SUMMARY OF INDIAN NEWS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 1, Issue 24, 6 March 1858, Page 5

SUMMARY OF INDIAN NEWS.

(From the Empire, Jan. 20.) We have at length been furnished with some, though not yet with all the necessary details of the fall of Delhi, by which an approximate judgment may be formed of the slaughter that ensued at its final capture and of the extent of the dispersion of the fleeing sepoys. And truly, if we reflect upon the spread of the rebellion over so many portions of our Indian empire, upon the immeasurable difficulties that attend the transmission of European troops during the hot and wet seasons there, upon the few troops that could be spared to take up a position as a check upon the movements of the mutineers in the royal city, the cholera that spread amongst our men, and the sorties of the enemy against them at every opportunity, we shall not think that four months, and those the most oppressive in the year, was too long a period for our crippled regiments to wait for reinforcements ere Delhi should be stormed ; or that their patience and bravery have not merited, or will not receive, the gratitude of the Government and the glowing praises everywhere of their admiring countrymen. Before the long looked for siege train had arrived in sight of the doomed city, two Generals commanding had, one after another died, and a third had become incapacitated by sickness. By the superior tact of General Wilson, the avengers are at length in readiness to commence their gory work. Seven native regiments — for all were happily not disloyal — joined with as many European, compose the besieging force. Whilst the enemy are unexpectant of our preparations, nearer and nearer our approaches are effected. The batteries are in readiness, and the bombardment of Delhi ensues. Exemplary courage now animates every British soldier, and the assaul- j ting columns, with rapt attention, await the sublime signal. The Cashmere gate is blown into atoms, at the sacrifice, it is to be feared, of the gallant Lieutenant Salkeld and of two of his intrepid companions. The storming band now rush in. Slaughter from either side becomes universal. Our officers, and their men also, fall like leaves in autumn, wounded or dead. Such is the headlong daring of our troops, that time is not given to the enemy to scatter them with the heavy grape loaded guns. The rebels I bite the dust in numbers every day until the city, palace, and suburbs are in our hands — though post after post was disputed by them with bravery worthy, of a better cause, or rather say, with all the madness of Asiatic desperation. They flee. The British bayonet thirsts to glut itself in the life blood of the merciless rebel. It is not, however, that which gives a distinctive character to the sack and plunder of the city and the unrelenting massacre of the sepoy. The numerous tribes of the Punjaub, with propensities as fiendish as are those of their adversaries, are let loose upon the mutinous race. Vengeance must have then been chaotic in the extreme. Yet women and children in the midst of all that hellish fury were, it is so asserted, both spared and protected. And, moreover, the source of all our disasters, the king of Delhi, was spared also ! The mind confesses itself incapable of forming a just conception of the ascendency of horror that so long reigned throughout the streets, and lanes, in the houses, the palaces, the temples, and the squares of the once renowned capital of the great Mogul, now nearly Teduced to ruins. But the greater part of its real wealth had been conveyed away ere the palaces and treasury fell into our hands. Treasure to a great extent was , nevertheless, being dug up in spots vainly supposed likely to escape the instinct of human vigilance ; and the plunder will have been immense. The enemy that fled did not far proceed without pursuit. Our flying columns ceased not for days to overtake numbers, as at Bolundshuhur and at Muttra, and to attack and defeat them with unrelenting slaughter. Unfortunately, we have no list of the casualties which befel our troops at the taking of Delhi. Information not only appears to travel slowly in India, but to be intentionally withheld from the expectant public. , We are assured that the fall of the city has had a vast moral effect upon the mutineers ; but we may well be permitted to doubt the truth of that statement in the face of their determined conduct during the jajsault, their discipline afterwards, and the loaowledge which they are sure. to swiftly Obtain that the old King has escaped the -disgraceful end which every British soldier could have sworn would have been the

traitor's lot. Although a mistaken feeling of mercy had taken possession of many of our officers and civilians in favour of the rebels, caught even in arms against us, we do not apprehend that Captain Hudson spared the King and Queen — whom, when in pursuit of the fugitives, he overtook — from motives of clemency towards them, because they conditionally surrendered. They could not help themselves. That officer evidently acted under superior orders ; for, we apprehend, he would not have dared to give them his protection in defiance of instructions to the contrary. He knew where, on one day to find the royal pair, and on the following, two of the sons and a grandson of the King. Neither the rank of the captured nor the sanctuary they had fled to saved them from being — not hanged, but "shot on the spot and their bodies exposed to public gaze." Here again, was mercy misplaced, though not to the same extent. They should have been hanged on high — they and their sire — from the accursed tree ; but we doubt not their punishment was in accordance with orders also. Be that as it may, the sparing of the life of the arch-offender— as though it were of "the Lord's anointed" — is as impolitic to the living as it was unjust to our honoured dead — to the memories of those who have fallen to avenge the inhuman atrocities committed at his beek — to the virtues, the heroism, and the sufferings of the abused and lacerated and mangled of our lamented countrywomen and their innocent offspring. Every one of the mutineers will deride the British as destitute of the protective passion in such a case of justifiable revenge. They will both feel and assert that we decapitated not their King — because we durst not do it. So long as that guilty old man is suffered to live, so long shall we have to fear that the mutineers will still exist in bodies in the west, and at the north-western extremity of India — that the British troops, in this unnatural warfare, will have spent their health and hopes, and have shed their blood almost in vain. Of Lucknow and the fortunate relief of its gallant garrison we have some further information. The persevering spirit of the brave and now lamented Havelock, in the details before us, shines forth with peculiarlustre, as does also the discernment as well as the promptitude of Sir James Outram. They were however, only just in time to effect their purpose, as mines had been run under our principal works, which if sprung would have rendered their promised protection to the garrison utterly useless. It was on the day following their arrival that the never-to-be-forgotten General Neill, in the assault on the batteries of the besiegers, fell in the company of many a brave associate. The glory of having triumphantly achieved the relief of the whole garrison falls to Sir Colin Campbell, whose attacks on the enemy at various points, in order to effect it, would appear to have been made with consummate skill and brilliancy. The Commander-in-Chief was in one of those actions slightly wounded. The rebels suffered greatly and the British troops, it is said also. Sir Colin — though he has given liberty to the garrison — has yet perhaps to attack the rebels — who fled from Lucknow with the traitor Man Singh, the Oudean chieftain — strengthened.by the Gwalior mutineers and headed by Nana Sahib, the eternally execrable. What a series of touching pictures have been indelibly fixed upon the mind by the accidents and calamities and episodes that have transpired dnring this long night of human misery. We speak not now of the dread scenes which have been enacted against the feeble — against those whose very nature should at all times claim ' protection and succour of the strong. We allude to the anguish and virtuous daring that promted many a lovely woman to cast their lives into the cold embrace of unpolluting stream rather than be exposed to the bestial insolence of' the brutal sepoy. We- see — who does not see ? — numbers of the wives and daughters of our wounded and massacred officers, of women brought up in the lap of luxury, who having fled the presence of that demonical race, were compelled for their safety to land in the capital of their pride in rags and tatters, stockingless and shoeless — mute yet eloquent pleaders for their country's sympathy and protection. Whatjreminiscences does not the narration of the feelings of the great and avenging soul of General Neill awake in us, as we read that, at the sight of the go-down in Cawnpore, unable to control himself, "he wept like a child." And. what talented hand will that painter not possess who shall faithfully depict the affecting group of Highlanders at Cawnpore, as overshadow-

ed by the wings of an avenging Nemesis, each one of them separately takes, before heaven, the oath of the lock. Looking into the fatal well, they recognised among the mangled remains that had therein been thrown, those of the late General Wheeler's beloved and heroic daughter. "The ringlets were gently removed from her head — some of which were sent home to her friends, the remainder were equally divided amongst the men, and each as he received his share, swore before heaven, that for every hair he had received, a Hindoo savage should die by his hands, and most religiously," it is affirmed, and we believe it, "will that terrible oath be observed, were the Governor-General himself to stand in the way of its execution." And so may it be.