On January 5th, 1843, he struck out with a small force for the desert fortress of Emanghur.
The desert—the world before it was born or after its death, the earth without water, no cloud above, no tree below—space, silence, solitude, all realised in one word—there is nothing like it in creation.
At midnight on January 5th the little column started for Emanghur,—three hundred and fifty men of the Twenty-Second Regiment on camels—two men on each—two twenty-four pounders drawn by camels, and two hundred troopers of the Scinde Horse, with fifteen days' food and four days' water. From a group of wells called Choonka, Napier sent back a hundred and fifty of his horse, and pushed on with the remainder. For seven days he held on through the sea of sand, and on the 12th reached his object. It was deserted by the Beloochees, who had abandoned their redoubtable stronghold at the approach of the British. On the last day's march the men of the Twenty-Second had to dismount from their camels and help to drag the heavy howitzer through the sand, all laughing and joking, and with such strength! We shall see these men a few weeks later doing still more splendid work, and will have a few words to say about them; now we must hurry on. Napier blew up thedesert fort and turned his face back towards the Indus. On January 16th he is still toiling through the sand waves, the men again dragging the guns, but with a significant absence of laughter now that the chances of fight are over. It is the anniversary of Corunna, and despite the labour and anxieties which surround him, the General's mind is away in the past. He reviews the long career now stretching like this desert into an immense horizon. In this retrospect his mind fastens upon one satisfactory thought—he and his brothers have not disgraced their father's memory. "We all resolved not to disgrace him," he writes, "and were he now alive he would be satisfied." The previous day, with the tremendous explosion of the blowing up of Emanghur still ringing in his ears, he wrote: "All last night I dreamed of my beloved mother; her beauteous face smiled upon me. Am I going to meet her very soon?" No, they were not to meet soon; for in spite of fierce battle and Scindian sun and life long past its prime, he is still to realise in himself that mysterious promise given in even a vaster desert than this to those who hold dear the memory of father and mother—he will be left long in the land he is soon to conquer.
By the end of January he has cleared the desert, reunited his column to the main body, and turned the head of his advance to the south. All this time negotiations were going on. Outram had gone to Hyderabad. The Ameers were in wildest confusion; they would sign anything one day, on the next it was protest, threat, or supplication. Camel and horse messengers were flying through the land. But amid all this varying mass of diplomatic rumour one fact was certain, the Ameers'fighting feudatories were gathering, the wild sword and matchlock men of the hills and the deserts were assembling at Hyderabad. The last day of January had come. In another month or six weeks the terrible sun would be hanging as a blazing furnace overhead, and it would be too late. "If they would turn out thirty thousand men in my front it would relieve me from the detestable feeling of having to deal with poor miserable devils that cannot fight, and are seeking pardon by submission. Twenty times a day I am forced to say to myself, 'Trust them not; they are all craft; be not softened.'" Halting five days at Nowshara to allow further time for negotiations and to rest his own troops, he resumes his march early in February. He is at Sukurunda on the 10th, and here again he halts for some days; for Outram has written from Hyderabad that the Ameers have accepted the treaty, and he prays a further respite. But at this place an event occurred which did much to decide the wavering balance between peace and war. On the night of February 12th Napier's cavalry seized some Beloochee chiefs passing the left of the camp. They were of the Murree hill tribe, and the leader of the clan, Hyat Khan, was among them. On him was found a letter from Ameer Mahomet of Hyderabad calling upon him to assemble all his warriors and to march to Meanee on the 9th. The discovery of this message at once decided Napier. He would march straight to his front; he would attack whatever barred his road, be they six or sixty thousand. The events that happened in these early days of February, 1843, and the trembling balance which now was decided to the side of war, have been made the occasion of long and fierce controversy.Volumes were written on Napier's side and on Outram's side. Did the Ameers mean war all the time, and were their professions of peace only directed to delay events until their soldiers were collected and the hot season had come? Or were they a poor helpless lot of enervated rulers, driven to resist the aggression of the English general, and only fighting at last when every other avenue of settlement had been closed against them? To us now two things are very clear. First, that Napier played the game of negotiation with the Ameers from first to last with an armed hand, ready to strike if there was hesitation on the part of his adversaries. Second, that his adversaries played precisely the same game with him. Both sides got their fighting men out. One began its march, the other took up its position of defence. That the flint on one side and the steel on the other, represented by their respective fighting forces, were anxious to come to blows there cannot be a doubt; and that when they found themselves only a few marches distant from each other they struck and fire flew, need never have been the cause of wonderment, least of all the cause of wonderment to soldiers. And now for the clash of flint and steel which bears the name of the battle of Meanee.
From the village of Hala, thirty-three miles north of Hyderabad, two roads led to that city. One of these, that nearer the Indus, approached the position of Meanee directly in front; the other, more to the east, turned that place on its right. Napier reached Hala on the morning of the 18th, and there his mind became immovably determined. In the afternoon Outram arrived by steamer from Hyderabad, having beenattacked on the previous day in the Residency by a division of the Beloochee army, with six guns. He had successfully resisted the attack with his small force for some hours, but, finding his ammunition running short, he withdrew with the little garrison to his steamers. There could now be no further doubt that the Ameers had elected to appeal to the sword, and the path was at last clear before Napier and his army. He will advance along the road nearest to the river; if possible he will manœuvre to turn the enemy's right when he is face to face with him. "There is but one thing—battle!" he writes on this day. "Had Elphinstone fought, he would not have lost his character. Had Wellington waited for Stevenson at Assaye, he would have been beaten. Monson hesitated and retreated and was beaten." Then he pushed on to Muttaree, one march from the Beloochee position. At this place, Muttaree, many things happened. During the day and night various reports came in as to the strength of the enemy. Outram says they are eighteen thousand strong, the spies report twenty to twenty-five, and thirty thousand Beloochees in position. They are flocking in so fast to Meanee that in another day or two there may be sixty thousand assembled. "Let them be sixty or one hundred thousand," is his reply, "I will fight." All the arrangements for the advance are now made. He will move his little army—it is only twenty-two hundred strong—after midnight, so as to arrive in front of Meanee by nine o'clock next morning. Then he sits down to write his letters and bring up his journal to date; for this coming battle, which is to be his first essay as Commander-in-Chief, may be his last as asoldier. "To fall will be to leave many I love," he writes to his old and true friend John Kennedy; "but to go to many loved, to my home! and that in any case must be soon"; for is he not sixty-one years of age? Then, having written all his letters and closed his journal with a message to his wife and children, which shows how the grand heart of the man was ever torn by love and steeled by duty, he goes out of his hut to visit the outposts and see that all is safe in the sleeping camp. It is now midnight. He lies down—has three hours' sleep, and at threeA.M.the fall-in sounds and the march to Meanee begins.
When day dawns the column is within a few miles of the enemy. The road leads over a level plain of white silt with a few stunted bushes growing at intervals upon it. To the right and left of this plain, extensive woods close the view. Theseshikargahs(hunting preserves) are about three-quarters of a mile apart, and the intervening plain across which the road leads is here and there seared by anullahor dry watercourse. Clouds of dust rise into the morning air from the feet of horses, men, camels, and the roll of wheels.
When there is good light to see, the halt is sounded and the men breakfast; then the march is resumed, and in another hour the leading scouts are in sight of the enemy. It is now eight o'clock. The enemy seems to occupy a deep and sudden depression in the plain on a front of twelve hundred yards, extending right across the line of advance and touching the woods on each flank. Before his right flank there is a village which he also occupies, but no other obstacle lies between the British advancing column and the great hollow in which the Beloochee lineof battle has been formed. Napier halts his advanced guard, and while awaiting the arrival of his main body, still a considerable distance in rear, endeavours to obtain some idea of the enemy's strength and position. It is no easy matter. The woods to right and left hide whatever troops he has on these flanks, and the deepnullahin front conceals his strength in that direction; but beyond thenullah, where the plain resumes its original level, the morning sun strikes upon thousands of bits of steel, and a vague dust hanging overhead tells of a vast concourse of human beings on the earth below it.
When the column arrives in line with the advanced guard there is a busy interval getting the immense baggage-train into defensive position, pushing forward guns and cavalry, deploying the infantry into line of battle, and trying to obtain from the top of some sand-dune a better view of the enemy's position. When all is ready for the final advance across the last thousand yards, one thing is certain to the General,—there is no chance of manœuvring to gain the Beloochee flank. The woods are too dense,nullahsintersect them, they swarm with the enemy—there is nothing possible but to attack the centre straight in front across the bare white plain. There is a small mud village before the enemy's right flank, where the leftshikargahtouches the bank of the big hollow. The nearer bank of this big hollow has a slight incline towards the plain, and above its level edge many heads can be seen through the field-glasses, and tall matchlock-barrels are constantly moving along it. This hollow is in fact the bed of the Fullalee river, a deep channel which quits the main stream of the Indus three or four miles farther to the right andbends round here to the village of Meanee, where, making a sudden turn to the south, it bends back towards Hyderabad. It is a flowing river only when the Indus is in flood; now the Indus is low and the Fullalee is a deep wide water-course destitute of water, or holding it only in a few stagnant pools. It is in this dry river-bed that the main portion of the Beloochee army is drawn up, and beyond it, in a loop of level ground which the river-channel makes between its bend, can be seen the tents and camp-equipage of the chiefs whose clansmen are arrayed beneath.
Carrying the glass still to the right along the nearer edge of the dry channel, the eye noted that theshikargah, or jungle-cover, which formed the left of the Beloochee army had a high wall dividing it from the plain, and that about midway between the enemy and the British line a large gap or opening had been made in this formidable obstacle. In an instant the quick eye of the General noted this opening. It was the gate of a proposed trap. Through it the left wing of the enemy would debouch upon the rear of the British when the little army would have passed the spot to engage the centre in the Fullalee. In the angles formed by theshikargahswhere they touched the Fullalee there were six guns in battery, while the entire front of the Beloochee position for a distance of some seven hundred yards had been cleared of even the stunted trees which elsewhere grew upon the plain. All these things Charles Napier took in in that short and anxious interval which preceded the final advance of his little army. It was not a sight that longer examination could make more pleasant. It was a strong and well-selected position, taken up with careand foresight, not to be turned on either flank, forcing the enemy that would attack it to show his hand at once, while it kept hidden from that assailant and safe from his shot, the main body of its defenders.
And now the British line of battle has reached to within nine hundred yards of this strong position which we have just glanced along. Let us see in what manner of military formation the English General moves his men to attack it. Line, of course; for every memory of his old soldier life held some precious moment consecrated to the glory of the red line of battle. Thirty years had rolled over him since he had seen that glorious infantry moving in all the splendour of its quiet courage to the shock of battle. Many things had changed since then, but the foot soldier was still the same. Now as in Peninsular days he came mostly from those lowly peasant homes which greed and foolish laws had not yet levelled with the ground. Now as in Peninsular days he was chiefly Irish. When Napier rode at the head of his marching column in Scinde, when he chatted as he loved to do at the halt or in the camp with the "man in the ranks," the habit of thought and mode of expression were the same as they had been in the far-off marches and bivouacs by the Tagus or the Coa. True, in this Scindian strife he had only a single regiment of that famous infantry in his army. But that single regiment was worth a host. "I have one British regiment," he had written only the previous night, "the Twenty-Second, magnificent Tipperary! I would not give yourspecimensfor a deal just now." What manner of men these Tipperary soldiers were, Sir William Napier tells us in hisConquest of Scinde. The description isworth repeating, because the picture is rarer than it used to be. "On the left of the artillery," he writes, describing the advance to Meanee, "marched the Twenty-Second Regiment. This battalion, about four hundred in number, was composed almost entirely of Irishmen, strong of body, high-blooded, fierce, impetuous soldiers who saw nothing but victory before them, and counted not their enemies." On the left of the Twenty-Second Regiment marched four battalions of native infantry, resolute soldiers moving with the firm tread which discipline so easily assumes when it is conscious of being led by capacity and courage. In front of the line of infantry thus formed, the Scinde Horse on the left and the grenadier and light companies of the Twenty-Second Regiment were thrown forward for the double purpose of screening the movement of the main body in their rear and of drawing the fire and thereby revealing the position of the enemy in front. With this advanced line of skirmishers rides the General in blue uniform, and conspicuous from the helmeted head-dress which he wears. The soldiers are in the old red coatee with white lappels and forage caps covered with white cotton, for there was no light Karkee clothing or helmets of pith or cork in those days, and the British infantry marched under the sun of India clad almost in the military costume of an English winter.
When the skirmishers reach the large gap in theshikargahwall before mentioned, the perfect soldier nature of Napier shows itself—the instant adaptation of means to end which marks the man who has to do his thinking on horseback and amid the whistle of bullets, from the man who has to do it in an easy chair and atan office-table. The wide gap in the high wall has been recently made. It will be used to attack the right rear of our line when engaged in front at the edge of the Fullalee. He will block up this gap with the grenadiers of the Twenty-Second. He will close this gaping wound in his plan of battle with these stalwart Celts, who, he knows, will stop it with their blood. So the grenadiers are closed upon their right flank, wheeled to the right, and pushed into the opening. "He is a good man in a gap" had been a favourite saying among these soldiers when they were peasant lads at home to designate a stout-hearted comrade. They are to prove its truth now.
So, with the grenadier company standing in the gap on his right, his baggage parked in rear, with the camels tied down in a circle, heads inward, forming a rampart around it, and having an escort as strong as he could spare from his already attenuated front, Napier passes on to the assault, all the swords of his cavalry and the bayonets of his infantry just numbering eighteen hundred, while his enemy in the hollow and the woods reckons not a man less than thirty thousand chiefs and clansmen.
And now as the line oféchelongets closer to the hollow the fire from matchlock and gun hits harder into the ranks of men moving in the old fighting formation, the red line of battle—thin, men have called it, but very thick for all that, with the memories of many triumphs. The leading line—the Twenty-Second Regiment—is only one hundred yards from the enemy. The moment had come for the skirmishers to fall back and give place to the chief combatants now so near each other. Napierputs himself in front of the Irishmen whose serried line of steel and scarlet extends two hundred yards from right to left, and then the command to charge rings out in his clear voice as three-and-thirty years earlier it sounded above the strife of Corunna. Until this moment the fire of the skirmishers has partly hidden the movement of formations behind; but when the magic word which flings the soldier on his enemy was heard, there came out of this veiling smoke a sight that no Beloochee warrior had ever seen before, for, bending with the forward surge of a mighty movement, the red wall of the Twenty-Second, fronted with steel, is coming on to the charge. It took little time to traverse the intervening space, and on the edge of the dry river-bed the two opposing forces met in battle. If to the Beloochee foeman the sight and sound of a British charge had been strange, not less terrible was the aspect of the field, as all at once it opened upon the Twenty-Second. Below them, in the huge bed of the Fullalee, a dense dark mass of warriors stood ready for the shock. With flashing swords and shields held high over turbaned heads, twenty thousand men shouting their war-cries and clashing sword and shield together seemed to wave fierce welcome to their enemies. For a moment it seems as though the vast disparity between the combatants must check the ardour of the advancing line; for a moment the red wall appears to stagger, but then the figure of the old General is seen pushing out in front of his soldiers, as with voice and gesture, and the hundred thoughts that find utterance at moments of extreme tension, he urges them to stand steady in this terrible combat. And nobly do these young soldiers—for thisis their first battle—respond to the old leader's call. A hundred times the Beloochee clansmen, moving from the deep mass beneath, come surging up the incline, until from right to left the clash of scimitar and shield against bayonet and musket rings along the line, and a hundred times they reel back again, leaving the musket and the matchlock to continue the deadly strife until another mass of chosen champions again attempts the closer conflict. More than once the pressure of the foremost swordsmen and the appearance of the dense dark mass behind them cause the line of the Twenty-Second to recoil from the edge of the bank; but wherever the dinted front of fight is visible there too is quickly seen the leader, absolutely unconscious of danger, his eagle eye fixed upon the strife, his hand waving his soldiers on, his shrill clear voice ringing above shot and steel and shout of combatants—the clarion call of victory. The men behind him see in this figure of their chief something that hides from sight the whole host of Beloochee foemen. Who could go back while he is there? Who among them would not glory to die with such a leader? The youngest soldier in the ranks feels the inspiration of such magnificent courage. The bugler of the Twenty-Second, Martin Delaney, who runs at the General's stirrups, catches, without necessity of order, the thought of his chief, and three times when the line bends back before the Beloochee onslaught, the "advance" rings out unbidden from his lips.
The final advance to the edge of the Fullalee, which brought the lines to striking distance, had been made inwhat is calledéchelonof battalions from the right. That is to say, the Twenty-Second Regiment struck the enemy first, then the Twenty-Fifth Sepoys came into impact, and so on in succession until the entire line formed one continuous front along the bank of the dry river. The advantages of this method of assault were many. First, it allowed the Twenty-Second Regiment to give a lead to the entire line, for each succeeding battalion could see with what a front and bearing these splendid soldiers carried themselves in the charge. Then, too, it enabled each particular regiment to come into close quarters with the enemy upon a more regular and imposing front than had the advancing force formed a single line necessarily crowded and undulating by the exigencies of marching in a long continuous formation, and also it made the assault upon the enemy's left flank the last to come to shock of battle; for on this left flank the village of Meanee was held in advance of the river line, and the Beloochee guns in battery there had to be silenced before his infantry could be encountered.
We have already said that our own artillery moved on the extreme right of the infantry. Early in the action they closed up to the right flank of the Twenty-Second, and coming into action on a mound which there commanded the bed of the Fullalee, the farther bank of the river, and the woodedshikargahto the right, made havoc among the Beloochee centre on one side, and, on the other, among the left wing which was destined to fall upon our rear. Stopped by the grenadier company from issuing through the large gap in the wall, and taken in flank by two of the guns behind the mound, firing case-shot through another opening in thewall made by the Madras Sappers, this left wing of the enemy suffered so severely that it was unable to make any head. Napier had told the grenadier company to defend the opening to the last man, and nobly did they answer his behest. The captain of the company, Tew, died at his post, but no enemy passed the gap that day.
Meanwhile the fight on the edge of the dry channel went on with a sameness of fierceness that makes its recital almost monotonous. In no modern battle that we read of is the actual shock of opposing forces more than a question of a few moments' duration. Here at Meanee it is a matter of hours. For upwards of three hours this red line is fighting that mass of warriors at less than a dozen yards' distance, and often during the long conflict the interval between the combatants is not half as many feet. Over and over again heroic actions are performed in that limited area between the hosts that read like a page from some dim combat of Homeric legend. The commander of the Twenty-Fifth Bombay Sepoys, Teesdale, seeing the press of foemen in front of his men to be more than his line can stand, spurs into the midst of the surging mass, and falls, hewing his enemies to the last. But his spirit seems to have quitted his body only to enter into the three hundred men who have seen him fall, and the wavering line bears up again. So, too, when the Sepoy regiment next in line has to bear the brunt of the Beloochee charge, the commanding officer, Jackson, rides forward into the advancing enemy and goes down amid a whirl of sword-blades, his last stroke crashing through a shield vainly raised to save its owner's life, and beats back the Beloochee surge. M'Murdoof the Twenty-Second, riding as staff-officer to the General, cannot resist the intoxication of such combats. Seeing a chief conspicuous alike by martial bearing and richness of apparel, he rides into the enemy's ranks and engages him in single combat. Before they can meet M'Murdo's horse is killed, but the rider is quickly on his feet, and the combat begins. Both are dexterous swordsmen, and each seems to recognise in the other a foeman worthy of his steel; but the Scottish clansman is stouter of sword than his Beloochee rival, and Jan Mahomet Khan rolls from his saddle to join the throng which momentarily grows denser on the sandy river-bed.
Once or twice the old General is himself in the press of the fight. He is practically unarmed, because his right hand had been disabled a few days earlier by a blow which he had dealt a camel-driver who was maltreating his camel, and the Scindian's head being about fifty times harder than the General's hand, a dislocated wrist was the result. So intent is he on the larger battle that the men around him are scarcely noticed, and more than once his life is saved by a soldier or an officer interposing between him and an enemy intent on slaying the old chief, who seems to him exactly what he is—the guiding spirit of this storm of war. Thus Lieutenant Marston saves his General's life in front of the Twenty-Fifth Sepoys by springing between a Beloochee soldier and Napier's charger at the moment the enemy is about to strike. The blow cuts deep into the brass scales on Marston's shoulder, and the Beloochee goes down between the sword of the officer and the bayonet of a private who has run in to themelée. Again he gets entangled in the press infront, and is in close peril when a sergeant of the Twenty-Second saves him; and as the old man emerges unscathed from the surf of shield and sword, the whole Twenty-Second line shouts his name and greets him with a wild Irish cheer of rapture ringing high above the clash of battle. It is at this time that the drummer Delaney, who keeps everywhere on foot beside his General, performs the most conspicuous act of valour done during the day. In the midst of themeléehe sees a mounted chief leading on his men. Delaney seizes a musket and bayonet, rushes upon the horseman, and Meer Wullee Mahomet Khan goes down in full sight of both armies, while the victor returns with the rich sword and shield of the Beloochee leader.
There are no revolvers yet, no breechloading arms, nothing but the sword for the officer and the flint musket and bayonet for the men; and fighting means something more than shoving cartridges in at one end of a tube and blowing them out at the other, twenty to the minute, by the simple action of pulling a finger. "At Meanee," says M'Murdo, "the muskets of the men often ceased to go off, from the pans becoming clogged with powder, and then you would see soldiers, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the onslaught, wiping out the priming pans with a piece of rag, or fixing a new flint in the hammer." Sometimes these manifold inducements to old "brown Bess" to continue work have to be suspended in order to receive on levelled bayonets a wild Beloochee rush, and then frequently could be seen the spectacle of men impaled upon the steel, still hacking down the enemy they had been able to reach only in death.
This desperate battle has continued for three hours, when for the first time the Beloochees show symptoms of defeat. The moment has in fact come which in every fight marks the turn of the tide of conflict, and quick as thought Napier seizes its arrival. His staff officers fly to the left carrying orders to the Scinde Horse and the Bengal Cavalry to penetrate at all hazards through the right of the enemy's line, and fall upon his rear. The orders are well obeyed, and soon the red turbans of Jacob's Horse and the Bengal Cavalry are seen streaming through the Fullalee, and, mounting the opposite slope where the Beloochee camp is pitched, they capture guns, camp, standards, and all the varied insignia of Eastern war. The battle of Meanee is won. Then, beginning with the Twenty-Second, there went up a great cheer of victory. How those Tipperary throats poured forth their triumph, as bounding forward, the men so long assailed became assailants, and driving down the now slippery incline they bore back in quickening movement the wavering mass of swordsmen! Perhaps there was something in that Irish cheer that told the old General there was the note of love as well as of pride in the ring. Why not? Had he not always stood up for them and for their land? Had not their detractors ever been his enemies? Had not he dammed back the tide of his own success in life by championing their unfashionable cause? Soldiers catch quickly thoughts and facts that come to other men through study and reflection. They were proud of him, they loved him, and for more than half a century their valour and their misfortunes had touched the springs of admiration and sorrow in his heart. How he valued these cheers on the field of Meanee his journal of thefollowing day tells. "The Twenty-Second gave me three cheers after the fight, and one during it," he writes. "Her Majesty has no honour to give that can equal that." What a leader! What soldiers!
Exhausted by the prolonged strain of mind and body—"ready to drop," he tells us, "from the fatigue of one constant cheer"—Napier lay down in his cloak that night in the midst of the dead and dying. Terrible had been the slaughter. More than twelve hundred dead lay in the dry bed of the river immediately in front of where the British line had fought. The woods and surrounding ground held a vast number of bodies. It is estimated that not less than six or seven thousand Beloochees perished in the battle. On our own side the loss, though severe, was slight compared with that of the enemy. About two hundred and seventy of all ranks had been killed and wounded—more than one-seventh of the total number engaged. Of these, nineteen were officers—a third of the number on the ground. These figures give us a good measure of the fierce nature of the struggle, and of the bravery displayed on both sides; but the true lesson of such heroism was not noticed at the time, or rather was kept steadily out of sight by all save a few men, and that lesson was this, that good and courageous leadership means brave and victorious soldiers, and that bad leadership means cowardice and defeat. It was buta year before this day of heroes at Meanee that there had been whole days and weeks of cowardice at Cabul. Infantry, cavalry, artillery; arms, powder, and shot—all the same, yet all the difference between victory and defeat, between honour and dishonour in the two results. It was this fact above every other that caused the display of envious enmity from so many quarters towards Napier and his victory; the contrast was too glaring, the youngest soldier in the ranks could read it. But a year ago the world had beheld the most dishonourable and inglorious chapter of our military history enacted near the head waters of this same Indus river, and here, now, another hand playing the game with the self-same cards had won it against greater odds and braver enemies.
But if it was unpleasant in England to find the lesson of victory taught so well by one who had ever opposed privilege, whether it called itself Whig or Tory, still more disagreeable was it to certain classes in India to find the man who had already, during his brief sojourn in the East, vehemently assailed the most cherished abuses of Indian misgovernment all at once the victor of a desperate battle. What was to be done in the circumstances? They dared not depreciate the valour of the troops or the desperate bravery they had overcome, but it was possible for them to denounce the victorious old general. He had few friends among the rulers. He had too frequently told them what he thought of them. He had so often applied the salt of his satire to the great leech called favouritism, that now his detractors were sure of finding an audience ready to applaud when they launched the envenomed shaft, and spoke of the "ferocity and blood-thirstiness" of the old chief, and did what theycould to lessen his glory,—that chief who wrote in his journal how he had covered an enemy who had come too close to him with his pistol, "but did not shoot, having great repugnance to kill with my own hand unless attacked!"
It is a sorry story, and one we will gladly pass on from with this observation. It would have been better had Napier treated the whole host of his attackers, Indian editors and Indian civilians, English peers and English pressmen, with silent contempt. The very virulence of their denunciation was as quicksilver poured upon the glass of their envy. He could see his own greatness all the better, and measure the shallowness of the medium that revealed it to him. But there was one thing that the detractors could not do; they could not hide from the soldiers of England or India, or from the people of the United Kingdom, that this battle of Meanee had been a victory with the old ring in it. Right up comes the little army; no hesitation, no false movements; right thrown forward because the Irish are there; left thrown back because the enemy's guns are there; then a hand-to-hand fight for three hours in which the old leader is ever out in front waving his hat, cheering with his shrill voice, getting his hair singed with the closeness of guns going off under his nose. No, they cannot blacken that picture, for every man in the little army has seen it during these three hours, and under its influence the very camp-followers have become daring soldiers. "I bring to your notice," writes the officer commanding the artillery, "the names of three native gun-lascars, who displayed the greatest bravery in dragging the guns up to the edge of the bank, level with theTwenty-Second line. I would not venture to do so had they not been mere followers, entitled to no pension to themselves or reward to their families had they fallen." Such is the force of a general's example.
Before night closed on the field the fruits of the victory were apparent. Six Ameers of Scinde came in and surrendered themselves prisoners of war, bringing with them the keys of Hyderabad, whose tall towers were visible against the horizon five miles to the south. Then Napier lay down to sleep, and so sound was his rest that when there is a false alarm among the camp-followers towards morning they cannot rouse him. Next morning he writes his despatches and tells the story of the fight in short and vivid language. He does not forget the man in the ranks, and for the first time in the history of our wars the private soldier is personally named for his bravery. What a levelling general this is! Yesterday he was levelling his enemies; now to-day he is levelling his friends. They will not like it at home, he thinks. Well, he cannot help that; they will have to like it some day, and the sooner they begin to learn the better, so off goes the names of Drummer Martin Delaney, and full Private James O'Neill, and Havildar Thackoor Ram, and Subadar Eman Beet, and Trooper Mootee Sing, and many others.
Having buried his dead, rested his living, and sent off his despatches, Napier moved his little army to Hyderabad, hoisted the British flag on the great tower of the fortress, and put his force in camp four miles farther west on the Indus. He was still far from the end of hostilities. He had defeated over thirty thousand Beloochees at Meanee, but there were fifteen thousandmore who had not reached the field of battle that day, and these now formed a rallying-point for the bands which had withdrawn from that stubborn fight beaten but not routed. Shere Mahomet, Ameer of Meerpoor, the leader of this force—the only real fighting man among the Scindian princes—had still to be reckoned with, and that reckoning was in no degree rendered easier by the fact that since Meanee, the real weakness of the British in numbers had become known to the whole world of Scinde. Everybody had seen the slender column that had taken possession of Hyderabad, and was now entrenched on the left bank of the Indus four miles from the city. Let the Lion of Meerpoor bide his time, gather all the Beloochee clansmen, and when the sun once more hung straight over the Scindian desert fall on the Feringhee. It was a pretty plan, and no doubt might have had fair chance of at least a temporary success had it been played against a less experienced enemy than this old war-dog now entrenched upon the Indus. For him two things were necessary. First, he must obtain reinforcements for his army; second, he must draw the Lion closer to his camp. When the time comes for making another spring it will not do to go seeking this Scindian chief afar off, in deserts that are glowing like live coals in the midsummer sun. So two lines of policy are pursued by Napier. He sends up and down the Indus for every man and gun he hopes to lay hands on, and he spreads abroad in Hyderabad the story of his own weakness. The Lion, scared by Meanee, had fallen back towards his deserts; now, lured by these accounts of paucity of numbers, sickness, etc., he draws forward again, until he is only six miles beyondHyderabad and within one march of the Indus. It was now the middle of March; the reinforcements are approaching. Stack with fifteen hundred men and five guns is only five marches distant to the north. The Lion can strike at Stack before he joins Napier, but on his side Sir Charles is watchful. If the Lion moves to fall on Stack, he, Napier, will make a spring at the Lion's flank. It is a pretty game, but one of course only possible to play in war with a half-savage enemy. On March 22nd Stack is passing Meanee. The Lion makes a weak attempt to gobble up his fifteen hundred men, but Napier has sent out a strong force of cavalry and guns to help his lieutenant, and Stack gets safely in on the 22nd. On the same day boats arrive from north and south with more reinforcements and supplies, and on the following everything is ready for the attack on the Lion, who is just nine miles distant, entrenched up to his eyes and tail in woods,nullahs, and villages at Dubba, five miles from Hyderabad.
Napier has five thousand men all told, the Lion has five-and-twenty thousand. The odds are long, but longer ones had been faced at Meanee, and the Tipperary men are still at the head of the column, and neither they nor their general have the slightest doubt about the result. The army marches before daybreak, and the morning is yet young when it is in sight of the enemy. The Lion is lying low, well hidden in hisnullahsof which he has a double line, one flank resting on the village of Dubba and the old Fullalee channel, the other well screened by wood. He has eleven guns in front of Dubba. The British column now forms line as at Meanee, but this time the Twenty-Second take theleft, opposite the fortified village and the battery, because there will be the thick of the fight. The advance is again to be inéchelonof battalions, the Twenty-Second leading. When all is ready, the guns, of which Napier has nineteen, open on the Beloochee position, then the Twenty-Second lead straight upon Dubba. Into thenullah, through thenullah, out of thenullah, right through the double line of entrenchments goes this "ever-glorious regiment," strewing the ground with enemies, and leaving more than a third of its own numbers down too. The fighting here and at the village of Dubba is very stubborn, for at this point the brave African chief Hoche Mahomet has taken his stand, and the fierce valour—which forty years later we are to know more about—marks his presence. But Meanee has taken the steel out of the Beloochee swordsmen, and the whole position is soon in our hands. This time Napier is strong in cavalry, and a vigorous pursuit followed the broken bands as they retreated towards Meerpoor. In this fight at Dubba as at Meanee Napier has many escapes. A bullet breaks the hilt of his sword; the orderly riding behind him has his horse disabled with a sword-cut; as they gain the village a magazine blows up in the midst of them; but the General is not touched. As usual he is in the very thick of the fighting, cheered everywhere by the soldiers. They are all young enough to be his children, but they watch him as a lioness would watch her last remaining cub, Private Tim Kelly constituting himself as special protector, and bayoneting every Beloochee that comes near his child. Six months later we find Napier has not forgotten these splendid soldiers. Writing to the Governor-General and thanking him for the promise of a medal forthe battles, he thus speaks of his men: "Now I can wear my Grand Cross at ease, but while my officers and men received nothing my Ribbon sat uncomfortably on my shoulder. Now I can meet Corporal Tim Kelly and Delaney the bugler without a blush." And then comes a bit which deserves record so long as history tells of heroism. Here it is: "I find that twelve wounded men of the Twenty-Second concealed their wounds at Dubba, thinking there would be another fight. They were discovered by a long hot march which they could not complete, and when they fell they had to own the truth. Two of them had been shot clean through both legs. How is it possible to defeat British troops? It was for the Duke of York to discover that!"
From the field of Dubba the victors pressed on to finish the war. Two days after the fight the infantry are twenty, and the cavalry forty, miles from the scene of battle. The Lion's capital, Meerpoor, was occupied on March 26th, his desert fort at Omercote surrendered on April 4th. The war was practically over. "This completes the conquest of Scinde," writes Napier when he hears that Omercote is his; "every place is in my possession, and, thank God, I have done with war! Never again am I likely to see another shot fired in anger. Now I shall work at Scinde as in Cephalonia to do good, to create, to improve, to end destruction, to raise up order." So he hoped; but it was not to be as he thought. Peace was yet some months distant, and even when it came with Beloochee on the Indus, a warfare of words and pens with a whole host of enemies at home and in India was to embitter the remaining future of the conqueror's life. The Lion got clear away from Dubba,and by the middle of May he had again rallied to his standard some ten thousand men. He was now fifty miles north of Hyderabad, on the line Napier had followed when moving from Sukkur to Meanee. The heat was at its worst. No one who has not felt the power of the sun in lands where the desert acts as a vast fire-brick to scorch life to a cinder can realise this terrible temperature. One only chance remains for European life under such conditions—it is entire abstinence from alcoholic drink. In Scinde as in other parts of India alcohol was plentiful, and the loss among the soldiers was proportionally great. In the end of May Napier moved once more against the Lion. Two other columns were also directed from north and east against him. Thus between the three advancing forces and the Indus it was hoped he might be crushed. Despite terrific heat and an inundation now at its height, these columns gradually drew to their object; but there was no real fight now left in the Beloochee clansmen; Roberts near Schwan, and Jacob at Shadadpoor, defeated his soldiers with ease, and the Lion became a fugitive in the foot-hills of Beloochistan. It was full time for hostilities to cease. On June 14th Napier's column reached Nusserpoor, some ten or twelve miles east of Meanee; his men were dropping by scores; the air seemed to be on fire. Suddenly through this furnace-heated atmosphere came the distant sound of cannon. It was the last echo of the war; Jacob was fighting the Lion twenty miles to the north. When mid-day arrived the heat grew more intense. In one hour forty-three European soldiers were down with sunstroke, and before evening they were all dead. One more had to fall before the terrible daywas over. It was the General. He was sitting writing in his tent, and had just written: "Our lives are on thesimmernow, and will soon boil; the natives cannot stand it; and I have been obliged to take my poor horse, Red Rover, into my tent, where he lies down exhausted, and makes me very hot. I did not bring a thermometer—what use would it be to lobster boiling alive?" Then he fell struck by heat apoplexy. Fortunately the doctors were near, all the restoratives were quickly applied, and life was saved. As they were tying up his arm after bleeding, a horseman came galloping to the tent. He carried a despatch from Jacob announcing the final victory over Shere Mahomet. What effect the news had on the prostrate old soldier we learn from the journal ten days later, when he is able again to write an entry. "Jacob's message roused me from my lethargy as much as the bleeding; it relieved my mind, for then I knew my plans had succeeded, and the Beloochee had found that his deserts and his fierce sun could not stop me. We lost many men by heat; but all must die some time, and no time better than when giving an enemy a lesson."
They brought him back to Hyderabad, and the wonderful constitution, tempered and twisted into birdcage wire by years of temperance and labour, again asserted itself, and within a fortnight of the blow of the sun he comes up smiling to the hundred cares of war and government, and to the still more wearing worries of assault from open and concealed enemies in England and India. For a long time he is very weak. All the reaction of these four anxious months, all the waste of life-power which war brings with it, now capped by sunstroke, and still further accentuated by calumny andill-natured criticism, are too much for him, and it seems that he must soon lay his bones in the sands of Scinde. "Even to mount my horse," he writes, "is an exertion. I, who ten years ago did not know what fatigue was, and who even a few months ago at Poonah knocked off fifty-four miles in the heat, am now distressed by four miles! This last illness has floored me, and even my mind has lost its energy; yet it is good to die in harness." These forebodings were not to be verified. The long Scindian summer wore away, and with the end of August cooler weather began to dawn on the Unhappy Valley. Gradually we find the old tone coming back into the journal, the old ring into the letters. He has a hundred plans for the improvement of Scinde and the happiness of its people. He will chain the Indus in its channel, cut canals for irrigation, lessen the taxes, lighten the lot of the labourer, curb the power of the chiefs—in fine, make a Happy Valley out of this long dreary, dusty, sun-baked land. Alas! it was only a pleasant dream. The man who would do all this must be something more than a governor reporting home by every mail, and called upon to reply to every silly question which ignorance, prompted by mammon or malice, may dictate. One thing he is determined upon. He will give the labourer justice, cost what it may. He has caught two tax-collectors riding roughshod over the peasants. "I will make," he writes, "such an example of them as shall show the poor people my resolution to protect them. Yes, I will make this land happy if life is left me for a year. I shall have no more Beloochees to kill. Battle! victory! spirit-stirring sounds in the bosom of society; but to me—OGod, how my spirit rejects them! Not one feeling of joy or exultation entered my head at Meanee or Dubba—all was agony. I can use no better word. To win was the least bloody thing to be done, and was my work for the day; but with it came anxiety, pain of heart, disgust, and a longing never to have quitted Celbridge; to have passed my life in the 'round field,' and in the 'devil's acre,' and under the yew trees on the terrace amongst the sparrows—these were the feelings that flashed in my head after the battles." And then he goes on to speak his thoughts upon government and justice, and very noticeable thoughts they are too—never more worthy of attention than to-day. "People think," he writes, "and justly sometimes, that to execute the law is the great thing; they fancy this to bejustice. Cast away details, good man, and take what the people call justice, not what the laws call justice, and execute that. Both legal and popular justice have their evils, but assuredly the people's justice is a thousand times nearer to God's justice. Justice must go with the people, not against the people; that is the way to govern nations, and not by square and compass." Very old words these, rung so often in the ears of rulers that they have long ago forgotten their import, until all at once their truth is brought home to heart again by the loss of a crown or the revolt of a colony.
Now arrived from England the list of honours and rewards for the victories. Immediately upon the receipt of the news of Meanee Lord Ellenborough had appointed Napier Governor of Scinde, with fullest powers. TheGazettemade him only a Grand Cross of the Bath. Peerages had been bestowed for very small fractions ofvictory in Afghanistan; but for these real triumphs in Scinde there was to be no such reward, and it was better that it should have been so. The gold of Napier's nature did not want the stamp of mere rank; perhaps it would not carry the alloy which the modern mint finds necessary for the operation. But although the reward of the victor was thus carefully limited, it was quite sufficient to call forth many open expressions of ill-will, and still more numerous secret assaults of envious antagonists. Unfortunately for Napier, these he could not meet with silent contempt. The noble nature of the man could accept neglect with stoical indifference; but the fighting nature of the soldier could not brook the stings of political or journalistic cavillers. And it must be acknowledged these last were enough to rouse the lion of St. Mark himself, even had that celebrated animal imbibed from his master his full share of virtues. Everything was cavilled at; motive, action, and result were attacked, and from the highest Director of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street to the most insignificant editor of an Indian newspaper in the service of the civilian interest in Bombay or Calcutta, came the stinging flight of query, innuendo, or direct condemnation. The reason for much of this animosity was not hard to find. Napier had dared to tell unpalatable truths about the impoverishment of India through the horde of locusts who, under the name of Government, had settled upon it. The man who could tell the Directors of the East India Company that their military policy tended to the mutiny of their soldiers, and their civil system was a huge source of Indian spoliation, was not likely to find much favour with the richest and most powerful, and, itmay be added, the most commercial company the world has ever seen; nor was he likely to be apersona gratawith the officials who administered the affairs of that gigantic corporation. This is the true key to solve the now perplexing question of the antagonism encountered by Charles Napier from the moment of his success at Meanee to the end of his life. The pride of aristocratic privilege in high place is a dangerous thing to touch; but the pride of the plutocratic Solomon in his right to reap the labour of those who toil and spin is a thousand times a more venturesome thing to trench upon. Added to these causes for negative recognition of brilliant service, and positive condemnation from many quarters, there was a political state of things which influenced the opinion of the moment. Lord Ellenborough was not popular. The Whig policy of action beyond the Indian frontier had been most disastrous. The contrast between it and the campaign on the Indus was painfully apparent. It was like some long day of storm and gloom which had closed in a glorious sunset; and while the morning and mid-day of tempest had been Whig, the evening glory had come under a Tory administration. In reading the history of all these squabbles now, the chief regret we experience is that Napier should have bothered himself with their presence. Indeed, in his moments of calm reflection he appears to have rated them at their true worth. "Honours!" he writes about this time; "I have had honour sufficient in both battles. At Meanee, when we forced the Fullalee, the Twenty-Second, seeing me at their head, gave me three cheers louder than all the firing. And at Dubba, when I returned nearly alonefrom the pursuit with the cavalry, the whole Line gave me three cheers. One wants nothing more than the praise of men who know how to judge movements."
With these soldiers indeed, officers and men, his popularity was unbounded. They knew the truth. Many among them had seen to their cost the fruits of bad leadership in Cabul, and had learnt to value the truth of the old Greek proverb, which declared that "a herd of deer led by a lion was more formidable to the enemy than a herd of lions led by a deer." And they knew that though this small, spare, eagle-beaked and falcon-eyed leader worked them till they dropped beneath the fierce sun of Scinde, there was no heat of sun or fatigue of march or press of battle which he did not take his lion's share of. Even when now, in this autumn of 1843, an enemy more formidable to soldiers attacked them, when the deadliest fever stalked through the rough camps along the Indus, and the graveyards grew as the ranks thinned, no murmur rose from the rank and file, but silently the fate was accepted which sent hundreds of them to an inglorious death. Here and there through the journals we come on entries that tell more powerfully than any record of figures could do what this mortality must have been. "Alas!" we read only a few months after Meanee, "these two brave soldiers, Kelly and Delaney of the Twenty-Second, are dead. They fought by my side, Kelly at Dubba and Delaney at Meanee. Three times, when I thought the Twenty-Second could not stand the furious rush of the swordsmen, Delaney sounded the advance, and each time the line made a pace or two nearer to the enemy." Difficult now is it for us to believe that at this time,when the soldiers of the army of Scinde were dying by hundreds in hospital, they were denied the last consolations of their religion. "There is no Catholic clergyman here," writes Napier in October, 1843. "The Mussulman and the Hindoo have their teachers; the Christian has none. The Catholic clergyman is more required than the Protestant, because Catholics are more dependent upon their clergy for religious consolation than the Protestants are; and the Catholic soldier dies in great distress if he has not a clergyman to administer to him. But, exclusive of all other reasons, I can hardly believe that a Christian government will refuse his pastor to the soldier serving in a climate where death is so rife, and the buoyant spirit of man is crushed by the debilitating effects of disease and heat. I cannot believe that such a government will allow Mammon to cross the path of our Saviour, to stand between the soldier and his God, and let his drooping mind thirst in vain for the support which his Church ought to afford." No wonder that the Governor who could, in such glowing words, rebuke the greed of his governors and champion the cause of the lowly should find few friends in high place; that the reward of rank, given before and since for such trivial result or such maculated victory, should have been denied to the brilliant victor of Meanee and conqueror of Scinde; that the thanks of Parliament should have been delayed till the greater part of the army thanked was in its grave; and that the leader of that army should find himself and his victories the objects of all the secret shafts and mysterious machinery which wealth, power, and malevolent envy could set in motion against him.
Scinde subdued in the open field, there still remained great work to be done—work which tasks to a far larger degree the talent of man than any feat of arms in war can do. War at best is but a pulling down, often a very necessary operation, but all the same only the preliminary step of clearing the ground for some better edifice.
For better, for worse, Scinde was now British, and Napier set at once to work to consolidate his conquest, and secure to the conquered province the best administration of justice he could devise for it. A terrible misfortune came, however, to retard all plans for improvement. Early in the autumn pestilence laid low almost the entire army of the Indus. A slow and wasting form of fever broke out among both English and Indian soldiers, and equally struck down the natives of Scinde. In the camp at Hyderabad twenty-eight hundred men were down together. At Kurachee the Twenty-Eighth Regiment could only muster about forty men fit for service out of the entire battalion. At Sukkur, in Northern Scinde, sixteen hundred were in hospital. There were only a few doctors to look afterthis army of sick. Out of three cavalry regiments, only a hundred men could mount their horses. People shook their heads gloomily, and Scinde became known far and wide as the Unhappy Valley. Amid all this misery, while "the land in its length and breadth was an hospital," as Napier described it, we find him never giving in for a moment, working at his plans for justice, repression of outrage, irrigation, roads, bridges, moles, harbours, and embankments as though he was enjoying the health-giving breezes of the Cephalonian mountains. Wonderful now to read are the plans and visions of the future that then floated before his mind. "Suez, Bombay, and Kurachee will hit Calcutta hard before twenty years pass," he writes, "but Bombay will beat Kurachee, and be the Liverpool if not the London of India." Nor has the pestilence stilled in his heart dreams of further conquest. "How easily, were I absolute," he says, "could I conquer all these countries and make Kurachee the capital. With the Bombay soldiers of Meanee and Hyderabad I could walk through all the lands. I would raise Beloochee regiments, pass the Bolan in a turban, and spread rumours of a dream and the prophet. Pleasant would be the banks of the Helmund to the host of Mahomedans who would follow any conqueror." So passed the winter of 1844. Before the cool season was over, the troops had regained comparative health, and were better able to face the terrible summer. May and June came, as usual bringing sunstroke, disease, and death in their train, but for Napier the hot season of 1844 had something worse in store. His Chief, Lord Ellenborough, was suddenly recalled by the East India Directors.This was a regular knock-down blow, for while Lord Ellenborough was Viceroy of India Charles Napier could count upon an unvarying support; he fought, as it were, with his back to a wall. Now the wall was gone, and henceforth it seemed that the circle of his enemies would be complete. "I see but one advantage in the unfortunate recall of Lord Ellenborough," he writes; "it will oblige the Government to destroy a Mercantile Republic which has arisen in the midst of the British Monarchy." The prophecy was not to be fulfilled for thirteen years, when the terrible mutiny of 1857—so often predicted by Napier, and laughed at by his enemies—came like an avalanche to sweep before it every vestige of the famous Association.
What life in Scinde meant to Napier in this hot season of 1844 we gather from a letter written in June to his brother. "The Bengal troops at Shikarpoor are in open mutiny," he writes, "and I am covered with boils, that have for three weeks kept me in pain and eight days in bed. This, with the heat and an attack of fever, has made me too weak to go to Shikarpoor, for the sun is fierce up the river; many have been struck down by it last week, and it would be difficult for me to bear a second rap. Still I would risk it, but that a storm seems brewing at Mooltan, and this extraordinary change of governors will not dispel it. To me also it appears doubtful, if the Sikhs pour sixty or seventy thousand men over the Sutlej, whether Gough has means to pull them up. I am therefore nursing myself to be able to bolt northwards when we can act, which is impossible now—three days under canvas would kill half the Europeans." If Napier'sreputation for foresight stood alone upon the above letter, it would suffice to place him at the top of the far-seeing leaders of his day. In the midst of all his sickness and discomfort he accurately forecast the history of the coming years in India. The intense activity of the man's mind is never more apparent than during this terrible season, which prostrates thousands of younger men. His letters teem with brilliant bits of thought on government, war, justice, society, politics, taxation,—nothing comes amiss to him. Here, for example, is a bit on war worth whole volumes of the stuff usually written about it. "The man who leads an army cannot succeed unless his whole mind is thrown into his work, any more than an actor can act unless he feels his part as if he was the man he represents. It is not saying 'Come and go' that wins battles; you must make the men you lead come and go with a will to their work of death. The man who either cannot or will not do this, but goes to war snivelling about virtue and unrighteousness, will be left on the field of battle to fight for himself." Here again is a little chapter on Indian government. "The Indian system seems to be the crushing of the native plebeian and supporting the aristocrat who, reason and facts tell us, is our deadly enemy. He always must be, for we step into his place. Theryotis ruined by us, though willing to be our friend. Yet he is the man to whom we must trust for keeping India—and the only one who can take it from us, if we ill-use him, for then he joins his hated natural chief. English and Indian may be amalgamated by just and equal laws—until we are no longer strangers. The final result of our Indian conquests no man can predict, but if we take the peopleby the hand we may count on ruling India for ages. Justice—rigid justice, even severe justice—will work miracles. India is safe if so ruled, but such deeds are done as make me wonder that we hold it a year."
As the cool season of 1844-45 drew on, Napier set out on an expedition against the hill tribes of Northern Scinde. Hitherto these wild clansmen had had things pretty much their own way; in true Highland fashion they were wont to sweep down upon the villages of the plain, killing men, carrying off women and cattle, looting and devastating as they went. Hard to catch were these Beloochee freebooters, for their wiry little horses carried the riders quickly out of reach into some fastness where pursuit, except in strength and with supplies for man and beast, was hopeless. The hills which harboured these raiders ran along the entire western frontier of Scinde, from the sea to the Bolan Pass. North of that famous entrance to Afghanistan they curved to the east, approaching the Indus not far from the point where that stream received the five rivers of the Punjaub. Here, spreading out into a labyrinth of crag, defile, and mountain, they formed a succession of natural fortresses, the approaches to which were unknown to the outer world. This great fastness, known as the Cutchee Hills, was distant from Kurachee more than three hundred miles. Leaving Kurachee in the middle of November and following a road which skirted a fringe of hills lying west of the Indus, Napier reached his northern frontier after a month's march. It was a pleasant change to get away from the sickly cantonments into the desert and the hills, where the pure air, now cooled by the winter nights, broughtback health and strength to the little column. How thoroughly the toil- and heat-worn soldier enjoyed this long march we gather from his letters.
My march is a picturesque one (he writes). At this moment behind me is my Mogul guard, some two hundred cavalry, with their splendid Asiatic dress, and the sun's horizontal rays glancing with coruscations of light along their bright sword-blades. Behind them are three hundred infantry—the old bronzed soldiers of the Thirteenth Regiment—the defenders of Jellalabad, veterans of battle. So are the cavalry, for they charged at Meanee and Hyderabad, where their scarlet turbans were seen sweeping through the smoke—by their colour seeming to announce the bloody work they were at. On these picturesque horsemen the sun is gleaming, while the Lukkee hills are casting their long shades and the Kurta range reflects from its crowning rock the broad beautiful lights. Below me are hundreds of loaded camels with guards and drivers, rude grotesque people, all slowly winding among the hills. Such is royal life here, for it is grand and kingly to ride through the land that we have conquered, with the men who fought. Yet, what is it all? Were I a real king there would be something in it—but a mere copper captain!
My march is a picturesque one (he writes). At this moment behind me is my Mogul guard, some two hundred cavalry, with their splendid Asiatic dress, and the sun's horizontal rays glancing with coruscations of light along their bright sword-blades. Behind them are three hundred infantry—the old bronzed soldiers of the Thirteenth Regiment—the defenders of Jellalabad, veterans of battle. So are the cavalry, for they charged at Meanee and Hyderabad, where their scarlet turbans were seen sweeping through the smoke—by their colour seeming to announce the bloody work they were at. On these picturesque horsemen the sun is gleaming, while the Lukkee hills are casting their long shades and the Kurta range reflects from its crowning rock the broad beautiful lights. Below me are hundreds of loaded camels with guards and drivers, rude grotesque people, all slowly winding among the hills. Such is royal life here, for it is grand and kingly to ride through the land that we have conquered, with the men who fought. Yet, what is it all? Were I a real king there would be something in it—but a mere copper captain!
A fine picture of martial life in the East all the same, and when we contrast it with a little bit of his experience a couple of days later, we get the far-apart limits which held between them the nature of the man. He is now writing from Schwan, where he has delayed his march two days for the purpose of seeing justice done to the poor cultivators and fishermen of that place.
November 30th.—Still at Schwan, having halted to find out the truth. The poor people came to me with earnest prayers,—they never come without cause,—but they are such liars and so bad at explaining, that were their language understood by me it would be hard to reach facts. Yet,knowing well that at the bottom there is gospel, that no set of poor wretches ever complain without a foundation, here will I stay until the truth comes out, and relief be given. On all these occasions my plan is a most unjust one, for against all evidence I decide in favour of the poor, and argue against the argument of the Government people as long as I can. When borne down by proofs 'irrefragable,' like Alexander, I cut the knot and give an atrocious verdict against 'clearest proof.' My formula is this: punish the Government servants first, and inquire about the right and wrong when there is time. This is the way to prevent tyranny, to make the people happy, and to render public servants honest. If the complaint is that they cheat Government, oh! that is another question; then have fair trials and leniency. We are all weak when temptation is strong.
November 30th.—Still at Schwan, having halted to find out the truth. The poor people came to me with earnest prayers,—they never come without cause,—but they are such liars and so bad at explaining, that were their language understood by me it would be hard to reach facts. Yet,knowing well that at the bottom there is gospel, that no set of poor wretches ever complain without a foundation, here will I stay until the truth comes out, and relief be given. On all these occasions my plan is a most unjust one, for against all evidence I decide in favour of the poor, and argue against the argument of the Government people as long as I can. When borne down by proofs 'irrefragable,' like Alexander, I cut the knot and give an atrocious verdict against 'clearest proof.' My formula is this: punish the Government servants first, and inquire about the right and wrong when there is time. This is the way to prevent tyranny, to make the people happy, and to render public servants honest. If the complaint is that they cheat Government, oh! that is another question; then have fair trials and leniency. We are all weak when temptation is strong.
Pity is it to lose a word of this ruler, who rules in fashion so different from the law-giving of the usual bigwig. But space denies us longer leave to delve in this rich mine of justice. It is a fine picture—one that the world does not see enough of—this victorious old soldier riding through the conquered land intent on justice, sparing himself nothing to lift up the poor, to free the toiler, to unbind the slave. A strong man, terrible only to the unjust, spreading everywhere the one grand law of his life—"A privileged class cannot be permitted." With him the quibbler, thedoctrinaire, the political economist, has no place. "Well did Napoleon say," he writes, "that thedoctrinaireand the political economist would ruin the most flourishing kingdom in ten years. Well, they have no place yet in Scinde; there are no Whig poor-laws here. Oh, it is glorious thus to crush Scindian Whiggism! and don't I grind it till my heart dances? The poor fishermen who are now making their lying howls of complaint at the door of my tent areright, though I can't yet find the truth in the midst of their falsehoods." But he stops by the shore of Lake Manchur until the truth is found out; and then we read: "Marched this morning, having penetrated the mystery. The collector has without my knowledge raised the taxation 40 per cent on the very poorest class of the population. He is an amiable man, and so religious that he would not cough on a Sunday, yet he has done a deed of such cruelty as is enough to raise an insurrection. This discovery of oppression is alone sufficient to repay the trouble of my journey." A despot, you will say, reader, is this soldier judge, thus