John Lawrence himself was only forty-two when he was made Chief Commissioner. Lord Dalhousie, who inspired and controlled them, the youngest Governor-General ever appointed to India, was only 37 in 1849. Many of them too were brave and tried soldiers, bearing the honourable scars of battle. Edwardes carried a bullet-wound, and Reynell Taylor three sabre-cuts, from the field of Múdki. Nicholson, when a mere stripling, had distinguished himself by prodigies of valour at Ghazní before he obeyed the orders to surrender and yield himself to what seemed at the time a hopeless captivity. He had been through Chilianwála and Gujrát and in Gilbert's pursuit, and was only thirty-four when he met the soldier's death in the assault of Delhi.
Fearing no responsibility and shirking no labour, there was perhaps a tendency in the young men to act too much on their own initiative, or, as Lord Dalhousie put it, 'to consider themselves as Governor-General at least.' Edwardes had already drawn Dalhousie's fire upon himself:— 'I will not stand it in quieter times for half an hour, and will come down unmistakably upon any one of them who may "try it on," from Major Edwardes, C.B., down to the latest-enlisted General-Ensign-Plenipotentiary on the establishment.' Perhaps the kingly vision of Dalhousie was a little distorted by his imperiousness. But this fertility of initiative, this disregard of formalities, this readiness to accept responsibility without usurping it, stood us well in the after-days of trial.
