linger. Among the many scenes of heroism and courage presented to us in India during 1857, the eye rests gladly elsewhere than on the community sheltered in the Agra Fort. They were secure, provisioned, unmolested. But they were animated, unhappily, by a spirit of contention, by party animosity, by unworthy jealousies. These led to discreditable wranglings with which readers of narratives of the scenes at Agra are familiar; and which among the pages recording the conduct of our countrymen and countrywomen elsewhere in India, remain an unpleasing blot.
At the first Council held on May 11, Mr. Raikes found the Lieutenant-Governor
'already exposed to the rush of alarm, advice, suggestion, exhortation, and threat which went on increasing for nearly two months, till he was driven broken-hearted into the Fort.'
He went into the Fort for other reasons, which will be explained; not broken-hearted, but driven in by the success of a rebel force.
'The flame of mutiny and rebellion was on every side, and dissensions arose when unity above all things was required to husband our remaining strength[1].' ... I cannot look back without emotion on those troublous days. Exhausted by want of sleep[2], worn with anxieties that few men
- ↑ Mr. E. A. Reade's Narrative of Events at Agra, from May to September, 1857. Printed, not published.
- ↑ His rest was almost hourly broken. He had been known to pass forty-eight hours without opportunity of sleep. It was doubtless in some such moment of exhaustion that the interview took place, described at p. 67 of his Indian Mutiny, by Mr. Thornhill.
