ever, the disabled and bandaged condition of young Spens, who was one of the party, excited the notice of one of the troopers, who stepped up and cleft him in pieces, coolly remarking that it was useless taking a wounded man with them to cumber them.
Whether they had any specific intention concerning their captives on starting it is impossible to say; but it is certain that, after proceeding for some time, they halted, as if in accordance with a pre-arranged purpose. Opening the carriages, they ordered the ladies and children to step out. The unhappy husbands and fathers entreated to be taken in their stead. Impatient of the slightest resistance, they dragged the babes and their mothers to the ground, and, with a refinement of cruelty, dismembered and mutilated them in the presence of their powerless protectors. Having finished with them, they fell upon the men and butchered them also, and then drove off with the empty carriages, leaving the mangled bodies dishonored and exposed upon the road, to be devoured by the jackals and birds of prey. Some friendly villagers, however, soon after they had gone, dug a pit near the spot and buried the outraged remains.
A leading American journal very justly remarked at the time: “Horrible are the atrocities which mark the progress of the present rebellion. The North American savage need no longer be considered the monster of human cruelty, as the red man has found his match in the Sepoys, who cut off women's ears, eyes, and noses, destroying them by tortures worthy of the diabolical rage and malignity of Satan himself.” Indeed, one may venture to go further, and say that history may be searched in vain to find a parallel to the riot, plunder, and murder of those dreadful days. The number of the slain and mutilated will probably never be known. Inquiry has ascertained, however, that, apart from the relieving army, not less than fifteen hundred Englishmen and Englishwomen must have perished, not half of whom probably found the rest of the grave: their bodies lay upon the waste, or were dragged out of the bazaars, or left amid the wreck of their own homes, to lie neglected and become the food of dogs and jackals, or the foul birds
