CHAPTER XVIII.
The tale of the services of the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry is told — and told unassumingly, in a mere nutshell, with the humdrum accuracy of history. And this tale adds another footnote to the annals of the Indian Mutiny. But, in conclusion, I have yet to add that during the rainy season the Corps remained at Buste in profound peace. A market was opened in the town; the shops, as in former days, were filled with goods; and the Commissariat having undergone resuscitation, improved its stores; sickness became less; the feeble began to get stronger, and by the time the monsoon had well-nigh run itself out, men looked in better health once more. After the rainy season, the Corps was employed in some minor affairs with fugitive rebels on the Oudh frontier; thence it marched to Sultānpūr, and was there “broken up” — not, however, without a splendid Notification in recognition of its services, gazetted and published early in 1859; and from which I transcribe verbatim only the following paragraphs:—
“His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India in Council cannot allow the officers and men of the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry to separate, without expressing in General Orders his acknowledgment of the excellent services they have rendered) and his admiration of their endurance, and of their gallant bearing on the many occasions in which they have come in contact with the enemy.
“The Gazette of the 23rd March, 27th April, 11th May, 6th and 13th July, 13th August, 12th and 19th October, 23rd November, 1858, and 11th and 18th January and 9th March, 1859, all that the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry have borne a distinguished part in the several operations therein recounted.
“Long marches, exposure, fatigue, and harassing patrol and picket duties have from the first fallen to the lot of this young Corps, and they have borne the whole in a truly soldier-like spirit.
“The Governor-General in Council desires to convey to the brave officers and men of the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry — a regiment of which, all who have belonged to it may be proud[1] — his best thanks for the good service they have rendered to the State, and in disbanding the Corps, he wishes the members of it a hearty farewell.”
The reader will have noticed that, in quoting the numerous Gazettes recounting the fourteen actions in which we were engaged during the campaign, I have mentioned only about half that number in the preceding chapters; and my reason for curtailing them, I ought to say, is simply because they so closely resembled one another in general feature that, had I described them all, it would have been almost tantamount to describing the same actions, as it were, over and over again.
And now, with almost the last drop of ink in my laboured pen, I have only to add that the above Notification was penned by the generous hand of that illustrious Viceroy of India, Earl Canning of immortal memory, who, in bidding farewell to the Corps in such laudatory terms, has left no ordinary record of the men who voluntarily, at all personal risks, and at all personal sacrifices, rallied round him in the tremendous Imperial crisis through which India had commenced to pass; and who in those critical days of immeasurable anguish, when no Englishman in the Upper Provinces could call his life his own, stood by him in behalf of the endangered Empire — not when succour had arrived from England, and British bayonets were gleaming over the country, but in the darkest hour of trial, when the gloom of despondency and despair hung like a pall over the Bengal Presidency, and the fiendish massacres of innumerable English families, had made Upper India like a vast Christian charnel-house.
Furthermore, the Viceroy, in thus generously recording the meritorious and splendid services rendered by this little band of devoted Volunteers, was doubtless influenced by the remembrance of the exceptional ordeals through which they had passed while aiding in the suppression of the Mutiny. For he well knew and could speak of their days of trial, of nights of anxiety, of hardships encountered, of dangers vanquished, of sufferings borne with heroic fortitude, such as none except those who had themselves experienced them could understand.
Above all — how far above, words silenced by sorrow cannot say — he was aware of the sad fact that a considerable number of the Corps, in the flower of their youth or. manhood, had lost their lives, while a larger number still shed their blood, in helping to crush a Mutiny that in unparalleled treachery, and tragical infamy, has indelibly tarnished, and for ever blood-stained, one of the saddest pages in the saddest annals of the whole world; and over the ever-lamentable record of which, alas! the veil of oblivion can never be drawn.
Finally, in memory of my departed comrades who died in the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry, it remains to be said that, though their deeds of glory are not blazoned in letters of gold, the imperishable records of the memorable campaign, in which they lost their youthful lives, enshrine the sacred death-roll commemorative of their devoted services, and tend to immortalise the patriotic devotion by which that famous Corps was animated, while passing through an ordeal as terrible as any that ever tested the daring audacity, and unyielding endurance of what may be called, a handful of dauntless and uncompromising Volunteers.
THE END.
- ↑ The italics are mine.