PREFACE.
In the following narrative an attempt has been made to relate the military services of the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry during the Indian Mutiny, and Sepoy War; and as truth lies in a small compass, so this little volume contains no fiction, nor will any conjectural narration be found in its compressed chapters of unembellished facts.
Parenthetically, it may be recorded in this place that, as the Bengal Yeomanry Cavalry was the parent, or pioneer Corps, of the great Patriotic Force now established and consolidated in England, it is entitled to claim the proud distiniction of having undeniably originated the modern Volunteer movement throughout the British Empire, and this narrative will tend to show that the Corps was worthy of that proud position.
Although more than thirty years have elapsed since the "transitory regiment" passed away with the shifting tide of events, the subjoined narrative is the legitimate offspring of my manuscript journal, kept with diligence and care at the time when the various movements, scenes, and actions it describes occurred.
Nevertheless, the mere fact of my having kept this journal as a sealed book up to the present day, conclusively proves that I never Intended to publish its contents, nor did I anticipate ever being asked by the gallant survivors (there are, alas! few now left) of my late fellow-volunteers to allow it to be published. They, however, see that a Volunteer Age has dawned upon the world since the eventful year 1857; and lest in the gigantic strides of the general movement the eminent services they rendered to their country in the darkest days of the Mutiny fade into oblivion, and be lost to them altogether, they naturally seek a descriptive record — an authoritative biography, as it were — to perpetuate the military operations in which they were engaged. I have accordingly traced an unassuming sketch of those familiar operations; and my readers must never lose sight of the fact that the Government Gazetted records — which are quoted in this plain, unvarnished narrative — substantiate, in every detail, the veracity of every paragraph I have written. And as regards all that concerns the rough composition of my pages, I have to ask some forbearance, for they but reflect, as in a glass, the contents of a journal penned not merely in the days of my youth, but also amid the interminable stir of a Mutiny never likely to be forgotten by those who bore the first shock of it, and passed through its fearful horrors.
London, 1893.