WILLIAM FORBES-MITCHELL, LATE NINETY-THIRD SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS. CALCUTTA, April, 1893....

These Reminiscences are submitted to the public in the trust that they will be welcomed alike by soldier and civilian. They are recorded by one who was himself an actor in the scenes which he describes, and who viewed them from a novel and most unusual position for a military historian—the ranks. They have been carefully perused by an officer who was present at many of the operations mentioned; and considerable pains have been taken to verify, wherever possible, those incidents of which he was n

I cannot truthfully commence these reminiscences with the usual formula of the amateur author,—namely, by stating that, "At the solicitation of numerous friends, the writer was most reluctantly prevailed upon to publish his narrative," and so forth. No one has asked me to write my recollections of the past and my impressions of the present. I do so to please myself, because on revisiting the scenes of the Mutiny I have been forcibly impressed with the fact that, like so many memories, the soldie

By the 25th of September the whole of the Ninety-Third were once more together in Chinsurah, and on the 28th the first company, the grenadiers under Captain Middleton, started by rail for Râneegunge en route for Lucknow, and a company followed daily in regular rotation till the light company left Chinsurah on the 7th of October. From Râneegunge to Benares the old bullock-train was arranged with relays of bullocks from eight to ten miles apart, according to the nature of the road, and six men wer

When proceeding on our march to Lucknow it was clear as noonday to the meanest capacity that we were now in an enemy's country. None of the villages along the route were inhabited, the only visible signs of life about them being a few mangy pariah dogs. The people had all fled on the first advance of Havelock, and had not returned; and it needed no great powers of observation to fully understand that the whole population of Oude was against us. The deserted villages gave the country a miserable

In the first chapter of these reminiscences I mentioned that, before leaving Dover, the Ninety-Third obtained a number of volunteers from the other Highland regiments serving in England. Ours was the only Highland regiment told off for the China expedition, and it was currently whispered that Lord Elgin had specially asked for us to form his guard of honour at the court of China after he had administered a due castigation to the Chinese. Whether the report was true or not, the belief did the reg

I must now leave for a little the general struggle, and turn to the actions of individual men as they fell under my own observation,—actions which neither appear in despatches nor in history; and, by the way, I may remark that one of the best accounts extant of the taking of the Shâh Nujeef is that of Colonel Alison, in Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1858. Both the Alisons were severely wounded on that occasion,—Colonel Archibald Alison, Military Secretary, and his brother, Captain F. M. Alis

By this time several of the old campaigners had kindled a fire in one of the small rooms, through the roof of which one of our shells had fallen the day before, making a convenient chimney for the egress of the smoke. They had found a large copper pot which had been left by the sepoys, and had it on the fire filled with a stew of about a score or more of pigeons which had been left shut up in a dovecot in a corner of the compound. There were also plenty of pumpkins and other vegetables in the ro

Since commencing these reminiscences, and more particularly during my late visit to Lucknow and Cawnpore, I have been asked by several people about the truth of the story of the Scotch girl and the bagpipes at Lucknow, and in reply to all such inquiries I can only make the following answer. About the time of the anniversary dinner in celebration of the relief of Lucknow, in September, 1891, some writers in the English papers went so far as to deny that the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders had their ba

So far as I now remember, the 30th of November, 1857, passed without any movement on the part of the enemy, and the Commander-in-Chief, in his letter describing the state of affairs to the Governor-General, said, "I am obliged to submit to the hostile occupation of Cawnpore until the actual despatch of all my incumbrances towards Allahabad is effected." As stated in the last chapter, when our tents came up our camp was pitched (as near as I can now make out from the altered state of Cawnpore), a

As a further proof that the British star was now in the ascendant, before we had been many days in Bithoor each company had got its full complement of native establishment, such as cooks, water-carriers, washer-men, etc. We left Bithoor on the 27th of December en route for Futtehghur, and on the 28th we made a forced march of twenty-five miles, joining the Commander-in-Chief on the 29th. Early on the 30th we reached a place named Meerun-ke-serai, and our tents had barely been pitched when word w

When we returned to Cawnpore, although we had been barely two months away, we found it much altered. Many of the burnt-down bungalows were being rebuilt, and the fort at the end of the bridge of boats had become quite a strong place. The well where the murdered women and children were buried was now completely filled up, and a wooden cross erected over it. I visited the slaughter-house again, and found the walls of the several rooms all scribbled over both in pencil and charcoal. This had been d

After leaving Oonâo our division under Sir Edward Lugard reached Buntera, six miles from the Alumbâgh, on the 27th of February, and halted there till the 2nd of March, when we marched to the Dilkooshá, encamping a short distance from the palace barely beyond reach of the enemy's guns, for they were able at times to throw round-shot into our camp. We then settled down for the siege and capture of Lucknow; but the work before us was considered tame and unimportant when compared with that of the re

We had barely finished our meal when we noticed a stir among the staff-officers, and a consultation taking place between General Sir Edward Lugard, Brigadier Adrian Hope, and Colonel Napier. Suddenly the order was given to the Ninety-Third to fall in. This was quietly done, the officers taking their places, the men tightening their belts and pressing their bonnets firmly on their heads, loosening the ammunition in their pouches, and seeing that the springs of their bayonets held tight. Thus we s

On the return of the regiment to camp at the Dilkooshá on the 13th of March I was glad to get back to my own company. The men were mortified because they had not shared in the honour of the assault on the Begum's palace; but as some compensation the company had formed the guard-of-honour for the reception of the Mâharâja Jung Bahâdoor, Commander-in-Chief of the Nepaulese Army, who had just reached Lucknow and been received in state by Sir Colin Campbell on the afternoon of the 11th, at the momen

After the Mutiny some meddling philanthropists in England tried to get up an agitation about such stories as wounded sepoys being burnt alive; but owing to the nature of the war it was morally impossible to have prevented such accidents. As to cases of real wanton cruelty or outrage committed by European soldiers, none came under my own notice, and I may be permitted to relate here a story which goes far to disprove any accusations of the sort. My company had been posted in a large building and

The heat was now very oppressive, and we had many men struck down by the sun every day. We reached Shâhjehânpore on the 30th of April, and found that every building in the cantonments fit for sheltering European troops had been destroyed by order of the Nânâ Sâhib, who, however, did not himself wait for our arrival. Strange to say, the bridge of boats across the Râmgunga was not destroyed, and some of the buildings in the jail, and the wall round it, were still standing. Colonel Hale and a wing

I will relate an incident of an unusual kind, told to me by a man whom I met in Jhânsi, which has reference to the executions ordered by General Neill at Cawnpore in July and August, 1857. But before I do so I may mention that in Cawnpore, Jhânsi, and Lucknow I found the natives very unwilling to enter into conversation or to give any information about the events of that year. In this statement I don't include the natives of the class who acted as guides, etc., or those who were in the service o

Although recollections of the Mutiny are fast being obliterated by the kindly hand of time, there must still be many readers who will remember the reports current in the newspapers of the time, and elsewhere in 1857 and 1858, of Europeans being seen in the ranks of the rebels. In a history of The Siege of Delhi, by an Officer who served there (name not given), published by Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1861, the following passages occur. After describing the battle of Budlee-ke-Serai, the w

A short time back I read an article on sword-blades, reprinted I believe from some English paper. Now, in a war like the Mutiny sword-blades are of the utmost importance to men who depend on them either for taking or preserving life; I will therefore state my own experience, and give opinions on the swords which came under my observation, and I may at once say that I think there is great room for improvement in our blades of Birmingham manufacture. I consider that the swords supplied to our offi

On the afternoon of the 19th August, 1892, I left Cawnpore for Lucknow. As I was a few minutes before time, I walked along the railway-platform to see the engine, and, strange to relate, the engine attached to the train which was to take me into Lucknow (under circumstances very different from those of 1857) was No. 93! In 1857 I had crossed the Ganges in the ranks of the Ninety-Third Highlanders, with the figures 93 on the front of my cap, and here I was, under very different circumstances, rev