1857]

JOHN NICHOLSON

33 tour of inspection, and very soon I received an invitation to dine with him, at which I was greatly pleased. John Nicholson was a name to conjure with in the Punjab. I had heard it mentioned with an amount of respect indeed, awe-which no other name could excite, and I was all curiosity to see the man whose influence on the frontier was so great that his word was law to the refractory tribes amongst whom he lived. He had only lately arrived in Peshawar, having been transferred from Bannu, a difficult and troublesome district ruled by him as it had never been ruled before, and where he made such a reputation for himself that, while he was styled 'a pillar of strength on the frontier' by Lord Dalhousie, he was looked up to as a god by the Natives, who loved as much as they feared him. By some of them he was actually worshipped as a saint; they formed themselves into a sect, and called themselves 'Nicholseyns.' Nicholson impressed me more profoundly than any man I had ever met before, or have ever met since. I have never seen anyone like him. He was the beau-ideal of a soldier and a gentleman. His appearance was distinguished and commanding, with a sense of power about him which to my mind was the result of his having passed so much of his life amongst the wild and lawless tribesmen, with whom his authority was supreme. Intercourse with this man amongst men made me more eager than ever to remain on the frontier, and I was seized with ambition to follow in his footsteps. Had I never seen Nicholson again, I might have thought that the feelings with which he inspired me were to some extent the result of my imagination, excited by the astonishing stories I had heard of his power and influence; my admiration, however, for him was immeasurably strengthened when, a few weeks later, I served as his staff officer, and had opportunities of observing more closely his splendid soldierly qualities and the workings of his grand, simple mind.

It was the end of April when I returned to Peshawar from Cherat, and rapidly getting hot. On the strength of being a D.A.Q.M.G., I had moved into a better house than I had hitherto been able to afford, which I shared with Lieutenant Hovenden of the Engineers. We were just settling down and making ourselves comfortable for the long hot weather, when all our plans were upset by the breaking out of the Mutiny.

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1857]

PROMPT ACTION AT PESHAWAR

35 latter place had joined the mutineers, and that many officers and residents at both stations had been killed.

Lieutenant-Colonel Davidson, commanding the 16th Irregular Cavalry, who happened to be dining at mess that evening, was the first to recover from the state of consternation into which we were thrown by the reading of this telegram. He told us it was of the utmost importance that the Commissioner and the General should at once be put in possession of this astounding news, and at the same time impressed upon us the imperative necessity for keeping it secret.

Davidson then hurried off to the Commissioner, who with his deputy, Nicholson, lived within a stone's-throw of the mess. Edwardes drove at once to the General's house, while Nicholson came to our mess. He too pointed out to us the importance of preventing the news from getting about and of keeping it as long as possible from the Native soldiers.

We had at Peshawar three regiments of Native Cavalry and five of Native Infantry, not less than 5,000 men, while the strength of the two British regiments and the Artillery did not exceed 2,000. This European force was more than sufficient to cope with the eight Native corps, but in the event of any general disturbance amongst the Native troops, we had to calculate on the probability of their being joined by the 50,000 inhabitants of the city, and, indeed, by the entire population of the Peshawar valley; not to speak of the tribes all along the border, who were sure to rise.

It was an occasion for the gravest anxiety, and the delay of even a few hours in the sepoys becoming aware of the disastrous occurrences at Meerut and Delhi meant a great deal to us.

Fortunately for India, there were good men and true at Peshawar in those days, when hesitation and irresolution would have been fatal, and it is worthy of note that they were comparatively young menEdwardes was thirty-seven, Nicholson thirty-five; Neville Chamberlain, the distinguished Commandant of the Punjab Frontier Force (who was hastily summoned from Kohat, where he happened to be on his tour of inspection), was thirty-seven; and the Brigadier, Sydney Cotton, though much older, being sixty-five, was not only exceptionally young for his years and full of energy and intelligence, but actually much younger than the average of General officers commanding stations in India.

At once, on hearing of the Mutiny, Edwardes, acting in unison with Nicholson, sent to the post-office and laid hands on all Native correspondence; the letters they thus secured showed but too plainly how necessary was this precaution. The number of seditious papers seized was alarmingly great; they were for the most part couched in figurative and enigmatical language, but it was quite sufficiently clear from them that every Native regiment in the garrison was more or less implicated and prepared to join the rebel movement.

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