Hodson from the command of the Guides"; and again, "In so far as the court of inquiry was concerned, Major Hodson, had he survived, might perhaps have commanded the Corps of Guides to this day." Nor is it generally known, except by hearsay, how extraordinarily convincing a proof of Hodson's innocence of all the charges affecting his honour is Taylor's detailed report. In it are clearly and lucidly set forth the manner in which the accounts of the Corps had been kept up to the time when Hodson assumed command; the irregularities of the system; the difficulties with which the commandant of the Guides had to contend in consequence of his multifarious duties, and of the special circumstances under which the Guides served; the further difficulties resulting from the delays and irregularities of the accounts department; the efforts made by Hodson to keep his books in order in spite of these difficulties; and, finally, the conclusions arrived at after a careful and detailed perusal of the books. Space does not allow of any lengthy extracts from the document; but the two paragraphs which follow may well be quoted before we pass from this subject :—

"This was the nature of the account to which Lieutenant Hodson succeeded; everything known to be in the main correct, but the whole unbalanced and undetailed. . . . He had long been connected with the regiment, and knew all the difficulty and confusion that had been caused in its payment by a long period of ubiquitous service, during which its numerous detachments had been paid by the various officers, to whom they

If it may seem to some that this subject has been dealt with at undue length, it must be remembered that those who have seen fit to attack Hodson's memory have placed the facts above discussed foremost in their catalogue of his shortcomings; and so closely have the charges of dishonesty been pressed against him, that to this day a mention of Hodson will almost inevitably call forth the comment that "he was not straight about money."

To return to the narrative of

Hodson's life. The early part of 1856 saw him reverting to duty as a regimental subaltern with the 1st Bengal Fusiliers, aged and shattered by the terrible ordeal of private and public trials which had dragged their weary length through the last two years; but not without determination to recover his lost position, and make a name for himself yet in the world. And, indeed, the manner in which he faced his altered fate, and the energy and loyalty with which he undertook the comparatively minor duties of his regimental work, were eloquent of the best qualities of the man, and well

deserved the commendation which they elicited from his superior officers.

But a period was at hand of more strenuous activity than any which even Hodson had yet experienced. On the 10th May 1857 the great Mutiny broke out at Meerut. In such a crisis Hodson was not a man to be left idle, and that day week saw him appointed to be Assistant Quartermaster-General in charge of the Intelligence Department with the field army, and commissioned to raise a regiment of irregular horse in the Punjab. From this moment until the following March, Hodson's name was foremost in the ranks of those who did the work of giants to save India for England. So much has been written about all the incidents of the siege of Delhi, that there is no need to detail here Hodson's share therein his ride into Meerut to open communication with that place; his reconnaissances as the field force approached Delhi; his arguments for an immediate attempt to storm the city; his numerous expeditions against scattered parties of rebels; his incessant labours in the work of obtaining intelligence of the enemy's doings, which resulted in his being as well informed of all that went on in Delhi as were the rebel leaders themselves. But some notes about the formation of his famous regiment of horse will be of interest, and will not deal with matters so widely known. Hodson had (as one who knew him well has written of him) "pre-eminently the gift of converting all the men he got hold of into useful,

working soldiers. . . . He was a good linguist; knew his men and all about them; knew thoroughly the good Sikh classes and families, amongst whom good soldierly men were to be found; but his chief qualifications, after all, as a leader of men, were his extreme hardiness, heat, cold, or wet, food or no food, it was all the

same to him, and, above all, his good horsemanship, and his entire fearlessness, whatever the odds-not possible odds, but actually in front of him and

against him."

These were the qualities which had already stood Hodson in good stead; which had so endeared him to the men of the Guides that, when the corps marched into the

camp at Delhi and found their old leader there to meet them, they broke through all bonds of discipline in their enthusiastic delight, cheering, shouting, weeping round him (as he wrote himself) "like frantic creatures." It is a pleasant picture, this of the Guides and Hodson meeting once more on the field of danger. It is pleasant to those who know and admire the Punjab army to recognise that, though bunias and babus and monials may turn against an of icer in disgrace, the men in the ranks will not readily forget one who has led them to victory.

But excellent as was the choice of Hodson to raise a regiment of horse for employment against the mutineers, it is obvious that he could not himself attend to the enlistment of men in the Punjab while he was on the staff of the army before Delhi. Consequently he had to depend largely on the exertions of his friends, British and native, foremost among whom was Sir Robert

:

Montgomery at Lahore. Of the sort of men who were enlisted and the manner of their enlistment the following description gives a graphic picture: "He [Hodson] asked me to get him as many good men as I could -a squadron if possible--and if possible with their own horses under them, or with sufficient money in their pockets to buy them; but on this point, horse or money, he was not very particular, for, as he said, he could always pick up the horses. It was a curious business: there were the old Sikh Ghorchurrahs 1 everywhere, and old artillerymen too. They were looking every way, certain that sooner or later they would take a hand one side or the other, and were just biding their time, and it was hard to get a beginning.

After the first start the men began to come in, and I had a pretty good number to select from; and the test of their riding capabilities was to ride my grey mare, a country-bred, from my house verandah to the compound gate and back. She was a junglee, 14.3, and used to stand like a sheep until she was mounted bareback, and then the fun used to begin. She used to fly right and left, and bound in the air, and lumbais all down the road, and get almost all of them off sooner or later; and we soon found out those who

had ridden before, and no others were accepted."

The men so enlisted were sent down to Delhi in batches, and there joined Hodson's Horse, and were rapidly converted by their leader, with the aid of such officers as C. M. McDowell and Hugh Gough, into a useful and dashing cavalry corps.

Amongst the many noticeable exploits of Hodson and his Horse during the siege, his raid into the Rhotak district with

about a hundred horsemen of the Guides and two hundred of his own men is worthy of some further notice here. "In three days," he wrote, describing the affair, "we have frightened away and demoralised a force of artillery, cavalry, and infantry some 2000 strong; beat those who stood or returned to fight us twice, in spite of numbers; and got fed and furnished forth by the rascally town itself.” On this occasion it was that Hodson, having stormed a small town which was crowded with rebels, forthwith had such of the ringleaders shot as surrendered or were taken prisoners. Amongst them was one Bisharat Ali, a native officer of the 1st Bengal Irregular Cavalry, to whom Hodson had been pecuniarily indebted in previous years. For having this man shot he has been accused of ingratitude and worse; and it has been urged that Bisharat Ali was in no way in league with the rebels, and was on leave at the village in question with the knowledge of his commanding officer. If this be true, it can only be said that appearances were very much against the native officer. He was found in the midst of a hotbed of rebels, with whom he was evidently on friendly terms, or he could not have remained there alive; and that too not within a few days or weeks of the outbreak of the Mutiny, but at the end of August, long before which time every soldier who was loyal to the British Gov

3 Plunge.

ernment had been summoned to rejoin his regiment. Under these circumstances, and at such a time, any officer who did his duty would have acted as Hodson did; and he was the last man to allow personal considerations to stand in the way of what he considered the proper course to follow.

It is not necessary to linger further over the events of the siege, nor to dwell at length on the trying ordeal which Hodson's young corps had to endure on the day of the storming of Delhi. To the columns of our infantry, who faced the desperate enemy in the breach and in the narrow streets, that day was one of severest strain; but the cavalry had a yet more trying task. Sole defenders

of the almost deserted British camp from any counter-attack on the part of the besieged, the cavalry brigade under General Hope Grant was of necessity obliged to sit motionless on their horses for over two hours exposed to a hot fire from the walls, from which they were unable to seek cover, and to which they could make no reply. "It was indeed a most crucial test of discipline and endurance, to stand there for hours, losing good men every minute, and being able to make no return." 1 Of Hodson in these hours of danger an eyewitness has written that he "sat like a man carved in stone, and as calm and apparently as unconcerned as the sentries at the Horse Guards, and only by his eyes and his ready hand, whenever occasion

1 Sir H. Gough, Old Memories.

offered, could you have told that he was in deadly peril." 2 And of the brigade as a whole Hope Grant wrote in his despatch: "I beg leave to state that I have never, in the whole course of my life, seen so much bravery and so much noble conduct displayed by men as was the case in the brigade I had the honour to command."

So ended the siege of Delhi; but the good effects of the success were marred, if not nullified, by the escape of the old emperor, Bahadur Shah, and his family, and it is with the daring capture of these persons, the figurehead and the leaders of the great rebellion, that the name of Hodson is most intimately connected. The story discloses perhaps the most wonderful achievement of individual courage, coolness, and determination which the whole. history of the British army can show. It is, withal, so picturesque and so interesting that, even at the risk of recapitulating what is already familiar to the reader, we are impelled to briefly recall the facts.

On the 20th September Hodson received information that the old king and his sons were in hiding in the tomb of the emperor Humayun, some three and a half miles from the Delhi gate of the modern city, on the road to old Delhi. He forthwith obtained permission, not without difficulty, to attempt to capture the king, and he started off with fifty of his own regiment, under a Sikh officer named Man Singh, to carry out this purpose. The

2 Hodson of Hodson's Horse.

road lay through the midst of the vast ruins of forts, tombs, and temples which surround the site of the ancient city: all these buildings, many of them immediately overhanging the road, were thronged with the armed rabble who had fled from Delhi on its occupation by our troops. At any moment Hodson's advance might have been opposed, his return cut off, or a shot aimed from the adjacent buildings might have disabled or killed him. Holding on his course, however, he arrived at the entrance to Humayun's tomb, a great red sandstone gateway leading into a vast enclosure, high walled, and containing in its midst the marble-domed edifice, beneath which rest the remains of the great emperor. The enclosure, some 350 yards square, was now thronged by the fanatical adherents of the old king, the degenerate descendant of the house of Timur, who with his wife and her child cowered in the gloomy vaults of the royal tomb. To this day dwellers about the spot will point out the last refuge of the wretched Bahadur Shah, and will describe how the British officer, leaving his handful of followers at a little distance, advanced alone and stood under the shadow of the great gate-house, demanding the surrender of the fugitives. After a period of waiting, which must have seemed interminable to the high-strung nerves of the man who thus ventured to face unsupported the sullen rage of his treacherous but craven foes, the very audacity of the venture overawed both the old king and his rabble

following. There was a parley, in which Bahadur Shah declared that he would surrender to none but to "Hodson Bahadur" in person, and at last a cavalcade of litters issued slowly from the gateway: a moment afterwards Hodson's little party of Sikhs closed round them, and the last of the Mogul emperors was a prisoner in the hands of the English subaltern. Avoiding the dangerous road through the ruins, the return journey was accomplished by the longer though more open route to the Lahore Gate of Delhi, and an hour later the city was reached in safety,

But the three princes, whom common report at the time declared to have been foremost in instigating the terrible massacres which had marked the outbreak of the mutiny at Delhi, were still at large, and to effect their capture Hodson made another excursion to Humayun's tomb the following day, accompanied this time by Lieutenant McDowell and a hundred men. Arrived at the tomb, much the same scene was enacted as before, and in an hour the princes were in their turn Hodson's prisoners, and were being driven in a lumbering bullock - cart towards Delhi. Hodson sent part of his men with the cart, while with the rest and with McDowell he lingered at the tomb to keep the crowds of rebels in check, and, by a wonderful exercise of his daring will, to force them to lay down their arms. Then he rode after the cart, which had proceeded through the ruined buildings towards the Delhi gate of the city. He overtook it just under