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THE GOVERNMENT PROHIBITION CONSIDERED.

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The Governor-General wishes it to be understood, that any concession to the King, of which the King's restoration to his former position should be the basis, is one to which the Government, as at present advised, cannot for a moment give its consent. Should any negotiation of this sort be contemplated, a full report of all the circumstances must be submitted to the Governor-General in Council before the Government is committed to anything." Yet it is on this expression of opinion, received two months after, that Lord Granville bases his statement; whereas the whole affair had, so to say, settled itself within two days.

It is in such cases as these that the full benefits which the sepoys conferred on India, in cutting the telegraph wire, may be estimated. They enabled Sir John Lawrence to act independently, and to escape the fatal delay of perpetual references, which, had it been possible, must have been made to Government-references which, even under the existing circumstances, the Governor-General seemed to insist on, forgetting that it must take some three months before an answer could be received, and that probably on a point on which the fate of the Punjab might turn within as many days. Nor, indeed, with due respect be it said, was the Council at Calcutta in a condition to form a fair and sound judgment on such momentous events as were daily occurring in the Punjab. Lord Canning himself had only landed in India a few months, and scarcely been twenty miles north of Calcutta, and only one of his immediate advisers had ever had official

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ABANDONMENT OF SIEGE THREATENED.

*

acquaintance with that province; much less could they in Calcutta, in the month of August (when the letter under consideration was written),—with European troops flowing in, and the river crowded with ships, ready for an escape in the event of emergency, with an Indian trained general, Hearsey, at Barrackpore, and Sir Colin Campbell, the hope of England, sent out to their rescue,-realise the position of the Punjab during that most critical month of July, when it was a struggle for existence-when to fail would have been to perish.

Another point there was of momentous importance, which about the same time pressed on the Chief Commissioner's mind, and on which the line he was prepared, if driven to extremities, to adopt, has been misunderstood. It was the abandonment of all our transIndus territory. Now, what were the facts of the case? He was being constantly reminded that the advance on Delhi had been originally made solely at his instigation, that the personal advisers of General Anson had, as has been already stated, nearly all opposed it. Sir H. Barnard, then commanding the Sirhind Division, had strongly condemned it,† and now that circumstances had placed him in command of the force, he seemed to maintain the siege under protest; and hints were constantly thrown out, that unless more reinforcements could be sent down from the Punjab, the siege must

* Mr G. F. Edmonstone, then Secretary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department, had been Commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej States, and, for a few months, Financial Commissioner of the Punjab. GREATHED'S Letters, p. 94.

A FATAL COURSE FOR THE PUNJAB.

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be abandoned, and the force withdrawn until succours could arrive from below. Frequently did Sir John Lawrence remonstrate against so fatal a step; the siege must be maintained at all hazard, even though the Punjab could not spare another man. Even now, in moments of calm security, one's heart sinks at the thought of all that a retreat might, and most probably would, have involved-the certain loss of the Punjab, and the almost certain sacrifice of every man, woman, and child still left in the country. Retreat is the one trial an English soldier cannot endure; it is fatal to subordination-fatal to the morale of an army: both subordination and morale were already shaken, and a retreat would have ruined all. Corunna, of chivalrous yet bloody memories, speaks to us of the effects of a retreat on English troops, even under a Sir John Moore. We may point, indeed to Busaco, where Arthur Wellesley, with his retreating columns, repelled the pressing foe, and rallied around him in redoubled force his wavering allies; or to Torres Vedras, where, during long weeks of firm discipline, he restored order and tone to a disorganised and disheartened army. Why not re-enact a Busaco at Kurnaul, and a Torres Vedras at Umballa? For one reason, among others: perhaps in nothing does Asiatic warfare differ more widely from European than in this, that in the one a retreat may be acknowledged as masterly strategy, in the other it is sure to be regarded as an admission of defeat. At the first sight of a retrograde move, our native allies, who were still so nobly fighting for us, would have

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A FATAL COURSE FOR THE PUNJAB.

gone-it would have snapped the last link of the chain of loyalty, or of interest, which held them to our side. Jheend could no longer have breasted the tide of rebellion which surged around; Puttiala even could not have stood, and with him would have gone Nabha and every Sikh chief. And how would our army have fared? Had we once given up the vantage-ground on that ridge-had we moved one single march from camp, our native troops would doubtless have turned against us en masse; our irregular cavalry would have harassed the rear, and cut up all the sick and stragglers; the city would have poured out its 50,000 armed men, and its multitude of budmashes; the whole country around would have risen; the villagers would have mobbed and clubbed the worn-out famished soldiers; the sun of Hindostan would have proved as deadly as the snows of Cabul, and the banks of the Jumna have witnessed the annihilation of an English army stronger than that which perished in the Khyber.

Nor was this all; with Delhi abandoned, there would be little hope of saving the Punjab. Between the Sutlej and the Indus were only four European regiments-one with Nicholson's column, and the other three weak in numbers, and weaker still by being broken up into detachments over seven stations; with three more beyond shut up in the Peshawur valley; while above 10,000 women and children had to be cared for and protected. At Lahore itself above 3000 had been concentrated from the neighbouring stations ;

THE ABANDONMENT OF PESHAWUR CONTEMPLATED.

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as many more were at Umballa and the hills; at Murree were above 1500, and quite that number at Peshawur, and how was their safety or their escape to be provided for?

He was prepared, if

All this the Chief Commissioner saw, and when the subject was again revived by General Wilson, with the possibility of the retreat from Delhi being attempted, his only hope lay in bringing into use the three regiments at Peshawur. the exigency arose, to make a present of the valley to Dost Mohammed, to give back to the Douranee empire its long-lost, long-mourned province, if at such a price he might save the rest. It was a desperate step; one only to be attempted when all else should fail. Cotton, Edwardes, Barnes, and other of his most trusted friends, to whom he had most confidentially broached the subject, strongly opposed it; abandon Delhi, but don't give up Peshawur. Still Sir John remained unchanged in his opinion, that in this step might lie the only chance of saving the thousands of women and children, by bringing them down under strong escort, and then, that achieved, the three regiments, if only mustering 1000 bayonets among them, would have been above all value at Delhi. Nor, despite the strongly-expressed opinions to the contrary, did the Chief Commissioner, in calmly reviewing the struggle of that time, modify his own opinion. “In that extremity," he wrote in May 1858, "the only chance for the British of even preserving existence, would have been to collect the European troops into

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