Whatever conclusion you draw about Hodson, there are certainly enough tales of his behaviour that are hard to comprehend. The story of his taunting a prisoner by riding rings around him is true, as is Nicholson’s reference to his being taken to account for his decidedly dodgy handling of the financial affairs of the Guides when he was their commander. Flashmanesque or not, Hodson certainly sailed close to the wind.
If I have perhaps been too harsh on Hodson, I could also stand accused of being too kind to Captain (Brevet Major and Acting Brigadier General) John Nicholson. Like Hodson, Nicholson is another hugely divisive character. At the time, he was seen as a hero, his doomed role in the assault on Delhi lauded as one of the great heroic acts of the Victorian age. But whilst Victorian historians lavished praise on him, those following later have been much less kind. William Dalrymple, in his magnificent work The Last Mughal, describes Nicholson as a ‘great imperial psychopath’, and it is a fool who takes the opinion of a historian as wise as Dalrymple lightly.
Yet there can be no doubt that Nicholson played a pivotal role in the siege. It is no coincidence that after months of delay, it was only a matter of days after he arrived that the attack on the city was planned and put into action. His conviction that Wilson should be removed from command is well documented, and the stories that Captain Blane recounts of the affair with the cooks at Jullunder and Nicholson being worshipped as a god are quite possibly true.
My role as an author makes the battle for an opinion on the characters of the two men a little easier. Books need both heroes and villains, and so Hodson became a paler version of Flashman and Nicholson stepped forth as the great hero he was cast as in many histories of the time. In my defence I can only point to a contemporary, Sir Robert Montgomery, who wrote in a letter of October 1857 that Nicholson had ‘every quality necessary for a successful commander; energy, forethought, decision, good judgment, and courage of the highest order’. Even Hodson referred to Nicholson as ‘our best and bravest’, although he was conveniently dead at the time while Hodson was enjoying one of his own finest hours.
I have tried to use as many of Nicholson’s own words as I could find, many of which came from the account of the siege written by Fred Roberts. This can be found in Roberts’s memoir, Forty One Years in India, published back in 1897, which I recommend to anyone interested in reading more about the siege. Fred Roberts, just a subaltern when he meets Jack, went on to do passably well in his career as a soldier. When he died in November 1914, he was more correctly titled Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts of Kandahar, Pretoria and Waterford, VC KG KP GCB OM GCSI GCIE KStJ VD PC. ‘Bobs’, as he became popularly known, earned his VC later on in the Indian Mutiny at Khudagani, for repeated acts of gallantry, before going on to find fame during the 2nd Afghan War (1878–80), when he commanded the Kurra Field Force. He later commanded the British forces in South Africa during the Boer War (1899–1902). He died of pneumonia in France in 1914, while inspecting Indian troops in St Omer.
As well as taking dreadful liberties in my casting of heroes and villains, I also made a few other changes to suit the needs of the story.
The defence of the magazine at Delhi was a remarkable affair. The fight was longer than I described and the handful of defenders fought off the attackers for several hours, only ending their resistance when not one of their number was left unwounded. The guns they used to defend the magazine’s entrance actually included a howitzer rather than just simple field guns, but I did not want to let such detail slow the pace and I stuck to the simpler description.
Lieutenant Willoughby conducted the defence of the magazine without any assistance, and it was the courageous Conductor Scully who carried out the act of detonating the store of ammunition, killing himself in the process. Poor Willoughby survived the explosion but was killed making his escape from the city, a rather sad and ignoble end for a man of such bravery. For an account of the defence there is no source better than Lieutenant Forrest’s official report, which is available online.
I must also apologise for making a tweak to the history of Hodson’s Horse. I brought the appearance of the first formed troops of the regiment forward so that they could fight at Badli-Ki-Serai. For the course of that battle, and the opening weeks of the siege itself, Hodson was actually served by men from the Jhind Horse as he waited for his own troop to arrive.
The assault on Delhi happened largely as described in the story. Nicholson led the assault, even managing to hold a conversation with Brigadier Grant of the cavalry column in the midst of the fighting. Sadly, he did indeed charge alone into the alley outside the Lahore Bastion, where a sepoy sharpshooter shot him down. The story of his abandonment by his bearers is also true, and he was found by a distraught Fred Roberts, who wrote movingly of the moment.
There is a wealth of sources available to anyone wishing to learn more about the bloody and brutal siege of Delhi. I heartily recommend The Indian Mutiny, by Saul David, while for more on the real-life adventures of Nicholson and Hodson, amongst others, there is no better source than Soldier Sahibs, by Charles Allen. Finally I must pay homage to The Last Mughal, by William Dalrymple. This truly is a superb book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Jack has survived the mutiny, but like so many who felt the breath of the devil’s wind that fateful year, he is a changed man. Only time will tell where he finds himself next. But one thing is certain. He is no longer the simple redcoat he believed himself to be. His ambition to be an officer lies dead in the bloody streets of Delhi. He will no longer simply follow orders. He is his own man, beholden to no one but himself. Let’s see where that takes him.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About Paul Fraser Collard
Also by Paul Fraser Collard
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Map – The Siege of Delhi
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Epilogue
Historical Note