The Press. — London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

The Deccan moveable column will, fve understand, be commanded by Brigadier-General John Jacob, C. 8., and will be organised under the immediate supervision of his Excellency Sir Henry Somerset, rH E PRESS, OCTOBER 24,1857. peens, with their thrilling " Hurrah !" put the cowardly cutthroats to flight, and they then marched on to Arrah without opposition, and met Wake's gallant little band on the road. One thing I must not omit. The mutineers undermined the bungalow, but Boyle dug a countermine and met them. After the relief they found bags of gunpowder, and in the mine, ready laid to blow them up. The mutineers separated into two parties. The 7th and Bth Regiments, with 2,000 or 3,000 bud mashes, marched to Chundowlee, burning all Govern ment property they passed, and plundering every village. They then heard that Europeans and guns were after them, so they took the direction of Mirza pore, and are not far from that place, where the Europeans are waiting for them. The other party i.e., the 40th Native Infantry—and Koer Singh's guns stayed at his place near to Arrah, where Wake got Eyre and 500 Europeans to attack them. They were driven out of that very sharp; many were killed, and Jugduspore has ceased to be a habitation. A mound of rubbish indicates where the rebels' abode was. The party then taking a south-easterly direction, have gone to Rhotasghur, on the banks of the Sone, where there is an old fortress. He will perhaps make a stand there, and be joined by the Ramghur Infantry, who have mutinied, and are sup posed to have gone to Doorunda, Chota Nagpore, to take the treasure thence, and with their ammuni tion join Koer Singh. It will be difficult to dislodge them from the hills and jungle. Jaunpore and Azimghur are at present unoccupied' and Goruckpore has been deserted by every officer except Bird, who refused to leave the district. The others marched with the Ghoorkas (3,0001, who have been lent by Jung Bahadoor. They were to have gone to Allahabad, but their destination will probably be Benares, Jaunpore, or Azimghur, as Havelock positively refuses their company. A letter received yesterday from Agra reports all right. They had about 1,500 fighting men (800 Christian natives), and the other natives, women and children, make up about 5,000, yet they have provisions for more than six months. Havelock found it impossible to advance as far as Lucknow ; consequently he returned to Cawnpnre to await reinforcements. Some 1,000 men and Eyrt's battery must he near Cawnpore now, but he will scarcely be able to advance till he has a force of '2,500 men, with four batteries. H 6 has no cavalry, and the enemy has, so we cannot follow them up. When our men charge and capture their guns, of which they have plenty, they leave them, and scuttle away, and their cavalry cover their retreat. They rally a few miles off, and await the approach of our troops. They swarm in numbers, and are not under 30.000 of all sorts. During the advance of Havelock the Lucknow garrison had time to look about them ; so they left their old intrenchment and took up a better position, at the same time getting in large supplies. A wing of her Majesty's 53rd and a Madras native infantry corps are on their way up the country, marching. We are amused to see the cool way they ',except Lord Ellenborongh, Mr. Disraeli, and Sir E. Colebrooke) are treating the mutiny at home. They say fourteen thousand men will be as many as are required, and they are confident that India will be quiet before they arrive. We shall have received our quietus before the assistance arrives, if they don't look sharp. At Chundowlee the people are very loyally disposed. They long to see us in power again. They are so annoyed at being looted by the rebels the other day, they have now sworn amongst themselves to cut to pieces any band of rebels or mutineers that may pass thiA. In connection with the defence at Arrah, of which our correspondent gives so lively an account, we may mention that the credit of the success of that defence is given by Ur. Wake in his official report to " Mr. B. V. Boyle's engineering skill and untiring exer tions." It is impossible to read the above account without seeing the important bearing this defence had upon the whole campaign. It delayed for seven days the advance of Doer Singh at the head of 2,500 disciplined sepoys, and about the same number of his own adherents, until the rebels were defeated and the garrison was relieved by the gallant band from Buxar, under Major Vincent Eyre. The Dublin Evening Post, referring to the event, justly re marks :—" The army and civil servants of the Government justly engross much the greater share of the public honours, because they have much the greater power and opportunity of rendering public service ' • but when such public service has been effected by a volunteer, we cannot but think, especially in such a crisis as the present, that the Govetnment of this country will but do their duty in alvising the Queen to bestow upon Mr. Richard Vipers Boyle some signet malt pf dis. ttnotioli," PRIVATE LETTERS. We have been favoured with the following original letters from Dinaporo and Delhi : Dinapore, August 22. The mutineers went off unscathed to Arrah. They had lots of boats at the ghat to cross in, and poor Wake heard by a sower that they would be in Arrah in six hours time. fie, like a plucky, gallant fellow as he is, having canvassed the opinion of ten other Europeans who were with him at the station, de termined upon remaining in a little bungalow of Mr. Vicars Boyle, the distriet railway engineer, with their guard of about forty-five Sikhs. They made all the hurried preparations they could for a siege of two or three days, as they made sure that the Europeans would follow up the rebels and relieve them before long. They had only water enough to last them two or three days, and provisions at the same rate. The sepoys came up sharp and commenced looting the treasury, from which they took 85,000 rupees. They burnt the bungalows too, and of course looted the city. They regularly besieged the bungalow in which Wake and Boyle and the others were shut up, brought 2 and 4 lbs. cannon to bear on it, and offered -eery high bribes to the Sikhs to give up the sahibs. But the pluck of Wake and his friends and the Sikhs was beyond belief. They dug up the floor, and increased the thickness of the walls with the rubble and earth thus turned up; and when, after two or three days, no relief having arrived, their water began to run short. they dug a well in the floor twenty-four feet deep by six feet broad. The breaches msde by the small guns of the besiegers were instantly repaired with earthen banks, and made stronger than before. On the fourth or fifth night, being short of provi sions, they sallied out and brought in four sheep, &c. In the meantime the Dinapore authorities had attempted to relieve them by sending the detach ment of the 37th Queen's and 150 of the 10th Queen's on board a steamer up the Sone. She, however, soon grounded ; the men were landed, and made a night march (! !I on Arrah, through a country and along a road that not one of the party had ever seen before. Captain Dunbar, the officer in command of the party, a brave though rash officer, with that dangerous contempt for " niggers " that all Queen's officers have, utterly disregarded the warnings of brother officers, who represented the folly and great risk they were running of marching in the dark, and pressed on for the relief of Wake and his party. Within a mile of Arrah, however, they came upon an ambuscade. The mutineers had concealed themselves in a mango tope, and poured in a well-directed fire upon our soldiers which told most fearfully. Dunbar, two or three other officers, and upwards of a hundred men were killed at the first volley, and the rest, being utterly taken aback at this sudden disaster, broke and fled. They could see no enemy to attack, and were therefore forced to retreat. Of the 350 men that had marched, only 150 returned unhurt to the steamer. There were nine officers killed and wounded. Captain Harrison took the men back to Dinapora. This to the sepoys was great cause for exaltation. They returned to Arrah more elated and more insolent than ever, and then, not fearing any further attacks from our soldiers, commenced a regular siege on Wake's party. They took their guns up to the top of a neighbouring house, and tried to bring the bungalow down about their beads. The besieged, however fired so steadily that the cowardly scoundrels did not dare to approach too close. They tried by threats and persuasions to turn the Sikbs from their loyal and courageous determination to give up their lives to our cause, but without avail, however, thank God ; and the conse quence was, that, after a nine or ten days' siege, the gallant little band of heroes was rescued from their perilous position by Major Eyre, who had brought half of his battery and 250 Europeans to the rescue, The rescue was not, however, easily affected, as you may conceive. Our soldiers fought their way through the mutineers from morning till evening, Fancy three regiments, well armed and well disciplined, elated by their late complete victory over our small party, backed by a powerful zemindar ' by name Baboo Koer Singh, w ith hi s th ousan d s o f budmashes with their matchlocks and swords, opposed to our 250 soldiers and three guns. It appears madness in Eyre to have attempted it; but he is not only a tine, dashing soldier, but a good military genius, So close a thing was it at one time, that the mutineers had got within fifty paces of the guns; but a well. 4 / 1 " 44 dilMhsrP of grape And 4 viblirge of E11T47, 1033 The following letter gives an animated description of the dash of the rebel Cavalry upon our camp on the oth of July last:— Camp before Delhi, July 11, 1857. The commissioner having chartered a private express enabled me to get to the camp before Delhi on the Ist July. The reports of heavy guns first gave notice of our approach to Delhi, and then the remains of the conflict of the Bth of June which sprinkled the roads and fields through which we passed told us that we were near the small Sebas topol which had given, and promised to give, so much trouble, and we soon found out that the cap ture of the place (as far as regards any means to that end) was as far off as it was when our forces first sat down before it. It was then equally capable of being taken by escalade or by surprise through the gates as it is now, and not a third of their pre sent force was opposed to us, and no defence then had been token against a sudden attack, by mines or street barricades, which are now, we are informed, all ready. General A— was incompetent ; his successor, B--, equally so ; and the man on whom the command devolved, It—, of the —, is a poor old, nervous, weak, and broken-down man. We trust God will, in his mercy, raise up some one, for our present indecision has the worst effect on the native mind. The communication of the enemy with their rear by the bridge of boats, which is never broken in the rainy season, gives them any amount of provisions, and their communication with our rear across the canal, and even on this side of it, and their holding our road to Meerut, often enables them to cut off our supplies. For a regular siege, we have not nearly enough siege materials, and not half or a quarter of the number of guns in position which the enemy has ; for, you know, Delhi was our largest arsenal. Our position there as a check on their advance is too extended a one for our army. To hold it properly would take 25,000 men, and we have not 0,000, in cluding Sikhs, and Ghocrkas, and Guides, who are for us. Our left is on the river and our right is in the gardens, which give us more to do than we can well manage, for the enemy come out and occupy them in force, and, as we are obliged to drive them out (or they would get in the rear of our batteries and turn our right), we suffer many casualties, and valuable lives are lost which we can ill afford. Our front rests on a line of hills, on which, and in front of the enemy's batteries, we have erected a number of batteries, and every other day and night is spent by me on the Mound Battery, marked 17. [The sketch to which this figure alludes is not with the letter.] These little bills rise out of the plain joined together, and forming a steep parapet on three sides and an enticing slope on the fourth. We hold several intrenebed houses on the rugged ad vancel ground beyond the batteries. The enemy were turned out of their posts the day before yes terday (oth), after some sharp fighting. They came on in two bodies (to decide who was to take the command, which was to be given to the general who might take the advanced heavy batteries or the camp !) One party engaged our people at the Samy • house (as the men call an inclosed musjiel) at our right, supported by the Delhi batteries and some guns which they brought out under the trees oppo site the Lahore gate. Our right battery, and espe cially the field-guns in position up the road (as 10 marked), were sharply engaged. We heard them ; but actually the " turn out " was not sounded in camp. It was a pelting rain, and old B— did not like it At the same time a very heavy fire was opened from the city on our batteries, and about a thousand shells in two hours burst over and near our camp without doing any damage. In these bat teries several men were killed. The fire of the mus ketry came to my ear, and I ran to my post sharps Hardly any one else had gone, except Captain F— of ours, who, wondering why the " turn-out" bugle had not sounded, said "If I had command of the enemy's cavalry, I would gallop them straight through the camp and back, and all our servants would ruh away." I was going after this to my tent when galloped up and cried, " You are wanted at the Mound. The enemy's cavalry are out in force." My tent was en route, so I went in, buckled on my sword, and was running from No. 25 to No. 7. When I got about half across, say 200 yards, musketry sounded beyond the Mound and picket No. 24, and the bullets whistled over my head. At the same moment I saw a movement among the two guns of horse artillery, which, with some carabineers, were where I have put ill( in (marked *1 *1). I was at first rather startled at finding the enemy had got so close to our guns, but seeing the horse artillery re assured me. Ina second, however, to my horror, I saw the enemy's cavalry right among the guns, cutting down the gunners. One limber started oil' (leaving the gun) without any men on the horsea t end dashed off towards the hills, and the other gum posed me et twill gallop, followed by th e !We