The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-29 00:00:00

lITI/lA.s.a..ND CHINA.

(From a Co)'l esponclent of the Times.)

By the arrival of the Calcutta mail we have re-
ceived our pri vat(; correspondence and files of
papers from Ca .lcut to to the 24th of October and
from Hong Kc ing l z,o the 13th of October.
The following 1 s the letter of our Calcutta cor-
respondent :

g, CALCUTTA, OCT. 24.

,s The Queen's p ro( Aamation has arrived at last,
and. I am told will. to, a published on the Ist of No-
vember, some dela.: y being necessary to secure its
simultaneous pub] i cation throughout the empire.
Nothing is as yet utown of its contents, but it is
universally believe( I. that it comprises a wide, per-
haps a general, ami testy. If this be the case it is
to be regretted hat official etiquette should
have delayed the elf ?spatch so long. The columns
are already in move rrient, and to issue an amnesty
in the very momen 1, of attack may rouse that sud-
den distrust whiel i has so often frustrated the best
designed efforts o t the Administration. For the
rest an amnesty, if sufficiently wide, can only be
beneficial. The
.country is weary of the contest,
and even the , sepoys, sullen as they still are,
acknowledge t .'fiat they are beaten. The certainty
of life and sec./ arity will, it is reasonable to suppose,
tempt thousal tds to their villages, and quiet, if only
temporary, is still indispensable to enable us to
organise any I to save. Ido not think there is
much dang er of the sepoys not hearing of
the proclamation. They hear of everything they
choose mud t quicker than Europeans. They heard
of the grease -A cartridges all over India in a fort-
night, and ti le seizure of Delhi was known in Cal-
cutta within ‘.a. week after the event. If, contrary to
all expectati on, they should refuse the boon and
continue to s pread disorder through the country,
we shall at le tast have discharged our consciences
of blood.

" The colmr ms, as I said, commenced their march
on the 18th inst., but we have no further intelli-
gence. For some time past incessant accounts have
appeared of skirmishes, more or less petty, some of
which I relate b‘llow. They were all instigated by
a proclamation i Asued by the Begum of Oude. This
woman, who, li'ke all the women who have turned
up in the in:sur rection, has more sense and nerve
than all her 'Generals together, conceived the idea
of a combin .ed attack. She believed that if all the
posts were atacked at once, the English, taken by
surprise, 'must be beaten at some one point, and
any vict,ory, however unimportant, would have
brought thousands to her. standard. Accordingly
towards the end of September, she issued a general
order, which has just fallen into the hands of Go-
vernment. She had, she said, remained passive
during the rains, but she had paid up the troops
and given the landholders compensation for their
losses ; the cold weather had now arrived, and all
devoted to her must attack the nearest English
posts on one and the same day, the Ist of October.
Those who were wounded should have pensions ;
those who obtained a victory large rewards. The
leaders obeyed the rescript, but punctuality is im-
possible to an Asiatic. One man could not get his
stores in time. Another was interrupted by unex-
pected difficulties in crossing a river, and the ablest
of all seems to have miscalculated his march. The
great cannonade which was to have blown us out
of Oude degenerated into an irregular, harmless
discharge 'of popguns. The third leader men-
tioned, Horopersad, did, however, reach Sun-
, deela, the cantonment so gallantly carried by
Captain Dawson on the 3d of October. He had
12,000 men, but only four guns, the stores of artil-
lery evidently being nearly exhausted. Captain
Dawson had only 1,400 infantry, natives, and 500
Sowars of the mounted police. He threw himself
with the foot into a fotified enclosure, and sent the
cavalry to Mulheeabad. There they were joined by
120 of H.M.'s 88th, 200 police Sowars, 600 police
foot, and some light guns. On the 7th this body
reached Sundeela, drove out Horopersad, and killed
100 of his followers, with the loss of only one artil-
leryman. Following them up on the Bth, the re-
lieving force stormed Panoo, four miles from Sun-
deela, captured three guns, and killed upwards of
1,000 of the enemy. The telegram expressly men-
tions that this number is reported from several dif-
ferent sources. We lost Lieut. Green and one other
officer severely wounded, seven privates wounded,
and 45 policemen killed and wounded. This is
the most substantial success as yet obtained, and
reflects the highest credit upon all concerned. On
the 14th two other skirmishes occurred. In one
Major Raikes, commanding a small column, at-
tacked and defeated a party near Fyzabad Without
the loss of a man. The other was more important.
The enemy, about 1,200 strong, with two guns, had
posted themselves at Meeahgunj, where they were
attacked by Brigadier Eveleigh with 150 cavalry,
a number of infantry—misreported by the telegraph
at 5,200. The rebels were scattered, wiih a loss of
some 200 men.

" These little affairs are all subordinate to the
main design, the execution of which commenced on
the 11th inst., and which, though all details are kept
secret, is, I am informed briefly the rebels
in Oude are to be driven beyond the Goegra, and
then into a trap formed by the simultaneous advance
of Brigadier Troup from the West, and Sir H. Grant
from the East. The South is protected by the river,
and to the North there is only Nepaul. As the
columns move on arrangements are completed for
following up their blows by dismantling every fort,
cutting roads through every jungle, and thoroughly
disarming the population. Mr. Montgomery helped
to perform this task in the Punjab, and understands
the work. It will probably be performed more
effectually than beyond the Sutlej, for the buried
artillery has been dug up, and will be seized on the
field. The stores of cannon possessed by the Sikhs
did not, I fear, all fall into our hands.
" Meanwhile Jugdespore, the opprobrium of our
power in Bengal, has been occupied by Brigadier
Douglas. Previously, on Oct. 7th, a small column
from Buxar had gone out to apprehend a notorious
leader. The achievement which followed may best
be described in the words of the despatch, which is
simple, brief, and intelligible
" I send some further particulars of our yester-
day's dawk. At 10 o'clock on the night of the 6th
100 men of the 54th, 40 Madras Rifles, and 60 Sikh
infantry, embarked on board the little gunboat Be-
nares ; at the same time a troop of the Military
Train and another of Madras cavalry started by
land, the plan being that we should join our forces-
together at Dehree on the Karamnassa and proceed
together to Kherce. (In the map this village is
written Khareeka). Owing to the darkness of the
night, and the captain being but imperfectly ac-
quainted with the Karamnassa, he landed us at 5
a.m. below Soonpa, occasioning us a march of four
or five miles more than was intended. At Dehree
we were joined by the cavalry, with whom we
marched as far as Mikris, there obtained a guide,
and the cavalry was ordered to advance and sur-
round Kheree until the infantry came up. From
inquiries I made at various villages, it appeared
that the day before the rebels at Kheree had been
joined by those who had been staying at Barounda
(11 or 12 miles west), altogether there were about
300 puma sepoys. i was also told that morning these
rebels had looted some villages north of Kheree, but
had afterwards returned to the last named place.
The cavalry was proceeding to Kheree when they
came near the village of Soonee, out of which
the sepoys issued and formedin' the open (I
think they must have stopped
here to cook on
their way back to Kheree.) As the cavalry
advanced the sepoys began to fall back and
the cavalry charged. The rebels seeing little
chance of escape, became desp t
era e. They took to
some high crops, and some threw themselves on
the ground, trying thus to avoid the sabres of our
men, while they endeavoured to wound the horses
with their own. Captain Nasen, who`avd already
killed Douglas, gallantly led the charge, had
killed. one man and was rushing up to another
when he turned and, deliberately taking aim, shot
poor Noon dead. This man was immediately
despatched by Major Douglas, who shortly after
was himself mortally wounded by a Sepoy he was
going to cut down. The loss of their leacicr3
dis-
pirited our cavalry, and they soon fell back upon
the infantry which was advancing. We never came
up to the rebels again. However, they had already
left at least 60 of their number dead upon the
field. I only passed over a portion of the ground.
I myself counted 34 dead Sepoys, an officer counted
47 ; but there must have been many who fell in
the high crops that escaped our observa-
tion. The ground was fearfully heavy and
swampy, or greater execution would assuredly
have been done. We afterwards proceeded to

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