TWELVE YEARS
OF A
SOLDIER'S LIFE IN INDIA.

TWELVE YEARS

OF A

SOLDIER'S LIFE IN INDIA:

BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS

OF THE LATE

MAJOR W. S. R. HODSON, B. A.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE;
FIRST BENGAL EUROPEAN FUSILEERS, COMMANDANT OF HODSON'S HORSE.

INCLUDING

A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF THE SIEGE OF DELHI
AND CAPTURE OF THE KING AND PRINCES.

EDITED BY HIS BROTHER,
THE REV. GEORGE H. HODSON, M. A.
SENIOR FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

FROM THE THIRD AND ENLARGED ENGLISH EDITION.

BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
M DCCC LX.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

[The following paper, by the author of "Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby," appeared in "Fraser's Magazine:"—]

The heart of England has not, within the memory of living men, been so deeply moved as by the Indian rebellion of 1857. It was a time of real agony,—the waiting, week after week, for those scanty despatches, which, when they came, and lay before us in the morning papers, with huge capitals at the top of the column, we scarcely dared take up, we could not read without a strong effort of the will. What it must have been to those of us whose sisters, brothers, sons, were then in the Northwest Provinces, they alone can tell; but of the rest we do believe there was scarce a man who did not every now and then feel a cold sinking of heart, a sense of shame at his inability to help, a longing to make some sacrifice of money, ease, or what not, whereby to lift, if it might be, a portion of the dead weight from off his own soul. By degrees came the light. As the trial had been, so had been the strength. The white squall was past; and though that great and terrible deluge still heaved and tossed, we began to catch sight of one and another brave ship riding it out. Our pulses beat quick and our eyes dimmed as we heard and read how the little band of our kindred had turned to bay, in tale after tale of heroic daring and self-sacrificing and saintly endurance and martyrdom. The traces here and there of weakness and indecision only brought out more clearly the soundness and strength of the race which was on its trial; and from amongst the thousands who were nobly doing their duty, one man after another stood out and drew to himself the praise, the gratitude, and the love of the whole nation. In all her long and stern history, England can point to no nobler sons than these, the heroes of India in 1857. Thank God, many of them are left to us; but the contest was for the life itself, the full price had to be paid, and one after another the heroes paid it. Some fell, full of years and honors, whom the mutiny found with names already famous; others in their glorious mid-day strength; others fresh from England, in the first daring years of early youth; of all ranks and professions,—generals, governors, cadets, missionaries, civilians, private soldiers; but each heard the call and obeyed it faithfully, loving not his own life; and we believe that even in this hurrying, bewildering, forgetful age, England and Englishmen will not let the name of one of them die.

At any rate, there is little chance that the subject of this paper will be forgotten by his countrymen, for not only has he carved out with his sword a name for himself which knows few equals even in Indian story, but he has left materials which have enabled his brother to put together one of the best biographies in our language.

Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India is the history of the career of Hodson of Hodson's Horse, the captor of the King of Delhi, compiled from private letters written to different members of his family.

To the book itself, as a literary work, high praise may be awarded. There are four pages only which we could wish omitted; we mean those (from p. 432 to p. 436) which contain the extracts from newspapers. Able leading article writers and special correspondents, who as soon as the firing is over, bustle up to battle-fields where their country's noblest are dying, and sit down to catch the tale of every claqueur, and spin the whole into thrilling periods, doubtless have their use, and their productions are highly valued,—or, at any rate, are highly paid for,—by the British public. The extracts in question are favorable specimens, on the whole, of such commodities. But Hodson has no need of them, and they jar on one's soul at the end of such a book. With this exception, the book is a model of its kind. There is not a word too much of the letters; in fact, we long for more of them, while confessing that no additional number could bring the man or his career more livingly before us; and the editor has, with rare tact, given us just what was needed of supplementary narrative, and no more, and has shown himself a high-minded gentleman and Christian by his forbearance in suppressing the names of the men who enviously and wickedly persecuted his brother. In a charming little preface he compares that brother to Fernando Perez, the hero of the later Spanish ballads, and then seems to doubt whether affection may not have biassed his judgment. We think we may reassure him on this point. The career of the Indian Captain of Irregulars may fairly challenge comparison with that of Fernando Perez or any other hero of romance, and we may well apply to the Englishman, lying in the death chamber at Lucknow, the poet's touching farewell to the peerless knight Durandarte, stretched on the bloody sward at Roncesvalles,—

But it is time for us to turn from the book to the man, and we think our readers will thank us for giving them the best picture which our space will allow of him and his work, as nearly as may be in his own words; only begging them to bear in mind that these letters were written in the strictest confidence to his nearest relations, and that so far from wishing to make his own deeds known during his life, he resolutely refused to allow his letters to be made public.

William Stephen Raikes Hodson, third son of the Archdeacon of Stafford, was born in March, 1821, and went, when fourteen years old, to Rugby, where he stayed for more than four years, two of which were spent in the sixth form under Arnold. At school he was a bright, pleasant boy, fond of fun, and with abilities decidedly above the average, but of no very marked distinction, except as a runner; in which exercise, however, he was almost unequalled, and showed great powers of endurance. None of his old schoolfellows have been surprised to hear of his success as the head of the Intelligence Department of an army, or of his marvellous marches and appearances in impossible places