Self Help by Samuel Smiles (best romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

Daylesford. And when his long public life, so singularly chequered

with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed

for ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die.”

Sir Charles Napier was another Indian leader of extraordinary

courage and determination. He once said of the difficulties with

which he was surrounded in one of his campaigns, “They only make my

feet go deeper into the ground.” His battle of Meeanee was one of

the most extraordinary feats in history. With 2000 men, of whom

only 400 were Europeans, he encountered an army of 35,000 hardy and

well-armed Beloochees. It was an act, apparently, of the most

daring temerity, but the general had faith in himself and in his

men. He charged the Belooch centre up a high bank which formed

their rampart in front, and for three mortal hours the battle

raged. Each man of that small force, inspired by the chief, became

for the time a hero. The Beloochees, though twenty to one, were

driven back, but with their faces to the foe. It is this sort of

pluck, tenacity, and determined perseverance which wins soldiers’

battles, and, indeed, every battle. It is the one neck nearer that

wins the race and shows the blood; it is the one march more that

wins the campaign; the five minutes’ more persistent courage that

wins the fight. Though your force be less than another’s, you

equal and outmaster your opponent if you continue it longer and

concentrate it more. The reply of the Spartan father, who said to

his son, when complaining that his sword was too short, “Add a step

to it,” is applicable to everything in life.

Napier took the right method of inspiring his men with his own

heroic spirit. He worked as hard as any private in the ranks.

“The great art of commanding,” he said, “is to take a fair share of

the work. The man who leads an army cannot succeed unless his

whole mind is thrown into his work. The more trouble, the more

labour must be given; the more danger, the more pluck must be

shown, till all is overpowered.” A young officer who accompanied

him in his campaign in the Cutchee Hills, once said, “When I see

that old man incessantly on his horse, how can I be idle who am

young and strong? I would go into a loaded cannon’s mouth if he

ordered me.” This remark, when repeated to Napier, he said was

ample reward for his toils. The anecdote of his interview with the

Indian juggler strikingly illustrates his cool courage as well as

his remarkable simplicity and honesty of character. On one

occasion, after the Indian battles, a famous juggler visited the

camp and performed his feats before the General, his family, and

staff. Among other performances, this man cut in two with a stroke

of his sword a lime or lemon placed in the hand of his assistant.

Napier thought there was some collusion between the juggler and his

retainer. To divide by a sweep of the sword on a man’s hand so

small an object without touching the flesh he believed to be

impossible, though a similar incident is related by Scott in his

romance of the ‘Talisman.’ To determine the point, the General

offered his own hand for the experiment, and he stretched out his

right arm. The juggler looked attentively at the hand, and said he

would not make the trial. “I thought I would find you out!”

exclaimed Napier. “But stop,” added the other, “let me see your

left hand.” The left hand was submitted, and the man then said

firmly, “If you will hold your arm steady I will perform the feat.”

“But why the left hand and not the right?” “Because the right hand

is hollow in the centre, and there is a risk of cutting off the

thumb; the left is high, and the danger will be less.” Napier was

startled. “I got frightened,” he said; “I saw it was an actual

feat of delicate swordsmanship, and if I had not abused the man as

I did before my staff, and challenged him to the trial, I honestly

acknowledge I would have retired from the encounter. However, I

put the lime on my hand, and held out my arm steadily. The juggler

balanced himself, and, with a swift stroke cut the lime in two

pieces. I felt the edge of the sword on my hand as if a cold

thread had been drawn across it. So much (he added) for the brave

swordsmen of India, whom our fine fellows defeated at Meeanee.”

The recent terrible struggle in India has served to bring out,

perhaps more prominently than any previous event in our history,

the determined energy and self-reliance of the national character.

Although English officialism may often drift stupidly into gigantic

blunders, the men of the nation generally contrive to work their

way out of them with a heroism almost approaching the sublime. In

May, 1857, when the revolt burst upon India like a thunder-clap,

the British forces had been allowed to dwindle to their extreme

minimum, and were scattered over a wide extent of country, many of

them in remote cantonments. The Bengal regiments, one after

another, rose against their officers, broke away, and rushed to

Delhi. Province after province was lapped in mutiny and rebellion;

and the cry for help rose from east to west. Everywhere the

English stood at bay in small detachments, beleaguered and

surrounded, apparently incapable of resistance. Their discomfiture

seemed so complete, and the utter ruin of the British cause in

India so certain, that it might be said of them then, as it had

been said before, “These English never know when they are beaten.”

According to rule, they ought then and there to have succumbed to

inevitable fate.

While the issue of the mutiny still appeared uncertain, Holkar, one

of the native princes, consulted his astrologer for information.

The reply was, “If all the Europeans save one are slain, that one

will remain to fight and reconquer.” In their very darkest moment-

-even where, as at Lucknow, a mere handful of British soldiers,

civilians, and women, held out amidst a city and province in arms

against them—there was no word of despair, no thought of

surrender. Though cut off from all communication with their

friends for months, and not knowing whether India was lost or held,

they never ceased to have perfect faith in the courage and

devotedness of their countrymen. They knew that while a body of

men of English race held together in India, they would not be left

unheeded to perish. They never dreamt of any other issue but

retrieval of their misfortune and ultimate triumph; and if the

worst came to the worst, they could but fall at their post, and die

in the performance of their duty. Need we remind the reader of the

names of Havelock, Inglis, Neill, and Outram—men of truly heroic

mould—of each of whom it might with truth be said that he had the

heart of a chevalier, the soul of a believer, and the temperament

of a martyr. Montalembert has said of them that “they do honour to

the human race.” But throughout that terrible trial almost all

proved equally great—women, civilians and soldiers—from the

general down through all grades to the private and bugleman. The

men were not picked: they belonged to the same ordinary people

whom we daily meet at home—in the streets, in workshops, in the

fields, at clubs; yet when sudden disaster fell upon them, each and

all displayed a wealth of personal resources and energy, and became

as it were individually heroic. “Not one of them,” says

Montalembert, “shrank or trembled—all, military and civilians,

young and old, generals and soldiers, resisted, fought, and

perished with a coolness and intrepidity which never faltered. It

is in this circumstance that shines out the immense value of public

education, which invites the Englishman from his youth to make use

of his strength and his liberty, to associate, resist, fear

nothing, to be astonished at nothing, and to save himself, by his

own sole exertions, from every sore strait in life.”

It has been said that Delhi was taken and India saved by the

personal character of Sir John Lawrence. The very name of

“Lawrence” represented power in the North-West Provinces. His

standard of duty, zeal, and personal effort, was of the highest;

and every man who served under him seemed to be inspired by his

spirit. It was declared of him that his character alone was worth

an army. The same might be said of his brother Sir Henry, who

organised the Punjaub force that took so prominent a part in the

capture of Delhi. Both brothers inspired those who were about them

with perfect love and confidence. Both possessed that quality of

tenderness, which is one of the true elements of the heroic

character. Both lived amongst the people, and powerfully

influenced them for good. Above all as Col. Edwardes says, “they

drew models on young fellows’ minds, which they went forth and

copied in their several administrations: they sketched a FAITH,

and begot a SCHOOL, which are both living things at this day.” Sir

John Lawrence had by his side such men as Montgomery, Nicholson,

Cotton, and Edwardes, as prompt, decisive, and high-souled as

himself. John Nicholson was one of the finest, manliest, and

noblest of men—“every inch a hakim,” the natives said of him—“a

tower of strength,” as he was characterised by Lord Dalhousie. In

whatever capacity he acted he was great, because he acted with his

whole strength and soul. A brotherhood of fakeers—borne away by

their enthusiastic admiration of the man—even began the worship of

Nikkil Seyn: he had some of them punished for their folly, but

they continued their worship nevertheless. Of his sustained energy

and persistency an illustration may be cited in his pursuit of the

55th Sepoy mutineers, when he was in the saddle for twenty

consecutive hours, and travelled more than seventy miles. When the

enemy set up their standard at Delhi, Lawrence and Montgomery,

relying on the support of the people of the Punjaub, and compelling

their admiration and confidence, strained every nerve to keep their

own province in perfect order, whilst they hurled every available

soldier, European and Sikh, against that city. Sir John wrote to

the commander-in-chief to “hang on to the rebels’ noses before

Delhi,” while the troops pressed on by forced marches under

Nicholson, “the tramp of whose war-horse might be heard miles off,”

as was afterwards said of him by a rough Sikh who wept over his

grave.

The siege and storming of Delhi was the most illustrious event

which occurred in the course of that gigantic struggle, although

the leaguer of Lucknow, during which the merest skeleton of a

British regiment—the 32nd—held out, under the heroic Inglis, for

six months against two hundred thousand armed enemies, has perhaps

excited more intense interest. At Delhi, too, the British were

really the besieged, though ostensibly the besiegers; they were a

mere handful of men “in the open”—not more than 3,700 bayonets,

European and native—and they were assailed from day to day by an

army of rebels numbering at one time as many as 75,000 men, trained

to European discipline by English officers, and supplied with all

but exhaustless munitions of war. The heroic little band sat down

before the city under the burning rays of a tropical sun. Death,

wounds, and fever failed to turn them from their purpose. Thirty

times they were attacked by overwhelming numbers, and thirty times

did they drive back the enemy behind their defences. As Captain

Hodson—himself one of the bravest there—has said, “I venture to

aver that no other nation in the world would have remained here, or

avoided defeat if they had