The Story of the Guides | Page 8

body of troops
proved, however, to be entirely unreliable. Agnew and Anderson were,
within a few hours of their arrival at Mooltan, attacked and severely
wounded by fanatics, and no one raised a hand to help them. Lying
helpless and sorely wounded in the temporary asylum which their
quarters afforded, they heard with dismay that practically the whole of
the escort on whom their safety depended had gone over to the faction

of Mulraj, a faction which insisted on his remaining in power, and
which was strongly antagonistic to the claims of British political
influence. Alone amid thousands, it remained only for these brave
young officers to offer up their lives on the altar of British dominion.
Thus strongly committed to a line of action which was far from
according with his weak and vacillating nature, Mulraj raised the
standard of revolt, and sending the fiery cross through the country,
called on all to join in expelling the hated foreigner, and common
enemy, from the Land of the Five Rivers. The prospects of the cause
looked bright indeed. No organised body of British troops lay nearer
than Lahore, hundreds of miles distant; the hot season had commenced,
when the movement of regular troops encounters almost insuperable
difficulties; the whole country was smarting under the sense of recent
severe but hardly conclusive defeat; while hundreds of petty chiefs, and
thousands of soldiers, were chafing under the thinly disguised veil of
foreign sovereignty.
Yet out of the unlooked for West arose a star which in a few brief
weeks eclipsed the rising moon of national aspiration, and, shining
bright and true, helped to guide the frail bark of British supremacy
through victory to the haven of a permanent peace. That star was an
unknown British subaltern named Herbert Edwardes. Edwardes was
one of the young officers deputed to assist the Sikhs in the work of
systemising and purifying their administration, and was at this time
engaged in the revenue settlement of the Dera-Ismail-Khan district.
One day in June as he sat in court settling disputes, there came to him a
runner, covered with dust and sweat, who brought to him a last
message from Agnew, as he lay wounded on his bed in Mooltan. The
message asked urgently for help, and appealed, as the writer knew, to
one who would spare no risk or pains to furnish it. To succour the
wounded British officers was a matter which had passed beyond the
region of possibility, for the ink had hardly dried on their message
before they were murdered; but to re-establish the prestige of the
British name, to reassert its dignity and influence, and to bring to
punishment the perpetrators of a hideous and treacherous crime,--these
tasks Herbert Edwardes at once set before himself.

Alone, save for the presence of one other Englishman, the young
British subaltern, with the sage intrepidity of ripest experience, hastily
summoned the chiefs of the Derajat and Bannu districts to his aid, and
assembled their motley followings under his banner. He sent
messengers to the friendly chief of Bhawulpore, and called on him to
join in the crusade against Mooltan. Then after much feinting and
fencing, and greatly assisted by the stout Van Cortlandt, Edwardes
threw his army across the Indus, at this season a roaring torrent three
miles wide, and sought out his enemy. Coming up with him he defeated
Mulraj and his army of ten thousand men in two pitched battles, and
drove him to take refuge behind the walls of Mooltan.
Accompanying Herbert Edwardes was a detachment of the Guides, lent
by Lumsden, and before the war bent on learning their way about this
portion of the frontier, in accordance with the rôle assigned their corps.
This detachment not only joined with natural zest in the hard fighting
that fell to the share of all, but proved of great service to the
commander as scouts and intelligence men. So far did intrepidity and
love of adventure carry them, that four sowars,[4] under Duffadar
Khanan Khan, rode through the enemy's outposts, and with admirable
coolness picketed their horses, probably without excessive ostentation,
amidst the enemy's cavalry. They then separated, and went about to see
and remember that which might be useful to their own commander and
their own comrades in the war. It is perhaps needless to say that
discovery meant instant death, yet, with the happy insolence of the born
free-lance, superb indifference carried them through where the slightest
slip would have been fatal. Indeed, one of them, by name Mohaindin,
with nerves of steel, actually succeeded in being taken on as an orderly
by Diwan Mulraj himself, and while acting as such was severely
wounded by a round shot from one of our own guns at the battle of
Sadusam.
[4] Sowar, a native trooper.