_September 18th._--There is nothing worth speaking of doing here. We are still shelling the fort and palace, but as slowly, alas, as possible. I am writing in great haste, in order to go down and see my "intelligence" people. Some of the enemy are trying negotiation. I only hope they may find it is too late, and that we may pursue and destroy the wretches whom we have to thank for so much barbarity and bloodshed.
_September 19th._--We are making slow progress in the city. The fact is, the troops are utterly demoralized by hard work and hard drink, I grieve to say. For the first time in my life I have had to see English soldiers refuse repeatedly to follow their officers. Greville, Jacob, Nicholson, and Speke were all sacrificed to this. We were out with all the cavalry this morning on a _reconnaissance_, or rather demonstration, for some miles, and got a wetting for our pains; however, rain at this season is too grateful to be complained of.
_September 20th._--I have been much shocked (even familiar as I have become with death) by poor Greathed's[50] sudden death yesterday from cholera; the strongest and healthiest man in camp snatched away after a few hours' illness. Sir T. Metcalfe also is very ill with the same cruel disease; what a harvest of death there has been during the past four months, as if war was not sufficiently full of horrors. The rebels have fled from the city in thousands, and it is all but empty; only the palace is still occupied, and that we hope to get hold of immediately, and so this horribly protracted siege will be at an end at last, thank God. None but those who fought through the first six weeks of the campaign know on what a thread our lives and the safety of the Empire hung, or can appreciate the sufferings and exertions of those days of watchfulness and combat, of fearful heat and exhaustion, of trial and danger. I look back on them with a feeling of almost doubt whether they were real or only a foul dream. This day will be a memorable one in the annals of the Empire; the restoration of British rule in the East dates from the 20th September, 1857.
IN THE ROYAL PALACE DELHI, _September 22d_.--I was quite unable to write yesterday, having had a hard day's work. I was fortunate enough to capture the King and his favorite wife. To-day, more fortunate still, I have seized and destroyed the King's two sons and a grandson (the famous, or rather infamous, Abu Bukr), the villains who ordered the massacre of our women and children, and stood by and witnessed the foul barbarity; their bodies are now lying on the spot where those of the unfortunate ladies were exposed. I am very tired, but very much satisfied with my day's work, and so seem all hands. We were to have accompanied the movable column, but to-day it is counter-ordered, and we remain here.[51]