Macdowell writes the epitaph of the princes: “So ended the career of the chiefs of the revolt and of the greatest villains that ever shamed humanity.”
The bodies were driven into Delhi and cast on a raised terrace in front of the Kotwallee. Cave-Browne, who was chaplain to the forces at the time, comments on the curious fact that this was the very spot where the worst crimes of the princes had been committed. “It was,” he says, “a dire retribution! On the very spot where, four months ago, English women and children had suffered every form of indignity and death, there now lay exposed to the scoff and scorn of the avenging army, three scions of the royal house, who had been chief among the fiends of Delhi.”
The story of the siege of Delhi is one of the most wonderful chapters in the history of war. The besieging army never amounted to 10,000 men; it sometimes sank below 5000. For weeks the British had thus to face an enemy exceeding themselves in number sometimes by a ratio of ten to one, and with an overwhelming superiority of artillery. They fought no fewer than thirty-two battles with the enemy, and did not lose one! For three months every man, not sick, in the whole force had to be under arms every day, and sometimes both by night and day. The men were scorched by the heat of the sun, wasted with dysentery and cholera, worn out with toil.
A new and strange perplexity was added to the situation by the fact that many of the native troops on the Ridge were notoriously disloyal. The British officers sometimes ran as much danger of being shot by their own troops behind them as by the Sepoys in front. Early in July the 4th Sikhs were purged of Hindustanis, as these could not be trusted. General Barnard had to abandon one plan of assault on Delhi, because at the last moment he discovered a conspiracy amongst the native soldiers in the camp to join the enemy. The strength of the force was sapped by sickness as well as by disloyalty.
On August 31, for example, out of under 11,000 men 2977 were in hospital. Of their total effective force, nearly 4000—or two out of every five—were killed, or died of wounds received in battle. Yet they never lost heart, never faltered or murmured or failed. And after twelve weeks of such a struggle, they at last stormed in open day a strong city, with walls practically unbreached, and defended by 30,000 revolted Sepoys. This is a record never surpassed, and seldom paralleled, in history!