The officers of Sir Colin’s staff read Ewart’s condition more truly, and as this ragged, blood-stained figure, carrying the captured flag, came running out from the furnace of the great fight, they cheered vehemently. Later in the day Sir Colin himself apologised to Ewart for his brusqueness.
In the whole record of war there are not many scenes of slaughter to be compared with that which took place within the walls of the Secundrabagh. The 53rd held the north side of the great quadrangle, the Sikhs and the 93rd the east side, and a mixed force, composed of several regiments, held the south; on the west there was no escape. The great mass of Sepoys in the centre of the quadrangle was thus pelted with lead and fire from the three fronts. “We fired volley after volley into the dense multitude,” says Jones-Parry, “until nothing was left but a moving mass, like mites in a cheese!”
Of the 2000 or 2500 Sepoys who formed the garrison of the Secundrabagh not one man escaped. Its whole area, when the fight was over, was red with blood and strewn with the bodies of slain men. Four whole regiments of mutineers were simply blotted out. Many of the slain Sepoys wore Punjab medals on their breasts; many, too, were found to have leave certificates, signed by former commanding officers, in their pockets, showing they had been on leave when the regiment mutinied, and had rejoined their regiment to fight against the British. The walls of the Secundrabagh still stand, a long, low mound along one side showing where the great company of slain Sepoys were buried. What other patch of the earth’s surface, of equal size, has ever witnessed more of human valour and of human despair than those few square yards of turf that lie within the shot-battered walls of this ancient Indian pleasure-garden!
The British losses, curiously enough, were comparatively light, except amongst the officers. The 93rd had nine officers killed and wounded. The 4th Punjab infantry went into the fight with four British officers; two were killed, one was desperately wounded, and the regiment was brought out of the fight by the sole surviving officer, Lieut. Willoughby, himself only a lad. He was recommended for the V.C., but did not live to wear that much-coveted decoration, as he was slain in fight shortly afterwards.