It can scarcely be needful to make any apology for offering to the public this record of one who has attracted to himself so large a measure of attention and admiration. Many, both in this country and in India, have expressed, and I doubt not many others have felt, a desire to know more of the commander of Hodson’s Horse, and captor of the King of Delhi and his sons.
My original intention was to have compiled from my brother’s letters merely an account of the part he bore in the late unhappy war. I very soon, however, determined to extend the work, so as to embrace the whole of his life in India.
I felt that the public would naturally inquire by what previous process of training he had acquired, not merely his consummate skill in the great game of war, but his experience of Asiatics and marvellous influence over their minds.
The earlier portions of this book will serve to answer such inquiries; they will show the gradual development of my brother’s character and powers, and that those exploits which astonished the world by their skill and daring, were but the natural results of the high idea of the soldier’s profession which he proposed to himself, honestly and consistently worked out during ten years of training, in perhaps the finest school that ever existed for soldiers and administrators.
They will explain how it was that, in the midst of a struggle for the very existence of our empire, he was able to call into being and bring into the field around Delhi an “invincible and all but ubiquitous” body of cavalry.
The dragon’s teeth which came up armed men, had been sown by him long before in his earlier career in the Punjab. There, by many a deed of daring and activity, by many a successful stratagem and midnight surprise, by many a desperate contest, he had taught the Sikhs first to dread him as an enemy, and then to idolise him as a leader. Already in 1849 the Governor-General had had “frequent occasions of noticing not only his personal gallantry, but the activity, energy, and intelligence with which he discharged whatever duties were entrusted to him.” Even then the name of Hodson, although unknown in England, except to the few who watched his course with the eyes of affection, was a sound of terror to the Sikhs, and a bugbear to their children. In 1852 he earned this high praise from one best qualified to judge: “Lieutenant Hodson, marvellously attaching the Guides to himself by the ties of mutual honour, mutual daring, and mutual devotion, has on every opportunity proved that the discipline of a public school and subsequent university training are no disqualification for hazardous warfare, or for the difficult task of keeping wild tribes in check.”
The title given to this book will sufficiently indicate the principle on which, particularly in the first part, I have made selections from my brother’s letters. My object has been to show what a soldier’s life in India may be, and what in his case it was; how wide and varied is the field which it opens for the exercise of the highest and noblest qualities, intellectual and moral, of our nature; and how magnificently he realised and grasped the conception.
His letters, written in all the freedom of unreserved intercourse, will give a truer notion of his character than the most laboured description; they exhibit the undercurrent of deep feelings that ran through even his most playful moods, the yearning after home that mingled. with the dreams of ambition and the thirst for the excitement of war, the almost womanly tenderness that co-existed with the stern determination of the soldier. They show that though his lot was cast in camps, he was not a mere soldier; though a hanger-on on the outskirts of civilisation amidst wild tribes, he had a keen appreciation of the refinement and elegancies of civilised life; that though in India, he remembered that he was an Englishman; that though living amongst the heathen, he did not forget that he was a Christian.
I have not attempted to write a biography, but have allowed my brother to speak for himself, merely supplying such connecting links as seemed absolutely necessary. Indeed, I could do no otherwise; for unhappily, during the twelve years of his soldier’s life – those years in which his character received its mature development – I knew him only by his letters, or by the reports of others: when we parted on board the ship that carried him from England, in 1845, we parted to meet no more in this world. My recollections of him, vivid as they are, are not of the leader of men in council and the battle-field, but of the bright and joyous boy, the life of the home circle, the tender and affectionate son, the loving brother, the valued friend, the popular companion.
Of what he became afterwards my readers will have the same means of judging as myself. He seems to me to have been one of whom not only his family, but his country, may well be proud – a worthy representative of the English name
and nation amongst the tribes of India, an impersonation of manly straightforwardness, and unhesitating daring and irresistible power.
I cannot doubt but that the verdict of his countrymen will confirm my judgment.
Many too, I believe, will agree with me in thinking that these pages prove that the poetry and romance of war are not yet extinct, that even the Enfield rifle has not reduced all men to a dead level, but that there is still a place to be found for individual prowess, for the lion-heart, and the eagle eye, and the iron will. One seems transported back from the prosaic nineteenth century to the ages of romance and chivalry, and to catch a glimpse, now of a Paladin of old, now of a knightly hero sans peur et sans reproche; now of a northern chieftain, “riding on border foray,” now of a captain of free-lances; yet all dissolving into a Christian soldier of our own day.
Most striking of all, it has appeared to me, is the resemblance to the romantic career ‘of that hero of the Spanish ballads, who, by his many deeds of heroic daring, gained for himself the distinguished title of “El de las Hazanas,” – “He of the exploits.” Those who are acquainted with the chronicles of the Conquest of Granada, will almost fancy in reading these pages that they are hearing again the story of Fernando Perez del Pulgar; how at one time by a bold dash he rode with a handful of followers across a country swarming with the enemy, and managed to force his way into a beleaguered fortress; how at another he galloped alone up the streets of Granada, then in the possession of the enemy, to the gates of the principal mosque, and nailed a paper to the door with his dagger; how again he turned the tide of battle by the mere charm of his eagle-eye and thrilling voice, inspiring the most timid with a courage equal to
his own; how he made the enemy lay down their arms at his word of command; how the Moorish mothers frightened their children with the sound of his name; how he was not only the hair-brained adventurer, delighting in peril and thirsting for the excitement of the fight, but also the courteous gentleman, the accomplished scholar; as profound and sagacious in the council as he was reckless in the field, and frequently selected by the wily Ferdinand to conduct affairs requiring the greatest prudence and judgment4.
It may be, however, that affection has biassed my judgment, and that I shall be thought to have formed an exaggerated estimate of the grandeur and nobleness of the subject of this memoir. Even if this be so, I shall not take much to heart the charge of having loved such a brother too well, and I shall console myself with the thought that I have endeavoured to do something to perpetuate his memory.
If, however, any young soldier be induced, by reading these pages, to take a higher view of his profession, to think of it as one of the noblest fields in which he can serve his God and his country, and enter on it in a spirit of self-sacrifice, with “duty” as his guiding principle, and a determination never to forget that he is a Christian soldier and an Englishman, I shall be abundantly rewarded; my main object will be attained.
COOKHAM DEANE,
December 1858.
4. See Washington Irving, &c.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage