In
whatever capacity he acted he was great, because he acted with his
whole strength and soul. A brotherhood of fakeers--borne away by
their enthusiastic admiration of the man--even began the worship of
Nikkil Seyn: he had some of them punished for their folly, but
they continued their worship nevertheless. Of his sustained energy
and persistency an illustration may be cited in his pursuit of the
55th Sepoy mutineers, when he was in the saddle for twenty
consecutive hours, and travelled more than seventy miles. When the
enemy set up their standard at Delhi, Lawrence and Montgomery,
relying on the support of the people of the Punjaub, and compelling
their admiration and confidence, strained every nerve to keep their
own province in perfect order, whilst they hurled every available
soldier, European and Sikh, against that city. Sir John wrote to
the commander-in-chief to "hang on to the rebels' noses before
Delhi," while the troops pressed on by forced marches under
Nicholson, "the tramp of whose war-horse might be heard miles off,"
as was afterwards said of him by a rough Sikh who wept over his
grave.
The siege and storming of Delhi was the most illustrious event
which occurred in the course of that gigantic struggle, although
the leaguer of Lucknow, during which the merest skeleton of a
British regiment--the 32nd--held out, under the heroic Inglis, for
six months against two hundred thousand armed enemies, has perhaps
excited more intense interest.
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