Watchmen! what of the night?
Fearful noises come from the camp, my lord.
HINDOO DRAMA.
Nor were the rumours of the imperial wrath meditated to be inflicted
upon Lahore, nor of the terrible cruelties practised upon the
prisoners, by the orders of Bochari, exaggerated. The captive
chieftains of the insurgent force, who had not died of their wounds,
were condemned to various punishments, distinguished from each other,
according to the rank of the sufferers, by refinements of torture,
which the genius of Bochari had invented. Some were impaled, some
flayed alive, some condemned to wear wooden yokes, and perform menial
services for the lowest followers of the army; while others were thrown
into the dens of wild beasts for food, or trampled to death by the
elephants.
Such of the unhappy men as had not been able to make their escape from
the rafts and boats on the river, during the conflict between Bochari
and Afkun, were reserved for the special vengeance of the Persian. It
was said that he had resolved to cut them limb from limb with his own
hand, but that through the interposition of the emperor, they were only
drawn through the river until they were nearly suffocated, and that
then they were suspended from the branches of trees with their heads
downwards.
The spectacle of these punishments, instead of shaking the fidelity of
the troops, in whose presence they were conducted, served to animate
them with fresh ardour for the attack which they were about to make
upon Lahore. They were informed that the public treasures, accumulated
in the vaults of the citadel, were incalculable; that the wealth of
the nobles and merchants, resident within the walls, was, of itself,
sufficient to enrich every individual in the army; that the granaries
and stores overflowed with provisions of every kind, and that all
these they should be at liberty to distribute amongst themselves, if
they should succeed in capturing the town. They received the official
license for universal plunder with shouts that rent the air, and called
upon the emperor to lead them without delay against the devoted walls,
within which all the available resources of the insurrection were
supposed to be now concentrated.
Bochari passed through the lines, borne on an elephant, and further
gave orders, for which he had not received the sanction of Jehangire,
that when they entered Lahore, as he had no doubt they would do
triumphantly, they should put to death every man they met, armed
or unarmed; that they should drive into the temples the women and
children, fling combustibles amongst them, and sacrifice them to the
just anger of the violated laws. The captor, he added, who should bring
him Afkun alive, should, besides receiving ten elephant loads of gold,
be appointed viceroy of the best province of the empire. If he could
not be taken alive, the amount of gold just mentioned would be given
for the head of that arch leader of the rebellion.
These communications were every where listened to with shouts of “Long
live Bochari!” which resounded through the whole army, as if the war
were henceforth to have for its principal object the gratification of
the implacable resentment excited in the breast of that commander, by
the disgrace he had suffered from the hands of Afkun, in the presence
of the imperial guards.
The troops having arrived, by forced marches, within a short distance
of Lahore, proceeded, without delay, to establish their lines. Their
camp was pitched immediately behind a forest, which extended on both
sides of the Rawee to the north and east of the town, around which
they posted strong detachments, resolved, if they could not take it
by storm, to effect the destruction of the besieged by the more tardy
process of blockade. As soon as they could plant their artillery in
a favourable position, they opened a fire upon four of the twelve
gates by which the walls were divided; but having been defended on the
outside by large bundles of brambles chained together, the discharges
produced no effect. Frequent attempts were made on the part of the
besiegers to set fire to these external defences; soldiers, tempted by
large sums of money, ran forward with lighted torches for the purpose,
but they were vigorously repulsed by matchlockmen, who, sallying from
small door-ways in the walls, met them half way, and cut them down as
fast as they approached. Women and children were seen pouring down
water upon the brambles, to protect them from the burning missiles
hurled from a distance.
The imperial artillery next directed their guns against those portions
of the walls, extending between the towers, with a view to effect
breaches, through which storming parties might attempt to effect an
entrance. But the walls having been of great thickness, and bulwarked
on the inside by mounds of earth raised against them, the largest balls
which the besiegers could use rebounded, without causing the slightest
impression on those massive ramparts.
Meanwhile the guns of the citadel, as well as those planted on the
outer walls and towers, poured an incessant fire upon the assailants,
which, being steadily directed under the orders of Afkun, produced
considerable havoc amongst the imperialists, and prevented them
from establishing any posts within the nearer points which they had
intended to occupy. Rockets and grenades issuing from the citadel, as
well as from the imperial camp, constantly crossed each other in the
sky, producing through the night especially, a fearful illumination.
Occasionally houses in the town were set on fire by these messengers
of destruction, but the river being at hand, and numbers of the
inhabitants being prepared with buckets, especially set apart for
that service, the conflagrations were subdued almost as soon as they
commenced.
In the middle of the second night of the siege, the whole garrison was
thrown into alarm, by an enormous explosion, which took place in the
citadel. The inhabitants all ran out from their houses, which were
shaken to the foundation. At first the universal impression was, that
an earthquake had taken place, and that the hopes of the besiegers
were already accomplished by the interposition of that most awful of
all auxiliaries. But when, amidst the coruscations, which threw a
lurid flame through the skies, they beheld fragments of human beings
scattered in all directions, some without heads, some without arms,
here shapeless trunks, there mutilated limbs, intermixed with domestic
utensils, broken beams of wood, bricks and stones, which immediately
fell to the earth again amidst cries of woe that rent the air, they
concluded that some of the magazines of powder had either by accident,
or by treachery, been ignited, and that the enemy were already rushing
in upon them in overwhelming numbers.
Instead of hastening to the ramparts, whither the dictates of duty
would have directed them, lamentable to relate, the mob collected by
this catastrophe, precipitated themselves upon the quarter of the
citadel where the houses were in ruins, and murdering every body who
offered any resistance, proceeded to plunder the habitations thus
exposed to their atrocious thirst for gold. The efforts of the prince
to check the banditti in their rage for prey of any kind, would have
been fatal to him, had not Afkun, with a select body of troops, arrived
at a seasonable moment to his assistance. Attacking the ruthless crowd
sword in hand, he hewed them down, until some pieces of artillery,
which he had ordered to follow him, were ranged across the street they
had occupied. Then suddenly retiring behind the guns, he applied
the match himself to the cannon that was nearest to him. Upon this
signal being given, the whole street was swept in a few minutes of the
infamous offenders, who sought to avail themselves of the confusion of
such a scene, to spread wider, for their own benefit, the havoc already
too extensive.
The besieging army, startled from sleep by the explosion that had taken
place in the citadel, and the tumult by which it was followed, ignorant
of the real cause of the firing which they heard, assumed at once that
the garrison had made a nocturnal attack upon the camp, and prepared
to defend themselves with all possible expedition. They were, however,
soon apprised, by their sentinels, that the firing was altogether
within the walls.
Bochari was already mounted on his charger, and in council with the
emperor, who was also mounted, and surrounded by his staff. The
Persian then disclosed the fact, that he had succeeded in opening
a communication with a powerful party within the town (by which he
meant fifty omrahs, whom he had found means to corrupt by largesses
and promises of immense plunder), that it must have been through
their instrumentality the powder-magazine, in the citadel, had been
ignited; but that, unfortunately, they had done their appointed work
prematurely, as it was his intention that it should not take place
until the next night, when the army was to be prepared to follow it up
by a general assault upon the town.
“It is not yet too late,” said Jehangire, “to turn what has occurred to
our advantage. Have the torches been distributed?”
“They have not,” answered Bochari; “but I shall see that done, if your
majesty will, in the mean time, ride through the camp, and give the
requisite orders for an immediate march upon the walls.”
The emperor, adopting Bochari’s suggestion, rode through the lines,
where he found the men very generally on the alert; and after directing
that their pay should be doubled, ordered that they should close
upon the walls with a light but rapid pace, and in the most profound
silence. Torch-bearers were sent forward, by the care of Bochari, to
the foot of the walls, where the assault was intended to be made; but
with strict orders not to kindle the flambeaus until the ladders,
which he had also despatched, were erected.
These preparations were completed by the time the banditti had been
dispersed in the citadel, and a body of upwards of twenty thousand men
were already within an arrow’s flight of the walls, on the Delhi side,
when the sentinels on the ramparts, whose attention had been hitherto
engrossed by the events occurring in the citadel, imagined that they
heard an unusual sound beneath them. Attributing it to the consequences
of the explosion, and apprehending no danger from the enemy, they were
slow to take the alarm.
Afkun, however, when he saw that the banditti were about to be disposed
of in the way they deserved, anticipating a combined movement on the
part of the besiegers, to whose machinations he at once attributed
the explosion of the magazine, apprised the prince of his suspicions,
and suggested to him the expediency of an immediate inspection of the
ramparts. Chusero went in one direction, while Afkun proceeded in
another. It was the fortune of the latter to visit the walls on the
Delhi side; when hearing, from the sentinels, a report of the low
noises that had just reached their ears, he instantly desired them to
fire in that direction. The fire remained unreturned; but as the murmur
without seemed to approach nearer, Afkun ordered the trumpets to sound
to arms.
In a few moments the garrison were all out; but before they could
take their stations on the ramparts, a thousand torches flung their
light upon as many ladders, up which men were crowding with desperate
courage. Some of the assailants had already surmounted the walls, and
were in conflict with the sentinels, who were almost all slain upon the
spot.
Afkun leading on the first company of the garrison, which he could
embody for the purpose, ran against them with such impetuosity, that
most of those to whom he was opposed were precipitated over the
ramparts. This check, however, did not repress the continued lines of
men, who were seen ascending rapidly as far as the eye could reach.
Chusero, on the other hand, hearing the alarm, placed himself at the
head of a large body of troops, and, hastening towards the Delhi gate,
perceived that all the danger was in that quarter. He was immediately
in the thick of the assailants, who fought with the most undaunted
valour. It was difficult at such a moment, the night being intensely
dark, to distinguish between friend and foe; but Afkun calling the
prince to him, suggested that they should let the enemy, already on the
walls, rush on; in the mean time direct the attention of the garrison
only to the men who were ascending the ladders, and occupy the ramparts
in that direction with masses, through which it would be impossible
for any reinforcement to penetrate. This suggestion being carried into
immediate execution, he, with a handful of men, went in pursuit of
those who had already entered the town. He found them, as he expected,
hastening down to the Delhi gate, with a view to open it to their
friends. Attacking them sword in hand, he drove them before him through
the narrow street leading to that gate, where, for nearly an hour, the
conflict was maintained on either side with an energy which no efforts
seemed to exhaust.
The imperialists being nearest to the gate, Afkun urged his men to cut
their way at all hazards through the enemy, in order to reach the gate
before it could be opened. His soldiers gallantly exerted themselves
to fulfil his orders; but so densely wedged within the narrow way were
their adversaries, that it became impossible for them to penetrate the
living rampart.
Chusero having succeeded in stopping the tide of the assailants,
directed the men on the ramparts, on either side of the Delhi gate,
to pour down their fire upon the enemy in the street, and also upon
the masses prepared on the outside to enter, the moment the gate
should be unbarred. But no danger--no slaughter, seemed to divert the
imperialists from their object. The enormous bolts of the gate were
already drawn back; the chains drawn across it were heard falling;
the masses without were pressing onwards with a force that seemed
irresistible, when Afkun, climbing up the rampart, leaped down in the
space which the enemy had cleared with difficulty, in order to let the
gate be opened; and placing his back against the iron bars, by which it
was still defended, he repelled the assailants.
Chusero lost no time in following his example. A few noble and faithful
followers were instantly by their side, and the attack, being all at
once renewed against the enclosed enemy in front, on both sides, and in
the rear, not a man escaped to tell the emperor, how fearlessly they
persevered in their resolution to die or to accomplish the object he
had entrusted to their valour.
The assault of the imperialists having thus failed, those who were
outside the walls retired in good order. When the morning came, the
space between their lines and the ramparts presented a terrible
array of victims, sacrificed to the crude plans of Jehangire and his
commander. Soon after the sun had risen, a cavalry-officer was seen
riding towards the walls, with his shield upon his back. He was,
therefore, permitted to approach; and, having signified, that he was
commissioned to propose a truce of three days, in order that the dead
should be removed, and burned, with the honours due to their gallantry,
the proposition was immediately acceded to by the prince, who was glad
to have some interval of repose, in order to repair and guard against
a recurrence of the disaster, which had placed the citadel in so much
danger.