The pitiless Indian sun had poured down upon the Hyderabad _maidan_
until its sandy surface glowed like a stove at white heat. Drawn up in
motionless ranks, which stretched from end to end of the great
parade-ground, was a division of cavalry: squadron after squadron of
scarlet-coated troopers on sleek and shining horses; row after row of
brown and bearded faces peering stolidly from under the white turbans.
The rays of the sun danced and sparkled upon ten thousand lance-points;
the feeble breeze picked up ten thousand pennons and fluttered them into
a white-and-scarlet cloud. Now and then the silence would be broken by a
clash of steel as a horse tossed its head or a _sowar_ stirred uneasily
in his saddle. Sitting a white Arab, a score of paces in advance of the
foremost rank, very stiff and soldierly in his gorgeous uniform, was a
tall young man whose ruddy cheeks and pleasant eyes looked strangely out
of place in so Oriental a setting.
From somewhere within the city walls a bugle spoke shrilly and was
answered by another and then another, each nearer than the one
preceding. The young man in the splendid uniform barked an order, and
men and horses stiffened into rigidity as sharply as though an electric
current had gone through them. Through the twin-towered gateway of the
city advanced a procession, colorful as a circus, dazzling as a durbar.
The two figures who rode at the head of the glittering cortege formed an
almost startling contrast. One of them answered in every detail the
popular conception of an Asiatic potentate: haughty of manner, portly of
person, with a clear, dark skin and wonderfully piercing eyes and a
great black beard, spreading fan-wise upon his breast. An aigret of
diamonds flashed and scintillated in his flame-colored turban; rubies,
large as robin's eggs, gleamed in his ears, and hanging from his neck
over his pale blue surtout was a rope of pearls which would have roused
the envy of an empress. His companion, to whom he paid marked attention,
was equally noticeable, though in quite a different fashion: a lean,
smooth-shaven, lantern-jawed man, still in the middle thirties, very
cold and reserved of manner, with a great beak of a nose and a jaw like
a granite crag. It did not need the cocked hat and gold epaulets of a
British general to mark him as a soldier.
As the cortege cantered onto the _maidan_ the massed bands of the
cavalry burst into a wild, barbaric march, brass and kettle-drums
crashing together in stirring discord. The strains ceased as abruptly as
they began, and the youthful commander, rising in his stirrups, shot his
blade into the air and called in a voice like a trumpet:
"Cheers for his Highness!"
And back came a guttural roar from ten thousand throats:
"Long live the Nizam!"
Obviously gratified at the warmth of his greeting, the ruler of the
Deccan wheeled his horse and came cantering up to the cavalryman, whose
sword flashed in salute.
"Boyd Sahib," he said, "you are a veritable magician. You turn ryots
into soldiers as readily as a fakir turns a stone into bread. Your men
are admirable. I congratulate you on their appearance."
Then, turning to his taciturn companion:
"Sir Arthur Wellesley, permit me to present to you Boyd Sahib, commander
of my cavalry and my trusted friend. General Boyd," he added, glancing
at the Englishman with a malicious smile, "is a very brilliant
soldier--and an American."
* * * * *
Thus met, when the nineteenth century was still in its
swaddling-clothes, two extraordinary men: Sir Arthur Wellesley, who in
later years, as the Duke of Wellington, was to gain undying fame by
conquering Napoleon; and General John Parker Boyd, an American soldier
of fortune, who rendered most gallant service to his own people, but
whose very name has been forgotten by them.
Jack Boyd, as his boyhood companions in Newburyport used to call him,
was born with the spirit of adventure strong within him. Almost before
he had graduated from dresses to knee-trousers he would linger about the
wharfs of the quaint old town, drinking in the stories of strange places
and stranger doings told him by the seafarers who were wont to
congregate along the water-front, or staring wistfully at the big, black
merchantmen about to sail for foreign parts. He was wont to say that it
was a perverse and unkind fate which caused him to be born in so
inauspicious a year as 1764, for, though there was no more ardent
youngster in all New England, his youth caused the recruiting sergeants
of the Continental Army to whom he applied for enlistment to pat him on
the shoulder and remark encouragingly: "Come again, son, when you're a
few years older."
Thus it was that he saw unroll before him that marvellous moving-picture
of the birth of a nation, which began on the greensward at Lexington and
ended before the British lines at Yorktown, without being able to play
any greater part in those stirring events than does a spectator in the
thrilling scenes which he pays his five cents to see depicted on a
screen. Indeed, a twelve-month passed after the last British soldier
left our shores before young Boyd achieved the ambition of his life by
obtaining an ensign's commission in the 2d Regiment of Foot and donned
the blue coat and buff breeches of an officer in the American army.
Although within a year he had been promoted to lieutenant, his was not
the temperament which could long endure the monotony of garrison life,
with its unending round of guard-mounting and small-arms practice and
company drill. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that before
the gold braid on his lieutenant's uniform had time to tarnish he had
handed in his papers and had booked passage on an East Indiaman sailing
out of Boston for Madras. The year 1788, then, saw this youngster of
four-and-twenty landed on the coast of Coromandel, poor in acquaintances
and pocket but rich in adventurousness and pluck.
He could have taken his military talents to no better market, for at
this period of India's troubled history a brilliant career awaited a man
whose wits were as sharp as his sword. The last quarter of the
eighteenth century found all India ablaze with racial and religious
hatred. Wars were as frequent as strikes are in the United States.
Though the French were still supreme in the south of the peninsula, the
English power was steadily rising in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. There
were really two distinct struggles in progress: the English were
fighting the French and the Hindus were fighting the Mohammedans. The
most powerful of the native princes at this time were the Nizam of
Hyderabad, and the Peishwa, as the ruler of the Mahratta tribes was
called--both of whom had, for reasons of policy, espoused the English
cause--and Tippoo Sahib, the son of a Mohammedan military adventurer who
had made himself Sultan of Mysore, who was an ally of the French. Ranged
on the one side, then, were the British, with their allies, the Nizam
and the Peishwa, while opposed to them were the French and Tippoo of
Mysore. All of the reigning princes of India maintained extensive
military establishments, and soldiers of fortune found at their courts
rapid promotion and lavish pay. When Boyd landed in India he was
confronted with the problem which of the rival causes he should make his
own, and it speaks well for his sagacity and foresight that he promptly
decided to offer his services to the allies of the English, for at that
time most students of politics, in India and out of it, believed that
the future of the peninsula was to be Gallic rather than Anglo-Saxon.
From Madras Boyd made his way on horseback to the Mahratta country,
where his attractive personality and soldierly appearance so impressed
the Peishwa that he gave the young American the command of a cavalry
brigade of fifteen hundred men. Boyd was now in possession of the raw
material for which he had hankered, and he forthwith proceeded to show
his extraordinary skill in welding, tempering, and sharpening it. From
daybreak until dark his camp resounded to the call of bugles, the words
of command, and the clatter of galloping hoofs. He hammered his men into
shape as a blacksmith hammers a bar of iron, until they combined the
inflexible discipline of Prussian foot-guards with the mobility and
endurance of Texas rangers. His chance to test the quality of his
handiwork came in 1790, when Tippoo Sultan, failing in his attempt to
bring on a renewal of the war between England and France, turned loose
his hordes and overran the land. In the three years' war which followed,
the British, under Lord Cornwallis, who was striving to regain in India
the reputation he had lost at Yorktown, were aided by the Mahrattas and
the Nizam, who were induced by fear and jealousy to join in the struggle
against their powerful neighbor. Thus Opportunity knocked sharply on
Boyd's door. Commanding a body of as fine horsemen as ever threw leg
across saddle, his name quickly became a synonym for audacity and
daring. Riding, wholly without support, into the very heart of Tippoo's
dominions, he would strike a series of paralyzing blows, burn a dozen
towns, capture or destroy immense stores of ammunition, exact a huge
indemnity, and be back in his own territory again before any troops
could be brought up to oppose him. Boyd's flying columns played no small
part, indeed, in the campaign which ended in 1792 with the defeat of
Tippoo--a defeat for which the Sultan had to pay by ceding half his
dominions, paying an indemnity of three thousand lacs of rupees (one
hundred million dollars), and giving his two sons as hostages for his
future good behavior.
Boyd, meanwhile, had never let slip an opportunity for improving his
knowledge of Hindustani and its kindred dialects or familiarizing
himself with the complex conditions, racial, religious, and political,
which prevailed in Hindustan. Realizing that the Mahratta power was on
the wane, he resigned from the service of the Peishwa, and, bearing
letters of the highest commendation from that ruler to the British envoy
at the court of the Nizam, he turned his horse's head toward Hyderabad.
In a letter to his father, written at this time, he says: "On my arrival
I was presented to his Highness in form by the English consul. My
reception was as favorable as my most sanguine wishes had anticipated.
After the usual ceremony was over he presented me with the command of
two _kansolars_ of infantry, each of which consists of five hundred
men." Continuing, he described in detail the army of the Nizam, which at
that time consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand infantry, sixty
thousand cavalry, and five hundred elephants, each of which bore a
"castle" containing a nabob and his attendants. Can't you picture the
scene when that letter, with its strange foreign postmarks, reached the
old brick house in the quaint New England town; how the parents read and
re-read that message from the son who was adventuring in foreign parts,
and how the neighbors dropped in of evenings to hear the latest news of
the boy they all knew, who was carving out a career with his sword half
the world away? Success is, after all, a rather tasteless thing if there
are no home folks to rejoice in it.
Fortuna, that capricious beauty whose favor so many brave men have
sought in vain, seemed to have lost her heart to the stalwart American,
for in 1799, when Tippoo and his savage soldiery once more broke loose
and swept across the peninsula, leaving a trail of corpses and burning
villages behind them, the Nizam, recalling the tales he had heard of
Boyd's exploits as a cavalry leader, gave him the command of a division
of ten thousand turbaned troopers. Nor did the fair goddess desert him
even when he was captured by a body of Mysore horsemen, taken before
Tippoo Sahib himself, and, upon his stoutly refusing to turn traitor to
the Nizam, condemned to death by torture. And the torturers of the
tyrant of Mysore bore a most evil reputation. Overpowering the sentries
who were set to guard him, he succeeded in making his way, thanks to his
fluency in Hindustani, through the enemy's lines, rejoining the Nizam's
forces in time to take part in the storming of the Sultan's capital of
Seringapatam, Tippoo being killed in a hand-to-hand struggle after a
last stand at the city gates. Thus died, as he would have wished--with
his boots on--the most dangerous adversary with whom Britain had to
contend in the winning of her Eastern empire.
[Illustration: The death of Tippo-Sahib at the storming of Seringapatam.