e threatening an attack on Moradabad.
These reminiscences do not, as I have before remarked, profess to be a
history of the Mutiny except in so far as I saw it from the ranks of the
Ninety-Third. But I may correct historical mistakes when I find them,
and in vol. ii., p. 500, of _The Indian Empire_, by R. Montgomery
Martin, the following statement occurs: "Khan Bahadoor Khan, of
Bareilly, held out in the Terai until the close of 1859; and then,
hemmed in by the Goorkhas on one side and the British forces on the
other, was captured by Jung Bahadoor. The Khan is described as an old
man, with a long white beard, bent almost double with rheumatic fever.
His life is considered forfeited by his alleged complicity in the
Bareilly murders, but his sentence is not yet pronounced." This is not
historically correct. Khan Bahadoor Khan was captured by the Bareilly
police-levy early in July, 1858, and was hanged in my presence in front
of the _kotwalee_ in Bareilly a few days after his capture. He was an
old man with a long white beard, but not at all bent with age, and there
was certainly no want of proof of his complicity in the Bareilly
murders. Next to the Nana Sahib he was one of the most active
instigators of murder in the rebel ranks. He was a retired judge of the
Company's service, claiming descent from the ancient rulers of
Rohilcund, whom the English, in the time of Warren Hastings, had
assisted the Nawab of Lucknow to put down in the Rohilla war. His
capture was effected in the following manner:--Colonel W. C. M'Donald,
of the Ninety-Third, was on the staff in the Crimea, and he had in his
employ a man named Tahir Beg who was a sort of confidential interpreter.
Whether this man was Turkish, Armenian, or Bulgarian I don't know, but
this much I do know; among Mahommedans Tahir Beg was a strict Mussulman,
among Bulgarians he was a Roman Catholic, and in the Ninety-Third he had
no objections to be a Presbyterian. He was a good linguist, speaking
English, French, and Turkish, as well as most of the vernaculars of Asia
Minor; and when the Crimean war was over, he accompanied Major M'Donald
to England in the capacity of an ordinary servant. In 1857, when the
expedition under Lord Elgin was being got ready for China, Colonel
M'Donald was appointed quarter-master-general, and started for Canton
taking Tahir Beg with him as a servant; but, the expedition to China
having been diverted for the suppression of the Mutiny, M'Donald
rej
|