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I am currently reading the autobiography of the late Field Marshall Viscount Wolesley, OM, KP, GCB, GCMG, DCL, LLD. He gives an account of when, as a captain, he was serving to suppress the Indian Mutiny in 1857:
I need not describe what followed. The operation was
badly planned and still worse executed, as judged by the
bumptious wisdom of my brother officers and myself.
However, we drove the enemy back, and then bivouacked
for the night outside the Nana's palace. I kept up a
rattling good fire through the cold hours of the morning,
using the great mahogany legs of that villain's billiard
table as fuel. The following day we returned to Cawnpore.
This was my first little action during the Mutiny, and it
did not incline me to think highly of old Indian colonels
of British regiments. Most certainly none of us learnt
anything from it.
It seems a shame to use a mahogany table as fuel but can one blame him? He seems to have had scant sympatthy for the owner of the palace who, of course, was a supporter of the rebels.
Then a bit later in the book now at Lucknow:
First came dear old Billy himself, clad
in garments he had used in the Crimean War, a fez cap
and a Turkish grego, the latter tied round his waist with a
piece of rope. About fifty yards behind came his wellknown
battery sergeant-major in a sort of shooting coat
made from the green baize of a billiard table ; then a gun,
every driver flogging as hard as he could ; then another at
a long distance in rear.
I need not describe what followed. The operation was
badly planned and still worse executed, as judged by the
bumptious wisdom of my brother officers and myself.
However, we drove the enemy back, and then bivouacked
for the night outside the Nana's palace. I kept up a
rattling good fire through the cold hours of the morning,
using the great mahogany legs of that villain's billiard
table as fuel. The following day we returned to Cawnpore.
This was my first little action during the Mutiny, and it
did not incline me to think highly of old Indian colonels
of British regiments. Most certainly none of us learnt
anything from it.
It seems a shame to use a mahogany table as fuel but can one blame him? He seems to have had scant sympatthy for the owner of the palace who, of course, was a supporter of the rebels.
Then a bit later in the book now at Lucknow:
First came dear old Billy himself, clad
in garments he had used in the Crimean War, a fez cap
and a Turkish grego, the latter tied round his waist with a
piece of rope. About fifty yards behind came his wellknown
battery sergeant-major in a sort of shooting coat
made from the green baize of a billiard table ; then a gun,
every driver flogging as hard as he could ; then another at
a long distance in rear.