Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/82

74 young lieutenant who, during the long burning months of the hot weather of 1848, had almost single-handed held the field against the revolt, and driven the arch-rebel to the ignominious shelter of his walls. It is difficult not to be carried away by the magnificent verve of the 734 pages, here condensed to less than 12, in which he has rendered immortal the heroic deeds of that summer. It is difficult, also, to refrain from censure of the inability to move which the Commander-in-Chief betrayed during that period, in spite of his two great camps of nine thousand men apiece at Lahore and Firozpur — camps standing in readiness to march at a day's notice. But it is right to state quite frankly that Lieutenant Edwardes underrated, indeed, from first to last failed to perceive, the military difficulties of the situation. It was indeed a blindness glorious to himself, and worth to the British name the keenest eyesight of a dozen elderly generals. Let it suffice for Herbert Edwardes that he, a young subaltern, maintained the prestige of England through the critical months during which the head of the British army in India was unable, or thought he was unable, to place a force in the field.

I have had the advantage of hearing, on this question, the opinion of the greatest engineer officer whom India has in our age produced. Lord Napier — the Major Napier whom Edwardes supposed would suffice with a few heavy guns and some