Chapter XII

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.