Indian mutiny, 1857. Lots of stress, everyone frightened, all that. Into the British camp on the Delhi Ridge on 14 August march nearly 2000 soldiers under the lead of John Nicholson. According to William Dalrymple's terrific The Last Mughal, the key thing from the perspective of all the beleaguered Brits was Nicholson himself ('Nicholson is a host unto himself'; 'his whole appearance and mien stamped him as a "king of men"'; and so on).
The British army was led by a lot of tired, vacillating old men, and Micholson was the perfect antidote. 'He was a man cast in a giant mould, with massive chest and powerful limbs, and an expression ardent and commanding, with a dash of roughness; features of stern beauty, a long black beard, and a deep sonorous voice.' As the marched hard to Delhi, while his men rested, he would wait 'erect and immobile on his horse in the full glare of the sun.' If you think this makes him sound like a nutter, then you are pretty astute, and probably remember all those seconds ago to that moment when you read the title of this blog post.
He swept the country for mutineers 'like the incarnation of vengeance' striking terror into wavering Indian hearts. As Dalrymple beautifully puts it, 'There were very few who remained immune to the hero worship of this great imperial psychopath.' One of them, Lieutenant Edward Ommaney, thought he was 'a great brute'. He thrashed cook who got in the way of a march. The cook complained, was thrashed again and died.
Nicholson also proposed 'a Bill for the flaying alive, impalement, or burning of the murderers of the [British] women and children of Delhi ... The idea of simply hanging the perpetrators of such atrocities is maddening ... I will not, if I can help it, let fiends of that stamp let off with a simple hanging.'
There are more Nicholson stories, but time is no man's friend.
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