enlisting willingly in our contingent, and those that are not fit for service, or do not choose to enlist, get their arrears of pay and three months' in addition, as a present.

'The army will break up soon now, and we shall all return to our respective stations. I shall be twenty-two in five days more. I would that I had a spare year for reading of general kinds. I want it sadly.

before me

'This has been a sad time for some poor fellows, sadder than we with sound limbs and light hearts have time to think about. The spirits of others have retired with the year that's awa', and are nearly forgotten by some already. There is nothing in death in the field which gives one a horror of death, and so that a man has tried to serve his God as well as his earthly master, the old rascal's sting must fall lighter there than anywhere, I should say.'

At the end of January the army broke up before Gwalior, and the troops retired to their different stations. Reynell Taylor was not destined to remain long with the 11th Light Cavalry, for, on the return of the regiment to Cawnpore, he was appointed to the Governor-General's Body Guard, an advancement of which he was justly proud.

He announces the fact to his father on February 15, in a letter headed, 'Three marches from Allahabad' :

'I have undergone another change since I last wrote to you, and have mounted the red again, so, instead of a youth in French grey and a busby, you must look upon me for the present as Captain Taylor, of the GovernorGeneral's Body Guard. Be very particular about the "Captain," because it may not last long.

The Body Guard when I first came to this country was only one squadron strong, with a commandant, adjutant, and vet. After the last campaign in Afghanistan Lord E. increased it to two squadrons, and gave it two extra subalterns. It is now increased to three squadrons, with the addition, I believe, eventually of four officers. Three have been appointed, and I am one of these. Chamberlain had been made adjutant, but he has gone to the hills on sick certificate, having been wounded in the leg in the Khyber pass. Meantime I get the acting adjutancy, so I drop in to what may be my first step on the ladder of advancement. My present situation holds out many advantageous prospects. In the first place, if there is anything to do in the Punjab we shall be in the thick of it; another thing is, that when Chamberlain returns I shall have to take my turn of duty in Calcutta, and I shall then, I hope, pass my examination at the college under the very noses of the dispensers of loaves and fishes.

'The station of the Body Guard is to be Sultanpore, Benares, for which place we are in full march now. There will, however, be a detachment of 60 men under a subaltern at Calcutta.

'Gwalior affairs were all comfortably settled before we left. The enemy's battalions had all laid down their arms; most of those that were fit enlisted into our contingent, the rest took the gratuity and retired to their homes.

'I studied the fort a good deal while I was there. If you go round the ramparts at Gwalior, taking the in and out of every elbow of the rock, I suppose you would have to walk four or five miles before you had completed the

circuit. The rock is about 340 feet high, and is black and inky, like iron ore. It seems a most impregnable place, but has fallen once by coup de main, and would have again very likely. Popham took it by escalade about sixty years ago. There are some curious figures carved on the rock; one, I think, nearly 40 feet high. I have a drawing of it.'

The Body Guard arrived at Sultanpore at the end of February, when Reynell Taylor was appointed ‘Officiating Adjutant.' His new duties naturally occupied the chief part of his time, but he employed himself as well studying native languages and reading military works. His letters to his father at this time are filled with long dissertations on the uses and capabilities of cavalry in the field, and he asks that any books dealing with cavalry tactics may be sent him. 'What is your opinion of carbines for troopers?' he asks. 'We are just going to have them, and the N.C.O.'s are to have percussion pistols in place of the flint locks they have carried hitherto. With the new carbine you make sure of your man at sixty yards on a steady horse.'

In August he hears of his brother Fitzwilliam being appointed to the living of West Ogwell, and he writes :'I shall look with more pleasure still upon the old tower among the trees in your picture, and I like to think my old companion in snipe and plover shooting holds forth there to his simple congregation upon those ways that are all pleasantness and those paths that are all peace.'

In November Reynell Taylor qualified as an interpreter, and in the following January he resigned the adjutancy of the Body Guard and took up the appointment of Interpreter and Quartermaster.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST SIKH WAR.

1845-1846.

ALL eyes were now turned towards the Punjab. The condition of that country, and the mutinous conduct of the Sikh soldiery, gave cause for the gravest anxiety, and it became necessary to reinforce the garrisons in the neighbourhood of the frontier. Among the troops moving northwards was the Body Guard, and early in 1845 the regiment took up its quarters at Umballa.

Ever since the death of Runjeet Sing, in 1839, discord had reigned where before there had been order. The firm hand which for years had held within its iron grip the various factions of the state was withdrawn; the mighty fabric which Runjeet had raised with his single arm fell asunder, and an impotent and vacillating government, acting for a boy sovereign, now reigned in Runjeet's place. The army which the great ruler had spent forty years in organising, and which had never known defeat, grew by degrees to be the dominant power in the state, and the urgency of its demands, coupled with the attitude and temper of the troops within its ranks, 'threatened the very existence of the Ranee and the Sirdars around her.''

The Governor-General to the Secret Committee, December 2, 1845.

To occupy the minds of the soldiers became at last a necessity. They had already once before, in the early part of this year, demanded that they should be led across the frontier, but wiser counsels prevailed, and for a moment war was averted. It was not, however, for long. The reinforcements now gathering on the left bank of the Sutlej appeared to furnish a pretext for a further hostile demonstration as well as a way out of immediate difficulties, and on December 17 the durbar decided on no less an undertaking than the invasion of British India.

The forces which had been gradually collected in the vicinity of Ferozepore, Loodiana, and Umballa were made the excuse for what followed; but, in the words of the Governor-General, 'the real cause originated in the internal dissensions of the Lahore Government, and, above all, in their desire to be released on any terms from the terror which the ferocity of their own troops had inspired.'

To the very last it was hoped that the Sikhs would be deterred from any act of aggression, and even up to December 10 the Governor-General, and those about him, still held the opinion that the Sikhs would not cross the river. Yet on the very next day a part of their army had entered British territory, and by the 15th 60,000 men and over 100 guns stood ready to give us battle on our own soil.

The news of the violation of the frontier reached the Governor-General on the 12th, but by that time our army, in preparation for any contingency, was already on the move, and while the Sikhs were advancing on the one side, our forces were pushing up from Meerut, Umballa, and Loodiana.

But I must retrace my steps. 'We do not know