A History of the Mahrattas v2.c36.51

v2.c36.51

(Dec. 23.)—The whole force accompanied by Rugoba, Amrut Rao, his adopted son, and a few straggling horse that had joined them, ascended the Ghauts by the 23d of December; by that time some partial skirmishing had taken place between Captain Stewart and small parties of the enemy, in which the Sepoys showed great zeal. Colonel Egerton, at the top of the Ghauts, divided his force into two brigades; the one commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Cay, the other under Lieutenant-Colonel Cockburn, still reserving the advance as a separate corps under Captain Stewart. These three divisions advanced alternately at the rate of about three-quarters of a mile daily, the march rarely exceeding two miles, and the one division always occupying the ground which the other had quitted. In this manner, in eleven days they reached Karlee,¹ a village eight miles from the ground which Captain Stewart had first occupied. This extraordinary mode of warfare, which the Commanding Officer afterwards declared was owing to want of provisions and carriage in the commissariat, and which Mr. Carnac describes as what Colonel Egerton might have seen in Germany, encouraged the enemy, who brought down infantry, rockets, and guns to harass them; but they were attacked and driven back on every occasion with the greatest spirit. During the march from Kundalla the army lost Lieutenant-Colonel Cay, an excellent officer, who was mortally wounded by a rocket on the 31st of December; but at the village of Karlee, on the 4th of January, Captain Stewart, who on the present and several other occasions had distinguished himself, was killed by a cannon ball, to the general regret of the army. ‘He was,’ says the Bombay Government, ‘a most active, gallant, and judicious officer, and possessed of the true military spirit.’ It is a remarkable fact that his name is to this day familiar in the Mahratta country by the appellation of Stewart Phakray,² which expresses something more than the gallant Stewart, a circumstance that marks the strong impression made by his conduct; and what soldier, wherever he may fall, could desire a nobler epitaph than that such a tradition should be preserved by his enemies?