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Updated: May 8, 2025
These, cut off by the city wall from their comrades within, were unable to stand the British onslaught and the thunder of Peel's guns, and fled precipitately, pursued by the British for fourteen miles along the Calpee Road. Every gun and ammunition wagon of the mutineers on this side fell into the hands of the victors.
Thus abruptly terminates the first part of the colonel's travels, and at the commencement of the second we find him crossing the Jumna to Calpee, the frontier town of Bundelcund, a wild and unsettled province, prolific in Thugs and bad characters of all sorts, and principally inhabited by a peculiar race called Bundelas, who have never been perfectly reconciled to the British supremacy, and who, at this present writing, are kept quiet only by the presence of a force of 15,000 men.
General Grey took the lead with a division of infantry and a brigade of cavalry, and, crossing the Jumna at Calpee, threatened the Gwalior territory from the south; while two divisions of infantry, and two brigades of cavalry, with the usual complement of artillery, moved down from the northward under the command of Sir Hugh Gough himself.
We cannot help suspecting, both from the traits recorded of him, and from the vicinity of Calpee to his former residence at Jalone, that this personage was no other than the celebrated Ameer Ali, whose adventures formed the ground of Captain Meadows Taylor's well-known "Confessions of a Thug;" and as a pendant to the already published descriptions of him, we here quote the impression he made upon the colonel.
Shamsheer then treated for peace but, after having delayed the advance for two months, finally broke off negotiations, suddenly; and the British at once laid siege to Calpee, which capitulated on the 4th of December. Finding himself unable to resist the farther advance of the British, Shamsheer then surrendered.
It is said that he has always fifteen servants in stated pay, and can in a few hours command the services of three hundred armed and desperate men; and the strength and vigour of the Calpee police may be estimated by the fact, that he has been known to walk into the house of a rich merchant in the centre of the town, when he was surrounded by his servants and family; he has very coolly selected the gold bangles of his children, and silenced the trembling remonstrances of the Mahajun by threats of vengeance; nor is this a solitary instance.
Calpee is said to be the hottest place in India, the thermometer in June, according to the colonel, standing even on a cloudy day at 145 degrees a degree of heat almost incredible; and it is also the principal mart for the cotton, which the rich black soil of Bundelcund produces of finer quality than any other part of Hindostan.
Gopal was not the only amiable character with whom the colonel became acquainted at Calpee, as he sought and obtained an interview with a famous Thug approver, who had retired from the active exercise of his profession, and was travelling the country in company with a party of police, denouncing his former associates to justice.
The colonel, however, expresses a shrewd suspicion, from circumstances which had come to his knowledge, that his distinguished visitor's esprit de corps led him to deviate from truth in this particular a belief in which Captain Taylor's pages fully bear him out. The colonel's movements, after quitting Calpee and its attractive circles, appear to have been somewhat desultory.
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