Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

139
With such an air as Mars to battle strides.
Propitious heaven must sure a hero save
Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave!'
"My officers (Captains Biggs and Mackanulty, Lieutenants Glogger, Pappendick, Stuffle,
&c., &c.) were dressed exactly in the same way, but in yellow; and the men were similarly
equipped, but in black. I have seen many regiments since, and many ferocious-looking
men, but the Ahmednuggar Irregulars were more dreadful to the view than any set of
ruffians on which I ever set eyes. I would to heaven that the Czar of Muscovy had passed
through Cabool and Lahore, and that I with my old Ahmednuggars stood on a fair field to
meet him! Bless you, bless you, my swart companions in victory! through the mist of
twenty years I hear the booming of your war-cry, and mark the glitter of your scimitars as
ye rage in the thickest of the battle!*
* I do not wish to brag of my style of writing, or to
pretend that my genius as a writer has not been equalled in
former times; but if, in the works of Byron, Scott, Goethe,
or Victor Hugo, the reader can find a more beautiful
sentence than the above, I will be obliged to him, that is
all—I simply say, I WILL BE OBLIGED TO HIM.——G. O'G. G.,
M. H. E. I. C. S., C. I. H. A.
"But away with melancholy reminiscences. You may fancy what a figure the Irregulars cut
on a field-day—a line of five hundred black-faced, black-dressed, black-horsed, blackbearded
men—Biggs, Glogger, and the other officers in yellow, galloping about the field
like flashes of lightning; myself enlightening them, red, solitary, and majestic, like yon
glorious orb in heaven.
"There are very few men, I presume, who have not heard of Holkar's sudden and gallant
incursion into the Dooab, in the year 1804, when we thought that the victory of Laswaree
and the brilliant success at Deeg had completely finished him. Taking ten thousand horse
he broke up his camp at Palimbang; and the first thing General Lake heard of him was, that
he was at Putna, then at Rumpooge, then at Doncaradam—he was, in fact, in the very heart
of our territory.
"The unfortunate part of the affair was this:—His Excellency, despising the Mahratta
chieftain, had allowed him to advance about two thousand miles in his front, and knew not
in the slightest degree where to lay hold on him. Was he at Hazarubaug? was he at Bogly
Gunge? nobody knew, and for a considerable period the movements of Lake's cavalry were
quite ambiguous, uncertain, promiscuous, and undetermined.