A distressing and pathetic tragedy resulted from the mutiny of this regiment.  Colonel Henry Spottiswoode who commanded it, like so many other officers, absolutely refused to believe in the disloyalty of his men.  He was one of those who held the view that distrust bred disaffection, which with confidence would never appear.  So deeply distressed was this chivalrous officer when his regiment rebelled, that he refused to outlive what to him was an indelible disgrace, and so, going apart, shot himself dead.  According to an old soldier, then in the Guides, he fell and was buried under a great mulberry tree at the cross-roads near the fort.

Meanwhile, the Guides, at six hours’ notice, fully equipped, horse and foot, had started on their historic march to Delhi.  They left Mardan at six in the evening of May 13th, and joined the British force at the siege of Delhi early on June 9th.  The distance is five hundred and eighty miles, and the time taken was twenty-six days and fourteen hours; but from this must be deducted five days and nine hours made up as follows:  detained forty-two hours at Attock, holding the fort pending the arrival of a reliable garrison; detained forty-one hours at Rawul Pindi, pending the question as to whether the Guides were to be employed to disarm the native artillery; detained forty-six hours at Karnal by the magistrate, in order to attack, capture, and burn a hostile village lying twelve miles off the road.  If, therefore, these halts “by order” are deducted, it will be found that the Guides took actually twenty-one days and five hours to march five hundred and eighty miles.  This works out to an average of over twenty-seven miles a day.  As a contemporary historian remarks, such a feat would be highly creditable to mounted troops, and was doubly so to the infantry portion of the corps.  To add to the credit of this high achievement, it may be added that the march took place at the hottest season of the year through the hottest region on earth.

The record of a march along the Grand Trunk Road of India does not lend itself to much picturesque description, but perhaps it may be in this case of some interest to follow the stern resolve and steady endurance which carried the stout-hearted regiment through those never-ending miles along the straight and scorching road to Delhi.  And in this endeavour we are singularly fortunate in having for reference a diary written from day to day by Henry Daly, who, in the absence of Lumsden on a special mission, commanded the corps.[11]

  [11] Memoirs of General Sir Henry Dermot Daly, G.C.B., C.I.E.; by
  Major H. Daly.  London, 1905.

The first night’s march took the Guides sixteen miles to Nowshera, where after barely two hours’ rest came orders to push on to Attock, another eighteen miles.  To add to the hardships of this march, it so chanced that the Mahomedan fast of Ramzan was in observance, during which no follower of the Prophet may eat or drink between sunrise and sunset.  Parched, hungry, and weary, the thirty-four mile march was completed, and the Indus crossed at ten in the morning of the 14th of May.