BLUE DEATH IN BENGAL - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 39

Figure 4.1. The Maratha War in 1817 was waged in the independent regions of north-central India, south
of Delhi. Lord Hastings's forces, encamped south of the city of Gwalior on the River Sinde, removed east
to the River Betwah after the deadly cholera outbreak. (Adapted from a contemporary map by American
cartographer Fielding Lucas, in his General Atlas, Containing Distinct Maps of All the Known Countries in the
World [Baltimore, 1823].)
After a long, hot march out of Bengal, the British Grand Army was encamped by the River
Sinde in north-central India. From his position at the base of a thickly wooded range of hills,
Hastings could guard the sole eastern access to the fortress town of Gwalior, bastion of the in-
dependent Maratha prince Scindia. Cut off from his allies, Scindia had just concluded a tense
treaty with Hastings to withhold his support for the roving Pindaree militias, whom the Brit-
ish governor hoped to destroy.
In the early afternoon of November 8, soldiers brought two Indian stretcher-bearers to
the tent of Frederick Corbyn, a medical officer attached to the Bengal regiment of Hastings's
army. The men's skin was clammy and leaden, their eyes sunken, pulse almost imperceptible.
When one of them vomited, the sight of the rice-colored odorless fluid prompted Corbyn to
seek out the superintending surgeon, who told him to break camp immediately and find safer
ground. Before he could act upon this order, however, an officer of the rear guard arrived
to report that hundreds of camp followers and soldiers were already dead or dying along the
line of march, their lips and fingers a telltale blue. Accompanied by a cavalry guard, Corbyn
hurried to the road, where he found the Indian regiments and their followers in a terrible
state. Whole families who, that same morning, he had seen set off in perfect health were lying
dead by the streams near the road. 2
The next day, cholera swept through the camp of the British Grand Army with “indescrib-
able violence.” Between November 15 and 20 alone, five thousand men, women, and children
died. All military maneuvers ceased, as the camp transformed into a hospital and open-air
morgue. An eerie quiet descended, broken only by the groans of the dying. The British kept
to their tents, venturing out only to inquire about the state of sick friends, while the Indians
bore the biers of their dead to the river in silence. At the height of the epidemic, even these
rituals ceased. The victims were thrown into ravines or brought to the English tents and left