BLUE DEATH IN BENGAL - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 40

there—the guilt for their deaths laid ceremonially at the door of the colonizing power. Many
Indians blamed the epidemic on the slaughter of a cow to feed the British officers in a nearby
grove sacred to Hardaul Lala, the deified ancestor of a local noble family. Hardaul Lala subse-
quently became one of the new popular cholera deities, with temples as far away as Lahore. 3
By the time it was reconstituted, Hastings's camp had lost half its numbers. Thirty thou-
sand followers deserted, while some ten thousand died, many of them in the act of deserting.
The roads for miles around were littered with the bodies of those who had not been able to
outrun the blue death. In the commander's tent, two Indian servants collapsed behind Hast-
ings's chair as he worked, while the general himself gave orders that in the event of his own
perishing from the contagion he should be quietly buried inside the tent so as not to demoral-
ize his troops or send hope to Britain's prevaricating Indian allies that the terms of the recent
treaty might be disregarded.
Convinced the cause of the epidemic lay in their unhealthy situation by the River Sinde,
surrounded by forest and swamp, Hastings ordered the removal of the army to higher ground.
This process was hampered by the paralyzed state of the camp and the lack of vehicles with
which to transport the sick. Carts, cattle, and elephants were recruited from the nearby vil-
lages, but even these proved insufficient. Many were left to die in the road. Hundreds more
dropped during each day's march, creating “the appearance of a field of battle and … an army
retreating under every circumstance of discomfiture and distress.” Hastings, confiding his dis-
may to his journal, called the experience “heartbreaking” and “a most afflicting calamity.” 4
Finally, after a week of halting, harrowing progress, Hastings's division encamped on the
heights at Erich by the holy river Betwah, some fifty miles from the Sinde. The cholera, which
had already begun its decline en route, now disappeared from the army's ranks, confirming
Hastings in his view, and that of subsequent reporters on the epidemic, that the cholera de-
rived from local miasmatic causes and that the salvation of the army lay only with its “change
of ground and climate.” 5 On November 22, Hastings heard the unfamiliar sound of laughter in
the camp and breathed a sigh, knowing the crisis had passed. The British Army in India had
narrowly escaped total destruction at the hands of this new, fearsome, “epidemical” cholera.
Figure 4.2. A View of Erich above the River Betwah , as depicted by an anonymous artist attached to Hast-
ings's expeditionary force in 1817. The cliffs about the Betwah provided a safe haven for British troops fol-
lowing the cholera outbreak. The river is considered sacred by tradition and is mentioned in the Sanskrit
epic the Mahabharata . (© British Library, Marquess of Hastings Collection.)
Percy Shelley's literary-minded cousin, Thomas Medwin, served as an officer in Hastings's
army in that fateful campaign. His experience along the banks of the Sinde “haunted” him the
rest of his life: