Indian Mutiny Brigadier General John Nicholson, CB (11 December 1822 – 23 September 1857) was an Anglo-Irish military officer who rose to prominence during his career in British India.
A charismatic and authoritarian figure, Nicholson led a life whose controversial exploits have created a polarized legacy; contemporary descriptions of Nicholson presented him as the man who was crucial in suppressing the Indian Rebellion,[3] while more recent historical accounts have described him as an "imperial psychopath"[4] and "a violent, manic figure, a homosexual bully; an extreme egoist who was pleased to affect a laconic indifference to danger".
[5] His imposing physical appearance and noted deeds of valor and violence created an almost mythical status and even religious worship among the numerous tribes of the North-West Frontier whom Nicholson brought into the British Empire.
[8] Nicholson was privately educated in Delgany and later attended the Royal School Dungannon, through the patronage of his maternal uncle, Sir James Weir Hogg, a successful East India Company lawyer and for some time Registrar of the Calcutta Supreme Court, and later a Member of Parliament.
[9] He left school soon after his sixteenth birthday and, as the eldest male in his family, obtained a cadetship in the East India Company army's Bengal Infantry thanks to his uncle.
[10] In early 1839, Nicholson spent several weeks under his uncle's tutorship in London, gaining an understanding of Indian matters, before departing Gravesend in mid February on the voyage to India where he would spend the majority of the rest of his life.
Following the outbreak of a revolt led by Wazir Akbar Khan, the main British garrison at Kabul was besieged and annihilated as it tried to retreat from Afghanistan in January 1842.
On 1 November 1842, Nicholson was briefly reunited with his younger brother Alexander, who had arrived in India only a few short months before and was now helping to escort the British force through the pass.
[16] Alexander's unit was ambushed and overwhelmed two days later and it was the nineteen-year-old Nicholson who was the first to find the mutilated body of his younger brother; his severed genitalia had been stuffed in his mouth.
[18] Nicholson's first experience of war had also, however, instilled a "near-messianic sense of destiny" on him and he now believed it was his duty to spread Christian civilization into what he considered a "heathen" land.
In November 1845, on passing his Urdu vernacular examination, Nicholson was posted to the Delhi Field Force which was being organised at that time, as the threat of a war with the Sikh Kingdom of the Punjab loomed near.
[19] Upon the outbreak of the First Anglo-Sikh War in December 1845, Nicholson was serving as a staff officer in the commissariat department of Sir Hugh Gough's field force which marched into the Punjab.
He left Peshawar with a troop of irregular Pakthun horsemen and rode straight for the vital fort at Attock which, if controlled by the enemy, could sever the British line of communication.
In this role, Nicholson was ruthless in bringing peace and order to the region with a zero tolerance attitude on crime or any perceived disrespect shown towards the colonial government, often using flogging or other similar methods to both punish and humiliate any who dared infringe the law.
[32] At first, he was feared for his foul temper and authoritarian manner which underpinned his tyrant-style rule, but Nicholson soon gained the respect of the Afghan and North Punjabi tribes in the area for his fairhandedness and sense of honour as well as his almost complete elimination of crime.
[1][34] Rather than be flattered by this religious devotion, Nicholson found his Christian beliefs offended by the worship and would promptly whip any of the devotees who publicly practiced this cult in his presence.
[37] Nicholson and Edwardes immediately planned to form a 'strong movable column' consisting of European and irregular troops which would be able to move and meet any outbreaks in the Punjab.
[39] After taking part in the successful disarming of the remaining five regular Bengal regiments at Peshawar, Nicholson accompanied the force dispatched to Nowshera to deal with the 55th.
[41] One famous story recounted by Charles Allen in Soldier Sahibs is of a night during the Rebellion when Nicholson strode into the British mess tent at Jullunder, coughed to attract the attention of the officers, then said, "I am sorry, gentlemen, to have kept you waiting for your dinner, but I have been hanging your cooks."
He proposed an Act endorsing a 'new kind of death for the murderers and dishonourers of our women', suggesting, 'flaying alive, impalement or burning,' and commenting further, 'I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with a perfectly easy conscience.
[53] He then helped clear the remainder of the walls of the Mori bastion but became separated from his column whose assault had become bogged down in the face of fierce resistance as they advanced further into the city.
Drawing his sword, Nicholson called for his men to follow him as he led a charge down a narrow alley through which his troops had been unable to advance in order to capture the Burn Bastion.
[55] The mortally wounded Nicholson was dragged back by troops of the 1st Bengal Fusiliers and initially refused to be taken to the field hospital until the city had fallen but eventually relented and was placed in a doolie.
Upon hearing of Wilson's faltering nerve and contemplation of retreat, Nicholson, who lay dying in the field hospital, reached for his pistol and famously declared "Thank God that I still have the strength yet to shoot him, if necessary.
"[57] Nicholson managed to remain alive until hearing the news that the British had finally taken Delhi, before succumbing to his wounds on 23 September, nine days after he had led the assault on the city.
He also appears as one of the main characters in James Leasor's novel about the Indian Rebellion, Follow the Drum, which describes his death in some detail and features heavily in the same author's history of the siege, 'The Red Fort'.
He told his mother that marriage would not suit his Government appointment, but most modern scholars have assumed that he was homosexual;[64] one stating that "Boys were certainly John Nicholson's principal solace".
[69] Upon learning of Nicholson's death, Edwardes wrote to Neville Chamberlain, eulogizing his friend as "So undaunted, so noble, so tender, so good, so stern to evil, so single-minded, so generous, so heroic and yet so modest.
"[70] On the day that the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland formally ceded control of Dublin Castle to the government of the Irish Free State, 16 January 1922, a sword-wielding figure of John Nicholson was unveiled in Lisburn's Market Square.
A memorial relief (by John Henry Foley), placed by his mother sixty years before in the town's Cathedral,[73] depicts the final assault upon Delhi's Red Fort.