INDIA OR HINDOSTAN

Printed in Colours by Shefick & Macfarlane Edinburgh

W. & R. CHAMBERS, LONDON & EDINBURGH

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In the present volume is given a narrative of the chief events connected with one of the most formidable military Revolts on record. These events—from the first display of insubordination in the beginning of 1857, to the issue of the Royal Proclamation in the later weeks of 1858—form a series full of the romance as well as the wretchedness of war: irrespective of the causes that may have led to them, or the reforms which they suggested. The sudden rising of trained native soldiers in mutiny; the slaughter of officers who to the last moment had trusted them; the sufferings of gently-nurtured women and children, while hurrying wildly over burning sands and through thick jungles; and the heroism displayed amid unspeakable miseries—all tended to give an extraordinary character to this outbreak. Nor is it less interesting to trace the operations by which the difficulties were met. The task was nothing less than that of suppressing insurgency among a native population of nearly two hundred million souls by a small number of British soldiers and civilians, most of whom were at vast distances from the chief region of disaffection, and were grievously deficient in means of transport.

A chronicle of these events reveals also the striking differences between various parts of India. While Behar, Oude, Rohilcund, the Doab, Bundelcund, Malwah, and Rajpootana were rent with anarchy and plunged in misery, the rest of India was comparatively untouched. Most important, too, is it to trace the influence of nation, caste, and creed. Why the Hindoos of the Brahmin and Rajpoot castes rebelled, while those of the lower castes remained faithful; why the Sikhs and Mussulmans of the Punjaub shewed so little sympathy with the insurgents; why the Hindoos of Bengal were so timidly quiet, and those of Hindostan so boldly violent; why the native armies of Madras and Bombay were so tranquil, when that of Bengal was so turbulent?—were questions which it behoved the government to solve, as clues to the character of the governed, and to the changes of discipline needed. It was a time that brought into strong relief the peculiarities of the five chief classes of Europeans in India—Queen’s soldiers, Company’s soldiers, Company’s ‘covenanted’ servants, ‘uncovenanted’ servants, and residents independent of the Company; and it shewed how nobly these classes forgot their differences when the honour of the British name and the safety of India were imperiled.

ivThe history of home affairs during, and in relation to, that period of struggle, has its own points of interest—shewing in what manner, amid the stormy conflicts of party, the nation responded to the call for military aid to India, for pecuniary aid to individual sufferers, and for a great change in the government of that country.

Although the minor results of the Revolt may be visible to a much later date, it is considered that the month of November 1858 would furnish a convenient limit to the present narrative. The government of India had by that time been changed; the change had been publicly proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of that empire; the British army in the east had been so largely augmented as to render the prospects of the insurgents hopeless; the rebel leaders were gradually tendering their submission, under the terms of the Royal Proclamation; the skilled mutinous sepoys had in great proportion been stricken down by battle and privation; the military operations had become little more than a chasing of lawless marauders; and the armed men still at large were mostly dupes of designing leaders, or ruffians whose watchwords were pay and plunder rather than nationality or patriotism.

The remarkable Expeditions to Persia, China, and Japan are briefly noticed towards the close of the volume—on account of the links which connected them with the affairs of India, and of the aspect which they gave to the influence of England in the east.

Every endeavour has been made, by a careful examination of available authorities, to render the narrative a truthful one. It is hoped that the errors are few in number, and that hasty expressions of opinion on disputed points have in general been avoided. The Work is quite distinct from the History of the Russian War, issued by the same Publishers; yet may the two be regarded as companion volumes, relating to the affairs of England in the east—seeing that a few short months only elapsed between the close of the events of 1854-5-6 in Turkey, Russia, and Asia Minor, and the commencement of those of 1856-7-8 in India, Persia, and China.

December 1858.

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vii

Various Tail-pieces, Vignettes, &c.

1

Scarcely had England recovered from the excitement attendant on the war with Russia; scarcely had she counted the cost, provided for the expenditure, reprobated the blunderings, mourned over the sufferings; scarcely had she struck a balance between the mortifying incapacity of some of her children, and the Christian heroism of others—when she was called upon anew to unsheath the sword, and to wage war, not against an autocrat on this side of the Caspian, but against some of the most ancient nations in the world. Within a few months, almost within a few weeks, China, Persia, and India appeared in battle-array against her—they being the injurers or the injured, according to the bias of men’s judgments on the matter. It may almost be said that five hundred millions of human beings became her enemies at once: there are at the very least this number of inhabitants in the three great Asiatic empires; and against all, proclamations were issued and armaments fitted out. Whether the people, the millions, sided more 2with her or with their own rulers, is a question that must be settled in relation to each of those empires separately; but true it is that the small army of England was called upon suddenly to render services in Asia, so many and varied, in regions so widely separated, and so far distant from home, that a power of mobility scarcely less than ubiquity, aided by a strength of endurance almost more than mortal—could have brought that small force up to a level with the duties required of it. Considering how small a space a month is in the life of a nation, we may indeed say that this great Oriental outbreak was nearly simultaneous in the three regions of Asia. It was in October 1856 that the long-continued bickerings between the British and the Chinese at Canton broke out into a flame, and led to the despatch of military and naval forces from England. It was while the British admiral was actually engaged in bombarding Canton that the governor-general of India, acting as viceroy of the Queen of England, declared war against the Shah of Persia for an infringement of treaty relating to the city of Herat. And lastly, it was while two British armaments were engaged in those two regions of warfare, that disobedience and disbanding began in India, the initial steps to the most formidable military Revolt, perhaps, the world has ever seen.

The theologian sees, or thinks he sees, the finger of God, the avenging rod of an All-ruling Providence, in these scenes of blood-shedding: a punishment on England for not having Christianised the natives of the East to the full extent of her power. The soldier insists that, as we gained our influence in the East mainly by the sword, by the sword we must keep it: permitting no disobedience to our military rule, but at the same time offending as little as possible against the prejudices of faith and caste among the natives. The politician smitten with Russo-phobia, deeply imbued with the notion, whether well or ill founded, that the Muscovite aims at universal dominion in Europe and Asia, seeks for evidences of the czar’s intrigues at Pekin, Teheran, and Delhi. The partisan, thinking more of the ins and outs of official life, than of Asia, points triumphantly to the dogma that if his party had been in power, no one of these three Oriental wars would have come upon England. The merchant, believing that individual interest lies at the bottom of all national welfare, tells us that railways and cotton plantations would be better for India than military stations; and that diplomatic piques at Canton and at Teheran ought not to be allowed to drive us into hostility with nations who might be advantageous customers for our wares. But while the theologian, the soldier, the politician, the partisan, and the merchant are thus rushing to a demonstration, each of his favourite theory, without waiting for the evidence which can only by degrees be collected, England, as a nation, has had to bear up against the storm as best she could. Not even one short twelvemonth of peace was vouchsafed to her. The same year, 1856, that marked the closing scenes of one war, witnessed the commencement of two others; while the materials for a fourth war were at the same time fermenting, unknown to those whose duty it was to watch symptoms.

Few things in the history of our empire are more astonishing than the social explosion in India, taken in connection with the positive declarations of official men. Historical parallels have often been pointed out, striking and instructive; but here we have a historical contradiction. At the time when the plenipotentiaries of seven European empires and kingdoms were discussing at Paris the bases for a European peace, the Marquis of Dalhousie was penning an account of India, in the state to which Britain had brought it. A statesman of high ability, and of unquestioned earnestness of purpose, he evidently felt a pride in the work he had achieved as governor-general of India; he thought he had laid the foundation for a great future; and he claimed credit for England, not only in respect to what she had done, but also for the motives that had dictated her Indian policy. It was in the early part of 1848 that this nobleman went out to the East; it was in 1856 that he yielded the reins of power to Viscount Canning; and shortly before his departure from Calcutta he wrote a minute or narrative, formally addressed to the East India Company, but intended for his fellow-countrymen at large, giving an account of his stewardship. Remembering that that minute was written in March 1856, and that the Revolt commenced in January 1857, it becomes very important to know, from the lips or the pen of the marquis himself, what he believed to be the actual condition of the Anglo-Indian Empire when he left it. The document in question is worth more, for our present purpose, than any formal history or description of India; for it shews not only the sum-total of power and prosperity in 1848, but the additions made to that sum year after year till 1856. A parliamentary paper of fifty folio pages need not and cannot be reproduced here; but its substance may be rendered intelligible in a few paragraphs. This we will attempt at once, as a peculiarly fitting introduction to the main object of the present work; for it shews how little the Revolt was expected by him who was regarded as the centre of knowledge and influence in India. The marquis said: ‘The time has nearly come when my administration of the government of India, prolonged through more than eight years, will reach its final close. It would seem that some few hours may be profitably devoted to a short review of those eventful years; not for the purpose of justifying disputed measures, or of setting forth a retrospective defence of the policy which may, on every several occasion, have been adopted; but for the purpose of recalling the political events that have occurred, the measures that have been 3taken, and the progress that has been made, during the career of the administration which is about to close. I enter on that review with the single hope that the Honourable Court of Directors may derive from the retrospect some degree of satisfaction with the past, and a still larger measure of encouragement for the future.’ The words we have italicised are very remarkable, read by the light so soon and so calamitously to be afforded.

The minute first passes in review the proceedings of the Indian government with the independent native states, both east and west of the Ganges. How little our public men are able to foretell the course of political events in the East, is shewn by the very first paragraph of the governor-general’s narrative: ‘When I sailed from England in the winter of 1847, to assume the government of India, there prevailed a universal conviction among public men at home that permanent peace had at length been secured in the East. Before the summer came, we were already involved in the second Sikh war.’ Be it observed that public men at home are here adverted to: of what were the opinions of public men in India, the English nation was not kept sufficiently informed. There had been British officers murdered at Moultan; there was a rebellion of the Dewan Moolraj against the recognised sovereign of Lahore; but the renewal of war is attributed mainly to the ‘spirit of the whole Sikh people, which was inflamed by the bitterest animosity against us; when chief after chief deserted our cause, until nearly their whole army, led by sirdars who had signed the treaties, and by members of the Council of Regency itself, was openly arrayed against us;’ and when the Sikhs even joined with the Afghans against us. It was not a mere hostile prince, it was a hostile nation that confronted us; and the Indian government, whether wisely or not, declared war, put forth its power, maintained a long campaign, defeated and subdued the Sikhs, drove back the insurgent Afghans, and ended by annexing the Punjaub to the British territories. Scarcely had the Anglo-Indian armies been relieved from these onerous duties, when war called them to the regions beyond the Ganges. Certain British traders in the port of Rangoon had been subjected to gross outrage by the officers of the King of Ava, in violation of a pre-existing treaty; and the Marquis of Dalhousie, acting on a high-sounding dictum of Lord Wellesley, that ‘an insult offered to the British flag at the mouth of the Ganges should be resented as promptly and as fully as an insult offered at the mouth of the Thames,’ resolved to punish the king for those insults. That monarch was ‘arrogant and over-bearing’—qualities much disapproved, where not shewn by the Company’s servants themselves; he violated treaties, insulted our traders, worried our envoys, and drove away our commercial agent at Rangoon; and as the government of India ‘could never, consistently with its own safety, permit itself to stand for a single day in an attitude of inferiority towards a native power, and least of all towards the court of Ava, war was declared. After some sharp fighting, the kingdom of Pegu was taken and annexed, ‘in order that the government of India might hold from the Burman state both adequate compensation for past injury, and the best security against future danger.... A sense of inferiority has penetrated at last to the convictions of the nation; the Burman court and the Burman people alike have shewn that they now dread our power; and in that dread is the only real security we can ever have, or ever could have had, for stable peace with the Burman state.’ These words are at once boastful and saddening; but the notions conveyed, of ‘sense of inferiority’ and ‘dread of power,’ are thoroughly Asiatic, and as such we must accept them. Another independent state, Nepaul, on the northern frontier of India, remained faithful during the eight years of the Dalhousie administration; it carried on a war of its own against Tibet, but it was friendly to England, and sent a bejewelled ambassador, Jung Bahadoor, to visit the island Queen. The mountain region of Cashmere, stolen as it were from the Himalaya, was under an independent chieftain, Maharajah Gholab Sing, who, when he visited the Marquis of Dalhousie at Wuzeerabad, caught the vice-regal robe in his hand and said; ‘Thus I grasp the skirts of the British government, and I will never let go my hold.’ The governor-general expresses a belief that Gholab Sing ‘will never depart from his submissive policy as long as he lives;’ while Gholab’s son and anticipated successor, Meean Rumbeer Sing, is spoken of as one who will never give ‘any cause of offence to a powerful neighbour, which he well knows can crush him at will.’ The Khan of Khelat, near the western frontier, was brought into close relationship, insomuch that he became ‘the friend of our friends, and the enemy of our enemies,’ and engaged to give us temporary possession of such military stations within his territory as we might at any time require for purposes of defence. At the extreme northwest of our Indian Empire, the Afghans, with whom we had fought such terrible battles during the Auckland and Ellenborough administrations of Indian affairs, had again been brought into friendly relations; the chief prince among them, Dost Mohammed Khan of Cabool, had been made to see that England was likely to be his best friend, and ‘had already shewn that he regards English friendship as a tower of strength.’

Thus the governor-general, in adverting to independent states, announced that he had conquered and annexed the Punjaub and Pegu; while he had strengthened the bonds of amity with Nepaul, Cashmere, Khelat, and Cabool—amity almost degraded to abject servility, if the protestations of some of the chieftains were to be believed.

Having disposed of the independent states, the marquis directed attention to the relations existing between the British government and the protected 4or semi-independent states, of which there are many more than those really independent. The kingdom of Nagpoor became British territory by simple lapse, ‘in the absence of all legal heirs.’ In bygone years the British put down one rajah and set up another; and when this latter died, without a son real or adopted, or any male descendant of the original royal stock, ‘the British government refused to bestow the territory in free gift upon a stranger, and wisely incorporated it with its own dominions’—a mode of acquiring territory very prevalent in our Eastern Empire. The King of Oude, another protected sovereign, having broken his engagements with the Company in certain instances, his state was treated like Nagpoor, and added to British India. Satara lost its rajah in 1849, and as no male heir was then living, that small state shared the fate of the larger Oude: it was made British. Jhansi, a still smaller territory, changed owners in an exactly similar way. The Nizam of Hyderabad, owing to the Company a sum of money which he was unable or unwilling to pay, and being in other ways under the Company’s wrath, agreed in 1853 to give up Berar and other provinces to the exclusive sovereignty of the British. Early in 1848 the Rajah of Ungool, a petty chieftain in the Jungle Neehals, resisted the authority of the government; his raj was taken from him, and he died in exile. The Rajah of Sikim, a hill-chieftain on the borders of Nepaul, ‘had the audacity’ to seize a Company’s official at Darjeling; as a punishment, all the territories he possessed within the plains were confiscated and annexed. In Sinde, Meer Ali Morad of Khyrpore, having involved himself in an act of forgery concerning the ownership of territory, ‘the lands were taken from him, and his power and influence were reduced to insignificance.’ The Nawab Nazim of Bengal having committed a murder by bastinado, ‘his highness’s peculiar jurisdiction and legal exemption were taken away from him; and he was subjected to the disgrace of losing a large portion of the salute of honour which he had previously received.’ The Nawab of the Carnatic died suddenly in 1855; and as he left no male heir, and his relations lived very disreputably, the title of nawab ‘was placed in abeyance:’ that is, the Carnatic was made British territory, and the several members of the nawab’s family were pensioned off. About the same time, the Rajah of Tanjore died, in like manner without male issue bearing his name; and the same process was adopted there as in the Carnatic—sovereign power was assumed by the Company, and the ex-royal family was pensioned off.

Counting up his treasures, the governor-general was certainly enabled to announce a most extraordinary accession of territory during the years 1848 to 1855. The Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Oude, Satara, Jhansi, Berar, Ungool, Darjeling, Khyrpore, the Carnatic, and Tanjore, all became British for the first time, or else had the links which bound them to England brought closer. While, on the one hand, it must be admitted that the grounds or excuses for annexation would be deemed very slight in any country but India; so, on the other, there can be no doubt that the Marquis of Dalhousie, and the directors with whom he was acting, believed that these annexing processes were essential to the maintenance of British power in the East. He takes credit to his government for having settled certain family quarrels among the petty royalties of Gujerat, Buhawalpore, Jummoo, and Mumdote, without paying itself for its services: as if it were a virtue to abstain from annexation at such times. The mention made of Delhi must be given in the governor-general’s own words, to shew how much the descendant of the once mighty Mogul was regarded as a mere puppet—yet maintaining a certain hold on the reverence of the people, as was destined to be shewn in a series of events little anticipated by the writer of the minute. ‘Seven years ago the heir-apparent to the King of Delhi died. He was the last of the race who had been born in the purple. The Court of Directors was accordingly advised to decline to recognise any other heir-apparent, and to permit the kingly title to fall into abeyance upon the death of the present king, who even then was a very aged man. The Honourable Court accordingly conveyed to the government of India authority to terminate the dynasty of Timour, whenever the reigning king should die. But as it was found that, although the Honourable Court had consented to the measure, it had given its consent with great reluctance, I abstained from making use of the authority which had been given to me. The grandson of the king was recognised as heir-apparent; but only on condition that he should quit the palace in Delhi in order to reside in the palace at the Kootub; and that he should, as king, receive the governor-general of India at all times on terms of perfect equality.’ How strange do these words sound! A board of London merchants sitting in a room in Leadenhall Street, giving ‘authority to terminate the dynasty of Timour;’ and then, as a gracious condescension, permitting the representative of that dynasty to be on terms of ‘perfect equality’ with whomsoever may be the chief representative of the Company in India.

The Marquis of Dalhousie pointed to the revenues derivable from the newly annexed territories as among the many justifications for his line of policy. He shewed that four millions sterling were added to the annual income of the Anglo-Indian Empire by the acquisition of the Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Oude, Satara, Jhansi, and Berar—increasing the total revenue from about twenty-six millions in 1848 to above thirty millions in 1855.

The extreme importance of this official document lying in the evidence it affords how little dread was felt in 1856 of any approaching outbreak, we proceed with the governor-general’s narrative of the augmentation and stability of British power in the East, power of which he was 5evidently proud—presenting, of course, as a mere outline, that which his lordship fills up in more detail.

Credit is claimed in the minute for the improved administrative organisation both of the old and of the newly acquired territories. Able men were selected to administer government in the Punjaub; and so well did they fulfil their duties that internal peace was secured, violent crime repressed, the penal law duly enforced, prison-discipline maintained, civil justice administered, taxation fixed, collection of revenue rendered just, commerce set free, agriculture fostered, national resources developed, and future improvements planned. Not only did the marquis assert this; but there is a general concurrence of opinion that the Punjaub fell into fortunate hands when its administration came to be provided for. In Pegu the administration, less brilliant than in the Punjaub, is nevertheless represented as being sound in principle; tranquillity was restored; effective police had secured the safety of all; trade was increased and increasing; a fair revenue was derived from light taxation; ‘the people, lightly taxed and prosperous, are highly contented with our rule;’ and, when population has increased, ‘Pegu will equal Bengal in fertility of production, and surpass it in every other respect.’ At Nagpoor the assumption of supreme authority by Britain was ‘hailed with lively satisfaction by the whole population of the province;’ no additional soldier had been introduced thither; the civil administration was introduced everywhere; the native army was partly embodied and disciplined in British pay, and partly discharged either with pensions or gratuities. In short, ‘perfect contentment and quiet prevail; beyond the palace walls not a murmur has been heard; and in no single instance throughout the districts has the public peace been disturbed.’ In Berar, we are told, the same phenomena were observed; as soon as the cession was made, our numerous disputes with the nizam ended; the civil administration was brought into working order; crime, especially the violent crime of dacoitee (gang-robbery without murder) was diminished; the ‘admirable little army,’ formerly called the Nizam’s Contingent, was made available as part of the British force; the revenue rapidly increased; and the public tranquillity had ‘not been disturbed by a single popular tumult.’ The kingdom of Oude had only been annexed a few weeks before the Marquis of Dalhousie wrote his minute; but he states that a complete civil administration, and a resident military force, had been fully organised before the annexation took place; that the troops of the deposed native king were contentedly taking service in British pay; that no zemindar or chief had refused submission to our authority; that the best men who could be found available were selected from the civil and military services for the new offices in Oude; and that no popular resistance or disturbance had occurred.

Nothing could be more clear and positive than these assertions. Not only did the governor-general announce that the Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Berar, and Oude had been completely annexed, bringing a large accession to the British revenues; but that in every case a scheme of administration had been framed and established, conducive to the lasting benefit of the natives, the honour of the British name, and the development of the natural resources of the several districts. Not a whisper of discontent, of spirits chafed by change of rulers, did the marquis recognise: if they occurred, they reached not him; or if they did reach him, he passed them by as trifles.

Nor was it alone in the newly acquired territories that credit for these advantageous changes was claimed. Improvements in the government of India were pointed out in every direction. The governor-general had been relieved from an overwhelming press of duties by the appointment of a lieutenant-governor for Bengal. A Legislative Council had been organised, distinct from the Supreme Council: the public having access to its deliberations, and its debates and papers being printed and issued to the world. The Indian civil service, by an act passed in 1853, had been thrown open to all who, being natural-born subjects of the British sovereign, should offer themselves as candidates for examination and admission. Young cadets, who previously had been allowed nearly two years to ‘idle and loiter’ at the presidencies while studying for examination as civilians, were by a new regulation required to complete their studies in a much shorter period, thereby lessening their idleness and rendering them sooner useful. Periodical examinations of the civil servants had been established, to insure efficiency before promotion was given. A board of examiners had been founded, to conduct examinations and superintend studies. All officers of the Indian government had been formally prohibited from engaging in banking or trading companies; and any bankruptcy among them entailed suspension from office. In many of the civil offices, promotion, before dependent on seniority alone, had been made dependent on merit alone. A pension or superannuation list had been established in many departments, to insure steady and faithful service. Three boards of administration for salt, opium, and customs had been replaced by one board of revenue, simpler in its constitution. The annual financial reports, transmitted to the home government, had gradually been made more clear, full, and instructive. All the salaries throughout India had been placed under the consideration of a special commissioner, for equitable revision; and the authorities had determined that, in future, no salaries, with a few special exceptions, shall exceed fifty thousand rupees (about five thousand pounds) per annum.

Nor had legislative reform been wholly forgotten. During the eight years under review, laws had been passed or rules laid down for the punishment 6of officials guilty of corruption, or accountants guilty of default; for allowing counsel to prisoners on their trial; for abolishing the semi-savage custom of branding convicts; for rendering public officers more amenable to public justice; for vesting a right of pardon in the supreme government; for improving the procedure in all the civil and criminal courts; for rendering the reception of evidence more fair and impartial; and, among many less important things, for ‘securing liberty of conscience, and for the protection of converts, and especially of Christian converts, against injury in respect of property or inheritance by reason of a change in their religious belief.’ For the amelioration of prison-discipline, inspectors of prisons had been appointed in all the three presidencies, as well as in Oude, the Punjaub, and the northwest provinces.

Equally in moral as in administrative matters did the Marquis of Dalhousie insist on the manifold improvement of India during the eight years preceding 1856. Schools for the education of natives had been established; the Hindoo College at Calcutta had been revived and improved; a Presidency College had been founded in the same city, to give a higher scale of education to the youth of Bengal; similar colleges had been sanctioned at Madras and Bombay; grants-in-aid to all educational establishments had been authorised, subject to government inspection of the schools aided; a committee had been appointed to consider the plans for establishing regular universities at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras; a distinct educational department had been formed at the seat of government, with director-generals of public instruction in all the presidencies and governments; and the East India Company had, by a dispatch framed in 1854, sanctioned a most extensive educational scheme for the whole of India, to be rendered available to all the natives who might be willing and able to claim its advantages. The delicate subject of female education had not been forgotten. Instructions had been given to the officers of the educational department to afford all possible encouragement to the establishment of female schools, whenever any disposition was shewn by the natives in that direction. There is a peculiar difficulty in all that concerns female education in India, arising from the reluctance which has always been shewn by the higher classes of natives to permit the attendance of their daughters at schools. Mr Bethune commenced, and the Marquis of Dalhousie continued, a delicate and cautious attempt to overcome this unwillingness by establishing a Hindoo ladies’ school at Calcutta; and the minute gives expression to an earnest hope and belief that the female character in India will gradually be brought under the elevating influence of moral and intellectual education. As the native mind was thus sought to be ameliorated and strengthened by education; so had the prevention or cure of bodily maladies been made an object of attention. Additional advantages had been granted to natives who applied themselves to the study of the medical sciences; the number of dispensaries had been greatly increased, to the immense benefit of the poorer classes of Hindoos and Mohammedans; plans had been commenced for introducing a check to the dreadful ravages of the small-pox; admission to the medical service of the Company had been thrown open to natives; and, as a first-fruit of this change, one Dr Chuckerbutty, a Hindoo educated in England, had won for himself a commission as assistant-surgeon in the Company’s service.

In so far as concerns superstition and religion, the minute narrates a course of proceeding of which the following is the substance. Among the extraordinary social customs—atrocities they are unquestionably considered in Europe—of India, those of Suttee, Thuggee, Infanticide, and the Meriah Sacrifice, are mentioned as having undergone much amelioration during the eight years to which the minute relates. The suttee, or burning of widows, had been almost suppressed by previous governor-generals, and the marquis had carried out the plans of his predecessors: remonstrating where any suttees occurred in independent states; and punishing where they occurred in the British and protected territories. Thuggee, or systematic murder of travellers for the sake of booty, had been quite suppressed east of the Sutlej; but having unexpectedly made its appearance in the Punjaub in 1851, it was thoroughly put down there as elsewhere; those who turned approvers or king’s evidence against their brother Thugs now form—or rather did form in 1856—a peaceful industrious colony at Jubbulpoor, where they spun and wove muslins of exquisite fineness, instead of cutting the throats of unsuspecting travellers. Female infanticide, the result of pride of birth and pride of purse—parents murdering their infant daughters either because they cannot afford the marriage expenditure which must one day be incurred on their account, or because they see difficulties in marrying them suitably—had been greatly checked and discouraged. In the Punjaub a most signal and singular conquest had been achieved; for the British representative, calling together the chiefs of tribes in 1854, unfolded to them a plan, ‘the observance of which would effectually secure that no man should feel any real difficulty in providing for his daughter in marriage;’ whereupon the chiefs, as well as those of the Cashmere tribes, promised that, as the motive for infanticide would thus in great measure be removed, they would cheerfully aid in suppressing the practice. Lastly, the Meriah sacrifice—a horrible rite, in which young human victims are sacrificed for the propitiation of the special divinity which presides over the fertility of the earth—had been nearly rooted out from the only district where it was practised, among the hill and jungle tribes of Orissa. In religious matters, the ecclesiastical strength of the established church had been 7largely increased; clergymen had been occasionally sanctioned, besides those acting as chaplains to the Company; places of worship had been provided for the servants and soldiers of the Company; Protestant churches had been built in places where the worshippers were willing to contribute something towards the expenditure; Roman Catholics serving the Company had been provided with places of worship; salaries had been granted to three Roman Catholic bishops, one in each presidency; the salaries of the priests had been revised and augmented; and a wish was manifested to observe justice towards the Catholic as well as the Protestant who served his country well in the East.

Thus—in the acquisition of territory, in the augmentation of revenue consequent on that acquisition, in the administrative organisation, in the spread of education, in the provision for religious services, and in the plans for improving the moral conduct of the natives—the Marquis of Dalhousie claimed to have done much that would redound to the honour of the British name and to the advancement of the millions under British rule in India. The problem still remains unsolved—Why should India, or the native military of that country, have revolted from British service? Let us see, therefore, whether the governor-general says aught that throws light upon the matter in connection with trade and commerce; and in order to understand this subject clearly, let us treat separately of Productive Industry and Means of Communication.

Cotton is destined, according to the ideas of some thinkers, to mark a great future for India; but meanwhile we are told in the minute that, by the acquisition of Nagpoor and Berar, many fertile cotton districts were brought under British rule; and that since the acquisition of Pegu, an examination of the cotton-growing capabilities of the northern part of that kingdom had been commenced. The tea-culture in Assam had prospered greatly during the eight years from 1848 to 1856; the plant had been largely introduced into the upper districts of the northwest provinces; plantations had been established at Deyrah Dhoon, Kumaon, and Gurhwal; Mr Fortune had brought large supplies of Chinese seeds and Chinese workmen to India; many of the native zemindars had begun the cultivation on their own account in districts at the foot of the Himalaya; and every year witnessed a large increase in the production of Indian tea, which was excellent in quality, and sold readily at a high price. In agriculture generally, improvements of all kinds had been made; an Agricultural and Horticultural Society had been established in the Punjaub; carefully selected seeds had been procured from Europe; the growth of flax had been encouraged; the growth of the mulberry and the rearing of silkworms had been fostered by the government; and a grant had been made in aid of periodical agricultural shows in the Madras presidency. In relation to live-stock, plans had been formed for improving the breed of horses; merino and Australian rams had been introduced to improve the breed of sheep; and sheep had been introduced into Pegu, to the great delight of the natives and the advantage of all; ‘for the absence of sheep leads to a privation in respect of food, which is severely felt, not only by European soldiers in the province, but also by all of every class who are employed therein.’ The forests had been brought under due regulation by the appointment of conservators of forests at Pegu, Tenasserim, and Martaban; by the careful examination of the whole of the forests in the Punjaub; by the planting of new districts, hitherto bare; and by the laying down of rules for the future preservation and thrifty management of these important sources of timber and fuel. The inestimable value of coal being duly appreciated, careful researches had been made, by order of the government, in the Punjaub, Pegu, Tenasserim, Bengal, Silhet, and the Nerbudda Valley, to lay the groundwork for careful mining whenever and wherever good coal may be found. Practical chemists and geological surveyors had been set to work in the Simla Hills, Kumaon, Gurhwal, the Nerbudda Valley, Beerboom, and Jubbulpoor, either to discover beds of ironstone, or to organise ironworks where such beds had already been discovered; and an experimental mining and smelting establishment had been founded by the government among the Kumaon Hills, to apply tests likely to be valuable in future.

Next, in connection with means of communication, the channels by and through which commerce permeates the empire, the governor-general had a very formidable list of works to notice. Surveys, irrigation and canals, rivers and harbours, roads, railways, electric telegraphs, and postal communications—had all been made the subjects of great engineering activity during the eight years of the Dalhousie administration. A few words must be said here on each of these topics; for it becomes absolutely necessary, in order to a due appreciation of the narrative of Revolt about to follow, that we should, as a preliminary, know whether India really had or had not been neglected in these elements of prosperity in the years immediately preceding the outbreak.

Measures, we learn from the minute, had been taken for executing exact surveys of all the newly annexed territory in the Punjaub, Pegu, Sinde, Nagpoor, and Berar in the same careful manner as the survey of the older territories had been before carried out; and in Central India ‘the consent of all the native states has been obtained to the making of a topographical survey, and to a demarcation of all the boundaries between the several native states, and between the British territories and those of native states:’ a proceeding expected to lessen the frequency of feuds concerning disputed boundaries.

The activity in irrigation-works and canal-cutting 8had unquestionably been very great. In 1854 the Ganges Canal was opened in its main line, for the double purpose of irrigation and navigation. A mighty work this, which no mutiny, no angry feelings, should induce the English public to forget. It is 525 miles in length, and in some parts 170 feet in width; and considered as a canal for irrigation, ‘it stands unequalled in its class and character among the efforts of civilised nations. Its length is fivefold greater than that of all the main lines of Lombardy united, and more than twice the length of the aggregate irrigation lines of Lombardy and Egypt together—the only countries in the world whose works of irrigation rise above insignificance.’ Nor is this all. ‘As a single work of navigation for purposes of commerce, the Ganges Canal has no competitor throughout the world. No single canal in Europe has attained to half the magnitude of this Indian work. It nearly equals the aggregate length of the four greatest canals in France. It greatly exceeds all the first-class canals of Holland put together; and it is greater, by nearly one-third, than the greatest navigation canal in the United States of America.’ Pausing for one moment just to observe that the writer of the words here quoted seems to have temporarily forgotten the great canal of China, we proceed to state, on the authority of the minute, that when all the branches are finished, this noble Ganges Canal will be 900 miles in length. It will then, by its periodical overflowings, irrigate a million and a half of acres, thus lessening the terrible apprehensions of famine or dearth among millions of human beings. We may doubt or not on other subjects, but it is impossible to doubt the sincerity of the Marquis of Dalhousie when he says: ‘I trust I shall not be thought vain-glorious if I say that the successful execution and completion of such a work as the Ganges Canal would, even if it stood alone, suffice to signalise an Indian administration.’ But this work did not absorb all the energies of the canal engineers; much of a similar though smaller kind had been effected elsewhere. An irrigation canal had been begun in the Punjaub, which, when finished, would be 465 miles in length, fed from the river Ravee. All the old canals formed in the Moultan district of the Punjaub, 600 miles in length, had been cleansed, enlarged, and improved, and the distribution of the waters for the purpose of irrigation placed under judicious regulation. Irrigation canals had been made or improved in the Derajat, in the provinces east of the Sutlej, in Behar, and in Sinde. A magnificent work had been executed for carrying an irrigation canal over the river Godavery; and canals of much importance had been commenced in the Madras and Bombay presidencies.

Rivers and harbours had shared in the attention bestowed on irrigation and canal navigation. The Ganges had been opened to river steamers before 1848, and it only remained to advance in the same line of improvement. The Indus, by the conquest of the Punjaub, had been made a British river almost from the Himalaya down to the ocean; steamers had been placed upon it; and it had become a direct route for troops and travellers to many parts of Northern India, before attainable only by the Calcutta route. All the rivers in the upper part of the Punjaub had been surveyed, with a view to the determination of their capabilities for steam-navigation. No sooner was Pegu acquired, than steamers were placed upon the Irrawaddy, the great river of that country; and short canals of junction between various rivers had been so planned as to give promise of a complete line of river-steaming from Bassein to Moulmein. Arrangements had been made for placing steamers upon the river Burhampooter or Brahmaputra, to connect Assam with the Bay of Bengal. Extensive works had been commenced to improve the navigation of the Godavery. The channels that lead from Calcutta through the Sundurbunds to the sea had been enlarged; and a great bridge over the Hoogly near the city had been planned. The port of Bombay had been greatly improved, and large works for water-supply commenced. At Kurachee, at Madras, at Singapore, at Rangoon, and at other places, engineering improvements had been made to increase the accommodation for shipping.

We follow the Marquis of Dalhousie from the river to the land, and trace with him the astonishing length of new road constructed or planned during his administration. A great trunk-road from Calcutta to Delhi had been extended nearly to the Sutlej; and when the Punjaub became a British possession, plans were immediately marked out for prolonging the same road to Loodianah, Umritsir, Lahore, Jelum, Attock, and Peshawur—thus forming, if all be completed, a magnificent road 1500 miles in length from Calcutta to the Afghan frontier, available both for commercial and military operations. The difficulties of crossing so many broad rivers in Northern India is immense, and the cost great; but the road, as the minute tells us, ‘will repay a thousandfold the labour and the treasure it has cost.’ Then, fine roads had been formed from Patna to Gya, from Cuttack to Ungool and Sumbhulpore, from Dacca to Akyab, and thence towards Aracan and Pegu; while vast systems of roads had been brought under consideration for Pegu, the Punjaub, Sinde, and other newly acquired regions. Engineers had been employed to plan a road from Simla up to the very Himalaya itself, to connect India with Tibet; as it would greatly improve the social position of all the native tribes near it. When Pegu was attacked, and when a military force was sent thither overland from Calcutta, hundreds of elephants were employed to force a way through the forests and roadless tracts between Aracan and Pegu; but by the spring of 1855 a road had been formed, along which a battalion could march briskly on foot.

The Marquis of Dalhousie was not in a position to say so much concerning railways in India as 9ordinary roads. Although railways were brought under the consideration of the Company in 1843, nothing was done regarding them till 1849, when a contract was entered into with a separate company to construct a certain length of railway which, if continued, would connect Calcutta with the north and northwest of India. In the spring of 1853 the marquis recommended a bold line of policy in these matters: the sanction and support, in every available way, of great lines of railway to connect Calcutta with Lahore, Bombay with Agra, Bombay with Madras, and Madras with the Malabar coast. A qualified approval of these schemes had been accorded by the East India Company, and engagements to the extent of ten millions sterling had been made for a railway from Delhi to Burdwan: a line from Burdwan to Calcutta having been opened in 1855. The governor-general, not dreaming of mutinies and rebellions, named the year 1859 as the probable time of finishing the iron route from Calcutta to Delhi. Besides these engagements with the East India Railway Company in the Bengal presidency, contracts had been made with the Great India Peninsula Company for a railway from Bombay to the Ghaut Mountains; and another with the Bombay and Central India Company for a railway from Bombay to Khandeish and Nagpoor, and for another from Surat to Ahmedabad. On the eastern coast, the government had arranged with the Madras Railway Company for lines from Madras to the Malabar coast, viâ Coimbatore, and from Variembaddy to Bangalore. The English nation has long blamed the East India Company for a dilatory policy in regard to railways; but all we have to do in this place is, on the authority of the governor-general, to specify in few words what had been done in the years immediately preceding the outbreak.

The electric telegraph—perhaps the grandest invention of our age—found in India a congenial place for its reception. Where the officials had no more rapid means of sending a message to a distance of a thousand miles than the fleetness of a corps of foot-runners, it is no marvel that the achievements of the lightning-messenger were regarded with an eager eye. An experimental line of electric telegraph was determined on, to be carried out by Dr (now Sir William) O’Shaughnessy; and when that energetic man made his report on the result in 1852, it was at once determined to commence arrangements for lines of immense length, to connect the widely separated cities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Peshawur, and the great towns between them. It was a grand idea, and was worthily realised; for by the month of March 1854 an electric wire of 800 miles was established between Calcutta and Agra; by the month of February 1855, the towns of Calcutta, Agra, Attock, Bombay, and Madras were placed in telegraphic communication by 3000 miles of wire, serving nearly forty towns on the way; and by the beginning of 1856 another length of 1000 miles was added, from Attock to Peshawur, from Bangalore to Ootacamund, and from Rangoon to the Burmese frontier. Many works of great magnitude were required; there were few good roads for the workmen to avail themselves of; there were few bridges; there were deadly jungles to be passed; there was every variety of foundation, from loose black soil to hard rocky wastes; there were seventy large rivers to be crossed, either by cables in the water, or by wires extended on the tops of masts; there was a cable of two miles required to cross the Toongabudra, and one of three miles to cross the Sone—and yet the entire work was comprised within a cost of 500 rupees or £50 per mile: perhaps the wisest expenditure ever incurred in India. Repeatedly has a message, relating to news from England, been transmitted 1000 miles, from Bombay to Calcutta, in less than three-quarters of an hour; and it has become a regular routine that the government at Calcutta shall be in possession of a considerable body of telegraphic news from England within twelve hours after the anchoring of the mail-steamer at Bombay. Who can conceive the bewilderment of the Hindoo mind at such achievements! It is certainly permissible to the governor-general to refer with pride to two or three among many instances of the remarkable service rendered by these telegraphs. ‘When her Majesty’s 10th Hussars were ordered with all speed from Poonah to the Crimea, a message requesting instructions regarding their despatch was one day received by me at Calcutta from the government of Bombay, about nine o’clock in the morning. Instructions were forthwith sent off by the telegraph in reply; and an answer to that reply was again received at Calcutta from Bombay in the evening of the same day. A year before, the same communications for the despatch of speedy reinforcements to the seat of war, which occupied by the telegraph no more than twelve hours, could not have been made in less than thirty days.’ Again: ‘When it was resolved to send her Majesty’s 12th Lancers from Bangalore to the Crimea, instead of her Majesty’s 14th Dragoons from Meerut, orders were forthwith despatched by telegraph direct to the regiment at Bangalore. The corps was immediately got ready for service; it marched two hundred miles, and was there before the transports were ready to receive it.’ Again: ‘On the 7th of February 1856, as soon as the administration of Oude was assuredly under British government, a branch-electric telegraph from Cawnpore to Lucknow was forthwith commenced; in eighteen working-days it was completed, including the laying of a cable, six thousand feet in length, across the river Ganges. On the morning on which I resigned the government in India, General Outram was asked by telegraph: “Is all well in Oude?” The answer: “All is well in Oude,” was received soon after noon, and greeted Lord Canning on his first arrival.’ Little did the new governor-general then foresee in how few months he would receive 10painful proof that all was not well in Oude. However, the Marquis of Dalhousie was justified in adverting with satisfaction to the establishment of telegraphic communication during his reign of power; and he insists on full credit being due to the East India Company for what was done in that direction. ‘I make bold to say, that whether regard be had to promptitude of executive action, to speed and solidity of construction, to rapidity of organisation, to liberality of charge, or to the early realisation and vast magnitude of increased political influence in the East, the achievement of the Honourable Company in the establishment of the electric telegraph in India may challenge comparison with any public enterprise which has been carried into execution in recent times, among the nations of Europe, or in America itself.’

The postal system had not been allowed to stagnate during the eight years under consideration. A commission had been appointed in 1850, to inquire into the best means of increasing the efficiency of the system; and under the recommendations of this commission, great improvements had been made. A director-general of the post-office for the whole of India had been appointed; a uniformity of rate irrespective of distance had been established (three farthings for a letter, and three half-pence for a newspaper); prepayment by postage-stamps had been substituted for cash payment; the privileges of official franking had been almost abolished; and a uniform sixpenny rate was fixed for letters between India and England. Here again the governor-general insists, not only that the Indian government had worked zealously, but that England herself had been outstripped in liberal policy. ‘In England, a single letter is conveyed to any part of the British isles for one penny; in India, a single letter is conveyed over distances immeasurably greater—from Peshawur, on the borders of Afghanistan, to the southernmost village of Cape Comorin, or from Dehooghur, in Upper Assam, to Kurachee at the mouth of the Indus—for no more than three farthings. The postage chargeable on the same letter three years ago in India would not have been less than one shilling, or sixteen times the present charge. Again, since uniform rates of postage between England and India have been established, the Scotch recruit who joins his regiment on our furthest frontier at Peshawur, may write to his mother at John o’ Groat’s House, and may send his letter to her free for sixpence: three years ago, the same sum would not have carried his letter beyond Lahore.’

So great had been the activity of the Company and the governor-general, in the course of eight years, in developing the productive resources of our Oriental empire, that a department of Public Works had become essentially necessary. The Company expended from two to three millions sterling annually in this direction, and a new organisation had been made to conduct the various works on which this amount of expenditure was to be bestowed. When the great roads and canals were being planned and executed, numerous civil engineers were of course needed; and the minute tells us that ‘it was the far-seeing sagacity of Mr Thomason which first anticipated the necessity of training engineers in the country itself in which they were to be employed, and which first suggested an effectual method of doing so. On his recommendation, the civil engineering college at Roorkee, which now rightly bears his honoured name, was founded with the consent of the Honourable Court. It has already been enlarged and extended greatly beyond its original limits. Instruction in it is given to soldiers preparing for subordinate employment in the Public Works department, to young gentlemen not in the service of government, and to natives upon certain conditions. A higher class for commissioned officers of the army was created some years ago, at the suggestion of the late Sir Charles Napier; and the government has been most ready to consent to officers obtaining leave to study there, as in the senior department at Sandhurst. Excellent fruit has already been borne by this institution; many good servants have already been sent forth into [from?] the department; and applications for the services of students of the Thomason College were, before long, received from other local governments.’ But this was not all: civil engineering colleges and classes were formed at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Poonah.

So greatly had the various public works on rivers and harbours, roads and canals, telegraphic and postal communications, increased the trade of India, that the shipping entries increased regularly year by year. There were about six hundred vessels, exclusive of trading craft, that ascended the Hoogly to Calcutta in 1847; by 1856, the number had augmented to twelve hundred; and the tonnage had risen in a still greater ratio.

What is the English nation to think of all this, and how reconcile it with the tragedies destined so soon to afflict that magnificent country? Here we find the highest representative of the British crown narrating and describing, in words too clear to be misunderstood, political and commercial advancements of a really stupendous kind, effected within the short period of eight years. We read of vast territories conquered, tributary states annexed, amicable relations with other states strengthened, territorial revenues increased, improved administration organised, the civil service purified, legislative reforms effected, prison-discipline improved, native colleges and schools established, medical aid disseminated, thuggee and dacoitee put down, suttee and infanticide discouraged, churches and chapels built, ministers of religion salaried. We are told of the cultivation of raw produce being fostered, the improvement of live-stock insured, the availability of mineral treasures tested, exact territorial surveys completed, stupendous irrigation and navigation canals constructed, flotillas of river-steamers established, 11ports and harbours enlarged and deepened, magnificent roads formed, long lines of railway commenced, thousands of miles of electric telegraph set to work, vast postal improvements insured. We read all this, and we cannot marvel if the ruler of India felt some pride in his share of the work. But still the problem remains unsolved—was the great Revolt foreshadowed in any of these achievements? As the mutiny began among the military, it may be well to see what information is afforded by the minute concerning military reforms between the years 1848 and 1856.

It is truly remarkable, knowing what the English nation now so painfully knows, that the Marquis of Dalhousie, in narrating the various improvements introduced by him in the military system, passes at once to the British soldiers: distinctly asserting that ‘the position of the native soldier in India has long been such as to leave hardly any circumstance of his condition in need of improvement.’ The British troops, we are told, had been benefited in many ways. The terms of service in India had been limited to twelve years as a maximum; the rations had been greatly improved; malt liquor had been substituted for destructive ardent spirits; the barracks had been mostly rebuilt, with modifications depending on the climate of each station; separate barracks had been set apart for the married men of each regiment; lavatories and reading-rooms had become recognised portions of every barrack; punkhas or cooling fans had been adopted for barracks in hot stations, and additional bed-coverings in cold; swimming-baths had been formed at most of the stations; soldiers’ gardens had been formed at many of the cantonments; workshops and tools for handicraftsmen had been attached to the barracks; sanitaria had been built among the hills for sick soldiers; and arrangements had been framed for acclimatising all recruits from England before sending them into hot districts on service. Then, as to the officers. Encouragement had been offered for the officers to make themselves proficient in the native languages. A principle had been declared and established, that promotion by seniority should no longer govern the service; but that the test should be ‘the selection of no man, whatever his standing, unless he was confessedly capable and efficient.’ With the consent of the Queen, the Company’s officers had had granted to them the recognition, until then rather humiliatingly withheld, of their military rank, not only in India but throughout the world. A military orphan school had been established in the hill districts. All the military departments had been revised and amended, the commissariat placed on a wholly new basis, and the military clothing supplied on a more efficient system than before.

Again is the search baffled. We find in the minute proofs only that India had become great and grand; if the seeds of rebellion existed, they were buried under the language which described material and social advancement. Is it that England, in 1856, had yet to learn to understand the native character? Such may be; for thuggee came to the knowledge of our government with astounding suddenness; and there may be some other kind of thuggee, religious or social, still to be learned by us. Let us bear in mind what this thuggee or thugism was, and who were the Thugs. Many years ago, uneasy whispers passed among the British residents in India. Rumours went abroad of the fate of unsuspecting travellers ensnared while walking or riding upon the road, lassoed or strangled by means of a silken cord, and robbed of their personal property; the rumours were believed to be true; but it was long ere the Indian government succeeded in bringing to light the stupendous conspiracy or system on which these atrocities were based. It was then found that there exists a kind of religious body in India, called Thugs, among whom murder and robbery are portions of a religious rite, established more than a thousand years ago. They worship Kali, one of the deities of the Hindoo faith. In gangs varying from ten to two hundred, they distribute themselves—or rather did distribute themselves, before the energetic measures of the government had nearly suppressed their system—about various parts of India, sacrificing to their tutelary goddess every victim they can seize, and sharing the plunder among themselves. They shed no blood, except under special circumstances; murder being their religion, the performance of its duties requires secrecy, better observed by a noose or a cord than by a knife or firearm. Every gang has its leader, teacher, entrappers, stranglers, and gravediggers; each with his prescribed duties. When a traveller, supposed or known to have treasure about him, has been inveigled to a selected spot by the Sothas or entrappers, he is speedily put to death quietly by the Bhuttotes or stranglers, and then so dexterously placed underground by the Lughahees or gravediggers that no vestige of disturbed earth is visible.^[1] This done, they offer a sacrifice to their goddess Kali, and finally share the booty taken from the murdered man. Although the ceremonial is wholly Hindoo, the Thugs themselves comprise Mohammedans as well as Hindoos; and it is supposed by some inquirers that the Mohammedans have ingrafted a system of robbery on that which was originally a religious murder—murder as part of a sacrifice to a deity.

We repeat: there may be some moral or social thuggee yet to be discovered in India; but all we have now to assert is, that the condition of India in 1856 did not suggest to the retiring governor-general the slightest suspicion that the British in that country were on the edge of a volcano. He 12said, in closing his remarkable minute: ‘My parting hope and prayer for India is, that, in all time to come, these reports from the presidencies and provinces under our rule may form, in each successive year, a happy record of peace, prosperity, and progress.’ No forebodings here, it is evident. Nevertheless, there are isolated passages which, read as England can now read them, are worthy of notice. One runs thus: ‘No prudent man, who has any knowledge of Eastern affairs, would ever venture to predict the maintenance of continued peace within our Eastern possessions. Experience, frequent hard and recent experience, has taught us that war from without, or rebellion from within, may at any time be raised against us, in quarters where they were the least to be expected, and by the most feeble and unlikely instruments. No man, therefore, can ever prudently hold forth assurance of continued peace in India.’ Again: ‘In territories and among a population so vast, occasional disturbance must needs prevail. Raids and forays are, and will still be, reported from the western frontier. From time to time marauding expeditions will descend into the plains; and again expeditions to punish the marauders will penetrate the hills. Nor can it be expected but that, among tribes so various and multitudes so innumerable, local outbreaks will from time to time occur.’ But in another place he seeks to lessen the force and value of any such disturbances as these. ‘With respect to the frontier raids, they are and must for the present be viewed as events inseparable from the state of society which for centuries past has existed among the mountain tribes. They are no more to be regarded as interruptions of the general peace in India, than the street-brawls which appear among the everyday proceedings of a police-court in London are regarded as indications of the existence of civil war in England. I trust, therefore, that I am guilty of no presumption in saying, that I shall leave the Indian Empire in peace, without and within.’

Such, then, is a governor-general’s picture of the condition of the British Empire in India in the spring of 1856: a picture in which there are scarcely any dark colours, or such as the painter believed to be dark. We may learn many things from it: among others, a consciousness how little we even now know of the millions of Hindostan—their motives, their secrets, their animosities, their aspirations. The bright picture of 1856, the revolting tragedies of 1857—how little relation does there appear between them! That there is a relation all must admit, who are accustomed to study the links of the chain that connect one event with another; but at what point the relation occurs, is precisely the question on which men’s opinions will differ until long and dispassionate attention has been bestowed on the whole subject.

Notes.

[This may be a convenient place in which to introduce a few observations on three subjects likely to come with much frequency under the notice of the reader in the following chapters; namely, the distances between the chief towns in India and the three great presidential cities—the discrepancies in the current modes of spelling the names of Indian persons and places—and the meanings of some of the native words frequently used in connection with Indian affairs.]

Distances.—For convenience of occasional reference, a table of some of the distances in India is here given. It has been compiled from the larger tables of Taylor, Garden, Hamilton, and Parbury. Many of the distances are estimated in some publications at smaller amount, owing, it may be, to the opening of new and shorter routes:

13Orthography.—It is perfectly hopeless to attempt here any settlement of the vexed question of Oriental orthography, the spelling of the names of Indian persons and places. If we rely on one governor-general, the next contradicts him; the commander-in-chief very likely differs from both; authors and travellers have each a theory of his own; while newspaper correspondents dash recklessly at any form of word that first comes to hand. Readers must therefore hold themselves ready for these complexities, and for detecting the same name under two or three different forms. The following will suffice to shew our meaning:—Rajah, raja—nabob, nawab, nawaub—Punjab, Punjaub, Penjab, Panjab—Vizierabad, Wuzeerabad—Ghengis Khan, Gengis Khan, Jengis Khan—Cabul, Caboul, Cabool, Kabul—Deccan, Dekkan, Dukhun—Peshawur, Peshawar—Mahomet, Mehemet, Mohammed, Mahommed, Muhummud—Sutlej, Sutledge—Sinde, Scinde, Sindh—Himalaya, Himmaléh—Cawnpore, Cawnpoor—Sikhs, Seiks—Gujerat, Guzerat—Ali, Alee, Ally—Ghauts, Gauts—Sepoys, Sipahis—Faquir, Fakeer—Oude, Oudh—Bengali, Bengalee—Burhampooter, Brahmaputra—Asam, Assam—Nepal, Nepaul—Sikkim, Sikim—Thibet, Tibet—Goorkas, Ghoorkas—Cashmere, Cashmeer, Kashmir—Doab, Dooab—Sudra, Soodra—Vishnu, Vishnoo—Buddist, Buddhist, &c. Mr Thornton, in his excellent Gazetteer of India, gives a curious instance of this complexity, in eleven modes of spelling the name of one town, each resting on some good authority—Bikaner, Bhicaner, Bikaneer, Bickaneer, Bickanere, Bikkaneer, Bhikanere, Beekaneer, Beekaner, Beykaneer, Bicanere. One more instance will suffice. Viscount Canning, writing to the directors of the East India Company concerning the conduct of a sepoy, spelled the man’s name Shiek Paltoo. A fortnight afterwards, the same governor-general, writing to the same directors about the same sepoy, presented the name under the form Shaik Phultoo. We have endeavoured as far as possible to make the spelling in the narrative and the map harmonise.

Vocabulary.—We here present a vocabulary of about fifty words much used in India, both in conversation and in writing, connected with the military and social life of the natives; with the initials or syllables P., Port., H., M., A., T., Tam., S., to denote whether the words have been derived from the Persian, Portuguese, Hindustani, Mahratta, Arabic, Tatar, Tamil, or Sanscrit languages. Tamil or Tamul is spoken in some of the districts of Southern India. In most instances, two forms of spelling are given, to prepare the reader for the discrepancies above adverted to:

Ab, aub (P.), water; used in composition thus: Punjaub, five waters, or watered by five rivers; Doab, a district between two rivers, equivalent in meaning to the Greek Mesopotamia.

Abad (P.), inhabited; a town or city; such as Allahabad, city of God; Hyderabad, city of Hyder.

Ayah (Port.), a nurse; a female attendant on a lady.

Baba (T.), a term of endearment in the domestic circle, nearly equivalent to the English dear, and applied both to a father and his child.

Baboo, a Hindoo title, equivalent to our Esquire.

Bag, bágh, a garden; Kudsiya bágh is a celebrated garden outside Delhi.

Bahadoor (P.), brave; a title of respect added to the names of military officers and others.

Bang (P.), an intoxicating potion made from hemp.

Bazar, bazaar, an exchange or market-place.

Begum (T.), a princess, a lady of high rank.

Bheestee, bihishtí, a water-carrier.

Bobachee, báwarchí (T.), an Indian officer’s cook.

Budgerow, bajrá (S.), a Ganges boat of large size.

Bungalow, banglá (H.), a house or dwelling.

Cherry, cheri (Tam.), village or town; termination to the name of many places in Southern India; such as Pondicherry.

Chit, chittí (H.), a note or letter.

Chupatty, chápátí (P.), a thin cake of unleavened Indian-corn bread.

Coolie, kuli (T.), a porter or carrier.

Cutcherry, kacharí (H.), an official room; a court of justice.

Dacoit, dákáit (H.), a gang-robber.

Dâk, dahk, dawk (H.), the Indian post, and the arrangements connected with it.

Dewan, a native minister or agent.

Dost (P.), a friend.

Feringhee, a Frank or European.

Fakeer, fakír (A.), a mendicant devotee.

Ghazee, ghazi (A.), a true believer who fights against infidels: hence Ghazeepoor, city of the faithful.

Golundauze, golandáz (P.), a native artilleryman.

Havildar (P.), a native sergeant.

Jehad (A.), a holy war.

Jemadar (P.), a native lieutenant.

Jhageerdar, jaghiredar, jágírdár (P.), the holder of land granted for services.

Mohurrum (A.), a fast held sacred by Mohammedans on the tenth day of the first month in their year, equivalent to the 25th of July.

Musjid (A.), a mosque; thence jumma musjid or jum’aah masjid, a cathedral or chief mosque.

Naik, naig (S.), a native corporal.

Náná, nena (M.), grandfather, a term of respect or precedence among the Mahrattas; Náná Sahib, so far from being a family or personal name, is simply a combination of two terms of respect (see Sahib) for a person whose real name was Dhundu Punt.

Nawab, nabob, núwáb (A.), derived from náib, a viceroy or vicegerent.

Nuddee, nadi (S.), a river.

Nullah, nálá (H.), a brook, water-course, the channel of a torrent.

Patam, pattanam (S.), a town; the termination of the names of many places in Southern India; such as Seringapatam, the city of Shrí Ranga, a Hindoo divinity.

Peon (P.), a messenger or foot-attendant.

Pore, poor, a town; the final syllable in many significant names, such as Bhurtpore or Bharatpoor, the town of Bharata.

Rajpoot, a Hindoo of the military caste or order; there is one particular province in Upper India named from them Rajpootana.

Ryot, a peasant cultivator.

Sahib, saheb, sáaib (A.), lord; a gentleman.

Sepoy, sípahí, in the Bengal presidency, a native soldier in the Company’s service; in that of Bombay, it often has the meaning of a peon or foot-messenger.

Shahzadah (P.), prince; king’s son.

Sowar (P.), a native horseman or trooper.

Subadar, soubahdar (A.), a native captain.

Tuppal, tappál (H.), a packet of letters; the post.

Zemindar, zamindár (P.), a landowner.

The magnificent India which began to revolt from England in the early months of 1857; which continued that Revolt until it spread to many thousands of square miles; which conducted the Revolt in a manner that appalled all the civilised world by its unutterable horrors—this India was, after all, not really unsound at its core. It was not so much the people who rebelled, as the soldiers. Whatever grievances the hundred and seventy millions of human beings in that wonderful country may have had to bear; whatever complaints may have been justifiable on their parts against their native princes or the British government; and whatever may have been the feelings of those native princes towards the British—all of which matters will have to be considered in later chapters of this work—still it remains incontestable that the outbreak was a military revolt rather than a national rebellion. The Hindoo foot-soldier, fed and paid by the British, ran off with his arms and his uniform, and fought against those who had supported him; the Mohammedan trooper, with his glittering equipments and his fine horse, escaped with both in like manner, and became suddenly an enemy instead of a friend and servant. What effect this treachery may have had on the populace of the towns, is another question: we have at present only to do with the military origin of the struggle.

Here, therefore, it becomes at once necessary that the reader should be supplied with an intelligible clue to the series of events, a groundwork on which his appreciation of them may rest. As this work aims at something more than a mere record of disasters and victories, all the parts will be made to bear some definite relation one to another; and the first of these relations is—between the mutinous movements themselves, and the soldiers who made those movements. Before we can well understand what the sepoys did, we must know who the sepoys are; before we can picture to ourselves an Indian regiment in revolt, we must know of what elements it consists, and what are its usages when in cantonments or when on the march; and before we can appreciate the importance of two presidential armies remaining faithful while that of Bengal revolted, we must know what is meant by a presidency, and in what way the Anglo-Indian army bears relation to the territorial divisions of India. We shall not need for these purposes to give here a formal history of Hindostan, nor a history of the rise and constitution of the East India Company, nor an account of the manners and customs of the Hindoos, nor a narrative of the British wars in India in past ages, nor a topographical description of India—many of these subjects will demand attention in later pages; but at present only so much will be touched upon as is necessary for the bare understanding of the facts of the Revolt, leaving the causes for the present in abeyance.

What are the authoritative or official divisions of the country in reference to the governors who control and the soldiers who fight (or ought to fight) for it? What are the modes in which a vast region, extending more than a thousand miles in many different directions, is or may be traversed by rebel soldiers who fight against their employers, and by true soldiers who punish the rebels? What and who are the soldiers thus adverted to; how many, of what races, how levied, how paid and supported, where cantoned, how officered? These are the three subjects that will occupy a brief chapter; after which the narrative of the Revolt may with profit be at once entered upon.

And first, for India as an immense country governed by a people living eight or ten thousand miles distant. Talk as we may, there are few among us who can realise the true magnitude of this idea—the true bearing of the relation borne by two small islands in a remote corner of Europe to a region which has been famed since the time of Alexander the Great. The British Empire in India—what does it denote? Even before the acquisition of Oude, Pegu, and Nagpoor, the British possessions in India covered nearly 800,000 square miles; but as the influence of England is gradually extending over the protected and the hitherto independent states, we shall best conceive the whole (without Pegu, which is altogether eastward of what is considered India) as a compact territory of 1,400,000 square miles—twelve times as large as the United Kingdom, sixteen times as large as Great Britain, twenty-five times as large as 15England and Wales: double the size, in fact, of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Prussia, and Switzerland, all combined. Nor is this, like the Russian Empire, a vast but thinly populated region. It contains at least a hundred and eighty millions of human beings, more than a hundred and thirty millions of whom are the direct subjects of Queen Victoria—that is, if anything can be direct, connected with the anomalous relations between the Crown and the East India Company.

It comes within the knowledge of most intelligent English readers at the present day, that this Indian Empire, governed by a curiously complicated bargain between a sovereign and a company, has been growing for a hundred years, and still continues growing. In fits of national anger or international generosity, we inveigh against the Czar of Russia for processes of aggression and plans of annexation in regions around and between the Caspian and Black Seas, and we compassionate and assist his weak neighbours under the pressure of his ambition; but it is only in times of excitement or peril that we consider the extraordinary way in which our own Indian Empire has been built up—by conquest, by purchase, by forfeiture—and in some cases by means which, called robbery by our enemies, do at any rate demand a little compunction from us as a Christian people. Exactly a century ago, England scarcely occupied a foot of ground in India; her power was almost crushed out by the native nawab who rendered himself infamous by the episode of the Black Hole at Calcutta; and it was in the year after that atrocity—namely, in 1757, that Clive began those wonderful victories which established a permanent basis for a British Empire in Hindostan. And what a continuous growth by increment has since been displayed! The Pergunnahs, Masulipatam, Burdwan, Midnapore, Chittagong, Bengal, Bahar, the Northern Circars, Benares, all passed into British hands by the year 1775; the next twenty-five years brought to us the ownership of Salsette, Nagore, Pulo Penang, Malabar, Dindigul, Salem, Barramahal, Coimbatore, Canara, Tanjore, and portions of the Deccan and Mysore; in the first quarter of the present century the list was increased by the Carnatic, Gorukhpore, the Doab, Bareilly, portions of Bundelcund, Cuttack, Balasore, Delhi, Gujerat, Kumaon, Saugor, Khandeish, Ajmeer, Poonah, the Concan, portions of Mahratta country, districts in Bejapore and Ahmednuggur, Singapore, and Malacca; in the next period of equal length the acquisitions included Assam, Aracan, Tenasserim, the Nerbudda districts, Patna, Sumbhulpore, Koorg, Loodianah, Kurnaul, Sinde, and the Jullundur Doab; while during the eight years of the Marquis of Dalhousie’s administration, as we learn on his own authority, there were added Pegu, the Punjaub, Nagpoor, Oude, Satara, Jhansi, and Berar—all these in exactly a century.

The whole of British India is placed under a governor-general, whose official residence is at Calcutta, and who is assisted by a kind of cabinet or council of ministers. Formerly there were three presidencies, under whom the whole territory was placed; two being under the governors of Bombay and Madras, and the remainder, called the Bengal presidency, being under the governor-general himself, who was to this extent vested with a special as well as a general government. But in process of time it was found impossible for this official to fulfil all the duties imposed upon him; and the great Bengal presidency became subdivided. There are now five local governors of great districts—the governor-general himself, who directly rules many of the newly acquired regions; the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, who rules some of the country formerly included in the presidency of Bengal; the lieutenant-governor of the Lower Provinces, who rules the rest of that country; and the governors of Madras and Bombay, whose range of territory has not undergone much increase in recent years. Let us learn a little concerning each of these five.

Madras, as a presidency or government, includes the whole of the south of India, where its narrowed, peninsular form is most apparent, up to about latitude 16° north, together with a strip still further north on the east or Coromandel coast. Its greatest inland extent is about 950 miles in one direction, and 450 in another; while its shores are washed by the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal along a coast-line of no less than 1700 miles—unfortunately, however, very ill provided with ports and anchorages. There are about thirty districts and states under the governor’s rule—some as ‘regulation districts,’ others as ‘non-regulation districts,’ and others as ‘native states.’ The difference between these three kinds may be thus briefly indicated: the ‘regulation’ districts are thoroughly British, and are governed directly by the chief of the presidency; the ‘non-regulation’ districts are now equally British, though of more recent acquisition, but are governed by agents or commissioners; while the ‘native states’ have still their native princes, ‘protected,’ or rather controlled by the British. Without any formal enumeration, it may be well to remember that the following names of some of these districts, all more or less familiar to English readers as the names of towns or provinces, are included among those belonging to the presidency or government of Madras—Masulipatam, Nellore, Chingleput, Madras, Arcot, Cuddalore, Cuddapah, Salem, Coimbatore, Trichinopoly, Tanjore, Madura, Tinnevelly, Malabar, Canara, Vizagapatam, Kurnaul, Koorg,^[3] Cochin, Mysore, Travancore. Some of these are not absolutely British; but their independence is little more than a name. There are various important towns, or places worth knowing in connection with Indian affairs, which are included in some or other of 16these districts, but not giving their names to them—such as Seringapatam, Golcandah, Rajamandry, Juggernaut, Vellore, Pulicat, Pondicherry (French), Tranquebar, Negapatam, Bangalore, Ootacamund, Mangalore, Calicut.

Bombay, as a presidency, is a curiously shaped strip. Exclusive of the subordinate territories of native princes (over which, however, the Company exercises paramount political sway) and of Sinde, which, though recently placed under the government of Bombay, may properly be regarded as a distinct territory—exclusive of these, the presidency occupies a narrow strip, of irregular outline, stretching for a considerable distance north and south. It occupies the western coast of the peninsula, from Gujerat on the north, to the small Portuguese settlement of Goa on the south; and has a length of 650 miles, with a maximum breadth of 240. The Bombay provinces included in the strip just noticed, the neighbouring territories administered by or on behalf of native princes, and Sinde, form three sections about equal in size, the whole collectively being thrice as large as England and Wales. To assist the memory, as in the last paragraph, we give the names of the chief districts likely to be known to English readers—all of which either belong absolutely to the presidency of Bombay, or are more or less under the control of the governor—Surat, Baroche, Ahmedabad, Khandeish, Poonah, Ahmednuggur, Bombay, Concan, Satara, Baroda, Kattywar, Kolapore, Cutch, the Mahratta districts, Kurachee, Hyderabad, Shikarpore, Khyrpore. The last four are districts of Sinde, conquered by the late Sir Charles James Napier, and placed under the Bombay presidency as being nearer at hand than any of the others. Besides the towns similarly named to most of these districts, the following may be usefully mentioned—Goa (Portuguese), Bejapore, Bassein, Aurungabad, Assaye, Nuseerabad, Cambay.

Lower Bengal, or the Lower Provinces of Bengal, considered as a sub-presidency or lieutenant-government, comprises all the eastern portion of British India, bounded on the east by the Burmese and Chinese Empires, and on the north by Nepaul, Sikim, and Bhotan; southward, it is washed by the Bay of Bengal; while inland or westward, it reaches to a point on the Ganges a little beyond Patna, but not so far as Benares. Fancy might compare it in shape to a dumb-bell, surmounting the upper part of the Bay of Bengal, which washes its shores throughout a distance of 900 miles. Without reckoning native states under the control of the Company, this lieutenant-governorship is considerably more than three times as large as England and Wales; and nearly the whole of it is in the basins of, or drained by, the two magnificent rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra. On the principle before adopted, we give the names of districts most likely to become familiarised to the reader—Jessore, Burdwan, Bancorah, Bhaugulpore, Monghir, Cuttack, Balasore, Midnapore, Moorshedabad, Rungpoor, Dacca, Silhet, Patna, Bahar, Chittagong, the Sunderbunds, Assam, Aracan. Most of these are also the names of towns, each the chief in its district; but there are other important towns and places not here named—including Calcutta, Cossimbazar, Barrackpore, Chandernagore, Serampore, Culpee, Purneah, Boglipore, Rajmahal, Nagore, Raneegunge, Jellasore, Dinapore, Bahar, Ramghur, Burhampore.

Northwest Bengal, or the Northwestern Provinces of the Bengal presidency, regarded as a sub-presidency or lieutenant-governorship, comprises some of the most important and densely populated districts of Northern India. It covers seven degrees of latitude and nine of longitude; or, if the portion of the ‘non-regulation’ districts under the control of this lieutenant-governor be included, the range extends to ten degrees of latitude and twelve of longitude. Its boundary is roughly marked by the neighbouring provinces or states of Sirhind, Kumaon, Nepaul, Oude, Lower Bengal, Rewah, Bundelcund, and Scindiah’s Mahratta territory; but many of these are included among its ‘non-regulation’ territories. In its limited, strictly British territory, it is a little larger than England and Wales; but including the ‘non-regulation’ provinces, such as Kumaon, Ajmeer, Saugor, &c., it is vastly larger. As the chief city is Agra, the lieutenant-governorship is often called by that name: more convenient, perhaps, than the one officially adopted—indeed it was at one time determined, though the plan has been postponed sine die, to form an entirely new and distinct presidency, called the Presidency of Agra. The Ganges and the Jumna are the great rivers that permeate it. As before, we give the names of the most familiarly known divisions or districts—Delhi, Meerut, Allygurh, Rohilcund, Bareilly, Shahjehanpoor, Bijnour, Agra, Furruckabad, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Futtehpore, Benares, Gorukhpore, Azimghur, Jounpore, Mirzapore, Ghazeepore; and if to these we add the names of towns not indicated by the names of their districts—such as Simla, Sirhind, Umballa, Loodianah, Shahabad, Buxar—it will be seen how many places noted more or less in Indian affairs lie within this province or lieutenant-governorship.

For the sake of brevity, it may here be remarked, we shall frequently, in future chapters, use the names ‘Northwest Bengal’ and ‘Lower Bengal,’ instead of the tedious designations ‘Northwestern Provinces’ and ‘Lieutenant Government of Bengal.’

As to the fifth or remaining sphere of government—that which is under the governor-general himself—it is with difficulty described; so many are the detached scraps and patches. The overworked representative of the crown, whether his name be Auckland or Ellenborough, Dalhousie or Canning, finding the governorship of Bengal too onerous when added to the governor-generalship of the whole of India, gives up his special care of Bengal, divides it into two sub-provinces, and 17hands it over to the two lieutenant-governors. But the increase of territory in British India has been so vast within the last few years, and the difficulty so great of deciding to which presidency they ought to belong, that they have been made into a fifth dominion or government, under the governor-general himself. The great and important country of the Punjaub, acquired a few years ago, is one of the list; it is under the governor-general, and is administered for him by a board of commissioners. The kingdom of Oude is another, annexed in 1856, and similarly represented by residents or commissioners acting for and under the orders of the governor-general. The province of Nagpoor is a third: a large country in the very centre of India, annexed in 1853, and nearly touching all the four governorships already described. Pegu is a fourth, wrested from the sultan of Burmah, in 1852, and placed under the governor-general’s administration. A fifth is Tenasserim, a strip of country stretching five hundred miles along the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal. There are other fragments; but the above will suffice to shew that the governor-general has no inconsiderable amount of territory under his immediate control, represented by his commissioners. If we look at the names of places included within these limits, we shall be struck with their number and importance in connection with stirring events in India. In the Punjaub we find Peshawur, Attock, Rawul Pindee, Jelum, Ramnugur, Chillianwalla, Wuzeerabad, Umritsir, Lahore, Jullundur, Ghoorka, Ferozpore, Ferozshah, Moodkee; in the once independent but now British province or kingdom of Oude will be found the names of Lucknow, Oude, Fyzabad, Sultanpore, Khyrabad; in the territory of Nagpoor is the town of the same name, but other towns of any note are scarce. In Pegu and Tenasserim, both ultra-Gangetic or eastward of the Ganges, we find Rangoon, Bassein, Prome, Moulmein, and Martaban.

The reader has here before him about a hundred and forty names of places in this rapid sketch of the great divisional governments of India, mostly the names of important towns; and—without any present details concerning modes of government, or numbers governed, natural wealth or social condition—we believe he will find his comprehension of the events of the great Revolt much aided by a little attention to this account of the five governments into which British India is at present divided. As for the original names of kingdoms and provinces, nawabships and rajahships, it scarcely repays the trouble to learn them: when the native chiefs were made pensioned puppets, the former names of their possessions became of lessened value, and many of them are gradually disappearing from the maps. We have ‘political residents,’ ‘government agents,’ or ‘commissioners,’ at the capital city of almost every prince in India; to denote that, though the prince may hold the trappings of royalty, there is a watchful master scrutinising his proceedings, and claiming something to do with his military forces. Such is the case at Hyderabad in the Nizam’s territory, at Khatmandoo in Nepaul, at Gwalior in Scindiah’s dominions, at Indore in Holkar’s dominions, at Bhopal, in the country of the same name, at Bhurtpore and elsewhere in the Rajpoot princes’ dominions, at Darjeeling in Sikim, at Baroda in the Guicowar’s dominions, &c.

The semi-independent princes of India—mostly rajahs if Hindoos, nawabs if Mohammedans—are certainly placed in a most anomalous position. There are nearly two hundred of these vassal-kings, if we may so term them—some owning territories as large as European kingdoms, while others claim dominion over bits of country not larger than petty German principalities. The whole of them have treaties and engagements with the British government, involving the reciprocal obligations of protection and allegiance. Some of them pay tribute, others do not; but almost all have formally relinquished the right of self-defence, and also that of maintaining diplomatic relations with each other. The princes are regarded as children, expected to look up for protection only to their great mother, the Company. The Company undertakes not only to guarantee external safety but also internal tranquillity in these states, and is the umpire in all quarrels between native rulers. Though not called upon, and indeed not allowed, to defend themselves from an external attack, the princes mostly have armies, more for show than use under ordinary circumstances; but then they must obtain permission to do this, and they must limit the numbers; and in some cases there is a stipulation that if the British be at war in India, the prince must lend his troops. It is in this sense that the independent princes of India are said to possess, collectively, an armed force of little less than four hundred thousand men: many of them available, according to treaty, for British service.

Next, we may usefully pay a little attention to this question—How, in so immense a country, do the soldiers and subjects of these several states, British and native, travel from place to place: how do they cross mountains where passes are few, or marshes and sandy plains where roads are few and bad, or broad rivers where bridges are scarce? The distances traversed by the armies are sometimes enormous. Let us open a map of India, and see, for example, the relative positions of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Delhi, Peshawur, and Kurachee at the western mouth of the Indus. Delhi is nearly nine hundred miles from Bombay, more than nine hundred from Calcutta by land, fifteen or sixteen hundred miles from the same city by water-route up the Ganges and Jumna, and nearly fourteen hundred from Madras. Kurachee, the most westerly spot in India, and destined one day, perhaps, to be an important depôt for steamers from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, is more than sixteen hundred miles from Calcutta, nearly 18across the broadest part of India from east to west; while Peshawur, at the extreme northwest or Afghan frontier, acquired by England when the Punjaub was annexed, is no less than two thousand miles from Madras. All opinions and judgments, concerning the slowness of operations in India, must be tempered by a consideration of these vast distances.

The rivers were the great highways of that country before roads existed, as in other regions; and they have never ceased to be the most frequented routes. At least such is the case in relation to the larger rivers—such as the Ganges, Indus, Nerbudda, Kishna, Jumna, Sutlej, and Jelum. Hindoos and Mohammedans, too poor to hire horses or palkees for land-travel, may yet be able to avail themselves of their river-boats.

The native boats which work on the Ganges are numerous and curious in kind. The patella or baggage-boat is of saul-wood, clinker-built, and flat-bottomed, with rather slanting outsides, and not so manageable as a punt or a London barge; its great breadth gives it a very light draught of water, and renders it fittest for the cotton and other up-country products, which require little more than a dry and secure raft to float them down the stream. The oolak or common baggage-boat of the Hoogly and Central Bengal, has a sharp bow and smooth rounded sides; it is fitted for tracking and sailing before the wind, and is tolerably manageable with the oar in smooth water. The Dacca pulwar is more weatherly, although, like the rest, without keel, and the fastest and most handy boat in use for general traffic. The budgerow, the bauleah, and the ketch-rigged pinnace, are employed by Europeans for their personal conveyance. Besides these, there are numerous others—such as the wood-boats of the Sunderbunds, of various forms and dimensions—from one hundred to six thousand maunds burden (a maund being about equal to 100 pounds troy); the salt-boats of Tumlook; the light boats which carry betel-leaf; the Calcutta bhur, or cargo-boat of the port; the Chittagong boats; the light mug-boats, with floors of a single hollowed piece of timber, and raised sides, neatly attached by sewing, with strips of bamboo over the seams; the dinghee; and the panswee—all found within the limits of the Bengal presidency. ‘A native traveller, according to his degree and substance, engages a dinghee or a panswee, a pulwar or an oolak; the man of wealth puts his baggage and attendants in these, and provides a budgerow or a pinnace for his personal accommodation. Officers of high standing in the civil or military service, travelling with a large retinue of servants and a quantity of baggage, seldom have less than five or six boats (one of them a cooking-boat, and another fitted with an oven for baking bread): sometimes as many as fifteen when they carry their horses and equipages, and the materials of housekeeping for their comfortable establishment on arrival.’

Before Indian steamers were introduced, or Indian railways thought of, the Ganges was the great highway from Calcutta to Benares, Allahabad, and the northwestern provinces generally, in all cases where speed was not required. The Indian government used to allow their military servants two months and a half for proceeding to Benares, three to Allahabad, five to Meerut, and nine to Loodianah—periods that seem to us, in the old country, outrageous in their length. The boats were chiefly of two of the kinds mentioned in the preceding paragraph—namely, the pinnace, very European in its appearance, and the lofty sterned budgerow, peculiarly Indian. Even after steamers were placed upon the Ganges, the slow-going budgerow continued to be much used by the Company’s officers, and by other persons going northwest—chiefly in cases where a family and a large quantity of luggage or personal effects had to be conveyed; for every other mode than the budgerow then becomes very costly—and will probably so continue until the great trunk-railway is completed. Budgerow boating is, it must be confessed, enough to stagnate the blood of an active man who wishes to speed onward to a scene of usefulness. As the tide ends at a few miles above Calcutta, there is a constant downward current throughout all the rest of the Ganges; and this current has to be struggled against during the up-passage. If the wind be favourable, sails are hoisted; but if otherwise, progress is made by gooning or tracking, an operation performed by the greater part of the crew proceeding on shore, and with ropes attached to the mast-head, dragging the vessel bodily along: wading for hours, it may be, through nullahs or creeks more than breast high. The travellers spend much of their time on shore in the cooler hours of the morning and evening, walking, fishing, or shooting, or otherwise whiling away their time; for they can easily keep up with a boat that only makes ten miles per average day. The Company have been accustomed to make a certain allowance to each officer for boat-accommodation up the country; and it is not unusual for two or three to join in the hire of one budgerow, to their mutual comfort, and with a small saving out of their allowance. They engage an attendant dinghee as a cook-boat, to keep the culinary operations at a respectful distance; and they fit up their budgerow with camp-tables, camp-stools, charpoys or light bedsteads, copper chillumchees or wash-basins, rugs, hanging lamps, canteens, bullock or camel trunks, and a few other articles of furniture; with wine, spirits, ale, preserves, cheeses, pickles, salt meats, hams, tongues, and other provisions, which are cheaper at Calcutta than if purchased on the way; and with their wardrobes, articles for the toilet, books, chess and backgammon boards, guns, musical instruments, and other aids to lessen the tedium of a long voyage.

Hitherto, commerce has had so much more to do with this Ganges traffic than passenger travel, that the slowness of the progress was not felt: as in the 19instance of the canals of England, which, made for goods and not for passengers, are not blameable on the score of tardiness. The Ganges is now, as it has been for ages, the main channel for the commerce of Northern India. The produce of Europe, of Southern India, of the Eastern Archipelago, of China, brought to Calcutta by ocean-going steamers or sailing-ships, is distributed upwards to Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi, and other great towns, almost exclusively by the Ganges route; and the same boats which convey these cargoes, bring down the raw cotton, indigo, opium, rice, sugar, grain, rich stuffs, piece-goods, and other grown or manufactured commodities from the interior, either for consumption at Calcutta and other towns on the route, or for shipment to England and elsewhere. It is probable that the cargo-boats and the budgerows will continue to convey a largo proportion of the traffic of India, let steamers and railways make what progress they may; for there is much local trading that can be better managed by this slow, stopping, free-and-easy Ganges route of boating.

Boats on the Ganges.

The Ganges steamers are peculiar. Each consists of two vessels, a tug and a flat, neither of which is of much use without the other. The tug contains the engine; the flat contains the passengers and cargo; and this double arrangement seems to have been adopted as a means of insuring light draught. Each flat contains fifteen or twenty cabins, divided into three classes according to the accommodation, and obtainable at a fare of twenty to thirty pounds for each cabin for a voyage from Calcutta up to Allahabad—less in the reverse direction, because the aid of the stream shortens the voyage. Besides this, the passenger pays for all his provisions, and most of the furniture of his cabin. Every passenger is allowed to take one servant free of passage fare. The steamer proceeds only during the day, anchoring every night; and it stops every three or four days, to take coals into the tug, and to deliver and receive passengers. The chief of these stopping-places are at the towns of Berhampore, Monghir, Patna, Dinapoor, Chupra, Buxar, Ghazeepore, Benares, Chunar, and Mirzapore, all situated on the banks of the Ganges between Calcutta and Allahabad; and it is only during the two or three hours of these stoppages that the passengers have an opportunity of rambling on the shore by daylight. The tug is of iron, and drags the flat by means of hawsers and a long beam, which latter serves both as a gangway and to prevent collision between the two vessels. The East India Company first established these steamers, but others have followed their example, and help to keep up a healthy competition. The river distance to Allahabad being eight hundred miles (three hundred in excess of the land route), and the time of transit being about twenty days, this gives forty miles per day as the average rate of progress of the tug and its attendant flat or accommodation-boat. Of proposed plans for improving this Ganges steaming, we do not speak in this place.

20The Indus is less traversed by boats and steamers; but, being nearer to England than the Ganges, it is becoming more and more important every year, especially since the annexation of the Punjaub by the British. The boats on the Indus take up the produce of the Persian and Arabian gulfs, Cutch, the western districts of India, and so much of the produce of Europe as is available for Sinde, the Punjaub, and the northwest of India generally: taking back the produce of Afghanistan, Cashmere, the Punjaub, Sinde, and the neighbouring countries. The boats on this river, having fewer European travellers, do not possess so many accommodations as those on the Ganges; the scantiness of the population, too, and the semi-barbarous condition of the natives, tend towards the same result. The Sutlej boats, mostly employed, are long and clumsy; when going downwards, the stream gives them a velocity of about two miles an hour, while the oars and sail give them barely another extra mile. They correspond, indeed, rather with our idea of a Thames coal-barge, than with that of a boat. The steersman and two oarsmen are at the stern, working with a broad paddle and two oars. The passengers occupy the rest of the vessel, in a rude bamboo cabin twelve or fourteen feet long. When the wind and the stream are unfavourable, the sail is hauled down, and tracking is resorted to. As the up-river return-voyage is exceedingly slow, a passenger travelling down towards the sea is obliged to pay for the return-voyage as well. As there are hardly any important towns on the banks below the Punjaub, except Hyderabad, a traveller is obliged to take almost the whole of his provisions and necessaries with him. The journey up the stream is so insupportably tedious by these boats, that small steamers are generally preferred; but these require very light draught and careful handling, to prevent them from grounding on the shoals and sandbanks, which are more numerous in the Indus than in the Ganges.

River-travelling, it hence appears, is a very slow affair, ruinously inadequate to the wants of any but a population in a low scale of commercial advancement. Let us inquire, therefore, whether land-travelling is in a condition to remedy these evils.

There are so few good roads in India, that wheel-carriages can scarcely be trusted for any long distances. The prevailing modes of travel are on horseback or in a palanquin. Technically, the one mode is called marching; the other, dâk, dakh, or dawk. The former is sometimes adopted for economy; sometimes from necessity while accompanying troops; and sometimes, on short trips, through inclination; but as it is almost impossible to travel on horseback during the heat of the day, the more expensive but more regular dâk is in greater request. The horseman, when he adopts the equestrian system, accomplishes from twelve to twenty miles a day: sending on his servants one march or day in advance, with tent, bedding, tent-furniture, canteen, &c., in order that they may have a meal ready for the traveller by the time he arrives. They daily buy fodder, fowls, eggs, milk, rice, fruit, or vegetables at the villages as they pass through; the traveller, if a sportsman, aids the supply of his larder with snipe, wild-fowl, quail, partridges, hares, jungle-cocks, or bustard; but a week’s provision at a time must be made of all such supplies as tea, coffee, dried or preserved meats, sauces, spices, beer, or wine, at the principal towns—as these commodities are either unattainable or very costly at the smaller stations and villages. Thus the traveller proceeds, accomplishing eighty to a hundred and fifty miles per week, according to his supply of horse-relays. We may get rid of the European notions of inns and hotels on the road: the India officer must carry his hotel with him.

We come next to the dâk system, much more prevalent than travelling by horseback. The dâk is a sort of government post, available for private individuals as for officials. A traveller having planned his journey, he applies to the postmaster of the district, who requires from one to three days’ notice, according to the extent of accommodation needed. The usual complement for one traveller consists of eight palkee-burdars or palanquin-bearers, two mussanjees or torch-bearers, and two bangey-burdars or luggage-porters: if less than this number be needed, the fact must be notified. The time and place of starting, and the duration and localities of the halts, must also be stated; for everything is to be paid beforehand, on the basis of a regular tariff. The charge is about one shilling per mile for the entire set of twelve men—shewing at how humble a rate personal services are purchasable in India. There is also an extra charge for demurrage or delays on the road, attributable to the traveller himself. For these charges, the postmaster undertakes that there shall be relays of dâk servants throughout the whole distance, even if it be the nine hundred miles from Calcutta to Delhi; and to insure this, he writes to the different villages and post stations, ordering relays to be ready at the appointed hours. The stages average about ten miles each, accomplished in three hours; at the end of which time the twelve men retrace their steps, and are succeeded by another twelve; for each set of men belong to a particular station, in the same way as each team of horses for an English stage-coach belongs to a particular town. The rivers and streams on the route are mostly crossed by ferry-boats, for bridges are scarce in India; and this ferrying is included in the fare charged by the postmaster; although the traveller is generally expected to give a small fee, the counterpart to the ‘drink-money’ of Europe, to ferrymen as well as bearers. The palanquin, palankeen, or palkee, is a kind of wooden box opening at the sides by sliding shutters; it is about six feet in length by four in height, and is suspended by two poles, borne on the shoulders of four men. The eight bearers 21relieve one another in two gangs of four each. The postmaster has nought to do with the palanquin; this is provided by the traveller; and on its judicious selection depends much of his comfort during the journey, for a break-down entails a multitude of petty miseries. The average value of a palanquin may be about ten pounds; and the traveller can generally dispose of it again at the end of his journey. On account of the weight, nothing is carried that can be easily dispensed with; but the traveller manages to fit up his palanquin with a few books, his shaving and washing apparatus, his writing materials, and a few articles in frequent use. The regular fittings of the palanquin are a cushion or bed, a bolster, and a few light coverings. The traveller’s luggage is mostly carried in petarrahs, tin boxes or wicker-baskets about half a yard square: a porter can carry two of these; and one or two porters will suffice for the demands of any ordinary traveller, running before or by the side of the palanquin. The petarrahs are hung, each from one end of a bangey or bamboo pole, the middle of which rests on the bearer’s shoulder. The torch-bearers run by the side of the palanquin to give light during night-travelling; the torch is simply a short stick bound round at one end with a piece of rag or a tuft of hemp, on which oil is occasionally dropped from a flask or a hollow bamboo; the odour of the oil-smoke is disagreeable, and most travellers are glad to dispense with the services of a second torch-bearer.

Palanquin.

Bishop Heber’s journey from Delhi to Benares was a good example of dâk-travelling in his day; and the system has altered very little since. He had twelve bearers, on account of his route lying partly through a broken country. His clothes and writing-desk were placed in the two petarrahs, carried by the two bangey-burdars. ‘The men set out across the meadows at a good round trot of about four miles an hour, grunting all the way like paviers in England: a custom which, like paviers, they imagine eases them under their burden.’ Only four men can usually put their shoulders to a palanquin at the same time; but the bishop observed that whenever they approached a deep nullah or steep bank, the bearers who were not at that time bearing the palanquin, but were having their interval of rest, thrust stout bamboos under the bottom of the palanquin, and took hold of the ends on each side; so that the strength of several additional men was brought into requisition. In crossing a stream, ‘the boat (the spot being a regular ferry), a broad and substantial one, had a platform of wood covered with clay across its middle. The palanquin, with me in it, was placed on this with its length athwart the middle; the mangee steered, and some of the dâk-bearers took up oars, so that we were across in a very short time.’

Private dâks are occasionally employed, a speculator undertaking to supply the bearers. Having no large establishments to keep up, these men can afford to undersell the government—that is, establish a lower tariff; and they provide a little additional accommodation in other ways. Some travellers, however, think these speculators or chowdries not sufficiently to be trusted, and prefer the government dâk at higher rates. Experienced men will sometimes dispense with the preliminary of ‘laying a dâk,’ or arranging for the whole journey: depending on their own sagacity for hunting up bearers at the successive stations. There have also been introduced horse-dâks, wheeled palanquins drawn by horses; but these are only available on the great trunk-roads recently executed by the government.

It was observed, in relation to ‘marching’ or horse-travelling, that there are no hotels or inns 22on the road; there is a partial substitute, however, that may here be noticed. The Company have established dâk-bungalows at certain stations, varying from fifteen to fifty miles apart, according as the road is much or little frequented. These places are under the control of government officers: a khitmutgar or servant, and a porter, attend at each; the traveller pays a fixed sum for the use of the room, and makes a separate bargain for any few articles of provisions that may be obtainable. The building is little more than a thatched house of one story, divided into two small rooms, to each of which a bathing-room is attached. The servant cooks and serves a meal, while the porter assists in subsidiary offices. If a traveller does not choose to avail himself of these bungalows, he can travel continuously in his palanquin, sleeping and waking by turns. This, however, is a great trial for most persons; because the bearers make an unpleasant grunting noise as an accompaniment to their movements; and moreover, unless well drilled, they do not balance the palanquin well, but subject its inmate to distressing joltings.

Indian Domestics.

1. Dirgee—tailor. 2. Khitmutgar writing the accounts of the previous day. 3. Sepoy after parade. 4. Maitre, or house-cleaner. 5. Dobee—washerman. 6. Chuprassee going out with gun before a shooting-party. 7. Chuprassee—letter-carrier. 8. Bengalee Pundit, or scholar.

It has been placed upon record, as an instructive commentary on the immense distances to be traversed in India, the imperfection of most of the roads, and the primitive detail of travelling arrangements—that when Viscount Hardinge was engaged in the Punjaub campaign in 1846, one hundred European officers were sent off from Calcutta to aid him. Although the distance was nearly fifteen hundred miles, nothing more rapid than palanquin travelling was available; and, as a consequence, the journey became so tediously prolonged that only thirty out of the hundred officers arrived at the Sutlej before the campaign was over. Palanquin-bearers were posted at different stations to carry three persons daily; and it was calculated that, assuming twelve bearers to be posted at every station, and the stations eight miles apart on an average, the duty must have required the services of seven thousand of these men—all to carry one hundred officers: a waste of muscular energy singular to contemplate by the light of an Englishman’s home experience.

The Indian post is still more simple than the dâk. It is conducted by runners, each of whom slings his mail-bag on the end of a stick over his shoulder. He runs five miles in an hour, and then gives his bag to another man, who runs five miles in an hour; and so on. Strictly speaking, dâk is an appellation properly belonging to this letter-carrying 23system. It is equivalent to the English post; and as the English have adopted the custom of applying the term post to quick travelling as well as to letter-carrying, in like manner have the Anglo-Indians adopted a double application of the word dâk. It is only the express or quick dâk which maintains a speed of five miles an hour; the ordinary speed, when the letter-bag is heavy, is four miles. In order that the runners may not be required to go far from their homes, each man carries his bag one stage, exchanges bags with another runner who has come in the opposite direction, and then returns. A letter may thus be conveyed a hundred miles in a day—a distance which, considering the nature of the system, is quite as great as can reasonably be expected. Horse and camel dâks are occasionally employed; but they are not easily available, except on good roads. Besides the letter-dâk, there is a parcel-dâk or bangey, the runner carrying a packet or box, in which small parcels or newspapers are placed.

It will become a duty, in a later portion of this work, to notice somewhat fully the railway schemes of India, in relation to the plans for developing the industrial resources of that great region; but at present this would be out of place, since the Revolt has been dependent on the actual, not the prospective. This actuality, so far as concerns means and modes of travelling, is summed up in a few words. An Indian officer, we have seen, must travel to his station by horse or by palanquin if on land, by drag-boat or by steam-boat if on the rivers. In any case his rate of progress is slow; his movements are encumbered by a train of servants, by a whole bazarful of furniture and culinary apparatus, and by an anxiously selected provision for his larder. To move quickly is well-nigh impossible: all the conditions for it are wanting. Improvements, it is true, are in progress: steamers of light draught and rapid movement are being planned for the rivers; the great trunk-road from Calcutta to the Afghan frontier is beginning to offer facilities for wheel-carriage transport; and the railways are beginning to shew their iron tracks in various regions; nevertheless, these are rather indications of the future than appliances for the present; and the Indian officers are not yet in a position to say much about them from personal experience. The humbler soldiers, whether Europeans or sepoys, are of course less favourably served than the officers. There is no Weedon in India, connected by rail with a Chatham, a Portsmouth, a Liverpool, a Leeds, along which a whole regiment can be conveyed in a few hours; and as saddle-horses and palanquins are out of the question for infantry privates, it becomes necessary to trudge on foot along such roads as may be available, or to linger on the tardy river route. Once now and then, it is true, a daring man, a Napier or an Edwardes, will swiftly send a small body of troops over a sandy desert or a marshy plain on camels, horses, elephants, or some exceptional modes of conveyance; but the prevalent characteristics of travel are such as have here been described, and such will doubtless be the case for many years to come.

Such, then, being the territorial arrangements by which Anglo-Indian troops are considered to belong to different presidencies and states; and such the modes in which military as well as civilians must move from place to place in those territories; we shall be prepared next to understand something about the soldiers themselves—the Anglo-Indian army.

In no country in Europe is there an army so anomalous in its construction as that which, until lately, belonged to the East India Company. Different kinds of troops, and troops from different provinces, we can well understand. For instance, the French avail themselves of a few Algerine Arabs, and a small foreign legion, as components in the regular army. The English have a few colonial corps in addition to the Queen’s army. The Prussians have a landwehr or militia equal in magnitude to the regular army itself. The Russians have military colonists as well as military tributaries, in addition to the great corps d’armée. The Austrians have their peculiar Military Frontier regiments, besides the regular troops furnished by the dozen or score of distinct provinces and kingdoms which form their empire. The German States provide their several contingents to form (if the States can ever bring themselves to a unity of opinion) an Army of the Confederation. The Neapolitans employ Swiss mercenaries as a portion of their army. The Romans, the subjects of the pope as a temporal prince, have the ‘protection’ of French and Austrian bayonets, in addition to a small native force. The Turks have their regular army, aided (or sometimes obstructed) by the contingents of vassal-pachas and the irregulars from mountain districts. But none of these resemble the East India Company’s army. Under an ordinary state of affairs, and without reference to the mutiny of 1857, the Indian army is in theory a strange conglomerate. The Queen lends some of her English troops, for which the Company pay; the Company enlist other English troops on their own account; they maintain three complete armies among the natives of India who are their subjects; they raise irregular corps or regiments in the states not so fully belonging to them; they claim the services of the troops belonging to certain tributary princes, whenever exigency arises; and the whole of these troops are placed under the generalship of a commander-in-chief, who is appointed—not by the Company, who have to pay for all—but by the Queen or the British government.

The Company’s army rose by degrees, as the territorial possessions increased. At first the troops were little better than adventurers who sold their swords to the highest bidders, and fought for pay and rations without regard to the justice of the cause in which they were engaged; many were liberated convicts, many were deserters from 24various European armies, some were Africans, while a few were Topasses, a mixed race of Indo-Portuguese. The first regular English troops seen in Bengal were an ensign and thirty privates, sent from Madras to quell a petty disturbance at the Company’s factory in the Hoogly. Gradually, as the numbers increased and the organisation improved, the weapons underwent changes. The troops originally were armed with muskets, swords, and pikes twelve or fourteen feet long: the pikemen in the centre of the battalion or company, and the musketeers on the flank. In the beginning of the last century the pikes were abandoned, and the soldiers armed with bayonets in addition to the muskets and swords. When the custom was adopted, from European example, of forming the companies into a regular battalion, the swords were abolished, and the common soldiers left only with muskets and bayonets. Various changes were made during the century, assimilating the troops more and more to those of the English crown, in weapons and accoutrements.

The regiments became, by successive ameliorations, composed almost wholly of native Hindoos and Mohammedans, officered to some extent by Europeans. An English sergeant was given to each company, and a drill-sergeant and sergeant-major to each battalion. Afterwards, when the battalions were formed into regiments, natives were appointed as sergeants of companies; and then the only European non-commissioned officers were a sergeant-major and a quartermaster-sergeant. By the time of Lord Clive’s achievements, just about a century ago, three armies were owned by the Company—one in Bengal or the Calcutta presidency, one in the Coromandel or Madras presidency, and one on the Malabar coast, south of the present station of Bombay. These three armies were totally separate and distinct, each under its own commander, and each presenting some peculiarities of organisation; but they occasionally joined as one army for large military operations. There were many native corps, and a few European corps; but all alike were officered by Europeans. The cadet, the young man sent out from England to ‘make his fortune’ in India, was appointed to a native corps or a European corps at the choice of the commander. The pay being good and regular, and the customs and prejudices respected, the sepoys, sipahis, or native soldiers became in most cases faithful servants to the Company, obeying their native officers, who, in their turn, were accountable to the European officers. The European and the native corps were alike formed by enlistment: the Company compelling no one to serve but those who deemed the pay and other arrangements sufficient. An endeavour was made at that time (afterwards abandoned) to equalise the Hindoos and Mohammedans in numbers as nearly as possible.

From an early period in the Company’s history, a certain number of regiments from the British royal army were lent for Indian service; the number being specified by charter or statute; and the whole expense, of every kind, being defrayed by the Company—including, by a more modern arrangement, retiring pay and pensions. There were thus, in effect, at all times two English armies in India; the one enlisted by the Company, the other lent by the Crown; and it was a matter of some difficulty to obviate jealousies and piques between the two corps. For, on the one hand, the officers of the Company’s troops had better pay and more profitable stations assigned to them; while, on the other hand, the royal officers had precedence and greater honour. A Company’s captain, however so many years he might have served, was subordinate even to the youngest royal captain, who assumed command over him by right. At length, in 1796, the commissions received by the Company’s officers were recognised by the crown; and the two corps became placed on a level in pay and privileges.

The year just named witnessed a new organisation also of the native army. A regiment was ordered to be of two thousand men, in two corps or battalions of one thousand each; and each battalion was divided into ten companies, with two native officers to each company. Thus there were forty native officers in each of these large regiments. Besides these, there were half as many European officers as were allowed to a European regiment of the same magnitude. There had before been a native commandant to each battalion; but he was now superseded by a European field-officer, somewhat to the dissatisfaction of the men. The service occasionally suffered from this change; for a regiment was transferred at once from a native who had risen to command by experience and good conduct, to a person sent out from England who had to learn his duties as a leader of native troops after he went out. The youngest English ensign, perhaps a beardless boy, received promotion before any native, however old and tried in the service. And hence arose the custom, observed down to recent times, of paying no attention to the merits of the natives as a spur to promotion, allowing seniority to determine the rise from one grade to another.

While on the one hand the natives volunteered as soldiers in the Company’s service, and were eligible to rise to a certain rank as regimental officers; the English officers, on the other, had their own particular routine and hopes of preferment. The cadets or youths went out partially educated by the Company in England, especially those intended for the artillery and engineer departments; and when settled with their regiments in India as officers, all rose by seniority; the engineers and artillery in their own corps, the cavalry and infantry in their own regiments. It often happened, however, that when few deaths occurred by war, officers reached middle life without much advancement, and retired after twenty years or more of 25service with the pay of the rank they then held. In 1836, however, a law was made to insure that the retiring allowance should not be below a certain minimum: if an officer served twenty-three years, he retired with captain’s pay; if twenty-seven years, with major’s pay; if thirty-one years, with lieutenant-colonel’s pay; if thirty-five years, with colonel’s pay—whatever might have been his actual rank at the date of his retirement. There was also permission for them to sell their commissions, although those commissions were not bought by them in the first instance.

Unquestionably the sepoy was well paid, considering the small value of labour and personal services in his country; and thus it arose that the Company had seldom any difficulty in obtaining troops. The sepoys were volunteers in the full sense of the word. Their pay, though small in our estimation, was high in proportion to the station they formerly held. The Bengal Infantry sepoy received seven rupees (fourteen shillings) per month, with an additional rupee after sixteen years’ service, and two after twenty years. A havildar or sergeant received fourteen rupees; a jemadar or lieutenant twenty-four rupees; and a subadar or captain sixty-seven rupees. This pay was relatively so good, that each man was usually able to send two-thirds of it to his relations. And he was not a stranger to them at the end of his term, like a Russian soldier; for it was a part of the system to allow him periodical furlough or leave of absence, to visit his friends. If unfit for military service after fifteen months’ duty, he retired on a life-pension sufficient to support him in his own simple way of life. Whether he ought, in moral fairness, to be grateful towards the rulers who fed and clothed him, is just one of those questions on which Indian officers have differed and still differ. Viewed by the aid of the experience furnished by recent events, many of the former encomiums on the sepoys, as men grateful for blessings conferred, read strangely. The Marquis of Dalhousie’s statement, that ‘The position of the native soldier in India has long been such as to leave hardly any circumstance of his condition in need of improvement,’ has already been adverted to. To this we may add the words of Captain Rafter: ‘We assert, on personal knowledge and reliable testimony, that the attachment of the sepoy to his English officer, and through him to the English government, is of an enduring as well as an endearing nature, that will long bid defiance to the machinations of every enemy to British supremacy, either foreign or domestic.’^[4] In another authority we find that the sepoy, when his term of military service has expired, ‘goes back to live in ease and dignity, to teach his children to love and venerate that mighty abstraction the Company, and to extend the influence of England still further throughout the ramifications of native society. Under such a system, although temporary insubordination may and sometimes does occur in particular regiments, it is invariably caused by temporary grievances. General disaffection cannot exist—desertion is unknown.’ But the validity or groundlessness of such opinions we do not touch upon here: they must be reserved to a later chapter, when the causes of the mutiny will come under review. We pass on at once, therefore, from this brief notice of the origin of the Company’s army, to its actual condition at and shortly before the period of the outbreak.

Should it be asked what, during recent years, has been the number of troops in India, the answer must depend upon the scope given to the question. If we mention Queen’s troops only, the number has been usually about 24,000; if Queen’s troops and the Company’s European troops, about 42,000; if the Company’s native regulars be added to these, the number rises to 220,000; if the Company’s irregular corps of horse be included, there are 280,000; if it include the contingents supplied by native princes, the number amounts to 320,000; and lastly, if to these be added the armies of the independent and semi-independent princes, more or less available by treaty to the Company, the total swells to 700,000 men.

As exhibiting in detail the component elements of the Company’s Anglo-Indian army at a definite period, the following enumeration by Captain Rafter may be adopted, as applicable to the early part of 1855. Certain minor changes were made in the two years from that date to the commencement of the outbreak; but these will be noticed in later pages when necessary, and do not affect the general accuracy of the list. The three presidencies are kept separate, and the three kinds of troops—regiments of the royal army, the Company’s native regular regiments, and native irregular regiments—are also kept separate.

First we take the Bengal presidency in all its completeness, stretching almost entirely across Northern India from the Burmese frontier on the east, to the Afghan frontier on the west:

• Two regiments of light cavalry.
• Fifteen regiments of infantry.
• One battalion of 60th Rifles.

• Three brigades of horse-artillery, European and native.
• Six battalions of European foot-artillery.
• Three battalions of native foot-artillery.
• Corps of Royal Engineers.
• Ten regiments of native light cavalry.
• Two regiments of European fusiliers.
• Seventy-four regiments of native infantry.
• One regiment of Sappers and Miners.

• Twenty-three regiments of irregular native cavalry.
• Twelve regiments of irregular native infantry.
• One corps of Guides.
• One regiment of camel corps.
• Sixteen regiments of local militia.
• Shekhawuttie brigade.
• Contingents of Gwalior, Jhodpore, Malwah, Bhopal, and Kotah.

The European troops here mentioned, in the Company’s regular army, are those who have been enlisted in England or elsewhere by the Company’s agents, quite irrespective of the royal or Queen’s army. The above forces, altogether, amounted to somewhat over 150,000 men. Let us now glance at another presidency:

• One regiment of light cavalry.
• Five regiments of infantry.

• One brigade of horse-artillery, European and native.
• Four battalions of European foot-artillery.
• One battalion of native foot-artillery.
• Corps of Royal Engineers.
• Eight regiments of native light cavalry.
• Two regiments of European infantry.
• Fifty-two regiments of native infantry.

No irregular or contingent troops appear in this entry.

• One regiment of light cavalry.
• Five regiments of infantry.

• One brigade of horse-artillery, European and native.
• Two battalions of European foot-artillery.
• Two battalions of native foot-artillery.
• Corps of Royal Engineers.
• Three regiments of native light cavalry.
• Two regiments of European infantry.
• Twenty-nine regiments of native infantry.

• Fifteen regiments of irregular native troops.

The European and the native troops of the Company are not here separated, although in effect they form distinct regiments. So costly are all the operations connected with the Anglo-Indian army, that it has been calculated that every English soldier employed in the East, whether belonging to the Queen’s or to the Company’s forces, costs, on an average, one hundred pounds before he becomes available for service, including his outfit, his voyage, his marching and barracking in India. This of course relates to the privates; an officer’s cost is based upon wholly distinct grounds, and can with difficulty be estimated. The greatly increased expenditure of the Company on military matters has partly depended on the fact that the European element in the armies has been regularly augmenting: in 1837 there were 28,000 European troops in India; in 1850 the number was 44,000, comprising 28,000 Queen’s troops, and 16,000 belonging to the Company; while the new charter of 1854 allowed the Company to raise 24,000, of whom 4000 were to be in training in England, and the rest on service in India. What was the number in 1857, becomes part of the history of the mutiny. In the whole Indian army, a year or two before this catastrophe, there were about 5000 European officers, governing the native as well as the European regiments; but of this number, so many were absent on furlough or leave, so many more on staff appointments, and so many of the remainder in local corps and on civil duties, that there was an insufficiency of regimental control—leading, as some authorities think, in great part to the scenes of insubordination; for the native officers, as we shall presently see, were regarded in a very subordinate light. There was a commander-in-chief for each of the three presidencies, controlling the three armies respectively; while one of the three, the commander-in-chief of the Bengal army, held at the same time the office of commander-in-chief of the whole of the armies of India, in order that there might be a unity of plan and purpose in any large combined operations. Thus, when Sir Colin Campbell went out to India in the summer of 1857, his power was to be exerted over the armies of the whole of India generally, as well as over that of Bengal in particular.

Continuing to speak of the Indian army as it was before the year 1857, and thereby keeping clear of the changes effected or commenced in that year, we proceed to mention a few more circumstances connected with the Company’s European element in that army. The formation of an Indian officer commenced in England. As a youth, from fourteen to eighteen years of age, he was admitted to the Company’s school at Addiscombe, after an ordeal of recommendations and testimonials, and after an examination of his proficiency in an ordinary English education, in which a modicum of Latin was also expected. A probation of six months was gone through, to shew whether he possessed the requisite abilities and inclination; and if this probation were satisfactory, his studies were continued for two years. His friends paid the larger portion of the cost of his maintenance and education at the school. If his abilities and progress were of a high class, he was set apart for an appointment in the engineers; if next in degree, in the artillery; and if the lowest in degree, for the infantry. At the end of his term the pupil must have attained to a certain amount of knowledge, of which, however, very little was professional. Supposing all to be satisfactory, he became a military cadet in the service of the Company, to be available for Indian service as occasion arose. Having joined one of 27the regiments as the lowest commissioned officer, his subsequent advancement depended in part on his qualifications and in part on seniority. He could not, by the more recent regulations of the Company, become a captain until he had acquired, besides his professional efficiency, a knowledge of the spoken and written Hindustani language, and of the Persian written character, much used in India. When placed on the general staff, his services might be required in any one of a number of ways quite unknown in the Queen’s service in England: he might have a civil duty, or be placed at the head of the police in a tract of country recently evacuated by the military, or be made an adjutant, auditor, quartermaster, surveyor, paymaster, judge-advocate, commissary-general, brigade-major, aid-de-camp, barrack-master, or clothing agent. Many of these offices being lucrative, the military liked them; but such a bestowal created some jealousy among the civil servants of the Company, whose prizes in the Indian lottery were thereby diminished; and, what was worse, it shook the connection between an officer and his regiment, rendering him neither able nor willing to throw his sympathies into his work. No officer could hold any of these staff appointments, as they were called, until he had been two years in the army.

The officers noticed in the last paragraph were appointed to the command both of European and of native regiments. As to privates and non-commissioned officers in the European regiments, they were much the same class of men, and enlisted much in the same way, as those in the Queen’s army. The privates or sepoys of the native regiments were of course different, not only from Europeans, but different among themselves. Four-fifths of the Bengal native infantry were Hindoos, mainly of the Brahmin and Rajpoot castes; and the remainder Mohammedans. On the other hand, three-fourths of the Bengal native cavalry were Mohammedans, the Hindoos being generally not equal to them as troopers. In the Madras native army, the Mohammedans predominated in the cavalry, while the infantry comprised the two religions in nearly equal proportions. In Bombay, nearer the nations of Western Asia, the troops comprised volunteers of many countries and many religions—more easily managed, our officers found, on that account.

Without at present going into the question how far the religious feelings and caste prejudices of the natives induced a revolt, it may be useful to shew how a regiment was constituted, of what materials, and in what gradations. An infantry regiment in the Bengal presidency will serve as a type.

The organisation of a Bengal native regiment, before the mutiny, was nearly as follows: An infantry regiment consisted of about 1000 privates, 120 non-commissioned officers, and 20 native commissioned officers. It was divided into ten companies, each containing one-tenth of the above numbers. When stationary, the regiment seldom had barracks, but was quartered in ten lines of thatched huts, one row for each company. In front of each row was a small circular building for containing the arms and accoutrements of that particular company, under the charge of a havildar or native sergeant. All these natives rose by a strict rule of seniority: the sepoy or private soldier becoming a naik or corporal, the naik being promoted to be havildar or sergeant, the havildar in time assuming the rank of jemadar or lieutenant, and the jemadar becoming a subadar or captain. All these promotions were necessarily slow; for the English colonel of the regiment had very little power to promote a worthy native officer or non-commissioned officer to a higher rank. The jemadar often became a gray-headed man of sixty before he rose to the rank of subadar, the highest attainable by a native. As a rule, there were four or five Hindoos to one Mohammedan in a Bengal infantry regiment; and of these eight hundred Hindoos, it was not unfrequent to find four hundred Brahmins or hereditary priests, and two hundred Rajpoots, a military caste only a little lower in rank than the former; while the remaining two hundred were low-caste Hindoos. The European officers, as will be explained more fully further on, lived in bungalows or detached houses near the lines of their regiment; but as the weather is too hot to admit of much open-air duty in the daytime, these officers saw less of their men than is customary in European armies, or than is necessary for the due preservation of discipline. The head of a regiment was the commander, generally a lieutenant-colonel; below him was an adjutant, who attended to the drill and the daily reports; below him was a quartermaster and interpreter, whose double duties were to look after the clothes and huts of the men, and to interpret or translate orders. Besides these three, there were ten subordinate officers for the ten companies, each expected to make a morning scrutiny into the condition and conduct of his men. The Europeans in a native regiment were thus fourteen or fifteen. It is true that the theory of a regiment involved a complement of about five-and-twenty European officers; but the causes of absenteeism, lately adverted to, generally brought down the effective number to about twelve or fifteen. The arrangements of the infantry in the other presidencies, and of the native cavalry all over India, each had their peculiarities.

Leaving for future chapters a further elucidation of the relations between the European officers and the native troops—so important in connection with the Revolt—and a description of the sepoys in their dresses, usages, and personal characteristics—we shall now proceed to view the native army under two different aspects—first, when barracked and cantoned in time of peace; and, secondly, when on the march towards a scene of war.

And first, for the army when stationary. At Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, there are solidly 28built barracks for the whole of the soldiery, men as well as officers; but in almost all other parts of India the arrangements are of a slighter and less permanent character. At the cantonments, it is true, the officers have houses; but the sepoys are lodged in huts of their own construction. Around the cantonments at the stations, and generally skirting the parade-grounds, are the houses or bungalows of the officers. Within the lines of the cantonment, too, the officers’ mess-rooms are situated; and at the larger stations may be seen ball-rooms, theatres, and racket-courts; while outside is a race-stand for witnessing the sports which Englishmen love in India as well as at home.

Group of Sepoys.

1. Subadar—major. 2. Jemadar—Lieutenant. 3. Subadar—Captain. 4. Naik—Corporal. 5. Havildar—Sergeant. 6. Sepoy—Private.

The Indian bungalows, the houses inhabited by European officers at the different towns and stations in India, have a certain general resemblance, although differing of course much in details. A bungalow of good size has usually a central room called the hall, a smaller room opening on the front verandah, a similar one opening on the back verandah, three narrower rooms on each side of these three, and bathing-rooms at the four corners. A verandah runs entirely round the exterior. The central hall has only the borrowed light derived from eight or a dozen doors leading out of the surrounding apartments: these doors are always open; but the doorways are covered, when privacy is desired, with the chick, a sort of gauze-work of green-painted strips of fine bamboo, admitting air and light, but keeping out flies and mosquitoes. The floors are usually of chunam, finely tempered clay, covered with matting, and then with a sort of blue-striped carpet or with printed calico. The exterior is usually barn-like and ugly, with its huge roof, tiled or thatched, sloping down to the pillars of the verandah. Air and shade are the two desiderata in every bungalow, and adornment is wisely sacrificed to these. The finest part of the whole is the surrounding space or garden, called the compound, from a Portuguese word. The larger the space allowed for this compound, the more pleasant is the residence in its centre, and the more agreeable to the eye is a cantonment of such bungalows. The trees and fruits in these enclosures are delicious to the sight, and most welcome to the heat-wearied occupants of the dwellings. Officers in the Company’s service, whether military or civil, live much under canvas during the hot seasons, at some of the stations; and the tents they use are much larger and more like regular habitations than those known in Europe. The tents are double, having a space of half a yard or so between the two canvas walls, to temper the heat of the sun. The double-poled tents are 29large enough to contain several apartments, and are furnished with glass-doors to fit into the openings. A wall of canvas separates the outer offices and bathing-rooms. Gay chintz for wall-linings, and printed cotton carpets, give a degree of smartness to the interior. Movable stoves, or else fire-dishes for wood-fuel called chillumchees, are provided as a resource against the chill that often pervades the air in the evening of a hot day. The tents for the common soldiers hold ten men each with great ease, and have a double canvas wall like the others.

Bungalow.

An important part of every cantonment is the bazaar, situated in convenient proximity to the huts or tents of the troops. It comprises an enormous number of sutlers, who sell to the soldiers those commodities which cannot well be dispensed with, but which cannot conveniently be provided and carried about by them. Curry stuffs, tobacco, rice, arrack (in addition to the Company’s allowance), cotton cloth, and a multiplicity of other articles, are sold at these bazaars; and the market-people who supply these things, with their families, the coolies or porters, and their hackeries or carts—add enormously to the mass that constitutes an Indian cantonment. The sepoy has little to spend with his sixpence a day; but then his wants are few; and his copper pice, somewhat larger than the English farthing, will buy an amount of necessaries little dreamed of in England. The Hindoos have such peculiar notions connected with food and cooking, that the government leave them as much to themselves as possible in those matters; and the bazaar and sutlers’ arrangements assume a particular importance from this circumstance.

An Anglo-Indian army we have seen at rest, in cantonments. Now let us trace it when on a march to a scene of war; but while describing this in the present tense, we must make allowance for the changes which the Revolt has inevitably produced.

The non-fighting men who accompany the troops greatly exceed in number the troops themselves. Captain Munro says: ‘It would be absurd for a captain to think of taking the field without being attended by the following enormous retinue—namely, a dubash (agent or commissionaire), a cook, and a maty boy (servant-of-all-work); if he cannot get bullocks, he must assemble fifteen or twenty coolies to carry his baggage, together with a horse-keeper and grass-cutter, and sometimes a dulcinea and her train, having occasionally the assistance of a barber, a washer, and an ironer, in common with the other officers of his regiment. His tent is furnished with a good large bed, mattress, pillows, &c., a few camp stools or chairs, a folding table, a pair of glass shades for his candles, six or seven trunks, with table equipage, his stock of linens (at least twenty-four suits), some dozens of wine, porter, brandy, and gin; with tea, sugar, and biscuit, a hamper of live poultry, and his milch-goat. A private’s tent for holding his servants and the overplus of his baggage is also requisite; but this is not at the Company’s expense.’ Of course it must be inferred that all this luxury belongs to the best of times only, and is not available in the exigency of sudden military movements. The sepoys or common soldiers, too, have their satellites. Each man is accompanied by his whole family, who live upon his pay and allowances of rice from the Company. Every trooper or horse-soldier, too, has his grass-cutter; for it is a day’s work for one person to dig, cut, and prepare a day’s grass for one horse.

When on the march, the tents are generally struck soon after midnight. At the first tap of the drum, the servants knock up the tent-pins, and down fall the tents; horses begin to neigh and the camels to cry, the elephants and camels receive their loads of camp-equipage, the bullocks are laden with the officers’ tents and boxes, the coolies take up their burdens, and all prepare for the road. During the noise and bustle of these preliminaries, the officers and men make their few personal arrangements, aided by their servants or families; while the officers’ cooks and agents are sent on in advance, to prepare breakfast at the next halting-place. Between one and two o’clock the regiments start off, in columns of sections: the camp-followers, baggage, bullocks, elephants, and camels, bringing up the rear. The European soldiers do not carry their own knapsacks on the march; they have the luxury of cook-boys or attendants, who render this service for them. The natives, it is found, are able to carry heavier loads than the Europeans; or—what is perhaps more nearly the case—they bear the burdens more patiently, as the Europeans love soldiering better than portering. The tedium of the journey is sometimes relieved by a hunt after antelopes, hares, partridges, wild ducks, or wild boars, which the officers may happen to espy, according to the nature of the country through which they are passing. Arrived at the halting-place, everything is quickly prepared for a rest and a breakfast; the quarter-masters push forward to occupy the ground; the elephants and camels are disburdened of the tents; the natives and the cattle plunge into some neighbouring pool or tank to refresh themselves; the cooks have been already some time at work; and the officers sit down to a breakfast of tea, coffee, curry, rice, pillau, 30ham, and other obtainable dishes. The fakeers often recognise their friends or admirers among the natives of the cavalcade, and give loud blessings, and tom-tom drummings, in exchange for donations of the smallest Indian coins. The quarter-masters’ arrangements are so quickly and so neatly made, that in a short time the general’s durbar appears in the centre of a street of tents for staff-officers, dining-tents on the one side and sleeping-tents on the other; while the bazaar-dealers open their temporary shops in the rear. The horses are picketed in long lines; while the elephants and camels browse or rest at leisure. Under ordinary circumstances, the day’s marching is over by nine o’clock in the morning, at which hour the sun’s heat becomes too fierce to be willingly borne. Repose, amusements, and light camp-duties fill up the remainder of the day, to be followed by a like routine on the morrow.

Troops on the March.

While one of these extraordinary marches is in progress, ‘when the moving masses are touched here and there by the reddening light of the dawn, it seems to be a true migration, with flocks and herds, cattle loaded with baggage, men, women, and children, all in a chaos of disorder but the troops whose wants and wishes have attracted this assemblage. At length the country appears to awake from its sleep, and with the yell of the jackal, or the distant baying of the village dogs, are heard to mingle the voices of human beings. Ruddier grows the dawn, warmer the breeze, and the light-hearted sepoy, no longer shivering with cold, gives vent to the joyous feelings of morning in songs and laughter. The scenes become more striking, and the long array of tall camels, led by natives in picturesque costume, with here and there a taller elephant mingling with droves of loaded bullocks, give it a new and extraordinary character to a European imagination. The line of swarthy sepoys of Upper India, with their moustached lips and tall handsome figures, contrasts favourably with the shorter and plainer soldiers of Britain; the grave mechanical movements of the regular cavalry in their light-blue uniforms are relieved by the erratic evolutions and gay and glittering dresses of the irregulars, who with loud cries and quivering spears, and their long black locks streaming behind them, spur backwards and forwards like the wind from mere exuberance of spirits.... The camp-followers in the meantime present every possible variety of costume; and among them, and not the least interesting figures in the various groups, may frequently be seen the pet lambs of which the sepoys are so fond, 31dressed in necklaces of ribbons and white shells, and the tip of their tails, ears, and feet dyed orange colour. The womenkind of the troops of the Peninsula (Southern India) usually follow the drum; but the Bengalees have left their families at home; and the Europeans bidden adieu to their temporary wives with the air the band strikes up on quitting the station, “The girl I left behind me.’”^[5]

Such, before the great Revolt, were the usual characteristics of an Anglo-Indian army when on the march; and, considering the impedimenta, it is not surprising that the daily progress seldom exceeded ten or twelve miles. The system was very costly, even at the cheap rate of Indian service; for the camp-followers, one with another, were ten times as numerous as the troops; and all, in one way or other, lived upon or by the Company.

Note.

A parliamentary paper, issued in 1857 on the motion of Colonel Sykes, affords valuable information on some of the matters treated in this chapter. It is ‘A Return of the Area and Population of each Division of each Presidency of India, from the Latest Inquiries; comprising, also, the Area and Estimated Population of Native States.’ It separates the British states from the native; and it further separates the former into five groups, according to the government under which each is placed. These five, as indicated in the present chapter, are under the administration of ‘the governor-general of India in council’—the ‘lieutenant-governor of Bengal’—the ‘lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces’—the ‘government of Madras’—and the ‘government of Bombay.’ In each case the ‘regulation districts’ are treated distinct from the non-regulation provinces,’ the former having been longer under British power, and brought into a more regular system than the latter. Without going again over the long list of names of places, it will suffice to quote those belonging to the group placed immediately under the governor-general’s control. This group comprises the Punjaub, in the six divisions of Lahore, Jelum, Moultan, Leia, Peshawur, and Jullundur; the Cis-Sutlej states, four in number; the lately annexed kingdom of Oude; the central district of Nagpoor or Berar; the recently acquired region of Pegu; the strip of country on the east of the Bay of Bengal, known as the Tenasserim Provinces; and the ‘Eastern Straits Settlements’ of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The whole of British India is divided into nearly a hundred and eighty districts, each, on an average, about the size of Inverness-shire, the largest county, except Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. The population, however, is eight times us dense, per average square mile, as in this Scottish shire. Keeping clear of details concerning divisions and districts, the following are the areas and population in the five great governments:

In some of the five governments, the population is classified more minutely than in others. Thus, in the Punjaub member of the governor-general’s group, Hindoos are separated from non-Hindoos; then, each of these classes is divided into agricultural and non-agricultural; and, lastly, each of these is further separated into male and female. The most instructive feature here is the scarcity of females compared with males, contrary to the experience of Europe; in the Punjaub and Sirhind, among thirteen million souls, there are a million and a half more males than females—shewing, among other things, one of the effects of female infanticide in past years. The ratio appears to be about the same in the Northwest Provinces, around Delhi, Meerut, Rohilcund, Agra, Benares, and Allahabad. Not one place is named, throughout India, in which the females equal the males in number. In the Bombay presidency, besides the difference of sex, the population is tabulated into nine groups—Hindoos, Wild Tribes, Low Castes, Shrawniks or Jains, Lingayets, Mussulmans, Parsees, Jews, Christians. Of the last named there are less than fifty thousand, including military, in a population of twelve millions.

The area and population of the native states are given in connection with the presidencies to which those states are geographically and politically related, and present the following numbers:

The enumeration of these native states is minute and intricate; and it may suffice to shew the complexity arising out of the existence of so many baby-princedoms, that one of the native states of Bundelcund, Kampta by name, figures in the table as occupying an area of one square mile, and as having three hundred inhabitants!

Including the British states, the native states, the few settlements held by the French and Portuguese, and the recent acquisitions on the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal, the grand totals come out in the following numbers:

or 124 dwellers per square mile. Of these inhabitants, it is believed—though the returns are not complete in this particular—that there are fifteen Hindoos to one Mohammedan: if so, then India must contain more than a hundred and sixty million worshippers of Hindoo deities—even after allowance is made for Buddhists, Parsees, and a few savage tribes almost without religion.

Little did the British authorities in India suspect, in the early weeks of 1857, that a mighty CENTENARY was about to be observed—a movement intended to mark the completion of one hundred years of British rule in the East; and to mark it, not by festivities and congratulations, but by rebellion and slaughter.

The officers in India remembered and noted the date well; but they did not know how well the Mohammedans and Hindoos, the former especially, had stored it up in their traditions. The name of Robert Clive, the ‘Daring in War,’ was so intimately associated with the date 1757, that the year 1857 naturally brought it into thought, as a time when Christian rule began to overawe Moslem rule in that vast country. True, the East India Company had been connected with India during a period exceeding two hundred years; but it was only at the commencement of the second half of the last century that this connection became politically important. It was remembered that—1756 having been marked by the atrocities of the Black Hole at Calcutta, and by the utter extinction for a time of the East India Company’s power in Bengal—the year 1757 became a year of retribution. It was remembered, as a matter of history among the British, and of tradition among the natives, how wonderful a part the young officer Clive performed in that exciting drama. It was remembered that he arrived at Calcutta, at that time wholly denuded of Englishmen, on the 2d of January in the last-named year, bringing with him a small body of troops from Madras; that on the 4th of February, with two thousand men, he defeated an army ten times as large, belonging to Suraj-u-Dowlah, Nawab of Bengal—the same who had caused the atrocities at the Black Hole, when a hundred and thirty persons died from suffocation in a room only fitted to contain a fourth of the number. It was further remembered how that, on the 9th of February, Clive obtained great concessions from the nawab by treaty; that Suraj broke the treaty, and commenced a course of treachery, in which Clive was not slow to imitate him; that on the 13th of June, Clive, having matured a plan equally bold and crafty, declared renewed hostilities against the nawab; that on the 23d he gained the brilliant battle of Plassey, conquering sixty thousand men with a force of only three thousand; that within a week, Suraj-u-Dowlah, a miserable fugitive, ended his existence; and that from that day British power had ever been supreme in Bengal. This was a series of achievements not likely to be forgotten by Englishmen. Ere yet the news of mutiny and murder reached Europe, steps had been taken to render homage to Clive on the hundredth anniversary of the battle of Plassey; the East India Company had subscribed largely towards a statue of the hero; and a meeting in London had decided that the chief town in Clive’s native county of Shropshire should be selected as the spot wherein the statue should be set up.

Judging from the experience afforded by recent events, it is now clear that the Mohammedans in India had thought much of these things, and that the year 1857 had been marked out by them as a centenary to be observed in a special way—by no less an achievement, indeed, than the expulsion of the British, and the revival of Moslem power. In the spring of the year it was ascertained that a paper was in circulation among the natives, purporting to be a prophecy made by a Punjaub fakeer seven hundred years ago—to the effect that, after various dynasties of Mohammedans had ruled for some centuries, the Nazarenes or Christians should hold power in India for one hundred years; that the Christians would then be expelled; and that various events foretold in the Koran would then come to pass, connected with the triumph of Islamism. That this mysterious prediction was widely credited, is probable—notwithstanding that the paper itself, if really circulated, must manifestly have been an imposture of recent date; for the English nation was not known even by name to the natives of India seven hundred years ago. Setting aside, at present, all inquiries concerning the first authors of the plot, the degree to which the Company’s annexations had provoked it, the existence of any grievances justifiably to be resisted, the reasons which induced Hindoos to join the Mohammedans against the British, or the extent to which the general population shared the views of the native military—laying 33aside these inquiries for the present, there is evidence that a great movement was planned for the middle of the year 1857. Of this plan the British government knew nothing, and suspected little.

But although no vast plot was suspected, several trifling symptoms had given cause for uneasiness and the English public learned, when too late, that many Indian officers had long predicted the imminency of some outbreak. Insubordination and mutiny, it was found, are not faults of recent growth among the native troops of India. Now that the startling events of 1857 are vividly presented to the public mind, men begin to read again the old story of the outbreak at Vellore, and seek to draw instruction therefrom. A little more than half a century ago—namely, on the 10th of July 1806—the European barracks at Vellore were thrown into a state of great excitement. This town is in the Carnatic, a few miles west of Madras, and in the presidency of the same name. At two o’clock in the morning, the barracks, containing four companies of the 69th regiment, were surrounded by two battalions of sepoys in the Company’s service, who poured in a heavy fire of musketry, at every door and window, upon the soldiers. At the same time the European sentries, the soldiers at the mainguard, and the sick in the hospital, were put to death. The officers’ houses were ransacked, and everybody found in them murdered. Upon the arrival of the 19th Light Dragoons, under Colonel Gillespie, the sepoys were immediately attacked; six hundred were cut down upon the spot, and two hundred taken from their hiding-places to be shot. There perished of the four European companies, a hundred and sixty-four, besides officers; and many British officers of the native troops were also murdered. Nothing ever came to light concerning the probable cause of the outrage, but this—that an attempt had been made by the military men at Madras to change the shape of the sepoy turban into something resembling the helmet of the light infantry of Europe, which would prevent the native troops from wearing on their foreheads the marks characteristic of their several castes. The sons of Tippoo Saib, the deposed ruler of Mysore, together with many distinguished Mohammedans deprived of office, were at that time in Vellore; and the supposition is, that these men contributed very materially to excite or inflame the suspicions of the Hindoos, concerning an endeavour to tamper with their religious usages. There was another mutiny some time afterwards at Nundeydroog, in the same presidency; and it was found indispensable to disarm four hundred and fifty Mohammedan sepoys, who had planned a massacre. At Bangalore and other places a similar spirit was exhibited. The governor of Madras deemed it necessary, in very earnest terms, to disclaim any intention of tampering with the native religion. In a proclamation issued on the 3d of December, he said: ‘The right honourable the governor in council having observed that, in some late instances, an extraordinary degree of agitation has prevailed among several corps of the native army of this coast, it has been his lordship’s particular endeavour to ascertain the motives which may have led to conduct so different from that which formerly distinguished the native army. From this inquiry, it has appeared that many persons of evil intention have endeavoured, for malicious purposes, to impress upon the native troops a belief that it is the wish of the British government to convert them by forcible means to Christianity; and his lordship in council has observed with concern that such malicious reports have been believed by many of the native troops. The right honourable the governor in council, therefore, deems it proper, in this public manner, to repeat to the native troops his assurance, that the same respect which has been invariably shewn by the British government for their religion and their customs, will be always continued; and that no interruption will be given to any native, whether Hindoo or Mussulman, in the practice of his religious ceremonies.’ Notwithstanding the distinctness of this assurance, and notwithstanding the extensive promulgation of the proclamation in the Tamul, Telinga, and Hindustani languages—the ferment continued a considerable time. Even in March 1807, when some months had elapsed, so universal was the dread of a general revolt among the native troops, that the British officers attached to the Madras army constantly slept with loaded pistols under their pillows.

In the interval between 1806 and 1857, nothing so murderous occurred; but, among the Bengal troops, many proofs of insubordination were afforded; for it repeatedly occurred that grievances, real or pretended, led to combinations among the men of different regiments. In 1835, Lord William Bentinck, acting on a principle which had often been advocated in England, abolished flogging in the Indian army; this appears to have raised the self-pride rather than conciliated the good-will of the troops: insubordination ensued, and several regiments had to be disbanded. Again, in 1844, when several Bengal regiments were ordered to march to Sinde, the 34th native infantry refused; whereupon Lord Ellenborough, at that time governor-general, ignominiously disbanded the regiment in presence of the rest of the army. Again, in 1849, Sir Colin Campbell, serving under Sir Charles Napier, reported that the 22d Bengal regiment had mutinied on a question of pay, in which they were clearly in the wrong; but as the Punjaub was at that time in a critical state, Sir Charles did that which was very opposite to his general character—he yielded to an unjust demand, as a measure of prudence. It may have been that the sepoys counted on this probability when they mutinied. No less than forty-two regiments were ascertained to be in secret correspondence on this matter, under Brahminical influence—one of whom went 34so far as to threaten the commanding officer that they could stop enlistment if they chose. In 1850, Napier was compelled to disband the 66th regiment, for mutiny at Peshawur. In 1852, the 38th regiment was ordered to proceed to Burmah; the men objected to the sea-voyage, and refused to depart; and the authorities in this case gave way.

Like as, in the ordinary affairs of life, men compare notes after a disaster, to ascertain whether any misgiving had silently occupied their minds concerning causes and symptoms; so did many military officers, observing that the troubles were all or mostly in Bengal, or where Bengal troops operated, come forward to state that they had long been cognizant of a marked difference between the Bengal army on the one hand, and the Bombay and Madras armies on the other. Lord Melville, who, as General Dundas, had held a command during the Punjaub campaign, expressed himself very strongly in the House of Lords shortly after news of the mutiny arrived. He stated that, in the Bengal army, the native officers were in nearly all cases selected by seniority, and not from merit; that they could not rise from the ranks till old age was creeping on them; and that a sort of hopelessness of advancement cankered in the minds of many sepoys in the middle time of life. In the Bombay and Madras armies, on the contrary, the havildars or sergeants were selected for their intelligence and activity, and were recommended for promotion by the commanding officers of the regiments. It might possibly be a theory unsusceptible of proof, that this difference made the one army mutinous and the other two loyal; but Lord Melville proceeded to assert that the Bengal troops were notoriously less fully organised and disciplined, more prone to insubordination, than the troops of the other two presidencies. He stated as an instance, that when he commanded the Bombay army in the Punjaub frontier in 1849, the Bengal regiments were mutinous; while the Bombay troops remained in soldierly subordination. Indeed these latter, which he commanded in person, were credited by his lordship with having exhibited the highest qualities of brave and faithful troops. He detailed an incident which had occurred at the siege of Moultan. A covering-party having been ordered into the trenches, some disturbance soon afterwards arose; and an English officer found that many soldiers of the Bengal army had been endeavouring to prevent the men belonging to one of the Bombay regiments from digging in the trenches in discharge of their duty, on the ground that the sepoys’ duty was to fight and not to work. Again: after the assault of Moultan, an officer in command of one of the pickets was requested to post a sergeant and twelve men at one of the gates of the town; this was done; but not long afterwards, three native officers of the Bengal engineers were detected in an endeavour to pass the gate with stores which they were about to plunder or appropriate. Although the views of Lord Melville were combated by a few other officers, there was a pretty general concurrence of opinion that the Bengal native army, through some circumstances known or unknown, had long been less obedient and orderly than those of the other two presidencies.

As it is the purpose of the present chapter to treat rather of the facts that preceded the horrors of Meerut and Cawnpore, than of the numerous theories for explaining them, we shall not dwell long in this place on the affairs of Oude, in connection with the Revolt; but so general is the opinion that the annexation of that kingdom was one of the predisposing causes of the late calamities, that it may be right to glance slightly at the subject.

Oude—once a nawabship under the great Mogul, then a kingdom, and the last remaining independent Mohammedan state in Northern India—was annexed in the early part of 1856; and although the governor-general sought to give a favourable account, both in its reasons and its results, of that momentous measure, there are not wanting grounds for believing that it made a deep impression on the minds of the natives, unfavourable to the English—among the military, if not among the people at large. The deposed king, with his family and his prime-minister, came to live at Calcutta in April 1856; and in the following month his mother, his brother, and one of his sons, proceeded in great state to England, to protest before Queen Victoria against the conduct of the governor-general and of the East India Company, in having deprived them of their regal position: prepared to prove, as they everywhere announced, that no justifiable grounds had existed for so harsh a step. Whether they sincerely believed this, or whether it was a blind to hide ulterior objects, could not at that time be determined. It is one among many opinions on the subject, that the courtiers around the deposed king gradually organised a plot against the British power; that the Queen of Oude’s visit to England was merely intended to mask the proceedings arising out of this plot; that the conspirators brought over to their views the Mogul of Delhi, the shadowy representative of a once mighty despot; that they then sought to win over the Hindoos to side with them; and that, in this proceeding, they adduced any and all facts that had come to their knowledge, in which the British had unwittingly insulted the religious prejudices of the worshippers of Brahma—craftily insinuating that the insult was premeditated. The wisdom or justice of the annexation policy we do not discuss in this place; there is a multiplicity of interpretations concerning it—from that of absolute necessity to that of glaring spoliation; but the point to be borne in mind is, that a new grievance was thereby added to others, real or pretended, already existing. It is especially worthy of note, that any distrust of England, arising out of annexation policy, was likely to be more intense in Oude than anywhere else; for three-fourths of the infantry in the Bengal army 35had been recruited from the inhabitants of that state; they were energetic men, strongly attached to their native country; and when the change of masters took place, they lost certain of the privileges they had before enjoyed. The Bengalees proper, the natives of the thickly populated region around the lower course of the Ganges, have little to do with the Bengal army; they are feeble, indolent, and cowardly, glad by any excuses to escape from fighting.

Let us now—having said a few words concerning the centenary of British rule, and the state of feeling in Oude—attend to the strange episode of the chupatties, as a premonitory symptom of something wrong in the state of public feeling in India.

The chupatties—small cakes of unleavened bread, about two inches in diameter, made of Indian corn-meal, and forming part of the sepoys’ regular diet—were regarded in England, as soon as the circumstances of the Revolt became known, as signs or symptoms which the various officers of the Company in India ought sedulously to have searched into. Ever since the middle of 1856—ever since, indeed, the final arrangements for the annexation of Oude—these chupatties were known to have been passing from hand to hand. A messenger would come to a village, seek out the headman or village elder, give him six chupatties, and say: ‘These six cakes are sent to you; you will make six others, and send them on to the next village.’ The headman accepted the six cakes, and punctually sent forward other six as he had been directed. It was a mystery of which the early stages were beyond our ken; for no one could say, or no one would say, which was the first village whence the cakes were sent. During many months this process continued: village after village being brought into the chain as successive links, and relays of chupatties being forwarded from place to place. Mr Disraeli, attacking on one occasion in the House of Commons the policy of the Indian government, adverted sarcastically to this chupatty mystery: ‘Suppose the Emperor of Russia, whose territory, in extent and character, has more resemblance to our Eastern possessions than the territory of any other power—suppose the Emperor of Russia were told—“Sire, there is a very remarkable circumstance going on in your territory; from village to village, men are passing who leave the tail of an ermine or a pot of caviare, with a message to some one to perform the same ceremony. Strange to say, this has been going on in some ten thousand villages, and we cannot make head or tail of it.” I think the Emperor of Russia would say: “I do not know whether you can make head or tail of it, but I am quite certain there is something wrong, and that we must take some precautions; because, where the people are not usually indiscreet and troublesome, they do not make a secret communication unless it is opposed to the government. This is a secret communication, and therefore a communication dangerous to the government.”’ The opposition leader did not assert that the government could have penetrated the mystery, but that the mystery ought to have been regarded as significant of something dangerous, worthy of close scrutiny and grave consideration.

The chupatties first appeared in the Northwest Provinces, around Delhi; and subsequent events offered a temptation for rebuking the governor-general and the commander-in-chief, in having failed to strengthen the posts with English troops after the indications of some secret conspiracy had thus been made. In some places it was ascertained that the cakes were to be kept till called for by the messengers, other cakes being sent on instead of them; but what was the meaning of this arrangement, the English officials could not, or at least did not find out. In Scotland, in the clannish days, war-signals were sent from hut to hut and from clan to clan with extraordinary rapidity; and, however little an unleavened cake might appear like a war-signal, military men and politicians ought certainly to have been alive to such strange manifestations as this chupatty movement. From the Sutlej to Patna, throughout a vast range of thickly populated country, was the secret correspondence carried on. One thing at any rate may safely be asserted, that the military stations required close watching at such a time; something was fermenting in the minds of the natives which the English could not understand; but that very fact would have justified—nay, rendered almost imperative—the guarding of the chief posts from sudden surprise. Little or nothing of this precautionary action seems to have been attempted. Throughout nearly the whole of the great trunk-road from Calcutta to the Punjaub, the military stations were left as before, almost wholly in the hands of the sepoys. At Benares there was only a single company of European foot-artillery; the rest of the troops consisting of two regiments of native infantry, and one of the Cis-Sutlej Sikh regiments. At Allahabad, the great supply magazine of the province was left almost wholly to the guard of the sepoys. Lucknow had only one European regiment and one company of artillery; notwithstanding that, as the capital of Oude, it was in the midst of a warlike and excited population; while the native army of the province, capable of soon assembling at the city, comprised no less than fourteen regiments of infantry, six of cavalry, and six companies of artillery. Cawnpore, a very important station with a large medical depôt, contained three regiments of native infantry, one of native cavalry, and two companies of native artillery with twelve guns; while the English force was only a company of infantry, and about sixty artillerymen with six guns. The large magazine of Delhi, the great storehouse of ammunition for the military stations all around it, was left to be guarded entirely by sepoys. The late General Anson, at that time commander-in-chief, was among the hills at Simla, relaxing from his duties; and neither at Simla nor at Calcutta did it seem 36to be felt that, with existing symptoms, more European troops were necessary in the Bengal and Northwest Provinces.

The chupatty was not the only symbol of some mystery: the lotus was another. It was a common occurrence for a man to come to a cantonment with a lotus-flower, and give it to the chief native officer of a regiment; the flower was circulated from hand to hand in the regiment; each man took it, looked at it, and passed it on, saying nothing. When the lotus came to the last man in the regiment, he disappeared for a time, and took it to the next military station. This strange process occurred throughout nearly all the military stations where regiments of the Bengal native army were cantoned.

Chupatties and lotus-flowers, together with the incendiarism and the cartridge grievances presently to be noticed, unquestionably indicated some widely spread discontent among the natives—military if not general. ‘It is clear,’ in the words of an observant officer, writing from one of the Cis-Sutlej stations, ‘that a certain ferment had been allowed gradually to arise throughout the mass of the Bengal army. In some it was panic, in some excitement, in some a mere general apprehension or expectation, and in some it was no doubt disaffection, or even conspiracy. Governing an alien people and a vast army, we had divested ourselves of all the instruments of foreign domination so familiar to Austria and all other continental powers. We had no political police, no European strongholds, no system of intelligence or espionage, comparatively little real military discipline; and even our own post-office was the channel of free, constant, and unchecked intercourse between all the different regiments. Not a letter even was opened; that would have been too abhorrent to English principles. The sepoy mind had probably become prepared to distrust us, as we had begun to distrust them. There were strange new legislative acts, and new post-office rules, and new foreign service enlistments, and new employment of armed races in our army, and other things disagreeable and alarming to the true old sepoy caste. And then it came about that from a small and trifling beginning, one of those ferments to which the native mind is somewhat prone, took possession of the sepoy army.’

One of the strange facts connected with the chupatty movement was, that the cakes were transmitted to the heads of villages who have not been concerned in the mutiny, while many sepoys who broke out in revolt had received no cakes. They appear to have been distributed mostly to the villagers; whereas the lotus passed from hand to hand among the military.

The chupatties and the lotus-flowers, however indicative they may have been of the existence of intrigue and conspiracy, were quiet indications; but there were not wanting other proofs of a mutinous spirit, in acts of violence and insubordination—apart from the incendiarisms and the cartridge difficulties. On one evening, early in the year, information was given by a sepoy of the intention of the men to rise against their officers and seize on Fort William, at Calcutta. On another occasion, a fanatic moulvie, a high Mohammedan priest at Oude, was detected preaching war against the infidels; and on his person was found a proclamation exciting the people to rebellion. On a third day, two sepoys were detected in an attempt to sap the fidelity of the guard at the Calcutta mint. An English surgeon in an hospital at Lucknow, by the bedside of a sepoy, put his lips to a bottle of medicine before giving it to his patient; this being regarded as a pollution, a pundit was sent for to break the bottle and exorcise the evil: on that night the doctor’s bungalow was burned down by incendiaries who could not be discovered. A refusal to accept a furlough or leave of absence might not usually be regarded as a symptom of a mutinous spirit; yet in India it conveyed a meaning that could not safely be disregarded. On the 6th of March, the commander-in-chief, with the sanction of the governor-general, notified that the native army would receive, as usual, the annual indulgence of furlough from the 1st of April to a certain subsequent date. When this order was read or issued, about fourteen men of the 63d native infantry, stationed at Soorie, and under orders to proceed to Berhampore, evinced a disinclination to avail themselves of the indulgence, on the plea that none of the regiments at Barrackpore intended to take theirs. It certainly appears to have been a circumstance worthy of a searching inquiry by the military authorities, why the troops should have declined to take their furlough at that particular time.

We must now pass on to that series of events which, so far as outward manifestations are concerned, was more especially the immediate forerunner of the Revolt—namely, the disturbances connected with the greased cartridges. Let not the reader for a moment regard this as a trivial matter, merely because it would be trivial in England: the sepoys may have been duped, and indeed were unquestionably duped, by designing men; but the subject of suspicion was a serious one to them. The fat of cows and of pigs is regarded in a peculiar light in the East. The pig is as much held in abhorrence by the Mohammedans as the cow is venerated by the Hindoos; to touch the former with the lips, is a defilement to the one religion; to touch the latter, is a sacrilege to the other. The religious feelings are different, but the results in this case are the same. So sacred, indeed, are cattle regarded by the Hindoos, that the Company’s officers have been accustomed to observe much caution in relation to any supply of beef for their own tables; the slaughter of a cow in a Hindoo village would in itself have been a sufficient cause for revolt; in large towns where Europeans are stationed, a high-walled paddock or compound is set apart for the reception of 37bullocks intended for food; and scrupulous care is taken that the natives shall know as little as possible of the proceedings connected with the slaughtering. The use of cow’s fat in ammunition would therefore be repulsive to the Hindoo sepoy. Many experienced men trace the mutiny to a false report concerning the cartridges, acting on the minds of natives who had already become distrustful by the machinations of agitators and emissaries. ‘It is a marvel and a mystery that so many years should have passed away without an explosion. At last a firebrand was applied to what a single spark might have ignited; and in the course of a few weeks there was a general conflagration; but a conflagration which still bears more marks of accident than of deliberate conspiracy and incendiarism. In a most unhappy hour—in an hour laden with a concurrence of adverse circumstances—the incident of the greased cartridges occurred. It found the Bengal army in a season of profound peace, and in a state of relaxed discipline. It found the sepoys pondering over the predictions and the fables which had been so assiduously circulated in their lines and their bazaars; it found them with imaginations inflamed and fears excited by strange stories of the designs of their English masters; it found them, as they fancied, with their purity of caste threatened, and their religious distinctions invaded, by the proselytising and annexing Englishmen. Still, there was no palpable evidence of this. Everything was vague, intangible, obscure. Credulous and simple-minded as they were, many might have retained a lingering confidence in the good faith and the good intentions of the British government: had it not been suddenly announced to them, just as they were halting between two opinions, that, in prosecution of his long-cherished design to break down the religion both of Mohammedan and Hindoo, the Feringhee had determined to render their military service the means of their degradation, by compelling them to apply their lips to a cartridge saturated with animal grease—the fat of the swine being used for the pollution of the one, and the fat of the cow for the degradation of the other. If the most astute emissaries of evil who could be employed for the corruption of the Bengal sepoy had addressed themselves to the task of inventing a lie for the confirmation and support of all his fears and superstitions, they could have found nothing more cunningly devised for their purpose.’^[6]

It was on the 7th of February 1857 that the governor-general communicated to the home government the first account of anything mysterious or unpleasant in relation to the greased cartridges. He had to announce that a dissatisfaction had exhibited itself among the native troops attached to the musketry-depôt at Dumdum. There are two Dumdums, two Dumdumas, one Dumdumma, and one Dumdumineah in India; but the place indicated is in Bengal, a few miles out of Calcutta, and about half-way between that city and Barrackpore. It was formerly the head-quarters of artillery for the presidency of Bengal; and near it is an excellent cannon-foundry, with casting-rooms, boring-rooms, and all the appliances for making brass guns. It is a sort of Woolwich on a humble scale, connected with ordnance and firearms.

The sepoys at Dumdum had heard rumours which induced them to believe that the grease used for preparing the cartridges for the recently introduced Enfield rifles was composed of the fat of pigs and cows—substances which their religion teaches them to regard in a light altogether strange to Europeans. It was not the first time by three or four years that the cartridge-question had excited attention in India, although in England the public knew absolutely nothing concerning it. From documents brought to light during the earlier months of the mutiny, it appears that in 1853 the commander-in-chief of the forces in India directed the adjutant-general of the Bengal army to call the attention of the governor-general to the subject of cartridges as connected with the prejudices of the natives. For what reason grease of any kind is employed on or with cartridges, may be soon explained. A cartridge, as most persons are aware, is a contrivance for quickly loading firearms. Instead of inserting the powder and bullet separately into the musket, rifle, or pistol, as was the earlier wont, the soldier is provided with a supply of small cartridge-paper tubes, each containing a bullet and the proper proportion of powder; and by the employment of these cartridges much time and attention are saved under circumstances where both are especially valuable. The missiles are called ball or blank cartridges, according as they do or do not each contain a bullet. Now the Enfield rifle, an English improvement on the celebrated Minié rifle invented and used by the French, was largely manufactured by machinery in a government establishment at Enfield, for use in the British and Indian armies; and in firing from this or other rifles it was necessary that the ball-end of the cartridge should have an external application of some greasy substance, to facilitate its movement through the barrel. In the year above named, the East India Company informed the Calcutta government, that a supply of new-greased cartridges had been sent, which the Board of Ordnance wished should be subjected to the test of climate. It was concerning these cartridges that the commander-in-chief recommended caution; on the ground that ‘unless it be known that the grease employed in these cartridges is not of a nature to offend or interfere with the prejudices of caste, it will be expedient not to issue them for test to native corps, but to Europeans only, to be carried in pouch.’ It was not until June 381854 that the cartridges were received in India; and during the next twelve months they were subjected to various tests, at Calcutta, at Cawnpore, and at Rangoon. The cartridges had been greased in four ways—with common grease, with laboratory grease, with Belgian grease, and with Hoffman’s grease, in each case with an admixture of creosote and tobacco; one set was tested by being placed in the ordnance magazines, a second by being kept in wagons, and a third by being tied up in pouch-bundles. The result of these tests was communicated to the directors in the autumn of 1855; and as a consequence, a modification was effected in the cartridges afterwards sent from England for service with the Enfield rifles in India.

To return now to the affair at Dumdum. When the complaints and suspicions of the sepoys were made known, inquiries were sent to England for exact particulars relating to the obnoxious missiles. It was ascertained that the new cartridges were made at the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich; and that Captain Boxer, the superintendent of that department, was accustomed to use for lubrication a composition formed of five parts tallow, five parts stearine, and one part wax—containing, therefore, ox or cow’s fat, but none from pigs. He had no prejudices in the matter to contend against in England, and used therefore just such a composition as appeared to him most suitable for the purpose. The cartridges were not sent out to India ready greased for use; as, in a hot country, the grease would soon be absorbed by the paper: there was, therefore, a part of the process left to be accomplished when the cartridges reached their destination.

It appears to have been in the latter part of January that the first open manifestation was made at Dumdum of a disinclination to use the cartridges; and immediately a correspondence among the authorities commenced concerning it. When the complaint had been made, the men were seemingly appeased on being assured that the matter would be duly represented; and as a means of conciliation, cartridges without grease were issued, the men being allowed to apply any lubricating substance they chose. It was further determined that no more ready-made cartridges should be obtained from England, but that bullets and paper should be sent separately, to be put together in India; that experiments should be made at Woolwich, to produce some lubricating substance free from any of the obnoxious ingredients; and that other experiments should meanwhile be made by the 60th Rifles—at that time stationed at Meerut—having the same object in view.

During the inquiry into the manifestation and alleged motives of this insubordination, one fact was elicited, which, if correct, seems to point to a date when the conspirators—whoever they may have been—began to act upon the dupes. On the 22d of January, a low-caste Hindoo asked a sepoy of the 2d Bengal Grenadiers to give him a little water from his lota or bottle; the other, being a Brahmin, refused, on the ground that the applicant would defile the vessel by his touch—a magnificence of class-superiority to which only the Hindoo theory could afford place. This refusal was met by a retort, that the Brahmin need not pride himself on his caste, for he would soon lose it, as he would ere long be required to bite off the ends of cartridges covered with the fat of pigs and cows. The Brahmin, alarmed, spread the report; and the native troops, as is alleged, were afraid that when they went home their friends would refuse to eat with them. When this became known to the English officers, the native troops were drawn up on parade, and encouraged to state the grounds of their dissatisfaction. All the native sergeants and corporals, and two-thirds of all the privates, at once stepped forward, expressed their abhorrence of having to touch anything containing the fat of cows or pigs, and suggested the employment of wax or oil for lubricating the cartridges. It was then that the conciliatory measures, noticed above, were adopted.

Still were there troubles and suspicious circumstances; but the scene is now transferred from Dumdum to Barrackpore. This town, sixteen miles from Calcutta, is worthy of note chiefly for its connection with the supreme government of India. The governor-general has a sort of suburban residence there, handsome, commodious, and situated in the midst of a very beautiful park. There are numerous bungalows or villas inhabited by European families, drawn to the spot by the salubrity of the air, by the beauty of the Hoogly branch of the Ganges, at this place three-quarters of a mile in width, and by the garden and promenade attached to the governor-general’s villa. In military matters, before the Revolt, there was a ‘presidency division of the army,’ of which some of the troops were in Calcutta, some at Barrackpore, and a small force of artillery at Dumdum, nearly midway between the two places; the whole commanded by a general officer at Barrackpore, under whom was a brigadier to command that station only. The station is convenient for military operations in the eastern part of Bengal, and for any sudden emergencies at Calcutta. Six regiments of native infantry were usually cantoned at Barrackpore, with a full complement of officers: the men hutted in commodious lines, and the officers accommodated in bungalows or lodges.

It was at this place that the discontent next shewed itself, much to the vexation of the government, who had hoped that the Dumdum affair had been satisfactorily settled, and who had explained to the native regiments at Barrackpore what had been done to remove the alleged cause of complaint. The sepoys at this place, however, made an objection to bite off the ends of the cartridges—a necessary preliminary to the loading of a rifle—on account of the animal fat contained, or supposed to be contained, in the grease with which the paper was lubricated: such fat not being 39permitted to touch the lips or tongues of the men, under peril of defilement. Some of the authorities strongly suspected that this renewed discontent was the work of secret agitators rather than a spontaneous expression of the men’s real feeling. There was at the time a religious Hindoo society or party at Calcutta, called the Dhurma Sobha, suspected of having spread rumours that the British government intended to compel the Hindoos to become Christians. Contemporaneously, too, with this movement, three incendiary fires took place at Barrackpore within four days; and a native sergeant’s bungalow was burnt down at Raneegunge, another military station in Lower Bengal. It was natural, therefore, that General Hearsey, the responsible officer at Barrackpore, should wish to ascertain what connection, if any, existed between these incendiarisms, intrigues, complainings, and greased cartridges. This was the more imperative, on account of the relative paucity of English troops in that part of India. There were four native regiments quartered at that time at Barrackpore—namely, the 2d Grenadiers, the 34th and 70th Native Infantry, and the 43d Native Light Infantry; whereas, in the four hundred miles between Calcutta and Dinapoor there was only one European regiment, the Queen’s 53d foot, of which one half was at Calcutta and the other half at Dumdum. The general held a special court of inquiry at Barrackpore on the 6th of February, and selected a portion of the 2d native Grenadier regiment to come forward and explain the cause of their continued objection to the paper of which the new rifle-cartridges were composed. One of the sepoys, Byjonath Pandy, stated that he felt a suspicion that the paper might affect his caste. On being asked his reason for this suspicion, he answered that the paper was a new kind which he had not seen before; and there was a ‘bazaar report’ that the paper contained animal fat. On being requested to examine the paper carefully in the light, and to explain to the court what he saw objectionable in it, he replied that his suspicion proceeded from the paper being stiff and cloth-like, and from its tearing differently from the paper formerly in use. Another sepoy, Chaud Khan, was then examined. He objected to the paper because it was tough, and burned as if it contained grease. He stated that much dismay had been occasioned in the regiment by the fact that ‘on the 4th of February a piece of the cartridge-paper was dipped in water, and then burned; when burning, it made a fizzing noise, and smelt as if there were grease in it.’ Thereupon a piece of the paper was burned in open court; Chaud Khan confessed that he could not smell or see grease in it; but he repeated his objection to the use of the paper, on the plea that ‘everybody is dissatisfied with it on account of its being glazed, shining like waxed cloth.’ Another witness, Khadu Buksh, filling the rank of subadar or native captain, on being examined, frankly stated that he had no objection to the cartridge itself, but that there was a general report in the cantonment that the paper was made up with fat. A jemadar or lieutenant, named Golal Khan, said very positively: ‘There is grease in it, I feel assured; as it differs from the paper which has heretofore been always used for cartridges.’ As shewing the well-known power of what in England would be called ‘public opinion,’ the answer of one of the sepoys is worthy of notice; he candidly confessed that he himself had no objection to use the cartridges, but he could not do so, as his companions would object to it. While these occurrences were under scrutiny, a jemadar of the 34th regiment came forward to narrate what he knew on the matter, as affording proof of conspiracy. On the 5th, when the fear of detection had begun to work among them, two or three of the sepoys came to him, and asked him to accompany them to the parade-ground. He did so, and there found a great crowd assembled, composed of men of the different regiments at the station; they had their heads tied up in handkerchiefs or cloths, so that only a small part of the face was exposed. They told him they were determined to die for their religion; and that if they could concert a plan that evening, they would on the next night plunder the station and kill all the Europeans, and then depart whither they pleased. The number he stated to be about three hundred. It was not at the time known to the authorities, but was rendered probable by circumstances afterwards brought to light, that letters and emissaries were being despatched, at the beginning of February, from the native troops at Barrackpore to those at other stations, inviting them to rise in revolt against the British.

Under any other circumstances, a discussion concerning such petty matters as bits of cartridge-paper and items of grease would be simply ridiculous; but at that time and place the ruling authorities, although ignorant of the real extent of the danger, saw clearly that they could not afford to regard such matters as otherwise than serious. There was either a sincere prejudice to be conciliated, or a wide-spread conspiracy to be met; and it was at once determined to test again the sincerity of the sepoys, by yielding to their (apparently) religious feelings on a matter which did not affect the efficiency of the service. A trial was made, therefore, of a mode of loading the rifle without biting the cartridge, by tearing off the end with the left hand. The commander-in-chief, finding on inquiry that this method was sufficiently efficacious, and willing to get rid of mere formalism in the matter, consented that the plan should be adopted both for percussion-muskets and for rifles. This done, the governor-general, by virtue of his supreme command, ordered the adoption of the same system throughout India.

The scene now again changes: we have to attend to certain proceedings at Berhampore, following on those at Barrackpore. Of Berhampore 40as a town, little need be said here; and that little is called for principally to determine which Berhampore is meant. Under the forms Berhampore, Berhampoor, or Burhampore, there are no less than four towns in India—one in the native state of Nepaul, sixty miles from Khatmandoo; another in the Nagpoor territory, sixty miles from the city of the same name; another in the Madras presidency, near Orissa; and a fourth in the district of Moorshedabad, Lower Bengal. It is this last-named Berhampore to which attention is here directed. The town is on the left bank of the river Bhagruttee, a great offset of the Ganges, and on the high road from Calcutta to Moorshedabad—distant about a hundred and twenty miles from the first-named city by land, and a hundred and sixty by water. It is in a moist, unhealthy spot, very fatal to Europeans, and in consequence disliked by them as a station in past times; but sanitary measures, draining, and planting have greatly improved it within the last few years. As a town, it is cheerful and attractive in appearance, adorned by stately houses in the neighbourhood, to accommodate permanent British residents. The military cantonments are large and striking; the grand square, the excellent parade-ground, the quarters of the European officers—all are handsome. Before the Revolt, Berhampore was included within the presidency division in military matters, and was usually occupied by a body of infantry and another of artillery. There is painful evidence of the former insalubrity of the station met with in a large open space filled with tombstones, contrasting mournfully with the majestic cantonments of the military. Berhampore has, or had a few years ago, a manufactory of the silk bandana handkerchiefs once so popular in England.

The troubles in this town were first made manifest in the following way. On or about the 24th of February, a portion of the 34th regiment of Bengal infantry changed its station from Barrackpore to Berhampore, where it was greeted and feasted by the men of the 19th native infantry, stationed there at that time. During their feasting, the new-comers narrated all the news from Dumdum and Barrackpore concerning the greased cartridges; and the effects of this gossip were very soon made visible. To understand what occurred, the mode of piling or storing arms in India must be attended to; in the Bombay army, and in the Queen’s regiments, the men were wont to keep their arms with them in their huts; but in the Bengal army, it was a custom to deposit them in circular brick buildings called bells, which were kept locked under native guard, each in front of a particular company’s lines. The men of the 19th regiment, then, excited by the rumours and stories, the fears and suspicions of their companions in arms elsewhere, but not knowing or not believing—or perhaps not caring for—the promises of change made by the military authorities, broke out into insubordination. On the 26th of February, being ordered to parade for exercise with blank cartridges, they refused to receive the percussion-caps, as a means of rendering their firing impossible—alleging that the cartridge-paper supplied for the charge was of two kinds; that they doubted the qualities of one or both; and that they believed in the presence of the fat of cows or pigs in the grease employed. That the men were either dupes or intriguers is evident; for it so happened that the cartridges offered to them were the very same in kind as they had used during many years, and had been made up before a single Enfield rifle had reached India. This resistance was a serious affair; it was something more than a complaint or petition, and needed to be encountered with a strong hand. It is a matter of opinion, judged differently even by military men accustomed to India and its natives, whether the proper course was on that occasion taken. The commanding officer, Lieutenant-colonel Mitchell, ordered a detachment of native cavalry and a battery of native artillery—the only troops at Barrackpore besides those already named—to be on parade on the following morning. Between ten and eleven o’clock at night, however, the men of the 19th regiment broke open the armouries or bells, took possession of their muskets and ammunition, and carried them to their lines. The next day, the guns were got ready, and the officers proceeded to the parade-ground, where they found the men in undress, but armed, formed in line, and shouting. The officers were threatened if they came on. Mitchell then expostulated with them; he pointed out the absurdity of their suspicions, and the unworthiness of their present conduct, and commanded them to give up their arms and return peaceably to their lines; whereupon the native officers said the men would refuse so to do unless the cavalry and artillery were withdrawn. The lieutenant-colonel withdrew them, and then the infantry yielded. It was a difficult position for an officer to be placed in; if he had struggled, it would have been with natives against natives; and, doubtful of the result of such a contest, he assented to the men’s conditional surrender.

The affair could not be allowed to end here. The Calcutta authorities, receiving news on the 4th of March of this serious disaffection, but deeming it unsafe to punish while so few European troops were at hand, sent quietly to Rangoon in Pegu, with orders that Her Majesty’s 84th foot should steam up to Calcutta as quickly as possible. On the 20th, this regiment arrived; and then the governor-general, acting in harmony with Major-general Hearsey, resolved on the disbandment of the native regiment which had disregarded the orders of its superiors. Accordingly, on the 31st of March, the 19th regiment was marched from Berhampore to Barrackpore, the head-quarters of the military division; the men were disarmed, paid off, marched out of the cantonments as far as Palta Ghaut, and conveyed across the river in steamers placed for the purpose. In short, the regiment, in a military sense, was 41destroyed, without personal punishment to any of the men composing it. But though not punished, in the ordinary sense, the infliction was a great one; for the men at once became penniless, unoccupied, objectless. The governor-general, in describing these proceedings for the information of the home government, added: ‘We trust that the severe measures which we have been forced to adopt will have the effect of convincing the native troops that they will only bring ruin on themselves by failing in their duty to the state and in obedience to their officers.’

Viscount Canning.

On the occasion just adverted to, General Hearsey addressed the men very energetically, while an official paper from the governor-general, read to the troops, asserted in distinct terms that the rumour was wholly groundless which imputed to the government an intention to interfere with the religion of the people. It was a charge soon afterwards brought in England against the governor-general, that, having subscribed to certain missionary societies in India, he did not like to abjure all attempts at the conversion of the natives; and that, being thus balanced between his public duty and his private religious feeling, he had issued the general order to the whole army, but had not shewn any solicitude to convey that positive declaration to all the natives in all the cantonments or military stations. This, however, was said when Viscount Canning was not present to defend himself; reasonable men soon saw that the truth was not to be obtained by such charges, unless supported by good evidence. It is, however, certain, that much delay and routine formality occurred throughout all these proceedings. As early as the 11th of February, General Hearsey wrote from Barrackpore the expressive words: ‘We are on a mine ready to explode’—in allusion to the uneasy state of feeling or opinion among the sepoys that their religious usages were about to be tampered with; and yet it was not until the 27th of March that the Supreme Council at Calcutta agreed to the issue of a general order declaring it to be the invariable rule of the government to treat the religious tendencies of all its servants with respect; nor until the 31st that this general order was read to the troops at Barrackpore. Considering the mournful effects of dilatoriness and rigid formalism during the Crimean war, the English public had indulged a 42hope that a healthy reform would be introduced into the epistolary mechanism of the government departments; and this was certainly to some extent realised in England; but unfortunately the reform had not yet reached India. During these early months of the mutiny, an absurd waste of time occurred in the writing and despatching of an enormous number of letters, where a personal interview, or a verbal message by a trusty servant, might have sufficed. Eight letters were written, and four days consumed, before the Calcutta authorities knew what was passing at Dumdum, eight miles distant. A certain order given by the colonel of a regiment at Calcutta being considered injudicious by the general, an inquiry was made as to the grounds for the order; eight days and nine letters were required for this inquiry and the response to it, and yet the two officers were within an hour’s distance of each other during the whole time. Although the affair at Barrackpore on the 6th of February was assuredly of serious import, it was not known to the government at Calcutta until the evening of the 10th, notwithstanding that a horseman might easily have ridden the sixteen miles in two hours. General Hearsey’s reply to a question as to the cause of the delay is truly instructive, as exemplifying the slowness of official progress in India: ‘I have no means of communicating anything to the government; I have no mounted orderly, no express camels; I must always write by the post; and that leaves Barrackpore at the most inconvenient hour of three o’clock in the afternoon.’ These facts, trivial in themselves, are worthy of being borne in mind, as indicative of defects in the mechanism of government likely to be disastrous in times of excitement and insubordination.

Barrackpore was destined to be a further source of vexation and embarrassment to the government. It will be remembered that a part of the 34th native infantry went from that town to Berhampore in the last week in February; but the bulk of the regiment remained at Barrackpore. Inquiries, afterwards instituted, brought to light the fact that the European commander of that regiment had been accustomed to distribute religious tracts among his men; and it was surmised that the scruples and prejudices of the natives, especially the Brahmins, had been unfavourably affected by this proceeding. But whether the cause had or had not been rightly guessed, it is certain that the 34th displayed more mutinous symptoms at that time than any other regiment. When the news of the disturbance at Berhampore reached them, they became greatly excited: they attended to their duties, but with sullen doggedness; and they held nightly meetings, at which speeches were made sympathetic with the Berhampore mutineers. The authorities, not wholly ignorant of these meetings, nevertheless remained quiet until a European regiment could arrive to aid them. When the Queen’s 84th arrived at Calcutta, the 34th were more excited than ever, believing that something hostile was intended against them; their whispers became murmurs, and they openly expressed their sympathy. When, in accordance with the plan noticed in the last paragraph, the 19th were marched off from Berhampore to be disbanded at Barrackpore, the 34th displayed still greater audacity. The 19th having rested for a time at Barraset, eight miles from Barrackpore, a deputation from the 34th met them, and made a proposal that they should that very night kill all their officers, march to Barrackpore, join the 2d and 34th, fire the bungalows, surprise and overwhelm the Europeans, seize the guns, and then march to threaten Calcutta. Had the 19th been as wild and daring, as irritated and vengeful, as the 34th, there is no knowing what calamities might have followed; but they exhibited rather a repentant and regretful tone, and submitted obediently to all the details of their disbandment at Barrackpore.

It will therefore be seen that the seeds of further disaffection had been already sown. As the 34th native infantry had been instrumental in inciting the 19th to mutiny, ending in disbandment, so did it now bring a similar punishment on itself. On the 29th of March, one Mungal Pandy, a sepoy in the 34th, roused to a state of excitement by the use of intoxicating drugs, armed himself with a sword and a loaded musket, traversed the lines, called upon his comrades to rise, and declared he would shoot the first European he met. Lieutenant Baugh, adjutant of the corps, hearing of this man’s conduct, and of the excited state of the regiment generally, rode hastily to the lines. Mungal Pandy fired, missed the officer, but struck his horse. The lieutenant, in self-defence, fired his pistol, but missed aim; whereupon the sepoy attacked him with his sword, wounded him in the hand, brought him to the ground, and tried to entice the other soldiers to join in the attack. The sergeant-major of the corps, who went to the lieutenant’s assistance, was also wounded by Mungal Pandy. The dark feature in this transaction was that many hundred men in the regiment looked on quietly without offering to protect the lieutenant from his assailant; one of them, a jemadar, refused to take Mungal into custody, and forbade his men to render any assistance to the lieutenant, who narrowly escaped with his life. Major-general Hearsey, on being informed of the occurrence, proceeded to the parade-ground, where, to his astonishment, he saw the man walking to and fro, with a blood-smeared sword in one hand, and a loaded musket in the other. He advanced with some officers and men to secure the sepoy, which was accomplished with much difficulty; and it was only by the most resolute bearing of the major-general that the rest of the men could be induced to return quietly to their lines. A court-martial was held on Mungal Pandy, and on the rebellious jemadar, both 43of whom were forthwith found guilty, and executed on the 8th of April. No assignable cause appeared for the conduct of this man: it may have been a mere drunken frenzy; yet there is more probability that a mutinous spirit, concealed within his breast during sober moments, made its appearance unchecked when under the influence of drugs. There was another sepoy, however, who acted faithfully on the occasion; this man, Shiek Paltoo, was accompanying Lieutenant Baugh as orderly officer at the time of the attack; and by his prompt assistance the lieutenant was saved from further injury than a slight wound. Shiek Paltoo was raised to the rank of supernumerary havildar for his brave and loyal conduct.

Calcutta.

The outrage, however, could not be allowed to terminate without further punishment. For a time, the government at Calcutta believed that the execution of the two principal offenders would suffice, and that the sepoys would quietly return to their obedience; but certain ominous occurrences at Lucknow and elsewhere, about the end of April, shewed the necessity for a stern line of conduct, especially as the 34th still displayed a kind of sullen doggedness, as if determined on further insubordination. After mature consideration the whole of the disposable troops in and around Calcutta were, on the 5th of May, marched off to Barrackpore, to effect the disarming and disbanding of such sepoys among the 34th as were present in the lines when Lieutenant Baugh was wounded. The force comprised the Queen’s 64th regiment, a wing of the 53d, the 2d, 43d, and 70th native infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, and a light field-battery with six guns. When these troops had been drawn up in two sides of a square, on the morning of the 6th, about four hundred sepoys of the 34th were halted in front of the guns. The order for disbandment was read out by the interpreter, Lieutenant Chamier; and after a few energetic remarks upon the enormity of their offence, General Hearsey commanded them to pile their arms, and strip off the uniform which they had disgraced. When this was done, the work of paying up their arrears was commenced. They were then dismissed with their families and baggage, to Chinsura, a town a few miles higher up the Hoogly. The grenadiers of the 84th, and a portion of the cavalry, accompanied them to see that they went to and settled at Chinsura, and did not cross the river to Chittagong, where three other companies of the same regiment were stationed. Four of the disbanded sepoys were officers; one of whom, a subadar, sobbed bitterly at his loss and degradation, although 44it was strongly suspected that he had been one of the leaders in the insubordination. In the general order which the governor-general ordered to be read to every regiment in the service, concerning this disbandment, words occur which shew that the old delusion was still working in the breasts of the natives. ‘The sepoy who was the chief actor in the disgraceful scene of the 29th of March called upon his comrades to come to his support, for the reason that their religion was in danger, and that they were about to be compelled to employ cartridges, the use of which would do injury to their caste; and from the words in which he addressed the sepoys, it is to be inferred that many of them shared this opinion with him. The governor-general in council has recently had occasion to remind the army of Bengal that the government of India has never interfered to constrain its soldiers in matters affecting their religious faith. He has declared that the government of India never will do so; and he has a right to expect that this declaration shall give confidence to all who have been deceived and led astray. But, whatever may be the deceptions or evil counsels to which others have been exposed, the native officers and men of the 34th regiment native infantry have no excuse for misapprehension on this subject. Not many weeks previously to the 29th of March, it had been explained to that regiment—first by their own commanding officer, and subsequently by the major-general commanding the division—that their fears for religion were groundless. It was carefully and clearly shewn to them that the cartridges which they would be called upon to use contained nothing which could do violence to their religious scruples. If, after receiving these assurances, the sepoys of the 34th regiment, or of any other regiment, still refuse to place trust in their officers and in the government, and still allow suspicions to take root in their minds, and to grow into disaffection, insubordination, and mutiny, the fault is their own, and their punishment will be upon their own heads.’

Five weeks elapsed between the offence of the 19th native infantry and its punishment by disbandment; five weeks similarly elapsed between the offence and the disbandment of the 34th; and many observant officers were of opinion that these delays worked mischief, by instilling into the minds of the sepoys a belief that the authorities were afraid to punish them. Whether the punishment of disbanding was, after all, sufficiently severe, is a question on which military men are by no means agreed.

At a later date than the events narrated in this chapter, but closely connected with them in subject, was the circulation of a report manifestly intended to rouse the religious prejudices of the Hindoos by a false assertion concerning the designs of the ruling powers. In some of the towns of Southern India, far away from Bengal, unknown emissaries circulated a paper, or at least a story, of which the following was the substance: That the padres, probably Christian missionaries, had sent a petition to the Queen of England, complaining of the slowness with which Hindoos were made to become Christians; they adduced the conduct of some of the Mohammedan potentates of India in past times, such as Tippoo Saib, who had compelled the Hindoos to embrace Islamism; and they suggested a similar authoritative policy. The story made the padres give this advice: to mix up bullocks’ fat and pigs’ fat with the grease employed on the cartridges; in order that, by touching these substances with their teeth or lips, the sepoys might lose caste, and thus induce them to embrace Christianity as their only resource. The climax of the story was reached by making the Queen express her joy at the plan, and her resolve that it should be put in operation. The success of such a lying rumour must, of course, have mainly depended on the ignorance and credulity of the natives.

A far-distant region now calls for notice. At a time when the Upper and Lower Bengal provinces were, as the authorities hoped and believed, recovering from the wild excitement of the cartridge question, the commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej territory had ample means for knowing that the minds of the natives in that region were mischievously agitated by some cause or other. It is necessary here to understand what is meant by this geographical designation. If we consult a map in which an attempt is made, by distinct colouring, to define British territory from semi-independent states, we shall find the region between Delhi and Lahore cut up in a most extraordinary way. The red British patches are seen to meander among the scraps of native territory with great intricacy: so much so, indeed, that a map on a very large scale could alone mark the multitudinous lines of boundary; and even such a map would soon become obsolete, for the red, like a devouring element, has been year by year absorbing bits of territory formerly painted green or yellow. The peculiar tribe of the Sikhs, besides occupying the Punjaub, inhabit a wide region on the east or left bank of the river Sutlej, generally included under the name of Sirhind. For fifty years the British in India have had to deal, or have made a pretext for dealing, with the petty Sikh chieftains of this Sirhind region: at one time ‘protecting’ those on the east of the Sutlej from the aggression of the great Sikh leader, Runjeet Singh, on the west of that river; then ‘annexing’ the small territories of some of these chieftains on failure of male heirs; then seizing others as a punishment for non-neutrality or non-assistance during war-time. Thus it arose that—before the annexation of the Punjaub itself in 1849—much of the Sikh country in Sirhind had become British, and was divided into four districts marked by the towns of Ferozpore, Umballa or Umballah, Loodianah, and Kythul; leaving Putialah, Jeend, and Furreedkote as the three principal 45protected or semi-independent Sikh states of that country. Meanwhile a region somewhat to the east or northeast of Sirhind was subject to just the same process. Being hilly, it is called the Hill Country; and being ruled by a number of petty chieftains, the separate bits of territory are called the Hill States. During about forty years the process of absorption has been going on—arising primarily out of the fact that the British aided the Hill chieftains against the Nepaulese, and then paid themselves in their wonted manner. Part of Gurhwal was annexed; then Sundock, Malowa, and a number of other places not easily found in the maps; and afterwards Ramgurh was given back in exchange for Simla, to form a healthy holiday-place among the hills, a sort of Balmoral for sick governors and commanders. As a final result, much of the Hill Country became British, and the rest was left in the hands of about twenty petty chieftains.

Now, when the Cis-Sutlej territory is mentioned, it must be interpreted as including all the region taken by the British from the minor Sikh chieftains in Sirhind; together with such of the Hill States of Gurhwal and its vicinity as have become British. The whole together have been made a sub-government, under a commissioner responsible to the governor-general; or, more strictly, the commissioner rules the Sirhind region, while the Hills are included among the non-regulation districts of the Agra government. The four towns and districts of Ferozpore, Loodianah, Umballa, and Kythul, east of the Sutlej, will suffice for our purpose to indicate the Cis-Sutlej territory—so named in a Calcutta point of view, as being on the cis or hither side of the Sutlej, in reference to that city.

It was at Umballa, one of the towns in the Cis-Sutlej territory, that the commissioner, Mr Barnes, reported acts of incendiarism that much perplexed him. On the 26th of March, Hurbunsee Singh, a subadar or native captain in the 36th regiment native infantry, attached to the musketry depôt at that place, became an object of attack to the other men of the regiment; they endeavoured to burn his hut and his property. It was just at the time when reports reached Umballa relative to the cartridges, the using of which was said by the sepoys to be an innovation derogatory to their caste and religion. Hurbunsee Singh had at once come forward, and publicly stated his willingness to fire with such cartridges, as being, in his opinion, free from objection. The incendiarism took place on the day named; and the commissioner directly inferred that there must be something wrong in the thoughts of men who would thus seek to injure one of their own native officers on such grounds. Nothing further occurred, however, until the 13th of April, when another fire broke out. This was followed by a third on the 15th, in some outhouses belonging to the 60th native infantry; by two fires on the 16th, when government property was burned to the value of thirty thousand rupees; by the burning on the 17th of an empty bungalow in the 5th regiment native infantry lines, of a stable belonging to an English officer of the 60th, and of another building. On the 20th, attempts were made on the houses of the jemadar and havildar of the 5th regiment, two native officers favourable to the new cartridges; and under the bed of the jemadar were found gunpowder and brimstone, as if to destroy the man as well as his property. Some of the buildings are believed to have been set on fire by dropping burning brimstone through holes in the roof; and on one occasion, when the attempt at incendiarism had failed, a paper containing powder and brimstone was found. On the 21st and two following days, similar fires occurred. On the 25th, the house of the band-master of Her Majesty’s 9th Lancers was fired and burned; and two or three similar attempts were shortly afterwards made, but frustrated. At all these fires, the engines of the cantonment were set to work; but it was observed that many of the sepoys worked listlessly and indifferently, as if their thoughts were bent rather upon fire-raising than fire-quenching.

That such occurrences produced uneasiness among the English authorities at Umballa may well be supposed. Captain Howard, magistrate of the cantonment, wrote thus to the Calcutta government: ‘The emanating cause of the arson at this cantonment, I conceive, originated with regard to the newly introduced cartridges, to which the native sepoy shews his decided objection: it being obnoxious to him from a false idea—which, now that it has entered the mind of the sepoy, is difficult to eradicate—that the innovation of this cartridge is derogatory both to his caste and his religion.... That this has led to the fires at this cantonment, in my own private mind I am perfectly convinced. Were it the act of only one or two, or even a few persons, the well-disposed sepoys would at once have come forward and forthwith informed; but that there is an organised leagued conspiracy existing, I feel confident. Though all and every individual composing a regiment may not form part of the combination, still I am of opinion that such a league in each corps is known to exist; and such being upheld by the majority, or rather connived at, therefore it is that no single man dared to come forward and expose it.’ Although proof could not be obtained of the culpability of any one sepoy, the incendiarism was at once attributed to them rather than to the peasantry. The existence of some oath or bond of secrecy was further supposed from the fact that a reward of one thousand rupees failed to bring forward a single witness or accuser. After about twenty attempts at burning buildings, more or less successful, the system was checked—by the establishment of mounted and foot patrols and pickets; by the expulsion of all fakeers and idle persons not belonging to the cantonment; by the refusal of a passage through it to sepoys on furlough or discharged; and by the arrest of 46such sepoys in the Umballa regiments as, having furloughs, still remained in the cantonment—influenced, apparently, by some mischievous designs.

Every one coincided in opinion with Captain Howard that there had been an organised plan among the sepoys; but some of the officers in the Company’s service, civil as well as military, differed from him in attributing it solely to the cartridge affair—they thought this a blind or pretence to hide some deeper scheme. The commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej states, however, agreed with the magistrate, and expressed an opinion that nothing would restore quiet but a concession to the natives in the matter of greased cartridges; and he recommended to the government at Calcutta the adoption of that line of policy. Writing on the 7th of May, he said: ‘Fires, for the present, have ceased; but I do not think that this is any indication that the uneasy feeling among the sepoys is on the wane.’ Considering the position of Umballa, it is no wonder that those in authority at that spot should feel anxiety concerning the safety of their position. Umballa is more than a thousand miles from Calcutta, separated from it by the whole of the important states in which the cities of Delhi, Meerut, Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, and Benares are situated, and deprived of assistance from thence in the event of the intermediate regions being disturbed. Umballa is a somewhat important town, too, in itself, with more than twenty thousand inhabitants; it is large, and surrounded with a wall, well supplied with water, bounded by a highly fertile district, and capable of furnishing abundant supplies to rebels, if held by them.

The authorities, awakened by these events in so many parts of India, sought to inquire whether the native newspaper press of India had fermented the anarchy. It seemed at first ridiculous to suppose that those miserable little sheets, badly written and worse printed, and having a small circulation, could have contributed much to the creation of the evil. Yet many facts tended to the support of this view. It was a frequent custom in those papers to disguise the writer’s real sentiments under the flimsy mask of a dialogue, in which one side was uniformly made victor. When the government was not actually abused and vilified, it was treated with ridicule, and its motives distorted. There were not many copies of these papers printed and sold; but a kind of ubiquity was afforded to them by the practice of news-mongers or tale-bearers, who went from hut to hut, retailing the various items of news or of comment that had been picked up.

Indeed, the tendency of the people to listen to attacks against the government is now known to have been very marked among the Hindoos. Predictions of the downfall of rulers were a favourite subject with them. Of course, such predictions would not be openly hazarded in newspapers; but they not less surely reached the ears of the natives. Thirty years ago, Sir John Malcolm spoke on this subject in the following way: ‘My attention has been, during the last twenty-five years, particularly directed to this dangerous species of secret war against our authority, which is always carrying on by numerous though unseen hands. The spirit is kept up by letters, by exaggerated reports, and by pretended prophecies. When the time appears favourable, from the occurrence of misfortune to our arms, from rebellion in our provinces, or from mutiny in our troops, circular-letters and proclamations are dispersed over the country with a celerity almost incredible. Such documents are read with avidity. The contents in most cases are the same. The English are depicted as usurpers of low caste, and as tyrants who have sought India with no other view but that of degrading the inhabitants and of robbing them of their wealth, while they seek to subvert their usages and their religion. The native soldiery are always appealed to, and the advice to them is, in all instances I have met with, the same—“Your European tyrants are few in number: kill them!”’ This testimony of Malcolm is especially valuable, as illustrating, and illustrated by, recent events.

The native press of India will come again under notice in a future chapter, connected with the precautionary measures adopted by the governor-general to lessen the power of those news-writers, whether English or native, who shewed a disposition to encourage rebellion by their writings. News and rumours always work most actively among credulous people—an important fact, knowing what we now know of India and its Hindoo inhabitants.

When General Anson, commander-in-chief of the forces in India, found that the small events at Dumdum, Berhampore, and Barrackpore had grown into great importance, and that the cartridge grievance still appeared to press on the consciences or influence the conduct of the sepoys, he deemed it right to make an effort that should pacify the whole of the native troops. Being at Umballa on the 19th of May, to which place he had hastened from his sojourn at Simla, he issued a general order to the native army, informing the troops that it had never been the intention of the government to force them to use any cartridges which could be objected to, and that they never would be required to do so. He announced his object in publishing the order to be to allay the excitement which had been raised in their minds, at the same time expressing his conviction that there was no cause for this excitement. He had been informed, he said, that some of the sepoys who entertained the strongest attachment and loyalty to the government, and who were ready at any moment to obey its orders, were nevertheless under an impression that their families would believe them to be in some way contaminated by the use of the cartridges used with the Enfield rifles recently introduced in India. He expressed 47regret that the positive assertions of the government officers, as to the non-existence of the objectionable substances in the grease of the cartridges, had not been credited by the sepoys. He solemnly assured the army, that no interference with their caste-principles or their religion was ever contemplated; and as solemnly pledged his word and honour that no such interference should ever be attempted. He announced, therefore, that whatever might be the opinions of the government concerning the cartridges, new or old, he had determined that the new rifle-cartridge, and every other of new form, should be discontinued: balled ammunition being made up by each regiment for its own use, by a proper establishment maintained for the purpose. Finally, he declared his full confidence, ‘that all in the native army will now perform their duty, free from anxiety or care, and be prepared to stand and shed the last drop of their blood, as they had formerly done, by the side of the British troops, and in defence of their country.’ The central government at Calcutta, on receipt of the news of this order having been promulgated, hastily sent to state that, in implying that new cartridges had been issued, the commander-in-chief had overstepped the actual facts of the case; nothing new in that way had been introduced throughout the year, except to the troops at the Depôt of Musketry Instruction at Dumdum. From this fact it appears certain that the credulity of the sepoys at the more distant stations had been imposed upon, either by their fellow-Hindoos engaged in a conspiracy, or by Mohammedans.

Council-house at Calcutta.

In this chapter have been discussed several subjects which, though strange, exhibit nothing terrible or cruel. The suspicions connected with the Oude princes, the mystery of the chupatties, the prophecies of British downfall, the objections to the greased cartridges, the insubordination arising out of those objections, the incendiarism, the inflammatory tendency of the native newspaper press—all were important rather as symptoms, than for their immediate effects. But the month of May, and the towns of Meerut and Delhi, will now introduce us to fearful proceedings—the beginning of a series of tragedies.

48

King’s Palace, Delhi.

The first week in May marked a crisis in the affairs of British India. It will ever remain an insoluble problem, whether the hideous atrocities that followed might have been prevented by any different policy at that date. The complainings and the disobedience had already presented themselves: the murders and mutilations had not yet commenced; and there are those who believe that if a Lawrence instead of a Hewett had been at Meerut, the last spark that ignited the inflammable materials might have been arrested. But this is a kind of cheap wisdom, a prophecy after the event, an easy mode of judgment, on which little reliance can be placed. Taking the British officers in India as a body, it is certain that they had not yet learned to distrust the sepoys, whom they regarded with much professional admiration for their external qualifications. The Brahmins of the Northwest Provinces—a most important constituent, as we have seen, of the Bengal army—are among the finest men in the world; their average height is at least two inches greater than that of the English soldiers of the line regiments; and in symmetry they also take the lead. They are unaddicted to drunkenness; they are courteous in demeanour, in a degree quite beyond the English soldier; and it is now known that the commanding officers, proud of the appearance of these men on parade, too often ignored those moral qualities without which a good soldier is an impossible production. Whether, when the disturbances became known, the interpretation was favourable to the sepoys, depended much on the peculiar bias in the judgment of each officer. Some believed that the native soldier was docile, obedient, and loyal as long as his religious prejudices were respected; that he was driven to absolute frenzy by the slightest suspicion, whether well or ill grounded, of any interference with his creed or his observances; that he had been gradually rendered distrustful by the government policy of forbidding suttee and infanticide, by the withholding of government contributions to Hindoo temples and idol-ceremonies, by the authorities at Calcutta subscribing to missionary societies, and lastly by the affair of the greased cartridges; and that the sensibilities of Brahminism, thus vitally outraged, prepared the native mind for the belief that we designed to proceed by some stratagem or other to the utter and final abolition of caste. This interpretation is wholly on the Hindoo side, and is respectful rather than otherwise to the earnestness and honesty of the Brahmins. Other officers, however, directed their attention at once to the Mohammedan element in the army, and authoritatively pronounced that the Hindoo sepoys were simply dupes and tools in the hands of the Moslem. These interpreters said—We have superseded the Mohammedan power in India; we have dethroned the descendants of the great Aurungzebe and the greater Akbar; we have subjected the mogul’s lieutenants or nawabs to our authority; we have lately extinguished the last remaining monarchy in Northern India held by a son of the Faithful; we have reduced a conquering and dominant race to a position of inferiority and subserviency; and hence their undying resentment, their implacable hatred, their resolute determination to try one more struggle for supremacy, and their crafty employment of simple bigoted Hindoos as worthy instruments when sufficiently excited by dark hints and bold lies.

PART OF
INDIA
Chief Scene of
THE MUTINIES OF 1857

W. & R. CHAMBERS LONDON & EDINBURGH

49But there was one fact which all these officers admitted, when it was too late to apply a remedy. Whether the Hindoo or the Mohammedan element was most disturbed, all agreed that the British forces were ill placed to cope with any difficulties arising out of a revolt. Doubt might be entertained how far the disloyalty among the native troops would extend; but there could be no doubt that European troops were scanty, just at the places where most likely to be needed. There were somewhat over twenty thousand Queen’s troops at the time in India, with a few others on the way thither. Of these, as has been shewn in a former page, the larger proportion was with the Bengal troops; but instead of being distributed in the various Bengal and Oude provinces, they were rather largely posted at two extreme points, certainly not less than two thousand miles apart—on the Afghan frontier of the Punjaub, and on the Burmese frontier of Pegu. Four regiments of the Queen’s army were guarding the newly annexed country of the Punjaub, while three others were similarly holding the recent conquests in Pegu. What was the consequence, in relation to the twelve hundred miles between Calcutta and the Sutlej? An almost complete denudation of European troops: a surrendering of most of the strongholds to the mercy of the sepoys. Only one European regiment at Lucknow, and none other in the whole of Oude; two at Meerut, one at Agra, one at Dinapoor, and one at Calcutta—none at Cawnpore or Allahabad. The two great native capitals of India—Delhi, of the Mohammedans: Benares, of the Hindoos—had not one European regiment in them. Indeed, earlier in the year, Calcutta itself had none; but the authorities, as narrated in the last chapter, became so uneasy at the thought of being without European supporters at the seat of government, that they sent to Rangoon in Pegu for one of the Queen’s regiments, and did not venture upon the Barrackpore disbandments until this regiment had arrived. The lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, comprising Delhi and the surrounding regions, had in his whole government only three European regiments, and a sepoy army, soon found to be faithless. Oude had a considerable native force; but Bengal proper had very few troops of any kind. In short, the Company’s forces were almost as unfavourably distributed as they could possibly be, to stem the Revolt at its beginning; and there may not be much hazard in assuming that the natives were as well acquainted with this fact as the British.

The reader will find it useful to bear in mind, that the unfavourable symptoms during the first four months of the year did not present themselves in those districts which were afterwards associated with such terrible deeds. Meerut and Delhi, Dinapoor and Ghazeepore, Benares and Allahabad, Cawnpore and Lucknow, Mirzapore and Agra—these were not in open disaffection during the period under notice, however much the elements for a storm may have been gathering. It was at Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore, on the Hoogly branch of the Lower Ganges—and at Umballa near the Sutlej, separated from them by more than a thousand miles—that the insubordination was chiefly shewn. Now, however, the scene shifts to the Jumna and the Upper Ganges—with which it will be well to become familiar by means of maps. Especially must the positions of Meerut and Delhi be attended to, in relation to the events detailed in this and the next following chapters.

Meerut, as a district, is a part of the Doab or delta enclosed between the rivers Ganges and Jumna; but it is Meerut the town with which this narrative is concerned. It came into the possession of the British in 1836, and is now included in the territories of Northwest Bengal. The town, standing on the small river Kalee Nuddee, is about equidistant from the Ganges and the Jumna, twenty-five or thirty miles from each, and nearly nine hundred miles from Calcutta. Meerut is interesting to the Indian antiquary in possessing some good architectural remains of mosques and pagodas; and to the European residents, in possessing one of the largest and finest Christian churches in India, capable of accommodating three thousand persons, and provided with a good organ; but the houses of the natives are wretchedly built, and the streets narrow and dirty, as in most 50oriental towns. It is as a military station, however, that Meerut is most important. The cantonment is two miles north of the town, and is divided into two portions by a small branch of the river, over which two bridges have been thrown. The northern half of the cantonment contains lines for the accommodation of a brigade of horse-artillery, a European cavalry corps, and a regiment of European infantry—separated respectively by intervals of several hundred yards. In front of these is a fine parade-ground, a mile in width and four miles in length, having ample space for field-battery practice and the manœuvres of horse-artillery; with a heavy battery on the extreme right. Overlooking the parade are the barracks, with stables, hospitals, riding-schools, canteens, and other military offices. The barracks consist of a series of separate brick-built low-roofed structures, each comprising one large and lofty room, surrounded by a spacious enclosed verandah, divided into apartments for the non-commissioned officers and the families of married men. Behind the barracks, in a continued line three deep, are the bungalows or lodges of the officers, each surrounded by a garden about a hundred yards square. The opposite or southern half of the cantonment is mainly occupied by the huts (not barracks) for native troops, and by the detached bungalows for the officers who command them. This description, applicable in some degree to many parts of India, may assist in conveying an idea of the manner in which the European officers have usually been lodged at the cantonments—in detached bungalows at no great distance from the huts of the native troops: it may render a little more intelligible some of the details of the fearful tragedies about to be narrated. Before the Revolt, it was customary to keep at Meerut a regiment of European cavalry, a regiment of European infantry, one of native cavalry, and three of native infantry, besides horse and foot artillery. The station is a particularly healthy one; and, both politically and geographically, is an important place to the British rulers of India.

Meerut, in some respects, was one of the last towns in which the mutiny might have been expected to commence; for there was no other place in the Northwest Provinces containing at the time so many English troops. There were the 60th (Rifle) regiment, 1000 strong; the 6th Dragoon Guards or Carabineers, 600 strong (but not fully mounted); a troop of horse-artillery; and 500 artillery recruits—altogether about 2200 men, with a full complement of officers. The native troops were but little more numerous: comprising the 3d Bengal cavalry, and the 11th and 20th Bengal infantry. In such a relative state of the European and native forces, no one for an instant would have admitted the probability of a revolt being successful at such a time and place.

Although it was not until the second week in May that those events took place which carried grief and mourning into so many families, Meerut began its troubles in the latter part of the preceding month. The troops at this station had not been inattentive to the events transpiring in Lower Bengal; they knew all the rumours concerning the greased cartridges; they had been duped into a belief in the truth of those rumours; and, moreover, emissaries had been at work among them, instilling into their minds another preposterous notion—that the government had plotted to take away their caste and insult their religion, by causing the pulverised bones of bullocks to be mixed up with the flour sold in the public markets or bazaars. Major-general Hewett, commanding the military division of which Meerut was the chief station, sought by every means to eradicate from the minds of the men these absurd and pernicious ideas; he pointed out how little the government had to gain by such a course, how contrary it would be to the policy adopted during a hundred years, and how improbable was the whole rumour. He failed, however, in his appeal to the good sense of the men; and equally did the European officers of the native regiments fail: the sepoys or infantry, the sowars or cavalry, alike continued in a distrustful and suspicious state. Many British officers accustomed to Indian troops aver that these men had been rendered more insubordinate than ever by the leniency of the proceedings at Barrackpore and Berhampore; that disbandment was not a sufficiently severe punishment for the offences committed at those places; that the delay in the disbanding was injurious, as denoting irresolution on the part of the authorities at Calcutta; and that the native troops in other places had begun to imbibe an opinion that the government were afraid of them. But whatever be the amount of truth in this mode of interpretation, certain it is that the troops at Meerut evinced a mutinous spirit that caused great uneasiness to their commanders. Bungalows and houses were set on fire, no one knew by whom; officers were not saluted as had been their wont; and whispers went about that the men intended to adopt a bold course in reference to the greased cartridges.

The military authorities on the spot resolved to put this matter to the test. On the 23d of April, Colonel Smyth, the English commander of the 3d regiment of native Bengal cavalry, ordered a parade of the skirmishers of his regiment with carabines on the following morning, to shew them the newly introduced mode of adjusting their cartridges without biting, hoping and believing that they would be gratified by this indication of the willingness of the government to consult their feelings in the matter. He caused the havildar-major and the havildar-major’s orderly to come to his house, to shew them how it was to be done; and the orderly fired off a carabine under the new system. At night, however, uneasiness was occasioned by the burning down of the orderly’s tent, and of a 51horse-hospital close to the magazine. Although this act of incendiarism looked ominous, the colonel nevertheless determined to carry out his object on the morrow. Accordingly, on the morning of the 24th, the troops assembled on parade; and the havildar-major fired off one cartridge to shew them how it was to be done. The men demurred, however, to the reception of the cartridges, though the same in kind as had been used by them during a long period, and not the new cartridges. An investigation ensued, which was conducted on the 25th by Major Harrison, deputy-judge advocate. On being examined, the men admitted that they could discern nothing impure in the composition or glazing of the paper; but added that they had heard it was unclean, and believed it to be so. The inquiry, after a few conciliatory observations on the part of the judge, ended in the men expressing contrition for their obstinacy, and promising a ready obedience in the use of the cartridges whenever called upon.

A hope was now entertained that the difficulties had been smoothed away; but this hope proved to be fallacious. Major-general Hewett, wishing to put an end to the stupid prejudice, and to settle at once all doubts as to the obedience of the men, ordered a parade of the 3d cavalry for the morning of the 6th of May. On the evening of the 5th, preparatory to the parade, cartridges were given out to the men, the same in quality as those which had been freely in use during many years. Eighty-five of the sowars or troopers—either still incredulous on the grease-question, or resolved to mutiny whether with just cause or not—positively refused to receive the cartridges. This conduct, of course, could not be overlooked; the men were taken into custody, and tried by a court-martial; they were found guilty of a grave military offence, and were committed to imprisonment with hard labour, for periods varying from six to ten years. The governor-general, seeing the necessity of promptitude at this crisis, had just sent orders to the military stations that the judgments of all court-martials should be put in force instantly, as a means of impressing the troops with the seriousness of their position; and Major-general Hewett, acting on these instructions, proceeded on the 9th to enforce the sentence of the court-martial. A European guard of 60th Rifles and Carabiniers was placed over the convicted men; and at daybreak the whole military force at the station was assembled on the rifle parade-ground. All were there—the European 60th, Carabiniers, and artillery—the native 3d, 11th, and 20th. The European cannon, carbines, and rifles were loaded, to prepare for any emergency. The eighty-five mutineers of the 3d native cavalry were marched upon the ground; they were stripped of their uniforms and accoutrements; they were shackled with irons riveted on by the armourers. While this was being done, very meaning looks were exchanged between the culprits and the other sowars of the same regiment—the former looking reproachfully at the latter, while the latter appeared gloomy and crestfallen: it was evident that the unconvicted men had promised to resist and prevent the infliction of the degrading punishment on their convicted associates; but it was equally evident that the presence of so many armed European troops would have rendered any attempt at rescue worse than useless. The manacles having been adjusted, the men were marched off to jail. And herein a grave mistake appears to have been committed. Instead of keeping a watchful eye over these men at such a perilous time, and retaining them under a guard of European troops until the excitement had blown over, they were sent to the common jail of Meerut, two miles distant from the cantonment, and there handed over to the police or ordinary civil power of the town. How disastrous was the result of this course of proceeding, we shall presently see. The native troops, when the culprits had been removed from the parade-ground, returned to their lines furious with indignation—at least the 3d cavalry were so, and they gradually brought over the infantry to share in their indignant feelings. It was a degrading punishment, unquestionably: whether the remainder of the native troops at the station would be terrified or exasperated by it, was just the problem which remained to be solved. All the afternoon and evening of that day were the men brooding and whispering, plotting and planning. Unfortunately, the European officers of native regiments were accustomed to mix so seldom with their men, that they knew little of what occurred except on parade-ground: this plotting was only known by its fruits. Judged by subsequent events, it appears probable that the native troops sent emissaries to Delhi, forty miles distant, to announce what had occurred, and to plan an open revolt. The prime plotters were the 3d; the 20th were nearly as eager; but the 11th, newly arrived at Meerut, held back for some time, although they did not betray the rest.

Little did the European inhabitants, their wives and their children, at Meerut, dream what was in store for them on Sunday the 10th of May—a day of peace in the eyes of Christians. It was on the 9th that the sentence of the court-martial on the eighty-five mutineers was enforced: it was on the 10th that the Revolt, in its larger sense, began. Whether these two events stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect, is a question not easily to be answered; but it may safely be asserted that the Revolt would not have resulted from the punishment unless the men had been generally in a state of disaffection. The Sunday opened as most Sundays open in India, quiet and uneventful, and remained so till evening. Ladies and families were then going to evening-service at the church. Some of them passed the mess-room of the 3d cavalry, and there saw servants looking towards the road leading to the native infantry lines. Something was evidently wrong. On 52inquiry it appeared that a mutiny had broken out, and that fighting was going on in the bazaar. Crowds of armed men soon hurried that way; and families who had been on the route to church, drove or walked back in haste to escape danger. So it was on all sides: whoever on that evening ventured forth, found that blood-shedding instead of church-service would fill their thoughts. The Rev. Mr Smyth, chaplain of Meerut, while driving to church for the seven o’clock service, met two of the 60th Rifles covered with blood; and on reaching the church, he saw buggies and carriages driving away in great confusion, and a body of people pointing to a column of fire and smoke in the direction of the city: frequent shots were heard, amid the cries of a large mob. In another direction the wife of an officer in the 3d cavalry, going like other Europeans to church, and startled like them by sounds of violence, saw a private of the Carabiniers unarmed, and running for very life from several men armed with latthies or long sticks: she stopped her carriage and took in the English soldier; but the men continued to strike at him until the vehicle rolled away. This lady, on reaching her bungalow in haste and dismay, was the first to give notice to her husband that something was wrong among the native troops: he instantly started off on foot to the lines, without waiting for his horse. In another part of the scene, an English officer of the 11th native infantry, at about six o’clock on that evening, while in his bungalow preparing for a ride with Colonel Finnis of the same regiment, had his attention attracted to his servants, and those in the bungalows of other officers, going down towards the front of the several compounds or gardens, and looking steadily into the lines or cantonment of the regiment. He heard a buzzing, murmuring noise, which at first he deemed of no consequence; but as it continued and increased, he hastily finished dressing and went out. Scarcely had he reached his gate, when he heard the sound of firearms, which his practised ear at once told him were loaded with ball-cartridge. An European non-commissioned officer came running towards him, with others, and exclaimed: ‘For God’s sake, sir, leave! Return to your bungalow, change that dress, and fly!’ Shortly afterwards shots came into his own compound; and the havildar-major of the 11th, rushing terrified and breathless into the bungalow, exclaimed: ‘Fly, sahib—fly at once! the regiments are in open mutiny, and firing on their officers; and Colonel Finnis has just been shot in my arms!’ The officer mounted and started off—at first leisurely—because ‘a Briton does not like actually running away under any circumstances;’ but when the havildar-major (native sergeant-major) advised him to gallop off to the European cavalry lines, he saw that the suggestion was good; and he immediately started—over a rugged and barren plain, cut up by nullahs and ravines—towards the lines of the Queen’s Carabiniers.

When these, and a dozen similar mysteries, came to receive their solution, it was found that a mutiny had indeed broken out. Shortly before five o’clock on that Sunday afternoon, the men of the 3d native cavalry, and of the 20th native infantry, rushed out of their lines on a given signal, and proceeded to the lines of the 11th native infantry, all fully armed. After a little hesitation, their comrades joined them; and then all three regiments proceeded to open acts of violence. Colonel Finnis of the 11th, the moment he heard of this startling proceeding, rode to the parade-ground, harangued the men, and endeavoured to induce them to return to their duty. Instead of listening to him, the men of the 20th fired a volley, and he fell, riddled with bullets—the first victim of the Indian Revolt. The other officers present, feeling that their remaining longer on the ground would effect no good, escaped. Whether a daring man might have stemmed the torrent, cannot now be told: no one attempted it after Finnis’s death; his brother-officers were allowed to escape to the lines of the artillery and the Carabiniers, on the other side of the encampment. So far as the accounts are intelligible, the first shots appear to have been fired by the 20th, the 11th joining afterwards in the violence.

While the infantry were thus engaged, the ominous but natural step was taken by the 3d cavalry of releasing their eighty-five imprisoned companions—ominous, because those men, enraged at their incarceration, would join in the disorder with heated blood and excited passions. The troopers proceeded to the jail, set their companions free, armed them, and invited them to share in the mutiny. All this was evidently preconcerted; for native smiths were at hand to strike off the manacles. Yelling and threatening, the whole returned to the lines; and then commenced the direful mischief. Within a very short time, all three regiments became busily engaged in burning and murdering. But this was not all; when the eighty-five troopers were liberated, the other prisoners in the jail, twelve hundred in number, were set at liberty at the same time; and then the scum of Indian society entered into the scenes of violence with demoniac relish, adding tenfold to the horrors perpetrated by the sepoys and sowars. The mutineers and the ruffians set fire to nearly all the bungalows of the native lines, and to the government establishments near at hand, murdering, as they went, the Europeans who fell in their way. The bungalows being mostly thatched with straw, the destruction was very rapid; the cowardly assailants, setting fire to the thatch, waited till the flames had driven out the inmates of the bungalow, and then fell upon them as assassins. The conflagrations were accompanied by the yells of the rioters and the shrieks of the sufferers, rendered more terrible by the approach of darkness. The rabble of the bazaar, and the lowest portion of the population generally, as if intoxicated by release from the dread of Europeans, now 53joined the mutineers and the released felons, and the horrors thickened. On all sides shot up columns of flame and smoke; on all sides were heard the shouts and curses of some, the cries and lamentations of others. One redeeming feature—there may have been others—marked these proceedings; the sepoys of the 11th, in most instances, connived at the escape of their officers—nay, strove earnestly to save them: it was not by men of his own regiment that poor Colonel Finnis had been shot down.

A few individual examples, drawn from the simple but painful narratives of eye-witnesses, will shew in what way misery and death were brought into homes where the peace of a Christian Sabbath had reigned only a few hours before.

The Rev. Mr Smyth, after returning hurriedly from the church where he had intended to perform divine service, took shelter in the house of an officer of the artillery in the English lines. Shots had just before been aimed at that officer and his wife by eight or ten sepoys of the artillery depôt or school, while standing at the very gate of their compound; and yet Mr Smyth himself was saluted respectfully by several sepoys during his hurried retreat—shewing the strange mixture of deference and ferocity exhibited by these misguided men. Presently afterwards another shot was heard, a horse was seen galloping past with a buggy; and it was soon found that the surgeon and the veterinary surgeon of the 3d cavalry had been wounded and mutilated. The clergyman escaped unhurt, to learn and to mourn over the events transpiring in other parts of the town and cantonment.

A captain of horse, the husband of the lady mentioned in a former paragraph, hastened on the first news from his bungalow to the lines of the 3d cavalry, in which he commanded a troop. He was respected by his men, who offered him no hurt, and who seemed to hesitate for a time whether to join the rest in mutiny or not. Soon, however, the mania infected them; and the captain, seeing the jail opened and the prisoners liberated, hastened back. The road from the town to the cantonment was in an uproar; the infantry and the bazaar-people were in crowds, armed and firing; and he saw one of the miscreant troopers stab to death an Englishwoman, the wife of the Meerut hotel-keeper, as she passed. Soon a ball whizzed past his own car, and he saw one of his own troopers aiming at him; he shouted: ‘Was that meant for me?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply; ‘I will have your blood!’ The captain detected this man as one whom he had been obliged to punish for carelessness and disobedience. The man fired again, but again missed his aim; and although the other troopers did not join in this, they made no attempt to check or seize the assailant. The captain, abandoned gradually by all but a very few troopers, at length reached the European lines, where he took part in the proceedings afterwards adopted. Meanwhile the poor wife had passed two hours of terrible suspense. Believing at first that the carabinier whom she had saved might have been the main object of attack, she hid his uniform, dressed him in a coat of her husband’s, and bade him sit with herself and family, for mutual safety. Out of doors she heard shots and shouts, and saw houses burning. In the next bungalow, speedily fired, was the wife of an adjutant lately arrived from England; she was entreated to come over for shelter, but not arriving, servants were sent in to seek her. A horrid sight met them: the hapless lady lay on the floor in a pool of blood, dead, and mutilated in a way that the pen refuses to describe. The noises and flames increased; eight or ten flaming bungalows were in sight at once; and many a struggle took place between the captain’s servants and the mutineers, during which it was quite uncertain whether one more burning, one more massacre, would ensue. Troopers rushed into the bungalow, endeavouring to fire it; while others, with a lingering affection towards the family of their officer, prevented them. The husband arrived, in speechless agony concerning the safety of those dear to him. Wrapped in black stable-blankets, to hide their light dresses, all left the house amid a glare of flame from neighbouring buildings, and hid under trees in the garden; whence they sped to a small ruin near at hand, where, throughout the remainder of the night, they crouched listening to the noises without. Bands of armed men passed in and out of the bungalow compound during the night, and were only prevented from prosecuting a search, by an assurance from the domestics that the officer’s family had effected their escape. When morning came, the (now) houseless Europeans, with about twenty troopers who remained faithful to the last—though agitated by strange waverings and irresolution—left the place, taking with them such few clothes and trinkets as could be hastily collected, and started off for the Carabiniers’ lines, passing on their way the smouldering ruins of many bungalows and public buildings.

Howsoever the narratives might vary in details, in substance they were all alike; they spoke of a night of burning, slaughter, and dismay. Wherever there was a bungalow, the European inhabitants of which did not succeed in escaping to the English lines, there was murder perpetrated. The escape of Mr Greathed, civil commissioner for Meerut, was a narrow one. His house—flat-roofed, as it fortunately happened—was one of the first attacked by the mutineers: at the first alarm, Mr and Mrs Greathed fled to the roof; thither, on the least intimation from any of the servants, the miscreants would have followed them; but the servants persisted that the family had departed; and the assailants, after searching every room in the house, took their departure. One officer after another, as he rushed from his bungalow to call his men back to their allegiance, was shot down; and wherever the mutineers and their ruffian companions 54brought murder into a house, they mingled with the murder a degree of barbarity quite appalling and unexpected. There were a few Europeans in the town and vicinity not connected with the military department; and these, unless they effected their escape, were treated like the rest; rank, age, and sex were equally disregarded—or, if sex made any difference, women, gentle English women, were treated more ruthlessly than men. An officer of the 20th, living in his bungalow with his wife and two children, was sought out by the ruffians: the father and mother were killed; but a faithful ayah snatched up the two children and carried them off to a place of safety—the poor innocents never again saw their parents alive. An English sergeant was living with his wife and six children beyond the limits of the cantonment; he and three of his little ones were massacred in a way that must for very shame be left untold: the mother, with the other three, all bleeding and mutilated, managed to crawl to the European lines about midnight.

With what inexpressible astonishment were the narratives of these deeds heard and perused! Men who had been in India, or were familiar with Indian affairs, knew that the sepoys had before risen in mutiny, and had shot their officers; but it was something strange to them, a terrible novelty, that tender women and little children—injuring none, and throwing a halo of refinement around all—should be so vilely treated as to render death a relief. The contrast to all that was considered characteristic of the Hindoo was so great, that to this day it remains to many an Indian veteran a horrid enigma—a mystery insoluble even if his heart-sickness would lead him to the attempt. Be it remembered that for a whole century the natives had been largely trusted in the relations of social life; and had well justified that trust. Many an English lady (it has been observed by an eloquent reviewer, whose words we have before quoted) has travelled from one end of the country to the other—along desert roads, through thick jungles, or on vast solitary rivers—miles and miles away from the companionship of white men, without the slightest anxiety. Her native servants, Mohammedans and Hindoos, were her protectors; and she was as safe in such custody as in an English home. Her slightest caprice was as a law to her attendants. These swarthy bearded men, ready at her beck, ever treated her with the most delicate respect, ever appeared to bear about with them a chivalrous sense of the sacredness of their charge. Not a word or a gesture ever alarmed her modesty or excited her fear; and her husband, father, brother never hesitated to confide her to such guardianship. It was in the year 1857 that the charm of this delicate fidelity was first broken; and broken so appallingly, that men were long incredulous that such things could be.

But the children, the sabred and mangled little ones—that these could be so treated by the same natives, was more astounding to the Anglo-Indians than even the treatment of the women. ‘Few of our countrymen have ever returned from India without deploring the loss of their native servants. In the nursery they are, perhaps, more missed than in any other part of the establishment. There are, doubtless, hundreds of English parents in this country who remember with feelings of kindliness and gratitude the nusery bearers, or male nurses, who attended their children. The patience, the gentleness, the tenderness with which these white-robed swarthy Indians attend the little children of their European masters, surpass even the love of women. You may see them sitting for hour after hour, with their little infantine charges, amusing them with toys, fanning them when they slumber, brushing away the flies, or pacing the verandah with the little ones in their arms, droning the low monotonous lullaby which charms them to sleep; and all this without a shadow on the brow, without a gesture of impatience, without a single petulant word. No matter how peevish, how wayward, how unreasonable, how exacting the child may be, the native bearer only smiles, shews his white teeth, or shakes his black locks, giving back a word of endearment in reply to young master’s imperious discontent. In the sick-room, doubly gentle and doubly patient, his noiseless ministrations are continued through long days, often through long nights, as though hunger and weariness were human frailties to be cast off at such a time. It is little to say that these poor hirelings often love their master’s children with greater tenderness than their own. Parted from their little charges, they may often be seen weeping like children themselves; and have been known, in after-years, to travel hundreds of miles to see the brave young ensign or the blooming maiden whom they once dandled in their arms.’ These men, it is true, were domestic servants, not sepoys or soldiers fighting in the army of the Company; but it is equally true that the British officers, almost without exception, trusted implicitly to the sepoys who acted as orderlies or servants to them; and that those orderlies shewed themselves worthy of the trust, by their scrupulous respect to the ladies of each household, and their tender affection for the little ones born under the roof of the bungalow. Hence the mingled wonderment and grief when fiend-like cruelties suddenly destroyed the charm of this reliance.

Allowing the veil to remain, at present, drawn over still greater horrors in other places, it must be admitted that the principal atrocities at Meerut were perpetrated by the twelve hundred miscreants liberated from the jail, aided by the general rabble of the town. The native troops had something in their thoughts besides firing bungalows and murdering a few Europeans; they had arranged some sort of plot with the native troops of Delhi; and they set out in a body for that city long before the deplorable transactions at Meerut had ceased. Those scenes continued more or 55less throughout the night; officers and their wives, parents and their children, were not relieved from the agony of suspense before morning broke.

Laboratory at Meerut.

The number massacred at Meerut on this evening and night was not so large as the excited feelings of the survivors led them to imply; but it was large to them; for it told of a whole cluster of happy homes suddenly broken up, of bungalows reduced to ashes, of bleeding corpses brought in one by one, of children rendered fatherless, of property consumed, of hopes blasted, of confidence destroyed. The European soldiers, as will presently be seen, soon obtained the mastery so far as Meerut was concerned; but the surviving women and children had still many hours, many days, of discomfort and misery to bear. The School of Instruction near the artillery laboratory became the place of shelter for most of them; and this place was much crowded. How mournfully does it tell of large families rendered homeless to read thus: ‘We are in a small house at one end of the place, which consists of one large room and verandah rooms all round; and in this miserable shed—for we can scarcely call it anything else—there are no less than forty-one souls’—then are named thirteen members of one family, ten of another, three other families of four each, and two others of three each—‘besides having in our verandah room the post-office, and arranging at present a small room adjoining the post-office as the telegraph-office.’ Some of the houseless officers and their families found temporary homes in the sergeants’ rooms of the European lines; space was found for all, although amid much confusion; and one of the refugees writes of ‘a crowd of helpless babies’ that added to the misery of the scene. Adverting to others like herself, she remarks: ‘Ladies who were mere formal acquaintances now wring each other’s hands with intense sympathy; what a look there was when we first assembled here!—all of us had stared death in the face.’

Let us turn now to a question which has probably presented itself more than once to the mind of the reader during the perusal of these sad details—What were the twenty-two hundred European troops doing while the three native regiments were imbuing their hands in the blood of innocent women and children? Could not they have intervened to prevent the atrocities? It must be borne in mind that these fine English troops, the Carabiniers and 60th Rifles, with artillery, were nearly equal in number to the rebels; and that, if quickly moved, they would have been a match for five or ten times their number. Whether or not they were quickly moved, is just the question at issue. Major-general Hewett’s dispatch to the adjutant-general thus describes the course adopted as soon as the 56outbreak became known to him: ‘The artillery, Carabiniers, and 60th Rifles were got under arms; but by the time we reached the native infantry parade-ground, it was too dark to act with efficiency in that direction; consequently, the troops retired to the north of the nullah, so as to cover the barracks and officers’ lines of the artillery, Carabiniers, and 60th Rifles; which were, with the exception of one house, preserved; though the insurgents—for I believe the mutineers had by that time retired by the Allygurh and Delhi roads—burned the vacant Sapper and Miner lines.’

One thing is quite certain—the mutineers were not pursued: they were allowed to go to Delhi, there to raise the standard of rebellion in a still more alarming way. The Carabiniers, it is true, were deficient in horses to join in pursuit; but this might assuredly have been obviated by precautionary arrangements during the many days on which the 3d native cavalry had shewn symptoms of insubordination. An officer of the 11th native infantry, who narrowly escaped death in his gallop to the European cantonment, accompanied the Queen’s regiments to the scene of anarchy; but there is evidence that he considered the movements somewhat tardy. ‘It took us a long time, in my opinion,’ he says, ‘to get ready, and it was dark before the Carabiniers were prepared to start in a body.’ In the latitude of Meerut, we may remark, in the second week in May, darkness can hardly come on until near seven o’clock, whereas the outbreak occurred two hours earlier. He continues: ‘When the Carabiniers were mounted, we rode off at a brisk trot, through clouds of suffocating dust, and darkness, in an easterly direction, and along a narrow road—not advancing in the direction of the conflagration, but, on the contrary, leaving it behind on our right rear. In this way we proceeded for some two or three miles, to my no small surprise, when suddenly the “halt” was sounded, and we faced about, retracing our steps, and verging off to our left. Approaching the conflagration, we debouched on the left rear of the native infantry lines, which of course were all in a blaze. Skirting along behind these lines, we turned them at the western end, and wheeling up to the left, came upon the 11th parade-ground, where, at a little distance, we found the horse-artillery and her Majesty’s 60th Rifles. It appears that the three regiments of mutineers had by this time commenced dropping off to the westward to the Delhi road, for here some firing took place between them and the Rifles; and presently the horse-artillery, coming to the front and unlimbering, opened upon a copse or wood in which they had apparently found cover, with heavy discharges of grape and canister, which rattled among the trees; and all was silent again. The horse-artillery now limbered up again, and wheeled round; and here I joined them, having lost the Carabiniers in the darkness. By this time, however, the moon arose. The horse-artillery column, with Rifles at its head, moving across the parade-ground, we entered the long street turning from the southward behind the light cavalry lines. There it was that the extent and particulars of the conflagration first became visible; and, passing the burning bungalow of the adjutant of the 11th native infantry, we proceeded along the straight road or street, flanked on both sides with flaming and crashing houses in all stages of combustion and ruin; the Rifles occasionally firing volleys as we proceeded. It was by this time past ten o’clock; and having made the entire circuit of the lines, we passed up to the east of them, and, joined by the Carabiniers and Rifles, bivouacked for the night.’

Collating various accounts of this evening’s events, it becomes evident that the military movements of the Europeans were anything but prompt. Even if the two regiments and the artillery could not have reached the scene of tumult before dark—a supposition not at all borne out—still it seems strange that all should have ‘bivouacked for the night’ at the very time when three mutinous native regiments were on the way to Delhi. Hasty critics, as is usual in such circumstances, at once condemned the military commander at Meerut; and an ex-governor-general, dwelling, in his place in the House of Lords, on the occurrences in India, spoke in a contemptuous tone of ‘an unknown man named Hewett’ as one whose misconduct had allowed the rebel troops to escape from Meerut to Delhi. It was hard for a soldier who had served for forty years in India, without once returning to his native country, to find contumely thus hurled at him; it is one of the bitter things to which public men are subjected, not only from anonymous writers, but from other public men whose names carry authority with them. A near relation of the major-general afterwards took up his defence, urging that it might have been unwise policy to send the only European troops in pursuit to Delhi, at a time when the magazines and stores at Meerut required so much attention. The defence may possibly be insufficient; but the history of the Crimean war had shewn how hastily Lord Raglan had been accused of offences, things committed and things omitted, for which he was afterwards known not to have been responsible; and this experience ought to have suggested caution to assailants, especially remembering how long a time must often elapse between an accusation and a refutation, during which time the wound is festering. Declining years certainly did not prevent the officer whose name is now under notice from taking a part in the operations, such as they were, of the English troops at Meerut; although in his sixty-eighth year, he slept on the ground among the guns, like his men, on the 10th of May, and for fourteen consecutive nights he did the same; while for many following weeks he never doffed his regimentals, except for change of apparel, night or day. Whether such details are trivial or not, depends on the nature of the accusations. It is only the hasty judgments of those at a distance that are here commented on; 57the dissatisfaction of the Calcutta authorities will be adverted to in a future page.

The sympathies of the Europeans at Meerut were drawn in a forcible way towards the inmates of a convent and school at Sirdhana—an establishment remarkable as existing in that part of India. We must go back sixty years to understand this. Towards the close of the last century, there was a Cashmerian bayadère or dancing-girl, who became associated with a German adventurer, and then, by a course of unscrupulous intrigue and fearless sanguinary measures, obtained possession of three considerable jaghires or principalities in the region around and between Meerut and Delhi. These cities, as well as Agra and others in the Doab, were at that time in the hands of the great Mahratta chief, Dowlut Rao Scindia. After a series of brilliant victories, the British obtained possession of the Doab in 1803, but awarded a petty sovereignty to the female adventurer, who became thenceforth known as the Begum Sumroo. She retained her queendom until her death in 1836, after which the three jaghires passed into the hands of the British. This remarkable woman, during the later years of her life, professed the Roman Catholic faith; she had a spacious and handsome palace at Sirdhana, about twelve miles from Meerut; and near it she built a Catholic church, imitative on a small scale of St Peter’s at Rome, with a beautiful altar inlaid with mosaics and precious stones. Out of twelve thousand inhabitants in Sirdhana, about one-tenth now profess themselves Christians, having imitated the begum in her change of religion; and there is a Christian convent there, containing a number of priests, nuns, and pupils. When, therefore, the outrages occurred at Meerut, apprehensions naturally arose concerning the fate of the European women and girls at this convent. About five days after the Revolt commenced, rumours came in that the inmates of the convent at Sirdhana were in peril; and it was only by great exertions that the postmaster at Meerut was enabled to bring some of them away. A letter written in reference to this proceeding said: ‘The poor nuns begged of him, when he was coming away, to try and send them some help; he tried all he could to get a guard to escort them to this station, but did not succeed; and yesterday morning (16th of May), having given up the idea of procuring a guard from the military authorities, he went round, and by speaking to some gentlemen, got about fifteen persons to volunteer their services, to go and rescue the poor nuns and children from Sirdhana; and I am happy to say they succeeded in their charitable errand without any one having been injured.’

It will be remembered that, during the burnings and murderings at Meerut on the evening of the 10th, most of the mutineers of the three regiments started off to Delhi. They took, as was afterwards found, the high road from Meerut, and passing the villages of Begumabad, Moradnuggur, Furrucknuggur, and Shahderuh, reached Delhi early on Monday; the infantry making forced marches, and the cavalry riding near them for support. Proof was soon afforded that the native troops in that city, or some of them, had been waiting for the mutineers, prepared to join them in an organised attack on the Europeans. What aspect that attack put on, and what were the calamities to which it gave rise, will be narrated in the next two chapters.

Many days elapsed before Meerut recovered its tranquillity. Such men of the 3d, 11th, and 20th regiments as remained faithful—especially the 11th, of whom there were more than a hundred—were received at the cantonment, and their previous insubordination pardoned on account of their subsequent fidelity; but still there were many causes for anxiety. In the major-general’s first report on the disasters, he said: ‘Nearly the whole of the cantonment and Zillah police have deserted.’ These police or watchmen are referred to by an officer familiar with the district, who says: ‘Round about Meerut and Delhi there are two or three peculiar castes or tribes, something similar to our gipsies, only holding human life at less value, and which in former days gave constant trouble. Of late years, they have lived in more peace and quietness, contenting themselves with picking up stray cattle and things that did not belong to them. They have now, however, on the earliest occasion broken out again, and have been guilty of all kinds of depredations. Skinner’s Horse was originally raised to keep these people in order, about the time of Lord Lake; such men have hitherto been necessary at Meerut, Delhi, and those parts, as watchmen; every one was obliged to keep one, to avoid being robbed to a certainty.’ The Meerut inhabitants had thus, in addition to their other troubles, the knowledge that gangs of desperadoes would be likely to acquire renewed audacity through the defection of the native police.

It was soon ascertained that the dâk communications on many of the roads were cut off, and the military commandant found much difficulty in transmitting intelligence to the seat of government. Five days after the great outbreak, another cause of uneasiness ensued. Six companies of native Sappers and Miners arrived at Meerut from Roorkee, under their commander, Major Fraser. The place here named is interesting in a twofold point of view. Being situated in one of the most elevated sites in the Doab between the Jumna and the Ganges, about eighty miles north of Meerut, it was selected as the head-quarters for operations on the great Ganges Canal, the noblest British work in India; and here has been made a magnificent aqueduct nine hundred feet in length, with arches of fifty feet span. This aqueduct, and the necessary workshops and model-rooms of the engineers, have converted the place from a small village to a considerable station. Roorkee also contains an establishment called the ‘Thomason College,’ for affording instruction in civil engineering to 58Europeans and natives. When the native Sappers and Miners, about eight hundred strong, arrived at Meerut from this place, on the 16th of May—either excited by the news of the late occurrences, or moved by some other impulse—they suddenly shot their commanding officer, and made off for the open country. A force of the Carabiniers and horse-artillery went in pursuit of them, and shot down many; but a greater number escaped, probably to Delhi. Such of the companies as did not attempt flight were disarmed and carefully watched.

Dâk Runner.

Too soon, alas! did the Europeans at Meerut know that atrocities were being committed at Delhi. By twos and threes did fugitives come in, glad to sacrifice all else for the sake of very life. Now several officers of the 38th native regiment; now a merchant and his family; now officers of the 74th and their families; now civil servants of the Company; now officers of the 54th—all toil-worn, dirty, ragged, hungered, weighed down by the miseries of their forty miles’ flight from brutal assailants: women, as is usual with Englishwomen, bearing their share of these miseries with the truest heroism. All was doubt as to the occurrences in other quarters; dâks were cut off, telegraphic wires were severed; the wishes and orders of the governor-general at one place, and the commander-in-chief at another, could not yet be known. On the night of the outbreak, two Europeans had endeavoured to travel by dâk from Meerut to Delhi; they encountered the rebels, and were murdered; and this was the commencement of indications, afterwards abundant enough, that the roads were no longer safe. All that was certain was, that a sudden social earthquake had overturned the homes of families distant nine hundred miles from Calcutta, bringing death to many, mourning and loss to others, distrust and anxiety to all.

The course of this narrative now requires that attention—more particular than will be required in relation to other cities in India—should be bestowed on the world-renowned Delhi, the great focus of all that can be called truly national in that vast country. Three regiments fled from Meerut to Delhi, and there found other regiments ready to join them in scenes of revolt and violence, of spoliation and murder; but it is necessary, in order to appreciate what followed, to know why Delhi is regarded in a peculiar light by the natives: why a successful resistance to British rule was, and must long continue to be, more serious in that locality than in any other part of the East. Not only ought the position of the city, considered as the residence of a hundred and sixty thousand Mohammedans and Hindoos, to be rendered familiar; but the reader should know how it has happened that the sovereign of that city has, for eight or nine hundred years, been regarded in a peculiar sense as the autocrat of Hindostan, the one man before whom millions of natives have been wont to bend the knee, or rather to lie prostrate in abject submission.

What India was before the arrival of the Mussulmans, need not be told here at any length. We know, in truth, very little on that matter. It was from the days of the first Moslem conqueror that the greatness of Delhi began. Long before the Christian era, Arab merchants brought rich spiceries from Sinde and Malabar, and sold them to Phœnician merchants, who conveyed them on laden camels by way of Petra to the shores of the Mediterranean. Other portions of Indian merchandise were carried up the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates to a point whence they were transported westward to Aleppo or Antioch—a route almost identical with that advocated in the present day for a Euphrates railway and a Euphrates telegraph. The Greeks derived all their knowledge of Indian commodities through the Phœnicians: while their information concerning the country itself was obtained from the Persians, who at one time held sway as far as the Indus. The expedition of Alexander the Great into India, about 326 B.C., first gave the Greeks a personal knowledge of this wonderful land; and many successors of the great Macedonian added to the then existing amount of information concerning the tribes, the productions, the customs of the region beyond the Indus. Consequent on those discoveries, the merchants of the newly founded city of Alexandria gradually obtained a command of the trade with India: bringing the rich produce of the East by ship to Berenice on the Red Sea, and then transporting it overland to Alexandria. The commodities thus imported were chiefly precious stones, spices, perfumes, and silks; and during some centuries the Roman Empire was drained of much specie to pay for these imports. Alexandrians were the principal merchants who furnished the nations of Europe with Indian articles till the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama in 1498. The western nations of Asia, however, continued to be supplied principally by the merchants of Basra or Bussorah, a very flourishing commercial city near the point where the Euphrates empties itself into the Persian Gulf; and there was also an extensive caravan-trade from Northern India through Northern Persia to the Caspian and the Black Sea. The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route naturally attracted the attention of the maritime nations of Europe towards India, followed by the settlement of Portuguese and Dutch traders on the coast, and ultimately by the wonderful rise of British power in those regions through the instrumentality of the East India Company.

But although trading instincts thus laid India open to the commercial dealings of merchants, and to the cupidity of European princes, it was not until modern erudition had been applied to the subject that the true history of the land of the Hindoos became at all known. Scholars found, when they had mastered the Sanscrit or sacred language of that people, that a wonderful mine of information was thrown open to them. They ascertained that the nation, whatever it may 60have been called, from which the genuine Hindoos are descended, must at some period have inhabited the central plains of Asia, whence they migrated into the northern parts of India; that for at least a thousand years before the Christian era, great and powerful empires existed in Hindostan, which made considerable progress in knowledge, civilisation, and literature; that Southern India, or the Deccan, was conquered and peopled by the Hindoos at a much later date than the rest; that Buddhism, the religion of the earlier inhabitants, was overruled and driven out by Brahminism or Hindooism in the fifth century of our era; and that for five centuries longer, the Hindoos were the true rulers of this much-coveted land.

It was, however, as has been already implied, only with the arrival of the Mohammedans that the course of Indian history took that turn which is now interesting to us, especially in connection with the city of Delhi.

The year 1000 was marked by the invasion of India by Mahmoud of Ghiznee, a Tatar sovereign who held sway among the chieftains of Afghanistan. He defeated the rajah of Lahore at Peshawur; then penetrated beyond the Sutlej; and returned laden with spoil. In a second expedition he conquered Moultan; in a third, he reconquered the same city after a revolt. A fourth expedition found Mahmoud opposed by a confederacy of all the sovereigns of Northern India, who, seeing a common danger, resolved to unite for a common cause; they were rapidly gaining an advantage over him, when the sudden fright of an elephant induced a panic in the Hindoo army, and left the victory to Mahmoud, who returned to Ghiznee still more richly laden with booty than ever. For a time, the Hindoo king who reigned over the region of which Delhi was the chief city, managed to ward off the hostility of the great invader; but taking offence at a departure from neutrality during one of the later expeditions, Mahmoud captured that city, and returned to Ghiznee with forty thousand prisoners. For thirty years did these raids and spoliations continue. The most celebrated next to that which resulted in the sack of Delhi, was the expedition intended for the destruction of the Hindoo temple of Somnauth in Gujerat: a temple which, if native annals are to be believed, had fifty thousand worshippers, and was endowed with a revenue of two thousand villages; which had two thousand Brahmins officiating as priests, five hundred daughters of noble Hindoos as dancing-girls, three hundred musicians; and the sandal-wood gates of which were the theme of magniloquence from the pen of an English governor-general eight centuries afterwards.^[7] Mahmoud broke all the idols, and carried off countless treasures to Ghiznee.

From that time to the period of the rise of British power, the Mohammedans never lost their hold upon India, however much it may have been shaken by occasional success on the part of the Hindoos; nor did they ever cease to regard Delhi as the chief Indian city. Although Mahmoud made twelve expeditions across the Indus, the object was mainly booty, rather than permanent settlement. His successors, however, established a regular government in the Punjaub, and in the region thence eastward to Delhi. The Ghiznee dynasty was put an end to in the year 1184, when it was overcome by the Seljuks; and in 1193 Delhi was formally appointed capital of the Moslem sovereigns of India. After a succession of rebellions and murders, exhibiting all the hideous features of Oriental politics, the Seljuk dynasty fell to pieces in the year 1289. Then arose a third Mohammedan dynasty, that of the Afghans or Patans, who came like all the other conquerors of India from the northwest, and who like them coveted Delhi as their capital. For about a century did these Patan emperors reign, continually struggling against Hindoo rajahs on the one hand, and Mussulman adventurers on the other.

It was in the year 1398 that Tamerlane—familiar to all school-boys in England by the famous name of Timour the Tatar—first set foot in India, and laid the foundation of the Mogul dynasty. Properly speaking, he was not a true Mogul, but belonged to the rival Tatar nation of Turcomans; nevertheless the line of emperors to which he gave origin has always been known as the Mogul dynasty. He was a ruthless conqueror, who, having ravaged all Central Asia from the Black Sea to the Chinese frontier, turned his attention towards India. He crossed the Indus at Attock, went to Moultan, and extended his march to Delhi, wading through Hindoo blood, which he shed without resistance and almost without cause. The native annalists record how he put a hundred thousand beings to death in the great city; how he caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor or Great Mogul of India; how he departed suddenly to end his days on the other side of the Indus; and how Delhi mourned for many a year over its miseries. No pen can describe what India suffered during the next century and a quarter, with a Mogul emperor at Delhi, constantly fighting with the Mohammedan chieftains who resisted his authority.

The long but often broken line of wretched despots need not be enumerated here: a few landmarks of great names—Baber, Akbar, Jehanghire, 61Shahjehan, Aurungzebe, Nadir Shah—will furnish all that is needful for our present purpose.

Baber—or, in more majestic form, Zahireddin Mohammed Baber—a descendant of Tamerlane, was the first really great Mohammedan emperor of Delhi, the first Mogul who regarded his subjects in any other light than as a prey to be spoliated. Centering his power at Delhi, he extended it eastward to the mouth of the Ganges; and although, in his short reign of four years, from 1526 to 1530, constantly engaged in military expeditions, he nevertheless found time to cultivate the arts of peace, and to attend to whatever appeared calculated to promote the prosperity of his empire. In blood-shedding, he was scarcely surpassed by his predecessor Tamerlane: indeed this was a propensity among all the Tatar chieftains of those times. When his warlike and angry passions were not excited, Baber could, however, come forth in a very different light, as a kind and forgiving man, one fond of friends and friendship, and not without a tinge of poetry in his tastes. He was a man of business, who attended personally to the affairs of government, and passed fewer hours in sensual idleness than is customary with oriental princes. With the Hindoos he had little trouble; their national character was by this time much broken; the rapid succession of reigning families had inured them to change; and they had imbibed a feeling of horror and dismay from the atrocities to which the various Moslem conquerors had subjected them. When opposition to his progress had once ceased in India, he became an altered man. He made or improved roads; established serais or resting-places for travellers at suitable distances; caused the land to be measured, in order to fix taxation by equitable adjustment; planted gardens, and introduced many trees and plants until then unknown in India; established a regular post from Agra, through Delhi, Lahore, and Peshawur, to Cabool; and wrought many improvements in the city of Delhi.

Akbar, unquestionably the wisest and greatest prince who ever ruled India—a prince who was really a benefactor to his people—was the grandson of Baber. Becoming emperor of Delhi in 1556, he established the Mogul dynasty on a firmer basis than it had before occupied. The native Hindoos enjoyed, under him, greater prosperity than they had ever experienced since the first invasion of the Mohammedans. He was distinguished by a spirit of toleration and a love of justice; and the memory of his virtues is to this day treasured up by the Hindoos as well as the Mussulmans of India. As the worshippers of Islam had, by the time of Akbar, fallen out much among themselves, in various parts of Asia, the Mogul Moslems of India gradually became weaned from sympathy with the rest, and prepared for more thorough amalgamation with the Hindoos than had ever before been possible. If not an amalgamation by family ties, it was at least an incorporation by civil and social usages; and thus it is that from the time of Akbar may be dated the remarkable mixture of Mohammedans and Hindoos in so many towns of India. Ambitious chieftains might continue to struggle for supremacy; but the populace of the two religions began to wish rather to trade together than to exterminate each other. Akbar had the genius to see the full force of this tendency, and the honesty to encourage it. He never crushed those whom he conquered; but invited all alike, Hindoos as well as Mohammedans, to settle down as peaceful citizens, assured that they would receive equal justice from him regardless of their religious differences. He placed natives of both races in offices of trust; he abolished the capitation-tax on infidels; he forbade the degradation of war-prisoners to the position of slaves; he abrogated such of the Hindoo laws as were most repulsive to reason or humanity, without being vital parts of their religion; he discouraged fanaticism among those of his own faith; he encouraged trade and commerce; he reduced taxation; and he kept a strict watch over the conduct of the officers of his government. The mildness of his character, his strict impartiality to the different classes of his subjects the magnanimity which he shewed to his enemies, and his great personal courage are mentioned with praise even by the Jesuits, who visited India during his reign. Well did this eminent man, during his long reign of forty-nine years, deserve the title of Akbar the Great; and natural was it that his subjects should look up with reverence to Delhi, the centre and seat of his empire. His reign, both in its beginning and its end, was almost exactly contemporaneous with that of Queen Elizabeth in England.

Jehanghire, a far inferior prince to Akbar, succeeded him in 1605, and soon became involved in troubles. The Uzbeks obtained possession of his dominions in Cabool; the King of Persia took Candahar from him; the Afghans revolted from his rule; the Hindoo Rajpoots commenced their struggles for independence; and, at a later date, his son Shahjehan rebelled against him. Nevertheless, Jehanghire, judged by an oriental standard, was not a bad ruler of Hindostan. The country enjoyed considerable prosperity under him; literature was extensively cultivated; many new cities were built; the Hindoo religion experienced even greater toleration than in the reign of Akbar; and he gave a courteous reception to Sir Thomas Roe, sent on an embassy from England to the Great Mogul. He was, however, a strange being. In a fit of anger against certain rebels, he caused several hundreds of them to be impaled, and placed in a row leading out of the Lahore gate at Delhi; and he himself rode past them on an elephant, ‘to receive the obeisance of his friends.’ His native ferocity also shone out, in his causing one of his principal councillors to be sewed up in the hide of a newly flayed ox, and thrown into the street; the hide, shrinking in the heat of the sun, compressed him to death; but as the compression came too soon to satisfy the savage 62feelings of the monarch, he caused the next victim, when similarly incased, to be sprinkled with water occasionally, to prolong the torture. One of the most remarkable circumstances in the career of Jehanghire was the influence gradually acquired over him by his Sultaness Nurmahal, the ‘light of the palace,’ whose name became changed to Nurjehan, the ‘light of the world;’ her exquisite beauty, wit, and accomplishments, won the love of the monarch; and as she was in mind and heart far his superior, her power over him was often exerted for good purposes.

Shahjehan, an ungrateful son to Jehanghire, was destined to be, in turn, the victim of his own son Aurungzebe. He was an emperor from 1627 to 1659, and then a miserable uncrowned captive for seven years longer. He attacked all the neighbouring princes whose dominions or wealth he coveted; and blinded or murdered all his relations whose ambition he dreaded. And yet, amid his atrocities, he was a man of much ability. Delhi, Agra, and other cities, benefited by his rule. The internal government of his kingdom was very complete. The great mosque at Delhi, and the Taj Mahal at Agra, which rose at his command, are, to this day, objects of admiration to the natives of India. Though it may, to English minds, have been a waste of public money to spend six millions sterling on the far-famed peacock’s throne; yet, as all his establishments were formed on a scale of great magnificence, and as numerous other cities and towns throughout the Empire vied with the splendour of Delhi and Agra—there is evidence that the Mogul and his dominions must have owned vast wealth. He possessed both taste and financial tact; and thus, with all his atrocities, Shahjehan left behind him a full treasury and a splendid and prosperous empire.

Aurungzebe, the last Mogul who maintained the real greatness of the native court of Delhi, became emperor in 1659, by an act of violence against his royal parent. He captured the cities of Hyderabad, Bejapore, and Golconda, and extended his dominions nearly to the limits of the Carnatic. There were, however, the germs of mischief perceptible in his reign: the warlike Hindoo tribe of Mahrattas rose into note; and though they were frequently defeated in the plains by the troops of Aurungzebe, he was unable to subdue the country inhabited by these mountaineers. Sevajee, the founder of the Mahratta empire, gradually conquered the greater part of the Deccan; he died in 1682, and his son, Sambajee, was put to a cruel death by Aurungzebe in 1689; but the Mogul emperors of the north could never afterwards wholly subdue the Mahratta rajah of the south. Aurungzebe was illiberal towards his Hindoo subjects; and this circumstance threw them into closer sympathy than would otherwise have been produced with the rude Mahratta mountaineers. He was not without ability; but he had neither the wisdom nor the justice to maintain his wide-spreading empire in a state of greatness; and when he died in 1707, he left the Mogul power at Delhi much weaker than he found it at the period of his seizure of the crown.

Nadir Shah, although never emperor of Delhi, must be named here as one who contributed to the crumbling of the Mogul dynasty. This man, one of the grand barbarians whom Central Asia has so often sent forth, was the son of a sheep-skin cap-maker. He became a soldier of fortune; then the leader of a band of robbers; then governor of Khorassan; then Shah of Persia; then a formidable opponent of the Turks and the Afghans; and then a scourge to India. While devastating Afghanistan in 1738, he required of the Emperor of Delhi that none of the Afghans should find shelter in his (the Mogul’s) dominions; but as no attention was paid to his demands, he marched into Hindostan in the following year, and entered Delhi with an enormous army on the 8th of March. He seized the whole of the vast treasures which had been amassed in the course of nearly two centuries by the Mogul monarchs. The citizens not being so submissive as he wished, he ordered a general massacre. His commands were only too well obeyed; for, from sunrise till noon, the inhabitants were slaughtered by his soldiers without distinction of sex or age. At the earnest intercession of the emperor, Nadir ordered the butchery to be stopped. Where the estimates of human beings murdered varies from 8000 to 150,000, it is clear that no trustworthy data are obtainable; but it is unquestionable that Delhi suffered immensely, both in its population and its wealth. The ruthless despoiler not only refrained from claiming the crown of Hindostan, but he did not make any conquests whatever: he came simply as a Shah of Persia on an errand of vengeance; he remained two months at Delhi; and then departed westward, carrying with him treasures that have been variously estimated at from thirty to seventy millions sterling.

The Delhi monarchs no longer need or deserve our attention; they had fallen from their high estate, and were forced to struggle constantly for the maintenance of their authority. A number of obscure names meet our view after the time of Aurungzebe—Shah Alum, Moez-Eddin, Furrucksir, Mohammed Shah, Ahmed Shah, Alumghir, and Shah Alum II.: each more powerless than the preceding. Now they were attacked by the warlike Mahrattas; now by the Rajpoots, a military Hindoo tribe which had never been wholly subdued by the Moslems; now by the Sikhs, a kind of Hindoo dissenters, brave and independent in their bearing; now by the Rohillas, an Afghan race, who effected a settlement in the very neighbourhood of Delhi; now by many of the Mohammedan nawabs or viceroys, who, like other Asiatic viceroys in parallel circumstances, were willing to rise on the fall of their masters; now by the competing sons and nephews who surrounded every emperor; and now—more striking in its 63consequences than all the rest—by the ever-encroaching British.

Nevertheless, amid all this decadence of Mogul power, the natives of Hindostan never ceased to look up to the emperor as the centre of power, to Delhi as the centre of nationality. Their traditions told them of Mahmoud, of Tamerlane, of Baber, of the great Akbar, of Jehanghire, of Shahjehan, of Aurungzebe; and although ruthless barbarities were connected with the names of many of these rulers, there was still a grandeur that impressed the imagination. The Hindoos, it is true, had their sacred associations connected with Benares rather than with Delhi; but their distinct nationality had been almost stamped out of them during eight centuries of Mohammedan supremacy; and they, like the rest, held in reverence the city where the peacock’s throne had glittered on the world.

By what strange steps the descendants of the Great Mogul became pensioners of the East India Company, will be explained presently; but it will be well first to describe Delhi itself.

This far-famed city is situated on the river Jumna, about five hundred miles by road above Allahabad, where the Jumna flows into the Ganges, and nine hundred by road from Calcutta. In the opposite direction, Delhi is nearly four hundred miles from Lahore, and six or seven hundred from Peshawur—so great are the distances between the chief towns in India: distances that terribly hamper the operations of a British army during any sudden emergency. Striking as Delhi may be, it presents but a faint approach in splendour to the city of past days, the home of the grand old Moguls. Of the original Delhi, the natives give the most extravagant account; they even run back to a period three thousand years before the Christian era for its foundation. All that is certain, however, is, that Inderput or Indraprestha, the name of the old city, was the capital of a Hindoo kingdom under a rajah, long before its conquest by the Mohammedans. When or how the original city went to ruin, is not exactly known; but modern Delhi owes its chief adornments to Shahjehan. A traveller from the south or Agra direction is struck with the evidences of ruined Inderput before he sees anything of modern Delhi. ‘Everywhere throughout the plain rise shapeless half-ruined obelisks, the relics of massive Patan architecture, their bases buried under heaps of ruins bearing a dismal growth of thorny shrubs. Everywhere we tread on overthrown walls. Brick mosaics mark the ground-plan of the humbler dwellings of the poorer classes. Among the relics of a remote age, are occasionally to be seen monuments of light and elegant style of architecture, embellished with brilliant colours, gilt domes, and minarets incased in enamelled tiles.’ Some travellers have asserted that they have traced these ruins thirty miles along the Jumna; but these cannot all have been the ruins of one city. Approaching the present Delhi, it is seen that the ruins are spread over a plain, in the midst of which the city is situated; and they give place, after a time, to the tasteful villas of the Europeans who exercise civil or military control within Delhi. Most of these villas are on the site of the once famous garden of Shalimar. On the northern side of the city, close under a ridge of sandstone rocks called the Mijnoon Pahar, are the cantonments—an alternation of bungalows, huts, and groups of trees.

So much for the environs. Although not entitled to take rank among the great cities of the earth, Delhi is nevertheless a considerable place, for it is seven miles in circumference. The Jumna bounds it on the east, while a lofty crenellated wall, of horseshoe shape, completes the boundary on the other sides. This wall has been an object of much attention at different times. As built by Shahjehan, it possessed little strength. When the British obtained ascendency over the city in 1803, the wall was found to be in a ruinous state, without other flanking defences than small circular bastions placed at intervals; the ditch was imperfect; there was scarcely any vestige of a glacis or exterior slope; and the crumbling ruins of dilapidated buildings had been allowed to accumulate all round the wall. Captains Hutchinson and Smith, of the Bengal engineers, were thereupon deputed to restore and strengthen the fortifications. It was determined to establish a series of bastions, with faces and flanks to defend the curtain or plain wall, and to mount them with heavy artillery. The walls were repaired; and to shield them from escalade, they were protected, especially on the river-front, with beams of timber, the sharpened ends of which were pointed at an acute angle downward into the ditch. The ditch was cleared out and deepened; the glacis was made to cover, in some degree, the scarp of the wall; the ground outside was cleared to some distance of ruins and houses; and the ravines were filled up to check the approach of marauding horsemen. To prepare for a rising within the city as well as an attack from without, detached martello towers were constructed, entirely separate from the walls, and accessible from them only by drawbridges; each tower had a gun mounted on a pivot, so that in the event of a tumult in the city, the towers might be occupied by artillerymen, the drawbridges drawn up, and the guns swiveled round to pour a fire upon the insurgents. The gateways of the city were strengthened; outworks were provided in front of some of them, while others were provided with guard-houses and places-d’armes. At a much later date—in 1838—Lord Auckland caused the walls and towers to be strengthened, and one of the new defences, called the Wellesley Bastion, to be reconstructed.

In what relation these defences stood to a British besieging force in 1857, will remain to be told in a future chapter: we proceed here with the description of the city.

64

BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF DELHI.—From a Coloured Lithograph by A. Maclure: taken from original native Drawings.

65Delhi has seven gates on the land-side, named, respectively, the Lahore, Ajmeer, Turcoman, Cabool, Mohur or Moree, Cashmere, and Agra Gates; while along the river-front are four others, the Rajghat, Negumbod, Lall, and Kaila Gates. Some little diversity is shewn by travellers in giving these names; and some make the number of gates twelve instead of eleven. The Cashmere Gate is provided with casemated or shot-proof chambers, for the accommodation of a city-guard. A bridge of boats over the Jumna connects Delhi with the road leading northeastward to Meerut, and the chief magazine is, or was, between the centre of the city and this bridge. Eight of the defences on the walls are called the Shah Bastion, Burn Bastion, Gurstin Bastion, College Bastion, Ochterlony Bastion, Lake Bastion, Wellesley Bastion, and Nawab Bastion—names obviously derived, in most instances, from military officers engaged in the Company’s service. Strictly speaking, the wall does not quite surround the city; for on one side it abuts on a small branch of the river, where there is a short bridge across to the old fort of Selimgurh, built in a very heavy style by one of the early emperors. Entirely outside the wall, north of the city, is a custom-house, which affords a curious commentary on the relations existing between the civil and military officers of the Company. It was first built by a medical officer, then sold to the Company for a treasury, and then adapted as a custom-house. The engineers wanted to get rid of this building, as an obstruction to their plan of defences, in the same way as they had swept away numerous outhouses, bazaars, and ruins; but the civilians prevented this; and so the custom-house remained till 1857, when the building and its garden became a ready prey to the rebels.

The city, considered without relation to its defences, presents many of those features so familiar in oriental towns. As seen by the approaching traveller, few of the dwelling-houses peep above the ramparts; but the Jumma Musjid or principal mosque, the turreted and battlemented palace, the minarets, and other public buildings, combine to form a majestic picture; while the graceful acacias and lofty date-trees bending over the ramparts, and the grouping of tombs with sombre foliage on the glacis, add new features to the scene. Arrived within the city, it is seen that the streets are mostly narrow. The chief exception is that of a handsome street running south from the palace to the Agra Gate: three quarters of a mile long by a hundred and fifty feet wide. This street has, therefore, length and breadth enough to afford space for much splendour; but the Delhians have not fully availed themselves of this opportunity, for they have built blocks of small houses in the midst of this street, analogous in some degree to the ‘Middle Rows’ known to the inhabitants of London. Another large street, similarly shorn of its due dignity, runs from the palace westward to the Lahore Gate. Both streets are, however, enlivened by raised water-courses flowing in channels of red stone—part of a great work begun and finished by the Company, for supplying Delhi with water.

The glories of Delhi are the great mosque and the still greater palace. The Jumma Musjid, situated in the centre of the city, is one of those buildings to which Mohammedans point with pride: famous not only in Hindostan, but all over Southern and Central Asia. It presents to the eye an open court on an elevated platform, nearly five hundred feet square; in the middle of which is a marble fountain for the ablutions necessary in the ceremonials of Islamism. On three sides of this court are open arcades and octagonal pavilions; while on the fourth side is the mosque, a structure of great splendour approached by a magnificent flight of marble steps. White marble cornices inlaid in black marble with inscriptions from the Koran; walls, ceilings, and pavements of the same delicate materials; beautiful domes and lofty minarets—all combine to render the Jumma Musjid a truly gorgeous structure. The Emperor Shahjehan built it more than two centuries ago; and the British government gave orders in 1851 that it should be kept in repair.

But, splendid as is the Jumma Musjid, the imperial palace is still more striking—partly for what it is, but principally for what it has been. The palace stands between the two principal streets and the bridge. Some travellers have compared it with Windsor Castle, some with the Kremlin at Moscow, in size and majesty; while others insist that it has no compeer. Bishop Heber was quite enthusiastic in its praise. In the first place, the palatial buildings are surrounded by a wall to which there is certainly no parallel either at Windsor or at Moscow; it is of red granite, three quarters of a mile in circuit, nearly forty feet high, flanked with turrets and domes, and entered by two noble gates with barbicans. This wall is a grand work in itself, irrespective of the structures it encloses. Strictly speaking, the wall is only on three sides, the fourth abutting on a small branch of the Jumna, where occurs the short bridge crossing to the old fort of Selimgurh. The palace itself is entered by a series of beautiful gateways, all of red granite, and all sculptured with flowers and inscriptions from the Koran. The vaulted aisles and the open octagonal courts are spoken of by Heber with great admiration. The Dewani Khas, or private council-chamber, although allowed to become filthy by the visits of crows and kites, is an exquisite structure; it is a pavilion of white marble, supporting four cupolas of the same delicate material, with pillars and arches elaborately inlaid with gilt arabesques, flowers, and inscriptions. The garden around it has numerous white marble fountains of elegant form, and a small octagonal pavilion with bath-rooms, but all dirty and neglected. The Moti Musjid or private mosque for the court, and the Dewani-aum or public hall of audience, are, like the rest of the palace, ornate in marble and in carving, in 66sculpture and in inscriptions, in gilding and in inlaying; and, also like the rest, disfigured with filth—a combination truly oriental. In the hall of audience is, or was before the Revolt, the dais on which once stood the world-renowned peacock’s throne, formed entirely of gold and jewels; and it was in this same chamber that the victorious Nadir Shah, by exchanging turbans with the defeated Mogul Mohammed Shah, obtained possession of a treasure almost as renowned as the peacock’s throne itself—the koh-i-noor, the ‘mountain of light,’ the glorious diamond which, after various vicissitudes, now occupies a place in the regalia of Queen Victoria.

Passing from a scene of decayed splendour to one of living interest, we find Delhi to be inhabited by almost an exactly equal number of Hindoos and Mohammedans, eighty thousand of each; but it is essentially a Mohammedan city, the centre of their prestige and influence in India; and all the dwellings and public buildings of the Hindoos are indicative of a race locally less powerful. Besides the imperial palace just described, there is, about nine miles from Delhi, near an extraordinary pillar called the Kootub Minar, the country residence of the emperor, or, as it has been more customary in recent years to call him, the King. It is a large but paltry building, in an inferior style of Italian architecture, with a public road running through the very court-yard. Within the city a palace was built for the British resident a few years ago; and around this building a number of elegant houses have since been erected, by the natives as well as by the Europeans. Since the once great Mogul has been a king without a kingdom, a pensioned puppet of the Company, a potentate having nothing to employ his thoughts and his pension but political intrigue and sensual indulgence—the representative of England has been a sort of envoy or resident, ostensibly rendering honour to the Mogul, but really watching that he does no mischief, really insuring that he shall be a king only in name. But more on this point presently. The British civil staff in the city comprises—or did comprise before the Revolt—a resident or commissioner, a revenue collector, a magistrate, and other officials. There have usually been three regiments barracked or stationed in the cantonment; but the military importance of the place has been rather due to the fact that Delhi has been made a depôt for a large park of artillery—valuable enough when in the hands of the British, but a source of dismay and disaster when seized by mutineers.

Although this narrative has little to do with the merits or demerits of Delhi as a place of residence; yet, knowing something of what Englishmen and Englishwomen have had to bear when cooped up within a town or fort menaced by ruthless natives, every compatriot at home would like further to know in what way those trials are likely to have been aggravated by the incidents of climate. A lady-traveller furnishes a vivid picture of Delhi in a hot-wind, such as frequently visits towns in India during certain seasons of the year. ‘Every article of furniture is burning to the touch; the hardest wood, if not well covered with blankets, will split with a report like that of a pistol; and linen taken from the drawers appears as if just removed from a kitchen-fire. The nights are terrible, every apartment being heated to excess. Gentlemen usually have their beds placed in the verandahs, or on the chubootiar or terrace on the top of the house: as they incur little risk in sleeping in the open air, at a season in which no dew falls, and when there is scarcely any variation in the thermometer. Tornadoes are frequent during these hot winds; while they last, the skies, though cloudless, are darkened with dust, the sun is obscured, and a London fog cannot more effectually exclude the prospect. The birds are dreadful sufferers at this season; their wings droop, and their bills are open as if gasping for breath; all animals are more or less affected.’ Then, when this frightful heat is about to depart, ensues a storm, more terrible to look at, though easier to bear. ‘The approaching strife is made known by a cloud, or rather a wall of dust, which appears at the extremity of the horizon, becoming more lofty as it advances. The air is sultry and still; for the wind, which is tearing up the sand as it rushes along, is not felt in front of the billowy masses, whose mighty ramparts gather strength as they spread. At length the plain is surrounded, and the sky becomes as murky as midnight. Then the thunder breaks forth, but its most awful peals are scarcely heard in the deep roar of the tempest; burst succeeds to burst, each more wild and furious than the former; the forked lightnings flash in vain, for the dust, which is as thick as snow, flings an impenetrable veil around them. The wind having spent itself in a final effort, suddenly subsides, and the dust is as speedily dispersed by torrents of rain, which in a very short time flood the whole country.’ This is the last agony of the storm; after which the temperature lowers and nature becomes more tranquil.

Such is Delhi—such the city which, amid all its changes of fortune, has for so many centuries been an object of reverential affection to the natives of Hindostan. When the disorganised regiments from Meerut entered the imperial gates, they found an aged mogul or king, with sons and grandsons, courtiers and retainers, willing to make him a stepping-stone to their own advancement. Who this king was, and how he had come into that position, may soon be told.

Precisely a century ago, when Clive was preparing to revenge the atrocities connected with the Black Hole at Calcutta, the Delhi empire was rapidly losing all its power; the northern and northwestern provinces were seized upon by the Afghans and the Sikhs; the Rajpoots extended their dominions as far as Ajmeer; and the Emperor Alumghir was too weak to protect his capital from the monstrous barbarities of the 67Afghan insurgents. The next emperor, Shah Alum II., unable either to repel invaders or to control his rebellious nawabs, virtually yielded to the rapidly rising power of the East India Company. He signed a treaty with Clive in 1765, involving mutual obligations; he was to yield to the British certain provinces, and to award to a resident appointed from Calcutta considerable power at the court of Delhi; while the British were to protect him from his numerous assailants, and to secure him a pension of £260,000 per annum, which, with other sources of wealth, brought the degenerate descendant of the Moguls nearly half a million annually. Troubled by the Mahrattas on one side, by the Rohillas on a second, and by the Nawab of Oude on a third, the paralysed emperor became so bewildered that he knew not which way to turn. About 1788 a Rohilla chieftain suddenly entered Delhi, and put out the eyes of the unfortunate emperor with a poniard; then the Mahrattas defeated this chieftain, seized the capital, and reduced Shah Alum himself to a mere puppet. During this anarchy the British in India were so fully occupied in other quarters, that they could not make a resolute demonstration in the centre of the once great Mogul empire; but in the year 1803 all was prepared by Lord Lake for a resolute attempt to break down the Mahratta and Rohilla power in the north, and to insure that the emperor should have no other master than the Company—a kindness, the motives for which will not bear very close scrutiny. The battle of Delhi, fought on the 11th of September 1803, opened the gates of the city to the British, and relieved the emperor from his thraldom. A reverse had very nearly occurred, however. While Lake was reposing after his victory, Holkar, the great Mahratta chief, leaving his cavalry to attract the notice of the British at Muttra, suddenly appeared before Delhi with a force of 20,000 infantry and 100 guns. The garrison comprised only two battalions and four companies of native troops, with a few irregular horse; and as some of these deserted at the first affright, there were left only 800 men and 11 guns to defend a city seven miles in circuit. By unwearied patience and daring intrepidity, however, Colonel Burn, who was military commandant in the city at the time, and who was ably assisted by Colonel Ochterlony and Lieutenant Rose, succeeded in repelling all the attacks of the Mahrattas; and Holkar retired discomfited.

From that day—from the 16th of October 1803, until the 11th of May 1857—an enemy was never seen before the gates of Delhi; a day had never passed during which the city had been other than the capital of a state governed nominally by a Mogul king, but really by a British resident. Shah Alum, after thirty years of a troubled life, was vouchsafed three years of peace, and died in 1806—a pensioner of that great abstraction, that inscrutable mystery to the millions of Hindostan, the ‘Coompanee Bahadoor,’ the Most Honourable Company.

The behaviour of the Company’s servants towards the feeble descendant of the Great Moguls was, until about thirty years ago, the most absurd mockery. They took away all his real power, and then offered him a privilege, the least exercise of which, if he had ventured on such a thing, they would at once have resented. Shah Akbar, who succeeded his old, blind, feeble father, Shah Alum, in 1806, became at once a pensioner. He was really king, not over a kingdom, but only over the twelve thousand inmates of the imperial palace at Delhi, his relations and retainers—the whole of whom he supported on a pension of about a hundred thousand pounds per annum, paid by the Company. Hindoo and Mussulman, notwithstanding his fallen state, alike looked up to him as the only representative of the ancient glories of India; numerous princes received their solemn and legal investiture from him; and until 1827, the Company acquired no new province without applying for his nominal sanction and official firman. He was permitted to bestow dresses of honour on native princes at their accession to the musnud, as a token of suzerainty; and the same ceremony was attempted by him occasionally towards the governor-general. At length, under the rule of Earl Amherst in 1827, it was determined to put an end to a system which was either a mockery, or an incentive to disaffection on the part of the Delhians. The pension to the king was increased to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, but the supposed or implied vassalage of the East India Company to the nominal Padishah or Mohammedan ruler of India was brought to an end; Shah Akbar being, from that date, powerless beyond the walls of his palace—except as the representative, the symbol, of something great, still venerated by the natives.

Palace intrigues have not been wanting at Delhi during the twenty years that preceded the Revolt; and these intrigues have borne some relation to the state of disaffection that accompanied that outbreak. Shah Akbar reigned, if reigning it can be called, from 1806 until 1837. He wished to be succeeded by his second son, Shahzadah Jehanghire; but the British authorities insisted that the succession should go, as before, to the eldest son; and consequently Meerza Abu Zuffur became emperor on Shah Akbar’s death in 1837, under the title of Mahomed Suraj-u-deen Shah Ghazee. This monarch, again, exhibited the same distrust of the next heir that is so often displayed in Oriental countries; the British authorities were solicited to set aside the proper heir to the peacock’s throne, in favour of a younger prince who possessed much influence in the zenana. Again was the request refused; and the palace at Delhi was known to have been a focus of discontent and intrigue for some time previous to the Revolt. The mode in which the Marquis of Dalhousie treated these matters, in his minute of 1856, has 68already been adverted to; but it may be well to repeat his words here, to shew the exact state of Delhi palace-politics at that time. ‘Seven years ago [that is, in 1849], the heir-apparent to the King of Delhi died. He was the last of the race who had been born in the purple. The Court of Directors was accordingly advised to decline to recognise any other heir-apparent, and to permit the kingly title to fall into abeyance upon the death of the present king, who even then was a very aged man. The Honourable Court accordingly conveyed to the government of India authority to terminate the dynasty of Timour, whenever the reigning king should die. But as it was found that, although the Honourable Court had consented to the measure, it had given its consent with great reluctance, I abstained from making use of the authority which had been given to me. The grandson of the king was recognised as heir-apparent; but only on condition that he should quit the palace in Delhi, in order to reside in the palace at the Kootub; and that he should, as king, receive the governor-general of India at all times on terms of perfect equality.’ It was therefore simply a suspension of the absolute extinction of the kingly title at Delhi: a suspension dictated, apparently, by the existence of a little more hesitation in the court of directors, than in the bold governor-general.

The king who occupied the nominal throne of Delhi at the time of the Revolt was neither better nor worse than the average of his predecessors. A pensioned prince with no responsibilities, he was a true Oriental sensualist, and had become an almost imbecile old man between eighty and ninety years of age. Nevertheless, for the reasons already more than once stated, he was invested with a certain greatness in the eyes of the natives of Hindostan; and Delhi was still their great city. Hindoos, Afghans, Patans, Seljuks, Rajpoots, Tatars, Moguls, Persians, Rohillas, Mahrattas, Sikhs—all had left their impress upon the capital; and with one or other of these, the millions of India had sympathies either of race or of creed. Even to the hour of the outbreak, the king was approached with the reverence due to royalty. In the ruined paradise of Oriental sensualism, the great palace of Delhi, ‘the house of Tamerlane still revelled in unchecked vileness. The royal family, consisting of many hundreds—idle, dissolute, shameless, too proud or too effeminate for military service—lived in entire dependence on the king’s allowance. For their amusement were congregated from all India the most marvellous jugglers, the most cunning bird-tamers and snake-charmers, the most fascinating dancing-girls, the most skilled Persian musicians. Though the population was exactly balanced between Mohammedans and Hindoos, it was the Moslem who here reigned supreme.’^[8]

Howdah of an Indian Prince.

69

King of Delhi.

Remembering that in the month of May 1857 there was a very aged king living in the great palace at Delhi; that the heir-apparent, his grandson, resided in the palace of Kootub Minar, eight or nine miles from the city; that the Moslem natives still looked up to the king with a sort of reverence; and that his enormous family had become dissatisfied with the prospective extinction of the kingly power and name—remembering these facts, the reader will be prepared to follow the fortunes of the Meerut mutineers, and to understand on what grounds the support of the royal family was counted upon.

The distance to be passed over being forty miles, it was not till the day after the outbreak at Meerut—namely, the 11th of May—that the three mutinous regiments reached Delhi. The telegraphic wires were so soon cut, and the dâks so effectually interrupted, that it is doubtful at what hour, and to what extent, the transactions at Meerut became known to Brigadier Graves, who commanded at Delhi. The position of that officer was well calculated to produce uneasiness in his mind at a time of insubordination and distrust; for he had no European regiments with him. The garrison consisted of the 38th, 54th, and 74th native regiments, and a battery of native artillery; the English comprised only a few officers and sergeants of those regiments, the various servants of the Company, and private traders within the city. The 54th and 74th had 70not up to that time shewn any strong symptoms of disaffection; but the 38th, which had achieved a kind of triumph over the Marquis of Dalhousie in 1852, in reference to the proposed expedition to Pegu, had ever since displayed somewhat of a boastful demeanour, a pride of position and influence. The three regiments and the artillery had their regular quarters in the cantonment, about two miles north of the city: sending into Delhi such companies or drafts as were necessary to man the bastions, towers, magazine, &c. As the river Hindoun, a tributary to the Jumna, crosses the Meerut and Delhi road near Furrucknuggur, about ten miles from Delhi, it might be a fair problem whether the mutineers could have been met and frustrated at the crossing of that river: the solution of this problem, however, would necessarily depend partly on the time available, and partly on the prudence of marching the Delhi force across the Jumna at such a period, placing a broad river between the brigadier and a city likely to be readily affected by notions of disaffection. Whether influenced by want of time, want of due information, or by strategical reasons, no such movement was made by him. The mutineers would obviously cross the Jumna by the bridge of boats, and would then pass southwestward into the city, or northwestward towards the cantonment, or possibly both. A necessity arose, therefore, for adopting defensive measures in two different quarters; and as the non-military portion of the European inhabitants, especially women and children, would be a source of much anxiety at such a time, the brigadier made arrangements to accommodate them, or some of them, in the Flagstaff Tower, a strong circular brick building on the heights near the cantonment, a mile and a half north of the nearest or Cashmere Gate of the city. The military commandant ordered out his regiments, drew forth his guns, and delivered a pithy address, in which he exhorted the sepoys to stand true to their colours, and repel the mutineers as soon as they should appear. His address was received with cheers, the insincerity of which was soon to be made manifest.

So many Europeans were cut and shot down at Delhi on this day of misery, and so precipitate was the escape of others, that not one single person was in a position to give a connected narrative of the dismal work. Startling, indeed, were the sights and the sounds which riveted the attention of the European inhabitants on this morning. A peaceful Sunday had passed over in its ordinary way; for none knew what were the deeds being perpetrated at Meerut. The native troops, it is true, were to some extent cognizant of that movement, for the insurgents had unquestionably arranged the outlines of a plan; and some of the European officers at Delhi had observed, not without uneasiness, a change in the behaviour of the sepoys at that station; nevertheless, to the Europeans generally, this social avalanche was a wholly unexpected visitation. Resistance was needed from those too powerless to resist effectually; and flight was the only resource for many too weak, too young, too sick, to bear up under such a necessity. All the letters, since made public, relating to the sad events of that day, tend to shew how little the European inhabitants of Delhi looked forward to such scenes. One lady, after a hurried retreat, said: ‘We can hardly ourselves believe how we escaped. The way in which poor helpless men, women, and children were slaughtered without a moment’s warning was most dreadful. We were surprised on the morning of the 11th of May (baby’s birthday) by a party of mutineers from Meerut.’ It is evident that ‘baby’s birthday’ had dawned with much happier thoughts in the poor mother’s mind, than were destined to remain there. Another lady, with her husband and child, were just about to leave Delhi for Calcutta; their dâk-passage was paid, and their travelling arrangements nearly completed. Suddenly a messenger hastened to their home to announce that the Meerut mutineers had crossed the bridge, and were within the city walls; and very soon afterwards, fearful sights told them that immediate escape was the only mode of saving their lives. So it was all over the city; terror and blood began the week, instead of peace and commerce.

The train of circumstances, as we have just said, having involved either the death or the hasty flight of nearly all the English within the city and the cantonment, it follows that the narrative of the day’s ruthless work must be constructed from materials derived from various quarters, each supplying some of the links. When Major Abbott of the 74th found himself, on the next day, the senior officer among those who escaped to Meerut, he deemed it his duty to write an account to Major-general Hewett of the proceedings, so far as his sad tale could tell them. With this we begin.

The city, according to Major Abbott’s narrative, was entered first by a small number of the mutinous 3d native cavalry, who crossed by the bridge of boats. While proceeding westward, they were met by a wing of the 54th native infantry, under the command of Colonel Ripley. But here a serious symptom at once presented itself; the 54th excused themselves from firing on the mutineers, on the plea of their muskets not being loaded; the guard of the 38th native infantry likewise refused, on some pretence, to fire; and thus the insurgents were enabled to enter the city by the Cashmere Gate. Captain Wallis, the field-officer of the week, on ordering the men of the mainguard at the gate to wheel up and fire, was met by insulting jeers; and he only desisted from importuning them when he found the work of death going on in other quarters. Six British officers of the 54th speedily fell, either killed or wounded—namely, Colonel Ripley, Captains Smith and Burrowes, Lieutenants Edwardes, Waterfield, and Butler. Major Abbott, willing to hope that 71his own regiment, the 74th, was still faithful, hastened to the cantonment, got as many of his men together as he could, and explained to them that the time was come to shew their fidelity as true soldiers: he announced his intention to go down to the Cashmere Gate, and called for volunteers to follow him. All for a while went favourably; the men stepped up to the front, loaded promptly, and marched off briskly after the major. On arriving at the Cashmere Gate, the 74th took possession of the mainguard, drawn up in readiness to receive any attack that might be made. Affairs remained quiet near that gate until towards three o’clock, when a heavy firing of guns, followed by a terrific explosion, announced that fighting had been going on near the magazine, and that a vast store of ammunition had been blown into the air. Whether this explosion had been caused by friends or enemies was not at first known; but the news soon spread abroad that a gallant artillery-officer, Lieutenant Willoughby, had adopted this terrible mode of preventing an enormous supply of warlike material from falling into the hands of the insurgents.

Before proceeding with the narrative of events in the city, it will be necessary to describe more particularly the occurrence last adverted to. There were two magazines, one near the cantonment, and a much larger and more important one in the city. It was the last named that became the scene of such desperate work. This magazine was an enclosure of considerable size, about midway between the Selimgurh Fort and the Cashmere Gate, almost close to the British residency. As a storehouse filled with a greater quantity of guns, gunpowder, and ammunition, than any other place in India, a struggle for its possession between the British and the insurgents became inevitable: hence it arose that the destruction of the magazine was an achievement worthy of record, no less for its vast importance in relation to the ultimate fate of the city, than for the cool heroism that marked its planning and execution. The magazine contained no less than three hundred guns and mortars, twenty thousand stand of arms, two hundred thousand shot and shell, and other warlike stores. Lieutenant Willoughby was himself too severely wounded by the explosion to write; but the details of this gallant affair have been very exactly given by Lieutenant G. Forrest, who was assistant-commissary of ordnance in Delhi at the time. Between seven and eight o’clock in the morning of this eventful day, Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, one of the civil servants of the Company, residing between the city and the cantonment, came to the lieutenant, and requested him to go to the magazine for the purpose of planting two guns on the bridge, as a means of barring the passage of the mutineers. Arrived at the magazine, they met Lieutenants Willoughby and Raynor, and several officers and privates of the ordnance establishment. The three principals went to the small bastion on the river-face, commanding a full view of the bridge; there they could distinctly see the mutineers marching in open columns, headed by their cavalry; and they also saw that the Delhi side of the bridge was already in the possession of a smaller body of horse. Any attempt to close or guard the city-gates was found to be too late; for the mutineers were admitted, with great cheering, into the gate of the palace. Lieutenant Willoughby, seeing the critical state of affairs, returned quickly to the magazine, closed and barricaded the gates, and prepared for defence. Conductor Crow and Sergeant Stewart were placed near one of the gates, with lighted matches in their hands, in command of two six-pounders double-charged with grape, which they were ordered to fire if any attempt were made to force the gate from without. The principal gate of the magazine was similarly defended by two guns, with chevaux-de-frise laid down on the inside. There were five other six-pounders, and a twenty-four pounder howitzer, quickly placed at such spots as might render them more readily available for defence—all double-loaded with grape-shot. A more doubtful task was that of arming the native artillerymen or ordnance servants within the magazine; for they were in a state, not only of excitement, but of insubordination, much more inclined to aid the assailants without than the defenders within. This arming being effected so far as was practicable, a train of gunpowder was laid down from the magazine to a distant spot; and it was agreed that, on Lieutenant Willoughby giving the order, Conductor Buckley should raise his hat as a signal to Conductor Scully to fire the train and blow up the magazine with all its contents. Having done all that a cool and circumspect leader could do to prepare for the worst, Lieutenant Willoughby awaited the issue. Very soon, mutinous sepoys—or rather the palace guards, who had not until that hour been mutinous—came and demanded possession of the magazine, in the name of the King of Delhi! No answer being vouchsafed to this demand, scaling-ladders were sent from the palace, and placed against the wall of the magazine. This decided the wavering of the native artillerymen; they all as with one accord deserted, climbed up to the sloping roofs on the inside of the magazine, and descended the ladders to the outside. The insurgents now appearing in great numbers on the top of the walls, the little band of Europeans commenced a brisk fire of grape-shot, which worked much mischief among the enemy; although only nine in number, they kept several hundred men at bay. At last, the stock of grape at hand was exhausted, and the beleaguered garrison was shot at instead of shooting: seeing that none could run to the storehouses for more grape-shot without leaving to the mutineers freedom of entry by leaping from the walls. Two of the small number being wounded, and the impossibility of longer holding out being apparent, Lieutenant Willoughby gave the signal; whereupon Conductor Scully 72instantly fired the train. An awful explosion followed, amid the din and confusion of which, all who were not too much injured made their way out of the sally-port, to escape in the best manner they could. What was the number of insurgents killed and wounded by the grape-shot discharges and by the explosion, no one knew; some of the English officers estimated it at more than a thousand. It was at the time hoped by the authorities that the whole of the vast store of ammunition had been blown into the air, beyond the reach of the mutineers; but subsequent events shewed that the destruction was not so complete.^[9]

To return to the agitating scenes within the city. Major Abbott, immediately on hearing of the explosion at the magazine, found himself placed in a painful position: urged to different courses by different persons, and doubtful how long his own regiment would remain faithful. He was requested by the commandant to send back two guns to the cantonment, as a means of defence; while, on the other hand, he was entreated by Major Paterson, and by the civil collector who had charge of the treasury, to retain his small force for guarding the various government establishments within the city. Major Abbott listened to this latter suggestion for a time, but then made arrangements for sending off the two guns to the cantonment. By this time, however, he found it was of little consequence what orders he gave: the native troops were fast getting beyond his control. The two guns, and some men of the 38th regiment, returned; the gunners had deserted on the road, and the guns had therefore been brought back again. A few of the native officers who were still faithful now importuned him to leave the city as soon as possible; he at first interpreted their request as an advice to hasten to defend the cantonment; but soon found that it bore relation to his own safety. Presently he heard shots whizzing in the mainguard. He asked what they meant, and was told: ‘The 38th are shooting the European officers.’ He then ordered about a hundred of his men to hasten with him to the rescue; but they replied: ‘Sir, it is useless. They are all killed by this time, and we shall not save any one. We have saved you, and we are happy; we will not allow you to go back and be murdered.’ The history of the Revolt presented many such incidents as this; in every native regiment there were some men who wished to remain faithful, and some officers who were favourites among them. The sepoys formed a ring round the major, and hurried him on foot along the road leading to the cantonment. He stopped some time at the quarter-guard, and sent a messenger to the saluting tower to obtain information of the proceedings in other parts of the city.

The sun was now setting, and evening approaching, giving omen of a night of danger and difficulty. Major Abbott espied two or three carriages belonging to officers of his own regiment, going northward on the road to Kurnaul; and on inquiry, he was told by the men at the quarter-guard: ‘Sir, they are leaving the cantonment; pray follow their example. We have protected you so far; but it will be impossible for us to do so much longer. Pray fly for your life!’ Willing as he was to remain at his post to the last, the major felt that the men around him were so far faithful as to deserve credence for what they had just uttered; and that his own life, if now taken, would be sacrificed without in any way contributing towards the retention of Delhi in British hands. He therefore replied: ‘Very well; I am off to Meerut. Bring the colours; and let me see as many of you at Meerut as are not inclined to become traitors.’ Major Abbott and Captain Hawkey now mounted one horse and started off after the carriages. They overtook some guns going the same road; but after a progress of four miles, the drivers refused to go any further, and insisted on driving the guns back again to Delhi. The officers, thus entirely deserted by the native troops, having no European troops with or near them, and being powerless to effect any good, rode or drove off to seek safety in other directions.

Major Abbott afterwards learned at what point in the day’s proceedings his own regiment, the 74th, first broke out in mutiny. As soon as the explosion of the magazine was heard, he ordered Captain Gordon to take a company with him, to see whether he could render any aid in that quarter; the captain found, however, not only that his aid would be useless, but that his men exhibited great unwillingness to move. Somewhat later, several officers of the 74th were about to march out with a detachment, when a ball whistled among them: Captain Gordon fell dead. Another ball was heard, and Lieutenant Revely was laid low. It now became a matter of life and death: each officer, without any imputation of selfishness, looking after his own safety. Among others, Ensign Elton made for the bastion of the fort, jumped over the parapet, descended into the ditch, clambered up the counterscarp on the other side, ran across the country to the cantonment, and then followed the road which many of the other officers had taken. Captain Tytler, Captain Nicoll, and some others, went towards Kurnaul; Major Abbott, Captains Hawkey and Wallace, Lieutenant Aislabie, Ensign Elton, and Farrier-sergeant Law, took the Kurnaul road for some distance, and then struck off on the right to Meerut, where 73they arrived at eight o’clock in the evening of Tuesday the 12th—thirty-six hours after the mutineers from Meerut had reached Delhi.

Escape from Delhi.

After stating that almost all the European inhabitants of Delhi had been murdered, except those who had at once been able to effect their escape, Major Abbott thus expressed the opinion which he formed during these two days of terrible excitement, concerning the successive steps of the mutiny at Delhi: ‘From all I could glean, there is not the slightest doubt that this insurrection has been originated and matured in the palace of the King of Delhi, with his full knowledge and sanction, in the mad attempt to establish himself in the sovereignty of this country. It is well known that he has called on the neighbouring states to co-operate with him in thus trying to subvert the existing government. The method he adopted appears to have been to gain the sympathy of the 38th light infantry, by spreading the lying reports now going through the country, of the government having it in contemplation to upset their religion, and have them all forcibly inducted to Christianity. The 38th, by insidious and false arguments, quietly gained over the 54th and 74th native infantry, each being unacquainted with the other’s real sentiments. I am perfectly persuaded that the 54th and 74th were forced to join the combination by threats that the 38th and 54th would annihilate the 74th if they refused; or, vice versâ, that the 38th and 74th would annihilate the 54th. I am almost convinced that had the 38th not been on guard at the Cashmere Gate, the results would have been very different; the men of the 74th would have shot down every man who had the temerity to assail the post.’ It may be that this officer, anxious to lessen the dishonour of his own regiment, viewed somewhat too partially the relative merits of the native troops; but it is unquestionable that the 74th remained faithful much longer than the 38th. To what extent the King of Delhi was really implicated, neither Major Abbott nor any other Englishman could at that time correctly tell.

It was not during the dire confusion of this terrible day that the course of events in the streets and buildings of Delhi could be fully known. The facts came to light one by one afterwards. When the 3d Bengal troopers, who preceded the mutinous infantry in the march from Meerut, arrived at the Jumna about seven in the morning, they killed the toll-keeper of the bridge of boats, took the money found in his office, and crossed the bridge. Arrived in Delhi, they hastened to the royal palace, where they made some sort of announcement of their arrival and its purport. Mr Simon Fraser, the commissioner for Delhi, Captain Douglas, his assistant, and one or two other officials, hearing of this movement, and seeing the approach of insurgent infantry on the other side of the river, hastened to the palace to watch the conduct of the royal personages at such a suspicious time. No sooner did they enter the palace precincts, 74however, than they were shot down. Shortly afterwards, the Rev. Mr Jennings, chaplain of the residency, was killed; as were likewise his daughter and another lady near him—after, it is to be feared, atrocities worse than death. It was seen that the insurgent troopers were in a state of the greatest excitement and fury, as if they had worked themselves up, by indulgence in the intoxicating bang, to a level with their terrible plans. While the military operations, already noticed, were going on at the Cashmere Gate, the magazine, and the cantonment, all the ruffians of Delhi and the neighbouring villages, eager for loot or plunder, joined the insurgents. Every European residence was searched: the troopers and sepoys seeking the lives of the inmates; while the rabble followed, and swept off every shred of property. Bungalows were fired one by one, until glaring sheets of flame were visible in every direction. Bands of Goojurs—a kind of Hindoo gipsy tribe—were lying in wait after nightfall all along the line of road twenty miles out of Delhi, on the watch for refugees. It was a day of jubilee for all the miscreants; they did not stay their hands when the Europeans had been pillaged, but attacked the houses of all the Hindoo bankers, carrying off great treasure. Some of the Europeans concealed themselves for a time within the palace gardens—a vain refuge, for they were all detected, tied to trees in a row, and shot or sabred by the mutineers. Many of the troopers, during the savage scenes of these days, pointed to the marks of manacles on their ankles; they were of the eighty-five who had been put in irons at Meerut on the preceding Saturday; and they now shewed how deep was the revenge which they intended to take for that degrading punishment. The military officers and their families were, from various causes, those whose fate became more publicly known; but the number of civil servants, Christians of humble grade, and half-castes, put to death, was very great. The bank-clerks, with their wives and children, were murdered; and similar scenes occurred at most of the public offices.

Mr Farrington, deputy-commissioner, when at Jullundur two or three weeks afterwards, received a written account from a native of the occurrences at Delhi during the days immediately following the Revolt—an account considered worthy of credence. A part of this narrative comprised the following sad tale: ‘On the third day they [the mutineers] went to a house near the mosque where some Europeans had taken refuge. As they were without water, &c., they called for a subadar and five others, and asked them to take their oaths that they would give them water, and take them alive to the king: he might kill them, if he liked. On this oath, the Europeans came out: the mutineers placed water before them, and said: “Lay down your arms, and then you get water.” They gave over two guns, all they had. The mutineers gave no water. They seized eleven children—among them infants—eight ladies, and eight gentlemen. They took them to the cattle-sheds. One lady, who seemed more self-possessed than the rest, observed that they were not taking them to the palace; they replied they were taking them by the way of Duryagunge (one of the gates on the river-side of the city). Deponent says that he saw all this, and saw them placed in a row and shot. One woman entreated to give her child water, though they might kill her. A sepoy took her child, and dashed it on the ground. The people looked on in dismay, and feared for Delhi.’ The imagination can, too truly, alas! fill up the deficient incidents in this tale of treachery. Mr Farrington deemed his informant worthy of reliance. He said: ‘The man has been with me. He speaks frankly, and without fear. He is able, evidently, to narrate many a harrowing tale; but I did not wish to hear any. He seemed really to recall with dismay what he had witnessed.’

The aged but wretched king of Delhi—wretched in having the hopes of earlier years revived, only to be crushed again—for a time distrusted the mutineers; he entertained misgivings that all might not end well. The shops and bazaars were being plundered; the king was in the palace; and some of those around him urged that order could be restored only by his assumption of the imperial purple. After three or four days, he went in a kind of state through the city, advising or commanding the people to re-open their shops, and resume their former commercial dealings—advice more easily given than acted upon; for the devastation had been terrible, striking grief into the more peaceful portion of the native inhabitants. The king assumed command in the city; he named Mirza Mogul commander-in-chief, and gave the title of general of cavalry to Mirza Abu Bukur; he collected around him eight or nine thousand mutineers and volunteers, who were posted at the several gates of the city, or cantoned in the Duryagunge Bazaar. Additional guns were placed on the ramparts; and the native sappers and miners were placed in command of the cannon in the old fort of Selimgurh. The Company’s treasury, one of the largest in India, is said to have been respected by the mutineers to this extent—that they did not appropriate it among themselves as spoil, but guarded it as belonging to their newly chosen leader, the King of Delhi. To shew how perplexed the Calcutta government must have been at the first news of these events, it may be mentioned that the king’s name was adverted to as that of a friend rather than an enemy. On the 14th of May, three days after the arrival of the Meerut mutineers at Delhi, Mr Colvin, lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, telegraphed from Agra to the governor-general as follows: ‘We have authentic intelligence in a letter from the king that the town and fort of Delhi, and his own person, are in the hands of the insurgent regiments of the place, which joined about one hundred of the 75troops from Meerut and opened the gates.’ Judged by the ordinary rules of probability, it would appear that the mutineers first secured the person of the king, and then compelled him to head them: the old man being further urged by the entreaties and threats of his intriguing sons and grandsons. It is difficult, under any other supposition, to account for his transmission of a message of information and warning to the chief British authority in those regions. On the 15th Mr Colvin sent a further telegraphic communication to Calcutta, containing this information: ‘The rebels have declared the heir-apparent king. They are apparently organising the plan of a regular government; they still remain in the place. Their policy is supposed to be to annex the adjoining districts to their newly formed kingdom. They are not likely, therefore, to abandon the country or leave Delhi; they have probably strengthened themselves there. They may have secured fifty lacs of rupees [half a million sterling].’ No further mention was here made of the old man; it was a younger relation who had been set up as king; and this younger prince may possibly have been the one whom the Marquis of Dalhousie had insisted should be the heir-apparent, with such prospective limitations of authority as the Company might hereafter declare to be expedient. The ordinary motives which influence men’s conduct would be quite strong enough to induce this prince to avail himself of any accidental or unexpected means of insuring the crown without the limitations here adverted to. Ambition was almost the only sentiment not absolutely degrading left to the pensioned, sensual, intriguing dwellers in the palace.

The details of this chapter have hitherto been confined chiefly to the course of events within the city—as collected from the dispatches of military officers, the letters from commissioners and other civil servants of the Company, and the published statements of Europeans who survived the dangers of the day. But we now come to adventures which, politically of less importance, touch more nearly the hearts and sympathies of those who would know how Englishmen, and more particularly Englishwomen, bore up against the accumulated miseries that pressed upon them. We have to accompany the fugitives to the fields and jungles, the ditches and rivers, the swampy marshes and scorching sandy roads; we have to see how they contended against privation and trial—on their way forty miles in one direction towards Meerut, or eighty miles in another towards Kurnaul. Many of the narratives of the fugitives, afterwards made public, supply details not furnished in any official dispatches; while they illustrate many points worth knowing—among others, the greater hostility of the Mohammedan than the Hindoo natives near Delhi, and the indications of individual kindness in the midst of general brutality. A selection from these narratives will suffice for the present purpose, shortened and thrown into a different form so as to throw light on each other, and on the general events of the day. In most cases, the names of the fugitives, especially of ladies, will be withheld, from a motive which a considerate reader will easily appreciate. This scruple must not, however, be interpreted as affecting the authenticity of the narratives, which was verified only too abundantly by collateral evidence.

We select first a family of three fugitives to Kurnaul. The wife of an officer of the 54th native regiment, in the forenoon of this eventful Monday, hastened with her child to the Flagstaff Tower; where, in accordance with the advice of the brigadier-commandant, many other families had assembled. The gentlemen remained outside on guard; the ladies assisted in loading the guns, and in other services towards the common defence of all. Here they remained many hours, in all the horrors of suspense; for the husbands and fathers of many were away, and their fate unknown. At length came the news that the 38th had openly revolted; that none of the native regiments at Delhi could now be depended upon; and that the inmates of the tower ought to effect their escape as speedily as possible. There had been one company of the 38th at the Flagstaff Tower all day; and as the building was very strong, and armed with two guns, the brigadier long deemed himself able to protect the numerous persons there assembled; but as soon as the defection of the main body of this regiment became known, all reliance on the smaller corps was at an end. Such carriages and horses as could be obtained were immediately put in requisition, and various parties hastened off, mostly northward on the Kurnaul road. The small group whom we have here under notice—namely, the officer with his wife and child, reached Kurnaul the next day; but danger was all around, and the fugitives were forced to continue their flight, as soon as they could obtain means of conveyance. It is touching to read how ‘baby’ occupied the mother’s thoughts through all this agitating escape. During a sojourn at a place called Thwanessur, on the road between Kurnaul and Umballa, they stopped at the assistant-commissioner’s house. ‘Before we had rested two hours we were alarmed by being told that a regiment of sepoys was come to attack us; we had to fly from the house and hide as best we could, under the bushes, &c., in the garden; and I kept dear baby in my own arms the whole time until morning.’ The alarm proved to be false, and the fugitives proceeded. They arrived safely at Umballa on the morning of Thursday the 14th, having left Delhi on Monday evening. That the brave wife was ‘quite fatigued and worn out’ may well be conceived when she adds, ‘for dear baby had never left me since we left Delhi.’

76

Delhi from Flagstaff Tower.

This adventure, however, was far exceeded in length, in privation, in strange situations, in hair-breadth escapes, by one which befell a party of four persons—an officer of the 38th regiment, an army surgeon, and their two wives: all of whom, in the wilderness of confusion, sought the Kurnaul route rather than that to Meerut. These ladies were among the many who sought refuge in the Flagstaff Tower. There they had the pain of witnessing the sufferings of poor Colonel Ripley, who, as already narrated, had been bayoneted by men of his own regiment, and had been brought thither for succour; they tended him as women only can tend the sick; but their ministrations were of brief avail. After hours of suspense, in which small hope was mingled with large despair, the necessity for escape became obvious. A little bitterness is expressed, in the narratives of some of the fugitives, concerning the delay in making any preparations for the escape of the women and children; and a few of the head officers are blamed for supineness; but those who suffer are not always, at the time, the best judges of the cause of their sufferings. When evening approached, many of the native coachmen drove away the vehicles belonging to the Europeans, and appropriated them, thus leaving the women and children in dreadful perplexity how to reach Kurnaul or Meerut. The two Englishwomen whose narrative we now follow were among the last of those who left the city, when evening was approaching. They were in a buggy, but had been parted from their husbands during the confusion of the arrangements for departure, and one of them had lost her little child. They drove on, with no male protector, across rugged fields, fearful of the high road: treated sometimes respectfully by the natives, but at other times 77robbed and vilely addressed. Even the velvet head-dress of one of them was torn off, for the value of the bugles that adorned it. A jewel-box had been brought away in haste, as the only treasure preserved; and it became every hour more uncertain whether this would be a prey to the spoilers. Returning to the high road, the ladies met some gunners with two guns; and as the men told them certain death would be the result if they took the road to Kurnaul, they drove in another direction to the Company’s garden outside Delhi. Here, marauding was everywhere going on; the poor ladies soon had the misery of seeing their carriage, horse, jewel-box, and most of their outer clothing reft from them. In the dead of the night they ventured to a neighbouring village. The surgeon, husband to one of the ladies, here managed to join them; but being enfeebled by previous sickness, and wounded in the jaw during the day’s exciting troubles, he was powerless as a defender, and—far from being able to succour others—needed succour himself. During the next fifteen hours were these three persons hiding in fields and huts, befriended by a few natives, and conscious that roving sepoys were near, ready for murder or pillage. Sallying forth again on the evening of Tuesday, they were speedily stopped by six men, who robbed them of a further portion of their scanty apparel, and only stopped short of murder when the officer’s wife pleaded for mercy, on the ground that she was searching for her husband and her child, both of whom had gone she knew not whither. The three fugitives walked all that night, the wounded surgeon dragging himself along. In the morning they were again accosted, and only escaped death by the ladies yielding up a further part of their attire, the only property they had left to give. During the remainder of that day they crept on, obtaining a little food and water from some villagers, who were, however, too much afraid of the sepoys to afford the fugitives the shelter of a roof; and it was terrible work indeed to roam along the roads with a burning sun overhead and burning sand under foot. They sat down by a well-side, and drank some water; but rude fellows accosted them, and after insulting the hapless women, compelled them to withdraw. They next encountered a party of irregular horse, who had not yet joined the mutineers; the men were at first inclined to befriend them; but fears of the consequences supervening, they soon deserted the fugitives. Here were these two Englishwomen, gently nurtured, and accustomed to all the amenities of good society, again compelled to wander like miserable outcasts, helping along a male companion whose under-jaw had been shattered, and who was otherwise in a weak state. They crawled on during another night, and then reached a village, which, as they saw it was Hindoo, they did not scruple to enter. Kindness was accorded to them for one whole day; after which the humane natives, timid lest the sepoys should burn their village if they heard of Feringhees having been harboured, declared they could no longer afford shelter. Once more, therefore, were the fugitives driven forth: having seen renewed symptoms that the sepoys, or rather the marauding ruffians, would not scruple to murder them, if opportunity offered. They had now been five days wandering about, and yet were only ten miles distant from Delhi: so completely had each day’s plans been frustrated by the events of the next day. Again they entered a friendly village, and again were they compelled soon to depart, after receiving simple but kind assistance. No villagers, it was found, were free from dread at having assisted a Feringhee. Once they hid for shelter under a bridge; but an armed ruffian detected them, and behaved so unbearably towards the women that the surgeon, who was a Roman Catholic, took a gold cross from his bosom, and gave it as the price of their freedom from further molestation: a wounded, shattered, sinking man, he could not offer them a strong arm as a shield from insult. On the night of the 17th, at a little more than twenty miles from Delhi, they were glad to obtain the shelter of an outhouse containing twenty cows, the only roof that the owner dared to offer them. They made an attempt to have a letter forwarded to Kurnaul, praying for assistance; but none in those parts could be depended upon for faithfulness beyond an hour or two: so much was there of treachery on the one hand, and timidity on the other. On the 18th they heard that Major Paterson, of the 54th regiment, was in the same village as themselves; and he, powerless to succour, contrived to send a short message to them, written with a burnt stick on a piece of an old broken pan. Shortly afterwards they were greatly astonished, and not a little delighted, to see an officer, the husband of one of the ladies, enter the village; but more like a naked savage, blistered from head to foot, than like an English gentleman.

An eventful tale had this officer to narrate. When the scenes of violence on the 11th at Delhi had reached such a point that to remain longer was to meet certain slaughter, he sent off his little boy with friends towards Meerut, and saw his wife and her lady-companion start for Kurnaul. After being robbed of his horse, and having three bullets sent through his hat, and one through the skirt of his coat, he ran past the blazing houses of the cantonment, and, being ill at the time, sank down under a tree exhausted. A gang of ruffians found him, stripped him, robbed him of everything, and endeavoured, Thug-like, to strangle him—using, however, the sleeve of his own shirt instead of a silken cord. Happily the choking was only partial; he recovered, staggered on a mile or two, rested briefly in a hut, and then walked twelve miles to Alipore in a broiling sun. He obtained a little water, a little bread, and a few fragments of clothing, but was refused shelter. He wended his painful way barefoot, keeping to 78ploughed fields as safer than the high road, and reached a village where the headman gave him an asylum for five days. During these days, however, he twice narrowly escaped death from sepoys prowling about the village. On the sixth he received information which led him to believe that his wife and her travelling companions were within six or seven miles of him. He hastened on, with swollen and blistered feet, wretched substitutes for raiment, and a frame nearly worn out by sickness and anxiety; but a gleam of joy burst upon him when at length he overtook the surgeon and the two wives, though dismayed to see the plight to which they had been reduced. The poor ladies he found to be, like himself, reft of everything they had in the world except a few torn and toil-worn fragments of garments. The surgeon had been less rudely stripped, simply because the clothes of a wounded man were less acceptable to the spoliators. The fugitives, now four in number, continued their journey, their feet pierced with thorns and sharp stones, and the difficulty of carrying or dragging a wounded man becoming greater and greater. The officer’s wife, having had no head-covering for many days, felt the sun’s heat to be gradually affecting her brain; she was thankful when a villager gave her a wet cloth to bind round her temples. Matters now began to mend; the villagers were less afraid of the Delhi sepoys; the vicinity of Kurnaul exhibited less violence and marauding; horses and mules were obtained on one day to take them to Lursowlie; and on the next a carriage was provided for their conveyance to Kurnaul. How they got on from Kurnaul to Umballa, and from Umballa to Simla, need not be told—the romance of the incident was over when the three fugitives, two women and a wounded man, were joined by a fourth; although much physical and mental suffering had still to be endured. The little son of this lady, it was afterwards found, had been carried by some friends safely to Meerut on the 12th. The four fugitives, when they reached friendly quarters, were poor indeed: no beggars could be more completely dependent on the sympathy of those whom they now happily met.

Next we will follow the steps of some of those who chose Meerut rather than Kurnaul as their place of refuge. Their adventures partake of a new interest, because there was a broad and swift river to be crossed. A young ensign of the 54th regiment, a stripling who had just commenced military service under the Company, had a sad tale to tell, how the European officers of his regiment had fallen almost to a man. He was in the cantonment when the news arrived of the approach of the Meerut mutineers; his regiment was ordered to hasten to the city; and he, like other officers, was fain to hope that the men would remain true to their colours. Leaving two companies to follow with two guns, the other eight marched off to the city, distant, as has already been stated, about two miles. Arriving at the mainguard of the Cashmere Gate, the regiment encountered the mutinous 3d Bengal cavalry, who immediately shot down nearly all the officers of the eight companies: the men of those companies shewing, by a refusal to defend their officers, that they were quite ready for revolt. The colonel, indeed, was bayoneted by one of his own men after a trooper had shot him. In about half an hour the other two companies arrived with the two guns; but as the few remaining officers of the regiment knew not which of their men, if any, could be depended on, they formed a kind of small fort or citadel of the mainguard, into which they brought their few remaining companions one by one. The poor youth, who had just commenced soldiering, and who had never seen a dead body, was nearly overwhelmed with grief at the sight of his brother-officers, with whom he had laughed and chatted a few hours before, lying side by side dead and mutilated. The main body of the regiment remained sullen, though not mutinous, until about five o’clock in the evening; but then the spirit of evil seemed to seize them, and they turned upon the Europeans near them, shooting indiscriminately. The scene became agonising. Many women and children had gone to the mainguard for security; and now they as well as the officers found it necessary to flee for very life. Some ran, leaped, clomb, until they got beyond the wall of the city; others waited to help those who were weaker or of more tender years. Some of the ladies, though wounded, lowered themselves by handkerchiefs into the ditch, from embrasures in the parapet, and were caught by officers below; and then ensued the terrible labour of dragging or carrying them up the counterscarp on the other side of the ditch. (A ditch, in military matters, be it remembered, is a dry, broad, very deep trench outside a fortified wall, with nearly vertical sides, called the scarp and counterscarp.) The young officer tells how that he and his male companions would have made a dash towards Meerut, sword in hand, or have sold their lives at once; but that their chief thoughts were now for the women and children. What were the privations of such a company as this, in fords and jungles, in hunger and nakedness, we shall presently see by means of a narrative from another quarter.

It is an officer of the 38th who shall now tell his tale—how that his own personal troubles, when alone, were slight compared with those which he had afterwards to bear in company with other fugitive Europeans. This officer states that, while the refugees were anxiously watching the course of events at the Flagstaff Tower, they were momentarily expecting aid from Meerut. They could not believe that Major-general Hewett would have allowed the mutineers to march from Meerut to Delhi without either making an attempt to intercept them, or following on their heels; and their disappointment in this particular led to some of the unfavourable comments made on that general’s 79line of conduct. The officer of the 38th, whose narrative is now under notice, shared the difficulty of all the others in endeavouring to keep the men at their duty; and he speaks of the terrible sight, more than once adverted to, which met his eye at the mainguard inside the Cashmere Gate: ‘By the gate, side by side, and covered by pretty ladies’ dresses taken from some house, as if in mockery, lay the bodies of poor Captain Smith, Burrowes, Edwardes, and Waterfield, and the quarter-master-sergeant; some lying calm as shot dead, and others with an expression of pain, mutilated by bayonets and swords.’ When all became hopeless within the city, and the brigadier had given orders to retire, the officers made a show of bringing off their regiments as well as their families; but it was only a show; for such of the men as had remained faithful up to this time now fell away, and the Europeans found themselves compelled to escape as best they could. The officer hastened to the cantonment, disconsolate and helpless, but having no immediate idea of escape. With the colonel of the same regiment, however, he was urged to adopt that course, as the cantonment itself was now in a blaze. The two ran off in the dead of the night towards the river, crouching beneath trees when enemies seemed near; they forded the Jumna Canal, slaking their parched lips as they waded or swam; and they tore off the brighter parts of their glittering accoutrements, to prevent betrayal. In the morning, faint and hungered, they took refuge in a hut while a body of sepoys was searching around, as if for victims. A few Hindoo peasants discovering them, told them where they could hide in a tope of trees, and brought them chupatties and milk. Being able to ford across a narrow branch of the Jumna soon afterwards, they concealed themselves in the wild jungle; and there, to their joy and surprise, they found others of their friends in the same kind of concealment—joy damped, it is true, at the thought of educated English men and women crouching among long jungle-grass like savages or wild beasts. On counting numbers, they found they were thirteen, eight gentlemen and five ladies and children; and as they had several guns and swords among them, they took heart, and prepared to struggle against further difficulties.

To bring up the two parallel threads of the story, the escapes of the larger party, comprising the women and little ones, must now be told. In the afternoon of the preceding day, after arrangements had been made for conveying the ladies on gun-carriages from the city to the cantonment, the natives who had been trusted with this duty turned faithless, and the Europeans within the Cashmere Gate, finding themselves shot at, sought to escape beyond the walls in any way they could. One after another, women and children as well as men, leaped over into the ditch, scrambled up the other side, and ran off towards the house of Sir T. Metcalfe. One lady, the mother of three daughters who had to share in the flight, was shot through the shoulder, yet still kept on. The native servants—in the absence of their master, who afterwards had his own tale to tell of jungle-life and narrow escapes—gave them a little food; but just before the house was about being fired by the insurgents, the fugitives left it, and succeeded in fording the narrow stream to the spot mentioned above. When the thirteen had told their adventures, and formed a plan, they started anew, and sought a spot where they could ford the majestic Jumna. The officer must here tell the story of this perilous fording: ‘Our hearts failed, and no wonder, where ladies were concerned, as we looked at the broad swift river. It was getting dark, too. Two natives went across. We watched them anxiously wade a considerable portion of the river; then their heads alone appeared above water. It was our only chance of life, and our brave ladies never flinched. The water was so deep, that where a tall man would wade, a short man would be drowned. I thought it was all over when, on reaching the deep water with Mrs —— on my left arm, a native supporting her on the other side, we were shot [drifted] down the river; however, by desperate efforts and the assistance of another native, we reached the bank in safety. I swam back once more for another of our party; and so ultimately we all got safe over. It was a brave feat for our ladies to do.’ But so it was throughout these terrific scenes: the heroism, the patience, the long-suffering endurance of these gentlewomen, bore up to the last; feebleness of frame was vanquished by nobility of spirit; and the men were often kept in heart, though deeply pained, by the uncomplaining perseverance of their gentle companions in misery. Our fugitives passed a wretched night after this fording of the Jumna, crouching in the jungle, with no sound ‘but the chattering of their teeth.’ The next day threw them into the hands of a large band of ruffians; and as the guns of the officers had been rendered useless by wet, the consequence was direful: the whole party were stripped and robbed, and then left without food, without clothing, without resource, to wander whither they could. With naked feet, and skins blistering in the sun, they toiled on. ‘How the ladies stood it,’ says the officer whose narrative we are following, ‘is marvellous; they never murmured or flinched, or distressed us by a show of terror.’ Fortunately, a fakeer, in a Hindoo village, ventured to give them shelter; they remained three days, obtaining a little food, but nothing more. A German zemindar or landowner, who had been so long in India as to be hardly distinguishable from a Hindoo, hearing of their plight, sent for them, gave them some rough cloth to huddle on as substitutes for garments, and caused a message to be sent to Meerut, which brought relief to them; and they reached that town in seven days after leaving Delhi—worn out in mind and body, haggard, lame, penniless, but thankful that their lives had been spared.

Strange as these escapes and perils were, they 80were eclipsed in individual daring and fertility of resource by one which remains to be told, and which may form the last of this little group of painful narratives. Mr Batson, surgeon of the 74th regiment, was unheard of during so long a time after the events at Delhi on the fatal Monday that he was given up for lost; but in a letter which he wrote to announce his safety, he detailed such a series of adventures as appear to belong rather to romance than to real life—Defoe-like, but entirely true instead of fictitious. And here it may be again remarked that these narratives must not be suspected of boastful exaggeration; there were links which connected all the eventful stories into one chain—each receiving corroborative strength from the others. Mr Batson states that when it was found that the three regiments at Delhi refused to act against the mutineers from Meerut, and that when such of the women and children as could be collected were placed in the mainguard and the Flagstaff Tower, he went to Brigadier Graves, volunteering to convey a letter to Meerut, in hope of obtaining the aid of European troops. His offer being accepted, he took leave of his wife and three daughters in the Flagstaff Tower, went to his house, dressed himself like a native fakeer or mendicant devotee, and coloured his face, hands, and feet. Off he set on his perilous errand. He first tried to cross the Jumna by the bridge of boats, but found it broken. Then he ran to the cantonment, and endeavoured to cross by a ferry near that spot, but found the insurgent cavalry and the neighbouring villagers plundering and marauding. Next he hastened across the parade-ground, and, after escaping two or three shots, was seized by some of the villagers and stripped of every bit of his fakeer clothing. On he ran again, in his now truly forlorn state, towards the Kurnaul road, hoping to overtake some of the officers who were escaping by that route; but before he could do so, two of the insurgent troopers intercepted him. Just as they were about to cut him down with their drawn swords, his tact and knowledge saved him. Being familiar both with the Hindostani language and with the Mohammedan customs, he threw himself into a supplicating position, and uttered the most exalted praises of the great Prophet of Islam: begging them to spare his life for the sake of the Moslem. Had his assailants been infantry sepoys, he would probably not have attempted this manœuvre, for most of them were Hindoos; but knowing that the cavalry sowars were chiefly Mohammedans, he made the venture. It succeeded. Whether they knew him as a fugitive Englishman, is not certain; but they let him go, saying: ‘Had you not asked for mercy in the name of the Prophet, you should have died like the rest of the Kaffirs [infidels].’ After running another mile—at once shivering with nakedness and burning with excitement—he encountered some Mussulman villagers, who rushed upon him, crying: ‘Here is a Feringhee; kill the Kaffir! You Feringhees want to make us all Christians!’ They dragged him to a village, tied his hands behind him, and sent one of their number to a house hard by to get a sword, with which to despatch him. At this critical moment some excitement—the nature of which Mr Batson could not understand—caused them all to leave him, and he ran off again. He fortunately fell in with some smiths who had been employed in the Delhi magazine, and who were willing to save him; they urged him not to go forward, or the villagers would certainly murder him. They took him to a hut, gave him an article or two of apparel, and fed him with milk and bread. He tried to sleep, but could not; he lay awake all night, restless and excited. In the morning he bethought him of informing his protectors that he was a physician, a doctor, a ‘medicine-man;’ and this proved to be an aid to him; for the villagers, finding that he could answer questions relating to maladies, and was familiar with their religion, language, and customs, began to take much interest in the Feringhee doctor. He found that two officers were in hiding at no great distance, but he could reach neither of them. To get to Meerut in time to deliver his message was of course now out of the question: all that Mr Batson could do was to secure his own safety. More perils were in store for him. The villagers of Badree were informed that if they harboured any Feringhees, the now triumphant King of Delhi would direfully punish them; they became alarmed, and hid him in a small mango tope. ‘Here,’ the surgeon says, ‘I was left night and day alone. I was visited at night by some one or other of the villagers, who brought me bread and water in a ghurrah. I am unable to describe my feelings during this trying time. I was all day in the sun, in the extreme heat, and alone at night, when the jackals came prowling about and crying. It is only God and myself know what I have endured. After five nights and days in this tope of trees, I was again taken back to the village and concealed in a bhoosa house. I was here shut in for twenty-four hours; the heat and suffocation I cannot find language to describe. I do not know which was the greatest misery, the tope of trees in solitude or the bhoosa kotree.’ At length the villagers, afraid to keep him any longer, dismissed him—enabling him to dress himself up again as a fakeer. Tramping on from village to village, he acted his part so well as to escape detection. He gave himself out as a Cashmerian; and although one of the villagers suspected his European origin by his blue eyes, he did not betray him. He observed from village to village—and the fact is worthy of note in relation to the causes and details of the Revolt—that the Mohammedans were much more savage than the Hindoos in their expressions and threats against the Feringhees. The further he proceeded from Delhi, the less did Mr Batson find himself involved in danger; and he was fortunately picked up by Captain M^cAndrews and Lieutenant Mew of his own regiment. He had been out no less 81than twenty-five days, wandering from village to village, from tope to tope; suffering privations which none but himself could know, and not even he adequately describe. One great anxiety gnawed him the while—the fate of his family: one great joy awaited him—his family escaped.

Elephant and State Howdah.

Here this chapter may close. We have seen that on the morning of Monday the 11th of May, the European inhabitants of Delhi arose from their beds in peace; and that by the close of the same day there was not a single individual of the number whose portion was not death, flight, or terrified concealment. So far as the British rule or influence was concerned, it was at an end. The natives remained masters of the situation; their white rulers were driven out; and a reconquest, complete in all its details, could alone restore British rule in Delhi. At what time, in what way, and by whom, that reconquest was effected, will remain to be told in a later portion of this work. Much remains to be narrated before Delhi will again come under notice.

82

Lucknow.

Another regal or once-regal family, another remnant of Moslem power in India, now comes upon the scene—one which has added to the embarrassment of the English authorities, by arraying against them the machinations of deposed princes as well as the discontent of native troops; and by shewing, as the King of Delhi had shewn in a neighbouring region, that a pension to a sovereign deprived of his dominions is not always a sufficient medicament to allay the irritation arising from the deprivation. What and where is the kingdom of Oude; of what rank as an Indian city is its capital, Lucknow; who were its rulers; why and when the ruling authority was changed—these matters must be clearly understood, as a preliminary to the narrative of Sir Henry Lawrence’s proceedings about the time of the outbreak.

Oude, considered as a province of British India, and no longer as a kingdom, is bounded on the north and northeast by the territory of Nepaul; on the east by the district of Goruckpore; on the southeast by those of Azimghur and Jounpoor; on the south by that of Allahabad; on the southwest by the districts of the Doab; and on the northwest by Shahjehanpoor. It is now about thrice the size of Wales; but before the annexation, Oude as a kingdom included a larger area. On the Nepaul side, a strip of jungle-country called the Terai, carries it to the base of the sub-Himalaya range. This Terai is in part a wooded marsh, so affected by a deadly malaria as to be scarcely habitable; while the other part is an almost impassable forest of trees, underwood, and reeds, infested by the elephant, the rhinoceros, the bear, the wild hog, and other animals. Considered generally, however, Oude surpasses in natural advantages almost every other part of India—having the Ganges running along the whole of its southwest frontier, a varied and fertile soil, a 83genial though hot climate, and numerous facilities for irrigation and water-carriage. It cannot, however, be said that man has duly aided nature in the development of these advantages; for the only regularly made road in the whole province is that from Lucknow to Cawnpore: the others being mostly wretched tracks, scarcely passable for wheel-carriages. The railway schemes of the Company include a line through Oude, which would be of incalculable benefit; but no definite contract had been made at the time when the Revolt commenced; nor would such a railway be profitable until the trunk-line is finished from Calcutta to Benares and Allahabad. Although the Mohammedans have, through many ages, held the ruling power in Oude, the Hindoos are greatly more numerous; and nearly the whole of the inhabitants, five millions in number, speak the Hindostani language; whereas those nearer Calcutta speak Bengali. As shewing the kind of houses in which Europeans occasionally sought concealment during the disturbances, the following description of the ordinary dwelling-places of Oude may be useful. They are generally built either of unburnt brick, or of layers of mud, each about three feet in breadth and one foot high. The roofs are made of square beams, placed a foot apart, and covered with planks laid transversely; over these are mats, and a roofing of well-rammed wet clay half a yard in thickness. The walls are carried to a height six or seven feet above the upper surface of the roof, to afford a concealed place of recreation for the females of the family; and during the rainy season this small elevated court is covered with a slight awning of bamboos and grass. Though so simply and cheaply constructed, these houses are very durable. Around the house there is usually a verandah, covered with a sloping tiled roof. Inside, the beams overhead are exposed to view, without any ceiling. The floors are of earth, well beaten down and smoothed, and partially covered with mats or cotton carpets. In the front of the house is a chabootra or raised platform of earth, open to the air at the sides, and provided with a roof of tiles or grass supported on pillars. This platform is a pleasant spot on which neighbours meet and chat in the cool of the evening. The dwellings of the wealthy natives of course present an aspect of greater splendour; while those of the Europeans, in the chief towns, partake of the bungalow fashion, already described.

There are few towns of any distinction in Oude compared with the area of the province; and of these few, only two will need to be mentioned in the present chapter. As for the city whence the province originally obtained its name—Oude, Oudh, or Ayodha—it has fallen from its greatness. Prinsep, Buchanan, and other authorities, regard it as the most ancient, or at any rate one of the most ancient, among the cities of Hindostan. Some of the coins found in Oude are of such extreme antiquity, that the characters in which their legends are graven are totally unknown. Buchanan thinks that the city was built by the first Brahmins who entered India, and he goes back to a date fourteen hundred years before the Christian era for its foundation; while Tod and Wilford claim for Oude an origin even six centuries earlier than that insisted on by Buchanan. The value of such estimates may not be great; they chiefly corroborate the belief that Oude is a very ancient city. With its eight thousand inhabitants, and its mud and thatch houses, the grandeur of Oude lives in the past; and even this grandeur is in antiquity rather than in splendour; for the ruins and fragments give a somewhat mean idea of the very early Hindoo architecture to which they belong. On the eastern side of the town are extensive ruins, said to be those of the fort of Rama, king of Oude, celebrated in the mythological and romantic legends of India. According to Buchanan: ‘The heaps of bricks, although much seems to have been carried away by the river, extend a great way—that is, more than a mile in length, and half a mile in width—and, although vast quantities of materials have been removed to build the Mohammedan Ayodha or Fyzabad, yet the ruins in many parts retain a very considerable elevation; nor is there any reason to doubt that the structure to which they belonged was very large, when we consider that it has been ruined for above two thousand years.’ A spot among the ruins is still pointed out by the reverential Hindoos from which Rama took his flight to heaven, carrying all the people of the city with him: a hypothetical emigration which had the effect of leaving Oude desolate until a neighbouring king repopulated it, and embellished it with three hundred and sixty temples. The existing buildings connected with the Hindoo faith are four establishments kept up in honour of the fabled monkey-god, the auxiliary of Rama; they have annual revenues, settled on them by one of the rulers of Oude; they are managed by maliks or spiritual superiors; and the revenues are dispensed to several hundreds of bairagis or religious ascetics, and other lazy Hindoo mendicants—no Mussulman being ever admitted within the walls.

Lucknow, however, is the city to which our attention will naturally be most directed—Lucknow, as the modern capital of the kingdom or province; as a city of considerable importance, political, military, commercial, and architectural; and as a scene of some of the most memorable events in the Revolt.

The city of Lucknow stands on the right bank of the river Goomtee, which is navigable thence downwards to its confluence with the Ganges between Benares and Ghazeepore. It is rather more than fifty miles distant from Cawnpore, and about a hundred and thirty from Allahabad. As Cawnpore is on the right bank of the Ganges, that majestic river intervenes between the two towns. The Goomtee is crossed at Lucknow by a bridge of boats, a bridge of substantial masonry, and an iron bridge—an unusual fulness of transit-channels in 84an Indian city. Lucknow displays a varied, lively, and even brilliant prospect, when viewed from a position elevated above the level of the buildings; but, once in the streets, the traveller has his dream of beauty speedily dissipated; for oriental filth and abomination meet his eye on all sides. The central portion of the city, the most ancient, is meanly built with mud-houses roofed with straw; many of them are no better than booths of mats and bamboos, thatched with leaves or palm-branches. The streets, besides being dirty, are narrow and crooked, and are dismally sunk many feet below the level of the shops. The narrow avenues are rendered still less passable by the custom of employing elephants as beasts of burden: unwieldy animals which almost entirely block up the way. In the part of the city occupied by Europeans, however, and containing the best public buildings, many of the streets are broad and lively. Until 1856, when Oude was annexed to British India, Lucknow was, to a stranger, one of the most remarkable cities of the east, in regard to its armed population. Almost every man went armed through the streets. One had a matchlock, another a gun, another a pistol; others their bent swords or tulwars; others their brass-knobbed buffalo-hide shields. Men of business and idlers—among all alike it was a custom to carry arms. The black beards of the Mussulmans, and the fierce moustaches of the Rajpoots, added to the warlike effect thus produced. Oude was the great storehouse for recruits for the Company’s native army; and this naturally gave a martial bent to the people. The Company, however, deemed it a wise precaution to disarm the peaceful citizens at the time of the annexation.

Three or four structures in and near Lucknow require separate description. One is the Shah Nujeef, or Emanbarra of Azof-u-Dowlah, a model of fantastic but elegant Mohammedan architecture. English travellers have poured out high praise upon it. Lord Valentia said: ‘From the brilliant white of the composition, and the minute delicacy of the workmanship, an enthusiast might suppose that genii had been the artificers;’ while Bishop Heber declared: ‘I have never seen an architectural view which pleased me more, from its richness and variety, as well as the proportions and general good taste of its principal features.’ The structure consists of many large buildings surrounding two open courts. There are three archways to connect the courts; and in the centre of these is the tomb of the founder, watched by soldiers, and attended by moullahs perpetually reading the Koran. This structure is often called the king’s Emanbarra or Imaumbarah, a name given to the buildings raised by that sect of Moslems called Sheahs, for the celebration of the religious festival of the Mohurrum. Every family of distinction has its own emanbarra, large or small, gorgeous or simple, according to the wealth of its owner, who generally selects it as his own burial-place. The central hall of the Shah Nujeef, the king’s emanbarra, is of vast size and very magnificent; and the combination of Moslem minarets with Hindoo-pointed domes renders the exterior remarkably striking; nevertheless the splendour is diminished by the poverty of the materials, which are chiefly brick coated with chunam or clay cement. Near or connected with this building is the Roumee Durwaza or Gate of the Sultan, having an arch in the Saracenic style. Another public building is the mosque of Saadut Ali, one of the former nawabs of Oude; its lofty dome presents a remarkable object as seen from various parts of the city; and, being provided with terraces without and galleries within, it is especially attractive to a sight-seer. Southeast of the city, and near the river, is a fantastic mansion constructed by Claude Martine, a French adventurer who rose to great wealth and power at the late court of Lucknow. He called it Constantia, and adorned it with various kinds of architectural eccentricities—minute stucco fretwork, enormous lions with lamps instead of eyes, mandarins and ladies with shaking heads, gods and goddesses of heathen mythology, and other incongruities. The house is large, and solidly built of stone; and on the topmost story is the tomb of Martine; but his body is deposited in a sarcophagus in one of the lower apartments. The favourite residence of the former nawabs and kings of Oude was the Dil Koosha or ‘Heart’s Delight,’ a richly adorned palace two miles out of the city, and placed in the middle of an extensive deer-park. When Colonel (afterwards General Sir James) Outram was appointed British resident at the court of Lucknow, about a year before the annexation, the Dil Koosha was set apart for his reception; and the whole ceremonial illustrated at once the show and glitter of oriental processions, and the honour paid to the Englishman. As soon as the colonel arrived at Cawnpore from Calcutta, the great officers of state were sent from Lucknow to prepare for his reception. After crossing the Ganges, and thereby setting foot in the Oude dominions, he entered a royal carriage replete with gold and velvet; a procession was formed of carriages, cavalry, and artillery, which followed the fifty miles of road to the capital. On the next day, the king was to have met the colonel half-way between the city palace and the Dil Koosha; but being ill, his place was taken by the heir-apparent. The one procession met the other, and then both entered Lucknow in state. A Lucknow correspondent of a Bombay journal said: ‘Let the reader imagine a procession of more than three hundred elephants and camels, caparisoned and decorated with all that barbaric pomp could lavish, and Asiatic splendour shower down; with all the princes and nobles of the kingdom blazing with jewels, gorgeous in apparel, with footmen and horsemen in splendid liveries, swarming on all sides; pennons and banners dancing in the sun’s rays, and a perfect forest of gold and silver sticks, spears, and other insignia of imperial and royal state.’

85A work of remarkable character has appeared, relating to Lucknow and the court of Oude. It is called the Private Life of an Eastern King, and has been edited from the notes of an Englishman who held a position in the household of the king of Oude, Nussir-u-Deen, in 1834 and following years.^[10] Though the name of the author does not appear, the work is generally accepted as being trustworthy, so many corroborations of its statements having appeared in other quarters. Speaking of the king’s palace within the city, this writer says: ‘The great extent of the buildings, generally called the king’s palace, surprised me in the first instance. It is not properly a palace, but a continuation of palaces, stretching all along the banks of the Goomtee, the river on which Lucknow is built. In this, however, the royal residence in Oude but resembles what one reads of the Seraglio at Constantinople, the khan’s residence at Teheran, and the imperial buildings of Pekin. In all oriental states, the palaces are not so much the abode of the sovereign only, as the centre of the government: little towns, in fact, containing extensive lines of buildings occupied by the harem and its vast number of attendants; containing courts, gardens, tanks, fountains, and squares, as well as the offices of the chief ministers of state. Such is the case in Lucknow. One side of the narrow Goomtee—a river not much broader than a middle-sized London street—is lined by the royal palace; the other is occupied by the rumna or park, in which the menagerie is (or was) maintained.... There is nothing grand or striking about the exterior of the palace, the Fureed Buksh, as it is called. Its extent is the only imposing feature about it; and this struck me more forcibly than any magnificence or loftiness of structure would have done.’

These few topographical and descriptive details concerning Oude and its two capitals, the former and the present, will prepare us to enter upon a subject touching immediately the present narrative: namely, the relations existing between the East India Company and the Oudians, and the causes which have generated disaffection in the late royal family of that country. It will be needful to shew by what steps Oude, once a Hindoo kingdom, became under the Mogul dynasty a Mohammedan nawabship, then a nawab-viziership, then under British protection a Mohammedan kingdom, and lastly an Anglo-Indian province.

Whether or not historians are correct in asserting that Oude was an independent Hindoo sovereignty fourteen hundred years before the Christian era, and that then, for an indefinite number of centuries, it was a Hindoo dependency of a prince whose chief seat of authority was at Oojein—it seems to be admitted that Bakhtiar Khilzi, towards the close of the twelfth century, was sent to conquer the country for the Mohammedan sovereign at that time paramount in the north of India; and that Oude became at once an integral part of the realm of the emperor of Delhi. Under the powerful Baber, Oude was a lieutenancy or nawabship: the ruler having sovereign power within his dominions, but being at the same time a vassal of the Great Mogul. This state of things continued until about a century ago, when the weakening of the central power at Delhi tempted an ambitious nawab of Oude to throw off the trammels of dependency, and exercise royalty on his own account. At that time the Mohammedan rulers of many states in Northern India were troubled by the inroads of the fierce warlike Mahrattas; and although the nawabs cared little for their liege lord the emperor, they deemed it expedient to join their forces against the common enemy. One result of this struggle was, that the nawab of Oude was named ‘perpetual’ nawab—the first loosening of the imperial chain. The nawab-vizier, as he was now called, never afterwards paid much allegiance to the sovereign of Delhi: nay, the effete Mogul, in 1764, asked the British to defend him from his ambitious and disobedient neighbour. This assistance was so effectively given, that in the next year the nawab-vizier was forced to sue humbly for peace, and to give up some of his possessions as the price of it. One among many stipulations of the East India Company, in reference to the military forces allowed to be maintained by native princes, was made in 1768, when the nawab-vizier was limited to an army of 35,000 troops; namely, 10,000 cavalry, 10,000 sepoys or infantry, 5000 matchlockmen, 500 artillery, and 9500 irregulars. In 1773, Warren Hastings had become so completely involved in the perplexities of Indian politics, and made treaties so unscrupulously if he could thereby advance the interests of the Company—that Company which he served with a zeal worthy of a better cause—that he plotted with the nawab-vizier against the poor decrepit Mogul: the nawab to obtain much additional power and territory, and the British to obtain large sums of money for assisting him. When the next nawab-vizier, Azof-u-Dowlah, assumed power in Oude in 1775, he hastened to strengthen himself by an alliance with the now powerful British; he gave up to them some territory; they agreed to protect him, and to provide a certain contingent of troops, for which he was to pay an annual sum. This was the complicated way in which the Company gained a footing in so many Indian provinces and kingdoms. It was in 1782 that that shameful proceeding took place, which—though Warren Hastings obtained an acquittal concerning it at his celebrated trial in the House of Lords—has indubitably left a stain upon his name; namely, the spoliation of two begums or princesses of Oude, and the cruel punishment, almost amounting to torture, of some of their dependents. The alleged cause was an arrear in the payment of the annual sum due from the nawab. Even if the debt were really due, the mode of extorting the money, and the selection of the persons from whom it was 86extorted, can never be reconciled to the principles of even-handed justice. The truth may be compressed into a short sentence—the Company being terribly in want of money to carry on a war against Hyder Ali, the governor-general determined to obtain a supply from some or other of the native princes in Northern India; and those natives being often faithless, he did not hesitate to become faithless to them. During the remainder of the century, the Company increased more and more its ‘protection’ of the nawab-vizier, and received larger and larger sums in payment for that protection. Azof-u-Dowlah was succeeded in 1797 by Vizier Ali, and he in 1798 by Saadut Ali.

We come now to the present century. In 1801, the Marquis Wellesley placed the relations with Oude on a new footing: he relinquished a claim to any further subsidy from the nawab-vizier, but obtained instead the rich districts of Allahabad, Azimghur, Goruckpore, and the Southern Doab, estimated to yield an annual revenue of nearly a million and a half sterling. Oude was larger than England before this date; but the marquis took nearly half of it by this transaction. Matters remained without much change till 1814, when Saadut Ali was succeeded by Ghazee-u-Deen Hyder. During the war between the British and the Nepaulese, soon afterwards, the nawab-vizier of Oude lent the Company two millions sterling, and received in return the Terai or jungle-country between Oude and Nepaul. A curious system of exchanges, this; for after receiving rich districts instead of money, the Company received money in return for a poor district inhabited chiefly by wild beasts. In 1819, the Company allowed Ghazee-u-Deen Hyder to renounce the vassal-title of nawab-vizier, which was a mockery as connected with the suzerainty of the now powerless Emperor of Delhi, and to become King of Oude—a king, however, with a greater king at his elbow in the person of the British resident at the court of Lucknow. The Company again became a borrower from Ghazee, during the Mahratta and Burmese wars. In 1827, the throne of Oude was ascended by Nussir-u-Deen Hyder—an aspirant to the throne who was favoured in his pretensions by the Company, and who was, as a consequence, in bitter animosity with most of his relations during the ten years of his reign. Complicated monetary arrangements were frequently made with the Company, the nature and purport of which are not always clearly traceable; but they generally had the effect of increasing the power of the Company in Oude. On the death of Nussir, in 1837, a violent struggle took place for the throne. He, like other eastern princes, had a large number of sons; but the Company would not acknowledge the legitimacy of any one of them; and the succession therefore fell upon Mahomed Ali Shah, uncle to the deceased sovereign. The begum or chief wife of Nussir fomented a rebellion to overturn this arrangement; and it cost Colonel (afterwards General) Low, resident at Lucknow, much trouble to preserve peace among the wrangling members of the royal family.

Now approaches the arrangement which led to the change of rulers. Oude had been most miserably governed during many years. The king and his relations, his courtiers and his dependents, grasped for money as a substitute for the political power which they once possessed; and in the obtainment of this money they scrupled at no atrocities against the natives. The court, too, was steeped in debaucheries of the most licentious kind, outraging the decencies of life, and squandering wealth on the minions who ministered to its pleasures. The more thoughtful and large-hearted among the Company’s superior servants saw here what they had so often seen elsewhere: that when the Company virtually took possession of a native state, and pensioned off the chief and his family, a moral deterioration followed; he was not allowed to exercise real sovereignty; he became more intensely selfish, because he had nothing to be proud of, even if he wished to govern well; and he took refuge in the only oriental substitute—sensual enjoyment. When Mahomed Ali Shah died in 1842, and his son, Umjud Ali Shah, was sanctioned by the Company as king, a pledge was exacted and a threat foreshadowed: the pledge was, that such reforms should be made by the king as would contribute to the tranquillity and just government of the country; the threat was, that if he did not do this, the sovereignty would be put an end to, and the Company would take the government into its own hands. In 1847, Umjud Ali Shah was succeeded by his son, Wajid Ali Shah: a king who equalled or surpassed his predecessors in weakness and profligacy, and under whom the state of matters went from bad to worse. The Marquis of Dalhousie was governor-general when matters arrived at a crisis. There can be no question that the Company, whatever may be said about aggressive views, wished to see the millions of Oude well and happily governed; and it is equally unquestionable that this wish had not been gratified. The engagement with Umjud Ali Shah had assumed this form: ‘It is hereby provided that the King of Oude will take into his immediate and earnest consideration, in concert with the British resident, the best means of remedying the existing defects in the police, and in the judicial and revenue administration of his dominions; and that if his majesty should neglect to attend to the advice and counsel of the British government or its local representative, and if (which God forbid!) gross and systematic oppression, anarchy, and misrule, should hereafter at any time prevail within the Oude dominions, such as seriously to endanger the public tranquillity, the British government reserves to itself the right of appointing its own officers to the management of whatsoever portion of the Oude territory, either to a small or great extent, in which such misrule as that above alluded to may have occurred, for so long a period as it may deem necessary.’ The 87marquis, finding that thirteen years had presented no improvement in the internal government of Oude, resolved to adopt decisive measures. He drew up a treaty, whereby the administration of the territory of Oude was to be transferred to the British government: ample provision being made for the dignity, affluence, and honour of the king and his family. The king refused to sign the treaty, not admitting the allegations or suppositions on which it was based; whereupon the marquis, acting with the sanction of the Company and of the imperial government in London, announced all existing treaties to be null and void, and issued a proclamation declaring that the government of the territories of Oude was henceforth vested exclusively and for ever in the East India Company. The governor-general in his minute, it will be remembered, spoke of this transfer of power in the following brief terms: ‘The kingdom of Oude has been assumed in perpetual government by the Honourable East India Company; in pursuance of a policy which has so recently been under the consideration of the Honourable Court, that I deem it unnecessary to refer to it more particularly here.’

Everything tends to shew that the king violently opposed this loss of his regal title and power. When the governor-general and the resident at Lucknow waited on him with the draft of the proposed treaty, towards the close of 1855, he not only refused to sign it, but announced his intention to proceed to England, with a view of obtaining justice from Queen Victoria against the Company. This the marquis would not prevent; but he intimated that the king must travel, and be treated by the Company’s servants, as a private individual, if he adopted this step. The stipend for the royal family was fixed by the Company—of course without the consent of the king and his relations—at £120,000 per annum. The reasons for putting an end to the title of King of Oude were thus stated, in a document addressed by the directors of the East India Company to the governor-general of India in council, many months after the transfer of power had been effected, and only a short time before the commencement of the Revolt: ‘Half a century ago, our new and critical position among the Mohammedans of Northwestern India compelled us to respect the titular dignity of the Kings of Delhi. But the experiences of that half-century have abundantly demonstrated the inconveniences of suffering an empty nominal sovereignty to descend from generation to generation; and the continuance of such a phantom of power must be productive of inconvenience to our government, and we believe of more mortification than gratification to the royal pensioners themselves. It fosters humiliating recollections; it engenders delusive hopes; it is the fruitful source of intrigues that end in disappointment and disgrace. The evil is not limited to the effect produced upon the members of the royal house: prone to intrigue themselves, they become also a centre for the intrigues of others. It is natural, also, that the younger members of such a family should feel a greater repugnance than they otherwise would to mix with the community and become industrious and useful subjects. Strongly impressed with these convictions, we therefore observe with satisfaction that no pledge or promise of any kind with regard to the recognition by our government of the kingly title after the death of the present titular sovereign, Wajid Ali Shah, has been made to him or to his heirs.’ The reasoning in this declaration is probably sound; but it does not apply, and was not intended to apply, to the original aggressive movements of the Company. Because the shadow of sovereignty is not worth retaining without the substance, it does not necessarily follow that the Company was right in taking the substance fifty-five years earlier: that proceeding must be attacked or defended on its own special ground, by any one who wishes to enter the arena of Indian politics.

It appears from this document, that four of the British authorities at Calcutta—the Marquis of Dalhousie, General Anson, Mr Dorin, and Mr Grant—had concurred in opinion that, as the king refused to sign the treaty, he should, as a punishment, be denied many of the privileges promised by that treaty. They proposed that the annual stipend of twelve lacs of rupees (£120,000) should be ‘reserved for consideration’ after the demise of the king—that is, that it should not necessarily be a perpetual hereditary stipend. To this, however, Colonel Low, who had been British resident at Lucknow, very earnestly objected. He urged that the king’s sons were so young, that they could not, in any degree, be blamed for his conduct in not signing the proposed treaty; that they ought not to be made to lose their inheritance through the father’s fault; that the father, the king, would in any case be pretty severely punished for his obstinacy; and that it would not be worthy of a great paramount state, coming into possession of a rich territory, to refuse a liberal stipend to the descendants of the king. These representations were listened to, and a pension to the amount already named was granted to the king and his heirs—‘not heirs according to Mohammedan usages, but only those persons who may be direct male descendants of the present king, born in lawful wedlock.’ A difficult duty was left to the Calcutta government, to decide how many existing persons had a claim to be supported out of the pension, seeing that an eastern king’s family is generally one of great magnitude; and that, although he has many wives and many children, they fill various ranks in relation to legitimacy. The Company proposed, if the king liked the plan, that one-third of the pension should be commuted into a capital sum, with which jaghires or estates might be bought, and vested in the family for the use of the various members—making them, in fact, zemindars or landed proprietors, having something to do 88instead of leading lives of utter idleness. In what light the directors viewed the large and important army of Oude, will be noticed presently; but in reference to the transfer of mastership itself, they said: ‘An expanse of territory embracing an area of nearly twenty-five thousand square miles, and containing five million of inhabitants, has passed from its native prince to the Queen of England without the expenditure of a drop of blood, and almost without a murmur. The peaceable manner in which this great change has been accomplished, and the tranquillity which has since prevailed in all parts of the country, are circumstances which could not fail to excite in us the liveliest emotions of thankfulness and pleasure.’ This was written, be it remembered—and the fact is full of instruction touching the miscalculations of the Company—less than two months before the cartridge troubles began, and while the mysterious chupatties were actually in circulation from hand to hand.

The deposed King of Oude did not go to England, as he had threatened; he went to Calcutta, and took up his abode, in April 1856, at Garden Reach, in the outskirts of that city, attended by his late prime minister, Ali Nuckee Khan, and by several followers. The queen, however, achieved the adventurous journey to the British capital, taking with her a numerous retinue. This princess was not, in accordance with European usages, the real Queen of Oude; she was rather a sort of queen-dowager, the king’s mother, and was accompanied by the king’s brother and the king’s son—the one claiming to be heir-presumptive, the other heir-apparent. All felt a very lively interest in the maintenance of the regal power and revenues among the members of the family, and came to England in the hope of obtaining a reversal of the governor-general’s decree. They left Lucknow in the spring of 1856, and arrived in England in August. An attempt was made by an injudicious agent to enlist public sympathy for them by an open-air harangue at Southampton. He bade his hearers picture to themselves the suppliant for justice, ‘an aged queen, brought up in all the pomp and luxury of the East, the soles of whose feet were scarcely allowed to tread the ground, laying aside the prejudices of travel, and undertaking a journey of some ten thousand miles, to appeal to the people of England for justice;’ and the ‘fellow-countrymen’ were then exhorted to give ‘three cheers’ for the royal family of Oude—which they undoubtedly did, in accordance with the usual custom of an English assemblage when so exhorted; but this momentary excitement soon ceased, and the oriental visitors settled in London for a lengthened residence. What official interviews or correspondence took place concerning the affairs of Oude, was not publicly known; but there was an evident disinclination on the part both of the government and the two Houses of parliament to hold out any hopes of a reversal of the policy adopted by the East India Company; and the ex-royal family of Oude maintained no hold on the public mind, except so far as the turbaned and robed domestics attracted the attention of metropolitan sight-seers. In what fashion these suppliants disowned and ignored the Revolt in India, a future chapter will shew.

The reader will, then, picture to himself the state of Oude at the period when the Revolt commenced. The deposed king was at Calcutta; his mother and other relations were in London; while the whole governing power was in the hands of the Company’s servants. Sir Henry Lawrence, a man in whom sagacity, energy, and nobleness of heart were remarkably combined, had succeeded Sir James Outram as resident, or rather chief-commissioner, and now held supreme sway at Lucknow.

It is important here to know in what light the East India Company regarded the native army of Oude, at and soon after the annexation. In the directors’ minute, of December 1856, just on the eve of disturbances which were quite unexpected by them, the subject was thus touched upon: ‘The probable temper of the army, a force computed on paper at some 60,000 men of all arms, on the announcement of a measure which threw a large proportion of them out of employment, and transferred the remainder to a new master, was naturally a source of some anxiety to us. In your scheme for the future government and administration of the Oude provinces, drawn up on the 4th of February, you proposed the organisation of an Oude irregular force, into which you suggested the absorption of as large a number of the disbanded soldiers of the king as could be employed in such a corps, whilst others were to be provided for in the military and district police; but you observed at the same time that these arrangements would not absorb one-half of the disbanded troops. To the remainder you determined to grant pensions and gratuities, graduated according to length of service. There were no better means than these of palliating a difficulty which could not be avoided. But only partial success was to be expected from so partial a measure. As a further precaution, the chief-commissioner deemed it expedient to promise pensions of one hundred rupees per month to the commandants of the regiments of the late king, some sixty in number, conditional on their lending their cordial co-operation to the government in this crisis, and provided that their regiments remained quiet and loyal. We recognise the force of the chief-commissioner’s argument in support of these grants; and are willing to adopt his suggestion that, in the event of any of these men accepting office as tuhseeldars or other functionaries under our government, the amount of their pensions should still be paid to them.’ It was found that the King of Oude had allowed the pay of his soldiers to run into arrear. On this point the directors said: ‘The army, a large number of whom are necessarily thrown out of employment, and who cannot immediately find, even 89if the habits of their past lives fitted them for, industrial occupations, are peculiarly entitled to liberal consideration. It is doubtless true that, as stated by the chief-commissioner, the soldiery of Oude have “fattened on rapine and plunder;” and it is certain that the servants of the Oude government enriched themselves at the expense of the people. But this was only part of the system under which they lived; nothing better, indeed, was to be expected from men whose pay, after it had been tardily extracted from the treasury, was liable to be withheld from them by a fraudulent minister. Whatever may have been the past excesses and the illicit gains of the soldiers, it was the duty of the British government in this conjuncture to investigate their claims to the arrears of regular pay alleged to be due to them by the Oude government, and, having satisfied ourselves of the justice of these claims, to discharge the liabilities in full. We observe with satisfaction that this has been done.... We concur, moreover, in the very judicious remark made by Viscount Canning, in his minute of the 5th of March, “that a few lacs^[11] spent in closing the account, without injustice, and even liberality, will be well repaid if we can thereby smooth down discontent and escape disturbance.”’

The plan adopted, therefore, was to disband the army of the deposed king, pay up the arrears due by him to the soldiers, re-enlist some of the discharged men to form a new Oude force in the Company’s service, and give pensions or gratuities to the remainder.

We are now in a condition to follow the course of events at Lucknow during the months of April and May 1857: events less mutinous and tragical than those at Meerut and Delhi, but important for their consequences in later months.

It was in the early part of April that the incident occurred at Lucknow concerning a medicine-bottle, briefly adverted to in a former chapter: shewing the existence of an unusually morbid feeling on the subjects of religion and caste. Dr Wells having been seen to taste some medicine which he was about to administer to a sick soldier, to test its quality, the Hindoos near at hand refused to partake of it, lest the taint of a Christian mouth should degrade their caste. They complained to Colonel Palmer, of the 48th native regiment, who, as he believed and hoped, adopted a conciliatory course that removed all objection. This hope was not realised, however; for on that same night the doctor’s bungalow was fired and destroyed by some of the sepoys, whom no efforts could identify. Very soon afterwards, nearly all the huts of the 13th regiment were burned down, under similarly mysterious circumstances.

Sir Henry Lawrence’s difficulties began with the vexatious cartridge-question, as was the case in so many other parts of India. Towards the close of April, Captain Watson found that many of the recruits or younger men in his regiment, the 7th Oude infantry, evinced a reluctance to bite the cartridges. Through some oversight, the new method of tearing instead of biting had not been shewn to the sepoys at Lucknow; and there was therefore sufficient reason for adopting a conciliatory course in explaining the matter to them. The morbid feeling still, however, remained. On the 1st of May, recusancy was again exhibited, followed by an imprisonment of some of the recruits in the quarter-guard. The native officers of the regiment came forward to assure Captain Watson that this disobedience was confined to the ‘youngsters,’ and that the older sepoys discountenanced it. He believed them, or seemed to do so. On the 2d he addressed the men, pointing out the folly of the conduct attributed to the young recruits, and exhorting them to behave more like true soldiers. Though listened to respectfully, he observed so much sullenness and doggedness among the troops, that he brought the matter under the notice of his superior officer, Brigadier Grey. The native officers, when put to the test, declined taking any steps to enforce obedience; they declared their lives to be in danger from the men under them, should they do so. The brigadier, accompanied by Captains Watson and Barlow, at once went to the lines, had the men drawn up in regular order, and put the question to each company singly, whether it was willing to use the same cartridges which had all along been employed. They refused. The brigadier left them to arrange plans for the morrow; placing them, however, under safe guard for the night. On the morning of the 3d, the grenadier company (picked or most skilful company) of the regiment went through the lines, threatening to kill some of the European officers; and soon afterwards the tumult became so serious, that the fulfilment of the threat seemed imminent. By much entreaty, the officers, European and native, allayed in some degree the excitement of the men. While this was going on, however, at the post or station of Moosa Bagh, a messenger was sent by the intriguers of the 7th regiment to the cantonment at Murreeoun, with a letter inciting the 48th native infantry to join them in mutiny. This letter was fortunately brought, by a subadar true to his duty, to Colonel Palmer, the commandant. Prompt measures were at once resolved upon. A considerable force—consisting of the 7th Oude cavalry, the 4th Oude infantry, portions of the 48th and 71st Bengal infantry, a portion of the 7th Bengal cavalry, a wing of her Majesty’s 32d, and a field-battery of guns—was sent from the cantonment to the place where the recusants were posted. The mutineers stood firm for some time; but when they saw cannon pointed at them, some turned and fled with great rapidity, while others quietly gave up their arms. The cavalry pursued and brought back some of the fugitives. The 7th Oude irregular infantry regiment, about a thousand strong, was thus suddenly broken into three fragments—one 90escaped, one captured, and one disarmed. A letter from the Rev. Mr Polehampton, chaplain to the English residents at Lucknow, affords one among many proofs that Sunday was a favourite day for such outbreaks in India—perhaps purposely so selected by the rebellious sepoys. The 3d of May was Sunday: the chaplain was performing evening-service at the church. ‘Towards the end of the prayers, a servant came into church, and spoke first to Major Reid, of the 48th; and then to Mr Dashwood, of the same regiment. They both went out, and afterwards others were called away. The ladies began to look very uncomfortable; one or two went out of church; one or two others crossed over the aisle to friends who were sitting on the other side; so that altogether I had not a very attentive congregation.’ When it was found that the officers had been called out to join the force against the mutineers, the chaplain ‘felt very much inclined to ride down to see what was going on; but as the Moosa Bagh is seven miles from our house, and as I should have left my wife all alone, I stayed where I was. I thought of what William III. said when he was told that the Bishop of Derry had been shot at the ford at the Battle of the Boyne, “What took him there?”’

The course of proceeding adopted by Sir Henry Lawrence on this occasion was quite of an oriental character, as if suggested by one who well knew the Indian mind. He held a grand military durbar, to reward the faithful as well as to awe the mutinous. In the first instance he had said that the government would be advised to disband the regiment, with a provision for re-enlisting those who had not joined the rebels; but pending the receipt of instructions from Calcutta, he held his durbar (court; levee; hall of audience). Four native soldiers—a havildar-major, a subadar, and a sepoy of the 48th regiment, and a sepoy of the 13th—who had proved themselves faithful in an hour of danger, were to be rewarded. The lawn in front of the residency was carpeted, and chairs were arranged on three sides of a square for some of the native officers and sepoys; while a large verandah was filled with European officials, civil and military, upwards of twenty in number. Sir Henry opened the proceedings with an address in the Hindostani language, full of point and vigour. After a gorgeous description of the power and wealth of the British nation—overwrought, perhaps, for an English ear, but well suited to the occasion—he adverted to the freedom of conscience in British India on matters of religion: ‘Those amongst you who have perused the records of the past must well know that Alumghir in former times, and Hyder Ali in later days, forcibly converted thousands and thousands of Hindoos, desecrated their fanes, demolished their temples, and carried ruthless devastation amongst the household gods. Come to our times; many here present well know that Runjeet Singh never permitted his Mohammedan subjects to call the pious to prayer—never allowed the Afghan to sound from the lofty minarets which adorn Lahore, and which remain to this day a monument to their munificent founders. The year before last a Hindoo could not have dared to build a temple in Lucknow. All this is changed. Who is there that would dare now to interfere with our Hindoo or Mohammedan subjects?’ He contrasted this intolerance of Mohammedan and Hindoo rulers in matters of religion with the known scruples of the British government; and told his hearers that the future would be like the present, in so far as concerns the freedom of all religions over the whole of India. He rebuked and spurned the reports which had been circulated among the natives, touching meditated insult to their faith or their castes. He adverted to the gallant achievements of the Company’s native troops during a hundred years of British rule; and told how it pained him to think that disbandment of such troops had been found necessary at Barrackpore and Berhampore. And then he presented the bright side of his picture: ‘Now turn to these good and faithful soldiers—Subadar Sewak Tewaree, Havildar Heera Lall Doobey, and Sipahi Ranura Doobey, of the 48th native infantry, and to Hossein Buksh, of the 13th regiment—who have set to you all a good example. The first three at once arrested the bearer of a seditious letter, and brought the whole circumstance to the notice of superior authority. You know well what the consequences were, and what has befallen the 7th Oude irregular infantry, more than fifty of whose sirdars and soldiers are now in confinement, and the whole regiment awaits the decision of government as to its fate. Look at Hossein Buksh of the 13th, fine fellow as he is! Is he not a good and faithful soldier? Did he not seize three villains who are now in confinement and awaiting their doom. It is to reward such fidelity, such acts and deeds as I have mentioned, and of which you are all well aware, that I have called you all together this day—to assure you that those who are faithful and true to their salt will always be amply rewarded and well cared for; that the great government which we all serve is prompt to reward, swift to punish, vigilant and eager to protect its faithful subjects; but firm, determined, resolute to crush all who may have the temerity to rouse its vengeance.’ After a further exhortation to fidelity, a further declaration of the power and determination of the government to deal severely with all disobedient troops, Sir Henry arrived at the climax of his impassioned and vigorous address: ‘Advance, Subadar Sewak Tewaree—come forward, havildar and sepoys—and receive these splendid gifts from the government which is proud to number you amongst its soldiers. Accept these honorary sabres; you have won them well: long may you live to wear them in honour! Take these sums of money for your families and relatives; wear these robes of honour at your homes and your festivals; and may the bright example which you have so conspicuously 91set, find, as it doubtless will, followers in every regiment and company in the army.’ To the subadar and the havildar-major were presented each, a handsomely decorated sword, a pair of elegant shawls, a choogah or cloak, and four pieces of embroidered cloth; to the other two men, each, a decorated sword, a turban, pieces of cloth, and three hundred rupees in cash. Hossein Buksh was also made a naik or corporal.

Let not the reader judge this address and these proceedings by an English standard. Sir Henry Lawrence knew well what he was doing; for few of the Company’s servants ever had a deeper insight into the native character than that eminent man. There had been, in the Company’s general system, too little punishment for misconduct, too little reward for faithfulness, among the native troops: knowing this, he adopted a different policy, so far as he was empowered to do.

When the news of the Lucknow disturbance reached Calcutta, a course was adopted reminding us of the large amount of written correspondence involved in the mode of managing public affairs. The governor-general, it may here be explained, was assisted by a supreme council, consisting of four persons, himself making a fifth; and the council was aided by four secretaries, for the home, the foreign, the military, and the financial affairs of India. All these officials were expected to make their inquiries, communicate their answers, state their opinions, and notify their acts in writing, for the information of the Court of Directors and the Board of Control in London; and this is one reason why parliamentary papers touching Indian affairs are often so voluminous. At the period in question, Viscount Canning, Mr Dorin, General Low, Mr Grant, and Mr Peacock, were the five members of council, each and all of whom prepared ‘minutes’ declaratory of their opinions whether Sir Henry Lawrence had done right or wrong in threatening to disband the mutinous 7th regiment. The viscount wished to support the chief-commissioner at once, in a bold method of dealing with the disaffected. Mr Dorin went further. He said: ‘My theory is that no corps mutinies that is well commanded;’ he wished that some censure should be passed on the English officers of the 7th, and that the men of that regiment should receive more severe treatment than mere disbanding. General Low advocated a course midway between the other two; but at the same time deemed it right to inquire how it happened that the men had been required to bite the cartridges; seeing that instructions had already been issued from head-quarters that the platoon exercises should be conducted without this necessity. Mr Grant’s minute was very long; he wanted more time, more reports, more examinations, and was startled at the promptness with which Lawrence had proposed to act. Mr Peacock also wanted further information before deciding on the plan proposed by the ruling authority at Oude. The governor-general’s minute was written on the 9th; the other four commented on it on the 10th; the governor-general replied to their comments on the 11th; and they commented on his reply on the 12th. Thus it arose that the tedious system of written minutes greatly retarded the progress of business at Calcutta.

There cannot be a better opportunity than the present for adverting to the extraordinary services rendered by the electric telegraph in India during the early stages of the Revolt, when the mutineers had not yet carried to any great extent their plan of cutting the wires. We have just had occasion to describe the routine formalities in the mode of conducting business at Calcutta; but it would be quite indefensible to withhold admiration from the electro-telegraphic system established by the East India Company. This matter was touched upon in the Introduction; and the middle of May furnished wonderful illustrations of the value of the lightning-messenger. Let us fix our attention on two days only—the 16th and 17th of May—less than one week after the commencement of violent scenes at Meerut and Delhi. Let us picture to ourselves Viscount Canning at Calcutta, examining every possible scheme for sending up reinforcements to the disturbed districts; Sir John Lawrence at Lahore, keeping the warlike population of the Punjaub in order by his mingled energy and tact; Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, surrounded by Oudians, whom it required all his skill to baffle; Mr Colvin at Agra, watching with an anxious eye the state of affairs in the Northwest Provinces; General Anson at Simla, preparing, as commander-in-chief, to hasten down to the Delhi district; Lord Elphinstone at Bombay, as governor of that presidency; and Lord Harris, filling an analogous office at Madras. Bearing in mind these persons and places, let us see what was done by the electric telegraph on those two busy days—deriving our information from the voluminous but ill-arranged parliamentary papers on the affairs of India: papers almost useless without repeated perusals and collations.

First, then, the 16th of May. Sir Henry Lawrence sent one of his pithy, terse telegrams^[12] from Lucknow to Calcutta, to this effect: ‘All is quiet here, but affairs are critical; get every European you can from China, Ceylon, and elsewhere; also all the Goorkhas from the hills. Time is precious.’ On the same day he sent another: ‘Give me plenary military power in Oude; I will not use it unnecessarily. I am sending two troops of cavalry to Allahabad. Send a company of Europeans into the fort there. It will be good to raise regiments of irregular horse, under good officers.’ In the reverse direction—from Calcutta to Lucknow—this 92message was sent: ‘It appears that the regiment of Ferozpore [Sikhs] has already marched to Allahabad, and that, under present circumstances, no part of that regiment can be spared.’ And another, in like manner answering a telegram of the same day: ‘You have full military powers. The governor-general will support you in everything you think necessary. It is impossible to send a European company to Allahabad; Dinapoor must not be weakened by a single man. If you can raise any irregulars that you can trust, do so at once. Have you any good officers to spare for the duty?’ All this, be it remembered was telegraphed to and from two cities six or seven hundred miles apart. On the same day, questions were asked, instructions requested, and information given, between Calcutta, on the one hand, and Agra, Gwalior, Meerut, Cawnpore, and Benares on the other. Passing thence to Bombay—twelve hundred miles from Calcutta by road, and very much more by telegraph-route—we find the two governors conversing through the wires concerning the English troops which had just been fighting in Persia, and those about being sent to China; all of whom were regarded with a longing eye by the governor-general at that critical time. Viscount Canning telegraphed to Lord Elphinstone on the 16th: ‘Two of the three European regiments which are returning from Persia are urgently wanted in Bengal. If they are sent from Bombay to Kurachee, will they find conveyance up the Indus? Are they coming from Bushire in steam or sailing transports? Let me know immediately whether General Ashburnham is going to Madras.’ The general here named was to have commanded the troops destined for China. The replies and counter-replies to this on the 17th, we will mention presently. Lord Harris, on this same day of activity, sent the brief telegram: ‘The Madras Fusiliers will be sent immediately by Zenobia; but she is hardly fit to take a whole regiment.’ This was in reply to a request transmitted shortly before.

Sir Henry Lawrence.

93

Residency at Lucknow.

Next, the 17th of May. Sir Henry Lawrence telegraphed from Lucknow: ‘You are quite right to keep Allahabad safe. We shall do without Sikhs or Goorkhas. We have concentrated the troops as much as possible, so as to protect the treasury and magazine, and keep up a communication. A false alarm last night.’ He sent another, detailing what he had done in managing the turbulent 7th regiment. In the reverse direction, a message was sent to him, that ‘The artillery invalids at Chunar, about 109 in number, have been ordered to proceed to Allahabad immediately.’ The telegrams were still more numerous than on the 16th, between the various towns mentioned in the last paragraph, in Northern India. From Bombay, Lord Elphinstone telegraphed to ask whether an extra mail-steamer should be sent off to Suez with news for England; and added: ‘The 64th will arrive in a few days from Bushire; their destination is Bengal; but we can keep them here available, or send them round to Calcutta if you wish it.’ To which the governor-general replied from Calcutta, still on the same day, expressing his wishes about the mail, and adding: ‘If you can send the 64th to Calcutta by steam, do so without any delay. If steam is not available, I will wait for an answer to my last message before deciding that they shall come round in sailing-vessels. Let me know when you expect the other European regiments and the artillery, and what steam-vessels will be available for their conveyance. Have you at present a steam-vessel that could go to Galle to bring troops from there to Calcutta? This must not interfere with the despatch of the 64th.’ Another, from Lord Elphinstone, on the very same day, announced that the best of the Indus boats were in Persia; that it would be impossible to send up three European regiments from Kurachee to the Punjaub, within any reasonable time, by the Indus boats then available; that he nevertheless intended to send one regiment, the 1st Europeans, by that route; and that the 2d Europeans were daily expected from Persia. He further said: ‘Shall I send them round to Calcutta; and shall I send the 78th also? General Ashburnham leaves this to-day by the steamer for Galle, where he expects to meet Lord Elgin; he is not going to Madras.’ While this was going on between Calcutta and Bombay, Madras was not idle. The governor-general telegraphed to Lord Harris, to inform him of the mutiny, on the previous day, of the Sappers and Miners who went from Roorkee to Meerut; and another on the same day, replying to a previous telegram, said: ‘If the Zenobia cannot bring all the Fusiliers, the remainder might be sent in the Bentinck, which will be at Madras on the 26th; but send as many in the Zenobia as she will safely hold. Let me know when the Zenobia sails, and what force she brings.’ If we had selected three days instead of two, as illustrating the wonders of the electric telegraph, we should have had to narrate that on the third day, the 18th of May, Lord Harris announced that the Fusiliers would leave Madras that evening; that Viscount Canning thanked him for his great promptness; that Lord Elphinstone received instructions to send one of 94the three regiments up the Indus, and the other two round to Calcutta; that he asked and received suggestions about managing a Beloochee regiment at Kurachee; and that messages in great number were transmitted to and from Calcutta, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and other large towns.

The imagination becomes almost bewildered at contemplating such things. Between the morning of the 16th of May and the evening of the 17th, the great officers of the Company, situated almost at the extreme points of the Indian empire—east, west, north, and south—were conversing through four thousand miles of wire, making requests, soliciting advice, offering services, discussing difficulties, weighing probabilities, concerting plans; and all with a precision much greater than if they had been writing letters to one another, in ordinary official form, in adjoining rooms of the same building. It was, perhaps, the greatest triumph ever achieved up to that time by the greatest of modern inventions—the electric telegraph.

We shall find the present part of the chapter an equally convenient place in which to notice a series of operations strikingly opposed to those just described—slow travelling as compared with quick telegraphy. It is full of instruction to see how earnestly anxious Viscount Canning was to send troops up to the northern provinces; and how he was baffled by the tardiness of all travelling appliances in India. The railway was opened only from Calcutta to Raneegunge, a very small portion of the distance to the disturbed districts. The history of the peregrinations of a few English troops in May will illustrate, and will receive illustration from, the matters treated in Chapter I.

The European 84th regiment, it will be remembered, had been hastily brought from Rangoon in the month of March, to assist in disbanding the sepoys who had shewn disaffection at Barrackpore and Berhampore. When the troubles began at Meerut and Delhi, in May, it was resolved to send on this regiment; and the governor-general found no part of his onerous duties more difficult than that of obtaining quick transmission for those troops. On the 21st of May he telegraphed to Benares: ‘Pray instruct the commissariat officer to prepare cooking-pots and other arrangements for the 84th regiment, now on its way to Benares; and the barrack department to have cots ready for them.’ On the 23d, Sir Henry Lawrence asked: ‘When may her Majesty’s 84th be expected at Cawnpore?’ to which an answer was sent on the following day: ‘It is impossible to convey a wing of Europeans to Cawnpore (about six hundred and thirty miles) in less time than twenty-five days. The government dâk and the dâk companies are fully engaged in carrying a company of the 84th to Benares, at the rate of 18 men a day. A wing of the Madras Fusiliers arrived yesterday, and starts to-day; part by bullock-train, part by steamer. The bullock-train can take 100 men per day, at the rate of thirty miles a day. The entire regiment of the Fusiliers, about 900 strong, cannot be collected at Benares in less than 19 or 20 days. About 150 men who go by steam will scarcely be there so soon. I expect, that from this time forward troops will be pushed upwards at the rate of 100 men a day from Calcutta; each batch taking ten days to reach Benares; from Benares they will be distributed as most required. The regiments from Pegu, Bombay, and Ceylon will be sent up in this way. Every bullock and horse that is to be had, except just enough to carry the post, is retained; and no troops will be sent by steam which can be sent more quickly by other means.’ These details shew that Cawnpore and Benares were both asking for troops at the same time; and that the governor-general, even if he possessed the soldiers, had not the means of sending them expeditiously. On the 24th, a message was sent to Raneegunge, ordering that a company of Madras troops might be well attended to, when they arrived by railway from Calcutta; and on the next day, Benares received notice to prepare for four companies proceeding thither by bullock-train, one company per day. The Benares commissioner announced the arrival of fifteen English soldiers, as if that were a number to be proud of, and stated that he would send them on to Cawnpore. (It will be seen, on reference to a map, that Benares lies in the route to almost all the upper and western provinces, whether by road or by river.) The Raneegunge agent telegraphed on the 26th: ‘If the men reach Sheergotty, there is no difficulty in conveying them to Benares; the only difficulty is between Raneegunge and Sheergotty. Ekahs are not, I think, adapted for Europeans; nor do I think that time would be gained.’ An ekah or ecka, we may here remark, is a light pony-gig on two wheels, provided with a cloth cushion on which the rider (usually a native) sits cross-legged. It shews the nature of Indian travelling, to find the officials discussing whether English soldiers should be thus conveyed—one cushioned vehicle to convey each cross-legged soldier. At Benares, the commissioner borrowed from the rajah the use of a house in which to lodge the English troops as fast as they came; and he sent them on by dâk to Allahabad and Cawnpore. Nevertheless Sir Henry Lawrence, disturbed by ominous symptoms, wished for ekahs, dâks—anything that would give him English soldiers. He telegraphed on this day: ‘I strongly advise that as many ekah-dâks be laid as possible, from Raneegunge to Cawnpore, to bring up European troops. Spare no expense;’ and on the next day he received the reply: ‘Every horse and carriage, bullock and cart, which could be brought upon the road, has been collected, and no means of increasing the number will be neglected.’ On the 27th it was announced from Benares that ‘the steamer had stuck,’ and that all the land-dâks were being used that could 95possibly be procured. On the same day the Allahabad commissioner spoke hopefully of his plan that—by the aid of 1600 siege-train bullocks from that place, 600 from Cawnpore, the government bullocks, the private wagon-trains, and magazine carts—he might be able to send 160 Europeans per day up to Cawnpore. On the 28th, the Calcutta authorities sent a telegram to Benares, to announce that ‘Up to the 1st of June seven dâk-carriages will be despatched daily, with one officer and 18 soldiers. On the 1st of June, and daily afterwards, there will be despatched nine dâk-carriages, with one officer and 24 Europeans; and 28 bullock-carts, with one officer, 90 Europeans, a few followers, and provisions to fill one cart. The Calcutta steamer and flat, with four officers, 134 Europeans, and proportion of followers; and the coal-steamer, with about the same numbers, will reach Benares on the 10th or 11th of June.’ From this it will be seen that a ‘dâk-carriage’ conveyed three soldiers, and a ‘bullock-cart’ also three, the ‘followers’ probably accompanying them on foot. The Benares commissioner on the same day said: ‘Happily we have good metalled roads all over this division’—thereby implying what would have been the result if the roads were not good. The use of bullocks was more particularly adverted to in a telegram of the 30th of May: ‘Gun-bullocks would be most useful between Raneegunge and the Sone, if they could be sent from Calcutta in time; if there are carts, the daily dispatches can be increased; not otherwise. Gun-bullocks would save a day, as they travel quicker than our little animals.’ Immediately afterwards, forty-six elephants were sent from Patna, and one hundred from Dacca and Barrackpore, to Sheergotty, to assist in the transport of troops. On a later occasion, when more troops had arrived from England, Viscount Canning sent two steamers from Calcutta to Pegu, to bring over cargoes of elephants, to be used as draught-animals!

Thus it continued, day after day—all the servants of the Company, civil and military, calculating how long it would take to send driblets of soldiers up the country; and all harassed by this dilemma—that what the Ganges steamers gained in roominess, they lost by the sinuosities of the river; and that what the dâks and bullock-trains gained by a direct route, they lost by the inevitable slowness of such modes of conveyance, and the smallness of the number of soldiers that could be carried at a time. Thankful that they possessed telegraphs, the authorities had little to be thankful for as concerned railways or roads, vehicles or horses.

We now return to the proceedings of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow.

Before the collective minutes of the five members of the Supreme Council were fully settled, he had acted on the emergency which gave rise to them. He held a court of inquiry; the result of which was that two subadars, a jemadar, and forty-four sepoys of the mutinous 7th were committed to prison; but he resolved not at present to disband the regiment. His grand durbar has been already described. In the middle of the month, as just shewn, he sent many brief telegrams indicating that, though no mutinies had occurred at Lucknow, there was nevertheless need for watchfulness. He had asked for the aid of some Sikhs, but said, on the 18th: ‘As there is difficulty, do not send the Sikhs to Lucknow.’ On the next day, his message was: ‘All very well in city, cantonment, and country;’ but after this, the elements of mischief seemed to be gathering, although Lawrence prepared to meet all contingencies resolutely. ‘All quiet,’ he said on the 21st, ‘but several reports of intended attacks on us.’ He was, however, more solicitous about the fate of Cawnpore, Allahabad, and Benares, than of Lucknow.

The military position of Sir Henry towards the last week in May was this. He had armed four posts for his defence at Lucknow. In one were four hundred men and twenty guns; in another, a hundred Europeans and as many sepoys; in another was the chief store of powder, well under command. A hundred and thirty Europeans, two hundred sepoys, and six guns, guarded the treasury; the guns near the residency being under European control. The old magazine was denuded of its former contents, as a precautionary measure. Six guns, and two squadrons of the 2d Oude irregular cavalry, were at the Dâk bungalow, half-way between the residency and the cantonment. In the cantonment were three hundred and forty men of her Majesty’s 32d, with six European guns, and six more of the Oude light field-battery. By the 23d of the month, nearly all the stores were moved from the old magazine to one of the strongholds, where thirty guns and one hundred Europeans were in position, and where ten days’ supplies for five hundred men were stored. On the 29th, Lawrence’s telegram told of ‘great uneasiness at Lucknow. Disturbances threatened outside. Tranquillity cannot be much longer maintained unless Delhi be speedily captured.’ The residency, a place rendered so memorable by subsequent events, must be here noticed. The cantonment was six miles from the city, and the residency was itself isolated from the rest of Lucknow. The Rev. Mr Polehampton, describing in his letter the occurrences about the middle of May, said: ‘The sick have been brought to the residency; so have the women; and the residency is garrisoned by 130 men of the 32d, and by the battery of native artillery. All the ladies, wives of civilians, who live in different parts of the city, have come into the residency. By the residency, I mean a piece of ground a good deal elevated above the rest of the city, allotted by the King of Oude, when he first put himself under British “protection” some fifty years ago, to the British civil residents. It is walled round almost entirely; on one side native 96houses abut upon it, but on the other three sides it is tolerably clear. Roads without gates in some places connect it with the city; but it is not at all a bad place to make a stand—certainly the best in Lucknow, to which it is a sort of acropolis. The residency contains the chief-commissioner’s house, Mr Gubbins’s, Mr Ommaney’s, Foyne’s, the post-office, city hospital, electric-telegraph office, church, etc.’ The ever-memorable defence made by a little band of English heroes in this ‘acropolis’ of Lucknow, will call for our attention in due time. Mr Polehampton spoke of the gravity with which Sir Henry Lawrence regarded the state of public affairs; and of the caution which led him to post one English soldier at every gun, to watch the native artillerymen. The chaplain had means of knowing with what assiduity crafty lying men tried to gain over the still faithful sepoys to mutiny. ‘Another most absurd story they have got hold of, which came out in the examination of some of the mutineers before Sir Henry Lawrence. They say that in consequence of the Crimean war there are a great many widows in England, and that these are to be brought out and married to the Rajahs in Oude; and that their children, brought up as Christians, are to inherit all the estates! The natives are like babies—they will believe anything.’—Babies in belief, perhaps; but fiends in cruelty when excited.

The last two days of May were days of agitation at Lucknow. Many of the native troops broke out in open mutiny. They consisted of half of the 48th regiment, about half of the 71st, some few of the 13th, and two troops of the 7th cavalry—all of whom fled towards Seetapoor, a town nearly due north of Lucknow. Lawrence, with two companies of her Majesty’s 32d, three hundred horse, and four guns, went in pursuit; but the horse, Oude native cavalry, evinced no zeal; and he was vexed to find that he could only get within round-shot of the mutineers. He took thirty prisoners—a very inadequate result of the pursuit. Many disaffected still remained in Lucknow; four bungalows were burned, and a few English officers shot. The city was quiet, but the cantonment was in a disturbed state. In his last telegrams for the month, the chief-commissioner, who was also chief military authority, used these words: ‘It is difficult to say who are loyal; but it is believed the majority are so; only twenty-five of the 7th cavalry proved false;’ and he further said: ‘The faithful remnants of three infantry regiments and 7th cavalry, about seven hundred men, are encamped close to the detachment of two hundred of her Majesty’s 32d and four European guns.’ Even then he did not feel much uneasiness concerning the city and cantonment of Lucknow: it was towards other places, Cawnpore especially, that his apprehensive glance was directed.

What were the occurrences at Lucknow, and in other towns of the territory of Oude, in June, will be better understood when the progress of the Revolt in other places during May has been narrated.

Ekah, or Officer’s Travelling Wagon.

97

General View of Calcutta from Fort William.

The narrative has now arrived at a stage when some kind of classification of times and places becomes necessary. There were special reasons why Delhi and Lucknow should receive separate attention, connected as those two cities are with deposed native sovereigns chafed by their deposition; but other cities and towns now await notice, spread over many thousand square miles of territory, placed in various relations to the British government, involved in various degrees in mutinous proceedings, and differing much in the periods at which the hostile demonstrations were made. Two modes of treatment naturally suggest themselves. The towns might be treated topographically, beginning at Calcutta, and working westward towards the Indus; this would be convenient for reference to maps, but would separate contemporaneous events too far asunder. Or the occurrences might be treated chronologically, beginning from the Meerut outbreak, and advancing, as in a diary, day by day throughout the whole series; this would facilitate reference to dates, but would ignore local connection and mutual action. It may be possible, however, to combine so much of the two methods as will retain their advantages and avoid their defects; there may be groups of days and groups of places; and these groups may be so treated as to mark the relations both of sequence and of simultaneity, of causes and of co-operation. In the present chapter, a rapid glance will be taken over a wide-spread region, to shew in what way and to what degree disaffection spread during the month of May. This will prepare us for the terrible episode at one particular spot—Cawnpore.

To begin, then, with Bengal—the fertile and populous region between the Anglo-Indian city of Calcutta and the sacred Hindoo city of Benares; the region watered by the lower course of the majestic Ganges; the region inhabited by the patient, plodding, timid Bengalee, the type from which Europeans have generally derived their idea of the Hindoo: forgetting, or not knowing, that Delhi and Agra, Cawnpore and Lucknow, exhibit the Hindoo character under a more warlike aspect, and are marked also by a difference of language. 98A fact already mentioned must be constantly borne in mind—that few Bengalees are (or were) in the Bengal army: a population of forty millions furnished a very small ratio of fighting men.

Although not a scene of murder and atrocity during the Revolt, Calcutta requires a few words of notice here: to shew the relation existing between the native and the European population, and the importance of the city as the head-quarters of British India, the supreme seat of legislation and justice, the residence of the governor-general, the last great city on the course down the Ganges, and the port where more trade is conducted than in all others in India combined.

Calcutta stands on the left bank of the Hoogly, one of the numerous streams by which the Ganges finds an outlet into the sea. There are no less than fourteen of these streams deep enough for the largest craft used in inland navigation, but so narrow and crooked that the rigging of vessels often becomes entangled in the branches of the trees growing on the banks. The delta formed by these mouths of the Ganges, called the Sunderbunds, is nearly as large as Wales; it is little else than a cluster of low, marshy, irreclaimable islands, very unhealthy to the few natives living there, and left almost wholly to tigers, wild buffaloes, wild boars, and other animals which swarm there in great numbers. The Hoogly is one of the few really navigable mouths of the Ganges; and by this channel Calcutta has free access by shipping to the sea, which is about a hundred miles distant. The city, extending along the river four or five miles, covers an area of about eight square miles. A curved line nearly bounds it on the land-side, formed by the Mahratta ditch, a defence-work about a century old. Beyond the ditch, and a fine avenue called the Circular Road, the environs are studded with numerous suburbs or villages which may be considered as belonging to the city: among these are Nundenbagh, Bahar-Simla, Sealdah, Entally, Ballygunge, Bhowaneepore, Allipore, Kidderpore, Seebpore, Howrah, and Sulkea. The three last are on the opposite or west bank of the river, and contain the dock-yards, the ship-building establishments, the railway station, the government salt-warehouses, and numerous extensive manufactories. The approach to the city from the sea presents a succession of attractive features. First, a series of elegant mansions at a bend in the river called Garden Reach, with lawns descending to the water’s edge; then the anchorage for the Calcutta and Suez mail-steamers; then the dock-yards; next the canal junction, the arsenal and Fort William. Above these is the Chowringhee, once a suburb, but now almost as closely built as Calcutta itself, containing the Esplanade, the Town Hall, the Government House, and many European residences. ‘Viewed from Garden Reach,’ says Mr Stocqueler, ‘the coup d’œil is one of various and enchanting beauty. Houses like palaces are studding the bank on the proper left of the river, and a verdure like that of an eternal summer renovates the eye, so long accustomed to the glitter of the ocean. Anon, on your left, appears the semi-Gothic Bishop’s College; and in front of you, every moment growing more distinct, are beheld a forest of stately masts, a noble and beautiful fortress, a thousand small boats, of shapes new and undreamed of by the visitant, skimming over the stream; the larger vessels of the country, pleasant to look upon even for their strange dis-symmetry and consequent unwieldiness; the green barge or budgerow, lying idly for hire; and the airy little bauleahs, with their light venetianed rooms.’ All this relates to the portion of the city lying south or seaward of the Chandpaul Ghat, the principal landing-place. Northward of this stretches a noble strand, on which are situated the Custom-house, the New Mint, and other government offices.

It must be noted that, although the chief British city in India, Calcutta in ordinary times contains no less than seventy times as many natives as English—only six thousand English out of more than four hundred thousand inhabitants. Even if Eurasians (progeny of white fathers and native mothers) be included, the disparity is still enormous; and is rendered yet more so by the many thousands of natives who, not being inhabitants, attend Calcutta at times for purposes of trade or of worship. Many wild estimates were made a few years ago concerning the population of Calcutta, which was sometimes driven up hypothetically to nearly a million souls; but a census in 1850 determined the number to be four hundred and seventeen thousand persons, living in sixty-two thousand houses and huts. The Hindoos alone exceed two hundred and seventy thousand. Circumstances of site, as well as the wishes and convenience of individuals, have led the Europeans to form a community among themselves, distinct from the native Calcutta. Many natives, it is true, live in the southern or British town; but very few British live in the northern or native town. The latter differs little from Indian towns generally, except in the large size of the dwellings belonging to the wealthy inhabitants. The southern town is European in appearance as in population; it has its noble streets, sumptuous government offices, elegant private residences surrounded with verandahs. On the esplanade is situated Fort William (the official name given to Calcutta in state documents), one of the strongest in India; it is octagonal, with three sides towards the river, and the other five inland; and it mounts more than six hundred guns. Whatever force holds Fort William may easily reduce Calcutta to ashes. The public buildings, which are very numerous, comprise the following among others—the Government House, that cost £130,000; the Town Hall, in the Doric style; the Supreme Court of Judicature; the Madrissa and Hindoo Colleges; the Martinière, an educational establishment founded by Martine the Frenchman, who has been mentioned in connection with Lucknow; the 99Metcalfe Hall; the Ochterlony Monument; the Prinsep Testimonial; the Calcutta Asiatic Society’s Rooms; St Paul’s Cathedral, the finest Christian church in India; the Bishop’s Palace and College; the European Female Orphan Asylum; the Botanic Gardens. The Episcopalians, the National and the Free Churches of Scotland, the Independents, the Baptists, the Roman Catholics, the Armenians, the Jews, the Greeks—all have places of worship in Calcutta. The native temples and mosques are of course much more numerous, amounting to two hundred and fifty in number.

Concerning the inhabitants, the English comprise the Company’s civil and military servants, a few members of the learned professions, merchants, retail-dealers, and artisans. Of the native Hindoos and Mohammedans, exclusive of the degraded castes of the former, it is supposed that one-third are in the service of the English, either as domestic servants, or as under-clerks, messengers, &c. A majority of the remainder pick up a living on the street or the river—carrying palanquins as bearers, carrying parcels as coolies, rowing boats, attending ships, &c. The native artisans, shopkeepers, and market-people, fill up the number.

It will be remembered, from the details given in Chapter II., that the authorities at Calcutta, during the first four months of the year, were frequently engaged in considering the transactions at Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore, connected with the cartridge grievances. These did not affect the great city itself, the inhabitants of which looked on as upon events that concerned them only remotely. When the middle of May arrived, however, and when the startling news from Meerut and Delhi became known, an uneasy feeling resulted. There was in Calcutta a kind of undefined alarm, a vague apprehension of some hidden danger. At that time there were six companies of the 25th Bengal infantry, and a wing of the 47th Madras infantry, barracked on the esplanade between the Coolie Bazaar and the fort. They were without ammunition. There were, however, detachments of two other regiments acting as guards in the fort, provided with ten rounds of ammunition per man. It came to light that, on the 17th of May, the men of the 25th asked the guards privately to be allowed to share this ammunition, promising to aid them in capturing the fort during the following night. This treason was betrayed by the guards to the town-major, who at once ordered bugles to sound, and preparations to be made for defending the fort; the drawbridges were raised, the ladders withdrawn from the ditches, additional guards placed upon the arsenal, European sentries placed at various points on the ramparts, and armed patrols made to perambulate the fort during the night. The refractory sepoys, thus checked, made no attempt to carry out their nefarious project. An express was at once sent off to Dumdum for the remaining portion of her Majesty’s 53d regiment, to join their comrades already at Calcutta. Although the immense value of these English troops was at once felt, the inhabitants of Calcutta were thrown into great excitement by the rumoured outbreak; they talked of militia corps and volunteer corps, and they purchased muskets and powder, rifles and revolvers, so rapidly, that the stores of the dealers were speedily emptied.

Two demonstrations of loyalty—or rather two sets of demonstrations—were made on this occasion, one from the Christian inhabitants, and one from the natives. The mutineers found head-quarters not quite suited for their operations; order was soon restored; and then all parties came forward to state how faithful, contented, and trustworthy they were. It is not without interest to glance at some of these demonstrations. One was from the Calcutta Trade Association, which held a meeting on the 20th of May. The resolution agreed to was to the effect that ‘This body do send up to government a statement that they are prepared to afford the government every assistance in their power towards the promotion of order and the protection of the Christian community of Calcutta, either by serving as special constables or otherwise, in such manner as may appear most desirable to government; and at the same time suggesting to government that their services should be availed of in some manner, as they deem the present crisis a most serious one, and one in which every available means should be brought into action for the suppression of possible riot and insurrection.’ The answer given by the governor-general in council to the address sent up in virtue of this resolution is worthy of note; shewing, as it does, how anxious he was to believe, and to make others believe, that the mutiny was very partial, and that the sepoy army generally was sound at heart. He thanked the Trade Association for the address; he announced that he had no apprehension whatever of riot or insurrection amongst any class of the population at Calcutta; he asserted his possession of sufficient means to crush any such manifestation if it should be made; but at the same time he admitted the prudence of civilians enrolling themselves as special constables, ready for any emergency. In reference, however, to an opinion in the address that the sepoys generally exhibited a mutinous spirit, he expressed uneasiness at such an opinion being publicly announced. ‘There are in the army of this presidency many soldiers, and many regiments who have stood firm against evil example and wicked counsels, and who at this moment are giving unquestionable proof of their attachment to the government, and of their abhorrence of the atrocious crimes which have lately been perpetrated in the Northwestern Provinces. It is the earnest desire of the governor-general in council that honourable and true-hearted soldiers, whose good name he is bound to protect, and of whose fidelity he is confident, should not be included in a condemnation of rebels and murderers.’ Alas, for the ‘honourable and true-hearted soldiers!’

100Another movement of the same kind was made by the Freemasons of Calcutta—a body, the numbers of which are not stated. They passed a resolution on the same day, ‘That at the present crisis it is expedient that the masonic fraternity should come forward and offer their services to government, to be employed in such manner as the governor-general may deem most expedient.’

The Armenians resident in the city met on the following day, and agreed to a series of resolutions which were signed by Apcar, Avdall, Agabeb, and others of the body—declaratory of their apprehension for the safety of Calcutta and its inhabitants; their sincere loyalty to the British government; their grateful appreciation of its mild and paternal rule; and their fervent hope that the energetic measures adopted would suffice to quell the insurrectionary spirit: concluding, ‘We beg most respectfully to convey to your lordship in council the expression of our willingness and readiness to tender our united services to our rulers, and to co-operate with our fellow-citizens for maintaining tranquillity and order in the city.’ The Armenians, wherever settled, are a peaceful people, loving trade better than fighting: their adhesion to the government was certain.

The French inhabitants in like manner held a meeting, and sent up an address to the governor-general by the hands of Consul Angelucci. They said: ‘Viewing the dangers that, from one moment to another, may menace life and property at Calcutta, all the French resident in the city unite with one accord, and place themselves at the disposal of your excellency in case of need; beseeching that their services may be accepted for the common good, and as a proof of their loyalty and attachment towards her Majesty, the Queen of England.’

It is more interesting, however, in reference to such a time and such a place, to know in what way the influential native inhabitants comported themselves on the occasion. The meetings held, resolutions passed, and addresses presented, were remarkable for their earnestness, real or apparent. Although Viscount Canning gladly and promptly acknowledged them as valuable testimonials; yet the subsequent lying and treachery in many quarters were such that it is impossible to decide how much or how little sincerity was involved in declarations of loyalty. There was a body of Hindoo gentlemen at Calcutta, called the British Indian Association. The committee of the Association held a meeting on the 22d of May, and the secretary, Issur Chunder Singh, forwarded an address from the committee to the government. The address asseverated that the atrocities at Meerut and Delhi had been heard of with great concern; that the committee viewed with disgust and horror the excesses of the soldiery at those stations; and that such excesses would not meet with countenance or support from the bulk of the civil population, or from any reputable or influential classes among them. The committee recorded ‘their conviction of the utter groundlessness of the reports which have led a hitherto faithful body of the soldiers of the state to the commission of the gravest crimes of which military men or civil subjects can be guilty; and the committee deem it incumbent on them on the present occasion to express their deep abhorrence of the practices and purposes of those who have spread those false and mischievous reports.’ Finally, they expressed their belief that the loyalty of the Hindoos, and their confidence in the power and good intentions of the government, would be unimpaired by ‘the detestable efforts which have been made to alienate the minds of the sepoys and the people of the country from their duty and allegiance to the beneficent rule under which they are placed.’

Three days later, a meeting was held of Hindoo persons of influence generally, at Calcutta, without reference to the British Indian Association; and the chairman of this meeting, Bahadoor Radhakant Rajah, was commissioned to forward a copy of resolutions to the governor-general. These resolutions were similar in character to those passed by the Association; but two others were added of very decided character: ‘That this meeting is of opinion that, should occasion require, it would be the duty of the native portion of her Majesty’s subjects to render the government every aid in their power for the preservation of civil order and tranquillity; and that, with a view to give an extensive circulation to the proceedings of this meeting, translations of the same into the vernacular dialects of the country shall be printed and distributed amongst the native population.’

Another Hindoo manifestation was remarkable for the mode in which the intentions of the persons concerned were proposed to be carried out. A meeting was held on the 23d, of ‘some young men, at the premises of Baboo Gooroo Churn Dey, Bhowanipore, Chuckerbaria, in the suburbs of Calcutta: to consider the best means of keeping the peace in the said suburban town at this crisis of panic caused by some mutinous regiments.’ These ‘young men,’ who appointed Baboo Gooroo Churn Dey and Essan Chunder Mullick as secretary and assistant-secretary, threw into their deliberations an abundance of youthful enthusiasm not to be found in the resolutions of their seniors. Their plan—not expressed in, or translated into, very good English—was: ‘That some of the members will alternately take round at every night, with the view of catching or detecting any wrong-doer that may be found in the work of abetting some such malicious tales or rumours, as the town will be looted and plundered by the sepoys on some certain day, and its inhabitants be cut to pieces; and will, by every means in their power, impress on the minds of timid and credulous people the idea of the mightiness of the power of the British government to repel aggression of any foreign enemy, however powerful and indomitable, or put down any internal 101disturbance and disorder.’ They announced their success in obtaining many ‘strong and brave men’ to aid them in this work.

The Mohammedans of Calcutta were a little behind the rest of the inhabitants in time, but not in expressed sentiment, concerning the position of public affairs. On the 27th, many of the leading men of that religion held a meeting; one was a deputy-magistrate; two were pleaders in the sudder or native courts of law; others were moulvies, moonshees, hadjis, agas, &c.; and all signed their names in full—such as Hadji Mahomed Hashim Ishphahanee, and Aga Mahomed Hassan Kooza Kenanee. Nothing could be more positive than some of the assertions contained in the resolutions passed by this meeting: ‘We subjects are well aware that the members of the British government, from the commencement of their dominion in Hindostan, have repeatedly declared and made known their determination not to interfere with the religion or religious observances of any of their subjects; and we repose entire faith in this declaration, and assert, that up to the present time, a space of nearly one hundred years, our religion has never been interfered with. A number of us having left our homes, have found a dwelling and asylum under this government, where we live in peace and safety, protected by the equity and fostering care of the British government, and suffering no kind of injury or loss. As we have ever lived in safety and comfort under the British rule, and have never been molested or interfered with in religious matters; we therefore, with the utmost eagerness and sincerity, hereby determine, that in case of necessity we will serve the government to the utmost of our abilities and means.’ In true oriental form the resolutions ended, in allusion to the governor-general, ‘May his prosperity increase!’

What could Viscount Canning say to all this? How could he, in that early stage of the commotions, but believe in the sincerity of these men: and, believing, to thank them for their expression of loyalty and support? His official reply, in each case, conveyed in pointed terms his conviction that the disaffection among the sepoys was only local and temporary. He could not at that time foresee how severely this conviction would be put to the test.

The hostility to the governor-general, manifested at a later date by some of the English inhabitants of Calcutta, will be noticed in its due place.

Leaving Calcutta, the reader is invited to direct his attention to towns and districts north and northwest, following the course of the Hoogly and the Ganges, up to the busy scenes of mutiny and warfare. The whole district from Calcutta to Benares by land is singularly devoid of interest. The railway is open through Burdwan to Raneegunge; but thence to the great Hindoo capital there is scarcely a town or village worthy of note, scarcely one in which the mutineers disturbed the peaceful occupations of the inhabitants.

Three military stations on the Hoogly—Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore—all concerned, as we have seen, in the cartridge disturbances—remained quiet during the month of May, after the disbandments. One inquiry connected with those occurrences, not yet adverted to, must here be noticed. The conduct of Colonel S. G. Wheler, commanding the 34th regiment B. N. I.,^[13] occupied much attention on the part of the Calcutta government, during and after the proceedings relating to the disbanding of the seven companies of that regiment at Barrackpore. Rumours reached the government that the colonel had used language towards his men, indicating his expectation that they would be converted to Christianity, and that he had addressed them on religious subjects generally. In the usual epistolary formalism of routine, the secretary to the government was requested to request Major-general Hearsey to request Brigadier Grant to request Colonel Wheler to furnish some reply to those rumours. The substance of the colonel’s reply was contained in these words: ‘During the last twenty years and upwards, I have been in the habit of speaking to the natives of all classes, sepoys and others, making no distinction, since there is no respect of persons with God, on the subject of our religion, in the highways, cities, bazaars, and villages—not in the lines and regimental bazaars. I have done this from a conviction that every converted Christian is expected, or rather commanded, by the Scriptures to make known the glad tidings of salvation to his lost fellow-creatures: our Saviour having offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, by which alone salvation can be secured.’ He quoted from the Epistle to the Romans to prove that a Christian must necessarily be a better subject to any state than a non-Christian. He declared, however, that he had not given the sepoys cause for believing that any proselyting violence would be used against their own religion. Viscount Canning, passing over in silence the Scriptural phraseology used by Colonel Wheler, wished to ascertain whether the colonel’s religious conversations had been held with the men of the 34th regiment as well as with other natives: seeing that the critical subject at that particular time was the dogged suspicion of the sepoys of that regiment on matters affecting their faith. In a second letter, Colonel Wheler adopted a still more decidedly evangelical tone. He stated that it was his custom to address all natives, whether sepoys or not, on religious matters. ‘I have told them plainly that they are all lost and ruined sinners both by nature and by practice, like myself; that we can do nothing to save ourselves in the way of justifying ourselves in the sight of God. Our hearts being sinful, all our works must consequently be sinful in His sight; and therefore there can be no salvation by works, on which 102they are all resting and depending.’ This homily, singular as forming part of a military reply to a military question, was carried to a considerable length. On matters of plain fact, Colonel Wheler stated that it was most certain that he had endeavoured by argument and exhortation to convert sepoys as well as others to Christianity; that he was in the habit of enforcing by the only standard which he could admit to be valid, objections concerning ‘the efficacy of their own works of washing in the Ganges, proceeding on pilgrimage, worshipping all kinds of creatures instead of the Creator, and other methods of man’s invention.’ Finally, he announced his determination to adhere to the same policy, even if his worldly position were injured thereby: taking shame to himself for his past lukewarmness as a soldier of Christ.

The whole of the members of the Supreme Court at Calcutta at once decided that an officer, holding Colonel Wheler’s views of duty, ought not to remain in command of a native regiment, especially at such a critical period. The question was not, whether that officer was a good Christian, anxious to communicate to others what he himself fervently believed; but whether the black gown was not more suitable to him than the red coat, in such a country and at such a time.

The native troops at Barrackpore and Chittagong, after the disbandment of the mutinous corps, made professions of loyalty and fidelity to the government, concerning the sincerity of which it is now exceedingly difficult to judge. One theory is, that the men were designing hypocrites from the first; but the frequent examples of wavering and irresolution, afforded during the progress of the mutiny, seem to shew rather that the sepoys were affected by the strength of the temptation and example at each particular time and place. Be this as it may, some of the petitions and addresses deserve notice. Towards the close of May a petition, written in the Persian character (much used in India), was prepared by the native officers of the 70th regiment B. N. I., stationed at Barrackpore, and presented to their commander, Colonel Kennedy. In the names of themselves and the sepoys they said: ‘It is reported that European troops are going up to Delhi and other places, to coerce the mutinous and rebellious there; and we wish to be sent with them also. In consequence of the misconduct of these traitors and scoundrels, confidence in us is weakened, although we are devoted to government; and we therefore trust that we may be sent wherever the European troops go; when, having joined them, we will, by bravery even greater than theirs, regain our good name and trustworthiness. You will then know what really good sepoys are.’ Colonel Kennedy, in a letter to Major-general Hearsey, expressed his full belief that the men were sincere in their protestations; and added, that hitherto he had always been satisfied with the regiment. So important did this manifestation appear to Viscount Canning, that he went to Barrackpore in order to thank the men in person. He appeared before them on parade, on the 27th, and said, among other things: ‘Men of the 70th, I will answer your petition. You have asked to be sent to confront the mutineers of Delhi. You shall go. In a few days, as soon as the arrangements can be made for your progress, you shall proceed to the northwest.’ He expressed his conviction that they would keep their promise to vie with the Europeans in fidelity and bravery; and added: ‘You have another duty to perform. You are going where you will find men, your brothers in arms, who have been deluded into the suspicion against which you have kept firm, that the government has designs against their religion or their caste. Say to them that you at least do not credit this; that you know it to be untrue; that for a hundred years the British government has carefully respected the feelings of its Indian subjects in matters of caste and religion.’

Arrangements were immediately made for sending this faithful, or apparently faithful, regiment to districts where it might render useful service. As there was an insufficient supply of steamers available, the government resolved to send the regiment the whole distance from Barrackpore to Allahabad by country boats on the Ganges—an excessively protracted voyage of eight hundred miles, as the reader is already aware. When the men were about to start, they expressed to Colonel Kennedy a wish that the new Enfield rifle should be served out to them. They declared themselves entirely satisfied with the explanations concerning the cartridges; and they added, in a written petition to which the names of twelve subadars and jemadars were appended: ‘We have thought over the subject; and as we are now going up the country, we beg that the new rifles, about which there has been so much said in the army and all over the country, may be served out to us. By using them in its service, we hope to prove beyond a doubt our fidelity to government; and we will explain to all we meet that there is nothing objectionable in them: otherwise, why should we have taken them? Are we not as careful of our caste and religion as any of them?’ All the native officers of this regiment, so far as can be judged from the names appended to the petition, were Hindoos. When the 70th started to the northwest, every effort was made by the government to set the unhappy cartridge troubles wholly at rest, and to enlist the services of the sepoys of that regiment in diffusing among their compatriots a knowledge of the real facts. Orders, instructions, memoranda, circulars were brought into requisition to explain—that the new rifle fired nine hundred yards, against the two hundred yards’ range of the old musket; that it was lighter than the musket; that its great range and its lightness caused it to be introduced into the Anglo-Indian army; that the new rifle-bullets, requiring machinery for 103their manufacture, were sent out from England in a finished state; that a few cartridges for those bullets were in the first instance sent out ready prepared with a lubricant, but that the Indian government resolved not to issue them to the native troops, in deference to their religious scruples; that the cartridge-paper had long been, and would continue to be, made at Serampore, without any admixture of grease; that every native regiment would be allowed to lubricate its cartridges with any suitable substance preferred by the men; and that the practice of biting off the ends of the cartridges might be wholly dispensed with. In short, everything that could be done, was done, to remove a suspicion unsound in its origin, and pernicious in its continuance.

Another regiment, the 34th B. N. I., adopted nearly the same course as the 70th. The larger portion of this regiment, it will be remembered, was at Barrackpore at the time of the cartridge troubles; but the rest was at Chittagong. The sepoys in this last-named detachment came forward with a very pointed declaration of their loyalty. Captain Dewaal, in command of that detachment, assembled his men one day towards the end of April, and told them how shamefully their companions had acted at Barrackpore, and how much disgrace had thereby been brought upon the regiment. Two days afterwards, an address or petition was presented to him, signed by the subadars and havildars in the names of all; in which regret was expressed for the conduct of the mutineers at Barrackpore. ‘By a careful performance,’ the petitioners said, ‘of our duties, we have gained a reputation for fidelity to government. These men have deprived us of it. We well know that the government will not interfere with our religion. We hope that the government will consider us as faithful as ever; and we pray that this petition may be sent to the governor-general, in order that his lordship may know the state of our feelings.’ Three or four weeks later, when this remnant of the regiment had been removed to Barrackpore, the men made another profession of their loyalty. In a petition to their commander, they said: ‘Some evil-disposed men of the regiment have deprived us of the reputation for loyalty which we have ever held. They have received the fruits of their misconduct by being disbanded. We that remain are willing to serve against the mutineers at Delhi, and are anxious to recover our lost name. We pray that the government will ever regard us as faithful soldiers.’

Two further examples of a similar kind were presented, one by the 43d and another by the 63d regiments B. N. I. About the end of May, the commandant of the first of these two regiments at Barrackpore, received a petition signed by the native commissioned officers, praying that the regiment might be allowed to proceed against the mutineers at Delhi—a wish that had been previously expressed to him on parade. Nearly at the same time Captain Pester, commanding the 63d at Berhampore, received a petition signed by the whole of the native officers on parade, intended to be forwarded to the governor-general; and, this petition being afterwards read in the native language to the whole regiment, the sepoys unanimously expressed their concurrence in the sentiments it conveyed. The petitioners said: ‘We have this day heard on parade the order issued by your lordship consequent on the petition forwarded by the native officers and sepoys of the 70th regiment of native infantry. On hearing the same, we were greatly rejoiced; for, in truth, all the men of that regiment have behaved as becomes loyal and faithful soldiers, and your lordship has in every way been pleased with them. Now do we also all petition that we may be numbered among the good and trustworthy soldiers of the state, as we have always been; and we are prepared and ready, with heart and hand, to go wherever, and against whomsoever you may please to send us, should it even be against our own kinsmen.’

The governor-general could do no other than receive these demonstrations. Whether he acceded to the request for permission to ‘march against the mutineers,’ depended necessarily on the military arrangements of the time; whether he fully believed the protestations, may perhaps be doubted, although no disbelief was expressed.

Happily for Bengal, it was affected by few of the disturbances that agitated the more western provinces. Consulting a map, we shall see that the banks of the Hoogly and the Lower Ganges are thickly studded with towns; and it may here at once be stated, that the peaceful industry of these towns was very little interrupted during the month of May. Tracing upwards from Calcutta, we meet with Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Serampore, the first two of which experienced a lull after the storm. Serampore was once the Alsatia of Calcutta, a place of refuge for schemers, insolvent debtors, and reckless adventurers; but the Company bought it from the Danish government, to which it had belonged, and the Baptist missionaries helped to civilise it; it is now a clean cheerful town, with a large paper-manufactory. Higher up is the once flourishing but now decayed town of Chandernagore, one of the few places in India still belonging to the French. Near this is Chinsura, held by the Dutch until 1825, but now a flourishing settlement belonging to the Company, provided with an extensive military depôt for Europeans, with a magnificent hospital and barracks. Then we come to Hoogly, a town bearing the same name as the river on whose banks it stands: a busy place, with many civil and educational establishments. Further north is Plassy, the place near which Clive fought the great battle that virtually gave India to the British. Beyond this is Berhampore, which, very refractory in March and April, had become tractable and obedient in May. Next we meet with Moorshedabad and its suburb Cossimbazar. Once the capital of 104Bengal when a Mohammedan dominion, Moorshedabad contained a splendid palace belonging to the nawab; but though no longer possessed of this kind of greatness, the city is commercially very important, as standing on the great highway, or rather water-way, from Calcutta to the northwest. All the places above named are situated either on the Hoogly or on the Bhagruttee, those two rivers combining to form the most convenient outlet from the Ganges to the sea.

The Ganges itself, too—the majestic, far-famed, sacred Ganges—was little disturbed by commotions in May throughout the lower part of its course. Rajmahal, Bhagulpore, Curruckpore, Monghir, Behar, Futwah, Patna, Hajeepoor, Dinapoor, Chupra, Arrah, Bishunpore, Buxar, Ghazeepore—all lie on or near the Ganges between the Hoogly and Benares. Some of these places are centres of commerce for the opium-trade; some are busy with the trading in rice grown in neighbouring districts; others are shipping-places for corn and other agricultural produce; while all regard the Ganges as an invaluable channel, affording intercourse with the rich districts of the west, and with the great focus of authority and trade at Calcutta. Such of these towns as were involved in trouble in later months of the year, will be noticed in the proper chapters; of the others, this narrative is not called upon to treat. One fact, however, may be mentioned in connection with Dinapoor. So early in the year as the middle of February, the Calcutta authorities wrote to the commander at that town, apprising him that a messenger was known to have been sent to the native regiment at Dinapoor, from some men of the 2d Bengal grenadiers, inciting them to mutiny. Major-general Lloyd promised to look out sharply for the messenger, but candidly expressed a doubt whether the astute native would suffer himself to be caught.

Benares may conveniently be described at once; for, whether disturbed or not by mutineers, it is so remarkably situated as to lie in the line of route of all commerce, all aggression, all military movement, between Calcutta and the upper provinces, whether by road, by rail, or by water. Regarded in this light, its possession and security are, and were in an especial degree during the mutiny, objects of the highest importance. This renowned city stands on the left bank of the Ganges, about four hundred and twenty miles by road from Calcutta, and seventy-four from Allahabad. The magnificent river, half a mile wide in the rainy season, forms a kind of semicircular bay in front of the city, which has thus three miles of river-frontage. Among the chief characteristics of Benares are the ghats or flights of fine broad freestone steps, giving access to the river: mostly very solid in construction, and in some cases highly decorated. So numerous are they, that they extend almost in a continuous line along the river’s banks, interrupted here and there by temples. ‘Upon these ghats,’ says a lively traveller, ‘are passed the busiest and happiest hours of every Hindoo’s day: bathing, dressing, praying, preaching, lounging, gossiping, or sleeping, there will be found. Escaping from the dirty, unwholesome, and confined streets, it is a luxury for him to sit upon the open steps and taste the fresh air of the river; so that on the ghats are concentrated the pastimes of the idler, the duties of the devout, and much of the necessary intercourse of business.’ Artists in India have delighted to portray the beauty and animation of this scene; but they cannot, if they would, reveal the hideous accompaniments—the fakeers and ascetics of revolting appearance, ‘offering every conceivable deformity which chalk, cow-dung, disease, matted locks, distorted limbs, and repulsive attitudes of penance, can shew.’

Benares, beyond any other place in India, perhaps, is studded with religious structures. Thirty years ago the Moslem mosques were more than three hundred in number, while the Hindoo temples exceeded a thousand. The pinnacles of the Hindoo pagodas combine to give a very picturesque appearance to the city, viewed from a distance. Large as the number is, the Benares temples, as has been sarcastically observed, are not too many, for religion is ‘the staple article of commerce, through which the holy city flourishes and is enriched.’ The Mohammedan mosques, mostly situated in the northeast quarter of the city, are generally elegant little edifices crowned by small slender minarets, each standing in a garden planted with tamarinds. Most of them have been constructed on the sites, and with the materials, of demolished Hindoo temples. By far the grandest is the great mosque of Aurungzebe, built by that emperor on the site of a temple of Vishnu, which he destroyed to signalise the triumph of Islamism over Brahminism. It rises from the platform above the Madhoray Ghat. The minars or minarets, admired for their simplicity and boldness, taper from eight feet in diameter at the bottom to seven at the top; and though so slender, they are carried up to a height of a hundred and fifty feet, and have each an interior staircase from bottom to top. The streets of Benares have the usual oriental character of narrowness, crookedness, and dirtiness; they are mere alleys, indeed, that will admit no wheel-carriages; nor can beasts of burden pass without sorely disturbing pedestrians. The houses are more lofty than in most Indian cities, generally from three to six stories high; and as the upper stories usually project beyond the lower, the narrow street is almost closed in above: nay, in some cases, the inmates of one house can walk over to the opposite tenement through the upper windows. The houses are, in the better streets, built of stone, small-windowed and gaily painted. During the hot season the citizens are much accustomed to sleep in screened enclosures on the roof, open to the sky above, and to the night-breezes around. There are somewhat under 105two hundred thousand inhabitants, who live in about thirty thousand houses.

Ghat on the Ganges.

Benares is a religious, not a military city. The district around was at a very remote period the seat of an independent Hindoo state, founded, according to native tradition, twelve hundred years before the Christian era. It subsequently formed part of the dominions of the Rajpoot sovereigns. Then began the Mussulman rule, and Benares became a dependent province under the Moguls. The nawab-viziers of Oude, when the Mogul power was declining, seized Benares; and during some of the political jugglery of the year 1775, the territory was transferred to the East India Company, by whom it has ever since been held. But under whatever dynasty it has been placed, Benares has from remote ages been known as the sacred city of the Hindoos, where all that is remarkable, all that is abominable, in Brahminism, flourishes. It has been described as the Jerusalem of Hindostan—swarming with religious teachers, devotees, mendicants, and sacred bulls. To wash in the Ganges in front of Benares, to die in that city, are precious privileges to the Hindoo. Some writers have given the inhabitants a bad character in what concerns loyalty to their present British rulers. ‘Benares is one of the most unsafe and rebellious cities in Hindostan. It once successfully opposed a house-tax imposed on the people by the British government. There was also recently a strong commotion when the magistrate attempted to equalise the weights and measures. To shew the hostility of the Hindoos of Benares to the English, it may be mentioned that when we lay before Bhurtpore in 1826, no less than thirty thousand sabres were sharpened at the cutlers’ in expectation of our repulse.’ If this statement be well founded, it does indeed denote a perilous state of feeling at the time in question.

Benares, we have said, is not a military city; but so important a place could not safely be left unguarded. Accordingly a British cantonment has been built at Secrole, two or three miles to the northwest. Secrole contains not only the barracks and huts for soldiers, but various civil establishments, and the residences of most of the British population of Benares. The cantonment consists of the usual buildings belonging to the head-quarters of a military division of the Company’s army, and capable of accommodating three or four regiments; it lies on both sides of a small stream called the Burnah Nuddee, crossed by the great road from Benares to Allahabad. On the side of the cantonment furthest from the city are the bungalows of the various officials 106and European residents: substantially built, well fitted and appointed, and surrounded by pleasant gardens. There are, among the public buildings, a Christian church and chapel, a court of justice, the treasury, the jail, and a mint—the last named never yet appropriated to its destined purpose. Secrole is thus, in effect, the British portion of Benares.

Another military station, subordinate to Benares, Chunar or Chunargur, is about sixteen miles distant; indeed, being nearly midway between Benares and Mirzapore, it may be an auxiliary to either in time of need. Chunar is a town of about twelve thousand inhabitants, standing on a plateau or elevated cliff close to the Ganges. It was regarded as a stronghold more than three centuries ago; and, like many other places in the neighbourhood, belonged to the great Mogul; from whom, in lapse of time, it was wrested by the ambitious nawab-viziers of Oude; until at length it fell into the hands of the British. It was for some years the Company’s principal artillery depôt for the Northwestern Provinces. The fortified portion of the town, on the heights, is surrounded by a rampart a little over a mile in circuit, and from ten to twenty feet high, guarded by towers, and in its turn completely commanding the river and its banks. The space enclosed by this wall or rampart, however, has very little of a military aspect; part is open grass-land; part occupied by bungalows and gardens of Europeans; part by the governor’s house, the hospital, and the state prison; and part by the ancient Hindoo palace, a massy vaulted edifice presenting little of its original splendour. An article of Hindoo faith is recorded in connection with a slab of black marble in a small square court of this palace; to the effect that ‘the Almighty is seated personally, though invisibly, on this stone, for nine hours each day, removing during the other three hours to Benares;’ so that the fort, in sepoy belief, can only be taken between the hours of six and nine in the morning. Considered in a military sense, the fort is by no means strong; nevertheless the steepness of the ascent would render storming difficult; and to increase this difficulty, the garrison was wont in former times to keep a number of large rudely made stone-cylinders at hand, to roll down upon a besieging force. The citadel or stronghold is in the northeastern part of the enclosure; it is mounted with several cannon, and has a bomb-proof magazine. The native town, consisting principally of two-storied stone-houses, is spread over a slope lying eastward of the fortifications. The English dwellings, and the station for invalid soldiers, are lower down the slope.

As soon as the Revolt began, the safety of Benares became an object of much solicitude to the governor-general at Calcutta, to Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, and indeed to all the Company’s servants: seeing that the maintenance of free communication would greatly depend on the peaceful condition of that city. We have seen that telegrams passed almost daily between Benares and the other chief cities in May; intended partly to facilitate the transport of reinforcements to the northwest, and in part also to insure the tranquillity of Benares itself. About the middle of the month the military commandant had to announce that there had been some excitement in the 37th native infantry; that a Sikh regiment had been sent on to Mirzapore and Allahabad; that the 13th irregular cavalry were at Sultanpore; and that his position was rather weak. On the 18th he telegraphed for aid: stating that ‘if one hundred European infantry could be spared for duty here, it would restore confidence, and make Benares more secure, so as to maintain communication with the northwest.’ General Lloyd was asked whether he could spare that much-coveted reinforcement—a hundred Europeans—from Dinapoor. About the same time the commandant was directed to defend Chunar fort with European invalids and veterans, and to keep the native infantry regiment at hand in Benares. Mr Tucker, civil commissioner, writing to the government on the same day, spoke of the ‘bold policy’ which had been adopted when the 37th shewed disaffection; the Europeans remaining in their houses, and acting so as neither to exhibit nor inspire distrust—instead of attempting to escape. On the 19th, arrangements were completed for sending a company of her Majesty’s 84th from Dumdum to Benares, in five separate parties of twenty-one each, in transit-carriages. By the 19th, the irregular cavalry had been brought in from Sultanpore, and every precaution taken to guard against a surprise—insomuch that the Europeans at neighbouring stations were looking to Benares as a sort of stay and support. More than once allusion was made, by the civil commissioner at that city, to the tactics of serenity, as a medium between severity and fright. One of the telegrams told that ‘Brigadier Ponsonby carries out Colonel Gordon’s quiet policy of shewing no fear or distrust; not a muscle is moved.’ Until towards the close of the month, Benares was included in the military command of which Dinapoor was the centre; but as the distance between the two towns is a hundred and fifty miles, Brigadier Ponsonby received permission to act for himself, irrespective of control from General Lloyd.

The 31st of May found Benares and its neighbourhood at peace. How close at hand were days of violence and bloodshed—a future chapter will shew.

We have now left Bengal, both in its original and in the Company’s acceptation of that term, and have arrived within the territories grouped together as the Northwest Provinces. From Benares and Chunargur, as a glance at the map will shew, the course of the Ganges, of the great trunk-road, and of the railway in process of construction, brings us to Mirzapore—a town not actually thrown into rebellion during the month 107of May, but placed between two foci of inflammable materials, Benares and Allahabad, and liable at any time to be inflamed by them. Mirzapore is on the right bank of the Ganges, which is half a mile wide at this spot, and is crossed by a ferry in the absence of a bridge. It is a great commercial city, with about eighty thousand inhabitants; the emporium of the cotton trade of Bundelcund and the adjacent provinces; not rich in Mohammedan or Hindoo antiquities or splendour, associated with few military events, but wealthy on account of its industry. The Company’s military cantonment, as in so many other parts of India, is two or three miles out of the town; indeed, this is a fact that must be borne in mind throughout, as a necessary condition to the understanding of events connected with the Revolt.

Approaching now the Jumna regions, the plot thickens and the characters increase in number. We come to that rich country, the Doab, watered on the one side by the Ganges and on the other by the Jumna, with Oude and Rohilcund on the north, Bundelcund and Scindiah’s territory on the south. We find a considerable number of large and important towns—Lucknow, Fyzabad, Bareilly, Allahabad, Futtehpoor, Cawnpore, Furruckabad, Gwalior, Bhurtpore, Agra, Delhi, Meerut—in the immediate vicinity of one or other of these two rivers. The Company’s military stations are far more thickly posted in that region than in any other part of India—a source of weakness in the midst of apparent strength; for as the native troops were predominant in all these places, their numbers became a manifest evil as soon as a mutinous spirit appeared among the men.

This chapter being mainly intended, as already explained, to shew how remarkably the materials for explosion were accumulating during the month of May, to burst forth with frightful violence in June, we shall glance rapidly and touch lightly here on many of the towns situated westward of Mirzapore, in order to place the reader in a position to understand what will follow—treating of sudden outrages and strange escapes in some few cases, and in others of a deceitful calm before a storm.

Allahabad, in a military sense, is a more important post than any between it and Calcutta: indeed, there are few to equal it throughout India. This is due principally to the fact that it lies at the junction of the two great rivers Ganges and Jumna, the northern side being washed by the one, the southern by the other. It occupies the most eastern, or rather southeastern point of the rich and fertile Doab; it lies in the direct water-route from Calcutta to both of the upper rivers; it is a main station on the great trunk-road from Calcutta to the Punjaub, and on the East India Railway now in course of construction; and a bridge will carry that railway across the Jumna close to it. No wonder, therefore, if the eyes of all were directed anxiously towards Allahabad during the mutinies and consequent struggles. The fort and arsenal are among the largest and finest in India. The fort rises direct from the point of confluence of the two rivers, and is on that side nearly impregnable. It is a mile and a half in circuit, five-sided, stone built, and bastioned. Two of the sides, near the water, are old, and weak as against a European force; the other three are modern, and, with their bastions and ravelins, command the city and the country beyond. Bishop Heber remarked that Allahabad fort had lost in grandeur what it had gained in strength: the lofty towers having been pruned down into bastions and cavaliers, and its high stone ramparts obscured by turf parapets and a sloping external glacis. The principal gate of the fort, surmounted by a dome with a wide hall beneath, and surrounded by arcades and galleries, forms a very majestic ornament. The arsenal, situated within the fort, is one of great magnitude, containing (before the Revolt) arms for thirty thousand men, an immense park of artillery, and the largest powder-magazine in Upper India. Altogether, it is a place of great strength, probably impregnable to natives, and fitted to bear a prolonged and formidable siege. In a part of the fort overlooking the Jumna is an ancient and spacious palace, formerly fitted up as residences for the superior European officers, but latterly used for state prisoners. From a balcony perched near the summit of a tower on which the windows of one of the chambers open, a scene is presented, of which European travellers in India speak with much admiration. The spectator looks down upon a grove of mango-trees, flanking a fine esplanade, and peopled with innumerable ring-necked paroquets. Above, on pediment, pinnacle, and turret, others of the feathered tribe build their nests and plume their wings. Along the thickly wooded shores on the north or Allahabad side of the Jumna, buildings of various degrees of interest are seen interspersed with the small islands which speckle the river; while the opposite or Bundelcund shore forms a noble background to the picture. In the days before the Revolt, the European troops of the garrison were accommodated in well-constructed barracks within the fort; while the military cantonment for the native troops lay northwest of it.

The city of Allahabad, westward of the fort, and on the Jumna shore, is scarcely worthy of its magnificent situation. It contains seventy thousand inhabitants; but its streets and houses are poor; nor do the mosques and temples equal those in many other parts of Hindostan, though the gardens and tomb of Sultan Khosroo and his serai are almost unequalled in India. There is a particular spot, outside the fort, where the actual confluence of the two great rivers is considered to take place; and this presents the liveliest scene in the whole city. One traveller tells of the great numbers of pilgrims of both sexes, anxious to bathe in the purifying waters; and of devotees who, causing earthen vessels to be fastened round 108their waists or to their feet, proceed in a boat to the middle of the stream, and precipitate themselves into the water—supposing that by this self-immolation they secure eternal bliss. Another states that when a pilgrim arrives here—Benares, Gyayah, and Allahabad being frequently included in the same pilgrimage—he sits down on the brink of the river, and causes his head and body to be so shaved that each hair may fall into the water—for the sacred writings promise the pilgrim a million years’ residence in heaven for every hair thus deposited—and that, after shaving and bathing, he performs the obsequies of his deceased ancestors. The Brahmins are the money-makers at these spots; each has his little platform, standing in the water, where he assists in the operations by which the pilgrim is supposed to become holy. Skinner describes the whole scene as a kind of religious fair.

City and Fort of Allahabad.

When the events at Meerut and Delhi became known at Allahabad, the native troops shewed much excitement. One of them, the 6th Bengal infantry, drew down encomiums for fidelity, in offering to march and fight against the insurgents; whether all the officers believed the men, may be doubted; but the chief authorities did not deem themselves justified in shewing distrust. Thanks came from Calcutta for the manifestation of loyalty made by the regiment—a loyalty destined to be of brief duration. A detachment of her Majesty’s 84th reached Allahabad on the 23d of May, sent up from Calcutta by the laboriously tedious methods lately described. There being some disturbance expected at the jail, the detachment was sent into the fort, and held in readiness to proceed to the cantonment with two guns; but as the alarm ceased for a time, the troops were sent on to Cawnpore, where much more anxiety was felt. Lieutenant Brasyer commanded four hundred Sikhs of the Ferozpore regiment in the fort; while Captain Hazelwood took charge of the European artillerymen. About two hundred Englishwomen and children were in the fort; and all hoped that the native troops in the cantonment could and would be kept in subjection. How far this hope was well founded, will be shewn in a future chapter.

Lucknow and the important territory of Oude, so far as concerns the events in May, have already been treated. The relations of the British government to the court of Oude, the assiduous exertions of Sir Henry Lawrence to maintain subordination and tranquillity, and the vigorous measures adopted by him against the mutineers at Lucknow towards the close of the month of May, were followed by occurrences in June which will come for notice in their proper place.

Of Cawnpore—a name never to be uttered by 109an English tongue without a thrill of horror, an agony of exasperated feeling—all notice will be postponed until the next chapter; not because the hapless beings there residing were free from peril in the month of May, but because the tragedy must be treated continuously as a whole, each scene leading forward to the hideous climax. Suffice it at present to know that Cawnpore contained so many English men and women, and so many mutinous native troops, that all eyes were anxiously directed towards the progress of events at that city.

Let us turn to towns and districts further westward.

Agra Fort.

Agra, once the capital of the Patan emperors, is the chief city of the Northwestern Provinces. Delhi is historically, and in population, more important; but was still at that time nominally under another sovereign; whereas Agra has been British territory since 1803, and is very well suited for a seat of government. The city, like Delhi, is situated on the right bank of the Jumna, and will, like it, be at some future time accommodated by the East India railway. In round numbers, its distance from Delhi is a hundred and fifty miles; from Calcutta, a little under eight hundred; and from Lahore, five hundred. The boundary of the old city encloses a space of twelve square miles; but not more than half of this is at present occupied by houses. There is one fine street, with houses built of red sandstone; the remaining streets are mostly narrow, with very small, insignificant-looking shops. The public buildings are numerous, and some of them very magnificent, telling of the past days of imperial glory and splendour. One is the palace of Shahjehan; small, but rendered very beautiful by its white marble surfaces, arabesques and mosaics, carvings of flowers, inlayings of black and yellow marble, enrichments of gilding, screen-works of marble and metal, fountains in the mosaic pavements. Near this is Shahjehan’s audience-chamber, as large as the palace itself, originally enclosed by arcades hung with tapestries. And also close at hand is the Moti Musjid or Pearl Mosque; with an exterior of red sandstone and an interior of white marble; a court with arcades and a fountain; a vestibule raised on steps; three terraces surmounted by beautiful domes; and nine elegant kiosks equidistant along the front. But the crowning beauty of Agra in its Mohammedan aspect is the celebrated Taj Mahal, a little way outside the city. This was the mausoleum of Shahjehan and his favourite sultaness Nurjehan, the ‘Light of the world,’ and occupied in its construction twenty thousand men during a period of more than twenty years. Page after page of travellers’ descriptions are occupied with this glorious structure—its façade of a thousand 110feet in length; its dazzling whiteness of marble; its mosques, at either end, with their domes; its stupendous marble terraced platform, with steps and pillars, minarets and kiosks; its great dome surmounted by gilded globes and crescents; its octagonal shrine or sepulchral apartment, with enclosures of extraordinary marble latticework; and its sarcophagi, literally covered with arabesques, fanciful mouldings, sculptured flowers, and inscriptions from the Koran.

What a mockery of past grandeur is all this now! Shahjehan, two centuries ago, was kept closely a prisoner in his splendour at Agra, while his ambitious son, Aurungzebe, was seizing the throne at Delhi; and now another race is dominant in both of those cities. Shahjehan’s audience-chamber has had its arcades walled up, and is converted into an arsenal for and by the British; and near it are now an armoury, a medical depôt, and a district collectorate treasury. Nearly all the once-imperial buildings are within the fort, a large place nearly a mile in circuit; it contained a hundred and sixty guns when Lord Lake captured it in 1803. Adjacent to the city, on the west, is the government-house, the official residence of the lieutenant-governor of the Northwestern Provinces; and in various places are numerous buildings belonging to the Company, for revenue, magisterial, and judicial establishments. The military lines are outside the city-wall. Before the Revolt, this station was within the Meerut military division, and was usually occupied by a considerable body of European and native troops. It was a fact of small importance in peaceful times, but of some moment when rebellion arose, that the civilians and writers in the public offices were accustomed to live three or four miles from the cantonment containing the military, quite on the opposite suburb of Agra. None would live in the city itself, unless compelled, owing to the intense heat. It will be well to bear in mind that the fort at Agra was, as just noticed, not merely a post or stronghold, indicated by its name, but a vast enclosure containing most of the palatial as well as the defensive buildings, and ample enough to contain all the Europeans usually residing in the city and its vicinity—large enough in dimensions, strong enough in defences, provided a sufficient supply of food were stored within its walls. Here, as at Delhi, Lucknow, Allahabad, and other places, the due understanding of the mutinous proceedings requires an appreciation of this fact—that the city, the fort, and the cantonment were all distinct.

Agra, being the seat of government for the Northwest Provinces, was naturally the city to which the Calcutta authorities looked for information touching the Revolt; and Mr Colvin, the lieutenant-governor, was assiduously engaged in collecting details, so far as telegraphs and dâks permitted. On the night of the 10th of May he received sinister news from the postmaster at Meerut, telling of deeds of violence being at that moment committed. Next he heard that a young sepoy, mounted on a travelling troop-horse, was stopped at Bolundshuhur, on suspicion of being en route to excite other sepoy regiments to rebellion. On the 13th, it was ascertained that a few sepoys were on their way from Meerut through Allygurh to Agra, bent on mischief; and that others were supposed to be advancing from Delhi. So little, however, did Mr Colvin apprehend serious results, that when Scindiah, the maharajah of Gwalior, came forward to offer his body-guard of three hundred men, and a battery of artillery, as an aid to the Company, the governor accepted the offer as ‘a personal compliment for a short time;’ but in the same message saying, ‘though we really do not require more troops.’ This was obviously said on the supposition that the native troops in and near Agra would not be affected by the rebellious epidemic prevailing further northward; a supposition destined to be sadly overturned. Nevertheless the government made arrangements for placing at the disposal of Mr Colvin two regiments of irregular horse from regions further west. Day after day did evidence arrive shewing that the various districts around were gradually becoming disturbed. On the 15th, the governor reviewed the native regiments in Agra, and, finding them deeply impressed with a conviction that the government intended in some way to degrade their caste, gave them the most positive assurance that they had been grossly deceived by such reports. He believed his explanation to have given satisfaction.

Towards the close of the month a step was taken by Mr Colvin which brought him into collision with his superiors in power. As lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, surrounded on every side by a teeming population, he wished to believe that the native troops as a body would still remain faithful, and that an indulgent tone towards them would effect more than severity to bring the erring back to a sense of their duty. It was not a thoughtless proceeding: if wrong, the mistake arose from the estimate formed of the native character, and of the effect which indulgence would produce. ‘Hope,’ he said, in a letter to the governor-general, ‘I am firmly convinced, should be held out to all those who were not ringleaders or actually concerned in murder and violence. Many are in the rebels’ ranks because they could not get away; many certainly thought we were tricking them out of their caste; and this opinion is held, however unwisely, by the mass of the population, and even by some of the more intelligent classes.’ When he found some of the troopers of the Gwalior Contingent, on whose fidelity much reliance had been placed, become mutinous on the 24th of May, he resolved on issuing a proclamation, based on the supposition that ‘this mutiny was not one to be put down by indiscriminating high-horsed authority.’ The pith of his proclamation was contained in these words: ‘Soldiers, 111engaged in the late disturbances, who are desirous of going to their own homes, and who give up their arms at the nearest government civil or military post, and retire quietly, shall be permitted to do so unmolested.’’ To this another sentence was added, in a less prominent form: ‘Every evil-minded instigator in the disturbances, and those guilty of heinous crimes against private persons, shall be punished.’ Mr Colvin earnestly solicited the assent of the Calcutta government to this proclamation; but the assent was as earnestly withheld. Viscount Canning telegraphed orders back to Agra to recall the proclamation as quickly as possible, and to substitute another sent for that purpose. ‘Use every possible means to stop the circulation of the proclamation ... do everything to stop its operation.’ Mr Colvin was obliged to announce the abrogation of his own proclamation by a second which contained these words: ‘Every soldier of a regiment which, although it has deserted its post, has not committed outrages, will receive free pardon if he immediately deliver up his arms to the civil or military authority, and if no heinous crimes be shewn to have been perpetrated by himself personally. This offer of free and unconditional pardon cannot be extended to those regiments which have killed or wounded their officers or other persons, or which have been concerned in the commission of cruel outrages.’ Mr Colvin wished to pardon all who would give up their arms, except a few ringleaders, and persons individually engaged in outrage; while Viscount Canning wished to exempt from this pardon such regiments as had been engaged in the murderous atrocities at Meerut, Delhi, and elsewhere. General Anson, the commander-in-chief, died before his opinion could be sought; but the Calcutta government, and (at a later date) the British government and the British public, agreed with the governor-general. Mr Colvin was placed in a most perplexing position; for he was called upon to overturn his own proceedings, thereby departing from a plan which he believed adequate for the purpose in view, and weakening his authority in the eyes of the natives. Canning telegraphed to Colvin: ‘The embarrassment in which your proclamation will place the government and the commander-in-chief is very great;’ while Colvin telegraphed to Canning: ‘Openly to undo my public act, where really no substantial change is made, would fatally shake my power for good.’ Brigadier Sibbald, commanding the Rohilcund division, with Bareilly for his head-quarters, joined Mr Colvin in opinion on this matter; he said: ‘Were the men under my command fully convinced that the past should be forgotten, I feel assured their loyalty and good conduct may be relied upon.’ The general tendency of opinion has been that stern measures were necessary at that crisis; but it was unquestionably infelicitous that these contradictory views should have been held at such a time in high quarters.

Mr Colvin, perpetually harassed with the accounts daily received from the various important towns included in his government, was nevertheless secure at Agra itself until towards the close of the month of May. Then, however, he found stern measures necessary. Having two regiments of native infantry with him, the 44th and the 67th, he sent two companies, one of each regiment, to Muttra (on the Delhi road), to bring down treasure to Agra. On the road, they mutinied, murdered some of their officers, and hastened to join the insurgents at Delhi. Mr Colvin at once resolved to disarm the remaining companies of those regiments: this he was enabled to do by the presence of the 3d Europeans and Captain D’Oyley’s European field-battery; and the disarming was quietly effected on the 1st of June. Shortly afterwards, a corps of volunteer horse was raised among the Europeans at Agra, and placed under the command of Lieutenant Greathed—one of three brothers at that time actively engaged in the Company’s service. This corps rendered good service by putting down rebellious petty chieftains in the neighbourhood. Mr Colvin felt the full weight of his position; the governor-general was far from him in one direction, Sir John Lawrence far in another; while Sir Henry Lawrence had no troops to spare, and the commander-in-chief could scarcely be heard of.

The great Mahratta stronghold, Gwalior, did not become a scene of mutiny until June; we therefore need not notice the city or its chief, Scindiah, in this place; but by following the fortunes of a portion of the Gwalior Contingent, a regiment of irregular horse, we shall learn much concerning the state of the country round Agra, and of the active services required from the English officers. Mr Colvin having accepted the proffered services of the contingent from the maharajah, Lieutenant Cockburn received orders to head half the regiment, together with a battery of guns. He started on the 13th of May from Gwalior, and accomplished the distance of ninety miles to Agra by the 15th, without knocking up man or horse. On the 18th, news arrived that troubles had broken out at Allygurh, fifty-five miles north of Agra, and that the services of the contingent were necessary for the protection of the ladies and the civilians. Cockburn with his troopers marched thirty-four miles to Hattrass on that day, and the remaining twenty-one miles on the 19th—seeking shelter from the tremendous mid-day heat in any dilapidated building that might offer; and each officer keeping in store his only clean shirt ‘to meet the fugitive ladies from Allygurh.’ What he saw, and what he had yet to see, at Allygurh, was serious enough. This town was destined to affect the operations of the British, not so much by its intrinsic importance, as by its position on one of the great lines of route between the eastern and western provinces of India. Allygurh commands the road from Agra to Meerut; and thus, in hostile hands, it would necessarily add to the 112difficulties attending the temporary loss of Delhi; seeing that the road both to Simla and to Lahore would thus be interrupted. The town is so surrounded by marshes and shallow pools, as to be almost unassailable in the rainy season. The fort consists of a regular polygon, with a broad and very deep ditch outside; it was of simple construction at the time of its capture by the British in 1803, but has since been much strengthened and improved. The military cantonment, the civil establishments, and the bazaar, are situated towards Coel, a little southward of the fort. At the beginning of the troubles in May, Allygurh was under the care of Mr Watson, as magistrate and collector. There were in the place, at the time, the head-quarters and three or four companies of the 9th regiment B. N. I.: the remainder of the regiment being in detachments at Minpooree, Etawah, and Bolundshuhur, towns further to the southeast. The troops at Allygurh behaved well and steadily during the first half of the month; but gradually a change supervened. A spy was one day caught endeavouring to excite the men. Lieutenant Cockburn, in a private letter, thus narrates the manner—quite melodramatic in its way—in which this villain was foiled: ‘An influential Brahmin of this neighbourhood having been seen lurking about the lines for the past day or two, a native non-commissioned officer concealed a number of sepoys, and induced the Brahmin to accompany him to where the men lay hidden; under pretence of its being a secluded spot where they might safely concert matters. The Brahmin then made overtures to the soldier, and told him that if he would persuade the men of the regiment to mutiny, he would furnish two thousand men to assist in murdering the Europeans and plundering the treasury. At a preconcerted signal, the sepoys jumped up and secured the ruffian.’ He was hanged the same day. The troops at Bolundshuhur, really or affectedly expressing horror at the hanging of a Brahmin, marched to Allygurh, and, on the 20th, succeeded in inducing their companions to mutiny. This result was so wholly unforeseen, the 9th had hitherto behaved so well, and had displayed such alacrity in capturing the treacherous Brahmin, that neither the civilians nor the English officers were prepared to resist it. Cockburn at first intended to dash at them with his troopers; but the approaching darkness, and other considerations—possibly a doubt concerning the troopers themselves—led to a change of plan. ‘One holy duty remained to be performed—to save the ladies and children. This we accomplished; and whilst they were being put into carriages, we shewed a front to the mutineers, and hindered their advance. An occasional bullet whistled by our heads, but it was too dark for taking aim. One man was shot through the wrist, and five are missing. We then heard that the inhabitants were rising, so we determined on retreating. The ladies were sent on direct to Agra, and we went on to Hattrass. We had not gone far, when the bright light behind us told too plainly that the cantonment was in flames.’ The civilians and the officers of the 9th lost all except their horses and the clothes on their backs. Allygurh remained for a considerable time in the hands of the insurgents: almost cutting off communication between the southeast and the northwest.

While the refugees remained in safety at Hattrass, the troopers scoured the country to put down marauders and murderers—for it was a saturnalia of lawlessness. On the 21st, many of the ruffians were captured, and speedily hanged. On the 22d, two headmen of neighbouring villages joined the marauders in an attack on some English refugees, but were frustrated. On the 23d, Cockburn and his troop galloped off from Hattrass to Sarsnee, and rescued eighteen refugees from Allygurh. ‘Poor people! They have sad tales to tell. One indigo planter, Mr ——, has had one son murdered; another son, his wife, and himself, are wounded. His house and all he possessed have been destroyed. The very clothes were torn from their backs; and even the poor women, naked and bleeding, insulted and abused, had to walk many miles. At length they received shelter from a kind-hearted native banker in the village where I found them; but even there the house in which they were sheltered was twice attacked.’ The good Samaritan—for there were some good and kind amid all the villainies that surrounded them—gave two or three sheets to the poor sufferers, to cover their nakedness, and to enable them to proceed to Hattrass.

The 24th of May shewed how little the Gwalior troopers could be depended upon. Of two hundred and thirty that had been intrusted to Lieutenant Cockburn, a hundred and twenty suddenly mutinied, and galloped off to join the insurgents at Delhi. As the villagers began to shew symptoms of attacking him in his weakness, and as a hundred and ten troopers still stuck by their colours, he marched off that night nineteen miles from Hattrass to Kundowlie. On the road, the troopers told the lieutenant of many little grievances that had affected them at Gwalior, and that had partly led to the mutiny of the rest of their body; and he felt grateful that some at least of the number had remained true. During the remainder of the month, and in the early part of June, this diminished body of troopers was incessantly engaged in skirmishing, attacking, or resisting attacks; the country around being in such a frightful state, that a dozen villages were sometimes seen in flames at once—the work of desperadoes, who took advantage of a time of anarchy. On one occasion, Cockburn baffled a horde of scoundrels by a capital stratagem. They had collected to the number of about five hundred, and were plundering every one on the road in a shameful manner. The lieutenant went after them with fifty troopers. He sent four of his men in a bullock-cart, a curtained vehicle such as women usually ride in. 113When the marauders saw this, they made a rush for plunder, and perhaps something worse, believing the cart to contain defenceless women; they approached, but the four men jumped up, fired their muskets, and by that signal brought Cockburn and his party forward. An exciting chase ensued, which ended in the death of fifty of the marauders, and the capture of many others.

The 9th native regiment, it will be remembered, was quartered in four detachments at Allygurh, Minpooree, Etawah, and Bolundshuhur. At all four places the troops mutinied. At Etawah and Bolundshuhur, the course of events was not so exciting as at Allygurh, although amply sufficient to try the tact and courage of the few officers and civilians stationed at those places. Minpooree, on the road from Agra to Furruckabad, was, however, the scene of so smart an affair, that the governor-general, amid all his harassing employments, made it a matter of special comment. The officer chiefly concerned was Lieutenant de Kantzow; the date was May the 23d, when three companies of the 9th broke out into revolt. On the night of the 22d, news arrived that the chief portion of the regiment had mutinied at Allygurh, and it thence became at once doubtful whether the three companies at Minpooree could be depended upon. The magistrate and the collector of the district, acting with Lieutenant Crawford, resolved on removing all the English women and children for safety to Agra: this was done, promptly and successfully. A plan was agreed on, relating to the three companies of native troops on the morrow; but the sepoys anticipated this plan by mutinying at four in the morning, and endeavouring to shoot down their officers. They loaded themselves with a great store of ammunition, and tried—first to bring down their officers, and then to plunder the treasury and the bungalows. Lieutenant de Kantzow, second in command under Crawford, confronted them undauntedly, reasoned with them, and endeavoured to stop them in their mad career. Some of the men, attached to the chivalrous officer, dashed down several muskets levelled at him, and saved his life. But a terrible scene occurred at the treasury. De Kantzow, with a mere handful of ill-armed jail-guards and jail-officials, maintained a three hours’ struggle against three companies of fully armed troops. The commandant had gone off; the collector also had made a hasty escape, deeming the magistrate’s conduct ‘romantic’ in remaining behind; and thus De Kantzow was left to do the best he could at the treasury, the magistrate elsewhere. De Kantzow sent a hasty message, requesting the magistrate not to come to the treasury, as it would make one European the more for the sepoys to yell at and attack. How long the unequal struggle would have been maintained, cannot be said; but the magistrate found an influential native, Ras Bhowanee Singh, willing and able to visit the excited sepoys, and induce them to desist from further violence. They did so: they decamped with a good deal of property, but without three lacs of rupees deposited in the treasury, and without taking one English life. Right indeed was it that De Kantzow should receive the thanks of the government;^[14] for if he had flinched, Minpooree with its twenty thousand inhabitants would have been at the mercy of three hundred brutal armed men, ready to plunder natives as well as Feringhees.

It was about one week after this event that Captain Carey, of the 17th B. N. I., rode into Minpooree, the only remaining one of four English officers who had been endeavouring to render useful service in the neighbourhood. They were at the head of a small body of native cavalry. The sowars suddenly turned upon them in an open road. Major Hayes, military secretary to Sir Henry Lawrence—a great oriental scholar and most able officer, whom General Wheeler had just before solicited Sir Henry to send him, to open the communications with Agra—was instantly cut down with a sword, his head frightfully hacked, his right hand cut off, his left mutilated. Another, Lieutenant Fayers, had his head nearly severed from his body by a dastardly villain, while the unfortunate young officer was drinking at a well. An old Sikh rushed forward to prevent the atrocity, but was repelled with the words: ‘What! are you with these Kaffirs? Look to yourself!’ Lieutenant Barber, adjutant of the 2d irregular cavalry, made an attempt to escape, but was shot down, cut to pieces, robbed, and left dead. The fourth, Captain Carey, trusted to the heels of his good horse; on he galloped over fields and roads, followed by a troop of blood-thirsty miscreants, yelling and firing as they rode. Happily, just as his steed was about to sink through exhaustion, his pursuers gave up the chase. He reached Minpooree in safety; and on the 1st of June, followed the mangled remains of his three poor companions to the grave.

Another exploit connected with Minpooree shall be given in the words of Lieutenant de Kantzow, affording as it does one among many examples of the extraordinary risks to which the officers were exposed at that turbulent period, and of the rattling, quick-witted, fearless, persevering way in which such dangers were met, and afterwards described in the letters written to friends at home—letters that admit the reader behind the scenes in a way not possible in official dispatches: ‘I was returning from reconnoitring, when information was brought me that five troopers of the 7th light cavalry (native) were coming along the road. An 114immediate pursuit was of course ordered by me, and my thirty-nine troopers tore away at full speed after them. I was just coming up to them, and had already let drive among the murdering villains; when, lo! I came upon two hundred of their comrades, all armed with swords, and some with carbines. A smart fire was kept up at a distance of not more than twenty-five yards. What could thirty-nine do against two hundred regular troopers, well horsed and armed—particularly when walked into by the bullets of a hundred of the infantry! I ordered a retreat, but my cavalry could not get away from troopers mounted upon good stud-bred horses; so we were soon overtaken, and then commenced the shindy in earnest. Twelve troopers surrounded me: the first, a Mohammedan priest, I shot through the breast just as he was cutting me down. This was my only pistol, so I was helpless as regards weapons, save my sword; this guarded off a swingeing cut given me by number two, as also another by number three; but the fun could not last. I bitterly mourned not having a couple of revolvers, for I could have shot every man. My sword was cut down, and I got a slash on the head that blinded me; another on the arm that glanced and only took a slice off; the third caught me on the side, but also glanced and hit me sideways. I know not how I escaped: God only knows, as twelve against one were fearful odds, especially as I was mounted on a pony bare back. Escape, however, I did.’ Twenty-four out of his thirty-nine troopers were killed, wounded, or missing.

The region lately noticed, including the towns of Allygurh, Hattrass, Etawah, Minpooree, &c., was formerly included in Rohilcund, or the land of the Rohillas; but according to the territorial or political division adopted by the Company, it is now partly in the Meerut division, and partly in that of Agra; while the present Rohilcund division is wholly on the left bank of the Ganges. These technical distinctions are, however, a matter of very little importance in connection with the progress of the Revolt; for the insubordinate sepoys tempted and imitated each other wholly in disregard of mere conventional boundaries. We must now follow the stream of insurrection across the Ganges, and shew how deplorable was the anarchy, how sad the sufferings, that began there towards the close of May.

The districts of Rohilcund in its modern or limited sense are Bareilly, Boodayoun or Budaon, Shahjehanpoor, Mooradabad, and Bijnour, each named after a chief town; and not only were the whole of these towns more or less disturbed, but throughout the intervening country the military cantonments were set into a flame—figuratively and often literally. In some instances the civil servants of the Company, chiefly magistrates and revenue collectors, made their escape with their wives and children, leaving the mutineers to occupy the stations and pillage the treasuries; in others the civil servants, led by one of their number possessing tact and resolution, held the marauders at bay until assistance could be procured; while in many cases the English officers of native regiments, as well as the civilians, yielded—by flight or by death—only after a determined resistance.

Two of the towns above named, Bareilly and Boodayoun, will suffice at present to illustrate the state of affairs in Rohilcund. Sunday, as we have often had occasion to observe, was a favourite day for the native outbreaks; and it was on Sunday the 31st of May that the miseries at Bareilly began. The 18th and 68th regiments N. I. were cantoned there. The bungalow of Colonel Troup was suddenly surrounded by two companies of his own regiment, the 68th: and it was only by a hasty exit through a side-door that he escaped death. During many previous days and nights the troops had been in a rebellious state; the English, civilians and military, had slept in their clothes, with pistols ready loaded, and horses kept ready saddled. The ladies had all been sent up for safety to Nynee Tal; and thus, when the struggle arose, the officers had only themselves to protect. This word ‘ladies,’ however, is to be interpreted in its conventional sense; for many women in a humbler grade of life, together with their children, remained in the town; and among these some deplorable scenes occurred. The members of one family were brought before a ruthless fellow who assumed some kind of authority; and in a very few minutes their heads were severed from their bodies. At the same time, Mr Robertson the judge, two medical men, the professors of the college, and others, were subjected to a mock trial and publicly hanged. The mutinous sepoys took aim in the most deliberate way at their officers, while the latter were fleeing; Mr Alexander, commissioner of Bareilly, though ill at the time, was forced to mount his horse and gallop off as the only means of saving his life, amid a shower of bullets and grape-shot—for the treacherous villains not only used muskets and rifles, but fired grape from the cannon. Many of the gentlemen rode off in haste without any head-coverings, the rays of an Indian sun pouring down upon them in full force. When the English were driven out, the Mohammedans and Hindoos began to fight fiercely against each other for possession of the treasure—one among many indications that plunder was at least as strong a desire as revenge in impelling the natives to deeds of violence.

The name of Nynee Tal is mentioned in the above paragraph; and it may be well to understand on what ground that town was so often named with earnest solicitude by officers engaged in arduous struggles in various parts of the north of India. Nynee Tal is a healthy spot on the banks of a beautiful lake, a few miles from Almora in Kumaon, and not far from the Nepaulese border: indeed it belonged to the Goorkhas of Nepaul until recent times, when it was conquered 115from them by the British; since which occurrences the late owners have been friendly neighbours within their own territory of Nepaul. Nynee Tal became a second Simla during the disturbances. Women and children, if their lives were spared at the scenes of tumult, were hurried off to the places just named, and to one or two other towns among the hills—there to remain till days of peace returned, or till means of safe conveyance to Calcutta or Bombay could be procured. When the troubles in Rohilcund commenced; when Bareilly and Boodayoun, Mooradabad and Shahjehanpoor, fell into the hands of the rebels—all fled to Nynee Tal who could. Captain Ramsey, commanding at that town, at once made arrangements for protecting the poor fugitives; he formed the gentlemen of the station into a militia, who took it in turn to fulfil the duties of an armed patrol, to keep in order the dacoits and other ruffians in the neighbourhood; he laid in a store of three months’ provisions for all the mouths in the place; and he armed the station and the roads with companies of a Goorkha regiment. These Goorkhas, it may be well here to explain, are of Mongol origin, but smaller and darker than the real Chinese. They belong to Nepaul, and first became familiar to the British by their resolute soldierly qualities during the Nepaulese war. Although Hindoos by religion, they have little or nothing of caste prejudice, and sympathise but slightly with the Hindoos of the plains. Being natives of a somewhat poor country, they have shewn a readiness in recent years to accept Company’s pay as auxiliary troops; and it was a very important fact to those concerned in quelling the revolt, that the Goorkhas manifested a disposition rather to remain faithful to their British paymasters, than to join the standard of rapine and murder.

Bareilly, we have just seen, was one of the towns from which fugitive ladies were sent for safety to Nynee Tal; and now the town of Boodayoun, on the road from Agra to Bareilly, comes for notice under similar conditions. Considering that the course of public events often receives illustration of a remarkable kind from the experience of single individuals, we shall treat the affairs of Boodayoun in connection with the strange adventures of one of the Company’s civil servants—adventures not so deeply distressing as those of the fugitives from Delhi, but continued during a much longer period, and bringing to light a much larger number of facts connected with the feelings and position of the natives in the disturbed districts. The wanderer, Mr Edwards, collector of the Boodayoun district, was more than three months in reaching Cawnpore from Boodayoun—a distance scarcely over a hundred miles by road. About the middle of May, the districts on both sides of the Ganges becoming very disturbed, Mr Edwards sent his wife and child for refuge to Nynee Tal. He was the sole European officer in charge of the Boodayoun district, and felt his anxieties deepen as rumours reached him of disturbances in other quarters. At the end of the month, news of the revolt at Bareilly added to his difficulties; for the mutineers and a band of liberated prisoners were on their way from that place to Boodayoun. Mr Edwards expresses his opinion that the mutiny was aggravated by the laws, or the course adopted by the civil courts, concerning landed property. Landed rights and interests were sold by order of the courts for petty debts; they were bought by strangers, who had no particular sympathy with the people; and the old landowners, regarded with something like affection by the peasantry, were thrown into a discontented state. Evidence was soon afforded that these dispossessed landowners joined the mutineers, not from a political motive, but to seize hold of their old estates during a time of turmoil and violence. ‘The danger now is, that they can never wish to see the same government restored to power; fearing, as they naturally must, that they will have again to give up possession of their estates.’ This subject, of landed tenure in India, will call for further illustration in future pages, in relation to the condition of the people.

116

Nynee Tal—a refuge for European fugitives.

Narrowly escaping peril himself, Mr Edwards, on the 1st of June, saw that flight was his only chance. There were two English indigo-planters in the neighbourhood, together with another European, who determined to accompany him wherever he went, thinking their safety would be thereby increased. This embarrassed him, for friendly natives who might shelter one person, would probably hesitate to receive four; and so it proved, on several occasions. He started off on horseback, accompanied by the other three, and by a faithful Sikh servant, Wuzeer Singh, who never deserted him through all his trials. The worldly wealth of Mr Edwards at this moment consisted of the clothes on his back, a revolver, a watch, a purse, and a New Testament. During the first few days they galloped from village to village, just as they found the natives favourable or hostile; often forced to flee when most in need of food and rest. They crossed the Ganges two or three times, tracing out a strange zigzag in the hope of avoiding dangers. The wanderers then made an attempt to reach Futteghur. They suffered much, and one life was lost, in this attempt; the rest, after many days, reached Futteghur, where Mr Probyn was the Company’s collector. Native troops were mutinying, or consulting whether to mutiny; Europeans were departing; and it soon became evident that Futteghur would no longer be a place of safety either for Probyn or for Edwards. Flight again became necessary, and under more anxious circumstances, for a lady and four children were to be protected; but how to flee, and whither, became anxious questions. Day after day passed, before a friendly native could safely plan an escape for them by boat; enemies and marauders were on every side; and at last the danger became so imminent that it was resolved to cross the Ganges, and seek an asylum in a very desolate spot, out of the way of the mutineers. Here was presented a curious exemplification of ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ days as viewed by the natives. ‘A lucky day having been found for our start,’ says Mr Edwards, ‘we were to go when the moon rose; but this moon-rise was not till three o’clock on the morning after that fixed for the start. This the Thakoors were not at first aware of. I was wakened about eleven o’clock by one of them, who said that the fact had just come to his knowledge, and that it was necessary that something belonging to us should start at once, as this would equally secure the lucky influence of the day, even though we ourselves should not start till next morning. A table-fork was accordingly given him, with which he went off quite satisfied, and which was sent by a bearer towards the village we were to proceed to.’ Under the happy influence of this table-fork, the wanderers set forth by night, Mrs Probyn and her children riding on an elephant, and the men walking on roads almost impassable with mud. They reached the stream; they crossed in a boat; they walked some distance amid torrents of rain, Mr Edwards ‘carrying poor baby;’ and then they reached the village, Runjpoonah, destined for their temporary home. What a home it was! ‘The place intended for the Probyns was a wretched hovel occupied by buffaloes, and filthy beyond expression, the smell stifling, and the mud and dirt over our ankles. My heart sank within me as I laid down my little charge on a charpoy.’ By the exercise of ingenuity, an extemporaneous chamber was fitted up in the roof. During a long sojourn here in the rainy season, Mr Edwards wrote a letter to his wife at Nynee Tal, under the following odd circumstances: ‘I had but a small scrap of paper on which to write my two notes, and just the stump of a lead-pencil: we had neither pens nor ink. In the middle of my writing, the pencil-point broke; and when I commenced repointing it, the whole fell out, there being just a speck of lead left. I was in despair; but was fortunately able to refix the atom, and to finish two short notes—about an inch square each: it was all the man could conceal about him. I then steeped the notes in a little milk, and put them out to dry in the sun. At once a crow pounced on one and carried it off, and I of course thought it was lost for ever. Wuzeer Singh, however, saw and followed the creature, and recovered the note after a long chase.’ Several weeks passed; ‘poor baby’ died; then an elder child—both sinking under the privations they had had to endure: their anxious mother, with all her tender solicitude, being unable further to preserve them. Mr Edwards, who was one of those that thought the annexation of Oude an unwise measure, said, in relation to a rumour that Oude had been restored to its king: ‘I would 117rejoice at such an equitable measure at another time; but now it would be, if true, a sign of a falling cause and of great weakness, which is I fear our real case.’ On another occasion, he heard ‘more rumours that the governor-general and the King of Oude had arrived at Cawnpore; and that Oude is then formally to be made over to the king.’ Whether Oudians or not, everywhere he found the Mohammedans more hostile to the British than the Hindoos; and in some places the two bodies of religionists fought with each other. After many more weeks of delays and disappointments, the fugitives were started off down the Ganges to Cawnpore. In effecting this start, the ‘lucky-day’ principle was again acted on. ‘The astrologer had fixed an hour for starting. As it was not possible for us to go at the fortunate moment and secure the advantage, a shirt of mine and some garments of those who were to accompany me, were forwarded to a village some way on the road, which is considered equivalent to ourselves starting.’ Half-a-dozen times on their voyage were they in danger of being shot by hostile natives on shore; but the fidelity and tact of the natives who had befriended them carried them through all their perils. At length they reached Cawnpore on the 1st of September, just three calendar months after Mr Edwards took his hasty departure from Boodayoun.

This interesting train of adventures we have followed to its close, as illustrating so many points connected with the state of India at the time; but now attention must be brought back to the month of May.

West of the Rohilcund district, and northwest of Allygurh and its neighbouring cluster of towns, lie Meerut and Delhi, the two places at which the atrocities were first manifested. Meerut, after the departure of the three mutinous regiments on the night of the 10th of May, and the revolt of the Sappers and Miners a few days afterwards, remained unmolested. Major-general Hewett was too strong in European troops to be attacked, although his force took part in many operations against the rebels elsewhere. Several prisoners, proved to have been engaged in the murderous work of the 10th, were hanged. On the other hand, many sowars of the 3d native cavalry, instead of going to Delhi, spread terror among the villagers near Meerut. One of the last military dispatches of the commander-in-chief was to Hewett, announcing his intention to send most of his available troops from Kurnaul by Bhagput and Paniput, to Delhi, and requesting Hewett to despatch from Meerut an auxiliary force. This force he directed should consist of two squadrons of carabiniers, a wing of the 60th Rifles, a light field-battery, a troop of horse-artillery, a corps of artillerymen to work the siege-train, and as many sappers as he could depend upon. General Anson calculated that if he left Umballa on the 1st of June, and if Hewett sent his force from Meerut on the 2d, they might meet at Bhagput on the 5th, when a united advance might be made upon Delhi; but, as we shall presently see, the hand of death struck down the commander-in-chief ere this plan could be carried out; and the force from Meerut was placed at the disposal of another commander, under circumstances that will come under notice in their proper place.

Delhi, like Cawnpore, must be treated apart from other towns. The military proceedings connected with its recapture were so interesting, and carried on over so long a period; it developed resources so startlingly large among the mutineers, besieging forces so lamentably small on the part of the British—that the whole will conveniently form a subject complete in itself, to be treated when collateral events have been brought up to the proper level. Suffice it at present to say, that the mutineers over the whole of the north of India looked to the retention of Delhi as their great stronghold, their rock of defence; while the British saw with equal clearness that the recapture of that celebrated city was an indispensable preliminary to the restoration of their prestige and power in India. All the mutineers from other towns either hastened to Delhi, or calculated on its support to their cause, whatever that cause may have been; all the available British regiments, on the other hand, few indeed as they were, either hastened to Delhi, or bore it in memory during their other plans and proceedings.

Just at the time when the services of a military commander were most needed in the regions of which Agra is the centre, and when it was necessary to be in constant communication with the governor-general and authorities, General Anson could not be heard of; he was supposed at Calcutta to be somewhere between Simla and Delhi; but dâks and telegraphs had been interfered with, and all remained in mystery as to his movements. Lawrence at Lucknow, Ponsonby at Benares, Wheeler at Cawnpore, Colvin at Agra, Hewett at Meerut, other commanders at Allahabad, Dinapoor, and elsewhere—all said in effect: ‘We can hold our own for a time, but not unless Delhi be speedily recaptured. Where is the commander-in-chief?’ Viscount Canning sent messages in rapid succession, during the second half of the month of May, entreating General Anson to bring all his power to bear on Delhi as quickly as possible. Duplicate telegrams were sent by different routes, in hopes that one at least might reach its destination safely; and every telegram told the same story—that British India was in peril so long as Delhi was not in British hands, safe from murderers and marauders. Major-general Sir Henry Barnard, military commander of the Umballa district, received telegraphic news on the 11th of May of the outrages at Meerut and Delhi; and immediately sent an aid-de-camp to gallop off with the information to General Anson at Simla, seventy or eighty miles distant. The commander-in-chief at once hastened from his retirement among the hills. Simla, as was noticed in a 118former page, is one of the sanataria for the English in India, spots where pure air and moderate temperature restore to the jaded body some of the strength, and to the equally jaded spirits some of the elasticity, which are so readily lost in the burning plains further south. The poorer class among the Europeans cannot afford the indulgence, for the cost is too great; but the principal servants of the Company often take advantage of this health-restoring and invigorating climate—where the average temperature of the year is not above 55° F. The question has been frequently discussed, and is not without cogency, whether the commander-in-chief acted rightly in remaining at that remote spot during the first twenty weeks in the year, when so many suspicious symptoms were observable among the native troops at Calcutta, Dumdum, Barrackpore, Berhampore, Lucknow, Meerut, and Umballa. He could know nothing of the occurrences at those places but what the telegraphic wires and the postal dâks told him; nevertheless, if they told him the truth, and all the truth, it seems difficult to understand, unless illness paralysed his efforts, why he, the chief of the army, remained quiescent at a spot more than a thousand miles from Calcutta.

Startled by the news, the commander-in-chief quitted Simla, and hastened to Umballa, the nearest military station on the great Indian highway. It then became sensibly felt, both by Anson and Barnard, how insufficient were the appliances at their disposal. The magazines at Umballa were nearly empty of stores and ammunition; the reserve artillery-wagons were at Phillour, eighty miles away; the native infantry were in a very disaffected state; the European troops were at various distances from Umballa; the commissariat officers declared it to be almost impossible to move any body of troops, in the absence of necessary supplies for a column in the field; and the medical officers dwelt on the danger of marching troops in the hot season, and on the want of conveyance for sick and wounded. In short, almost everything was wanting, necessary for the operations of an army. The generals set to work, however; they ordered the 2d European Fusiliers to hasten from Subathoo to Umballa; the Nusseree Battalion to escort a siege-train and ammunition from Phillour to Umballa; six companies of the Sappers and Miners to proceed from Roorkee to Meerut; and the 4th Irregular Cavalry to hold themselves in readiness at Hansi. Anson at the same time issued the general order, already adverted to, inviting the native regiments to remain true to their allegiance, explaining the real facts concerning the cartridges, and reiterating the assurances of non-intervention with the religious and caste scruples of the men. On the 17th there were more than seven regiments of troops at Umballa—namely, the Queen’s 9th Lancers, the 4th Light Cavalry Lancers, the Queen’s 75th foot, the 1st and 2d European Fusiliers, the 5th and 60th native infantry, and two troops of European horse-artillery; but the European regiments were all far short of their full strength. Symptoms soon appeared that the 5th and 60th native infantry were not to be relied upon for fidelity; and General Anson thereupon strengthened his force at Umballa with such European regiments as were obtainable. He was nevertheless in great perplexity how to shape his course; for so many wires had been cut and so many dâks stopped, that he knew little of the progress of events around Delhi and Agra. Being new to India and Indian warfare, also, and having received his appointment to that high command rather through political connections than in reference to any experience derived from Asiatic campaigning, he was dependent on those around him for suggestions concerning the best mode of grappling with the difficulties that were presented. These suggestions, in all probability, were not quite harmonious; for it has long been known that, in circumstances of emergency, the civil and military officers of the Company, viewing occurrences under different aspects or from different points of view, often arrived at different estimates as to the malady to be remedied, and at different suggestions as to the remedy to be applied. At the critical time in question, however, all the officers, civil as well as military, assented to the conclusion that Delhi must be taken at any cost; and on the 21st of May, the first division of a small but well-composed force set out from Umballa on the road to Delhi. General Anson left on the 25th, and arrived on the 26th at Kurnaul, to be nearer the scene of active operations; but there death carried him off. He died of cholera on the next day, the 27th of May.

With a governor-general a thousand miles away, the chief officers at and near Kurnaul settled among themselves as best they could, according to the rules of the service, the distribution of duties, until official appointments could be made from Calcutta. Major-general Sir Henry Barnard became temporary commander, and Major-general Reid second under him. When the governor-general received this news, he sent for Sir Patrick Grant, a former experienced adjutant-general of the Bengal army, from Madras, to assume the office of commander-in-chief; but the officers at that time westward of Delhi—Barnard, Reid, Wilson, and others—had still the responsibility of battling with the rebels. Sir Henry Barnard, as temporary chief, took charge of the expedition to Delhi—with what results will be shewn in the proper place.

The regions lying west, northwest, and southwest of Delhi have this peculiarity, that they are of easier access from Bombay or from Kurachee than from Calcutta. Out of this rose an important circumstance in connection with the Revolt—namely, the practicability of the employment of the Bombay native army to confront the mutinous 119regiments belonging to that of Bengal. It is difficult to overrate the value of the difference between the two armies. Had they been formed of like materials, organised on a like system, and officered in a like ratio, the probability is that the mutiny would have been greatly increased in extent—the same motives, be they reasonable or unreasonable, being alike applicable to both armies. Of the degree to which the Bombay regiments shewed fidelity, while those of Bengal unfurled the banner of rebellion, there will be frequent occasions to speak in future pages. The subject is only mentioned here to explain why the western parts of India are not treated in the present chapter. There were, it is true, disturbances at Neemuch and Nuseerabad, and at various places in Rajpootana, the Punjaub, and Sinde; but these will better be treated in later pages, in connection rather with Bombay than with Calcutta as head-quarters. Enough has been said to shew over how wide an area the taint of disaffection spread during the month of May—to break out into something much more terrible in the next following month.

Notes.

Indian Railways.—An interesting question presents itself, in connection with the subject of the present chapter—Whether the Revolt would have been possible had the railways been completed? The rebels, it is true, might have forced up or dislocated the rails, or might have tampered with the locomotives. They might, on the other hand, if powerfully concentrated, have used the railways for their own purposes, and thus made them am auxiliary to rebellion. Nevertheless, the balance of probability is in favour of the government—that is, the government would have derived more advantage than the insurgents from the existence of railways between the great towns of India. The difficulties, so great as to be almost insuperable, in transporting troops from one place to another, have been amply illustrated in this and the preceding chapters; we have seen how dâk and palanquin bearers, bullocks and elephants, ekahs and wagons, Ganges steamers and native boats, were brought into requisition, and how painfully slow was the progress made. The 121 miles of railway from Calcutta to Raneegunge were found so useful, in enabling the English soldiers to pass swiftly over the first part of their journey, that there can hardly be a doubt of the important results which would have followed an extension of the system. Even if a less favourable view be taken in relation to Bengal and the Northwest Provinces, the advantages would unquestionably have been on the side of the government in the Bombay and Madras presidencies, where disaffection was shewn only in a very slight degree; a few days would have sufficed to send troops from the south of India by rail, viâ Bombay and Jubbulpoor to Mirzapore, in the immediate vicinity of the regions where their services were most needed.

Although the Raneegunge branch of the East Indian Railway was the only portion open in the north of India, there was a section of the main line between Allahabad and Cawnpore nearly finished at the time of the outbreak. This main line will nearly follow the course of the Ganges, from Calcutta up to Allahabad; it will then pass through the Doab, between the Ganges and the Jumna, to Agra; it will follow the Jumna from Agra up to Delhi; and will then strike off northwestward to Lahore—to be continued at some future time through the Punjaub to Peshawur. During the summer of 1857, the East India Company prepared, at the request of parliament, an exact enumeration of the various railways for which engineering plans had been adopted, and for the share-capital of which a minimum rate of interest had been guaranteed by the government. The document gives the particulars of about 3700 miles of railway in India; estimated to cost £30,231,000; and for which a dividend is guaranteed to the extent of £20,314,000, at a rate varying from 4½ to 5 per cent. The government also gives the land, estimated to be worth about a million sterling. All the works of construction are planned on a principle of solidity, not cheapness; for it is expected they will all be remunerative. Arrangements are everywhere made for a double line of rails—a single line being alone laid down until the traffic is developed. The gauge is nine inches wider than the ‘narrow gauge’ of English railways. The estimated average cost is under £9000 per mile, about one-fourth of the English average.

Leaving out of view, as an element impossible to be correctly calculated, the amount of delay arising from the Revolt, the government named the periods at which the several sections of railway would probably be finished. Instead of shewing the particular portions belonging respectively to the five railway companies—the East Indian, the Great Indian Peninsula, the Bombay and Central India, the Sinde, and the Madras—we shall simply arrange the railways into two groups, north and south, and throw a few of the particulars into a tabulated form.

The plans for an Oude railway were drawn up, comprising three or four lines radiating from Lucknow; but the project had not, at that time, assumed a definite form.

’Headman’ of a Village.—It frequently happened, in connection with the events recorded in the present chapter, that the headman of a village either joined the mutineers against the British, or assisted the latter in quelling the disturbances; according to the bias of his inclination, or the view he took of his own interests. The general nature of the village-system in India requires to be understood before the significancy of the headman’s position can be 120appreciated. Before the British entered India, private property in land was unknown; the whole was considered to belong to the sovereign. The country was divided, by the Mohammedan rulers, into small holdings, cultivated each by a village community under a headman; for which a rent was paid. For convenience of collecting this rent or revenue, zemindars were appointed, who either farmed the revenues, or acted simply as agents for the ruling power. When the Marquis of Cornwallis, as governor-general, made great changes in the government of British India half a century ago, he modified, among other matters, the zemindary; but the collection of revenue remained.

Whether, as some think, villages were thus formed by the early conquerors; or whether they were natural combinations of men for mutual advantage—certain it is that the village-system in the plains of Northern India was made dependent in a large degree on the peculiar institution of caste. ‘To each man in a Hindoo village were appointed particular duties which were exclusively his, and which were in general transmitted to his descendants. The whole community became one family, which lived together and prospered on their public lands; whilst the private advantage of each particular member was scarcely determinable. It became, then, the fairest as well as the least troublesome method of collecting the revenue to assess the whole village at a certain sum, agreed upon by the tehsildar (native revenue collector) and the headman. This was exacted from the latter, who, seated on the chabootra, in conjunction with the chief men of the village, managed its affairs, and decided upon the quota of each individual member. By this means, the exclusive character of each village was further increased, until they have become throughout nearly the whole of the Indian peninsula, little republics; supplied, owing to the regulations of caste, with artisans of nearly every craft, and almost independent of any foreign relations.’^[15]

Not only is the headman’s position and duties defined; but the whole village may be said to be socially organised and parcelled out by the singular operation of the caste principle. Each village manages its internal affairs; taxes itself to provide funds for internal expenses, as well as the revenue due to the state; decides disputes in the first instance; and punishes minor offences. Officers are selected for all these duties; and there is thus a local government within the greater government of the paramount state. One man is the scribe of the village; another, the constable or policeman; a third, the schoolmaster; a fourth, the doctor; a fifth, the astrologer and exorciser; and so of the musician, the carpenter, the smith, the worker in gold or jewels, the tailor, the worker in leather, the potter, the washerman—each considers that he has a prescriptive right to the work in his branch done within the village, and to the payment for that work; and each member of his family participates in this prescriptive right. This village-system is so interwoven with the habits and customs of the Hindoos, that it outlives all changes going on around. Sir T. Metcalfe, who knew India well, said: ‘Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindoo, Patan, Mogul, Mahratta, Sikh, English, are all masters in turn; but the village community remains the same. In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves. If a hostile army passes through the country, the village communities collect their cattle within their walls, and let the enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be directed against themselves, and the force employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly villages at a distance; but when the storm has passed over, they return and resume their occupations. If a country remain for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the village cannot be inhabited, the scattered villages nevertheless return whenever the power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the places of their fathers; the same site for their village, the same positions for the houses, the same lands will be reoccupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when the village was depopulated; and it is not a trifling matter that will drive them out, for they will often maintain their post through times of disturbance and convulsion, and acquire strength sufficient to resist pillage and oppression with success. This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered.’^[16]

It is easily comprehensible how, in village communities thus compactly organised, the course of proceeding adopted by the headman in any public exigency becomes of much importance; since it may be a sort of official manifestation of the tendencies of the villagers generally.

Palanquin.

121

Parade-ground, Cawnpore.

No other events connected with the Revolt in India made so deep an impression on the public mind, or produced so utter an astonishment and dismay, as those relating to Cawnpore—the treachery of an arch-villain, and the sufferings that resulted therefrom. The mystery that for so many weeks veiled the fate of the victims heightened the painful interest; for none in England knew how the troubles in May gave rise to the miseries in June, and these to the horrors of July, until nearly all were dead who could faithfully have recorded the progress of events. Now that the main incidents are known, they come upon the reader almost with the force of a tragic drama; associating themselves in succession with five scenes—the intrenchment, the boats, the ghat, the house of slaughter, the well—the intensity deepening as the plot advances towards its end.

So unutterably revolting were the indignities to which some of the unfortunates were subjected, at Cawnpore as at other places, that no one dared to speak or write fully of them; even men, hardy and world-worn men, almost shrank from whispering the details to each other. Vague generalities of language were employed, in sheer dismay lest the use of precise words should lift too high the veil that hid the hideous scene. So much was this felt, so much were the facts understated, that persons of unblemished moral character almost regretted the reticence of the press. A nobleman held in very high estimation, the Earl of Shaftesbury, on one occasion expressed at a public meeting a wish that the daily journals would proceed one stage further in making the mournful tale known: on the ground that Englishmen, by learning more of the real truth, would appreciate more fully the sufferings of our countrymen and countrywomen, the heroism and Christian patience with which those sufferings were borne, and the necessity for (not vengeance, but) retributive justice on those who had ordered and executed the devilish 122barbarities. It is not a trifling compliment to the delicacy of the English press, that a Christian nobleman should thus have suggested less scruple, less reserve, in the treatment of a most trying subject. In every narrative of these mournful events, the reader feels, and must continue to feel, that the worst is left unsaid.

The first matters to treat are—the locality in which, and the native chieftain by whom, these wrongs were inflicted. Cawnpore, a terrible word to English readers, is the name both of a district and of its chief town. The district, a part of the Doab or delta between the Ganges and the Jumna, is included within the government of the Northwestern Provinces. The city of Cawnpore is on the right bank of the Ganges, about two hundred and seventy miles below Delhi; and the river flows down nearly a thousand miles below this point to Calcutta; the land-distance, however, from Cawnpore to Calcutta is between six and seven hundred miles. The Ganges here is sometimes more than a mile in width at and soon after the rainy season, and is at such time very difficult to be crossed by bodies of troops. Cawnpore is an important city to the British in India, both commercially and in a military sense. The ghat or landing-place, in peaceful times, is a scene of great liveliness and bustle. When Skinner was there, ‘Every description of vessel that can be imagined was collected along the bank. The pinnace, which with its three masts and neat rigging might have passed for a ship; budgerows, the clumsiest of all clumsy things, with their sterns several times higher than their bows; the bauleahs, ugly enough, but lightly skimming along like gondolas compared with the heavy craft around them; the drifting haystacks, which the country-boats appear to be when at a distance, with their native crews straining every nerve upon their summits, and cheering themselves with a wild and not unfrequently a sweet song; panswees shooting swiftly down the stream, with one person only on board, who sits at the head, steering with his right hand, rowing with his foot, and in the left hand holding his pipe. A ferry-boat constantly plying across the stream adds to the variety of the scene, by its motley collection of passengers—travellers, merchants, fakeers, camels, bullocks, and horses—all crowded together. The vessels fastened to the shore are so closely packed, that they appear to be one mass, and, from their thatched roofs and low entrances, might easily pass for a floating village.’ Cawnpore is (or rather was) remarkable in its military arrangements. The cantonment, six miles long by half a mile broad, often contained, before the Revolt, a native population of fifty thousand persons, besides sixty thousand in the city itself, irrespective of military and Europeans. The native infantry of the station encamped here in the cool part of the year, when there were regular streets and squares of canvas stretching over an immense space; each regiment was provided with its bazaar; in the rear and far beyond the lines, were the bivouacs of every kind of camp-followers, in immense numbers. All these, with many hundred bungalows or lodges of officers and European residents, gave great animation to the cantonment. The bungalows, though tiled or thatched, were here, as in other parts of India, large and commodious; each standing pleasantly in the midst of its compound or enclosure, richly planted with grapes, peaches, mangoes, shaddocks, plantains, melons, oranges, limes, guavas, and other fruits especially acceptable in a hot climate. There was accommodation for seven thousand troops, but the number actually stationed there was generally much less. In accordance with the Company’s regulations, the English military officers, whether of European or native regiments, always resided within the cantonment where their services were required; while the civilians, although residing chiefly in the suburbs, had their offices and places of business within the city itself. There were thus, to some extent, two sets of English residents.

The next point to render clear is, the position of the man who so fatally influenced the affairs at Cawnpore in the summer months of 1857. Nena Sahib was his name to an English eye and tongue, and as Nena Sahib he will ever be execrated; but that was his titular or honorary, not his real name, which appears to have been Dhundu Punt or Dhoondhoopunt. When called the Nena or Náná, the Nena Sahib, the Peishwa, the Maharajah, the Nena Bahadoor, he was recognised by one of his oriental titles of honour. Let him to us be the Nena Sahib. There was a motive, however inadequate in the estimate of persons possessing a spark of human feeling, for the black treachery and monstrous cruelty of this man. He had a quarrel with the East India Company: a quarrel which the Company had nearly forgotten, but not he. The disagreement arose out of the prevalent Eastern custom of adoption, in default of legitimate male heirs. Bithoor, a town six or eight miles from Cawnpore, and within the same district, had long been the residence of the chief of the Mahrattas or Peishwa, with whom, as with other native princes, the Company had had many negotiations and treaties. Bithoor itself, a town of about fourteen thousand inhabitants, possesses numerous Hindoo temples, and several ghats or flights of steps giving access to the Ganges, to which the Brahmins and their followers frequently resort for the purpose of ritual ablution. The place is not without fortification, but it does not take rank among the strongholds of India. The last chief, Maharajah Bajee Rao Peishwa, died in 1851; and in consequence of that event, a jaghire or estate, near the town, which had been bestowed upon him during pleasure by the Company, lapsed to the government, and was subjected to the general regulations in force in Cawnpore. Being sonless, he had adopted a son, or indeed two sons—not merely to inherit the vast 123wealth which belonged to him independently of the arrangements with the Company, but also to perform certain filial duties which high-caste Hindoos deem it necessary to their religion that a son should perform. This adoption was legal so far as concerned the Peishwa’s personal property; but the Company would not admit its validity in relation to a pension of £50,000 per annum which he had been in the habit of receiving. A slight obscurity in the wording of an official document led to some doubt on this matter. On the 1st of June 1818, Sir John Malcolm, on the part of the Company, signed a treaty with Bajee Rao, granting a pension to the rajah and his family. This has since been interpreted, by the Bithoor intriguers, as a perpetual grant to the heirs; but there is abundant evidence that Sir John and the Company meant the pension to be for Bajee Rao’s life only, to be shared by his family then living. Nine years afterwards, namely, in 1827, Bajee Rao adopted two children, Suddchoo Rao and Dhundu Punt, the one four years and the other two years and a half old; they were the sons of two Brahmins, natives of the Deccan, who had come to reside at Bithoor about a year before. There is no evidence that Bajee Rao ever considered these two adopted sons, or either of them, entitled to a continuance of the Company’s pension; although Dhundu Punt may very possibly have thrown out frequent hints, to sound the Company on this subject. It has been supposed that when the old King of Delhi was reproclaimed after the Meerut outbreak, he offered to acknowledge the Nena Sahib, Dhundu Punt, as the proper successor of the Peishwa of Bithoor, on condition of receiving his aid and allegiance. This was probably true, but would not suffice, without the incentive of private animosity, to account for his subsequent actions. So little was known of him in England when the Revolt began, that doubt prevailed whether he was really the adopted son of Bajee Rao; some writers asserting that that honour had been conferred upon another Dhundu Punt, and that the Nena himself was the eldest son of the rajah’s subadar, Ramchunder Punt.

If hatred ruled his heart during the six years from 1851 to 1857, he must indeed have been a consummate hypocrite; for the English were always courteously received by him at his petty court, and generally came away impressed in his favour—impressed, however, at the same time, with a conviction that he entertained a sort of hope that the Queen of England would graciously befriend him in his contest with the Calcutta government, the Court of Directors, and the Board of Control, all of whom disputed his adoptive claims. He had a curious taste for mingling the English with the oriental in his palace at Bithoor. An English traveller, who visited him a few years before the Revolt, and was received with an amount of flattery that appeared to have a good deal of shrewd calculation in it, found the rooms set apart for him decked with English furniture arranged in the most incongruous manner—a chest of drawers and a toilet-table in the sitting-room; a piano and a card-table in the bedroom; tent-tables and camp-stools in the same room with elegant drawing-room tables and chairs; a costly clock by the side of cheap japan candlesticks; good prints from Landseer’s pictures, in juxtaposition with sixpenny coloured plates of Wellington and Napoleon; sacred prints, and prints of ballet-girls and Epsom winners—all kinds were mingled indiscriminately, as if simply to make a show. The guest was most struck by the oriental compliments he received from the Nena, and by the odd attempt to provide English furniture where English habits and customs were so little known; yet there were not wanting dark tints to the picture. He heard rumours ‘that two women of rank were kept in a den not far from my apartments, and treated like wild beasts; and that a third, a beautiful young creature, had recently been bricked up in a wall, for no other fault than attempting to escape.’ An agent of the Nena, one Azimullah, resided some time in London, about the year 1855; he came to England to advocate the Nena’s claims, and managed to ingratiate himself with many persons moving in the upper circles of society, by his manifest abilities, his winning grace, his courtesy to all with whom he came into relation. Yet there were strange fits of moody silence observable in him; and when the failure of his mission became evident, he was heard to throw out dark mysterious threats, which were disregarded at the time, but were brought vividly to recollection afterwards, when the deeds of his master forced themselves into notice.

It will presently be seen that Nena Sahib, whatever were his thoughts at the time, did not depart, when the Revolt commenced, from his usual demeanour towards the English; he was courteous to them, and was always courteously saluted by them when he rode past.

How interesting it is—nay, how affecting—to trace the mode in which the unfortunate Europeans at Cawnpore became gradually shut out from communication with the external world; neither knowing what was occurring east and west of them, nor able to communicate news of their own sufferings! In May, messages and letters passed to and from them; in June, authentic intelligence was superseded by painful rumours; in July, a deadly silence was followed by a horrible revelation.

124

Nena Sahib. From a picture painted at Bithoor in 1850, by Mr Beechy, portrait-painter to King of Oude.

When the Meerut and Delhi outbreaks occurred, the attention of the civil and military authorities was turned to the importance of securing Cawnpore: because of its native troops, its store of ammunition, its large treasury, its considerable English population, and its position on the Ganges and the great road. Sir Henry Lawrence, knowing that Sir Hugh Wheeler’s force in European troops was weak, sent him fifty English infantry in the third week in May, and also sent the aid (aid as it was hoped to be) of two squadrons of Oude irregular horse. But Lucknow could ill spare these armed men, and hence the telegrams already briefly adverted to. First, Lawrence to Canning: ‘Cawnpore to be reinforced with all speed. When may her Majesty’s 84th be expected?’ Then Canning to Lawrence: ‘It is impossible to place a wing of Europeans at Cawnpore in less time than twenty-five days.’ Then Wheeler to Canning: ‘All is quiet here, but impossible to say how long it will continue so.’ Next a telegram from Benares, announcing that every possible exertion would be made to send on troops to Cawnpore as fast as they came from Calcutta. Then, on the 25th, Wheeler telegraphed to Canning: ‘Passed anxious night and day, in consequence of a report on very good authority that there would be an outbreak during one or the other. All possible preparations to meet it, but I rejoice to say that none occurred.’ On this, Lawrence sent his earnest message recommending the establishment of ekah dâks—anything at any expense—to carry troops on to Cawnpore. Towards the close of the month, about seventy men of the Queen’s 84th reached the city; and Sir Hugh telegraphed ‘All quiet:’ at the same time making very evident the existence of anxiety on his mind concerning his prospects. The governor-general telegraphed to him: ‘Your anxious position is well understood; and no means have been neglected to give you aid.’ On another day Sir Hugh telegraphed: ‘All quiet still, but I feel by no means certain it will continue so. The civil and military are depending entirely upon me for advice and assistance.’ He announced to Lawrence that he had been obliged to send irregular cavalry to clear the roads of insurgent ruffians; and added, ‘Europeans are arriving but very slowly here.’ The dilemma and doubt were painful to all; for Viscount Canning had few troops to send up from Calcutta, and no facilities for sending them rapidly; while, on the other hand, he did not know that death had cut off General Anson ere an advance could be made to Delhi and Cawnpore from the northwest. Hence such telegrams as the following from Canning to Anson: ‘Cawnpore and Lucknow are severely pressed, and the country between Delhi and 125Cawnpore is passing into the hands of the rebels. It is of the utmost importance to prevent this, and to relieve Cawnpore; but nothing but rapid action will do this.... It is impossible to overrate the importance of shewing European troops between Delhi and Cawnpore.’ Sir Hugh Wheeler’s anxieties did not relate wholly to Cawnpore; he knew that a wide region depended on that city for its continuance in loyalty. By the 2d of June only ninety European troops had reached him. On the next day he telegraphed that the population was much excited, and that unfavourable reports were coming in from the districts between Cawnpore and Lucknow. To make matters worse, Lawrence was becoming weak at the last-named place, and Wheeler sent him fifty-two of his highly cherished English troops—a number that shews how precious, from its scarcity, this military element was regarded by the two commanders. ‘This leaves me weak,’ said Wheeler; and well might he say so. Then occurred the cutting of the telegraph wires on all sides of Cawnpore, and the stoppage of the dâk-runners. After this, all was doubt and mystery, for it was only by stealthy means that letters and messages could leave or enter that city. By degrees there reached the Company’s officers at Lucknow, Allahabad, and Benares, indirect news telling of disaster—of a rebellious rising of the native troops at Cawnpore; of the mutineers being aided and abetted by the Nena Sahib of Bithoor; of all the Europeans taking refuge in an intrenched barrack; of the forlorn band being regularly besieged in that spot; of terrible sufferings being endured; and of the soldiers and civilians, the women and children, being brought to death by numerous privations. The commissioner at Benares, when these rumours of disaster reached him, telegraphed to Calcutta: ‘May God Almighty defend Cawnpore; for no help can we afford.’ And so it was throughout June—Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Agra, all were equally unable to send aid to the beleaguered garrison. Gradually the messages became fewer, and the rumours darker; escaped fugitives and native messengers came in stealthily to one or other of the neighbouring towns; and men talked of a massacre at Cawnpore of English fugitives from Futtehgur, of another massacre of English in boats bound for Calcutta, of women and children placed in confinement, and of Nena Sahib’s cruelty.

Such was the condition of Cawnpore as viewed from without, by those who could necessarily know but little of the truth. Let us now enter and trace the course of events as experienced by the sufferers themselves.

There is abundant evidence that, previous to the actual outbreak at Cawnpore, the native troops—consisting of the 1st, 53d, and 56th B. N. I., and the 2d native cavalry—were much agitated by the rumours of mutiny elsewhere; and that the European inhabitants felt sensibly the paucity of English soldiers at that place. A lady, the wife of the magistrate and collector of Cawnpore—one of those who, with all her family, were barbarously slaughtered in cold blood a few weeks afterwards—writing to her friends on the 15th of May, said: ‘Cawnpore is quiet, and the regiments here are stanch; but there is no saying that they would remain long so if they came in contact with some of their mutinous brethren. We have only about a hundred European soldiers here altogether, and six guns.... Down-country, from Meerut to Dinapore, there is but one regiment of Europeans, of which we have a hundred.’ Nevertheless, although the sepoys at Cawnpore were restless, an impression prevailed that, even if they joined in the mutiny, and marched off to Delhi, they would not inflict any injury on the military commander, Sir Hugh Wheeler, or the other English officers, who were much respected by them. The general thought it right to obtain correct though secret information from spies who mixed among the men in the cantonment; and these spies reported that the three infantry regiments, except a few refractory sepoys, appeared well disposed towards the government; whereas the 2d native cavalry, discontented and surly, had sent their families to their homes, to be out of danger, and were in the habit of holding nightly meetings or punchayets (a kind of jury of five persons, one of the Hindoo institutions of very ancient formation), in their lines, to concert measures of insubordination. These troopers endeavoured to bring over the foot regiments to a scheme for rising in revolt, seizing the government treasure, marching off to Delhi, and presenting that treasure to the newly restored Mogul as a token of their allegiance. The European inhabitants were numerous; for they comprised not only the officers and civilians with their families, but European merchants, missionaries, engineers, pensioners, &c., and also many nonresidents, who had either come to Cawnpore from parts of the country supposed to be less protected, or had been stopped there on their way up-country by the mutineers in the Doab. These, relying on the report concerning the apparently favourable feeling among the native infantry, made no immediate attempt to quit the place. Sir Hugh Wheeler, however, did not deem it consistent with his duty to remain unprepared. Cawnpore is built on a dead level, without stronghold or place of refuge, and could not long be held against a rebel besieging force; the cantonment was at a considerable distance; and the general resolved on making some sort of defensive arrangement irrespective both of the city and the cantonment. He secured sufficient boats to convey the whole of the Europeans down the Ganges if danger should appear; and he formed a plan for protection at night in an intrenched position. This stronghold, if so it may be called, afterwards rendered memorable as ‘the Intrenchment,’ was a square plot of ground on the grand military parade, measuring about two hundred yards in each direction; within it were two barrack hospitals, a few other buildings, and a well; while the boundary was formed 126by a trench and parapet or breastwork of earth, intended to be armed and defended in case of attack. The intrenchment was entirely distinct both from the city and from the cantonment, and was further from the Ganges than either of them, about a quarter of a mile out of the Allahabad and Cawnpore high road. On the side of it furthest from the river were several barracks in course of construction. It was not intended that the European civilians should at once enter the intrenchment, but that they should regard that spot as a place of shelter in time of need. Sir Hugh brought into this place a supply of grain, rice, salt, sugar, tea, coffee, rum, beer, &c., calculated at thirty days’ consumption for one thousand persons. He gave orders to the assistant-commissary to blow up the magazine if a mutiny should take place; while the collector was instructed to convey all the Company’s cash, estimated at ten or twelve lacs of rupees, from the treasury in the city to the cantonment—an instruction which, as we shall see, he was able only to obey in part. As another precaution, the executive commissariat and pay-officers, with all their records and chests, were removed into bungalows adjacent to the intrenchment. There is reason to believe that the ringleaders among the native troops sought to terrify the rest into mutiny by representing that the digging, which had been seen actively in progress at the intrenchment, was the beginning of the construction of a series of mines, intended to blow them all up.

One of the most painful considerations associated with these events in May was, that the heartless man who afterwards wrought such misery was trustingly relied upon as a friend. The magistrate’s wife, in a series of letters before adverted to, wrote under date May 16th: ‘Should the native troops here mutiny, we should either go into cantonments, or to a place called Bithoor, where the Peishwa’s successor resides. He is a great friend of C——‘s [the magistrate’s], and is a man of enormous wealth and influence; and he has assured C—— that we should all be quite safe there. I myself would much prefer going to the cantonment, to be with the other ladies; but C—— thinks it would be better for me and our precious children to be at Bithoor.’ Again, on the 18th: ‘If there should be an outbreak here, dearest C—— has made all the necessary arrangements for me and the children to go to Bithoor. He will go there himself, and, with the aid of the rajah, to whose house we are going, he will collect and head a force of fifteen hundred fighting-men, and bring them into Cawnpore to take the insurgents by surprise. This is a plan of their own, and is quite a secret; for the object of it is to come on the mutineers unawares.’ Here, then, in the month of May, was Nena Sahib plotting with the English against the mutineers. It was on the 20th that Sir Hugh, rendered uneasy by the symptoms around, sent to Lucknow for three hundred European soldiers; but as Sir Henry Lawrence could hardly spare one-sixth of that number, arrangements were made for accommodating as many English families as possible in the cantonment, and for fitting up the intrenchment as a place of refuge. On the 21st, the magistrate, with Wheeler’s consent, wrote to the Nena, begging him to send the aid of a few of his Mahratta troops. The native soldiers being hutted in the cantonment, and the few English soldiers barracked in the intrenchment, it was speedily determined that—while the English officers should sleep at the cantonment, to avoid shewing distrust of the native troops—their wives and families, and most of the civilians, should remain at night in the intrenchment, under protection of English soldiers. On the first night of this arrangement, ‘there were an immense number of ladies and gentlemen assembled in the intrenchment; and oh! what an anxious night it was! The children added much to our distress and anxiety,’ said the lady whose letters were lately quoted; ‘it was some hours before I could get them to sleep. I did not lie down the whole night. Extraordinary it was, and most providential too, that we had a thunderstorm that night, with a good deal of rain, which cooled the air a little; had it not been for this, we should have suffered much more.’ An English officer, in relation to this same night, said: ‘Nearly all the ladies in the station were roused out of their houses, and hurried off to the barracks. The scene in the morning you can imagine. They were all huddled together in a small building, just as they had left their houses. On each side were the guns drawn up; the men had been kept standing by them all night through the rain, expecting an instant attack. There are few people now in the station but believe this attack had been intended, and had merely been delayed on finding us so well prepared.’ On the last day of the month—a day that seems to have ended all communication from this hapless lady to her friends in England—she wrote: ‘We are now almost in a state of siege. We sleep every night in a tent pitched by the barracks, with guns behind and before. We are intrenched, and are busy getting in a month’s provisions in case of scarcity. For the first four or five nights, we scarcely closed our eyes.... Last night, the sepoys of the 1st regiment threatened to mutiny, and poor Mrs Ewart was in dreadful distress when Colonel Ewart went to sleep in the lines, according to orders; and he himself fully expected to be killed before morning; but, thank God, all passed off quietly. The general remains in the barracks day and night, to be at hand if anything should happen. We still pass the day at the Ewarts’ house; but at night every one returns to the barracks, which is a wretched place.... Poor Mrs —— has quite lost her reason from terror and excitement. Oh! it is a hard trial to bear, and almost too much; but the sight of the children gives us strength and courage.’

Colonel Ewart, mentioned in the above 127paragraph, and Major Hillersdon, were the commandants of the 1st and 53d native regiments, respectively; they lived in pleasant bungalows outside Cawnpore; but at this perilous time they slept near their men in the cantonment, while their families took refuge within the intrenchment. Mrs Ewart—destined, like the magistrate’s wife, to be in a few weeks numbered among the outraged and slaughtered—wrote like her of the miseries of their position, even at that early period of their privation. Speaking of the interior of the intrenchment, she said: ‘We have a tent, which is, of course, more private and comfortable for the night; and at present there is no occasion to spend days as well as nights there, though many people do so. This is fortunate, since the weather is fearfully hot. God grant that we may not be exposed to such suffering as a confinement within that intrenchment must entail; even should we be able to bear it, I know not how our poor little ones could go through the trial.’ The general feelings of the English in the place towards the close of May cannot be better conveyed than in the following words: ‘We are living face to face with great and awful realities—life and property most insecure, enemies within our camp, treachery and distrust everywhere. We can scarcely believe in the change which has so suddenly overcast all the pleasant repose and enjoyment of life. We are almost in a state of siege, with dangers all around us—some seen, some hidden.... Major Hillersdon joins us daily at our four o’clock dinner, and we stay together till half-past seven, when we go to our melancholy night-quarters, behind guns and intrenchments. My husband betakes himself to his couch in the midst of his sepoys; and you can fancy the sort of nights we have to pass. These are real trials, but we have not experienced much actual physical suffering yet.’ In another letter she further described the intrenchment and barracks as they were at night: ‘We returned to those melancholy night-quarters. Oh, such a scene! Men, officers, women and children, beds and chairs, all mingled together inside and outside the barracks; some talking or even laughing, some very frightened, some defiant, others despairing. Such sickening sights these for peaceful women; and the miserable reflection that all is caused not by open foes, but by the treachery of those we had fed and pampered, honoured and trusted, for so many years.’ Colonel Ewart, in probably the last letter received from him by his friends in England, wrote on the 31st: ‘The treasury, containing some ten or twelve lacs of rupees, is situated five miles from the cantonment. It has hitherto been thought inexpedient to bring the treasure into the cantonment; but the general has now resolved on making the attempt to-morrow. Please God, he will succeed. He is an excellent officer, very determined, self-possessed in the midst of danger, fearless of responsibility—that terrible bugbear that paralyses so many men in command.’ This was the character generally given to Sir Hugh Wheeler, who was much liked and trusted. The state of suspense in which the officers themselves were placed, not knowing whether revolt and outrage would speedily mark the conduct of regiments that had up to that moment remained faithful, was well expressed in a letter written by one of the infantry officers: ‘I only wish that I might get orders to go out with my regiment, or alone with my company, against some of the mutineers; so that we could put the men to the test, and see whether they really mean to stick to us or not, and end this state of suspense.’

Numerous scraps of local information, portions of letters, diaries, conversations, and scarcely intelligible messages, in English, Hindustani, and Persian, help to make up the materials out of which alone a connected narrative of the events at Cawnpore can be prepared. These would all have been very insufficient, had it not fortunately happened that an officer of the Company, an educated man, lived to record upon paper his experience of four weeks spent in the intrenchment, and three subsequent weeks of imprisonment in the city. This was Mr Shepherd, belonging to the commissariat department. How his life was saved, and how those dear to him were savagely butchered, will be seen further on; at present, it will suffice to remark that he lived to prepare, for the information of the government, a record of all he knew on this dreadful subject; and that the record thus prepared contains more information than any other brought to light amid that dismal wreck of human hopes and human existence.

When the month of June opened, symptoms became so unfavourable that the non-military Christian residents thought it expedient to move from the city, and obtain shelter in the English church and other buildings near the intrenchment. Day after day small portions of cash, and Company’s papers of various kinds, were brought by the commissariat officers to head-quarters. The collector, acting on Sir Hugh’s instructions, had endeavoured to bring the Company’s treasure from the city to the intrenchment; but he met too much opposition to enable him to effect this, save in part; and the aid of three or four hundred men was obtained from Nena Sahib, to guard the treasury and its contents. What was passing through the heart of that treacherous man at the time, none but himself could know; but the English officers, whether forgetful or not of his grudge against the Company, seem to have acted as though they placed reliance on him. On the 3d, it being thought improper to keep any public money under the sepoy guard at the office, the commissariat treasure-chest, containing about thirty-four thousand rupees in cash, together with numerous papers and account-books, was brought into the intrenchment, and placed in the quarter-guard there. In short, nothing was deemed safe by Wheeler and the other officials, unless it was under their own immediate care.

128

The Intrenchment at Cawnpore.

On the 5th of June arrived the crisis which was to tax to the utmost the firmness and courage, the tact and discrimination, the kindness and thoughtfulness, of the general on whom so many lives now depended. He had appealed, and appealed in vain, for reinforcements from other quarters: no one possessed troops that could readily be sent to him; and he had therefore to meet his troubles manfully, with such resources as were at hand. At two o’clock in the morning, after a vain attempt to draw the native infantry from their allegiance, the 2d cavalry rose in a body, gave a great shout, mounted their horses, set fire to the bungalow of their quarter-master-sergeant, and took possession of thirty-six elephants in the commissariat cattle-yard. The main body then marched off towards Nawabgunge; while the ringleaders remained behind to assail once more the honesty of the infantry. The 1st regiment N. I. yielded to the temptation, and marched out of the lines about three o’clock; but before doing so, the sepoys shewed a lingering affection for the English officers of the regiment; those officers had for some time been in the habit of sleeping in the quarter-guard of the regiment, to indicate their confidence in the men; and now the men begged them—nay, forced them—to go into the intrenchment, as a means of personal safety. An alarm gun was fired, and all the non-combatants were brought from the church-compound into the intrenchment—a necessary precaution, for burning bungalows were seen in various directions. A few days previously, a battery of Oude horse-artillery had been sent from Lucknow by Lawrence to aid Wheeler at Cawnpore; and this battery was, about seven o’clock on the eventful morning of the 5th, ordered with a company of English troops to pursue the two mutinous regiments. But here a dilemma at once presented itself. Could the 53d and 56th regiments be relied upon? Sir Hugh thought not; and therefore he countermanded the order for the pursuit of the other two regiments. The wisdom of this determination was soon shewn; for about ten o’clock the whole of the native officers of the 53d and 56th came to the general and announced that their hold over the fidelity of the men was gone. While they were yet speaking, a bugle was heard, and the two regiments were seen to march off to join their companions at Nawabgunge; any attempt on the English being checked by the pointing of a gun at them. The apparently faithful native officers were directed to organise a few stragglers who had not joined the mutineers; they left the intrenchment for this purpose, but did not return: whether they joined in the revolt, or went quietly to their own homes to avoid the resentment of the sepoys, was not fully known. As soon as possible, carts were sent to the cantonment to bring away the sick from the hospital, and such muskets and other property as might be useful. In consequence of 129this, the two hospitals or barracks in the intrenchment became very much crowded, many of the people being compelled to sleep in the open air through want of room. All the civilians were then armed, and directed what they should do for the common good. The Oude artillery, shewing signs of being smitten by the prevailing mania for revolt, were disarmed and dismissed that same evening.

Plan of Sir H. Wheeler’s Intrenchment at Cawnpore. From an official survey.

The scene must now be shifted, to shew Nena Sahib’s share in the work. Rumours came to the intrenchment that when the rebels reached Nawabgunge, he quitted Bithoor and came out to meet them; that he placed himself at their head; that they all went together to the treasury; that he carried off a large amount of government treasure on the government elephants; and that he gave up the rest to the sepoys as a prize. Thereupon the papers were burnt, and the treasury and the collector’s office destroyed. The sepoys guarding the magazine would not allow that building to be blown up by the government officer; the mutineers brought as many country carts as they could procure, and carried off a considerable quantity of baggage and ammunition. All then marched off to Kullianpore, being one stage on the road to Delhi, except a few troopers who remained to finish the work of destruction among the bungalows. The Oude artillery, lately disarmed and dismissed by Wheeler, now went to Nena Sahib, and laid before him a plan for attacking the intrenchment, concerning which they were able to give much information. They reported that the cantonment contained many guns, and much powder and ammunition, with which the intrenchment might safely be attacked. There was another fact favourable to the rebels. One end of the great Ganges Canal enters the river near Cawnpore; and it had been contemplated by the government to send a large store of shot and shell by that canal up to Roorkee, through Allygurh and Meerut; but as the Doab and Rohilcund were in too disturbed a state to permit this, thirty-five boats laden with shot and shell were this day lying in the canal near the cantonment. This large store of ammunition the rebel artillerymen suggested should be at once seized; and the advice was acted on. A native inhabitant, who afterwards gave information to the English, said that when the Nena openly took part with the rebels, he released four hundred prisoners in the town, whose fetters he ordered to be knocked off; ‘and having opened the door of the armoury, he gave the order that whatever 130prisoner was willing to follow him should arm himself with gun, pistol, or sword, as he liked best’—a story highly probable, though not within the power of Mr Shepherd to confirm. Before the Nena finally committed himself to a course of rebellion and war, the 1st native infantry made their head subadar a general; and the general then promoted all the havildars and naiks to be subadars and jemadars.

Two officers of the 56th regiment were fortunate enough to be away from Cawnpore and the cantonment altogether, on the day of the mutiny. They had been sent with two hundred men to Ooral, a village or town at some distance, on the 2d of June. When that regiment mutinied at the cantonment, and when the news of the mutiny reached Ooral, the two hundred did not long delay in following their example. The officers, seeing their danger, at once galloped off, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs, and their swords and revolvers. Their tale was as full of adventure as many that have already occupied these pages. They found their way to Calpee, to Humeerpoor, to various places; they met with two brother-officers escaping from mutineers at Humeerpoor; the four rowed boats, swam rivers, entered villages where they were plundered of their weapons and clothes, roamed through jungles, fed on chupatties and water when they could obtain such fare, picked up bits of native clothing, encountered friendly Hindoos at one time and marauding enemies at another. Of the two officers from Cawnpore, one died mad in the jungle, from heat, thirst, and suffering; but the other, Ensign Browne, joined the body of English troops at Futtehpoor, after thirty-seven days of wandering. All the other English officers of the four native regiments appear to have been at or near Cawnpore at the time of the outbreak; and all were called upon to bear their bitter share in the woes that followed—woes rendered more distressing by falling equally on innocent women and children as on themselves—nay, much more heavily.

The sun rose upon an anxious scene on the 6th of June. Sir Hugh Wheeler and nearly all the Europeans—men, women, and children—military, civilians, and servants—were crowded within the intrenchment; while the rebel troops, four regiments and an artillery battery, had not only abandoned their allegiance, but were about to besiege those who were lately their masters. The rebels brought into requisition all the government work-people and the bullocks, in the town and cantonment, to drag guns into position near the intrenchment, and to convey thither a store of powder and ammunition. They brought six guns (two of them 18-pounders) to bear in a line, and opened fire about ten o’clock in the forenoon. Instantly a bugle sounded within the intrenchment; and every man, from the highest officers down to the clerks and the drummers, flew to arms, and took up the position assigned to him. There was only a breast-high earthen parapet, bounded by a small trench, between the besiegers and the besieged: hence there was nothing but indomitable courage and unceasing watchfulness that could enable the English to hold their own against the treacherous native troops. Here, then, were nine hundred persons^[17] hemmed into a small space, forming their citadel, while the surrounding country was wholly in the hands of the rebels. Out of the nine hundred, barely one-third were fighting-men; while considerably more than one-third were women and children, to be fed and protected at all hazards. The few guns within the intrenchment answered those from without; but all the men not employed with those guns crouched down behind the breastwork, under the hot wind and scorching sun of a June day, ready to defend the spot with musketry if a nearer attack were made. The rebels did not attempt this; they adopted the safer course of bringing up their guns nearer to the beleaguered place. Sir Hugh Wheeler had eight pieces of ordnance—two brass guns of the Oude battery, two long 9-pounders, and four smaller; he had also a good store of ammunition, buried underground, and had thus a defensive power of some importance. On the other hand, his anxieties were great; for one of the two buildings (they had been used as hospitals for European troops) was thatched, liable to be fired by a chance shot; the commissariat officers were unable to bring in more supplies; the shelter was direfully insufficient for nine hundred persons in a fierce Indian climate; and the women and children could do little or nothing to assist in the defence of all.

The native informant, above adverted to, states that when Nena Sahib found the mutineers about to depart to Delhi, ‘he represented to the native officers that it would not be correct to proceed towards Delhi until they had entirely destroyed the officers and European soldiers, and women and children of the Christian religion; and that they should, if possible, by deceiving the officers, accomplish this grand object, or they would be good for nothing.’ Such words were certainly consistent with the machinations of a villain who sought a terrible revenge for some injury, real or pretended; but they do not the less illustrate the remarkable subtlety and secretiveness of the Hindoo character, so long concealing a deadly hatred under a friendly exterior. This same native, who was in Cawnpore at the time, further said: ‘In the city it was as if the day of judgment had come, when the sepoys of 131the infantry and the troopers of the cavalry, the jingling of whose sword-scabbards and the tread of whose horses’ feet resounded on all sides, proceeded with guns of various sizes, and ammunition, from the magazine through the suburbs of Cawnpore towards the intrenchment.’ In relation to the conduct of native servants of the Company on that day, Mr Shepherd said: ‘None of the native writers, Bengalees and others in government offices or merchants’ employ, went into the intrenchment; they remained in the city, where they appear to have received much annoyance from the mutineers; and some had to hide themselves to save their lives. The (native) commissariat contractors’ [those who supplied provisions and stores for the troops, ordered and paid for by the head commissary] ‘all discontinued their supplies from the 6th; or rather, were unable to bring them in, from the way the mutineers surrounded the intrenchment on all sides, permitting no ingress or egress at any time except under cover of night.’ Those natives must, in truth, have been placed in a perplexing position, between employers whom they wished to serve but could not, and rebels who sought to tamper with their honesty.

Another day broke, revealing a further strengthening of the rebels’ attack. They increased their number of guns, four of which were 24-pounders; and with the shot from these guns not only were many valuable men struck down, but the walls and verandahs of the hospitals pierced, spreading terror among the helpless inmates. There was but one well within the intrenchment; and so hot was the fire from without, that, to use the words of Mr Shepherd, ‘it was as much as giving a man’s life-blood to go and draw a bucket of water; and while there was any water remaining in the large jars, usually kept in the verandah for the soldiers’ use, nobody ventured to the well; but after the second day, the demand became so great that a bheestee bag of water was with difficulty got for five rupees, and a bucket for a rupee. Most of the servants deserted, and it therefore became a matter of necessity for every person to fetch his own water, which was usually done during the night, when the enemy could not well direct their shots.’ What was the degree of thirst borne under these circumstances, none but the forlorn garrison could ever know. As there was no place under which to shelter live cattle, some of the animals were let loose, and others slaughtered; entailing a necessary exhaustion of meat-rations after three or four days. The commissariat servants, however, now and then managed to get hold of a stray bullock or cow near the intrenchment at night, which served for a change. Not only was it difficult to obtain suitable food to eat, but the native servants took every opportunity to escape, and the cooking was in consequence conducted under very sorry conditions.

The tale of accumulated suffering need not, and indeed cannot, be followed day by day: several days must be grouped together, and the general character of the incidents noted—so far as authentic recitals furnish the materials. Meat, as has just been intimated, soon became scarce; hogsheads of rum and malt liquor were frequently burst by cannon-balls, but the supply still remained considerable; chupatties and rice were the chief articles of food for all. The English found their troubles increase in every way: the rebels at first fired only cannon on them; but by degrees, after burning the English church and all other buildings around and near the intrenchment, the sepoys masked themselves behind the ruined walls, and kept up an almost incessant fire of musketry, shooting down many who might have escaped the cannon-balls. There were seven unfinished barracks outside the intrenchment, three of them at about a furlong distance. These were scenes of many an exciting encounter. Captain Moore of the 32d foot, a gallant and intrepid officer, often encountered the rebels near those places. He would send some of his men, with field-telescopes, to watch the position of the enemy’s guns, from the roof of one of the barracks, as a guidance for the besieged; and as soon as these men were attacked, a handful of gallant companions would rush out of the intrenchment, and drive off the assailants with a fire of musketry. The enemy having no cannon on this side, a sort of drawn battle ensued: the besiegers holding three or four of the barracks, and the besieged maintaining a hold of the three nearest to the intrenchment After a while, the enemy brought one gun round to this quarter; but twenty English made a sortie at midnight on the 11th, spiked the gun, and returned safely. Whenever fighting on anything like terms of equality took place, the European troops proved themselves a match for many times their number of natives; but any daring achievements for effectual liberation were rendered nugatory by the presence of so many helpless women and children, whose safety was the first thought in the minds of the men, whether civilians or military. Numbers of the poor creatures died within the first week, from illness, heat, fright, want of room, want of proper food and care. In the obituary of many an English newspaper, when news of the terrible calamity had crossed the ocean, might be read that such a one, probably an officer’s wife, had ‘died in the intrenchment at Cawnpore;’ what that intrenchment meant, few readers knew, and fewer knew what sufferings had preceded the death. The dead bodies were thrown into a well outside the intrenchment, lest they should engender disease by any mode of burial within the crowded and stifling enclosure; and even this sad office could only be rendered under a shower of shot and shell. ‘The distress was so great,’ says Mr Shepherd, ‘that none could offer a word of consolation to his friend, or attempt to administer to the wants of each other. I have seen the dead bodies of officers, and tenderly brought-up young ladies of rank (colonels’ and 132captains’ daughters), put outside the verandah amongst the rest, to await the time when the fatigue-party usually went round to carry the dead to the well; for there was scarcely room to shelter the living.’

During all these days, Cawnpore itself, and the country between it and the intrenchment, became prey to a marauding host of sepoys, liberated prisoners, and ruffians of every kind. The native before adverted to, one Nujeer Jewarree, referring to this period, said: ‘In whatever shop the sepoys entered to ask for sugar or rice, they plundered everything belonging to the citizen that they could find; so much so, that plunder and oppression were the order of the day. Every violent man did what came into his mind; and the troopers got possession of a note, the value of which amounted to twenty-five thousand rupees, belonging to Eman-u-Dowlah and Bakir Ali. One troop, or thereabouts, left the cantonment and proceeded to the buildings in which the civil and revenue and judicial courts were held, and commenced firing them. In the city and gardens there was so much villainy committed that travelling became dangerous, and to kill a man was quite easy. They (the marauders) committed deeds of oppression and plundered each other; some forcibly cut the grain out of the fields, and others were occupied in picking up plundered property. He then spoke of the houses and offices of certain English merchants and traders—Greenway, Crump, Mackintosh, Reid, Marshall, Kirk, &c.—and of the ‘lacs’ of treasure that were plundered from each; too vaguely estimated to be relied on in detail, but evidently denoting a scene of unscrupulous pillage. Another native, Nerput, presently to be noticed more particularly, said: ‘Zemindars of the neighbourhood are fighting among themselves in payment of old quarrels; sepoys, making for their homes with plundered treasure, have been deprived of their plunder, and, if any opposition is made, immediately murdered. Such few Europeans as had remained beyond the intrenchment, were caught and put to death.’

The native authority just referred to states (although the statement is not confirmed by Mr Shepherd), that on the 9th of June Sir Hugh Wheeler sent a message to Nena Sahib, demanding why he had thus turned against the English, who had hitherto been treated by him in a friendly spirit; and why he was causing the death of innocent women and children—to which the Nena gave no other reply than from the cannon’s mouth.

One day was so much like another, after the actual commencement of the siege, that the various narrators make little attempt to record the particular events of each. Every day brought its miseries, until the cup nearly overflowed. The food was lessening; the water was difficult to obtain; strength was sinking; lives were being rapidly lost; the miscreant rebels were accumulating in greater and greater number outside the intrenchment; the two buildings were becoming every day more and more riddled with shot; the wounded had their wretchedness increased by the absence of almost everything needful to the comfort of the sick; the hearts of the men were wrung with anguish at seeing the sufferings borne by the women; and the women found their resolution and patience terribly shaken when they saw their innocent little ones dying from disease and want.

A scene was presented on the 13th that filled every one with horror. The officers and their families had hitherto lived chiefly in tents, within the intrenchment; but the rebels now began to fire red-hot shot, which not only necessitated the removal of the tents, but ignited the thatch-roof of one of the two hospitals. This building contained the wives and children of the common soldiers, and the sick and wounded. The flames spread so rapidly, and the dire confusion among the wretched creatures was such, that forty of the helpless invalids were burned to death before aid could reach them. The rebels appeared to have calculated on all the men within the intrenchment rushing to save the victims from the flames, leaving the besiegers to enter with musket and sword; and so threatening was the attack, so close the approach of the enemy, that the Europeans were forced to remain watchful at their frail earthen defence-work, despite their wish to rescue the shrieking sufferers in the hospital. Nearly all the medicines and the surgical instruments were at the same time destroyed by the fire, affording a hopeless prospect to those who might afterwards fall ill or be wounded. The rebels by this time amounted to four thousand in number, and their attacks increased in frequency and closeness; but the besieged had not yielded an inch; every man within the intrenchment, a few only excepted, was intrusted with five or six muskets, all of which were kept ready loaded, to pour a fire into any insurgents who advanced within musket-shot. Bayonets and swords were also ready at hand, for those who could use them. The condition of every one was rendered more deplorable than before by this day’s calamity; the fire had wrought such mischief that many of the men, who had until then occasionally sheltered themselves under a roof for a few hours at a time, were now forced to remain permanently in the open air, exposed to a fierce Indian sun at a date only one week before the summer solstice. That many were struck down by coup de soleil at such a time may well be conceived. The poor ladies, too, and the wives of the soldiers, were rendered more desolate and comfortless than ever, by the destruction of much of their clothing during the fire, as well as of many little domestic comforts which they had contrived to bring with them in their hurried flight from their homes in the city or the cantonment.

What transpired outside the intrenchment, none of the captives knew; and even at later times it was difficult to ascertain the real truth. The 133native chronicler already referred to speaks of many deeds of cruelty, but without affording means of verification. On one day, he says, a family was seen approaching from the west in a carriage; the husband was at once killed; the others, ‘one lady and one grown-up young lady and three children,’ were brought before the Nena, who ordered them to be instantly put to death. ‘The lady begged the Nena to spare her life; but this disgraceful man would not in any way hearken to her, and took them all into the plain. At that time the sun was very hot, and the lady said: “The sun is very hot, take me into the shade;” but no one listened. On four sides the children were catching hold of their mother’s gown and saying: “Mamma, come to the bungalow and give me some bread and water.” At length, having been tied hand to hand, and made to stand up on the plain, they were shot down by pistol-bullets.’ This story, touching amid all its quaintness of recital, was probably quite true in its main features. Another lady, whom he calls the wife of Mukan Sahib, merchant, and who had been hiding for four or five days in the garden of her bungalow, ‘came out one evening, and was discovered. She had through fear changed her appearance by putting on an Hindustani bodice, and folding a towel around her head. She was taken before the Nena, who ordered her to be killed. The writer of this journal having gone in person, saw the head of that lady cut off, and presented as a nazir (gift of royalty).’ There can be no question that the vicinity of Cawnpore was at that time in a frightful state. Not only were mutinous sepoys and sowars engaged in hostilities against the ‘Feringhees,’ whom they had so lately served, and whose ‘salt’ they had eaten; but many of the ambitious petty rajahs and chieftains took advantage of the anarchy to become leaders on their own special account; plunderers and released prisoners were displaying all their ferocious recklessness; while timid, sneaking villagers, too cowardly to be openly aggressive, were in many instances quite willing to look complacently at deeds of savage brutality, if those deeds might leave a little loot, or plunder, as their share. Consequently, when any English refugees from other towns passed that way, their chance of safety was small indeed.

Before tracing the course of events in the intrenchment during the third week in June, we must advert to another calamity. The griefs and sufferings endured by the English soldiers and residents at Cawnpore did not fill up the measure of Nena Sahib’s iniquity. Another stain rests on his name in connection with the fate of an unfortunate body of fugitives from Futteghur. It is an episode in the great Cawnpore tragedy; and must be narrated in this place, in connection with the events of the month.

Futteghur, as will be seen by reference to a map, is situated higher up the Ganges than Cawnpore, near Furruckabad. Practically, it is not so much a distinct town, as the military station or cantonment for the place last named. Furruckabad itself is a city of sixty thousand inhabitants; handsome, cleaner, and more healthy than most Indian cities, carrying on a considerable trading and banking business, and standing in the centre of a fertile and cultivated region. It has no other fortifications than a sort of mud-fort connected with the native nawab’s residence. When this nawab became, like many others, a stipendiary of the modern rulers of India, the British built a military cantonment at Futteghur, about three miles distant, on the right bank of the river. Towards the close of May, Futteghur contained the 10th regiment Bengal native infantry, together with a few other native troops. Among the chief English officers stationed there, were General Goldie, Colonels Smith and Tucker; Majors Robertson, Phillot, and Munro; Captains Phillimore and Vibert; Lieutenants Simpson, Swettenham, and Fitzgerald; and Ensigns Henderson and Eckford. The troops displayed much insubordination as the month closed; and on the 3d of June the symptoms were so threatening, that it was deemed prudent to arrange for sending off the women and children for safety to Cawnpore—in ignorance that the Europeans in that city were in a still more perilous state. Boats had already been procured, and held in readiness for any such exigency. On the next day the 10th infantry exhibited such ominous signs of mutiny, that a large party of the English at once took to their boats. After a short voyage, finding the natives on the banks of the Ganges likely to be troublesome, the fugitives resolved on separating themselves into two parties; one, headed by Mr Probyn, the Company’s collector, and consisting of about forty persons, sought refuge with a friendly zemindar named Herden Buksh, living about twelve miles from Futteghur, on the Oude side of the river; while the other party proceeded on the voyage down the Ganges to Cawnpore. This last-named party amounted to more than a hundred and twenty persons, nearly all non-combatants; missionaries, merchants, indigo planters, estate stewards, agents, collectors, clerks, shopkeepers, schoolmasters, post and dâk agents—such were the male members of this hapless band of fugitives; most of them had wives; and the children far exceeded the adults in number. It is pitiable, knowing as we now know the fate that was in store for them, to read such entries as the following, in a list of the occupants of the boats—‘Mr and Mrs Elliott and five children;’ ‘Mr and Mrs Macklin and eight children;’ ‘Mr and Mrs Palmer and nine children.’

So few persons survived from Futteghur, that it is not certain at what places and on what days they separated into parties; nor how many lives were lost on the way; but there is evidence that while some pursued their way down the Ganges without much interruption until they reached Bithoor, others went back to Futteghur. This 134retrograde movement was due to two causes; for while, on the one hand, the officers trusted to a report that the sepoys had returned to a sense of their duty; Herden Buksh, on the other, was threatened by the Oude mutineers if he harboured any of the English. We will follow the fortunes of this second party. From about the 12th to the 18th of June there was a lull in the station; but on the last-named day the 10th infantry broke out in earnest, and being joined by the mutinous 41st from the other side of the Ganges, seized the treasure and threatened the officers. There were about a hundred Europeans now in the place; and as the river was at the time too low to render a boat-voyage to Cawnpore safe, it was resolved to defend a post or fort at Futteghur, and there remain till succour arrived. Out of the hundred there were scarcely more than thirty fighting-men, so numerous were the women and children; nevertheless, Colonel Smith, of the 10th, organised the whole, and prepared for the worst. He had a fair store both of ammunition and of food within the fort. Until the 4th of July they maintained a manly struggle against the mutineers, holding their fort until they could hold it no longer. Colonel Tucker and one of the civil officers were shot in the head while acting as artillerymen; General Goldie was slightly wounded, as was likewise one of his daughters; and many other casualties occurred. The besieged had great difficulty in making a covered-way to protect their servants, to enable them to pass to and fro with the meals for the ladies and children, who were collected in a room or godown overlooked by a two-storied house held by the insurgents. Then commenced a voyage full of miseries, in boats that contained all the Europeans still remaining at that spot. First the rebels fired on the boats as they rowed along; then one of the boats ran aground; then a boatful of rebels approached, and the ladies in the stranded boat jumped overboard to avoid capture. Death by bullets, death by drowning, took place every hour; and the fugitives were thrown into such dire confusion that none could help the rest. Some crept on shore, and wandered about the fields to escape detection; others found shelter under friendly roofs; one boat-load succeeded in prosecuting their voyage down to Cawnpore, or rather Bithoor.

There were thus two sets of Futteghur fugitives; one that reached the clutches of the Nena towards the middle of June; the other, much smaller, that was spared that fate until the middle of July. So complete was the destruction of both, however; so sweeping the death-stroke hurled against them by Nena Sahib, that the details of their fate have been but imperfectly recorded. Towards the close of June, Mr Court and Colonel Neill, at Allahabad, received information touching the events at Cawnpore from a native named Nerput, an opium gomashta or agent at the last-named city; he gave them or sent them a narrative written in Persian, portions of which were afterwards translated and published among the official papers. Nerput was one of the few who wrote concerning the arrival of the first party of Futteghur fugitives at Cawnpore. Under the date of June the 12th he said: ‘Report that Europeans were coming in boats to relieve Cawnpore; and two companies sent westward to make inquiries. They found that a hundred and twenty-six men, women, and children, were in boats, sick.’ Another narrative of the Futteghur calamity simply states, that when the unhappy fugitives arrived at the part of the Ganges opposite Bithoor, Nena Sahib ‘stopped their boats, brought the fugitives on shore, and shot every one. He then tied their bodies together, and threw them into the river.’ A native resident at Cawnpore, who was examined a few weeks afterwards by Colonel Neill concerning his knowledge of the atrocities committed by the rajah, and of the sufferings borne by the English, gave an account of the Futteghur catastrophe corresponding nearly with those derived from other quarters. He states that on the 12th of June, just as the customary daily cannonading of the intrenchment was about to recommence, a report came in that Europeans were approaching from the west. Immediately a troop of cavalry and two companies of infantry were sent to reconnoitre (probably to the vicinity of Bithoor). There were found three boats, containing about a hundred and thirty men, women, and children. ‘The troopers seized them all and took them to the Nena, who ordered that they should all be killed; and sundry Rampoorie troopers of the Mussulmans of the 2d Cavalry, whom the Nena kept with him for the express purpose, killed them all. Among them was a young lady, the daughter of some general. She addressed herself much to the Nena, and said: “No king ever committed such oppression as you have, and in no religion is there any order to kill women and children. I do not know what has happened to you. Be well assured that by this slaughter the English will not become less; whoever may remain will have an eye upon you.” But the Nena paid no attention, and shewed her no mercy; he ordered that she should be killed, and that they should fill her hands with powder and kill her by the explosion.’

The fate of the second party of fugitives from Futteghur will be noticed presently. We must return now to the unfortunate occupants of the intrenchment at Cawnpore.

When three weeks of the month of June had transpired, the rebels, joined by a number of ruffians who had crossed over the Ganges from Oude, made a more determined effort than ever to capture the intrenchment; they had made the subadar-major of the 1st N. I. a sort of general over them; and he swore to vanquish the weakened garrison, or die in the attempt. They brought large bales of cotton, which they rolled along the ground, and approached in a crouching position under cover of these bales, firing their muskets at 135intervals. About a hundred sepoys thus advanced within a hundred and fifty yards of the intrenchment, backed up by a strong body, who seemed bent on storming the position. In this, as in every former attempt, they failed; their leader was struck down, nearly two hundred were killed or wounded by a fire of grape-shot, and the rest driven back to their former distance. At the very same time, contests were maintained on all sides of the enclosure; for what with musketeers in the unfinished barracks, guns and mortars in four different directions, and rifle-pits approached under cover of zigzags, the rebels maintained a tremendous fire upon the besieged. Wheeler’s guns, under a gallant young officer, St George Ashe, were manned at all hours, loaded and fired with great quickness and precision, and pointed in such directions as might produce most mischief among the enemy. But the contest was unequal in this as in most other particulars; one gun after another was disabled by the more powerful artillery of the insurgents—until the eight were reduced to six, then to four, three, and at last two. As the forlorn garrison became weaker and weaker, so did the heroic men redouble their exertions in defence. One day a shot from the enemy blew up an ammunition-wagon within the intrenchment; and then it became a question of terrible import how to prevent the other wagons from being ignited. Lieutenant Delafosse, a young officer of the once trusted but now disloyal 53d, ran forward, laid himself down under the wagons, picked up and threw aside the burning fragments, and covered the flaming portions with handfuls of earth—all the while subject to a fearful cannonading from a battery of six guns, aimed purposely by the enemy at that spot! Two soldiers ran to him, with two buckets of water; and all three succeeded in rescuing the other ammunition-wagons from peril, and in returning from the dangerous spot in safety.

Unspeakable must have been the misery of those nine hundred persons—or rather, nine hundred wofully diminished by deaths—after twenty days of this besieging. The hospitals were so thoroughly riddled with shot, and so much injured by the fire, as to afford little or no shelter; and yet the greater portion of the non-combatants remained in them rather than be exposed to the scorching glare of the sun outside. Some made holes for themselves behind the earthen parapet that bounded the intrenchment; these holes were covered with boxes, cots, &c., and whole families of wretched beings resided in them—more after the fashion of the Bushmen of Africa, than of Christian civilised people. Apoplexy struck down many in these fearfully heated abodes. At night, all the men had to mount guard and keep watch in turn; and the women and children, to be near their male protectors in the hour of trouble, slept near them behind the parapet—or rather they tried to sleep; but the bomb-shells vomited forth from three mortars employed by the enemy, kept the terrified people in an agony that ‘murdered sleep;’ and thus the existence of the women and children was spent in perpetual fear. The soldiers had their food prepared by the few remaining cooks; but all the rest shifted for themselves in the best way they could; and it was often difficult, for those who received their scanty rations of rice and grain, to provide a mouthful of cooked victuals for themselves and their children. Money would hardly, one would suppose, be thought of at such a time and place; yet it appears that the richer bought with money the services of the poorer, at a rupee or two per meal, for cooking. The innumerable troubles and distresses felt by all were deepened at the sight of the sick and wounded, to whom it was now utterly impossible to render proper assistance. The stench, too, from the dead bodies of horses and other animals that had been shot in the enclosure and could not be removed, added to the loathsomeness of the place. Oppressed as they were with heat, the English nevertheless dreaded the setting in of the rains; for one single day of Indian rain would have converted the earthen abodes of the poor people into pools of water, deluged the shot-riddled buildings, and rendered the muskets useless. Nothing can better denote the extraordinary scene of ruin and devastation which the interior of the intrenchment must have presented, than the descriptions given a few weeks afterwards by English officers concerned in the recovery of Cawnpore. Or rather, it would be more correct to say, that those descriptions, by relating only to the intrenchment when deserted, necessarily fell far short of the reality as presented when many hundreds of suffering persons were residing there day after day. One officer wrote: ‘We are encamped close to poor old Wheeler’s miserable intrenchment. Of all the wonders which have passed before us since this outbreak commenced, the most wonderful is that this ruinous intrenchment should have held that horde of blood-thirsty ruffians off so long. This is a strong statement; but none who have visited it can call it too strong.’ Another said: ‘I have had a look at the barracks in which the unfortunate people were intrenched. They consist of a couple of oblong buildings; in one of them, the roof is completely fallen in; and both are battered with round shot. The verandahs as well as the walls have been torn up by the shot; and round the buildings are some pits dug in the ground, and breastworks. The ground inside and out is strewed with broken bottles, old shoes, and quantities of books and other documents and letters. It was a melancholy sight; and the suffering must have been more than humanity could bear.’ A third officer corroborated this general description, but mentioned one or two additional particulars: ‘These buildings formed what was called the European Cavalry Hospital. Right well and heroically must it have been defended. The walls are riddled with cannon-shot like the cells of a honey-comb. The 136doors, which seem to have been the principal points against which the Nena’s fire was directed, are breached and knocked into large shapeless openings. Of the verandahs, which surrounded both buildings, only a few splintered rafters remain, and at some of the angles the walls are knocked entirely away, and large chasms gape blackly at you. Many of the enemy’s cannon-shot have gone through and through the buildings; portions of the interior walls and roof have fallen; and here and there are blood-stains on wall and floor. Never did I yet see a place so terribly battered.’

As a sad story is often most touchingly told in the fewest words, we may here advert to the contents of two scraps of paper, shewing how the members of a family were cut off one by one during these days of misery. When Cawnpore fell again into the hands of the British, by a train of operations hereafter to be described, there were found among other wrecks two small pieces of paper, covered with blood, and containing a few words in pencil; they appeared to have been written by two persons, both females. One gave a brief and confused narrative of some of the events in the intrenchment; while the other consisted simply of a record of the dates on which members of the writer’s family were struck down by the hand of death.^[18] The dates were irregular, and extended into July; but every line told, in its simplicity, how agonising must have been the position of one who had to record such things of those who were dear to her. The contents of the two pieces of paper were printed in a Calcutta journal; and when the mournful tale reached Scotland, it was at once concluded, almost as a certainty, from the Christian names mentioned, that the sufferers were all members of a family of Lindsays, who had been stationed at Cawnpore. The writers of the two notes were themselves numbered with the dead before the gloomy tragedy was ended.

All these evidences render only too plain to us the deplorable position of the Europeans, after eighteen days of siege, and thirty-three of enforced residence in the intrenchment. When duly considered, who can wonder that the beleaguered garrison pondered on two possible contingencies—a defeat of the rebels by a daring sally, or a release by parley? If the officers could have known the treachery which was about to be practised on them, they would probably have attempted the former; but they could receive no intelligence or warning, and they did not like to quit their wives and children at such a perilous time, in uncertainty of their chances of success.

Their first knowledge of the state of affairs at Cawnpore was obtained in an unexpected way. Among the commercial firms in the city was that of Greenway Brothers, of which the members and the family had hastily left Cawnpore at the beginning of the troubles, and taken refuge at Nujjubgurh, a village about sixteen miles distant. They were discovered by Nena Sahib, however, and only saved from death by promising a ransom of a lac of rupees. Mrs Greenway, a very aged lady, the mother and grandmother of a number of the sufferers, was sent by this treacherous villain with a message to Sir Hugh Wheeler at the intrenchment, intended to mask a nefarious and bloody scheme. The message was to this effect—that the general and all his people should be allowed to proceed to Allahabad unmolested, on condition that he abandoned Cawnpore, the intrenchment, the public treasure, the guns, and the ammunition. This message was delivered on the 24th of June; but whether in consequence of Mr Shepherd’s adventure on that same day, presently to be mentioned, does not clearly appear. On the next day an interview took place, outside the intrenchment, between Sir Hugh and an agent of Nena named Azimoollah (probably the same who had visited London two years before), who was accompanied by a few of the leading mutineers. The terms were agreed to, with a few modifications; and Nena Sahib gave his signature, his seal, and his oath to a contract binding him to provide the Europeans with boats and a safe escort to Allahabad.

Such was the account given by Mr Shepherd of a transaction narrated somewhat differently by other persons; but before noticing certain anomalies in this matter, it will be well to treat of an occurrence in which that gentleman was unquestionably the best judge of the facts. When the 24th of June arrived, Mr Shepherd adopted a course which led to his own preservation, and enabled him to write his brief but mournful narrative. The besieged civilians, not being under the command of Sir Hugh Wheeler further than might be consistent with their own safety, naturally thought with yearning hearts of their former abodes in the city, and compared those abodes with the present deep misery and privation. Wheeler would gladly have allowed them to return to Cawnpore; but could they cross the intervening ground in safety, or would they find safety in the city itself? To ascertain these points, was a project adopted on the suggestion of Mr Shepherd, who—as a commissariat officer in a place where scarcely any commissariat services could be rendered—occupied a position somewhat midway between the military and the civil. He had a large family within the intrenchment, comprising his wife, daughter, brother, sister, three nieces, and two other relatives; an infant daughter had been killed by a musket-shot a few days earlier. Mr Shepherd’s mission was—to make his way to the city; to ascertain the state of public affairs there; to enter into negotiations with influential persons who were not friendly to the mutineers; and to spend 137or promise a lac of rupees in any way that might bring about a cessation of the siege. The arrangement made with Sir Hugh was, that if Mr Shepherd succeeded in returning to the intrenchment with any useful information, he should be allowed to go with his family to Cawnpore. He started; but he never returned, and never again saw those hapless beings whose welfare had occupied so much of his solicitude. He disguised himself as a native cook, left the intrenchment, passed near the new barracks, and ran on towards Cawnpore; but he was speedily descried and captured, and carried before Nena Sahib. Two native women-servants had shortly before escaped from the intrenchment to the city, and had reported that the garrison was starving; the new captive, designedly, gave a very different account; and as the Nena did not know which to believe, he imprisoned all three. Mr Shepherd remained in prison, suffering great hardships, from the 24th of June to the 17th of July, as we shall presently see.

It is not easy to reconcile the various accounts of the convention between the besiegers and the besieged, the Nena and the general. According to Mr Shepherd, as we have just seen, the Nena sent a message by Mrs Greenway on the 24th; and Sir Hugh had an interview with one of Nena’s agents on the 25th. An ayah, or native nurse, however, who had been in the service of Mrs Greenway, and who afterwards gave a narrative in evidence before some English officers at Cawnpore, said that the message was taken, not by Mrs Greenway, but by a Mrs Jacobi. She proceeded to aver that Nena Sahib himself went to the intrenchment; and then she gave a curious account of the interview, which, to say the least of it, is quite consistent with the relative characters and positions of the two leaders. According to her narrative: ‘The Nena said: “Take away all the women and children to Allahabad; and if your men want to fight, come back and do so: we will keep faith with you.” General Wheeler said: “You take your solemn oath, according to your custom; and I will take an oath on my Bible, and will leave the intrenchment.” The Nena said: “Our oath is, that whoever we take by the hand, and he relies on us, we never deceive; if we do, God will judge and punish us.” The general said: “If you intend to deceive me, kill me at once: I have no arms.” The Nena replied: “I will not deceive you; rely on us. I will supply you with food, and convey you to Allahabad.” On this the general went inside the intrenchment, and consulted with the soldiers. They said: “There’s no reliance to be placed on natives; they will deceive you.” A few said: “Trust them; it is better to do so.” On this the general returned, and said: “I agree to your terms; see us away as far as Futtehpoor, thence we can get easily to Allahabad.” The reply was: “No; I will see you all safe to Allahabad.”’

That Sir Hugh Wheeler was mortally wounded before his unfortunate companions left the intrenchment under a solemn pledge of safety, seems to be generally admitted, but the date of his death is not clearly known; nor do the narrators agree as to the names of the persons by whom the convention was signed. But on the main point all evidence coincides—that a safe retirement to Allahabad was guaranteed. How villainously that guarantee was disregarded, we shall now see.

It was on the 27th of June that those who remained of the nine hundred took their departure from the intrenchment where they had borne so many miseries. Collateral facts lead to a conjecture that the sepoys, belonging to the native regiments that had mutinied, had become wearied with their three-weeks’ detention outside the intrenchment, and wished to start off to a scene of more stirring incidents at Delhi. This would not have suited the Nena’s views; he wanted their aid to grasp the remainder of the Company’s treasure and ammunition at Cawnpore; and hence he formed the plan for getting rid of the Europeans and obtaining their wealth without any more fighting. Cannonading ceased on both sides from the evening of the 24th; and from thence to the 27th all was done that could be done to fit out the boat-expedition. But under what miserable circumstances was this done! The unburied bodies of relations and friends lay at the bottom of a well; the sick and wounded were more fit to die than to be removed; the women and children had become haggard and weak by almost every kind of suffering; the clothes of all had become rent and blood-stained by many a terrible exigency; and misgivings occupied the thoughts of those who remembered that the same Nena Sahib, at whose mercy they were now placed, was the man who had proved a traitor three weeks before. Twenty boats were provided, each with an awning. The English were forced to give up the three or four lacs of rupees which had been brought to the intrenchment. Early on the morning of the 27th, the Nena sent a number of elephants, carts, and doolies, to convey the women, children, sick, and wounded, to the river-side, a distance of about a mile and a half: the hale men proceeding on foot—if hale they can be called, who were worn down with hunger, thirst, fatigue, heat, grief for the dear ones who had fallen, anxiety for those who still lived to be succoured and protected. If Mr Shepherd is right in his statement that the number who took their departure in this mournful procession from the intrenchment was four hundred and fifty, then one half of the original number of nine hundred must have fallen victims to three weeks of privation and suffering. Those who first reached the river took boat, and proceeded down-stream; but the later comers were long detained; and while they were still embarking, or preparing to embark, they were startled by the report of a masked battery of three guns. 138The dreadful truth now became evident; the execrable rebel-chief, in disregard of all oaths and treaties, had given orders for the slaughter of the hapless Europeans. Some of the boats were set on fire, and volley upon volley of musketry fired at the unfortunates—scores of whom were shot dead, others picked off while endeavouring to swim away. A few boats were hastily rowed across the river; but there a body of the 17th N. I., just arrived from Azimghur, intercepted all escape. The ruffians on both banks waded into the water, seized the boats within reach, and sabred all the men yet remaining alive in them. The women were spared for a worse fate; though many of them wounded, some with two or three bullets each, these poor creatures, with the children, were taken ashore, and placed in a building called the Subadar Kothee, in Nena Sahib’s camp.

The fortunes of two separate boat-parties must be traced. Lieutenant Delafosse, whose name has already been mentioned in connection with a gallant achievement in the intrenchment, has placed upon record the story of one boat’s adventure, shewing how it happened that he was among the very few who escaped the Cawnpore tragedy. After stating that nearly all the boats which attempted to descend the Ganges were either stopped one by one, or the persons in them shot down where they sat, he proceeds thus: ‘We had now one boat, crowded with wounded, and having on board more than she could carry. Two guns followed us the whole of that day, the infantry firing on us the whole of that night. On the second day, 28th June, a gun was seen on the Cawnpore side, which opened on us at Nujjubgurh, the infantry still following us on both sides. On the morning of the third day, the boat was no longer serviceable; we were aground on a sand-bank, and had not strength sufficient to move her. Directly any of us got into the water, we were fired upon by thirty or forty men at a time. There was nothing left for us but to charge and drive them away; and fourteen of us were told off to do what we could. Directly we got on shore the insurgents retired; but, having followed them up too far, we were cut off from the river, and had to retire ourselves, as we were being surrounded. We could not make for the river; we had to go down parallel, and came to the river again a mile lower down, where we saw a large force of men right in front waiting for us, and another lot on the opposite bank, should we attempt to cross the river. On the bank of the river, just by the force in front, was a temple. We fired a volley, and made for the temple, in which we took shelter, having one man killed and one wounded. From the door of the temple we fired on every insurgent that happened to shew himself. Finding that they could do nothing against us whilst we remained inside, they heaped wood all round and set it on fire. When we could no longer remain inside on account of the smoke and heat, we threw off what clothes we had, and, each taking a musket, charged through the fire. Seven of us out of the twelve got into the water; but before we had gone far, two poor fellows were shot. There were only five of us left now; and we had to swim whilst the insurgents followed us along both banks, wading and firing as fast as they could. After we had gone three miles down the stream [probably swimming and wading by turns], one of our party, an artilleryman, to rest himself, began swimming on his back, and not knowing in what direction he was swimming, got on shore, and was killed. When we had got down about six miles, firing from both sides [of the river] ceased; and soon after we were hailed by some natives, on the Oude side, who asked us to come on shore, and said they would take us to their rajah, who was friendly to the English.’ This proved to be the case; for Lieutenant Delafosse, Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson, and one or two companions, remained in security and comparative comfort throughout the month of July, until an opportunity occurred for joining an English force.

Although the boat-adventure just narrated was full of painful excitement, ending in the death of nearly all the persons by shooting or drowning—yet there is one still to be noticed more saddening in its character, for the sufferers were reserved for a worse death. The name of Sir Hugh Wheeler is connected with this adventure in a way not easily to be accounted for; Mr Shepherd and Lieutenant Delafosse were not witnesses of it, and no reliable personal narrative is obtainable from any one who was actually present when it occurred. The probability is, that Sir Hugh, although wounded in the intrenchment, did not die until the boat-expedition had commenced, and that the same boat contained his daughter and his (living or dead) body. At anyrate, this was the last the world could hear of a brave old soldier, who went to India fifty-four years before; who fought with Lord Lake before Delhi in 1804; who took an active part in the Punjaub war; and who had been military commander of the Cawnpore district from 1850 to 1857. It was also the last to be heard of Brigadier Jack, who commanded the Cawnpore cantonment; and of many brave English officers, from colonels down to ensigns, of both the English and the native regiments.

Whether the general was alive or dead, and by whomsoever accompanied, it appears certain that a large party rowed many miles down the Ganges. One account states that Baboo Rambuksh, a zemindar of Dowreea Kheyra near Futtehpoor, stopped the boats, captured the persons who were in them, and sent them in carts as prisoners back to Cawnpore. The names of Mr Reid, Mr Thomas Greenway, Mr Kirkpatrick, Mr Mackenzie, Captain Mackenzie, and Dr Harris, were mentioned in connection with this band of unfortunates; but accuracy in this particular is not to be insured. The narrative given by Nujoor Jewarree, the native afterwards examined by English officers 139at Cawnpore, was different in many points, and much more detailed. He stated that the boat in question, after proceeding some distance, got upon a sand-bank, where there was a severe encounter; the sepoys not only ran along the shore, but followed in boats shooting at the victims as soon as they got within musket-range, and receiving many fatal shots in return. A freshet in the river released the boat, and the voyage recommenced. Meanwhile, the probable escape of this party being reported to Nena Sahib, he ordered three companies of the 3d Oude infantry to pursue the boat, and effect a complete capture. The boat was soon after taken, and all the occupants seized as prisoners. ‘There came out of that boat,’ said Nujoor Jewarree, ‘sixty sahibs (gentlemen), twenty-five memsahibs (ladies), and four children—one boy and three half-grown girls.’ His story then proceeded to details which, if correct, shew that Sir Hugh Wheeler was in the boat, and still alive; for a contest ensued between Nena and some of the soldiers whether or not the old general should be put to death: many of the sepoys wishing to preserve his life.

It will become apparent to the reader, from the nature of the above details, that the true story of the boat-catastrophe at Cawnpore will probably never be fully told. All that we positively know is, that one portion of the wretched victims met their death in the river, by muskets, swords, and drowning; and that two other portions were carried back to a captivity worse even than that of the intrenchment.

The proceedings of Nena Sahib, after the iniquitous treachery of the 27th of June, bore evident relation to his own advancement as an independent chieftain. At sunset on that day he held a review of all the rebel troops around Cawnpore on a plain between the now deserted intrenchment and the Ganges. They appear to have consisted of five regiments of Bengal native infantry, two of Oude native infantry, one of Bengal cavalry, two of Oude cavalry, two of irregular cavalry, a battery of field-guns, besides sundry detachments of regiments, and marauders who became temporary soldiers in the hope of sharing pillage. Guns were fired in honour of the Nena as sovereign, of his brother as governor-general, and of an ambitious Brahmin as commander-in-chief, of the newly restored Mahratta kingdom. From day to day more troops joined his standard, after mutinying at various stations on all sides of Cawnpore. Twenty thousand armed men are said to have been in that city by the 10th of July; and as the Nena was very slow in awarding to them any of his ill-gotten wealth, they recompensed themselves by plundering the inhabitants, under pretext of searching for concealed Europeans. Cawnpore was thus plunged into great misery, and speedily had cause to lament the absence of its former masters. Nena created new offices, for bestowal upon those who had served him; and he ordered the neighbouring zemindars to pay to him the revenue that had wont to be paid to the Company. He caused to be proclaimed by beat of tom-tom, throughout Cawnpore and the surrounding district, that he had entirely conquered the British; and that, their period of reign in India having been completed, he was preparing to drive them out foot by foot. During this heyday of self-assumed power, he issued many remarkable proclamations, worthy of note as indications of his ambitious views, of his hopes as dependent on the mass of the native people, and of the stigma which he sought to throw on the British government. Some of these proclamations are given in full at the end of the present chapter. There are many facts which lend support to the supposition that this grasp at power and wealth was suggested to him by the gradual development of events. He probably entertained crafty designs and suppressed vindictiveness from the outset; but these did not shew themselves openly until the native troops at the cantonment had rebelled. Seeing a door opened by others, which might possibly lead him to power and to vengeance, he seized the occasion and entered.

The last acts of the Cawnpore tragedy now await our attention.

What horrors the poor women suffered during their eighteen days of captivity under this detestable miscreant, none will ever fully know; partial glimpses only of the truth will ever come to light. According to the ayah’s narrative, already noticed, the women and children who were conveyed from the boats into captivity were a hundred and fifteen in number. The poor creatures (the women and elder girls) were sought to be tempted by an emissary of the Nena to enter quietly into his harem; but they one and all expressed a determination to die where they were, and with each other, rather than yield to dishonour. They were then destined to be given up to the sensual licence of the sepoys and sowars who had aided in their capture; but the heroic conduct of Sir Hugh Wheeler’s daughter is said to have deterred the ruffians. What this ‘Judith of Cawnpore’ really did, is differently reported. Her heroism was manifested, in one version of the story, by an undaunted and indignant reproach against the native troops for their treachery to the English who had fed and clothed them, and for their cowardice in molesting defenceless women; in another version, she shot down five sepoys in succession with a revolver, and then threw herself into a well to escape outrage; in a third, given by Mr Shepherd, this English lady, being taken away by a trooper of the 2d native cavalry to his own hut, rose in the night, secured the trooper’s sword, killed him and three other men, and then threw herself into a well; while a fourth version, on the authority of the ayah, represents the general’s daughter as cutting off the heads of no less than five men in the trooper’s hut. These accounts, incompatible one with another, nevertheless reveal to us a true soldier’s daughter, an English gentlewoman, resolved to proceed 140to any extremity in defence of her own purity.

The victims were detained three days at Nena’s camp, with only a little parched grain to eat, dirty water to drink, and the hard ground to lie upon, without matting or beds of any kind. The ayah states that the Nena, after the events of the 27th of June, sent to ask the temporarily successful King of Delhi what he should do with the women and children; to which a reply was received, that they were not to be killed. Whether this statement be right or wrong, the captives were taken from the camp to Cawnpore, and there incarcerated in a house near the Assembly Rooms, consisting of outbuildings of the medical depôt, shortly before occupied by Sir George Parker. Here they were joined by more than thirty other European women and children, the unhappy relics of the boat-expedition that had been recaptured near Futtehpoor in the vain attempt to escape. Without venturing to decide whether the ayah, Nujoor Jewarree, Mr Shepherd, or Lieutenant Delafosse was most nearly correct in regard of numbers; or whether Sir Hugh Wheeler was at that time alive or dead—it appears tolerably certain that many unhappy prisoners were brought back into Cawnpore on the 1st of July. All the men were butchered in cold blood on the evening of the same day. One officer’s wife, with her child, clung to her husband with such desperate tenacity that they could not be separated; and all three were killed at once. The other women were spared for the time. This new influx, together with five members of the Greenway family, swelled the roll of prisoners in the small building to a number that has been variously estimated from a hundred and fifty to two hundred, nearly all women and children. Their diet was miserably insufficient; and their sufferings were such that many died through want of the necessaries of life. ‘It is not easy to describe,’ says Mr Shepherd, ‘but it may be imagined, the misery of so many helpless persons: some wounded, others sick, and all labouring under the greatest agony of heart for the loss of those, so dear to them, who had so recently been killed (perhaps before their own eyes); cooped up night and day in a small low pukha-roofed house, in the hottest season of the year, without beds or punkahs, for a whole fortnight—and constantly reviled and insulted by a set of brutish ruffians keeping watch over them.’

Added to all these suffering women and children, were those belonging to the second boat-expedition from Futteghur. It will be remembered, from the details given in a former page, that one party from this fort reached Bithoor about the middle of June, and were at once murdered by orders of Nena Sahib; while another body, after a manly struggle against the rebels for two or three weeks, did not prosecute their voyage downwards until July. It will throw light on the perils and terrors of these several boat-adventures to transcribe a few sentences from an official account by Mr G. J. Jones, a civil servant of the Company, who left Futteghur with the rest on the 4th of July, but happily kept clear of the particular boat-load which went down to Cawnpore: ‘We had not proceeded far, when it was found that Colonel Goldie’s boat was much too large and heavy for us to manage; it was accordingly determined to be abandoned; so all the ladies and children were taken into Colonel Smith’s boat. A little delay was thus caused, which the sepoys took advantage of to bring a gun to bear on the boats; the distance, however, was too great; every ball fell short. As soon as the ladies and children were all safely on board, we started, and got down as far as Singheerampore without accident, although fired upon by the villagers. Here we stopped a few minutes to repair the rudder of Colonel Smith’s boat; and one out of the two boatmen we had was killed by a matchlock ball. The rudder repaired, we started again, Colonel Smith’s boat taking the lead; we had not gone beyond a few yards, when our boat grounded on a soft muddy sand-bank; the other boat passed on; all hands got into the water to push her; but, notwithstanding all our efforts, we could not manage to move her. We had not been in this unhappy position half an hour, when two boats, apparently empty, were seen coming down the stream. They came within twenty yards of us, when we discovered they carried sepoys, who opened a heavy fire, killing and wounding several. Mr Churcher, senior, was shot through the chest; Mr Fisher, who was just behind me, was wounded in the thigh. Hearing him call out, I had scarcely time to turn round, when I felt a smart blow on my right shoulder; a bullet had grazed the skin and taken off a little of the flesh. Major Robertson was wounded in the face. The boats were now alongside of us. Some of the sepoys had already got into our boat. Major Robertson, seeing no hope, begged the ladies to come into the water rather than fall into their hands. While the ladies were throwing themselves into the water, I jumped into the boat, took up a loaded musket, and, going astern, shot a sepoy.... Mr and Mrs Fisher were about twenty yards from the boat; he had his child in his arms, apparently lifeless. Mrs Fisher could not stand against the current; her dress, which acted like a sail, knocked her down, when she was helped up by Mr Fisher.... Early the next morning a voice hailed us from the shore, which we recognised as Mr Fisher’s. He came on board, and informed us that his poor wife and child had been drowned in his arms.’

The occupants of the boat that prosecuted the voyage down to Cawnpore, or rather Bithoor, suffered greatly: the hands of the gentlemen who were on board, and who pulled the boat, were terribly blistered; the women and children suffered sad hardships; and all were worn down by fatigue and anxiety. At Bithoor, so far as the accounts are intelligible, Nena Sahib’s son seized 141the boat, and sent all the unfortunate Europeans in her into confinement at Cawnpore. As in other parts of this mournful tragedy, it will be vain to attempt accuracy in the statement of the numbers of those that suffered; but there is a subsidiary source of information, possessing a good deal of interest in connection with the July occurrences. When, at a later date, the reconquerors of Cawnpore were in a position to attempt a solution of the terrible mystery; when the buildings of Cawnpore were searched, and the inhabitants examined, for any documents relating to the suffering Europeans—a paper was found, written in the Mahratta language, in the house of a native doctor who had been in charge of the prisoners, or some of them. It was, or professed to be, a list of those who were placed under his care on Tuesday the 7th of July; but whether invalids only, does not clearly appear. All the names were given, with some inaccuracy in spelling; which, however, cannot be considered as rendering the document untrustworthy. In it were to be found large families of Greenways, Reids, Jacobis, Fitzgeralds, Dempsters, and others known to have been in Cawnpore about that time. They were a hundred and sixty-three in number. To this hapless group was added another list, containing the names of forty-seven fugitives belonging to the second boat-party from Futteghur, who are reported as having arrived on the 11th of July, and who included many members of the families of the Goldies, Smiths, Tuckers, Heathcotes, &c., already named in connection with the Futteghur calamities. The Mahratta document gave altogether the names of two hundred and ten persons; but it was silent on the question how many other Europeans were on those days in the clutches of the ruthless chieftain of Bithoor. A further list contained the names of about twenty-six persons, apparently all women and children, who died under this native doctor’s hands between the 7th and the 15th, diminishing to that extent the number of those left for massacre. To most of the names ‘cholera,’ or ‘diarrhœa,’ or ‘dysentery’ was appended, as the cause of death; to two names, ‘wounds;’ while one of the patients was ‘a baby two days old.’ In what a place, and under what circumstances, for an infant to be born, and to bear its two wretched days of life!

House at Cawnpore in which the women and children were massacred.

Let us follow Mr Shepherd’s two narratives—one public, for government information; one in a letter, relating more especially to his own personal troubles and sufferings—concerning the crowning iniquity of Nena Sahib at Cawnpore.

After his capture, on attempting to hasten from the intrenchment to the city, the commissary was subjected to a sort of mock-trial, and condemned to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour; on what plea or evidence, is not stated. He implies that if he had been known as an Englishman, he would certainly have been put to death. On the third day after his capture he heard a rumour of certain movements among his unfortunate compatriots in the intrenchment. ‘Oh! how I felt,’ he exclaims, ‘when, in confinement, I heard that the English were going in safety! I could not keep my secret, but told the subadar of the prison-guard that I was a Christian; 142I nearly lost my life by this exposure.’ Mr Shepherd was confined for twenty-four days in a miserable prison, with heavy fetters on his legs, and only so much parched grain for food as would prevent actual starvation. As days wore on, he obtained dismal evidence that the departure from the intrenchment had not been safely effected; that coward treachery had been displayed by the Nena; that innocent lives had been taken; and that the survivors were held in horrible thraldom by that cruel man. The commissary was a prisoner within the city during all the later days of the tragedy; whether he was within earshot of the sufferers, is not stated; but the following contains portions of his narrative relating to that period: ‘Certain spies, whether real or imaginary is not known, were brought to the Nena as being the bearers of letters supposed to have been written to the British [at Allahabad] by the helpless females in their captivity; and with these letters some of the inhabitants of the city were believed to be implicated. It was therefore decreed by Nena Sahib that the spies, together with all the women and children, as also the few gentlemen whose lives had been spared, should be put to death.’ Mr Shepherd connected these gentlemen with the Futteghur fugitives, concerning whom, however, he possessed very little information. It was a further portion of Nena’s decree, that all the baboos (Bengalees employed as clerks) of the city, and every individual who could read or write English, should have their right hands and noses cut off. At length, on the 15th, just before quitting Cawnpore in the vain hope of checking the advance of a British column, this savage put his decrees into execution. ‘The native spies were first put to the sword; after them the gentlemen, who were brought from the outbuildings in which they had been confined, and shot with bullets. Then the poor females were ordered to come out; but neither threats nor persuasions could induce them to do so. They laid hold of each other by dozens, and clung so closely that it was impossible to separate or drag them out of the building. The troopers therefore brought muskets, and after firing a great many shots through the doors, windows, &c., rushed in with swords and bayonets. Some of the helpless creatures in their agony fell down at the feet of their murderers, and begged them in the most pitiful manner to spare their lives; but to no purpose. The fearful deed was done deliberately and determinedly, in the midst of the most dreadful shrieks and cries of the victims. From a little before sunset till dark was occupied in completing the dreadful deed. The doors of the buildings were then locked for the night, and the murderers went to their homes. Next morning it was found, on opening the doors, that some ten or fifteen females, with a few of the children, had managed to escape from death by hiding under the murdered bodies of their fellow-prisoners. A fresh command was thereupon sent to murder these also; but the survivors not being able to bear the idea of being cut down, rushed out into the compound, and seeing a well there, threw themselves into it. The dead bodies of those murdered on the previous evening were then ordered to be thrown into the same well; and julluds were appointed to drag them away like dogs.’

Mr Shepherd himself did not witness this slaughter; no looker-on, so far as is known, has placed upon record his or her account of the scene. Nor does there appear any trustworthy evidence to shew what the poor women endured in the period, varying from four to eighteen days, during which they were in the Nena’s power; but the probability is fearfully great that they passed through an ordeal which the mind almost shrinks from contemplating. Mr Shepherd was evidently of this opinion. While telling his tale of misery relating to those poor ill-used creatures, he hinted at ‘sufferings and distresses such as have never before been experienced or heard of on the face of the earth.’ It was in his agony of grief that he wrote this; when, on the 17th of July, a victorious English column entered Cawnpore; and when, immediately on his liberation, he hastened like others to the house of slaughter. Only when the manacles had been struck from his limbs, and he had become once more a free man, did he learn the full bitterness of his lot. ‘God Almighty has been graciously pleased to spare my poor life,’ was the beginning of a letter written by him on that day to a brother stationed at Agra. ‘I am the only individual saved among all the European and Christian community that inhabited this station.’ [Nearly but not exactly true.] ‘My poor dear wife, my darling sweet child Polly, poor dear Rebecca and her children, and poor innocent children Emmeline and Martha, as also Mrs Frost and poor Mrs Osborne’ [these being the members of his family whom he had left in the intrenchment on the 24th of June, when he set out disguised on his fruitless mission], ‘were all most inhumanly butchered by the cruel insurgents on the day before yesterday;’ and his letter then conveyed the outpourings of a heart almost riven by such irreparable losses.

While reserving for a future chapter all notice of the brilliant military movements by which a small band of heroes forced a way inch by inch from Allahabad to Cawnpore; and of the struggle made by the Nena, passionately but ineffectually, to maintain his ill-gotten honours as a self-elected Mahratta sovereign—it may nevertheless be well in this place to follow the story of the massacre to its close—to know how much was left, and of what kind, calculated to render still more vividly evident the fate of the victims.

Never, while life endures, will the English officers and soldiers forget the sight which met their gaze when they entered Cawnpore on the 17th of July. It was frequently observed that all were alike deeply moved by the atrocities that 143came to light in many parts of Northern India. Calcutta, weeks and even months afterwards, contained ladies who had escaped from various towns and stations, and who entered the Anglo-Indian capital in most deplorable condition: ears, noses, lips, tongues, hands, cut off; while others had suffered such monstrous and incredibly degrading barbarities, that they resolutely refused all identification, preferring to remain in nameless obscurity, rather than their humiliation should be known to their friends in England. Their children, in many instances, had their eyes gouged out, and their feet cut off. Many were taken to Calcutta in such hurry and confusion, that it remained long in doubt from what places they had escaped; and an instance is recorded of a little child, who belonged no one knew to whom, and whose only account of herself was that she was ‘Mamma’s pet:’ mournfully touching words, telling of a gentle rearing and a once happy home. An officer in command of one of the English regiments, speaking of the effect produced on his men by the sights and rumours of fiend-like cruelty, observed: ‘Very little is said among the men or officers, the subject being too maddening; but there is a curious expression discernible in every face when it is mentioned—a stern compression of the lips, and a fierce glance of the eye, which shew that when the time comes, no mercy will be shewn to those who have shewn none.’ He told of fearful deeds; of two little children tortured to death, and portions of their quivering flesh forced down the throats of their parents, who were tied up naked, and had been compelled to witness the slaughter of their innocent ones. The feelings of those who were not actually present at the scenes of horror are well expressed in a letter written by a Scottish officer, who was hemmed in at Agra during many weeks, when he longed to be engaged in active service chastising the rebels. He had, some months before, been an officer in one of the native regiments that mutinied at Cawnpore; and, in relation to the events at that place, he said: ‘I am truly thankful that most of the officers of my late corps died of fever in the intrenchment, previous to the awful massacre. Would that it had been the will of Heaven that all had met the same fate, fearful as that was. For weeks exposed to a scorching sun, without shelter of any kind, and surrounded by the dying and the dead, their ears ringing with the groans of the wounded, the shouts of sun-struck madmen, the plaintive cries of children, the bitter sobs and sighs of bereaved mothers, widows, and orphans. Even such a death was far better than what fell to the lot of many. Not even allowed to die without being made witnesses of the bloody deaths of all they loved on earth, they were insulted, abused, and finally, after weeks of such treatment, cruelly and foully murdered. One sickens, and shudders at the bare mention of it.... Oh! how thankful I am that I have no wife, no sisters out here.’ It was a terrible crisis that could lead officers, eight or ten thousand miles away from those near and dear to them, to say this.

It is necessary, as a matter of historical truth, to describe briefly the condition of the house of slaughter on the 17th of July; and this cannot be better done than in the words employed by the officers and soldiers in various letters written by them, afterwards made public. The first that we shall select runs thus: ‘I have seen the fearful slaughter-house; and I also saw one of the 1st native infantry men, according to order, wash up part of the blood which stains the floor, before being hanged.’ [This order will presently be noticed in the words of Brigadier Neill.] ‘There were quantities of dresses, clogged thickly with blood; children’s frocks, frills, and ladies’ underclothing of all kinds; boys’ trousers; leaves of Bibles, and of one book in particular, which seems to be strewed over the whole place, called Preparation for Death; broken daguerreotypes; hair, some nearly a yard long; bonnets, all bloody; and one or two shoes. I picked up a bit of paper with the words on it, “Ned’s hair, with love;” and opened and found a little bit tied up with ribbon. The first [troops] that went in, I believe, saw the bodies with their arms and legs sticking out through the ground. They had all been thrown in a heap in the well.’ A second letter: ‘The house was alongside the Cawnpore hotel, where the Nena lived. I never was more horrified. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the soles of my boots were more than covered with the blood of these poor wretched creatures. Portions of their dresses, collars, children’s socks, and ladies’ round hats, lay about, saturated with their blood; and in the sword-cuts on the wooden pillars of the room, long dark hair was sticking, carried by the edge of the weapon, and there hung their tresses—a most painful sight. I picked up a mutilated Prayer-book; it appeared to have been open at page 36 of the Litany, where I have little doubt those poor creatures sought and found consolation in that beautiful supplication; it is there sprinkled with blood.’ A third: ‘We found that the Nena had murdered all the women and children that he had taken prisoners, and thrown them naked down a well. The women and children had been kept in a sort of zenana, and no attention whatever paid to cleanliness. In that place they had been butchered, as the ground was covered with clotted blood. One poor woman had evidently been working, as a small work-box was open, and the things scattered about. There were several children’s small round hats, evidently shewing that that was their prison. The well close by was one of the most awful sights imaginable.’ A fourth: ‘It is an actual and literal fact, that the floor of the inner room was several inches deep in blood all over; it came over men’s shoes as they stepped. Tresses of women’s hair, children’s shoes, and articles of female wear, broad hats and bonnets, books, and such like things, lay scattered all about the rooms. There were the marks of bullets and 144sword-cuts on the walls—not high up, as if men had fought—but low down, and about the corners where the poor crouching creatures had been cut to pieces. The bodies of the victims had been thrown indiscriminately into a well—a mangled heap, with arms and legs protruding.’ Some of the officers, by carefully examining the walls, found scraps of writing in pencil, or scratched in the plaster, such as, ‘Think of us’—‘Avenge us’—‘Your wives and families are here in misery and at the disposal of savages’—‘Oh, oh! my child, my child.’ One letter told of a row of women’s shoes, with bleeding amputated feet in them, ranged in cruel mockery on one side of a room; while the other side exhibited a row of children’s shoes, filled in a similarly terrible way; but it is not certain whether the place referred to was Cawnpore. Another writer mentioned an incident which, unless supported by collateral testimony, seems wanting in probability. It was to the effect that when the 78th Highlanders entered Cawnpore, they found the remains of Sir Hugh Wheeler’s daughter. They removed the hair carefully from the head; sent some of it to the relations of the unfortunate lady; divided the rest amongst themselves; counted every single hair in each parcel; and swore to take a terrible revenge by putting to death as many mutineers as there were hairs. The storm of indignant feeling that might suggest such a vow can be understood easily enough; but the alleged mode of manifestation savours somewhat of the melodramatic and improbable.

A slight allusion has been made above to Brigadier Neill’s proceedings at Cawnpore, after the fatal 17th of July. In what relation he stood to the reconquering force will be noticed in its due place; but it may be well here to quote a passage from a private letter, written independently of his public dispatches: ‘I am collecting all the property of the deceased, and trying to trace if any have survived; but as yet have not succeeded in finding one.’ [Captain Bruce’s research, presently to be mentioned, had not then been made.] ‘Man, woman, and child, seem all to have been murdered. As soon as that monster Nena Sahib heard of the success of our troops, and of their having forced the bridge about twenty miles from Cawnpore, he ordered the wholesale butchery of the poor women and children. I find the officers’ servants behaved shamefully, and were in the plot, all but the lowest-caste ones. They deserted their masters and plundered them. Whenever a rebel is caught, he is immediately tried, and unless he can prove a defence, he is sentenced to be hanged at once; but the chief rebels or ringleaders I make first clean up a certain portion of the pool of blood, still two inches deep, in the shed where the fearful murder and mutilation of women and children took place. To touch blood is most abhorrent to the high-caste natives; they think by doing so they doom their souls to perdition. Let them think so. My object is to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, barbarous deed, and to strike terror into these rebels.... The well of mutilated bodies—alas! containing upwards of two hundred women and children—I have had decently covered in and built up as one grave.’

With one additional testimony, we will close this scene of gloomy horror. The Earl of Shaftesbury, as was noticed in a former page, took occasion soon after the news of the Cawnpore atrocities reached London, to advert at a public meeting to the shrinking abhorrence with which those deeds were regarded, and to the failure of the journalists to present the full and fearful truth. He himself mentioned an incident, not as an example of the worst that had been done by the incarnate fiends at Cawnpore, but to indicate how much remains to be told if pen dare write or tongue utter it: ‘I have seen a copy of a letter written and sent to England by an officer of rank who was one of the first that entered Cawnpore a few hours after the perpetration of the frightful massacre.... To his unutterable dismay, he saw a number of European women stripped stark naked, lying on their backs, fastened by the arms and legs; and there many of them had been lying four or five days exposed to a burning sun; others had been more recently laid down; others again had been actually hacked to pieces, and so recently, that the blood which streamed from their mangled bodies was still warm. He found children of ten, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen years of age treated in the same horrible manner at the corners of the streets and in all parts of the town: attended by every circumstance of insult, the most awful and the most degrading, the most horrible and frightful to the conception, and the most revolting to the dignity and feelings of civilised men. Cawnpore was only a sample of what was perpetrated in various parts of that vast region, and that with a refinement of cruelty never before heard of. Women and children have been massacred before; but I don’t believe there is any instance on record where children have been reserved in cold blood to be most cruelly and anatomically tortured in the presence of their horrified parents before being finally put to death.’

Something must be said here concerning the devastated property at Cawnpore, in relation to the miserable beings to whom it had once belonged. When the city was again in British hands, and the Rajah of Bithoor driven out with the curses of all English hearts resting on him, it was found to be in such a devastated state, so far as regarded Europeans, that Brigadier Neill was at a loss what to do with the wrecks of spoliated property. He requested Captain Bruce, of the 5th Punjaub cavalry, whom he had appointed temporarily superintendent of police, to write to the Calcutta newspapers, inviting the aid of any one able to identify the property. The letter said: ‘The property of the unfortunate people who lost their lives here has been collected in one spot; and any which can be recognised will be handed over to the owners, or put up to auction 145for the benefit of the estates of the deceased. There is a good deal of property belonging to the different mercantile firms here, as well as to the heirs of deceased officers, &c.; but when I mention that every house was gutted, and the property scattered over sixty or seventy square miles of country, it will be apparent how impossible it was to take care of individual interests.... Almost all the former European residents here having been murdered by the miscreant Nena Sahib, there is no one forthcoming to recognise or give any information concerning the property that has been saved.’ At a later date Captain Bruce captured one of the boatmen who had come down from Futteghur with the first party of unhappy fugitives from that place; the man had a large amount of English jewellery in his possession, comprising brooches, earrings, bracelets, clasps, studs, shawl-pins, hair-lockets, gold chains, and similar articles. The boatman had probably secreted the jewel-caskets of the unfortunate ladies, at or shortly before the forcible landing of the boat-party at Bithoor.

A much more painful inquiry, than any relating to property, was that relating to the loss of life. When Captain Bruce, after many days of sedulous inquiry, had collected all the available information bearing on the fate of the hapless sufferers, he arrived at these conclusions—that the only Europeans who escaped from the boat-massacre, and really obtained their liberty, were two officers and two soldiers—probably Lieutenant Delafosse and three of his companions; that the only one who remained in Cawnpore and yet preserved his life, was a pensioner of the 3d light dragoons, who was concealed in the city by a trooper of the 4th light cavalry; and that there were, on the 31st of July, six Englishmen, three Englishwomen, and three children, concealed and protected by the Rajah of Calpee, across the Jumna; but it was not stated, and perhaps not known, whether they had gone thither from Cawnpore. Mr Shepherd himself was not included in this list. When Lieutenant Delafosse, about a fortnight after the recapture of Cawnpore, was requested by Brigadier Neill to furnish the best list he could of the English sufferers at that place, he endeavoured to separate the victims into three groups, according as they had died in the intrenchment, in the boats, or in the house of slaughter. But this was necessarily a very imperfect list; for, on the one hand, he knew nothing of the two parties of fugitives from Futteghur; while, on the other, he speaks of many persons who came into the station with their families on account of disturbance, and whose names he did not know. Taking the matter in a military estimate, however, he gave the names of one general (Wheeler), one brigadier (Jack), three colonels, five majors, thirteen captains, thirty-nine lieutenants, five ensigns, and nine doctors or army-surgeons; Lady and Miss Wheeler, Sir George Parker, and two clergymen or missionaries, were among the other members in his melancholy list. No guess can be made of the total numbers from this document, for the persons included under the word ‘family’ are seldom specified by name or number. The mournful truth was indeed only too evident that many complete families—families consisting of very numerous members—were among the slaughtered. When the lists began to be made out, of those who had been known as Cawnpore residents or Futteghur fugitives, and who were found dead when the English recaptured the place, there were such entries as these—‘Greenway: Mr, two Mrs, Martha, Jane, John, Henry’—‘Fitzgerald: John, Margaret, Mary, Tom, Ellen’—‘Gilpin: Mrs, William, Harriet, Sarah, Jane, F.’—‘Reid: Mr, Susan, James, Julia, C., Charles’—‘Reeve: Mrs, Mary, Catherine, Ellen, Nelly, Jane, Cornelia, Deon.’

Religious men, thoughtful men—and, on the other hand, men wrought up to a pitch of exasperated feeling—afterwards spoke of the fatal well as a spot that should be marked in some way for the observance of posterity. Two church missionaries were among the murdered at Cawnpore; and it was urged in many quarters that a Christian church, built with the splendour and resources of a great nation, would be a suitable erection at that spot—as an appropriate memorial to the dead, a striking lesson to the living, and the commencement of a grand effort to Christianise the heathen millions of India. Whether a church be the right covering for a hideous pit containing nearly two hundred mangled bodies of gentle English women and children; and whether rival creeds would struggle for precedency in the management of its construction, its details, and the form of its service—may fairly admit of doubt; but with or without a church, the English in no parts of the world are ever likely to forget The Well at Cawnpore!

Note.

Nena Sahib’s Proclamations.—When Generals Neill and Havelock were at Cawnpore, during a period subsequent to that comprised within the range of the present chapter, they found many proclamations which had been printed in the Mahratta language by order of Nena Sahib, as if for distribution among the natives under his influence. These proclamations were afterwards translated into English, and included among the parliamentary papers relating to India. A few of them may fittingly be reproduced here, to shew by what means that consummate villain sought to attain his ends.

The following appears to have been issued on or about 146the 1st of July:—‘As, by the kindness of God and the ikbal or good-fortune of the Emperor, all the Christians who were at Delhi, Poonah, Satara, and other places, and even those 5000 European soldiers who went in disguise into the former city and were discovered, are destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops, who are firm to their religion; and as they have all been conquered by the present government, and as no trace of them is left in these places, it is the duty of all the subjects and servants of the government to rejoice at the delightful intelligence, and to carry on their respective work with comfort and ease.’

This was accompanied by another: ‘As, by the bounty of the glorious Almighty God and the enemy-destroying fortune of the Emperor, the yellow-faced and narrow-minded people have been sent to hell, and Cawnpore has been conquered, it is necessary that all the subjects and landowners should be as obedient to the present government as they had been to the former one; that all the government servants should promptly and cheerfully engage their whole mind in executing the orders of government; that it is the incumbent duty of all the ryots and landed proprietors of every district to rejoice at the thought that the Christians have been sent to hell, and both the Hindoo and Mohammedan religions have been confirmed; and that they should as usual be obedient to the authorities of the government, and never to suffer any complaint against themselves to reach the ears of the higher authority.’

On the 5th of the same month the Nena issued the following to the kotwal or Mayor of Cawnpore: ‘It has come to our notice that some of the city people, having heard the rumours of the arrival of the European soldiers at Allahabad, are deserting their houses and going out into the districts; you are, therefore, directed to proclaim in each lane and street of the city that regiments of cavalry and infantry and batteries have been despatched to check the Europeans either at Allahabad or Futtehpoor; that the people should therefore remain in their houses without any apprehension, and engage their minds in carrying on their work.’

Another proclamation displayed in an extraordinary way the Rajah’s mode of practising on the credulity of the natives, by the most enormous and barefaced fictions: ‘A traveller just arrived in Cawnpore from Calcutta states that in the first instance a council was held to take into consideration the means to be adopted to do away with the religion of the Mohammedans and Hindoos by the distribution of cartridges. The council came to this resolution, that, as this matter was one of religion, the services of seven or eight thousand European soldiers would be necessary, as 50,000 Hindustanis would have to be destroyed, and then the whole of the people of Hindostan would become Christians. A petition with the substance of this resolution was sent to the Queen Victoria, and it was approved. A council was then held a second time, in which English merchants took a part, and it was decided that, in order that no evil should arise from mutiny, large reinforcements should be sent for. When the dispatch was received and read in England, thousands of European soldiers were embarked on ships as speedily as possible, and sent off to Hindostan. The news of their being despatched reached Calcutta. The English authorities there ordered the issue of the cartridges, for the real intention was to Christianise the army first, and this being effected, the conversion of the people would speedily follow. Pigs’ and cows’ fat was mixed up with the cartridges; this became known through one of the Bengalese who was employed in the cartridge-making establishment. Of those through whose means this was divulged, one was killed and the rest imprisoned. While in this country these counsels were being adopted, in England the vakeel (ambassador) of the Sultan of Roum (Turkey) sent news to the sultan that thousands of European soldiers were being sent for the purpose of making Christians of all the people of Hindostan. Upon this the sultan issued a firman to the King of Egypt to this effect: “You must deceive the Queen Victoria, for this is not a time for friendship, for my vakeel writes that thousands of European soldiers have been despatched for the purpose of making Christians the army and people of Hindostan. In this manner, then, this must be checked. If I should be remiss, then how can I shew my face to God; and one day this may come upon me also, for if the English make Christians of all in Hindostan, they will then fix their designs upon my country.” When the firman reached the King of Egypt, he prepared and arranged his troops before the arrival of the English army at Alexandria, for this is the route to India. The instant the English army arrived, the King of Egypt opened guns upon them from all sides, and destroyed and sunk their ships, and not a single soldier escaped. The English in Calcutta, after the issue of the order for the cartridges, and when the mutiny had become great, were in expectation of the arrival of the army from London; but the Great God, in his omnipotence, had beforehand put an end to this. When the news of the destruction of the army of London became known, then the governor-general was plunged in grief and sorrow, and beat his head.

‘Done by order of the Peishwa Bahadoor, 13 Zekaida, 1273 Hegira.’

The Well at Cawnpore.

147

House of the Rajah at Allahabad.

When, through the media of telegrams, dispatches, and letters, the tragical events at Cawnpore became known in England, and were invested with an additional horror on account of a vague suspicion that worse remained untold, a painful and widely spread sensation was produced. Nay, more; in almost every part of the civilised world, whether or not in harmony with the British government on political and international questions, astonishment was excited by these recitals of unapproachable barbarity among a people who had acquired a sort of traditional character for mildness and gentleness. It was about the end of June when news of the Meerut outbreak reached London; and from that time each fortnightly mail revealed the truth that a larger and larger area of India was becoming involved in the troubles of insurrection—that a gradually increasing number of military officers and civil servants of the Company, with their wives and children, were placed in circumstances of imminent peril. Residents in the United Kingdom, any of whose relations and friends were stationed at Cawnpore, sought eagerly and anxiously, as each mail arrived, for indications that escape had been effected, or a rescuing force obtained. No such news came, no such hopes were realised; darker and more silent was everything relating to that much-dreaded city, until at length the frightful climax became known.

There has been a designed avoidance, in the preceding chapters of this work, of any account of the measures adopted by the British government in military matters, or by the British nation in active benevolence, to remedy the disasters and allay the sufferings to which the Anglo-Indians had so suddenly been exposed; for, in truth, India knew little of such measures until August was far advanced. Whether all was done that might have been done to expedite the passage of British troops to India, is a question that will have to be considered in its proper place; the significant truth now to be borne in mind is that the Calcutta government had to meet the difficulties as best it could, with the scanty supply of troops at that time in India—sending to the Mauritius and the 148Cape of Good Hope for such reinforcements as might be available, but knowing that aid from England could not arrive for many months. The mode of treatment adopted here is naturally suggested by the course of events themselves. When the ramifications of the Revolt have been traced throughout the month of June, a chapter will then be devoted to the subjects above indicated; for, although Cawnpore carried us into July, we have yet to watch what was concurrently passing at other places.

We begin with the region extending from the Burmese frontier to the Doab, and forming the eastern portion of Northern India; it may for convenience be called Bengal, without any rigid adherence to territorial subdivision.

The Indian government was not as yet troubled with any serious outbreaks at Chittagong or Dacca, or in any of the districts bounding the Bay of Bengal on the north and east. There were a few native troops at the first named of these two towns, belonging to one of the mutinous regiments at Barrackpore; but tranquillity was not disturbed by them. It is true that, when the disloyalty of the 34th became known, the inhabitants of Chittagong and Tipperah experienced some alarm lest the detachment of this regiment stationed at the first-named town might follow the pernicious example; but the Company’s collector, having three lacs of rupees in hand, quietly removed his treasure on board a steamer; and all uneasiness was soon allayed. Along the extreme eastern border of the Bengal presidency, from Assam down through Dacca to Chittagong, the month of June similarly passed over without any disturbances calling for notice, although a temporary panic was excited in more than one spot. At Dacca, for instance, the approach of disbanded native mutineers was apprehended; and a mischievous set of Mohammedans, under one Keramut Ali, were detected in the endeavour to sow the seeds of disaffection; but by the firmness of the civil authorities, and the arrival of a hundred seamen in two pinnaces from the Company’s steamers Zenobia and Punjaub, tranquillity was soon restored.

In the Calcutta and Barrackpore district, although no actual mutiny occurred, symptoms were presented that gave much anxiety to the Europeans residing at the capital, and prompted energetic preventive measures. We have seen, in Chapter II., that much discontent was exhibited at Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore, between the months of January and May, by the native troops; that this discontent was (professedly) associated with the affair of the greased cartridges; that insubordination led to disarming and disbandment; that the news of the Meerut and Delhi atrocities in May greatly alarmed the Calcutta inhabitants; and that many addresses of loyalty and sympathy with the government were thenceforth presented. During the first half of June, the European residents looked with a sort of suspicious watchfulness at everything that was occurring around them, prepared to find the native troops treacherous, yet hoping for better things. The reliable forces in Calcutta at that time comprised H.M. 53d foot, nine hundred strong, and five hundred of H.M. 37th. A company of the 3d battalion Madras artillery; No. 2 horse field-battery; forty men of the royal artillery, recently arrived from Ceylon; and a wing of H.M. 35th foot, were at Barrackpore. The 78th Highlanders were at Chinsura. On the 13th of June, Calcutta was thrown into great agitation. A messenger was captured by the authorities, and confessed that the sepoys at Barrackpore and Calcutta had agreed to mutiny on that very night. Arrangements were immediately made for defending the city by the aid chiefly of volunteers, who had before then begun to organise themselves. The civilians took arms, marshalled themselves into companies and corps, and paraded the streets in the English part of the city. During the two following nights, this patrolling was conducted very vigilantly; and every native met in the streets was required to give an account of his movements. On one occasion, Lady Canning, accompanied by the governor-general, the commander-in-chief, Generals Windham and Beatson, and a glittering staff, went to the parade-ground; where, the volunteers being all drawn up in full array, her ladyship presented them with colours, and made a complimentary address; to which Major Turnbull replied, as commandant of the ‘Calcutta Volunteer Guards.’

The military proceedings on this occasion were as follow. Before light on Sunday morning the 14th, in consequence of a message received from head-quarters, a body of the 78th Highlanders was sent off hastily from Chinsura to Barrackpore, to disarm the native troops there; while five hundred of her Majesty’s 37th foot, landed from Ceylon only the day before, were marched off to a point about midway between Calcutta and Barrackpore, to command the road during the disarming. About midnight an order arrived that some of the 37th should return instantly to the capital. It had been discovered that the deposed King of Oude, residing in a handsome house at Garden Reach, was engaged in some machinations with a prince of the Delhi family, inimical to the interests of the Europeans. A military force marched to his house at four o’clock on the morning of the 15th, surrounded the grounds, entered, and seized the king and his prime minister, together with a large quantity of papers. Arrangements were immediately made for the safe custody of the two Oudians, until the papers could be fully examined. A document came to light, containing a Mohammedan sketch-map of Calcutta, dividing the city into sections; together with the plan for a general rising of natives on the centenary day of the battle of Plassy, the murder of all the Feringhees, and the establishment of a native ‘raj’ or dynasty on the ruins of that of the Company. It was deemed proper to adopt prompt measures on 149this occasion; all the native troops in Calcutta were disarmed as a precautionary measure, including the Calcutta militia, but excluding the governor-general’s body-guard. The sepoys, who made no demur whatever, were disarmed in parties wherever they happened to be—at the Government House guard, the treasury, the mint, the bank, and the fort. Each party was confronted by a party of Europeans, and gave up arms on being so commanded; the arms and ammunition were then taken away by the European soldiers, nothing being left with the sepoys but their ramrods, with which to ‘shoulder arms.’ It was explained to them that the disarming was only a temporary precautionary measure; that they would receive pay and perform sentinel-duty as before; and that the arms would be restored to them as soon as public tranquillity was insured.

The inhabitants of Calcutta long continued to bear well in remembrance the 14th of June. For nearly a month the civilians had been in the habit of taking revolvers with them to church, balls, and parties; but on this day, such were the vague terrors of slaughter whispered from mouth to mouth, that the excitement rose to a height of panic. One who was there at the time said: ‘The infection of terror raged through all classes. Chowringhee and Garden Reach were abandoned for the fort and the vessels in the river. The shipping was crowded with fugitives; and in houses which were selected as being least likely to be attacked, hundreds of people gladly huddled together, to share the peculiar comfort which the presence of crowds imparts on such occasions. The hotels were fortified; bands of sailors marched through the thoroughfares, happy in the expectation of possible fighting and the certainty of grog. Every group of natives was scanned with suspicion. The churches and the course were abandoned for that evening. A rising, either of Hindoos or of Mussulmans, or perhaps of both, was looked upon as certain to happen in the course of the night. From Chandernagore the whole body of European and East Indian inhabitants emigrated to Calcutta; the personnel of government, the staff of the army, all in short who had anything to lose, preferred to come away and run the risk of losing it, rather than encounter the unknown danger.’ A somewhat unworthy timidity seems, at first sight, to mark all this; but the civilians and private families of Calcutta, utterly unused to war, had been so horror-stricken by the accounts of murders of officers, violations of women, mutilations of little children, burnings of sick and wounded, and other atrocities perpetrated in Upper India, as to become in a certain sense paralysed. After the decisive measures adopted by the government on the 14th and next following day, the inhabitants of the capital gradually recovered their equanimity; and the month closed peacefully.

Early in June, the sepoys cantoned at Barrackpore made the same kind of demonstration as at an earlier date—that is, they professed fidelity, and asked to be furnished with the new Enfield rifle. In the 43d regiment B. N. I., there was a general application made to Major Matthews, by native officers as well as sepoys, to this effect; accompanied by the expression of a desire to be sent to fight against the rebels at Delhi. The 70th B. N. I., almost to a man, came forward on the 5th of the month, and presented a petition to Colonel Kennedy, with a similar prayer. The petition began somewhat boastfully: ‘From the day on which his lordship the governor-general condescended to come in person to answer our petition, on which occasion General Hearsey translated to us his address, and which was fully explained to us by our colonel, interpreter, adjutant, and all the other officers of the regiment, our honour and name have been raised amongst our countrymen;’ and it ended with an abundant profession of loyalty towards the government. The 34th regiment B. N. I., or such of the men as were at Barrackpore, imitated the example of their fellow-soldiers; they sent a petition to Lieutenant-colonel Wheler on the 9th of June, expressive of their loyalty, and requesting that the new rifle might be served out to them. The government, in reply to all these petitions and demonstrations, stated that the supply of Enfield rifles received from England was too small to permit the granting of the request; but that the request itself was received with much gratification by the governor-general, ‘proving as it does that the men of these regiments consider there is nothing objectionable either in the rifles or in the cartridges to their caste or religion.’

Little was it suspected in how short a time all these complimentary exchanges of good words would be brought to nought. On the evening of the 13th came to light those plottings or suspicions of plottings which led to an imperative order for the disarming of the sepoys. In a private letter on this subject, the major-general said: ‘Some villains in the corps were trying to incite the good men and true to mutiny; these good men ought to have given the villains up to justice;’ but as they did not, he thought it a safe plan to disarm them all. When this determination was made known by the authorities, many of the English officers of the native regiments felt much vexed and hurt; they still relied on their men, and deemed it a humiliation to themselves that such a course should be deemed necessary. Captain Greene, of the 70th N. I., wrote to Major-general Hearsey, on the Sunday morning: ‘Is it of any use my interceding with you on behalf of my old corps, which, for nigh twenty-five years, has been my pride and my home? I cannot express to you the pain with which I have just heard that they are this evening to be subjected to the indignity of being disarmed. Had the men misbehaved, I should have felt no sympathy for them; but they have not committed themselves in any way; and surely after the governor-general’s laudatory order and expression of confidence, it would not 150be too much to expect that a fair trial of their sincerity should be afforded.’ Captain Greene proceeded to say that he knew the men thoroughly, and had the most firm and undoubted reliance on their fidelity. The authorities were not affected by this appeal. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the 35th and 78th British regiments were marched to the parade-ground at Barrackpore, with loaded muskets, and supported by six 12-pounders loaded with grape-shot. The native troops were then summoned to the parade, and ordered at once to surrender their arms; this they did quietly and promptly, for even if disposed to resist, the force against them was too formidable. In little more than an hour, the muskets of the disarmed regiments were on the way to Calcutta. The sepoys bore the trial quietly, but with many expressions of mortification.

Captain Greene, in the postscript to a letter written on the following day to the major-general, mentioned certain facts which ought to have opened his eyes to the possibility of deceit and danger. A Mussulman sepoy of the 70th regiment came to him on the 9th of the month, and after conversation on some contemplated movements of the captain, said: ‘Whatever you do, do not take your lady with you.’ He gave as a reason: ‘Because the minds of the native soldiers are now in a state of inquietude; and it would be better to let the lady remain here till everything is settled in the country, as there is no knowing what might happen.’ On being asked whether he had reason to doubt the regiment, he exclaimed: ‘Who can tell the hearts of a thousand men!’ He implied that a few evil men were endeavouring to corrupt the rest. This communicative sepoy went on to observe, that the cartridge grievance, although founded on a misconception in the first instance, was afterwards used as a means of imposing on the ignorant. There were men who went about saying that the English endeavoured to destroy the caste and religion of the people; that the government ought to be uprooted; and that as the Company had been driven out of Cabool, so might it be driven out of the whole of India, if the people acted resolutely and with one accord. Another sepoy, a Hindoo, in the same regiment, told Captain Greene that the Mussulmans generally in all regiments were in the habit of talking to the effect that their ‘raj’ or supremacy was coming round again. Many others spoke indistinctly to him about dangers, and promised to protect him if peril arose. It may not be improbable that most of the men in that regiment were really disposed to be faithful, and that the danger arose from a smaller number of malcontents. Captain Greene went to see his men in the lines after the disarming; it was a painful interview to them all. ‘I have been for upwards of an hour,’ he wrote, ‘endeavouring to allay the excited feelings of our men, who were in such a state of depression, that many were crying bitterly, and none could cook their food. Some, too, had sold their cooking utensils for a mere trifle in the bazaar.’ The regiment had not been disbanded as if in disgrace, only disarmed as if for precaution; but the men nevertheless regarded it as a degradation. Some budmashes (scoundrels) had been amongst them in the night, and had urged them to desert, telling them that handcuffs and manacles had been sent for. The captain earnestly implored that their arms should be given back to them: ‘Unless something be speedily done to reassure them, the influence of their European officers will cease to exist, and a good regiment will crumble away before hopelessness and desertion. All of us, black and white, would be so thankful to you if you would get us back our arms, and sent away from here at once.’ This request was not acceded to.

Within ten days after the disarming, a hundred and thirty-three men of the disarmed regiments (2d, 34th, 43d, and 70th) deserted from Barrackpore and Calcutta, nearly all belonging to the 43d. The magistrates and military authorities in many parts of Bengal were troubled with the arrival of these deserters, who came two or three at a time, and endeavoured to excite disaffection against a government which, as they alleged, had disgraced them without a cause. A reward of fifty rupees was offered for the apprehension of every deserter.

Departing from Calcutta and Barrackpore as centres, it may be well now to sketch the state of the surrounding districts during the month of June. Towards the northeast, many towns, especially Jessore, were thrown occasionally into excitement by occurrences which would have been regarded as trivial if happening at any other time, but which required watchful attention on the part of the authorities in the peculiarly sensitive state of the native mind. In the Dinagepore district, near the Bhotan frontier, several moulvies spread reports of the intention of the government forcibly to convert native children to Christianity: these reports caused many of the children in the vernacular school at Muthoorapore to be withdrawn by their parents; and on an examination of the moulvies being ordered by the authorities, it was found that the fakeers and other religious mendicants were accustomed to carry treasonable letters and concealed correspondence within the bamboo sticks with which most of them were provided. North and west of the Anglo-Indian capital, a similar state of public affairs was presented; a succession of troublous symptoms that required attention, but without entailing serious consequences. In some instances disarmed sepoys were detected exciting disaffection; in others, seditious placards were posted up in the towns. In the country around Ramgurh a few circumstances transpired to produce temporary disquietude. The Ramgurh battalion was believed to be stanch; but as some discontent had spread among the troops in relation to the cartridge grievance, and as two or three petty chieftains exhibited symptoms of disloyalty, 151judicious and early precautions were taken against disaster—especially at Hazarebagh, where the treasury contained a lac of rupees, and where the jail, containing nine hundred prisoners, was guarded solely by two companies of a native regiment: a kind of guard which had proved very perilous at Meerut a few weeks earlier. At Midnapore, a sepoy of the jail-guard, detected in an attempt to excite mutiny among the men of the Shekhawuttie battalion, was tried, found guilty, and hanged.

The most serious event in the districts around Calcutta, perhaps, was one that occurred in the Sonthal Pergunnahs; in which the 5th irregular cavalry displayed a tendency, fatal on a small scale, and likely to have become much more disastrous if not speedily checked. Lieutenant Sir N. R. Leslie was adjutant of that regiment at Rohnee. On the 12th of June, this officer, Major Macdonald, and Assistant-surgeon Grant, while sitting in Sir Norman Leslie’s compound, in the dusk of the evening, were suddenly attacked by three men armed with swords. Major Macdonald received a blow which laid his head open, and rendered him insensible for many hours; Mr Grant received sword-wounds on the arm and the leg; while Sir Norman was so severely wounded that he expired within half an hour. The miscreants escaped after this ferocious attack, without immediate detection.^[19] At first it was hoped and believed that the regiment had not been dishonoured by the presence of these murderers on the muster-roll; Mr Grant was of this opinion; but Major Macdonald, commandant of the regiment, took a less favourable view. The offenders, it soon appeared, belonged to the regiment; a chase was ordered; two of the men were found after a time, with their clothes smeared with blood; while the third, when taken, candidly owned that it was his sword that had given the death-stroke to Leslie. The murderers were speedily executed, but without giving any information touching the motives that led to their crime. Three sowars of the regiment, Ennus Khan, Kurreem Shere Khan, and Gamda Khan, received encomiums and rewards for the alacrity with which they had pursued the reckless men who had thus brought discredit on their corps. The official dispatches relating to this affair comprised two letters written by Major Macdonald to Captain Watson, an officer commanding a squadron of the same regiment at Bhagulpore; they afford curious illustration of the cheerful, daring, care-for-naught spirit in which the British officers were often accustomed to meet their difficulties during those exciting scenes: ‘I am as fairly cut and neatly scalped as any Red Indian could do it. I got three cracks in succession on the head before I knew I was attacked. I then seized my chair by the arms, and defended myself successfully from two of them on me at once; I guarded and struck the best way I could; and at last Grant and self drove the cowards off the field. This is against my poor head, writing; but you will be anxious to know how matters really were; I expect to be in high fever to-morrow, as I have got a bad gash into the skull besides being scalped.’ This was written on the day after the murderous attack; and three days later the major wrote: ‘My dear fellow, I have had a sad time of it, and am but little able to go through such scenes, for I am very badly wounded; but, thank God, my spirits and pluck never left me for a moment. When you see my poor old head, you will wonder I could hold it up at all. I have preserved my scalp in spirits of wine—such a jolly specimen!’

In Cuttack, bounding the northwest corner of the Bay of Bengal, many Mohammedans were detected in the attempt to sap the loyalty of the Shekhawuttie battalion. Lieutenant-colonel Forster, with the head-quarters of that corps at Midnapore, succeeded by his personal influence in keeping the men from anything beyond slight acts of insubordination; but he had many proofs, in that town and in the Cuttack district, that the Company’s ‘raj’ or rule was being preached against by many emissaries of rebellion.

This rapid sketch will have shewn that the eastern divisions of Bengal were not disturbed by any very serious tumults during the month of June. Incipient proofs of disaffection were, it is true, manifested in many places; but they were either unimportant in extent, or were checked before they could rise to perilous magnitude. In the western divisions, however, the troubles were more serious; the towns were further from Calcutta, nearer to the turbulent region of Oude; and these conditions of locality greatly affected the steadiness and honesty of the native troops.

During the earlier days of the month, considerable excitement prevailed in the districts of which Patna and Dinapoor are the chief towns; in consequence of the general spread of a belief, inculcated by the deserters from Barrackpore, that the government contemplated an active 152interference with the religion of the people. A similar delusion, it was speedily remembered, had existed in the same parts about two years earlier; the government had adopted such measures as, it was hoped, would remove the prejudice; but the events of 1857 shewed that the healing policy of 1855 had not been effective for the purpose in view. Until the 13th of June, the disaffection was manifested only by sullen complainings and indistinct threats; but on that day matters presented a more serious aspect. The various magistrates throughout the Patna division reported to the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, that although no acts of violence had been committed, the continuance of tranquillity would mainly depend on the fidelity of the native troops at Dinapoor, the most important military station in that part of India. Dinapoor may, in fact, be regarded as the military post belonging to the great city of Patna, which is about ten miles distant.^[20] The magistrates also reported, as one result of their inquiries, that the Mohammedans in that division were thoroughly disaffected; and that if any disturbance occurred at head-quarters (Dinapoor), a rapid extension of the revolt would be almost inevitable. When these facts and feelings became known, such precautionary measures were adopted as seemed best calculated to avert the impending evils. An increase was made in the police force at Behar; the ghats or landing-places were carefully watched and regulated; the frontiers of the neighbouring disaffected districts were watched; a portion of the Company’s treasure at Arrah and Chupra was sent off to Calcutta, and the rest removed to Patna for safe custody under a guard of Sikhs; a volunteer guard was formed in that city; measures were taken to defend the collectorate and the opium factories; six companies of the Sikh police battalion were marched from Soorie to Patna; and places of rendezvous for European residents were appointed at many of the stations, to facilitate a combined plan of action in the event of mutinous symptoms appearing among the native troops. The Rajahs of Bettiah and Hutwah addressed letters expressive of loyalty and affection towards the government, and placed men and elephants at the disposal of the local authorities, to assist in the maintenance of tranquillity.

Towards the middle of the month, an alarm prevailed at Chupra and Arrah, consequent on the mutinous proceedings in certain towns further to the west, presently to be noticed. Large works were under construction near those places in connection with the East India Railway; and the Europeans engaged in those operations, as well as others resident in the two towns, made a hasty retreat, and sought for refuge at Dinapoor. The magistrates and most of the civil officers remained at their posts, and by their firmness prevented the alarm from degenerating into a panic. At Gayah or Gya, a town between Patna and the great trunk-road—celebrated for its Bhuddist and Hindoo temples, and the great resort of pilgrims of both religions—considerable apprehension prevailed, on account of the unprotected state of a large amount of Company’s treasure in the collectorate; an apprehension increased by the presence of many desperate characters at that time in the jail, and by the guard of the jail being wholly composed of natives who would remain steady only so long as those at Dinapoor were ‘faithful to their salt.’ Fortunately, the authorities were enabled to obtain a guard of European soldiers, chiefly from her majesty’s 64th regiment; and thus the ruffians, more to be dreaded than even the rebellious sepoys, were overawed.

It is impossible to avoid seeing, in the course of events throughout India, how much importance ought to be attached to the matter just adverted to—the instrumentality of robbers and released prisoners in producing the dreadful scenes presented. India swarms with depredators who war on the peaceful and industrious inhabitants—not merely individual thieves, but robber-tribes who infest certain provinces, directing their movements by the chances of war or of plunder. Instead of extirpating these ill-doers, as Asiatic sovereigns have sometimes attempted to do, the East India Company has been accustomed to capture and imprison them. Hence the jails are always full. At every important station we have several hundred, sometimes two or three thousand, such prisoners. The mutiny set loose these mischievous elements. The release of crowds of murderers and robbers from prison, the flocking of others from the villages, and the stimulus given to latent rogues by the prospect of plunder, would account for a large amount of the outrage committed in India—outrage which popular speech in England attaches to the sepoys alone.

On the 13th of June, the first indications of a conspiracy at Patna were detected. A nujeeb of the Behar station guards was discovered in an attempt to tamper with the Sikhs of the police corps, and to excite them to mutiny: he was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged; while three Sikhs, who had been instrumental in his apprehension, were publicly rewarded with fifty rupees each. In singular contrast to this, three other nujeebs of the same force, on the same day, placed in the commissioner’s hands a letter received from sepoys at Dinapoor, urging the Behar guards to mutiny, and to seize the treasure at Patna before the Sikhs could arrive to the rescue: this, as a valuable service rendered at a critical period, was rewarded by donations of two hundred rupees to each of the three men. The next symptoms were exhibited by certain members of the Wahabee sect of Mohammedans at Patna. The fanatical devotion of these Mussulmans to their spiritual 153leaders, their abnegation of self, and their mode of confidential communication with each other without written documents, render it at all times difficult to produce legal proof of any machinations among them; while their mutual fidelity enables them to resist all temptation to betrayal. The commissioner of Patna, having suspicions of the proceedings of the Wahabees in that city, deemed it politic to detain four of their number as hostages for the sect generally—a sect formidable for its organisation, and peculiarly hostile to Christians. They were placed in a sort of honourable confinement, while a general disarming of the inhabitants took place. On another occasion a police jemadar, Waris Ali, was ascertained to be in possession of a large amount of treasonable correspondence; he was known to be in some way related to the royal family of Delhi; and the letters found in his house threw suspicion on more than one native official in the service of the Company.

The most serious affair at Patna, however, occurred about the close of the period to which this chapter more particularly relates. At about eight o’clock in the evening of the 3d of July, a body of Mohammedans, variously estimated from eighty to two hundred, assembled at the house of one of their number, one Peer Ali Khan, a bookseller, and proceeded thence to the Roman Catholic church and mission-house in Patna, with two large green flags, a drum beating, and cries of ‘Ali! Ali!’ The priest, whom they probably intended to murder, fortunately escaped. They emerged into the street, reiterated their cries, and called on the populace to join them. Dr Lyell, principal assistant to the opium agent, immediately went to the spot, accompanied by nine Sikhs. He rode ahead of his support, was shot down by the rioters, and his body mangled and mutilated before the Sikhs could come up. A force of Sikhs and nujeebs speedily recovered the unfortunate gentleman’s body, killed some of the insurgents, and put the rest to flight. This appeared at first to be a religious demonstration: a Mohammedan fanatic war-cry was shouted, and the property of the Catholic mission was destroyed, but without any plunder or removal. Thirty-six of the insurgents were afterwards captured and tried; sixteen of the number, including Peer Ali Khan, who was believed to be the murderer of Dr Lyell, were condemned to death; eighteen, including a jemadar, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment; and two were acquitted. All the facts of this temporary outbreak were full of significance; for it soon became evident that something more than mere religious hostility had been intended. Peer Ali Khan was offered a reprieve if he would divulge the nature of the conspiracy; but, like a bold, consistent fanatic, he remained defiant to the last, and nothing could be got out of him. It was afterwards ascertained that he had been in secret communication with an influential native at Cawnpore ever since the annexation of Oude, and that the details of some widely-spread plot had been concerted between them. The capture of the thirty-six rioters had been effected by the disclosures of one of the band, who was wounded in the struggle; he declared that a plot had been in existence for many months, and that men were regularly paid to excite the people to fight for the Padishah of Delhi. Letters found in Peer Ali’s house disclosed an organised Mussulman conspiracy to re-establish Mohammedan supremacy on the ruins of British power; and besides the correspondence with Cawnpore and Delhi, a clue was obtained to the complicity of an influential Mohammedan at Lucknow.

Patna was sufficiently well watched and guarded to prevent the occurrence of anything of more serious import. Nevertheless, the European inhabitants were kept in great anxiety, knowing how much their safety depended on the conduct of the sepoys at Dinapoor. The commissioner at the one place, and the military commandant at the other, were naturally rejoiced to receive any demonstrations of fidelity on the part of the native troops, even if the sincerity of those demonstrations were not quite free from doubt. On the 3d of June, Colonel Templer assembled the 7th regiment B. N. I. on the military parade at Dinapoor, to read to them the flattering address which Viscount Canning had made to the 70th regiment at Barrackpore, on the manifestation of loyalty by that corps. On the conclusion of this ceremony, the native commissioned officers came up to the colonel, and presented to him a petition, signed by two subadars and five jemadars on the part of the whole regiment. The petition is worth transcribing,^[21] to shew in what glowing language the native troops could express their grateful allegiance—but whether sincere or insincere, no European could at that time truly tell. Colonel Templer desired that all the men who acknowledged the petition to contain an expression of their real sentiments and wishes, would shoulder their arms in token thereof; on which every one present 154shouldered arms. The native officers afterwards assured the colonel, with apparent earnestness, that it was the eager wish of the whole regiment to be afforded an opportunity of removing even a suspicion of their disaffection. When Colonel Templer repeated this to Major-general Lloyd, the military commander of the Dinapoor division, and when Lloyd forwarded the communication to Calcutta, the regiment of course received thanks for the demonstration, and were assured that ‘their good conduct will be kept in remembrance by the governor-general in council.’ It was not until a later month that the small value of these protestations was clearly shewn; nevertheless the Europeans at Dinapoor continued throughout June to be very uneasy. Almost every one lived in the square; the guns were kept ready loaded with grape; the few European troops were on the alert; and pickets were posted all round the station. A motley assemblage—planters, soldiers, civilians, railway men, and others—was added to the ordinary residents, driven in from the surrounding districts for protection. The officers gave up their mess-house to the ladies, who completely filled it.

In Tirhoot, a district north of Patna, on the other side of the Ganges, the planters and others were thrown into great excitement during the month of June, by the events occurring around them. About the middle of the month, planters left their estates and civilians their homes, to go for refuge to the Company’s station at Mozufferpoor. Eighty gentlemen, thirty ladies, and forty children, were all crowded into two houses; the ladies and children shut up at night, while the men slept in verandahs, or in tents, or took turns in patrolling. The nujeebs, stationed at that place, were suspected of being in sympathy with the mutineers; one of the Company’s servants, disguised as a native, went to their quarters one night, and overheard them conversing about murdering the Europeans, looting the treasury (which contained seven lacs of rupees), and liberating the prisoners. This was the alarm that led to the assembling of the Europeans at the station for mutual protection; and there can be little doubt that the protection would have been needed had Dinapoor fallen. One of the Mohammedan inhabitants was seized at Mozufferpoor, with a quantity of treasonable correspondence in his possession; and the commandant at Segowlie condemned to the gallows with very little scruple several suspicious characters in various parts of the district.

Advancing up the Ganges, we come to Ghazeepore, on its northern or left bank. This town, containing forty thousand inhabitants, is rendered somewhat famous by a palace once belonging to the Nawab of Oude, but now in a very ruinous state; also by the beautiful Grecian tomb erected to the Marquis of Cornwallis; and by the rose-gardens in its vicinity, where rose-leaves are gathered for making the celebrated otto or attar. The bungalows of the Company’s civil servants are situated west of the town; and beyond them is the military cantonment. During the early part of the month of June, the 65th native infantry, stationed at Ghazeepore, was sorely tempted by the mutinying of so many other regiments at stations within forty or fifty miles; but they remained stanch for some time longer.

Not so the sepoys at Azimghur, a town northwest of Ghazeepore, containing twelve or fourteen thousand inhabitants, and a military station. At this place the 17th regiment Bengal native infantry was posted at the beginning of June. On the 3d of the month an escort of thirty troopers of the 13th irregular cavalry brought in seven lacs of rupees from Goruckpore, en route to Benares. At six o’clock in the evening the treasure was started again on its journey; and in three hours afterwards the 17th mutinied, influenced apparently rather by the hope of loot than by any political or religious motives. During several days previously the authorities had been employed in throwing up a breastwork around the cutchery or government offices; but this was not finished. The sepoys killed their quartermaster, and wounded the quartermaster-sergeant and two or three others. The officer on guard at the fort of the cutchery sent out a picket to the lines, and ordered the native artillerymen to load their guns: this they refused to do; and hence the infantry were left to follow out their plan of spoliation. The officers were at mess when the mutiny began; seeing the danger, they placed the ladies on the roof of the cutchery. When the sepoys came up, they formed a square round the officers, and swore to protect them; but stated that, as some men of the regiment were very hostile, it would be better for all the officers to depart. The men brought carriages for them, and escorted them ten miles on the road to Ghazeepore. Many of the civilians hurried away to the same town, reaching that place in terrible plight. The marauders from the neighbouring villages did not fail in their usual course; they plundered the bungalows of the Europeans at Azimghur, or such of them as were left unprotected.

Far more serious were the events at Benares, than at any city or station eastward of it, during the month of June. It would in all probability have been still more deplorable, had not European troops arrived just at that time. Lieutenant-colonel Neill reached Benares on the 3d of June, with sixty men and three officers of the 1st Madras Fusiliers (Europeans), of which regiment five more companies were in the rear, expecting to reach that city in a few days. The regiment had been despatched in great haste by Viscount Canning, in the hope that it would appear before Cawnpore in time to relieve Sir Hugh Wheeler and his unfortunate companions. Neill intended, after a day’s repose, to have started from Benares for Cawnpore on the 4th; but he received timely notice from Lieutenant Palliser that the 17th B. N. I. had mutinied at Azimghur; and that 155the treasure, passing through Azimghur in its way from Goruckpore to Benares (mentioned in the last paragraph), had been plundered by the mutinous sepoys. Brigadier Ponsonby, the commandant at Benares, at once consulted with Colonel Neill concerning the propriety of disarming the 37th regiment Bengal infantry, stationed at that city. Neill recommended this to be done, and done at once. It was then arranged that Neill should make his appearance on parade at five o’clock that same afternoon, accompanied by a hundred and fifty of H.M. 10th foot, sixty of the Madras Fusiliers, and three guns of No. 12 field-battery, with thirty artillerymen. They were to be joined on parade by the Sikh regiment, in which Lieutenant-colonel Gordon placed full confidence, and about seventy of the 13th irregular cavalry. The 37th, suspecting what was intended, ran to the bells of arms, seized and loaded their muskets, and fired upon the Europeans; several men fell wounded, and the brigadier was rendered powerless by a sun stroke. Thereupon Colonel Neill, assuming the command, made a dash on the native lines. What was now the perplexity of the colonel, and the mortification of Gordon, at seeing the Sikhs halt, waver, turn round, wound several of their officers, fire at the Europeans, and disperse! It was one of those inexplicable movements so frequently exhibited by the native troops. Neill, now distrusting all save the Europeans, opened an effective fire with his three guns, expelled the 37th from their lines, burnt the huts, and then secured his own men and guns in the barrack for the night. Early on the morning of the 5th he sent out parties, and brought in such of the arms and accoutrements of the 37th as had been left behind; he also told off a strong body to bring the Company’s treasure from the civil offices to the barracks. Colonel Neill fully believed that if he had delayed his bold proceeding twelve hours, the ill-protected treasury would have been seized by the 37th, and that the numerous European families in the cantonment would have been placed in great peril before he could reach them. The barracks were between the cantonment and the city; and near them was a building called the mint. Into this mint, before going on parade on the 4th, he had arranged that all the families should go for refuge in the event of any disturbance taking place. A few of the Sikhs and of the irregular cavalry remained faithful; and Colonel Neill, with his two hundred and forty Europeans^[22] and these fragments of native regiments, contrived to protect the city, the barracks, the mint, and the cantonment—a trying task, to defend so large an area from mutinous sepoys and troopers, and predatory budmashes. He had to record the deaths of Captain Guise, an army-surgeon, and two privates; and the wounding of about double this number—casualties surprising for their lightness, considering that there were nearly two thousand enemies to contend against altogether. Of the insurgents, not less than two hundred were killed or wounded. It was at once determined to strengthen the neighbouring fort of Chunar or Chunargur; for which duty a small detachment of Europeans was drafted off.

Such were the military operations of the 4th and 5th of June, as told in the brief professional language of Colonel Neill. Various officers and civilians afterwards dwelt more fully on the detailed incidents of those two days. The 13th irregular cavalry and the Sikhs (Loodianah regiment) had been relied on as faithful; and the 37th had greatly distinguished itself in former years in the Punjaub and Afghanistan. This infantry regiment, however, exhibited signs of insubordination on the 1st of the month; and on the 3d, Lieutenant-colonel Gordon, second in command under Ponsonby, told the brigadier that the men of the 37th were plotting with the ruffians of the city. The brigadier, Mr Tucker the commissioner, and Mr Gubbins the judge, thereupon conferred; and it was almost fully determined, even before Colonel Neill’s arrival, and before the receipt of disastrous news from Azimghur, that the disbandment of the regiment would be a necessary measure of precaution. The irregular cavalry were stationed at Sultanpore and Benares, and were called in to aid the Europeans and Sikhs in the disarming. A few of the officers, unlike their brethren, distrusted these troopers; and the distrust proved to be well founded. The Sikhs, at the hour of need, fell away as soon as the 37th had seized their arms; and the irregulars were not slow to follow their example; so that, in effect, the insurgents were to the Europeans in the ratio of eight or ten to one. One of the English officers of the 37th has placed upon record a few facts shewing how strangely unexpected was this among many of the Indian outbreaks, by the very men whose position and experience would naturally lead them (one might suppose) to have watched for symptoms. In the first instance, Major Barrett, indignant at the slight which he believed to have been put upon the good and faithful sepoys of the 37th, by the order for disarming, went openly towards the regiment during the struggle at the bells of arms, to shew his confidence in them; but when he saw some of his men firing at him, and others approach him with fixed bayonets, he felt painfully that he must both change his opinions and effect a retreat. Some of the 37th did, however, remain ‘true to their salt;’ and these, under the major, who had escaped the shots aimed at him, were among the troops sent to guard Chunar Fort. As a second instance: after Captain Guise, of the 13th irregulars, had been shot down by men of the 37th, the brigadier appointed Captain Dodgson 156to supply his place; but the irregulars, instead of obeying him, flashed their swords, muttered some indistinct observations, fired at him, and at once joined the rebels whom they had been employed and expected to oppose. A third instance, in relation to the Sikhs, shall be given in the words of the officer above adverted to: ‘Just as the irregulars were flashing their swords in reply to Captain Dodgson’s short address, I was horrified by noticing about a dozen of the Sikhs fire straight forward upon the European soldiers, who were still kneeling and firing into the 37th. The next moment some half-dozen of their muskets were staring me in the face, and a whole tempest of bullets came whizzing towards me. Two passed through my forage-cap, and set my hair on fire; three passed through my trousers, one just grazing my right thigh. I rushed headlong at one of the fellows whom I had noticed more especially aiming at me, but had scarcely advanced three paces when a second volley of bullets saluted me.’ This volley brought the officer low; he lay among the wounded, unrecognised for many hours, but was fortunate enough to obtain surgical aid in time to avert a fatal result. Many circumstances afterwards came to light, tending to shew that, had not Neill and Ponsonby taken the initiative when they did, the native troops would probably have risen that same night, and perhaps imitated the Meerut outrages. One of the missionaries at Benares, who escaped to Chunar as soon as the outbreak occurred, said in a letter: ‘Some of the 37th have confessed to their officers that they had been told out in bands for our several bungalows, to murder all the Europeans at ten o’clock that night; and that, too, at the time they were volunteering to go to Delhi, and Colonel Spottiswoode was walking about among them in plain clothes with the most implicit confidence.’

The fighting, during this exciting day at Benares, was practically over as soon as the rebels began to retreat; but then the perils of the civilians commenced. More correctly, however, it might be said that the wild confusion began earlier; for while the brief but fierce military struggle was still in progress on the parade-ground, the native guards of the 37th at the treasury, the hospital, the mess-house, the bazaar, and other buildings, broke from their duty, and proceeded to molest the Europeans, with evident hopes of plunder. A Sikh, one Soorut Singh, has been credited with an act which saved many lives and much treasure. He was among the Sikhs of the treasury-guard; and when the rising began, talked to his comrades, and prevented them from rising in mutiny; many civilians, with their families, who had taken refuge in the collector’s cutcherry, were saved through this friendly agency; while the treasure was held intact till the following morning, when European troops convoyed it to a place of safety. The Rev. Mr Kennedy, a resident in Benares at that time, states that the faithfulness of these Sikhs, about seventy in number, was deemed so remarkable under the circumstances, that £1000 was given to them as a reward for their safe guardianship of the £60,000 in the treasury. After the discomfiture on the parade-ground, the rebels, maddened by defeat and thirsting for blood, streamed through many of the compounds in the cantonment as they retreated, and fired as they passed, but happily so much at random that little danger was done. Several of the Europeans took refuge in stables and outhouses. Others climbed to the roofs of their houses, and hid behind the parapets. At the house of the commissioner, Mr Tucker, many ladies and children found concealment under straw on the flat roof; while the gentlemen stood by to defend them if danger should approach. Three or four families took boat, and rowed out into the middle of the Ganges, there to remain until news of returning tranquillity should reach them; much booming of cannon and rattling of musketry, much appearance of fire and smoke hovering over city and cantonment, kept the occupants of the boats in constant anxiety; but when victory had declared for the British, and these boat-parties had returned to land, escorts arrived to convey the non-combatants and some of the officers to the mint, in accordance with the arrangement already made. They arrived at that building about midnight. Mr Kennedy described in a letter the scene presented at the mint when he and his family reached it: ‘What a scene of confusion and tumult was there. All in front, bands of English soldiers, ready to act at a moment’s notice; men, women, and children, high and low, huddled together, wondering at meeting at such a time and in such a place, not knowing where they were to throw themselves down for the night, and altogether looking quite bewildered.’ A young officer, throwing into his narrative that light-heartedness which so often bore up men of his class during the troubles of the period, gave a little more detail of the first night and day at the place of refuge: ‘I found everybody at the mint, which several had only reached after many adventures. We bivouacked in the large rooms, and slept on the roof—ladies, children, ayahs, and punkah-coolies; officers lying down dressed, and their wives sitting up fanning them. In the compound or enclosure below, there was a little handful of Europeans, perhaps a hundred and fifty in all; others were at the barracks half a mile off. There was a picknicking, gipsifying look about the whole affair, which prevented one from realising that the small congregation were there making a stand for a huge empire, and that their lives were upon the toss-up of the next events.’

During a considerable portion of the month of June, the Europeans made the mint their chief place of residence, the men going out in the daytime to their respective duties, and the ladies and children remaining in their place of refuge. On the 5th, few ventured out of the building, unless heavily armed or strongly escorted. The mint 157had a most warlike appearance, bristling with arms, and soon became almost insupportably hot to the numerous persons congregated within it. The hot winds of Benares at that time, nearly midsummer, were terrible for Europeans to bear.

Mess-house of the Officers of the 6th Native Infantry at Allahabad.

On the 7th, which was Sunday, Mr Kennedy performed divine service at the mint, and a church-missionary at the barracks. Gradually, on subsequent days, whole families would venture out for a few hours at a time, to take a hasty glance at homes which they had so suddenly been called upon to quit; but the mint continued for two or three weeks to be the refuge to which they all looked. As European troops, however, were arriving at Benares every day, on the way to the upper provinces, it soon became practicable, under the energetic Neill, to insure tranquillity in and near that city with a very small number of these so much-valued Queen’s troops. The capture and execution of insurgents, under the combined orders of Neill, Tucker, and Gubbins, respectively the commandant, commissioner, and judge, were conducted with such stern promptness as struck terror into the hearts of evildoers. It may be instructive to see in what light Mr Kennedy, as a clergyman, regarded these terrible executions, which are admitted to have been very numerous: ‘The gibbet is, I must acknowledge, a standing institution among us at present. There it stands, immediately in front of the flagstaff, with three ropes always attached to it, so that three may be executed at one time. Scarcely a day passes without some poor wretches being hurled into eternity. It is horrible, very horrible! To think of it is enough to make one’s blood run cold; but such is the state of things here, that even fine delicate ladies may be heard expressing their joy at the rigour with which the miscreants are treated. The swiftness with which crime is followed by the severest punishment strikes the people with astonishment; it is so utterly foreign to all our modes of procedure, as known to them. Hitherto the process has been very slow, encumbered with forms, and such cases have always been carried to the Supreme Court for final decision; but now, the commissioner of Benares may give commissions to any he chooses (the city being under martial law), to try, decide, and execute on the spot, without any delay and without any reference.’

Jounpoor or Juanpoor, a town about thirty miles northwest of Benares, was one of those which shared with that city the troubles of the month of June. A detachment of the Loodianah Sikh regiment, under Lieutenant Mara, stationed at that place, mutinied most suddenly and unexpectedly on the 5th, within less than an hour after they had shaken hands with some of the European residents as a token of friendly feeling. The men revolted through some impulse that the English in vain endeavoured to understand at the time; but it was afterwards ascertained that 158some of the mutinous 37th from Benares had been tampering with them. In the first whirl of the tumult, the lieutenant and a civilian were shot down, and the rest of the Europeans sought safety by flight. Information reached Benares, after some days, that the fugitives were in hiding; and a small detachment was at once despatched for their relief. It was now found, as in many other instances, that amid all the brutality and recklessness of the mutineers and budmashes, there were not wanting humane natives in the country villages, ready to succour the distressed; one such, named Hingun Lall, had sheltered and fed the whole of the fugitives from Jounpoor for five days.

There were many stations at which the number of insurgent troops was greater; there were many occasions on which the Europeans suffered more general and prolonged miseries; there were many struggles of more exciting character between the dark-skinned soldiers and the light—but there was not perhaps, throughout the whole history of the Indian mutinies, an outbreak which excited more astonishment than that at Allahabad in the early part of June. It was totally unexpected by the authorities, who had been blinded by protestations of loyalty on the part of the troops. This place (see p. 107) occupies a very important position in relation to Upper India generally; being at the point where the Jumna and Ganges join, where the Benares region ends and the Oude region begins, where the Doab and Bundelcund commence, where the river-traffic and the road-traffic branch out in various directions, and where the great railway will one day have a central station. As stated in a former page, the 6th Bengal Native Infantry, stationed at Allahabad, voluntarily came forward and offered their services to march against the Delhi mutineers. For this demonstration they were thanked by their officers, who felt gratified that, amid so much desertion, fidelity should make itself apparent in this quarter. Rather from a vague undefined uneasiness, than from any suspicion of this particular regiment, the Europeans at Allahabad had for some time been in uneasiness; there had been panics in the city; there had been much patrolling and watching; and the ladies had been looking anxiously to the fort as a place of refuge, whither most of them had taken up their abode at night, returning to their homes in the cantonment or the city in the daytime. From Benares, Lucknow, or other places, they apprehended danger—but not from within.

It was on the 5th of June that Colonel Simpson, of the 6th regiment, received Viscount Canning’s instructions to thank his men for their loyal offer to march and fight against the rebels at Delhi; and it was on the same day that news reached Allahabad, probably by telegraph, of the occurrences at Benares on the previous day, and of the possible arrival of some of the insurgents from that place. The officers still continued to trust the 6th regiment, not only in virtue of the recent protestation of fidelity by the men, but on account of their general good conduct; indeed, this was one of the most trusted regiments in the whole native army. Nevertheless, instructions were given to arm the civilians as well as the military, and to prepare for making a good stand at the fort. Many civilians, formed into a militia, under the commandant of the garrison, slept in the fort that night, or relieved each other as sentinels at the ramparts. There were at that time in the fort, besides the women and children, about thirty invalid artillerymen, under Captain Hazelwood; a few commissariat and magazine sergeants; about a hundred volunteer civilians; four hundred Sikhs, of the Ferozpore regiment, under Lieutenant Brasyer; and eighty men of the 6th regiment, guarding the main gate. Several Europeans with their families, thinking no danger nigh, slept outside the fort that night. Two companies of the native regiment under three English officers, and two guns under Captain Harward, were sent to guard the bridge of boats across the Ganges in the direction of Benares. Captain Alexander, with two squadrons of the 3d regiment Oude irregular cavalry, was posted in the Alopee Bagh, a camping-ground commanding the roads to the station. The main body of the 6th remained in their lines, three miles from the fort. All proceeded quietly until about nine o’clock on the evening of the 6th of June; when, to the inexpressible astonishment and dismay of the officers, the native regiment rose in revolt. The two guns were seized by them at the bridge-head, and Harward had to run for his life. In the cantonment the officers were at mess, full of confidence in their trusted troops, when the sepoys sounded the alarm bugle, as if to bring them on parade; those who rushed out were at once aimed at, and nearly all shot dead; while no fewer than nine young ensigns, mere boys who had just entered on the career of soldiering, were bayoneted in the mess-room itself. It was a cruel and bloody deed, for the poor youths had but recently arrived, and were in hostility with none. Captain Alexander, when he heard of the rising, hastened off to the lines with a few of his troopers; but he was caught in an ambush by a body of the sepoys, and at once shot down. The sepoys, joined by released prisoners and habitual plunderers, then commenced a scene of murder and devastation in all directions; Europeans were shot wherever they could be seen; the few English women who had not been so fortunate as to seek refuge in the fort, were grossly outraged before being put to death; the telegraph wires were cut; the boats on the river were seized; the treasury was plundered; the houses of native bankers, as well as those of European residents, were pillaged; and wild licence reigned everywhere. Terrible were the deeds recorded—a whole family roasted alive; persons killed by the slow process of cutting off in succession ears, nose, fingers, feet, &c.; others 159chopped to pieces; children tossed on bayonets before their mother’s eyes.

An affecting incident is related of one of the unfortunate young officers so ruthlessly attacked at the mess-house. An ensign, only sixteen years of age, who was left for dead among the rest, escaped in the darkness to a neighbouring ravine. Here he found a stream, the waters of which sustained his life for four days and nights. Although desperately wounded, he contrived to raise himself into a tree at night-time, for protection from wild beasts. On the fifth day he was discovered, and dragged by the brutal insurgents before one of their leaders. There he found another prisoner, a Christian catechist, formerly a Mohammedan, whom the sepoys were endeavouring to terrify and torment into a renunciation of Christianity. The firmness of the native was giving way as he knelt before his persecutors; but the boy-officer, after anxiously watching him for a short time said: ‘Oh, my friend, come what may, do not deny the Lord Jesus!’ Just at this moment the arrival of Colonel Neill and the Madras Fusiliers (presently to be noticed) at Allahabad was announced; the ruffians made off; the poor catechist’s life was saved; but the gentle-spirited young ensign sank under the wounds and privations he had endured. When this incident became known through the medium of the public journals, the father of the young officer, town-clerk of Evesham, told how brief had been the career thus cut short. Arthur Marcus Hill Cheek had left England so recently as the 20th of March preceding, to commence the life of a soldier; he arrived at Calcutta in May, was appointed to the 6th native regiment, reached Allahabad on the 19th of the same month, and was shot down by his own men eighteen days afterwards.

The inmates of the fort naturally suffered an agony of suspense on the night of the 6th. When they heard the bugle, and the subsequent firing, they believed the mutineers had arrived from Benares; and as the intensity of the sound varied from time to time, so did they picture in imagination the varying fortunes of the two hypothetical opposing forces—the supposed insurgents from the east, and the supposed loyal 6th regiment. Soon were they startled by a revelation of the real truth—that the firing came from their own trusted sepoys. The Europeans in the fort, recovering from their wonder and dismay, were fortunately enabled to disarm the eighty sepoys at the gate through the energy of Lieutenant Brasyer; and it was then found that these fellows had loaded and capped their muskets, ready to turn out. Five officers succeeded in entering during the night, three of them naked, having had to swim the Ganges. For twelve days did the Europeans remain within the fort, not daring to emerge for many hours at a time, lest the four hundred Sikhs should prove faithless in the hour of greatest need. The chief streets of the city are about half a mile from the fort; and during several days and nights troops of rioters were to be seen rushing from place to place, plundering and burning. Day and night the civilians manned the ramparts, succeeding each other in regular watches—now nearly struck down by the hot blazing sun; now pouring forth shot and shell upon such of the insurgents as were within reach. The civilians or volunteers formed themselves into three corps; one of which, called the Flagstaff Division, was joined by about twenty railway men—sturdy fellows who had suffered like the rest, and were not slow to avenge themselves on the mutineers whenever opportunity offered. After a time, the volunteers sallied forth into the city with the Sikhs, and had several skirmishes in the streets with the insurgents—delighted at the privilege of quitting for a few hours the hot crowded fort, even to fight. It was by degrees ascertained that conspiracy had been going on in the city before the actual outbreak occurred. The standard of insurrection was unfurled by a native unknown to the Europeans: some supposed him to be a moulvie, or Mohammedan religious teacher; but whatever may have been his former position, he now announced himself as viceroy of the King of Delhi. He quickly collected about him three or four thousand rebels, sepoys and others, and displayed the green flag that constitutes the Moslem symbol. The head-quarters of this self-appointed chieftain were in the higher part of the city, at the old Mohammedan gardens of Sultan Khoosroo; there the prisoners taken by the mutineers were confined—among whom were the native Christian teachers belonging to the Rev. Mr Hay’s mission.

The movements of Colonel Neill must now be traced. No sooner did this gallant and energetic officer hear of the occurrences at Allahabad, than he proceeded to effect at that place what he had already done at Benares—re-establish English authority by a prompt, firm, and stern course of action. The distance between the two cities being about seventy-five miles, he quickly made the necessary travelling arrangements. He left Benares on the evening of the 9th, accompanied by one officer and forty-three men of the Madras Fusiliers. The horses being nearly all taken off the road, he found much difficulty in bringing in the dâk-carriages containing the men; but this and all other obstacles he surmounted. He found the country between Mirzapore and Allahabad infested with bands of plunderers, the villages deserted, and none of the authorities remaining. Major Stephenson, with a hundred more men, set out from Benares on the same evening as Neill; but his bullock-vans were still more slow in progress; and his men suffered much from exposure to heat during the journey. Neill reached Allahabad on the afternoon of the 11th. He found the fort almost completely invested; the bridge of boats over the Ganges in the hands of a mob, and partly broken; and the neighbouring villages swarming with insurgents. By cautious manœuvring at the end of the Benares road, he succeeded in obtaining 160boats which conveyed him and his handful of men over to the fort. He at once assumed command, and arranged that on the following morning the enemy should be driven out of the villages, and the bridge of boats recaptured. Accordingly, on the morning of the 12th he opened fire with several round-shot, and then attacked the rebels in the village of Deeragunge with a detachment of Fusiliers and Sikhs: this was effectively accomplished, and a safe road opened for the approach of Major Stephenson’s detachment on the evening of that day. On the 13th the insurgents were driven out of the village of Kydgunge. Neill had now a strange enemy to combat within the fort itself—drunkenness and relaxed discipline. The Sikhs, during their sallies into the city before his arrival, had gained entrance into some of the deserted warehouses of wine-merchants and others in the town, had brought away large quantities of beverage, and had sold these to the European soldiers within the fort—at four annas (sixpence) per bottle for wine, spirits, or beer indiscriminately; drunkenness and disorganisation followed, requiring determined measures on the part of the commandant. He bought all the remaining liquors obtainable, for commissariat use; and kept a watchful eye on the stores still remaining in the warehouses in the town. Neill saw reason for distrusting the Sikhs; they had remained faithful up to that time, but nevertheless exhibited symptoms which required attention. As soon as possible, he got them out of the fort altogether, and placed them at various posts in the city where they might still render service if they chose to remain faithful. His opinion of the native troops was sufficiently expressed in this passage in one of his dispatches: ‘I felt that Allahabad was really safe when every native soldier and sentry was out of the fort; and as long as I command I shall not allow one to be on duty in it.’ Nothing can be more striking than the difference of views held by Indian officers on this point; some distrusted the natives from the first, while others maintained faith in them to a very disastrous extent.

From the time when Neill obtained the upper-hand in Allahabad, he was incessantly engaged in chastising the insurgents in the neighbourhood. He sent a steamer up the Jumna on the 15th, with a howitzer under Captain Harward, and twenty fusiliers under Lieutenant Arnold; and these worked much execution among the rebels on the banks. A combined body of fusiliers, Sikhs, and irregular cavalry made an attack on the villages of Kydgunge and Mootingunge, on the banks of the Jumna, driving out the insurgents harboured there, and mowing them down in considerable numbers. On subsequent days, wherever Neill heard of the presence of insurgents in any of the surrounding villages, he at once attacked them; and great terror seized the hearts of the malcontents in the city at the celerity with which guns and gibbets were set to work. On the 18th he sent eighty fusiliers and a hundred Sikhs up the river in a steamer, to destroy the Patan village of Durriabad, and the Meewattie villages of Sydabad and Russelpore. It was not merely in the villages that these active operations were necessary; a large number of the mutinous sepoys went off towards Delhi on the day after the outbreak, leaving the self-elected chief to manage his rabble-army as he liked; and it was against this rabble that many of the expeditions were planned. The city suffered terribly from this double infliction; for after the spoliation and burning effected by the marauders, the English employed cannon-balls and musketry to drive those marauders out of the streets and houses; and Allahabad thus became little other than a mass of blackened ruins. Colonel Neill organised a body of irregular cavalry by joining Captain Palliser’s detachment of the 13th irregulars with the few men of Captain Alexander’s corps still remaining true to their salt. A force of about a hundred and sixty Madras Fusiliers started from Benares on the 13th, under Captain Fraser; he was joined on the road by Captain Palliser’s detachment of troopers, just adverted to, of about eighty men, and the two officers then proceeded towards Allahabad. They found the road almost wholly in the hands of rebels and plunderers; but by fighting, hanging, and burning, they cleared a path for themselves, struck terror into the evildoers, and recovered much of the Company’s treasure that had fallen into hostile hands. It is sad to read of six villages being reduced to ashes during this one march; but stringent measures were absolutely necessary to a restoration of order and obedience. Fraser and Palliser reached Allahabad on the 18th, and their arrival enabled Neill to prosecute two objects which he had at heart—the securing of Allahabad, and the gradual collection of a force that might march to the relief of poor Sir Hugh Wheeler and the other beleaguered Europeans at Cawnpore. During these varied operations, the officers and men were often exposed during the daytime to a heat so tremendous that nothing but an intense interest in their work could have kept them up. ‘If I can keep from fever,’ wrote one of them, ‘I shan’t care; for excitement enables one to stand the sun and fatigue wonderfully. At any other time the sun would have knocked us down like dogs; but all this month we have been out in the middle of the day, toiling like coolies, yet I have never been better in my life—such an appetite!’ To meet temporary exigencies, the church, the government offices, the barracks, the bungalows—all were placed at the disposal of the English troops, as fast as they arrived up from Calcutta. These reinforcements, during the second half of the month, consisted chiefly of detachments of her Majesty’s 64th, 78th, and 84th foot. The peaceful inhabitants began to return to the half-ruined city, shattered houses were hastily rebuilt or repaired, trade gradually revived, bullocks and carriages arrived in considerable number, supplies were laid 161in, the weather became cooler, the cholera abated, and Colonel Neill found himself enabled to look forward with much confidence to the future. The fort, during almost the whole of the month, had been very much crowded, insomuch that the inmates suffered greatly from heat and cholera. Two steam-boat loads of women and children were therefore sent down the river towards Calcutta; and all the non-combatants left the fort, to reoccupy such of their residences as had escaped demolition. Some of the European soldiers were tented on the glacis; others took up quarters in a tope of trees near the dâk-bungalow; lastly, a hospital was fitted up for the cholera patients.

With the end of June came tranquillity both to Benares and to Allahabad, chiefly through the determined measures adopted by Colonel Neill; and then he planned an expedition, the best in his power, for Cawnpore—the fortunes of which will come under our notice in due time.

Notes.

The Oude Royal Family.—When the news reached England that the deposed King of Oude had been arrested at Calcutta, in the way described in the present chapter, on suspicion of complicity with the mutineers, his relations, who had proceeded to London to appeal against the annexation of Oude by the Company, prepared a petition filled with protestations of innocence, on his part and on their own. The petition was presented to the House of Lords by Lord Campbell, though not formally received owing to some defect in phraseology. A memorial to Queen Victoria was couched in similar form. The petition and memorial ran as follows:

‘The petition of the undersigned Jenabi Auliah Tajara Begum, the Queen-mother of Oude; Mirza Mohummud Hamid Allie, eldest son and heir-apparent of his Majesty the King of Oude; and Mirra Mohummud Jowaad Allie Sekunder Hushmut Bahadoor, next brother of his Majesty the King of Oude, sheweth:

‘That your petitioners have heard with sincere regret the tidings which have reached the British kingdom of disaffection prevailing among the native troops in India; and that they desire, at the earliest opportunity, to give public expression to that solemn assurance which they some time since conveyed to her Majesty’s government, that the fidelity and attachment to Great Britain which has ever characterised the royal family of Oude continues unchanged and unaffected by these deplorable events, and that they remain, as Lord Dalhousie, the late governor-general of India, emphatically declared them, “a royal race, ever faithful and true to their friendship with the British nation.”

‘That in the midst of this great public calamity, your petitioners have sustained their own peculiar cause of pain and sorrow in the intelligence which has reached them, through the public papers, that his Majesty the King of Oude has been subjected to restraint at Calcutta, and deprived of the means of communicating even with your petitioners, his mother, son, and brother.

‘That your petitioners desire unequivocally and solemnly to assure her Majesty and your lordships, that if his Majesty the King of Oude has been suspected of any complicity in the recent disastrous occurrences, such suspicion is not only wholly and absolutely unfounded, but is directed against one, the whole tenor of whose life, character, and conduct directly negatives all such imputations. Your petitioners recall to the recollection of your lordships the facts relating to the dethronement of the King of Oude, as set forth in the petition presented to the House of Commons by Sir Fitzroy Kelly on the 25th of May last, that when resistance might have been made, and was even anticipated by the British general, the King of Oude directed his guards and troops to lay aside their arms, and that when it was announced to him that the territories of Oude were to be vested for ever in the Honourable East India Company, the king, instead of offering resistance to the British government, after giving vent to his feelings in a burst of grief, descended from his throne, declaring his determination to seek for justice at her Majesty’s throne, and from the parliament of England.

‘That since their resort to this country, in obedience to his Majesty’s commands, your petitioners have received communications from his Majesty which set forth the hopes and aspirations of his heart; that those communications not only negative all supposition of his Majesty’s personal complicity in any intrigues, but fill the minds of your petitioners with the profound conviction that his Majesty would feel, with your petitioners, the greatest grief and pain at the events which have occurred. And your petitioners desire to declare to your lordships, and to assure the British nation, that although suffering, in common with his heart-broken family, from the wrongs inflicted on them, from the humiliations of a state of exile, and their loss of home, authority, and country, the King of Oude relies only on the justice of his cause, appeals only to her Majesty’s throne and to the parliament of Great Britain, and disdains to use the arm of the rebel and the traitor to maintain the right he seeks to vindicate.

‘Your petitioners therefore pray of your lordships that, in the exercise of your authority, you will cause justice to be done to his Majesty the King of Oude, and that it may be forthwith explicitly made known to his Majesty and to your petitioners wherewith he is charged, and by whom, and on what authority, so that the King of Oude may have full opportunity of refuting and disproving the unjust suspicions and calumnies of which he is now the helpless victim. And your petitioners further pray that the King of Oude may be permitted freely to correspond with your petitioners in this country, so that they may also have opportunity of vindicating here the character and conduct of their sovereign and relative, of establishing his innocence of any offence against the crown of England, or the British government or people, and of shewing that, under every varying phase of circumstance, the royal family of Oude have continued steadfast and true to their friendship with the British nation.

‘And your petitioners will ever pray, &c.’

Some time after the presentation of this petition and memorial, a curious proof was afforded of the complexity and intrigue connected with the family affairs of the princes of India. A statement having gone abroad to the effect that a son of the King of Oude had escaped from Lucknow during the troubles of the Revolt, a native representative of the family in London sought to set the public mind right on the matter. He stated that the king had had only three legitimate sons; that one of these, being an idiot, was confined to the zenana or harem at Lucknow; that the second died of small-pox when twelve years of age; that the third was the prince who had come to London with the queen-mother; and that if any son of the king had really escaped from Lucknow, he must have been illegitimate, a boy about ten years old. This communication was signed by Mahmoud Museehooddeen, residing at Paddington, and 162designating himself ‘Accredited Agent to his Majesty the King of Oude.’ Two days afterwards the same journal contained a letter from Colonel R. Ouseley, also residing in the metropolis, asserting that he was ‘Agent in Chief to the King of Oude,’ and that Museehooddeen had assumed a title to which he had no right.

Castes and Creeds in the Indian Army.—The Indian officers being much divided in opinion concerning the relative insubordination of Mohammedans and Hindoos in the native regiments, it may be useful to record here the actual components of one Bengal infantry regiment, so far as concerns creed and caste. The information is obtained from an official document relating to the cartridge grievance, before the actual Revolt began.

The 34th regiment Bengal native infantry, just before its disbandment at Barrackpore in April, comprised 1089 men, distributed as follows:

The portion of this regiment present at Barrackpore—the rest being at Chittagong—when the mutinous proceedings took place, numbered 584, thus classified under four headings:

When 414 of these men were dismissed from the Company’s service, their religions appeared as follows:

It is not clearly stated how many Rajpoots, or men of the military caste, were included in the Hindoos who were not Brahmins.

If the regiment thus tabulated had been cavalry, instead of infantry, the preponderance, as implied in Chapter I., would have been wholly on the side of the Mussulmans.

Sikh Cavalry.

The course of events now brings us again to that turbulent country, Oude, which proved itself to be hostile to the British in a degree not expected by the authorities at Calcutta. They were aware, it is true, that Oude had long furnished the chief materials for the Bengal native army; but they could not have anticipated, or at least did not, how close would be the sympathy between those troops and the Oude irregulars in the hour of tumult. Only seven months before the beginning of the Revolt, and about the same space of time after the formal annexation, a remarkable article on Indian Army Reform appeared in the Calcutta Review, attributed to Sir Henry Lawrence; in which he commented freely on the government proceedings connected with the army of Oude. He pointed out how great was the number of daring reckless men in that country; how large had been the army of the king before his deposition; how numerous were the small forts held by zemindars and petty chieftains, and guarded by nearly sixty thousand men; how perilous it was to raise a new British-Oudian army, even though a small one, solely from the men of the king’s disbanded regiments; how serious was the fact that nearly a hundred thousand disbanded warlike natives were left without employment; how prudent it would have been to send Oudians into the Punjaub, and Punjaubees into Oude; and how necessary was an increase in the number of British troops. The truth of these comments was not appreciated until Sir Henry himself was ranked among those who felt the full consequence of the state of things to which the comments referred. Oude was full of zemindars, possessing considerable resources of various kinds, having their retainers, their mud-forts, their arsenals, their treasures. These zemindars, aggrieved not so much by the annexation of their country, as by the manner in which territorial law-proceedings were made to affect the tenure of their estates, shewed sympathy with the mutineers almost from the first. The remarks of Mr Edwards, collector at Boodayoun, on this point, have already been adverted to (p. 115). The zemindars did not, as a class, display the sanguinary and vindictive passions so terribly evident in the reckless soldiery; still they held to a belief that a successful revolt might restore to them their former position and influence as landowners; and hence the formidable difficulties opposed by them to the military movements of the British.

Sir Henry Lawrence, as chief authority both military and civil in Oude, found himself very awkwardly imperiled at Lucknow in the early days of June. Just as the previous month closed, nearly all the native troops raised the standard of rebellion (see p. 96); the 13th, 48th, and 71st infantry, and the 7th cavalry, all betrayed the infection, though in different degrees; and of the seven hundred men of those four regiments who still remained faithful, he did not know how many he could trust even for a single day. The treasury received his anxious attention, and misgivings arose in his mind concerning the various districts around the capital, with their five millions of inhabitants. Soon he had the bitterness of learning that his rebellious troops, who had fled towards Seetapoor, had excited their brethren at that place to revolt. The Calcutta authorities were from that day very ill informed of the proceedings at Lucknow; for the telegraph wires were cut, and the insurgents stopped all dâks and messengers on the road. About the middle of the month, Colonel Neill, at Allahabad, received a private letter from Lawrence, sent by some secret agency, announcing that Seetapoor and Shahjehanpoor were in the hands of the rebels; that Secrora, Beraytch, and Fyzabad, were in like condition; and that mutinous regiments from all those places, as well as from Benares and Jounpoor, appeared to be approaching Lucknow on some combined plan of operations. He was strengthening his position at the Residency, but looked most anxiously for aid, which Neill was quite unable to afford him. Again, it became known to the authorities at Benares that Lawrence, on the 19th, still held his position at Lucknow; that he had had eight deaths by 164cholera; and that he was considering whether, aid from Cawnpore or Allahabad being unattainable, he could obtain a few reinforcements by steamer up the Gogra from Dinapoor. Another letter, but without date, reached the chief-magistrate of Benares, to the effect that Lawrence had got rid of most of the remaining native troops, by paying them their due, and giving them leave of absence for three months; he evidently felt disquietude at the presence even of the apparently faithful sepoys in his place of refuge, so bitterly had he experienced the hollowness of all protestations on their part. He had been very ill, and a provisional council had been appointed in case his health should further give way. Although the Residency was the stronghold, the city and cantonment also were still under British control: a fort called the Muchee Bhowan, about three-quarters of a mile from the Residency, and consisting of a strong, turreted, castellated building, was held by two hundred and twenty-five Europeans with three guns. The cantonment was northeast of the Residency, on the opposite side of the river, over which were two bridges of approach. Sir Henry had already lessened from eight to four the number of buildings or posts where the troops were stationed—namely, the Residency, the Muchee Bhowan, a strong post between these two, and the dâk-bungalow between the Residency and the cantonment; but after the mutiny, he depended chiefly on the Residency and the Muchee Bhowan. News, somewhat more definite in character, was conveyed in a letter written by Sir Henry on the 20th of June. So completely were the roads watched, that he had not received a word of information from Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, or any other important place throughout the whole month down to that date; he knew not what progress was being made by the rebels, beyond the region of which Lucknow was more immediately the centre; he still held the fort, city, Residency, and cantonment, but was terribly threatened on all sides by large bodies of mutineers. On the 27th he wrote another letter to the authorities at Allahabad, one of the very few (out of a large number despatched) that succeeded in reaching their destination. This letter was still full of heart, for he told of the Residency and the Muchee Bhowan being still held by him in force; of cholera being on the decrease; of his supplies being adequate for two months and a half; and of his power to ‘hold his own.’ On the other hand, he felt assured that at that moment Lucknow was the only place throughout the whole of Oude where British influence was paramount; and that he dared not leave the city for twenty-four hours without danger of losing all his advantages. His sanguine, hopeful spirit shone out in the midst of all his trials; he declared that with one additional European regiment, and a hundred artillerymen, he could re-establish British supremacy in Oude; and he added, in a sportive tone, which shewed what estimate he formed of some, at least, of the contingent corps, ‘a thousand Europeans, a thousand Goorkhas, and a thousand Sikhs, with eight or ten guns, will thrash anything.’ The Sikhs were irregulars raised in the Punjaub; and throughout the contests arising out of the Revolt, their fidelity towards the government was seldom placed in doubt.

The last day of June was a day of sad omen to the English in Lucknow. On the evening of the 29th, information arrived that a rebel force of six or seven thousand men was encamped eight miles distant on the Fyzabad road, near the Kookra Canal. Lawrence thereupon determined to attack them on the following day. He started at six o’clock on the morning of the 30th, with about seven hundred men and eleven guns.^[23] Misled, either by accident or design, by informants on the road, he suddenly fell into an ambush of the enemy, assembled in considerable force near Chinhut. Manfully struggling against superior numbers, Lawrence looked forward confidently to victory; but just at the most critical moment, the Oude artillerymen proved traitors—overturning their six guns into ditches, cutting the traces of the horses, and then going over to the enemy. Completely outflanked, exposed to a terrible fire on all sides, weakened by the defection, having now few guns to use, and being almost without ammunition, Sir Henry saw that retreat was imperative. A disastrous retreat it was, or rather a complete rout; the heat was fearful, the confusion was dire; and the officers and men fell rapidly, to rise no more. Colonel Case, of H.M. 32d, receiving a mortal wound, was immediately succeeded by Captain Steevens; he in like manner soon fell, and was succeeded by Captain Mansfield, who escaped the day’s perils, but afterwards died of cholera.

Sir Henry Lawrence now found himself in a grave difficulty. The English position at Lucknow needed all the strengthening he could impart to it. He had held, as already explained, not only the Residency, but the fort of Muchee Bhowan and other posts. The calamity of the 30th, however, having weakened him too much to garrison all, or even more than one, he removed the troops, and then blew up the Muchee Bhowan, at midnight on the 1st of July, sending 240 barrels of gunpowder and 3,000,000 ball-cartridges into the air. From that hour the whole of the English made the Residency their stronghold. Later facts rendered it almost certain that, if this abandonment and explosion had not taken place, scarcely a European would have lived to tell the tale of the subsequent miseries at Lucknow. By incessant exertions, he collected in the Residency six months’ food for a thousand persons. The last hour of the gallant man was, however, approaching. A shell, sent by the insurgents, penetrated into his room on this 165day; his officers advised him to remove to another spot, but he declined the advice; and on the next day, the 2d of July, another shell, entering and bursting within the same room, gave him a mortal wound. Knowing his last hour was approaching, Sir Henry appointed Brigadier Inglis his successor in military matters, and Major Banks his successor as chief-commissioner of Oude.

Grief, deep and earnest, took possession of every breast in the Residency, when, on the 4th of July, it was announced that the good and great Sir Henry Lawrence had breathed his last. He was a man of whom no one doubted; like his gifted brother, Sir John, he had the rare power of drawing to himself the respect and love of those by whom he was surrounded, almost without exception. ‘Few men,’ said Brigadier Inglis, at a later date, ‘have ever possessed to the same extent the power which he enjoyed of winning the hearts of all those with whom he came in contact, and thus insuring the warmest and most zealous devotion for himself and the government which he served. All ranks possessed such confidence in his judgment and his fertility of resource, that the news of his fall was received throughout the garrison with feelings of consternation only second to the grief which was inspired in the hearts of all by the loss of a public benefactor and a warm personal friend.... I trust the government of India will pardon me for having attempted, however imperfectly, to portray this great and good man. In him every good and deserving soldier lost a friend and a chief capable of discriminating, and ever on the alert to reward merit, no matter how humble the sphere in which it was exhibited.’ Such was the soldier whom all men delighted to honour,^[24] and to whom the graceful compliment was once paid, that ‘Sir Henry Lawrence enjoyed the rare felicity of transcending all rivalry except that of his illustrious brother.’

How the overcrowded Residency at Lucknow bore all the attacks directed against it; how the inmates, under the brave and energetic Inglis, held on against heat, disease, cannon-balls, thirst, hunger, and fatigue; how and by whom they were liberated—will come for notice in proper course.

The other districts of Oude fell one by one into the hands of the insurgents. The narratives subsequently given by such English officers as were fortunate enough to escape the perils of those evil days, bore a general resemblance one to another; inasmuch as they told of faith in native troops being rudely broken, irresolute loyalty dissolving into confirmed hostility, treasuries of Company’s rupees tempting those who might otherwise possibly have been true to their salt, military officers and their wives obliged to flee for succour to Nynee Tal or some other peaceful station, the families of civilians suddenly thrown homeless upon the world, and blood and plunder marking the footsteps of the marauders who followed the example set by the rebellious sepoys and troopers. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the general character of these outbreaks.

The mutiny at Fyzabad, besides being attended with a sad loss of life, was note-worthy for certain peculiarities in the tactics of the insurgents—a kind of cool audacity not always exhibited in other instances. A brief description will shew the position and character of this city. In a former chapter (p. 83) it was explained that Oude or Ayodha, the city that gave name to the province, is very ancient as a Hindoo capital, but has become poor and ruinous in recent times; and that the fragments of many of its old structures were employed in building Fyzabad, the Mohammedan Ayodha, nearly adjoining it on the southwest. It was scarcely more than a hundred and thirty years ago that the foundation of Fyzabad was established, by Saadut Ali Khan, the first nawab-vizier of Oude; its advance in prosperity was rapid; but since the selection of Lucknow as the capital in 1775, Fyzabad has fallen in dignity; the chief merchants and bankers have migrated to Lucknow, and the remaining inhabitants are mostly poor.

On the 3d of June, rumours circulated in Fyzabad that the mutinous 17th regiment B. N. I. was approaching from Azimghur. Colonel Lennox, the military commandant, at once conferred with the other officers, and formed a plan for defending the place. The immediate alarm died away. On the 7th, however, renewed information led the colonel to propose an advance to Surooj-khoond, a place about five miles away, to repel the mutineers before they could reach Fyzabad. The native troops objected to go out, on the plea of disinclination to leave their families and property behind; but they promised to fight valiantly in the cantonment if necessary, and many of them shook hands with him in token of fidelity. The evening of the 8th revealed the hypocrisy of this display. The native troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, joined in a demonstration which rendered all 166the officers powerless; every officer was, in effect, made a prisoner, and placed under armed guard for the night; two tried to escape, but were fired at and brought back. The leader of the mutiny, Dhuleep Singh, subadar-major of the 22d regiment, came to Colonel Lennox in the morning, and told him plainly that he and the other officers must yield to the course of circumstances; that boats would be provided to take them down the river Gogra towards Dinapoor, but that he would not guarantee their safety after once they had embarked. There was a cool impudence about the proceeding, unlike the wild confusion exhibited at many of the scenes of outbreak. A moulvie, who had been imprisoned in the quarter-guard for a disturbance created in the city, and who had just been liberated by the mutineers, sent the sub-assistant surgeon to Colonel Lennox with a message; thanking him for kindnesses received during the imprisonment, and requesting that the colonel’s full-dress regimentals might be sent to the moulvie. The native surgeon begged pardon for his change of allegiance; urging that times were altered, and that he must now obey the mutineers. There was something more than mere effrontery, however, in the proceedings of these insurgents;^[25] there was a subordination amid insubordination. ‘The men,’ said one of the narrators, ‘guarded their officers and their bungalows after mutinying, placed sentries over the magazines and all public property, and sent out pickets to prevent the towns-people and servants from looting. They held a council of war, in which the cavalry proposed to kill the officers; but the 22d, objecting to this, informed their officers that they would be allowed to leave, and might take with them their private arms and property, but no public property—as that all belonged to the King of Oude.’

Let us briefly trace the course of some of the European fugitives. Colonel Lennox, powerless to resist, gave up his regimentals, and prepared for a melancholy boat-departure with his wife and daughter. They were escorted to the banks of the Gogra, and pushed off on their voyage. From two in the afternoon on the 8th of June, until nearly midnight, their boat descended the stream—often in peril from sentries and scouts on shore, but befriended by two sepoys who had been sent to protect them for a short distance. Much care and manœuvring were required to effect a safe passage near the spot where the mutinous 17th regiment was encamped; for it now became manifest that the 22d had in effect sold the fugitives to the other corps. Early on the following morning, information received on shore rendering evident the danger of a further boat-voyage, the houseless wanderers, leaving in the boat the few fragments of property they had brought away from Fyzabad, set out on foot towards Goruckpore. With nothing but the clothes on their backs, the family began their weary flight. After stopping under trees and by the side of wells to rest occasionally, they walked until the heat of day rendered necessary a longer pause. By a narrow chance they avoided being dragged to the camp of the 17th regiment, by a trooper who professed to have been offered two hundred rupees for the head of each member of the family. A friendly chieftain, one Meer Mohammed Hossein Khan, came to their rescue just at the moment of greatest peril. One of the retainers of this man, however, more disposed for enmity than amity, spoke to the colonel with great bitterness and fierceness of manner, shewing that the prevalent rumours had made a deep impression in Oude; he expressed a longing to shoot the English, ‘who had come to take away their caste, and make them Christians.’ Meer Mohammed rebuked this man for saying that a stable would do to shelter the refugees, for that he was prepared ‘to kill them like dogs.’ The fugitives were taken to a small fort, one of the numerous class lately adverted to, where the zemindars and petty chieftains maintained a kind of feudal or clannish independence. On the second day, the danger to sheltered Europeans becoming apparent, Colonel Lennox, his wife, and daughter, put on native dresses, and remained nine days concealed in a reed-hut behind the zenana, treated very kindly and considerately by their protector. Meer Mohammed went once or twice to Fyzabad, to learn if possible the plans of the mutineers; he was told that they meant to attack Lucknow, and then depart for Delhi. On the 10th day of the hiding, when news arrived that the fort was likely to be attacked, the ladies went for shelter into the zenana, while the colonel was hid in a dark woodshed. Happily, however, it turned out that the suspected strangers were a party sent by the collector of Goruckpore for the rescue of the family. Danger was now nearly over. The fugitives reached Amorah, Bustee, Goruckpore, Azimghur, and Ghazeepore, at which place they took steamer down to Calcutta. This fortunate escape from great peril was almost wholly due to ‘the noble and considerate’ Meer Mohammed, as Colonel Lennox very properly characterises him.

Far more calamitous were the boat-adventures of the main body of Fyzabad officers, of which an account was afterwards written, for the information of government, by Farrier-sergeant Busher, of the light field-battery. On the morning of the 8th, the wives and families of many civilians, and of five non-commissioned European officers, had been sent by Captain Orr to a place called Sheergunge, under the protection of a friendly native, Rajah Maun Singh, to be free from peril if tumult should arise. Early on the 9th, while Colonel Lennox was still at the station, all or nearly all the other English were sent off by the mutineers in four 167boats. One of these boats (mere dinghees, in which little more than a bundle for each person could be put) contained eight persons, one six, one five, and the remaining boat three. Only one female was of the party, Mrs Hollum, wife of Sergeant-major Hollum of the 22d native regiment. The first and second boats got ahead of the other two, and proceeded about twenty miles down the river without molestation; but then were seen troopers and sepoys approaching the banks, with an evidently hostile intent. The firing soon became so severe that the occupants of the first boat struck in for the off-shore, and seven of them took to their heels—the eighth being unequal to that physical exertion. They ran on till checked by a broad stream; and while deliberating how to cross, persons approached who were thought to be sepoys; the alarm proved false, but not before Lieutenants Currie and Parsons had been drowned in an attempt to escape by swimming. The other five, running on till quite exhausted, were fortunate enough to meet with a friendly native, who sheltered them for several hours, and supplied them with food. At midnight they started again, taking the road to Amorah, which they were enabled to reach safely through the influence of their kind protector—although once in great peril from a gang of freebooters. They were glad to meet at Amorah the three occupants of the fourth boat, who, like themselves, had escaped the dangers of the voyage by running across fields and fording streams. At seven in the morning of the 10th, the fugitives, now eight in company, recommenced their anxious flight—aided occasionally by friendly natives, but at length betrayed by one whose friendship was only a mask. They had to cross a nullah or stream knee-deep, under pursuit by a body of armed men; here Lieutenant Lindesay fell, literally cut to pieces; and when the other seven had passed to the opposite bank, five were speedily hewn to the ground and butchered—Lieutenants Ritchie, Thomas, and English, and two English sergeants. The two survivors ran at their topmost speed, pursued by a gang of ruffians; Lieutenant Cautley was speedily overtaken, and killed; and then only Sergeant Busher remained alive. He, outrunning his pursuers, reached a Brahmin village, where a bowl of sherbet was given to him. After a little rest, he ran on again, until one Baboo Bully Singh was found to be on the scent after him; he endeavoured to hide under some straw in a hut; but was discovered and dragged out by the hair of the head. From village to village he was then carried as an exhibition to be jeered and scoffed at by the rabble; the Baboo evidently intended the cruel sport to be followed by murder; but this intention underwent a change, probably from dread of some future retribution. He kept his prisoner near him for ten days, but did not further ill treat him. On the eleventh day, Busher was liberated; he overtook Colonel Lennox and his family; and safely reached Ghazeepore seventeen days after his departure from Fyzabad. The boat containing Colonel O’Brien, Lieutenants Percival and Gordon, Ensign Anderson, and Assistant-surgeon Collinson, pursued its voyage the whole way down to Dinapoor; but it was a voyage full of vicissitudes to the fugitives. At many places they were obliged to lie flat in the boat to prevent recognition from the shore; at others they had to compel the native boatmen, on peril of sabring, to continue their tugging at the oars; on one occasion they narrowly escaped shooting by a herd of villagers who followed the boat. For three days they had nothing to eat but a little flour and water; but happening to meet with a friendly rajah at Gola, they obtained aid which enabled them to reach Dinapoor on the 17th.

The occupants of the remaining boat, the civilians, and the ladies and children who had not been able to effect a safe retreat to Nynee Tal, suffered terribly; many lives were lost; and those who escaped to Goruckpore or Dinapoor arrived in distressing plight—especially a party of women and children who had been robbed of everything while on the way, and who had been almost starved to death during a week’s imprisonment in a fort by the river-side. When it is stated that, among a group of women and children who reached a place of safety after infinite hardships, an infant was born on the road, the reader will easily comprehend how far the sufferings must have exceeded anything likely to appear in print. Many persons were shot, many drowned, while the fate of others remained doubtful for weeks or even months. Colonel Goldney and Major Mill were among the slain. The wanderings of Mrs Mill and her three children were perhaps among the most affecting incidents of this mutiny. Amid the dire haste of departure, she became separated from her husband, and was the last Englishwoman left in Fyzabad. How she escaped and how she fared, was more than she herself could clearly narrate; for the whole appeared afterwards as a dreadful dream, in which every kind of misery was confusedly mixed. During two or three weeks, she was wandering up and down the country, living in the jungle when man refused her shelter, and searching the fields for food when none was obtainable elsewhere. Her poor infant, eight months old, died for want of its proper nourishment; but the other two children, seven and three years old, survived all the privations to which they were exposed. On one occasion, seeing some troopers approaching, and being utterly hopeless, she passionately besought them, if their intentions were hostile, to kill her children without torturing them, and then to kill her. The appeal touched the hearts of the rude men; they took her to a village and gave her a little succour; and this facilitated their conveyance by a friendly native to Goruckpore, where danger was over.

Sultanpore was another station at which mutiny and murder occurred. On the 8th of June, a wing of the 15th irregular cavalry entered that place 168from Seetapoor, in a state of evident excitement. Lieutenant Tucker, who was a favourite with them, endeavoured to allay their mutinous spirit, and succeeded for a few hours; but on the following morning they rose in tumult, murdered Colonel Fisher, Captain Gubbings, and two other Europeans, and urged the lieutenant to escape, which he did. After much jungle-wanderings, and concealment in a friendly native’s house, he safely arrived at Benares, as did likewise four or five other officers, and all the European women and children at the station. In this as in other instances, the revolt of the troops was followed by marauding and incendiarism on the part of the rabble of Sultanpore; in this, too, as in other instances, the mutineers had a little affection for some one or more among their officers, whom they endeavoured to save.

The station of Pershadeepore experienced its day of trouble on the 10th of June. The 1st regiment Oude irregular infantry was there stationed, under Captain Thompson. He prided himself on the fidelity of his men; inasmuch as they seemed to turn a deaf ear to the rumours and suspicions circulating elsewhere; and he had detected the falsity of a mischief-maker, who had secretly caused ground bones to be mixed with the attah (coarse flour with which chupatties are made) sold in the bazaar, as the foundation for a report that the government intended to take away the caste of the people. This pleasant delusion lasted until the 9th; when a troop of the 3d Oude irregular cavalry arrived from Pertabghur, followed soon afterwards by news of the rising at Sultanpore. The fidelity of the infantry now gave way, under the temptations and representations made to them by other troops. When Captain Thompson rose on the morning of the 10th, he found his regiment all dressed, and in orderly mutiny (if such an expression may be used). He tried with an aching heart to separate the good men from the bad, and to induce the former to retire with him to Allahabad; but the temptation of the treasure was more than they could resist; they all joined in the spoliation, and then felt that allegiance was at an end. At four in the afternoon all the Europeans left the station, without a shot or an angry word from the men; they were escorted to the fort of Dharoopoor, belonging to a chieftain named Rajah Hunnewaut Singh, who treated them courteously, and after some days forwarded them safely to Allahabad. There was not throughout India a mutiny conducted with more quietness on both sides than this at Pershadeepore; the sepoys had evidently no angry feeling towards their officers. Captain Thompson remained of opinion that his men had been led away by rumours and insinuations brought by stragglers from other stations, to the effect that any Oude regiment which did not mutiny would be in peril from those that had; and that, even under this fear, they would have remained faithful had there been no treasure to tempt their cupidity. It is curious to note Colonel Neill’s comment on this incident, in his official dispatch; his reliance on the native troops was of the smallest possible amount; and in reference to the captain’s honest faith, he said: ‘This is absurd; they were as deeply in the plot as the rest of the army; the only credit due to them is that they did not murder their officers.’

Seetapoor, about fifty miles north of Lucknow, was the place towards which the insurgent troops from that city bent their steps at the close of May. Whether those regiments kept together, and how far they proceeded on the next few days, are points not clearly made out; but it is certain that the native troops stationed at Seetapoor—comprising the 41st Bengal infantry, the 9th and 10th Oude irregular infantry, and the 2d Oude military police, in all about three thousand men—rose in mutiny on the 3d of June. The 41st began the movement. A sepoy came to one of the officers in the morning, announced that the rising was about to take place, declared that neither he nor his companions wished to draw blood, and suggested that all the officers should retreat from the station. The regiment was in two wings, one in the town and one in the cantonment; the plundering of the treasury was begun by the first-named party; the other wing, obedient at first, broke forth when they suspected they might be deprived of a share in the plunder. After the 41st had thus set the example, the 9th revolted; then the military police; and then the 10th. Lieutenant Burnes, of the last-named regiment, entreated his men earnestly to remain faithful, but to no effect. Seeing that many officers had been struck down, the remainder hastily retired to the house of Mr Christian the commissioner; and when all were assembled, with the civilians, the ladies, and the children, it was at once resolved to quit the burning bungalows and ruthless soldiers and seek refuge at Lucknow. Some made their exit without any preparation; among whom was Lieutenant Burnes—roaming through jungles for days, and aiding women and children as best they could, suffering all those miseries which have so often been depicted. The great body of Europeans, however, left the station in buggies and other vehicles; and as the high roads were perilous, the fugitives drove over hills, hollows, and ploughed fields, where perhaps vehicles had never been driven before. Fortunately, twenty troopers remained faithful to them, and escorted them all the way to Lucknow, which place they reached on the night of the third day—reft of everything they possessed, like many other fugitives in those days. Many of the Europeans did not succeed in quitting Seetapoor in time; and among these the work of death was ruthlessly carried on—the sepoys being either unwilling or unable to check these scenes of barbarity.

As at Lucknow, Fyzabad, Sultanpore, Pershadeepore, Seetapoor; so at Secrora, Durriabad, Beraytch, Gouda, and other places in Oude—wherever there was a native regiment stationed, 169or a treasury of the Company established, there, in almost every instance, were exhibited scenes of violence attended by murder and plunder. The lamented Lawrence, in the five weeks preceding his death, was, as has been lately pointed out, placed in an extraordinary position. Responsible to the supreme government both for the political and the military management of Oude, and knowing that almost every station in the province was a focus of treachery and mutiny, he was notwithstanding powerless to restore tranquillity. So far from Cawnpore assisting him, he yearned to assist Cawnpore; Rohilcund was in a blaze, and could send him only mutineers who had thrown off all allegiance; Meerut, after sending troops to Delhi, was doing little but defending itself; Agra, with a mere handful of European troops, was too doubtful of its Gwalior neighbours to do anything for Lucknow and Oude; Allahabad and Benares were too recently rescued, by the gallant Neill, from imminent peril, to be in a position to send present assistance to Sir Henry; and the Nepaul sovereign, Jung Bahadoor, had not yet been made an ally of the English in such a way as might possibly have saved Oude, and as was advocated by many well-wishers of India.

The position of the sovereignty just named may usefully be adverted to here. Nepaul, about equal in area to England, is one of the few independent states of Northern India; it reaches to the Himalaya on the north; and is bounded on the other sides by the British territories of Behar, Oude, and Kumaon. The region is distinguished by the magnificent giant mountain-chain which separates it from Tibet; by the dense forest-jungle of the Terai on the Oude frontier; by the beautiful valley in which the capital, Khatmandoo, lies, and which is dotted with flourishing villages, luxuriant fields, and picturesque streams; and by its healthy and temperate climate. It is with the people, however, that this narrative is more particularly concerned. The Nepaulese, about two millions in number, comprise Goorkhas, Newars, Bhotias, Dhauwars, and Mhaujees. The Goorkhas are the dominant race; they are Hindoos in religion, but very unlike Hindoos in appearance, manners, and customs. The Newars are the aborigines of Nepaul, decidedly Mongolian both in faith and in features; they are the clever artisans of the kingdom, while the Goorkhas are the hardy soldiers. The other three tribes are chiefly cultivators of the soil. In the latter half of the last century, Nepaul was for a short time a dependency of the Chinese Empire; but a treaty of commerce with the British in 1782 initiated a state of affairs which soon enabled Nepaul to throw off Chinese supremacy. Conventions, subsidies, border encroachments, and family intrigues, checkered Nepaulese affairs until 1812; when the Company made formal war on the ground of a long catalogue of injuries and insults—such a catalogue as can easily be concocted by a stronger state against a weaker. The war was so badly conducted, that nothing but the military tact of Sir David Ochterlony, who held one-fourth of a command which seems to have had no head or general commander, saved the British from ignominious defeat. Broken engagements led to another war in 1816, which terminated in a treaty never since ruptured; the Nepaulese court has been a focus of intrigue, but the intrigues have not been of such a character as to disturb the relations of amity with the British. Jung Bahadoor—a name well known in England a few years ago, as that of a Nepaulese ambassador who made a sensation by his jewelled splendor—was the nephew of a man who became by successive steps prime minister to the king. Instigated by the queen, and by his own unscrupulous ambition, Jung Bahadoor caused his uncle to be put to death, and became commander-in-chief under a new ministry. Many scenes of truly oriental slaughter followed—that is, slaughter to clear the pathway to power. Jung Bahadoor treated kings and queens somewhat as the Company was accustomed to do in the last century; setting up a son against a father, and treating all alike as puppets. At a period subsequent to his return from England, he caused a marriage to be concluded between his daughter, six years old, and the heir-apparent to the Nepaulese throne, then in his ninth year. Whether king or not, he was virtually chief of Nepaul at the time when the Revolt broke out; and had managed, by astuteness in his diplomacy, to remain on friendly terms with the authorities at Calcutta: indeed he took every opportunity, after his English visit, to display his leaning towards his neighbours. Like Nena Sahib, he had English pianos and English carpets in his house, and prided himself in understanding English manners and the English language; and it is unquestionable that both those men were favourites among such of the English as visited the one at Bithoor or the other at Khatmandoo.

It has been mentioned in a former chapter (p. 115) that Goorkha troops assisted to defend Nynee Tal when that place became filled with refugees; and Goorkha regiments have been adverted to in many other parts of the narrative. Jung Bahadoor permitted the Nepaulese of this tribe to enlist thus in the Company’s service; and he also offered the aid of a contingent, the non-employment of which brought many strictures upon the policy of the Calcutta government. At a later date, as we shall see, this contingent was accepted; and it rendered us good service at Juanpore and Azimghur by protecting Benares from the advance of Oude mutineers. About the middle of June, fifteen Europeans (seven gentlemen, three ladies, and five children) escaped from the Oude mutineers into the jungle region of Nepaul, and sought refuge in a post-station or serai about ten days’ journey from Goruckpore and eighteen from Khatmandoo. The officer at that place wrote to Jung Bahadoor for instruction in the matter; to which he received a speedy reply—‘Treat them with every kindness, give them 170elephants, &c., and escort them to Goruckpore.’ Major Ramsey, the Company’s representative at Khatmandoo, sent them numerous supplies in tin cases; and all the English were naturally disposed to bless the Nepaulese chieftain as a friend in the hour of greatest need, without inquiring very closely by what means he had gained his power.

The course of the narrative now takes us from Oude northwestward into the province of Rohilcund; the districts of which, named after the towns of Bareilly, Mooradabad, Shahjehanpoor, Boodayoun, and Bijnour, felt the full force of the mutinous proceedings among the native troops. The Rohillas were originally Mussulman Afghans, who conquered this part of India, gradually settled down among the Hindoo natives, and imparted to them a daring reckless character, which rendered Rohilcund a nursery for irregular cavalry—and afterwards for mutineers.

Brigadier Sibbald was commandant of Bareilly, one of the towns of Rohilcund in which troops were stationed. These troops were entirely native, comprising the 18th and 68th Bengal native infantry, the 8th irregular cavalry, and a battery of native artillery—not an English soldier among them except the officers. The brigadier, although these troops appeared towards the close of the month of May to be in an agitated state, nevertheless heard that all was well at Mooradabad, Shahjehanpoor, Almora, and other stations in Rohilcund, and looked forward with some confidence to the continuance of tranquility—aided by his second in command, Colonel Troup, and the commissioner, Mr Alexander. As a precaution, however, the ladies and children were sent for safety to Nynee Tal; and the gentlemen kept their horses saddled, ready for any emergency. Bareilly being a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, the temper of the natives was very anxiously watched. Scarcely had the month closed, before the hopes of Brigadier Sibbald received a dismal check, and his life a violent end. We have already briefly mentioned (p. 114) that on Sunday the 31st, Bareilly became a scene of violence and rapine; the brigadier himself being shot by a trooper, the treasure seized, the bungalows plundered and burned, and the Europeans either murdered or impelled to escape for their lives. When Colonel Troup, who commanded the 68th native infantry, and who became chief military authority after the death of Sibbald, found himself safe at Nynee Tal, he wrote an official account of the whole proceeding, corroborating the chief facts noted by the brigadier, and adding others known more especially to himself. From this dispatch it appears that the colonel commanded at Bareilly from the 6th to the 19th of May, while the brigadier was making a tour of inspection through his district; that from the 19th to the 29th, Sibbald himself resumed the command; and that during those twenty-three days nothing occurred to shew disaffection among the troops, further than a certain troubled and agitated state. On that day, however, the Europeans received information, from two native officers, that the men of the 18th and 68th native regiments had, while bathing in the river, concerted a plan of mutiny for that same afternoon. Most of the officers were quickly on the alert; and, whether or not through this evidence of preparedness, no émeute took place on that day. On the 30th, Colonel Troup, who had relied on the fidelity of the 8th irregular cavalry, received information that those sowars had sworn not to act against the native infantry and artillery if the latter should rise, although they would refrain from molesting their own officers. After a day and night of violent excitement throughout the whole station, the morning of Sunday the 31st (again Sunday!) ushered in a day of bloodshed and rapine. Messages were despatched to all the officers, warning them of some intended outbreak; but the bearers, sent by Troup, failed in their duty, insomuch that many of the officers remained ignorant of the danger until too late to avert it. Major Pearson, of the 18th, believed his men to be stanch; Captain Kirby, of the artillery (6th company, 6th battalion), in like manner trusted his corps; and Captain Brownlow, the brigade major, disbelieved the approach of mutiny—at the very time that Colonel Troup was impressing on all his conviction that the sinister rumours were well founded. At eleven o’clock, the truth appeared in fatal colours; the roar of cannon, the rattle of musketry, and the yells of men, told plainly that the revolt had begun, and that the artillery had joined in it. The 8th irregular cavalry, under Captain Mackenzie, were ordered or invited by him to proceed against the lines of the insurgent infantry and artillery; but the result was so disastrous, that all the Europeans, military as well as civilians, found their only safety would be in flight. Ruktawar Khan, subadar of artillery, assumed the rank of general, and paraded about in the carriage of the brigadier, attended by a numerous string of followers as a ‘staff.’ Colonel Troup, writing on the 10th of June, had to report the deaths of Brigadier Sibbald and three or four other officers, together with that of many of the civil servants. About twenty-five military officers escaped; but the list of ‘missing’ was large, and many of those included in it were afterwards known to have been brutally murdered. Captain Mackenzie, who clung to his troopers in the earnest hope that they would remain faithful, found only nineteen men who did so, and who escorted their officers all the way to Nynee Tal.

A despicable hoary traitor, Khan Bahadoor Khan, appears to have headed this movement. He had for many years been in receipt of a double pension from the Indian government—as the living representative of one of the early Rohilla chieftains, and as a retired judge of one of the native courts. He was an old, venerable-looking, insinuating man; he was thoroughly relied on by 171the civil authorities at Bareilly; he had loudly proclaimed his indignation against the Delhi mutineers; and yet he became ringleader of those at Bareilly—deepening his damning atrocities by the massacre of such of the unfortunate Europeans as did not succeed in making their escape. It was by his orders, as self-elected chief of Rohilcund, that a rigorous search was made for all Europeans who remained in Bareilly; and that Judge Robertson, and four or five other European gentlemen, were hung in the Kotwal square, after a mock-trial. During the month of June, Bareilly remained entirely in the hands of the rebels; not an Englishman, probably, was alive in the place; and the Mussulmans and Hindoos were left to contend for supremacy over the spoil.

Of Boodayoun it will be unnecessary to say more here; Mr Edwards’s narrative of an eventful escape (pp. 115, 116), pointed to the 1st of June as the day when the Europeans deemed it necessary to flee from that station—not because there were any native troops at Boodayoun, but because the mutineers from Bareilly were approaching, and joyfully expected by all the scoundrels in the place, who looked forward to a harvest of plunder as a natural result.

Mooradabad, which began its season of anarchy and violence on the 3d of June, stands on the right bank of the Ramgunga, an affluent of the Ganges, at a point about midway between Meerut and Bareilly. It is a town of nearly 60,000 inhabitants—having a civil station, with its cutcherry and bungalows; a cantonment west of the town; a spacious serai for the accommodation of travellers; and an enormous jail sufficiently large to contain nearly two thousand prisoners. In this, as in many other towns of India, the Company’s troops were wont to be regarded rather as guardians of the jail and its inmates, than for any active military duties. So early as the 19th of May, nine days after the mutineers of Meerut had set the example, the 29th regiment native infantry proceeded to the jail at Mooradabad, and released all the prisoners. Although Mr Saunders, collector and magistrate, wrote full accounts to Agra of the proceedings of that and the following days, the dâks were so completely stopped on the road that Mr Colvin remained almost in ignorance of the state of affairs; and on that account Saunders could obtain no assistance from any quarter. The released prisoners, joined by predatory bands of Goojurs, Meewatties, and Jâts, commenced a system of plunder and rapine, which the European authorities were ill able to check. The 29th, however, had not openly mutinied; and it still remained possible to hold control within the town and the surrounding district; several native sappers and miners were stopped and captured on their way from Meerut, and several of the mutinous 20th regiment on the way from Mozuffernugger. When, however, news of the Bareilly outbreak on the 31st reached Mooradabad, the effect on the men of the 29th regiment, and of a native artillery detachment, became very evident. On the 3d of June, the sepoys in guard of the treasury displayed so evident an intention of appropriating the money, that Mr Saunders felt compelled to leave it (about seventy thousand rupees) together with much plate and opium in their hands—being powerless to prevent the spoliation. The troops manifested much irritation at the smallness of the treasure, and were only prevented from wreaking their vengeance on the officials by an oath they had previously taken. To remain longer in the town was deemed a useless risk, as bad passions were rising on every side. The civil officers of the Company, with their wives and families, succeeded in making a safe retreat to Meerut; while Captain Whish, Captain Faddy, and other officers of the 29th, with the few remaining Europeans, laid their plans for a journey to Nynee Tal. All shared an opinion that if the Bareilly regiments had not mutinied, the 29th would have remained faithful—a poor solace, such as had been sought for by many other officials similarly placed. Mr Colvin afterwards accepted Mr Saunders’s motives and conduct in leaving the station, as justifiable under the trying circumstances.

Rohilcund contained three military stations, Bareilly, Mooradabad, and Shahjehanpoor—Boodayoun and the other places named being merely civil stations. As at Bareilly and Mooradabad, so at Shahjehanpoor; the native troops at the station rose in mutiny. On Sunday the 31st of May—a day marked by so many atrocities in India—the 28th native infantry rose, surrounded the Christian residents as they were engaged in divine worship in church, and murdered nearly the whole of them, including the Rev. Mr M’Callum in the sacred edifice itself. The few who escaped were exposed to an accumulation of miseries; first they sought shelter at Mohammerah in Oude; then they met the 41st regiment, after the mutiny at Seetapoor, who shot and cut them down without mercy; and scarcely any lived to tell the dismal tale to English ears.

Thus then it appears that, in Rohilcund, the 18th, 68th, 28th, and 29th regiments native infantry, together with the 8th irregular cavalry and a battery of native artillery, rose in revolt at the three military stations, and murdered or drove out nearly the whole of the Europeans from the entire province—European troops there were none; only officers and civilians. They plundered all the treasuries, containing more than a quarter of a million sterling, and marched off towards Delhi, five thousand strong—unmolested by the general who commanded at Meerut.

Nynee Tal became more crowded than ever with refugees from Oude and Rohilcund. Under the energetic command of Captain Ramsey, this hill-station remained in quiet during the month of May (p. 115); but it was not so easily defended in June. Some of the native artillery at Almora, not far distant, gave rise to uneasiness towards 172the close of the month; yet as the ill-doers were promptly put into prison, and as the Goorkhas remained stanch, confidence was partially restored. The sepoys from the rebel regiments dreaded a march in this direction, on account of the deadly character of the Terai, a strip of swampy forest, thirty miles broad, which interposes between the plains and the hills; but that jungle-land itself contained many marauders, who were only prevented by fear of the Goorkhas from going up to Nynee Tal. At the end of June, there were five times as many women and children as men among the Europeans at that place; hence the anxious eye with which the proceedings in surrounding districts were regarded.

The third region to which this chapter is appropriated—the Doab—now calls for attention. Like Oude and Rohilcund, it was the scene of terrible anarchy and bloodshed in the month of June. In its two parts—the Lower Doab, from Allahabad to a little above Furruckabad; and the Upper Doab, from the last-named city up to the hill-country—it was nearly surrounded by mutineers, who apparently acted in concert with those in the Doab itself.

Of Allahabad and Cawnpore, the two chief places in the Lower Doab, sufficient has been said in Chapters VIII. and IX. to trace the course of events during the month of June. About midway between the two is Futtehpoor, a small civil station in the centre of a group of Mohammedan villages; it contained, at the beginning of June, about a dozen civil servants of the Company, and a small detachment of the 6th native regiment from Allahabad. The residents, as a precautionary measure, had sent their wives and children to that stronghold, and had also arranged a plan for assembling at the house of the magistrate, if danger should appear. On the 5th of the month, disastrous news arriving from Lucknow and Cawnpore, the residents took up their abode for the night on the flat roof of the magistrate’s house, with their weapons by their sides; and on the following day they hauled up a supply of tents, provisions, water, and ammunition—a singular citadel being thus extemporised in the absence of better. On the 7th, their small detachment aided in repelling a body of troopers who had just arrived from Cawnpore on a plundering expedition; and the residents congratulated themselves on the fidelity of this small band. Their reliance was, however, of short duration; for, on the receipt of news of the Allahabad outbreak, the native officials in the collector’s office gave way, like the natives all around them, and Futtehpoor soon became a perilous spot for Europeans. On the 9th, the residents held a council on their roof, and resolved to quit the station. A few troopers befriended them; and they succeeded, after many perils and sufferings, in reaching Banda, a town southward of the Jumna. Not all of them, however. Mr Robert Tucker, the judge, resisting entreaty, determined to remain at his post to the last. He rode all over the town, promising rewards to those natives who would be faithful; he endeavoured to shame others by his heroic bearing; he appealed to the gratitude and good feeling of many of the poorer natives, who had been benefited by him in more peaceful times. But all in vain. The jail was broken open, the prisoners liberated, and the treasury plundered; and Mr Tucker, flying to the roof of the cutcherry, there bravely defended himself until a storm of bullets laid him low. Robert Tucker was one of those civilians of whom the Company had reason to be proud.

Advancing to the northwest, we come to a string of towns and stations—Etawah, Minpooree, Allygurh, Futteghur, Muttra, Bolundshuhur, Mozuffernugger, &c.—which shared with Oude and Rohilcund the wild disorders of the month of June. The mutiny at Futteghur has already engaged our notice (p. 133), in connection with the miserable fugitives who swelled the numbers put to death by Nena Sahib at Bithoor and Cawnpore. It needs little further mention here. The 10th native infantry, and a small body of artillery, long resisted the temptation held out by mutineers elsewhere; but, on the appearance of the insurgent regiments from Seetapoor, their fidelity gave way. Four companies went off with the treasure; the remainder joined the other mutinous regiments in besieging the fort to which so many Europeans had fled for refuge, and from which so disastrous a boat-voyage was made down the Ganges. Mr Colvin, at Agra, knew of the perilous state of things at Futteghur; he knew that a native nawab had been chosen by the mutineers as a sort of sovereign; but, as we shall presently see, he was too weak in reliable troops to afford any assistance whatever. Thus it happened that the two boat-expeditions, of June and July, ended so deplorably to the Europeans, and left Futteghur so wholly in the hands of the rebels. It was a great loss to the British in many ways; for most of the Company’s gun-carriages were made, or at least stored, at Futteghur; and the agency-yard was surrounded by warehouses containing a large supply of material belonging to the artillery service. Indeed it was this court-yard of the gun-carriage agency that constituted the fort, as soon as a few defensive arrangements had been made. Many circumstances had drawn rather a large English population to Futteghur; and hence the terrible severity of the tragedy. There were officers of the 10th regiment; other military officers on leave; gun-carriage agents; civil servants; merchants and dealers; a few tent-makers and other artisans; indigo-planters from the neighbouring estates; and many native Christians under the care of the American Presbyterian mission.

We have already seen (pp. 112, 113) by how small a number of native troops several stations were set in commotion in May. The 9th regiment Bengal native infantry was separated into four portions, which were stationed at Allygurh, Bolundshuhur, 173Etawah, and Minpooree, respectively; and all mutinied nearly at the same time. The fortune of war, if war it can be called, at these stations during the month of June, may be traced in a very few words. It was on the 20th of May that the four companies at Allygurh mutinied; and on the 24th that one-half of Lieutenant Cockburn’s Gwalior troopers, instead of assisting him to retain or regain the station, rose in mutiny and galloped off to join the insurgents elsewhere. There were, however, about a hundred who remained faithful to him; and these, with fifty volunteers, made an advance to Allygurh, retook it, drove out the detachment of the 9th native regiment, released a few Europeans who had been in hiding there, captured one Rao Bhopal Singh, and hanged him as a petty chieftain who had continued the rapine begun by the sepoys. Throughout the month of June this station was maintained in British hands—not so much for its value in a military sense, as for its utility in keeping open the roads to Agra and Meerut; but, in the direction of Delhi, the volunteers could obtain very little news, the dâks being all cut off by the Goojurs and other predatory bands. At Minpooree the three companies of the 9th checked, it will be remembered, by the undaunted courage and tact of Lieutenant de Kantzow, departed to join the insurgents elsewhere; but Minpooree remained in British hands. The remaining companies mutinied at Etawah and Bolundshuhur without much violence.

Simla, the summer residence of the Governor-general of India.

Agra, when the narrative last left it (p. 111), had passed through the month of May without any serious disturbances. The troops consisted of the 44th and 67th regiments Bengal native infantry, the 3d Europeans, and a few artillery. After two companies of these native troops had mutinied while engaged in bringing treasure from Muttra to Agra, Mr Colvin deemed it necessary to disarm all the other companies; and this was quietly and successfully effected on the 1st of June, by the 3d Europeans and Captain D’Oyley’s field-battery. Many facts afterward came to light, tending to shew that if this disarming had not taken place, the 44th and 67th would have stained their hands with the same bloody deeds as the sepoys were doing elsewhere. The native lines had been more than once set on fire during the later days of May—in the hope, as afterwards appears, that the handful of Europeans, by rushing out unarmed to extinguish the flames, would afford the native troops a favourable opportunity to master the defences of the city, and the six guns of the field-battery. A curious proof was supplied of the little knowledge possessed by the Europeans of the native character, and the secret springs that worked unseen as moving powers for their actions. There had long seemed to be an angry feeling between the 44th and the 67th; and Mr Colvin, 174or the brigadier acting with him, selected one company from each regiment for the mission to Muttra, in the belief that each would act as a jealous check upon the other; instead of which, the two companies joined in revolt, murdered many of their officers, and carried off their treasure towards Delhi. After the very necessary disarming of the two regiments, the defence of this important city was left to the 3d European Fusiliers, Captain D’Oyley’s field-battery of six guns, and a corps of volunteer European cavalry under Lieutenant Greathed. Most of the disarmed men deserted, and swelled the ranks of the desperadoes that wrought so much ruin in the surrounding districts—a result that led many military officers to doubt whether disarming without imprisonment was a judicious course under such circumstances; for the men naturally felt exasperated at their humbled position, whether deserved or not; and their loyalty, as soldiers out of work, was not likely to be in any way increased. Whether or not this opinion be correct, the Europeans in Agra felt their only reliance to be in each other. During the early days of June, most of the ladies resorted at night to certain places of refuge allotted by the governor, such as the fort, the post-office, the office of the Mofussilite newspaper, and behind the artillery lines; while the gentlemen patrolled the streets, or maintained a defensive attitude at appointed places. Trade was continued, British supremacy was asserted, bloodshed was kept away from the city, and the Europeans maintained a steady if not cheerful demeanour. Nevertheless Mr Colvin was full of anxieties; he was responsible to the Calcutta government, not only for Agra, but for the whole of the Northwest Provinces; yet he found himself equally unable to send aid to other stations, and receive aid from them. Agra was troubled on the night of the 23d of June by the desertion of the jail-guard, to whom had been intrusted the custody of the large central prison. A guard from the 3d Europeans was thereupon placed on the outside; while the inside was guarded by another force under Dr Walker the superintendent. So far as concerned military disturbances within the city, Mr Colvin was not at that time under much apprehension; but he knew that certain regiments from Neemuch—the mutiny of which will be described in the next chapter—had approached by the end of the month to a point on the high road between Agra and Jeypoor, very near the first-named city; and he heard that they contemplated an attack. He estimated their strength at two regiments of infantry, four or five hundred cavalry, and eight guns; but as the whole of the civil and military authorities at Agra were on the alert, he did not regard this approaching force with much alarm. To strengthen his position, and maintain public confidence, he organised a European militia of horse and foot, among the clerks, railway men, &c., to which it was expected and desired that nearly all civilians should belong. This militia, placed under the management of Captains Prendergast and Lamb, Lieutenants Rawlins and Oldfield, and Ensign Noble, who had belonged to the disarmed native regiments, was divided into two corps, to which the defence of the different parts of the station was intrusted. How the Europeans, both military and civilians, became cooped up in the fort during July, we shall see in a future chapter.

Meerut, during June, remained in the hands of the British; but there was much inactivity on the part of the general commanding there, in relation to the districts around that town. On the 10th of May, when the mutiny began (p. 50), there were a thousand men of the 60th Rifles, six hundred of the Carabiniers, a troop of horse-artillery, and five hundred artillery recruits—constituting a force unusually large, in relation to the general distribution of English troops in India. Yet these fine soldiers were not so handled as to draw from them the greatest amount of service. They were not sent after the three mutinous regiments who escaped to Delhi; and during the urgent and critical need of Lawrence, Colvin, and Wheeler, Major-general Hewett kept his Europeans almost constantly in or near Meerut. It is true that he, and others who have defended him, asserted that the maintenance of the position at Meerut, a very important consideration, could not have been insured if he had marched out to intercept rebels going from various quarters towards Delhi; but this argument was not deemed satisfactory at Calcutta; Major-general Hewett was superseded, and another commander appointed in his place. It was not until June that dâks were re-established between Meerut and Agra on the one hand, and Meerut and Kurnaul on the other. Some of the Europeans were sent off to join the besieging army before Delhi; while a portion of the remainder were occasionally occupied in putting down bands of Goojurs and other predatory robbers around Meerut. The town of Sirdhana, where the Catholic nuns and children had been placed in such peril (p. 57), was too near Meerut to be held by the rebels. Early in June, one Wallee Dad Khan set himself up as subadar or captain-general of Meerut, under the King of Delhi; raised a rabble force of Goojurs; held the fort of Malagurh with six guns; and seized the district of Bolundshuhur. News arriving that he was advancing with his force towards Meerut, about a hundred European troops, Rifles and Carabiniers, with a few civilians and two guns, started off to intercept him. They had little work to do, however, except to burn villages held by the insurgents; for the robber Goojurs having quarrelled with the robber Jâts about plunder, the latter compelled Wallee Dud Khan and his general, Ismail Khan, to effect a retreat before the English came up. In the last week of the month the force at Meerut, chiefly in consequence of the number sent off to Delhi, was reduced to about eight hundred; these were kept 175so well on the alert, and the whole town and cantonment so well guarded, that the Europeans felt little alarm; although vexed that they could afford no further assistance to the besiegers of Delhi, nor even chastise a portion of the 4th irregular cavalry, who mutinied at Mozuffernugger. All the English, civilians and their families as well as military officers, lived at Meerut either in barracks or tents—none venturing to sleep beyond the immediate spot where the military were placed.

Simla, during these varied operations, continued to be a place where, as at Nynee Tal, ladies and children, as well as some of the officers and civilians, took refuge after being despoiled by mutineers. A militia was formed after the hasty departure of General Anson; Simla was divided into four districts under separate officers; and the gentlemen aided by a few English troops, defended those districts, throughout June. The people at the bazaar, and all the native servants of the place, were disarmed, and the arms taken for safe custody to Kussowlie.

Delhi—a place repeatedly mentioned in every chapter of this narrative—continued to be the centre towards which the attention of all India was anxiously directed. Fast as the native regiments mutinied in Bengal, Oude, Rohilcund, the Doab, Bundelcund, and elsewhere, so did they either flee to Delhi, or shape their course in dependence on the military operations going on there; and fast as the British troops could be despatched to that spot, so did they take rank among the besiegers. But in truth this latter augmentation came almost wholly from the Punjaub and other western districts. Lloyd, Neill, Wheeler, Lawrence, Hewett, Sibbald, were so closely engaged in attending to the districts around Dinapoor, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Meerut, and Bareilly, that they could not send aid to the besiegers of Delhi, during several weeks of siege operations. These operations will be noticed in systematic order, when the other threads of the narrative have been traced to the proper points. Meanwhile the reader will bear in mind that the siege of Delhi was in progress from the middle of June to an advanced period in the summer.

Tomb at Futtehpore Sikri.

In the political and territorial arrangements of the East India Company, the name of Central India is somewhat vaguely employed to designate a portion of the region lying between the Jumna and Bundelcund on the northeast, and the Nizam’s territory and Gujerat on the southwest; a designation convenient for general reading, without possessing any very precise acceptation. In the present chapter, we shall change the expression and enlarge the meaning so as to designate a belt of country that really forms Central India in a geographical sense, extending from Lower Bengal to Rajpootana, and separating Northern India from the southern or peninsular portion of the empire. This will carry the narrative into regions very little mentioned in former chapters—such as Nagpoor, the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, Bundelcund and Rewah, the Mahratta states and the Rajpoot states—regions that will be briefly described, so far as to render the proceedings of the native troops intelligible.

We begin with Nagpoor, a country now belonging to the British government, and considerably larger than England and Wales.

This province was acquired, not so much by conquest, as by one of those intricate arrangements concerning dynasty which have brought so many native states under British rule. It is in general an elevated country, containing many offshoots from the Vindhya range of mountains. Some parts of it, towards the southeast, have never been explored by Europeans, but are believed to be hilly, wooded, and full of jungles, inhabited by the semi-barbarous tribe of Ghonds. The remainder is better known and better cultivated; and being on the high road from Calcutta to Bombay, possesses much political importance. The population exceeds four millions and a half. Early in the last century, one of the Mahratta chieftains conquered Nagpoor from the rajahs who had before governed it; and he and his descendants, or other ambitious members of the Mahratta family, continued to hold it as Rajahs of Nagpoor or Berar. Although constantly fighting one with another, these Mahrattas were on fair terms with the East India Company until 1803, when, unluckily for the continuance of his rule, the native rajah joined Scindia in the war against the British. As a consequence, when peace was restored in 1804, he was forced to yield Cuttack and other provinces to the conquerors. In 1817, another Rajah of Nagpoor joined the Peishwa of the Mahrattas in hostilities against the British—a course which led to his expulsion from the raj, and to a further increase of British influence. Then followed a period during which one rajah was imbecile, another under age, and many unscrupulous chieftains sought to gain an ascendency one over another. This was precisely the state of things which rendered the British resident more and more powerful, setting up and putting down rajahs, and allowing the competitors to weaken the whole native rule by weakening each other. The history of British India may be almost told in such words as these. At length, in 1853, the last rajah, Ragojee, died—not only without heirs, but without any male relations who could support a legitimate claim to the raj. Thereupon, the governor-general quietly annexed this large country to the Company’s dominions. It will be remembered (p. 4) that the Marquis of Dalhousie, in his minute, despatched this subject in a very few lines; not asserting that the British had actually any right to the country; but ‘wisely incorporated it,’ as no one else could put in a legitimate claim for it, and as it would have been imprudent ‘to bestow the territory in free gift upon a stranger.’ The Nagpoor territory was placed under the management of a commissioner, who was immediately subordinate to the governor-general in council; seeing that the Bengal Presidency was already too large to have this considerable country attached to it for governmental purposes.

At and soon after the time of the outbreak, there were the 1st regiment irregular infantry, the Kamptee irregulars, an irregular horse-battery, and a body of European gunners, stationed in the city of Nagpoor, or in Kamptee, eleven miles distant; the 2d infantry and a detachment of the 1st were at Chandah; a detachment of the 1st at Bhandara; 177the chief portion of the 3d at Rajpoor; and the remainder of the same regiment at Bilaspoor. The arsenal, containing guns, arms, ammunition, and military stores of every description; and the treasury of the province, with a large amount of Company’s funds—were close to the city. Mr Plowden filled the office of commissioner at that period. With a mere handful of Europeans in the midst of a very extensive territory, he often trembled in thought for the safety of his position, and of British interests generally, in the region placed under his keeping. He had numerous native troops with him, and a large city under his control; if anything sinister should arise, he was far away from any extraneous aid—being nearly six hundred miles distant from Madras, and still further from Calcutta. But, whatever were his anxieties (and they were many), he put on a calm bearing towards the natives of Nagpoor. This city, the capital of the territory bearing the same name, is a dirty, irregular, straggling place, nearly seven miles in circumference. Most of the houses are mud-built; and even the palace of the late rajah is little more than a clumsy pile of unfinished masonry. The city has become rather famous for its banking business, and for its manufactures of cottons, chintzes, turbans, silks, brocades, woollens, blankets, tent-cloths, and other textile goods. The population exceeds a hundred thousand. There is nothing of a military appearance about the city; but whoever commands the Seetabuldee, commands Nagpoor itself. This Seetabuldee is a hilly ridge close to the city on the west, having two summits, the northern the higher, the southern the larger, but every part overlooking the city, and fortified. Such being the topographical position of his seat of government, Mr Plowden proceeded to disarm such of his troops as excited disquietude in his mind, and to strengthen the Seetabuldee. A corps of irregular cavalry shewed symptoms of disloyalty; and indeed rumours were afloat that on a particular day the ascent of a balloon was to be a signal for the revolt of the troops. Under these circumstances, Mr Plowden arranged with Colonel Cumberlege, the commandant, to disarm them on the morning of the 23d of June—the colonel having the 4th regiment of Madras cavalry, on whom he fully relied, to enforce the order for disbanding. The irregulars were paraded, mounted and fully armed, to shew that the authorities were not afraid of them. Mr Plowden having addressed them, they quietly gave up their arms and their saddles, which were taken in carts to the arsenal; and thus six hundred and fifty troopers were left with nothing but their bare horses, and ropes to picket them. Some of the men and of the native officers were arrested, and put on their trial for an attempt to excite mutiny. The roll was called over every four hours, and every native soldier absent, or found outside the lines without a pass, was treated as a deserter. The 1st regiment irregular infantry assisted in the disarming of the troopers. Following up the measures thus promptly taken, the commissioner strengthened the defences on the Seetabuldee hill, as a last refuge for the Europeans at Nagpoor in the event of any actual mutiny at that place. The Residency became a barrack at night for all the civil and military officers; and a watchful eye was kept on the natives generally. At present, all was safe in Nagpoor.

Another province, and another commissioner in charge of it, now come for notice. This province, bearing the rather lengthened name of the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, is about half the size of England, and is bounded by the various provinces or regions of Nagpoor, Mirzapore, Allahabad, Banda, Bundelcund, Gwalior, Bhopal, and the Nizam’s state of Hyderabad. It corresponds more nearly with the exact centre of India than any other portion of territory. One half of its name is derived from the town of Saugor, the other half from the river Nerbudda. To describe the scraps and patches of which it consists, and the means by which they were acquired, would be neither easy nor necessary. Within its limits is the small independent state of Rewah, the rajah of which was bound to the British government by a treaty of alliance. Four other petty states—Kotee, Myhir, Oocheyra, and Sohawul—were in the hands of native chieftains, mere feudatories of the Company, under whose grants they held their possessions; allowed to govern their small sovereignties, but subject at any moment to the supervision and interference of the paramount power. The larger portion, now entirely British, is marked by the towns and districts of Saugor, Jubbulpoor, Hosungabad, Seuni, Nursingpore, Baitool, Sohagpoor, and others of less importance. There are still many aboriginal Ghonds in the province, as in Nagpoor, lurking in the gloomiest recesses of dense forests, and subsisting for the most part on wild roots and fruits. There are other half-savage tribes of Koles, Palis, and Panwars; while the more civilised population comprises a singular mixture of Brahmins, Bundelas, Rajpoots, Mahrattas, and Patans. The Mahrattas at one time claimed this region, on the same plea as those east and west of it—the right of conquest; and the British obtained it from the Mahrattas, about forty years ago, by cession after a course of hostilities.

Major Erskine was commissioner of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories during the early weeks of the mutiny; responsible, not immediately to the governor-general at Calcutta, but to the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces at Agra. Like Mr Plowden at Nagpoor, he felt how imperiled he and his fellow-Europeans would be if the native troops were to rebel. At Jhansi and at Nuseerabad, as we shall presently see, revolt and massacre marked the first week in June; and Major Erskine sought earnestly for means to prevent his own Saugor troops from being tempted to a similar course. He was with the 52d native infantry at Jubbulpoor. He wrote on the 9th of 178June to Brigadier Prior at Kamptee, praying him—while keeping that station and Seuni intact—to prevent, if possible, all news of the mutineers from passing to Jubbulpoor by that route; he feared lest his 52d should yield to the influence of pernicious example. Seuni was a small civil station, nearly midway between Jubbulpoor and Nagpoor, and about eighty miles distant from each; while Kamptee was a cantonment of Madras regulars, eleven miles north of Nagpoor. The four places named, in fact, stand nearly in a line north and south, and interpose between the Mahratta states and Lower Bengal. Mr Plowden at Nagpoor, Major Erskine at Jubbulpoor, and Brigadier Prior at Kamptee, thereupon concerted measures for preserving, so far as they could, that region of India from disturbance; they all three agreed that ‘tranquillity will be most effectually secured by crushing disaffection before it approaches too near to agitate men’s minds dangerously.’ One consequence of this arrangement was, that a force was sent on the 13th to Seuni, under Major Baker; consisting of the 32d native infantry, a squadron of the 4th light cavalry, a squadron of irregular cavalry, and three field-guns.

The Europeans at Jubbulpoor were not allowed to pass through the month of June without many doubts and anxieties. The native troops, though not actually in mutiny, were seized with a mingled feeling of fear and exasperation when European troops were mentioned; they were in perpetual apprehension, from the countless rumours at that time circulating throughout India, that Europeans were about to approach and disarm them, as degraded and distrusted men. Jubbulpoor is a large thriving town, which at the time of the mutiny contained a small cantonment for native troops, and a political agency subsidiary to that at Saugor. On one occasion, this report of the approach of European troops seized so forcibly on the minds of the sepoys, that the subadar-major, a trusted and influential man, lost all control over them; and they were not satisfied until their English colonel allowed two or three from each company to go out and scour the country, to satisfy themselves and the rest whether the rumour were true or false. On another occasion, one of the sepoys rose with a shout of ‘Death to the Feringhees,’ and endeavoured to bayonet the adjutant; but his companions did not aid him; and the authorities deemed it prudent to treat him as a madman, to be confined and not shot. When troops were marched from Kamptee to Seuni, in accordance with the arrangements mentioned in the last paragraph, the sepoys at Jubbulpoor were at once told of it, lest their excited minds should be again aroused on the subject of Europeans. Some of the English officers felt the humiliation involved in this kind of petting and pampering; but danger was around them, and they were obliged to temporise. A few ladies had been sent to Kamptee; all else remained with their husbands, seldom taking off their clothes at night, and holding themselves ready to flee at an hour’s warning. Such a state of affairs, though less perilous, was almost as mentally distressing as actual mutiny. As the month drew to a close, and the perpetual anxiety and expectation were becoming wearisome to all, the Europeans resolved to fortify the Residency. This they did, and moreover stored it with six months’ provision for about sixty persons, including thirty ladies and children; and for several civilians, who had also to be provided for.

Saugor was placed in some such predicament as Jubbulpoor; its European officers had much to plan, much to execute, to enable them to pass safely through the perils of the month of June. This town, the capital of the province in political matters, possessed a military cantonment on the borders of a lake on which the town stands; a large fort, which had been converted into an ordnance depôt; and a population of fifty thousand souls, chiefly Mahrattas. At the time of the outbreak, Brigadier Sage commanded the Saugor district force, and had under him the 31st and 42d native infantry regiments, a regiment of native cavalry, and about seventy European gunners. The fort, the magazine, and the battering-train were at one end of the cantonment; an eminence, called the Artillery Hill, was at the other end, three miles off; and the brigadier felt that if mutiny should occur, he would hardly be able to hold both positions. During many minor transactions in the district, requiring the presence of small detachments from Saugor, the temper of the troops was made sufficiently manifest; sometimes the 31st shewed bad symptoms, sometimes the 42d; two or three men were detected in plans for murdering their officers; and petty rajahs in the district offered the sepoys higher pay if they would change their allegiance. The European inhabitants of Saugor becoming very uneasy, the brigadier cleared out the fort, converted it into a place of refuge for women and children, supplied it with useful furniture and other articles, and succeeded in supplanting sepoys by Europeans in guard of the fort, the magazine, and the treasury. The fort being provisioned for six months, and the guns secured, Brigadier Sage felt himself in a position to adopt a resolute tone towards the native troops, without compromising the safety of the numerous persons congregated within it—comprising a hundred and thirty officers and civilians, and a hundred and sixty women and children, all the Europeans of the place. Thus ended June. It may simply be added here, that during the early part of the following month, the 31st and 42d regiments had a desperate fight, the former willing to be faithful, and the latter to mutiny. The brigadier, not feeling quite sure even of the 31st, would not place either his officers or his guns at their mercy, but he sent out of the fort a few men to aid them. The irregular cavalry joined the 42d; but both corps were ultimately 179beaten off by the 31st—to carry wild disorder into other towns and districts.^[26]

Without dwelling on minor mutinies at Dumoh and other places in the Saugor province, we will transfer our attention northward to Bundelcund; where Jhansi was the scene of a terrible catastrophe, and where riot and plunder were in the ascendant throughout the month of June. Bundelcund, the country of the Bundelas, affords a curious example of the mode in which a region became in past times cut up into a number of petty states, and then fell in great part into British hands. It is a strip of country, about half the size of Scotland, lying south or southwest of the Jumna, and separated by that river from the Doab. The country was in the hands of the Rajpoots until the close of the fourteenth century; when another tribe, the Bundelas, began a system of predatory incursions which led to their ultimate possession of the whole tract. Early in the last century there was a chief of Western Bundelcund tributary to the Great Mogul, and another in Eastern Bundelcund supported by the Mahrattas against that sovereign. How one chief rose against another, and how each obtained a patch of territory for himself, need not be told; it was only an exemplification of a process to which Asiatics have been accustomed from the earliest ages. About the close of the century, the East India Company began to obtain possession here, by conquest or by treaty; and in 1817, after a war with the Mahrattas, a large increase was made in this ownership. These are matters needful to be borne in mind here; for, though the country is but small, it now contains five or six districts belonging to the British, and nine native princedoms or rajahships; besides numerous petty jaghires or domains that may in some sense be compared to the smallest states of the Germanic confederation. At the time of the mutiny, the British districts were managed under the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces; while the ‘political superintendence,’ as it was called, of the native states was in the hands of an agent appointed by, and directly responsible to, the governor-general. With the principal native states, of which Jhansi was one, the British government had engagements, varying on minor points according to circumstances, but all recognising its supremacy, and binding the dependent state to the relinquishment of all political relations except with the superior power. Some were tributary; some exempt from that obligation. The chief towns in the portion of Bundelcund belonging to the British are Jhansi, Banda, and Jaloun.

Bundelcund, we have said, was the scene of much outrage, especially at Jhansi. This town, lying on the main route from Agra to Saugor, was much frequented in the last century by caravans of merchants who traded between the Doab and the Deccan; and it is still a prosperous commercial place, rendered conspicuous by the castellated residence of the former rajahs. The Jhansi mutiny was not followed by so many adventures and wanderings as that at other places—for a very mournful reason; nearly all the Europeans were at once put to death. A fort in the town had been previously supplied with food and ammunition, and had been agreed on as a place of refuge in time of danger. Major Skene and Captain Gordon, civil officers of the Company, received information which tended to shew that a petty chieftain near Jhansi was tampering with the troops; and Captain Dunlop, in command there, made what defensive preparations he could. Besides the fort in the town, there was one called the Star Fort in the cantonment, containing the guns and the treasure. The native troops—portions of the 12th infantry and of the 14th irregular cavalry, and a few artillery—rose on the afternoon of the 4th of June, seized the Star Fort, and shot at all the officers in the cantonment; many were killed, and the rest ran to the Town Fort, which they barricaded as well as they were able. The little garrison of Europeans then prepared for a siege; but it could be only of short duration, as the place was too weak to contend against the rebel besiegers. Musketry and sword-cuts (for the garrison often met their assailants hand to hand at the gates) brought down many; and some of the civilians, who tried to escape disguised as natives, were caught by the insurgents and killed. At last, when Captains Dunlop and Gordon, and many other officers had fallen, and when the remaining Europeans had become disheartened, by the scarcity of ammunition and of food, Major Skene accepted terms offered to him, on oath—that the whole of the garrison should be spared if he opened the gate and surrendered. The blood-thirsty villains soon shewed the value of the oath they had taken. They seized all—men, women, and children—and bound them in two rows to ropes, the men in one row and the women and children in the other. The whole were then deliberately put to death; the poor ladies stood with their infants in their arms, and their elder children clinging to their gowns; and when the husbands and fathers had been slaughtered, then came the other half of the tragedy. It is even said that the innocent children were cut in halves before their mothers’ eyes. One relief, and one only, marked the scene; there was not, so far as is known, torture and violation of women as 180precursors of death. The death-list was a sad one. Skene, Dunlop, Gordon, Ryves, Taylor, Campbell, Burgess, Turnbull—all were military officers in the Company’s service, employed either on military or civil duties; and all were killed. Twenty-four civil servants and non-commissioned officers likewise met with their death; and most painful of all, nineteen ladies and twenty-three children were butchered by the treacherous miscreants. Mr Thornton, the collector for a district between Jhansi and Cawnpore, was afterwards in a position to inform the government that the mutinous troops intended to have left Jhansi after they had captured the treasure; that a Bundelcund chieftainess, the Ranee of Jhansi, wishing to regain power in the district, bribed them with large presents to take the fort and put all the Europeans to death before they finally departed for Delhi; and that it was thus to a woman that was due the inhuman slaughtering of more than forty European ladies and children. One account, that reached the ears of officers at other stations, was to the effect that when Major Skene became aware of the miscreant treachery, he kissed his wife, shot her, and then shot himself, to avert apprehended atrocities worse than death; while another narrative or rumour represented the murderers as having chopped off the heads of the victims, instead of merely shooting them; but, in truth, the destruction was so complete that scarcely one was left to tell the tale except natives, who contradicted each other in some of the particulars.

Jhansi of course soon became a prey to lawless marauders; while the mutineers marched off to Delhi or elsewhere. Lieutenant Osborne, at Rewah, was placed in a difficult position at that time. Rewah is a small Rajpoot state, ruled by a native rajah, who is bound by treaties with the British government, and who has a British agent as resident at his court. Rewah was nearly surrounded by mutinous districts, such as Benares, Allahabad, Futtehpoor, Jhansi, Saugor, and Jubbulpoor; and it became a difficult problem for Lieutenant Osborne, the British agent, how to keep wild disorder away from that place. On the 8th of June, by an energetic use of his influence, he was able to announce that the Maharajah of Rewah had placed his troops at the disposal of the government; that the offer had been accepted; and that eight hundred of those troops, with two guns, had been sent off to Ummapatan, a place which commanded the roads to Jubbulpoor, Nagode, and Saugor—ready to oppose insurgents from any of those towns, and to intercept communication with other mutinous towns on the Jumna. He also sent eleven hundred of the Maharajah’s troops, with five guns, to Kuttra Pass: a spot whence a rapid advance could be made to Benares, Chunar, or Mirzapore, according as military exigencies might render desirable. A week later, he obtained permission from the Maharajah to send seven hundred troops to Banda; and at the same time to issue a proclamation, promising rewards to any of his soldiers who should distinguish themselves by their gallantry and fidelity. With no higher military rank than that of lieutenant did this active officer thus lay plans, not only for the peace of the Rewah territory itself, but also in aid of the Company’s officers all around him. His position at a later date was very perilous.

If the destruction of life was less at Nowgong than at Jhansi, the proceedings of mutinous troops were followed by much more adventure and varied interest. Nowgong or Nowgaon is situated about a hundred miles southeast of the last-named town, but, like it, in the Bundelcund territory. At the beginning of June there were stationed at that place about four hundred men of the 12th native infantry, and rather over two hundred of the 14th irregular cavalry—wings of the same two regiments as at Jhansi; together with a company of the 9th battalion of artillery, and a light field bullock-battery. Major Kirke, commanding the station, had in earlier weeks often discussed the cartridge question with his men, and believed he had removed from their minds all misgivings on that unfortunate subject. Nevertheless, as June approached, the major deemed the appearance of affairs so suspicious, that he made such precautionary arrangements as were practicable to resist an outbreak. Bungalows were now and then discovered to be in flames, without any means of detecting the incendiaries. When the atrocities at Meerut and elsewhere became known, the troops stationed at Nowgong made ardent demonstrations of loyalty—so ardent, that Kirke almost upbraided himself for his momentary distrust of them; the infantry embraced their colours, the artillery embraced their guns, and all asserted their burning desire to chastise the rebels who had proved faithless to the Company Bahadoor. So late as the 6th of June, even while whisperings and ominous signs were passing between them, these unreliable men sent in a grandiloquent petition, in which they said: ‘As it is necessary to avenge the government on those cowardly rascals who now, in Delhi and other places, are exciting rebellion, and for which purpose many European regiments are being despatched; we, hearing of this, are exceedingly desirous that we be sent as volunteers to chastise these scoundrels. And that we may shew from our hearts our faithfulness, we are ready to go wherever sent’—and more to the same purpose. This petition or address was presented to Major Kirke by the wing of the 12th regiment. On that same day news arrived that the other wing of the same regiment had mutinied at Jhansi; and the Neemuch men, either with childish indecision or with profound duplicity, sent off a letter to them, reproving them for their insubordination! On the 10th, a petition was presented by the commandant of the artillery (4th company, 9th battalion), couched in similar language; demanding that the artillery might be sent against the rebels; ‘in 181order,’ as the petition averred, ‘that we may fulfil the wish of our hearts by shewing our bravery and loyalty.’

Never were words uttered more hollow and treacherous. By nightfall on that same 10th of June, the native troops at Nowgong were nearly all rebels, and the Europeans nearly all fugitives. A few hours sufficed to shew the English officers that they were powerless to contend against their opponents. Flight commenced. The officers and civilians, with their families, and Europeans of humbler station, all took their departure from Nowgong—some in buggies, some on horseback, and some on foot; but all equally reft of their worldly property. Were it not that this Chronicle has already contained examples, mournfully numerous, of similar wanderings over the scorching roads and through the thick jungle of India, the fate of the Nowgong party might afford materials for a very exciting narrative; but with the reader’s experience on this matter, a few lines of description will suffice. The party was a large one. It comprised Major Kirke, Captain Scot, Lieutenants Townshend, Jackson, Remington, Ewart, Franks, and Barber, about forty other Europeans of both sexes and all ages, and about ninety sepoys of the mutinous infantry, who had not joined their brethren. The fugitives lessened in number every day; some or other of them sank under the heat and fatigue; while the sepoys deserted when they approached towns where insurgents were in the ascendant. Either collectively or separately the wanderers found themselves on different days at Chutterpore, at Logassee, at Churkaree, at Mahoba, at Callingurh, at Kabrai, at Banda—places mostly belonging to petty rajahs of Bundelcund. The principal survivors of the party were about ten or twelve days on the roads and fields, before they reached friendly quarters at Banda. On one occasion they were attacked by a band of marauders, and had to buy security with rupees; on another, their sepoys were seized with a panic, and ran off in large numbers; on a third, a body of matchlockmen suddenly confronted them, and shot down Lieutenant Townshend. On one part of the journey, Captain Scot found himself in the midst of a distressing group of women and children: having poor Townshend’s horse with him, he loaded both horses with as many as he could carry; but it made him heart-sick to see the others fall away one by one, utterly broken down by fatigue, and with insufficient men to help them along—for the flight appears to have been wanting in every semblance of organisation. A bandsman’s wife dropped dead through a sun-stroke; then an artillery sergeant, worn out, went into a hut to die. Captain Scot came up with a lady and her child, reeling along the road as if delirious; he readjusted his horse-load, took up the fugitives, and the lady very speedily died in his arms. Shortly after this a fine hale sergeant-major sank, to rise no more; Major Kirke died through a sun-stroke; and others dropped off in a similar way. Dr Mawe died from illness and fatigue; and then his wife, while laving her blistered feet in a pool, was set upon by ruffians and robbed of the little she had about her. Captain Scot, after many changes in his horse-load, took up Dr Mawe’s child; and ‘little Lotty,’ of two years’ old, seemed to him a blessing rather than a burden; for on the few occasions when he met friendly natives, their friendship was generally gained for him by the sight of the little girl, whose head he endeavoured to shield from the burning sun by a portion of his shirt—the only resource for one who had lost both hat and coat, and whose own head was nearly driven wild by the intense solar heat. It is pleasant to know that the captain and ‘little Lotty’ were among the few who reached a place of safety.

Banda was another of the stations affected; but the details of its troubles need not be traced here. Suffice it to say that, on the 14th of June, there was a mutiny of a detachment of native infantry, and a few troops belonging to the Nawab of Banda—a titular prince, possessing no political power, but enjoying a pension from the Company, and having a sort of honorary body-guard of native troops. The officers and their families were at first in great peril; but the nawab aided them in making a safe retreat to Nagode. On the 16th of June, Major Ellis had to announce to the government that his station at Nagode was beginning to be filled with anxious fugitives from Banda, Futtehpoor, Humeerpoor, and Ameerpoor; comprising military officers, magistrates, salt-agents, revenue servants, railway officials, and private persons. Twenty-eight of these fugitives arrived on one day. He sent to many petty chieftains of Bundelcund, who were pensioners under the Company or had treaties with it, to exert themselves to the utmost in recovering all property seized during the events of the preceding two or three days in the Banda district. Major Ellis at Nagode, and Mr Mayne at Banda, applied earnestly to Calcutta for military assistance; but they were told plainly that none could be sent to them, every European soldier being needed in the Ganges and Jumna regions.

It now becomes necessary, on removing the scene further to the west, to know something concerning the Mahrattas, their relations to the two great families of Scindia and Holkar, the conventions existing between those two families and the British government, and the military arrangements of the Mahratta territories at the time of the outbreak. These matters can be rendered intelligible without any very lengthened historical narrative.

After the death of the Emperor Aurungzebe, a century and a half ago, India was distracted and impoverished by the contentions of his sons and descendants; each of whom, in claiming the throne, secured the partisanship of powerful nobles, and the military aid of fighting-men in the pay of those nobles. A civil war of terrible kind was the natural result; and equally natural was it that other chieftains, in nowise related to the 182imperial family, should take advantage of the anarchy to found dynasties for themselves. One such chieftain was Sevajee, a Mahratta in the service of the King of Bejapore, in the southern part of India. The Mahrattas were (and are) a peculiar tribe of Hindoos, more fierce and predatory than most of their fellow-countrymen. Long before Europeans settled in India, the Mahrattas were the chief tribe in the region north, south, and east of the present city of Bombay. After many struggles against the competitors for the throne of Delhi, the Mahrattas were left in possession of a sovereign state, of which Satara and Poonah were the chief cities. From 1707 till 1818, the nominal sovereign or rajah of the Mahrattas had no real power; he was a sort of state or honorary prisoner, confined in the hill-fortress of Satara; while the government was administered by the Peishwa or prime minister, whose office became hereditary in a particular family, and whose seat of government was at Poonah. After many Peishwas had held this singular kind of sovereignty at the one city—the nominal rajah being all the time powerless at the other—circumstances occurred which led to an intermeddling of the East India Company with Mahratta politics, followed by the usual results. Narrain Rao Peishwa was murdered in 1773; many relations of the murdered man competed for the succession; and as the Company greatly desired to possess the island of Salsette and the town of Bassein, at that time belonging to the Mahrattas, it was soon seen that this wish might be gratified by aiding one competitor against another. Battles and intrigues followed, ending in the possession of the two coveted places by the British, and in the appointment of a British resident at the Peishwa’s court at Poonah. Thus matters remained until 1817, when the Peishwa engaged in intrigues with other Mahratta chiefs against the British; a course that led to his total overthrow after a few fierce contests in the field. The Mahratta sovereignty at Poonah was entirely put an end to, except a small principality assigned to the Rajah of Satara, the almost forgotten representative of the founder of the Mahratta rule. The British took all the remaining territory, pensioning off the Peishwa; and as to Satara, after several rajahs had reigned, under the close control of the British resident at that city, the principality ‘lapsed’ in 1848, in default of legitimate male heirs—a lapse that led to the preparation of many ponderous blue books concerning the grievances and complaints of a certain adopted son of the last rajah.

Thus much for the south Mahratta country, having Poonah and Satara for its chief cities; but the British have had fully as much to do with the northern portion of the Mahratta region, represented by the two cities of Gwalior and Indore, and held by the two great Mahratta families of Scindia and Holkar. As the Peishwas in past years cared little for the nominal head of the Mahrattas at Satara, so did the Scindias and Holkars care little for the Peishwas. Each chieftain endeavoured to become an independent sovereign. The Scindia family is traceable up to the year 1720, when Ranojee Scindia was one of the dependents of the Peishwa. From that year, by predatory expeditions and by intrigues, the successive heads of the Scindia family became more and more powerful—contending in turn against the Mogul, the Rajpoots, the Peishwa, and the British; until at length, in 1784, Madhajee Scindia was recognised as an independent sovereign prince, with the hill-fortress of Gwalior as his stronghold and seat of government. In 1794, when Madhajee died, the Scindia dominions extended from beyond Delhi on the north to near Bombay on the south, and from the Ganges to Gujerat—a vast region, held and acquired by means as atrocious as any recorded in the history of India. Early in the present century, the power of the Scindia family received a severe check. Hostilities having broken out with the British, Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington) defeated Dowlut Rao Scindia at Assaye in 1803, while Lord Lake drove the Mahrattas from the whole of the Doab. Many desperate wars occurred in later years, ending, in 1844, by a treaty which left Bajerut Rao Scindia king or rajah of a state barely equalling England in area, with Gwalior as his capital. A contingent or body of troops was to be supplied by him for the service of the British, beyond which he was permitted to have an independent army of nine thousand men; and there were numerous minor details which gave much influence to the British resident at Gwalior.

Of the family of Holkar, almost the same account may be given as of that of Scindia; inasmuch as it has sprung from a Mahratta leader who acquired power a century and a half ago. The city of Indore has always been the centre of dominion belonging to this family—a dominion extending over a very wide region at some periods, but greatly contracted in recent times. The ruler of the Indore territory at the time of the mutiny was one Mulkerjee Holkar, who had been appointed by the Calcutta government at a time of disputed succession, in such a way as to imply that the territory might pass into British hands whenever the Company chose. Holkar’s territory is now much smaller than Scindia’s, scarcely exceeding Wales in area.

It will suffice, then, to bear in mind that the southern Mahratta power, that of the courts of Poonah and Satara, had wholly fallen into British hands before the time of the mutiny; and that the northern power, held by the courts of Gwalior and Indore, extended over a country no larger than England and Wales united. Nevertheless, considering that that portion of central India is bounded by Bundelcund, the Doab, Rajpootana, Gujerat, the Nizam’s dominions, and the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, it was of much importance to the British that Scindia and Holkar should 183remain faithful to their alliances at a critical period.

Although Nuseerabad is properly in Rajpootana, of which a few words of description will be given shortly, the mutiny at that place may conveniently be treated here; because it was a link in a chain which successively affected Neemuch, Indore, Mhow, and Gwalior.

Nuseerabad is near Ajmeer, the chief town of a British district surrounded by the dominions of independent or semi-independent rajahs. Ajmeer, though far smaller than most of the principal cities in India, is an ancient and important place, about two hundred and sixty miles southwest of Delhi; at the time of the mutiny, it was the seat of a British political agency; and in a ruined palace of the Emperor Akbar, converted into an arsenal, was a powder-magazine. Nuseerabad, fifteen miles from Ajmeer, may be regarded as the military station for that city, and for the neighbouring British districts; it had an extensive and well-laid-out cantonment, and was the head-quarters of the corps known as the Rajpootana Field-force. Nuseerabad had been nearly drained of troops early in the year, on account of the Persian expedition; but this gap was afterwards partially filled up. In the month of May there were at the station the 1st regiment Bombay lancers, the 15th and 30th Bengal native infantry, and the 2d company of the 7th battalion of Bengal native artillery. An instructive fact was made manifest; the Bombay troops remained faithful, while those of the Bengal army became first restless, then mutinous, then murderous. Unfortunately, the good were not strong enough to coerce the bad; the Bombay lancers numbered only two hundred and fifty sabres. The month of May had not closed when the disturbances at Nuseerabad began. The officers had been nightly in the habit of sleeping with revolvers and swords near at hand; while the Bombay lancers patrolled the cantonment—so suspicious were the symptoms observed. On the evening of the 28th a servant rushed into the bungalow of one of the lieutenants of the 15th infantry, announcing that the regiment had risen. The officers hastened to the lines, and there found the regiment drawn up in companies—the martial array being maintained in mutiny as it had been in regular drill. The men looked sternly at their officers; and soon worse news arrived. The native artillerymen who worked the six guns joined the revolters—not actually firing on the officers, but ready to do so. The Englishmen connected with the two regiments were a mere handful; they were powerless, for none of the sepoys would aid them against the rest. Colonel Penny, in command of the Bombay lancers, instantly hastened down, armed and mounted his troopers, and drew them up into position. Galloping to the artillery lines, and finding the guns pointed against him, he immediately ordered a charge for capturing them, each troop charging in succession. Captain Spottiswoode began, and soon fell mortally wounded; other officers led subsequent charges, but the guns could not be taken. Penny then felt obliged to relinquish this attempt, and to hold himself in readiness to check the mutineers in other ways; but as the two regiments of native infantry refused to listen to their officers, nothing was left but flight. Cornet Newberry, as well as Captain Spottiswoode, fell while charging; Colonel Penny became suddenly ill and died in a few hours; while two or three other officers were wounded. How perilous were those cavalry-charges against the six guns may be judged from a letter written by one of the officers: ‘I galloped towards the guns, and must have been eighty or a hundred yards from them when I began to experience the unpleasant sensation of bullets whizzing past my head, and saw a lot of sepoys taking shots at me as I came along. I immediately turned my pony’s head, and endeavoured to retreat under cover of a wall which ran in front of the artillery lines. Here I saw more men running up with the kind intention of having a crack at me; so I had to keep along the parade-ground right in the line of fire, and had one or two men popping at me from over the wall on my right. My tât (pony) went as fast as ever he could go, and, thanks be to God, carried me back in perfect safety.... Off we started towards the cavalry lines amid showers of bullets. I dodged round the first bell of arms; and as I passed the bells, saw three or four men behind each, who deliberately shot at us as we passed.’ The ladies had been sent off from the station just in time. The surviving officers joined them beyond the cantonment about nightfall, and then all hastened away. They rode forty miles during the night, on roads and fields and rocky hills, and reached a place of safety, Beaur or Beawur, towards noon—hungry, tired, and reft of everything but the clothes on their backs.

As this small body of Bombay native cavalry remained stanch when the Bengal troops were faithless all around them, it was deemed right to make some public acknowledgment of the fact. Lord Elphinstone, as president or governor of Bombay, issued a general order on the subject, thanking the troopers, and passing lightly over the fact that a few of them afterwards disgraced themselves.^[27] The commander-in-chief afterwards ordered the report of the transaction by Captain 184Hardy, who took the control of the lancers when Colonel Penny died, to be translated into the Hindustani and Mahratta languages, and read to all the regiments of the Bombay native army, as an encouragement to them in the path of duty. After the English officers and their families had escaped to Beaur, the mutinous troops made off towards Delhi. Nuseerabad being considered an important station in regard to the control of the surrounding districts, a force was sent to reoccupy it towards the end of June; comprising a detachment of H.M. 83d foot, another of the 20th Bombay native infantry, another of the Jhodpore legion, and a squadron of the 2d Bombay cavalry—Nuseerabad being sufficiently near Bombay to derive advantages not possessed by stations further east.

The usual consequences of the revolt of native regiments followed. Nuseerabad furnished a bad example to Neemuch. As a village, Neemuch is of small consequence; as a military station, its importance is considerable. During some of the negotiations with Scindia in past years, it was agreed that the British should have a cantonment at this spot, which is on the confines of Malwah and Mewar, about three hundred miles southwest of Agra; a force in British pay was to be stationed there, by virtue of certain terms in a treaty, and a small district, with the village in the centre, was made over to the Company for this purpose. The cantonment thereupon built was two or three miles long by a mile in width, and comprised the usual native infantry lines, cavalry lines, artillery lines, head-quarters, offices, bungalows, bazaar, parade-ground, &c. There was also a small fort or fortified square built, as a place of refuge for the families of the military when called to a distance on duty.

In the early part of June, the troops stationed at Neemuch comprised the 72d Bengal N. I., the 7th regiment of Gwalior infantry, two troops of the 1st Bengal light cavalry, and a troop of horse-artillery. Every effort had been made in the early weeks of the mutiny to insure the confidence of these troops, and prevent them from joining the standard of rebellion. Colonel Abbott, and most of the officers of the 72d, as well even as some of their families, slept within the sepoy lines, to win the good-will of the men by a generous confidence. One wing (three companies) of the Gwalior troops held the fortified square and treasury; while the other wing (five companies), now quartered in a vacant hospital, about a quarter of a mile distant, was encamped just outside the walls; Captain Macdonald, the chief officer, residing with the first-named wing. Colonel Abbott, who commanded the station generally, as well as the 72d regiment in particular, became convinced, on the morning of the 2d of June, that all the hopeful expectations of himself and brother-officers were likely to be dashed; for the troops at Neemuch had heard of the mutiny at Nuseerabad, and could be restrained no longer. While the superintendent, Captain Lloyd, hastened to secure some of the Company’s records and accounts, and to open a line of retreat for fugitives along the Odeypore road, Colonel Abbott made such military arrangements as were practicable on the spur of the moment. The colonel brought his native officers together, and talked to them so earnestly, that he induced them to swear, ‘on the Koran and on Ganges water,’ that they would be true to their salt; while he, at their request, swore to his confidence in their faithful intentions. This singular compact, in which Mohammedans, Hindoos, and a Christian swore according to the things most solemn to them respectively, remained unbroken for twenty-four hours; who broke it, after that interval, will at once be guessed. During many preceding days, a panic had prevailed in the Sudder Bazaar; incendiary fires occurred at night; great numbers of persons had removed with their property; the wildest reports were set afloat by designing knaves to increase the distrust; and the commonest occurrences were distorted into phantoms of evil intended against the troops. At last, on the night of the 3d, the troops threw off their oath and their allegiance at once. The artillery, disregarding Lieutenant Walker’s entreaties and expostulations, fired off two guns; the cavalry, on hearing this signal, rushed out to join them; and the 72d broke from their lines immediately afterwards. Captain Macdonald instantly ordered into the fort the one wing of the Gwalior regiment which had been encamped outside, under Lieutenants Rose and Gurdon; and then prepared for defence. A bold and singular expedient had just before been adopted by the civil superintendent; he authorised Macdonald to promise to the Gwalior troops, if they faithfully defended the fort during any mutiny outside, a reward of a hundred rupees to each sepoy or private, three hundred to each naik or corporal, five hundred to each havildar or sergeant, higher sums to the jemadars and subadars, and five thousand rupees to the senior native officer, or to the one who should most distinguish himself in preserving the loyalty of the regiment. These are large sums to the natives of India; and the superintendent must have considered long and fully before he promised the Company’s money in such a manner. All was, however, in vain. The Gwalior troops remained faithful under the temptation of this promise for a short time; but at length, headed by a subadar named Heera Singh, they demanded that the gates of the fort should be opened, and requested that the officers would make arrangements for their own safety. Macdonald, Rose, Gurdon, and other officers of the Gwalior regiment, expostulated with their men; but entreaty was now of no avail; the troops forcibly opened the gates, and the officers took their departure when the last vestige of hope had been destroyed.

Of the flight, little need be said; it was such a flight as almost every province in Northern India exhibited in those sad days. Some of the ladies 185and children had been sent off a few hours earlier, hurried away with no preparations for their comfort or even their sustenance; while others waited to accompany their husbands or fathers. Very few had either horses or vehicles; they laboured on footsore to Baree, to Chota Sadree, to Burra Sadree, to Doogla—straggling parties meeting and separating according as their strength remained or failed, and all dependent on the villagers for food. At Doogla, where they arrived on the third night, the officers strengthened a sort of mud-fort about forty yards square, within which forty persons were huddled. After being much straitened, they were relieved by Brigadier Showers on the 9th. The fugitive party now broke up; some returned to Neemuch, which the mutineers had abandoned; but the greater number went to Odeypore, the rana of which place gave them a hospitable reception; some of them afterwards went further west to Mount Aboo or Aboo Gurh—a celebrated place of Hindoo pilgrimage to a sacred temple, and a sanatarium for the Europeans stationed at the cantonment of Deesa, about forty miles distant. Those of the party who returned to Neemuch, found everything devastated, the bungalows and offices burnt, and the villagers stripped of their stores by the mutineers, who had afterwards started off for Agra. The officers and their families were literally beggars; they had lost their all. No Europeans were killed save the wife and three children of a sergeant, who could not leave Neemuch in time.

Fort of Mhow.

Thus were lost to the British about fourteen hundred men and six guns at Nuseerabad, and sixteen hundred men and six guns at Neemuch, all of which went to swell the insurgent forces inside Delhi or outside Agra.

The stations of Indore and Mhow must now engage a little of our attention—situated nearly south of Neemuch, and about four hundred miles from Agra. Indore, as has already been stated, is the capital of Holkar’s Mahratta dominions. It is an ill-built place, standing on the small river Kutki, and is less than a century old: the original Indore, or Jemnah, being on the opposite side of the river. Holkar’s palace is a building possessing few attractions; and the like may be said of the other native structures. The relation existing at that time between Indore and Mhow was this—that Indore was the residence of the British political agent at the court of Holkar; whereas Mhow, thirteen miles distant, was the military station or cantonment. The house of the British agent, and those of the other Europeans, were on the eastern side of the town. The agent, at the time of the mutiny, had an escort of cavalry and infantry at his disposal; but it was simply an escort, not a regular military force. The agent, in addition to his duties connected with Holkar’s court, was the immediate representative of the British government in relation to various petty states under its protection, but in other points differing greatly in their circumstances.

The Indore agent in May and June was Colonel 186Durand. All was peaceful at that place, although much agitation was visible, until the 1st of July; on which day mutiny occurred. Holkar’s troops rose against the English, without, as it afterwards appeared, the privity or the wish of the Maharajah himself. Two companies, set apart for the protection of the Residency in the bazaar square, brought two guns to bear upon the building; and the Europeans were horror-stricken at finding themselves suddenly exposed to cannon and musketry. Fortunately a few men of the Bhopal Contingent under Colonel Travers, were on duty at the Residency; and a few of these remained faithful long enough to allow the colonel and the other European officers, with their families, to escape. Not so the civilians, however; many of the civil servants, and of the clerks in the telegraph department, with their wives and children, were butchered in cold blood. As soon as Holkar heard of the outbreak, he ordered some of his own Mahratta troops to hasten to the Residency and aid Colonel Durand; but they told him it was a matter of deen (religion), and that they could not act against their brethren. During the next three days Holkar was almost a prisoner in his own palace; his troops rose in revolt, and were speedily joined by those from Mhow, presently to be mentioned; they plundered the treasury, the Residency, and many parts of the town; but as he would not countenance their proceedings, they at length marched off towards Gwalior. This affair at Indore led to the flight of many European families, amid great misery. They collected hastily a few ammunition-wagons, two or three bullock-carts, an elephant, and some horses, and started off towards Sehore and Hosungabad; escorted by a portion of the Bhopal Contingent from several small stations in that part of India.

An important question arose—how was Mhow affected by the mutinous proceedings? As the news of the Nuseerabad mutiny had thrown the troops at Neemuch into agitation, so did the subsequent events at Neemuch immediately affect the sowars and sepoys at Mhow.^[28] Mhow contained a squadron of the same cavalry regiment, the 1st B. N. C., two troops of which had mutinied at Neemuch; and in addition to these was the 23d regiment native infantry, and a company of European artillery. Mhow presented much the appearance of an English town; having a steepled church on an eminence, a spacious lecture-room, a well-furnished library, and a theatre; the cantonment was large and well appointed; and a force was maintained there in virtue of one of the treaties made with Holkar. This relates to the station or British part of the town; the small native town of Mhow is a mile and a half distant. The excitement caused at this station by the news from Neemuch was visible in the conduct of the troops throughout the whole of the month of June. Colonel Platt and the other officers, however, kept a vigilant watch on them, and by combined firmness and kindness hoped to surmount the difficulty. Captain Hungerford afterwards stated that such had been the excessive confidence of some of the officers in their respective regiments, that he could not induce them to strengthen the fort or fortified square, by occupying it with their artillery, until almost the last hour before the Revolt. The fortified square had for some time, however, been a rendezvous for all the ladies and children, who slept within it; the officers remaining in the lines. Thus matters passed until the 1st of July, when Colonel Platt received a pencil-note from Colonel Durand, announcing that the Residency at Indore had been attacked by Holkar’s soldiers, and that aid was urgently needed. A troop of cavalry and a few guns were immediately despatched from Mhow; but when they had reached within four miles of Indore, news arrived that the Europeans yet living at that station were about to effect a retreat; upon which the small force returned to Mhow. This duty the troops performed, but it was the last they rendered. The colonel, fearing the arrival of mutinous sepoys from Indore, but not suspecting his own men, made such arrangements as seemed to him befitting, bringing a European battery of artillery into the fort. Soon did the crisis arrive. At eleven o’clock on that same night the plans and hopes were cruelly disappointed; that terrible yell was heard which so often struck dismay into the hearts of the Europeans at the various military stations: the yell of native troops rising in mutiny. Lieutenant Martin, adjutant of the cavalry, while quietly conversing with one of the troopers, became the victim of that dastardly fellow; the war-cry arose, and the trooper turned round and shot the unfortunate officer without a moment’s warning. The other officers, hearing the report, but not suspecting the real truth, thought that Holkar’s Mahrattas had arrived; they rushed forward to head their respective companies and troops, but sepoys and sowars alike opened fire on them. The officers, now rendered painfully aware of their critical position, ran swiftly across the parade towards the fort, having no time to mount their horses; and it is a marvel that only one of the number, Major Harris, commandant of the cavalry, was shot by the heavy fire poured on them during this run. Colonel Platt, who was in the fort, was almost incredulous when the breathless officers rushed in; he could with difficulty believe the truth now presented to his notice—so fully had he relied on the fidelity of the men. Colonel Platt and Captain Fagan rode down to the lines of the 23d, to which regiment they both belonged, to ascertain the real facts and to exhort the men; but they were never seen alive again by their brethren in arms; they fell, riddled with bullets and gashed with sword-cuts. Captain Hungerford, of the artillery, brought two guns to bear on 187the mutineers, which gradually drove them from the lines, but not before they had fired the regimental mess-house and several bungalows; and during the darkness of night, plunderers carried off everything that was valuable. Hungerford would have followed the mutineers with his guns; but the roads were too dark for the pursuit, and the Europeans too unprotected to be left. The remaining English officers, having now no troops to command, acted as a cavalry guard in support of the European battery in the fortified square, under Captain Hungerford. As all the civilians, women, and children were in this place; as the square itself was quite unfitted for a long defence; and as only five native soldiers out of the whole number remained with the officers—the prospect was precarious enough: nevertheless all did their best; Hungerford collected in a few days a large store of provisions, and routed many of the insurgents in neighbouring villages. The impulses that guided the actions of the sepoys were strangely inconsistent; for two of the men saved the life of Lieutenant Simpson, who had been on outpost-duty on the fatal night, and brought him safely into the fort; and yet, though offered promotion for their fidelity, they absconded on the following morning to join their mutinous companions. The Europeans, about eighty in number, maintained their position at Mhow, until a force from Bombay arrived to reoccupy all that region. The ladies, there as everywhere, strove to lessen rather than increase the anxieties of their male companions. One of the officers thus shut up in the extemporised stronghold said in a letter: ‘Throughout all this I cannot express the admiration I feel at the way the ladies have behaved—cheerful, and assisting in every way in their power. Poor things, without servants or quarters, huddled together; they have had to do everything for themselves, and employ all their time in sewing bags for powder for the guns, well knowing the awful fate that awaits them if the place is taken. There has not been a sign of fear; they bring us tea or any little thing they can, and would even like to keep watch on the bastions if we would let them.... You should see the state we are in—men making up canister, ladies sewing powder-bags, people bringing plunder recovered, artillery mounting guns; all of us dirty and tired with night-watching; we mount sentry-duty to take the weight of it off the artillerymen, and snatch sleep and food as we can.’

Many other stations in that part of India were disturbed in June and July by the mutinies of wings and detachments of regiments too small in amount to need notice here. At one place, Asseerghur, Colonel Le Mesurier warded off mutiny by a prompt and dexterous manœuvre, for which he received the marked thanks of the government.

Gwalior now comes under notice, in relation to a mutiny of troops at that place, and to the conduct of Scindia, the most important of the Mahratta chieftains. Considered as a city or town (about sixty-five miles south of Agra), Gwalior is not very important or interesting, being irregularly built and deplorably dirty, and possessing few public buildings of any note. It is for its hill-fortress that Gwalior is so famed. The rock on which the fortress stands is an elongated mass, a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile in width, and reaching in some places to a height of about three hundred and fifty feet. It is entirely isolated from other hills; and—partly from the natural stratification of the sandstone, partly from artificial construction—is in many parts quite perpendicular. A rampart runs round the upper edge, conforming to the outline of the summit. The entrance to the enclosure within the rampart is near the north end of the east side; in the lower part by a steep road, and in the upper part by steps cut in the rock, wide enough to permit elephants to make the ascent. A high and massive stone-wall protects the outer side of this huge staircase; seven gateways are placed at intervals along its ascent; and guns at the top command the whole of it. Within the enclosure of the rampart is a citadel of striking appearance, an antique palace surmounted by kiosks, six lofty round towers or bastions, curtains or walls of great thickness to connect those towers, and several spacious tanks. It is considered that fifteen thousand men would be required to garrison this fortress completely. So striking is this rock, so tempting to a chieftain who desires a stronghold, that Gwalior is believed to have been a fortress during more than a thousand years. It has been captured and recaptured nearly a dozen times, by contending Hindoos and Mohammedans, in the course of centuries. The last celebrated contest there was in 1779, when the Company’s forces captured it through a clever and unexpected use of ladders and ropes during a dark night. In the next sixty-five years it was possessed successively by the British, the Jâts, the Mahrattas, the British again, the Mahrattas again, and finally by the British, according to the intricacies of treaties and exchanges. Since 1844, Gwalior has been the head-quarters of a corps called the Gwalior Contingent, commanded by British officers; and thus the hill-fortress has virtually been placed within the power of the British government. Besides this famous stronghold, there is at Gwalior a place called the Lashkar. This, in former times, was the stationary camp of the Maharajah Scindia—a dirty collection of rude buildings, extending to a great distance from the southwest foot of the rock; but the great reduction in the number of troops allowed to be held independently by Scindia has materially lessened the importance of the Lashkar.

The loyalty of Scindia became a question of very anxious importance at the time of the mutinies. Holkar was possessor of a much smaller territory than Scindia; and yet, when a rumour spread that the rising at Indore on the 1st of July had the sanction of the first-named sovereign, 188numerous petty chieftains in that part of India rose against the British, and prepared to cut off all retreat for Europeans. It was not until Holkar had given undoubted evidence of his hostility to the mutineers, that these movements were checked. Much more was this rendered manifest in Scindia’s dominions. If Scindia had failed us, the mutineers from Neemuch, Nuseerabad, and Jhansi, by concentrating at Gwalior, might have rendered that hill-fortress a second Delhi to the British. Scindia and Holkar both remained steady; it was the Contingents that failed. These contingents were bodies of native troops, paid by the native princes of the states or countries whose name they bore, but organised and officered by the British, in the same way as the ordinary battalions of the sepoy army. If the native princes, for whose defence ostensibly, and at whose expense really, these contingents were maintained, wished and were permitted to have any independent military force of their own, that could only be done additionally to the contingent which they were bound to furnish. As a consequence of this curious system, a distinction must be drawn between the contingent troops and the prince’s troops. At Indore, Holkar’s little army as well as Holkar’s contingent proved hostile to the British. Scindia was in like manner paymaster for a double force; and the British often anxiously pondered whether one or both of these might prove faithless at Gwalior, with or without the consent of Scindia himself. The Gwalior Contingent, though connected with a Mahratta state, consisted chiefly of Hindustanis, like the sepoys of the Bengal army; the Mahrattas formed quite a minority of the number. The contingent consisted of all three arms of the service—infantry, cavalry, and artillery—and formed a compact army.

The disasters at Gwalior began on Sunday the 14th of June—as usual, on Sunday. It will be remembered (p. 112) that Scindia, three or four weeks earlier, had offered the aid of his own body-guard, which had been accepted by Mr Colvin at Agra; that a portion of the Gwalior Contingent (cavalry) was also sent; that this contingent, under Lieutenant Cockburn, was actively engaged against the insurgents in the region between Agra and Allygurh; and that about one-half of the troopers composing it revolted on the 28th of May, placing that gallant officer in a very embarrassing position. They were portions of the same contingent that mutinied at Neemuch and one or two other places; and on this account the European inhabitants at Gwalior were subject to much anxiety—knowing that that station was the head-quarters; and that, although the contingent was paid for by the Maharajah, the troops had been raised mostly in Oude, and, being disciplined and officered by the British, were likely to share the same sentiments as the Oudians and other Hindustanis of the Bengal army elsewhere. The Maharajah had little or no influence over them; for neither were they his countrymen, nor had he any control over their discipline or movements. During fourteen years, as boy, youth, and man, he had been in great measure a pupil under the British resident at Gwalior; and if he remained an obedient pupil, this was nearly all that could be expected from him—shorn, as the Mahratta court was, of so much of its former influence. Dr Winlow Kirk, superintending surgeon of the contingent, placed upon record, ten days before the bloody deed which deprived him of life, a few facts relating to the position of the Europeans at Gwalior in the latter part of May and the beginning of June. The resident received information which led him to believe that the contingent—seven regiments of infantry, two of cavalry, and four batteries of artillery—was thoroughly disaffected, both the main body at Gwalior and the detachments elsewhere. The brigadier commandant shared this opinion with the resident; and, as a precautionary measure, all the ladies were sent from the station to the Residency, a distance of six miles, on the 28th of May. Dr Kirk, and most of the military officers, dissented from this opinion; they thought the troops were behaving in a respectful manner, and they offered to sleep among the men’s lines to shew their confidence in them. On the 29th and 30th, the ladies returned to cantonment, much to the apparent delight of the sepoys at the generous reliance thus placed in them. Bitter was the disappointment and grief in store for those who had trusted these miscreants.

It was on the 14th of June, we have said, that the uprising at Gwalior began. The Europeans had long wished for the presence of a few English troops; but as none were to be had, they watched each day’s proceedings rather anxiously. At nine o’clock in the evening of the disastrous Sunday, the alarm was given at the cantonment; all rushed out of their respective bungalows, and each family found others in a similar state of alarm. Shots were heard; officers were galloping or running past; horses were wildly rushing with empty saddles; and no one could give a precise account of the details of the outbreak. Then occurred the sudden and mournful disruption of family ties; husbands became separated from their wives; ladies and children sought to hide in gardens and grass, on house-tops and in huts. Then arose flames from the burning bungalows; and then came bands of reckless sepoys, hunting out the poor homeless English who were in hiding. On the morning of that day, Dr Kirk, although he had not shared the resident’s alarm seventeen days before, nevertheless thought with some anxiety of the ladies and children, and asked what arrangements had been made for their safety in the event of an outbreak; but the officers of the regiments, most of whom relied fully on their men, would not admit that there was any serious need for precautionary measures. Two of these unfortunate officers, Major Blake and Major Hawkins, were especially trustful; and these were two among the number who fell by the hands of 189their own men that very night. Captain Stewart, with his wife and child, were killed, as also Major Sheriff. Brigadier Ramsey, and several others, whose bungalows were on the banks of a small river, escaped by fording. Dr Kirk was one of those who, less fortunate, were furthest from the river. With Mrs Kirk and his child, he hid in the garden all night; in the morning they were discovered; Mrs Kirk was robbed without being otherwise ill treated; but her husband was shot dead before her eyes. Thus fell an amiable and skilful man, who for nearly twenty years had been a medical officer of the Company—first with the Bundelcund legion in Sinde; then as a medical adviser to Sir Charles Napier on matters connected with the health of troops in that sandy region; then with the Bengal troops at Bareilly; then with the European artillery at Ferozpore; and lastly, as superintending surgeon to the troops of the Gwalior Contingent, who shewed their gratitude for his medical aid by putting him to death. After this miserable sight, Mrs Kirk begged the murderers to put an end to her also; but they replied: ‘No, we have killed you already’—pointing to the dead body of her husband.

The rest of this story need not be told in detail. Agra was the place of refuge sought by those who had now to flee; and it is some small alleviation of the crimes of the mutineers that they allowed the ladies and children to depart—with their lives, but with little else. How the poor things suffered during five days of weary journeying, they could themselves hardly have told; hunger, thirst, heat, illness, fatigue, and anxiety of mind accumulated on them. Many arrived at Agra without shoes or stockings; and all were beggared of their worldly possessions when they reached that city. When, shortly afterwards, Lieutenant Cockburn wrote to private friends of this event, he had to tell, not only of his own mortification as the officer of a disloyal corps, but of the wreck suffered by the British station at Gwalior. ‘I fear there is no chance of my ever recovering any of your portraits; for the ruffians invariably destroy all they cannot convert into silver or gold. All our beautiful garden at Gwalior, on which I spent a good deal of money and care, has been dug up; our houses have been turned into cattle-sheds; there is not a pane of glass in the station; our beautiful church has been gutted, the monuments destroyed, the organ broken up, the stained-glass windows smashed, and the lovely floor of encaustic tiles torn up. The desecration of the tombs is still more horrible; in many places the remains of our countrymen have been torn from the earth, and consigned to the flames!’

The position of Scindia was sufficiently embarrassing at that time. As soon as the troops of the contingent had murdered or driven away their officers, they went to him, placed their services at his disposal, and demanded that he would lead them against the British at Agra. There were eight or ten thousand men in the contingent altogether, and his own Mahratta army was little less numerous; it was therefore a matter of critical importance to the English that he remained steady and faithful. He not only refused to sanction the proceedings of the mutineers, but endeavoured to prevent them from marching towards Agra. In this he succeeded until an advanced period of the autumn; for the troops that troubled Agra at the end of June and the beginning of July were those from Mhow and Neemuch, not the larger body from Gwalior. These mutineers proceeded towards Agra by way of Futtehpore or Futhepore Sikri—a town famed for the vast expanse of ruined buildings, erected by Akbar and destroyed by the Mahrattas; for the great mosque, with its noble gateway and flight of steps; and for the sumptuous white marble tomb, constructed by Akbar in memory of a renowned Mussulman ascetic, Sheik Selim Cheestee.^[29] The battle that ensued, and the considerations that induced Mr Colvin to shut up himself and all the British in the fort at Agra, will be better treated in a later page.

Many of the events treated in this chapter occurred in, or on the frontiers of, the region known as Rajpootana or Rajasthan—concerning which a few words may be desirable. The name denotes the land of the Rajpoots. These Hindoos are a widely spread sept of the Kshetrigas or military caste; but when or where they obtained a separate name and character is not now known. Some of the legends point to Mount Aboo as the original home of the Rajpoots. They were in their greatest power seven hundred years ago, when Rajpoot princes ruled in Delhi, in Ajmeer, in Gujerat, and in other provinces; but the Mohammedan conquerors drove them out of those places; and during many centuries the region mainly belonging to the Rajpoots has been nearly identical with that exhibited at the present time. This region, situated between Central India and Sinde, is about twice as large as England and Wales. Warlike as the Rajpoots have ever been, and possessing many strongholds and numerous forces, they were no match for the Mahrattas in the last century; indeed it was this inequality that led to the interference of the British, who began to be the ‘protector’ of the Rajpoot princes early in the present century. This protection, insured by various treaties, seems to have been beneficial to the Rajpoots, whose country has advanced in industry and prosperity during a long continuance of peace. The chief Rajpoot states at present are Odeypore or Mewar, Jeypoor, Jhodpore or Joudpore, Jhallawar, Kotah, Boondee, Alwur, Bikaneer, Jeysulmeer, Kishengurh, Banswarra, Pertabghur, Dongurpore, Kerowlee, and Sirohi. The treaties with these several states, at the time of the mutiny, were curiously complicated and diverse: Odeypore paid tribute, and shared with the Company the expense of maintaining a Bheel corps; Jeypoor, 190though under a rajah, was virtually governed by a British resident; Jhodpore, under a sort of feudal rule, paid tribute, and maintained a Jhodpore legion besides a force belonging to the feudatories; Kotah bore the expense of a corps called the Kotah Contingent, organised and officered by the British; Jeysulmeer gave allegiance in return for protection, and so did Kishengurh and many other of the states included in the above list. Most of the Rajpoot states had a feudal organisation for internal affairs; and most of them maintained small native corps, in addition to the contingents furnished by three or four under arrangements with the British. For the whole of the Rajpoot states collectively an agent was appointed by the governor-general to represent British interests, under whom were the civil officers at various towns and stations; while the military formed a Rajpootana Field-force, with head-quarters at Nuseerabad.

At the extreme north of Rajpootana is a small British district named Hurrianah, of which the chief towns are Hansi and Hissar. A military corps, called the Hurrianah Light Infantry Battalion, mutinied a few weeks after the Meerut outbreak, killing Lieutenant Barwell and other Europeans; the men acted in conjunction with a part of the 4th regiment irregular cavalry, and, after a scene of murder and pillage, marched off towards Delhi. At Bhurtpore, on the northeast frontier of Rajpootana, a similar scene was exhibited on a smaller scale; a corps called the Bhurtpore Levies revolted against Captain Nixon and other officers, compelling them to flee for their lives: the mutineers, as in so many other instances, marching off at once towards Delhi. There were other mutinies of small detachments of native troops, at minor stations in the Mahratta and Rajpoot countries, which need not be traced in detail.

The vast region in the centre of India has thus passed rapidly under review. We have seen Hindustanis, Bundelas, Jâts, Mahrattas, Bheels, Rajpoots, and other tribes of India revolting against English authority; we have seen native princes and chiefs perplexed how to act between the suzerain power on the one hand, and the turbulent soldiery on the other; we have seen that soldiery, and the attendant rabble of marauders, influenced quite as much by love of plunder as by hate of the Company’s raj; we have seen British officers sorely wounded at heart by finding those men to be traitors whom they had trusted almost to the last hour; we have seen ladies and children driven from their bungalows, and hunted like wild beasts from road to river, from jungle to forest; and lastly, in this vast region, we have tracked over considerably more than a thousand miles of country in length without meeting with a single regiment of British troops. The centre of India was defended from natives by natives; and the result shewed itself in deplorable colours.

Girls at the Ganges.

191

Akali of the Sikhs.

A very important and interesting region in Northern India has scarcely yet been mentioned in this narrative; that, namely, which comprises the Punjaub and Sinde—the Punjaub with its offshoot Cashmere, and Sinde with the delta of the Indus. It will now be necessary, however, to obtain a few general notions on the following points—the geographical position of the Punjaub; the national character of the Sikhs as the chief inhabitants; the transactions which rendered the British masters of that country; and the circumstances that enabled Sir John Lawrence at once to hold the Punjaub intact and to aid the besiegers of Delhi. Of Sinde, a still shorter account will suffice.

The name Punjaub is Persian; it signifies ‘five waters;’ and was given in early days to the region between the five rivers Indus, Jelum, Chenab, Ravee, and Sutlej. Tho Punjaub is somewhat triangular in shape, extending from the Himalaya and Cashmere as a northern base to an apex where the five rivers have all coalesced into one. It is about equal in area to England and Scotland without Wales. The 192northern part is rugged and mountainous; the southern almost without a hill, comprising the several ‘Doabs’ between the rivers. The natural facilities for inland navigation and for irrigation are great; and these, aided by artificial channels, render the Punjaub one of the most promising regions in India. If the Beas, an affluent of the Sutlej, be added to the five rivers above named, then there are five Doabs or tongues of land between the six rivers, named severally the Doabs of Jullundur, Baree, Rechna, Jetch, and Sinde Sagur, in their order from east to west. The Baree Doab, between the rivers Beas and Ravee, is the most populous and important, containing as it does the three cities of Lahore, Umritsir, and Moultan.

The population of this country is a very mixed one; the Punjaub having been a battle-ground whereon Hindoos from the east and Mohammedans from the west have often met; and as the conquerors all partially settled on their conquests, many races are found in juxtaposition, though each prevailing in one or other of the Doabs. For instance, the Afghans are mostly west of the Indus; the Sikhs, in the Baree Doab; and so on. The inhabitants exceed ten millions in number; nearly two-thirds of them are Mohammedans—a very unusual ratio in India. The Sikhs, however, are the most interesting constituent in this population. They are a kind of Hindoo dissenters, differing from other Hindoos chiefly in these three points—the renunciation of caste, the admission of proselytes, and the practice of the military art by nearly all the males. They trace their origin to one Nanac, who was born in 1469 in a village about sixty miles from Lahore; he founded a new religion, or a new modification of Brahminism; and his followers gave him the designation of Guru or ‘spiritual pastor,’ while they took to themselves that of Sikhs or ‘disciples.’ After many contests with the Mohammedans of the Punjaub, the Sikhs ceased to have a spiritual leader, but acquired temporal power—some assuming the general surname or tribe-name of Singh or ‘lion,’ to denote their military prowess; while the rest became Khalasas, adherents to the more peaceful and religious doctrines of Nanac. Some of the Singhs are Akalis, a sort of warlike priests. The Sikhs are more robust than the generality of Hindoos, and more enterprising; but they are more illiterate, and speak a jargon composed of scraps from a multitude of languages.

Such being the country, and such the inhabitants, we have next to see how the British gained influence in that quarter. From the eleventh century until the year 1768 the Mohammedans—Afghans, Gorians, Moguls, and other tribes—ruled in the Punjaub; but in that year the Sikhs, who had gradually been growing in power, gained the ascendency in the region eastward of the Jelum. At the close of the last century an adventurer, named Runjeet Singh, a Sikh of the Jât tribe, became ruler of the district around the city of Lahore; and from that time the Sikh power was in the ascendant. The Sikhs constituted a turbulent and irregular republic; holding, in cases of emergency, a parliament called the Guru-mata at Umritsir; but at other times engaged in petty warfare against each other. Runjeet Singh was ambitious of putting down these competitors for power. He built at Umritsir the great fort of Govindgurh, ostensibly to protect, but actually to overawe and control some of the chieftains. In 1809 he crossed the Sutlej, and waged war against some of the Sikh chieftains of Sirhind who had obtained British protection. This led, not to a war, but to a treaty; by which Runjeet agreed to keep to the west of the Sutlej, and the British not to molest him there. This treaty, with a constancy rare in Asia, the chief of Lahore respected throughout the whole of his long career: maintaining a friendly intercourse with the British. In other directions, however, he waged ruthless war. He conquered Moultan, then Peshawur, then the Derajat, then Cashmere, then Middle Tibet, then Little Tibet, and finally became Maharajah of the Sikhs. In 1831 an interview, conducted with gorgeous splendour, took place between Runjeet Singh and Lord Auckland, in which the governor-general strengthened the ties of amity with the great Sikh. Runjeet died in 1839, and his son and grandson in 1840. From that year a total change of affairs ensued; competitors for the throne appeared; then followed warlike contests; and then a period of such excessive anarchy and lawlessness that British as well as Sikh territory became spoliated by various chieftains. War was declared in 1845, during which it required all the daring and skill of the victors at Moodkee, Ferozshah, Aliwal, and Sobraon, to subdue the fierce and warlike Sikhs. This was ended by a treaty, signed in March 1846; but the treaty was so frequently broken by the chieftains, that another war broke out in 1848, marked by the battles of Moultan, Chillianwalla, and Gujerat. Then ended the Sikh power. The British took the Punjaub in full sovereignty, dated from the 29th of March 1849. Commissioners were appointed, to organise a thoroughly new system of government; and it was herein that Sir Henry Lawrence so greatly distinguished himself. In less than three years from that date, the progress made towards peaceful government was so great, that the court of directors enumerated them in a eulogistic dispatch to the governor in council. The progress was one of uninterrupted improvement from 1849 to 1857; and it will ever remain a bright page in the East India Company’s records that, finding the Punjaub a prey to wild licence and devastating intrigues, the Company converted it into a peaceful and prosperous country. The reward for this was received when the rest of Northern India was in a mutinous state. It may here be stated that, when the Punjaub was annexed, a distinct arrangement was made with Cashmere. This interesting country, 193almost buried among the Himalaya and its offshoots, is one of the few regions in India which have suffered more from natural calamities than from the ravages of man; its population has been diminished from eight hundred thousand to two hundred thousand in the course of thirty years, by a distressing succession of pestilences, earthquakes, and famines. It was governed by Mohammedans during about five centuries; and was then held by the Sikhs from 1819 till the end of their power. Circumstances connected with the annexation of the Punjaub led to the assignment of Cashmere as a rajahship to Gholab Singh, one of the Sikh chieftains; he was to be an independent prince, subsidiary to the British so far as concerned a contingent of troops. The two Tibets were abandoned by the Sikhs before the date when British sovereignty crossed the Sutlej.

For administrative purposes, the Punjaub has been separated into eight divisions—Lahore, Jelum, Moultan, Leia, Peshawur, Jullundur, Hoshyapoor, and Kangra; of which the Lahore division alone contains three millions and a half of souls. Each division comprises several revenue and judicial districts. For military purposes, the divisions are only two, those of Lahore and Peshawur, each under a general commandant.

Sir John Lawrence.

In the middle of May 1857, when the mutinies began, Sir John Lawrence, who had been knighted for his eminent services while with his brother Sir Henry, and had succeeded him as chief-commissioner in the Punjaub, was absent from the capital of that country. He was at Rawul Pindee, a station between Lahore and Peshawur; but happily he had left behind him men who had learned and worked with his brother and himself, and who acted with a promptness and vigour worthy of all praise. To understand what was done, we must attend to the city and cantonment of Lahore. This famous capital of the Punjaub is 194situated about a mile east of the river Ravee. It contains many large and handsome buildings—such as the Padshah Mosque, said to have been built by Aurungzebe, but converted into a barrack by Runjeet Singh, who cared little about mosques; the Vizier Khan Mosque, once celebrated for its lofty minarets, but afterwards desecrated by the Sikhs in being used as stables for horses and shambles for swine; the Sonara Mosque; and many other Mohammedan mosques and Hindoo temples. Beyond the limits of the city are the large and once-magnificent tomb of the Emperor Jehanghire; the tomb of Anarkalli; and the exquisite garden of Shahjehan, the Shalimar or ‘House of Joy’—at one time the pride of the Mussulmans of Lahore, with its three marble terraces and its four hundred marble fountains, but afterwards ruthlessly despoiled of its marble by Runjeet Singh, to adorn Umritsir. Lahore presents every trace of having been a much larger city before the time of the Sikh domination; for the ruins of palaces, serais, and mosques spread over a great area. The city now contains about a hundred thousand inhabitants, a great declension from its population in former days. Considered in a military sense, Lahore is surrounded by a brick wall, formerly twenty-five feet high, but recently lowered. Runjeet Singh ran a trench round the wall, constructed a line of works, mounted the works with many cannon, and cleared away many ruins. This line of fortification exceeds seven miles in circuit; and within the northwest angle is a fort or citadel, containing extensive magazines and manufactories of warlike stores.

From evidence educed at different times, it appears certain that many of the native troops in the Punjaub were cognizant of a conspiracy among the ‘Poorbeahs,’ by which name the sepoys of the eastern regions are known to the inhabitants of the Punjaub; and that they held themselves ready to join in any mutiny arising out of such conspiracy. How the authorities checked this conspiracy, was strikingly shewn by the proceedings at different stations immediately after news arrived of disaster in the eastern provinces. We will rapidly glance in succession at Lahore, Umritsir, Ferozpore, Jullundur, and Phillour; and will then proceed to the Peshawur region. The British military cantonment for the city of Lahore was six miles distant, at a place called Meean Meer; where were stationed three native infantry regiments, and one of cavalry, the Queen’s 81st foot, two troops of horse-artillery, and four reserve companies of foot-artillery. In the fort, within the city-walls, were half a native infantry regiment, a company of Europeans, and a company of foot-artillery. The plot, so far as concerned the Punjaub, is believed to have been this.^[30] On a particular day, when one wing of a native regiment at the fort was to be exchanged for another, there would, at a particular moment, be about eleven hundred sepoys present; they were to rise suddenly, murder their officers, and seize the gates; take possession of the citadel, the magazine, and the treasury; overpower the Europeans and artillery, only a hundred and fifty men in all; and kindle a huge bonfire as a signal to Meean Meer. All the native troops in cantonment were then to rise, seize the guns, force the central jail, liberate two thousand prisoners, and then commence an indiscriminate massacre of European military and civilians. The other great stations in that part of the Punjaub—Umritsir, Ferozpore, Jullundur, Phillour—were all in the plot, and the native troops at these places were to rise in mutiny about the 15th of May. There were many proofs, in the Punjaub and elsewhere, that the plotters at Meerut began a little too early for their own object; the scheme was not quite ripe at other places, else the English might have been almost entirely annihilated throughout the northern half of India.

The authorities at Lahore knew nothing of this plot as a whole, though they possibly observed symptoms of restlessness among the native troops. When the crisis arrived, however, they proved themselves equal to the difficulties of their position. On the 10th of May, the outbreak at Meerut occurred; on the 11th an obscure telegram reached Lahore, telling of some disaster; on the 12th the real nature of the affair became known. Sir John Lawrence being at Rawul Pindee, the other authorities—Mr Montgomery, Mr M’Leod, Mr Roberts, Colonel Macpherson, Colonel Lawrence (another member of this distinguished family), Major Ommaney, and Captain Hutchinson—instantly formed a sort of council of war; at which they agreed on a plan, which was assented to by Brigadier Corbett, commandant of the station at Meean Meer. This plan was to consist in depriving the native troops of their ammunition and percussion-caps, and placing more Europeans within the fort. A native officer in the Sikh police corps, however, revealed to the authorities the outlines of a conspiracy which had come to his knowledge; and the brigadier then resolved on the complete disarming of the native regiments—a bold step where he had so few Europeans to assist him, but carried out with admirable promptitude and success. It so happened that a ball was to be given that night (the 12th) by the military officers at Meean Meer; the ball was given, but preparations of a kind very different from festive were at the same time quietly made, wholly unknown to the sepoys. Early on the morning of the 13th, the whole of the troops, native and European, were ordered on parade, avowedly to hear the governor-general’s order relating to the affairs at Barrackpore, but really that the Europeans might disarm the natives. After this reading, a little manœuvring was ordered, whereby the whole of the native regiments—the 16th, 26th, and 49th Bengal infantry, and the 8th Bengal cavalry—were confronted by 195the guns and by five companies of the Queen’s 81st. At a given signal, the sepoys were ordered to pile arms, and the sowars to unbuckle sabres; they hesitated; but grape-shot and port-fires were ready—they knew it, and they yielded. Thus were disarmed two thousand five hundred native troops, by only six hundred British soldiers. Meanwhile the fort was not forgotten. Major Spencer, who commanded the wing of the 26th stationed there, had the men drawn up on parade on the morning of that same day; three companies of the 81st entered the fort under Captain Smith; and these three hundred British, or thereabouts, found it no difficult task to disarm the five or six hundred sepoys. This done, the 81st and the artillery were quickly placed at such posts as they might most usefully strengthen—in the lines of the 81st, on the artillery parade-ground, and in an open space in the centre of the cantonment, where the brigadier and his staff slept every night. The ladies and children were accommodated in the barracks; while the regimental officers were ordered to sleep in certain selected houses in the lines of their own regiments—regiments disarmed but not disbanded; and professedly disarmed only as a matter of temporary expediency. Thus was Lahore saved.

Umritsir is the next station to which attention must be directed relatively to the Punjaub. It was an important place to hold in due subordination, not only on account of its size and population, but for a certain religious character that it possesses in the eyes of the Sikhs. Umritsir or Amritsir has had a career of less than three centuries. In 1581, Ram Das, the fourth Guru or spiritual pastor of the Sikhs, ordered a reservoir or fountain to be formed at a particular spot, and named it Amrita Saras, or ‘Fount of Immortality.’ This Amrita Saras or Umritsir at once became a place of pilgrimage, and around it gradually grew up a considerable city. One of the Mohammedan sovereigns, Ahmed Shah, uneasy at the increasing power of the Sikhs, sought to terrify and suppress them by an act of sacrilege at Umritsir; he blew up a sacred shrine, filled up the sacred pool, and caused the site to be desecrated by slaughtering kine upon it. But he miscalculated. It was this very act which led to the supremacy of the Sikhs over the Mohammedans in the Punjaub; they purified and refilled the pool, rebuilt the shrine, and vowed unceasing hostility to the Mussulmans. At present, the holy place at Umritsir is a very large square basin, in which Sikhs bathe as other Hindoos would do in the Ganges; and in the centre, on a small island, is a richly adorned temple, attended by five hundred Akalis or armed priests. Considered as a city, Umritsir is large, populous, industrial, and commercial. The most striking object in it is the Govindgurh, the fortress which Runjeet Singh constructed in 1809, professedly to protect the pilgrims at the sacred pool, but really to increase his power over the Sikhs generally. Its great height and heavy batteries, rising one above another, give it a very imposing appearance; and it has been still further strengthened since British occupation began.

Directly the unfavourable news from Meerut was received at Lahore, or rather immediately after the disarming at the last-named place had been effected—a company of H.M. 81st foot, under Lieutenant Chichester, was sent off in eckas to Umritsir, to strengthen the garrison at Govindgurh. It was known that this fort was regarded almost in a religious light in the Punjaub; and that if the Poorbeahs or rebellious sepoys should seize it, the British would be lowered in the eyes of the Sikhs generally. In the fort, and in the cantonment near the town, were two companies of artillery, one European and one native; together with the 59th B. N. I., and a light field-battery. The wing of the Queen’s 81st, despatched from Lahore on the evening of the 13th of May, reached Umritsir on the following morning; and a company of foot-artillery, under Lieutenant Hildebrand, intended for Phillour, was detained at Umritsir until the authorities should feel sure of their position. The officers of the 59th had, some time previously, discussed frankly with their men the subject of the greased cartridges, and had encouraged them to hold a committee of inquiry among themselves; the result of which was a distinct avowal of their disbelief in the rumours on that unfortunate subject. It is only just towards the regimental officers to say that the highest authorities were as unable as themselves to account for the pertinacious belief of the sepoys in the greased-cartridge theory; Sir John Lawrence spoke of it as a ‘mania,’ which was to him inexplicable. With the miscellaneous forces now at hand, the authorities made no attempt to disarm the native regiment, but kept a watchful eye on the course of events. On the night of the 14th, an alarm spread that the native troops at Lahore had mutinied, and were advancing on Umritsir; the ladies and children were at once sent into the fort, and a small force was sent out on the Lahore road, to check the expected insurgents; but the alarm proved to be false, and the troops returned to their quarters. Peace was secured at Umritsir by the exercise of great sagacity. The Mohammedans were strong in the city, but the Sikhs were stronger; and Mr Cooper, the deputy-commissioner, succeeded in preventing either religious body from joining the other against the British—a task requiring much knowledge of the springs of action among the natives in general. It was not the first time in the history of India that the British authorities had deemed it expedient to play off the two religions against each other.

Ferozpore was not so happily managed as Lahore and Umritsir in this exciting and perilous week; either because the materials were less suitable to work upon, or because the mode of treatment was not so well adapted to the circumstances. 196Ferozpore is not actually in the Punjaub; it is one of the towns in Sirhind, or the Cis-Sutlej states—small in size and somewhat mean in appearance, but important through its position near the west bank of the Sutlej, and the large fort it comprises. In the middle of May, this station contained H.M. 61st foot, the 45th and 57th Bengal native infantry, the 10th Bengal native cavalry, about 150 European artillery, and one light-horse field-battery, with six field-guns—a large force, not required for Ferozpore itself, but to control the district of which it was the centre. Ferozpore had been the frontier British station before the annexation of the Punjaub, and had continued to be supplied with an extensive magazine of military stores. When Brigadier Innes heard on the 12th of May of the mutiny at Meerut, he ordered all the native troops on parade, that he and his officers might, if possible, judge of their loyalty by their demeanour. The examination was in great part, though not wholly, satisfactory. At noon on the 13th the disastrous news from Delhi arrived. The intrenched magazine within the fort was at that time guarded by a company of the 57th; and the brigadier, rendered somewhat uneasy on this matter, planned a new disposition of the troops. There had been many ‘cartridge’ meetings held among the men, and symptoms appeared that a revolt was intended. The relative positions of all the military were as follows: In the middle of the fort was the intrenched magazine, guarded as just stated; outside the fort, on the west, were the officers’ bungalows and the official buildings; still further to the west were the sepoy lines of the 45th and 57th; northward of these lines were the artillery barracks; still further north were the lines of the cavalry; south of the fort were the barracks of the European regiment; on the north of the fort was the Sudder Bazaar; while eastward of it was an open place or maîdan. The brigadier sought to avert danger by separating the two native regiments; but the Queen’s 61st, by the general arrangements of the cantonment, were too far distant to render the proper service at the proper moment. The 45th were to be removed to an open spot northeast of the cantonment, and the 57th to another open space on the south, two miles distant; the native cavalry were to take up a position near their own lines; the 61st were to encamp near the south wall of the fort; while one company, with artillery and guns, was to be placed within the fort. After a parade of the whole force, on the afternoon of the 13th, each corps was ordered to the camping-ground allotted for it. The 57th obeyed at once, but some companies of the 45th, while marching through the bazaar, refused to go any further, stopped, loaded their muskets, and prepared for resistance; they ran towards the fort, clambered over a dilapidated part of the ramparts, and advanced towards the magazine, where scaling-ladders were thrown over to them by a company of the 57th who had been on guard inside. This clearly shewed complicity to exist. A short but severe conflict ensued. Captain Lewis and Major Redmond had only a few Europeans with them, but they promptly attacked the mutineers, drove out the 45th, and made prisoners the treacherous guard of the 57th. All was now right in the fort and magazine, but not in the cantonment. About two hundred men of the 45th commenced a system of burning and looting; officers’ bungalows, mess-houses, hospitals, the church—all were fired. Many isolated acts of heroism were performed by individual Europeans, but no corps was sent against the ruffians. Fortunately, a powder-magazine beyond the cavalry lines, containing the enormous quantity of three hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder, did not fall into the hands of the rebels; it might have done so, for no preparations had been made to defend it. All this time the Queen’s troops chafed at their enforced inaction; their camping-ground had been so badly chosen that they dared not in a body attack the 45th lest the 57th should in the meantime surprise them in the rear; and there is no evidence that they were ordered to do what any English regiment would cheerfully have undertaken—divide into two wings, each to confront a whole regiment of sepoys. During the night and the following morning nearly all the sepoys decamped, some with arms and some without. Ferozpore was saved for the present; but mutinous proceedings were encouraged at Jullundur, Jelum, and Sealkote, by the escape of the 45th and 57th; and the brigadier fell into disgrace for his mismanagement of this affair. He had only just arrived to take command of that station, and it may be that he was on this account less able to judge correctly the merits or demerits of the forces placed at his disposal.

Jullundur, which gives name to the Jullundur Doab between the Sutlej and the Beas, is another of this group of stations. It is situated on the high road from Umballa and Umritsir to Lahore; and was formerly the capital of an Afghan dynasty in the Punjaub. Although shorn of much of its former greatness, it is still an important and flourishing town, with forty thousand inhabitants. Jullundur received the news from Meerut on the 11th of May, and immediately precautionary measures were taken. Brigadier-general Johnstone, the commandant, being absent at the time, a plan was at once formed by Colonel Hartley of H.M. 8th foot, and Captain Farrington, the deputy-commissioner, and agreed to by all the other officers. The station at that time contained H.M. 8th foot, the 6th light cavalry, the 36th and 61st native infantry, and one troop of horse-artillery. The chief officers in command were Colonels Longfield and Hartley, Majors Barton, Innes, and Olpherts, and Captain Faddy. When the telegraph of the 12th of May confirmed the Meerut news of the 11th, it was resolved at once to control the native troops at Jullundur, and to disarm them if mutinous symptoms should appear. 197Part of the Queen’s troops were marched into the artillery lines; the guns were pointed at the lines of the native regiments in such a way as to render the sepoys and sowars somewhat uneasy; two field-guns were kept with horses ready harnessed for movement; careful patrolling was maintained during the night; and the ladies and children were safely if not comfortably placed in barracks and rooms guarded by their own countrymen. Captain Farrington was placed in charge of the civil lines, the public buildings, and the town generally; and most fortunate was it for him, and the English generally, that the native Rajah of Jullundur, Rundheer Singh Alloowalla, remained friendly. This prince had been deprived of part of his territory at the period of the annexation of the Punjaub, but the deprivation had not rendered him hostile to his powerful superiors; he promptly aided Farrington with guns and men, instead of throwing in his lot with the mutineers. Jullundur, like Lahore, Umritsir, and Ferozpore, was saved for the present.

Phillour, the fifth station in this remarkable group, was in one sense more perilously placed than any of the others, owing to its nearer proximity to the mutineers of Meerut and Delhi. It stands on the right bank of the Sutlej, on the great high road from Umballa and Loodianah to Umritsir and Lahore. Phillour is of no account as a town, but of great importance as a military station on the frontier of the Punjaub, and as commanding the passage of the grand trunk-road across the Sutlej. At the time of the mutiny it had a magazine containing a vast supply of warlike material, without any European troops whatever. The adjoining cantonment contained one native regiment, of which one company guarded the fort and magazine. The military authorities all over the Punjaub and Sirhind well knew that Phillour contained munitions of war that would be most perilous in the hands of mutineers. Lieutenant Hildebrand, as was lately stated, was sent from Lahore with a company of artillery to Phillour; but he stopped on the way to aid the operations at Umritsir. When the news from Meerut arrived, Colonel Butler made such precautionary arrangements as he could at the lines, while Lieutenant Griffith looked watchfully after the fort and arsenal. Securing the telegraph, in order that the sepoys of the 3d native infantry might not tamper with it, they communicated with Jullundur, and were rejoiced to find that a small force was about to be despatched from that place for their relief. As soon as the authorities at the last named station became aware of the insurgent proceedings, they determined, besides attending to the safety of their own station, to aid Phillour; they sent a telegraphic officer to make such arrangements as would keep the wire in working order; they sent a message to Loodianah, to warn the deputy-commissioner to guard the bridge of boats across the Sutlej; and they sent a small but compact force to Phillour. This force consisted of a detachment of the Queen’s 8th foot, two horse-artillery guns, spare men and horses for the artillery, and a small detachment of the 2d Punjaub cavalry. Knowing that this welcome force was on the road, Colonel Butler and Lieutenant Griffith sought to maintain tranquillity in Phillour during the night; they closed the fort-gate at sunset; they placed a loaded light field-piece just within the gate, with port-fires kept burning; and the little band of Europeans remained on watch all night. At daybreak their succour arrived; the force from Jullundur, commanded by Major Baines and Lieutenants Sankey, Dobbin, and Probyn, marched the twenty-four miles of distance without a single halt. The guns and cavalry, being intended only as an escort on the road, and to aid in recovering the fort in the event of its having been captured by the sepoys during the night, returned to Jullundur, together with fifty of the infantry. The actual reinforcement, therefore, was about a hundred of H.M. 8th foot, and a few gunners to work the fort-guns if necessary. The little garrison opened the fort-gates to admit this reinforcement—much to the dismay of the sepoys in the cantonment; for, as was afterwards ascertained, a plot had been formed whereby the fort was to be quietly taken possession of on the 15th of the month, and used as a rendezvous for the sepoy regiments in the Punjaub, when they had risen in mutiny, and formed a system of tactics in reference to the great focus of rebellion at Delhi.

Thus were the days from the 11th to the 14th of May days of critical importance in the eastern part of the Punjaub. Evidence almost conclusive was obtained that the 15th was intended to have been a day of grand mutiny among the Bengal sepoys stationed in that region: the regimental officers knew nothing of this; some of them would not believe it, even at the time of the disarming; but the current of belief tended in that direction afterwards. There is very little doubt, as already implied, that the Meerut outbreak occurred before the plans were ready elsewhere; that event seemed to the British, and rightly so, a dreadful one; but, if delayed five days, it would probably have been followed by the shedding of an amount of European blood frightful to contemplate.

Having noticed the prompt measures taken at Lahore, Umritsir, Ferozpore, Jullundur, and Phillour, shortly before the middle of May; it will be useful, before tracing the course of subsequent revolt in some of the eastern Punjaub stations, to attend to the state of affairs in the western division, of which Peshawur was the chief city.

Peshawur was beyond the limits of British India until the annexation of the Punjaub. Situated as it is on the main road from the Indus at Attock to the Indian Caucasus range at the Khyber Pass, it has for ages been regarded as an important military position, commanding one of the gates of India. The Afghans and other Mohammedan tribes generally made their irruptions into India by this route. During the complexities of 198Indian politics and warfare, Peshawur passed from the hands of the Afghans to those of the Sikhs, and then to the British, who proceeded to make it the head-quarters of a military division. Peshawur had been so ruthlessly treated by Runjeet Singh, after his capture of that place in 1818, that its fine Moslem buildings were mostly destroyed, its commerce damaged, and its population diminished. At present, its inhabitants are believed to be about sixty thousand in number. The fort is very strong; it consists of lofty walls, round towers at the angles, semicircular ravelins in front, faussebraies of substantial towers and walls, a wet ditch, and one only gateway guarded by towers; within the enclosure are capacious magazines and storehouses.

When the mutiny began, the Peshawur division contained about fourteen thousand troops of all arms. A peculiar military system was found necessary in this division, owing to the large proportion of semi-civilised marauders among the inhabitants. The western frontier is hilly throughout, being formed of the Indian Caucasus and the Suliman Range, and being pierced by only a few roads, of which the Khyber Pass and the Bolan Pass are the most famous. These passes and roads are for the most part under the control of hardy mountaineers, who care very little for any regular governments, whether Afghan, Sikh, or British, and who require constant watching. Many of these men had been induced to accept British pay as irregular horsemen; and Colonel (formerly Major) Edwardes acquired great distinction for his admirable management of these rough materials. The fourteen thousand troops in the Peshawur division of the Punjaub comprised about three thousand European infantry and artillery, eight thousand Bengal native infantry, three thousand Bengal native cavalry and artillery, and a few Punjaubees and hill-men. These were stationed at Peshawur, Nowsherah, Hoti Murdan, and the frontier forts at the foot of the hills. Major-general Reid was chief military authority at Peshawur. On the 13th of May he received telegraphic news of the mutiny at Meerut and of the disarming at Lahore, and immediately held a council of war, attended by himself, Brigadiers Cotton and Neville Chamberlain, Colonels Edwardes and Nicholson. Edwardes was chief-commissioner and superintendent of the Peshawur division, besides being a military officer. It was resolved that, as senior military officer in the Punjaub, General Reid should assume chief command, and that his head-quarters should be with those of the Punjaub civil government, at Lahore or elsewhere; while Cotton should command in the Peshawur division. The council also agreed that, besides providing as far as was possible for the safety of each station individually, a ‘movable column’ should be formed at Jelum, a station on the great road about midway between Lahore and Peshawur—ready to move on any point in the Punjaub where mutinous symptoms might appear. This force, it will be seen,^[31] was made up of a singular variety of troops, comprising all arms of the service, irregulars as well as regulars, Europeans as well as natives; but the Oudian or ‘Poorbeah’ element was almost wholly absent, and by this absence was the efficiency of the column really estimated. Various arrangements were at the same time made for so distributing the European troops as to afford them the best control over the sepoy regiments. At Peshawur itself, the Company’s treasure was sent into the fort for safety, and the Residency was made the head-quarters of the military authorities.

On the 21st of May, news reached Peshawur that the 55th Bengal native infantry—encouraged probably by the withdrawal of the 27th foot from Nowsherah to aid in forming the movable column—had mutinied at Murdan on the preceding day, keeping their officers under strict surveillance, but not molesting them; and that Colonel Spottiswoode, their commander, had put an end to his existence through grief and mortification at this act. The crisis being perilous, it was at once resolved to disarm the native troops at Peshawur, or so much of them as excited most suspicion. This was successfully accomplished on the morning of the 22d—much to the chagrin of the officers of the disbanded regiments, who, here as elsewhere, were among the last to admit the probability of insubordination among their own troops. The 24th, 27th, and 51st regiments of Bengal native infantry, and the 5th of light cavalry, were on this occasion deprived of their arms; and a subadar-major of the 51st was hanged in presence of all his companions in arms. The disarming was effected by a clever distribution of the reliable forces; small parties of European artillery and cavalry being confronted with each regiment, in such way as to prevent aid being furnished by one to another. The men were disarmed, but not allowed to desert, on pain of instant death if caught making the attempt; and they were kept constantly watched by a small force of Europeans, and by a body of irregular troopers who had no sympathy whatever with Hindustanis. This done, a relieving force was at once sent off to Murdan; a step which would have been dangerous while sepoy troops still remained so strong at Peshawur. The small force of Europeans and irregulars was found to be sufficient for this duty; it arrived at Murdan, attacked the mutinous 55th, killed or captured two hundred, and drove the rest away. These misguided insurgents ill calculated the fate in store for them. Knowing that Mohammedan hill-tribes were near 199at hand, and that those tribes had often been hostile to the English, they counted on sympathy and support, but met with defeat and death. The chivalrous Edwardes, who had so distinguished himself in the Punjaub war, had gained a powerful influence among the half-trained mountaineers on the Afghan border. While the detachment from Peshawur was pursuing and cutting down many of the mutineers, the hill-men were at that very time coming to Edwardes to ask for military employment. These hill-men hated the Brahmins, and had something like contempt for traitors; when, therefore, Edwardes sent them against the mutineers, the latter soon found out their fatal error. ‘The petted sepoy,’ says one who was in the Punjaub at the time, ‘whose every whim had been too much consulted for forty years—who had been ready to murder his officer, to dishonour his officer’s wife, and rip in pieces his officer’s child, sooner than bite the end of a cartridge which he well knew had not been defiled—was now made to eat the bread and drink the water of affliction: to submit at the hazard of his wretched life, which he still tenaciously clung to, to ceremonies the least of which was more damning to his caste than the mastication of a million of fat cartridges.’ Even this was not the end; for the sepoys were brought back to the British cantonment, in fives and tens, and there instantly put to death; no quarter was given to men who shewed neither justice nor mercy to others. There were other forts in the Peshawur Valley similar to that at Murdan, places held by native regiments, in which little or no reliance could be placed. There were four native regiments altogether in these minor forts; and it became necessary to disarm these before the safety of the British could be insured. Peshawur contained its full Asiatic proportion of desperate scoundrels, who would have begun to loot at any symptom of discomfiture of the paramount power.

When this disarming of the native troops at the surrounding forts had been effected, the authorities at Peshawur continued to look sharply after the native troops at this important station. The disarmed 5th irregular cavalry, having refused to go against the 55th at Murdan, were at once and successfully disbanded. By a dexterous manœuvre, the troopers were deprived of horses, weapons, coats, and boots, while the mouths of cannon were gaping at them; they were then sent off in boats down the Indus, with a hint to depart as far as possible from any military stations. The authorities in the Punjaub, like Neill at Benares and Allahabad, believed that mercy to the sepoys would be cruelty to all besides at such a time; they shot, hanged, or blew away from guns with terrible promptness, all who were found to be concerned in mutinous proceedings. On one occasion a letter was intercepted, revealing the fact that three natives of high rank (giving names) were to sit in council on the morrow to decide what to do against the British; a telegraphic message was sent off to Sir John Lawrence, for advice how to act; a message was returned: ‘Let a spy attend and report;’ this was done, and a plot discovered; another question brought back another telegram: ‘Hang them all three;’ and in a quarter of an hour the hanging was completed. The importance of retaining artillery in European hands was strongly felt at Peshawur; to effect this, after many guns had been sent away to strengthen the moving column, a hundred and sixty European volunteers from the infantry were quickly trained to the work, and placed in charge of a horse-battery of six guns, half the number on horseback, and the other half sitting on the guns and wagons—all actively put in training day after day to learn their new duties. Fearful work the European gunners had sometimes to perform. Forty men of the 55th regiment were ‘blown from guns’ in three days. An officer present on the occasion says: ‘Three sides of a square were formed, ten guns pointed outwards, the sentence of the court read, a prisoner bound to each gun, the signal given, and the salvo fired. Such a scene I hope never again to witness—human trunks, heads, arms, legs flying about in all directions. All met their fate with firmness but two; so to save time they were dropped to the ground, and their brains blown out by musketry.’ It sounds strangely to English ears that such a terrible death should occasionally be mentioned as a concession or matter of favour; yet such was the case. Mr Montgomery, judicial commissioner of the Punjaub, issued an address to one of the native regiments, two sepoys of which had been blown away from guns for mutinous conduct. He exhorted them to fidelity, threatened them with the consequences of insubordination, and added: ‘You have just seen two men of your regiment blown from guns. This is the punishment I will inflict on all traitors and mutineers; and your consciences will tell you what punishment they may expect hereafter. These men have been blown from guns, and not hanged, because they were Brahmins, and because I wished to save them from the pollution of the hangman’s touch; and thus prove to you that the British government does not wish to injure your caste and religion.’ The treachery and cruelty of the mutinous sepoys soon dried up all this tenderness as to the mode in which they would prefer to be put to death. We have seen Neill at Cawnpore, after the revelation of the horrors in the slaughter-room, compelling the Brahmin rebels to pollute themselves by wiping up the gore they had assisted to shed, as a means of striking horror into the hearts of miscreant Brahmins elsewhere.

In addition to the severe measures for preserving obedience, other precautions were taken involving no shedding of blood. A new levy of Punjaubee troopers was obtained by Edwardes from the Moultan region; the disarmed sepoys were removed from their lines, and made to encamp in a spot where they could be constantly watched; a land-transport 200train was organised, for the conveyance of European troops from place to place; the fort was strengthened, provisioned, and guarded against all surprises; the artillery park was defended by an earthwork; and trusty officers were sent out in various directions to obtain recruits for local irregular corps—enlisting men rough in bearing and unscrupulous in morals, but who knew when they were well commanded, and who had no kind of affection for Hindustanis. Thus did Cotton, Edwardes, Nicholson, and the other officers, energetically carry out plans that kept Peshawur at peace, and enabled Sir John Lawrence to send off troops in aid of the force besieging Delhi. Colonel Edwardes, it may here be stated, had been in Calcutta in the month of March; and had there heard that Sikhs in some of the Bengal regiments were taking their discharge, as if foreseeing some plot then in preparation; this confirmed his predilection for Punjaub troops over ‘Poorbeahs.’ The activity in raising troops in the remotest northwest corner of India appears to have been a double benefit to the British; for it provided a serviceable body of hardy troops, and it gratified the natives of the Peshawur Valley. This matter was adverted to in a letter written by Edwardes. ‘This post (Peshawur), so far from being more arduous in future, will be more secure. Events here have taken a wonderful turn. During peace, Peshawur was an incessant anxiety; now it is the strongest point in India. We have struck two great blows—we have disarmed our own troops, and have raised levies of all the people of the country. The troops (sepoys) are confounded; they calculated on being backed by the people. The people are delighted, and a better feeling has sprung up between them and us in this enlistment than has ever been obtained before. I have also called on my old country, the Derajat, and it is quite delightful to see how the call is answered. Two thousand horsemen, formerly in my army at Moultan, are now moving on different points, according to order, to help us in this difficulty; and every post brings me remonstrances from chiefs as to why they have been forgotten. This is really gratifying.’ It may be here stated that Sir John Lawrence, about the end of May, suggested to Viscount Canning by telegraph the expediency of allowing Bengal sepoys to retire from the army and receive their pay, if they preferred so doing, and if they had not been engaged in mutinous proceedings—as a means of sifting the good from the bad; but Canning thought this would be dangerous east of the Sutlej; and it does not appear to have been acted on anywhere.

These exertions were materially aided by the existence of a remarkable police system in the Punjaub—one of the benefits which the Lawrences and their associates introduced. The Punjaub police was of three kinds. First was the military police, consisting of two corps of irregular infantry, seven battalions of foot, one regiment cavalry, and twenty-seven troops of horse—amounting altogether to about thirteen thousand men. These men were thoroughly disciplined, and were ready at all times to encounter the marauding tribes from the mountains. Then came the civil police, comprising about nine thousand men, and distributed over nearly three hundred thannahs or subordinate jurisdictions, to protect thirty thousand villages and small places: the men were armed with swords and carbines. Lastly were the constabulary, thirteen hundred men in the cities, and thirty thousand in the rural districts; these were a sort of watchmen, dressed in a plain drab uniform, and carrying only a staff and a spear. This large police army of more than fifty thousand men was not only efficient, when well officered, in maintaining tranquillity, but furnished excellent recruits for regiments of Sikh and Punjaubee soldiers.

Sir John Lawrence issued a vigorous proclamation, encouraging the native troops to remain faithful, and threatening them with dire consequences if they revolted; but from the first he relied very little on such appeals to the Bengal troops. Leaving this subject, however, and directing attention to those events only which bore with any weight on the progress of the mutiny, we shall now rapidly glance at Punjaub affairs in the summer months. Many struggles took place, too slight to require much notice. One was the disarming of a native regiment at Noorpore. Another, on June 13th, was the execution of twelve men at Ferozpore, belonging to the 45th N. I., for mutiny after being disarmed.

It was early in June that the station at Jullundur became a prey to insurgent violence. On the 3d of the month, a fire broke out in the lines of the 61st native infantry—a bad symptom wherever it occurred in those days. On the following night a hospital was burned. On the 6th, the 4th regiment Sikh infantry marched into the station, as well as a native troop of horse-artillery; but, owing to some uneasiness displayed by the Bengal troops, the Sikh regiment was removed to another station—as if the brigadier in command were desirous not to offend or irritate the petted regiments from the east. At eleven o’clock at night on the 7th, the close of a quiet Sunday—again Sunday!—a sudden alarm of fire was given, and a lurid glare was seen over the lines of the 36th native infantry. The officers rushed to their respective places; and then it was found that the 6th native cavalry, wavering for a time, had at last given way to the mutinous impulse that guided the 36th and 61st infantry, and that all three regiments were threatening the officers. The old sad story might again be told; the story of some of the officers being shot as they spoke and appealed to the fidelity of their men; of others being shot at or sabred as they ran or rode across the parade-ground; of ladies and children being affrighted at the artillery barracks, where they had been wont to sleep for greater security. The mutineers had evidently expected the native artillery to join them; but fortunately 201these latter were so dove-tailed with the European artillery, and were so well looked after by a company of the 8th foot, that they could not mutiny if they would. All the Europeans who fled to the artillery barracks and lines were safe; the guns protected them. The mutineers, after an hour or two of the usual mischief, made off. About one half the cavalry regiment mutinied, but as all confidence was lost in them, the rest were deprived of horses and arms, and the regiment virtually ceased to exist. The officers were overwhelmed with astonishment and mortification; some of them had gone to rest on that evening in perfect reliance on their men. One of the cavalry officers afterwards said: ‘Some of our best men have proved the most active in this miserable business. A rough rider in my troop, who had been riding my charger in the morning, and had played with my little child, was one of the men who charged the guns.’ This officer, like many others, had no other theory to offer than that his troopers mutinied in a ‘panic,’ arising from the sinister rumours that ran like wildfire through the lines and bazaars of the native troops, shaking the fidelity of those who had not previously taken part in any conspiracy. It was the only theory which their bitterness of heart allowed them to contemplate with any calmness; for few military men could admit without deep mortification that they had been ignorant of, and deceived by, their own soldiers down to the very last moment.

While a portion of the 6th cavalry remained, disarmed and unhorsed but not actually disbanded, at Jullundur, the two regiments and a half of mutineers marched off towards Phillour, as if bound for Delhi. At the instant the mutiny began, a telegraphic message had been sent from Jullundur to Phillour, to break the bridge of boats over the Sutlej, and thereby prevent the rebels from crossing from the Punjaub into Sirhind.

Unfortunately, the telegraphic message failed to reach the officer to whom it was sent. The 3d regiment Bengal native cavalry, at Phillour, might, as the commanding officer at that time thought, have been maintained in discipline if the Jullundur mutineers had not disturbed them; but when the 36th and 61st native infantry, and the 6th cavalry were approaching, all control was found to be lost. The telegraphic wires being cut, no news could reach Phillour, and thus the insurgents from Jullundur made their appearance wholly unexpected—by the Europeans, if not by the troopers. The ladies and families were at once hastened off from the cantonment to the fort, which had just before been garrisoned by a hundred men of H.M. 8th foot. The officers then went on parade, where they found themselves unable to bring the 3d regiment to a sense of their duty; the men promised to keep their hands clear of murder, but they would not fight against the approaching rebels from Jullundur. The officers then returned to the fort powerless; for the handful of Europeans there, though sufficient to defend the fort, were unable to encounter four mutinous regiments in the cantonment. In a day or two, all the ladies and children were sent off safely to the hills; and the cavalry officers were left without immediate duties. The tactics of the brigadier at Jullundur were at that crisis somewhat severely criticised. It was considered that he ought to have made such arrangements as would have prevented the mutineers from crossing the Sutlej. He followed them, with such a force as he could spare or collect; but while he was planning to cut off the bridge of boats that spanned the Sutlej between Phillour and Loodianah, they avoided that spot altogether; they crossed the river six miles further up, and proceeded on their march towards Delhi—attacked at certain places by Europeans and by Sikhs, but not in sufficient force to frustrate their purpose.

Although belonging to a region east of the Punjaub, it may be well here to notice another of the June mutinies nearer the focus of disaffection. One of the regiments that took its officers by surprise in mutinying was the 60th B. N. I.; of which the head-quarters had been at Umballa, but which was at Bhotuck, only three marches from Delhi, when the fidelity of the men gave way. One of the English officers, expressing his utter astonishment at this result, said: ‘All gone! The men that we so trusted; my own men, with whom I have shot, played cricket, jumped, entered into all their sports, and treated so kindly!’ He thought it almost cruel to subject that regiment to such temptation as would be afforded by close neighbourhood with the mutineers at Delhi. But, right or wrong, the temptation was afforded, and proved too strong to be resisted. It afterwards became known that the 60th received numerous letters and messages from within Delhi, entreating them to join the national cause against the Kaffir Feringhees. On the 11th of June, the sepoys suddenly rose, and fired a volley at a tent within which many of the officers were at mess, but fortunately without fatal results. Many of the officers at once galloped off to the camp outside Delhi, feeling they might be more useful there than with a mutinous regiment; while others stayed a while, in the vain hope of bringing the men back to a sense of their duty. After plundering the mess of the silver-plate and the wine, and securing the treasure-chest, the mutineers made off for Delhi. Here, however, a warm reception was in store for them; their officers had given the alarm; and H.M. 9th Lancers cut the mutineers up terribly on the road leading to the Lahore Gate. Of those who entered the city, most fell in a sortie shortly afterwards. At the place where this regiment had been stationed, Umballa, another death-fiend—cholera—was at work. ‘We have had that terrible scourge the cholera. It has been raging here with frightful violence for two months (May to July); but, thank God, has now left us without harming the Sahibs. It seemed a judgment on the 202natives. They were reeling about and falling dead in the streets, and no one to remove them. It is the only time we have looked on it as an ally; though it has carried off many soldiers, two native officers, and six policemen, who were guarding prisoners; all fell dead at the same place; as one dropped, another stepped forward and took his place; and so on the whole lot.’ It was one of the grievous results of the Indian mutiny that English officers, in very bitterness of heart, often expressed satisfaction at the calamities which fell on the natives, even townsmen unconnected with the soldiery.

Jelum, which was the scene of a brief but very fierce contest in July, is a considerable town on the right bank of the river of the same name; it is situated on the great line of road from Lahore to Peshawur; and plans have for some time been under consideration for the establishment of river-steamers thence down through Moultan to Kurachee. Like many other places on the great high road, it was a station for troops; and like many other stations, it was thrown into uneasiness by doubts of the fidelity of the sepoys. The 14th regiment Bengal native infantry, about three-fourths of which were stationed at Jelum, having excited suspicions towards the end of June, it was resolved to disarm them; but as no force was at hand to effect this, three companies of H.M. 24th foot, under Colonel Ellice, with a few horse-artillery, were ordered down from Rawul Pindee. On the 7th of July the English troops arrived, and found the native regiment drawn up on parade. Whether exasperated at the frustration of a proposed plan of mutiny, or encouraged by their strength being thrice that of the English, is not well known; but the 14th attacked the English with musketry directly they approached. This of course brought on an immediate battle. The sepoys had fortified their huts, loopholed their walls, and secured a defensive position in a neighbouring village. The English officers of the native regiment, deserted and fired at by their men, hastened to join the 24th; and a very severe exchange of musketry soon took place. The sepoys fought so boldly, and disputed every inch so resolutely, that it was found necessary to bring the three guns into requisition to drive them out of their covered positions. At last they were expelled, and escaped into the country; where the British, having no cavalry, were unable to follow them. It was an affair altogether out of the usual order in India at that time: instead of being a massacre or a chasing of treacherously betrayed individuals, it was a fight in which the native troops met the British with more than their usual resolution. The loss in this brief conflict was severe. Colonel Ellice was terribly wounded in the chest and the thigh; Captain Spring was killed; Lieutenants Streathfield and Chichester were wounded, one in both legs, and the other in the arm; two sergeants and twenty-three men were killed; four corporals and forty-three men wounded. Thus, out of this small force, seventy-six were either killed or wounded. The government authorities at Jelum immediately offered a reward of thirty rupees a head for every fugitive sepoy captured. This led to the capture of about seventy in the next two days, and to a fearful scene of shooting and blowing away from guns.

On the same day, July 7th, when three companies of H.M. 24th were thus engaged at Jelum, the other companies of the same regiment were engaged at Rawul Pindee in disarming the 58th native infantry and two companies of the 14th. The sepoys hesitated for a time, but seeing a small force of horse-artillery confronted to them, yielded; some fled, but the rest gave up their arms. Two hundred of their muskets were found to be loaded, a significant indication of some murderous intent.

The mutiny at Sealkote, less fatal than that at Jelum in reference to the conflict of troops in fair fight, was more adventurous, more marked by ‘hair-breadth ‘scapes’ among the officers and their families. Sealkote is a town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, in the Doab between the Chenab and the Ravee, on the left bank of the first-named river, and about sixty miles distant from Lahore. At the time of the mutiny there was a rifle-practice depôt at this place. The sepoys stationed at Sealkote had often been in conversation with their European officers concerning the cartridge-question, and had expressed themselves satisfied with the explanations offered. During the active operations for forming movable columns in the Punjaub, either to protect the various stations or to form a Delhi siege-army, all the European troops at Sealkote were taken away, as well as some of the native regiments; leaving at that place only the 46th Bengal native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, in cantonment, while within the fort were about a hundred and fifty men of the new Sikh levies. The brigadier commandant was rendered very uneasy by this removal of his best troops; some of his officers had already recommended the disarming of the sepoys before the last of the Queen’s troops were gone; but he was scrupulous of shewing any distrust of the native army; he felt and acted in this matter more like a Bengal officer than a Punjaub officer—relying on the honour and fidelity of the ‘Poorbeah’ troops. His anxieties greatly increased when he heard that the 14th native infantry, after revolting at Jelum, were approaching Sealkote. Many of them, it is true, had been cut up by a few companies of the Queen’s 24th; but still the remainder might very easily tempt his own sepoys and troopers. Nevertheless, to the last day, almost to the last hour, many of the regimental officers fully trusted the men; and even their ladies slept near the lines, for safety.

The troops appear to have laid a plan on the evening of the 8th of July, for a mutiny on the 203following morning. At four o’clock on the 9th, sounds of musketry and cries of distress were heard, rousing all the Europeans from their slumbers. An officer on night-picket duty near the cavalry lines observed a few troopers going towards the infantry lines. It was afterwards discovered that these troopers went to the sepoys, told them ‘the letters’ had come, and urged them to revolt at once—implying complicity with mutineers elsewhere; but the officer could not know this at the time: he simply thought the movement suspicious, and endeavoured to keep his own sepoy guards from contact with the troopers. In this, however, he failed; the sepoys soon left him, and went over to the troopers. He hurried to his bungalow, told his wife to hasten in a buggy to the fort, and then went himself towards the lines of his regiment. This was a type of what occurred generally. The officers sought to send their wives and families from their various bungalows into the fort, and then hastened to their duties. These duties brought them into the presence of murderous troops at the regimental lines; troops who fired on the very officers that to the last had trusted them. Especially was the mortification great among the Europeans connected with the 46th; for when they begged their sepoys to fire upon the mutinous troopers, the sepoys fired at them instead. A captain, two surgeons, a clergyman, and his wife and child, were killed almost at the very beginning of the outbreak; while Brigadier Brind and other officers were wounded.

There were no wanderings over burning roads and through thick jungles to record in this case; but a few isolated adventures may be briefly noticed. Two or three roads from the lines and bungalows to the fort became speedily marked by fleeing Europeans—officers, ladies, and children—in vehicles, on horseback, and on foot—all trying to reach the fort, and all attacked or pursued by the treacherous villains. Dr Graham, the superintending surgeon, on the alarm being raised, drove quickly with his daughter towards the fort; a trooper rode up and shot him dead; his bereaved daughter seized the reins, and, with the corpse of her parent on her lap, drove into the nearest compound, screaming for help. A young lieutenant of the 9th cavalry, when it came to his turn to flee, had to dash past several troopers, who fired many shots, one only of which hit him. He galloped thirty miles to Wuzeerabad, wounded as he was; and, all his property being left behind him only to be ruthlessly destroyed, he had, to use his own words, to look forward to begin the world again, ‘with a sword, and a jacket cut up the back.’ Three officers galloped forty miles to Gujeranwalla, swimming or wading the rivers that crossed their path. One of the captains of the 46th, who was personally much liked by the sepoys of his own company, was startled by receiving from them an offer of a thousand rupees per month if he would become a rebel like them, and still remain their captain! What answer he gave to this strange offer may easily be conceived; but his company remained kind to him, for they saw him safely escorted to the fort. In one of the bungalows fourteen persons, of whom only three were men, sought refuge from the murderous sepoys and troopers. The women and children all congregated in a small lumber-room; the three gentlemen remained in the drawing-room, pistols in hand. Then ensued a brisk scene of firing and counter-firing; during which, however, only one life appears to have been lost: the love of plunder in this case overpowered the love of murder; for the insurgents, compelling the gentlemen to retreat to their poor companions in the lumber-room, and there besieging them for a time, turned their attention to loot or plunder. After ten hours sojourn of fourteen persons in a small room in a sultry July day, the Europeans, finding that the mutineers were wandering in other directions, contrived to make a safe and hasty run to the fort, a distance of upwards of a mile. Some of the Europeans at the station, as we have said, were killed; some escaped by a brisk gallop; while the rest were shut up for a fortnight in the fort, in great discomfort, until the mutineers went away. There being no European soldiers at Sealkote, the sepoys and sowars acted as they pleased; they pillaged the bungalows, exploded the magazine, let loose the prisoners in the jail, and then started off, like other mutineers, in the direction of Delhi.

One of the most touching incidents at Sealkote bore relation to a nunnery, a convent of nuns belonging to the order of Jesus Marie of Lyon, a Roman Catholic establishment analogous to that at Sirdhana near Meerut, already brought under notice (p. 57). The superior at Lyon, many weeks afterwards, received a letter from one of the sisters,^[32] giving an affecting account of the way in which the quiet religieuses were hunted about by the mutineers.

204When the Sealkote mutineers had taken their departure towards Delhi, a force was organised at Jelum as quickly as possible to pursue them. This force, under Colonel Brown, comprised three companies of H.M. 24th foot, two hundred Sikhs, a hundred irregular horse, and three horse-artillery guns. The energetic Brigadier Nicholson, in command of a flying column destined for Delhi, comprising the 52d light infantry, the 6th Punjaub cavalry, and other troops, made arrangements at the same time for intercepting the mutineers. It thus happened that on the 12th of July, the insurgent 46th and 9th regiments when they reached the Ravee from Sealkote, found themselves hemmed in; and after an exciting contest on an island in the river, they were almost entirely cut up.

About the close of July, the disarmed 26th native infantry mutinied at Lahore, killed Major Spencer and two native officers, and fled up the left bank of the Ravee; but the police, the new levies, and the villagers pursued them so closely and harassed them so continuously, that hardly a man remained alive. In August, something of the same kind occurred at other places in the Punjaub; native Bengal regiments still were there, disarmed but not disbanded; and it could not be otherwise than that the men felt chafed and discontented with such a state of things. If faithful, they felt the degradation of being disarmed; if hollow in their professed fidelity, they felt the irksomeness of being closely watched in cantonment. At Ferozpore, on the 19th of August, a portion of the 10th native cavalry, that had before been disarmed, mutinied, and endeavoured to capture the guns of Captain Woodcock’s battery; they rushed at the guns while the artillerymen were at dinner, and killed the veterinary surgeon and one or two other persons; but a corps of Bombay Fusiliers, in the station at that time, repulsed and dispersed them. At Peshawur, where it was found frequently necessary to search the huts and tents of the disarmed sepoys, for concealed weapons, the 51st native infantry resisted this search on the 28th of the month; they beat their officers with cudgels, and endeavoured to seize the arms of a Sikh corps while those men were at dinner. They were foiled, and fled towards the hills; but a disastrous flight was it for them; more than a hundred were shot before they could get out of the lines, a hundred and fifty more were cut down during an immediate pursuit, nearly four hundred were brought in prisoners, to be quickly tried and shot, and some of the rest were made slaves by the mountaineers of the Khyber Pass, who would by no means ‘fraternise’ with them. Thus the regiment was in effect annihilated. There were then three disarmed native regiments left in Peshawur, which were kept so encamped that loaded guns in trusty hands might always point towards them.

The course of events in the Punjaub need not be traced further in any connected form. From first to last the plan adopted was pretty uniform in character. When the troubles began, there were about twenty regiments of the Bengal native army in the Punjaub; and these regiments were at once and everywhere distrusted by Sir John Lawrence and his chief officers. If hope and confidence were felt, it was rather by the regimental officers, to whom disloyalty in their respective corps was naturally mortifying and humiliating. All the sepoys were disarmed and the sowars dismounted, as soon as suspicious symptoms appeared; some regiments remained at the stations, disarmed, throughout the whole of the summer and autumn; some mutinied, before or after disarming; but very few indeed lived to reach the scene of rebel supremacy at Delhi; for they were cut up by the Europeans, Sikhs, Punjaubees, or hill-men which the Punjaub afforded. Gladly as every one, whether civilian or military, acknowledged the eminent services of Sir John Lawrence; there were, it must be admitted, certain advantages available to him which were utterly denied to Mr Colvin, the responsible chief of the Northwest Provinces, in which the mutiny raged more fiercely than anywhere else. When the troubles began, the Punjaub was better furnished with regiments of the Queen’s army than any other part of India; while the native Sikhs, Punjaubee Mohammedans, and hill-men, were either indifferent or hostile to the sepoys of Hindostan proper. The consequences of this state of things were two: the native troops were more easily disarmed; and those who mutinied were more in danger of annihilation before they could get east of the Sutlej. In the Northwest Provinces the circumstances were far more disastrous; the British troops were relatively fewer; and the people were more nearly in accord with the sepoys, in so far as concerned national and religious sympathies. In the Meerut military division, when the mutiny had fairly commenced, besides those at Meerut station, there was only one European regiment (at Agra), against ten native regiments, irrespective of those which mutinied at Meerut and Delhi. In the Cawnpore military division, comprising the great stations of Lucknow, Allahabad, Cawnpore, and the whole of Oude, there was scarcely more than one complete European regiment, against thirty native Bengal and Oude regiments, regular and irregular. In the Dinapoor military division, comprising Benares, Patna, Ghazeepore, and other large cities, together with much government wealth in the form of treasure and opium, there was in like manner only one British regiment, against sixteen native corps. There was at the same time this additional difficulty; that no such materials were at hand as 205in the Punjaub, for raising regiments of horse and foot among tribes who would sympathise but little with the mutineers.

Camel and Rider.

Sir John Lawrence was at first in some doubt what course to follow in relation to the liberty of the press. The Calcutta authorities, as we shall see in the next chapter, thought it proper to curtail that liberty in Bengal and the Northwest Provinces. Sir John, unwilling on the one hand to place the Europeans in the Punjaub in the tormenting condition of seclusion from all sources of news, and unwilling on the other to leave the news-readers at the mercy of inaccurate or unscrupulous news-writers at such a critical time, adopted a medium course. He caused the Lahore Chronicle to be made the medium of conveying official news of all that was occurring in India, so far as rapid outlines were concerned. The government secretary at that place sent every day to the editor of the newspaper an epitome of the most important public news. This epitome was printed on small quarter-sheets of paper, and despatched by each day’s post to all the stations in the Punjaub. The effect was—that false rumours and sinister reports were much less prevalent in the Punjaub than in Bengal; men were not thrown into mystery by a suppression of journalism; but were candidly told how events proceeded, so far as information had reached that remote part of India. The high character of the chief-commissioner was universally held as a guarantee that the news given in the epitome, whether little or much in quantity, would be honestly rendered; the scheme would have been a failure under a chief who did not command respect and win confidence. As the summer advanced, and dâks and wires were interrupted, the news obtainable became very scanty. The English in the Punjaub were placed in a most tantalising position. Aware that matters were going wrong at Delhi and Agra, at Lucknow and Cawnpore, they did not know how wrong; for communication was well-nigh cut off. As the cities just named lie between the Punjaub and Calcutta, all direct communication with the seat of government was still more completely cut off. The results of this were singularly trying. ‘Gradually,’ says an officer writing from the Punjaub, ‘papers and letters reached us from Calcutta viâ Bombay. It is not the least striking illustration of the complete revolution that has occurred in India, that the news from the Gangetic valley—say from Allahabad and Cawnpore—was known in London sooner than at Lahore. We had been accustomed to receive our daily letters and newspapers from every part of the empire with the same unfailing regularity as in England. Suddenly we found ourselves separated from Calcutta for two months of time. Painfully must a letter travel from the eastern capital to the western port—from Calcutta to Bombay; painfully must it toil up the unsettled provinces of the western coast; slowly must it jog along on mule-back across the sands of Sinde; many queer twists and unwonted turns must that letter take, many enemies must it baffle and elude, before, much bestamped, much stained with travel—for Indian letter-bags are not water-proof—it is delivered to its owner at Lahore.... Slowly, very slowly, the real truth dragged its way up the country. It is only this very 29th of September that this writer in the Punjaub has read anything like a connected account of the fearful tragedy at Cawnpore, which, once read or heard, no Englishman can ever forget.’

Attention must now for a brief space be directed to the country of Sinde or Scinde; not so much for the purpose of narrating the progress of mutiny there, as to shew how it happened that there were few materials out of which mutiny could arise.

Sinde is the region which bounds the lower course of the river Indus, also called Sinde. The name is supposed to have had the same origin as Sindhi or Hindi, connected with the great Hindoo race. When the Indus has passed out of the 206Punjaub at its lower apex, it enters Sinde, through which it flows to the ocean, which bounds Sinde on the south; east is Rajpootana, and west Beloochistan. The area of Sinde is about equal to that of England without Wales. The coast is washed by the Indian Ocean for a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles; being, with very few exceptions, little other than a series of mud-banks deposited by the Indus, or low sand-hills blown in from the sea-beach. So low is most of the shore, that a wide expanse of country is overflowed at each high tide; it is a dreary swamp, scarcely observable from shipboard three or four miles out at sea. The mouths of the Indus are numerous, but so shallow that only one of them admits ships of any considerable burden; and even that one is subject to so many fluctuations in depth and in weather, that sea-going vessels scarcely enter it at all. Kurachee, the only port in Sinde, is a considerable distance west of all these mouths; and the mercantile world looks forward with much solicitude to the time when a railway will be formed from this port to Hydrabad, a city placed at the head of the delta of the Indus. This delta, in natural features, resembles that of the Nile rather than that of the Ganges, being nearly destitute of timber. On each side of the Indus, for a breadth varying from two to twelve miles, is a flat alluvial tract, in most places extremely fertile. Many parts of Sinde are little better than desert; such as the Pât, between Shikarpore and the Bolan Pass, and the Thur, nearer to the river. In general, it may be said that no part of Sinde is fertile except where the Indus irrigates it; for there is little either of rain or dew, and the climate is intensely hot. Camels are largely reared in Sinde; and the Sindians have abundant reason to value this animal. It is to him a beast of burden; its milk is a favourite article of diet; its hair is woven into coarse cloth; and it renders him service in many other ways.

The Sindians are an interesting race, both in themselves and in their political relations. They are a mixture of Jâts and Beloochees, among whom the distinction between Hindoo and Mussulman has a good deal broken down. The Beloochees are daring, warlike Mohammedans; the Jâts are Hindoos less rigorous in matters of faith and caste than those of Hindostan; while the Jâts who have become Mohammedans are a peaceful agricultural race, somewhat despised by both the others. The Sindians collectively are a dark, handsome, well-limbed race; and it was a favourite opinion of Sir William Jones, that they were the original of the gipsies. The languages spoken are a mixture of Hindi, Beloochee, and Persian.

The chain of events which brought Sinde under British rule may be traced in a few sentences. About thirteen centuries ago the country was invaded by the Persians, who ravaged it without making a permanent settlement. The califs at a later date conquered Sinde; from them it was taken by the Afghans of Ghiznee; and in the time of Baber it fell into the hands of the chief of Candahar. It was then, for a century and a half, a dependency of the Mogul Empire. For a few years Nadir Shah held it; next the Moguls retook it; and in 1756 Sinde fell under the rule of the Cabool khans, which was maintained nearly to the time when the British seized the sovereign power. Although subject to Cabool, Sinde was really governed by eight or ten native princes, called Ameers, who had among them three distinct territories marked by the cities of Hydrabad, Khyrpore, and Meerpoor. Under these ameers the government was a sort of military despotism, each ameer having a power of life and death; but in warlike affairs they were dependent on feudal chieftains, each of whom held an estate on condition of supplying a certain number of soldiers. The British had various trading treaties with the ameers; one of which, in 1832, opened the roads and rivers of Sinde to the commerce of the Company. When, in 1838, the eyes of the governor-general were directed anxiously towards Afghanistan, Sinde became involved in diplomatic conferences, in which the British, the Afghans, the Sindians, and Runjeet Singh were all concerned. These conferences led to quarrels, to treaties, to accusations of breach of faith, which we need not trace: suffice it to say that Sir Charles James Napier, with powers of the pen and of the sword intrusted to him, settled the Sinde difficulty once for all, in 1848, by fighting battles which led to the annexation of that country to the Company’s dominions. The former government was entirely put an end to; and the ameers were pensioned off with sums amounting in the aggregate to about fifty thousand pounds per annum. Some of these Ameers, like other princes of India, afterwards came to England in the hope of obtaining better terms from Queen Victoria than had been obtainable from the Company Bahadoor.

When Sinde became a British province, it was separated into three collectorates or districts—Shikarpore, Hydrabad, and Kurachee; a new system of revenue administration was introduced; annual fairs were established at Kurachee and Sukur; and peaceful commerce was everywhere so successfully established, that the country improved rapidly, greatly to the content of the mass of the people, who had formerly been ground down by the ameers’ government. For military purposes, Sinde was made a division, under the Bombay presidency.

Sinde, at the commencement of the mutiny, contained about seven thousand troops of all arms, native and European. The military arrangements had brought much distinction to Colonel (afterwards Brigadier-general) John Jacob, whose ‘Sinde Irregular Horse’ formed a corps much talked of in India. It consisted of about sixteen hundred men, in two regiments of eight hundred each, carefully drilled, and armed and equipped in the European manner, yet having only five 207European officers; the squadron and troop commanders were native officers. The brigadier uniformly contended that it was the best cavalry corps in India; and that the efficiency of such a regiment did not depend so much on the number of European officers, as on the manner in which they fulfilled their duties, and the kind of discipline which they maintained among the men. On these points he was frequently at issue with the Bengal officers; for he never failed to point out the superiority of the system in the Bombay army, where men were enlisted irrespective of caste, and where there were better means of rewarding individual merit.^[33] Nationally speaking, they were not Sindians at all; being drawn from other parts of India, in the ratio of three-fourths Mohammedans to one-fourth Hindoos.

When the mutiny began in the regions further east, ten or twelve permanent outposts on the Sinde frontier were held by detachments of the Sinde Irregular Horse, of forty to a hundred and twenty men each, wholly commanded by native officers. These men, and the head-quarters at Jacobabad (a camp named after the gallant brigadier), remained faithful, though sometimes tempted by sepoys and troopers of the Bengal army. A curious correspondence took place later in the year, through the medium of the newspapers, between Brigadier Jacob and Major Pelly on the one side, and Colonel Sykes on the other. The colonel had heard that Jacob ridiculed the greased cartridge affair, as a matter that would never be allowed to trouble his corps; and he sought to shew that it was no subject for laughter: ‘Brigadier John Jacob knows full well that if he were to order his Mohammedan soldiers (though they may venerate him) to bite a cartridge greased with pigs’ fat, or his high-caste troopers to bite a cartridge greased with cows’ fat, both the one and the other would promptly refuse obedience, and in case he endeavoured to enforce it, they would shoot him down.’ Jacob and Pelly at once disputed this; they both asserted that the Mohammedans and Hindoos in the Sinde Horse would never be mutinous on such a point, unless other sources of dissatisfaction existed, and unless they believed it was purposely done to insult their faith. ‘If it were really necessary,’ said the brigadier, ‘in the performance of our ordinary military duty, to use swine’s fat or cows’ fat, or anything else whatever, not a word or a thought would pass about the matter among any members of the Horse, and the nature of the substances made use of would not be thought of or discussed at all, except with reference to the fitness for the purpose to which they were to be applied.’ The controversialists did not succeed in convincing each other; they continued to hold diametrically opposite opinions on a question intimately connected with the early stages of the mutiny—thereby adding to the perplexities of those wishing to solve the important problem: ‘What was the cause of the mutiny?’

Owing partly to the great distance from the disturbed provinces of Hindostan, partly to the vicinity of the well-disposed Bombay army, and partly to the activity and good organisation of Jacob’s Irregular Horse, Sinde was affected with few insurgent proceedings during the year. At one time a body of fanatical Mohammedans would unfurl the green flag, and call upon each other to fight for the Prophet. At another time, gangs of robbers and hill-men, of which India has in all ages had an abundant supply, would take advantage of the troubled state of public feeling to rush forth on marauding expeditions, caring much for plunder and little for faith of any kind. At another, alarms would be given which induced European ladies and families to take refuge in the forts or other defensive positions at Kurachee, Hydrabad, Shikarpore, Jacobabad, &c., where English officers were stationed. At another, regiments of the Bengal army would try to tamper with the fidelity of other troops in Sinde. But of these varied incidents, few were so serious in results as to need record here. One, interesting in many particulars, arose out of the following circumstance: When some of the Sinde forces were sent to Persia, the 6th Bengal irregular cavalry arrived to supply their place. These troopers, when the mutiny was at least four months old, endeavoured to form a plan with some Beloochee Mohammedans for the murder of the British officers at the camp of Jacobabad. A particular hour on the 21st of August was named for this outrage, in which various bands of Beloochees were invited to assist. The plot was revealed to Captain Merewether, who immediately confided in the two senior native officers of the Sinde Irregular Horse. Orders were issued that the day’s proceedings should be as usual, but that the men should hold themselves in readiness. Many of the border chiefs afterwards sent notice to Merewether of what had been planned, announcing their own disapproval of the conspiracy. At a given hour, the leading conspirator was seized, and correspondence found upon him tending to shew that the Bengal regiment having failed in other attempts to seduce the Sinde troops from their allegiance, had determined to murder the European officers as the chief obstacles to their scheme. The authorities at Jacobabad wished Sir John Lawrence to take this 208Bengal regiment off their hands; but the experienced chief in the Punjaub would not have the dangerous present; he thought it less likely to mutiny where it was than in a region nearer to Delhi.

The troops in the province of Sinde about the middle of August were nearly as follows: At Kurachee—the 14th and 21st Bombay native infantry; the 2d European infantry; the depôt of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers; and the 3d troop of horse artillery. At Hydrabad—the 13th Bombay native infantry; and a company of the 4th battalion of artillery. At Jacobabad—the 2d Sinde irregular horse; and the 6th Bengal irregular cavalry. At Shikarpore and Sukur, the 16th Bombay native infantry; and a company of the 4th battalion of artillery. The whole comprised about five thousand native troops, and twelve hundred Europeans.

At a later period, when thanks were awarded by parliament to those who had rendered good service in India, the name of Mr Frere, commissioner for Sinde, was mentioned, as one who ‘has reconciled the people of that province to British rule, and by his prudence and wisdom confirmed the conquest which had been achieved by the gallant Napier. He was thereby enabled to furnish aid wherever it was needed, at the same time constantly maintaining the peace and order of the province.’

Notes.

This will be a suitable place in which to introduce two tabular statements concerning the military condition of India at the commencement of the mutiny. All the occurrences narrated hitherto are those in which the authorities at Calcutta were compelled to encounter difficulties without any reinforcements from England, the time elapsed having been too short for the arrival of such reinforcements.

Military Divisions of India.—At the period of the outbreak, and for some time afterwards, India was marked out for military purposes into divisions, each under the command of a general, brigadier, or other officer, responsible for all the troops, European and native, within his division. The names and localities of these divisions are here given; on the authority of a military map of India, engraved at the Topographical Depôt under the direction of Captain Elphinstone of the Royal Engineers, and published by the War Department. Each division was regarded as belonging to, or under the control of, one of the three presidencies. We shall therefore group them under the names of the three presidential cities, and shall append a few words to denote locality:

It may be useful to remark that these military divisions are not necessarily identical in area or boundaries with the political provinces or collectorates, the two kinds of territorial limits being based on different considerations.

Armies of India, at the Commencement of the Mutiny.—During the progress of the military operations, it was frequently wished in England that materials were afforded for shewing the exact number of troops in India when the troubles began. The Company, to respond to this wish, caused an elaborate return to be prepared, from which a few entries are here selected. The names and limits of the military divisions correspond nearly, but not exactly, to those in the above list.

The Europeans in this list include all grades of officers as well as rank and file; and among the officers are included those connected with the native regiments. The natives, in like manner, include all grades, from subadars down to sepoys and sowars. The Punjaub, it will be seen, alone contained 40,000 troops. The troops were stationed at 160 cantonments, garrisons, or other places. As shewing gradations of rank, the Europeans comprised 2271 commissioned officers, 1602 non-commissioned officers, and 18,815 rank and file; the natives comprised 2325 commissioned officers, 5821 non-commissioned officers, and 110,517 rank and file. The stations which contained the largest numbers were the following:

209These 20 principal stations thus averaged 3800 troops each, or nearly 80,000 altogether.

This list was more fully made out than that for the Bengal army; since it gave the numbers separately of the dragoons, light cavalry, horse-artillery, foot-artillery, sappers and miners, European infantry, native infantry, and veterans. The ratio of Europeans to native troops was rather higher in the Madras army (about 20 per cent.) than in that of Bengal (19 per cent.) More fully made out in some particulars, it was less instructive in others; the Madras list pointed out the location of all the detachments of each regiment, whereas the Bengal list gave the actual numbers at each station, without mentioning the particular regiments of which they were composed. Hence the materials for comparison are not such as they might have been had the lists been prepared on one uniform plan. There were about 36 stations for these troops, but the places which they occupied in small detachments raised the total to a much higher number. Although Pegu is considered to belong to the Bengal presidency, it was mostly served by Madras troops. Besides the forces above enumerated, there were nearly 2000 Madras troops out of India altogether, on service in Persia and China.

The Bombay army was so dislocated at that period, by the departure of nearly 14,000 troops to Persia and Aden, that the value of this table for purposes of comparison becomes much lessened. Nevertheless, it affords means of knowing how many troops were actually in India at the time when their services were most needed. On the other hand, about 5000 of the troops in the Bombay presidency belonged to the Bengal and Madras armies. The different kinds of troops were classified as in the Madras army. The regular military stations where troops took up their head-quarters, were about 20 in number; but the small stations where mere detachments were placed nearly trebled this number. The Europeans were to the native troops only as 16 to 100.

As a summary, then, we find that India contained, on the day when the mutinies began, troops to the number of 238,002 in the service of the Company, of whom 38,001 were Europeans, and 200,001 natives—19 Europeans to 100 natives. An opportunity will occur in a future page for enumerating the regiments of which these three armies were composed.

Catholic Church, Sirdhana.—Built by Begum Sumroo (See p. 57).

210

Sir Colin Campbell.

Before entering on a narrative of the great military operations connected with the siege of Delhi, and with Havelock’s brilliant advance from Allahabad to Cawnpore and Lucknow, it will be necessary to glance rapidly at the means adopted by the authorities to meet the difficulties arising out of the mutiny—by the Indian government at Calcutta, and by the imperial government in London. For, it must be remembered that—however meritorious and indispensable may have been the services of those who arrived in later months—the crisis had passed before a single additional regiment from England reached the scene of action. There was, as we have seen in the note appended to the preceding chapter, a certain definite amount of European military force in India when the mutiny began; there were also certain regiments of the Queen’s army known to be at different spots in the region lying between the Cape of Good Hope on the west and Singapore on the east; and it depended on the mode of managing those materials whether India should or should not be lost to the English. There will therefore be an advantage in tracing the manner in which the Calcutta government brought into use the resources immediately or proximately available; and the plans adopted by the home government to increase those resources.

It is not intended in this place to discuss the numerous questions which have arisen in connection with the moral and political condition of the natives of India, or the relative fitness of different forms of government for the development of their welfare. Certain matters only will be treated, which immediately affected the proceedings of those intrusted with this grave responsibility at so perilous a time. Three such at once present themselves for notice, in relation to the Calcutta government—namely, the military measures taken to confront the mutineers; the judicial treatment meted out to them when conquered or captured; and the precautions taken in reference to freedom of public discussion on subjects likely to foster discontent.

211First, in relation to military matters. England, by a singular coincidence, was engaged in two Asiatic wars at the time when the Meerut outbreak marked the commencement of a formidable mutiny. Or, more strictly, one army was returning after the close of a war with Persia; while another was going out to begin a war with China. It will ever remain a problem of deep significance what would have become of our Indian empire had not those warlike armaments, small as they were, been on the Indian seas at the time. The responsible servants of the Company in India did not fail to recognise the importance of this problem—as will be seen from a brief notice of the plans laid during the earlier weeks of the mutiny.

On the 13th of May, three days after the troubles began at Meerut, Mr Colvin, lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, telegraphed to Calcutta, suggesting that the returning force from Persia should be ordered round to Calcutta, in order to be sent inland to strengthen the few English regiments by which alone the Revolt could be put down. On the next day, Viscount Canning, knowing that the Queen’s 43d foot and the 1st Madras Fusiliers were at Madras, telegraphed orders for those two regiments to be forwarded to Calcutta—seeing that the Bengal presidency was more likely than that of Madras to be troubled by mutinous sepoys. On the same day orders were sent to Pegu to bring the depôt of the Queen’s 84th foot to Calcutta, the bulk of the regiment being already in or near that city. On the 16th, a message was sent to Lord Elphinstone at Bombay, requesting him to send round to Calcutta two of the English regiments about to return from Persia; another message was sent to Pegu, summoning every available soldier of the Queen’s 35th foot from Rangoon and Moulmein; and orders were issued that all government river-steamers and flats in India should be held ready for army use. On the 17th, Lord Harris at Madras telegraphed to Canning, recommending him to stop the army going to China under Lord Elgin and General Ashburnham, and to render it immediately available for Indian wants. It was on this day, too, that Sir John Lawrence announced his intention of disarming the Bengal sepoys in the Punjaub, and of raising new Punjaub regiments in their stead; and that Mr Frere, commissioner of Sinde, was ordered by Lord Elphinstone to send the 1st Bombay Europeans from Kurachee up the Indus to Moultan, and thence to Ferozpore. On the 18th, Canning telegraphed to Elphinstone, naming the two regiments—the Queen’s 78th foot and the 2d Europeans—which were to be sent round to Calcutta, together with artillery; on the same day Elphinstone telegraphed to Canning that he would be able to send the Queen’s 64th as well as 78th foot; and on the same day the authorities at Sinde arranged for sending a Beloochee regiment up from Hydrabad to Ferozpore. On the 19th, the Madras Fusiliers started for Calcutta; and on the same day Sir Henry Lawrence, to strengthen his military command in Oude, was raised from the rank of colonel to that of brigadier-general. Without dwelling, day by day, on the proceedings adopted, it will suffice to say that, during the remaining period of May, the Madras Fusiliers, which were destined to render such good service under the gallant Neill, arrived at Calcutta; that the Queen’s 64th and 78th made their voyage from Bombay to Calcutta; and that steamers were sent to Ceylon to bring as many royal troops as could be spared from that island.

When June arrived, the same earnest endeavours were made to bring troops to bear upon the plague-spots of mutiny. Orders were sent to transfer a wing of the Queen’s 29th foot from Pegu, the 12th Lancers from Bombay, and cavalry horses from Bushire and elsewhere, to Calcutta. Later in the month, messages were transmitted to Madras, commanding the sending to Calcutta of everything that had been prepared there for the service of the expedition to China; such as tents, clothing, harness, and necessaries; but it was at the same time known that the regiments on that service available for India could be very few for a considerable time to come—the only certain news being of the 5th Fusiliers, which left Mauritius on the 23d of May, and the 90th foot, which left England on the 18th of April. Towards the close of the month, an arrangement was made for accepting the aid of an army of Nepaulese from Jung Bahadoor, to advance from Khatmandoo through Goruckpore towards Oude—a matter on which Lord Canning was much criticised, by those who thought the arrangement ought to have been made earlier. As soon as news reached Calcutta of the death of General Anson, Sir Patrick Grant, commander-in-chief of the Madras army, was summoned from Madras to hold the office of commander-in-chief of the army of Bengal, subject to sanction from the home authorities. When he had accepted this provisional appointment, and had arrived at Calcutta, Sir Patrick wrote a ‘memorandum,’ expressing his views of his own position towards the supreme government. It was to the effect that—seeing that there was in fact no native army to rely upon; that the European army was very small; and that this army had to operate on many different points, in portions each under its own commandant—it would be better for the commander-in-chief to remain for a while at Calcutta, than to move about from station to station. If near the seat of government, he would be in daily personal communication with the members of the supreme council; he would learn their views in relation to the innumerable questions likely to arise; and he would be in early receipt of the mass of intelligence forwarded every day to Calcutta from all parts of India. On these grounds, Sir Patrick proposed to make Calcutta his head-quarters. All the members of the council—Canning, Dorin, Low, J. P. Grant, and Peacock—assented at once to these views; the 212governor-general added: ‘I am of opinion, however, that as soon as the course of events shall tend to allay the general disquiet, and to shew to what points our force should be mainly directed, with the view of crushing the heart of the rebellion, it will be proper that his excellency should consider anew the question of his movements.’

As it was difficult in those days of interrupted dâks and severed wires to communicate intelligence between Calcutta and Lahore, the general officers in the Punjaub and Sirhind made the best readjustment of offices they could on hearing of Anson’s death; but when orders could be given from Calcutta, Sir Henry Barnard, of the Sirhind division, was made commander of the force against Delhi; General Penny, from Simla, replaced General Hewett at Meerut; General Reid, of the Peshawur division, became temporary commander in the west until other arrangements could be made; and Brigadier Cotton was appointed to the command at Peshawur, with Colonel Edwardes as commissioner. Later in the month, when Henry Lawrence was hemmed in at Lucknow, Wheeler beleaguered at Cawnpore, and Lloyd absorbed with the affairs of Dinapoor brigade, commands were given to Neill and Havelock, the one from Madras and the other from the Persian expedition; while Outram, who had been commander of that expedition, also returned to assume an important post in India. Several colonels of individual regiments received the appointment of brigadier-general, in command of corps of two or more regiments; and in that capacity became better known to the public than as simple commandants of regiments.

When the month of July arrived, the British troops in India, though lamentably few for the stern work to be done, were nevertheless increasing in number; but it is doubtful whether, at the end of the month, the number was as large as at the beginning; for many desperate conflicts had taken place, which terribly thinned the European ranks. The actual reinforcements which arrived at Calcutta during eight months, irrespective of any plans laid in England arising out of news of the mutiny, consisted of about twenty regiments, besides artillery. Some of these had been on the way from England before the mutiny began; the 84th foot arrived in March from Rangoon; none arrived in April; in May arrived the 1st Madras Fusiliers; in June, the 35th, 37th, 64th, and 78th Queen’s regiments, together with artillery belonging to all the three presidential armies; in July, the 5th Fusiliers, the 90th foot, and a wing of the 29th; in August, the 59th foot, a military train, a naval brigade from Hong Kong, and royal marines from the same place; in September, the 23d Welsh Fusiliers, 93d Highlanders, four regiments of Madras native infantry (5th, 17th, 27th, and 36th), and detachments of artillery and engineers; in October, the 82d foot, the 48th Madras native infantry, and recruits for the East India Company’s service—all these, be it again remarked, were troops which reached Calcutta without any reference to the plans laid by the home government to quell the mutiny; those which came from England started before the news was known; the rest came from Rangoon, Moulmein, Madras, Bombay, Ceylon, Mauritius, Hong Kong, Cape of Good Hope, &c. A few observations may be made in connection with the above list—that some of these regiments were native Madras troops, on whom reliance was placed to fight manfully against the Bengal sepoys; that some of the Madras companies advanced inland to Bengal, without taking the sea-voyage to Calcutta; that no cavalry whatever were included in the list; and that the list does not include the regiments which advanced from Bombay or Kurachee towards the disturbed districts.

Cavalry, just adverted to, was the arm of the service in which the Indian government was throughout the year most deficient. During a long period of peace the stud-establishments had been somewhat neglected; and as a consequence, there were more soldiers able and willing to ride, than horses ready to receive them. In the artillery and baggage departments, also, the supply of horses was very deficient. When news of this fact reached Australia, the colonists bestirred themselves to ascertain how far they could assist in remedying the deficiency. The whole of New South Wales was divided into eight districts, and committees voluntarily undertook the duty of ascertaining how many available horses fit for cavalry were obtainable in each district. Colonel Robbins was sent from Calcutta to make purchases; and he was enabled to obtain several hundred good strong horses at prices satisfactory both to the stock-farmers and to the government. The good effected by the committees consisted in bringing together the possible sellers and the willing buyer.

By what means the troops, as they arrived at Calcutta from various quarters, were despatched to the scene of action in the upper provinces, and by what difficulties of every kind this duty was hampered—need not be treated here; sufficient has been said on this subject in former pages.

We pass to the second of the three subjects marked out, in reference to the proceedings at Calcutta for notice—the arrangements for preventing the mutiny of native troops, or for punishing those who had already mutinied: a very important and anxious part of the governor-general’s duty.

Unfortunately for all classes in India, there was a hostile feeling towards the governor-general, entertained by many of the European inhabitants unconnected with the Company; they accused him of favouring the natives at the expense of the English. There was also a sentiment of deep hatred excited against the natives, owing to the barbarous atrocities perpetrated by the mutinous sepoys and the rabble budmashes on the unfortunate persons at the various military and civil stations of the Company during the 213course of the Revolt. There was at the same time a certain jealousy existing between the military and civil officers in India. These various feelings conspired to render the supreme government at Calcutta, and especially Viscount Canning as its head, the butt for incessant ridicule and the object of incessant vituperation. When the mutiny was many months old, the Calcutta government gave a full reply to insinuations which it would have been undignified to rebut at the time when made, and which, indeed, would have fallen with little force on the public mind while convulsed with passion at the unparalleled news from India.

It was repeatedly urged upon the governor-general to proclaim martial law wherever the Europeans found or fancied themselves in peril; to encounter the natives with muskets and cannon instead of courts of justice; and to adopt these summary proceedings all over India. In reply, Viscount Canning states that this was actually done wherever it was necessary, and as soon as it could answer any good purpose. Martial law was proclaimed in the Delhi province in May; in the Meerut province about the same time; in Rohilcund on the 28th of the same month; in the Agra province in May and the early part of June; in the Ajmeer district on the 12th of June; in Allahabad and Benares about the same date; in Neemuch also at the same time; in the Patna district on the 30th of June; and afterwards in Nagpoor. In the Punjaub and Oude, governed by special regulations, it was not necessary that martial law should be proclaimed, but the two Lawrences acted as if it was. Martial law, where adopted, was made even more stringent than in European countries; for there only military men take part in courts-martial; whereas in India, the military officers at the disposal of the government being too few for the performance of such duties at such a time, an act of the Calcutta legislature was passed directly after the news from Meerut arrived, authorising military officers to establish courts-martial for the trial of mutineers and others, and empowering them to obtain the aid at such courts, not only of the Company’s civil servants, but of indigo-planters and other Europeans of intelligence and of independent position. On the 30th of May, to meet the case of a rebellious populace as well as a mutinous soldiery, another act was passed authorising all the local executive governments to issue special commissions for the summary trial of delinquents, with power of life and death in addition to that of forfeiture of property—without any tedious reference to the ordinary procedures of the law-courts. On the 6th of June a third act was passed, intended to reach those who, without actually mutinying or rebelling, should attempt to excite disaffection in the native army, or should harbour persons guilty of that offence; general officers were empowered to appoint courts-martial, and executive bodies to appoint special commissions, to try all such offenders at once and on the spot, and to inflict varying degrees of punishment according to the offence. Some time afterwards a fourth act gave an extended application of these stringent measures to India generally. In all these instances Europeans were specially exempted from the operation of the statutes. The enormous powers thus given were largely executed; and they were rendered still more formidable by another statute, enabling police-officers to arrest without warrant persons suspected of being mutineers or deserters, and rendering zemindars punishable if they failed to give early information of the presence of suspicious persons on their respective estates. ‘Not only therefore,’ says the governor-general in council, ‘is it not the case that martial law was not proclaimed in districts in which there was a necessity for it; but the measures taken for the arrest, summary trial, and punishment of heinous offenders of every class, civil as well as military, were far more widely spread and certainly not less stringent than any that could have resulted from martial law.’

The outcry against Viscount Canning became so excessively violent in connection with two subjects, that the Court of Directors sought for explanations from him thereon, superadded to the dispatches forwarded in the regular course. The one referred to the state of Calcutta; the other to the proceedings of special commissioners in the Allahabad district. A petition was presented from about two hundred and fifty inhabitants of Calcutta, praying that martial law should at once be proclaimed throughout the whole of the Bengal presidency; on the ground that the whole native population was in a disaffected state, that the native police were as untrustworthy as the native soldiery, and that the Company’s civil authorities were wholly unable to cope with an evil of so great magnitude. The governor-general in council declined to accede to this request. He urged in reply—that there was no evidence of the native population of Bengal being in so disaffected a state as to render martial law necessary; that such law had already been enforced in the northwest provinces, where the mutineers were chiefly congregated; that in Bengal the native police, aided by the European civilians, would probably be strong enough to quell ordinary disturbances; that, as all his European troops were wanted to confront the mutinous sepoys, he had none to spare for ordinary police duties; and that in Calcutta especially, where a zealous volunteer guard had been organised, the peace might easily be preserved by ordinary watchfulness on the part of the European inhabitants. This reply was in many quarters interpreted into a declaration that the natives would be petted and favoured more than the Europeans.

The second charge, as stated above, related to the proceedings in the Allahabad district. When the power of appointing special commissions for trying the natives was given, the civilians in that region entered on the duty in a more stern manner 214than anywhere else. In about forty days a hundred and seventy natives were tried, of whom a hundred were put to death. When a detailed report of the proceedings reached Calcutta, grave doubts were entertained whether the offences generally were proportionate to the punishment. Many persons had been put to death for having plundered property in their possession, without being accused of having actually been engaged in mutiny; some were put to death for obtaining by threats salary that was not due to them from the revenue establishments; several others for ‘robbing their masters,’ and some for ‘plundering salt;’ six were condemned to death in one day for having in their possession more rupees than they could or would account for. The question forced itself on Lord Canning’s attention, whether such offences and such punishments as these were intended to be met by the extraordinary tribunals established in time of danger. The culprits might have been and probably were rogues; but it did not follow that they deserved death at the hands of civilians, irrespective of military proceedings. The Calcutta authorities considered, from all the information that reached them, that these large powers ‘had been in some cases unjustly and recklessly used; that the indiscriminate hanging, not only of persons of all shades of guilt, but of those whose guilt was at the least very doubtful, and the general burning and plunder of villages, whereby the innocent as well as the guilty, without regard to age or sex, were indiscriminately punished, and in some instances sacrificed,’ were unjustifiable. It further became manifest that ‘the proceedings of the officers of government had given colour to the rumour, which was industriously spread and credulously received in all parts of the country, that the government meditated a general bloody prosecution of Mohammedans and Hindoos in revenge for the crimes of the sepoys, and only awaited the arrival of European troops to put this design into execution.’ This led the governor-general to issue a resolution on the 31st of July, containing detailed instructions for the guidance of civil officers in the apprehension, trial, and punishment of natives charged with or suspected of offences. This resolution was interpreted by the opponents of Viscount Canning as a check upon all the heroes who were fighting the battles of the British against the mutinous natives; but it was afterwards clearly shewn that the resolution applied, and was intended to apply, only to the civil servants, among whom such vast powers were novel and often susceptible of abuse; it did not cramp the energies of generals or military commanders who might feel that martial law was necessary to the successful performance of their duties. So obstructive, however, was the bitter hostility felt in many quarters against the supreme government at Calcutta, that it led to a ready belief in charges which were afterwards shewn to be wholly untrue. When the Northwest Provinces had fallen into such utter anarchy by the mutiny, that the rule of the lieutenant-governor was little better than a name, a new government was formed called the Central Provinces, comprising the regions of Goruckpore, Benares, Allahabad, the Lower Doab, Bundelcund, and Saugor, and placed under the lieutenant-governorship of Mr Grant, who had until that time been one of the members of the supreme council. A rumour reached London, and was there credited three months before Viscount Canning knew aught concerning it, that ‘Mr Grant had liberated a hundred and fifty mutineers or rebels placed in confinement by Brigadier-general Neill.’ As a consequence of this rumour, it was often asserted in London that Mr Grant was more friendly to the native mutineers than to the British soldiery. Knowing the gross improbability of such a story, Viscount Canning at once appealed to the best authority on the subject—Mr Grant himself. It then appeared that the lieutenant-governor had never pardoned or released a single person seized by Neill or any other military authority; that he had never commuted or altered a single sentence passed by such authorities; that he had never written to or even seen Neill; that he had neither found fault with, nor commented upon, any of that general’s proceedings—in short, the charge was an unmitigated, unrelieved falsehood from beginning to end. As a mere canard, the governor-general would not have noticed it; but the calumny assumed historical importance when it affected public opinion in England during a period of several months.

We now arrive at the third subject marked out—the attitude of the Indian government towards the European population. It has been shewn in former chapters that, when the mutinies began, addresses were presented from various classes of persons at Calcutta, some expressing alarm, but all declaratory of loyalty. Similar declarations were made at Madras and Bombay—two cities of which we have said little, because they were happily exempt from insurgent difficulties. A few lines will suffice to shew the relation between these two cities and Calcutta, as seats of presidential government. Madras is situated on the east coast, far down towards Ceylon—perhaps the worst port in the world for the arrival and departure of shipping, on account of the peculiar surf that rages near the shore. Fort St George, the original settlement, is the nucleus around which have collected the houses and buildings which now constitute Madras. As Calcutta is called ‘Fort William’ in official documents, so is Madras designated ‘Fort St George.’ The principal streets out of the fort constitute ‘Black Town.’ Bombay, on the opposite coast, boasts of a splendid harbour that often excites the envy of the Madras inhabitants. The city is built on two or three islands, which are so connected by causeways and other constructions as to enclose a magnificent harbour. Nevertheless Madras has the larger population, the numbers being seven hundred and twenty thousand against five hundred and sixty thousand. So far as this 215Chronicle is concerned, both cities may pass without further description. Each was a metropolis, in all that concerned military, judicial, and civil proceedings; and each remained in peace during the mutiny, chiefly owing to the native armies of Madras and Bombay being formed of more manageable materials than that of Bengal. Lord Harris at the one city, and Lord Elphinstone at the other, received numerous declarations of loyalty from the natives; and were enabled to render military service to the governor-general, rather than seek aid from him.

In Calcutta, there was more difficulty than in Madras and Bombay. The government had to defend itself against Europeans as well as natives. It has already been stated that great hostility was shewn towards this government by resident Europeans not belonging to the Company’s service. On the one side, the Company was accused of regarding India as a golden egg belonging to its own servants; on the other, the Company sometimes complained that missionaries and newspapers encouraged disaffection among the natives. This had been a standing quarrel long before the mutiny broke out. As ministers of religion, missionaries of various Christian denominations were allowed to pursue their labours, but without direct encouragement. They naturally sympathised with the natives; but, however pure may have been their motive, it must be admitted that the missionaries often employed language that tended to place the Company and the natives in the antagonistic position of the injurers and the injured. In September 1856 certain missionaries in the Bengal presidency presented a memorial, setting forth in strong terms the deplorable social condition of the natives—enumerating a series of abuses and defects in the Indian government; and recommending the appointment of a commission of inquiry, to comprise men of independent minds, unbiassed by official or local prejudices. The alleged abuses bore relation to the police and judicial systems, gang-robberies, disputes about unsettled boundaries, the use of torture to extort confession, the zemindary system, and many others. The memorialists asserted that if remedies were not speedily applied to those abuses, the result would be disastrous, as ‘the discontent of the rural population is daily increasing, and a bitter feeling of hatred towards their rulers is being engendered in their minds.’ Mr Halliday, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, in reply to the memorial, pointed out the singular omission of the missionaries to make any even the most brief mention of the numerous measures undertaken by the government to remove the very evils complained of; thereby exhibiting a one-sided tendency inimical to the ends of justice. He declined to accede to the appointment of a commission on these grounds: That without denying the existence of great social evils, ‘the government is in possession of full information regarding them; that measures are under consideration, or in actual progress, for applying remedies to such of them as are remediable by the direct executive or legislative action of the government; while the cure of others must of necessity be left to the more tardy progress of national advancement in the scale of civilisation and social improvement.’ He expressed his ‘absolute dissent from the statement made, doubtless in perfect good faith, that the people exhibit a spirit of sullen discontent, on account of the miseries ascribed to them; and that there exists amongst them that bitter hatred to the government which has filled the memorialists, as they declare, with alarm as well as sorrow.’ The British Indian Association, consisting of planters, landed proprietors, and others, supported the petition for the appointment of a commission, evidently with the view of fighting the missionaries with their own weapons, by shewing that the missionaries were exciting the natives to disaffection. Mr Halliday declined to rouse up these elements of discord; Viscount Canning and the supreme council supported him; and the Court of Directors approved of the course pursued.

In the earlier weeks of the mutiny, or rather before the mutiny had actually begun, the colonel of a regiment at Barrackpore, as has already been shewn, brought censure upon himself by taking the duties of a missionary or Christian religious teacher among his own troops. Whatever judgment may be passed on this officer, or on those who condemned him, it is at least important to bear in mind that, throughout the whole duration of the mutiny and the battles consequent on it, one class of theorists persisted in asserting that the well-meant exertions of pious Christians had alarmed the prejudices of the native soldiers, and had led to the Revolt. Right or wrong, this theory, and the line of conduct that had led to it, greatly increased the embarrassments of the governor-general, and rendered it impossible for him to pursue a line of conduct that would please all parties.

Much more hostile, however, was the feeling raised against him in relation to an important measure concerning newspapers—turning against him the bitter pens of ready writers who resented any check placed upon their licence of expression. On the 13th of June, the legislative council of Calcutta, on the motion of the governor-general, passed an act whereby the liberty of the press in India was restricted for one year. The effect of this law was to replace the Indian press, for a time, very much in the position it occupied before Sir Charles Metcalfe’s government gave it liberty in 1835. Sir Thomas Munro and other experienced persons had, long before this last-named date, protested against any analogy between England and India, in reference to the freedom of the press. Sir Thomas was connected with the Madras government; but his observations were intended to apply to the whole of British India. In 1822 he said: ‘I cannot view the question of a free press in this country without feeling that 216the tenure by which we hold our power never has been and never can be the liberties of the people. Were the people all our own countrymen, I would prefer the utmost freedom of the press; but as they are, nothing could be more dangerous than such freedom. In place of spreading useful knowledge among the people and tending to their better government, it would generate insubordination, insurrection, and anarchy.... A free press and the dominion of strangers are things which are incompatible, and which cannot long exist together. For what is the first duty of a free press? It is to deliver the country from a foreign yoke, and to sacrifice to this one great object every meaner consideration; and if we make the press really free to the natives as well as to Europeans, it must inevitably lead to this result.’ Munro boldly, whether wisely or not, adopted the theory of India being a conquered country, and of the natives being more likely to write against than for their English rulers, if allowed unfettered freedom of the press. He pointed out that the restrictions on this freedom were really very few; extending only to attacks on the character of government and its officers, and on the religion of the natives. In reply to a suggestion that the native press might be placed under restriction, without affecting the Indo-British newspapers read by Europeans, he said: ‘We cannot have a monopoly of the freedom of the press; we cannot confine it to Europeans only. There is no device or contrivance by which this can be done.’ In fine, he declared his opinion that if the native press were made free, ‘it must in time produce nearly the same consequences here which it does everywhere else; it must spread among the people the principles of liberty, and stimulate them to expel the strangers who rule over them, and to establish a national government.’ When the liberty of the press was made free and full in 1835, the Court of Directors severely censured Sir Charles Metcalfe’s government for having taken that step without permission from London, and directed that the subject should be reconsidered; but Lord Auckland, who succeeded Sir Charles as governor-general, pointed out what appeared to him the difficulty of rescinding the liberty when once granted; and the directors yielded, though very unwillingly. The minute, in which the alteration of the law was made in 1835, was from the pen of Mr (afterwards Lord) Macaulay; but this eminent person at the same time admitted that the governor-general had, and ought to have, a power suddenly to check this liberty of the press in perilous times. The members of the supreme council at Calcutta, in their minutes on this subject, asserted the power and right of the government to use the check in periods of exigency.

General View of Madras.—From a Drawing by Thomas Daniell.

Viscount Canning, conceiving that all his predecessors had recognised the possible necessity of curbing the liberty of the press, considered whether the exigency for so doing had arrived. He found that it would be of little use to control the native press unless that of the English were controlled also; because he wished to avoid invidious distinctions; and because some of the newspapers, though printed in the English language, were written, owned, and published by natives, almost exclusively for circulation among 217native readers. The natives, it was found, were in the habit of procuring English newspapers, not only those published in India, but others published in England, and of causing the political news relating to their own country to be translated and read to them. This might not be amiss if the government were made responsible for such articles only as emanated from it; but the natives were often greatly alarmed at articles and speeches directed against them, or against their usages and religion, in the Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay newspapers—not by the government, but by individual writers. The newspaper press in India, whether English or native, has generally been distinguished by great violence in the mode of opposing the government; this violence, in times of peace, was disregarded by those against whom it was directed; but at a time when a hundred thousand native troops were more or less in mutiny, and when Mohammedan leaders were endeavouring to enlarge this military revolt into a national rebellion, Viscount Canning and his colleagues deemed it right to place a restriction on the liberty of the press, during the disturbed state of India.

Bombay.—From a View in the Library of the East India Company.

Very little has hitherto been known in England concerning the native newspapers of India; for few except the Company’s servants have come in contact with them. Their number is considerable, but the copies printed of each are exceedingly limited. In the Agra government alone, a few years ago, there were thirty-four native papers, of which the aggregate circulation did not reach two thousand, or less than sixty each on an average. Some appeared weekly, some twice a week. Some were printed in Persian, others in Oordoo, others in Hindee. About twenty more were published in various towns in the northwest regions of India. A few were sensible, many more trivial, but nearly all abusive of the government. As estimated by an English standard, the extremely small circulation would have rendered them wholly innocuous; but such was not the case in the actual state of affairs. The miserably written and badly lithographed little sheets of news had, each, its group of men seated round a fluent reader, and listening to the contents; one single copy sufficed for a whole regiment of sepoys; and it was observed, during a year or two before the Revolt, that the sepoys listened with unwonted eagerness to the reading of articles grossly vituperative of the government. The postal reform, effected by the Marquis of Dalhousie, exceeding in liberality even that of England itself, is believed to have led to an unexpected evil connected with the dissemination of seditious intelligence in India. To save expense, he placed natives instead of Europeans in most of the offices connected with this service; and it appears probable, from facts elicited during the mutiny, that Hindoo and Mohammedan postmasters were far too well acquainted with the substance of many of the letters which passed through their hands.

It may be well here to state that Lord Harris, governor of the presidency of Madras, dwelt on the unfair tone of the British press in India, before the actual commencement of the mutiny at Meerut. On the 2d of May he made a minute commencing thus: ‘I have now been three years in India, and during that period have made a 218point of keeping myself acquainted with the tenor of the larger portion of the British press, throughout the country; and I have no hesitation in asserting my impression to be that it is, more particularly in this presidency, disloyal in tone, un-English in spirit, and wanting in principle—seeking every opportunity, whether rightly or wrongly, of holding up the government to opprobrium.’ He denied that any analogy could be furnished from the harmlessness of such attacks in the home country; because, in England, ‘every man is certain of having an opportunity of bringing his case before the public, either by means of rival newspapers or in parliament.’ This facility is not afforded in India; and thus the newspaper articles are left to work their effects uncompensated. ‘I do not see how it is possible for the natives, in the towns more especially, with the accusations, misrepresentations, and calumnies which are constantly brought before them, to come to any other conclusion than that the government of their country is carried on by imbecile and dishonest men.’

The legislative statute of the 13th of June may be described in a few words. All printing-presses, types, and printing-machinery throughout British India were, by virtue of this act, to be registered, and not used without licence from the government. Magistrates were empowered to order a search of suspected buildings, and a seizure of all unregistered printing-apparatus and printed paper found therein. All applications for a printing-licence were to be made on oath of the proprietor, with full particulars on certain specified matters. The licence might be refused or granted; and, if granted, might be at any time revoked. A copy of every paper, sheet, or book was required to be sent to the authorities, immediately on being printed. The government, by notice in the government gazette, might prohibit the publication of the whole or any part of any book or paper, either in the whole or any part of India; and this was equally applicable whether the book or paper were printed in India or any other country. The penalty—for using unlicensed printing-machinery, or for publishing in defiance of a gazette order—was a fine of 5000 rupees (£500), or two years’ imprisonment, or both. This punishment was so rigorous, that the instances were very few in which the press disobeyed the new law; it produced great exasperation in some quarters; but the proprietors of newspapers generally placed such a check upon editors and writers as to prevent the insertion of such articles as would induce the government to withdraw the printing-licence.

So alien are such restrictions to the genius of the English people, that nothing but dire necessity could have driven the Calcutta government to make them. They must be judged by an Indian, not an English standard. It is well to remark, however, as shewing the connection of events, that this statute was one cause of the violent attacks made against Lord Canning in London; the freedom, checked in India, appeared in stronger form than ever when several of the writers came over to England, or sent for printing in England books or pamphlets written in India. When one of these editors arrived in London, he brought with him a petition or memorial, signed by some of the Europeans at Calcutta not connected with the government, praying for the removal of Viscount Canning from the office held by him.

Having thus passed in review three courses of proceeding adopted by the Indian government consequent on the outbreak—in reference to military operations, to judicial punishments, and to public opinion—we will now notice in a similarly rapid way the line of policy adopted by the home government to stem the mutiny, and by the British nation to succour those who had suffered or were suffering by it.

It was on the 27th of June that the government, the parliament, and the people of England were startled with the news that five or six native regiments had revolted at Meerut and Delhi, and that the ancient seat of the Mogul Empire was in the hands of mutineers and rebels. During some weeks previously, observations had occasionally been made in parliament, relating to the cartridge troubles at Barrackpore and Berhampore; but the ministers always averred that those troubles were slight in character. The Earl of Ellenborough, who had been governor-general from 1842 to 1844, and who possessed extensive knowledge of Indian affairs generally, had also drawn attention occasionally to the state of the Indian armies. While India was in commotion, but six or seven weeks before England was aware of that fact, the earl asked the ministers (on May 19th) what arrangements had been made for reinforcing the British army in India. Lord Panmure, as war-minister, replied that certain regiments intended for India had been diverted from that service and sent to China; but that four other regiments would be ready to depart from England about the middle of June, to relieve regiments long stationed in the East Indies; irrespective of four thousand recruits for the Company’s service. On the 9th of June Lord Ellenborough expressed suspicions that a mutinous feeling was being engendered among the sepoys, by a fear on their part that their religion was about to be tampered with; this expression of opinion led to various counter-views in both Houses of parliament.

Two or three paragraphs may here be usefully given, to shew to how great an extent the number and distribution of European troops in India had been a subject of consideration among the governing authorities, both at Calcutta and in London. Towards the close of 1848 the Marquis of Dalhousie drew attention to the propriety, or even necessity, of increasing the European element in the Indian armies; and, to this end, he suggested that an application should be made to the crown for three additional regiments of the royal army. This was attended to; three regiments 219being promptly sent. In March 1849, consequent on the operations in the Punjaub, application was made for two more Queen’s regiments; which was in like manner quickly responded to. All these additions, be it observed, were to be fully paid for by the Company. These five regiments, despatched during the early months of 1849, comprised 220 commissioned officers, and 5335 non-commissioned, rank and file. In 1853, after the annexation of Pegu, the marquis wrote home to announce that that newly-acquired province could not be securely held with a less force than three European regiments, eight native regiments, and a proportionate park of artillery; and he asked: ‘Whence is this force to be derived?’ The British empire in India was growing; the European military element, he urged, must grow with it; and he demanded three new regiments from England to occupy Pegu, seeing that those already in India were required in the older provinces and presidencies. There were at that time five regiments of European cavalry in India, all belonging to the Queen’s army; and thirty regiments of European infantry, of which twenty-four were Queen’s, and the remaining six belonging to the Company. As the crown retained the power of drawing away the royal regiments from India at any time of emergency, the marquis deemed it prudent that the three additional regiments required should belong to the Company, one to each presidential army, and not to the royal forces. The Company, by virtue of the act passed that year (1853), obtained permission to increase the number of European troops belonging absolutely to it in India; and, that permission being obtained, three additional regiments were planned in the year, to comprise about 2760 officers and men. Only two out of the three, however, were really organised. When the war with Russia broke out in 1854, a sudden demand was made for the services of several of the Queen’s regiments in India—namely, the 22d, 25th, 96th, and 98th foot, and the 10th Hussars; at the same time, as only the 27th and 35th foot were ordered out to India, the royal troops at the disposal of the governor-general were lessened by three regiments. This step the Marquis of Dalhousie, and his colleagues at Calcutta, most earnestly deprecated. A promise was made that two more regiments, the 82d and 90th foot, should be sent out early in 1855; but the marquis objected to the weakening of the Indian army even by a single English soldier. In a long dispatch, he dwelt upon the insufficiency of this army for the constantly increasing area of the British army in India. The European army in India, the Queen’s and the Company’s together, was in effect only two battalions stronger in September 1854 than it had been in January 1847; although in that interval of nearly eight years the Punjaub, Pegu, and Nagpoor, had been added to British India. The army was so scattered over this immense area, that there was only one European battalion between Calcutta and Agra, a distance of nearly eight hundred miles. The marquis earnestly entreated the imperial government not to lessen his number, already too small, of European troops—not only because the area to be defended had greatly increased; but because many of the princes of India were at that time looking with a strange interest at the war with Russia, as if ready to side with the stronger power, whichever that might be. There were symptoms of this kind in Pegu, in Nepaul, and elsewhere, which he thought ought not to be disregarded. No document penned by the marquis throughout his eight years’ career in India was more energetic, distinct, or positive than this; he protested respectfully but earnestly against any further weakening of the European element in his forces. The home government, however, had engaged in a war with a great power which needed all its resources; the withdrawal of the regiments was insisted on; and the governor-general was forced to yield.

The year 1855 presented nothing worthy of comment in relation to the Indian armies; but in February 1856, just on surrendering the reins of government to Viscount Canning, the Marquis of Dalhousie drew up a minute bearing on this subject. At that time, fifteen months before the commencement of the mutiny at Meerut, there were thirty-three regiments of European infantry in India.^[34] The marquis sketched a plan for so redistributing the forces as to provide for the principal stations during peace, and also for a field-army in case of outbreak in Cabool, Cashmere, Nepaul, Ava, or other adjacent states; he required two additional regiments to effect this, and shewed how the whole thirty-five might most usefully be apportioned between the three presidencies.^[35] He suggested that this number of 24 Queen’s regiments of foot should be a minimum, not at any time reducible by the imperial government without consent of the Indian authorities; he remembered the Crimean war, and dreaded the consequence of any possible future war in depriving India of royal troops. These were suggestions, made by the Marquis of Dalhousie when about to leave India; they possessed no other authority than as suggestions, and do not appear to have been taken officially into consideration 220until the mutiny threw everything into confusion. During the later months of 1856, Viscount Canning, the new governor-general, drew the attention of the Court of Directors to the fact that the English officers in the native regiments had become far too few in number; some were appointed to irregular corps, others to civil duties, until at length the regiments were left very much under-officered. As a means of partially meeting this want, the directors authorised in September that every regular native infantry or cavalry regiment should have two additional officers, one captain and one lieutenant; and that each European regiment in the Company’s service should have double this amount of addition. In the same month it was announced by the military authorities in London that the two royal regiments, 25th and 89th, borrowed from India for the Russian war in 1854, should be replaced by two others early in 1857; and that at the same time two additional regiments of Queen’s foot should be sent out, to relieve the 10th and 29th, which had been in India ever since 1842.

The year of the mutiny, 1857, witnessed the completion of the military arrangement planned in 1856, and the organisation of others arising out of the complicated state of affairs in Persia, China, and India. About the middle of February, the second division of the army intended for the Persian expedition left Bombay, making, with the first division, a force of about 12,000 men under the command of Sir James Outram. About 4000 of that number were European troops.^[36] Viscount Canning, speculating on the probability that a third division would be needed, pointed out that India could not possibly supply it; and that it would be necessary that the home government should send out, not only the four regiments already agreed on, but three others in addition, and that the 10th and 29th regiments should not return to Europe so early as had been planned. There was another complication, arising out of the Chinese war; the 82d and 90th foot, intended to replace the two regiments withdrawn from India during the Crimean war, were now despatched to the Chinese seas instead of to India; and the directors had to make application for two others. Early in May, before any troubles in India were known to the authorities in London, it was arranged that the plan of 1856 should be renewed—two Queen’s regiments to be sent out to replace those withdrawn for the Crimean war; and two others to relieve the 10th and 29th—bringing the royal infantry in India to the usual number of twenty-four regiments. Of these four regiments, two were to proceed to Calcutta, one to Madras, and one to Kurachee. They were to consist of the 7th Fusiliers, the 88th and 90th foot, and the 3d battalion of the Rifle Brigade. It was also planned that the 2d and 3d Dragoons should go out to India to relieve the 9th Lancers and 14th Dragoons. Furthermore, it was arranged that these six regiments should take their departure from England in June and July, so as to arrive in India at a favourable season of the year; and that with them should go out drafts from Chatham, in number sufficient to complete the regiments already in India up to their regular established strength. So far as concerned Persia, the proposed third division was not necessary; the Shah assented to terms which—fortunately for British India—not only rendered this increased force unnecessary, but set free the two divisions already sent.

Such was the state of the European element in the Indian army at, and some time before, the commencement of the mutiny. It was on the 27th of June, we have said, that the bad news from Meerut reached London. Two days afterwards, the Court of Directors ordered officers at home on furlough or sick-leave to return to their regiments forthwith, so far as health would permit. They also made a requisition to the government for four full regiments of infantry, in addition to those already decided on; to be returned, or replaced by other four, when the mutiny should be ended. On the 1st of July—shewing thereby the importance attached to the subject—the government announced, not only its acquiescence in the demand, but the numbers or designations of the regiments marked out—namely, the 19th, 38th, and 79th foot, and the 1st battalion of the 1st foot. It was also agreed to that the four regiments intended to have been relieved—namely, the 10th and 29th foot, and the 9th and 14th Dragoons—should not be relieved at present, but that, on the contrary, drafts should go out to reinforce them. Another mail arrived, making known further disasters; whereupon the directors on the 14th of July made another application to government for six more regiments of infantry, and eight companies of royal artillery—the artillerymen to be sent out from England, the horses from the Cape of Good Hope, and the guns and ammunition to be provided in India itself. Two days afterwards—so urgent did the necessity appear—the government named the six regiments which should be sent out in compliance with this requisition—namely, the 20th, 34th, 42d, 54th, and 97th foot, and the 2d battalion of the Rifle Brigade; together with two troops of horse-artillery, and six companies of royal (foot) artillery.

Summing up all these arrangements, therefore, we find the following result: Two regiments of royal infantry—7th Fusiliers and 88th foot—were to go to India, to replace two borrowed or withdrawn from the Company in 1854; two others—the 90th foot and the 3d battalion of the Rifle 221Brigade—to relieve the 10th and 29th foot, and two regiments of cavalry—the 2d and 3d Dragoons—to relieve the 9th Lancers and 14th Dragoons, but the four relieved regiments not to return till the mutiny should be quelled; four regiments of infantry—the 19th, 38th, and 79th foot, and the 1st battalion of the 1st foot—to go out in consequence of the bad news received from India at the end of June; six regiments of infantry—the 20th, 34th, 42d, 54th, 97th, and 2d battalion of the Rifle Brigade—together with several troops and companies of artillery, were to go out in consequence of the still more disastrous news received in the middle of July; drafts were to go out to bring up to the full strength the whole of the Queen’s regiments in India; and, lastly, recruits were to go out, to bring up to the full complement the whole of the European regiments belonging to the Company. These various augmentations to the strength of armed Europeans in India amounted to little less than twenty-four thousand men, all placed under orders by the middle of July.

Various discussions bearing on the military arrangements for India, took place in the two houses of parliament. Lord Ellenborough frequently recommended the embodiment of the militia and the calling out of the yeomanry, in order that England might not be left defenceless by sending a very strong royal army to India. The Earl of Hardwicke suggested that all the troops at Aldershott camp, about sixteen thousand in number, should at once be sent off to India. These, and other members of both Houses, insisted on the perilous position of India; whereas the ministers, in their speeches if not in their proceedings, treated the mutiny as of no very serious importance. Differences of opinion existed to a most remarkable extent; but the president of the Board of Control, Mr Vernon Smith, subjected himself at a later period to very severe criticism, on account of the boldness of the assertions made, or the extent of the ignorance displayed, in the earlier stages of the mutiny. When the news from Meerut and Delhi arrived, he said in the House of Commons: ‘I hope that the House will not be carried away by any notion that we exaggerate the danger because we have determined upon sending out these troops. It is a measure of security alone with respect to the danger to be apprehended. I cannot agree with the right honourable gentleman (Mr Disraeli) that our Indian empire is imperiled by the present disaster. I say that our Indian empire is not imperiled; and I hope that in a short time the disaster, dismal as it is, will be effectually suppressed by the force already in that country.... Luckily the outrage has taken place at Delhi; because it is notorious that that place may be easily surrounded; so that if we could not reduce it by force, we could by famine.... Unfortunately, the mail left on the 28th of May; and I cannot, therefore, apprise the House that the fort of Delhi has been razed to the ground; but I hope that ample retribution has by this time been inflicted on the mutineers.’ That other persons, military as well as civil, felt the mutiny to be a wholly unexpected phenomenon, is true; but this minister obviously erred by his positive assertions; his idea of ‘easily surrounding’ a walled city seven miles in circuit was preposterous; and there was displayed an unpardonable ignorance of the state of the armies in that country in the further assertion that ‘there are troops in India equal to any emergency.’

A question of singular interest and of great importance arose—how should the reinforcements of troops be sent to India? But before entering on this, it will be well to notice the arrangements made for providing a commander for them when they should reach their destination. As soon as it was known in London, early in July, that General Anson was dead, the government appointed Sir Colin Campbell as his successor. The provisional appointment of Sir Patrick Grant as commander of the forces in India was approved as a judicious step on the part of the Calcutta government; but, rightly or wrongly, the permanent appointment to that high office had come to be considered a ministerial privilege in London; and thus Sir Colin was sent out to supersede Sir Patrick. Fortunately, the general selected carried with him the trust and admiration of all parties. For a time, it is true, there was a disposition to foster a Campbell party and a Grant party among newspaper writers. One would contend that Sir Colin, though a brave and good soldier, and without a superior in command of a brigade, had nevertheless been without opportunity of shewing those powers of combination necessary for the suppression of a wide-spread mutiny, perhaps the reconquest of an immense empire; whereas Sir Patrick was just the man for the occasion, possessing the very experience, temper, and other qualities for dealing with the native soldiers. On the other hand, it was contended that Campbell was something more than a mere general of brigade, having successfully commanded masses of troops equal in extent to armies during the Punjaub war; whereas Grant, being by professional education and military sympathies a Bengal officer—although afterwards commander at Madras—had imbibed that general leaning towards the sepoys which rendered such officers unfit to deal sternly with them in time of disaffection. Happily, this controversy soon came to an end; Sir Colin was pronounced by the public verdict to be the right man, without any disparagement to Sir Patrick; and it was judiciously suggested by the Earl of Ellenborough that the last-named general might, with great advantage to the state, be made a military member of the supreme council at Calcutta, to advise the governor-general on army and military subjects. The nation recognised in Sir Colin the soldierly promptness which had distinguished Wellington and Napier, and which he illustrated in the following way: On the morning of Saturday the 11th 222of July, the news of General Anson’s death reached London; at two o’clock on the same day a cabinet council was held; immediately after the council an interview took place between the minister of war and the commander of the forces; consequent on this interview, Sir Colin Campbell was offered the post of commander-in-chief in India; he accepted it; he was asked how soon he could take his departure; his reply was ‘To-morrow;’ and, true to his word, he left England on the Sunday evening—taking very little with him but the clothes on his back. Men felt that there would be no unnecessary amount of ‘circumlocution’ in the proceedings of such a general—a veteran who had been an officer in the army forty-nine years; and who, during that long period, had served in the Walcheren expedition; then in the Peninsular battles and sieges of Vimieira, Corunna, Barossa, Vitoria, San Sebastian, and Bidassoa; then in North America; then in the West Indies; then in the first Chinese war; then in the second Sikh war; and lastly in the Crimea.

Sir Colin Campbell, as a passenger remarkably free from luggage and baggage of every kind, was able to take advantage of the quickest route to India—by rail to Folkestone, steam to Boulogne, rail to Marseille, steam to Alexandria, rail and other means to Suez, and thence steam to Calcutta. Whether the troops could take advantage of this or any other kind of swift conveyance, was a question whereon public authorities and public advisers soon found themselves at variance. There were four projects—to proceed through France to Alexandria and Suez; to reach Alexandria by sea from Southampton; to steam from England to Calcutta round the Cape of Good Hope; and to take this last-named route by sailing-ships instead of steamers. A few words may usefully be said on each of these four plans.

As the overland route through France is the quickest, some advisers urged that it would therefore be the best; but this was by no means a necessary inference. It would require an immense amount of changing and shifting. Thrice would the men of the various regiments have to enter railway-trains—at London or some other English station, at Boulogne, and at Alexandria—perhaps also a fourth time at Paris; thrice would they have to leave railway-trains—at Folkestone, at Marseille, and at Cairo or some other place in Egypt; thrice would they have to embark in steamers—at Folkestone, at Marseille, and at Suez; and thrice would they have to disembark—at Boulogne, at Alexandria, and at Calcutta. The difficulties incidental to these many changes would be very great, although of course not insuperable. There would, in addition, be involved a delicate international question touching the passage of large bodies of troops through the territories of another sovereign. The Emperor of France, at a time of friendly alliance, would possibly have given the requisite permission; but other considerations would also have weight; and it is, on the whole, not surprising that the route through France was left unattempted.

It does not follow, however, from difficulties in the French route, that the sea-route to Alexandria would be unavailable; on the contrary, that mode of transit found many advocates. The distance from Southampton to Alexandria is about three thousand miles; and this distance could obviously be traversed, in a number of days easy of estimate, by a steamer requiring no transhipment of cargo. Another steamer would make the voyage from Suez to Calcutta; and an overland passage through Egypt would complete the route. This is a much shorter route to Calcutta than that viâ the Cape of Good Hope, in the ratio of about eight thousand miles to twelve thousand; it is adopted for the heavy portion of the India mail; and many persons thought it might well be adopted also for the transmission of troops. The ministers in parliament, however, explained their reasons for objecting to this route. These objections referred principally to steamers and coal, of which there were no more in the Indian seas than were necessary for the mail service. The matter was argued thus: The first mail from England, after the news of the mutiny, left on the 10th of July; it would reach Bombay about the 10th of August; a return mail would start from Bombay on the 16th of August, describing the arrangements made for receiving at Suez any troops sent by the Egyptian route; that letter would reach London about the 16th of September; and if troops were sent off immediately, with everything prepared, they could not have reached India till towards the end of October—four months after the receipt of the first disastrous news from Meerut. A vessel by the Cape route, if sent off at once, would reach as soon. This argument depended wholly on the assumption that it would be necessary to spend three months in sending and receiving messages, before the troops could safely be started off from Southampton to Alexandria. Some of those who differed from the government on this point admitted that only a small number of troops could be conveyed by this route, owing to the unfinished state of the land-conveyance from Alexandria to Suez.^[37] The thirty miles of sandy desert to be traversed, either by marching or in vehicles, would necessarily entail much difficulty and confusion if the number of troops were large, especially as neither the isthmus nor its railway belonged to England. Then, again, there are questions concerning calms, storms, monsoons, trade-winds, shoals, and coral reefs, which were warmly discussed by the advocates of different systems; some of whom contended that the Red Sea cannot safely be depended on by ship-loads 223of troops during the second half of the year; while others argued that the dangers of the route are very slight. On the one side, it was represented that, by adopting the Suez route, there would be many changes in the modes of travel, many sources of confusion wherever those changes were made, many uncertainties whether there would be steamers ready at Suez, many doubts about the supply of coal at Aden and elsewhere, many perils of wreck in and near the Red Sea, much deterioration of health to the troops during the hot weather in that region, and much embarrassment felt by Viscount Canning if the troops came to him faster than he could transfer them up the country. Certain of these government doubts were afterwards admitted to be well founded; others were shewn to be erroneous; and though a few regiments were sent by the Suez route later in the year, it became pretty generally admitted, that if only one or two regiments had taken that route early in July, the benefit to India would have been very great, and the difficulties not more than might have been easily conquered.

Next for consideration was the Cape route. Those who admitted that the overland journey was suited only for a small body of troops, and not for an army of thirty thousand men, had yet to settle whether sailing-ships or steamers were best fitted for this service. In some quarters it was urged: ‘Employ our screw war-steamers; we are at peace in Europe, and can send our soldiers quickly by this means to India, without the expense of chartering steamers belonging to companies or private persons. If sufficient bounties are offered, in one week we could obtain seamen enough to man twenty war-steamers. Take the main and lower-deck guns out of the ships; place fifteen hundred troops in each of the large screw line-of-battle ships; and man each ship with half the war complement, the soldiers themselves serving as marines.’ To this it was replied that line-of-battle ships would be dearer rather than cheaper than chartered vessels, because they could not lessen the charge by back-cargoes. Sir Charles Napier contended, moreover, that screw war-steamers could not be fitted out as troop-ships in less than three months after the order was given; and that great difficulty would be found in raising men for them. The government was influenced by these or similar considerations; for no troops were sent out in war-vessels—possibly owing to a prudential wish to keep all war-ships ready for warlike exigencies.

There remained, lastly, the question whether, the Cape route being adopted, it would be better to hire steam-ships or sailing-ships for conveying troops to India. Eager inquiries on this question were made in parliament soon after the news of the outbreak arrived. The ministers, in reference to the superiority of steamers over sailing-ships, stated that, from the difficulty in procuring steamers of the requisite kind, and the delay caused by the number of intermediate points at which they would have to touch for coal, steamers would probably not reach the Indian ports more quickly than sailing-ships. Lord Ellenborough admitted that, when he was in India, sailing-vessels were found better than steamers for India voyages in the autumnal half of the year; but this left untouched the important improvements effected in steam-navigation during the intervening period of fourteen years. The battle was much contested. Sir Charles Wood, First Lord of the Admiralty, pointed out that fast sailing-ships often went from England to Calcutta in 90 to 100 days; that auxiliary screws had been known to take from 90 to 120 days; and therefore that we were not certain of quicker voyages by steam than by sail, even (which was doubtful) if coal enough were procurable at the Cape. This roused the advocates of steaming, who complained that the minister had compared quick sailing-ships with slow steamers. Mr Lindsey asserted that the average duration of twenty-two sail-voyages was 132 days; and that the steam-average would not exceed 94 days. Another authority averred that the average of ninety-eight sail-voyages was 130 days; and that of seven screw-steam voyages, 93 days.

Such were a few of the points brought under consideration, in connection with the schemes for sending troops to India. We mention them here, because they bore intimately on the mutiny and its history. A compromise between the various schemes was effected by the government, in this way:—The ten thousand troops intended to be sent out, as reinforcements, reliefs, and recruits, before the news of the disasters reached England, were despatched as originally intended, in ordinary sailing-vessels; the four thousand additional troops, immediately applied for by the Company, were despatched, half in screw-steamers, and half in fast-sailing clippers; while the six thousand supplied on a still later requisition were sent almost wholly in steamers. It was not until late in the year, when the slowness of most of the voyages had been made manifest, that the superiority of steaming became unquestionable—provided the various coal-depôts could be kept well supplied. Setting aside all further controversy as to the best mode of transit, the activity of the movements was unquestionable. In May and June few of the regiments and ships were ready, and therefore few only were despatched; but after that the rapidity was something remarkable. In July more than thirty troop-laden ships departed from our shores, carrying numbers varying from 131 to 438 soldiers each. August was a still more busy month, in relation both to the number of ships and the average freight of each; there being forty troop-laden ships, carrying from 208 to 1057 soldiers each. In July not a single steam-ship was included in the number; but in August nearly half were steamers. The most remarkable shipments were those in the James Baines clipper sailing-ship (1037 men of the 42d and 92d foot), the Champion of the Seas 224clipper (1032 men of the 42d and 20th foot) and the Great Britain screw-steamer (1057 men of the 8th Hussars and 17th Lancers). In these three splendid ships the troops were conveyed with a degree of comfort rarely if ever before attained in such service. While the necessary arrangements were in progress for shipping off the twenty-four thousand men chosen by the middle of July, other plans were being organised for despatching further regiments; insomuch that, by the end of the year, very nearly forty thousand men had been sent off to the scene of mutiny. In what order and at what times these troops reached their destination, may usefully be noted in a later page. Towards the close of the year the Suez route was adopted for a few regiments; and the rapidity of passage was such as to lead to much expression of regret that that route had not been adopted earlier—although an opinion continued to prevail on the part of the government and the Company that it would not have been practicable to send the bulk of the army by that means.

Another important question arose during the year, how these troops ought to be clothed, and their health secured. English soldiers complain of their tightly buttoned and buckled garments in hot weather, even in an English climate; but in an Indian summer the oppression of such clothing is very grievous; and much anxiety was manifested, when it became known that thirty or forty thousand troops were to set out for the East, as to the dress to be adopted. The War-office issued a memorandum on the subject, chiefly with the view of allaying public anxiety;^[38] but it became afterwards known that, owing to blunders and accidents similar to those which so disastrously affected the Crimean army, the light clothing, even if sufficient in quantity, was not in the right place at the right time; and our gallant men were only kept from complaining by their excitement at the work to be done. It must at the same time be admitted that, owing to the slowness of the voyages, the majority of the reinforcements did not land in India till the intense heat of summer had passed. In reference to the important question of the health of the troops, Dr James Harrison, of the Company’s service, drew up a series of rules or suggestions, for the use of officers in the management of their troops. These rules, which received the approval of Sir Colin Campbell, bore relation to the hours of marching; the length of each march; the kind of beverage best for the soldier before starting; the marching-dress in hot weather; the precautions against sitting or lying in wet clothes; the necessity for bathing; the best choice of food and the best mode of cooking; the stimulants and beverages, &c.

It would be difficult to enumerate all the modes in which the government, the legislature, and the press, sought to meet the difficulties and remedy the evils arising out of the Indian mutiny; nor would such an enumeration be necessary, further than concerned the really practicable and adopted measures. At a time when each mail from India increased the sum-total of disastrous news, each grievance found its own peculiar expositor, who insisted that that particular grievance had been the main cause of the mutiny, and that a remedy must be found in that particular direction. Nevertheless, in a series of short paragraphs to close the present chapter, it may be possible to sketch the general character of the plans and thoughts that occupied the public mind.

Railways were not forgotten. It was strongly urged that if Indian railways had been begun earlier, and carried to a further stage towards completion, the mutiny either could not have happened at all, or might have been crushed easily by a small force having great powers of locomotion. The disorders in India did not prevent the forwarding of schemes for new lines of railway—such as the Sinde Railway, from Kurachee to Hydrabad, there to be connected with steamers up the Indus to Moultan; the Punjaub Railway, from Moultan to Lahore, there to join the grand trunk railway; the Oude Railway, to supply Lucknow with a series of lines radiating in various directions; and the East Bengal Railway, to accommodate the region eastward of Calcutta. But besides these, the mutiny gave a new impetus to schemes for carrying railways across Western Asia towards India; either from Scutari (opposite Constantinople) to Bagdad, or from Antioch to the Euphrates, with a railway or a steam-route thence through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf. Some parts of these schemes were very wild; the projectors, in every case, required guaranteed interest from government, on the ground that the particular railway advocated would form a new and quick route from England to India available for government purposes; but as no guarantee was forthcoming, the schemes remained in abeyance.

Electric telegraphs did not fail to occupy a portion of public favour; and there is no question that their benefit was immense. Every lessening of the time for transmitting a message from India to London, or vice versâ, was so much gained to those responsible for quelling the mutiny. In the middle of 1857, small portions of submarine cable were 225immersed in the Mediterranean; but by the end of the year the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, and Corfu were all connected, greatly shortening the time for transmitting a telegram from Alexandria to Marseille. Superadded to this, the usefulness of the telegraph encouraged the projectors of new lines—from Corfu to Alexandria; from Antioch to the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; from Suez down the Red Sea to Aden and Kurachee. Rival companies occupied much of the public attention; and, had the British government been favourably disposed towards a guarantee or subsidy, engineers were not wanting who would have undertaken to connect London with Calcutta by an unbroken wire.

River-steaming was advocated as one of the great things needed for India. One scheme was for an Indus flotilla. Supposing a hundred miles of railway to be constructed from Kurachee to Hydrabad, then the Indus would be reached at a point whence it is navigable to Moultan for five hundred and seventy miles; and it was proposed for this service to establish a flotilla of fifteen steamers, fitted up for passengers and a little cargo, and each towing two flat-bottom barges for the conveyance of troops and heavy cargo. Irrespective of the success or failure of any particular project, the establishment of steamers on the Indus was unquestionably a practical good to which India had a right to look forward; for, as a glance at a map will shew, the Indus instead of the Ganges seems the natural route of communication from Europe to the upper provinces of India. The Ganges provinces also would undergo an immense development of resources by the increase of steam-navigation on that noble river.

Gun-boats for India did not fail to find advocates. It was deemed almost a certainty that if light-draught vessels of this description had been on two or three of the Indian rivers, especially the Ganges and the Jumna, the mutineers would have met with formidable opponents; and even if the mutiny were quelled, a few gun-boats might act as a cheap substitute for a certain number of troops, in protecting places near the banks of the great rivers. Impressed with this conviction, the East India Company commissioned Messrs Rennie to build a small fleet of high-pressure iron gun-boats; each to have one boiler, two engines, two screw-propellers, and to carry a twelve-pounder gun amidships. The boats were seventy-five feet long by twelve wide, and were so constructed as to be stowed away in the hold of a ship for conveyance from England to India.

The means of locomotion or communication—railways, electric telegraphs, river-steamers, river gun-boats—formed only one portion of the schemes which occupied public thought during the first six months of the mutiny. Still more attention was paid to men—men for fighting in India and for defending our home-coasts. Shortly before the bad news began to arrive from India, a council order announced that the militia would not be called out in 1857; two months afterwards, in reply to a question in the House of Commons, Viscount Palmerston would not admit that circumstances were so serious as to necessitate a change in this arrangement; he thought that recruiting would be cheaper than the militia, as a means of keeping up the strength of the army. In August, however, the ministers obtained an act of parliament empowering them to embody some of the militia during the recess, if the state of public affairs should render such a step necessary. A system of active recruiting commenced, and was continued steadily during several months. These recruits were intended, not to increase the number of regiments, but to add a second battalion to many regiments, and to increase the number of men in each battalion; some of the regiments were, by this twofold process, raised from 800 or 1000 to 2000 or 2400 men each. Volunteers, also, came forward from France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and other foreign countries; but these were mostly adventurers who sought officers’ commissions in India, and their services were not needed. The government made an attempt to encourage enlisting by offering commissions in the army to any private gentlemen who could bring forward a certain number of men each—a project not attended with much success. At certain crises, when the news from India was more than usually disastrous, appeals to patriotism shewed themselves in the newspapers—‘A Young Englishman;’ ‘Another Young Englishman;’ ‘A True Briton;’ ‘One of the Middle Class;’ or ‘A Young Scotsman’—would write to the journals, pour out his patriotism or his indignation, and shew what he would do if he only had the power. One proposed that clerks and shopmen out of situations should be embodied into a distinct volunteer corps; another said that, as he was a gentleman, and wished to avenge the foul murder of innocent women and children, he thought that he and such as he ought to be encouraged by commissions in the Indian army; another suggested that, if government would use them well, many young men would volunteer to serve in India, to return to their former mode of life when the mutiny was over. Some, rather in sarcasm than in earnest, suggested that drapers’ shopmen should drop the yard-measure, and go to India to fight; leaving to women the duty of serving muslins, and laces, and tapes. There was a certain meaning in all the suggestions, as expressive of honest indignation at the atrocities in India, especially those at Cawnpore; but, in its practical result, volunteering fell to the ground; and even the militia was not much appealed to. Various improvements were made in the condition of the common soldier; and recruits for the regular army came forward with much readiness.

We must now mention those who offered their monetary instead of their personal services in alleviation of the difficulties experienced in our Indian empire. Long before the mutinies in 226India had arrived at their greatest height, the question was anxiously debated both in that country and in England, what would be the worldly condition of the numerous families driven from their homes and robbed of all they possessed by the sepoys and marauders at the various stations? Every mail brought home fresh confirmation of the fact that the number of families thus impoverished was rapidly increasing; while on the other hand it was known that the East India Company could not reimburse the sufferers without much previous consideration. For, in the first place, it would have to be considered whether any distinction ought to be made between the two classes of Europeans in India—the civil and military servants of the Company, and those who, independent of the Company, had embarked capital in enterprises connected with indigo factories, opium farms, banks, printing-presses, &c.; and then would come a second inquiry whether the personal property only, or the commercial stock in trade also, should be considered as under the protection of the government. It was felt that immediate suffering ought not to wait for the solution of these questions; that when families had been burnt out or driven out of their homes, penniless and almost unclothed, immediate aid was needed from some quarter or other. This was admitted in the Punjaub, where Sir John Lawrence organised a fund for the relief of the necessitous; and it was admitted at Calcutta, where Lord and Lady Canning headed a subscription for providing shelter, raiment, and food to the hundreds of terrified fugitives who were constantly flocking to that capital. By the time the principal revolts of June were known in England, the last week of August had arrived; and then commenced one of those wonderful efforts in which London takes the lead of all the world—the collection of a large sum of money in a short time to ameliorate the sufferings arising out of some great calamity.

It was on the 25th of August that the lord-mayor presided at a meeting at the Mansion House to establish a fund for the relief of the sufferers by the Indian mutiny. The sum subscribed at the meeting did not much exceed a thousand pounds; but the whole merits of the case being set forth in newspapers, contributions poured in from all quarters, in the same noble spirit as had been manifested during the Crimean disasters. The high-born and the wealthy contributed large sums; the middle classes rendered their aid; country committees and town committees organised local subscriptions; large sums, made up of many small elements, were raised as collections after sermons in the churches and chapels; and when the Queen’s subjects in foreign and colonial regions heard of this movement, they sought to shew that they too shared in the common English feeling. Thousands swelled to tens of thousands, these to a hundred thousand, until in the course of a few months the fund rose to three or four hundred thousand pounds. In order to give system to the operations, thirty-five thousand circulars were issued, by the central committee in London, to all the authorities in church and state, to the ambassadors and ministers at foreign courts, to the governors of British colonies, and to the consuls at foreign ports.

This Mutiny Relief Fund was administered by four committees—General, Financial, Relief, and Ladies’ Committees. The General Committee settled the principles on which the fund was to be administered, determined the amount and destinations of the remittances to India, and controlled the proceedings of the subordinate committees. The Financial Committee supervised the accounts, the investments of the money, and the arrangement of remittances. The Relief Committee decided on applications for relief, on the administration of relief by donation or by loan, and on the application of means for the maintenance and education of children. The Ladies’ Committee took charge of such details as pertained more particularly to their own sex. Each of these committees met once a week. The first remittance was a sum of £2000 to Calcutta, to relieve some of the families who had been driven by the mutineers to seek shelter in that city. This was followed by frequent large remittances to the same place, and to Agra, Delhi, Lucknow, Bombay, and Lahore. Committees, formed in Calcutta and Bombay, corresponded with the head committee in London, and joined in carrying out plans for the expenditure of the fund. The donations and loans to persons who had arrived in England were small in amount; most of the aid being afforded to those who had not been able to leave India. The money was put out at interest as fast as the amount in hand exceeded the immediate requirements. At one time the government made an offer to appoint a royal commission for the administration of the fund; but this was declined; and there has been no reason for thinking that the transference of authority would have been beneficial. It was soon found that there were five classes of sufferers who would greatly need assistance from this fund—families of civil and military officers whose bungalows and furniture had been destroyed at the stations; the families of assistants, clerks, and other subordinate employés at the stations; European private traders and settlers, many of whom had been utterly impoverished; many missionary families and educational establishments; and the families of a large number of pensioners, overseers, artificers, indigo-workers, schoolmasters, shopkeepers, hotel-keepers, newspaper printers, &c. To apportion the amount of misery among these five classes would be impossible; but the past chapters of this work have afforded examples, sufficiently sad and numerous, of the mode in which all ranks of Europeans in India were suddenly plunged into want and desolation. At Agra, when the fort had been relieved from a long investment or siege by the rebels, almost the entire Christian population was not only houseless, but the majority were without 227the most essential articles of furniture or clothing; nearly all were living in cellars and vaults. At many other stations it was nearly as bad; at Lucknow it was still worse.

India speedily raised thirty thousand pounds on its own account, irrespective of aid from England; and most of this was expended at Calcutta in providing as follows: Board and lodging on arrival at Calcutta for refugees without homes or friends to receive them; clothing for refugees; monthly allowances for the support of families who were not boarded and lodged out of the fund; loans for purchasing furniture, clothing, &c.; free grants for similar purposes; passage and diet money on board Ganges steamers; loans to officers and others to pay for the passage of their families to England; free passage to England for the widows and families of officers; and education of the children of sufferers. These were nearly the same purposes as those to which the larger English fund was applied. The East India Company adopted a wholly distinct system in recognising the just claims of the officers more immediately in its service, and of the widows and children of those who fell during the mutiny—a system based on the established emoluments and pensions of all in the Company’s service.

It will thus be seen that the news of the Indian Revolt, when it reached London by successive mails, led to a remarkable and important series of suggestions and plans—intended either to strengthen the hands of the executive in dealing with the mutineers, or to succour those who had been plunged into want by the crimes of which those mutineers were the chief perpetrators.

Note.

At the end of the last chapter a table was given of the number of troops, European and native, in all the military divisions of India, on the day when the mutiny commenced at Meerut. It will be convenient to present here a second tabulation on a wholly different basis—giving the designations of the regiments instead of the numbers of men, and naming the stations instead of the divisions in which they were cantoned or barracked. This will be useful for purposes of reference, in relation to the gradual annihilation of the Bengal Hindustani army. The former table applied to the 10th of May 1857; the present will apply to a date as near this as the East India Register will permit—namely, the 6th of May; while the royal troops in India will be named according to the Army List for the 1st of May—a sufficiently near approximation for the present purpose. A few possible sources of error may usefully be pointed out. 1. Some or other of the India regiments were at all times moving from station to station; and these movements may in a few cases render it doubtful whether a particular corps had or had not left a particular station on the day named. 2. The station named is that of the head-quarters and the bulk of the regiment: detachments may have been at other places. 3. The Persian and Chinese wars disturbed the distribution of troops belonging to the respective presidencies. 4. The disarming and disbanding at Barrackpore and Berhampore are not taken into account; for they were not known in London at the time of compiling the official list. 5. The Army List, giving an enumeration of royal regiments in India, did not always note correctly the actual stations at a particular time. These sources of error, however, will not be considerable in amount.

Jumma Musjid, Agra.—Mosque built by Shah Jehan in 1656.

While these varied scenes were being presented; while sepoy regiments were revolting throughout the whole breadth of Northern India, and a handful of British troops was painfully toiling to control them; while Henry Lawrence was struggling, and struggling even to death, to maintain his position in Oude; while John Lawrence was sagaciously managing the half-wild Punjaub at a troublous time; while Wheeler at Cawnpore, and Colvin at Agra, were beset in the very thick of the mutineers; while Neill and Havelock were advancing up the Jumna; while Canning was doing his best at Calcutta, Harris and Elphinstone at Madras and Bombay, and the imperial government at home, to meet the trying difficulties with a determined front—while all this was doing, Delhi was the scene of a continuous series of operations. Every eye was turned towards that place. The British felt that there was no security for their power in India till Delhi was retaken; the insurgents knew that they had a rallying-point for all their disaffected countrymen, so long as the Mogul city was theirs; and hence bands of armed men were attracted thither by antagonistic motives. Although the real siege did not commence till many weary weeks had passed, the plan and preparations for it must be dated from the very day when the startling news spread over India that Delhi had been seized by rebellious sepoys, under the auspices of the decrepit, dethroned, debauched representative of the Moguls.

It was, as we have already seen (p. 70), on the morning of Monday the 11th of May, that the 11th and 20th regiments Bengal native infantry, and the 3d Bengal cavalry, arrived at Delhi after a night-march from Meerut, where they had mutinied on the preceding evening. At Delhi, we have also seen, those mutineers were joined by the 38th, 54th, and 74th native infantry. It was on that same 11th of May that evening saw the six mutinous regiments masters of the imperial city; and the English officers and residents, their wives and children, wanderers through jungles and over streams and rivers. What occurred within Delhi on the subsequent days is imperfectly known; the few Europeans who could not or did not escape were in hiding; and scanty notices only have ever come to light from those or other sources. A Lahore newspaper, three or four months afterwards, gave a narrative prepared by a native, who was within Delhi from the 21st of May to the 23d of June. Arriving ten days after the mutiny, he found the six regiments occupying the Selimgurh and Mohtabagh, but free to roam over the city; where the sepoys and sowars, aided by the rabble of the place, plundered the better houses and shops, stole horses from those who possessed them, ‘looted’ the passengers who crossed the Jumna by the bridge of boats, and fought with each other for the property which the fleeing British families had left behind them. After a few days, something like order was restored, by leaders who assumed command in the name of the King of Delhi. This was all the more necessary when new arrivals of insurgent troops took place, from Allygurh, Minpooree, Agra, Muttra, Hansi, Hissar, Umballa, Jullundur, Nuseerabad, and other places. The mutineers did not, at any time, afford proof that they were really well commanded; but still there was command, and the defence of the city was arranged on a definite plan. As at Sebastopol, so at Delhi; the longer the besiegers delayed their operations, the greater became the number of defenders within the place, and the stronger the defence-works.

It must be remembered, in tracing the history of the siege of Delhi, that every soldier necessary for forming the siege-army had to be brought from distant spots. The cantonment outside the city was wholly in the hands of the rebels; and not a British soldier remained in arms in or near the place. Mr Colvin at Agra speedily heard the news, but he had no troops to send for the recapture. General Hewett had a British force at Meerut—unskilfully handled, as many persons thought and still think; and it remained to be seen what arrangements the commander-in-chief could make to render this and other forces 231available for the reconquest of the important city.

Major-general Sir Henry Barnard was the medium of communication on this occasion. Being stationed at Umballa, in command of the Sirhind military division, he received telegraphic messages on the 11th of May from Meerut and Delhi, announcing the disasters at those places. He immediately despatched his aid-de-camp to Simla, to point out the urgent need for General Anson’s presence on the plains instead of among the hills. Anson, hearing this news on the 12th, first thought about his troops, and then about his own movements. Knowing well the extreme paucity of European regiments in the Delhi and Agra districts, and in all the region thence eastward to Calcutta, he saw that any available force to recover possession of Delhi must come chiefly from Sirhind and the Punjaub. Many regiments were at the time at the hill-stations of Simla, Dugshai, Kussowlie, Deyrah Dhoon, Subathoo, &c., where they were posted during a time of peace in a healthy temperate region; but now they had to descend from their sanitaria to take part in stern operations in the plains. The commander-in-chief sent instant orders to transfer the Queen’s 75th foot from Kussowlie to Umballa, the 1st and 2d Bengal Europeans from Dugshai to Umballa, the Sirmoor battalion from Deyrah Dhoon to Meerut, two companies of the Queen’s 8th foot from Jullundur to Phillour, and two companies of the Queen’s 81st foot, together with one company of European artillery, from Lahore to Umritsir. These orders given, General Anson himself left Simla on the evening of the 14th, and arrived at Umballa early on the 15th. Before he started, he issued the proclamation already adverted to, announcing to the troops of the native army generally that no cartridges would be brought into use against the conscientious wishes of the soldiery; and after he arrived at Umballa, fearing that his proclamation had not been strong enough, he issued another, to the effect that no new cartridges whatever should be served out—thereby, as he hoped, putting an end to all fear concerning objectionable lubricating substances being used; for he was not aware how largely hypocrisy was mixed up with sincerity in the native scruples on this point.

Anson and Barnard, when together at Umballa, had to measure well the forces available to them. The Umballa magazines were nearly empty of stores and ammunition; the artillery wagons were in the depôt at Phillour; the medical officers dreaded the heat for troops to move in such a season; and the commissariat was ill supplied with vehicles and beasts of burden and draught. The only effectual course was found to be, that of bringing small detachments from many different stations; and this system was in active progress during the week following Anson’s arrival at Umballa. On the 16th, troops came into that place from Phillour and Subathoo. On the 17th arrived three European regiments from the Hills,^[49] which were shortly to be strengthened by artillery from Phillour. The prospect was not altogether a cheering one, for two of the regiments at the station were Bengal native troops (the 5th and 60th), on whose fidelity only slight reliance could be placed at such a critical period. In order that no time might he lost in forming the nucleus of a force for Delhi, some of the troops were despatched that same night; comprising one wing of a European regiment, a few horse, and two guns. On successive days, other troops took their departure as rapidly as the necessary arrangements could be made; but Anson was greatly embarrassed by the distance between Umballa and the station where the siege-guns were parked; he knew that a besieging army would be of no use without those essential adjuncts; and it was on that account that he was unable to respond to Viscount Canning’s urgent request that he would push on rapidly towards Delhi.

On the 23d of May, Anson sketched a plan of operations, which he communicated to the brigadiers whose services were more immediately at his disposal. Leaving Sir Henry Barnard in command at Umballa, he proposed to head the siege-army himself. It was to consist^[50] of three brigades—one from Umballa, under Brigadier Halifax; a second from the same place, under Brigadier Jones; and a third from Meerut, under Brigadier Wilson. He proposed to send off the two brigades from Umballa on various days, so that all the corps should reach Kurnaul, fifty miles nearer to Delhi, by the 30th. Then, by starting on the 1st of June, he expected to reach Bhagput on the 5th, with all his Umballa force except the siege-train, which might possibly arrive on the 6th. Meanwhile Major-general Hewett was to organise a brigade at Meerut, and send it to Bhagput, where it would form a junction with the other two brigades. Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur being a somewhat important post, as a key to the Upper Doab, it was proposed that Brigadier Wilson should leave a small force there—consisting of a part of the Sirmoor battalion, a part of the 232Rampore horse, and a few guns—while he advanced with the rest of his brigade to Bhagput. Lastly, it was supposed that the Meerut brigade, by starting on the 1st or 2d of June, could reach the rendezvous on the 5th, and that then all could advance together towards Delhi. Such was General Anson’s plan—a plan that he was not destined to put in execution himself.

It will be convenient to trace the course of proceeding in the following mode—to describe the advance of the Meerut brigade to Bhagput, with its adventures on the way; then to notice in a similar way the march of the main body from Umballa to Bhagput; next the progress of the collected siege-army from the last-named town to the crest or ridge bounding Delhi on the north; and, lastly, the commencement of the siege-operations themselves—operations lamentably retarded by the want of a sufficient force of siege-guns.

Sir Henry Barnard.

Major-general Hewett, at Meerut, proceeded to organise a brigade in accordance with the plan laid down by General Anson: retaining at his head-quarters a force sufficient to protect Meerut and its neighbourhood. It was on the 27th of May that this brigade was ready, and that Colonel Archdall Wilson was placed in command of it—a gallant officer afterwards better known as Brigadier or General Wilson. The brigade was very small; comprising less than 500 of the 60th Rifles, 200 of the Carabiniers, one battery and a troop of artillery. They started on the evening of the 27th; and after marching during the cooler hours of the 28th and 29th, encamped on the morning of the 30th at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur (Ghazee-u-deen Nuggur, Guznee de Nuggur). This was a small town or village on the left bank of the river Hindoun, eighteen miles east of Delhi, important as commanding one of the passages over that river from Meerut, the passage being by a suspension-bridge.

On that same day, the 30th of May, Brigadier Wilson was attacked by the insurgents, who had sallied forth from Delhi for this purpose, and who were doubtless anxious to prevent a junction of the Meerut force with that from Kurnaul. The enemy appeared in force on the opposite side of the river, with five guns in position. Wilson at once sent a 233body of Rifles to command the suspension-bridge; while a few Carabiniers were despatched along the river-bank to a place where they were able to ford. The insurgents opened fire with their five heavy guns; whereupon the brigadier sent off to the attacked points all his force except sufficient to guard his camp; and then the contest became very brisk. The Rifles, under Colonel Jones, were ordered to charge the enemy’s guns; they rushed forward, disregarding grape and canister shot, and advanced towards the guns. When they saw a shell about to burst, they threw themselves down on their faces to avoid the danger, then jumped up, and off again. They reached the guns, drove away the gunners, and effected a capture. The enemy, beaten away from the defences of the bridge, retreated to a large walled village, where they had the courage to stand a hand-to-hand contest for a time—a struggle which no native troops could long continue against the British Rifles. As evening came on, the enemy fled with speed to Delhi, leaving behind them five guns, ammunition, and stores. Colonel Coustance followed them some distance with the Carabiniers; but it was not deemed prudent to continue the pursuit after nightfall. In this smart affair 11 were killed, 21 wounded or missing. Captain Andrews, with four of his riflemen, while taking possession of two heavy pieces of ordnance on the causeway, close to the toll-house of the bridge, were blown up by the explosion of an ammunition-wagon, fired by one of the sepoy gunners.

The mutineers did not allow Brigadier Wilson to remain many hours quiet. He saw parties of their horse reconnoitring his position all the morning of the 31st; and he kept, therefore, well on the alert. At one o’clock the enemy, supposed to be five thousand in number, took up a position a mile in length, on a ridge on the opposite side of the Hindoun, and about a mile distant from Wilson’s advanced picket. Horse-artillery and two 18-pounders were at once sent forward to reply to this fire, with a party of Carabiniers to support; while another party, of Rifles, Carabiniers, and guns, went to support the picket at the bridge. For nearly two hours the contest was one of artillery alone, the British guns being repeatedly and vainly charged by the enemy’s cavalry; the enemy’s fire then slackening, and the Rifles having cleared a village on the left of the toll-bar, the brigadier ordered a general advance. The result was as on the preceding day; the mutineers were driven back. The British all regretted they could not follow, and cut up the enemy in the retreat; but the brigadier, seeing that many of his poor fellows fell sun-stricken, was forced to call them back into camp when the action was over. This victory was not so complete as that on the preceding day; for the mutineers were able to carry off all their guns, two heavy and five light. The killed and wounded on the side of the English were 24 in number, of whom 10 were stricken down by the heat of the sun—a cause of death that shews how terrible must have been the ordeal passed through by all on such a day. Among the officers, Lieutenant Perkins was killed, and Captain Johnson and Ensign Napier wounded.

After the struggle of the 31st of May, the enemy did not molest Wilson in his temporary camp at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur. He provided for his wounded, refitted his brigade, and waited for reinforcements. On the morning of the 3d of June he was joined by another hundred of the 60th Rifles from Meerut, and by a Goorkha regiment, the Sirmoor battalion, from Deyrah Dhoon; and then lost no time in marching to the rendezvous. The route taken was very circuitous, hilly, and rugged; and the brigade did not reach the rendezvous head-quarters at Bhagput till the morning of the 6th.

We have now to trace the fortunes of the Umballa force. It was on the 23d of May, as has been shewn, that General Anson put forth the scheme for an advance towards Delhi, in which the brigade from Meerut was to take part. He left Umballa on the 24th, and reached Kurnaul on the 25th. All the proposed regiments and detachments from Umballa had by that time come in to Kurnaul except two troops of horse-artillery; but as the siege-train was far in arrear, Anson telegraphed to Calcutta that he would not be in a position to advance from Kurnaul towards Delhi until the 31st of the month. On the 26th, the commander-in-chief’s plans were ended by the ending of his life; an attack of cholera carried him off in a few hours. He hastily summoned Sir Henry Barnard from Umballa; and his last words were to place the Delhi force under the command of that officer. At that time news and orders travelled slowly between Calcutta and the northwest; for dâks were interrupted and telegraph wires cut; and it was therefore necessary that the command should at once be given to some one, without waiting for sanction from the governor-general. Viscount Canning heard the news on the 3d of June, and immediately confirmed the appointment of Sir Henry to the command of the siege-army; but that confirmation was not known to the besiegers till long afterwards. Major-general Reed, by the death of Anson, became provisional commander-in-chief; and he left Rawul Pindee on the 28th of May to join the head-quarters of the siege-army, but without superseding Barnard. It was a terrible time for all these generals: Anson and Halifax had both succumbed to cholera; Reed was so thoroughly broken down by illness that he could not command in person; and Barnard was summoned from a sick-bed by the dying commander-in-chief.

Sir Henry Barnard did not feel justified in advancing from Kurnaul until heavier guns than those he possessed could arrive from the Punjaub. On the 31st, a 9-pounder battery—those already at hand being only 6-pounders—came into camp; and the march from Kurnaul to Paniput 234commenced on that evening. Sir Henry expected to have met Brigadier Wilson at Raee, where there was a bridge of boats over the Jumna; but through some misconstruction or countermanding of orders, Wilson had taken a much more circuitous route by Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur, and could not join the Umballa brigade at the place or on the day expected. Barnard, after a brief sojourn and a slight change of plan, sent out elephants to aid in bringing forward the Meerut brigade, and advanced with the greater portion of his own force to Alipore (or Aleepore), where he arrived on the morning of the 5th of June. The chief artillery force being with the Meerut brigade, Sir Henry waited for Wilson, who effected a junction with him on the 6th; and on the 7th, the united forces were reorganised, at a point so near Delhi that the troops looked forward eagerly to a speedy encounter with the enemy.

Many of the soldiers who thus assembled at a place distant only a few miles from the famous city, which they all hoped soon to retake from the hands of the enemy, had marched great distances. Among the number was the corps of Guides, whose march was one of those determined exploits of which soldiers always feel proud, and to which they point as proof that they shrink not from fatigue and heat when a post of duty is assigned to them. This remarkable corps was raised on the conclusion of the Sutlej campaign, to act either as regular troops or as guides and spies, according as the exigencies of the service might require. The men were chosen for their sagacity and intelligence, as well as for their courage and hardihood. They were inhabitants of the Punjaub, but belonged to no one selected race or creed; for among them were to be found mountaineers, borderers, men of the plains, and half-wild warriors. Among them nearly all the dialects of Northern India were more or less known; and they were as familiar with hill-fighting as with service on the plains. They were often employed as intelligencers, and in reconnoitring an enemy’s position. They were the best of all troops to act against the robber hill-tribes, with whom India is so greatly infested. Among the many useful pieces of Indian service effected by Sir Henry Lawrence, was the suggestion of this corps; and Lord Hardinge, when commander-in-chief, acted on it in 1846. The corps was at first limited to one troop of cavalry and two companies of artillery, less than three hundred men in all; but the Marquis of Dalhousie afterwards raised it to three troops and six companies, about eight hundred and fifty men, commanded by four European officers and a surgeon. The men were dressed in a plain serviceable drab uniform. Their pay was eight rupees per month for a foot-soldier, and twenty-four for a trooper. These, then, were the Guides of whom English newspaper-readers heard so much but knew so little. They were stationed at a remote post in the Punjaub, not far from the Afghan frontier, when orders reached them to march to Delhi, a distance of no less than 750 miles. They set off, horse and foot together, and accomplished the distance in twenty-eight days—a really great achievement in the heat of an Indian summer; they suffered much, of course; but all took pride in their work, and obtained high praise from the commander-in-chief. One of the English officers afterwards declared that he had never before experienced the necessity of ‘roughing’ it as on this occasion. Captain Daly commanded the whole corps, while Captain Quintin Battye had special control of that portion of it which consisted of troopers.

The Guides, as has just been shewn, were an exceptional corps, raised among the natives for a peculiar service. But the siege-army contained gallant regiments of ordinary troops, whose marching was little less severe. One of these was the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers; a British regiment wholly belonging to the Company, and one which in old times was known as Lord Lake’s ‘dear old dirty shirts.’ On the 13th of May it was at Dugshai, a sanatarium and hill-station not far from Simla. Major Jacob rode in hastily from Simla, announced that Meerut and Delhi were in revolt, and brought an order for the regiment to march down to Umballa forthwith, to await further orders. At five o’clock that same day the men marched forth, with sixty rounds in pouch, and food in haversack. After a twenty-four miles’ walk they refreshed on the ground, supping and sleeping as best they could. At an hour after midnight they renewed their march, taking advantage—as troops in India are wont to do—of the cool hours of the night; they marched till six or seven, and then rested during the heat of the day at Chundeegurh. From five till ten in the evening they again advanced, and then had supper and three hours’ rest at Mobarrackpore. Then, after a seven hours’ march during the night of the 14th-15th, they reached Umballa—having accomplished sixty miles in thirty-eight hours. Here they were compelled to remain some days until the arrangements of the general in other directions were completed; and during this detention many of their number were carried off by cholera. At length four companies were sent on towards Kurnaul on the 17th, under Captain Dennis; while the other companies did not start till the 21st. The two wings of the regiments afterwards effected a junction, and marched by Paniput, Soomalka, and Sursowlie, to Raee, where they arrived on the 31st of May. Under a scorching sun every day, the troops were well-nigh beaten down; but the hope of ‘thrashing the rebels at Delhi’ cheered them on. One officer speaks of the glee with which he and his companions came in sight of a field of onions, ‘all green above and white below,’ and of the delightful relish they enjoyed during a temporary rest. The regiment, after remaining at Raee till the morning of the 5th of June, was then joined by its commandant, Colonel Welchman. Forming now 235part of Brigadier Showers’ brigade, the 1st Europeans marched to Alipore, where its fortunes were mixed up with those of the other troops in the besieging army.

Many at Calcutta wondered why Barnard did not make a more rapid advance from Paniput and Raee to Alipore; and many at Raee wondered why Wilson did not come in more quickly from Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur. The brigadier was said to have had his plans somewhat changed by suggestions from one of the Greatheds (Mr H. H. Greathed was agent, and Lieutenant W. H. Greathed, aid-de-camp, for the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces in the camp of the siege-army); while Sir Henry was anxious both to secure Wilson’s co-operation as soon as he started, and to preserve the health of his men during the trying season of heat. It is greatly to the credit of him and all the officers, that the various regiments, notwithstanding their long marches and fierce exposure to heat, reached Delhi in admirable health—leaving cholera many miles behind them. Having been joined by a siege-train on the 6th of June, and by Brigadier Wilson’s forces on the 7th, Barnard began at once to organise his plans for an advance. The reinforcements brought by Wilson were very miscellaneous;^[51] but they had fought well on the banks of the Hindoun, and were an indispensable aid to the general. Major-general Reed arrived from Rawul Pindee at midnight, not to take the command from Barnard, but to sanction the line of proceedings as temporary commander-in-chief.

It was at one o’clock on the morning of the 8th of June that the siege-army set out from Alipore, to march the ten miles which separate that village from Delhi. Some of the reinforcements, such as the Guides, had not yet arrived; but the troops which formed the army of march on this morning, according to Sir Henry’s official dispatch, were as noted below.^[52] They advanced to a village, the name of which is variously spelt in the dispatches, letters, and maps as Badulla Serai, Bardul-ki-Serai, Badulee-ke-Serai, Bardeleeke Serai, Budleeka Suraee, &c., about four miles from Delhi. Here the fighting began; here the besiegers came in contact with the enemy who had been so long sought. When within a short distance of the village, the sepoy watch-fires were seen (for day had scarcely yet broken). Suddenly a report was heard, and a shot and shell came roaring down the road to the advancing British force; and then it became necessary to plan a mode of dealing with the enemy, who were several thousands in number, in a strongly intrenched position, with artillery well served. Sir Henry Barnard intrusted Brigadiers Showers, Graves, and Grant with distinct duties—the first to advance with his brigade on the right of the main trunk-road; the second to take the left of the same road; and the third to cross the canal, advance quietly, and recross in the rear of the enemy’s position at such a time as a signal should direct them to effect a surprise. The guns were placed in and on both sides of the road. When the hostile forces met, the enemy opened a severe fire—a fire so severe, indeed, that the general resolved to stop it by capturing the battery itself. This was effected in a gallant manner by the 75th foot and the 1st Europeans; it was perilous work, for the troops had to pass over open ground, with very little shelter or cover. Several officers were struck down at this point; but the most serious loss was produced by a cannon-shot which killed Colonel Chester, adjutant-general of the army. The battery was charged so determinedly that the artillerymen were forced to flee, leaving their guns behind them; while the advance of the other two brigades compelled them to a general flight. Colonel Welchman, of the 1st Fusiliers, in his eagerness galloped after three of the mutineers and cut one of them down; but the act would have cost him his own life, had not a private of his regiment come opportunely to his aid.

A question now arose, whether to halt for a while, or push on towards Delhi. It was between five and six o’clock on a summer morning; and Barnard decided that it would be advisable not to allow the enemy time to reassemble in or near the village. The men were much exhausted; but after a hasty taste of rum and biscuit, they resumed their march. Advancing in two columns, Brigadiers Wilson and Showers fought their way along the main trunk-road; while Barnard and Graves turned off at Azadpore by the road which led through the cantonment of Delhi—a cantonment lately in the hands of the British authorities, but now deserted. This advance was a continuous fight the whole way: the rebels disputing the passage inch by inch. It then became perceptible that a rocky ridge which bounds Delhi on the north was bristling with bayonets and cannon, and that the conquest of this ridge would be a necessary preliminary to an approach to Delhi. Barnard determined on a rapid flank-movement to turn the right of the enemy’s position. With a force consisting of the 60th Rifles under Colonel Jones, the 2d Europeans under Captain Boyd, and a troop of horse-artillery under Captain Money, Sir Henry rapidly advanced, ascended the ridge, took the enemy in flank, compelled them to flee, and swept the whole length of the ridge—the enemy 236abandoning twenty-six guns, with ammunition and camp-equipage. The Rifles rendered signal service in this movement; taking advantage of every slight cover, advancing closer to the enemy’s guns than other infantry could safely do, and picking off the gunners. Brigadier Wilson and his companions were enabled to advance by the main road; and he and Barnard met on the ridge. From that hour the besieging army took up its position before Delhi—never to leave it till months of hard fighting had made them masters of the place. During the struggle on the ridge, two incidents greatly exasperated the troops: one was the discovery that a captured cart, which they supposed to contain ammunition, was full of the mangled limbs and trunks of their murdered fellow-Christians; the other was that two or three Europeans were found fighting for and with the rebels—probably soldiers of fortune, ready to sell their services to the highest bidders. Every European—and it was supposed that Delhi contained others of the kind—so caught was sure to be cut to pieces by the enraged soldiery, with a far more deadly hatred than sepoys themselves could have inspired. This day’s work was not effected without serious loss. Colonel Chester, we have said, was killed; as were Captains Delamain and Russell, and Lieutenant Harrison. The wounded comprised Colonel Herbert; Captains Dawson and Greville; Lieutenants Light, Hunter, Davidson, Hare, Fitzgerald, Barter, Rivers, and Ellis; and Ensign Pym. In all, officers and privates, there were 51 killed and 133 wounded. Nearly 50 horses were either killed or wounded.

Here, then, in the afternoon of the 8th of June, were the British posted before Delhi. It will be necessary to have a clear notion of the relative positions of the besiegers and the besieged, to understand the narrative which is to follow. Of Delhi itself an account is given elsewhere, with a brief notice of the defence-works;^[53] but the gates and bastions must here be enumerated somewhat more minutely, as the plan of the siege mainly depended on them. A small branch or nullah of the Jumna is separated from the main stream by a sand-bank which forms an island; the junction or rejoining of the two takes place where the Jumna is crossed by a bridge of boats, and where the old fort called the Selimgurh was built. Beginning at this point, we trace the circuit of the wall and its fortifications. From the Selimgurh the wall borders—or rather bordered (for it will be well to speak in the past tense)—the nullah for about three-quarters of a mile, in a northwest direction, marked by the Calcutta Gate, a martello tower, the Kaila Gate, the Nuseergunje Bastion, and the Moree or Moira Bastion. The wall then turned sharply to the west, or slightly southwest; and during a length of about three-quarters of a mile presented the Moree Bastion just named, the Cashmere Gate, the Moree Gate, and the Shah Bastion. To this succeeded a portion about a mile in length, running nearly north and south, and marked by the Cabool Gate, a martello tower, Burn Bastion, the Lahore Gate, and the Gurstin Bastion. Then, an irregular polygonal line of two miles in length carried the wall round to the bank of the Jumna, by a course bending more and more to the east; here were presented the Turushkana Gate, a martello tower, the Ajmeer Gate, the Akbar Bastion, another martello tower, the Ochterlony Bastion, the Turcoman Gate, a third and a fourth martello towers, and the Delhi Gate. Lastly, along the bank of the river for a mile and a half, and separated from the water at most times by a narrow sandy strip, was a continuation of the wall, broken by the Wellesley and Nawab Bastions, the Duryagunje Gate, a martello tower, the Rajghat Gate, the wall of the imperial palace, and the defence-wall entirely surrounding the Selimgurh. Such were the numerous gates, bastions, and towers at that period; many parts of the wall and bastions were formed of masonry twelve feet thick, and the whole had been further strengthened by the rebels during four weeks of occupation. Outside the defences was a broad ditch twenty feet deep from the ground, or thirty-five from the top of the wall.

The position taken up by the besiegers may be thus briefly described. The camp was pitched on the former parade-ground of the deserted encampment, at a spot about a mile and a half from the northern wall of the city, with a rocky ridge acting as a screen between it and the city. This ridge was commanded by the rebels until the afternoon of the 8th; but from that time it was in the hands of the besiegers. The British line on this ridge rested on the left on an old tower used as a signal-post, often called the Flagstaff Tower; at its centre, upon an old mosque; and at its right, upon a house with enclosures strongly placed at the point where the ridge begins to slope down towards the plain. This house, formerly occupied by a Mahratta chief named Hindoo Rao, was generally known as Hindoo Rao’s house. Owing to the ridge being very oblique in reference to the position of the city, the right of the line was of necessity thrown much forward, and hence Hindoo Rao’s house became the most important post in the line. Near this house, owing to its commanding position, the British planted three batteries; and to protect these batteries, Rifles, Guides, and Sirmoor Goorkhas were posted within convenient distance. Luckily for the British, Hindoo Rao’s house was ‘pucka-built,’ that is, a substantial brick structure, and bore up well against the storm of shot aimed at it by the rebels.

When the British had effected a permanent lodgment on the ridge, with the camp pitched in the old cantonment behind the ridge as a screen, the time had arrived when the detailed plan for the siege was to be determined, if it had not been determined already. Some military critics averred that Sir Henry Barnard, only acquainted in a 237slight degree with that part of India, displayed indecision, giving and countermanding orders repeatedly, and leaving his subordinates in doubt concerning the real plan of the siege. Others contended that the sudden assumption of command on the death of General Anson, the small number of troops, and the want of large siege-guns, were enough to render necessary great caution in the mode of procedure. The truth appears to be, that the rebels were found stronger in Delhi, than was suspected before the siege-army approached close to the place; moreover, they had contested the advance from Alipore more obstinately than had been expected—shewing that, though not equal to British soldiers, it would not be safe to despise their prowess. The plan of attack would obviously depend upon the real or supposed defensive measures of the besieged. If the rebels risked a battle outside the walls, they might very likely be defeated and followed into the city and palace; but then would come a disastrous street-fighting against enemies screened behind loopholed walls, and firing upon besiegers much less numerous than themselves. Or the half-crumbled walls might easily be scaled by active troops; but as these troops would be a mere handful against large numbers, their success would be very doubtful. A third plan, suggested by some among the many advisers of that period, was to make an attack by water, or on the river-side. The Jumna is at certain times so shallow at Delhi as to be almost fordable, and leaving a strip of sand on which batteries might be planted; these batteries might breach the river-wall of the palace, and so disturb the garrison as to permit a large body of the besiegers to enter under cover of the firing; but a rise in the river would fatally affect this enterprise. A fourth plan suggested was to attack near the Cashmere Gate, on the north side of the city; the siege-army would in this case be protected on its left flank by the river, and might employ all its force in breaching the wall between the gate and the river; the guns would render the mainguard untenable; when the assault was made, it would be on a part where there is much vacant ground in the interior; and the besieging troops would have a better chance than if at once entangled among the intricacies of loopholed houses. Any project for starving out the garrison, if it ever entered the mind of any soldier, was soon abandoned; the boundary was too extensive, the gates too many, and the besiegers too few, to effect this.

Hindoo Rao’s House—Battery in front.

During the early days after the arrival of the British, indications appeared of an intention to blow open the Cashmere Gate, and effect a forcible entry into the city at once; but these indications soon ceased; and the besiegers found themselves compelled rather to resist attacks than to make them; for the enemy, strong in numbers, made repeated sorties from the various gates of the city, and endeavoured to dislodge the British. One such 238sortie was made about noon on the 9th, within twenty-four hours after the arrival of the besiegers; the enemy were, however, easily repulsed, and driven in again. The corps of Guides met with a loss on this day which occasioned much regret. Among those who accompanied the hardy men all the way from the Afghan frontier was Captain Quintin Battye, a young officer much beloved as commandant of the cavalry portion of the corps. They arrived on the 8th; and on the next day poor Battye was shot through the body; he lived twenty-four hours in great agony, and then sank. The Guides had a large share in this day’s work; many of them fell, in dislodging the enemy from a rocky position which they temporarily occupied. On the 10th a little skirmishing took place, but not so serious as on the preceding day; it was found, however, that the white shirts of the men were a little too conspicuous; and they underwent an extemporaneous process of dyeing to deepen the colour. On the 12th, early in the morning, the enemy made a sudden attack on both flanks; but all points were speedily defended. They were first driven back on the left; then, after a repulse on the right, they advanced a second time under the cover of thickly wooded gardens near the Subzee Mundee—a suburb of Delhi about a mile and a quarter northwest of the Cabool Gate. Major Jacob was then sent against them with some of the Bengal Europeans; he beat them back till they got beyond the suburb, and then returned to the camp. This morning’s affair was supposed to have cost the enemy 250 men; the British loss was very small. On this day, the British had the mortification of seeing two regiments of Rohilcund mutineers, the 60th native infantry and the 4th native cavalry, enter Delhi with bands playing and colours flying; the defiant manner was quite as serious an affair as the augmentation of the strength of the garrison. On the 13th a large enclosure in advance of the British left, known as Metcalfe House, was occupied by them, and the erection of a battery of heavy guns and mortars commenced.

Not a day passed without some such struggles as have just been adverted to. The besieging of the city had not really commenced, for the British had not yet a force of artillery sufficient for that purpose; indeed, they were now the besieged rather than the besiegers; for the enemy came out of the city—horse, foot, and guns—and attempted to effect a surprise on one part or other of the position on the ridge. Against the battery at Metcalfe House a sortie was made on the 15th, and another was made on the same day at the right of the line. On the 17th an exciting encounter took place. A shot from the city struck the corner of Hindoo Rao’s house, and glancing off, killed Lieutenant Wheatley of the Goorkhas. It was then suspected that the enemy, besides their attacks on this house in front, were throwing up a battery outside the western gates of the town, at a large building known as the Eedghah, formerly used as a serai. Thereupon a force was immediately organised, consisting of horse-artillery, cavalry, Goorkhas, and Rifles, to drive them away from that position. They passed through the Subzee Mundee to the Eedghah, drove out the enemy, and captured the only gun which had yet been placed there. One of the officers on this duty had a finger shot off, a bullet through the wrist, another through the cheek, and another which broke the collar-bone; yet he recovered, to fight again.

On the 19th of June it came to the knowledge of Brigadier Grant that the enemy intended to attack the camp in the rear; and as the safety of the camp had been placed under his keeping, he made instant preparations to frustrate the insurgents. These troops are believed to have been augmentations of the insurgent forces, consisting of the 15th and 30th native regiments from Nuseerabad. The brigadier advanced with six guns and a squadron of lancers to reconnoitre, and found the enemy in position half a mile in rear of the Ochterlony Gardens, northwest of the camp. Troops quickly arrived, and a rapid exchange of fire began, the enemy being strong in artillery as well as in infantry. Just as the dusk of the evening came on, the enemy, by a series of skilful and vigorous attacks, aided by well-served artillery, very nearly succeeded in turning the flank of the British, and in capturing two guns; but both these disasters were frustrated. The dusk deepened into darkness; but the brigadier felt that it would not do to allow the enemy to occupy that position during the night. A charge was made with great impetuosity by horse and foot, with so much success, that the enemy were driven back quite into the town. The brigadier had to regret the loss of Colonel Yule of the 9th Lancers, who was knocked off his horse, and not found again by his men till next morning; when they were shocked to see him dead and mangled, with both thighs broken, a ball through the head just over the eyes, his throat cut, and his hands much gashed. He had been on leave of absence in Cashmere, but directly he heard of the work to be done, travelled night and day till he reached his regiment just before its arrival at Delhi. Lieutenant Alexander was also among the killed. Captain Daly of the Guides, and six other officers, were wounded. All the officers of the Guides, but one, received wounds. Altogether, the day’s fighting resulted to the British in the loss of 19 killed and 77 wounded; and it was a source of much regret that a few of these fell by the hands of their own comrades, while fighting in some confusion as darkness approached. No less than sixty horses fell. The brigadier did not fail to mention the names of three private soldiers—Thomas Hancock, John Purcell, and Roopur Khan—who behaved with great gallantry at a critical moment.

Sir Henry Barnard, for very cogent reasons, watched every movement on the part of the mutineers who sallied forth from Delhi. On the 23922d, he saw a body of them come out of the city; and as they were not seen to return at night, he suspected a masked attack. At six in the evening, he sent out a party of infantry, Guides, and Sappers, to demolish two bridges which carried the great road across a canal westward of the camp, and over which the enemy were in the habit of taking their artillery and columns when they wished to attack the camp in the rear; this was a work of six hours, warmly contested but successfully accomplished. On the 23d, Sir Henry, expecting a valuable convoy from the Punjaub, adopted prompt measures for its protection. He sent out a strong escort, which safely brought the convoy into camp. Scarcely had this been effected, when his attention was drawn to the right of his position, near Hindoo Rao’s house. It was afterwards ascertained that the enemy, remembering the 23d of June as the centenary of the battle of Plassy, had resolved to attempt a great victory over the British on that day; incited, moreover, by the circumstance that two festivals, one Mussulman and the other Hindoo, happened to occur on that day; and they emerged from the city in vast force to effect this. They commenced their attack on the Subzee Mundee side, having a strong position in a village and among garden-walls. Here a combat was maintained during the whole of the day, for the rebels continued their attacks with much pertinacity; they lodged themselves in loopholed houses, a serai, and a mosque, whence they could not be dislodged till they had wrought much mischief by musketry. At length, however, they were driven back into the city. The value of the precaution taken on the preceding evening, in destroying the bridges, was made fully evident; for the rebels were unable to cross the canal to get to the rear of the camp. The 1st Europeans had a desperate contest in the Subzee Mundee, where street-fighting, and firing from windows and house-tops, continued for many hours. The British troops suffered terribly from the heat of the midsummer sun, to which they were exposed from sunrise to sunset. Many officers were brought away sun-struck and powerless. The Guides fought for fifteen hours uninterruptedly, with no food, and only a little water. At one o’clock, when the enemy were strengthened by large reinforcements from the city, the Guides found themselves without ammunition, and had to send back to the camp for more; but as great delay occurred, they were in imminent peril of annihilation. Fortunately a corps of Sikhs, who had arrived at camp that morning, rushed forward at a critical moment, and aided the Guides in driving back the enemy. One of the incidents of the day has been thus narrated, shewing how little scruple a Goorkha felt when he met a sepoy: ‘In the intense heat, a soldier of the 2d Europeans and a Goorkha sought the shade and protection of a house near the Subzee Mundee, a window of which looked into a lane where they were seated. Not long had they rested when, from the open window, was seen to project the head of a sepoy. Now all Hindoos have what ladies at home call “back-hair,” and this is usually turned up into a knot; by this the unlucky wretch was at once seized, and before he could even think of resistance, his head was at a stroke severed from his body by the sharp curved knife of the Goorkha!’ This day’s work was in every way very severe, and shewed the besiegers that the rebels were in great strength. Lieutenant Jackson was killed; Colonel Welchman, Captain Jones, and Lieutenant Murray, wounded. The total loss of the day was 39 killed and 121 wounded. The enemy’s loss was very much larger; indeed, one of the estimates raised the number up to a thousand. The loss appears to have somewhat dispirited the mutineers, for they made very few attacks on the following three days.

But although there was a temporary cessation, Sir Henry Barnard, in his official dispatches, shewed that he was much embarrassed by this condition of affairs. His forces were few; those of the enemy were very large; and the attacks were rendered more harassing by the uncertainty of the point on which they would be made, and the impossibility of judging whether they were about to be made on more points than one. The onslaughts could only be successfully repulsed by the untiring and unflinching gallantry of a small body of men. The enemy, instead of being beleaguered within Delhi, were free to emerge from the city and attack the besiegers’ position. The British did not complain: it was not their wont; but they suffered greatly from this harassing kind of warfare. Reinforcements were slowly coming in; in the last week of June the Europeans numbered about three thousand; and they were well satisfied with the native corps who fought by their side—the Guides, the Goorkhas, and the Sikhs—all of whom joined very heartily in opposing the rebel sepoys. The siege-material at this time consisted of five batteries, mounting about fifteen guns and mortars, placed on various points of the ridge; the bombardment of the city by these guns was not very effective, for the distance averaged nearly a mile, and the guns were not of large calibre.

The interval from the 23d to the 30th of June passed much in the same way as the two preceding weeks; the British siege-guns wrought very little mischief to the city; while the enemy occasionally sallied forth to attack either the camp or the works on the ridge. It was often asserted, and facts seemed to corroborate the statement, that when mutinous regiments from other places appeared before Delhi, they were not afforded reception and shelter until they had earned it by making an attack on the British position; and thus it happened that the besiegers were opposed by a constantly increasing number of the enemy. The defenders of the garrison fitted up a large battery on the left of the Cashmere Gate, one at the gate itself, one at the Moree Gate, one at the Ajmeer Gate, and one directly opposite Hindoo Rao’s 240house; against these five batteries, for a long time, the British had only three; so that the besieged were stronger than the besiegers in every way. The gunners, too, within Delhi, were fully equal to those of the siege-army in accuracy of aim; their balls and shells fell near Hindoo Rao’s house so thickly as to render that post a very perilous one to hold. One shell entered the gateway, and killed eight or nine officers and men who were seeking shelter from the mid-day heat.

The General and his Staff at the Mosque Picket before Delhi.

It was pretty well ascertained, before June was half over, that Delhi was not to be taken by a coup de main; and when Sir John Lawrence became aware of that fact, he sent reinforcements down from the Punjaub as rapidly as they could be collected. Every sepoy regiment that was either disbanded or disarmed lessened his own danger, for he trusted well in his Sikhs, Punjaubees, and Guides; and on that account he was able to send Europeans and artillery. The reserve and depôt companies of the regiments already serving before Delhi were sent down from the hills to join their companions. A wing of H.M. 61st foot, a portion of the 8th, artillery from Jullundur, and artillerymen from Lahore, followed the Guides and Sikhs, and gradually increased the besieging force. Then came Punjaub rifles and Punjaub light horse; and there were still a few Hindustani cavalry and horse-artillery in whom their officers placed such unabated confidence that they were permitted to take part in the siege-operations, on the ground that there were Europeans enough to overawe them if they became unruly. These reinforcements of course came in by degrees: we mention them all in one paragraph, but many weeks elapsed before they could reach the Delhi camp. Fortunately, supplies were plentiful; the country between Delhi and the Sutlej was kept pretty free from the enemy; and the villagers were glad to find good customers for the commodities they had to sell. It hence arose that, during the later days of June, the British were well able to render nugatory all sallies made by the enemy; they had food and beverages in good store; and they were free from pestilential diseases. On the other hand, they suffered intensely from the heat; and were much dissatisfied at the small progress made towards the conquest of the city. Some expressed their dissatisfaction by adverse criticisms on the general’s tactics; while others admitted that a storming of Delhi would not be prudent without further reinforcements. As to the heat, the troops wrote of it in all their letters, spoke of it in all their narrations. One officer, who had seventy-two hours of outpost-duty on a plain without the slightest shelter, described his sensation in the daytime as if ‘a hot iron had been going into his head.’ On a certain day, when some additional troops arrived at camp after a twenty-two miles’ march, they had scarcely lain down to rest when they were ordered out to repel an attack by the enemy: they went, and gallantly did the work cut out for 241them; but some of them ‘were so exhausted that they sank down on the road, even under fire, and went off to sleep.’

July arrived. Brigadier Chamberlain had recently joined the camp, and reinforcements were coming in; but on the other hand the rebels were increasing their strength more rapidly than the British. The enemy began the month by an attack which tried the prowess of the Guides and Punjaubees, in a manner that brought great praise to those corps. In the afternoon of the 1st, Major Reid, who was established with the head-quarters of the Sirmoor battalion at Hindoo Rao’s house, observed the mutineers turning out in great force from the Ajmeer and Turcoman Gates, and assembling on the open plain outside. Then, looking round on his rear right, he saw a large force, which was supposed to have come out of Delhi on the previous day; comprising thirteen guns and mortars, besides cavalry and infantry. The two forces joined about a mile from the Eedghah Serai. At sunset 5000 or 6000 infantry advanced, passed through the Pahareepore and Kissengunje suburbs, and approached towards the British lines, taking cover of the buildings as they passed. The extreme right of the line was attacked at the Pagoda picket, which was held only by 150 Punjaubees and Guides, under Captain Travers. Major Reid sent him a message to reserve his fire till the enemy approached near, in order to husband his resources; while 150 British were being collected to send to his aid. Throughout the whole night did this little band of 300 men resist a large force of infantry and artillery, never yielding an inch, but defending the few works which had been constructed in that quarter. At daybreak, the enemy renewed the attacks with further troops; but Reid brought a few more of his gallant fellows to repel them. Evening, night, morning, noon, all passed in this way; and it was not until the contest had continued twenty-two hours that the enemy finally retired into the city. There may have been sufficient military reasons why larger reinforcements were not sent to Major Reid from the camp behind the ridge; but let the reasons have been what they may, the handful of troops fought in the ratio of hundreds against thousands, and never for an instant flinched during this hard day’s work. Major Reid had the command of all the pickets and defence-works from Hindoo Rao’s house to the Subzee Mundee. During the first twenty-eight days of the siege, his positions were attacked no fewer than twenty-four times; yet his singular medley of troops—Rifles, Guides, Sikhs, Punjaubees, Goorkhas, &c.—fought as if for one common cause, without reference to differences of religion or of nation. The officers, in these and similar encounters, often passed through an ordeal which renders their survival almost inconceivable. An artillery officer, in command of two horse-artillery guns, on one occasion was surprised by 120 of the enemy’s cavalry; he had no support, and could not apply his artillery because his guns were limbered up. He fired four barrels of his revolver and killed two men; and then knocked a third off his horse by throwing his empty pistol at him. Two horsemen thereupon charged full tilt, and rolled him and his horse over. He got up, and seeing a man on foot coming at him to cut him down, rushed at him, got inside his sword, and hit him full in the face with his fist. At that moment he was cut down from behind; and was only saved from slaughter by a brother-officer, who rode up, shot one sowar and sabred another, and then carried him off, bleeding but safe.

On the 2d, the Bareilly mutineers—or rather Rohilcund mutineers from Bareilly, Moradabad, and Shahjehanpoor, consisting of five regiments and a battery of artillery—crossed the Jumna and marched into Delhi, with bands playing and colours flying—a sight sufficiently mortifying to the besiegers, who were powerless to prevent it; for any advance in that direction would have left the rear of their camp exposed. It afterwards became known that the Bareilly leader was appointed general within Delhi. The emergence of a large body of the enemy from the city on the night of the 3d of July, induced Sir Henry Barnard to send Major Coke to oppose them; with a force made up of portions of the Carabiniers, 9th Lancers, 61st foot, Guides, Punjaubees, horse and foot artillery. Coke started at two in the morning of the 4th. He went to Azadpore, the spot where the great road and the road from the cantonment met. He found that the enemy had planned an expedition to seize the British depôt of stores at Alipore, and to cut off a convoy expected to arrive from the Punjaub. When the major came up with them near the Rohtuk road, he at once attacked them. During many hours, his troops were confronted with numbers greatly exceeding their own; and what with the sun above and swamps below, the major’s men became thoroughly exhausted by the time they returned to camp. The rebels, it was true, were driven back; but they got safely with their guns into Delhi; and thus was one more added to the list of contests in which the besiegers suffered without effecting anything towards the real object of the siege. The enemy’s infantry on this occasion seem to have comprised the Bareilly men. An officer of the Engineers, writing concerning this day’s work, said: ‘The Bareilly rascals had the impudence to come round to our rear, and our only regret is that one of them ever got back. I was out with the force sent against them, and cannot say that I felt much pity for the red-coated villains with “18,” “28,” and “68” on their buttons.’ This officer gives expression to the bitter feeling that prevailed generally in the British camp against the ‘Pandies’^[54] or mutinous sepoys, for their treachery, black ingratitude, and cruelty. ‘This is a war in its very worst phase, for generosity enters into no one’s mind. 242Mercy seems to have fled from us; and if ever there was such a thing as war to the knife, we certainly have it here. If any one owes these sepoys a grudge, I think I have some claim to one; but I must say that I cannot bring myself to put my sword through a wounded man. I cannot say that I grieve much when I see it done, as it invariably is; but grieve or not as you please—he is a clever man who can now keep back a European from driving his bayonet through a sepoy, even in the agonies of death.’ These were the motives and feelings that rendered the Indian mutiny much more terrible than an ordinary war. In allusion to sentiments at home, that the British soldiers were becoming cruel and blood-thirsty, the same officer wrote to a friend: ‘If you hear any such sentiments, by all means ship off their propounder to this country at once. Let him see one half of what we have seen, and compare our brutality with that of the rebels; then send him home again, and I think you will find him pretty quiet on the subject for the rest of his life.’

A new engineer officer, Colonel Baird Smith, arrived to supersede another whose operations had not met with approval. The colonel took into consideration, with his commander, a plan for blowing in the Moree and Cashmere Gates, and escalading the Moree and Cashmere Bastions; but the plan was abandoned on account of the weakness of the siege-army.

The 5th of July was marked by the death of Major-general Sir Henry Barnard, who had held practical command of the Delhi field-force during about five weeks, and had during that time borne much anxiety and suffering. He knew that his countrymen at Calcutta as well as in England would be continually propounding the question, ‘Why is Delhi not yet taken?’ and the varied responsibilities connected with his position necessarily gave him much disquietude. During the fierce heat of the 4th he was on horseback nearly all day, directing the operations against the Bareilly mutineers. Early on the following morning he sent for Colonel Baird Smith, and explained his views concerning the mode in which he thought the siege-operations should be carried on; immediately afterwards he sent for medical aid; and before many hours had passed, he was a corpse. Many of his friends afterwards complained that scant justice was done to the memory of Sir Henry Barnard; in the halo that was destined to surround the name of Wilson, men forgot that it was his predecessor who had borne all the burden of collecting the siege-force, of conducting it to the ridge outside Delhi, and of maintaining a continued series of conflicts almost every day for five or six weeks.

Major-general Reed, invalid as he was, immediately took the command of the force after Barnard’s death; leaving, however, the active direction mainly to Brigadier Chamberlain. It became every day more and more apparent that, notwithstanding reinforcements, the British artillery was too weak to cope with that of the enemy—whose artillerymen, taught by those whom they now opposed, had become very skilful; and whose guns were of heavier metal. The besiegers’ batteries were still nearly a mile from the walls, for any nearer position could not be taken up without terrible loss. To effect a breach with a few 18-pounders at this distance was out of the question; and although the field-guns were twenty or thirty in number, they were nearly useless for battering down defences.

The attacks from the enemy continued much as before, but resistance to them became complicated by a new difficulty. There were two regiments of Bengal irregular cavalry among the troops in the siege-army, and there were a few ‘Poorbeahs’ or Hindustanis in the Punjaub regiments. These men were carefully watched from the first; and it became by degrees apparent that they were a danger instead of an aid to the British. Early in the month a Brahmin subadar in a Punjaubee regiment was detected inciting his companions-in-arms to murder their officers, and go over to Delhi, saying it was God’s will the Feringhee ‘raj’ should cease. One of the Punjaubees immediately revealed this plot to the officers, and the incendiary was put to death that same evening. The other Poorbeahs in the regiment were at once paid up, and discharged from the camp—doubtless swelling the number of insurgents who entered Delhi. Again, on the 9th, a party of the enemy’s cavalry, while attempting an attack on the camp, was joined by some of the 9th irregulars belonging to the siege-army, and with them tried to tempt the men of the native horse-artillery. They were beaten back; and the afternoon of the same day, the 9th of July, was marked by one of the many struggles in the Subzee Mundee, all of which ended by the enemy being driven into Delhi. If the rebel infantry had fought as well as the artillery, it might have gone hard with the besiegers, for the sallies were generally made in very great force. The rebels counted much on the value of the Subzee Mundee; as a suburb, it had been rendered a mass of ruins by repeated conflicts, and these ruins precisely suited the sepoy mode of fighting. The sepoys found shelter in narrow streets and old houses, and behind garden-walls, besides being protected by heavy guns from the city. In this kind of skirmishing they were not far inferior to their opponents; but in the open field, and especially under a charge with the bayonet, they were invariably beaten, let the disparity of numbers be what it might. All the officers, in their letters, spoke of the terrible efficacy of the British bayonet; the sepoys became paralysed with terror when this mode of attack was resorted to. On one occasion they were constructing a defensive post at the Eedghah; the British attacked it and drove in the entrance; there was no exit on the other side, and the defenders were all bayoneted in the prison-house which they had thus unwittingly constructed for themselves.

243On the morning of the 14th, the mutineers poured out in great numbers, and attacked the batteries at Hindoo Rao’s house, and the picket in the Subzee Mundee. The troops stationed at those places remained on the defensive till three o’clock in the afternoon, struggling against a force consisting of many regiments of insurgent infantry, a large body of cavalry, and several field-pieces. It was indeed a most determined attack, supported, moreover, by a fire of heavy artillery from the walls. Why it was that so many hours elapsed before succour was sent forth, is not very clear; but the troops who had to bear the brunt of this onslaught comprised only detachments of the 60th and 75th foot, with the Goorkhas of the Sirmoor battalion and the infantry of the Guides. A column was formed, however, at the house above named, under Brigadier Showers, consisting of the 1st Punjaub infantry, the 1st Europeans, and six horse-artillery guns. Then commenced a double contest; Showers attacking the enemy at the picket-house, and Major Reid at Hindoo Rao’s house. After a fierce struggle the enemy were driven back into the city, and narrowly escaped losing some of their guns. It was a day’s work that could not be accomplished without a serious loss. None of the officers, it is true, were killed in the field; but the list of wounded was very large, comprising Brigadier Chamberlain (at that time adjutant-general of the army), and Lieutenants Roberts, Thompson, Walker, Geneste, Carnegie, Rivers, Faithful, Daniell, Ross, Tulloch, Chester, Shebbeare, Hawes, Debrett, and Pollock. Tho wounding of so many subalterns shews how actively different companies of troops must have been engaged. Altogether, the operations of this day brought down 15 men killed and 193 officers and men wounded.

The heat was by this time somewhat alleviated by rains, which, however, brought sickness and other discomforts with them. Men fell ill after remaining many hours in damp clothes; and it was found that the fierce heat was, after all, not so detrimental to health. Many young officers, it is true, lately arrived from England, and not yet acclimatised, were smitten down by sun-stroke, and a few died of apoplexy; but it is nevertheless true that the army was surprisingly healthy during the hot weather. One of the Carabiniers, writing in the rainy season, said: ‘The last three days have been exceedingly wet; notwithstanding which we are constantly in the saddle; no sooner has one alarm subsided than we are turned out to meet the mutineers in another quarter.’ An officer of Sappers, employed in blowing up a bridge, said: ‘We started about two P.M., and returned about twelve at night drenched through and thoroughly miserable, it having rained the whole time.’

The state of affairs in the middle of July was peculiar. It seemed to the nation at home that the army of Delhi ought to be strong enough to retake the city, especially when a goodly proportion of the number were Europeans. Yet that this was not the case, was the opinion both of Reed and of Wilson; although many daring spirits in the army longed to breach the walls and take the place by storm. Twelve hundred wounded and sick men had to be tended; all the others were kept fully employed in repelling the sallies of the enemy. Major-general Reed, who ought never to have assumed the command at all—so broken-down was he in health—gave in altogether on the 17th, after the wounding of Chamberlain; he named Brigadier Wilson, who had brought forward the Meerut brigade, as his successor. The new commander immediately wrote to Sir John Lawrence a letter (in French, as if distrusting spies), in which he candidly announced that it would be dangerous and disastrous to attempt a storm of the city; that the enemy were in great force, well armed, strong in position, and constantly reinforced by accessions of insurgent regiments; that they daily attacked the British, who could do little more than repel the attacks; that his army was gradually diminishing by these daily losses; that it would be impossible to take Delhi without at least one more European regiment and two more Sikh regiments from the Punjaub; and that if those additions did not speedily reach him, he would be obliged to raise the siege, retreat to Kurnaul, and leave the country all around Delhi to be ravaged by the mutineers. This letter shewed the gravity with which Brigadier Wilson regarded the state of matters at that critical time. Lawrence fully recognised the importance of the issue, for he redoubled his exertions to send 900 European Fusiliers and 1600 Punjaubees to the camp.

General Reed’s resignation was twofold. He resigned the provisional command-in-chief of the Bengal army as soon as he was officially informed of the assumption of that office by Sir Patrick Grant; and he resigned the command of the Delhi field-force to Brigadier Wilson, because his health was too far broken to permit him to take part in active duties. It was the virtual ending of his part in the wars of the mutiny; he went to the hills, in search of that health which he could never have recovered in the plains.

Among the many contests in the second half of the month was one near Ludlow Castle, a name given to the residence of Mr Fraser, the commissioner of Delhi, one of those foully murdered on the 11th of May. This house was within half a mile of the Cashmere Gate, near the river; the enemy were found to be occupying it; but their works were attacked and destroyed by a force under Brigadier Showers; while Sir T. Metcalfe’s house, further northward, was taken and strengthened as a defensive post by the British.

Mr Colvin, writing from Agra to Havelock on the 22d of July, giving an account of such proceedings at Delhi as had come to his knowledge, made the following observations on the character which the struggle had assumed: ‘The spirit by which both Hindoos and Mohammedans act together at Delhi is very remarkable. You would 244well understand a gathering of Mohammedan fanatical feeling at that place; but what is locally, I find, known by the name of “Pandyism,” is just as strong. Pandies are, among the Hindoos, all Brahmins. What absurd, distorted suspicions of our intentions (which have been so perfectly innocent towards them) may have been first worked upon, it is scarcely possible to say; but the thing has now got beyond this, and it is a struggle for mastery, not a question of mistrust or discontent. Mohammedans seem to be actively misleading Hindoos for their own purposes. Sir Patrick Grant will not know the Bengal army again. The Goorkhas, Sikhs, and Punjaubee Mohammedans have remained quite faithful, and done their duty nobly at Delhi; the bad spirit is wholly with the Poorbeahs.’ Mr Greathed, Colvin’s commissioner with the siege-army, made every attempt to ascertain, by means of spies and deserters, what were the alleged and what the real motives for the stubborn resistance of the mutineers to British rule. He wrote on this subject: ‘The result of all questionings of sepoys who have fallen into our hands, regarding the cause of the mutiny, is the same. They invariably cite the “cartouche” (cartridge) as the origin; no other cause of complaint has been alluded to. His majesty of Delhi has composed a couplet, to the effect that the English, who boast of having vanquished rods of iron, have been overthrown in Hindostan by a single cartridge. A consciousness of power had grown up in the army, which could only be exercised by mutiny. The cry of the cartridges brought the latent spirit of revolt into action.’ Mr Muir of Agra, commenting on these remarks, said: ‘I fully believe this to be the case with the main body of the sepoys. There were ringleaders, no doubt, who had selfish views, and possibly held correspondence with the Delhi family, &c.; but they made use of the cartridge as their argument to gain over the mass of the army to the belief that their caste was threatened.’

General Wilson.

It will be unnecessary to trace day by day the struggles outside Delhi. They continued as before; but the frequency was somewhat lessened, and the danger also, for the defence-works on the ridge had been much strengthened. Every bridge over the canal was blown up, except that on the main road to Kurnaul and Umballa; and thus the enemy could not easily attack the camp in the rear. It was not yet really a siege, for the British poured very few shot or shell into the city or against the walls. It was not an investment; for the British could not send a single regiment to the southwest, south, or east of the city. It was little more than a process of waiting till further reinforcements could arrive.

At the close of July, Brigadier Wilson forwarded to the government a very exact account of the state of his army, shewing what were his resources for maintaining the siege on the one hand, and repelling attacks by the enemy on the 245other. We present the chief particulars in a foot-note, in an altered and more condensed form.^[55] It appears that out of this army of something more than 8000 men, above 1100 were rendered non-effective by sickness or wounds; that of the whole number of effectives, just about one-half were Europeans, belonging either to the Queen’s or to the Company’s army; and that no European corps, except perhaps the Lancers, comprised more than a fractional percentage of a full regiment. A return sent in about the middle of the month had comprised 300 men of the 4th and 17th Bengal irregular cavalry; but the omission of this element at the end of the month shewed that those dangerous companions had been got rid of. The corps of Guides and Goorkhas had in a fortnight diminished from an aggregate number of 923 to 571—so rapidly had those gallant men been brought down by balls, bullets, and cholera. Ranked among the artillery and engineers were many hundred syces and bildars, natives who merely aided in certain labouring operations; and among the Sappers and Miners the Punjaubees were only just learning their trade.

Engineer Officers in Battery before Delhi.

The casualty list of officers was a very serious one. From the time when Brigadier Wilson encountered the enemy at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur at the end of May, till he made up his report at the end of July, the officers who were killed or wounded were 101 in number. Anson, Barnard, Reed, Chamberlain, Halifax, Graves—nearly all the general officers except Wilson and Showers, were either dead or in some way disabled; and these frequent changes in command doubtless affected the organisation and movements of the army.

Brigadier Wilson made every attempt, while doing the best he could with his own forces, to ascertain the number and components of those possessed by the enemy. Military commanders always aim at the acquisition of such knowledge, effected by a species of espionage which, however opposed to general feeling at other times, is deemed quite fair in war. From the 11th of May, when 246the troubles began in Delhi, to the end of July, there arrived in the city mutinous regiments from Meerut, Hansi, Muttra, Lucknow, Nuseerabad, Jullundur, Ferozpore, Bareilly, Jhansi, Gwalior, Neemuch, Allygurh, Agra, Rohtuk, Jhuggur, and Allahabad. The list given in a note^[56] is taken from the official dispatch, which was itself a record of information obtained from various native sources; but after making allowance for the fact that portions only of many of the regiments had entered Delhi, and that the numbers had been considerably lessened by the thirty or more encounters which had taken place outside the walls, the military authorities brought down the supposed number to a much lower limit than had before been named—namely, 4000 disciplined cavalry, and 12,000 infantry, besides 3000 undisciplined levies. The rebels retained the formidable defensive artillery which they found in Delhi, and brought thirty field-guns also with them; but these guns were lessened in number one-half by successive seizures made by the British.

The condition and proceedings of the rebels within the city could, of course, be known only imperfectly. The old king was looked up to by all as the centre of authority, but it is probable that his real power was small. Where regiments had arrived from so many different quarters, we may suppose that the apportionment of military command was no easy matter; and indeed there was, throughout, little evidence that the rebel force had one head, one leader whose plans were obeyed by all. The Lahore Chronicle some time afterwards printed a narrative by a native, of a residence in Delhi from the 13th to the 30th of July. Such narratives can seldom be relied on; but so far as it went, this revelation spoke of great discord among the leaders; great discontent among the troops because their pay was in arrear; great perplexity on the part of the old king because he had not funds enough to pay so large an army; and great plundering of the citizens by the rude soldiery, who deemed themselves masters of the situation. ‘When the sepoys,’ said this native, ‘find out a rich house in the city, they accuse the owner after the following manner, in order to plunder his property. They take a loaf of bread and a bottle of grog with them, and make a noise at the door and break it in pieces, get into the house, take possession of the cash and valuables, and beat the poor householder, saying: “Where is the Englishman you have been keeping in your house?” When he denies having done so, they just shew him the bread and the bottle, and say: “How is it that we happened to find these in your house? We are quite sure there was an Englishman accommodated here, whom you quietly sent elsewhere before our arrival.” Soon after, the talk is over, and the poor man is disgracefully put into custody, where there is no inquiry made to prove whether he is innocent or guilty; he cannot get his release unless he bribes the general.’ The known attributes of oriental cunning give a strong probability to this curious story.

Here, for the present, we take leave of the siege of Delhi, and of the stage at which it had arrived by the end of July. Much has to be narrated, in reference to other places, other generals, other operations, before the final capture of the imperial city will call for description.

Bullock-wagon.

247

Sir Henry Havelock.

If there be one name that stands out in brighter colours than any other connected with the mutiny in India, perhaps it is that of Henry Havelock. There are peculiar reasons for this. He came like a brilliant meteor at a time when all else was gloomy and overshadowed. Anson had died on the way to Delhi; Barnard had died in the camp before that city; Reed had retired, broken down by age and sickness; Wilson had not yet shewn whether he could work out victory at the great Mogul capital; Wheeler was falling, or had fallen, a miserable victim to the treachery of Nena Sahib; Henry Lawrence was no more; Hewett and Lloyd were under a cloud, for mismanagement as military commanders—all this had rendered the British nation grieved and irritated; and men fiercely demanded ‘Who’s to blame?’—as if it were necessary to seek relief by wreaking vengeance on some persons or other. It was a crisis that pressed heavily on Viscount Canning; but it was at the same time a crisis that 248insured fervid gratitude to any general who could achieve victories with small means. Such a general was Havelock. The English public knew little of him, although he was well known in India. Commencing his career as a soldier in 1816, Henry Havelock had borne his full share in all a soldier’s varied fortune. He went to India in 1823; engaged in the Burmese war in 1824; took part in a mission to the court of Siam in 1826; was promoted from lieutenant to captain in 1838; took an active share in the stirring scenes of the Afghan campaign, which brought him a brevet majority, and the order of C. B.; acted as Persian interpreter to generals Elphinstone, Pollock, and Gough; fought at Gwalior in 1843; became brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1844; fought with the bravest in 1845 at Moodkee, Ferozshah, and Sobraon; and in 1846 received the appointment of deputy adjutant-general of the Queen’s troops at Bombay. An Indian climate during so many years having told—in its customary sad way—on his constitution, Henry Havelock returned for a sojourn in England. Returning to Bombay in 1851, he became brevet colonel; and in after years he was appointed quarter-master-general, and then adjutant-general, of the whole of the Queen’s troops in India. When the war with Persia broke out, he took command of one of the divisions in 1857; and when that war was ended, he returned to Bombay. All this was known to official persons in India, but very few of the particulars were familiar to the general public in the home-country; hence, when Havelock’s victories were announced, the public were surprised as if by the sudden appearance of a great genius. That he bore so heavy a responsibility, or suffered such intense mental anxiety, as Wheeler at Cawnpore, Inglis at Lucknow, or Colvin at Agra, is not probable; for he had not hundreds of helpless women and children under his charge; but the astonishing victories he achieved with a mere handful of men, and the moral influence he thereby acquired for the British name throughout the whole of the Doab, well entitled him to the outburst of grateful feeling which the nation was not slow to exhibit. The only danger was, lest this hero-worship should render the nation blind for a time to the merits of other generals.

Neill and Havelock, who worked so energetically together in planning the relief of Lucknow, were brought from other regions of India to take part in the operations on the Ganges. Neill, as colonel of the 1st Madras European Fusiliers, accompanied that regiment to Calcutta, and thence proceeded up the country to Benares, where his contest with the rebels first began. Havelock, landing at Bombay from Persia, set off by steam to go to Calcutta; he was wrecked on the way near Ceylon, and experienced much perilous adventure before he could proceed on his journey. At Calcutta—where he arrived, in the same steamer which brought Sir Patrick Grant, on the 17th of June—he received the appointment of brigadier-general,^[57] to command such a force as could be hastily collected for the relief, first of the Europeans at Cawnpore, and then of those at Lucknow; and it was towards the close of June that he made his appearance at Allahabad.

Sufficient has been stated in former chapters to shew what was the state of affairs at that time. Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, and Delhi were either in the hands of the rebels, or were so beset by them that no British commander was able to assist his brother-officers. Oude, the Doab, and Rohilcund were in deplorable anarchy; and it depended either upon Viscount Canning at Calcutta, or Sir John Lawrence at Lahore, to send aid to the disturbed districts. Lawrence, as we have seen, and as we shall see again in a future chapter, with admirable energy and perseverance, sent such assistance as enabled Wilson to conquer Delhi; while Canning, under enormous difficulty, sent up troops to Allahabad by scores and fifties at a time, as rapidly as he could collect them at Calcutta.

Brigadier Neill preceded Havelock in the operations connected with the repression of the mutiny in the Doab and adjacent regions. His own regiment, the 1st Madras European Fusiliers, had been ordered to proceed to Persia in the spring, but had received counter-orders in consequence of the sudden termination of the war in that country. While at Bombay, uncertain whether commands might be received to proceed to China, the regiment heard the news of a revolt among the Bengal troops; and very speedily, both Persia and China were forgotten in matters of much greater exigency and importance. After making the voyage back from Bombay to Madras, the regiment proceeded to Calcutta, and the men were then sent up the country as rapidly as possible to Benares, some by road and the rest by steamers. Neill himself reached that city on the 3d of June, and was immediately engaged, as we have already seen (p. 154), in disarming a mutinous regiment, and in maintaining order in the vicinity. After six days of incessant work at Benares, the brigadier, hearing of the mutiny at Allahabad, started off on the 9th to render service in that region. With what a powerful hand he put down the rebels; with what stern and prompt firmness he retained possession of that important city, the ‘key to Upper India’—has already been briefly shewn.^[58] The various corps of the Madras Fusiliers reached 249Benares and Allahabad by degrees; and fragments of other European regiments were sent up as fast as possible, as the nucleus of a little army forming at Allahabad.

The 1st of July may be taken as the day that marked the commencement of General Havelock’s career in relation to the Indian Revolt. He and his staff arrived at Allahabad on that day, after a rapid journey from Calcutta. A few hours before his arrival, the first relieving column had been sent off by Neill towards Cawnpore: consisting of 200 Madras Fusiliers, 200 of the 84th foot, 300 Sikhs, and 120 irregular cavalry, under Major Renaud; and a second, of larger proportions, was to follow in a week or ten days’ time. The immediate object held in view, in the march of both columns, was to liberate Sir Hugh Wheeler and his hapless companions at Cawnpore; and, if this were accomplished, the second work to be done was to advance and relieve Sir Henry Lawrence and the British at Lucknow. It was not at that time known that, before the second column could start from Allahabad, both Wheeler and Lawrence had been numbered with the dead. Neill superseded the officer previously in command at Allahabad; Havelock superseded Neill in command of the relieving force; we shall have to speak of Outram superseding Havelock; and we have already spoken of Patrick Grant superseding Reed, and of Colin Campbell superseding Grant. All these supersessions were in virtue of military routine, depending either on seniority, or on the exercise of a right to make appointments. If these various officers had been unsuccessful, the system of supersession would have been attacked by adverse judges as the cause of the failure; but there was so much nobility of mind displayed by four or five of the gallant men here named, that the vexation often caused by supersession was much alleviated; while the nation at large had ample reason to admire and be thankful for the deeds of arms that accompanied generosity of feeling.

On the 3d, an auxiliary force under Captain Spurgin, left Allahabad for Cawnpore, irrespective of the two columns. It consisted only of 100 Madras Europeans armed with rifles, 12 artillerymen, and two 6-pounder guns; it went by steamer up the Ganges, partly in order to control the mutineers on the banks, but in part also on account of the paucity of means for land-conveyance. No steamer had had much success in that part of the Ganges; and hence great interest was felt in the voyage of the Brahmaputra. As a first difficulty, the engineers, having no coals, were obliged to forage for wood every day on shore. On the second day of the trip, this foraging had to be protected by half the force, against a body of 500 insurgents on the Oude bank, provided with a large piece of ordnance; the wood was not obtained without a regular battle, in which 50 English ‘thrashed’—to use a very favourite term among the soldiers—just ten times their number of rebels, and captured their gun. On they went, struggling against the rapid stream of the Ganges, and never making more than two miles an hour. The enemy hovered on the banks, and sent several round shot into the little iron steamer—a sort of irritation that kept the crew and soldiers well on the alert. Day after day passed in this way, Captain Spurgin timing his movements so as to accord with the march of the land-columns. The steamer reached Cawnpore on the 17th, just a fortnight after the departure from Allahabad—a degree of slowness not altogether dependent on the difficulty of the navigation, but partly due to the necessity of not advancing more rapidly than the columns could fight their way on shore.

The dismal news gradually reached Allahabad that some dreadful calamity had occurred at Cawnpore. This information led Havelock to modify his plans and quicken his movements; and, full of heart, he transmitted to Calcutta the telegram already quoted, to the effect that ‘1000 Europeans, 1000 Goorkhas, and 1000 Sikhs, with 8 or 10 guns, will thrash everything.’ Among the troops he collected was a handful of volunteer cavalry, consisting chiefly of officers who had been left without command by the mutiny of their respective native regiments, or had narrowly escaped massacre; the number amounted only to a score; but it comprised just the sort of men who would be ready for any enterprise at such a time.

Major Renaud had every reason to be satisfied with the gallantry of the Madras Fusiliers—to which corps he belonged—and of the other troops who aided in forming his small column, in various minor operations during the first nine days of the march from Allahabad. He everywhere pacified the country by punishing the ringleaders in mutiny and rebellion wherever and whenever they fell into his hands. Suddenly, however, he found himself placed in an awkward position on the 10th. Cawnpore had fallen; the British at that station had either been killed or thrown into prison; and the rebel force thus freed from occupation had rapidly pushed down to the vicinity of Futtehpoor—a town which had been in the hands of the rebels since the 9th of June (see p. 172). That force was at least 3500 strong, with 12 guns; whereas Renaud had at that time only 820 men and 2 guns. General Havelock, becoming aware of this state of things, saw that his force ought to join that of Renaud as quickly as possible. He marched twenty miles on the 11th, under a frightful sun, to Synee; then, after resting a few hours, he and his troops resumed their march at eleven o’clock in the evening, overtook Renaud during the night, and marched with him by moonlight to Khaga, five miles short of Futtehpoor. His little army consisted of about 2000 men, made up of a curious collection of fragments from various regiments; and as it was destined to achieve great results with limited resources, it may be interesting to tabulate the component elements of this 250admirable little band.^[59] Havelock’s information proved to be better than that of the enemy, for when he sent forward Colonel Tytler with a reconnaissance, the enemy supposed they had only Renaud’s small force to contend with; they fired on the colonel and his escort, and pushed forward two guns and a force of infantry and cavalry. When the enemy began to cannonade his front and threaten his right and left, Havelock saw that the time was come to undeceive them: he would have preferred to give his worn-out soldiers a few hours’ rest; but this was not now to be thought of, as, to use his own words, ‘it would have injured the morale of the troops to permit them thus to be bearded.’ The work before him was sufficiently formidable; for there was only the main trunk-road by which to approach Futtehpoor easily; the fields on either side were covered with a depth of two or three feet of water; there were many enclosures of great strength, with high walls; and in front of the city were many villages, hillocks, and mango-groves which the enemy occupied in force. Havelock placed his eight guns on and near the main road, protected by 100 riflemen of the 64th; the infantry came up at deploying distance, covered by rifle-skirmishers; and the cavalry moved forward on the flanks. The struggle was literally decided in ten minutes. The enemy saw a few riflemen approach; but they knew little of the Enfield rifle; and were panic-stricken with the length and accuracy of its range; they shrank back in astonishment; and then Captain Maude, who had dashed over the swamps with his artillery, poured into them a fire so rapid and accurate as to complete their discomfiture. Three guns were abandoned at once, and Havelock steadily advanced, with the 64th commanding the centre, the 78th the right, the 84th and the Sikhs the left. He drove the enemy before him at every point, capturing their guns one by one; the garden enclosures, the barricades on the road, the city wall, the streets of Futtehpoor, all were gained in turn. The enemy retreated right through the city, till they reached a mile beyond it; but they then attempted to make a stand. This attempt gave Havelock some trouble, because his infantry were almost utterly exhausted by fatigue, and because the few irregular horse shewed symptoms of a tendency to go over to the enemy unless narrowly watched. Again the guns and rifles came to the front, and again they attacked in a manner so irresistible as to put the enemy effectively to flight. Havelock thus became master of Futtehpoor, and parked 12 captured guns. It was with a justifiable pride that the general, in sending his list of ‘casualties,’ remarked that it was ‘perhaps the lightest that ever accompanied the announcement of such success. Twelve British soldiers were struck down by the sun, and never rose again;’ but not one was either killed or wounded in the action; his casualties, 6 killed and 3 wounded, were among his native troops. The truth seems to be, that the enemy were dismayed, first by finding that Havelock had joined Renaud, and then by the wonderful range of the Enfield rifles. ‘Our fight was fought neither with musket, nor bayonet, nor sabre, but with Enfield rifles and cannon; so we took no prisoners. The enemy’s fire scarcely reached us; ours, for four hours, allowed him no repose.’ It was with good cause that he thanked and congratulated his troops on the following day, in a ‘morning order,’ short but pithy.^[60]

While encamped at Kullenpore or Kullianpore, on the 14th, to which he had marched after a sojourn at Futtehpoor sufficient to afford his troops that rest which had become absolutely necessary, Havelock sent off a brief telegram, announcing that his capture of artillery at Futtehpoor would enable him to substitute nine excellent field-guns for six of lighter calibre, and also to bring into action two light 6-pounders.

This, then, was the brigadier-general’s first victory over the rebels; it elated his own troops, and checked the audacity of those to whom he was opposed. Neill, meanwhile, was anxiously watching at Allahabad. He had worked hard to organise and send off the first portion of the force under Renaud, the second under Spurgin, and the third under Havelock. He had received from Renaud, on the 4th of the month, information which rendered only too probable the rumour that an act of black treachery on the part of Nena Sahib at Cawnpore had been followed by a wholesale destruction of hapless fugitives in boats on the Ganges. Neill was thus especially anxious that Renaud should advance at once with the first column, and Spurgin with the detachment up the river; but Havelock saw reason why those officers should somewhat delay their advance until he could come up to them, in order that all might if possible enter Cawnpore together.

Havelock, after marching and resting on the 13th and 14th, came up again with the enemy on the 15th. When approaching the small stream 251called the Pandoo Nuddee, it became important to him to ascertain what was the state of the bridge which carried the high road over that river, at a spot about twenty miles from Cawnpore. The stream was too deep to be fordable at that season: hence the importance of obtaining command of the bridge. His intelligencers ascertained that the enemy intended to dispute his passage at the village of Aong, four miles short of the Nuddee; by means of two guns commanding the high road, skirmishers on the right and left of those guns, and cavalry to hover on the flanks of any advancing force. This information being obtained, Havelock sent forward his skirmishers on the right and left of the road; then his volunteer cavalry on the road itself; then the ten guns in line, mostly on the left of the road; and then the infantry in line—the 64th and 84th on the right flank; the 78th, Fusiliers, and Sikhs, on the left. The struggle ahead was not a severe one, for the enemy receded as the British under Colonel Tytler advanced; but Havelock was much harassed by the attempts of the hostile cavalry to get into his rear and plunder his baggage: attempts that required much exertion from his infantry to resist, seeing that the thickly wooded country interfered with the effect of cannon and musketry. The enemy after a time abandoned guns, tents, ammunition, and other materials of war, and made a hasty retreat through the village.

This difficulty over, Havelock prepared for another struggle at the Pandoo Nuddee, which it was necessary for him to cross as speedily as possible. He rested and refreshed his troops for a few hours, and advanced the same afternoon, on a fiercely hot July day. The enemy had not destroyed the bridge, but had placed two guns in épaulement to command it at the opposite side of the stream. Captain Maude disposed his artillery so as to bring a converging fire upon the two guns of the enemy; while the Madras Fusiliers commenced a fire with Enfield rifles to pick off the gunners. The two guns were fired directly down the road at the advancing British column; but after Maude had somewhat checked this fire, the Fusiliers gallantly closed, rushed upon the bridge, and captured both guns—an exploit in which Major Renaud was wounded. The mutineers precipitately retreated. Thus did the brigadier-general achieve two victories in one day—those of Aong and Pandoo Nuddee. True, the victories were not great in a military sense; but they were effected over a numerous force by a mere handful of troops, who fought after wearying marches under a solar heat such as residents in England can with difficulty imagine. Havelock had only 1 man killed during these two actions; 25 were wounded. The loss of the enemy was at least ten times greater; but the chief result of the battles was the dismay into which Nena Sahib was thrown.

General Havelock, like other commanders at that critical time, found the native Bengal troops in his force not to be trusted. Their conduct in presence of the enemy on the 12th excited his suspicion; it was, indeed, worse than doubtful; and on the 14th he found it necessary to disarm and dismount his sowars of the 13th Irregulars and 3d Oude Irregulars—at the same time threatening with instant death any one of their number who should attempt to escape. One of the officers at Allahabad who joined the volunteer cavalry, and had opportunity of observing the conduct of the irregulars at the battle of Futtehpoor, wrote thus concerning it: ‘On seeing the enemy, Palliser called to the men to charge, and dashed on; but the scoundrels scarcely altered their speed, and met the enemy at the same pace that they came down towards us. Their design was evident; they came waving their swords to our men, and riding round our party, making signs to them to go over to their side. When our men thus hung back, a dash out would certainly have ended in our being cut up.’ During a subsequent skirmish, ‘our rear-men turned tail and left us, galloping back as hard as their horses could go; and we were forced to commence a regular race for our necks.... I write this with shame and grief; but it was no fault of Palliser’s or ours.’ Havelock saw the necessity of disarming and dismounting such fellows.

The scene of operations now approaches Cawnpore, that city of unutterable horrors! It was a desperate struggle that Nena Sahib made to retain the supremacy he had obtained at Cawnpore. He probably cared little for kings of Delhi or for greased cartridges, provided he could maintain a hold of sovereign power. When he had broken faith with Sir Hugh Wheeler, and had carried his treachery to the extent of indiscriminate slaughter in the Ganges boats, he naturally hoped to become leader of the rebellious sepoys. In this object, however, he did not wholly succeed; he and his immediate followers were Mahrattas; the mutineers were mostly Hindustanis; and the latter made little account of the Nena’s claim to sovereignty. Had the issue depended upon the infantry sepoys, who were in chief part Hindoos, and who chiefly looked for plunder, his projects might speedily have come to an end; but the cavalry sepoys, being mostly Mohammedans, and exhibiting a more deadly hatred towards the British, more readily joined him in a combined plan of operations, and drew the sepoys to act with them. Leaving Delhi to be held by the large body of mutineers, Nena Sahib took upon himself the office of crushing any British force that might make its appearance from Allahabad. When he heard that Renaud had started with his little band, he got together a force of sowars, sepoys, Mahrattas, artillery, and rabble; having motives of fear as well as of self-interest to induce him to prevent the advance of his opponent. Not knowing that Renaud had been joined by Havelock, the Mahratta chieftain sent bodies of troops sufficient, as he believed, to check the advance; but when the gallant general swept everything before him, the 252arch-fiend of Bithoor saw that the matter was becoming serious. He had had experience of the indomitable resistance, under accumulated suffering, of the hapless Sir Hugh Wheeler and his companions; but now a British general had to be encountered in the open field. So far as is known, it appears that as soon as he heard of the passage of the Pandoo Nuddee by Havelock, Nena Sahib ordered the slaughter of all the captives yet remaining alive at Cawnpore—in order either that the dead might tell no tales, or that he might wreak vengeance on the innocent for the frustration of his plans. Having committed this bloody deed, he went out with an army, and took up a position at Aherwa, the point at which the road to the cantonment branches out from the main trunk-road to Cawnpore city. Nena Sahib commanded five villages, with numerous intrenchments, armed with seven guns; and in the rear was his infantry. Havelock, after advancing sixteen miles from the Pandoo Nuddee to Aherwa during the night of the 15th, and after measuring the strength of this force, saw that his troops would be shot down in alarming numbers before the guns could be silenced and the intrenchments carried; he resolved, therefore, on a flank-movement on the enemy’s left. As a preliminary, he left his camp and baggage under proper escort at Maharajpoor, a few miles in the rear; and gave his sunburnt and exhausted troops two or three hours’ rest in a mango-grove during mid-day of the 16th, until the fierce heat should have somewhat abated. The hour of struggle having arrived, Havelock quietly wheeled his force round to the left flank of the enemy’s position, behind a screen of clumps of mango. When the enemy detected this manœuvre, great sensation was displayed; a body of horse was soon sent to the left, and cannon opened fire in that direction. Then came a series of operations in which the superb qualities of British infantry were strikingly displayed. Villages were attacked and captured one after another, by fragments of regiments so small that one marvels how the enemy could have yielded before them. One such exploit is thus narrated in Havelock’s own language: ‘The opportunity had arrived, for which I have long anxiously waited, of developing the prowess of the 78th Highlanders. Three guns of the enemy were strongly posted behind a lofty hamlet, well intrenched. I directed this regiment to advance; and never have I witnessed conduct more admirable. They were led by Colonel Hamilton, and followed him with surpassing steadiness and gallantry under a heavy fire. As they approached the village, they cheered and charged with the bayonet, the pipes sounding the pibroch. Need I add that the enemy fled, the village was taken, and the guns captured?’ After three or four villages had thus changed hands, the enemy planted a 24-pounder gun on the cantonment road in such a position as to work much mischief upon Havelock, whose artillery cattle were so worn out with heat and fatigue that they could not drag the guns onward to a desired position. The Nena appearing to have in project a renewed attack, Havelock resolved to anticipate him; he cheered on his infantry to a capture of the 24-pounder; they rushed along the road amid a storm of grape-shot from the enemy, and never slackened till they had reached the gun and captured it. Especially was the 64th, led by Major Stirling, conspicuous in this bold enterprise. The enemy lost all heart; they retreated, blew up the magazine of Cawnpore on their way, and then went on to Bithoor.

Plan of action near Cawnpore, July 16, 1857.

253Thus was fought the battle of Cawnpore, the conquest of which place had for so many weeks been anxiously looked forward to by the British. True, they had heard, and under too great a variety of detail to warrant disbelief, that Sir Hugh Wheeler and his gallant companions had been most treacherously murdered by the ruthless chieftain of Bithoor; but yet a hope clung to them that some of their compatriots at least might be alive at Cawnpore. On this 16th of July, Havelock’s small force was lessened by the loss of 6 killed and 98 wounded or missing—a loss wonderfully slight under the circumstances, but serious to him. Captain Currie of the 84th received a wound so desperate that he sank under it in a few hours; Major Stirling was slightly wounded; Captain Beatson, attacked with cholera on the morning of the fight, held up with heroic bearing during the whole day, but died soon afterwards. The enemy lost seven guns on this day, of which three were 24-pounders.

Some of the Europeans bore an almost incredible amount of hard labour on this day of fierce July heat. One, a youth of eighteen who had joined the volunteer cavalry, had been on picket all the preceding night, with no refreshment save biscuit and water; he then marched with the rest sixteen miles during the forenoon; then stood sentry for an hour with the enemy hovering around him; then fought during the whole afternoon; then lay down supperless to rest at nightfall, holding his horse’s bridle the while; then mounted night-guard from nine till eleven o’clock; and then had his midnight sleep broken by an alarm from the enemy. It was on this occasion, too, that Lieutenant Marshman Havelock, son of the general, to whom he acted as aid-de-camp, performed a perilous duty in such a way as to earn for himself the Victoria Cross—a badge of honour established in 1856 for acts of personal heroism. The general thus narrated the incident, in one of his dispatches: ‘The 64th regiment had been much under artillery-fire, from which it had severely suffered. The whole of the infantry were lying down in line, when, perceiving that the enemy had brought out the last reserved gun, a 24-pounder, and were rallying round it, I called up the regiment to rise and advance. Without any other word from me, Lieutenant Havelock placed himself on his horse, in front of the centre of the 64th, opposite the muzzle of the gun. Major Stirling, commanding the regiment, was in front, dismounted; but the lieutenant continued to move steadily on in front of the regiment at a foot-pace, on his horse. The gun discharged shot until the troops were within a short distance, when it fired grape. In went the corps, led by the lieutenant, who still steered steadily on the gun’s muzzle until it was mastered by a rush of the 64th.’ It is difficult for civilians adequately to comprehend the cool courage required in an act like this; where a soldier walks his horse directly up in front of a large piece of cannon which is loaded and fired at him and his comrades as rapidly as possible.

What the British troops saw when they entered Cawnpore, has already engaged our attention (pp. 142-145). None could ever forget it to their dying day. It was on the 17th of July that Havelock, after a night’s rest for his exhausted troops, entered the city, and learned the hideous revelations of the slaughter-room and the well. What steps were immediately taken in Cawnpore, has been noticed in the chapter just cited; and the dismal story need not be repeated. The general could not wait to attend to those matters at that time; he had still to learn what were the movements of Nena Sahib after the battle of the preceding day—whether the Mahratta intended or not to make a stand in his palace at Bithoor. Sending forward part of his troops therefore on the afternoon of the 17th, he found the enemy in a very strong position. Their force consisted of the insurgent 31st and 42d Bengal infantry from Saugor, the 17th from Fyzabad, sepoys from various other regiments, troops of the cavalry regiments, and a portion of Nena Sahib’s Mahrattas—about 4000 men in all. The plain in front of Bithoor, diversified by thickets and villages, had two streams flowing through it, not fordable, and only to be crossed by two narrow bridges. The enemy held both bridges, and defended them well. The streams prevented Havelock from turning the enemy’s flanks; and when his infantry assaulted the position, they were received with heavy rifle and musketry fire. After an hour of very severe struggle, he effected a crossing, drove them back, captured their guns, and chased them towards Sorajpore. He had no cavalry to maintain a pursuit—indeed the want of cavalry was felt sadly by him in every one of his battles. This contest cost the enemy about 250 men, the British about one-fifth of the number; in this last-named list was included only one officer, Captain Mackenzie of the 78th Highlanders, who was slightly wounded.

254Here, then, was one part of the enterprise accomplished. Cawnpore had been recaptured, and the road cleared of rebels between that place and Allahabad. It was on the 30th of June that Renaud had left the last-named place with the first division, and on the 3d of July that Spurgin had set off with the detachment by steamer. It was on the 7th that Havelock had placed himself at the head of the second division, and marched forth to overtake the two others—carrying with him the recollection of a scowl from many of the Mussulman inhabitants of the city. He had seen, as he went along, evidences of Renaud’s stern energy, in the number of rebellious sepoys hanging from gibbets and trees by the roadside. He and his troops had made ordinary Indian marches the first three or four days, in alternate rain and fierce heat, and within sight of destroyed bungalows and devastated homesteads; but when the news from Renaud arrived, forced marches were made. Then came the battle of Futtehpoor on the 12th, that of Aong on the morning of the 14th, that of Pundoo Nuddee on the afternoon of the same day, that of Cawnpore on the 16th, and that of Bithoor on the 17th—five victories in six days, spreading the fame of Havelock far and wide throughout the surrounding districts. The future tactics had then to be resolved upon. Cawnpore had been recovered, although the garrison could not be saved; but there was another British garrison, another group of suffering British women and children, to be thought of—at Lucknow. The general well knew how desperate was the work before him, with the reduced and sickened force at his command; but he was not the man to shrink from making an attempt, at least, to relieve Brigadier Inglis and his companions. Feeling the urgent need of more troops, and the imperative necessity of holding Cawnpore safely while he himself advanced into Oude, Havelock had already sent to Allahabad, requesting Neill to come if possible in person to Cawnpore, and to bring reinforcements with him. It was easier for Neill to respond to the first of these two appeals than to the second; he would have gone anywhere, borne any amount of fatigue, to share in the good work; but he found himself already reduced to so few troops at Allahabad as to be barely able to maintain that place. Nevertheless, after counting heads and measuring strength, he ventured to draft off 227 men of the 84th foot from his little force; he started them forth on the 15th, partly by bullock-trains, to reach Cawnpore on the 20th. He himself set out on the 16th—the day of the battle of Cawnpore—leaving Allahabad under the command of Captain Drummond Hay of the 78th Highlanders, until Colonel O’Brien could arrive. After a rapid journey, Neill reached Cawnpore, took military command of that place and its neighbourhood, and assisted Havelock in the preparations necessary for crossing the Ganges into Oude. One great necessity was perceived on the instant by both generals; English soldiers, with all their good qualities, are prone to drink; and Havelock soon found, to use his own words, that ‘half his men would be needed to keep the other half from getting drunk’ if they had easy access to liquor; he therefore bought up all spare beverages in Cawnpore, and placed them in the hands of the commissariat. A calamity much grieved the little army at this time. Major Renaud, who had so successfully brought forward the first column from Allahabad, sank under the effects of a wound he had received. A bullet had hit him above the knee, forcing part of the scabbard of his sword into the wound, and causing much suffering; amputation seemed to afford some relief, but only for a time; he died soon after the arrival of Neill, who had highly valued him as a trusty officer in his own Madras Fusiliers.

Glancing at a map, we see that the high road from Cawnpore to Lucknow is broken at its very commencement by the river Ganges, which, at this point, varies from five hundred to two thousand yards in width. There is, of course, no bridge here; and as the stream is usually very rapid, the transport of troops necessarily becomes slow, difficult, and dangerous work. Havelock began to cross on the 20th of July, but many days elapsed before the task was completed. The Brahmaputra steamer, which brought Spurgin’s detachment to Cawnpore on the 17th, was, with a few open boats, the only available resource for this work. By the 23d, about 1100 of his troops had crossed over into Oude—every boat-load having to battle against a broad and swift current. All possible baggage was left behind, each man taking with him a very small supply of clothing and food.

On the 20th, Havelock sent a short telegram to the commander-in-chief—announcing that Nena Sahib’s followers appeared to be deserting him; that he had fled from Bithoor; that the British had re-entered that place on the 19th; and that the palace had been reduced to ashes, and 13 guns captured. On the next day a further communication was sent to the effect that three more guns, and a number of animals, had been brought along from Bithoor, and that the magazine had been blown up. Subsequent events proved that the Nena, though forced to flee, still retained a body of troops under his command.

When the brigadier-general, on the 23d of July, had so far succeeded in transporting his gallant little army over the majestic Ganges; and when his sanguine hopes had led him to believe that he could conquer Lucknow in two or three days, then arose in his mind the important strategic question—What next? Should he remain in Oude after the capture of Lucknow, and effect the thorough reconquest of that province; or should he hastily recross the Ganges, march to Agra, liberate Colvin and the other Europeans in the fort, pick up any available force there, and advance to aid in the siege of Delhi? Sir Patrick Grant, who was commander-in-chief at that time, was solicited by 255telegram for an answer to this query. He strenuously recommended that Havelock, once in Oude, should remain there if possible. ‘If he merely relieves the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow, and, after accomplishing that object, instantly recrosses the Ganges into our own provinces, it will be thought and believed throughout India that he had signally failed to reconquer Oude, and that he was driven out of the province by force of arms. The insurgents, though beaten before Lucknow, would assuredly collect again, and follow up the retiring army, prevent supplies from coming into camp, and reduce our troops to great straits and hazards when recrossing the Ganges—the passage of which, even when wholly unopposed, the brigadier-general describes as having been a very difficult and tedious operation.’ This exactly coincided with Havelock’s own view; and he therefore turned a deaf ear to all applications for aid made to him by the commanders at Agra and Delhi.

It was not until the 25th that Havelock, after seeing his army safely across the river, made the passage himself from the Doab into Oude. Neill, with a very small number of troops, prepared to hold Cawnpore safely during Havelock’s absence. He re-established British power throughout the place; offered government rewards for bringing in captured rebels and public property; appointed Captain Bruce to the post of superintendent of the police and intelligence departments; purchased troop-horses in the neighbouring districts; and made arrangements for keeping the road open and unmolested between Cawnpore and Allahabad. All this he did, besides taking care of Havelock’s sick and wounded, with a force of only 300 men—such was the result of the bravery of a soldier and the skill of a commander, when combined in the same person.

When Havelock had advanced six miles from the Ganges, at a place called Mungulwar, he was met by a messenger who had succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the insurgents at Lucknow, and had brought a plan of that city prepared by Major Anderson, together with some brief but valuable information from Brigadier Inglis. The details were partly written in Greek character, as a measure of precaution. Havelock now saw the full importance and difficulty of the work before him. His own little band was reduced to 1500 men, supported by 10 badly equipped and manned guns. On the other hand, he learned that the enemy had intrenched and covered with guns the long bridge across the Sye (Saee) at Bunnee, and had made preparations for destroying it if the passage were forced. Nor was his rear less imperiled than his front; for Nena Sahib had collected 3000 men and several guns, with which he intended to get between Havelock and the Ganges, to cut off his retreat. Nothing but the anxious dangers and difficulties of the Europeans at Lucknow would have induced the gallant man to advance under such perilous odds. He said in one of his dispatches to the government on the 28th: ‘The communications convince me of the extreme delicacy and difficulty of any operation to relieve Inglis; it shall be attempted, however, at every risk.’ Could he have known how anxiously the beleaguered British in the Residency at Lucknow was looking for him, his heart would have bled for them; Major Anderson had sent him a military plan, but the messenger was too much imperiled to bring any lengthened narrative.

The battle of Onao or Oonao was one of the most surprising of the series in which Havelock was engaged. His passage towards Lucknow was disputed on the 29th by the enemy, who had taken up a strong position. Their right was protected by a swamp which could neither be forced nor turned; their advanced corps was in a garden enclosure which assumed the form of a bastion; and the rest of their force was posted in and behind a village, the houses of which were loopholed and defended by 15 guns. The passage between the village and the town of Onao was very narrow; but along this passage the attack had to be made—because the swamp precluded an advance on the one flank, while the flooded state of the country equally rendered the other impassable. The attack was commenced by the 78th Highlanders and the 1st Fusiliers, who, with two guns, soon drove the enemy out of the bastioned enclosure; but when they approached the village, they were exposed to a hot fire from the loopholed houses. A party of the 84th foot advanced in aid; and then a determined struggle ensued; the village was set on fire, but still the enemy resisted with a bravery worthy of a better cause. At length the passage between the town and the village was forced; and then the enemy were seen drawn up in great strength in an open plain—infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Nevertheless Havelock attacked them, captured their guns, and put the horse and foot to flight. During all this time a large detachment of Nena Sahib’s troops, under Jupah Singh, threatened the left flank of the British, in the not unreasonable hope of being able to annihilate such a handful of men. No sooner had Havelock given his troops two or three hours’ rest, than he advanced from Onao to Busherutgunje. This was a walled town, with wet ditches, a gate defended by a round tower, four pieces of cannon on and near the tower, loopholed and strengthened buildings within the walls, and a broad and deep pond or lake beyond the town. Havelock sent the Highlanders and Fusiliers, under cover of the guns, to capture the earthworks and enter the town; while the 64th made a flank movement on the left, and cut off the communication from the town by a chaussée and bridge over the lake. His few horse could do nothing for want of open ground on which to manœuvre; but his guns and his infantry soon captured the place and drove the enemy before them. In these two battles on one day, he had 12 killed and 76 wounded; while the enemy is supposed to have lost half as many men as Havelock’s whole force. He also captured 19 guns, 256but as he had no gunners to work them, or horses to draw them, they were destroyed—two by spiking, and seventeen by shot. In a dispatch relating to this day’s hard work, the general, after describing the brief but desperate contest among the loopholed houses, said: ‘Here some daring feats of bravery were performed. Private Patrick Cavanagh, of the 64th, was cut literally in pieces by the enemy, while setting an example of distinguished gallantry. Had he lived I should have deemed him worthy of the Victoria Cross; it could never have glittered on a more gallant breast.’ This mode of noticing the merit of private soldiers endeared Havelock to his troops. Cavanagh had been the first to leap over a wall from behind which it was necessary to drive the enemy; he found himself confronted by at least a dozen troopers, two or three of whom he killed; but he was cut to pieces by the rest before his comrades could come to his aid.

It must have been with a pang of deep regret that the general, hitherto successful in every encounter, found it necessary, on the 31st of July, to make his first retrograde movement. He never scrupled to attack thousands of the enemy with hundreds of his own troops, in open battle; the odds, whether five to one or ten to one, did not deter him; but when his whole force, his miniature army of operations, became reduced to little more than the number for one full regiment, the question arose whether any men would be left at all, after fighting the whole distance to Lucknow. He had no means for crossing the Sye river or the great canal, as the enemy had taken care either to destroy or to guard all the bridges; and in every military requirement—except courage—his force was becoming daily weaker. Besides officers and men who had been killed or wounded in fair fight, numbers had been struck down by the sun; while others, through exposure to swamps and marshes, had been seized with cholera, diarrhœa, and dysentery; insomuch that Havelock was losing at the rate of fifty men a day. In addition to all this, as he could leave no men behind him to keep open the communication with Cawnpore, he was obliged to take all his sick and wounded with him. His little band being now reduced by battle and disease to 1364 men, he determined on receding two short marches, to wait until reinforcements of some kind could reach him. Colonel Tytler, his quartermaster-general, strongly confirmed the necessity of this retreat. He saw no possibility of more than 600 men reaching Lucknow alive and in fighting condition; and they would then have had two miles of street-fighting before reaching the Residency. He recommended a retreat from Busherutgunje to Mungulwar; and this retreat was made under the earnest hope that aid would arrive soon enough to permit an advance to Lucknow within a week—aid most urgently needed, seeing that the garrison at that place was becoming very short of provisions. The troops, of course, were a little disheartened by this retrograde movement. They rested in Busherutgunje from the early morning of the 30th to the afternoon, when they received the order to retreat. It was not till after the reasons were explained to them, that his gallant companions in arms could at all reconcile themselves to this order from the general. They marched back that evening to Onao, and the following morning to Mungulwar.

The month of August began under dispiriting circumstances to Havelock. His chance of reaching Lucknow was smaller than ever; although greater than ever was the need of the garrison at that place for his assistance. He sent back his sick and wounded from Mungulwar to Cawnpore, across the Ganges, and committed them to Neill’s keeping. He explained to that general the reasons for his retreat, and asked for further reinforcements if such were by any means obtainable. Neill was able simply to send a few dozens of men, bringing Havelock’s effective number up to about 1400. With these he set about reorganising his little band during the first three days of the month—counting each man as if he had been a gem above price. Every native had been got rid of; all his troops were British; and therefore, few as they were, he felt entire reliance on them. On the 4th he sent out his handful of volunteer cavalry to reconnoitre the Lucknow road, to see what had become of the enemy. The troopers dashed through Onao without interruption; but on approaching Busherutgunje they saw ample evidence that the enemy were endeavouring to block up the line of communication, by occupying in force a series of hamlets between the town and the lake beyond it. The cavalry, having thus obtained news critically important to the general, galloped back the same evening to Onao, where they were joined by Havelock and his force from Mungulwar. After a night’s bivouac at Onao, the British marched forth in early morn, and met their old enemy for a second time at Busherutgunje. Havelock, after a reconnaissance, resolved to deceive the enemy by a show of cavalry in front, while he sent round guns and infantry to turn their flanks. This manœuvre completely succeeded; the enemy were surprised, shelled out of the town, and pursued by the bayonet and the rifle through the whole of the hamlets to an open plain beyond. They suffered much, but safely drew off all their guns except two. Though a victory for Havelock, shewing the high qualities of his men, it was not one that cheered him much. The enemy were still between him and Lucknow, and he would have to encounter them again and again, with probably great reinforcements on their side, ere he could succeed in the object he had at heart. The morning of the 6th of August rose gloomily to him; for he was forced to a conclusion that an attack on Lucknow was wholly beyond his force. He returned from Busherutgunje through Onao to his old quarters at Mungulwar; 257and when encamped there, wrote or telegraphed to the commander-in-chief that he must abandon his long-cherished enterprise until strengthened. All his staff-officers joined in the opinion that to advance now to Lucknow would be ‘to court annihilation,’ and would, moreover, seal the doom of the heroic Inglis in that city—seeing that that officer could not possibly hold out without the hopeful expectation, sooner or later, of relief from Cawnpore. ‘I will remain,’ added Havelock in his notification, ‘till the last moment in this position (Mungulwar), strengthening it, and hourly improving my bridge-communication with Cawnpore, in the hope that some error of the enemy may enable me to strike a blow against them, and give the garrison an opportunity of blowing up their works and cutting their way out.’ Havelock’s army now only just exceeded 1000 effective men—a number absurd to designate as an army, were it not for its brilliant achievements. Between Mungulwar and Lucknow it was known that there were three strong posts, defended by 50 guns and 30,000 men. Every village on the road, too (this being, in the turbulent province of Oude), was found to be occupied by zemindars deadly hostile to the British. Neill had only 500 reliable troops at Cawnpore, of whom one-half were on the sick-list. Who can wonder, then, that even a Havelock shrank from an advance to Lucknow at such a time?

Plan of action near Bithoor, August 16, 1857.

From the evening of the 6th to the morning of the 11th was the small overworked column encamped at Mungulwar—fighting against cholera as a more dreaded opponent than rebellious sepoys, and keeping a guarded watch on the distrusted Oudians around. On the 11th, however, this sojourn was disturbed; and the British found themselves called upon to meet the enemy for the third time at the town of Busherutgunje. Early in the morning Havelock received information that 4000 rebels, with some guns, had advanced from Nawabgunge to that place. It did not suit his views to have such a hostile force in position within a few hours’ march of him; he therefore put his column in motion. His advanced guard drove the enemy’s parties out of Onao; but 258when he marched onward to the vicinity of Busherutgunje, he found the enemy far more numerous than he had expected—spread out to a great distance right and left, and strongly intrenched in the centre. Havelock saw reasons for postponing his attack till the following day. He returned to Onao, where his troops bivouacked on the wet ground amid much discomfort, and after a very scanty supper. Such men, however, were not likely to make the worst of their troubles; they rose on the 12th, ready to vanquish the enemy in their usual style. In the two former battles of Busherutgunje, the enemy had depended chiefly on defences in and behind the town; but in this instance they had adopted the plan of intrenching the village of Boursekee Chowkee, in advance of the town. Havelock was much retarded in bringing his battery and supporting troops across the deep and wide morasses which protected the enemy’s front, during which operation the enemy’s shot and shell caused him some loss; but when these obstacles were surmounted, and his artillery brought into play, the 78th Highlanders, without firing a shot, rushed with a cheer upon the principal redoubt, and captured two out of the three horse-battery guns with which it was armed. The enemy’s extreme left being also turned, they were soon in full retreat. But here, as before, the victory was little more than a manifestation of British superiority in the field of battle; the enemy lost six to one of the British, but still they remained on or near the Lucknow road. The brigadier, just alike to his humble soldiers and to his brother-officers, did not fail to mention the names of those who particularly distinguished themselves. On one occasion it was his own son Lieutenant Havelock; on another it was Patrick Cavanagh the private; and now it was Lieutenant Crowe of the 78th Highlanders, who, on this 12th of August, had been the first man to climb into the enemy’s redoubt at Boursekee Chowkee—an achievement which afterwards brought him the Victoria cross.

The conqueror for the third time retreated from Busherutgunje to Mungulwar, of course a little weaker in men than in the morning. Havelock’s object, in this third retreat, was not merely to reach Mungulwar, but to recross the Ganges to Cawnpore, there to wait for reinforcements before making another attempt to relieve Lucknow. The advance of the 4000 rebels on the 11th had been mainly with the view of cutting off the little band of heroes during this embarkation; but the battle of the 12th frustrated this; and by evening of the 13th the whole of the British had crossed the Ganges from the Oude bank to the Cawnpore bank, by a bridge of boats and a boat-equipage which Colonel Tytler and Captain Crommelin had used indefatigable exertions to prepare.

There can be no question that this retreat was regarded by the insurgents as a concession to their superior strength, as an admission that even a Havelock could not penetrate to Lucknow at that time; it elated them, and for the same reason it depressed the little band who had achieved so much and suffered so severely. The general himself was deeply grieved, for the prestige of the British name, but more immediately for the safety of Brigadier Inglis and his companions. But though grieved, he was too good a soldier to despond: he looked at his difficulties manfully. Those difficulties were indeed great. While he was fighting in Oude, bravely but vainly striving to advance to Lucknow, Nena Sahib had been collecting a motley assemblage of troops near Bithoor, for the purpose of re-establishing his power in that region. A whole month had been available to him for this purpose, from the middle of July to the middle of August; and during this time there had been assembled the 31st and 42d native infantry from Saugor, the 17th from Fyzabad, portions of the 34th disbanded at Barrackpore, troops of three mutinied cavalry regiments, and odds and ends of Mahrattas. The Nena had imitated Havelock in crossing into Oude, but had afterwards recrossed into the Doab, with the evident intention of attacking Neill’s weak force at Cawnpore. Bithoor he reoccupied without difficulty, for Neill had no troops to station at that place, but now he planned an advance to Cawnpore itself. As soon as Havelock had brought his column across the Ganges on the 13th, the two generals concerted a plan; they resolved to rest the troops on the 14th, attack Nena Sahib’s left wing on the 15th, and march to Bithoor on the 16th. Neill, with a mere handful of men, went out of his intrenchment, surprised the enemy’s left, and drove them with precipitation from the vicinity of Cawnpore. This done, Havelock laid his plan for a third visit to Bithoor on the 16th. He marched out with about 1300 men—nearly all that he and Neill possessed between them—and came up to the enemy about mid-day. They had established a position in front of Bithoor, which Havelock characterised as one of the strongest he had ever seen. They had two guns and an earthen redoubt in and near a plantation of sugar and castor-oil plants, intrenched quadrangles filled with troops, and two villages with loopholed houses and walls. Havelock, after surveying the position, sent his artillery along the main road; consisting of Maude’s battery, which had already rendered such good service, and Olphert’s battery, recently forwarded from Allahabad under Lieutenant Smithett. While the guns proceeded along the main road, the infantry advanced in two wings on the right and left. After a brief exchange of artillery-fire, the 78th Highlanders and the Madras Fusiliers advanced in that fearless way which struck such astonishment and panic into the mutineers; they captured and burned a village, then forced their way through a sugar-plantation, then took the redoubt, then captured two guns placed in a battery, and drove the rebels before them at every 259point. The battery, redoubt, quadrangles, villages, and plantations having been thus conquered, the British crossed a bridge over a narrow but unfordable stream, and pursued the enemy into and right through the town of Bithoor. Beyond this it was impossible to pursue them, for Havelock had now scarcely a dozen troopers, and his infantry were utterly exhausted by marching and fighting during a fiercely hot day. The 64th and 84th foot, with the Ferozpore Sikhs, were disabled from taking a full share in the day’s operations, by a bend or branch of the unfordable stream which intercepted their intended line of march; the chief glory of the day rested with the 78th Highlanders and the Madras Fusiliers. Havelock, in his dispatch relating to this battle, said: ‘I must do the mutineers the justice to pronounce that they fought obstinately; otherwise they could not for a whole hour have held their own, even with such advantages of ground, against my powerful artillery-fire.’ Worn out with fatigue, the British troops bivouacked that night near Bithoor; and on the 17th they returned to Cawnpore. They had been fighting for six or seven weeks under an Indian sun, almost from the day of their leaving Allahabad. ‘Rest they must have,’ said Neill, in one of his pithy telegrams. Captain Mackenzie, of the Highlanders, was among those who received wounds on this day.

This may be regarded as terminating the Havelock campaign in the strict sense of the term; that is, the campaign in which he was undisputed chief. He was destined, before the hand of death struck him down, to fight again against the rebellious sepoys, but under curious relations towards a brother-officer—relations strikingly honourable to both, as will presently be explained. A wonderful campaign it must indeed be called. Between the 12th of July and the 17th of August, Havelock had fought and won three battles in the Doab east of Cawnpore, three in the vicinity of Cawnpore and Bithoor, and four in Oude—ten battles in thirty-seven days; and this against an enemy manifold superior in numbers, and with an army which naturally became weaker by each battle, until at length its fighting power was almost extinguished.

Precarious, indeed, was the state to which Havelock’s little force was reduced. Shells, balls, bullets, sabres, heat, fatigue, and disease, laid his poor fellows low; while his constant cry for reinforcements was—not unheeded, certainly—but left unsatisfied. The cry was everywhere the same—‘Send us troops;’ and the reply varied but little: ‘We have none to send.’ On the 19th of August, he had 17 officers and 466 men sick at Cawnpore; while those who were not sick were so exhausted as to be scarcely fit for active service. Havelock and Neill thirsted to encourage their handful of men by some brilliant achievement; but the one essential would be the relief of Lucknow, and for this they were not strong enough. The rebels, encouraged by this state of affairs, assembled in great force on the Oude side of the Ganges; they threatened to cross at Cawnpore, at a spot twelve miles lower down, and at Futtehpoor; while, on the other side, the Gwalior Contingent threatened the small British force from Calpee. Havelock telegraphed to the commander-in-chief: ‘I could bring into the field 8 good guns, but the enemy are reported to have 29 or 30; these are great odds, and my 900 soldiers may be opposed to 5000 organised troops. The loss of a battle would ruin everything in this part of India.’ After deducting his sick and wounded, and two detachments to guard the cantonment and the road to it, he had only 700 men ready for the field—perhaps the smallest ‘army’ that modern warfare has exhibited. Every day the general became more earnest and urgent in the language of his telegrams; he was quite willing to ‘fight anything, and at any odds;’ but his failure of victory would be ruinous at such a critical time. There were 5000 Gwalior troops threatening his rear on the Jumna; there were 20,000 Oudians watching him from the other side of the Ganges; there were 12,000 of the enemy on his left at Furruckabad; and to oppose these 37,000 armed and disciplined soldiers, he had only 700 effective men! The contrast would have been ridiculous, but for the moral grandeur which gave almost a sublimity to the devotedness of this little band. On the 21st, he announced that unless reinforcements arrived soon, he would be compelled to abandon all his hopes and plans, and return to Allahabad, whence he had started on his career of conquest seven weeks before. He endeavoured, meanwhile, to strengthen his position at Cawnpore, and to send off sick and wounded to Allahabad, as a temporary relief.

It would not be easy to decide who was beset by most anxiety towards the close of August—Havelock or Inglis. The former, after his vain attempt to reach Lucknow, wrote a note on the 4th which happily reached Inglis; telling him of what had occurred, and adding, ‘You must aid us in every way, even to cutting your way out, if we can’t force our way in. We have only a small force.’ This note reached Inglis on the 15th; he wrote a reply on the 16th, which—after the messenger had been exposed to seven days of great peril—Havelock received on the 23d. This reply told how terrible was the position of the Lucknow garrison—120 sick and wounded; 220 women, and 230 children; food and all necessaries scanty; disease and filth all about them; officers toiling like common labourers from morning till night; soldiers and civilians nearly worn out with fatigue; enemy attacking every day, and forming mines to blow up the feeble intrenchments; and no means of carriage even if the garrison succeeded in quitting the place. The remaining days of the month were spent by Havelock inactively but hopefully. True, he was becoming almost invested by the rebels at Cawnpore, who saw that his handful of 260men could do little against them; but, on the other hand, telegraphic communication was well kept up with Allahabad, Benares, and Calcutta. He learned that Canning, Campbell, and Outram were busily engaged in sending up every possible reinforcement to him; and he wrote again and again to Inglis, urging him to remain firm to the last, in the cheerful trust that aid would come before the last act of despair—a surrender to the insurgents at Lucknow. There was mention of nearly 2000 men being either on their way or about to start from Calcutta, belonging to the 5th, 64th, 78th, 84th, and 90th regiments, the Madras Fusiliers, and the artillery; and there were confident hopes expressed of great service being rendered by the Naval Brigade, 500 ‘blue jackets,’ under Captain Peel, who left Calcutta by steamer on the 20th. The governor-general knew that Brigadier Inglis had a quarter of a million sterling of government money under his charge in the Residency of Lucknow; and he sent telegrams to Havelock and Neill, urging them, if possible, to convey instructions to Inglis not to care about the money, but rather to use it in any way that might best contribute to the liberation of his heroic and suffering companions.

New names now appear upon the scene—those of Outram and Campbell. Major-general Sir James Outram, after successfully bringing the Persian war to an end, had been appointed by the governor-general to the military command of the Dinapoor and Cawnpore divisions; succeeding Wheeler, who was killed at Cawnpore, and Lloyd, who had fallen into disgrace at Dinapoor. This was a very important trust, seeing that it placed under his control all the British officers engaged in the various struggles at Lucknow, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, Dinapoor, &c. He arrived at Dinapoor to assume this command on the 18th of August, two days after the date when Havelock had ended his series of ten battles. It happened, too, that Sir Colin Campbell arrived in India about the same time, to fill the office of commander-in-chief of all the armies of the crown and the Company in India. For a period of two months, Sir Patrick Grant had superintended military matters, remaining in consultation with Viscount Canning at Calcutta, and corresponding with the generals in the various provinces and divisions. Now, however, Sir Patrick returned to his former post at Madras, and Sir Colin assumed military command in his stead—remaining, like him, many weeks at Calcutta, where he could better organise an army than in the upper provinces. Campbell and Outram, the one at Calcutta and the other at Dinapoor, speedily settled by telegram that every possible exertion should be made to send up reinforcements to Havelock and Neill at Cawnpore; and that those gallant men should be encouraged to hold on, and not retreat from their important position. Outram had formed a plan entirely distinct from that in which Havelock was concerned—namely, to advance from Benares direct to Lucknow viâ Jounpoor, a route altogether northeast of the Ganges and the Doab; and to relieve Brigadier Inglis and the devoted garrison of that city. When, however, it became known that Inglis could not cut his way out of Lucknow without powerful assistance, and that Havelock himself was in danger at Cawnpore, Sir Colin Campbell suggested to Sir James Outram a reconsideration of his plan; pointing out that an advance of a hundred and fifty miles from Benares to Lucknow, through a country mostly in the hands of the enemy, would under any circumstances be very perilous; and submitting that a march by Allahabad to Cawnpore might probably be better. The great problem in effect was—how could Outram best assist Havelock and Neill, and how could all three best liberate Inglis from his difficulties? To solve this problem, the few remaining days of August, and the month of September, were looked forward to with anxiety.

The plan of operations once agreed upon, Sir James Outram engaged in it as quickly as possible. On the 1st of September, having made the necessary military arrangements for the safety of the Dinapoor region, he arrived at Allahabad, making a brief sojourn at Benares on his way. He took with him 90 men of H.M. 90th foot—a small instalment of the forces with which he hoped to strengthen Havelock’s little band. Three days afterwards, 600 men of the same regiment reached Allahabad by steamers—a slow and sure way which the government was forced to adopt owing to the miserable deficiency in means of land-transport. No time was lost in making these valuable troops available. Reckoning up the various fragments of regiments which had arrived at Allahabad since Havelock took his departure from that place two months before, Outram found them to amount to something over 1700 men; he set off himself on the 5th with a first column of 673 men; Major Simmonds started on the same day with a second column of 674; about 90 more followed on the 6th; and 300 remained to guard Allahabad, and to form the nucleus for further reinforcements. On the 7th, Outram was at Hissa, progressing at a rate that would probably carry him to Cawnpore by the 15th—all his men eagerly hoping to have a brush with the ‘Pandies,’ and to aid in augmenting the gallant little band under Havelock.

While Sir James was on his march, he received information that a party of insurgents from Oude were about to cross the Ganges into Doab, at a place called Koondun Puttee, between Allahabad and Futtehpoor, and about twenty miles from the last-named town. Seeing the importance of frustrating this movement, he made arrangements accordingly. Being at Thureedon on the 9th of September, he placed a small force under the charge of Major Vincent Eyre, who had lately much distinguished himself at Arrah; consisting of 100 of H.M. 5th, and 50 of the 64th regiments, mounted on elephants, with two guns, tents, two 261days’ cooked provisions, and supplies for three days more. These troops, not sorry at being selected for such a novel enterprise, started off and reached Hutgong by dusk on the 10th, where they were joined by 40 troopers of the 12th Irregular Horse under Captain Johnson. Eyre, after resting his men, made a moonlight march to Koondun Puttee, where he arrived at daybreak. The enemy, in surprise, rushed hastily to their boats, with a view of recrossing the Ganges into Oude; but this escape was not allowed to them. The sword, musket, rifle, and cannon brought them down in such numbers that hardly any saw Oude again. The number of the enemy was about 300; a number not large, but likely to prove very disastrous if they had obtained command of the road between Allahabad and Cawnpore. Havelock evidently attached much importance to this service, for he said in his dispatch: ‘I now consider my communications secure, which otherwise must have been entirely cut off during our operations in Oude; and a general insurrection, I am assured, would have followed throughout the Doab had the enemy not been destroyed—they being but the advanced-guard of more formidable invaders.’ This work achieved, the different columns continued their march, until at length they safely reached Cawnpore.

Brigadier-general Neill.

The three generals—Outram, Havelock, and Neill—met on the 15th of September at Cawnpore, delighted at being able to reinforce each other for the hard work yet to be done. And now came a manifestation of noble self-denial, a chivalrous sacrifice of mere personal inclination to a higher sense of justice. Outram was higher in rank as a military officer, and held a higher command in that part of India; he might have claimed, and officially was entitled to claim, the command of the forthcoming expedition; but he, like others, had gloried in the deeds of Havelock, and was determined not to rob him of the honour of relieving Lucknow. On the 16th, Sir James Outram 262issued an order,^[61] in which, among other things, he announced that Havelock had been raised from brigadier-general to major-general; that that noble soldier should have the opportunity of finishing what he had so well begun; that Outram would accompany him as chief-commissioner of Oude, and would fight under him as a volunteer, without interfering with his command; and that Havelock should not be superseded in the command by Outram until the relief of Lucknow should have been achieved. It was a worthy deed, marking, as Havelock well expressed it, ‘characteristic generosity of feeling;’ he announced it to his troops by an order on the same day, and ‘expressed his hope that they would, by their exemplary and gallant conduct in the field, strive to justify the confidence thus reposed in them.’

The two generals wished at once to ascertain from Calcutta what were the views of Viscount Canning and Sir Colin Campbell concerning any ulterior proceedings at Lucknow. Outram sent a telegram to Canning to inquire whether, if Lucknow were recaptured, it should be held at all hazards, as a matter of success and prestige. The governor-general at once sent back a reply: ‘Save the garrison; never mind our prestige just now, provided you liberate Inglis; we will recover prestige afterwards. I cannot just now send you any more troops. Save the British in the Residency, and act afterwards as your strength will permit.’ The two generals proceeded to act on these instructions. Just two months had elapsed since Havelock had made his appearance at Cawnpore as a victor; and it was with great pain and anxiety that he had been forced to allow those two months to pass away without sending one single soldier, one single ration of food, to the forlorn band who so wonderfully stood their ground in the Residency at Lucknow. Now, however, he looked forward with brighter hopes; Outram was with him, under relations most friendly and honourable; and both generals were fully determined to suffer any sacrifice rather than leave Inglis and his companions unrelieved.

Outram himself planned the organisation of the new force for operations in Oude; but he placed Havelock at the head of it, and took care that Neill should have a share in the glory.^[62] It consisted of two brigades of infantry, one of cavalry, one of artillery, and an engineer department.

It was on the 19th of September that the two generals crossed with this army into Oude, making use for that purpose of a bridge of boats over the Ganges, most laboriously constructed by Captain Crommelin. The enemy, assembled near the banks, retired after a nominal resistance to Mungulwar. The heavy guns and the baggage were crossed over on the 20th. On the 21st the British again came up with the enemy, turned their right flank, drove them from their position, inflicted on them a severe loss, and captured four guns. With the heroism of a true soldier, Sir James Outram headed one of the charges that brought about this victory; serving as a volunteer under Havelock. The enemy were not permitted to destroy the Bunnee bridge over the Sye; and thus the victors were enabled to pursue their route towards Lucknow. On the 23d, Havelock again found himself in presence of the enemy, who had taken up a strong position; their left posted in the enclosure of the Alum Bagh—a place destined to world-wide notoriety—and their centre and right on low hills. Alum Bagh is so near Lucknow that firing in the city could be distinctly heard; and Havelock therefore gave a volley with his largest guns, to tell the beleaguered garrison that aid was near. The British, in order to encounter the enemy, had to pass straight along the high road between morasses, during which they suffered much from artillery; but when once enabled to deploy to the right and left, they gradually gained an advantage, and added another to the list of their victories—driving the enemy before them, but at the same time suffering severely from the large numbers and the heavy firing of those to whom they were opposed. They had been marching three days under a perfect deluge of rain, irregularly fed, and badly housed in villages. Havelock determined, therefore, to pitch camp, and to give his exhausted troops one whole day’s rest on the 24th.

At last came the eventful day, the 25th of September, when the beleaguered garrison at Lucknow were to experience the joy of seeing those whose arrival had been yearned for during 263so long and anxious a period. Early on that morning, after depositing his baggage and tents under an escort in the Alum Bagh, Havelock pursued his march. The 1st brigade, with Outram attached to it as a volunteer, drove the enemy from a succession of gardens and walled enclosures; while the other brigades supported it. From the bridge of the Char Bagh over the canal, to the Residency at Lucknow, was a distance in a straight line of about two miles; and this interval was cut by trenches, crossed by palisades, and intersected by loopholed houses. Progress in this direction being so much obstructed, Havelock resolved to deploy along a narrow road that skirted the left bank of the canal. On they went, until they came opposite the palace of Kaiser or Kissurah Bagh, where two guns and a body of insurgents were placed; and here the fire poured out on them was so tremendous that, to use the words of the general, ‘nothing could live under it;’ his troops had to pass a bridge partly under the influence of this fire; but immediately afterwards they received the shelter of buildings adjacent to the palace of Fureed Buksh. Darkness now coming on, it was at one time proposed that the force should halt for the night in and near the court of this palace; but Havelock could not bear the idea of leaving the Residency for another night in the hands of the enemy; he therefore ordered his trusty Highlanders, and little less trusty Sikhs, to take the lead in the tremendous ordeal of a street-fight through the large city of Lucknow. It was a desperate struggle, but it was for a great purpose—and it succeeded. On that night, within the British Residency, Havelock and Outram clasped hands with Inglis, and listened to the outpourings of full hearts all around them. The sick and the wounded, the broken-down and the emaciated, the military and the civilians, the officers and the soldiers, the women and the children—all within the Residency had passed a day of agonised suspense, unable to help in their own deliverance; but when at length Havelock’s advanced column could be seen in a street visible from the buildings of the Residency—then broke forth such a cheer as none can know but those placed in similar circumstances.

When General Havelock penned a hasty dispatch narrating the events of this day, he said: ‘To form a notion of the obstacles overcome, a reference must be made to the events that are known to have occurred at Buenos Ayres and Saragossa. Our advance was through streets of flat-roofed and loopholed houses, each forming a separate fortress. I am filled with surprise at the success of operations which demanded the efforts of 10,000 good troops.’ The advantage cost him dearly. Sir James Outram received a flesh-wound in the arm early in the day, but nothing could subdue his spirit; though faint from loss of blood, he continued till the end of the operations to sit on his horse, from which he only dismounted at the gate of the Residency. Greatest loss of all was that of the gallant and energetic Brigadier-general Neill, who from the 3d of June to the 25th of September had been almost incessantly engaged in conflicts with the enemy, in and between the cities of Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. He fell, to fight no more. From the time when he left his native home in Ayrshire, a stripling sixteen years of age, he had passed thirty years of his life in service, and had been a trusty and trusted officer.^[63] But although the loss of Neill was the most deplored, on account of the peculiar services which he had rendered, Havelock had to lament the melancholy list of gallant officers who had equally desired to shew themselves as true soldiers on this day.^[64] No less than ten officers were either killed or wounded in the 78th Highlanders alone—shewing how terrible must have been the work in which that heroic regiment led. The whole list of casualties comprised 119 officers and men killed, 339 wounded, and 77 missing. Of these last Havelock said: ‘I much fear that, some or all, they have fallen into the hands of a merciless foe.’ Thus was the force reduced by more than five hundred men in one day.

On the evening of this day, the 25th of September, Major-general Havelock, within the Residency at Lucknow, gave back to Sir James Outram the charge which had so generously been intrusted to him. He became second in command to one who had all day fought chivalrously under him as a volunteer. Here, then, this chapter may end. It was the last day of Havelock’s campaign as an independent commander. What else he did before disease ended his valuable life; what the Lucknow garrison had effected to maintain their perilous position during so many weary weeks; what were the circumstances that rendered necessary many more weeks of detention in the Residency; by whom and at what time they were really and finally relieved—are subjects that will engage our attention in future pages.

After the first startling outbreak at Meerut, there was no instance of mutiny that threw consternation over a more widely spreading range of country than that at Dinapoor. This military station is in the midst of the thickly populated province of Behar, between Bengal and Oude; a province rich in opium, rice, and indigo plantations, and inhabited chiefly by a class of Hindoos less warlike than those towards the west. The Dinapoor mutiny was the one great event in the eastern half of Northern India during July and August; and on this account it may conveniently be treated as the central nucleus around which all the minor events grouped themselves. In the regions surrounding the lower course of the Ganges, and its branch the Hoogly, the disturbances were of minor character; but along both sides of the great trunk-road there was much more agitation, especially after the mutiny at the station above named. Nevertheless, it will be desirable to take a bird’s-eye glance at Bengal and Behar generally in this chapter, in relation to the events of July and August—keeping steadily in mind the 25th of July, as the day on which the occurrences at Dinapoor agitated all the natives, paralysed many of the Europeans, and led to a train of truly remarkable proceedings in and near the town of Arrah.

First, then, for Calcutta, the Anglo-Indian capital. This city was not afflicted by a mutiny, in the usual meaning of the term, at any time during the year. Many reasons might be assigned for this exemption. There were on all occasions more Europeans at Calcutta than in any other city in India, who could have presented a formidable defence-corps if they chose to combine for that purpose. There was the majesty of a vice-regal court at Calcutta, not without its effect on the impressionable minds of Asiatics. There were the head-quarters of all authority in the city, insuring the promptest measures if exigency should demand them. And lastly, Calcutta being the landing-place for most of the English troops, rebel sepoys could never hope for much chance of success in that capital. Mutiny there was not, but panic unquestionably appeared—panic among the Europeans who did not belong to the Company’s service, and whose imaginations were excited by the terrible narratives brought in from the northwest, and highly coloured during their transmission. It was an unfortunate circumstance that many of these persons were hostile to the government of Viscount Canning; and this hostility was especially displayed by those connected with the press, on account of the restrictions already adverted to. Whatever may be the varieties of opinion on the matters at issue, it is unquestionable that difficulties were thrown in the way of the executive by this want of accord. India has for a long period been rich in coteries and parties. Among military men, the Queen’s officers and the Company’s officers have had a little emulative pique; among non-military men, there has been an envy by the non-officials of the civil servants of the Company; and the military and the civilians have had their own grounds for antagonism. Calcutta, above all other places, has been marked by these sources of discord.

Towards the close of July the government deemed it prudent to ascertain what was the state of affairs in Calcutta with reference to the possession, sale, or concealment of arms. The Europeans in the city, in a state of perpetual alarm, kept up by unauthenticated paragraphs in the newspapers, had indulged a belief that the natives had lately made large purchases of arms, as if plotting mischief. Especially was this suspicion entertained when news arrived from Havelock and Neill that all the Europeans at Cawnpore had been murdered; almost wild with excitement, rage, and terror, the Calcutta community set no bounds to their apprehensions; they would fain have shot all the natives around them, in vague dread of some diabolical plot. Mr Wauchope, commissioner of police, was ordered to make strict inquiry concerning the possession of arms. He found that the sale of weapons had been very large during three 265mouths, but that nearly all the purchases had been made by Europeans, and that hardly a house in Calcutta, inhabited by Christians, was without one or more muskets or pistols. Many arms also had been purchased in Calcutta, and taken into the provinces for the use of indigo-planters, zemindars, and others, who naturally wished to have near them a few weapons at such a turbulent period. Of any considerable purchases of arms by the native population of Calcutta there was no proof, and the superintendent disbelieved the rumour. This was the third time in two months that the Anglo-Indian capital had been thrown into a paroxysm of terror on this subject; and although the panic was shewn to be groundless, the authorities nevertheless believed it to be expedient to cause all firearms in the city to be registered.

Major Vincent Eyre.

No small part of the agitation at Calcutta arose from the shackles on the press, already adverted to. Men of extreme opinions, and men of excited feelings, longing to pour out their thoughts on paper, found themselves less able so to do than in times gone by; there was the seizure of their printing apparatus, the infliction of a heavy fine, confronting them, and checking the movement of their pens. Sufficient transpired, however, to render manifest these two facts—that the European community at Calcutta violently hated the natives generally, and violently opposed Viscount Canning personally. There was a very general acquiescence in some such code of rules as the following, for dealing with the natives—that every mutineer who had taken up arms or quitted his ranks should be put to death; that every native, not a soldier, who aided the mutineers, should in like manner be put to death; that in every village in which a European had been murdered, a telegraph wire cut, or a dâk stolen, a swift tribunal should exercise summary justice; that every village in which a European fugitive had been insulted or refused aid should be heavily fined; and that vengeance, burning vengeance, was the only adequate measure to deal out to all who had offended. The distressing tales brought by the fugitives had much effect in keeping up the feeling denoted by such suggestions as these. It was under the influence of the same disturbed state of the public mind, that an address or petition was got up, condemnatory alike of Viscount Canning and of the East India Company; it was intended to work a considerable effect in England; but the obviously one-sided line of argument vitiated its force and damaged its reception.

As the month of July advanced, and fugitives came in from the disturbed provinces, arrangements were made for accommodating them at 266Calcutta, and—as we have seen—for alleviating their wants. It became also a point of much importance to provide barracks or temporary homes of some kind for the troops expected to arrive by sea from various regions. Among buildings set apart for this latter purpose were the Town Hall, the Free School, the Pleaders’ Chambers in the Sudder Court, and the Lower Orphan School at Kidderpore. Many months would necessarily elapse before troops in large numbers could arrive; but even a single regiment would require considerable space to house it before it could be sent up the country. In what way, during July and August, the English troops were sent to the seats of disturbance, has already been sufficiently noticed; some were despatched by steamers up the Ganges to Patna, Benares, and Allahabad; while the rest mostly went from Calcutta to Raneegunge by railway, and thence pursued their land-journey by any vehicles obtainable.

It may here be remarked, that when Sir Colin Campbell arrived at Calcutta, an immense amount of labour presented itself to his notice. Before he could decide whether to advance northwest to the seat of war, or to remain at the capital, he had carefully to examine the military condition of India. The records of the war department were at Simla, while the centre of authority was at Calcutta. The principal officers were scattered throughout the disturbed districts; the desultory and isolated struggles had relaxed the bond of military obedience; the reinforcements as they arrived had to be fitted into their places; the detached forces had to be brought into subordination to some general plan; and the different branches of the service had to be brought into harmony one with another. Hence Calcutta was for several weeks the head-quarters of the veteran commander-in-chief, while these all-important details of military organisation were in progress.

In the wide belt of country forming the eastern margin of India, from the Himalaya in the north to Pegu in the south, there was no mutiny properly so called during July and August. All the disturbances were limited to threatening symptoms which, if not attended to, might have proved dangerous. The nature of these symptoms may be illustrated by a few examples. At Jelpigoree, early in July, two men were detected tampering with the sepoys of the 73d N. I.; and a trooper of the 11th irregular cavalry was found guilty of insubordination. At Dinagepore the moulvies or Mussulman religious teachers began to spread seditious rumours. At Jessore, similar Mussulman tendencies were manifested. In the third week of July tranquillity prevailed throughout the divisions of Aracan, Chittagong, Dacca, Assam, and Darjeeling, comprising the belt above adverted to; and if agitation were more observable towards the close of the month, it was traceable to news of the Dinapoor mutiny, presently to be noticed. Early in August the Jelpigoree native troops were found to be in a very unsettled state, ready to mutiny at any time; and on the 15th a plot was discovered for murdering the officers and decamping towards the west. In consequence of this, orders were sent to Assam and Darjeeling to aid the Jelpigoree officers in case of need. During the remainder of August, a close watch was kept on the 73d N. I., the chief native regiment in that part of India, sufficient to prevent actual outbreaks; and native servants were disarmed during the Mohurrum or Mohammedan festival, to guard against the effects of fanaticism. Perhaps, however, the tranquillity of this eastern belt was more efficiently secured by the near neighbourhood of half-civilised border tribes, who had but little sympathy with the real Hindustanis, and were willing to enter into the Company’s service as irregular troops and armed police.

Passing westward, to the line of route along the Hoogly to the Ganges, and the country near it, we find traces of a little more turbulency, owing to the presence of a greater number of native troops. About the middle of July, the Barrackpore authorities asked for permission to disarm the villages near at hand, in order to render more effectual the previous disarming of native troops at Barrackpore itself—treated in a former chapter. Early in August the behaviour of the troops at Berhampore became suspicious; they had heard of the mutiny of the 8th N. I. at places further west, and were with difficulty kept from imitating the pernicious example. In the middle of the month, the commissioner of Bhagulpore deemed it necessary to detain two detachments of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, on their way up the Ganges, at Bhagulpore and Monghir; for the 32d native infantry, and the 5th irregular cavalry, exhibited symptoms not to be neglected. After the occurrences at Dinapoor, the region around Berhampore and Moorshedabad could no longer be kept in peace while the native troops retained their arms; it was determined therefore, by Mr Spencer the commissioner, and Colonel Macgregor the commandant, to adopt decisive measures while there was yet time. On the 1st of August, having the aid of H.M. 90th foot, they disarmed the 63d native infantry and the 11th irregular cavalry at Berhampore; and on the following day they similarly disarmed all the inhabitants of that place and of Moorshedabad. Colonel Campbell, of the 90th, who had brought that regiment from England in splendid condition in the Himalaya steamer, and who was on his way up the Ganges to the disturbed districts, was the officer who practically effected this disarming at Berhampore; he spoke of the 11th irregular cavalry as one of the most superb regiments he had ever seen, in men, horses, and equipments; they were rendered almost savage by the skill with which the colonel managed his delicate task; and they reproached the sepoys of the 63d for having submitted so quietly to the disarming. A little further up the country, at Bhagulpore, about 200 troopers of the 5th irregular cavalry mutinied 267on the 14th of August, taking the road towards Bowsee, but harming none of their officers; on the 15th they passed through Bowsee to Rownee; and on the 18th left Rownee for Gayah—bound for the disturbed regions in the west. At Monghir, still higher up the Ganges, a terrible commotion was produced by this occurrence; the civil commissioner shut himself up in a fort, with a few of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, and left the city to its fate; but fortunately Sir James Outram was at the time passing up the Ganges in a steamer; he rebuked this pusillanimity, and recommended the officials to shew a bolder front.

Arriving now at the Patna and Dinapoor district, we must trace the progress of affairs more in detail, to shew how the authorities were placed before, and how after, the mutiny which it is the chief object of this chapter to narrate. Patna is a large and important city, the centre of an industrious region; while Dinapoor, in the immediate vicinity, is the largest military station between Barrackpore and Allahabad. Mr Tayler, civil commissioner, was the chief authority at the one place; Major-general Lloyd was military commandant at the other; and it was essentially necessary, for the preservation of peace in all that region, that these two officials should act in harmony. We have already seen (pp. 151-154) that, about the middle of June, the Patna district became much agitated by the news of disturbances in other quarters; that the police force was thereupon strengthened, and the ghats or landing-places watched; that some of the Company’s treasure was removed to other stations; that places of rendezvous were agreed upon in case of emergency; that conspiracies among the Moslem inhabitants were more than once discovered, in concert with other conspirators at Lucknow and Cawnpore; and that on the 3d of July some of the fanatics murdered Dr Lyell, principal assistant to the opium agent. We have also seen, in the same chapter, that Dinapoor reposed upon a sort of moral volcano throughout June; that although the native troops made loud professions of loyalty, the Europeans were nevertheless in a very anxious position—all living near together, all on the alert, and most of them believing that the fidelity of the sepoys was not worth many days’ purchase. Being thus on their guard, a mutiny ought not to have occurred at their station; but it did occur, and brought disgrace to the general who was responsible for military affairs in that division.

An intelligent clue to this whole series of transactions will be obtained by tracing—first, the Dinapoor mutiny itself; then the mingled disasters and successes, blunders and heroism, at Arrah; then the effect of the mutiny on the districts of Behar north of the Ganges; and, lastly, the effects on the wide-spreading region south of that river.

The distance between the two cities is about ten miles. The barracks of the European troops at Dinapoor were situated in a large square westward of the native town; beyond this were the native lines; and most western of all, by a very injudicious arrangement, was the magazine in which the percussion-caps were stored—a matter apparently small in itself, but serious in its consequences, as we shall presently see. Major-general Lloyd, commander of the station, and of a vast military region called the Dinapoor Division, had for some weeks been an object of almost as much anxiety to the Europeans at the station as the sepoys themselves. He was advanced in years, infirm, and irresolute. Unable to mount his horse without assistance, and dreading to give orders that would have the effect of sending any European troops away from Dinapoor, he was singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties of those times. It points to some great defect in military routine, when one who had been a gallant officer in his better days was thus left in possession of a command he was no longer fitted to wield. Towards the close of July there were three regiments of Bengal native infantry at that station, the 7th, 8th, and 40th. There was also the greater portion of H.M. 10th foot, together with two companies of the 37th, and two troops of artillery. Not a British officer, except the major-general, doubted that these Europeans could have disarmed and controlled the sepoys, had the attempt been made at the proper time. The Calcutta inhabitants had petitioned the governor-general to disarm the native regiments at Dinapoor, and the officers of the Queen’s regiments at that station had all along advocated a similar measure; but General Lloyd, like many other Company’s officers, was proud of the sepoys, and trusted them to the last; and Viscount Canning placed reliance on his experience, to determine whether and when to effect this disarming. This reliance ended in unfortunate results.

On the 25th of July, the appearance of affairs led the major-general to exhibit less than his former confidence in the native troops; he shrank, it is true, from disarming them; but he sought to render their arms less dangerous by quietly removing the percussion-caps from the magazine. Now these caps had to be brought in front of the whole length of the sepoy lines on the way from the magazine to the English barracks. Early in the morning he sent the 10th and the artillery to the grand square, ready to be moved towards the sepoy lines if disturbance should occur. Two hackeries went down to the magazine under charge of an officer; the caps were placed in them; and the vehicles were drawn some distance towards the English lines. There then arose a shout among the sepoys: ‘Kill the sahibs; don’t let the caps be taken away!’ The caps were taken, however, and safely conveyed to the officers’ mess-room. The 10th were kept idle in the square or in barracks all the forenoon; while the native officers were ordered to go to the native lines, and ask the sepoys to give up the caps already issued to them. Some of the sepoys obeyed this strange demand—strange, because backed by no display of power; while some fired their muskets and threatened to shoot the officers. At the sound of these shots the 26810th were ordered hastily to advance; they did so, but only to see the rebel sepoys run off as fast as their legs could carry them. Inexpressible was the mortification of the officers at this sight; three entire regiments escaped across fields, with their arms and accoutrements, to swell the ranks of the mutineers elsewhere; and so stupid had been the orders given, that there was no force at hand to stop them. The 10th, two companies of the 37th, and the artillery, all were burning to castigate these men; yet was the escape so quickly and completely effected that very few of the sepoys fell. The English destroyed the sepoy lines, but did not pursue the mutineers, for their perplexed commander would not permit them to leave him in danger. A surgeon of the 10th, on seeing the officers threatened by the sepoys, brought his hospital-guards to confront them; and even some of his patients got upon the flat roof of the hospital, and fired at the rebels. He then galloped off, and brought all the ladies and children to the barracks for safety. Every man of the 10th regiment was vexed and irritated by this day’s work; complaints against the general were loud, deep, and many; and all the officers’ letters told plainly of the general feeling among them. The regiment numbered little more than four hundred bayonets; for many men were sick in hospital, and a detachment was at Benares; but the four hundred, highly disciplined men, would not have hesitated an instant to disarm, to fight, to pursue, the three thousand rebels, had they been properly instructed and permitted so to do. During eight or ten weeks the officers of that regiment had urged the disarming of the sepoys; but their recommendations had not been listened to, and now it was too late. The general himself, on the forenoon of the 25th, went on board a steamer in the Ganges: ‘I had no horse in cantonment,’ he said. ‘My stable was two miles distant; and being unable at the time to walk far or much, I thought I should be most useful on board the steamer with guns and riflemen.’ It is deeply to be regretted that an old soldier should have been so placed as to find such an explanation necessary. As a consequence of this retreat to a place of shelter, the officers remained without commands and without a commander. Some of the mutineers embarked in boats, with the intention of going down the Ganges to Patna, or of crossing the river; but the detachment of the 37th, on shore and in the steamer, killed most of them by rifle-shots. The steamer did its work, unquestionably; but it was not the place for a military commander at such a time.

The question at once presented itself to the minds of all—whither had the rebels gone? Evidence was soon afforded that the direction taken was that of Arrah, a town twenty-four miles from Dinapoor, and separated from it by the river Sone. Arrah, as a town, was not of great importance; but it was the chief place in the district of Shahabad, and was surrounded by a country whence much revenue was obtained by the East India Company. During the troubles arising out of the mutiny, the chief authority at Arrah was the magistrate, Mr Wake—a man who, by his energy and public spirit, proved to be eminently fitted to hold power in perilous times. During the whole of June and July he had watched the progress of events with an anxious eye. Very soon after the mutiny commenced, he wrote to the authorities at Calcutta, describing the contents of certain native newspapers published about that time, and suggesting the propriety of curbing the licence of those productions. On the 10th of June he announced—with something like contempt in his manner—that most of the Europeans employed on the railway-works near Arrah had hurried away frightened by reports of mutinous symptoms at Ghazeepore and Buxar; and he dwelt on the pernicious effects of the example afforded by this timidity. About a week afterwards he induced them all to return. From time to time he applied to Dinapoor, Patna, and Calcutta, for a small detachment of troops to protect Arrah; but none could be afforded. He suspected some of the chieftains and zemindars near at hand, and more than suspected numerous disbanded sepoys who were seen in the district; to detect plots, he detained and opened letters at the post-office; but this course met with disapproval, as commencing a system liable to great abuse. There were two influential men in the neighbourhood—Baboo Koer Singh, and the Rajah of Doomraon—whose conduct Mr Wake scrutinised very closely; they professed friendship and loyalty to the government, but he doubted them. On the 11th of July, Arrah had become surrounded by so many disbanded sepoys, and natives ready for any mischief, that he applied to Patna for a party of Captain Rattray’s Sikh police, which was furnished to him.

Thus matters proceeded until the 25th of July, when rumours of something disastrous at Dinapoor arrived. Arrah was now about to become suddenly famous. The ‘Defence of Arrah’ was to be narrated in dispatches and letters, in pamphlets and books, and was to cheer up many who had been humiliated by blunders committed elsewhere. True, it was only a house defended, not a town; it was less than a score of Europeans saved, not a whole community; yet did it bring well-deserved praise to those concerned in it, and encouragement to a spirited line of conduct on the part of the Company’s civil servants elsewhere.

269

Mr Boyle’s house at Arrah, defended for seven days against 3000 rebels.

On the evening of the day just named, Mr Wake received express news that the native troops at Dinapoor had actually mutinied, or shewed symptoms of so doing within a few hours. On the morning of the 26th, he heard that some of the mutineers were crossing the river Sone, at a point sixteen miles from Dinapoor, and advancing upon Arrah. His Hindustani local police speedily ran away; but he and a trusty band of civilians resolved to remain at their posts. They selected the bungalow of one of their number, Mr Boyle, an engineer of the main trunk railway, and made that their fortress. Or, more correctly, it was a building which Mr Boyle had selected for some such purpose as this many days or even weeks before, when the state of affairs began to look gloomy; it was a detached two-storied house, about fifty feet square, standing within the same compound as the bungalow inhabited by Mr Boyle; he fortified it with stones and timber, and always kept some provisions in it. When the other civilians learned this, some of them smiled; but the smile became one of gratitude on the 26th of July. The Europeans who now took up their abode in this fortified house were Messrs Wake, Boyle, Littledale, Combe, Colvin, Halls, Field, Anderson, Godfrey, Cock, Tait, Hoyle, Delpeiron, De Songa, and Dacosta; and a Mohammedan deputy-collector, Syud Azimoodeen—all employed in various civil duties in or near Arrah: not a military man among them. With them were 50 Sikhs of Captain Rattray’s police battalion. The ladies and children had been sent away to a place of safety. All that the defenders could bring into the house was meat and grain for a few days’ short allowance for the Europeans, with a very scanty supply of food for the Sikhs. As to weapons, most of the Europeans, besides revolvers and hog-spears, had two double-barrelled guns each, or a gun and a rifle; they had abundance of ammunition, and wherewithal to make cartridges by thousands. Early in the morning of the 27th, nearly the whole of the Dinapoor mutineers marched into Arrah, released the prisoners in the jail, about four hundred in number, rushed to the collectorate, and looted the treasury of eighty thousand rupees. They then advanced to Boyle’s house, and kept up a galling fire against it during the whole day, finding shelter behind trees and adjacent buildings. And now did Baboo Koer Singh shew himself in his true colours; he threw off the mask of friendliness, and boldly headed the mutineers. It was afterwards ascertained that this man, supposed to be in league with Nena Sahib, had openly become a rebel instantly on hearing of the mutiny at Dinapoor: it was he who had procured the boats in which they crossed the Sone; and he formed a plan for joining the Oude insurgents after plundering the treasury of Arrah. When in front of Mr Boyle’s house, Koer Singh and his myrmidons endeavoured to bribe the Sikhs to desert; but these stanch fellows remained true to their salt. On the 28th the insurgents having brought two small cannon, the hastily defended house had then to bear a torrent of cannon-balls as well as of musket-bullets. Thus the siege continued day after day. The rebels even dragged one of the cannon up to the roof of Mr Boyle’s bungalow, about sixty yards off, whence they could fire into the defended house. ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Wake in his dispatch, ‘but the cowardice, ignorance, and want of unanimity of our enemies, prevented our fortification from being brought down about our ears.’ As fast as the strength of the attack was increased, so fast did the garrison 270increase their defences; to oppose a new battery, a new barricade was raised; to defeat a mine, a countermine was run out. The Sikhs worked untiringly, and seemed to glory in the gallant defence they were making. When provisions began to run low, they made a sally one night, and brought in four sheep—a precious treasure to them at such a time. Seven whole days and nights did this continue—three thousand men besieging seventy. On the last two days the cowards offered ‘terms,’ which were contemptuously rejected. On the 2d of August the mutineers marched off to the west of Arrah to fight Major Vincent Eyre; how they fared, we shall see presently; but the battle brought about the liberation of Mr Wake and his companions. Wonderful to relate, only one member of the garrison, a Sikh policeman, received a dangerous wound; all the rest escaped with mere bruises and scratches. The Sikhs were justly proud of their share in the work. During the siege, when water ran short, they dug a well underneath the house, and continued their labour till they came to a spring; when all was happily ended, they requested that the well might be built into a permanent one, as a memento of their services; and that the house itself should receive the inscription of ‘Futtehgurh’ or ‘stronghold of victory’—requests with which Mr Boyle was not at all unwilling to comply.

We must now direct attention again to Patna and Dinapoor, and notice the measures taken to check if possible the triumph of the mutineers. Mr Tayler at the one place had civil control, and General Lloyd at the other had military control, over Arrah as well as all other towns in the neighbourhood; and both felt that that station was placed in peril as soon as the mutineers moved westward from Dinapoor. Some weeks earlier, when the railway officials had hurried away from Arrah to Dinapoor in affright, Mr Tayler rebuked them, saying that, ‘this is a crisis when every Englishman should feel that his individual example is of an importance which it is difficult to calculate. It is of great consequence that Europeans should exhibit neither alarm nor panic; and that, whenever it is practicable, they should band together for mutual defence and protection.’ This rebuke aided Mr Wake’s advice in bringing the railway people back to Arrah. It may here be remarked that Mr Tayler himself was, during the early part of July, in a state of discord, not only with the natives, but with many of the Europeans at Patna. He had an unseemly wrangle with Mr Lowis the magistrate; and was himself frequently reprimanded by the lieutenant-governor of Bengal. This anarchy appears to have arisen from the fact that, at a time of much difficulty, different views were entertained concerning the best policy to be pursued—views, advocated in a way that much obstructed public business.

It was about one o’clock on the 25th that the authorities at Patna heard alarming intelligence from Dinapoor. Mr Tayler at once summoned all the Europeans resident in the city to his house, where measures of defence were planned in case of an attack. At three o’clock a distant firing announced that the mutiny had taken place; and within an hour or two came the news that the mutinous regiments had marched off towards the west. Mr Tayler made up an expeditionary force of about 100 persons—Sikhs, Nujeebs, recruits, and volunteers—and sent it off that same night towards Arrah, to watch the movements of the rebels. At dawn on the following morning, however, unfavourable news came in from many country stations; and the commissioner, uneasy about Patna and its neighbourhood, recalled the corps. Tayler and Lloyd did not work well together at that crisis. The commissioner wrote to the general on the day after the mutiny, urging him to send 50 European troops either to Chupra or to Mozufferpoor, or both, to protect those places from an attack threatened by insurgents. To this application Lloyd returned a somewhat querulous answer—that he had only 600 Europeans at Dinapoor; that he was afraid of treachery on the part of Koer Singh; that he had already been blamed by the Calcutta authorities for listening to applications for troops to defend Patna, instead of sending them on to Allahabad; and that he could render no aid for the purposes required. Mr Tayler renewed the subject by announcing that he would send 50 Sikhs to the two places named; and he strongly urged the general to send 200 men to rout the mutineers who had gone to Arrah—proposing, at the same time, the establishment of a corps of volunteer cavalry among the officers and gentlemen of Patna and Dinapoor. In most of these matters Mr Tayler appears to have judged more soundly than General Lloyd; but in one point he was fatally in error—he believed that Baboo Koer Singh of Jugdispore would remain faithful to the British government.

If the ‘defence of Arrah’ has acquired notoriety, so has the ‘disaster’ at that place—to which we must now direct attention. This disaster was peculiarly mortifying to the British, as giving a temporary triumph to the mutineers, and as involving a positive loss of many English soldiers at a critical period. The revolt at Dinapoor having occurred on Saturday the 25th of July, General Lloyd made no effort until Monday the 27th to look after the sepoys; but on that day he sent a party of the 37th foot from Dinapoor towards Arrah, for the purpose of dispersing the mutineers assembled at that place, and for rescuing the European community hemmed in there. The troops went in the Horungotta steamer; but this unfortunately went aground after three hours’ steaming, and the plan was frustrated. On the evening of Tuesday the 28th, another expedition was organised; and it was to this that the disastrous loss occurred. The steamer Bombay happening to arrive at Dinapoor in her downward passage on the Ganges, Lloyd detained it, and 271arranged to send a detachment on board. The Bombay was to take a certain number of troops, steam up to the spot where the Horungotta had run aground, take in tow the detachment from that steamer, and proceed up the river Sone to a landing-place as near as possible to Arrah. This river enters the Ganges at a point a few miles west of Dinapoor. Early in the morning of Wednesday the 29th, the steamer started, and after picking up the other detachment, the whole disembarked in the afternoon at Beharee Ghat—over 400 men in all, under Captain Dunbar.^[65] The landing having been safely effected on the left or west bank of the Sone, the troops marched to a nullah which it was necessary to cross by means of boats. When, after a considerable delay, this was accomplished, they resumed their march, with a bright moon above them, a rough road beneath them, and a very few of the enemy in sight; and the evening was far advanced when they reached a bridge about a mile and a half short of Arrah. Here Captain Harrison of the 37th suggested that they should halt until daylight, and not incur the danger of entering the town by night; but Captain Dunbar, of the 10th, who commanded the force, overruled this suggestion, under an unfortunate impression that there would be little or no opposition. This was the fatal mistake that wrecked the whole enterprise. The troops arrived at Arrah at eleven at night, in black darkness, for the moon had set; then passed through the outskirts of the town—the 10th leading, then the Sikhs, then the 37th. Suddenly, while passing by a large tope of mango-trees, a dreadful musketry-fire flashed out of the gloom; the enemy, it now appeared, had been lying in ambush awaiting the arrival of the unsuspecting force. Mr Wake and his companions were startled by the sound of this musketry, audible enough in their beleaguered but well-defended house; they at once inferred that something wrong had occurred to British troops, and in this inference they were only too correct. The suddenness of the attack, and the blackness of the night, seem to have overwhelmed the detachment; the men lost their officers, the officers their men: some ran off the road to fire into the tope, others to obtain shelter; Dunbar fell dead; and Harrison had to assume the command of men whom, at midnight and in utter darkness, he could not see. The main body succeeded in reassembling in a field about four hundred yards from the tope; and there they remained until daylight—being joined at various periods of the night by stragglers, some wounded and some unhurt, and being fired at almost continually by the mutineers. It was a wretched humiliating night to the British. At daybreak they counted heads, and then found how severe had been their loss. Captain Harrison at once collecting the survivors into a body, marched them back ten or eleven miles to the steamer. The men had fasted so long (twenty-four hours), through some mismanagement, that they were too weak to act as skirmishers; they defended themselves as long as their ammunition lasted, but kept in column, pursued the whole way by a large body of the enemy, who picked off the poor fellows with fatal certainty. Arrived at the banks of the nullah, all organisation ceased; the men rushed to the boats in disorder; some were run aground, some drowned, some swam over, some were shot by sepoys and villagers on shore. How the rest reached the steamer, they hardly knew; but this they did know—that they had left many of their wounded comrades on shore, with the certain fate of being butchered and mutilated by the enemy. It was a mournful boat-load that the Bombay carried back to Dinapoor on the evening of the 30th of July. Captain Dunbar, Lieutenants Bagnall and Ingilby, Ensigns Erskine, Sale, Birkett, and Anderson, and Messrs Cooper and Platt (gentlemen-volunteers) were killed; Lieutenant Sandwith, Ensign Venour, and Messrs Garstin and Macdonell (gentlemen-volunteers) were wounded. Out of fifteen officers, twelve were killed or wounded. The dismal list enumerated 170 officers and men killed, and 120 wounded—290 out of 415! Havelock won half-a-dozen of his victories with no greater loss than this.

Here, then, was one disaster on the heels of another. General Lloyd’s vacillation had permitted the native troops at Dinapoor to mutiny; and now the unfortunate Captain Dunbar’s mismanagement had led to the destruction of nearly two-thirds of the force sent to rout those mutineers. Happily, Messrs Wake and Boyle, and their companions, still held out; and happily there was a gallant officer near who had the skill to command as well as the courage to fight. This officer was Major Vincent Eyre, of the artillery. Being en route up the Ganges with some guns from Dinapoor to Allahabad, and having arrived at Ghazeepore on the 28th of July, he there learned the critical position of the handful of Europeans in the house at Arrah. He applied to the authorities at Ghazeepore for permission to make an attempt to relieve Mr Wake; they gave it: he steamed back to Buxar, and there met a detachment of the 5th Fusiliers going up the Ganges. Finding the officers and men heartily willing to aid him, he formed a plan for marching a field-force from Buxar to Arrah, and there attacking the Dinapoor mutineers and their accomplice Koer Singh. Although dignified with the name of a field-force, it consisted simply of about 160 men of H.M. 5th Fusiliers under Captain L’Estrange, 12 mounted volunteers of the railway department, and three guns; but under an able commander, it was destined to prove more than a match for nearly twenty times its number of native troops. On the 30th of July, the morning when the detachment 272from Dinapoor retreated from Arrah under such deplorable circumstances, Eyre commenced a series of operations west of that town. He started from Buxar, and marched twenty-eight miles to Shawpoor, where he heard of the disaster that had overwhelmed Captain Dunbar’s party. He at once stated to General Lloyd, in a dispatch: ‘I venture to affirm confidently that no such disaster would have been likely to occur, had that detachment advanced less precipitately, so as to have given full time for my force to have approached direct from the opposite side; for the rebels would then have been hemmed in between the two opposing forces, and must have been utterly routed.’ Regret, however, being useless, Eyre proceeded to carry out his own plan. Hearing that the enemy intended to destroy the bridges en route, he pushed on again towards Arrah. On the 1st of August, finding the bridge at Bullowtee just cut, he hastily constructed a substitute, and marched on to Gujeratgunje by nightfall. Here he bivouacked for the night. At daybreak on the 2d he started again, and soon came in sight of the enemy, drawn up in great force in plantations on either side of the road, with inundated rice-fields in front; they had sallied out of Arrah to meet him. Perceiving that the enemy intended to turn his flanks, he boldly pushed on against their centre, penetrated it, and advanced to the village of Beebeegunje. The enemy, baffled by his tactics, gave up their first plan, and hastily sought to prevent his passage over a bridge near the village. In this they succeeded for a time, by destroying the bridge. After resting his troops a while, Eyre—seeing that the enemy had formed extensive earthworks beyond the stream, and that they occupied the houses of the village in great force—determined to make a detour to the right, and try to cross about a mile higher up. The enemy, seeing his object, followed him quickly, and attacked him with great boldness, being flushed by their recent victory over the luckless river detachment. They were nearly 2500 strong in mutinous sepoys alone, besides Koer Singh and his followers. After an hour’s hard fighting, Eyre ordered Captain L’Estrange to make a charge with infantry. Promptly and gallantly that officer obeyed the order; his skirmishers on the right turned the enemy’s flank, the guns with grape and shrapnell shells drove in the centre; and then the infantry advanced—driving the enemy, panic-stricken, in all directions. Losing no time, the major crossed the stream, and advanced through an open country to within four miles of Arrah. Here he was suddenly brought up by an impassable river, which cost him many hours’ hard labour to bridge over—obtaining, fortunately, for that purpose, the aid of labourers employed on the East Indian Railway, just close at hand. Koer Singh and the rebels were so dismayed at these proceedings, that they left Arrah altogether, and retreated in various directions. It seems almost incredible, although the detailed official list places the matter beyond all doubt, that Major Eyre, during nine hours’ severe fighting on this day, lost only 2 killed and 14 wounded.

As a means of enabling this energetic officer to follow up his success, a reinforcement was sent to him from Dinapoor on the 7th of August, consisting of 200 of H.M. 10th foot. This reinforcement entered Arrah on the next day; and a party of 100 Sikhs having arrived a day or two afterwards, the major was enabled to lay his plans for an expedition to Jugdispore, twelve miles distant, to which place Koer Singh and a large number of the mutineers had retired. The enterprise was not to be commenced without some caution; for the roads were difficult for the passage of troops at that season of the year, and the rebel chief’s fort at Jugdispore was represented as being very strong and well defended. All this, however, only whetted the desire of Eyre’s troops to try their mettle against the enemy. The force consisted of just 500 men,^[66] with three guns. On the afternoon of the 11th he took his departure from Arrah, marched eight miles, and encamped for the night on the bank of the Gagur Nuddee. Resuming his progress next morning, he passed over two miles of rice-fields nearly under water, which rendered the draught of his guns very difficult. At eleven o’clock he espied some of the enemy in the village of Tola Narainpore, evidently preparing to resist his passage of a river immediately beyond. After a fight of skirmishers, Eyre opened a fire of grape which roused up a large body of the enemy concealed behind bushes. The detachment of the 10th foot, eager to emulate the previous heroism of their comrades of the 5th Fusiliers, and exasperated by their previous loss under Captain Dunbar, asked to be permitted to charge the enemy at once; Eyre consented; Captain Patterson led them on; they rushed with a shout and a cheer, and the enemy gave way before a charge which they found irresistible. The other infantry came up and assisted in dispersing the enemy from another village, Dullaur, beyond the river. This accomplished, Eyre marched a mile and a half through thick jungle to Jugdispore, maintaining a running-fight the whole way. The treacherous Koer Singh’s stronghold was but feebly defended; Eyre took possession of it early in the afternoon, and with it large stores of grain, ammunition, and warlike material. The villagers around Jugdispore immediately sent in tokens of submission to the conqueror. Here as in the former instance, Major Eyre suffered wonderfully small loss; not a man of his force was killed on this 12th of August, and only six were wounded. The enemy lost 300.

Eyre did not give Koer Singh much time to recover himself. The rebel chief fled with a few followers to the Jutowrah jungle, where he had 273a residence. Thither the major followed him on the 14th, or rather sent Captain L’Estrange with a detachment; but all had dispersed, sepoys and rebels alike; and L’Estrange returned after destroying residences belonging to Koer Singh and his two brothers.

It may suffice here to mention, that, so far as concerned the region south and southwest of Arrah, the remaining days of August were spent in the marching of the Dinapoor mutineers from place to place, and the plundering or threatening of many towns as they passed. The authorities would gladly have checked the course of so many armed rebels; but it became a question whether Eyre or any other officer was strong enough in Europeans to do so, and whether their aid was not more urgently needed at Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. The mutineers marched southward of Mirzapore into Bundelcund, with the treacherous Koer Singh at their head. The engineers and others connected with the works for the East Indian railway were among those most perplexed by this movement of the rebels; because the various places occupied temporarily by those persons were just in the way of the mutineers. A lady, wife to one of these officials, has recorded in a letter that she and her friends received early news on the 25th of July that something was wrong at Dinapoor; that on the 26th the rebels themselves made their appearance; that the family got into a boat on the Sone, with no property but the clothes on their backs; that they immediately rowed off towards Dinapoor as the only means of escape; and that scarcely had they embarked when they saw bungalow’s and property of every description—belonging to individuals, to the railway company, and to the East India Company—a prey to devastating flames. ‘Everything we have in the world is gone,’ said the disconsolate writer; ‘what to do, or where to go, we know not.’ It is no wonder that the letters of such sufferers contained bitter comments on the government and politics of India—bitter, but often unjust.

The effects of this mutiny of the Dinapoor sepoys were, as has already been remarked, deep and wide-spreading. It is scarcely too much to say that twenty or thirty millions of persons were thrown into agitation by it. Along the whole line of the Ganges it was felt, from Calcutta up to Allahabad; along the great trunk-road between these two cities, it was felt; in the belt of country north of the Ganges; in the belt between the Ganges and the great road; in the belt south of the great road—in all these extensive regions, the news from Dinapoor threw Christians and natives alike into a ferment. Some discontented natives had vague hopes of advantage by the threatened dissolution of the English ‘raj;’ some of the villagers dreaded the approach of marauders who made little scruple in pillaging friend as well as foe; while all the Europeans cried out as with one voice: ‘Send us reliable British troops.’ Viscount Canning had none to send; and when ship-loads of troops did at length arrive at Calcutta, they were so urgently wanted higher up the country that he could spare few or none for regions east of Allahabad.

The revenue-officers were placed in a position of trying difficulty in those days. Besides collecting the taxes on land, salt, &c., and keeping the money in the local treasuries until it could be sent safely to Calcutta, they stored up large quantities of opium at certain factories, which were in their special keeping. The Company were the purchasers of the opium from the poppy-growers, and the sellers of it (at a large profit) to British merchants at Calcutta or Bombay; and during the interval of time between the buying and selling, the opium was stored in godowns or warehouses at certain large towns. Patna was the chief of these towns; and thus the revenue-officers of that place were especially interested in the maintenance of tranquillity among the native troops in the neighbouring station at Dinapoor. Dr Lyell, as was stated in a former page, fell a victim to Mussulman fanaticism at Patna early in July, about three weeks before the mutiny at Dinapoor. On the very day before his murder, anxious for the responsibility thrown upon him, he wrote an official letter which is interesting as illustrating the matter now under consideration. He had just succeeded the chief opium-agent, lately deceased, and had under his charge opium to the enormous value of two millions sterling, together with other government property of a quarter of a million. He had endeavoured to strengthen the opium godowns by barricading the gates with timber, and raising a breastwork of chests filled with sand on the flat roofs—fearful lest an excited rabble should attack the place. He had less than twenty Europeans on whom he could rely. Major-general Lloyd at Dinapoor either could not or would not supply him with any troops; and he sent to Calcutta urgent requisitions for British troops, Sikh police, and guns. Matters became worse; Lyell himself was massacred, and the native troops at Dinapoor mutinied; then, at the end of July, the revenue-officers at Patna announced to the government that the property under their charge had accumulated to three millions sterling, and that they could not adequately protect it unless reinforcements were sent. This appeared so serious at Calcutta, that arrangements were made for throwing a few British troops, and a few reliable Sikhs, into Patna.

The region north of the Ganges and east of Oude was in a perpetual state of flutter and uneasiness during those troubled weeks. There were few troops, either native or British; but the rumours from other quarters, gaining strength as they passed from mouth to mouth, occasioned great uneasiness, especially among the Europeans engaged in indigo-planting and other industrial pursuits. There was a small military station at Segowlie, not far from the Nepaul frontier, under the charge of Major Holmes; and this officer 274thought proper, even before the month of June was ended, to proclaim martial law in the districts between Segowlie and Patna. Mr Tayler, commissioner at the last-named city, thought this a bold proceeding; but he sanctioned it on account of the disturbed state of the country. The Calcutta government, however, considered that the major had overstrained his authority, and rebuked him for so doing. Before he could be informed of this rebuke, Holmes had assumed absolute military control over all the region between Patna and Goruckpore—giving orders to magistrates to watch the ghats or landing-places, to arrest suspicious persons, to offer rewards for the apprehension of rebels, to keep an eye on the petty rajahs and chieftains, to strengthen the native police, and to act in all things subordinately to him as military commander throughout the districts of Sarun, Tirhoot, and Chumparun. Military men applauded this step, but the civilians took umbrage at an assumption of power not warranted by any instructions received from Calcutta. This energetic but hapless officer was not permitted to remain many weeks in the position which he had taken up; his chief troops were the 12th irregular cavalry; and these rose on the 24th of July at Segowlie, murdered him and Mrs Holmes, as well as other Europeans, and then bent their steps towards Azimghur. This atrocity caused great consternation; for the 12th had been much trusted among the native regiments, as one whose gallantry was a guarantee for its fidelity. Gallantry was exchanged for cowardice and villainy this day. While the major and his wife were riding out, four of the troopers came up to the vehicle and beheaded them both as they sat; this being the signal, the rest of the regiment rose in mutiny, murdered the surgeon, his wife, and children, plundered the treasury, and made off in the way just noticed. When this savage act became known, and when the mutiny at Dinapoor on the next following day was also known, nothing could exceed the agitation among the Europeans. At Chupra, a station nearly opposite Arrah, the Europeans at once abandoned their homes and occupations, and ran off to Dinapoor, to be behind the shelter of a few hundred English bayonets; this was, indeed, not to be wondered at, for Chupra itself was threatened by the Segowlie mutineers. On the 30th, when the events at Dinapoor became known at Calcutta, the government did all and more than all that Major Holmes had before done; they declared martial law—not only in the northern districts of Sarun, Tirhoot, and Chumparun, but also in those districts of the Patna division south of the Ganges—Patna, Behar, and Shahabad. All through the month of August, the districts north of the river were in the state just noticed; no further mutinies took place there, but the various stations were thrown into frequent panics by the threatened irruption of insurgents from other quarters. It was chiefly from Oude that these onslaughts were feared; for that province contained more rebels than any other—more natives who, without being actually soldiers, were quite ready to embark in any desperate enterprise, military or marauding, against the English.

We have said that the whole region right and left of the main trunk-road was thrown into commotion by the mutiny at Dinapoor; this was certainly the case, if we add to the disturbing causes the revolt of one or two minor corps within this region itself. To describe how the region is parcelled out into divisions, districts, and collectorates, is wholly unnecessary: few in England know, and still fewer care, much concerning these territorial details; but if the reader will roughly mark out with his eye a sweep of country four hundred miles long by a hundred and fifty in width, beginning at Moorshedabad or Midnapore, and ending at Benares, and lying on the right or south of the Ganges—he will there see that which, in July and August, was a region of perplexity. Small military stations, and much more numerous civil stations, dot this space. The dispatches relating to the events of those two months spoke of dangers and alarms at places not one half of which are known even by name to any but persons intimately connected with India—Hazarebagh, Sheergotty, Burhee, Ramgurh, Sasseram, Bhagulpore, Bagoda, Ranchee, Bowsee, Gayah, Pittorea, Raneegunge, Rownee, Dorunda, Chyebassa, Rotas, Purulia, Bancorah, Dehree, Rotasgurh—all were places either disturbed by the visits of mutineers, or thrown into commotion lest those visits should be made at a time when means of defence were scanty.

It not unfrequently happened, at that troubled period, that while the British officers were making arrangements to disarm suspected regiments, the men of those regiments anticipated that proceeding by marching off in mutiny, of course taking their arms with them. Such happened to Lieutenant Graham, commanding at Hazarebagh. Being at Dorunda on the 30th of July, and learning that the 8th B. N. I. were unreliable at Hazarebagh, he marched off with a view to disarm them; taking with him about 220 Ramgurh infantry, 30 Ramgurh cavalry, and two 6-pounder guns. On that very day, long before he could reach Hazarebagh, the sepoys rose in mutiny, plundered the treasury, and released all the prisoners. Graham soon found himself in difficulties; he could not pass his guns over the river Damoodah at Ramgurh, because his bullocks were too few and too weak; and his Ramgurh infantry shewed signs of a disposition to march back to Dorunda and take the guns with them. After an anxious night, he crossed the river on the morning of the 31st, with his few troopers; but his infantry broke their faith, and marched away with the two guns. So far, therefore, from being able to disarm a suspected regiment, the lieutenant had the mortification of hearing that the regiment had mutinied, and, in addition, of seeing his own infantry follow the pernicious example. One fact cheered 275Lieutenant Graham in his anxious duty; his 30 sowars remained faithful to him. When Captain Drew, who commanded the detachment at Hazarebagh, came to make his report, it appeared that the men of the 8th B. N. I. numbered just 200 bayonets, forming two companies of one of the regiments lately mutinied at Dinapoor. When news reached the captain, on the 28th, of this last-named mutiny, he made arrangements for removing the ladies and children from the station, as he had seen enough to make him distrust his own men; he also sent to Colonel Robbins at Dorunda, for the aid of Lieutenant Graham’s Ramgurh force, and to Calcutta for any available aid in the shape of European troops. Four ladies and six children were forwarded to a place of safety, and Captain Drew passed the 29th in some anxiety. On the 30th he addressed his men, praising the sepoys who in certain regiments had remained faithful while their comrades revolted; his native officers seemed to listen to him respectfully, but the sepoys maintained an ominous silence. On that same afternoon the men ran to the bells of arms, broke them open, and seized their muskets. The die was cast. All the officers, military and civil, jumped on their horses, and rode for twelve hours through jungle, reaching Bagoda on the trunk-road on the morning of the 31st; after two hours’ rest they galloped forty miles further, then took transit dâk to Raneegunge, whence they travelled to Calcutta by railway. Meanwhile the mutineers released 800 prisoners, burned the bungalows, and pillaged the treasury of seventy thousand rupees. Whether a bold front might have prevented all this, cannot now be known; Captain Drew asserted that if he and the other officers had remained, they must inevitably have been killed on the spot.

An instructive illustration was afforded towards the close of July, of the intimate connection between the rebel sepoys and the villages of Behar or Western Bengal. The government issued a proclamation, offering rewards for the apprehension of mutineers and deserters. Mr Money, magistrate at Gayah, found by inquiries that the inhabitants of the villages refused to aid in giving up such men; but he hit upon a mode of ascertaining at least the connection between the sepoys and the villages respectively. Every sepoy remitted to his village a portion of his pay, by means of remittance-bills and descriptive rolls; each bill went to the accountant; the receipt of the payee went back to the regiment; while the descriptive roll was kept and filed in the office of the magistrate, shewing the name and regiment of the remitter. Mr Money thought it useful to collect and tabulate all these descriptive rolls for two years; and thus was able to obtain a record of the name of every sepoy belonging to every village within his jurisdiction. He could thus track any rebel soldier who might return to his village in hope of escaping punishment; for the native police, if ordered to apprehend a particular man in a particular district would do so, although unwilling to initiate inquiries. The matter is noted here, as shewing how closely the ties of family were kept up by the sepoys in this regular transmission of money from the soldier in his camp to his relations in their village.

During the first half of the month of July, before the state of affairs at Dinapoor had assumed a serious import, the towns and districts recently named were troubled rather by vague apprehensions than by actual dangers. At Gayah, the chief town of a district south of Patna, the magistrate was in much anxiety; the native inhabitants, in part hopefully and in part fearfully, were looking out daily for news from the mutineers in the Jumna and Ganges regions; and he felt much doubt whether the Company’s treasury at that place was safe. So it was in most of the towns and stations; from Raneegunge, where the finished portion of the railway ended (at about a hundred and twenty miles from Calcutta), to the districts approaching Benares and Patna, magistrates and revenue-collectors, feeling their responsibility as civil servants of the Company, cried aloud to Calcutta for a few, even a very few, English troops, to set at rest their apprehensions; but Calcutta, as these pages have over and over again shewn, had no troops to spare except for the great stations further to the northwest.

As the month advanced, these symptoms of uneasiness increased in number and intensity; and when the isolated mutineers at Rownee, Monghir, Hazarebagh, &c., became intensified by the more momentous outbreak at Dinapoor, fear grew in some instances up to panic, and the Company’s officers hastened away from stations which they believed themselves unable to hold. But here, as elsewhere, difficulties raised different qualities in different minds; many of these gentlemen behaved with a heroism worthy of all praise, as Mr Wake and Mr Boyle had done at Arrah. At some of the places not a single English soldier could be seen, or was likely to be seen at that time; and under those circumstances it was a fact of high importance that Captain Rattray’s battalion of Sikh police remained stanch and true—ready to march in small detachments to any threatened spot, and always rendering good service. When the two companies of the 8th B. N. I. mutinied at Hazarebagh, towards the close of the month, and when the Ramgurh force followed their example instead of opposing them, the civilians in this wide region were really placed in great peril; Hazarebagh wished to know what Ramgurh would do, Sheergotty looked anxiously towards Gayah, and Raneegunge feared for the safety of its railway station. The Raneegunge officials, after fleeing to Calcutta, returned to their station about the middle of August, under the protection of Sikh police. The wife of one of the civil servants of the Company, writing from Raneegunge on the 7th of August, told of the sad condition in which European fugitives reached 276that place, coming from various disturbed districts. ‘We are overwhelmed with refugees from all places. Some of the poor creatures have come without a thing but what they have on, and I am obliged to give them all changes of clothes for a time. Many came after riding seventy miles on one horse, and one gentleman without a saddle—a doctor and two others in their night-clothes—as they started while the wretches were firing into their bungalows. My husband had to lend them clothes to go to Calcutta in.’ The telegraphic messages or written letters that passed between Calcutta and the various stations in Western Bengal, in July and August, occupy a very large space in the blue-books relating to the mutiny; they everywhere tell of officials expressing apprehensions of being obliged to flee unless reinforcements could be sent to them; and of distinct replies from the governor-general that, as he had no troops to send them, they must bear up as long as their sagacity and resolution would permit. The Europeans at Sheergotty left that station in a body, not because they were attacked, but because they saw no hope of defence if enemies should approach. Many Europeans, however, similarly placed, afterwards regretted that they had fled; instances were not few of the moral power obtained over the native mind by men who resolutely clung to their duty in moments of peril; while in those cases where the abandonment took place, ‘the thieves and rabble of the neighbourhood,’ as an eye-witness remarked, ‘plundered the cutcheries and private houses; and those who had grudges against their neighbours began to hope and to prepare for an opportunity of vengeance.’

August found matters in an equally unsettled state. Many of the magistrates and collectors now had a new difficulty. Mr Tayler, as commissioner for the whole of the Patna division, ordered such of them as were under his control to abandon their stations and come into Patna for shelter; many were quite willing to do so; but others, resolute and determined men, did not like this appearance of shrinking from their duty in time of trouble. Mr Money, the magistrate of Gayah, called a meeting of the Europeans at that station, and read Mr Tayler’s order to them; it was decided by vote to abandon the place and its treasure, and retreat to Patna. ‘We formed rather a picturesque cavalcade,’ said one of the number, ‘as we wound out from Gayah; the elephants and horses; the scarlet of the Europeans contrasting with the white dresses of the Sikh soldiery; the party of gentlemen, armed to the teeth, who rode in the midst; and the motley assemblage of writers, servants, and hangers-on that crowded in the rear.’ While on the road towards Patna, two of the gentlemen, Mr Money and Mr Hollings, feeling some humiliation at the position they were in, resolved to march back to their posts even if none others accompanied them. It happened that a few men of the 64th foot had passed through Gayah a day or two before, and Mr Money was enabled to bring them back for a short period. These two officials, it is true, were afterwards driven away from Gayah by a band of released prisoners, and fled to Calcutta; but their firmness in an hour of difficulty won for them approval and promotion from the government. This transaction at Gayah was connected with a series of quarrels which led to much partisan spirit. Mr Tayler had long been in disfavour with Mr Halliday, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, as an official of a very intractable and insubordinate character; and after the issue of the order lately adverted to, Mr Tayler was removed from his office altogether—a step that led to a storm of letters, papers, pamphlets, charges, and counter-charges, very exciting to the Calcutta community at that time, but having little permanent interest in connection with the mutiny.

As the month advanced, the government were able to send a few English troops to some of the stations above named. When Mr Halliday had learned, by telegrams and letters, that not a single European remained in Sheergotty or Bagoda, and that the native troops of the Ramgurh battalion had mutinied at Ranchee, Purulia, and elsewhere, he earnestly begged Lord Canning to send a few troops thither, or the whole region would be left at the mercy of marauding bands. This the governor-general was fortunately enabled to do, owing to the arrival about that time of troops from the China expedition.

When August ended, the Dinapoor mutineers, under Koer Singh, were marching onwards to the Jumna regions, as if with the intention of joining the mutineers in Bundelcund; the 12th irregulars, after their atrocity at Segowlie, were bending their steps towards Oude; the Ramgurh mutineers were marching westward to the Sone, as if to join Koer Singh; while the petty chieftains, liberated prisoners, and ruffians of all kinds, were looking out for ‘loot’ wherever there was a chance of obtaining it. Bengal and Behar exhibited nothing that could be dignified with the name of battles or war; it was simply anarchy, with insufficient force on the part of the authorities to restore order.

One unfortunate result of the Dinapoor mutiny was, that the Europeans contracted a sentiment of hatred towards the natives, so deadly as to defeat all the purposes of justice and fairness. When Sir James Outram was at Dinapoor, on his way up the Ganges, he found that some of the English soldiers had murdered several sepoys against whom nothing could be charged—in revenge for the terrible loss suffered at Arrah. Sir James noticed in one of his dispatches, with strong expressions of regret, the distortion of feeling thus brought about by the mutiny; distortion, because those soldiers were not, at other times, less inclined to be just and manly than the other regiments of her Majesty’s army. It was a sore trial for men, when scenes of brutal cruelty were everywhere before their eyes, coolly to draw the line between justice and vengeance, and to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty.

The reader will easily appreciate the grounds on which it is deemed inexpedient to carry out uninterruptedly the history of the mutiny at any one spot. Unless contemporaneous events elsewhere be noticed, links in the chain of causes and effects will be wanting. We have traced the siege of Delhi down to a certain point in the line of operations; we have followed the footsteps of Havelock until he reached the ball-shattered home of the European residents at Lucknow; we have watched the more immediate effects of the Dinapoor mutiny in the regions of Bengal and Behar. It now, however, becomes necessary to inquire what was doing elsewhere during the months of July and August—how the Europeans at Agra fared, when the stations on all sides of them were in the hands of the insurgents; how far the affrighted women and tender children succeeded in finding refuge at the hill-stations of Nynee Tal and its neighbourhood; what the Mahratta followers of Scindia and Holkar were doing; to what extent Rohilcund and the Cis-Sutlej territory were thrown into anarchy; whether or not Bombay and Madras, Nagpoor and the Nizam’s country, remained at peace; how, in short, India generally was affected during the two months above named. Fortunately, this duty will not demand so full a measure of treatment as the analogous narratives for earlier months. The isolated revolts in June occupied attention in three successive Chapters^[67]—because of their great number, the wide-spreading area over which they occurred, the sufferings of many of the Europeans, the romantic adventures of others, the daring bravery of nearly all, and the necessity for describing the geographical and military peculiarities of the several provinces and stations. These matters having once been treated with moderate fulness, the narrative may now proceed at an accelerated pace; insomuch that we shall be enabled, in the present chapter, to take a bird’s-eye glance at the isolated or miscellaneous events, whether mutinies or suppressions of mutiny, belonging to the months of July and August.

Let us begin by directing attention to that small but thickly populated country lying between Patna and Allahabad, and extending in the other direction from the Ganges to Nepaul. Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, Azimghur, Jounpoor, and Benares, all lie within this region; Dinapoor, Buxar, Mirzapore, Sultanpore, and Fyzabad, lie just beyond it; and towns and villages of smaller character bestrew it more thickly than any other part of India. When Henry Lawrence was dead, and Inglis powerless in Oude for anything beyond maintaining his position in Lucknow; when Wheeler had been killed at Cawnpore, and Lloyd superseded at Dinapoor; when Colvin was shut up in Agra, and could do very little as lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—there was scarcely any one who could exercise control within the region just marked out. If a magistrate, collector, or commandant, succeeded in maintaining British supremacy by mingled courage and sagacity, so far well; but he was in few instances able to exercise power beyond the limits of his own town or station. Under these circumstances, Viscount Canning created a new office, that of ‘Lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces,’ and gave it to Mr J. P. Grant, one of the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta. The object in view was to restore order to a large range of country that had been thrown into utter anarchy. The title was not, perhaps, happily chosen; for there was already a ‘Central India,’ comprising the Mahratta country around Indore or Malwah; and, moreover, a jurisdiction was hardly ‘central’ that ran up to the borders of Nepaul. Passing by this, however, the newly aggregated ‘Central Provinces’ comprised the Allahabad division, the Benares division, and the Saugor division; containing a large number of important cities and towns.

When Mr Grant assumed his new duties in August, he found that the Goruckpore district was entirely in the hands of rebels. The leader of the 278rebels was one Mahomed Hussein, who was at the head of a poorly armed rabble, rather than of an organised military force, and who, with that rabble, had been perpetrating acts of great barbarity. One civilian, Mr Bird, had displayed that gallant spirit which so honourably marked many of the Company’s servants: he remained behind, at his own request, when the rest of the civil officers fled from Goruckpore; he hoped to be able to maintain his position, but was forced after a time to yield to the pressure of adverse circumstances, and escape to Bettiah. The governor-general, during the month of June, accepted aid which had been offered some time previously, by Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul. In pursuance of this agreement, three thousand Goorkhas were sent down from Khatmandoo, and entered British territory northward of Goruckpore. They were ordered on shortly afterwards to Azimghur; and most of the Goruckpore officials, availing themselves of this escort, quitted the station with their movables and the government treasure. Some of the Goorkhas then remained for a time at Azimghur, while the rest went to escort the treasure to Jounpoor and Benares. While at Goruckpore, the Goorkhas assisted in disarming such native troops as were at the station. Much was expected from these hardy troops, and it is only just to observe that they generally warranted the expectation. It was late in June that the arrangement was entered into, the immediate object in view being the pacification of the very districts now under notice.

The Azimghur district had its full share in the troubles of the period. During the first half of July, mutinous sepoys from other stations were frequently threatening the town of Azimghur, and keeping the Europeans perpetually on the watch. The 65th native infantry were very turbulent in the vicinity. On a particular day the Company’s servants at the station held a council of war; some voted that Azimghur was untenable, and that a retreat should be made to Ghazeepore; but bolder councils prevailed with the majority. At last a regular battle with the enemy took place; a battle which has been described in such a lively manner by Mr Venables, deputy-magistrate of Azimghur, that we cannot do better than quote a portion of a letter in which he narrated the events of the day.^[68] The action was really worthy of note even in a military sense; for a small force, headed by a civilian, defeated an enemy ten times as numerous. Mr Venables received the thanks of the government for his skill and courage on this occasion. But afterwards came a time of mortification. Of the native troops which formed his little army on the 18th, more than half belonged to the very regiment which mutinied a few days afterwards at Segowlie, after murdering their commandant, Major Holmes. Mr Venables pondered on the question: ‘Will the detachment of the 12th irregulars remain faithful at Azimghur, when another portion of the same regiment has mutinied at Segowlie?’ He thought such a proof of fidelity improbable; and therefore, he and the other Europeans sought to avert danger by removing from Azimghur to Ghazeepore, which they did on the 30th of July. The district all around the station at Azimghur remained at the mercy of lawless marauders until the arrival of the Goorkhas from Goruckpore, mentioned in the last paragraph. Then began a struggle, which should act with the most effective energy—Oudian insurgents from the west, openly hostile to the British; or Nepaul Goorkhas from the north, serving in alliance with the British—a struggle in which, it hardly need be said, many villages were reduced to ashes, and much disturbance of peaceful industry produced.

The Jounpoor district was even more completely disorganised than those of Goruckpore and Azimghur; it had been almost entirely abandoned since the first mutiny of the troops at that station in June. Not until after a Goorkha force had marched into Jounpoor in August, could the civil officers feel any safety in returning to their duties at that station.

Benares, the most important place hereabouts, became a temporary home for many officers who, by the revolt of their several native regiments, had been suddenly and unwillingly deprived of active duties; there were eight or ten of them, mostly belonging to Oude regiments which had revolted. When Jung Bahadoor agreed to send a body of Goorkha troops from Nepaul to the disturbed districts, the Calcutta government transmitted orders for some of these unemployed officers to meet those troops at Goruckpore, and act with them. Among those officers were Captain Boileau and Lieutenants Miles, Hall, and Campbell. It was early in July when this order was sent to Benares, but some weeks elapsed ere the Goorkhas reached Goruckpore. Before this co-operation with the Goorkhas took place, Benares was enabled to render a little good service against the rebels by the aid of British troops, not stationed at that place, but while on transit to the upper provinces. The gallant 78th Highlanders, journeying from Calcutta to Allahabad, 279were divided into portions according as the means of transport were presented, and according to the necessities of the districts through which they passed. On the 5th of July, Lieutenant-colonel Gordon, commanding the Benares district, saw the necessity of checking some insurgents near that city; and he intrusted that duty to Major Haliburton of the 78th. The major started on the morning of the 6th, with a mixed detachment of Europeans and natives, and marched eight miles on the Azimghur road. His advanced cavalry reported a large body of the enemy half a mile ahead, with their centre posted across the road, and their flanks resting on villages, partially concealed behind trees and rising-ground. Their number was about 500, aided by an equal number of villagers apparently eager for mischief. The contest was soon over, and the enemy repelled. The chief point that rendered the incident worthy of note was that a few of the 12th irregular cavalry, employed by Haliburton, shewed bad symptoms during the day; they did not charge the enemy with alacrity; and they appeared inclined to listen to the appeals made to their religious feelings by the natives whom they were called upon to oppose. These troopers belonged to the same regiment as those who afterwards mutinied at Segowlie.

After the departure of the Highlanders, this great and important Hindoo city was frequently thrown into excitement by mutinies or reports of mutinies at other places. Rumours came in early in August, to the effect that the irregular cavalry from Segowlie, after murdering their officers, were on their way to Jounpoor, thirty-five miles from Benares, with the intention of visiting Benares itself. The city contained at that time only 300 English soldiers, none of whom could safely be spared to go out and confront the rebels. The civil lines at Benares comprised that portion of the British station which contained the jails, the courts of justice, and the residences of the commissioner, judge, surgeon, &c.; it lay on the north of the Burnah River, while the military lines were on the south, the two being connected by a bridge. The civil station was thus peculiarly open to attack; and all that the authorities could do for it was to post a party of soldiers and two guns on the bridge; the prisoners were removed to the other side of the river, the courts were abandoned, and all valuable property was taken from the civil station to that of the European military in the cantonment. The Rev. James Kennedy, chaplain of the station, has in a letter mentioned a fact which shews in how agitated a state the English community at Benares were at that time;^[69] illustrating in a striking way—as was more than once shewn during those turmoils in India—that the panic arising from an apprehended danger was often worse than the reality, paralysing the exertions of those who would have rendered good service had actual fighting with an open enemy commenced. No sooner had the dread of the Segowlie mutineers passed away, than an approach of those from Dinapoor was threatened. Colonel Gordon, seeing the mischief that would accrue from such a step, resolved to prevent it: he sent out his handful of English soldiers, not merely to check the approach of the rebels, but to drive them from the district altogether. Koer Singh and his rabble army did not wait for this conflict; they gave Benares a ‘wide offing,’ and bent their steps towards Mirzapore. While the few English soldiers were engaged on this duty, the sentinels left behind were aided by the residents, headed by the judge—all keeping watch and ward in turn, for the common safety.

Mirzapore, from its large size and great importance as a commercial city, and its position on the banks of the Ganges between Benares and Allahabad, was often placed in considerable peril. No mutiny actually occurred there, but the city was repeatedly threatened by mutineers from other quarters, who, if successful, would certainly have been aided by all the budmashes of the place, and by many Mussulmans higher in station than mere rabble. The European residents were perpetually on the watch. When a battery of artillery came up the Ganges en route to Allahabad, they earnestly entreated to be allowed to retain it for their own protection; but Neill, the presiding genius at that time, would not listen to this; Allahabad and Cawnpore must be thought of, and Mirzapore must shift for itself. When the affairs at Segowlie and Dinapoor became known, measures were taken for making some kind of stronghold at Mirzapore. The Europeans intrenched the largest and strongest house belonging to them, barricaded the streets, buried much property, placed other property in guarded boats on the river, and prepared for service four small guns and five hundred rounds of ammunition. On numbering heads, they found 135 persons, all of whom had separate duties or posts assigned to them in the hour of need; they also secured provision for a month. This judicious line of policy answered the desired purpose: the Dinapoor mutineers did not enter or molest Mirzapore. Those marauders passed westward along a line of route further removed from the Ganges, plundering as they went, and committing great devastation. On the 19th of August, a small force set out from Mirzapore to check those acts of violence; but the Dinapoor men generally managed to keep beyond the reach of pursuers. A little later, when other regiments had mutinied in the Saugor division, it was deemed prudent by the Calcutta authorities to send a portion of a Madras regiment, with two guns, to aid in the protection of Mirzapore.

It may here be remarked, that along the line 280of country immediately adjacent to the eastern frontier of Oude, the influence of that turbulent province was made abundantly manifest during the period now under notice. There were many zemindars near the border who maintained bodies of armed men on foot. A rebel chief of Sultanpore, one Mehudee Hussein, appeared to direct the movements in that region; he was one among many who received direct commissions from the rebel authorities at Lucknow, as chieftains expected to bring all their forces to bear against the British. This fact alone suffices to shew how completely Oude was at that time in the hands of the enemy.

Mr Grant, as lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces, was called upon to exercise authority in the districts of Allahabad, Futtehpoor, Cawnpore, Banda, and Humeerpoor, as well as in those of Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, Jounpoor, Benares, and Mirzapore. When he settled down at Benares as his head-quarters, towards the close of August, he found that no civil business of the Company was carried on throughout the Doab, from Allahabad to Cawnpore, except at Allahabad itself. Neill and Havelock, by the gallant operations already described, obtained military control of the great line of road; but their troops being lamentably small in number, they were nearly powerless beyond a few miles’ distance on either side of that road; while the judges and magistrates, the commissioners and collectors, had in only a few instances been able to resume their duties as civil servants of the Company. A large portion of the population, driven from their villages either by the rebel sepoys or by the British, had not yet returned; and the fertile Doab had become, for a time, almost a desert. Banda and Humeerpoor, British districts immediately south of the Doab, were temporarily but completely given up; scarcely an Englishman remained within them, unless at hide-and-seek. Some of the petty chiefs, including the rajahs of Mundah and Churkarree, remained faithful. For a time, police in the service of the Company were able to retain command in that part of the Allahabad division which lay north of the Ganges; but the Oudians, as August advanced, crossed the frontier, and gradually drove them away, thus further narrowing the belt of country within which the Company’s ‘raj’ was respected. Koer Singh, whose name has so often been mentioned, was ruler for a time south of the Jumna, with his Dinapoor mutineers; it was supposed that he had offered his services to Nena Sahib and to the King of Delhi, in hopes of some substantial authority or advantages as a reward for his co-operation. This unsettled state of the region south of the Jumna placed Lieutenant Osborne in an extraordinary position. He was, as we have already seen (p. 180), British representative at the court of the Rajah of Rewah, a place southwest of Allahabad—unimportant in itself, but surrounded by districts every one of which was in a state of anarchy. Although the young rajah was friendly to the English, and aided the lieutenant in his military plans for checking the mutineers, it was at all times uncertain how far the Rewah troops themselves could be depended on. At a somewhat later date than that to which this chapter relates, Osborne was living in a tent at Rewah, with no Englishman of any grade near him, and uncertain whether he could rely for an hour on the fidelity of the native troops belonging to the rajah—defended by little else than his own indomitable force of character. Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers had asked the rajah either to join them, or to allow them to pass through his territory; he opposed it; his troops wished it; and thus the rajah and the lieutenant were thrown into antagonism with the Rewah troops.

Another region or division placed under Mr Grant’s lieutenant-governorship, Saugor, had witnessed very great disturbance during the month of June, as has already been shewn;^[70] and he found the effects of that disturbance manifested in various ways throughout July and August. Rewah, Nowgong, Jhansi, Saugor, Jubbulpoor, Hosungabad—all had suffered, either from the mutiny of troops at those towns, or by the arrival of mutineers from other stations. Nagpoor was under a different government or control; but it would not on that account have escaped the perils of those evil days, had it not been that the troops distributed over that province belonged to the Madras rather than to the Bengal army—a most important difference, as we have had many opportunities of seeing. Mr Plowden, commissioner of Nagpoor, found it comparatively easy to maintain his own territory in peace, for the reason just stated; and he used all possible exertion to bring up troops from Madras, and send them on to the Saugor province. His advice to Major Erskine was, to disarm his Bengal troops at all the stations as soon as he could obtain Madras troops; but the numbers of these latter were not sufficient to permit the carrying out of such a plan. The Saugor territory, in having the peaceful part of Bengal on the east, and Nagpoor territory on the south, was pretty safe from disturbance on those frontiers; but having the Jumna region on the north, and the Mahratta dominions on the west, it had many sources of disturbance in those directions.

In the town and military station of Saugor, the state of affairs was very remarkable. Brigadier Sage, in the month of June (p. 178), had converted a large fort into a place of refuge for the ladies and families of the officers, provisioned it for six months, placed the guns in position, and guarded the whole by a body of European gunners. This he did, not because the native regiments at the station (31st and 42d B. N. I., and 3d irregular cavalry) had mutinied, but because they appeared very unsettled, and received tempting offers from scheming chieftains in the vicinity. The Calcutta authorities called upon the brigadier for an 281explanation of the grounds on which he had shut up all the Europeans at Saugor, three hundred in number, in the fort, without any actual mutiny at that place; but on account of interrupted dâks and telegraphs, many weeks elapsed before the various official communications could take place, and during those weeks the brigadier was responsible for the safety of the residents. The remarkable feature in all this was, not that the native troops should mutiny, or that the Europeans should live in a fortified residence, but that one regiment should remain faithful when others at the same spot repudiated allegiance. Early in July the 42d and the cavalry endeavoured to incite the 31st to mutiny; but not only did the latter remain true to their salt—they attacked and beat off the rebels. On the 7th of the month a regular battle ensued; the 31st and some of the irregular cavalry attacking the 42d and the rest of the irregulars, and expelling them altogether from the station. ‘Well done, 31st,’ said Major Erskine, when news of this event reached Jubbulpoor. It was not merely that two infantry regiments were in antagonism; but two wings of one cavalry regiment were also at open war with each other. So delighted were the English officers of the 31st at the conduct of their men, that they were eager to join in the fray; but the brigadier would not allow this; he distrusted all these regiments alike, and would not allow the officers to place themselves in peril. Many at Saugor thought that an excess of caution was herein exhibited.

Fort at Agra, from the river Jumna.

The other chief place in the province, Jubbulpoor, as shewn in a former chapter (p. 178), had been thrown into much perplexity in the month of June by the news of mutiny at Jhansi and Nuseerabad; and Major Erskine, commissioner of the province, sought how he might best prevent the pestilence from spreading southeastward. He was at Jubbulpoor with the 52d B. N. I. By a system of constant watchfulness he passed through that month without an outbreak. It was, however, a month of anxiety; for such of the ladies as did not retire to Kamptee for shelter, remained in continual dread near their husbands at Jubbulpoor, seldom taking off their clothes at night, and holding ready to flee at an hour’s warning—a state of suspense entailing almost as much suffering as mutiny itself. Early in July the Europeans fortified the Residency, and stored it with half a year’s provisions for thirty officers, thirty ladies and children, and several civilians; this was done on receipt of news that the 42d native infantry and the 3d irregular cavalry had mutinied at Saugor. The Residency was made very strong, being converted from a house into a fort; three officers were made garrison engineers, two acted as commissariat officers, and all the rest took specific duties. It became not only the stronghold, but the home, night and day, for nearly seventy persons. One of the officers who had the best means of knowing the temper of the troops, while praising the 52d for still remaining faithful under 282so many temptations from mutineers elsewhere, and while promising them extra pay for their fidelity, nevertheless acknowledged in a private letter that the regiment was a broken reed to rest upon. ‘To tell the truth, I doubt the regiment being much better than any other. Circumstances alone keep the sepoys quiet. There is no treasure; we merely collect enough to pay ourselves and them. If they plundered the country, they could not take away the property; as the Bundelas would loot and murder them.’ Speaking of the domestic economy of his brother-officers and their families in the fortified Residency, he said: ‘The 52d mess manage everything in the Khana peena line (eating and drinking). Ladies and gentlemen all dine together—a strange scene, quite a barrack-life. In the evening a few of us drive out; others ride and walk. We cannot afford above six or eight to leave the garrison together.’ July passed over in safety in Jubbulpoor. Early in August a relieving force arrived from the Nagpoor territory, which, nearly tranquil itself, was able to forward trusty Madras troops to regions troubled by the faithless sepoys of the Bengal army. This force consisted of the 33d Madras native infantry, a squadron of the 4th Madras cavalry, 75 European artillerymen, and six guns. Major Erskine, thus reinforced, set forth to restore order at Dumoh, and to proceed thence to Saugor; to which place a Bombay column was expected to come, viâ Indore and Bhopal. This was a part of the policy determined on by the government at that time. Calcutta could supply no troops except for the Cawnpore and Lucknow region; the Punjaub could furnish reinforcements only for the siege of Delhi; and therefore it was determined that columns should start from the Madras and Bombay presidencies, comprising no Bengal native troops, and should work their way inwards and upwards to the disturbed provinces, sweeping away mutineers wherever they encountered them. It was not until the latter part of August that the Madras movable column could safely leave the vicinity of Jubbulpoor for Dumoh and other disturbed stations, and even then Major Erskine found it necessary to retain a portion of the troops. How long the 52d remained faithful at Jubbulpoor we shall see in a future page; but it may here be remarked that the English officers of the native regiments were at that time placed in a position of difficulty hardly to be comprehended by others. They either trusted their sepoys, or felt a kind of shame in expressing distrust: if not in actual peril, they were at least mortified and vexed; for they felt their own honour touched when their regiments proved faithless.

The Bengal troops at Nagode appear to have remained untouched by mutiny until the 25th of August. On that day the 50th native infantry shewed symptoms which caused some anxiety to the officers; two days afterwards disturbances took place, and at a period somewhat beyond the limit to which this chapter is confined the bulk of the regiment mutinied, and marched off to join mutineers elsewhere. About 250 of the sepoys remained true to their colours; they escorted their officers, and all the ladies and children, safely from Nagode to Mirzapore. These divergences among the men of the same regiment greatly complicate any attempts to elucidate the causes of the Indian mutiny generally. That the sepoys were often excited by temporary and exceptional impulses, is quite certain; and such impulses were wholly beyond the power of the Europeans correctly to estimate. There was one station at which a portion of a native regiment mutinied and shot an officer; the sepoys of his company threw themselves upon his body and wept, and then—joined the mutineers!

We pass from the Saugor province to those which were nominally under the control of Mr Colvin as lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—nominally, for, being himself shut up in Agra, he exercised scarcely any control beyond the walls of the fort. Of the Doab, sufficient has already been narrated to shew in what condition that fertile region was placed during the months of July and August. Where Havelock and Neill pitched their tents, there was British supremacy maintained; but beyond the three cities of Allahabad, Futtehpoor, and Cawnpore, and the high road connecting them, British power was little more than a name. Higher up the Doab, at Etawah, Minpooree, Furruckabad, Futteghur, Allygurh, Bolundshuhur, &c., anarchy was paramount. Crossing the Ganges into Oude, the cessation of British rule was still more complete. Scarcely an Englishman remained alive throughout the whole of Oude, except in Lucknow; all who had not been killed had precipitately escaped. Almost every landowner had become a petty chieftain, with his fort, his guns, and his band of retainers. In no part of India, at no time during the mutiny, was the hostility of the villagers more strikingly shewn than in Oude: in other provinces the inhabitants of the villages often aided the British troops on the march; but when Havelock, Neill, and Outram were in Oude, every village on the road had to be conquered, as if held by an avowed enemy. It has been often said that the Indian outbreak was a revolt of soldiery, not a rebellion of a people; but in Oude the contest was unquestionably with something more than the military only. Whether their love for their deposed king was sincere or only professed, the Oudians exhibited much animosity against the British. What the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow were doing, we shall see in the proper place.

Of Agra city, and the fort or residency in which the Europeans were for safety assembled, it will be remembered (p. 173) that after peaceably but anxiously passing through the month of May, Mr Colvin, on the 1st of June, found it necessary or expedient to disarm the 44th and 67th Bengal native infantry—because two companies of those regiments had just mutinied near Muttra, and 283because the bulk of the regiments exhibited unmistakable signs of disaffection. This great and important city was then left under the charge of the 3d European Fusiliers, a corps of volunteer European cavalry under Lieutenant Greathed, and Captain D’Oyley’s field-battery of six guns. Most of the disarmed native troops deserted, to swell the insurgent ranks elsewhere; and in the course of the month the jail-guard deserted also. Thus June came to its end—the European residents still remaining at large, but making certain precautions for their common safety at night.

When July arrived, however, the state of affairs became much more serious. The Europeans were forced into a battle, which ended in a necessity for their shutting themselves up in the fort. The force was very weak. The 3d Europeans only numbered about 600 men, the militia and volunteers 200, and a few artillerymen belonging to the guns. Among the officers present were several who had belonged to the Gwalior Contingent, the various regiments and detachments of which had mutinied at Hattrass, Neemuch, Augur, Lullutpore, and Gwalior, on various days between the 28th of May and the 3d of July; these officers, having now no commands, were glad to render aid in any available way towards the defence of Agra. Just at this critical time, when the approach of a hostile force was imminent, the Europeans were further troubled by the sudden mutiny of the Kotah Contingent. This force—consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, about 700 men in all—having been deemed loyal and trustworthy, had been brought about a month previously to Agra from the southwest, and had during that time remained true—collecting revenue, burning disaffected villages, capturing and hanging rebels and mutineers. They were brought in from the vicinity towards the close of June, to aid if necessary against the Neemuch mutineers, and were encamped half-way between the barracks and government-house. Suddenly and unexpectedly, on the evening of the 4th, the cavalry portion of the Contingent rose in revolt, fired at their officers, killed their sergeant-major, and then marched off, followed by the infantry and the artillery—all but a few gunners, who enabled the British to retain the two guns belonging to the Contingent. This revolt startled the authorities, and necessitated a change of plan, for it had been intended to attack the Neemuch force that very evening; nay, matters were even still worse, for the Kotah villains at once joined those from Neemuch.

On the morning of Sunday the 5th of July (again Sunday!), an army of mutineers being known to be near at hand, a reconnoitring party was sent out to examine their position. The enemy were found to consist of about 4000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, with ten or twelve guns; they comprised the 72d B. N. I., the 7th Gwalior Contingent infantry, the 1st Bengal native cavalry, the Malwah Contingent cavalry—which had joined the Neemuch men at Mehidpore—and fragments of other mutinied regiments, together with a very efficient artillery corps. The arrival of the Neemuch mutineers had for some time been expected; and as soon as it was known, on the 3d, that the enemy had reached Futtehpore Sikri, about twenty miles from Agra, the ladies and children, as well as many of the civilians and traders, had as a measure of precaution abandoned their houses in the city, and gone into the fort, which had been cleaned out, made as habitable as possible, and largely supplied with provisions. The reconnoitring party returned to announce that the enemy were at Shahgunje, a village close to the lieutenant-governor’s house, three miles from the cantonment and four from the fort. The authorities at Agra resolved at once to go out and fight the enemy in open field; seeing that the native citizens had begun to think slightingly of their British masters, and that it was necessary to remove any suspicion of fear or timidity. The brigadier made up a force equal to about one-eighth of the enemy’s numbers; it consisted of seven very weak companies of the 3d European Fusiliers, the militia and volunteers, and a battery of artillery. The infantry were placed under Colonel Riddell, and the artillery under Captain D’Oyley. As to the volunteer cavalry, it was made up of a curious medley of unemployed military officers, civilians, merchants, and writers—all willing to share the common danger for the common good; but with untrained horses, and without regular cavalry drill, they laboured under many disadvantages. About 200 men of the 3d Europeans remained behind to guard the fort.

At noon, the opposing forces met. The enemy occupied a strong position behind Shahgunje, with their guns flanking the village, and the cavalry flanking the guns. The British advanced in line, with their guns on each flank, the infantry in the middle, and the mounted militia and volunteers in the rear. When about six hundred yards from the enemy, the infantry were ordered to lie down, to allow the guns to do their work against the village, from behind the houses and walls of which the enemy’s riflemen opened a very destructive fire. It was a bad omen that women were seen in the village loading the rifles and muskets and handing them to the mutineers to fire. For two hours an exchange of artillery-fire was kept up—extremely fierce; shrapnel shells, round-shot, and grape-shot, filling the air. A tumbril belonging to D’Oyley’s battery now blew up, disabling one of the guns; the enemy’s cavalry took advantage of this to gallop forward and charge; but the 3d Europeans, jumping up, let fly a volley which effectually deterred them. Most of the officers and soldiers had wished during these two hours for a bolder course of action—a capture of the enemy’s guns by a direct charge of infantry. Then followed a rapid musketry-fire, and a chasing of the enemy 284out of the village by most of the infantry—the rest guarding the guns. Unfortunately another tumbril blew up, disabling another gun; and, moreover, D’Oyley had used up all the ammunition which had been supplied to him. Upon this the order was given for retreat to the city; and the retreat was made—much to the mortification of the troops, for they had really won a victory. The rebels, it was afterwards known, were themselves out of ammunition, and were just about to retreat when they saw the retreat of the British; their infantry marched off towards Muttra, but their cavalry and one gun harassed the British during their return to the city. The artillery-fire of the mutineers during the battle was spoken of with admiration even by those who were every minute suffering from it; the native artillerymen had learned to use effectively against us those guns which they had been paid and fed to use in our defence. If the cavalry had been equally effective, the British would probably have been cut off to a man. This battle of Agra was a severe one to the British, for one-fourth of the small force were killed or wounded. The officers suffered much: Majors Prendergast and Thomas, Captains D’Oyley, Lamb, and Alexander, Lieutenants Pond, Fellowes, Cockburn, Williams, and Bramley, were wounded, as well as many gentlemen belonging to the volunteer horse. The loss of Captain D’Oyley was very much deplored, for he was a great favourite. While managing his guns, a shot struck him; he sat on the carriage, giving orders, in spite of his wound; but at last he fell, saying: ‘Ah, they have done for me now! Put a stone over my grave, and say I died at my guns.’ He sank the next day.

The British returned to Agra—not to the city, but to the fort; for three or four thousand prisoners had got loose during the day, and had begun to fire all the European buildings in the city. Officers and privates, civilians and ladies, all who wrote of the events at Agra at that time, told of the wild licence of that day and night. One eye-witness said: ‘Hardly a house has escaped destruction; and such houses and their contents as were not consumed by fire have been completely gutted and destroyed by other means. In fact, even if we were to leave the fort to-morrow, there are not four houses in the place with roofs remaining under which we could obtain shelter; and as for household property and other things left outside, there is not a single article in existence in serviceable order. The very doors and windows are removed, and every bit of wood torn out, so that nothing remains but the bare brick walls. Things are strewed about the roads and streets in every direction; and wherever you move you see broken chairs and tables, carriages in fragments, crockery, books, and every kind of property wantonly destroyed.’ An officer of the 3d Europeans, after describing the battle, and the return of the little force to the fort, said: ‘Immediately afterwards the work of destruction commenced, the budmashes began to plunder, bungalows on every side were set on fire—one continued blaze the whole night. I went out the next morning. ‘Twas a dreadful sight indeed; Agra was destroyed; churches, colleges, dwelling-houses, barracks, everything burned.’

But they had something more to think of than the devastation in Agra city; they had to contemplate their own situation in Agra Fort. Among the number of Europeans, some had already borne strange adversities. One officer had escaped, with his wife, in extraordinary guise, from Gwalior at the time of the mutiny of the Contingent at that place. He had been obliged to quit his wife at their bungalow in the midst of great danger, to hasten down to his regiment in the lines; and when he found his influence with his men had come to naught, and that shots were aimed at him, three sepoys resolved to save him. They took off his hat, boots, and trousers, wrapped him in a horse-cloth, huddled him between them, and passed him off as a woman. They left him on the bank of a stream, and went to fetch his wife from a position of great peril. She being too weak to walk, they made up a horse-cloth into a sort of bag, tied it to a musket, put her into it, shouldered the musket horizontally, and carried her seven miles—her husband walking by her side, barefoot over sharp stones. After meeting with further assistance, they reached Agra somewhat more in comfort. Another officer, who had likewise served in the Gwalior Contingent, and who had seen much hard service before the mutiny of his corps compelled him to flee to Agra, counted up the wreck of his property after the battle of the 5th of July, and found it to consist of ‘a coat, a shirt, the greater portion of a pair of breeches, a pair of jack-boots, one sock, a right good sword’—and a cannon-ball through his leg; yet, recognising the useful truth that grumbling and complaining are but poor medicines in a time of trouble, he bore up cheerfully, and even cheered up Mr Colvin, who was at that time nearly worn to the grave by sickness and anxiety. An officer of the 3d Europeans said in a letter: ‘I lost everything in the world.... The enemy went quietly off; but here we are; we can’t get out—no place to go to—nothing to do but to wait for assistance.’ And a few days afterwards he added: ‘Here we are like rats in a trap; there are from four to five thousand people in this fort, military and civil, Eurasians, half-castes, &c.; and when we shall get out, is a thing to be guessed at.’ A surgeon of the recently mutinied Gwalior Contingent thus spoke of what he saw around him: ‘The scene in the fort for the first few days was a trying one. All the native servants ran off. I had eleven in the morning, and at night not one. Ladies were seen cooking their own food, officers drawing and carrying water from the wells, &c. Many people were ruined, having escaped with only their clothes on their backs. We are now 285shut up here, five hundred fighting-men with ammunition, and about four or five thousand altogether, eagerly awaiting the arrival of European troops.’ A commissariat officer said: ‘Here we are all living in gun-sheds and casemates. The appearance of the interior is amusing, and the streets (of the fort) are named; we have Regent and Oxford Streets, the Quadrant, Burlington and Lowther Arcades, and Trafalgar Square.’ The wife of one of the officers described her strange home: ‘We are leading a very unsettled ship-like life. No one is allowed to leave the fort, except bodies of armed men. We are living in a place they call Palace Yard; it is a square, with a gallery round it, having open arches; every married couple are allowed two arches.... It is no easy matter to keep our arches clean and tidy.’ As all the Europeans in Agra went to live in the fort, the number included the staff of the Mofussilite (’Provincial European’) newspaper, one of the journals which had for some time been published in that city; the issue for the 3d of July had been printed at the usual office of the paper; but none other appeared for twelve days, when a Mofussilite was printed within the fort itself.

There was no exaggeration in the accounts of the number of persons thus strangely incarcerated. So completely were the Europeans and their native servants at Agra shut up within the fort, and so much was that place regarded as a refuge for those who had been forced to flee from other stations, that it gradually became crowded to an extraordinary degree. On the 26th of July Mr Colvin determined to take a census of all the persons who slept within the fort on that night; he did so, and found them to amount to no less a number than 5845^[71]—all of whom had to be supplied with their daily food under military or garrison arrangements. More than 2000 of the number were children, who could render little or no return for the services so anxiously demanded by and for them. Provided, however, the supply of food and other necessaries were sufficient, the danger of the position was not at all comparable to that of Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore or of Brigadier Inglis at Lucknow. The fort at Agra (see wood-cut, p. 109) was a very large structure, a sort of triangle whose sides extended from three to five eighths of a mile each; it contained numerous large buildings within the walls, of which the chief were the palace of Shahjehan, the Hall of Audience built by the same emperor, and the Moti Musjid or Pearl Mosque. All the buildings were at once appropriated, in various ways, to the wants of the enormous number of persons who sought shelter therein. The defences of the place, too, were greatly strengthened; sixty guns of heavy calibre were mounted on the bastions; thirteen large mortars were placed in position; the powder-magazines were secured from accidental explosion; the external defences were improved by the levelling of many houses in the city which approached too near the fort; and preparations were completed for blowing up the superb Jumma Musjid (p. 229) if any attempt were made by a hostile force to occupy it, seeing that its upper ranges commanded the interior of the fort. The only insurgent force at that time in possession of guns and mortars powerful enough to breach strong walls was the Gwalior Contingent; and even if Scindia lost all hold over that force, Agra was provisioned for ten months, and had ammunition enough to stand a whole year’s siege. An officer of a mutinied Gwalior regiment, writing from Agra after some weeks’ confinement, said: ‘Almost all the roads are closed, and it is only by secret messengers and spies that we can get any intelligence of what is going on in the convulsed world around us. My letters from Scotland used to reach me in thirty days; now if I get one in eighty days I congratulate myself on my good-luck.... As for this fort, we can hold it against any number for months; our only fear being for the women and children, who would suffer much, and of whom we have some three thousand. The health of the troops, &c., is, thank God, excellent, and the wounded are doing well.’ Nevertheless, with all their sense of security, the Europeans within the fort had enough to do to maintain their cheerfulness. On the day and night of the 5th of July, property had been burned and despoiled in the city to an enormous amount; and most of this had belonged to the present inmates of the fort. The merchants had been prosperous, their large shops had abounded with the most costly articles of necessity and luxury—and now nearly all was gone. The military officers had of course less to lose, but their deprivation was perhaps still more complete.

Throughout July and August the state of affairs thus continued at Agra. The danger was small, but the discomforts of course numerous. Mr Colvin sent repeated applications for a relieving force. There was, however, none to aid him. His health failed greatly, and he did not bear up against the anxieties of his position with the cheerful firmness exhibited by many other of the officials at that trying time. Brigadier Polwhele, former military commandant, was superseded by Colonel Cotton when the account of the battle of the 5th of July became known at Calcutta. Occasional sallies were made from the fort, to punish isolated bodies of rebels at Futtehpore Sikri, Hattrass, and Allygurh; but the European troops were too few to be very effective in this way. The most note-worthy exploit took place during the latter half of August, when Mr Colvin requested Colonel Cotton to organise a small force for driving some mutineers from Allygurh. Major 286Montgomery set forth with this miniature army,^[72] reached Hattrass on the 21st, and there learned that 6000 mutineers, under Ghose Mahomed Khan, náib or lieutenant of the King of Delhi, were prepared to resist him at Allygurh. Montgomery marched from Allygurh to Sarsnee on the 23d, rested for the night in an indigo factory and other buildings, and advanced on the following day to Allygurh. There ensued a sharp conflict of two hours’ duration, in gardens and enclosures outside the town; it ended in the defeat and dispersion of the enemy, who left 300 dead on the field. The battle was a gallant affair, worthy of ranking with those of Havelock; for Montgomery contended against twenty times his own number; and, moreover, many of the troops among the enemy were Ghazees or fanatic Mussulmans who engaged fiercely in hand-to-hand contests with some of his troops. His detachment of men was too small to enable him to enter and reoccupy Allygurh: he was obliged to leave that place in the hands of the rebels, and to return to Hattrass; but having replenished his stock of ammunition and supplies, he advanced again to Allygurh, held it for several days, and left a detachment there when he took his departure.

Taking leave for the present of Agra, we may briefly state that almost every other city and station in that part of India was in the hands of the enemy during the months of July and August. Delhi was still under siege; but there was scarcely a British soldier in any part of the Delhi division except in the siege-camp before Delhi itself. In the Agra division, as we have just seen, British influence extended very little further than the walls of Agra Fort. In the Meerut division, the station at that town was still held; the military lines were strongly fortified, and supplied with provisions to an extent sufficient to remove immediate anxiety. The region between Delhi and the Sutlej, containing Hansi, Hissar, Sirsa, and other towns, was fortunately kept in some order by a column under General Van Cortlandt, which moved quickly from place to place, and put down a swarm of petty chieftains who were only too ready to take advantage of the mutinies of the native troops. In the Rohilcund division scarcely a town, except up in the hills, remained under British control.

Welcome as was the refuge which the wives and children of officers found at the hill-stations in the Rohilcund and Cis-Sutlej provinces, their tranquillity was frequently disturbed by the movements of rebels. Early in August the civil commissioner of Kumaon received intelligence that an attack was contemplated on Nynee Tal by Kalee Khan, one of the myrmidons of Khan Bahadoor Khan of Bareilly, who had 3000 rabble with him; the plunder and destruction of the station being the main objects in view. Captain Ramsey, commandant at Nynee Tal, and Colonel M’Causland, commanding the troops in the various stations of Kumaon, at once determined to remove the ladies and children, two hundred in number, from Nynee Tal to Almora, further away from Bareilly: this was done; and then the colonel prepared to meet the mutineers, and confront them with a detachment of the 66th Goorkhas. Kalee Khan set forth on his mission; but when he heard that M’Causland was calmly waiting for him, he changed his plan, returned to Bareilly, and avoided a conflict, the probable result of which presented itself very clearly to his mind. At Nynee Tal, at Almora, at Mussouree, at Simla, and at other places among the cool hilly regions, ladies and children were assembled in large numbers, some with their husbands and fathers, but many sent away from scenes of strife in which those dear to them were compelled to engage. It was not all idle hopelessness with them. Englishwomen can always find some useful service to render, and are always ready to render it. A lady, writing from Mussouree on the 9th of August, said: ‘We are very busy working flannel clothes for our army before Delhi. They are very badly off for these things; and being so much exposed at such a season of the year, and in such a proverbially unhealthy locality, and fighting as they have done so nobly, they really deserve to be provided for by us.’ After enumerating the sums subscribed towards this object from various quarters, the writer went on to say: ‘Mrs —— and myself are constantly at work; for, with the exception of our tailors, and one or two others given up to us by ladies, we can get none.... Wonderful to say, though I never did such a thing in my life before, I have the management of our portion of the business, which keeps me employed from early morning till late at night. We meet, with several other ladies, at ——‘s house every day, with as many tailors as we can collect, and stitch away.’

The great and important country of the Punjaub, though not free from disturbance, was kept pretty well under control during July and August, by the energy of Sir John Lawrence and the other officers of the Company. We have seen^[73] that on the 13th of May the 16th, 26th, and 49th regiments of Bengal native infantry, and the 8th Bengal cavalry, were disarmed at Meean Meer, a cantonment six miles from the city of Lahore; that on the same day the 45th and 57th native infantry mutinied at Ferozpore, while the 10th cavalry was disarmed; that during the same week, Umritsir, Jullundur, and Phillour were only saved from mutiny by the promptness and spirit of some of the officers; that on the 20th, the 55th native infantry mutinied at Murdan in the Peshawur Valley; that consequent upon this, the 24th, 27th, and 51st native infantry, and the 5th native 287cavalry, were on the 22d of the month disarmed in the station of Peshawur itself; that early in June, the 4th native regiment was disarmed at Noorpore; that on the 6th, the 36th and 61st native infantry, and the 6th native cavalry, mutinied at Jullundur, and marched off towards Phillour; that the 3d native cavalry, at the last-named station, mutinied on the following day, unable to resist the temptation thrown out to them by those from Jullundur; that the 14th native infantry mutinied at Jelum on the 7th of July, maintaining a fierce fight with a British detachment before their departure; that on the same day the 58th native infantry, and two companies of the 14th, were disarmed at Rawul Pindee; that on the 9th, the 46th native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, mutinied at Sealkote, and decamped towards Delhi; that towards the close of July, the disarmed 26th mutinied at Meean Meer, murdered Major Spencer, and marched off with the intention of strengthening the insurgents at Delhi; that on the 19th of August, a portion of the disarmed 10th cavalry mutinied at Ferozpore; and that on the 28th of the same month, the disarmed 51st mutinied at Peshawur, fled to the hills, and were almost annihilated. It thus appears that about a dozen regiments mutinied in the Punjaub between the middle of May and the end of August; that some of these had been previously disarmed; and that others had been disarmed without having mutinied.

A few additional words may be given here relating to the partial mutiny at Meean Meer. The four native regiments at that station, disarmed on the 13th of May, remained in their lines until the 30th of July, peaceful and without arms. On the last-named day, however, it became known to the authorities that the men meditated flight. Major Spencer of the 26th, and two native officers, were killed by the sepoys of that regiment on that day—with what weapons does not clearly appear. The murder of the unfortunate English officer deranged the plans of the troops; all were to have decamped at a given signal; but now only the 26th made off, leaving the other three regiments in their lines. The authorities, not well knowing whither the fugitives had gone, sent off three strong parties of mounted police, to Umritsir, Hurrekee, and Kussoor, the three routes towards the Sutlej. The men, however, had gone northward; but within a few days they were almost entirely destroyed, for the villagers aided the police in capturing or shooting the miserable fugitives as they marched or ran in field and jungle.

Without going over in detail any proceedings already recorded, it may be convenient to condense in a small space a narrative of Brigadier-general Nicholson’s operations in the later days of June and the first half of July with a movable column placed under his command by Sir John Lawrence. Having disarmed the 33d and 35th B. N. I., for reasons which appeared to him amply sufficient, he began on the 27th of June to retrace his steps from Phillour, and on the 5th of July he encamped at Umritsir, to overawe the 59th B. N. I., and to hold a central position whence he might march to any threatened point east or west. On the 7th, hearing of the mutiny of the 14th native infantry at Jelum, and receiving no satisfactory evidence that Colonel Ellice had been able to frustrate or defeat the mutineers, he at once resolved on a measure of precaution. He disarmed the 59th on the following morning—with very great regret; for he had nothing to censure in the conduct of the men; he took that step solely on account of the peril which, at such a time, threatened any station containing Bengal troops without British; and he added in his dispatch: ‘I beg very strongly to recommend this corps, both as regards officers and men, to the favourable consideration of government.’ On the 10th, receiving intelligence that the 46th native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, had mutinied at Sealkote, Nicholson at once disarmed the other wing of the same cavalry regiment, which formed part of his column. In the course of the same day he learned that the Sealkote mutineers intended to march eastward, through Goordaspore, Noorpore, Hoshyapoor, and Jullundur, to Delhi—endeavouring to tempt to mutiny, on their way, the 2d irregular cavalry at Goordaspore, the 4th native infantry at Noorpore, and the 16th irregular cavalry at Hoshyapoor. The problem thence arose—could Nicholson intercept these mutineers before they reached Goordaspore? He found he would have to make a forced march of forty miles in a northeast direction to effect this. He did so, by energetic exertions, in twenty hours. He came up with them at the Trimmoo ford over the Ravee, nine miles from Goordaspore, on the 12th of July—his force now consisting of H.M. 52d foot, 184 men of the Punjaub infantry, a company of the police battalion, a few irregular horse, a troop of artillery, and three guns. Nicholson defeated them after a short but sharp conflict on the river’s bank; but his horsemen were not trustworthy, and he could not pursue the enemy. About 300 mutineers, with one gun, took post on an island in the river; these, by a well-planned movement, were almost entirely annihilated on the 16th—and the ‘Sealkote mutineers’ disappeared from the scene. It was with justice that the active leader thanked his troops on the following day: ‘By a forced march of unusual length, performed at a very trying season of the year, the column has been able to preserve many stations and districts from pillage and plunder, to save more than one regiment from the danger of too close a contact with the mutineers; while the mutineer force itself, 1100 strong, notwithstanding the very desperate character of the resistance offered by it, has been utterly destroyed or dispersed.’

Let us now, as in a former chapter, glance at the state of affairs in the vast region of India southward of the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Sutlej—passing over Sinde without special mention, 288as being nearly free from disturbing agencies. The reader will remember^[74] that among the various states, provinces, and districts of Nagpoor, Hyderabad, Carnatic, Madras, Bombay, Holkar, Scindia, Rajpootana, &c., some became subject to anarchy in certain instances during the month of June—especially the three last-named states; and we have now to shew that this anarchy continued, and in some cases extended, during July and August; but it will also be made manifest that the amount of insurgency bore a very small ratio to that in the stormy districts further north.

Of Southwestern Bengal, Orissa, and Nagpoor, it is scarcely necessary here to speak. The native troops were not influenced by a hostility so fierce, a treachery so villainous, as those in Hindostan proper; there were not so many zemindars and petty chieftains who had been wrought up to irritation by the often questionable appropriations and annexations of the Company; and there was easier access for the troops of the Madras presidency, who, as has already been more than once observed, had small sympathy with the petted sepoys and sowars of the larger presidency. The mutinies or attempts at mutiny, in these provinces, were of slight character during July and August. Mr Plowden, commissioner of Nagpoor, was enabled, with troops sent by Lord Harris from Madras, not only to maintain British supremacy throughout that large country (nearly equal in size to England and Scotland combined), but also to assist Major Erskine in the much more severely threatened territory of Saugor and Nerbudda, lying between Nagpoor and the Jumna.

The Madras presidency remained almost entirely at peace. Not only did the native troops hold their faith with the government that fed and paid them, but they cheerfully volunteered to serve against the mutinous Bengal sepoys in the north. On the 3d of July the governor in council issued a proclamation, announcing that several regiments had expressed their desire to be employed in the Northwest Provinces or wherever else their services might be required; that thanks would be publicly awarded to the native officers and men of all the regiments who had thus come forward; and that the favourable attention of the supreme government towards them would be solicited. The corps that thus proffered their services were the 3d, 11th, 16th, and 27th Madras native infantry, the 3d and 8th Madras native cavalry, a company of native foot-artillery, a troop of native horse-artillery, and a detachment of native sappers and miners. Many of these afterwards rendered good service in the battles which distinguished—and we may at the same time add devastated—Northern and Central India. Four days afterwards, Lord Harris was able to announce that other regiments—the 17th, 30th, 36th, and 47th native infantry, and the 5th native cavalry—had in a similar way come forward ‘to express their abhorrence of the traitorous conduct of the mutineers of the Bengal army, and their desire to be employed wherever their services may be required.’ Besides thus providing faithful soldiers, the governor of Madras was in a position, at various times during July and August, to send large supplies of arms, ammunition, and camp-equipage, from Madras to Calcutta. In the city of Madras itself, and in the various southern provinces and countries of Carnatic, Tanjore, Travancore, Canara, Malabar, and Mysore, the same exemption from mutiny was experienced. There were, it is true, discontents and occasional plottings, but no formidable resistance to the British power. Many persons there were who, without being rebels or open malcontents, thought that the Company had dealt harshly with the native princes, and were on that account deterred from such hearty sympathy with the British as they might otherwise possibly have manifested. An officer in the Madras army, writing when the mutiny was four months old, stated that in the previous February, when that terrible movement had not yet commenced, he went one day to take a sketch of a mosque, or rather a collection of mosques, in the suburbs of Madras—tombs that were the memorials of past Mussulman greatness. His conversation with an old man of that faith^[75] left upon his mind the impression that there was a sentiment of injury borne, rights violated, nationality disregarded, conveyed in the words of his temporary companion.

There was, however, one occurrence in the Madras presidency which gave rise to much uneasiness. The 8th Madras native cavalry was ordered to march from Bangalore to Madras, and there embark for Calcutta. On arriving at a place about twenty-five miles from Madras, on the 17th of August, the men put forward a claim for the rates of pay, batta, and pension which existed before the year 1837, and which were more favourable than those of subsequent introduction. Such a claim, put forward at such a moment, was very perplexing to the officers; they hastened to Madras, and obtained the consent of the government to make conciliatory offers to the men. After a further march of thirteen miles to Poonamallee, the troopers again stopped, and declared they would not go forth ‘to war against their countrymen.’ This being an act of insubordination which of course could not be overlooked, two guns and some artillerymen were promptly brought forward; the 8th cavalry were unhorsed and disarmed, and sent to do dismounted duty at Arcot; while their horses were forthwith shipped to Calcutta, where such accessions were specially valuable. The affair caused great excitement at Madras; the volunteers were warned that their services were to be available at a moment’s notice; patrols were placed in the streets by day and night; and guns were planted in certain directions. Happily, the prompt disarming of this turbulent regiment prevented the poison from spreading further.

SKETCH MAP
TO ILLUSTRATE
HAVELOCK’S OPERATIONS

DURING JULY & AUGUST.
1857

From a Government Survey.

289Bombay, like its sister presidency Madras, was affected only in a slight degree by the storms that troubled Bengal and the northwest. The Bombay troops, though, as the sequel shewed, not altogether equal in fidelity to those of Madras, did nevertheless pass through the perilous ordeal very creditably—rendering most valuable service in Rajpootana and other regions of the north. There was a wealthy and powerful native community at Bombay—that of the Parsees—which was nearly at all times ready to support the government, and which greatly strengthened the hands of Lord Elphinstone by so doing. It consisted of merchants, shipowners, and bankers, many of whom had made large fortunes in the ordinary way of trade. Those Parsees may always be distinguished from the other natives of India by something peculiar in their names—Jamsetjee, Nowrojee, Cursetjee, Bomanjee, Rustomjee, Hormuzjee, Luxmonjee, Maneekjee, Sorabjee, Furdoonjee, Soonderjee, Ruttonjee, Wassewdewjee, Dhakjee, &c. The Parsees are the descendants of those Persians who, refusing to exchange the religion of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed, migrated to India more than a thousand years ago; those still remaining in Persia are few in number and degraded in position; but those at Bombay are wealthy and active, and bear a high character both morally and intellectually. The property in the island on which the city of Bombay stands is chiefly in the hands of the Parsees; and it is usual for the European commercial firms of Bombay to have a Parsee capitalist as one of the partners. Although wearing the Asiatic costume, and adhering very rigidly to their religious customs and observances, the Parsees assimilate more than other eastern people to the social customs of Europeans: they nearly all speak English, and have it carefully taught to their children. There is something remarkable in a Parsee holding the dignity of a baronet, in English fashion; such was the case a few years ago, when a Parsee of enormous wealth, and of liberality as great as his wealth, was made by Queen Victoria a baronet under the title of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. It will at once be seen that such a body as the Parsees, having little or no sympathy with Hindustani sepoys, and having their worldly interests much bound up with the English, were likely to be sources of strength instead of weakness in troubled times. They headed an address to Lord Elphinstone, signed by about four hundred natives of various castes and creeds.^[76] It was not more adulatory, not more filled with enthusiastic professions of loyalty, than many addresses presented to Viscount Canning in Bengal; but it more nearly corresponded with the conduct of those who signed it.

If Bombay city, however, remained nearly undisturbed during July and August, there were symptoms that required close watching in various districts to the north, south, and east. Kolapore, one of the places here adverted to, is distant about a hundred and eighty miles south from Bombay. It is the chief place of a raj or state of the same name, and was in the last century a scene of frequent contest between two Mahratta princes, the Peishwa of Satara and the Rajah of Kolapore, each of whom struggled against the claims to superiority put forth by the other. About half a century ago began those relations towards the Company’s government, which, as in so many other parts of India, led to the gradual extinction of the rule of the native rajah; the British govern ‘in the name of the rajah,’ but the rajah’s authority remains in abeyance. The military force belonging specially to the state, at the time of the mutiny, amounted to about ten thousand men of all arms. It was, however, among the Company’s own troops that the disaffection above adverted to took place. The 27th Bombay native infantry, without any previous symptoms of disaffection, suddenly mutinied at Kolapore, on the day of a festival called the Buckree Eed (1st of August); or rather, a portion of the regiment mutinied. While the officers were assembled in the billiard-room of their mess-house on the evening of that day, a jemadar rushed in and informed them that some of the sepoys had risen in revolt; the officers hastened out; when three of them, ignorant of the place, or bewildered 290in the darkness, went astray, and were taken and murdered by the mutineers. The mother of the jemadar went to the house of Major Rolland, the commanding officer, to warn the ladies of their danger, and to afford them means of escape. No sooner had the ladies hurried away, than the house was surrounded by mutineers, who, disappointed at finding it empty, revenged themselves by slaughtering the old woman. After plundering the treasury of forty thousand rupees, the mutineers retired to a religious edifice in the town, and marched off in early morning by the Phoonda Ghat towards Wagotun, on the coast. The native commissioned officers of the regiment remained faithful; none of them accompanied the mutineers. The outbreak ended most disastrously to those concerned in it. When they got some distance from Kolapore, they found themselves without food and without friends; and gradually nearly all were destroyed by detachments sent against them, headed by Major Rolland and Colonel Maughan, the latter of whom was British resident at Kolapore. There were circumstances which justify a belief that this was not so much a mutiny after the Bengal type, as an association of the bad men of the regiment for purposes of plunder.

This event at Kolapore threw the whole of the south Mahratta country into a ferment. At Poonah, Satara, Belgaum, Dharwar, Rutnagherry, Sawunt Waree, and other places, the threads of a Mohammedan conspiracy were detected; and fortunately the germs of insurrection were nipped in the bud. When Mr Rose, commissioner of Satara, found that the deposed royal family of that state were engaged in plots and intrigues, he took a small but reliable English force, entered Satara before daylight on the 6th of August, surrounded the palace, and ordered the rajah and the ranees to prepare for instant departure. Resistance being useless, the royal prisoners entered phaetons which had been brought for that purpose, and before eight o’clock they were on the way to Poonah—to be kept under the eye of the Bombay authorities until the political atmosphere should become clearer, in a navy depôt on an island near Bombay city. A plot was about the same time discovered at Poonah, concerted between the moulvies of that place and of Belgaum, for massacring the Europeans and native Christians of those stations; letters were intercepted at the Poonah post-office, which enabled the authorities to shun the coming evil. Many arrests of Mussulman conspirators were made; and it was then found that matters had gone so far as a preparation to blow up the arsenal at Poonah. The authorities at once disarmed the natives of the cantonment bazaar. From most of the out-stations, being troubled by these events, the English ladies were sent by military escort to Bombay or to Poonah. Among other measures of precaution, the remaining companies of the 27th native regiment were disarmed at Kolapore and Rutnagherry; and examples of the terrible ‘blowing away from guns’ were resorted to, to check this incipient revolution. The 28th Bombay native infantry, stationed at Dharwar, and the 29th, stationed at Belgaum, had been raised at the same time as the 27th; and a few symptoms of insubordination were manifested by sepoys of those regiments; but the timely arrival of a European regiment restored quiet. The English were greatly exasperated when the fact came to light that one of the conspirators detected at Belgaum was a moonshee who had been receiving a hundred and fifty rupees per month for instructing officers of regiments in Hindustani.

The three presidencies were all anxiously watching the state of feeling in the large and important country of Hyderabad, the dominions of the Nizam; for that country borders on Nagpoor on the northeast; while on the southeast and on the west it is conterminous with districts belonging to Madras and to Bombay respectively. Its two largest cities, Hyderabad in the southeast portion, and Aurungabad in the northwest, contained many English families belonging to military and civil servants of the Company; or at least the families were at stations not far from those cities. By the terms of various treaties between the Nizam and the Company, the latter had the right of maintaining a large military cantonment at Secunderabad, a few miles north of Hyderabad city. This cantonment was three miles in length, and was well provided with officers’ bungalows and mess-houses, European barracks, sepoy lines, horse-artillery lines, foot-artillery barracks, native bazaars, parade-ground, hospitals, arsenal, and all the other requisites for a large military station. The cavalry lines were two miles north of the cantonment, at Bowenpilly. The military station for the troops belonging to the Nizam as an independent sovereign was at Bolarum, somewhat further away from Hyderabad, but still within easy reach of Secunderabad. At the time of the mutiny the British resident at Hyderabad was placed in a position of some difficulty. Although there was a large force at Secunderabad, it comprised scarcely any British troops; and therefore, if trouble arose, he could only look to defence from natives by natives. The capital of the Deccan, or the Nizam’s territory, comprised within itself many elements of insecurity. The government and a large portion of the inhabitants were Mohammedan; the rabble of the city was numerous and ruthless; the Nizam’s own army was formed on the same model as the contingents which had so generally mutinied in Hindostan; the Company’s own forces, as just mentioned, were almost entirely native; and the city and province were at all times thronged with predatory bands of Rohillas, Afghans, Arabs, and other mercenaries, in the pay of the nobles and jaghiredars of the Hyderabad court. It is almost certain that if the Nizam had turned against us, Southern India would have been in 291a blaze of insurrection; but he was faithful; and his chief minister, Salar Jung, steadily supported him in all measures calculated to put down disturbance. The news of the rebel-triumph at Delhi set in tumultuous motion the turbulent Mussulmans of Hyderabad; and it has been well observed that ‘a single moment of indecision, a single act of impolicy, a single false step, or a single admission of weakness, might have turned Hyderabad into a Lucknow and made a second Oude of the Deccan.’ The Nizam, his prime minister, and the British resident, all brought sagacity and firmness to bear on the duties of their respective offices; and thus the Deccan and Southern India were saved. What might have been the case under other circumstances was foreshadowed by the events of the 17th of July. On the preceding day, intelligence was received at the Residency, which stands clear of the city, but at the distance of some few miles from the British cantonment at Secunderabad, that the mob in the city was much excited, and that a scheme was on foot to press the Nizam to attack the Residency. Notice was sent from the Residency to Salar Jung, and preparations were made. Early in the evening on the 17th, a Rohilla rabble stole forth from the city, and made for the Residency. An express was at once sent off to cantonments for aid; and in the meantime the guard, with three guns, went out to attack the insurgents. Captain Holmes plied his grape-shot effectively from the three guns; and when cavalry and horse-artillery arrived from Secunderabad, the Rohillas received a total discomfiture. This was almost the only approach to a mutiny that occurred in the portion of the Deccan near the Carnatic frontier.

Aurungabad, on the Bombay side of the Nizam’s dominions, was, in regard to mutinies, less important than Hyderabad, because more easily accessible for European troops; but more important, in so far as the sepoy regiments of Malwah and Rajpootana were nearer at hand to be affected by evil temptation. The city is about seventy miles distant from Ahmednuggur, and a hundred and seventy from Bombay. Uneasiness prevailed here so early as June. The 1st cavalry and the 2d infantry, of the corps called the Hyderabad Contingent, were stationed at Aurungabad; and of these, the former shewed signs of disaffection. Captain Abbott, commanding the regiment, found on the morning of the 13th that his men were murmuring and threatening, as if unwilling to act against mutineers elsewhere; indeed, they had sworn to murder their officers if any attempt were made to employ them in that way. Fortunately, the ressaldars—each being a native captain of a troop of cavalry, and there being therefore as many ressaldars in a regiment as there were troops or companies—remained faithful; and Captain Abbott, with Lieutenant Dowker, were enabled to discuss with these officers the state of the regiment. The ressaldars assured the captain that many of the troopers had begun to talk loudly about the King of Delhi as their rightful ruler. The resident at the court of the Nizam, through the military secretary, Major Briggs, advised Captain Abbott—seeing that no aid could be expected from any other quarter—to speak in as conciliatory a tone as possible to the men, and to promise them that they should not be required to act against the insurgents at Delhi, provided they would be obedient to other orders. Quiet was in this way restored; but it being a dangerous precedent thus to allow troops to decide where and against whom they would choose to fight, Major-general Woodburn, who had been placed in command of a movable column from Bombay, marched through Ahmednuggur to Aurungabad. This column consisted of the 28th Bombay native infantry, the 14th dragoons, Captain Woolcombe’s battery, and a pontoon train. When Woodburn arrived, he found that the ladies had all left the Aurungabad station, that the officers were living barricaded in the mess-room, and that all the Nizam’s troops exhibited unfavourable symptoms. The first native cavalry, when confronted with Woodburn’s troops, behaved in a very daring way; and about a hundred of them made off, owing to the unwillingness of the general to open fire upon them, although Abbott and Woolcombe saw the importance of so doing.

In the country north of Bombay, and between it and Malwah, many slight events occurred, sufficient to shew that the native troops were in an agitated state, as if oscillating between the opposite principles of fidelity and treachery. It was worthy of note, however, that the troops thus affected were, in very few instances, those belonging to the Company’s Bombay army; they were generally contingent corps, or Mahrattas, or Rajpoots, or men imbued with the same ideas as the Hindustanis and Oudians. Towards the close of July, a few troopers of the Gujerat Irregular Horse endeavoured to incite their companions to mutiny; they failed, and then decamped; but were pursued and captured, and then hung in presence of their own regiment.

Still further northward lies the country which, under the various names of Scindia’s territory, Holkar’s territory, Malwah, and Bhopal, has already been described as the chief seat of the Mahratta power, and which corresponds pretty nearly with the region marked out by the Company’s officials as ‘Central India.’ We have seen in former pages^[77] that Scindia, chief of the Mahratta state of which Gwalior is the capital, offered the aid of his Contingent army to Mr Colvin in May; that Lieutenant Cockburn, with half a cavalry regiment of this Contingent, rendered good service in the region around Agra, until the troopers deserted him; that the fidelity of Scindia to the British alone prevented his 292troops generally from joining the rebels, for they belonged to the same Hindustani and Oudian families, though serving a Mahratta prince in a Mahratta state; that after certain detachments had mutinied at Neemuch and elsewhere, the main body rose in revolt at Gwalior on the 14th of June, murdered some of the English officers, drove away the rest with their families, and formally threw off all allegiance to the Company; and that Maharajah Scindia, under circumstances of great difficulty and peril, managed to keep peace at Gwalior—retaining and feeding the troops at that place, and yet discountenancing their mutinous tendencies against the British. If he had not acted with much tact and judgment, the Gwalior Contingent would have marched to Agra in a body, and greatly imperiled the British ‘raj.’ Not only did he keep those troublesome troops near him during the remaining half of June, but also during July and August. Scindia’s special army, entirely under his own control, were chiefly Mahrattas, who had little sympathy with the soldiers of the Contingent; but they were too few in number to put down the latter, and therefore he was forced to temporise—partly by persuasions and promises, partly by threats. Major Macpherson, the British political agent, and Brigadier Ramsey, the military commandant, ceased to have influence at Gwalior; it was Scindia’s good faith alone that stood the British in stead.

Mount Aboo—Military Sanitarium in Rajpootana.

Holkar’s Mahratta territory, with Indore for its chief city, we have, in like manner, seen to be troubled with a mutinous spirit in the Contingent troops, partly owing to temptation from other quarters. We have briefly shewn in the chapters lately cited, that on the 28th of May the 15th and 30th Bengal native infantry revolted at Nuseerabad; that on the 2d of June, influenced by this pernicious example, the 72d B. N. I., the 7th regiment of Gwalior Contingent infantry, and the main body of the 1st Bengal native cavalry, mutinied at Neemuch; that on the 1st of July, a portion of Holkar’s Contingent rose against the British at Indore, without his wish or privity, and that he could not get even his own special troops to act against those of the Contingent; that, on the evening of the same day, the 23d Bengal native infantry, and one squadron of the 1st Bengal native cavalry, mutinied at Mhow; and that numerous British officers and their families were thrown into great misery by these several occurrences. It now remains to be stated that, during July and August, Holkar adopted nearly the same course as Scindia; he remained faithful to the British, and endeavoured to quell the mutinous 293spirit among his troops. Holkar possessed, however, less influence than his brother-chieftain; most of the mutineers from Indore and Mhow marched to Gwalior, and were only prevented by the shrewdness of Scindia from extending their march to Agra.

Among the troops in Rajpootana were the Deesa Field Brigade, commanded towards the close of August by Brigadier Creagh, who had under his control the troops at Deesa, those at the sanitarium on Mount Aboo, and those at Erinpoora and other places in the neighbourhood. These places were thrown into confusion during the last two weeks of the month, by the mutiny of the Jhodpore legion, consisting partly of cavalry and partly of infantry. Such of these men as were stationed at Erinpoora, about 550 in number, rose in mutiny on the 22d. They suddenly threw off their allegiance; seized the guns; made prisoners of Lieutenant Conolly and the European serjeants; plundered the bazaar and some of the native villages; burned all the officers’ bungalows, and destroyed or appropriated all that they found therein; lived in tents on the parade-ground for three days; and then marched off in the direction of Nuseerabad. The cavalry, although forming part of the same legion, and sharing in the movement, protected the Europeans from the infantry. Among the latter, it was only the Hindustani portion which revolted; there were some Bheels in the legion who remained faithful. On the preceding day (21st), about 100 men of the legion had mutinied at Mount Aboo; but as there was a detachment of H.M. 83d there, the mutineers did nothing but hastily escape. A native chieftain, the Rao of Sihori, was prompt to render any aid he could to Captain Hall at Mount Aboo. Another portion of the Jhodpore legion was at Jhodpore itself, where the mutiny placed in great peril Captain Monck Mason, British resident at that native state; by his energy, he provided an asylum for many ladies and children who had been driven from other stations; but he himself fell by the swords of a body of mutinous troopers, under circumstances of mingled cowardice and brutality.

The state of this part of India during July and August may be summed up in a few words. By the revolt of the Contingents of Scindia, Holkar, and Bhopal, and of the Jhodpore legion, English residents were driven from station to station in much peril and suffering, and English influence became for a time almost a nullity; but the native chieftains for the most part remained faithful, even though their troops revolted; and there were hopes of ultimate success from the arrival of relieving columns belonging to the Bombay army. Of that army, a few fragments of regiments occasionally displayed mutinous symptoms, but not to such a degree as to leaven the whole mass. What the officers felt through the treachery of the troops, and what their families suffered during all these strange events, need not again be described; both phases of the Revolt have received many illustrations in former pages; but this chapter may fittingly close with two short extracts from letters relating to the mutinies at the stations of Mhow and Indore. An artillery officer, commenting on the ingratitude of the sepoys towards commanders who had always used them well, said: ‘I must not forget to mention that Colonel Platt was like a father to the men; and that when he had an opportunity of leaving them and joining a European corps last summer, the men petitioned him to stay. He had been upwards of thirty years with them, and when the mutiny took place he had so much confidence in them that he rode up to their lines before we could get out. When we found him next morning, both cheeks were blown off, his back completely riddled with balls, one through each thigh, his chin smashed into his mouth, and three sabre-cuts between the cheekbone and temple; also a cut across the shoulder and the back of the neck.’ The following few words are from the letters of a lady who was among those that escaped death by flight from Indore: ‘I have already given you an account of our three days and three nights of wandering, with little rest and not much food, no clothes to change, burning sun, and deluges of rain; but —— and I, perhaps, could bear these things better than others, and suffered less. When we heard the poor famishing children screaming for food, we could but thank God that ours were not with us, but safe in England. We found kind friends here, and I am in Mrs ——‘s clothes; everything we had being gone. The destructive wretches, after we left Indore, commenced doing all the damage they could—cutting up carpets with their tulwars, smashing chandeliers, marble tables, slabs, chairs, &c.; they even cut out the cloth and lining of our carriages, hacking up the woodwork. The Residency is uninhabitable, and almost all have lost everything. I might have saved a few things in the hour and a half that elapsed between the outbreak and our retreat; but I had so relied on some of our defenders, and felt so secure of holding on, that flight never for a moment occurred to me.’

Note.

The British at the Military Stations.—The reader will have gathered, from the details given in various chapters, that the stations at which the military servants of the Company resided, in the Mofussil or country districts, bore a remarkable relation to the Indian towns and cities. They were in most cases separated from the towns by distances varying 294from one mile to ten, and formed small towns in themselves. Sometimes the civil officers had their bungalows and cutcheries near these military cantonments; while in other instances they were in or near the city to which the cantonment was a sort of appendage. Such, with more or less variety of detail, was the case at Patna (Dinapoor), Benares (Chunar), Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, Furruckabad (Futteghur), Agra, Delhi, Gwalior, Lahore (Meean Meer), Nagpoor (Kamptee), Indore (Mhow), Hyderabad (Secunderabad), Moorshedabad (Berhampore), Saugor, &c. The marked separation between the native and the British portions of the military stations has been described in a very animated way, by an able and distinguished correspondent of the Times, one of whose letters contains the following paragraph:

‘For six miles along the banks of the Ganges extend the ruins of the English station of Cawnpore. You observe how distinct they are from the city. The palace of the Victoria Regia at Chatsworth is not more unlike the dirty ditch in which lives the humble duck-weed—Belgravia is not more dissimilar to Spitalfields—than is the English quarter of an Indian station to the city to which it is attached. The one is generally several miles away from the other. There is no common street, no link to connect the one with the others; and the one knows nothing of the other. Here are broad roads, lined on each side with trees and walls, or with park-like grounds, inside which you can catch glimpses of gaily-painted one-storied villas, of brick, covered with cement, decorated with Corinthian colonnades, porticoes, and broad verandahs—each in its own wide park, with gardens in front, orchards, and out-offices. There are narrow, tortuous, unpaved lanes, hemmed in by tottering, haggard, miserable houses, close and high, and packed as close as they can stand (and only for that they would fall), swarming with a hungry-eyed population. The mosque and the Hindoo temple are near each other, but they both shun the church, just as the station avoids the city.... In the station there are hotels, ball-rooms, magazines, shops, where all the habits and customs of Europe, sometimes improved and refined by the influence of the East, are to be found; and when the cool of the evening sets in, out stream the carriages and horses and buggies, for the fashionable drive past the long line of detached villas within their neat enclosures, surrounded by shadowing groves and rich gardens. They pass the lines or barracks of the native infantry—a race of whom they know almost less than they do of the people of the town; and they are satisfied with the respect of action, with the sudden uprising, the stiff attitude of attention, the cold salute, regardless of the insolence and dislike of the eye; they chat and laugh, marry and are given in marriage, have their horse-races, their balls, their card-parties, their dinners, their plate, their tradesmen’s bills, their debts; in fact, their everything that English society has, and thus they lived till the deluge came upon them. We all know how nobly they stemmed its force, what heroic struggles they made against its fury. But what a surprise when it burst in upon them! What a blow to all their traditions! What a rebuke to their blind confidence! There is at the moment I write these lines a slight explosion close at hand, followed by the ascent of some dark columns of earth and bricks into the air. We are blowing up the Assembly-rooms of Cawnpore in order to clear the ground in front of the guns of our intrenchment, and billiard-rooms and ball-rooms are flying up in fragments to the skies. Is not that a strange end for all Cawnpore society to come to? Is it not a curious commentary on our rule, and on our position in India?’

Native Musicians at a Sepoy station.

295

Brigadier-General Nicholson.—Copied by permission from a Portrait published by Messrs Gambart.

After eleven weeks of hostile occupation, after seven weeks of besieging, the great city of Delhi still remained in the hands of a mingled body of mutineers and rebels—mutineers who had thrown off their soldierly allegiance to their British employers; and rebels who clustered around the shadowy representative of an extinct Mogul dynasty. Nay, more—not only was Delhi still unconquered at the end of July; it was relatively stronger than ever. The siege-army had been increased; but the besiegers had increased in number in a still larger ratio. General Anson^[78] had had thirteen days of command, in reference to the preparations for the reconquest of the city, before his death; General Barnard, forty, before he likewise died; General Reed, twelve, before his retirement; General Wilson, thirteen, by the end of July; and now the last-named commander was called upon to measure the strength with which he could open the August series of siege-operations.

It may be convenient slightly to recapitulate a 296few events, and to mention a few dates, connected with the earlier weeks of the siege, as a means of refreshing the memory of the reader concerning the train of operations which, in the present chapter, is to be traced to an end.

It will be remembered, then, that as soon as the startling mutinies at Delhi and Meerut became known to the military authorities at the hill-stations, the 75th foot were ordered down from Kussowlie, the 1st Europeans from Dugshai, and the 2d Europeans from Subathoo—all to proceed to Umballa, there to form portions of a siege-army for Delhi; that a siege-train was prepared at Phillour; that Generals Anson and Barnard, and other officers, held a council of war at Umballa on the 16th of May, and concerted such plans as were practicable on the spur of the moment; and that troops began at once to march southeastward towards Delhi. We have further seen that Anson was troubled by the presence of Bengal native troops whom he could not trust, and by the scarcity of good artillerymen to accompany his siege-train; and that his operations were suddenly cut off by a fatal attack of cholera, under which he sank on the 27th. Next we traced twelve days’ operations of Sir Henry Barnard, during which he had advanced to Raneeput, Paniput, Rhye, Alipore, Badulla Serai, and Azadpore, to the ridge northward of Delhi, on which he established his siege-camp on the 8th of June; he had just been joined by General Wilson, who had beaten the enemy at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur, and had crossed the Jumna from Meerut near Bhagput. Then came the diversified siege-operations of the month of June, with a force which began about 3000 strong, aided by 22 field-guns and 17 siege-guns and mortars—the arrival on the 9th of the Guide corps, after their surprising march in fiercely hot weather from Peshawur; the bold attack made by the rebels on the same day; the manifest proofs that the siege-guns were too light, too few, and too distant, to batter the defences of the city; the commencement on the 13th, but the speedy abandonment as impracticable, of a project for storming the place; the continual arrival of mutineers to swell the number of defenders within Delhi; the daily sallies of the enemy; the daily weakening of the small British force; and the necessity for employing one-half of the whole siege-army on picket-duty, to prevent surprises. We have seen how Hindoo Rao’s house became a constant target for the enemy’s guns, and Metcalfe House for attacks of less frequency; how Major Reid, with his Goorkhas and Guides, guarded the ridge with indomitable steadiness, and made successful attacks on the Eedghah and Kissengunje suburbs; and how sedulously Barnard was forced to watch the movements of the enemy in the rear of his camp. Passing from June to July, the details of the former chapter told us that the siege-army became raised to about 6000 men, by various reinforcements early in the last-named month; that an assault of the city was again proposed, and again abandoned; that insurgent troops poured into Delhi more rapidly than ever; that Sir Henry Barnard died on the 5th, worn down by anxiety and cholera; that numerous canal-bridges were destroyed, to prevent the enemy from gaining access to the rear of the camp; that the British were continually thrown on the defensive, instead of actively prosecuting the siege; that the few remaining Bengal native troops in the siege-army were either sent to the Punjaub, or disarmed and unhorsed, in distrust of their fidelity; that on the 17th, General Reed gave up the command which had devolved upon him after the death of Barnard, and was succeeded by Brigadier-general Wilson; and that towards the close of the month the enemy made many desperate attempts to turn the flanks and rear of the siege-camp, requiring all the skill of the British to frustrate them.^[79]

August arrived. The besieged, in every way stronger than the besiegers, continued their attacks on various sides of the heights. They gave annoyance, but at the same time excited contempt by the manner in which they avoided open hand-to-hand conflicts. An officer of engineers, commenting on this matter in a private letter, said: ‘At Delhi, they are five or six to one against us, and see the miserable attempts they make to turn us out of our position. They swarm up the heights in front of our batteries by thousands; the ground is so broken and full of ravines and rocks, that they can come up the whole way unseen, or you may depend upon it they would never venture. If they had the pluck of a goose, their numbers might terrify us. It is in the Subzee Mundee that most of the hard fighting goes on; they get into and on the tops of the houses, and fire into our pickets there; this goes on until we send a force from camp to turn them out, which we invariably do, but not without loss. We have now cleared the ground all around of the trees, walls, and houses; as a consequence, there is a large clear space around our pickets, and Pandy will not venture out of cover; so we generally let him pop away from a distance until he is tired.’ Early in the month, an attempt was made to destroy the bridge of boats over the Jumna; the rains had set in, the river was high, the stream strong, and these were deemed favourable conditions. The engineers started three ‘infernal machines,’ each consisting of a tub containing fifty pounds of powder, a stick protruding from the tub, and a spring connected with an explosive compound; the theory was, that if the tubs floated down to the bridge, any contact with the stick would explode the contents 297of the tub, and destroy one or more of the boats of the bridge; but there is no record of success attending this adventure. The bridge of boats being a mile and a half distant from the batteries on the ridge, it could not be harmed by any guns at that time possessed by the British; and thus the enemy, throughout the siege, had free and unmolested passage over the Jumna. The supply of ammunition available to the mutineers seemed to be almost inexhaustible; the British collected 450 round shot that had been fired at them from the enemy’s guns in one day; and as the British artillerymen were few in number, they were worked nearly to exhaustion in keeping up the necessary cannonade to repel the enemy’s fire. Although the ‘Pandies’ avoided contests in the open field, many of their movements were made with much secrecy and skill—especially that of the 1st of August, when at least 5000 troops appeared in the vicinity of the British position, by a combined movement from two different quarters, and made an attack which nothing but the courage and skill of Major Reid and his handful of brave fellows could have withstood. In some of these numerous operations, when the rainy season commenced, the amount of fatigue borne by the troops was excessive. It was the special duty of the cavalry, not being immediately available for siege-services, to guard the rear of the camp from surprise; and to insure this result, they held themselves ready to ‘boot and saddle’ at a few minutes’ notice—glad if they could insure only a few hours of sleep in the twenty-four. Many an officer, on picket or reconnoitring duty, would be in the saddle twelve hours together, in torrents of rain, without food or refreshment of any kind. Yet, with all their trials, they spoke and wrote cheerfully. An artillery-officer said: ‘Our position here is certainly by nature a wonderfully secure one; and if the Pandies could not have found a better place than Delhi as the head-quarters of their mutiny, with an unlimited magazine at their disposal, I doubt if we could have been so well off anywhere else. Providence has assisted us in every way. From the beginning, the weather has been most propitious; and in cantonments I have never seen troops so healthy as they are here now. Cholera occasionally pays us a visit, but that must always be expected in a large standing camp. The river Jumna completely protects our left flank and front; while the large jheel (water-course) which runs away to the southwest is at this season quite impassable for miles, preventing any surprise on our right flank; so that a few cavalry are sufficient as a guard for three faces of our position’—that is, a few, if constantly on the alert, and never shirking a hard day’s work in any weather.

The enemy gradually tired of attacks on the rear of the camp, which uniformly failed; but they did not cease to maintain an aggressive attitude. Early in the month, they commenced a series of efforts to drive the British from the Metcalfe post or picket. This Metcalfe House, the peaceful residence of a civil-service officer until the disastrous 11th of May, had become an important post to the besiegers. As early as four days after the arrival of the siege-army on the ridge, the enemy had emerged from the city, concealed themselves in some ravines around Sir T. Metcalfe’s house, and thence made a formidable attack on the Flagstaff Tower. To prevent a recurrence of this danger, a large picket was sent to occupy the house, and to form it into a river-side or left flank to the siege-position. This picket was afterwards thrown in advance of the house, and divided into three portions—one on a mound near the road leading from the Cashmere Gate to the cantonment Sudder bazaar; a second in a house midway between this mound and the river; and a third in a range of stables close to the river. All the portions of this picket were gradually strengthened by the engineers, as reinforcements reached them. The Flagstaff Tower was also well guarded; and as the night-sentries paced the whole distance between the tower and the Metcalfe pickets, the belt of rugged ground between the ridge and the river was effectually rendered impassable for the enemy. These various accessions of strength, however, were made only at intervals, as opportunity offered; at the time now under notice, they were very imperfectly finished. The enemy plied the Metcalfe picket vigorously with shot and shell, from guns brought out of the Cashmere Gate and posted a few hundred yards in advance of the city wall; while a number of infantry skirmishers, many of whom were riflemen, kept up a nearly incessant fire from the jungle in front. Although the losses at the Metcalfe picket were not numerous, owing to the good cover, the approach to it for reliefs, etc., was rendered extremely perilous; and as this species of attack was in many ways annoying to the British, General Wilson resolved to frustrate it. He placed under the command of Brigadier Showers a force of about 1300 men,^[80] by whom the insurgents were suddenly surprised on the morning of the 12th, and driven off with great loss. It was a sharp contest, for the brigadier had more than a hundred killed and wounded. Showers himself was in the list of wounded; as were also Major Coke, Captain Greville, Lieutenants Sherriff, James, Lindesay, Maunsell, and Owen. Four guns belonging to the enemy were captured and brought into camp; but the chief advantage derived from the skirmish was in securing the abandonment of a mode of attack likely to be very annoying to the besiegers. The insurgents, it is true, by placing guns on the opposite side of the Jumna, frequently 298sent a shot or shell across; but the danger here was lessened by shifting the camp of the 1st Punjaub infantry.

That the siege-army was weakened by these perpetual encounters, need hardly be said. Every day witnessed the carrying of many gallant fellows to the camp-hospital or to the grave. At about the middle of August, the force comprised 3571 European officers and men, and 2070 native officers and men, fit for duty; with 28 horse-artillery guns (6 and 9 pounders) and a small supply of siege-artillery. A detail of the component elements of the force, and of the ratio which the effectives bore to the sick and wounded, will be more usefully given presently in connection with the September operations. Knowing well from dearly-bought experience that he could not successfully assault and capture Delhi with his present force, General Wilson looked anxiously for reinforcements from the Punjaub, which were due about the middle of the month. Indeed, all in camp were prepared to welcome one who, from the daring and energy which characterised nearly all the operations with which he had been intrusted, had earned from some the title of the ‘Lion,’ from others that of the ‘Bayard,’ of the Punjaub. This was Brigadier-general Nicholson, a soldier who had attained to that rank at an unusually early age. About the end of June, Sir John Lawrence had intrusted to him a flying column which had been organised at Wuzeerabad,^[81] but which had undergone many vicissitudes; for Nicholson had been compelled to disarm all the Bengal native troops who were in his column. As we have seen in former pages, the brigadier struck terror into the mutineers, and swept away bands of rebels in front and on either side of him in the region between the Chenab and the Sutlej. He nearly annihilated the Sealkote mutineers near Goordaspore,^[82] and then cleared the country during a long march, in fearfully hot weather, to Delhi. He himself with a few companions reached the city on the 8th of August; but the bulk of his column did not arrive till the 14th. Its composition had undergone some change; and it now comprised H.M. 52d foot, the remaining wing of the 61st foot, the 2d Punjaub infantry, 200 Moultan horse, and a small force of artillery—in all, about 1100 Europeans and 1400 Punjaub troops. Valuable, however, as was this accession of strength, it could not immediately affect the siege-operations; seeing that it was necessary to await the arrival of another siege-train, which Sir John Lawrence had caused to be collected at Ferozpore, and which was on its way to Delhi, with great stores of ammunition.

As soon as General Wilson found himself aided by the energetic Nicholson, he gave additional efficiency to his army by grouping the infantry into four brigades, thus constituted: First brigade, under Brigadier Showers, H.M. 75th foot, 2d Bengal Europeans, and the Kumaon battalion of Goorkhas; Second, under Colonel Lenfield, H.M. 52d foot, H.M. 60th Rifles, and the Sirmoor battalion of Goorkhas; Third, under Colonel Jones, H.M. 8th foot, H.M. 61st foot, and Rothney’s Sikhs; Fourth, under Brigadier Nicholson, 1st Bengal Europeans, 1st Punjaub infantry (Coke’s rifles), and 2d Punjaub infantry (Green’s Rifles). The Guides were not brigaded, but were left free for service in any quarter. The cavalry was placed under Brigadier Grant, and the artillery under Brigadier Garbett. Nicholson had brought with him a few guns; nevertheless it was necessary, as just remarked, to wait for a regular siege-train before a bombardment of the city could be attempted. The camp, organised as it now was, although it put on a somewhat more regular appearance than before, was a singular phenomenon, owing to the mode in which European and Asiatic elements were combined in it. An officer who was present through all the operations has given, in a letter which went the round of the newspapers, a graphic account of the camp, with its British and native troops, its varieties of costume, its dealers and servants, its tents and animals, and all the details of a scene picturesque to an observer who could for a moment forget the stern meaning which underlay it.^[83] About the time of Nicholson’s arrival, Lieutenant Hodson was intrusted by General Wilson with an enterprise small in character but useful in result. It was to watch a party of the enemy who had moved out from Delhi on the Rohtuk road, and to afford support, if necessary, either to Soneeput or to the Jheend rajah, who remained faithful to his alliance with the British. Hodson started on the night of the 14th of August with a detachment of about 350 cavalry, comprising 230 of the irregular horse named after himself, 100 Guide cavalry, and a few Jheend cavalry. The enemy were known 299to have passed through Samplah on the way to Rohtuk; and Hodson resolved to anticipate them by a flank-movement. On the 15th, at the village of Khurkowdeh, he captured a large number of mutineer cavalry, by a stratagem at once bold and ingenious. On the 16th the enemy marched to Rohtuk, and Hodson in pursuit of them. On the 17th skirmishes took place near Rohtuk itself; but on the 18th Hodson succeeded in drawing forth the main body of rebels, who suffered a speedy and complete defeat. They were not simply mutineers from Delhi; they comprised many depredatory bodies that greatly troubled such of the petty rajahs as wished to remain faithful to or in alliance with the British. Lieutenant Hodson, by dispersing them, aided in pacifying the district around the siege-camp—a matter of much consideration. A letter from one of the officers of the Guides will afford a good idea of the manner in which all fought in those stirring times, and of the language in which the deeds were narrated when the formality of official documents was not needed.^[84]

For ten days after Nicholson’s arrival, little was effected on either side save this skirmish of Hodson’s at Rohtuk. Wilson did not want to begin; it was not his strategy; he steadily held his own until the formidable siege-train could arrive. On the other hand, the enemy were foiled in every movement; all their attacks had failed.

Nicholson was on the alert to render good service; and the opportunity was not long in presenting itself. His energy as a soldier and his skill as a general were rendered very conspicuous in his battle of Nujuffghur, resembling in its tactics some of those in which Havelock had been engaged. General Wilson obtained intelligence that a force of the enemy was advancing from Delhi towards Bahadoorghur, with the apparent intention of attacking the siege-camp in the rear; the distance between the city and the town being about twenty miles, and the latter being nearly due west of the former. Or, as seems more probable (seeing that all attacks on the rear of the camp had signally failed), the enemy may have intended to cross the Nujuffghur jheel or water-course, and intercept the siege-train which they as well as the British knew to be on the way from Ferozpore. One account of the matter is, that Bukhtar Singh, a rebel who had gained unenviable notoriety at Bareilly, had got into disfavour with the King of Delhi for his want of success as one of the military leaders within the city; that he had offered, if a good force were only placed at his disposal, to wipe off the discredit by a crowning victory over the Feringhees; and that, in pursuance of this object, he proposed to get in rear of the siege-camp, intercept the expected siege-train, capture it, and cut off all communication between the camp and Umballa. Whatever may have been the main purpose, the expeditionary force was of considerable strength, amounting to 7000 men, and comprising the whole or large portions of six mutinied infantry regiments, three of irregular cavalry, and numerous artillery. The general, on receipt of this information, at once placed a column^[85] under the command of Brigadier Nicholson, with instructions to frustrate the operations of the enemy. The brigadier started at daybreak on the 25th of August, crossed two difficult swamps, and arrived at Nanglooe, a village about midway between Delhi and Bahadoorghur. During a halt and a reconnoitre, it was found that the enemy had crossed a bridge over the Nujuffghur jheel, and would probably encamp in the afternoon near the town of the same name. Nicholson determined to push on against them that same evening. After another ten-mile march, during which his troops had to wade through a sheet of water three feet deep, he came up with the enemy about five o’clock, and found them posted in a position two miles in length, extending from the bridge to the town: they had thirteen guns, of which four were in a strong position at an old serai on their left centre. The brigadier, after a brief reconnaissance, resolved first to attack the enemy’s left centre, which was their strongest point, and then, ‘changing front to the left,’ sweep down their line of guns towards the bridge. His guns having fired a few rounds, the critical moment for a charge arrived; he addressed his men, told them what a bayonet charge had always been in the British army, and shouted—‘Advance!’ The infantry charged, and drove the enemy out of the 300serai with great impetuosity. He then changed front to the left, and so completely outflanked the enemy that they fled at once from the field, leaving thirteen guns behind them. While this was being done, Lieutenant Lumsden advanced to Nujuffghur, and cleared it of insurgents. A small number of the enemy concealed themselves in the neighbouring village of Nuglee; and when attacked, in a way that left no loophole for escape, they fought so desperately as to bring down a considerable number of Lumsden’s party, including the lieutenant himself. The enemy’s cavalry effected little or nothing; while Nicholson’s was employed chiefly in guarding baggage and escorting guns. Nicholson passed the night near the bridge, which had been the object of a fierce attack and defence during the evening, and which he succeeded in blowing up about two o’clock in the morning—thus cutting off one of the few approaches by which the mutineers from the city could get to the main line of road behind the camp. Nicholson returned to camp on the 26th, after a few hours’ rest for his exhausted troops. They had indeed had a hard day’s labour on the 25th; for they marched eighteen miles to the field of battle—starting at daybreak, and crossing two difficult swamps before they could arrive at Nanglooe; and, to use the words of their commander in his dispatch, ‘as it would not have been prudent to take the baggage across the ford at Baprowla, they were obliged, after fourteen hours’ marching and fighting, to bivouac on the field without food or covering of any kind.’ There seems to have been something wrong here. One of the officers has said: ‘Unfortunately, through some mistake, I suppose, the grog for the men had not arrived, nor commissariat rations; and it is wonderful how they bore up against the privations of a long march, some hard fighting, and no food. A little grumbling was occasionally heard, but good-humour and cheerfulness were the order of the day.’ Such of them as had time to sleep at all during the night, slept on the damp ground; but all these exigencies of a soldier’s life were soon forgotten, and the troops returned to camp in high spirits at their success. Nicholson had relied fully on the Punjaubees in the day of battle, and they justified his reliance, for they emulated the courage and soldierly qualities of the European troops who formed the élite of the force. He had to regret the loss of 25 killed, including Lieutenants Lumsden and Gabbett; and of 70 wounded, including Major Jacob and Lieutenant Elkington. The brigadier’s official dispatch contained some curious particulars not always given in such documents. It appears that during the day his men fired off 17,000 musket and rifle charges, and 650 cannon-shot and shells—a murderous torrent, that may perhaps convey to the mind of a reader some faint idea of the terrible ordeal of a battle. He captured all the enemy’s guns and ammunition; but a better result was, the frustration of an attack which might have been very annoying, if not dangerous, on the rear of the camp. Of the guns captured, nine were English field-pieces, formerly belonging to the regular Bengal army; while the other four were native brass guns belonging to the imperial palace at Delhi.

The Delhi insurgents, whether well or ill commanded, manifested no careless inattention to what was occurring outside the city walls. They were nearly always well informed of the proceedings of the besiegers. They knew that a large siege-train was expected, which they much longed to intercept; they knew that Brigadier Nicholson had gone out to Nujuffghur on the morning of the 25th; they knew that he had not returned to camp on the morning of the 26th; and they resolved on another attack on the camp in its then weakened state. All was in vain, however; in this as in every similar attempt they were beaten. As soon as they made their appearance, General Wilson strengthened his pickets. The enemy commenced by a fire with field-guns from Ludlow Castle against the Mosque picket; but the attack never became serious; it was steadily met, and the enemy, after suffering severely, retired into the city.

During the later days of August, the enemy attempted little more than a series of skirmishing attacks on the pickets. If, once now and then, they appeared in force outside the walls as though about to attack in a body, the intention was speedily abandoned, and they disappeared again within the city. No evidence was afforded that they were headed by any officer possessing unity of command and military ability. There was no Sevajee, no Hyder among them. ‘Often,’ as an eye-witness observed, ‘like an undisciplined mob, at best merely an agglomeration of regiments, the rebels have attacked us again and again, and fiercely enough when under cover, but always with a poverty of conception and want of plan that betrayed the absence of a master-mind. And now that they know strong reinforcements have joined our army, and that the day of retribution is not far distant—although they may make an attempt to intercept the siege-train—yet by their vacillating and abortive gatherings outside the walls, and by the dissensions and desertions that are rife within, they shew that the huge body of the insurrection is still without a vigorous and life-giving spirit.’

True as this may have been in the particular instance, it is nevertheless impossible not to be struck with the fact that the mutineers maintained a remarkable degree of organisation after they had forsworn their allegiance; the men of all the corps rallied round the colours belonging to each particular regiment; and those regiments which had customarily been massed into brigades, long strove to maintain the brigade character. Although the insurrection possessed few elements of unity, although the rebels could not form an army, or operate comprehensively in the field, they sought 301to maintain the organisation which their late British masters had given to them. There had usually been a brigade of two, three, or four native regiments at each of the larger military stations; from the station the brigade took its name; and when the mutiny was many months old, the mutineers were still recognisable as belonging to the brigades which they had once loyally served—such as the Bareilly brigade, the Neemuch brigade, the Dinapoor brigade, the Nuseerabad brigade, &c. Although single regiments and fragments of regiments entered Delhi, to maintain the standard of rebellion against the English ‘raj,’ nevertheless the majority were distinguishable as brigaded forces. The Delhi brigade itself, consisting of the 38th, 54th, and 74th regiments native infantry, formed the material on which the Meerut brigade had worked on the 11th of May. This Meerut brigade comprised the 11th and 20th infantry, and the 3d cavalry. On the 16th of June arrived the Nuseerabad brigade, consisting of the 15th and 30th infantry, with horse and foot artillery; on the 22d, the Jullundur and Phillour brigades entered, comprising the 3d, 36th, and 61st infantry, and the 6th cavalry; on the 1st and 2d of June came the Bareilly or Rohilcund brigade, including the 18th, 28th, 29th, and 68th infantry, and the 8th irregular cavalry; and later in the same month came the Neemuch and Jhansi brigades. Even when combined within the walls of Delhi, each brigade constituted a sort of family or community, having to a great extent a way and a will of its own. The history of a hundred years has shewn that the sepoys always fought well when well commanded; and their ineffective fighting as mutineers may hence be attributed in part to the fact that they were not well commanded.

It was about this period, the latter half of August, that an unfortunate English lady—unfortunate in being so long in the hands of brutal men—escaped from Delhi under circumstances which were narrated by the Bombay and Calcutta newspapers as below.^[86] She was the wife of one of the civil officers of the Company engaged at Delhi before the mutiny; but as the newspaper narratives were not always correct in matters of identification, the name will not be given here.

September arrived, and with it many indications that the siege would soon present new and important features. Little is known of what passed within Delhi during those days; but General Wilson learned from various sources that the mutineers were in a very dissatisfied state at the failure of all their attempts to dislodge the besiegers, or even to disturb in any material degree the plan of the siege. They were without a responsible and efficient leader, and were split up into small sections; they had no united scheme of operations; nor were they adequately provided with money to meet their daily demands.

With the besiegers, on the other hand, prospects were brightening. The siege-train, when it arrived early in September, made a formidable increase in the ordnance before Delhi. As the name implies, the guns were larger, and carried shot and shell more weighty, than those used in battles and skirmishes; their main purpose being to make breaches in the defence-works of the city, through which infantry might enter and capture the place. Sir John Lawrence had been able to collect in the Punjaub, and send to Delhi from Ferozpore, a train of about thirty heavy pieces of artillery, consisting of guns, howitzers, and mortars of large calibre. The difficulty was not to obtain the guns, but to secure and to forward men to escort them, animals to draw them, ammunition to serve them, carriages to convey the auxiliary stores, food and camp-equipage for the men, fodder for the animals—whether horses, oxen, camels, or elephants. Such was the disturbed state of India at that time, that Lawrence had not been able to send this reinforcement until September; and even then, all his skill, influence, and energy, were required to surmount the numerous difficulties. About the same time there arrived in camp a Belooch battalion from Kurachee, the 4th Punjaub infantry, the Patan Irregular Horse, and reinforcements to H.M. 8th, 24th, 52d, and 60th regiments. The siege-army now reached an aggregate of about 9000 men of all arms, effectives and non-effectives, including gun-lascars, syce-drivers, Punjaubee Sappers and Miners, native infantry recruits, and other men not comprised in regular regiments. There were also near the camp or on their march to it, numerous troops belonging to the Cashmere, Jheend, and Putialah Contingents. Out of the total number of troops of all kinds, Wilson hoped to be enabled to find 9000 effective infantry to make an assault on the city after a bombardment. To what extent this hope was realised, we shall see presently.

It is important to bear clearly in mind the relative positions of the besiegers and the besieged, the siege-camp and the fortified city, at that time. Let it not be forgotten that the British position before Delhi, from the early days of June to those of September, was purely a defensive one. The besiegers could neither invest the city nor 302batter down its walls; the troops being too few for the first of these enterprises, and the guns too weak for the second; while an assault, though twice intended, was not attempted, because there was no force sufficient to hold the city, even if it were captured. The position on the north of the city, from Metcalfe House to the Subzee Mundee, was the only one which they could successfully maintain. Nevertheless, though limited to that one side, it was invaluable, because it enabled the British to keep open a road of communication with the northwest, whence all supplies must necessarily be obtained. The English public, grieved and irritated by the astounding news from India, often reproached Barnard and Wilson for their delay in ‘taking Delhi;’ and many of the officers and soldiers on the spot longed for some dashing movement that would restore British prestige, and give them their hour of revenge against the mutineers. Subsequent experience, however, has gone far to prove that the generals were right. The grounds for so thinking have been thus set forth by an artillery-officer whose account of the siege has found a place among the Blue-books: ‘Whether the city might or might not have been carried by a coup de main, as was contemplated first in June and afterwards in July, it is needless now to inquire; but judging from the resistance we afterwards experienced in the actual assault, when we had been greatly reinforced in men and guns, it appears to me fortunate the attempt was not made. The strength of the place was never supposed to consist in the strength of its actual defences, though these were much undervalued; but every city, even without fortifications, is, from its very nature, strongly defensible, unless it can be effectually surrounded or bombarded. Moreover, within Delhi, the enemy possessed a magazine containing upwards of two hundred guns, and an almost inexhaustible supply of ammunition; while their numbers were certainly never less than double those of the besiegers.’ But, more than this, Delhi was not so weak a place as public opinion in England at that time represented it to be. The numerous bastions presented regular faces and flanks of masonry, with properly cut embrasures. The portions of wall or curtain between the bastions were twenty-four feet high, two-thirds of the height being twelve feet thick, and the remainder near the top being a parapet three feet in thickness. Outside the wall was a broad beam or ledge, screened by a parapet as a place for musketeers; below the beam was a ditch, sixteen feet deep by twenty feet wide at the bottom, with well-constructed escarp and counterscarp; and a good sloping glacis, descending from the outer edge of the ditch, covered nearly half the height of the wall from all assaults by distant batteries. Captain Norman, who was present during the whole of the siege as assistant adjutant-general, and who wrote a very lucid semi-official account of the siege-operations, fully corroborates this statement of the strength of the position.

As a memento of a remarkable event in the military history of India, it may be acceptable to present here a detailed list of all the troops constituting the siege-army of Delhi in the second week of September, when the assault was about to be made. The number, it will be seen, was 9866,^[87] besides ‘unarmed and undisciplined pioneers,’ of whom no enumeration was given. These, it must be remembered, were all effective troops, and did not include those who were disabled by wounds or sickness. It should also be observed, that the Cashmere, Jheend, and Putialah Contingents find no place in this list; they were scarcely mentioned by General Wilson in his dispatches, although from other sources of information they seem to have reached nearly three thousand in number. Why the general and his staff should have had to make the entry ‘strength unknown,’ in reference to them, does not clearly appear. Concerning the other or more important elements of the army, many of the regiments were represented only by detachments or wings in the camp, the rest being at other places; but all that need be noted in the list is the exact number of men. Glancing over this list, it is impossible to avoid being struck with the fact how nearly the Oudian or Hindustani element is excluded from it. There are Europeans, Goorkhas, Sikhs, Punjaubees, Beloochees, and mountaineers from the Afghan frontier; but the only entry referring clearly to the Bengal native army is that of 78 men of the 4th irregular cavalry, and these appear in the unsoldierlike condition, ‘disarmed and unhorsed.’ The horse-artillery were frequently referred to in dispatches by the names of the officers in command—such as Tombs’, Turner’s, Renny’s, and Remington’s troops; while two light field-batteries were named after Scott and Bourchier. There were also several companies of 303foot-artillery serving with the siege-guns, which altogether numbered more than sixty heavy pieces of ordnance of various kinds. It has been said above that the list of 9866 excluded sick and wounded; these latter numbered at that time no less than 3074; therefore the total of all ranks and all degrees of efficiency nearly reached 13,000 men, even excluding the unenumerated pioneers and contingents. In five regiments alone there were 1300 men sick and wounded, almost equalling in number those in an effective state; the 52d royal regiment and the Sirmoor battalion exhibited a greater number on the sick-list than on that of the effectives.

Now commenced those operations of siege-warfare which depend more on engineers and artillerymen than on infantry and cavalry—the arrangements for bringing near the city guns numerous and powerful enough to batter the walls. All hands were busy. The engineers and their assistants had made 10,000 fascines, 10,000 gabions, and 100,000 sand-bags; field-magazines, scaling-ladders, and spare platforms had been made in great number. The north side of the city being that which was to be assaulted, it was resolved to maintain the right of the position strongly against the enemy, while the main attack was pushed on the left—first, because the river would protect the left flank of the advancing columns; and, secondly, because the troops would find themselves in comparatively open ground in that part after a successful assault, instead of being cooped up in narrow and fiercely defended streets. One of the subsidiary measures taken was to form a trench to the left of the Samee, and to construct at the end of it a battery for four guns and two large howitzers. This Samee, better known to the soldiers as the Sammy House, was an old temple, situated some way down the slope of the ridge towards the city, and about half a mile distant from the Moree Bastion; it had for some weeks been held by the British. The purpose of this newly constructed Samee Battery was to prevent sorties from the Lahore or Cabool Gates passing round the city wall to annoy the breaching-batteries, and also to assist in keeping down the fire of the Moree Bastion. The three main works on the north side of the city were the Moree, Cashmere, and Water Bastions—all of which had been strengthened by the British authorities some years before, when no one dreamed that those strengthenings would be a disaster to the power which ordered them to be effected.

It was on the 7th of September that the besiegers began to render visible those works which pertain especially to the storming of a fortified post. Until then, there had been few or no trenches, parallels, or zigzags, intended to enable the besiegers to approach near the beleaguered city, preparatory to a forcible entry. On that night, however, a working-party was sent out to establish two batteries about seven hundred yards distant from the Moree Bastion. The sappers, attacked by the enemy and defended by infantry, prosecuted their work amid the peril which always surrounds that species of military labour. One battery, on the left, of four 24-pounders, was intended to hold the Cashmere Bastion partially in check; while the other, of five 18-pounders and one 8-inch howitzer, was to silence the Moree Bastion, and prevent it interfering with the attack on the left. A trench was made to connect the two batteries, and extending beyond them a little to the right and left, so as to communicate with a wide and deep ravine which, extending very nearly up to the left attack, formed a sort of first parallel, affording good cover to the guard of the trenches. All this was completed during the night or by the forenoon of the 8th; and the two portions, with the trench connecting them, became known as Brind’s Battery, named after the officer who worked it.

At dusk on the evening of the 8th, a second working-party set forth, to construct a battery to be called ‘No. 2.’ The enemy, influenced by an opinion that the attack would be made on the right, had neglected the ground at and near Ludlow Castle, a house situated barely seven hundred yards from the Cashmere Gate. The British engineers, taking advantage of this neglect, seized the position, occupied it with a strong detachment, and employed the nights of the 9th and 10th in constructing a battery upon it. The enemy, alarmed at this near approach, kept up a fierce cannonade from the Cashmere and Water Bastions and from the Selimgurh; but the besiegers had made their approach so carefully, that few of them suffered. This battery, like Brind’s, was in two portions; one, immediately in front of Ludlow Castle, for nine 24-pounders, was intended to breach the wall between the Cashmere and Water Bastions, and to render the parapet untenable by musketeers; the other, two hundred yards further to the right, for seven 8-inch howitzers and two 18-pounders, was to aid in attaining the same objects. The ‘No. 2’ Battery, from its magnitude, and the important duty assigned to it, was placed under the control of two officers; Major Kaye commanded the right position; while the left was intrusted to Major Campbell, who, being wounded soon afterwards, was succeeded by Captain Johnson.

304

Jumana Musjid at Delhi. From a Photograph.

305Still further was the powerful machinery for attack carried. On the night of the 10th, Battery No. 3 was commenced, within two hundred yards of the Water Bastion, behind a small ruined house in the custom-house compound; it was bold and hazardous work to construct a battery in such a spot, for the enemy kept up a destructive fire of musketry the whole time. The object of No. 3, when mounted with six 18-pounders, was to open a second breach in the Water Bastion. Battery No. 4 was in like manner constructed during the nights of the 10th and 11th, at the Koodseebagh near Ludlow Castle; it was mounted with ten heavy mortars, placed under the charge of Major Tombs. Later in the siege a battery of light mortars was worked by Captain Blunt from the rear of the custom-house. To enable the whole of the siege-batteries to be armed, most of the heavy guns were withdrawn from the ridge, leaving only a few that were necessary to defend it from any attacks made by the enemy from the Kissengunje and Subzee Mundee quarters. There being a deficiency of foot-artillerymen to man the heavy guns and mortars, nearly all the officers and men of the horse-artillery quitted the duties to which they more especially belonged, and worked in the batteries during the bombardment; as did likewise many volunteers from the British cavalry, who were eager to take part in the fray. Even the infantry regiments furnished volunteers from among the officers, who practised at the ridge-batteries for many days before the breaching-batteries opened their fire, when they transferred their services to the latter. The newly raised Sikh artillerymen, proud to share the dangers and emulate the courage of the British, were intrusted with the working of two of the great guns, a duty which they afterwards performed to admiration.

It thus appears that the works at the newly constructed breaching-batteries bristled with forty-four heavy pieces of ordnance, besides guns of lighter weight and smaller calibre at more distant points. The murderous conflict could not much longer be delayed. The besieged knew well the danger impending over them, and made arrangements for a desperate resistance. No sooner did Brind’s Battery open fire on the 8th than the enemy made a sortie from the city, principally of cavalry; but they were soon driven in by the artillery. From the broken ground below the ridge, and from a trench in front of the battery, they kept up a constant fire of musketry; grape-shot had to be used against them, from a light gun-battery near the Samee House. In like manner, during the construction of the remaining breaching-batteries, the enemy kept up a fierce and continuous fire from every available point, causing great loss to the besiegers—not only among the fighting-men, but among the natives employed as porters, magazine lascars, ordnance-drivers, &c. The enemy went to work on the night of the 11th, and constructed an advanced trench parallel to the British left attack, three or four hundred yards distant from it; and from this they opened a very hot fire of musketry. They also got some light guns, and one of heavier calibre, into the open ground on the right of the siege-position, from which they maintained an annoying enfilade fire. At the Custom-house Battery, within two hundred yards of the city, the British were continually assailed with a storm of bullets, which rendered their passage to and from the spot extremely perilous. On more than one occasion, before Battery No. 2 was finished, the mutineers sallied out from the Cashmere Gate, and poured forth a volley of musketry at that spot; and it required a very strong guard of infantry to protect the battery from a closer attack. Some of the enemy’s guns, planted to enfilade the batteries Nos. 1 and 2, were so sheltered that the ordnance on the ridge and at the Samee House were never able effectually to silence them. From another quarter, the Selimgurh or old fort, a constant fire of shells was kept up, so skilfully pointed as to drop with perilous accuracy upon three of the breaching-batteries. During the actual progress of the bombardment and assault, only one attempt was made by the enemy to annoy the besiegers in the rear; a body of horse crossed the canal at Azadpore (at the junction of the two roads leading from the city and the cantonment), drove in a picket of irregular horse, and created some confusion; but parties of Punjaub and Guide cavalry, quickly arriving at the spot, checked, pursued, and dispersed the intruders.

Now commenced the fearful thunder of a cannonading. The engineers having finished their work, handed it over to the artillerymen, who collected around them vast stores of shot and shell. It was on the 11th of September that the British siege-guns may be said to have opened their systematic fire, although some had been already tested, and others were not quite ready. The nine 24-pounders, in Major Campbell’s No. 2 Battery, ‘opened the ball,’ to use the language of one of the engineers, and soon shewed their tremendous power in bringing down huge pieces of the wall near the Cashmere Bastion. The enemy’s guns on that bastion attempted to reply, but were soon knocked over, and the bastion itself rendered untenable. The work was hot on the 11th, but much hotter on the 12th, when Battery No. 3 opened its fire, and upwards of forty ponderous pieces of ordnance belched forth ruin and slaughter on the devoted city. All that night, all the next day and night, until the morning of the 14th, did this cannonading continue, with scarcely an interval of silence. Soldiers like to be met in soldierly fashion, even if they suffer by it. The British did not fail to give a word of praise to the enemy; who, though unable to work a gun from any of the three bastions that were so fiercely assailed, stuck to their artillery in the open ground which enfiladed the right attack; they got a gun to bear through one of the holes breached in the wall; they sent rockets from one of their martello towers; and they poured forth a torrent of musketry from their advanced trench and from the city walls. Throughout the warlike operations here and elsewhere, the enemy were more effective in artillery than in infantry, and less in cavalry than in either of the other two.

When the great day arrived—the day with which hopes and fears, anxieties and responsibilities, had been so long associated—General Wilson made arrangements for the final assault. The plan of operations was dependent on the state 306to which the breaching-batteries had brought the defence-works of the city during two or three days’ bombarding, by the engineers under Colonel Baird Smith, and the artillery under Major Gaitskell. It was known that the force of shot and shell poured against the place had made breaches near the Cashmere and Water Bastions, destroyed the defences of those bastions, and knocked down the parapets which had afforded shelter to the enemy’s musketeers; but wishing to ascertain the exact state of matters, the general, on the night of the 13th, sent down Lieutenants Medley and Lang on the dangerous duty of examining the breach made in the city wall near the Cashmere Bastion; while Lieutenants Greathed and Home made a similar examination of the breach near the Water Bastion. These officers having announced that both breaches were practicable for the entrance of storming-parties, the general resolved that the next day, the 14th of September, should be signalised by a storming of the great Mogul stronghold. He marshalled his forces into columns,^[88] the exact components of which it will be interesting to record here; and to each column he prescribed a particular line of duty. The 1st column, of 1000 men, was to assault the main breach, and escalade the face of the Cashmere Bastion, after the heavy siege-guns had finished their destructive work; it was to be covered by a detachment of H.M. 60th Rifles. The 2d column, of 850 men, similarly covered by a body of Rifles, was to advance on the Water Bastion and carry the breach. The 3d column, of 950 men, was to be directed against the Cashmere Gate, preceded by an explosion-party of engineers under Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, and covered by a party of Rifles. The 4th column (strength unrecorded) was to assail the enemy’s strong position in the Kissengunje and Pahareepore suburbs, with a view both of driving in the rebels, and of supporting the main attack by forcing an entrance at the Cabool Gate; for this duty a miscellaneous body of troops, almost wholly native, was told off. In addition to the four columns, there was a reserve of 1300 men, covered by Rifles, which was to await the result of the main attack, and take possession of certain posts as soon as the columns entered the place. No more troops were left at camp than were absolutely necessary for its protection; a few convalescents of the infantry, and a few troopers and horse-artillery, were all that could be spared for this duty. Nearly all the pickets were handed over to the cavalry to guard. Arrangements were, however, made to send back a force as speedily as possible to the camp to guard the sick, wounded, stores, &c., which naturally became objects of much solicitude to the general at such a time. Brigadier Grant, with the bulk of the cavalry and some horse-artillery, moved down to the vicinity of No. 1 Battery, to check any attempt that might be made by the enemy, after a sortie from the Lahore or Ajmeer Gates, to attack the storming columns in flank.

The night which closed in the 13th and opened the 14th of September was not one to be soon forgotten by the soldiers of the siege-army. Few of them, officers or men, slept much; their thoughts were too intensely directed towards the stern realities of the morrow, which would end the career of so many among their number. At four o’clock on the morning of the 14th, the different columns set forth on their march from the camp to their respective places. The first three columns were, according to the programme just cited, to engage in the actual assault on the northern side of the city; the heads of those columns were to be kept concealed until the moment for assault had arrived; and the signal for that crisis was to be, the advance of the Rifles to the front, to act as skirmishers.

Brigadier Nicholson took the lead. He gave the signal; the Rifles rushed to the front with a cheer, and skirmished along through the low jungle which extended to within fifty yards of the ditch. The 1st and 2d columns, under himself and Brigadier Jones, emerged from behind the Koodseebagh, and advanced steadily towards the breached portions of the wall. Up to this time the enemy’s guns had wrought little mischief on the columns; but as soon as the latter emerged into the open ground, a perfect storm of bullets met them from the front and both flanks; officers and men were falling fast on the glacis; and for several minutes it was impossible to get the ladders placed for a descent into the ditch and an ascent of the escarp. After a fierce struggle, the British bayonet, as usual, won the day; the troops dashed through and over all obstacles, and entered the city through the breaches which the guns had previously made in the walls. Now within the boundary of the imperial city, the two brigadiers at once turned to the right, proceeded along the ramparts, fought the sepoys inch by inch, overcame all opposition, and captured in succession a 307small battery, a tower between the Cashmere and Moree Bastions, the Moree itself, and the Cabool Gate; but the vigorous attempts they made to take the Burn Bastion and the Lahore Gate failed, so determined was the resistance opposed to them, and so terrible the loss they suffered in officers and men. It was in one of the many attacks on the Lahore Gate, when the troops had to advance along a narrow lane swept by the enemy’s grape-shot and musketry, that the bullet was fired which laid low the gallant Nicholson—an officer in whom the whole army had reposed a full and deep reliance. As far as the Cabool Gate, the two columns were enabled to maintain their conquests; and they immediately made preparations for opening fire from the bastions inwards upon the yet unconquered buildings of the city—a sand-bag parapet being constructed across the gorge or open rear of each bastion.

We have now to see what was transpiring in another quarter, on this morning of heroism and slaughter. While the 1st column was engaged in forcing an entrance through the breach near the Cashmere Bastion, and the 2d column a similar entrance through that near the Water Bastion, the 3d directed its operations against the Cashmere Gate—through which, it will be remembered, the troops of that column were to rush after an explosion-party had blown in the gate itself. If there be any sublimity in bloody warfare, it is manifested in the self-devotion with which a soldier marches steadfastly to a position where he knows that death will be almost certain and immediate. Such self-devotion was shewn by the little band of heroes forming this explosion-party. They had to advance in broad daylight to the gate, amid a storm of bullets from above, from both flanks, and from a wicket in the gate itself; they had carefully to lay down and adjust the bags of gunpowder close to the gate, to arrange a train or fuse, to fire the bags, and to take their chance of being themselves blown up by the explosion. The gallant men intrusted with this dangerous duty were divided into two parties—an advanced and a firing party. The first consisted of an engineer officer, Lieutenant Home, two non-commissioned officers, Sergeants Smith and Carmichael, and a few native sappers, who carried the powder-bags. The firing-party consisted of Lieutenant Salkeld, Corporal Burgess, and a few native sappers. Owing to some delay, the two parties did not set out for their rendezvous at Ludlow Castle until broad daylight, and then they had to encounter a heavy fire of musketry all the way. When the advanced party reached the gate—a heavy wooden structure, flanked by massive walls—they found that a part of the drawbridge over the ditch had been destroyed; but, passing across the precarious footing afforded by the remaining beams, they proceeded to lodge their powder-bags against the gate. The wicket was open, and through it the enemy kept up a heavy fire. Sergeant Carmichael, and a native sapper named Madhoo, were killed while laying the bags; but Lieutenant Home only received a blow from a stone thrown up by a bullet. The perilous duty of laying the bags being completed, the advanced party slipped down into the ditch, to make room for the firing-party, which then advanced. ‘Lieutenant Salkeld,’ said Colonel Baird Smith, in his report of the engineering operations of the day, ‘while endeavouring to fire the charge, was shot through the arm and leg, and handed over the slow match to Corporal Burgess, who fell mortally wounded just as he had successfully accomplished the onerous duty. Havildar Tilluh Singh, of the Sikhs, was wounded, and Ramloll Sepoy of the same corps, was killed during this part of the operation. The demolition being most successful, Lieutenant Home, happily not wounded, caused the bugler (Hawthorne) to sound the regimental call of the 52d, as the signal for the advancing columns. Fearing that amid the noise of the assault the sounds might not be heard, he had the call repeated three times, when the troops advanced and carried the gateway with complete success.’ Sergeant Smith had a narrow escape from being blown up. Seeing Burgess fall, and not knowing the exact result of the gallant fellow’s efforts to fire the train, he ran forward; but seeing the train alight, he had just time to throw himself into the ditch before the explosion took place. The perilous nature of this kind of duty gave rise to a correspondence in the public journals, from which a few lines may not unsuitably be given in a note.^[89]

Colonel Campbell, with the 3d column, after the heroic explosion-party had forced an entry for him through the Cashmere Gate, marched boldly 308through the city towards the Jumma Musjid—a perilous enterprise; for the distance was upwards of a mile even in a straight line, and many populous streets would need to be traversed. In this march he was aided by Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, a member of the Company’s civil service, whose house outside Delhi has been so often mentioned, and who had been a valuable adviser to the siege-army during the whole period of its operations on the ridge. He knew Delhi well, and was thus enabled to render Campbell essential service. Conducting the column by a circuitous route, he kept it nearly free from opposition until the fine street, called the Chandnee Chowk, was reached, where they took possession of the Kotwallee. At this point, however, the troops began to fall rapidly under the muskets of the enemy, and it was found to be impracticable to achieve the object fondly hoped—the capture of the Jumma Musjid itself. After a gallant struggle, the column fell back to the neighbourhood of the English church near the Cashmere Gate, where it had the support of the reserve. The colonel at once placed the 52d regiment in the church, the Kumaon battalion in Skinner’s house, and the Punjaub infantry in the houses at the junction of two streets that led from the centre of the city to the open space around the church. Guns, too, were posted at the last-named place, to check the advance of insurgents who had begun to treat Campbell as a fleeing and defeated officer. He was in one sense defeated; for he had to retreat nearly a mile, and saw his fine troops cut up terribly all around him; nevertheless, before nightfall he had placed himself in a position from which the enemy could not dislodge him, and which enabled him to take a prominent part in the subsequent operations.

Corporal Burgess, blown up at Cashmere Gate.

Rather as a support to Colonel Campbell’s 3d column, than as a leading corps, the reserve now comes for notice—its position being indeed denoted by its name. This reserve column, under Brigadier Longfield, had, it will be remembered, the duty of watching the result of the main attack, and of taking possession of certain posts as soon as the other columns had effected an entry into the city. The reserve followed the 3d column through the Cashmere Gate, having previously spared the Belooch battalion to render service near Hindoo Rao’s house. Longfield at once cleared the college gardens of insurgents, and then told off his troops so as to obtain efficient hold of the Water Bastion, the Cashmere Gate, Skinner’s house, and a large commanding building called Ahmed Ali Khan’s house. Skinner’s house, or in Indian form, Sikunder’s, had at one time been the residence of Major Skinner, commander of a regiment of irregular horse, which had acquired much celebrity; the house was large, and presented many important advantages for a military force.

There is yet another portion of the siege-army, whose fortune on this 14th of September has to be noticed—namely, that which was placed under the command of Major Reid, for a series of operations in the western suburbs of the city. Everything here was under a cloud of disappointment; the operations were not attended with that degree of success which the officers and men had fondly hoped. Captain Dwyer, in command of the Cashmere field-force, was intrusted with the management of 400 men of that force, and four guns; and the object he was to endeavour to attain was the safe occupation of the Eedghah Serai, in dangerous proximity to the garrison within the city. Early in the morning he set out from the camp. Finding the road very difficult for artillery, he pulled down a portion of stone-wall to enable his guns to get upon the Rohtuk high road; the noise unfortunately attracted the enemy, who immediately sent down 2000 men to that point. Dwyer kept up a fire of artillery for 309three quarters of an hour; but finding that the enemy, instead of being discomfited, were about to outflank him, he resolved on a bold advance on the Eedghah. This resolve he could not carry out; his troops were widely spread in skirmishing order, and could not be collected in column; the guns could not be properly moved, for the grass-cutters had taken away the horses. In short, the attempt was a total failure, and the captain was compelled to retire without his guns. The force appears to have been too small, and the Cashmerian troops scarcely equal in soldierly discipline to the demands of the work intrusted to them. This attack on the Eedghah was to have been part of a larger enterprise intrusted to Major Reid, having in view the conquest of the whole western suburb of Delhi, and the command of all outlets by the western gates. The major advanced from the Subzee Mundee towards the Kissengunje suburb; but he found the enemy so numerous and strongly posted, and he met with such a strenuous opposition, that his progress was soon checked. The gallant Reid himself being struck down wounded, as well as many other officers, Captain Muter of the 60th Rifles, and Captain R. C. Lawrence, political agent with the Cashmere Contingent, felt it necessary promptly to decide on the course best to be pursued. They found the different detachments, of which the column consisted, so broken and disorganised by the heavy fire of the enemy, that it was impossible to reform them on broken ground, and under a severe fire the attack on the Kissengunje could not be renewed; all they attempted was to keep the enemy in check for an hour, without losing ground. They waited for a reinforcement of artillery, which Reid had sent for before being wounded; but these guns, through some unexplained cause, failed to arrive. Seeing the enemy increase in force, and fearing for the safety of the batteries below Hindoo Rao’s house, the officers gave up the attack and retired, strengthening the batteries and the Subzee Mundee picket. The failure of Captain Dwyer’s attack greatly increased the difficulty of the position; for the enemy was thereby enabled to advance on the right flank of the main column, endanger its rear, and hotly press the Subzee Mundee picket. Reid, Lawrence, Dwyer, Muter—all were mortified at their failure in this suburban operation.

Thus ended the 14th of September, a day on which British authority was partially restored in the ‘city of the Moguls,’ after an interregnum of eighteen weeks. Partial, indeed, was the reconquest; for the portion of the city held bore so small a ratio to the whole, that the troops foresaw a terrible and sanguinary ordeal to be gone through before the British flag would again wave undisputed over the conquered city. The loss was very large, in relation to the strength of the army generally. There fell on this one day, 8 British officers, 162 British troops, and 103 native troops, killed; while the list of wounded comprised 52 British officers, 512 British troops, and 310 native troops—a total of 1135. When night closed around the survivors, the 1st and 2d columns held all the towers, bastions, and ramparts from the vicinity of the Cashmere Gate to the Cabool Gate; the 3d column and the reserve held the Cashmere Gate, the English church, Skinner’s house, the Water Bastion, Ahmed Ali Khan’s house, the college gardens, and many buildings and open spots in that part of Delhi; while the 4th column, defeated in the western suburbs, had retreated to the camp or the ridge.

Snatching a little occasional repose during the night, the besiegers found themselves at dawn on the 15th, as we have said, masters of a part only of Delhi; and they prepared for the stern work before them. They dragged several mortars into position, at various points between the Cashmere and Cabool Gates, to shell the heart of the city and the imperial palace. A battery, commanding the Selimgurh and a part of the palace, was also established in the college gardens; and several houses were taken and armed in advance or further to the south. The enemy, meanwhile, kept up a vigorous fire from the Selimgurh and the magazine upon the positions occupied by the British, and skirmishing went on at all the advanced posts. This, be it understood, was within the city itself; the British being in command of a strip of ground and buildings just within the northern wall; while all the rest was still in the hands of the rebels. It was in every way a strange position for an army to occupy; the city was filled with hostile soldiery, who had the command of an immense array of guns and a vast store of ammunition, and whose musketry told with fatal effect from loopholed walls and houses in all the streets within reach; while the besiegers themselves were separated by a lofty city wall from their own camp.

The 16th was marked by a greater progress than the 15th towards a conquest of the city, because the newly established batteries began to shew signs of work. The guns in the college garden having effected a breach in the magazine defences, that important building was stormed and taken, with a loss comparatively slight, by the 61st, the 4th Punjaub, and the Beloochees.^[90] Outside the city, the Kissengunje suburb was this day evacuated by the enemy, leaving five guns, which were speedily captured by a detachment sent down from Hindoo Rao’s house; it was then found that the enemy’s position here had been one of immense strength, and the failure of Major Reid’s attack received a ready explanation.

Another day dawned, and witnessed the commencement of operations which placed a further portion of the city in the hands of the conquerors. The magazine having been captured, it became important to secure the whole line of rampart and 310forts from that point to the Cabool Gate, comprising the northeast as well as the north sides of the city. This was begun on the 17th, and completed on the 18th, giving to the British a firm hold of everything behind a straight line extending from the magazine to the Cabool Gate. A bold advance southward could now be made. Columns were sent forth, which captured the Delhi bank, Major Abbott’s house, and the house of Khan Mohammed Khan, and made a near approach to the palace and the Chandnee Chowk. The pen can easily record this, but it must leave to the imagination of the reader to conceive how great must have been the peril of soldiers thus advancing inch by inch through a crowded city; field-artillery was brought to bear against them from almost every street, muskets from almost every house-top and window; and many a gallant fellow was laid low. One great advantage the besiegers now had, was in the command of mortars brought out from the magazine; these were placed in selected positions, and employed to shell the palace and the quarters of the town occupied by the enemy. It was now that the insurgents were seen to be gradually escaping from the palace into the southern parts of the city, and thence through the southern gates into open country not yet attacked by the British. Over the bridge of boats they could not go, for the guns of the conquerors commanded it. Or, it may more correctly be said, the command of the bridge of boats enabled the conquerors to check that passage if they chose; but General Wilson did not make war on women and children, or on such males as appeared to be peaceful citizens: he allowed them to depart from the city if they wished—which nearly all did, for they feared terrible retribution at the hands of the British soldiery.

After another night within the imperial city, the conquerors achieved further successes on the 19th. The post called the Burn Bastion, situated on the west side of the city, close to the Lahore Gate, was surprised and captured by a detachment sent from the already conquered Cabool Gate. This swept the enemy from another large extent of wall. On the following morning a detachment of cavalry, going from the ridge by way of the Kissengunje and the Eedghah, found that the enemy had evacuated a large and strong camp long occupied by them outside the Delhi Gate. Lieutenant Hodson at once took possession of it; and a mere glance shewed, by the quantities of clothing, plunder, and ammunition lying around, that the enemy must have made a very precipitate flight. The cavalry, entering the city by the Delhi Gate—which, together with the Gurstin Bastion, had just been attacked and taken by the infantry, galloped on to the sumptuous Jumma Musjid, of which they took possession, being speedily supported by infantry and guns. While all this was going on, the imperial palace was the object of a distinct attack. A column advanced along the Chandnee Chowk, placed powder-bags against the gate, blew it in, and entered the palace. The enormous building was found to be deserted by all but a few fanatics and numerous wounded sepoys.

Thus at length was the great city of Delhi reconquered by its former masters; thus again did the Feringhee become paramount over the Mogul. Captain Norman, whose semi-official account of the siege has already been adverted to, closed his narrative by saying: ‘It is impossible to conclude without alluding to the trials and constancy of the troops employed in this arduous siege. Called on at the hottest season of the year to take the field, imperfectly equipped, and with the extent of difficulties to be faced very imperfectly known, all felt that a crisis had arrived, to meet which every man’s cheerful, willing, and heartfelt energies must be put forth to the utmost; and how well this was done, those who were with the army know and can never forget. For the first five weeks every effort was required, not indeed to take Delhi, but even to hold our own position; and day after day, for hours together, every soldier was under arms under a burning sun, and constantly exposed to fire. Notwithstanding the daily casualties in action, the numerous deaths by cholera, the discouraging reports relative to the fidelity of some of the native portions of our own force, the distressing accounts from all parts of the country, the constant arrival of large reinforcements of mutineers, and the apparent impossibility of aid ever reaching in sufficient strength to enable us to take the place—the courage and confidence of the army never flagged. And, besides enduring a constant and often deadly cannonade, for more than three months, in thirty different combats, our troops invariably were successful, always against long odds, and often opposed to ten times their numbers, who had all the advantages of ground and superior artillery.’

Taking the 30th of May as the date when the first conflict between the besiegers and defenders of Delhi took place, at some distance from Delhi itself, the interval of 113 days between that date and the final capture on the 20th of September was marked by a very large death-list. It could not be otherwise. Where men were exposed during so many days and nights to shells, balls, bullets, swords, heat, swamps, fatigue, and disease, the hand of the destroyer must indeed have been heavy. And, as in all similar instances, the list of wounded was much larger than that of killed. The official list comprised the names of 46 European officers who had either been killed in battle, or died from wounds received; and of 140 others whose wounds had not proved fatal. But the adjutant-general is seldom accustomed to comprise in his lists those who fall with disease without being wounded; and thus the Delhi enumeration did not include the names of Generals Anson and Barnard, or of any of the numerous officers, who, though not wounded before Delhi, unquestionably met their death in connection with the preparations for, or conduct of, the siege. 311Distributed under different headings, the killed and wounded amounted altogether to 3807,^[91] to which were added 30 missing. Of the horses there were 186 killed and 378 wounded. Of the number of insurgents who fell during the struggle, no authentic knowledge could be obtained.

The official dispatches were nearly silent concerning the proceedings, except military, in the interval of six days between the first assault of the city and the final subjugation, and during the remaining ten days of September. General Wilson, shortly before the final attack was to be made, issued an address to his soldiers, from which a few sentences are here given in a note;^[92] and in which, it will be seen, they were instructed to give no quarter to the mutineers—that is, make no prisoners, but put all armed rebels to death. This was attended to; but something more was done, something darker and less justifiable. It is not customary for soldiers to stab wounded and sick men in an enemy’s army; but such was done at Delhi. The sense of hatred towards the mutinous sepoys was so intense, the recollection of the atrocities at Cawnpore was so vivid, that vengeance took place of every other feeling. The troops did that which they would have scorned to do against the Russians in the Crimean war—they bayoneted men no longer capable of resistance. They refused to consider the rules of honourable warfare applicable to black-hearted traitors; their officers joined them in this refusal; and their general’s address justified them up to a certain point. If the rule laid down by Wilson had been strictly adhered to, there would have been military precedence to sanction it; but the common soldiers did not discriminate in their passion; and many a dark-skinned inhabitant of Delhi fell under the bayonet, against whom no charge of complicity with the mutineers could be proved. The letters written home to friends in England, soon after the battle, and made public, abundantly prove this; the soldiers were thirsting for vengeance, and they slaked their thirst. Many of the villagers of India, indeed, bore cruel injustice during that extraordinary period. Instances frequently came to light, such as the following: A revolted regiment or a predatory band would enter a village, demand and obtain money, food, and other supplies by threats of vengeance if the demand were not complied with, and then depart; an English corps, entering soon afterwards, would fine and punish the villagers for having aided the enemy. One thing, however, the British soldiers did not do; they did not murder women and children. This humanity, heroism, justice, or whatever it may best be called, was more than the natives generally expected: the leaders in the revolt had sedulously disseminated a rumour that the British would abuse all the women, and murder them and their children, in all towns and stations where mutinies had taken place; and under the influence of this belief, many of the natives put their wives to death rather than expose them to the apprehended indignities. While, at one part of Delhi, the conquerors (if the narrators are to be believed) found Christian women crucified against the walls in the streets; at another part, nearly twenty native women were found lying side by side with their throats cut, their husbands having put them to death to prevent them from falling into the hands of the conquerors.

What other scenes of wild licence took place within Delhi during those excited days, we may infer from collateral evidence. The mutineers, quite as much in love with plunder as with nationality, had been wont to carry about with them from place to place the loot which they had gathered during the sack of the stations and towns. As a consequence, Delhi contained temporarily an enormous amount of miscellaneous wealth; and such of this as the fugitives could not carry away with them, was regarded as spoil by the conquerors. There are certain rules in the English army concerning prizes and prize-money, which the soldiers more or less closely obey; but the Punjaubee and Goorkha allies, more accustomed to Asiatic notions of warfare, revelled in the unbridled freedom of their new position, and were with difficulty maintained in discipline. There was a large store of beverage, also, in the city, which the conquerors soon got at; and as intemperance is one of the weak points of English soldiers, many scenes of drunkenness ensued.

But all these are among the exigencies of war. The soldiers bore up manfully against their varied trials, fought heroically, and conquered; and it is not by the standards of conduct familiar to quiet persons at home that they should be judged. When General Wilson reported the result of his 312hard labours, he said in his dispatch: ‘Thus has the important duty committed to this force been accomplished, and its object attained. Delhi, the focus of rebellion and insurrection, and the scene of so much horrible cruelty, taken and made desolate; the king a prisoner in our hands; and the mutineers, notwithstanding their great numerical superiority and their vast resources in ordnance, and all the munitions and appliances of war, defeated on every occasion of engagement with our troops, are now driven with slaughter in confusion and dismay from their boasted stronghold.... Little remains for me to say, but to again express my unqualified approbation of the conduct and spirit of the whole of the troops, not only on this occasion, but during the entire period they have been in the field.... For four months of the most trying season of the year this force, originally very weak in number, has been exposed to the repeated and determined attacks of an enemy far outnumbering it, and supported by a numerous and powerful artillery. The duties imposed upon all have been laborious, harassing, and incessant, and notwithstanding heavy losses, both in action and from disease, have been at all times zealously and cheerfully performed.’ And in similar language, when the news was known at Calcutta, did Viscount Canning acknowledge the heroism of those who had conquered Delhi.^[93]

It will be seen above that the governor-general spoke of the ‘king a prisoner.’ This must now be explained. When all hope of retaining Delhi faded away, the aged king—who had in effect been more a puppet in the hands of ambitious leaders than a king, during four months—fled from the city, as did nearly all the members and retainers of the once imperial family. It fell to the lot of Captain (afterwards Major) Hodson to capture the king and other royal personages. This officer was assistant quartermaster-general, and intelligence-officer on General Wilson’s staff. His long acquaintance as a cavalry officer with Sikhs, Punjaubees, and Afghans had given him much knowledge of the native character, and enabled him to obtain remarkably minute information concerning the movements and intentions of the enemy; to insure this, he was invested with power to reward or punish in proportion to the deserts of those who assisted him. It was known directly the Cashmere Gate was conquered that the exodus of the less warlike inhabitants of Delhi was beginning; but not then, nor until six days afterwards, could this be stopped, for the southern gates were wholly beyond reach of the conquerors. The imperial palace was captured, and was found nearly empty, on the 20th; and on the following day Captain Hodson learned that the king and his family had left the city with a large force by the Ajmeer Gate, and had gone to the Kootub, a suburban palace about nine miles from Delhi. Hodson urged that a detachment should be sent in pursuit, but Wilson did not think he could spare troops for this service. While this subject was under consideration, messengers were coming from the king, and among others Zeenat Mahal, a favourite begum, making ridiculous offers on his part, as if he were still the power paramount—all of which were of course rejected. As these offers could not be accepted; as Wilson could not or would not send a detachment at once to defeat or capture the mutinous troops who had departed with the king; and as it was, nevertheless, desirable to have the king’s person in safe custody—Captain Hodson received permission to promise the aged sovereign his life, and exemption from immediate personal indignity, if he would surrender.

Thus armed, Hodson laid his plans. He started with fifty of his own native irregular troopers to Humayoon’s Tomb, about three miles from the Kootub. Concealing himself and his men among some old buildings close by the gateway of the tomb, he sent his demand up to the palace. After two hours of anxious suspense, he received a message from the king that he would deliver himself up to Captain Hodson only, and on condition that he repeated with his own lips the pledge of the government for his safety. The captain then went 313out into the middle of the road in front of the gateway, and said he was ready to receive his captives and renew the promise. ‘You may picture to yourself,’ said one familiar with the spot, ‘the scene before that magnificent gateway, with the milk-white domes of the tomb towering up from within, one white man among a host of natives, yet determined to secure his prisoners or perish in the attempt.’ After a time, a procession began to arrive from the palace. Threats and promises soon did their work; and the king, his begum Zeenat Mahal, and her son Jumma Bukht, were escorted to Delhi. It was a striking manifestation of moral power; for there were hundreds or even thousands of retainers in the procession, any one of whom could by a shot have put an end to Hodson’s life; but he rode at the side of the imperial palanquins, cool and undaunted, and they touched him not. As the city was approached, the followers and bystanders slunk away, being unwilling to confront the British troops. The captain rode on a few paces ahead, and ordered the Lahore Gate to be opened. ‘Who have you there in the palanquin?’ asked the officer on duty. ‘Only the King of Delhi,’ was the reply. The guard were all enraptured, and wanted to greet Hodson with a cheer; but he said the king would probably take the honour to himself, which was not desirable. On they went, through the once magnificent but now deserted Chandnee Chowk; and the daring captor, at the gate of the palace, handed up his royal prisoners to the civil authorities.

Scene of Capture of the Princes of Delhi—Tomb of Emperor Humayoon.

Captain Hodson’s work was not yet finished; there were other members of the royal family towards whom his attention was directed. Early on the following morning, he started to avail himself of information he obtained concerning three of the princes, who were known to have been guilty of monstrous deeds which rendered them worthy of instant death. He went with a hundred of his troopers to the Tomb of Humayoon, where the princes were concealed. After accepting ‘king’s evidence,’ bribing, threatening, and manœuvring, Hudson secured his prisoners, and sent them off with a small escort to the city. Entering the tomb, he found it filled with an enormous number of palace scum and city rabble, mostly armed; but so thoroughly cowed were they by his fearless demeanour, that they quietly obeyed his order to lay down their arms and depart. The captain and his men then moved warily off to the city; and at a short distance from the gate, he found the vehicle containing the princes surrounded by a mob, who seemed disposed to resist him. What followed must be given in the words of an officer who was in a position to obtain accurate information. ‘This was no time for hesitation or delay. 314Hodson dashed at once into the midst—in few but energetic words explained “that these were the men who had not only rebelled against the government, but had ordered and witnessed the massacre and shameful exposure of innocent women and children; and that thus therefore the government punished such traitors, taken in open resistance”—shooting them down at the word. The effect was instantaneous and wonderful. Not another hand was raised, not another weapon levelled, and the Mohammedans of the troop and some influential moulvies among the bystanders exclaimed, as if by simultaneous impulse: “Well and rightly done! Their crime has met with its just penalty. These were they who gave the signal for the death of helpless women and children, and outraged decency by the exposure of their persons, and now a righteous judgment has fallen on them. God is great!” The remaining weapons were then laid down, and the crowd slowly and quietly dispersed. The bodies were then carried into the city, and thrown out on the very spot where the blood of their innocent victims still stained the earth. They remained there till the 24th, when, for sanitary reasons, they were removed from the Chibootra in front of the Kotwallee. The effect of this just retribution was as miraculous on the populace as it was deserved by the criminals.’ Thus were put to death two of the old king’s sons, Mirza Mogul Beg, and another whose name is doubtful, together with Mirza’s son.

What was done to restore order in Delhi after its recapture; who was appointed to command it; what arrangements were made for bringing to justice the wretched king who was now a prisoner; and what military plan was formed for pursuing the mutinous regiments which had escaped from the city—will more conveniently be noticed in subsequent pages.

The country did not fail to do honour to those who had been concerned in the conquest of the imperial city. The commander of the siege-army was of course the first to be noticed. Although he had no European reputation, Archdale Wilson had served as an artillery officer nearly forty years in India. He was employed at the siege of Bhurtpore in 1824, and in many other active services; but his chief duties confined him to the artillery depôts. It is a curious fact that most of the guns employed by him at the siege of Delhi, as well as those used by the enemy against him, had been cast by him as superintendent of the gun-foundry at Calcutta many years before, and bore his name as part of the device. He held in succession the offices of adjutant-general of artillery and commandant of artillery. At the commencement of the mutiny, his regimental rank was that of lieutenant-colonel of the Bengal artillery; but he acted as brigadier at Meerut, and was afterwards promoted to the rank of major-general. The Queen, in November, raised him to the baronetcy, and made him a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath; and thus the artillery officer had risen to the rank of ‘Major-general Sir Archdale Wilson, K.C.B.’ The East India Company, too, sought to bestow honour—or something more solid than honour—on the victorious commander; the court of proprietors, on the suggestion of the court of directors, voted a pension of £1000 per annum to Sir Archdale Wilson, to commence from the day when his troops entered Delhi.

What honours Brigadier Nicholson would have earned, had his valuable life been spared, it would be useless to surmise. He was an especial favourite among the soldiers in the Indian army—more so, perhaps, than some whose names are better known to English readers; and his death within the walls of Delhi was very generally deplored. He had not yet attained his 35th year—a very early age at which to obtain brigade command, either in the Company’s or the Queen’s armies. Nothing but the unbounded confidence of Sir John Lawrence in the military genius of Nicholson would have justified him in making so young a man, a simple regimental captain (brevet-major), brigadier of a column destined to fight the rebels all the way from the Punjaub to Delhi; yet even those seniors who were superseded by this arrangement felt that the duty was intrusted to one equal to its demands. He had seen hard service during the Afghan and Punjaub campaigns, as captain in the 27th Bengal native infantry; and had, instead of idling his time during a furlough visit to England, studied the armies and military organisation of continental Europe. An officer who served with him during the mutiny said: ‘He had a constitution of iron. The day we marched to Murdan he was twenty-six hours in the saddle, following up the mutineers.’ The Queen granted the posthumous dignity of Knight Commander of the Bath upon Brigadier-general John Nicholson; and as he was unmarried, the East India Company departed from their general rule, by bestowing a special grant of £500 per annum upon his widowed mother, who had in earlier years lost another son in the Company’s service.

One among many civil servants of the Company who fell during the siege was Hervey Harris Greathed, a member of a family well known in India. After filling various official situations in the Punjaub, Rajpootana, and Meerut, he became chief-commissioner of Delhi, after the foul murder of Mr Simon Fraser on the 11th of May. Serve or remain in Delhi itself he could not, for obvious reasons; but he was with Wilson’s army in the expedition from Meerut to Delhi, and then remained with the siege-army on the heights, where his intimate knowledge of India and the natives was of essential value. He died of cholera just before the conclusion of the siege. His brothers, Robert and George Herbert, had already died in the services of the Company or the crown; but two others, Edward Harris and William Wilberforce Harris, survived to achieve fame as gallant officers.

Another of those who fell on the day of the 315assault was Lieutenant Philip Salkeld, of the Bengal engineers. He was the son of a Dorsetshire clergyman, and went to India in 1850, in his twentieth year, in the corps of Sappers and Miners. He was employed for four years as an engineer in connection with the new works of the grand trunk-road, in Upper India; and was then transferred to the executive engineers’ department in the Delhi division. His first taste of war was in relation to the mutinies; he was engaged in all the operations of the siege of Delhi, and was struck down while gallantly exploding the Cashmere Gate. He lingered in great pain, and died about the 10th of October. The Rev. S. G. Osborne, in a letter written soon after the news of Salkeld’s death reached England, said: ‘This young officer has not more distinguished himself in his profession by his devotion to his country’s service of his life, than he stands distinguished in the memory of those who knew him for his virtues as a son and brother. His father, a clergyman in Dorsetshire, by a reverse of fortune some years since, was with a large family reduced, I may say, to utter poverty. This, his soldier son, supported out of his own professional income one of his brothers at school, helping a sister, obliged to earn her own bread as a governess, to put another brother to school. Just before his death he had saved a sum of £1000, which was in the bank at Delhi, and was therefore lost to him, and, more than this, it was lost to the honourable purpose to which, as a son and brother, he had devoted it. In his native county it has been determined to erect a monument to his memory by subscription. Cadetships having been given to two of his young brothers, it is now wisely resolved that while the memorial which is to hand down his name to posterity in connection with his glorious death shall be all that is necessary for the purpose, every farthing collected beyond the sum necessary for this shall be expended as he would have desired, for the good of these his young brothers.’

Lieutenant Duncan Home, another hero of the Cashmere Gate, was not one of the wounded on that perilous occasion; he lived to receive the approval of his superior in the engineering department; but his death occurred even sooner than that of his companion in arms, for he was mortally wounded on the 1st of October while engaged with an expeditionary force in pursuit of the fleeing rebels. It was on that day, a few hours before he received the fatal bullet, that he wrote a letter to his mother in England; in which, after describing the operations at the Cashmere Gate, he said: ‘I was then continually on duty until the king evacuated the palace. I had never more than four hours’ sleep in the twenty-four, and then only by snatches. I had also the pleasure of blowing in the gate of the palace; luckily no one fired at me, there being so few men left in the palace.’

Salkeld and Home received the ‘Victoria Cross,’ a much-coveted honour among the British troops engaged in the Indian war. As did likewise Sergeant Smith, who so boldly risked, yet saved, his life; and also Bugler Hawthorne of the 52d, who blew his signal-blast in spite of the shots whistling around him. Poor Sergeant Carmichael and Corporal Burgess did not live to share in this honour; they fell bullet-pierced.

State Palanquin.