The Sepoy revolt; its causes and its consequences

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Preface

In the following pages I have condensed^ to the best of my ability, the results of ten years' labour in the busy fields of Indian journalism. My opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of political and social affairs have been great ; it is for the public to decide if I have made good use of them.

Were my book to be written over again, I should like to deepen the colours in which some pictures of Indian life have been painted ; but the experience which enables a man to write on the subject of Eastern government, tends to blunt his sympathies, and in some degree to injure his moral sense. Torture and lawlessness, and the perpetual suffering of millions, are so familiar to me, that I am conscious of not feeling as I ought to do when wrong is done to individuals and nations. The man who lives in the vicinity of the undertaker and boiler maker, is not likely to join in the agitation agtdnst barrel organs and street cries.

There is a malady conmion to savages in certain parts of the world, which is termed ^^ earth-hunger." It provokes an incessant craving for clay, a species of food which fails to satisfy the appetite, and which impairs the power of digestion. The East India Company have laboured under its influence

IV PREFACE.

for a century past ; aod as yet the disease shows no signs of abatement. The last mail informed us that 25^000 acres, in the districts recently assigned by the Nizam, had this season been thrown out of cultivation ; and current advices express the satisfaction of the Indian Government at the prospect of new confiscations. In Madras, Bombay, and the Punjab, for every acre that is .cultivated, at least three remain untilled ; and still we continue to make nobles landless, and to increase the sum total of Asiatic misery.

J£ Heaven had not a great work for us to do in the East, the cruelty, the oppression, and the measureless folly of our ride would before this have produced its natural fruits, and we should have been cast out from India, a scorn and example to the nations. We have been heavily punished, and there is yet a fearful blow to be endured; but after a while we shall comprehend the nature of our responsibilities, and try to fulfil them. England's difficulty is England's opportunity. If we are wise henceforth in dealing with India, the well of Cawnpore will so fertilise the land, that every corner of it will yield a crop of blessings.

H. M.

Chapter I

The Illusion. — The Reality. — Military Defences. — Cooking Accounts. — Pretensions of Caste. — Lord Dalhousie and his Policy . Page 1

CHAPTER n.

The Government of India. — Sketches of leading Statesmen. — Strange Unanimity of Unfitness . . . . . .13

CHAPTER in.

Composition of the Indian Armies. — Caste Prejudices of the Brahmin. — Causes of the Revolt. — Condition of Oude . . ,2V

CHAPTER IV.

The Story of the greased Cartridges. — Grovemment warned, but uselessly, of the Growth of Disaffection. — The Berhampore Outbreak • 45

CHAPTER V.

The Outbreak at Meerut. — The March to DelhL — Mr. Colvin's Despatches.-^G^vemment keeping back Intelligence • . 68

CHAPTER VI.

State of the Defences of Bengal. — The Grovernment urged to obtain Reinforcements. — Aviulable Resources. — Facility of relieving Cawnpore and Lucknow. — Jung Bahador and the Ghoorkas . . 79

VI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIL

The March on Delhi. — The Defence of the Man:azine. — The Great Mogul and his Court. — Narratives of the Capture and Condition of the City ........ Page 88

CHAPTER VIU.

The Siege of Delhi. — Want of Guns. — Defective Intelligence. — Unwise Clemency. — The Rebel Proclamation. — Lord Canning's waste Papers ........ 104

CHAPTER IX.

The first Troubles in Oude. — Weak Behaviour of Government. — Revolt of the entire Army of the Province. — Comparative Mildness of the Rebels . . . . . .114

CHAPTER X.

The Revolt of Benares. — - Panic amongst the Sikhs. — Defenceless State of Allahabad. — Mutiny of the 6th N. L — The Siege and Massacre of Cawnpore ....... 126

CHAPTER XL

The Outbreak in Rohllcund. •* Ingratitude and Hatred of the Sepoys and Populace. — Strange Conduct of the 10th N. L . . 141

CHAPTER XIL

A convincing Orator. — Mr. Colvin's Proclamation and Death. — Mutinies in Rajpootana • . . . . . .151

CHAPTER XIII.

The Administration of the Punjaub. — Lord Canning and Sir John Lawrence. — The Organbation of the Sikhs . . .160

CHAPTER XIV.

The Gwalior Rising. — Contradictory Conduct of the Mussulman Cavalry. — Holkar and bis Contingents. — The Revolt at Mhow and Indore . ...... 166

CONTENTS. VU

CHAPTER XV.

The Revolt at Dinaporc. — Refusal of Government to disarm the Sepoys. — General Lloyd; his Tastes and Sympathies . . Page 176

CHAPTER XVI.

The Indian Press. — Its Isolation, and natural Antagonism to the Indian Government, — Hypocrisy of its Assailants. — Lord Canning and Mr. Mangles. — The Gagging Act. — Apathy of the Public at Home . 1 87

CHAPTER XVIL

The End of the great Company. — The Financial Difficulty. — Importance of an immediate Assumption of Government by the Crown. — Native Princes and their Rights . . . .198

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Nobles and Jaghiredars of India. — Their Wrongs and miserable Condition. — The Inquisition in Bombay. — Case of the Nawab of Woodiagherry. — Proposed Remedy .... 220

CHAFIER XIX.

The Responsibility for Conquest. — Republican Notions of the Rights of Mankind. — The fighting Instinct universal in all Classes. — Value of American Lessons. — The Rights of Conquest and the Claims of the conquered ....... 229

CHAPTER XX.

The Religious Question. — Noble Lords upon Christian Riders. — The Despotism of Knowledge. — The wise and good Man always a Mis« sionary.-^ False Ideas of Native Hostility to Christianity . 247

CHAPTER XXL

Torture in the North-west. — How States are " protected." — Examples of Indian Justice ....... 253

CHAPTER XXII.

State. Education in India almost wholly confined to the Upper Classes.— Mistaken Notions as to its Results. — Purely secular Character of the Instruction.— The Field for Christian Effort . . .291

Vlll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXni.

Tendency of the Native Mind to Imitation. — Value to England and India of an extended System of Education . . Page 297

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Land Revenues of India. — Explanations of the various Modes of levying Taxes on the Soil. — The Zemindars and the Police of Bengal.

— Failure of the Village Communities in the North-west . 309

CHAPTER XXV.

The Ryotwarry System in Madras. — Melancholy Results of a Century of Rule. — The hopeless Poverty of all Classes . . .319

CHAPTER XXVI.

Socialist Doctrines of Lord Harris and the East India Company. — Gradual Decay of every Form of national or class Prosperity. — The future Aristocracy of the East ..... 327

CHAPTER XXVII.

The levelling Character of the Company's Rule. — Their Influence purely destructive. — The Rajah and the Yeoman equally ruined, without Profit to the Government ..... 337

CHAPTER XXVni.

The Condition of the Madras Ryot described by Authority. — Folly of attempting to invest Capital in that Presidency . . . 348

CHAPTER XXIX.

The Remedy. — Impossibility of nusing more Revenue under the present System of Grovemment. — Difficulty of obtaining correct Information.

— Cost of Cultivation and profitable Culture. — Overthrow of the Slave-holding Interest. — The Balance of Trade . 354

CHAPTER XXX.

Political Changes required. — Necessity for throwing India open to all the Queen's Subjects. — Organisation of a Staff Corps. — Monopoly of the Civil Service at an End ..... 369

Afpbndix. — The Gragging Act. — The First Fruits of the Act . 377

THE SEPOY REYOLT,

CHAPTER I.

^nE ILLUSION. — THE REALITY. — MILITARY DEFENCES. — COOKING ACCOUNTS. — PRETENSIONS OP CASTE. — LORD DALHOUSIE AND niS POLICY.

In the course of an article on the disturbed state of feeling in the native army, the ^^ Times" of the 19th of May last had the following : —

^^ Now that the whole of India ha^ been thoroughly subdued, and that from AfTghanistan to the borders of Siam there is no power which even aspires to oppose us, we may be humane while we are politic, and be content to punish disobedience by loss of pay and pension, without a resort to artillery or a charge of the bayonet. It is reassuring, moreover, that the Mussulman, the Sikh, the Ghoorka, has no share in the prejudices of the Hindoo. The Government may always count on the votaries of Islam for support in any tumult arising from the teaching of an idolatrous creed. Still we could wish to see a larger number of European troops at hand on such an occasion. Our Indian empire is not what it was, and yet the number of white regiments remains pretty nearly stationary. Within the last fifteen years we have annexed Scinde, and the Punjaub, and Pegu,

B

2 EDUCATED ENGLISH OFFICIALS. chap. i.

not to speak of Oude and half a dozen protected or tributary districts. The cares and duties of the army are therefore largely increased. Although the European force is costly and sickly — although every man sent out is said to cost 100/., and many are only sent out to be laid, before long, in the barrack cemetery, — yet we must not shrink from the duties which our situation necessitates. We have conquered India by British hands, and by them it must be retained. Nothing will render the • improvement of the country so difficult, nothing will so unsettle the minds of a people easy to be impressed, and likely to find evil advisers to impress them, as the suspicion that there is any weakness in us. The belief that on any point, whether ten miles or one thousand miles away, the authority of England can be overthrown for a day by Asiatics of any race or creed, will go far to nullify all our character of superiority, and all the authority of civilisation."

When this extract was first read in Tndia, rebellion was triumphant in the Sepoy army over the length and breadth of Bengal, from the farthest comer of Peshawur to the hills of Cuttack. The flame of insurrection had been leaping from post to post throughout the vast extent of country still nominally under British rule, until it had become a point of honour to rebel with j»en who had no previous thought of disloyalty ; who urged, in reply to kind words and remonstrances, that they were bound to do what all the rest of the Sepoys were doing. Away up to the hills of Nepaul, along the wide plains of the North West, on through the Punjaub, and over the wastes of Central India, the flag of revolt was flying, the mutineers gaining strength and boldness with every hour. More than 60,000 men, who had been trained to fight by the side of English soldiers, were eagerly availing themselves of every chance to murder the wives and little ones of their defenceless officers and comrades in arms. They had plundered more than a million sterling from the public treasuries ; captured hundreds of guns ; they were in possession of nimierous places of strength ; they had won

Chap. I. The Consolation Op Tax-payers. 3 •

iDtrenchments vainly defended for weeks by one of the most gallant veterans in the service, and after admitting the garrison to terms, had murdered man, woman, and child. A wall as of fire impassable cut off commimication between upper and lower Bengal ; trade was at a standstill, and the hopes of the best and bravest soldiers dared not soar beyond the possibility of holding the ground covered by their encampment. Kelief was certain, but it seemed far distant. Vengeance was the cry that rose from every lip, but no sound of thunder was heard on the horizon. The labours of the giants had disappeared. Six weeks had sufficed to undo the work of a century.

Men in Calcutta ask of each other. What will they say of this in England ? And the answer is, that our countrymen will take comfort in the thought, so consoling to a certain class of prodigals, that India has been royally spent, and that all have had a share in dissipating the rich inheritance. The people's House of Commons have scarcely ever bestowed a thought on Hindostan. Cabinets, whether Whig or Tory, have sent out men to rule over us just as faction or family interest ordained. The favourite of the Army has seldom had a chance against the favourite of the Court ; and hence it is that, at the close of a century, we have to begin a new career in the East, without money and without friends, backed only by our strong right hand and indomitable hearts. Be it so ; the work will be done, though the task is heavy : the labourer asking only for a competent overseer.

Had the apprehension to which the ^^ Times" gave currency been entertained a few months back in the proper quarter, either the mutinies would have never commenced, or have never been successful. The following statement of the means of defence in the shape of European regiments provided for India, and our new possessions to the eastward of the Bay of Bengal, will show how little danger has been apprehended from internal foes or outward aggression during the last three years.

B 2

H

OW INDIA WAS

CARED FOB.

CUAP. 1.

Agra • . .

. .8 th Foot.

Do.

3rd Eur.

Allahabad .

. . None.

None.

6th Drag.

Burmah . .

Do.

Calcutta Chinsurah ,

35th, 3rd Eur.

Cawnpore .

, . None.

None.

1st Eur.

Dugshan . .

Do.

1st Exir.

Dinapore • .

. , 3rd Eur.

None.

Ferozepore .

Do.

Jullundur .

Do.

8th.

Kussowlie .

Do.

Lahore . .

Lucknow . .

. . None.

None.

Meerut . •

Nowshera .

. , None.

None.

Peshawur

Kawul Pindee

Sealkote . .

None.

Subathoo . .

None.

2nd Eur.

Umballah

. . 9th Lan.

Do.

Do.

Wiizeerabad

Do.

None.

Ordered home f 2 Cavalry. * * I 21 Infantry.

None.

None.

Total . .

1 Cavalry.

2 Cavalry.

A VrMU • •

18 Infantry.

18 Infantry.

From the above, it will be seen that in December 1854, before the annexation of Oude took place, we had three more European regiments than we had when the rebellion occurred. Of the English troops serving in the country, it is considered that seven regiments should be always stationed in the Punjaub, two in Burmah, one at Calcutta, one at Dinapore, one at Agra, and one at Meerut. This leaves us a balance of five regiments ; but some of these are in absolute need of their customary rest in the hills, so that our whole movable force is actually reduced to, say, three regiments. Of course, as in the instance of the advance upon Delhi, a strong division can be improvised at a few days' notice; but the case is very much like that of the citizen who abandons his house and property to combat

CHAP. I. TEMPTATION TO TRAITORS IS HEART. 5

rebels in a different quarter of the city. He cannot fight the enemy and protect his own valuables as welL If Sepoys mutiny^ or the rabble rises at our great stations^ there is not much to prevent them from working their will for a season. Luck may serve us as on many previous occasions. Those who have old scores to settle with us may lack means or courage to improve the tempting opportunity ; but there is no counting upon what is really before us in the way of work^ and for our means we have to thank both the Home and Indian Governments that they were scarcely adequate to the ordinary requirements of a state of profound peace. We had eighteen European infantry regiments, giving perhaps a total of fifteen thousand effectives, to occupy and defend the whole country from Peshawur to Rangoon, a line of sixteen hundred miles in length, with a population of not less than eighty millions, including three countries recently conquered — the Punjaub, Pegu, and Oude. An outbreak surprised us with no JBuropean regiments at Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Furruckabad, Bareilly, Fyzabad, or Delhi; none at Dacca, Berhampore, or Patna. Calcutta was protected by a single wing of the 53rd, whilst five native regiments lay fourteen miles off in a state of disaffection, and the Commander-in-Chief was shooting in the Hills. We met the emergency by withdrawing three regiments from Burmah — one of them belonging to Madras — and so perilling Pegu ; by claiming two more Madras regiments, and sp leaving that Government with only four European Corps for the protection of its widely extended line of defence ; by begging help from Ceylon, which not many years ago was itself in a state of rebellion ; and by stopping the expedition to China. At this moment we have but one regiment in Pegu, with no John Lawrence to serve in lieu of horse dnd foot, and only a couple of thousand British bayonets in the country of the Sikhs. It is said that Lord Dalhousie^ just before his departure, applied for more European troops. If so, he failed to obtain them, but nevertheless carried out his intention of annexing Oude, the Cabinet at home approving of his policy, but neglecting to

B a

6 LORD DALHOUSIE AND HIS GOVERNMENT, chap. I.

give him the means of sustaining it. To the Board of Control and the Court of Directors we owe the insufficiency of the army, but the blame must not be laid wholly at the door of the Ministry. To the best of their ability our military chiefs have made the worst of the means at their disposal. Of the old and worn out men they make generals of division and brigadiers ; of the able and adventurous, administrators of civil affairs. Of course there are men in the highest departments of the army who are still able and vigorous ; but of the five major-generals of the Company's service in command of divisions, the youngest has been fifty years a commissioned officer. Of four brigadiers commanding field forces, the junior has been thirty-seven years in the service, and the oldest forty-nine. Of our most distinguished soldiers, such men as Chamberlain, Coke, Hodgson, and Lumsden, are allowed to grow old in minor posts on the frontier, whilst others no less capable of doing the state service are shelved in political employ. Why should we be hard then upon General Hewitt for allowing the mutineers to escape at Meerut? Another Elphinstone, it is happy for us that he was not in command at another Cabul. We owe him and his incapacity to the system. Had he been only ten years younger, he might have been as active as General Gomm, and we dare say quite as useful to the country.

Lord Dalhousie quitted the shores of India in October 1856. Before he reached home, he composed a state paper, in which the whole of his policy during eight years' occupation of the Government was reviewed and justified, and in the main the public were disposed at that time to adopt his own estimate of the results of his administration. He had done some harsh things, and had stooped to petty reprisals upon personal enemies, or upon men who had dared to exhibit an unpalatable independence. He was not above the suspicion of having connived at jobs in favour of his relatives and dependants ; but when his faults were all summed up and charged with the heavy interest which the world adds in all cases where it has to deal with truly able men, it was

CHAP. I. PLAYING WITH FIGUUES. 7

asserted that his merits far outweighed his defects. He had dominated over all classes — as much over the civilian as the soldier. He had borne down all enmity from without, and claimed to have exacted respect from within. It was said that he had given up the whole of his talents and time to the public service ; that he thought like a statesman, and worked like a secretary ; that he had added two fair provinces to the dominions of Britain, and extinguished a crying evil in the annexation of Oude ; that he had spent the best years of his life amongst the people of India, and was now going home only to die.

But the truth must be told with regard to his conquests. Perhaps they were made, in the first place, for the honour of his country ; but it was the nature of Lord Dalhousie to make a policy that he was proud of personal to himself, and after a while he became interested more from egotism than right feeling, more as an individual than as a Governor-General, in the prosperity of his new acquisitions. Prudence would have dictated that, with the increase of territories, the increase of physical strength should have gone hand in hand ; for if the addition of 100,000 square miles of country required no extra troops to guard it, it followed as a matter of course that the previous military expenditure had been needlessly lavish. The mode adopted by the late Governor- General to make the Punjaub and Pegu appear self supporting, was the not very dignified process of ** cooking accounts," by debiting the whole military charge of the troops occupying these provinces to the Bengal and Madras Presidencies. He had pandered skilfully to the weakness of our countrymen, for wherever it is possible to combine the merchant's love of gain with the soldier's desire of distinction, the rule of force is sure to dominate. The English are a Christian nation, but they trust to the civilising influences of commerce, rather than of creeds, and acknowledge a " mission " to teach the Bible wherever the sword can find a ready and profitable entrance. No one doubted the ability of the British Government to retain a permanent hold of Affghanistan, had they chosen to put forth the strength of the empire, but it

B 4

8 PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC REVENUE. chap. i.

was abandoned because it would not pay to be constantly fighting with the inhabitants. Had the latter been Bengalees or Cashmerians, it is quite certain that, whatever opinions might be entertained at home with regard to our right of interference on behalf of Shah Soqjah, the majority of statesmen would have decided that, having once advanced, we coidd not retreat with safety to the rest of the Queen's dominions in the East.

Scinde was acquired by means not more nefarious than those which have given us possession of half our Indian Empire, but the gain was dubious at best, and the conqueror was unpopular at the India House. So it was resolved to set down the province in the annual accounts at its true commercial value, and there is no saying what point a constant deficiency of revenue as compared with expenditure in this instance may not have given to the harangues of parliamentary orators, who think that the career of conquest ought to be put an end to. The Court of Directors have always deplored the achievement in question, as a merchant would annually sigh over a branch of business which he was obliged to maintain at a certain loss.

If the wars which gave us Pegu and the Punjaub were shown to be as unproductive as those which planted the British flag at Cabul and Hydrabad, it is quite certain that the Court of Directors would no more honour Lord Dalhousie than they honoured Sir Charles Napier, and that in like manner the legislature would denounce his evident passion for extending the boundaries of our rule as strongly as they assailed Lord Auckland on the score of a similar policy. The sole advantage which the marquis has over the earl is in the superior commercial results ; but that is sufficient to convert aggression into beneficence, censure into glory. In the one case, blood has been transmuted into gold ; in the other, it was poured out on a barren soil, and bore no harvest save that of unavailing tears.

And it is not merely that the insane passion for territorial extension is nourished by the deception resorted to ; but it inflicts gross injifstice on the inhabitants of the old

CHAP. I. GLORY THAT YIELDS NO PROFIT. 9

Presidencies. It is felt to be but right that the available Indian surplus should be laid out in works of improvement ; but when the distribution comes to be considered^ the districts that contribute the most to the fund will, of course, put forward claims to the largest portion of outlay. There is no part of our Eastern empire where profitable employment cannot be found for all the sums that Government and private capitalists combined are ever likely to furnish : bo that on no decent pretence could the surplus taxation of the Punjaub be appropriated to public works in Madras. Each part of India, then, is vitally interested in guarding against attempts to saddle it with the payment of charges that ought to be defrayed by another portion of territory. What would Middlesex say if it were compelled to pay, in addition to its own share of war taxes, the quota that ought to be contributed by Scotland ? How would our notions of equity be outraged, if a law were passed which compelled poor labourers in Dorsetshire to defray the costs of a rural police in Somersetshire? Yet in neither case would more injustice be done than was perpetrated by Lord Dalhousie, for the benefit of his pet provinces.

It is not requisite that we should enter into arguments to show the necessity of debiting each part of the British dominions in the East with the cost of the troops employed in it, so long as the revenue and expenditure of each province is kept distinct. The English public acknowledges the justice of the arrangement in the case of Scinde. Taking, then, the annual cost of the 40,000 troops stationed in the Punjaub at «53/. for each European, and 28/. for each native soldier, an estimate which does not include the expense incurred on account of the Commanders-in-Chief and the army-staff, we find the whole amounts to upwards of a million sterling ! Not an item of this charge was allowed to appear in the accounts furnished to Parliament, the whole of the burden being thrown on the other Presidencies ; and though the Madras Government earnestly protested from time to time against being saddled with the military charges of Pegu, the districts assigned by the

10 THE BRAHMIN SEPOY GROWING RESTLESS, chap. i.

Nizam, the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, and the Straits Settlements, their remonstrances were of no avail. Whereever a surplus revenue could be obtained, it was paid, of course, into the Bengal treasury ; where a deficit occurred, as in the case of Burmah and the country of the five rivers, Bengal or Madras made things appear pleasant. Meanwhile the Sepoys of the former Presidency complained that they were harassed by long marches, sent far away over the sea in one direction, and in another, beyond the confines of Hindostan, where they must expect to live in perpetual conflict with tribes of men who surpassed them in physical power and daring. A feeling compounded of the weariness that possessed the Greeks of Alexander when they arrived from the path of the setting sun on the banks of the Jhelum, and of the insolence of the Roman PraBtorians, filled their minds, and the far-sighted Napier warned the Government that the fidelity of the Indian host was not to be relied on. They had come to despise authority, and felt themselves to be objects of dread to their nominal masters, who anxiously availed themselves of every chance pretext for enlarging their immunities, and increasing their store of comforts. The system under which they held together had grown utterly unsuited to the maintenance of discipline ; age, and not merit, constituted the only claim to promotion ; strength of will and vigour of brain were of no use to the man who could not show gray hairs and an increasing stomach. The guards were relieved weekly, and when the Brahmin was not on sentry, he took off his uniform, tied a native cloth round his loins, and took his ease like any Sybarite. Before he could cook his food, he must undergo ablutions and say his prayers, and if the shadow of a Sudra or of a commanding officer was projected upon his brass lotah or his heap of rice, the food and the utensil became accursed.

The Mussulman Khitmutgar, who performs his daily devotions before the shrine of the prophet, will bring the flesh of the unclean beast from the kitchen, where it has been boiled by the Mahomedan cook, and place it on the

CHAP. I. NEGLECT OP THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT. 11

table before the inGdel^ his master ; the punka-wallah will fan the flies away from the joint of beef ; the bearer will throw away dirty water, though each of them in doing so commits an offence against the prejudices of caste. A prospect of good pay on the one hand, and a life of hardship on the other, has sufficient weight with them to overcome religious scruples, and if successive Governments had been as firm with the Bengal Sepoy as necessity has obliged us to be with our domestics, we should have heard nothing of greased cartridges at the present moment, or of the thousand insolent requirements of caste in times past.