The Indian mutiny of 1857

Preface

In writing this short History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 I have aimed at the compilation of a work which, complete in itself, should narrate the causes as well as the consequences of a movement unforeseen, undreamt of, sudden and swift in its action, and which taxed to the utmost the energies of the British people. Preceding writers on the same subject, whilst dealing very amply with the consequences, have, with one exception, but dimly shadowed forth the causes. The very actors in the Mutiny failed to detect them. Sir John Lawrence himself, writing with the fullest knowledge of events in which he played a very conspicuous part, mistook the instrument for the chief cause. He stopped at the greased cartridge. But the greased cartridge was never issued to the great body of the troops, it indeed to any. There must have been a latent motive power to make of an unissued cartridge a grievance so terrible as to rouse into revolt men whose fathers and whose fathers' fathers had vi • Preface.

contributed to the making of the British Empire in India. The greased cartridge, too, did not concern those landowners and cultivators of Oudh and the North-western Provinces, who rose almost to a man. What that latent motive power was I have described fully, and I believe truly, in this volume.

My belief in this respect is founded on personal knowledge and personal observation. Locally chief of the Commissariat Department at Kanhpur when, in January 1856, Sir James Outram crossed the Ganges to depose the King of Oudh, I had witnessed the indignation which the very rumour of his purpose caused among the sipahis of my own guard. I reported their excited state to my superiors, and was laughed at for my pains. But, impressed with the accuracy of my forecast, viz., that the annexation of Oudh would rouse indignation and anger in the sipdhi army, I continued then, and after my transfer, two months later, to an appointment in the Military Audit Department in Calcutta, to keep a careful record of the several occurrences, all apparently of minor import, which supervened when the effects of the annexation of Oudh had been thoroughly realised by the sipdhis. My observations led to the conclusion that they were thoroughly angered, and, a little later, that their minds were being mysteriously worked upon. I kept copious notes of the matters I observed, and I discussed them with my brother officers,

Preface, vii

without, however, finding that my views were shared by any one of them. It would seem, however, that the officer who held the responsible post of Town Major, Major Orfeur Cavenagh, had, from his own observation, arrived at conclusions not dissimilar. He has narrated in his admirable work ^ the observations forced upon him by the changed demeanour of the natives"^ of the North-western Provinces in 1856. But he, too, stood, amongst high-placed Europeans, almost alone in his convictions. The fact is that, up to the very outbreak of the Mutiny at Mirath, no one, from highest to lowest, believed in the possibility of a general combination. Those, and they could be counted on the fingers of one hand, who endeavoured to hint at an opposite conclusion were ridiculed as alarmists. So ingrained was the belief in the loyalty of the sipdhis, and so profound was the ignorance as to the manner in which their minds were affected, that neither the outbreak of Mirath nor the seizure of Dehli entirely removed it. The tone of the governing classes was displayed when the Home Secretary prated about 'a passing and groundless panic,' and when the acting Commander-in-Chief, an old officer of sipdhis, babbled, in June 1857, of reorganisation. But the fact, nevertheless, re-

^ Reminiscences of an Indian Official. By Sir Orfeur Cavenagh. On the subject of the services rendered by this officer, in 1857, I have entered fully in the sixth volume of my larger history.

viii Pi'eface,

mained: Circumstances had proved to me that extraneous causes were at work to promote an ill-feeling, a hatred not personal but national, in the minds of men who for a century had been our truest and most loyal servants. When the Mutiny had been quelled I renewed my researches regarding the origin of this feeling, and, thanks to the confidences of my native friends in various parts of the country, I arrived at a very definite conclusion. That conclusion I placed on record, in 1880, when I published the then concluding volume of a History of the Mutiny, begun by Sir John Kaye, but left unfinished by that distinguished writer. After the publication of that volume I again visited India, and renewed my inquiries among those of my native friends best qualified to arrive at a sound opinion as to the real origin of the Mutiny. The lapse of time had removed any restraints which might have fettered their freedom of speech, and they no longer hesitated to declare that, whilst the action of the Government of India, in Oudh and elsewhere, had undermined the loyalty of the sipahis, and prepared their minds for the conspirators, the conspirators themselves had used all the means in their power to foment the excitement. Those conspirators, they declared, were the Maulavi of Faizdbad, the mouthpiece and agent of the discontented in Oudh ; Nana Sahib ; one or two great personages

Preface, ix

in Lakhnao ; the Rani of Jhansi ; and Kunwar Singh. The action of the land system introduced into the North-west Provinces by Mr Thomason, had predisposed the population of those provinces to revolt. There remained only to tiie conspirators to find a grievance which should so touch the strong religious susceptibilities of the sipdhfs as to incite them to overt action. Such a grievance they found in the greased cartridge. By the circulation of chapatfs they then intimated to the rural population that the time for action was approaching. This version of the immediate causes of the Mutiny is known to be true by some at least who will read these pages ; it is known to be true by all who have taken the trouble to dive below the surface. I have accordingly given it a prominent place in this volume.

The task of compressing within about four hundred pages the story of a Mutiny which abounded in scenes of action, so many, so varied, so distinct from each other ; of a Mutiny in which every station occupied by English men and English women was either a camp or a battleground ; in the outset of which our countrymen, in the several sub-divisions of India, were in the position of detached parties of a garrison, unable to communicate with headquarters or with one another, suddenly surprised and set upon by men whom they had implicitly trusted ; has been one

X Preface.

•

the difficulty of which I never realised until I had taken it in hand. When a writer has at his command unlimited space, his task is comparatively easy. He can then do justice to all the actors in the drama. But I have found it most difficult to mention the names of all who have deserved in a volume every page of which must be devoted to the relation of events. And although my publishers, with a generosity I cannot sufficiently acknowledge, permitted me to increase, by an additional fourth, the number of pages allotted to the series of which this volume is the second issue, I am conscious that I have not sufficiently dwelt upon the splendid individual achievements of many of those who contributed to the final victory. The fact is that there are so many of them. There never has been an event in History to which the principle of the Order of the Day, published by Napoleon on the morrow of Austerlitz, applies more thoroughly than to the Mutiny of 1857. '" It will be enough for one of you to say," said the Emperor, in his famous bulletin, " I was at the Battle of Austerlitz," for all your fellow-citizens to exclaim, " There is a brave man ! " ' Substitute the words ' Indian Mutiny ' for the ' Battle of Austerlitz ' and the phrase applies to that band of heroes whose constancy, whose courage, and whose devotion saved India in 1857. One word as to the spelling I have adopted. It is similar to the spelling which appears in the

Preface, xi

cabinet edition of Kayes and Mallesons History^ to the spelling adopted by Captain Eastwick in Murray's admirable guide-books for India, and it is the correct spelling. Some critics have ignorantly remarked that the natives of India employ no definite spelling for their proper names. But this remark betrays the prejudice of the traveller who disdains to learn. The natives use not only a well-defined spelling for their proper names, but every name has a distinct meaning. The barbaric method adopted by our forefathers a century and a half since, when they were ignorant of the native languages, and wrote simply according to the sound which reached ears unaccustomed to the precise methods of an Oriental people, totally alters and disfigures that meaning. Take, for example, the word * Kdnhpur,' written, in accordance with barbaric custom, * Cawnpore.' Now, *Kdnhpur* has a definite meaning. * Kinh,' or * husband,' is one of the favourite names of ' Krishna.' * Pur ' means * a city.' The combination of the two words signifies * Krishna's city.' But what is the meaning of ' Cawnpore ' ? It does not even correspond to the pronunciation as the name of the place is pronounced by the natives. It serves to remind us of a period of ignorance and indifference to native methods over which it is surely kind to draw the veil. The same reasoning applies to every proper name in India. It is true I have spelt 'Calcutta,' * Bombay,' and the 'Ganges* acxii Preface.

cordirrg to the conventional method ; but the two places and the river have a long European record, and their names thus spelt are so ingrafted in the connection between India and Europe that it would be pedantry to alter them. But Kdnhpur and the places to the north-west and north of it were but little knowm before the Mutiny, and it seems becoming that the events which brought them into European prominence should introduce them under the names which properly belong to them, and which no European prejudice can permanently alter.

It remains for me now only to acknowledge gratefully the courteous manner in which Messrs W. H. Allen & Co. granted me permission to use, in a reduced form, the plans they had prepared for their larger history of the Indian Mutiny.

G. B. MALLESON.

27 West Cromwell Road, October 10, 1890.

Contents

PREFACE.

FACE

I. INTRODUCTORY, . . . *. I

Chapter I Introductory

In the history of the world there is no more wonderful story than that of the making of the British Empire in India. It was not the result of deliberate design. The early English settlers on the coasts of India thought only of protecting the small tracts of territory conceded to them against aggression from native princes and European rivals. For a long time they never dreamt even of questioning the sovereign rights of the native princes who exercised authority in the territories nearest to their possessions. The instructions which the agents on the spot received from the directors of the parent Company at home indicated, in the plainest language, that their business was to trade ; that to trade advantageously, it was necessary to humour the native princes, to display courtesy and civility, to put away from them all thoughts of aggression. The object of the Company was to pay good dividends. Such a result could only be obtained by the development of peaceful enterprise.

Suddenly there came a change in the action of the English agents on the Coromandel coast. The English

had beeivthe third European nation which had sought to opki a profitable trade with India, and which, for that purpose, had secured lodgments on her coasts. Of the two nations which had preceded them, the Portuguese had declined ; the Dutch were declining. The vigour and energy of the race which inhabits England was producing, in the rapid increase of the trade, the results which invariably follow the development of those qualities, when a fourth power, France, the hereditary rival of England in Europe, began, under the influence of MM. Dumas and Dupleix, to develop, in an extraordinary manner, the resources of a settlement which one of her children, Francois Martin, had made, under very difficult circumstances, on the same coast. This settlement, called from the town of which Martin had obtained possession Pondichery, had reached a high state of prosperity under the careful nursing of the immediate predecessor of Dupleix, M. Benoit Dumas. This able man had known how to conciliate the friendship of the native princes on the coast In return for many civilities and good offices, he had been granted permission to enlist sipdhis and to erect fortifications. Between Pondichery and the English settlement of Madras there had been in his time no thought of hostility. Peace between the rival powers reigned in Europe, and no temptation arose in India to disturb the happy relations of friendship.

In October 1741 M. Dupleix succeeded Dumas at Pondichery. A man remarkably gifted, endowed with a genius which could conceive the largest schemes, he continued that system of ingratiating himself with the native princes, which had been attended with such favourable results in the time of his predecessor. The policy was soon to bear the most brilliant fruits. In 1743 the English and French had taken opposite sides in the war

Rivalry between the French and English, 3

of the Austrian succession. The battle of Dettingen had been fought (June 16, 1743) before war had actually been declared. But the declaration soon followed, and it was not long before warlike operations, begun in Europe, extended to India.

Both nations despatched squadrons to the Indian seas. The English squadron, preceded by instructions from the directors of the East India Company to its agent at Madras, Mr Morse, to use it to destroy the French settlement at Pondichery, arrived first. But before Morse could carry out his instructions he was compelled to ask the sanction to the undertaking of the ruler of the country of which Madras formed a part, the Nuwdb of the Karnatik. But that prince was under the spell exercised by Dumas and Dupleix. He refused the permission, and Pondichery was saved.

Two years later the position of the two principal European powers on the Coromandel coast was inverted. The English squadron was absent : the French squadron was on the spot. Dupleix then prepared for his rivals the fate with which they had threatened him. In vain did the English appeal to the Nuwab of the Karnatik. That prince, gained by Dupleix, declined to interfere in the quarrel between the settlers. The result was that, on September 21, 1746, Madras surrendered to the French, and was promptly occupied by a garrison composed of French troops and of sipahis trained by French officers.

The capture of Madr^is by the French is an important event in the history of the connection of France and England with India ; for it was indirectly the cause of the development of that sipahi army, the great outbreak of which, against its masters, it is my object to describe in this volume. It would .seem that Dupleix, when pleading to the Nuwab for permission to attack

4 The First Sipdhi Army,

Madras, had promised that prince that he would transfer it, after he had captured it, to the Nuwdb for disposal. But when the Nuwab called upon him to fulfil his promise, he displayed great unwillingness to comply. He wished, at least, to level its fortifications, to dismantle it before making it over. The Nuwab, however, had despatched his son with a force to take possession. To dismantle the place in the presence of that force was impossible. Dupleix determined then to use every diplomatic means at his disposal to persuade the Nuwab to allow him to retain it. But the young prince who represented the Nuwab was impatient, and precipitated a contest by cutting off the water supply of the town and fort. The French governor, Despremesnil, despatched then 400 men and two guns to recover the water springs. It was the first contest on the Coromandel coast between the settlers of either nation and the indigenous population. Up to that time French and English had carefully refrained from all acts of hostility towards the children of the soil. In the princes of the coast they had recognised their landlords, their masters, to whose complaisance they owed the permission to maintain trading stations on the coast. They were to be courted, persuaded, won over, but never opposed. The sortie from Madras of the 2d November 1746 was, then, a rude infringement of a custom till then religiously observed. Its consequences were momentous. The fire of the two French field-pieces, well directed and continuous, put to flight the cavalry of the Nuwdb. The water springs were regained without the loss by the French of a single man, whilst about seventy Mughal horsemen bit the dust.

The son of the Nuwab, Maphuz Khdn by name, was not present on this occasion. When he heard of it he attributed the result to accident, to bad leading, to any

First Victory of the Europeans, 5

cause but the right one. He would show himself, he said, how these Europeans should be met. He had heard, the very day of the defeat of his cavalry, that a small force, composed of 230 Frenchmen and 700 trained sipahis, was approaching Madras from Pondichery, and would attempt to cross the little river Adyar, near St Thome, on the 4th (November). Maphuz Khan had at his disposal 10,000 men. He took at once a resolution worthy of a great commander. He marched with his whole army to St Thome, occupied a position on the northern bank of the Adyar, so strong and so commanding that he could not fail, if the combatants were at all equal in military qualities, to crush the little force marching on Madras.

Maphuz Khan was on the chosen spot, eager for combat, when the small French force appeared in sight. Paradis, who commanded it, was an engineer, a man who knew not fear, and who was not easily moved from his purpose. He saw the serried masses in front of him, barring his way. To attack them he must wade through the river, exposed to their fire. Had he hesitated an instant the story of the Europeans in India might have been different. But Paradis recognised, as many English commanders after him have recognised, that the one way for the European to pursue when combating Asiatics is to go forward. He did not hesitate a moment. Without waiting even to reconnoitre, he dashed into the river, scrambled up the bank, formed on it in line, delivered a volley, and charged. The effect was momentous. Never was there fought a more decisive battle, a battle more pregnant with consequences. The army of the Nuwdb was completely defeated. Vigorously pursued, it vanished, never again to appear in line against a European enemy, unless supported by the presence of that enemy's European rival.

6 Consequences of the Victory,

It is impossible to over-estimate the effects on the minds of the native princes and native soldiers of Southern India of the victory gained by the French at St Thome. The famous historian, Mr Orme, who was almost a contemporary, wrote of it that it broke the charm which had invested the Indian soldiers with the character of being *a brave and formidable enemy.' Another writer^ has recorded of it that, ' of all the decisive battles fought in India, there is not one more memorable than this. The action at St Thome completely reversed the positions of the Nuwab and the French governor. Not only that, but it inaugurated a new era, it introduced a fresh order of things, it was the first decided step to the conquest of Hindustan by a European power.'

There can be no doubt but that the result of the battle gave birth in the mind of Dupleix to ideas of conquest, of supremacy, even of empire, in Southern India. It is no part of this work to follow the course he adopted to secure the triumph of those ideas ; but this at least has to be admitted, that the scheme of forming a regular force of trained native soldiers, if it did not actually date from the victory of St Thome, acquired from it a tremendous impetus. Thereafter the spectacle was witnessed of the representatives of two European nations, longtime enemies in Europe, taking opposite sides in the quarrels of native princes in Southern India, and for that purpose employing not only their own countrymen but natives armed and drilled on the European system, led by European officers, vying with their European comrades in deeds of daring and devotion, and becoming by degrees the main supports of their European masters. After the lapse of a few years the European nation which inaugurated the new system

^ The Decisive Battles of India, fro7n 1 746 to 1 849 inclusive. New Edition Page 16.

A Hu7idred Years Later. 7

was completely vanquished by its rival. But before that could be accomplished the system had taken a firm hold of that rival. When, in 1756, Clive set out from Madras to recover Calcutta from the hands of Suraju-daulah, he took with him, in addition to his 900 Europeans, 1200 sipahis, natives of Southern India, armed and drilled on the European system. These men formed the nucleus of that glorious native army which, led by European officers, helped their English masters to win Bengal and Bihar from the satraps of the Mughals ; to wrest Banaras and the delta of the Ganges from the Nuwab Wazir of Oudh ; to expel the Marathas from the North-west Provinces ; to establish a frontier on the Satlaj ; to invade Afghanistan ; and, finally, to acquire the Panjab.

In another work^ I have told in detail the principal achievements of that army up to the time when Lord Dalhousie annexed the Panjab (1849). During that period of a hundred years the organisation of the native army had been more than once altered, but the spirit of devotion to its European officers had been manifested throughout all the changes on many memorable occasions. In the time of Clive the sipahis had stood firmly by their European masters (1766) when the European troops in India, officers and men, had mutinied. They had never shrunk from following their European officer whithersoever he would lead them. And if, on some rare occasions, some few of them had displayed momentary disaffection, that disaffection had been, up to 1857, the result of feelings in which there was not the smallest tinge of patriotism. Speaking broadly, the result in each instance was the consequence of an attempt, well meant but clumsily carried out, to graft western ideas upon an

1 The Decisive Batiks of India. LondoxT : W. II. Allen & Co, iSSS. New Edition.

8 Forcing Western Ideas .

oriental people. The secret of the influence of the Englishman in India has lain in the fact that he had so conducted himself, in all his relations with the children of the soil, that his word had come to be regarded as equal to his bond. It was only when the sipahi, at Vellor in 1806, at Barrackpur in 1824 and again in 1852, in the North-western Provinces in 1844, in the Panjab in 1849-50, deemed that the promises made to him on his enlistment had been deliberately violated, that he displayed an obstinate determination to break with his master rather than to continue service on terms which, it seemed to him, could be disregarded at that master's pleasure.

Action of a different character, although based on the same principle, so dear to the untravelled Englishman, of forcing the ideas in which he has been nurtured upon the foreign people with whom he is brought into contact, assisted, especially after the first Afghan war, to loosen the bonds of discipline, which, up to that period, had bound the sipdhi to his officer. In the time of Clive the sipahi army had been officered on the principle which, in India, is known as the irregular system. The men were dressed in the oriental fashion, the companies were commanded by native officers ; the European officers attached to each battalion, few in number, were picked men, selected entirely for their fitness to deal with and command native troops. The powers of the commanding officer were large. He was, to the sipahi, the impersonification of the British power in India. His word was law. Beyond him the mind of the sipdhi did not care to travel. The sipahi did not concern himself with regulations and appeals to the Commander-in-Chief. The system had answered admirably. It was in force throughout the reigns of Clive and Warren Hastings, and in no single respect had it failed.

upon an Eastern People, 9

But in course of time the idea came to the ruling authorities in India that great advantage would accrue {{ the sipahi regiments were to be remodelled on the system then prevailing in the British army. Just before the great Marquess Wellesley, then Lord Mornington, arrived in India, such a scheme was carried into effect (1796). The dress of the sipdhis was assimilated to that of his European comrades. The native officers, though maintained, were relegated to an inferior position. The English system, with its list of captains, lieutenants, and ensigns, supervised by a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a major, was introduced into the native army, and that army was brought more completely than it had ever been before into the European centralising system.

Fortunately for the tranquillity of British India it was only gradually, almost imperceptibly, that the great powers of the commanding officer were interfered with. Under the new system the sipdhis fought well against Tipu Sahib, against the Marathas, against the Pindaris, and against the Peshwa. They conducted themselves with their accustomed courage and resolution in the first war with Burma, 1825-6. Then came a period of peace, to be broken only in 1838 by the first invasion of Afghanistan.

That the disasters of the first Afghan war had an effect on the feelings with which the sipahi had until then regarded his English master is undeniable. During that war he had behaved with remarkable courage, self-denial, and devotion. A distinguished officer who served in it declared on a public occasion, after the return of the troops, that his personal experience had convinced him that, properly led, the sipahi would follow his English officer anywhere, and would bear uncomplainingly any amount of hardships. But the imagination exercises upon the mind of an oriental an influence which is often not at

10 The First Afghdn War.

all understood by the colder nature of the Englishman. Notwithstanding the triumphs of Nott and Pollock in the last phases of the war, the sipahi recognised that for the first time the enterprise of his English master against a native power had failed. There was no disguising the fact that the English troops had suffered greatly, and had finally retreated; that the soldiers of the Punjab, a territory which they had traversed on sufferance, had scoffed and jeered at them whenever they came in contact with them. They realised that a heavy blow had been dealt to British prestige. Possibly, with that tendency to exaggeration which characterises imaginative natures, they thought the blow greater than it actually had been.

But the retreat from Afghanistan was but the beginning of many evils. Within two years of the return of the army Lord Ellenborough annexed the province of Sind. The annexation was absolutely necessary, and had the Government of India been ruled by men of Indian experience, that is, by men possessing experience of the natives of India north-west of Bengal, the annexation might have been made a source of strength, instead of for a time weakening the relations of the Government with its native army, and in the end impairing its efficiency.

The first step taken by the Government shook the confidence of the sipahis in its promises. Up to that time certain extra allowances for food had been granted to all sipahi regiments serving beyond the then British frontier. Now, service in the hot and arid regions of Sind had always been distasteful to the sipahi of the Bengal Presidency, but he was reconciled to the discomforts by the promise that, whilst employed in that province, he should receive a considerable addition to his pay. But the Government of India argued that the incorporation of Sind within the British territories had cancelled the pre-

Mistakes of the Indian Government. 1 1

vailing regulations referring to service beyond the Indus, and they notified the fact to the several divisional commanders. The result was to create so great a revulsion in the minds of the sipahis that the native regiments under orders for Sind refused to march thither.

Ultimately the difficulty was got over, but in a manner not very creditable to the Government. The Bengal troops were relieved of the necessity of garrisoning Sind, and their place was taken by native troops from Bombay. One commanding officer was dismissed the service because, to induce his men to march, he had guaranteed them the allowances to which they considered themselves entitled, as indeed, upon the principles of abstract justice, they were. One regiment was disbanded. Sipahis in others were selected for punishment. The Government of India believed they had by these and kindred measures stayed the plague, when in reality they had shaken to the core the confidence of the sipahis in their justice, and laid the foundation of the evils which followed thirteen years later.