XIX. THE STORY OF THE LUCKNOW RESIDENCY…

XIX. THE STORY OF THE LUCKNOW RESIDENCY

There were events that made a deeper impression on the minds of the English public; military exploits more grand and comprehensive; episodes more fatal, more harrowing; trains of operation in which well-known heroic names more frequently found place—but there was nothing in the whole history of the Indian mutiny more admirable or worthy of study than the defence of Lucknow by Brigadier Inglis and the British who were shut up with him in the Residency. Such a triumph over difficulties has not often been placed upon record. Nothing but the most resolute determination, the most complete soldierly obedience, the most untiring watchfulness, the most gentle care of those who from sex or age were unable to defend themselves, the most thorough reliance on himself and on those around him, could have enabled that gallant man to bear up against the overwhelming difficulties which pressed upon him throughout the months of July, August, and September. He occupied one corner of an enormous city, every other part of which was swarming with deadly enemies. No companion could leave him, without danger of instant death at the hands of the rebel sepoys and the Lucknow rabble; no friends could succour him, seeing that anything less than a considerable military force would have been cut off ere it reached the gates of the Residency; no food or drink, no medicines or comforts, no clothing, no ammunition, in addition to that which was actually within the place at the beginning of July, could be brought in. Great beyond expression were the responsibilities and anxieties of one placed in command during eighty-seven of such days—but there was also a moral grandeur in the situation, never to be forgotten.

In former chapters of this work,[94] much has been said concerning Lucknow, its relations towards the British government on the one hand, and the court of Oude on the other, and the operations which enabled Havelock and Neill to bring a small reinforcement to its British garrison towards the close of September; but what the garrison did and suffered during the three months before this succour could reach them, has yet to be told. The eventful story may be given conveniently in this place, as one among certain intermediate subjects between the military operations of Sir Henry Havelock and those of Sir Colin Campbell.

Let us endeavour, by recapitulating a few facts, to realise in some degree the position of the British at Lucknow when July commenced. The city is a little over fifty miles from Cawnpore—exactly fifty to the Alum Bagh, fifty-three to the Residency, and fifty-seven to the cantonment. Most of its principal buildings, including the Residency, were on the right or southwest bank of the river Goomtee. There was a cantonment Residency, and also a city Residency, at both of which, according to his daily duties, it was the custom of the lamented Sir Henry Lawrence to dwell, before the troubles of the mutiny began; but it is the city Residency which has acquired a notoriety that will never die. It is also necessary to bear in mind that the mere official mansion called the Residency bore but a small ratio to the area and the buildings now known to English readers by that name. This ambiguity is not without its inconveniences, for it denotes a Residency within a Residency. Understanding the Residency to mean English Lucknow, the part of the city containing the offices and dwellings of most of the official English residents, then it may be described as an irregular quadrangle a few hundred yards square, jutting out at the north corner, and indented or contracted at the west. Within that limit were numerous residences and other buildings, some military, some political or civil, some private. The word ‘garrison’ was applied after the defence began, to buildings which had previously been private or official residences; if, therefore, the reader meets in one map with ‘Fayrer’s House,’ and in another with ‘Fayrer’s Garrison,’ he must infer that a private residence was fortified as a stronghold when the troubles began. In this chapter we shall in most instances denominate the whole area as the intrenchment or enclosure, with the Residency itself as one of the buildings; and we shall furthermore retain the original designation of house, rather than garrison, for each of the minor residences. The northeast side of the whole enclosure was nearly parallel with the river; and the north corner was in near proximity to an iron bridge carrying a road over the river to the cantonment.

How the British became cooped up within that enclosure, the reader already knows; a few words will bring to recollection the facts fully treated in the chapters lately cited. We have there seen that there were burnings of bungalows, and cartridge troubles, as early as April, in the cantonment of Lucknow; that on the 3d of May some of the native troops became insubordinate at the Moosa Bagh, a military post three or four miles northwest of the Residency; that the 3d Oude infantry was broken into fragments by this mutiny and its consequences; that Sir Henry Lawrence sought to restore a healthy feeling by munificently rewarding certain native soldiers who had remained faithful under temptation; that towards the close of the month he attended very sedulously to various magazines and military posts in and near the city; that he fortified the English quarter by placing defence-works on and near the walls by which it was already three-fourths surrounded, and by setting up other defences on the remaining fourth side; that he brought all the women and children, and all the sick, of the English community, into the space thus enclosed and guarded; that on the last two days of the month he had the vexation of seeing most of the native troops in Lucknow and at the cantonment, belonging to the 13th, 48th, and 71st infantry, and the 7th cavalry, march off in mutiny towards Seetapoor; and that of the seven hundred who remained behind, he did not know how many he could trust even for a single hour. Next, under the month of June, we have seen that nearly all the districts of Oude fell one by one into the hands of the insurgents, increasing at every stage the difficulties which beset Sir Henry as civil and military chief of the province; that he knew the mutineers were approaching Lucknow as a hostile army, and that he looked around in vain for reinforcements; that he paid off most of the sepoys still remaining with him, glad to get rid of men whose continuance in fidelity could not be relied on; that he greatly strengthened the Residency, and also the Muchee Bhowan, a castellated structure northwest of it, formerly inhabited by the dependents of the King of Oude; that all his letters and messages to other places became gradually cut off, leaving him without news of the occurrences in other parts of India; that he stored the Residency with six months’ provisions for a thousand persons as a means of preparing for the worst; and that on the last day of the month he fought a most disastrous battle with the mutineers at Chinhut, seven or eight miles out of Lucknow. Then, when July opened, we have seen the British in a critical and painful situation. Lawrence having lost many of his most valued troops, could no longer garrison the Muchee Bhowan, the cantonment, the dâk bungalow, or any place beyond the Residency. No European was safe except within the Residency enclosure; and how little safety was found there was miserably shewn on the 2d of the month, when a shell from the insurgents wounded the great and good Sir Henry Lawrence, causing his death on the 4th, after he had made over the military command of Lucknow to Brigadier Inglis, and the civil command to Major Banks.

The Europeans, then, become prisoners within the walls of the Residency enclosure at Lucknow—officers, soldiers, revenue-collectors, judges, magistrates, chaplains, merchants, ladies, children. And with them were such native soldiers and native servants as still remained faithful to the British ‘raj.’ What was the exact number of persons thus thrown into involuntary companionship at the beginning of July appears somewhat uncertain; but an exact enumeration has been given of those who took up their quarters within the Residency on the 30th of May, when the symptoms of mutiny rendered it no longer safe that the women and children should remain in the city or at the cantonment. The number was 794.[95] The principal persons belonging to the European community at Lucknow were the following: Sir Henry Lawrence, chief-commissioner; Captain Hayes, military secretary; Major Anderson, chief-engineer; Brigadier Inglis, commandant of the garrison; Brigadier Handscomb, commandant of the Oude brigade; Captain Carnegie, provost-marshal; Captain Simons, chief artillery officer; Colonel Master, 7th native cavalry; Colonel Case and Major Low, H.M. 32d foot; Major Bruyère, 13th native infantry; Major Apthorp, 41st native infantry; Colonel Palmer and Major Bird, 48th native infantry; Colonel Halford, 71st native infantry; Brigadier Gray, Oude Irregulars; Mr Gubbins, finance commissioner; Mr Ommaney, judicial commissioner; Mr Cooper, chief-secretary. Some of these died between the 30th of May and the 4th of July, but a few only. When the whole of the Europeans, officers and privates, had been hastily driven by the mutiny from the cantonment to the Residency; when all the native troops who remained faithful had been in like manner removed to the same place; and when the Muchee Bhowan and all the other buildings in Lucknow had been abandoned by the British and their adherents—the intrenched position at and around the Residency became necessarily the home of a very much larger number of persons; comprising, in addition to the eight hundred or so just adverted to, many hundred British soldiers, and such of the sepoys as remained ‘true to their salt.’

In one sense, the Europeans were not taken by surprise. They had watched the energetic exertions of Sir Henry during the month of June, in which he exhibited so sagacious a foresight of troubles about to come. They had seen him accumulate a vast store of provisions; procure tents and firewood for the Residency; arm it gradually with twenty-four guns and ten mortars; order in vast quantities of shot, shell, and gunpowder, from the Muchee Bhowan and the magazines; make arrangements for blowing up all the warlike matériel which he could not bring in; bury his barrels of powder beneath the earth in certain open spots in the enclosure; bury, in like manner, twenty-three lacs of the Company’s money, until more peaceful days should arrive; destroy many outlying buildings which commanded or overtopped the Residency; organise all the males in the place as component elements in a defensive force; bring in everything useful from the cantonment; build up, in front of the chief structures in the enclosure, huge stacks of firewood, covered with earth and pierced for guns; bring the royal jewels and other valuables from the king’s palace into the Residency for safety; and disarm—much to their chagrin—the servants and dependents of the late royal family. All this the Europeans had seen the gallant Lawrence effect during the five weeks which preceded his death. Of the non-military men suddenly converted into soldiers, Captain Anderson says: ‘Sir Henry Lawrence deemed it expedient to enrol all the European and Eurasian writers in the public offices as volunteers, and he directed arms and ammunition to be served out to them. Some of these men were taken into the volunteer cavalry—which also comprised officers civil and military—and the remainder were drilled as infantry. At the commencement, when these men were first brought together, to be regularly drilled by sergeants from Her Majesty’s 32d regiment, the chance of ever making them act in a body seemed almost hopeless. There were men of all ages, sizes, and figures. Here stood a tall athletic Englishman; there came a fat and heavy Eurasian, with more width about the waist than across the chest; next to the Eurasian came another of the same class, who looked like a porter-barrel, short and squat, and the belt round his waist very closely resembled a hoop; not far off you observed an old, bent-double man, who seemed too weak to support the weight of his musket and pouch.... We must not always judge by appearances. Amongst this awkward-looking body there sprang up, during the siege, bold, intrepid, and daring men!’

Notwithstanding these preparations, however, the calamity fell upon the inmates too suddenly. The fatal result of the battle of Chinhut compelled every one to take refuge within the Residency enclosure; even those who had hitherto lived in the city, rushed in, without preparation, many leaving all their property behind them except a few trifling articles. No one was, or ever could be, bitter against Sir Henry Lawrence; yet were there many criticisms, many expressions of regret, at the policy which led to the battle; and it is unquestionable that much of the misery subsequently borne arose from the precipitate arrangements rendered inevitable on the 30th of June and the following day. When they saw the rebels march into Lucknow, invest the Residency, set up a howitzer-battery in front of it, and loophole the walls of houses for musketry, the Europeans could no longer wait to provide for domestic and personal comforts, or even conveniences: they hastened to their prison-house with such resources as could be hastily provided.

Here, then, was a British community thrown most unexpectedly into close companionship, under circumstances trying to all. It is no wonder that some among the number kept diaries of the strange scenes they witnessed, the sad distresses they bore; nor could there be other than a strong yearning on the part of the English public for a perusal of such diaries or narratives. Hence the publication of several small but deeply interesting volumes relating to the defence of Lucknow—one by Mr Rees, a Calcutta merchant, who happened, unluckily for himself, to be at Lucknow when the troubles began; another by the wife of one of the two English chaplains; a third by Captain Anderson; a fourth by a staff-officer.[96] Such diaries, when used in illustration and correction one of another, are and must ever be the best sources of information concerning the inner life of Lucknow during that extraordinary period.

Terrible was the confusion within the Residency enclosure for the first few days. Those who had hastened into the place from other spots were endeavouring to find or make something which they could call ‘home;’ those who had been wounded at Chinhut were suffering in agony within the walls of a building hastily fitted up for them; while the military men looked anxiously around at the defences of the place, to see what could be done to keep the enemy out. When the officers, civil or military, went on the roofs of the houses, they had the mortification of seeing the mutineers gradually concentrating their forces towards the Residency; they saw, also, that the prisoners had escaped from the jails, to join the ranks of those who hated or at any rate opposed the Feringhees.

Arrangements had for some time been in progress, and were now hastily completed, to fortify the principal buildings within the enclosure. If we imagine this English Lucknow to be an irregular diamond-shaped enclosure, with the acute angles very nearly north and south; then it may be said that the south angle was the nearest point to the Cawnpore road, and the north angle the nearest to the iron bridge over the Goomtee towards the cantonment. Near the south point was the house of Captain Anderson, standing in the middle of a garden or open court surrounded by a wall; the house was defended by barricades, and loopholed for musketry; while the garden was strengthened by a trench and rows of palisades. Next to this house, and communicating with it by a hole in the wall, was a newly constructed defence-work that received the name of the Cawnpore Battery, mounted with guns, and intended to command some of the houses and streets adjacent to the Cawnpore road. Mr Deprat’s house had a verandah which, for defensive purposes, was blocked up with a mud-wall six feet high and two feet and a half thick; this wall was continued in a straight line to that of the next house, and carried up to a height of nine feet, with loopholes for musketry. Next to this was a house occupied as a school for boys of the Martinière College,[97] strengthened by a stockade of beams placed before it; and adjacent was a street or road defended by stockades, barricades, and a trench. Further towards the western angle of the enclosure was a building formerly known as the Daroo Shuffa or King’s Hospital, but now called the Brigade Mess-house, having a well-protected and lofty terrace which commanded an exterior building called Johannes’ house. In its rear was a parallelogram, divided by buildings into two squares or courts, occupied in various ways by officers and their families. Then came groups of low brick buildings around two quadrangles called the Sikh Squares, on the tops of which erections were thrown up to enable the troops to fire out upon the town. Separated from these by a narrow lane was the house of Mr Gubbins, the financial commissioner; the lane was barricaded by earth, beams, and brambles; the buildings were strengthened in every way; while the extreme western point was a battery formed by Mr Gubbins himself. Then, passing along the northwest side were seen in turn the racket-court, the slaughter-house, the sheep-pen, and the butcher-yard, all near the boundary of the fortified position, and separated one from another by wide open spaces; there was a storehouse for bhoosa (cut chaff for cattle-food), and a guardhouse for Europeans; and all the buildings were loopholed for musketry. In the rear of the Bhoosa Intrenchment, as this post was called, was Mr Ommaney’s house, guarded by a deep ditch and a cactus-hedge, and provided with two pieces of ordnance. North of the slaughter-house a mortar-battery was formed. The English church was the next important building towards the north; it was speedily converted into a granary; and in the church-yard was formed a mortar-battery capable of shelling all the portion of the city between it and the iron bridge. This church-yard was destined afterwards to present melancholy proofs of the large number of deaths among the English defenders of the place. Beyond the church-yard was Lieutenant Innes’s house, in dangerous proximity to many buildings held by the rebels, and bounded on two sides by a garden; it was a difficult but most important duty to strengthen this house as much as possible. The extreme northern part of the whole enclosure, not five hundred yards from the iron bridge, was scarcely susceptible of defence in itself; but it was fully protected by the Redan Battery, constructed by Captain Fulton: this was decidedly the best battery in the whole place, commanding a wide sweep of city and country on both banks of the river. Along the northeast side, connected at one end with the Redan, was a series of earthworks, fascines, and sand-bags, loopholed for musketry, and mounted with guns. A long range of sloping garden-ground was turned into a glacis in front of the line of intrenchment just named. In the centre of the northern half of the whole place was the Residency proper, the official home of the chief-commissioner; this was a large and beautiful brick building, which was speedily made to accommodate many hundred persons; and as it was on high ground, the terrace-roof commanded a view of the whole city—to whoever would incur the peril of standing there.[98] The hospital, a very large building near the eastern angle of the whole enclosure, had once been the banqueting-room for the British resident at the King of Oude’s court; but it was now occupied as a hospital, a dispensary, officers’ quarters, and a laboratory for making fuses and cartridges; it was defended by mortars and guns in various directions. The Ballee or Bailey guard was near the hospital, but on a lower level; various parts of it were occupied as a store-room, a treasury, and barracks; the portion really constituting the Bailey guard gate, the station of the sepoys formerly guarding the Residency, was unluckily beyond the limits of the enclosure, and was productive of more harm than good to the garrison; as a means of security, the gateway was blocked up with earth, and defended by guns. Dr Fayrer’s house, south of the hospital, had a terrace-roof whence rifles were frequently brought to bear on the insurgents, and near it a gun or two were placed in position. Southward again was the civil dispensary; and near this the post-office, a building which, from its position and construction, was one of the most important in the whole place; soldiers were barracked in the interior, a shell and fuse room was set apart, the engineers made it their head-quarters, several families resided in it, and guns and mortars were planted in and around it. The financial-office, and the house of Mrs Sago (mistress of a charity-school), were on the southeast side of the enclosure, and were with great difficulty brought into a defensive state. The judicial office, near Sago’s house, could only be protected from an open lane by a wall of fascines and earth. The jail, near the Cawnpore Gate, was converted into barracks; and the native hospital became a tolerably sheltered place. The Begum’s Kothee, or ‘lady’s house’ (formerly belonging to a native lady of rank), was in the centre of the whole enclosure; it comprised many buildings, which were afterwards parcelled off as commissariat store-rooms, cooking-rooms, and dwellings for officers’ families.

It will thus be seen that the Residency at Lucknow, so often mentioned in connection with the history of the mutiny, was a small town rather than a single building. But it will also be seen that this small town was most dangerously placed, in juxtaposition to a large city full of hostile inhabitants and revolted sepoys. Before Sir Henry Lawrence took it in hand in June, it could be approached and entered from all sides; and at the beginning of July only a part of the defence-works above described were completed. The officers had to fight and build, to suffer and work, to watch and fortify, day after day, under privations difficult for others to appreciate. The various houses, more frequently designated garrisons by those engaged in the siege, did really deserve that title in a military sense; for they were gradually transformed into little forts or strongholds, each placed under one commander, and each defended indomitably against all attacks from the enemy. To give one as an example of many—Captain Anderson, who had resided at Lucknow, as assistant-commissioner, ever since the annexation of Oude, made his own house one of these fortified posts; he had under him eighteen men and one subaltern officer, with whose aid he withstood a five months’ siege, notwithstanding the enemy had nine 9-pounder guns playing on his house. The wall of the compound around the house was levelled, and a stockade put in its place; within the stockade was a ditch, then an earthwork five feet high, and then another ditch with pointed bamboos, forming a chevaux-de-frise. It was, in truth, a small citadel, and one very important for the safety of the whole place.

The siege began on the 1st of July, the day following the disastrous battle of Chinhut. It was indeed a siege, even more so than that to which Sir Hugh Wheeler had been exposed at Cawnpore; for there was not only constant firing of musketry, cannon, and mortars, by the mutineers against the Residency; but there were also subterranean mines or galleries dug from the outer streets under the enclosing wall, to blow up the defenders and their defence-works. At every hour of the day, at every corner of the Residency enclosure, was it necessary to keep strict watch. A telegraph, worked at the top of one of the buildings, gave signals to the officers at the Muchee Bhowan, directing them to blow up that fort, and retire to the Residency with the treasure and the guns. This was a most perilous enterprise, but under the skilful superintendence of Captain Francis and Lieutenant Huxhain it succeeded; 240 barrels of gunpowder, and 600,000 rounds of ammunition, were blown into the air, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy; and then the few officers and soldiers marched from the Muchee Bhowan to the Residency, where they helped to strengthen the wofully small number of efficient fighting-men.[99] All this was done by midnight on the 1st. On the 2d, while resting on a couch after his exhausting and anxious labours, Sir Henry Lawrence was struck by the shell which took away his valuable life; for it was a day on which ten thousand rebels were firing shells, balls, and bullets into or at the Residency. Miss Palmer, daughter of Colonel Palmer of the 48th, had her thigh shattered by a ball which entered one of the buildings; and Mr Ommaney was among the wounded. On the 3d dire confusion was everywhere visible; for all felt that their great leader would die of his wound: none had yet fully realised the appalling difficulties of their position; yet were they distracted by family anxieties on the one hand, and public duty on the other. On the 4th, Lawrence descended to the grave; on that day his nephew, Mr G. H. Lawrence, was wounded; and on that day, also, all order or legitimate trade ceased in the city, for marauders and budmashes plundered the shops. No military honours marked the funeral of Sir Henry; there was neither time nor opportunity for any display; a hurried prayer was repeated amid the booming of the enemy’s cannon, and a few spadefuls of earth speedily covered the mortal remains of one whose good name was not likely soon to die.[100] On or about the 5th, the enemy seized the building known as Johannes’ house, from which they were able to keep up a deadly fire of musketry against Anderson’s house, the jail barracks, the post-office, and the Begum’s Kothee; it was afterwards much regretted that this house had not been included among those demolished by Sir Henry. On the 6th and 7th, the harassing fire continued from various points. Some of the bhoosa, or chopped straw for bullocks’ fodder, had been left in an ill-defended place; it was fired by the enemy, and totally consumed, placing in imminent danger a powder-magazine at no great distance. Major Francis had both his legs cut off by a cannon-ball, while quietly sitting in the mess-room; Mr Marshall, an opium-merchant, was killed, and the Rev. Mr Polehampton was wounded, about this time. It was a cruel vexation to the garrison to see and feel how much they were suffering through the skilful gunnery which the British had taught to the miscreants now in the insurgent army. The enemy’s artillerymen displayed great rapidity, ingenuity, and perseverance, in planting batteries in positions totally unlooked for; some even on house-tops, and others in spots where the garrison could not respond to their fire. It was more than suspected that Europeans were among them; indeed one reckless member of an otherwise worthy English family was recognised among the number, bringing discredit upon brothers and cousins who were at that very time gallantly serving the Company elsewhere. Many of the enemy’s batteries were not more than fifty or a hundred yards distant from the marginal buildings of the Residency enclosure; the balls knocked down pillars and verandahs with fearful accuracy. Most of the deaths, however, from ten to twenty a day, were caused by musket-bullets; the enemy had many good marksmen—especially a rebel African, who used his musket with deadly effect from Johannes’ house. If Sir Henry Lawrence had been a sterner soldier, if he had not been influenced by such considerate feelings for the opinions and prejudices of others, the British would have lost fewer lives than they did in Lucknow. We have already said that many of the houses around the Residency were destroyed by orders of Sir Henry, to prevent the enemy from converting them into strongholds; but it was afterwards known that the military officers under him urged the necessity for a still greater demolition. Brigadier Inglis, when at a later date he made a military report of the siege and the defence, adverted to this point in very decisive language. ‘When the blockade commenced,’ he said, ‘only two of our batteries were completed, part of the defences were yet in an unfinished condition, and the buildings in the immediate vicinity, which gave cover to the enemy, were only very partially cleared away. Indeed, our heaviest losses have been caused by the fire from the enemy’s sharpshooters, stationed in the adjoining mosques and houses of the native nobility, to the necessity of destroying which the attention of Sir Henry had been repeatedly drawn by the staff of engineers; but his invariable reply was: “Spare the holy places, and private property too, as far as possible;” and we have consequently suffered severely from our very tenderness to the religious prejudices and respect to the rights of our rebellious citizens and soldiery. As soon as the enemy had thoroughly completed the investment of the Residency, they occupied these houses, some of which were within easy pistol-shot of our barricades, in immense force, and rapidly made loopholes on those sides which bore on our post, from which they kept up a terrific and incessant fire day and night.’

The second week of the siege began, bringing with it an augmentation of the troubles already bitterly tasted. One day the Bailey guard would be fiercely attacked, another day the Cawnpore Battery, demanding incessant watchfulness on the part of the officers and men posted at those outworks. Brigadier Inglis sent off letters and messages to Cawnpore and Allahabad; but none reached their destination, the messengers being all intercepted on the way. He did not know how his missives fared; he only knew that no aid, no intelligence, reached him, and he measured his resources with an anxious heart. Sometimes a few officers would retire to snatch a little rest just before midnight, and then would be roused at one or two o’clock in the morning by a message that Gubbins’s house—or ‘garrison,’ as most of the houses within the enclosure were now called—or the Bailey guard, or some other important post, was closely attacked. Sleep, food, everything was forgotten at such moments, except the one paramount duty of repelling the enemy at the attacked point. One day a rebel musketeer pushed forward to such a spot as enabled him to shoot Lieutenant Charlton within side the very door of the church. The enemy sometimes fired logs of wood from their cannon and mortars, as if deficient in shot and shell; but they did not slacken from this or any other cause; they sent shots which set the commissioner’s house on fire, causing much danger and difficulty in extinguishing the flames; and it became perilous for any one within the enclosure to be seen for an instant by the enemy—so deadly accurate were their marksmen. Once now and then the officers with a few men, longing for a dash that would inspirit them in the midst of their troubles, would astonish the enemy by making a sortie beyond the defences, spiking a gun or two, despatching a few of the rebels, and hastening back to the enclosure. Lives being, however, too valuable to be risked for advantages so small as these, the brigadier sought rather to discourage than encourage such acts of heroism. Mr Bryson and Lieutenant Baxter were among the many who fell at this time. The officers did men’s duty, the civilians did military duty; for there were not hands enough to guard properly the numerous threatened points. One night all spare hands would be called upon to cover with tarpaulin the bhoosa stacks in the racket-court; on another, civilians who never before did labourers’ work were called up to dig earth and to carry sand-bags for batteries or breastworks; or they would stand sentinels all night in drenching rains. And then, perhaps on returning to their houses or ‘garrisons’ in the morning, they would find them untenable by reason of the torrent of balls and bullets to which they had been exposed. The open spots between the several buildings became gradually more and more dangerous. ‘A man could not shew his nose,’ says Captain Anderson, ‘without hearing the whiz of bullets close to his head. The shot, too, came from every direction; and when a poor fellow had nearly jerked his head off his shoulders in making humble salutations to passing bullets, he would have his penance disagreeably changed into a sudden and severe contortion of the whole body to avoid a round shot or shell. So soon as a man left his post he had no time for meditation; his only plan was to proceed rapidly. In fact, to walk slow was in some places very, very dangerous; and many a poor fellow was shot, who was too proud to run past places where bullets danced on the walls like a handful of pease in a frying-pan.’

The third week arrived. Now were the gallant defenders still more distressed and indignant than they had hitherto been; for the enemy commenced firing at the Brigade Mess, where large numbers of ladies and children had taken refuge; attacks were thus made on those who could not defend themselves, and the officers and soldiers found their attention distracted from necessary duties at other points. Anderson’s house had by this time become so riddled with shot, that the stores were removed from it; and Deprat’s house, similarly battered by the enemy, in like manner became uninhabitable. The buildings near the boundary naturally suffered most; and, as a consequence, those nearer the centre became more and more crowded with inmates. Day by day did officers and men work hard to strengthen the defences. Mortars were placed behind the earthwork at the post-office, to jet forth shells upon the troublesome Johannes’ house; stockades and traverses were made, to screen the entrance to the Residency, within which so many persons were domiciled. Nevertheless the attack increased in vigour quite as rapidly as the defence; for the insurgents appear to have received large reinforcements. Their custom was to fire all night, so as to afford the garrison no rest, and thus tire them out; they so pointed a mortar as to send two shells directly into the Residency itself; they commenced a new battery, to bear upon Gubbins’s house; their cannon-balls—of which there were indications of a new supply—fell upon and into Fayrer’s and Gubbins’s houses, the post-office and the Brigade Mess; a shot burst through a room in which many of the principal officers were breakfasting; a mine was sprung inside the Water Gate, intended to blow up the Redan Battery; and at the same time vigorous attacks were made with guns and musketry on almost every part of the enclosure, as if to bewilder the garrison with crushing onslaughts on every side. The pen cannot describe the state of incessant anxiety into which these daily proceedings threw the forlorn inmates of the place: no one could look forward to a night of sleep after a harassing day; for the booming of cannon, and the anticipated visit of a cannon-ball or a mortar-shell, drove away sleep from most eyelids. It was on the 20th that the specially vigorous attack, just adverted to, was made; so general and energetic, that it almost partook of the character of a storming or assault of a beleaguered city. Nothing but the most untiring assiduity could have saved the garrison from destruction. Every one who could handle a musket or load a cannon, did so; others helped to construct stockades and earthen barriers; and even many of the sick and wounded rose from their pallets, staggered along to the points most attacked, sought to aid in the general cause, and in some instances dropped dead while so doing. Almost every building was the object of a distinct attack. The Redan Battery was fortunately not blown up, the enemy having miscalculated the distance of their mine; but the explosion was followed by a desperate struggle on the glacis outside, in which the insurgents were mowed down by grape-shot before they would abandon their attempt to enter at that point. At Innes’s house, Lieutenant Loughnan maintained a long and fierce contest against a body of insurgents twentyfold more numerous than the little band who aided him; before they desisted, no less than a hundred dead and wounded were carried off by the rebels. The financial office and Sago’s house, entirely defended by non-military men, bore up bravely against the torrent brought against them. The judicial office, under Captain Germon, and Anderson’s house, under Captain Anderson, were not only successfully defended, but the handful of troops aided other points where there were no military men. The Brigade Mess, Gubbins’s house, the houses near the Cawnpore Battery—all were attacked with vigour, but every attack was repelled.

When the muster-roll was called after these exciting scenes, it was found that many valuable lives had been lost. Yet is it truly remarkable that less than thirty persons of all classes in the garrison were killed or wounded on the 20th. No officer was killed; among the wounded were Captains Lowe and Forbes, Lieutenants Edmonstone and M’Farlane, and Adjutant Smith. Mr Rees asserts that the loss of the enemy, during seven hours of incessant fighting, could hardly have been less than a thousand men. It was the grape-shot poured forth from the garrison that worked this terrible destruction. The week had been attended with its usual list of isolated losses within the enclosure. On one day Lieutenant Lester was killed; on another, Lieutenants Bryce and O’Brien were wounded; and on another, Lieutenant Harmer was laid low.

The arrival of the fourth week of the siege found Brigadier Inglis and his companions stout in heart, but yet depressed in spirits; proud of what they had achieved on the 20th, but fearful that many more such dangers would beset them. The detachment of the 32d foot was that on which Inglis most relied in a military point of view, and in that the casualties had been 150 in three weeks. He had sent out repeated messengers, but had hitherto obtained not a word of news from any quarter; shut out from the world of India, he knew of nothing but his own cares and responsibilities. On the 23d, however, a gleam of joy shot through the garrison; a messenger, amid imminent peril, had been to Cawnpore, and brought back news of Havelock’s victories in the Doab. Inglis immediately sent him off again, with an urgent request to the gallant general to advance with his column to Lucknow as quickly as possible. The English residents began to count the days that must elapse before Havelock could arrive—a hopeful thing at the time, but bitterly disappointing afterwards; for they knew not how or why it was that succour did not arrive. Whatever might be the hopes or fears for the future, there was an ever-present danger which demanded daily and hourly attention. Although mortified by their late defeat, the enemy did not on that account give up their attacks. On narrowly watching, the engineers detected the enemy forming a mine beneath the ground from Johannes’ house to the Sikh Square and the Brigade Mess; they could hear the miners at their subterraneous work, and they did what military engineers are accustomed to in such cases—run out a countermine, and destroy the enemy’s handiwork by an explosion. Above ground the attack was maintained chiefly by artillery, the hurling of balls, shells, shrapnels, and those abominable compounds of pitchy and sulphureous substances which artillerymen call ‘stinkpots.’ The breakfast-table of the officers at the post-office was one morning visited by an eight-inch shell, which fell on it without exploding. On the 25th a letter arrived from Colonel Tytler at Cawnpore, the first received from any quarter throughout July; for the former messenger had brought rumours concerning Havelock, not a letter or a message. Great was the joy at learning that Havelock intended to advance to Lucknow; and Inglis at once sent off to him a plan of the city, to aid his proceedings—offering the messenger five thousand rupees if he safely brought back an answer. An anxious time indeed was it for all, and well might they look out for succour. Major Banks, the civil commissioner appointed by Sir Henry Lawrence, was shot dead while reconnoitring from the top of an outhouse; he was an officer who had served nearly thirty years in India, and who, both as a soldier and a linguist, had won a good name. Dr Brydon was wounded; the Rev. Mr Polehampton was killed, as were Lieutenants Lewin, Shepherd, and Archer, and many others whose lives were valuable, not only to their families, but to all in the garrison. The death of Major Banks increased the cares and responsibilities of Brigadier Inglis, who, now that there was no chief-commissioner, felt the necessity of placing the whole community under strict military-garrison rules.

In the official dispatch afterwards prepared by Inglis, full justice was done to the ingenuity and perseverance of the besiegers. Speaking of the large guns placed in batteries on every side of the enclosure, he said: ‘These were planted all round our post at small distances, some being actually within fifty yards of our defences, but in places where our own heavy guns could not reply to them; while the perseverance and ingenuity of the enemy in erecting barricades in front of and around their guns, in a very short time rendered all attempts to silence them by musketry entirely unavailing. Neither could they be effectually silenced by shells, by reason of their extreme proximity to our position, and because, moreover, the enemy had recourse to digging very narrow trenches about eight feet in depth in rear of each gun, in which the men lay while our shells were flying, and which so effectually concealed them, even while working the gun, that our baffled sharpshooters could only see their hands while in the act of loading.’

And now, the reader may ask, what were the ladies and children doing during this terrible month of July; and how did the officers and men fare in their domestic and personal matters? It is a sad tale, full of trouble and misery; and yet it is a heroic tale. No one flinched, no one dreamed for an instant of succumbing to the enemy. It must be remembered, as a beginning of all the privations, that the Europeans went into the Residency very scantily supplied with personal necessaries. When the cantonment was burned during the mutiny of the 31st of May, much property belonging to the officers was destroyed; and when every one hurried in for shelter after the disastrous 30th of June, no time was allowed for making purchases in the city, or bringing in property from bungalows or storehouses outside the official stronghold. Hence every one was driven to make the best of such commodities as had been secured by the last day of June. Even during the greater part of that month the troubles were many; the enclosure Residency was full of officers and men, all hard at work; the heat was excessive; cholera, dysentery, and small-pox were at their deadly work; the church being full of grain, those who sought religious aid in time of need met for divine service in any available spot; most of the native servants ran away when the troubles began; and many of them ended their service by robbing their masters.

How July opened for the British, may faintly be imagined. The commissariat chief was ill; no one could promptly organise that office under the sudden emergency; the food and draught bullocks, unattended to, roamed about the place; and many of them were shot, or tumbled into wells. Terrible work was it for the officers to bury the killed bullocks, lest their decaying carcasses should taint the air in excessively hot weather. Some of the artillery horses were driven mad for want of food and water. Day after day, after working hard in the trenches, the officers had to employ themselves at night in burying dead bullocks and horses—officers, be it understood; for the men were all employed as sentries or in other duties. It was not until after many days that they could turn out of the enclosure all the spare horses, and secure the rest. As the heat continued, and as the dead bodies of animals increased in number, the stench became overpowering, and was one of the greatest grievances to which the garrison were exposed; the temperature at night was often less patiently borne than that by day, and the officers and men were troubled by painful boils. Even when wet days occurred, matters were not much improved; for the hot vapours from stagnant pools engendered fever, cholera, dysentery, and diarrhœa. The children died rapidly, and the hospital-rooms were always full; the sick and wounded could not be carried to upper apartments, because the enemy’s shot and shell rendered all such places untenable. The officers were put on half-rations early in the month; and even those rations they in many cases had to cook for themselves, owing to the disappearance of the native servants. The English ladies suffered unnumbered privations and inconveniences. The clergyman’s wife, in her Diary, told of the very first day of the siege in these words: ‘No sooner was the first gun fired, than the ladies and children—congregated in large numbers in Dr Fayrer’s house—were all hurried down stairs into an underground room called the Tye Khana, damp, dark, and gloomy as a vault, and excessively dirty. Here we sat all day, feeling too miserable, anxious, and terrified to speak, the gentlemen occasionally coming down to reassure us and tell us how things were going on. —— was nearly all the day in the hospital, where the scene was terrible; the place so crowded with wounded and dying men that there was no room to pass between them, and everything in a state of indescribable misery, discomfort, and confusion.’ In the preceding month it had been a hardship for the ladies to be deprived of the luxuries of Anglo-Indian life; but they were now driven to measure comforts by a different standard. They were called upon to sweep their own rooms, draw water from the wells, wash their own clothes, and perform all the menial duties of a household; while their husbands or fathers were cramped up in little outhouses or stables, or anywhere that might afford temporary shelter at night. When food became scanty and disease prevalent, these troubles were of course augmented, and difference of rank became almost obliterated where all had to suffer alike. Many families were huddled together in one large room, and all privacy was destroyed. The sick and wounded were, as may be supposed, in sad plight; for, kind as the rest were, there were too many harassing duties to permit them to help adequately those who were too weak to help themselves. Officers and men were lying about in the hospital rooms, covered with blood and often with vermin; the dhobees or washermen were too weak-handed for the preservation of cleanliness, and few of the British had the luxury of a change of linen; the windows being kept closed and barricaded, to prevent the entrance of shot from without, the pestilential atmosphere carried off almost as many unfortunates as the enemy’s missiles. The writer of the Lady’s Diary, whose narrative is seldom relieved by one gleam of cheerfulness, departs from her habitual sadness when describing the mode in which eleven ladies and seven children slept on the floor in the Tye Khana or cellar, ‘fitting into each other like bits into a puzzle.’ Chairs being few in number, most of the ladies sat on the floor, and at meal-times placed their plates on their knees. The cellar being perfectly dark, candles were lighted at meal-times. The reason for keeping so many persons in this subterranean abode was to lessen the chance of their being shot in any upper apartment. Of one torment, the flies, every person complained bitterly who was shut up in the Residency enclosure on those fearfully hot days. Mr Rees says: ‘They daily increased to such an extent that we at last began to feel life irksome, more on their account than from any other of our numerous troubles. In the day, flies; at night, mosquitoes. But the latter were bearable; the former intolerable. Lucknow had always been noted for its flies; but at no time had they been known to be so troublesome. The mass of putrid matter that was allowed to accumulate, the rains, the commissariat stores, the hospital, had attracted these insects in incredible numbers. The Egyptians could not possibly have been more molested than we were by this pest. They swarmed in millions, and though we blew daily some hundreds of thousands into the air, this seemed to make no diminution in their numbers; the ground was still black with them, and the tables were literally covered with these cursed flies. We could not sleep in the day on account of them. We could scarcely eat. Our beef, of which we got a tolerably small quantity every day, was usually studded with them; and when I ate my miserable boiled lentil-soup and unleavened bread, a number of scamps flew into my mouth, or tumbled into and floated about in my plate.’

Let us proceed, and watch the military operations of the month of August.

The fifth week of the siege opened with the same scenes as before, deepened in intensity. The enemy, it is true, did not attack with more vigour, but the defenders were gradually weakened in every one of their resources—except courage, and the resolution to bear all rather than yield to the enemy. Colonel Tytler’s letter had afforded hope that the relieving column under Havelock would arrive at Lucknow before the end of July; but when the 30th and 31st had passed, and the 1st and 2d of August had passed also, then were their hopes cruelly dashed. It required all the energy of Brigadier Inglis to keep up the spirits of himself and his companions under the disappointment. He did not know, and was destined to remain for some time in ignorance, that Havelock had been forced to return to Cawnpore, owing to the losses suffered by his heroic little band. About the beginning of the month, great numbers of additional rebel sepoys entered Lucknow, increasing the phalanx opposed to the British. They began a new mine near Sago’s house, and another near the Brigade Mess, in which many of the ladies and children were sheltered; and it required all the activity of the officers to frustrate these underground enemies. The rebels planted a 24-pounder near the iron bridge, to batter the church and the Residency. On one day a shell burst in a room of the Begum’s Kothee, where Lieutenant James and Mr Lawrence were ill in bed, but without injuring them; and on another a soldier was shot dead by a cannon-ball in the very centre room of the hospital. Inglis tried, but tried in vain, to get any one to take a letter, even so small as to go into a quill, to Havelock; the enterprise was so perilous, that the offer of a great reward fell powerless. Thus reduced to his own resources, he began anxiously to count up his stores and supplies: he protected the powder-magazine with heavy beams, laden with a great thickness of earth; and he got the civilians to labour at the earthworks, and to watch the batteries, for nearly all his engineers were ill. One engineer-officer, Captain Fulton, was happily spared from illness longer than most of the others; and he laboured unremittingly and most skilfully to baffle the enemy’s mining by countermining: he organised a body of sappers from among the humbler members of the garrison, and begged every one who did sentry-duty at night to listen for and give information concerning any underground sounds that denoted the driving of galleries or mines by the enemy. One of the ladies, Mrs Dorin, was among the number who this week fell from the shots of the enemy. An event of this kind was peculiarly distressing to all; an officer learns to brave death, but he is inexpressibly saddened when he sees tender women falling near him by bullets.

The sixth week arrived. The brigadier, by redoubling his offers, did at length succeed in obtaining the aid of a native, who started on the dangerous duty of conveying a small note to General Havelock at Cawnpore. This done, he renewed his anxious superintendence of matters within the enclosure. The enemy mounted on the top of Johannes’ house, and thence kept up a very annoying fire on the Brigade Mess. They also recommenced mining near the Redan. On the 8th of August the garrison could hear and see much marching and countermarching of troops within the city, without being able to divine its cause; they fondly hoped, when the booming of guns was heard, that Havelock was approaching. This hope was, however, speedily and bitterly dashed; for on the following day a great force of rebels was seen to approach from the direction of the cantonment, cross the river, and join the main body of the insurgents within Lucknow. This was a bad omen, for it prefigured an increase in the number, frequency, and varieties of attack. On the 10th the enemy succeeded in exploding one of their mines opposite Johannes’ house; it blew up sixty feet of palisades and earthen defences. Under cover of this surprise, and of a tremendous firing of guns, the enemy pushed forward into all the buildings near the Cawnpore Battery and Johannes’ house; but they encountered so steady and determined a resistance that they were beaten at all points. Near Sago’s house, too, they fired another mine, which blew up two soldiers; but here, in like manner, they were repulsed after a fierce contest. This explosion was accompanied or attended by an incident almost as strange as that connected with the soldier at Muchee Bhowan; the two men were blown into the air, but both escaped with their lives; one fell within the enclosure, slightly bruised, but not seriously injured; the other, falling into an open road between the enclosure and the enemy, jumped up when he found himself unhurt, and clambered over a wall or through the breach, untouched by the storm of bullets sent after him. On the same day there were other attacks on Innes’s, Anderson’s, and Gubbins’s houses or garrisons. Of the attacks on the Brigade Mess, the Cawnpore Battery, and Anderson’s house, Brigadier Inglis afterwards thus spoke in his dispatch: ‘The enemy sprang a mine close to the Brigade Mess, which entirely destroyed our defences for the space of twenty feet, and blew in a great portion of the outside wall of the house occupied by Mr Schilling’s garrison. On the dust clearing away, a breach appeared through which a regiment could have advanced in perfect order, and a few of the enemy came on with the utmost determination; but they were met with such a withering flank-fire of musketry from the officers and men holding the top of the Brigade Mess, that they beat a speedy retreat, leaving the more adventurous of their numbers lying on the crest of the breach. While this operation was going on, another large body advanced on the Cawnpore Battery, and succeeded in locating themselves for a few minutes in the ditch. They were, however, dislodged by hand-grenades. At Captain Anderson’s post, they also came boldly forward with scaling-ladders, which they planted against the wall; but here, as elsewhere, they were met with the most indomitable resolution; and the leaders being slain, the rest fled, leaving the ladders, and retreated to their batteries and loopholed defences, whence they kept up for the rest of the day an unusually heavy cannonade and musketry fire.’ All the attacks, it is true, were frustrated, but only by fearful labour on the part of the defenders; every man was worn down by exhaustion on this terrible day. A message or rather a rumour was received, obscure in its purport, but conveying the impression that Havelock had been baffled in his attempt to reach Lucknow: news that produced very great despondency in the garrison, among those who had become sick at heart as well as in body. When a cannon-ball rushed along and demolished the verandah of the Residency or chief-commissioner’s house, it could not do less than add to the trepidation of the numerous families domiciled within the walls of that building, already brought into a state of nervous agitation by the incessant noises and dangers. Death and wounds were as rife as ever during this week. A shot broke the leg of Ensign Studdy while breakfasting in the Residency; Captain Waterman was wounded; Lieutenant Bryce died of a wound received some days earlier; Major Anderson, chief-engineer, died of dysentery and over-fatigue, bringing grief to the whole garrison for the loss of a most valuable and intrepid officer. These were the chief names: those of humbler rank who fell to rise no more were too many to be officially recorded; they were hastily buried in the church-yard, and soon driven from the memories of those who had no time to dwell on the past.

Up to the day when the seventh week of the siege opened, there had been twenty letters sent for succour, first by Sir Henry Lawrence, and then by Brigadier Inglis; and to only one of these had a direct reply been received. Only a few of them, indeed, had reached their destinations; and of these few, a reply from one alone safely passed through all the perils between Cawnpore and Lucknow. As has been already said, this reply was not such as to comfort the British residents; they had to rouse themselves to a continuance of the same kind of exertions as before. The enemy did not give them one day, scarcely one hour, of rest. On the 12th of August so fierce an attack was made on the Cawnpore Battery, that all the defenders were forced to shield themselves from the balls and bullets—still remaining at hand, however, in case a closer assault were attempted. It being found, too, that a mine was being run by the enemy in the direction of Sago’s house, some of the officers made a daring sortie to examine this mine, much to their own peril. Then commenced, as before, a system of countermining, each party of miners being able to hear the other working in an adjoining gallery; it became a struggle which should blow the other up; the British succeeded, and shattered all the works of the enemy at that spot. Nothing in the whole progress of the siege was more extraordinary than this perpetual mining and countermining. While the infantry and artillery on both sides were at their usual deadly work in the open air, the Sappers and Miners were converting the ground beneath into a honey-comb of dark galleries and passages—the enemy attempting to blow up the defence-works, and the defenders attempting to anticipate this by blowing up the enemy. Whenever the firing by the mutineers slackened in any material degree, the defenders took advantage of the opportunity to make new sand-bags for batteries and earthworks, in place of the old ones which had been destroyed. The 15th of August was a white day within the enclosure; no burial took place. It was also rendered notable by the receipt of a letter from General Havelock—a letter telling of inability to afford present succour, and therefore a mournful letter; but still it was better than none, seeing that it pointed out to all the necessity for continued exertions in the common cause. Now came the time when a great increase of discomfort was in store for the numerous persons who had been accommodated in the Residency, the official house of the chief-commissioner. The building had been so shaken by shells and balls that it was no longer secure; and the inmates were removed to other quarters. On the 18th a terrible commotion took place; the enemy exploded a mine under the Sikh Square or barrack, and made a breach of thirty feet in the defence-boundary of the enclosure. Instantly all hands were set to work; boxes, planks, doors, beams, were brought from various quarters to stop up the gap; while muskets and pistols were brought to bear upon the assailants. Not only did the gallant fellows within the enclosure repel the enemy, but they made a sortie, and blew up some of the exterior buildings which were in inconvenient proximity. By the explosion on this day, Captain Orr, Lieutenant Meecham, and other officers and men, were hurled into the air, but with less serious results than might have been expected; several, however, were suffocated by the débris which fell upon them.

By the eighth week the garrison had become in a strange way accustomed to bullets and balls; that is, though always in misery of some kind or other, the report of firearms had been rendered so thoroughly familiar to them, through every day and night’s experience, that it was a matter of course to hear missiles whiz past the ear. Mr Rees, speaking of his daily movements from building to building in the enclosure, says: ‘At one time a bullet passed through my hat; at another I escaped being shot dead by one of the enemy’s best riflemen, by an unfortunate soldier passing unexpectedly before me, and receiving the wound through the temples instead; at another I moved off from a place where in less than a twinkling of an eye afterwards a musket-bullet stuck in the wall; at another, again, I was covered with dust and pieces of brick by a round-shot that struck the wall not two inches away from me; at another, again, a shell burst a couple of yards away from me, killing an old woman, and wounding a native boy and a native cook.’ Every day was marked by some vicissitudes. On the 20th, the enemy opened a tremendous cannonading, which knocked down a guard-room over the Mess-house, and lessened the number of places from which the garrison could obtain a look-out. The enemy were also on that day detected in the attempt to run new mines under the Cawnpore Battery and the Bailey guard. This led to a brilliant sortie, headed by Captain M’Cabe and Lieutenant Browne, which resulted not only in the spiking of two of the enemy’s guns, but also in the blowing up of Johannes’ house, which had been such a perpetual source of annoyance to the garrison. It was one of the best day’s work yet accomplished, and cheered the poor, hard-worked fellows for a time. Yet they had enough to trouble them; the Cawnpore and Redan batteries were almost knocked to pieces, and needed constant repair; the judicial office became so riddled with shot that the women and children had to be removed from it; the enemy’s sharpshooters were deadly accurate in their aim; their miners began new mines as fast as the old ones were destroyed or rendered innoxious; and Inglis’s little band was rapidly thinning.

Another week arrived, the last in August, and the ninth of this perilous life in the fortified enclosure. The days exhibited variations in the degree of danger, but not one really bright gleam cheered the hearts of the garrison. An advantage had been gained by the successful mining and blowing up of Johannes’ house, once the residence of a merchant of that name; it had been a post from which an African eunuch belonging to the late king’s court had kept up a most fatal and accurate fire into the enclosure, bringing down more Europeans than any other person in the enemy’s ranks. An advantage was thus gained, it is certain; but there were miseries in abundance in other quarters. Gubbins’s house had become so shot-riddled, that the ladies and children domiciled there were too much imperiled to remain longer; they were removed to other buildings, adding to the number of inmates in rooms already sadly overcrowded. Among the natives in the enclosure, desertions frequently took place; a fact at which no one could reasonably be surprised, but which nevertheless greatly added to the labours of those on whom devolved the defence of the place. Distressingly severe as those labours had all along been, they were now doubly so; for the enemy erected a new battery opposite the Bailey guard, and commenced new mines in all directions. As the defenders could seldom venture on a sortie to examine the enemy’s works of attack, they were driven to the construction of ‘listening-galleries’—underground passages where the sound of the enemy’s mining picks and shovels could be heard. And then would be renewed the digging of countermines, and a struggle to determine which party should be the first to blow up the other. The Mohurrum or Mohammedan festival commenced this week; a period in which fanatical Mussulmans are so fierce against all who dissent from their faith, that the garrison apprehended a new onslaught with more force than ever; this fear passed away, however, for though there was much ‘tom-tom’ processioning and buffalo-horn bugling in the city, the attacks on the enclosure did not differ much from their usual character. Another letter was received from Havelock, which gave joy to men who found that they were not wholly forgotten by friends in the outer world; but when they heard that a period of at least three weeks longer must elapse before he could possibly reach them, their overcharged hearts sank again, and deep despondency existed for a time among them.

During this month of August, the women and children, the sick and wounded, of course suffered much more terribly than in the previous month of July. Every kind of peril and discomfort had increased in severity; every means of succour and solace had diminished in quantity. Death struck down many; disease and wounds laid low a still greater number; and those who remained were a prey to carking cares, which wore down both mind and body. Those who, in a Christian country, are accustomed to pay the last token of respect to departed friends by decent funeral ceremonies, were often pained by their disability to do so in the Lucknow enclosure, under the straitened circumstances of their position. The Rev. Mr Polehampton, after working day and night in his kindly offices among the sick and wounded, was at length himself struck down by cholera; and then came the mournful question, whether he could have a coffin and a separate grave. The writer of the Diary, wife of the clergyman who succeeded Mr Polehampton in his duties as a pastor, says that her husband read the funeral-service over the dead body in presence of the mourning widow, on the day and in the room where the death took place, before removal for instant interment. ‘She (the widow) was extremely anxious he should have a coffin, a wish it seemed impossible to gratify; but —— instituted a search, and found one stored away with some old boxes under the staircase in the hospital; and he also had a separate grave dug for him. Since the siege, the bodies have hitherto always been buried several in the same grave, and sewn up in their bedding, as there are no people and no time to make coffins.’ In their troubled state of feeling, vexations affected the different members of the imprisoned community more acutely than would have been the case at other times. The plague of flies can be adverted to in a half-laughing manner by a man in health; but in the Lucknow enclosure it was a real plague, a source of exquisite misery, against which more complaints were uttered than almost anything else. There were also troublesome and painful boils on the person, brought on by high temperature and insufficient diet and medicines. Whatever might be the amount of care taken, bullocks were frequently killed by the shot of the enemy; and as animals so dying were not fit for human food, it became necessary to bury the carcasses at once. A frightful duty this was, mostly performed (as has already been stated) at night by officers, whose few hours of possible sleep were cut short by this revolting sort of labour. No one could leave the enclosure, except native servants determined on escape; not an inch of ground belonged to the British beyond the limits of the intrenched position; and therefore whatever had to be put out of sight—dead bodies of human beings, carcasses of bullocks and horses, garbage and refuse of every kind—could only so be treated by being buried underground in the few open spots between the buildings. And this, too, in the August of an Indian climate, when even the best sanitary arrangements fail to remove offensive odours. The officers, in all their letters and diaries, spoke of this portion of their labours as being most distressing; while the poor women, cabined by dozens together in single rooms, yearned, but yearned in vain, for the breathing of a little air free from impurities. They dared not move out, for the balls and bullets of the enemy were whizzing across and into every open spot. Sometimes an 18-pounder shot would burst into a room where two or three of them were dressing, or where a larger number were at meals. In some of the houses or ‘garrisons,’ where many ladies formed one community, they used to take it in turn to keep awake for hourly watches during the night; one of them said in a letter: ‘I don’t exactly know what is gained by these night-watchings—except that we are all very nervous, and are expecting some dreadful catastrophe to happen.’ The little children died off rapidly, their maladies being more than could be met by the resources at hand; and those who bore up against the afflictions were much emaciated. The husbands and fathers, worn out with daily fatigue and nightly watching, had little solace to afford their families; and thus the women and children were left to pass the weary hours as best they could. A few little creatures, ‘siege-babies,’ as their poor mothers called them, came into the world during this stormy period; and with them each day was a struggle for life. When the native servants one by one escaped, the discomforts of the English women of course underwent much aggravation; and when the house or bungalow of Mr Gubbins became untenable through shot and bullet, the difficulty was immense of finding shelter elsewhere; every place was already overcrowded. Much additional misery befell the officers and men from this fact—that the commissariat quarter, offensive to every sense on account of the organic accumulations inseparable from the slaughtering and cutting up of animals—was one of the weakest parts in the whole enclosure, and required to be guarded at all hours by armed men, who loathed the spot for the reason just mentioned. The chaplain, too, found the church-yard getting into such a horrible state that he dared not go near the graves to read the funeral-service. Mr Rees mentions an instance to illustrate the anxieties of those who, willing to suffer themselves, were almost crushed by witnessing the privations of those dear to them. ‘He’ (mentioning one of the officers) ‘had at first told me of his wife being feverish and quite overcome with the abominable life she had to lead. And then he talked to me of his boy Herbert; how he was attacked with cholera, and feared he was very ill; and how, instead of being able to watch by his bedside, he had been all night digging at Captain Fulton’s mine; and then how his child next night was convulsed, and what little hope of his darling being spared to them—how heart-rending the boy’s sufferings were to his parents’ feelings—how even his (the father’s) iron constitution was at last giving way—how he had neither medicine, nor attendance, nor proper food for the child—and how the blowing up of the mine so close to his sick child had frightened him. And then to-day he told me, with tears in his eyes, that yesterday—the anniversary of his birthday—his poor child was called away. “God’s will be done,” said he; “but it is terrible to think of. At night we dug a hole in the garden, and there, wrapped in a blanket, we laid him.”’ This case is not singular; many another poor parent’s heart was thus torn.

The provisioning of the garrison was of course a perpetual source of anxiety to Brigadier Inglis and the other officers; or rather, the distribution of the food already possessed, and rapidly becoming exhausted, without any prospect of replenishing. Fresh meat was in store for the garrison as long as any healthy bullocks remained; but in other articles of food the deficiency became serious as the month advanced. An immense store of attah—the coarse meal from which chupatties or cakes were made—had been provided by Sir Henry Lawrence; but this was now nearly exhausted, and the garrison had to grind corn daily, from the store kept in the impromptu granaries. The women and the elder children were much employed in this corn-grinding, by means of hand-mills. To economise the meal thus laboriously ground, rice and unground wheat were served out to the natives. The animal food was likely to be limited, by the want not of bullocks, but of bhoosa or fodder to feed them; and the commissariat-officers saw clearly before them the approach of a time when the poor animals must die for want of food. The tea and sugar were exhausted, except a little store kept for invalids. The tobacco was all gone; and the soldiers, yearning for a pipe after a hard day’s work, smoked dried leaves as the only obtainable substitute. A few casks of porter still remained, to be guarded as a precious treasure. Once now and then, when an officer was struck down to death, an auction would be held of the few trifling comforts which he had been able to bring with him into the enclosure; and then the prices given by those who possessed means plainly told how eager was the desire for some little change in the poor and insufficient daily food. A few effects left by Sir Henry Lawrence were sold; among them, £16 was given for a dozen bottles of brandy, £7 for a dozen of beer, the same amount for a dozen of sherry, £7 for a ham, £4 for a quart bottle of honey, £5 for two small tins of preserved soup, and £3 for a cake of chocolate. Sugar was the luxury for which most craving was exhibited.

We pass on now to another month, September, whose early days ushered in the tenth week of the captivity.

New mines were everywhere discovered. The British, officers and men, attended sedulously to the underground listening-galleries adverted to in a former paragraph, and there obtained unmistakable evidence that the enemy were running mines towards Sago’s house, the Brigade Mess, the Bailey guard, and other buildings, with the customary intent of blowing them up, and making a forcible entry into the enclosure. Untiring exertions at countermining alone frustrated these terrible operations. On one day, the upper part of the Brigade Mess was smashed in by a shot; on another, a breach was made in the wall of the Martinière temporary school, requiring very speedy stockading and barricading to prevent the entrance of the enemy; on another, a few engineers made a gallant sortie from Innes’s house, and succeeded in blowing up a building from which the enemy had maintained an annoying fire of musketry; and on another day, an officer had the curiosity to count the cannon-balls, varying from 3 to 24 pounds each, which had fallen on the roof of one building alone, the Brigade Mess—they were no less than 280 in number! On the 5th of the month, the enemy made a more than usually impetuous attack; there were 5000 of them in sight from the Residency; they had formed a battery on the other side of the river; they exploded two mines near the Bailey guard and the mess-house; they advanced to Gubbins’s house and to the Sikh Square, bringing with them long ladders to effect an escalade—in short, they seemed determined to carry their point on this occasion. All was in vain, however; the garrison, though worked almost to death, gallantly rushed to every endangered spot and repelled the enemy, hastily reconstructing such defence-works as had been destroyed or damaged. Fortunately, the two exploded mines were short of their intended distance: they wrought but little damage. Much marching and countermarching were occasionally visible among the troops in the city: vague rumours reached the Residency that Havelock had a second time vanquished Nena Sahib’s troops at Cawnpore or Bithoor; but to what extent these movements and rumours would influence the garrison was left painfully undecided. The nights were more terrible than the days; for the enemy, as if to destroy all chance of sleep, kept up a torrent of musketry, accompanied by much shouting and screaming. Many of the officers worked with almost superhuman energy at this time. Captains Fulton and Anderson, Lieutenants Aitken, Clery, Innes, Hutchinson, Tulloch, Birch, Hay, and others, were constantly on the watch for mines, and sedulously digging countermines to foil them.

The eleventh week found the garrison more than ever exposed to hourly peril. The officers, driven from place to place for their few hours of repast and repose, had latterly messed in one of the buildings of the Begum’s Kothee; this fact seemed to be well known to the rebels, who were from the first better acquainted with what transpired inside the fort than the garrison were with external affairs; they directed their shells and balls so thickly on that spot, that ingress and egress were equally difficult. Two sides of Innes’s house were blown in, and the whole structure made little else than a heap of ruins; the Residency, too, became so tottering, that renewed precautions had to be taken in that quarter; new mines were perpetually discovered, directed to points underneath the various buildings; and the enemy sought to increase their means of annoyance by booming forth shells filled with abominable and filthy compositions. Perhaps the most harassing troubles were owing to the uncertainty of the time and place when active services would be needed. The officers could not reckon upon a single minute of peace. ‘In the midst of all these miseries,’ says Captain Anderson, ‘you would hear the cry of “Turn out;” and you had to seize your musket and rush to your post. Then there was a constant state of anxiety as to whether we were mined or not; and we were not quite sure, whilst we were at a loophole, that we might not suddenly see the ground open, or observe the whole materials of the house fly into the air by the explosion of a mine. Shells came smashing into our rooms, and dashed our property to pieces; then followed round-shot, and down tumbled huge pieces of masonry, while hits of wood and brick flew in all directions. I have seen beds literally blown to atoms, and trunks and boxes completely smashed into little bits.’ Nevertheless, there was no flinching in the garrison; if a mine were discovered, a countermine was run out to frustrate it; if a wall or a verandah were knocked down by shot, the débris was instantly used to form a rampart, barricade, or stockade. On the 14th of the month, a loss was incurred which caused grief throughout the garrison. Captain Fulton, whose indomitable energy had won the admiration of all in his duties as engineer, and whose kindness of manner had rendered him a general favourite, was struck by a cannon-ball which took his head completely off. Brigadier Inglis felt this loss sensitively, for Fulton had been to him an invaluable aid in all his trials and difficulties. Fulton, who was especially marked by his skill and promptness in countermining, had succeeded Major Anderson as chief-engineer, and was himself now succeeded by Captain Anderson.

The twelfth week, the last which the beleaguered English were destined to suffer before the one which was to bring Havelock and Neill to Lucknow, found them in great despondency. They had lately lost a number of valuable officers. Lieutenant Birch fell; then M. Deprat, a merchant who worked and fought most valiantly at the defences; then Captain Cunliffe; and then Lieutenant Graham, whose mental firmness gave way under privation, grief, and wounds, leading him to commit suicide. As a natural consequence of these and similar losses, harder work than ever pressed on those who remained alive. Never for a moment was the look-out neglected. At all hours of the day and night, officers were posted on the roofs of the Residency and the post-office, finding such shelter as they could while watching intently the river, the bridges, the roads, and the buildings in and around the city; every fact they observed, serious in its apparent import, was at once reported to Brigadier Inglis, who made such defensive arrangements as the circumstances made desirable, and as his gradually lessened means rendered possible. What were the sleepless nights thus added to harassing days for the responsible guardian of the forlorn band, may to some extent be conceived. The enemy’s batteries were now more numerous than ever. They were constructed near the iron bridge; in a piece of open ground that formerly comprised the Residency kitchen-garden; near a mosque by the swampy ground on the river’s bank; in front of a range of buildings called the Captan Bazaar; in the Taree Kothee opposite the Bailey guard; near the clock-tower opposite the financial office; in a garden and buildings opposite the judicial office and Anderson’s house; in numerous buildings that bore upon the Cawnpore Battery and the Brigade Mess; in fields and buildings that commanded Gubbins’s house; and in positions on the northwest of the enclosure—in other words, the whole place was surrounded by batteries bristling with mortars and great guns, some or other of which were almost incessantly firing shot and shell into it.

And what, the reader may anxiously ask, was the domestic or personal life of the inmates of the enclosure during these three weeks of September? It was sad indeed—beyond the former sadness. If the men toiled and watched in sultry dry weather, they were nearly overcome by heat and noisome odours; if they slept in the trenches in damp nights after great heat, they suffered terribly in their limbs and bones, for they had neither tents nor change of clothing. Such was the state to which the whole of the ground was brought, by refuse of every kind, that a pool resulting from a shower of rain soon became an insupportable nuisance; sanitary cleansings were unattainable by a community who had neither surplus labour nor efficient drains at command. Half the officers were ill at one time, from disease, over-fatigue, and insufficient diet; and when they were thus laid prostrate, they had neither medicines nor surgeons sufficient for their need. There was not a sound roof in the whole place. On one day a cannon-ball entered at one end of the largest room in the hospital, traversed the whole length, and went out at the other—but, singular to relate, it did not hurt one human being in the whole crowded apartment. In the commissariat department, some of the bullocks yet remaining fell sick through privations, others were shot; thereby lessening the reserve store, and adding to the repulsive night-duties of the officers already adverted to. Of the few native servants still remaining, hardly one now could be retained; and the saving of their simple food was an inadequate counterbalance for the loss of their assistance in drudgery labours. There were not, however, wanting proofs of a fact abundantly illustrated in many walks of life—the moral healthiness of useful employment. One of the ladies, whose early weeks in the Residency had been weeks of misery, afterwards wrote thus: ‘I now find every hour of the day fully occupied. It is a great comfort to have so much to do, and to feel one’s self of some little use; it helps one to keep up one’s spirits much better than would otherwise be possible under the circumstances.’ The live-stock, the rum, the porter, were all getting low; tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate had long disappeared from the rations. Such officers and civilians as had money in their pockets, were willing to give almost any prices for the few luxuries still remaining in private hands, in order that they might in some degree alleviate the sufferings of their wives and children. Forty shillings were eagerly given for a bottle of brandy; thirty-two for a bottle of curaçoa; forty for a small fowl; sixteen shillings per pound were offered, but offered in vain, for sugar; two shillings a pound for coarse flour; ten shillings a pound for a little half-rancid butter or ghee; tobacco, four shillings a leaf; a bottle of pickles, forty shillings. Mr Rees sold a gold watch to a companion who had money to spare, and with it purchased the luxury of smoking cigars at two shillings each; but when those bits of rolled tobacco-leaf commanded three rupees or six shillings each, he bade adieu to his last remaining source of personal enjoyment. What any one gave, he gave out of kind sympathy to his suffering companions; but what he sold, he sold in the usual commercial spirit to the highest bidder. The attire was reduced to the most piteous condition. Many of the officers had found much of their clothing burned nearly four months earlier, during the mutiny at the cantonment; and the troubles of June had prevented them from making purchases in the city before the arrival of the day when they were all alike to be shut up in the enclosure. As a consequence, their remaining clothes wore away to rags, or something worse. There was scarcely a vestige of a military uniform visible throughout the place. Officers worked and fought, dined and slept, in shirt, trousers, and slippers; one made himself a coat out of a billiard table-cloth; and another contrived a sort of shirt out of a piece of floor-cloth. When the trifling effects of one of the deceased officers came to be examined and sold, a little underclothing was sought for with an eagerness which sumptuous garments would not have excited; four pounds sterling were given for a new flannel-shirt, and twelve pounds for five others which had already rendered much service.

Joy, joy beyond expression rang through the enclosure when, on the 21st of September, the rumour ran round that a messenger had arrived with good news. Inglis had, a few days before, sent off a spy on the often-tried but generally unsuccessful attempt to carry a small note (enclosed in a quill); the peril had been great, but the man safely returned with a small written reply from Havelock, announcing that Outram and himself were on the road from Cawnpore, and expected to reach Lucknow in three or four days. Hearts were filled to overflowing with this announcement. Many wept for joy, some laughed and shouted, more sank on their knees in thanksgiving, while the sick and wounded rose from their pallets, as if wondrously strengthened by the glad tidings. All worked hard and vigorously, in their respective ways, to prepare for the struggle inevitable on any attempt of the two generals to penetrate through the streets of the city; the inmates of the garrison could not, it is true, leave their stronghold to join in the fight, but they might possibly aid when the forlorn-hope was approaching the Bailey guard, the probable place of entrance. The 22d passed over in hopes and fears, expectations and preparations. On the 23d, musketry was heard on the Cawnpore road, and much agitation was visible within the city. On the next day, cannonading and musketry were again heard; and then were the garrison rejoiced at seeing multitudes escaping out of the city, and over the bridge to the other side of the river—rejoiced, because this movement denoted success on the part of the advancing British.

The 25th arrived—the day of deliverance! Prodigious agitation and alarm had marked the city all night: movements of men and horses, and all the indications of a city in commotion. At noon, the increasing sounds told that street-fighting was going on; those who went on the top of the Residency for a look-out could see the smoke of musketry, but nothing else. As the afternoon advanced, the sounds came nearer and nearer;[101] then was heard the sharp crack of rifles; then was gradually perceived the flash of musketry; and then the well-known uniforms of a friendly hand. Outram and Havelock, when they had fought their way over the canal by the Char Bagh Bridge (bridge of the ‘four gardens’), intended to have taken the straight road to the Residency; but this road had been blocked up by the enemy with guns, palisades, stockades, barricades, concealed pits and trenches, and other obstacles. The two generals therefore diverged to the right, marched along a by-road to the eastern part of the city, and there fought their way through a continuous line of streets to the Bailey guard entrance of the Residency enclosure, suffering terribly as they went.[102] Great was the shout with which they were welcomed, and warm the grasp with which Inglis thanked his deliverers. ‘The immense enthusiasm,’ says Mr Rees, ‘with which they were greeted defies description. As their hurrah and ours rang in my ears, I was nigh bursting with joy.... We felt not only happy, happy beyond imagination, and grateful to that God of mercy who, by our noble deliverers, Havelock and Outram, and their gallant troops, had thus snatched us from imminent death; but we also felt proud of the defence we had made, and the success with which, with such fearful odds to contend against, we had preserved, not only our own lives, but the honour and lives of the women and children intrusted to our keeping. As our deliverers poured in, they continued to greet us with loud hurrahs.... We ran up to them, officers and men without distinction, and shook them by the hands—how cordially, who can describe? The shrill notes of the Highlanders’ bagpipes now pierced our ears. Not the most beautiful music ever was more welcome, more joy-bringing. And these brave men themselves, many of them bloody and exhausted, forgot the loss of their comrades, the pain of their wounds, the fatigue of overcoming the fearful obstacles they had combated for our sakes, in the pleasure of having accomplished our relief.’ What the women felt on this day, the Lady’s Diary will tell us. ‘Never shall I forget the moment to the latest day I live. It was most overpowering. We had no idea they were so near, and were breathing air in the portico as usual at that hour, speculating when they might be in—not expecting they could reach us for several days longer; when suddenly, just at dark, we heard a very sharp fire of musketry close by, and then a tremendous cheering. An instant after, the sound of bagpipes, then soldiers running up the road, our compound and verandah filled with our deliverers, and all of us shaking hands franticly, and exchanging fervent “God bless you’s!” with the gallant men and officers of the 78th Highlanders. Sir James Outram and staff were the next to come in, and the state of joyful confusion and excitement was beyond all description. The big, rough-bearded soldiers were seizing the little children out of our arms, kissing them with tears rolling down their cheeks, and thanking God they had come in time to save them from the fate of those at Cawnpore. We were all rushing about to give the poor fellows drinks of water, for they were perfectly exhausted; and tea was made down in the Tye Khana, of which a large party of tired, thirsty officers partook, without milk or sugar; we had nothing to give them to eat. Every one’s tongue seemed going at once with so much to ask and to tell; and the faces of utter strangers beamed upon each other like those of dearest friends and brothers.’

After a night, in which joy kept many awake whom fatigue would have else sent into a deep sleep, the dawn of the 26th ushered in a day in which there was again to be much severe fighting; for some of Havelock’s heroic little band had been left in palatial buildings outside the Residency enclosure, which they managed to hold during the night. To succour these comrades, to bring in the guns which they had guarded, and to obtain firm possession of the buildings, were objects that required great exertion and daring courage. The attempt succeeded. The palaces of Fureed Buksh and Taree Kothee were conquered from the enemy, and formed into new intrenched positions, which greatly relieved the overcrowded Residency. When the further conquest of the Chuttur Munzil palace and other buildings near the river-side had been effected, the position held by the British was thrice as large in area as that which Brigadier Inglis had so long and so gallantly defended. It lay along the river-bank for a considerable distance; while on the other side it was bounded by a dense mass of the streets constituting the main portion of the city.

One of the results of Havelock and Outram’s advance was the capture of an important outpost. At a spot three or four miles out of Lucknow, near the new road from Cawnpore, was the Alum Bagh, the ‘garden of the Lady Alum or beauty of the world.’ It comprised several buildings, including a palace, a mosque, and an emambarra or private temple, bounded by a beautiful garden, which was itself in the middle of a park, and the park enclosed in a wall with corner towers. There was abundant space within it for a large military force, and it was susceptible of being made a stronghold if the defences were well maintained. Havelock, on his advance from Cawnpore, found the enemy drawn up in considerable strength, within and without the wall of the Alum Bagh; and it was only after a hot and fierce contest that he could capture the place. He encamped there on the night of the 23d, and had to bear many attacks from the enemy near the same spot on the 24th. On the 25th he advanced to Lucknow, and maintained the sanguinary street-fight already noticed. The Alum Bagh was too important a place to be abandoned when once conquered. Havelock left there the baggage, ammunition, sick, and wounded, of his relieving force; with 300 men to protect them, and an immense array of elephants, camels, horses, camp-followers, and laden carts; and with four guns to aid in the defence. No one for an instant supposed that that detachment would be left there without further aid. Havelock and his men fully expected, that, Lucknow once conquered, the Alum Bagh would simply be one of the strongholds of his position with which he could communicate when he pleased. Little did he look forward to the state of things actually produced, when the occupants of the Alum Bagh were so completely isolated from the British in the city, that they could not send even a message, unless by good-fortune a kossid or native messenger succeeded in conveying, in a quill or in the sole of his shoe, a brief letter from the one place to the other.

This isolated position of the little garrison at Alum Bagh was, moreover, only one among many grave subjects that speedily presented themselves for consideration. After the first outburst of thankfulness at the arrival of the welcome deliverers, the residents in the Lucknow intrenchment had to ask themselves to what extent it was really a deliverance. Then did they find that, in effect, they were as close prisoners as ever. Havelock had lost nearly one-third of his small force during the desperate encounters of the past few days; and those who survived were far too weak for any considerable military operations. The one great, absorbing, sacred, deeply earnest object he had all along held in view, was to save his fellow-countrymen, their wives and children, from horrors such as had been perpetrated at Cawnpore. To his dying day he remained deeply grateful that he had been permitted to effect this; but what more could he do? Could he remain a conqueror in Lucknow, or could he bring away from that city all those who for four months had been exposed to such peril! He could do neither the one nor the other. The result of the fighting on the 25th and 26th of September had given to him the command of a larger portion of the city than the Residency enclosure, which had been so long and so gallantly maintained by Inglis; but he could neither gain another inch without struggling for it, nor retain the portion already acquired without incessant watchfulness and assiduity. Nor could he make the Residency and the Alum Bagh component parts of one great stronghold, seeing that the British were alike besieged in the one and the other, and could not hold intercommunication. Nor could he send the women and children to Allahabad or any other place of safety; they would all have been cut to pieces on the road, so small was the escort he could afford, and so overwhelming the force of the enemy. The whole of the immediate benefit consisted in an increase in the number of British for the defence-works; but as these hard-working and hard-fighting troops brought little or no supplies further than the Alum Bagh, there was an increase rather in the number of mouths to be fed than in the means of feeding them. The disappointment of Inglis’s garrison, after the first joy had passed, was very severe. Captivity and short commons were still to be their lot. Many councils of war were held, to determine what should be done. A party of volunteer cavalry on one day set out with the intention of cutting their way to the Alum Bagh, and perhaps to Cawnpore, to seek for reinforcements and to give notice of the exact state of affairs; but they were driven back almost immediately, by a body of rebels too large to be resisted. Sir James Outram sought to ascertain whether any of the influential natives in the city were disposed, by tempting offers, to render him and his companions aid in their difficulties; but here in like manner failure resulted. The scene was very miserable until something like order could be restored. The poor fellows who had fallen on the 25th and 26th had been brought into the intrenchment, some to be buried, some to be healed if possible. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary said: ‘The hospital is so densely crowded, that many have to lie outside in the open air, without bed or shelter. —— says he never saw such a heart-sickening scene. It is far worse than that after Chinhut—amputated arms and legs lying about in heaps all over the hospital, and the crowd and confusion such that little can be done to alleviate the intense discomfort and pain of the poor sufferers.’

It might be interesting to surviving friends, but would be tedious to general readers, to present here a list of all the persons mentioned by name in Brigadier Inglis’s dispatch as having distinguished themselves in this most gallant struggle. They amount to about ninety in number. Indeed, it may well be supposed that at such a time every soldier worthy of the name, every civilian with a drop of honest blood in him, would achieve things of which, at another time, he would scarcely deem himself capable. Not only British; for Captain Anderson mentions two gentlemen of foreign birth, a Frenchman and an Italian, who, shut up like the rest in the intrenchment, fought and worked as untiringly as their companions. In a foot-note we give the names of officers mentioned by Brigadier Inglis as having died during the siege;[103] and in another, of those who commanded eleven of the outposts or ‘garrisons,’ those fortified houses which were defended in so extraordinary a way.[104] Of all these he had a kindly word to say; as well as of the artillery and engineer officers, the infantry officers, the officers of the staff, the surgeons and the chaplains, the commissariat-officers, the gentlemen-volunteers, the humble rank and file, and the ladies who became the ‘Florence Nightingales’ of the garrison. Nothing, perhaps, in the whole course of the siege, was more remarkable than the conduct of the native troops. It will be remembered that when three native infantry regiments mutinied at the cantonment on the 30th of May, some of the sepoys in each remained faithful. This select band shared all the labours and sufferings of the British during the siege. With scanty food, little and broken sleep, harassing exertions, daily fightings, they remained steadfast to the last. Though sorely tempted by the mutineers, who would often converse with them over the palisades of the intrenchment, they never flinched from their duty. What they were on the 30th of May, they were on the 25th of September, soldiers ‘true to their salt.’ Few things are more embarrassing, in taking an estimate of the causes and progress of the Revolt, than to meet with such anomalies as this. Explain it how we may, it would be gross injustice to withhold from such men a tribute of admiration for their fidelity at so trying a time. May there not have been something of a moral grandeur, a sublimity of heroism, in the conduct of the devoted garrison, that touched the hearts of these sepoys, and appealed to their better nature?

Viscount Canning did not fail to give an official recognition of the merits of those who had made this glorious defence. In an ‘Order in Council,’ issued at Calcutta, after adverting to the receipt of a military account of the proceedings from Brigadier Inglis, his lordship said:

‘The governor-general in council believes that never has a tale been told which will so stir the hearts of Englishmen and Englishwomen.... There does not stand recorded in the annals of war an achievement more truly heroic than the defence of the Residency at Lucknow. That defence has not only called forth all the energy and daring which belong to Englishmen in the hour of active conflict, but it has exhibited continuously, and in the highest degree, that noble and sustained courage which against enormous odds and fearful disadvantages, against hope deferred, and through increasing toil and wear of body and mind, still holds on day after day, and triumphs. The heavy guns of the assailants, posted almost in security within fifty yards of the intrenchments—so near, indeed, that the solicitations, threats, and taunts which the rebels addressed to the native defenders of the garrison were easily heard by those true-hearted men; the fire of the enemy’s musketry, so searching that it penetrated the innermost retreat of the women and children and of the wounded; their desperate attempts, repeatedly made, to force an entry after blowing in the defences; the perpetual mining of the works; the weary night-watching for the expected signal of relief; and the steady waste of precious lives until the number of English gunners was reduced below that of the guns to be worked—all these constitute features in a history which the fellow-countrymen of the heroes of Lucknow will read with swelling hearts, and which will endure for ever as a lesson to those who shall hope, by treachery, numbers, or boldness in their treason, to overcome the indomitable spirit of Englishmen.’

The officer who so nobly held the command after Lawrence and Banks had been stricken down by death, well earned the honours which the Queen afterwards conferred upon him. He entered Lucknow as a lieutenant-colonel; he left it as Major-general Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis, K.C.B. Promotion in various ways awaited many of the other officers; but the immediate recognition by the governor-general of the services rendered by the garrison was embodied in the following general order: ‘Every officer and soldier, European and native, who has formed part of the garrison of the Residency between the 29th of June and the 25th of September last shall receive six months’ batta. Every civilian in the covenanted service of the East India Company who has taken part in the defence of the Residency within the above-named dates shall receive six months’ batta, at a rate calculated according to the military rank with which his standing corresponds. Every uncovenanted civil officer or volunteer who has taken a like part shall receive six months’ batta, at a rate to be fixed according to the functions and position which may have been assigned to him. Every native commissioned and non-commissioned officer and soldier who has formed part of the garrison shall receive the Order of Merit, with the increase of pay attached thereto, and shall be permitted to count three years of additional service. The soldiers of the 13th, 48th, and 71st regiments native infantry, who have been part of the garrison, shall be formed into a regiment of the line, to be called “the Regiment of Lucknow,” the further constitution of which, as regards officers and men, will be notified hereafter.’

What was done at Lucknow during October and November must be recorded in a future chapter. While Outram, Havelock, and Inglis were maintaining themselves, by indomitable resolution, in the Residency and the Alum Bagh, Sir Colin Campbell was collecting a force adequate, if not to the actual reconquest of Lucknow, at least to the rescue of all the British of every class residing in that hateful city. Those two concurrent lines of proceeding will be treated in intimate connection, a few pages on.

Note.

Brigadier Inglis’s Dispatch.—In order that the narrative contained in the foregoing chapter might not be interrupted by too many extracts from official documents, little has been said of the report which Brigadier Inglis drew up of the siege soon after the arrival of Outram and Havelock. So vividly, however, and in all respects so worthily, did that report or dispatch portray the trying difficulties of the position, and the heroic conduct of the garrison, that it may be well to give a portion of it in this place.

‘The right honourable the governor-general in council will feel that it would be impossible to crowd within the limits of a dispatch even the principal events, much less the individual acts of gallantry, which have marked this protracted struggle. But I can conscientiously declare my conviction, that few troops have ever undergone greater hardships, exposed as they have been to a never-ceasing musketry-fire and cannonade. They have also experienced the alternate vicissitudes of extreme wet and of intense heat, and that, too, with very insufficient shelter from either, and in many places without any shelter at all. In addition to having had to repel real attacks, they have been exposed night and day to the hardly less harassing false alarms which the enemy have been constantly raising. The insurgents have frequently fired very heavily, sounded the advance, and shouted for several hours together, though not a man could be seen: with the view, of course, of harassing our small and exhausted force. In this object they succeeded, for no part has been strong enough to allow of a portion only of the garrison being prepared in the event of a false attack being turned into a real one; all, therefore, had to stand to their arms and to remain at their posts until the demonstration had ceased; and such attacks were of almost nightly occurrence. The whole of the officers and men have been on duty night and day during the 87 days which the siege had lasted up to the arrival of Sir J. Outram, G.C.B. In addition to this incessant military duty, the force has been nightly employed in repairing defences, in moving guns, in burying dead animals, in conveying ammunition and commissariat stores from one place to another, and in other fatigue-duties too numerous and too trivial to enumerate here. I feel, however, that any words of mine will fail to convey any adequate idea of what the fatigue and labours have been—labours in which all ranks and all classes, civilians, officers, and soldiers, have all borne an equally noble part. All have together descended into the mine, and have together handled the shovel for the interment of the putrid bullocks; and all, accoutred with musket and bayonet, have relieved each other on sentry without regard to the distinctions of rank, civil or military. Notwithstanding all these hardships, the garrison has made no less than five sorties, in which they spiked two of the enemy’s heaviest guns, and blew up several of the houses from which they had kept up their most harassing fire. Owing to the extreme paucity of our numbers, each man was taught to feel that on his own individual efforts alone depended in no small measure the safety of the entire position. This consciousness incited every officer, soldier, and man, to defend the post assigned to him with such desperate tenacity, and to fight for the lives which Providence had intrusted to his care with such dauntless determination, that the enemy, despite their constant attacks, their heavy mines, their overwhelming numbers, and their incessant fire, could never succeed in gaining one single inch of ground within the bounds of this straggling position, which was so feebly fortified, that had they once obtained a footing in any of the outposts the whole place must inevitably have fallen.

‘If further proof be wanting of the desperate nature of the struggle which we have, under God’s blessing, so long and so successfully waged, I would point to the roofless and ruined houses, to the crumbled walls, to the exploded mines, to the open breaches, to the shattered and disabled guns and defences, and lastly, to the long and melancholy list of the brave and devoted officers and men who have fallen. These silent witnesses bear sad and solemn testimony to the way in which this feeble position has been defended.

‘During the early part of these vicissitudes, we were left without any information whatever regarding the posture of affairs outside. An occasional spy did indeed come in with the object of inducing our sepoys and servants to desert; but the intelligence derived from such sources was, of course, entirely untrustworthy. We sent our messengers, daily calling for aid, and asking for information, none of whom ever returned until the 26th day of the siege; when a pensioner named Ungud came back with a letter from General Havelock’s camp, informing us that they were advancing with a force sufficient to bear down all opposition, and would be with us in five or six days. A messenger was immediately despatched, requesting that on the evening of their arrival on the outskirts of the city two rockets might be sent up, in order that we might take the necessary measures for assisting them while forcing their way in. The sixth day, however, expired, and they came not; but for many evenings after, officers and men watched for the ascension of the expected rockets, with hopes such as make the heart sick. We knew not then, nor did we learn until the 29th of August—or 35 days later—that the relieving force, after having fought most nobly to effect our deliverance, had been obliged to fall back for reinforcements; and this was the last communication we received until two days before the arrival of Sir James Outram, on the 25th of September.

‘Besides heavy visitations of cholera and small-pox, we have also had to contend against a sickness which has almost universally pervaded the garrison. Commencing with a very painful eruption, it has merged into a low fever, combined with diarrhœa; and although few or no men have actually died from its effects, it leaves behind a weakness and lassitude which, in the absence of all material sustenance, save coarse beef, and still coarser flour, none have been able entirely to get over. The mortality among the women and children, and especially among the latter, from these diseases and from other causes, has been perhaps the most painful characteristic of the siege. The want of native servants has also been a source of much privation. Owing to the suddenness with which we were besieged, many of these people, who might perhaps have otherwise proved faithful to their employers, but who were outside the defences at the time, were altogether excluded. Very many more deserted, and several families were consequently left without the services of a single domestic. Several ladies have had to tend their children, and even to wash their own clothes, as well as to cook their scanty meals, entirely unaided. Combined with the absence of servants, the want of proper accommodation has probably been the cause of much of the disease with which we have been afflicted.

‘I cannot refrain from bringing to the prominent notice of his lordship in council the patient endurance and the Christian resignation which have been evinced by the women of this garrison. They have animated us by their example. Many, alas! have been made widows and their children fatherless in this cruel struggle. But all such seem resigned to the will of Providence; and many—among whom may be mentioned the honoured names of Birch, of Polehampton, of Barbor, and of Gall—have, after the example of Miss Nightingale, constituted themselves the tender and solicitous nurses of the wounded and dying soldiers in the hospital.’

[After enumerating the officers and civilians who had wrought untiringly in the good cause, Brigadier Inglis did ample justice to the humbler combatants.]

‘Lastly, I have the pleasure of bringing the splendid behaviour of the soldiers—namely, the men of her Majesty’s 32d foot, the small detachment of her Majesty’s 84th foot, the European and native artillery, the 13th, 48th, and 71st regiments of native infantry, and the Sikhs of the respective corps—to the notice of the government of India. The losses sustained by her Majesty’s 32d, which is now barely 300 strong, by her Majesty’s 84th, and by the European artillery, shew at least that they knew how to die in the cause of their countrymen. Their conduct under the fire, the exposure, and the privations which they have had to undergo, has been throughout most admirable and praiseworthy.

‘As another instance of the desperate character of our defence, and the difficulties we have had to contend with, I may mention that the number of our artillerymen was so reduced, that on the occasion of an attack, the gunners, aided as they were by men of her Majesty’s 32d foot, and by volunteers of all classes, had to run from one battery to another wherever the fire of the enemy was hottest, there not being nearly enough men to serve half the number of guns at the same time. In short, at last the number of European gunners was only 24, while we had, including mortars, no less than 30 guns in position.

‘With respect to the native troops, I am of opinion that their loyalty has never been surpassed. They were indifferently fed and worse housed. They were exposed, especially the 13th regiment, under the gallant Lieutenant Aitken, to a most galling fire of round-shot and musketry, which materially decreased their numbers. They were so near the enemy that conversation could be carried on between them; and every effort, persuasion, promise, and threat, was alternately resorted to in vain to seduce them from their allegiance to the handful of Europeans, who, in all probability, would have been sacrificed by their desertion.’

-----

Footnote 94:

Chap. vi., pp. 82-96. Chap. x., pp. 163-165. Chap, xv., pp. 247-263.

Footnote 95:

General staff, 9 Brigade staff, 5 Artillery, 9 Engineers, 3 H.M. 32d foot, 22 H.M. 84th foot, 2 7th Bengal native cavalry, 13 13th Bengal native infantry, 10 41st Bengal native infantry, 11 48th Bengal native infantry, 14 71st Bengal native infantry, 11 Oude brigade, 26 Various officers, 9 Civil service, 9 Surgeons, 2 Chaplains, 2 Ladies, 69 Ladies, children of, 68 Other women, 171 Other women, children of, 196 Uncovenanted servants, 125 Martinière school, 8 ——— 794

Another account gave the number 865, including about 50 native children in the Martinière school.

Footnote 96:

Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow, from its Commencement to its Relief. By L. E. Ruutz Rees, one or the Survivors.

A Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow, written for the Perusal of Friends at Home.

A Personal Journal of the Siege of Lucknow. By Captain R. P. Anderson, 25th Regiment N. I., commanding an outpost.

The Defence of Lucknow: a Diary recording the Daily Events during the Siege of the European Residency. By a Staff-officer.

Footnote 97:

In a former chapter (p. 84), a brief notice is given of Claude Martine, a French adventurer who rose to great wealth and influence at Lucknow, and who lived in a fantastic palace called Constantia, southeastward of the city. His name will, however, be more favourably held in remembrance as the founder of a college, named by him the Martinière, for Eurasian or half-caste children. This college was situated near the eastern extremity of the city; but when the troubles began, the principals and the children removed to a building hastily set apart for them within the Residency enclosure. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary, whose husband was connected as a pastor with the Martinière, thus speaks of this transfer: ‘The Martinière is abandoned, and I suppose we shall lose all our remaining property, which we have been obliged to leave to its fate, as nothing more can be brought in here. We got our small remnant of clothes; but furniture, harp, books, carriage-horses, &c., are left at the Martinière. The poor boys are all stowed away in a hot close native building, and it will be a wonder if they don’t get ill.’

Footnote 98:

The wood-cut at p. 93 represents a part of the Residency in this limited sense of the term; the view at p. 82 will convey some notion of the appearance of the city of Lucknow as seen from the terrace-roof of this building. The plan on next page will give an idea of the Residency before siege; and in the next Part will be given a plan of the Residency under siege, shewing the relation which the enemies’ guns bore to those of the besieged.

Footnote 99:

Mr Rees relates a strange anecdote in connection with this retreat from the Muchee Bhowan to the Residency: ‘We saved all but one man, who, having been intoxicated, and concealed in some corner, could not be found when the muster-roll was called. The French say, Il y a un Dieu pour les ivrognes; and the truth of the proverb was never better exemplified than in this man’s case. He had been thrown into the air, had returned unhurt to mother-earth, continued his drunken sleep again, had awaked next morning, found the fort to his surprise a mass of deserted ruins, and quietly walked back to the Residency without being molested by a soul; and even bringing with him a pair of bullocks attached to a cart of ammunition. It is very probable that the débris of these extensive buildings must have seriously injured the adjacent houses and many of the rebel army—thus giving the fortunate man the means of escaping.

Footnote 100:

The authoress of the Lady’s Diary gives an affecting account of the hour that succeeded the wounding of Sir Henry Lawrence. She, with her husband, was at that time in the house of Dr Fayrer, a surgeon who had more than once urged upon Sir Henry the paramount duty of cherishing his own life as one valuable to others even if slighted by himself. ‘He was brought over to this house immediately. —— prayed with him, and administered the Holy Communion to him. He was quite sensible, though his agony was extreme. He spoke for nearly an hour, quite calmly, expressing his last wishes with regard to his children. He sent affectionate messages to them and to each of his brothers and sisters. He particularly mentioned the Lawrence Asylum, and entreated that government might be urged to give it support. He bade farewell to all the gentlemen who were standing round his bed, and said a few words of advice and kindness to each.... There was not a dry eye there; every one was so deeply affected and grieved at the loss of such a man.’

It may here be stated that the Queen afterwards bestowed a baronetcy on Sir Henry’s eldest son, Alexander Lawrence; to whom also the East India Company voted a pension of £1000 per annum.

Footnote 101:

The Jersey Times of December 10, 1857, contained what professed to be an extract of a letter from M. de Bannerol, a French physician in the service of Mussur Rajah, dated October 8, and published in Le Pays (Paris paper), giving an account of the feelings of the Christian women shut up within Lucknow just before their relief. It went on to state how Jessie Brown, a corporal’s wife, cheered the party in the depth of their terrors and despair, by starting up and declaring that, amidst the roar of the artillery, she caught the faint sound of the slogan of the approaching Highlanders, particularly that of the Macgregor, ‘the grandest of them a’!’ The soldiers intermitted firing to listen, but could hear nothing of the kind, and despair once more settled down upon the party. After a little interval, Jessie broke out once more with words of hope, referring to the sound of the Highland bagpipes, which the party at length acknowledged they heard; and then by one impulse, all fell on their knees, ‘and nothing was heard but the bursting sob and the voice of prayer.’ The tale has made so great an impression on the public mind, that we feel much reluctance in expressing our belief that it is either wholly a fiction, or only based slightly in fact. What excited our distrust from the first was the allusion to the slogans or war-cries of the respective clans—things which have had no practical existence for centuries, and which would manifestly be inappropriate in regiments composed of a miscellany of clansmen, not to speak of the large admixture of Lowlanders. We are assured that the story is looked upon in the best-informed quarters as purely a tale of the imagination.

Footnote 102:

See chap. xv., p. 263.

Footnote 103:

Sir Henry Lawrence; Major Banks; Lieutenant-colonel Case, Captains Steevens, Mansfield, Radcliffe, and M’Cabe, 32d foot; Captain Francis, 13th N. I.; Lieutenants Shepherd and Archer, 7th native cavalry; Captain Hughes, 57th N. I.; Major Anderson and Captain Fulton, engineers; Captain Simons, artillery.

Footnote 104:

Colonel Master and Captain Boileau, 7th N.C.; Major Apthorp and Captain Sanders, 41st N.I.; Captain Germon and Lieutenants Aitken and Loughnan, 13th N.I.; Captain Anderson, 25th N.I.; Lieutenant Graydon, 44th N.I.; Lieutenant Longmore, 71st N.I.; Mr Schilling, principal of the Martinière College.

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XX. MINOR CONFLICTS: SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER

Leaving for a while the affairs of Lucknow—which by the progress of events had become far more important than those of Delhi or of any other city in India—we may conveniently devote the present chapter to a rapid glance at the general state of affairs during the months of September and October: noticing only such scenes of discord, and such military operations, as arose immediately out of the Revolt. The subject may be treated in the same style as in Chapter xvii., relating to the months of July and August, but more briefly; for, in truth, so few Bengal native regiments now remained ‘true to their salt,’ that the materials for further mutiny were almost exhausted.

Of Calcutta, and the region around it on all sides, little need be said. Mutiny in that neighbourhood would not have been easy during the autumn months; for British troops were gradually arriving, who would speedily have put down any rebellious risings. Sometimes alarms agitated the civilians and traders in the city; but nothing really serious called for notice. The ex-king of Oude continued to be watched carefully at Calcutta. Whatever honeyed phrases may have been used to render his detention more palatable, none of the government officers placed any reliance on his fidelity or peacefulness. In truth, if he had displayed those qualities, after being compelled to witness the annexation of his country to the British raj, he would have been something more (or less) than oriental. At various times during the summer and autumn months, scrutinising inquiries were made into the conduct of the king and his retainers. Thus, on the 16th of August, a person who had for some time resided at Calcutta, under the assumed title of Bishop of Bagdad, but whose real name was Syed Hossein Shubber, was with five others arrested, for complicity in plots affecting the British government; and, consequent on papers discovered, three retainers of the king were arrested about a week afterwards. The government kept secret the details of these affairs, pending further inquiry; but it was apparent enough that mischief was fermenting in the minds of the royal prisoner’s retainers. Unquestionably many natives sincerely believed the king to have been an ill-used man—an opinion shared also by many Europeans—and they did not deem it treason to aid him in his misfortunes.

Much to the vexation of the government, the district of Assam, little known to Europeans except as a region where tea is experimentally grown, was drawn into the vortex of trouble early in September. Many of the sepoys of the 1st Assam native infantry came from the neighbourhood of Arrah, and were closely related to one regiment (the 40th) of the Dinapoor mutineers; while others were from the estates of Koer Singh. When, therefore, the news of the Dinapoor mutiny became known, the Assam regiment was thrown into much agitation. There was a rajah in Assam, one Saring Kunderpessawar Singh, who secretly engaged in treasonable correspondence, and who received offers of support from the Arrah men of the Assam regiment, if he would openly break with the British. There were also Hindustanis in the 2d Assam native regiment; while the artillery companies at Debrooghur were entirely Hindustanis. It was known likewise that many of the neighbouring tribes were in a disaffected state, and that a religious mendicant was rapidly moving about with some secret but apparently mischievous purpose. By degrees a plot was discovered. The conspirators planned on a given day to murder all the Christians in Assam, and then plunder the stations. Fortunately this project was known in time. The Calcutta government having no soldiers to spare, organised a force of English seamen, trained as gunners, and sent them by a steamer up the Brahmaputra to Debrooghur, to be employed as the local authorities might deem advisable. One of the circumstances connected with this movement illustrates the antagonism between governing authorities and newspaper writers on military matters—an antagonism frequently felt during the Indian Revolt as during the Russian war. A responsible leader wishes to keep his plans of strategy secret from the enemy; a newspaper writer wishes to give as much news as possible on all subjects; and these two modes of procedure do not always flow in harmonious concord. Mr Halliday, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, in reporting on this Assam affair, said: ‘The utmost care was taken to despatch the force to Assam with the secrecy necessary to prevent its destination being known; but it is feared that this intention has been frustrated by the ill-judged publication of the departure of the steamer, and notification of its objects, by the Calcutta papers. It is hoped that this injudicious proceeding may not be attended with the serious results that would ensue from a revolt in the province in its present unprotected state. Such an untoward contingency was feared by the officers in Assam, who pointed out the urgent necessity of extreme care being observed in preventing the promulgation of the transmission, before its arrival, of any European force that might be sent; lest the knowledge of the approach of aid should cause a premature explosion of the expected revolt.’ The force consisted of 100 armed sailors, with two 12-pounder guns; they set out on the 11th of September, under the charge of Lieutenant Davies, in the steamer Horungotta; and were to be at the disposal of Colonel Jenkins on arriving in Assam. As a curious example of the different light in which different tribes were at this time viewed, it may be stated that all the men of the 1st Assam infantry who were not Hindustanis were called in from the outposts to Debrooghur, as a protection in case the remainder of the regiment should mutiny. Captain Lowther, commanding a corps of Goorkhas, was sent from another station to capture the rajah; this he managed admirably, and in so doing, effectually crushed the incipient mutiny. The captain, in a private letter, told in excellent style the story of his expedition; from which we will extract so much as relates to the night-scene in the rajah’s palace at Debrooghur.[105]

Some weeks afterwards, towards the close of October, Mr Halliday entertained much distrust of the 73d Bengal native infantry, of which two companies were at Dacca, and the main body at Jelpigoree, near the Bhotan frontier. By precautionary measures, however, he prevented for a time any actual outbreak of this particular regiment.

There were reasons why the towns on the banks of the Lower Ganges remained tolerably free from rebellion during the months now under notice. English regiments, in wings or detachments, were sent up the river in flats tugged by steamers, from Calcutta towards Upper India; and the turbulent rabble of the towns were awed into quietness by the vicinity of these red-coats. Berhampore, Moorshedabad, Rajmahal, Bhagulpore, Monghir, Patna, Dinapoor, Buxar, Ghazeepore, Benares, Mirzapore—all felt the benefit of this occasional passing of British troops along the Ganges, in the moral effect produced on the natives. True, the arrivals at Calcutta were few and far apart until October was well advanced; true, many of the troops were sent by land along the main trunk-road, for greater expedition; true, those who went by water were too urgently needed in the Doab and in Oude to be spared for intermediate service at the towns above named; but, nevertheless, the mere transit of a few English regiments effected much towards the tranquillising of Bengal. Early in the month of August, Lord Elgin had come to Calcutta, and placed at the disposal of Lord Canning two war-steamers, the Shannon and the Pearl; and from among the resources of these steamers was organised a splendid naval brigade, consisting of 400 able British seamen, and no less than ten of the enormous 68-pounder guns which such seamen know so well how to handle. They started from Calcutta up the Hoogly and the Ganges, under the command of Captain Peel, who had so gallantly managed a naval-battery in the Crimea during the siege of Sebastopol. If such a man could fret, he would have fretted at the slowness of his voyage. Week after week elapsed, without his reaching those districts where his services would be invaluable. Half of August and the whole of September thus passed wearily away in this most tedious voyage. The upward passage is always tardy, against the stream; and his ponderous artillery rendered slowness still more slow. It was not until the 30th of September that he, with 286 men of his brigade, arrived at Benares. Hastening on, he arrived with 94 men at Allahabad on the 3d of October; and four days afterwards the rest joined him, with their enormous guns and store of ammunition. A small naval brigade, under Captain Sotheby, was placed at the disposal of the Patna authorities, to be used against certain insurgents in the neighbourhood.

The portion of Bengal north of the Ganges was almost entirely free from disturbance during these two months; but the parallel portion of Behar was in a very different state. The actual mutinies there had been few in number, for in truth there had not been many native troops quartered in that region; but the rebellious chieftains and zemindars were many, each of whom could command the services of a body of retainers ready for any mischief. Patna, in September, as in earlier months, was disturbed rather by anarchy in other regions than by actual mutinies within the city itself. In what way the Dinapoor troubles affected it, we have seen in an earlier chapter. Its present difficulties lay rather with the districts north and northwest of the city, where the revenue collectors had been driven from place to place by mutinous sepoys, and by petty chieftains who wished to strengthen themselves at the expense of the English ‘raj.’ The abandonment of Goruckpore by the officials, in a moment of fright, had had the effect of exposing the Chupra, Chumparun, and Mozufferpoor districts to the attacks of rebels, especially such as had placed themselves under the banner of the Mussulman chieftain Mahomed Hussein Khan, the self-appointed ‘ruler in the name and on behalf of the King of Oude.’ This man had collected a considerable force, and had organised a species of government at Goruckpore. The military power in the hands of the Company’s servants in the Chupra and Tirhoot districts consisted chiefly of a few Sikhs of the police battalion, quite unequal to the resistance of an incursion by Mahomed Hussein. The civilians of those districts sent urgent applications to Patna for military aid. But how could this be furnished? Troops and artillery were so imperatively demanded at Cawnpore, to aid the operations at Lucknow, that none could be detained on their passage up the river; the Dinapoor garrison, reduced by the mutiny and its consequences, could only spare a few troops for Patna itself; the troops going up the main trunk-road from Calcutta to Upper India could barely afford time and strength to encounter the Ramgurh insurgents, without attempting anything north of the Ganges. There happened, however, to be a Madras regiment passing up by steamer to Allahabad; and permission was obtained to detain a portion of this regiment for service in the Goruckpore region; while the Rajahs of Bettiah and Hutwah were encouraged to maintain a friendly attitude in support of the British authorities. The rebel or rather rabble forces under Mahomed Hussein were ill armed and worse disciplined; and it was probable that a few men of the 17th M. N. I., with a few Sikhs, could have beaten them at any time; but it was felt necessary to reoccupy Goruckpore at once, to prevent the neighbouring zemindars and thalookdars from joining the malcontents.

That Lord Canning accepted an offer of several Goorkha regiments, from Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul, has been stated in a former chapter; but a very long time elapsed before those hardy little troops were enabled to render much service. The process of collecting them at Khatmandoo and elsewhere occupied several weeks, and it was not until the beginning of September that they reached Jounpoor, a station in the very heart of the disturbed districts. Even then, there was much tardiness in bringing them into active service; for the English officers appointed to command them did not at first understand the difference of management required by Hindustani sepoys and Nepaulese Goorkhas. Happily, an opportunity occurred for remedying this defect. A smart affair on the 20th of September afforded the Goorkhas an opportunity of shewing their gallantry. Colonel Wroughton, military commandant at Jounpoor, having heard that Azimghur was threatened with an attack by 8000 rebels under Madhoo Singh of Atrowlia, resolved to send a regiment of Goorkhas from Jounpoor to strengthen the force already at Azimghur. They started at once, marched the distance in a day and a half, and reached the threatened city on the evening of the 19th. This was the Shere regiment of Jung Bahadoor’s force, under Colonel Shumshere Singh, a Nepaulese officer. At a very early hour on the morning of the 20th, it was ascertained that a large body of rebels had assembled in and near the neighbouring village of Mundoree. A force of 1200 men, mostly belonging to three Goorkha regiments, was immediately sent out to disperse them—Captain Boileau commanding, Colonel Shumshere Singh heading the Goorkhas, and Mr Venables (whose prowess had already been displayed in the same district) taking charge of a small body of local horse. Finding that the rebels were posted in a clump of trees and in a jheel behind the village, Captain Boileau directed Shumshere Singh to advance his Goorkhas at double pace. This was done, despite the fire from several guns; the little Goorkhas charged, drove the enemy away towards Captangunje, and captured three brass guns and all the camp-equipage. Mr Venables was seen wherever the fighting was thickest; he was up at the first gun taken, and killed three of the enemy with his own hand. About 200 of the enemy were laid low in this brief encounter, and one-sixth of this number on the part of the victors.

This little battle of Mundoree had a moral effect, superadded to the immediate dispersing of a body of rebels. It shewed the soldierly conduct of the Goorkhas, who had marched fifty miles in two days, and then won a battle in a kind of country to which they were unaccustomed. It proved the intrepidity of one of the civil servants of the Company, whose sterling qualities were brought forth at a critical time. Moreover, it dissipated a prejudice against the Goorkhas formed by some of the British officers. These troops had hitherto remained nearly inactive in the region between Nepaul and the Ganges. Jung Bahadoor had sent them, under a native officer, Colonel Puhlwan Singh, to be employed wherever the authorities deemed best. Colonel Wroughton, and other British officers, formed an opinion that the Nepaulese troops were incapable of rapid movement, and that their native officers dreaded the responsibility of independent action. Mr Grant, lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces, in an official letter to Colonel Wroughton after the battle of Mundoree, pointed out that this opinion had been very detrimental to the public service, in discouraging any employment of the Goorkhas. He added: ‘It was natural to expect that foreigners, and those foreigners mountaineers, unaccustomed either to the plains or to their inhabitants, should at first feel some awkwardness in the new position in which they were placed, with everything strange around them. The sagacity of Jung Bahadoor had already foreseen this difficulty; and it was at his earnest desire that British officers were attached to the Goorkha force, to encourage the officers and men, and to explain how operations should be carried on in such a country and such a climate as that in which they now for the first time marched, and against such an enemy as they now for the first time met.... The lieutenant-governor will now confidently look to you that the Goorkha force is henceforth actively employed in the service for which it was placed at the disposal of the British government by the Nepaulese.’ It must be borne in mind, to prevent confusion, that this Goorkha force, lent by Jung Bahadoor, was distinct from the Goorkha battalions of Sirmoor and Kumaon, often mentioned in former chapters; those battalions were part of the Bengal native army, fortunately consisting of Goorkhas instead of ‘Pandies;’ whereas the new force was a Nepaulese army, lent for a special purpose.

Mr Grant, the temporarily appointed lieutenant-governor just mentioned, employed all his energies throughout September and October in promoting the transit of British troops from the lower to the upper provinces, to aid in the operations at Cawnpore and Lucknow. He could not, however, forget the fact that the eastern frontier of Oude adjoined the British districts of Goruckpore, Jounpoor, and Azimghur; and that the Oude rebels were continually making demonstrations on that side. He longed for British troops, to strengthen and encourage the Goorkhas in his service, and occasionally applied for a few; but he, as all others, was told that the relief of the residents at Lucknow must precede, and be paramount over, all other military operations whatever. Writing to Lord Canning from Benares on the 15th of October, he said: ‘It is a point for consideration, how much longer it will be otherwise than imprudent to continue to send the whole of the daily arrivals of Europeans nearly half-way round the province of Oude, in order to create a pressure upon the rear of the mutineers and insurgents of that province from the direction of Cawnpore and Lucknow, whilst our home districts are left thus open to them in their front.’ He expressed a hope that the Punjaub and Delhi regions would be able to supply nearly troops enough for immediate operations at Lucknow; and that a portion of the British regiments sent up from the lower provinces would be permitted to form the nucleus of a new army at Benares, for operations on the eastern frontier of Oude. Many weeks elapsed, however, before this suggestion could meet with practical attention.

Thus it was throughout the districts of Goruckpore, Jounpoor, Azimghur, and others eastward of Oude and north of the Ganges. If the British had had to contend only with mutinied sepoys and sowars, victory would more generally and completely have attended their exertions; but rebellious chieftains were numerous, and these, encouraged by the newly established rebel government at Lucknow, continually harassed the British officials placed in charge of those districts. The colonels, captains, judges, magistrates, collectors—all cried aloud for more European troops; their cries were heeded at Calcutta, but could not be satisfied, for reasons already sufficiently explained.

Let us cross the Ganges, and watch the state of affairs in the southwestern districts of Bengal and Behar during the months of September and October.

Throughout this wide region, the troubles arose rather from sepoys already rebellious, than from new instances of mutiny. Preceding chapters have shewn that the 8th Bengal native infantry mutinied at Hazarebagh on the 30th of July; that the infantry of the Ramgurh battalion followed the pernicious example on the next day; that the 5th irregular cavalry mutinied at Bhagulpore on the 14th of August; and that the 7th, 8th, and 40th regiments of native infantry which mutinied at Dinapoor on the 25th of July, kept the whole of Western Bengal in agitation throughout August, by rendering uncertain in which direction they would march, under the rebel chieftain, Koer Singh. The only additional mutiny, in this region, was that of the 32d native infantry, presently to be noticed. The elements of anarchy were, however, already numerous and violent enough to plunge the whole district into disorder. Some of the towns were the centres of opium-growing or indigo-producing regions; many were surrounded simply by rice or cornfields; others, again, were military stations, at which the Company were accustomed to keep troops; while several were dâk or post stations, for the maintenance of communication along the great trunk-road from Calcutta to Benares. But wherever and whatever they may have been, these towns were seldom at peace during the months now under notice. The towns-people and the surrounding villagers were perpetually affected by rumours that the mutinous 5th cavalry were coming, or the mutinous 8th infantry, or the Ramgurh mutineers, or those from Dinapoor. For, it must be borne in mind, we are now treating of a part of India inhabited chiefly by Bengalees, a race too timid to supply many fighting rebels—too fond of quiet industry willingly to belt on the sword or shoulder the matchlock. They may or may not have loved the British; if not, they would rather intrigue than fight against them. In the contest arising out of the mutiny, these Bengalees suffered greatly. The mutineers, joined by the released vagabonds from the jails, too frequently plundered all alike, Feringhee and native; and the quiet trader or cultivator had much reason to dread the approach of such workers of mischief. The Europeans, few in number, and oppressed with responsibility, knew not which way to turn for aid. Revenue collectors, with many lacs of the Company’s rupees, feared for the safety of their treasure. Military officers, endeavouring with a handful of troops to check the passage of mutineers, were bewildered by the vague and conflicting intelligence which reached them. Officials at the dâk-stations, impressed daily by stringent orders from Calcutta to keep open the main line of road for the passage of English troops to Upper India, were in perpetual anxiety lest bands of mutineers should approach and cut off the dâks altogether. Every one begged and prayed the Calcutta government to send him a few trusty troops; every one assured the government that the salvation of that part of India depended on the request being acceded to.

Dorunda, sixty miles south of Hazarebagh, was a scene of violence on the 11th of September. The Ramgurh mutineers destroyed the public and private buildings at this place, plundered the town, committed great atrocities on the towns-people, beheaded a native surgeon belonging to the jail, and marched off in the direction of Tikhoo Ghat, taking with them four guns and a large amount of plunder and ammunition. Their apparent intention was to march through the Palamow district, and effect a junction with Koer Singh, with whom they had been in correspondence. Only four men of the Ramgurh irregular cavalry were of the party; all the rest were infantry. The cavalry, remaining faithful as a body, seized the first opportunity of joining their officers at Hazarebagh. This was another instance of divergence between the two parts of one corps, wholly inexplicable to the British officers, who could offer no reason why the infantry had lapsed, while the cavalry remained faithful. In this part of India the mutineers were not supported by the zemindars or landowners, as in other districts; and hence the few British troops were better enabled to lay plans for the frustration of these workers of mischief. Captain Fischer, Captain Dalton, Major English, Captain Oakes, Captain Davies, Captain Rattray, Lieutenant Graham, Lieutenant Birch, and other officers, were in command of small bodies of troops in this region during the greater part of the month; these troops consisted of Madras natives, Sikhs, and a very few British; and the numerous trifling but serviceable affairs in which they were engaged bore relation to the regiments which had mutinied at Ramgurh, Bhagulpore, and Dinapoor, and to the chieftains and marauders who joined those disloyal soldiers.

For the reasons already assigned, however, the British troops were very few in number; while the Madras troops were so urgently needed in the more turbulent Saugor provinces, that they could barely be spared for service in Bengal. Regiments had not at that time begun to arrive very rapidly from England; the few that did land at Calcutta, were eagerly caught up for service in the Doab and Oude. In most instances, the aid which was afforded by English troops to the region now under notice, depended on a temporary stoppage of a regiment or detachment on its passage to the upper provinces; in urgent cases, the government ordered or permitted a small British force to diverge from its direct line of march, and render aid to a Bengal town or station at a particular juncture. Such was the case with H.M. 53d foot. Major English, with a wing of this regiment, had a contest with the Ramgurh mutineers on the 29th of September. He marched from Hazarebagh to Sillis Chowk, where he heard news of these insurgents; and by further active movements he came up with them on the 2d of October, just as they had begun to plunder the town of Chuttra. The mutineers planted two guns so as to play upon the British; but the latter, in the way which had by this time become quite common with their comrades in India, determined to attack and take the guns by a fearless advance. On they went, through rice-fields, behind rocks and underwood, through lanes and round buildings, running and cheering, until they had captured four guns in succession, together with ammunition, ten elephants, and other warlike appliances, and sent the enemy fleeing. The officers dashed on at the head of their respective parties of men in a way that astonished the enemy; and the major, viewing these enterprises with the eye of a soldier, said in his dispatch: ‘It was splendid to see them rush on the guns.’ His loss was, however, considerable; 5 killed and 33 wounded out of three companies only. In addition to military trophies, Major English took fifty thousand rupees of the Company’s treasure from the mutineers, who, like mutineers elsewhere, regarded the revenue collections as fair booty when once they had thrown off allegiance. During the operations of the 53d in this region—one, in many parts of which British soldiers had never been seen—an instance was afforded of the dismay into which the civilians were sometimes thrown by the withdrawal of trusty troops; it was narrated in a letter written by an officer of that regiment.[106]

The native regiments were often distributed in detachments at different stations; and it frequently happened—as just adverted to—for reasons wholly inexplicable to the authorities, that some of those component elements remained faithful long after others had mutinied. Such was the case in reference to the 32d B. N. I. Two companies of that regiment, stationed at Deoghur in the Sonthal district, rose in mutiny on the 9th of October, murdered Lieutenant Cooper and the assistant-commissary, looted the bazaar, and then marched off to Rohnee, taking with them Lieutenant Rennie as a prisoner. Two other companies of the regiment were at that time en route from Burhait to Soorie, while the headquarter companies were at Bowsee. The authorities at Calcutta at once sought to ascertain what was the feeling among the men at the stations just named; but, pending these inquiries, orders were given to despatch a wing of H.M. 13th foot from Calcutta to the Sonthal district, to control the mutineers. Major English was at that time going to the upper provinces with a detachment of H.M. 53d foot; but he was now ordered to turn aside for a while, and aid in pacifying the district before pursuing his journey to Benares. Although the remaining companies of the native 32d did afterwards take rank among the mutineers, they were ‘true to their salt’ for some time after the treachery of their companions had become known.

This 32d mutinous regiment succeeded in crossing the Sone river, with the intention of joining Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers—a feat managed in a way that greatly mortified Major English’s 53d. On the 20th of October the wing of this latter regiment proceeded from Sheergotty to Gayah, to reassure the uneasy officials at that station; and on the 22d they started again, to intercept the mutineers. After much hot and wearying marching, they returned to Gayah, without having encountered the mutineers, one portion of whom had crossed the Sone. Some days later, news arrived that the second portion of the 32d, that which had not at first mutinied, was, in like manner, marching towards the river. On the 1st of November the 53d started in pursuit, marched thirty miles during the night to Hurwa, rested a while, marched ten miles further to Nowada during the evening, and came up with the mutineers in the night. A skirmish by moonlight took place, greatly to the advantage of the rebels, who had a better knowledge of the country than their opponents. The sepoys did not want to fight, they wished to march towards the Sone; and this they did day after day until the 6th, followed closely all the way by the British. The pursued outstripped the pursuers, and safely crossed the river—much to the vexation of the major and his troops. One of the officers present has said: ‘This was very provoking; for if we had but caught them, we should have got as much credit for it as for Chuttra. The country we went through was, for the most part, over swampy rice-fields; when we gave up the pursuit we had gone 130 miles in 108 hours; and, on our return to Gayah, we had been 170 miles in exactly one week. After the second day we sent our tents and bedding back; so that we marched as lightly as possible, and were by that means able to give the men an occasional lift on the elephants.’

Throughout these miscellaneous and often desultory operations in Bengal, if the Sikhs had proved faithless, all would have gone to ruin. It was more easy to obtain a thousand Sikhs than a hundred British, and thus they were made use of as a sort of military police, irrespective of the regular regiments raised in the Punjaub. Few circumstances are more observable throughout the Revolt, than the fidelity of these men. Insubordination there was, certainly, in some instances, but not in sufficient degree to affect the character of the whole. Captain Rattray’s Sikhs have often been mentioned. These were a corps of military police, formed for rendering service in any part of Bengal; and in the rendering of this service they were most admirable. The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, in a paper drawn up early in September, said: ‘The commandant of the Sikh Police Battalion has pleaded strongly on his own behalf, and on that of his men, for the assembling of the scattered fragments of his corps, to enable them to strike such a blow as to prove the high military spirit and discipline of the regiment. The urgent necessities which caused the separation of Captain Rattray’s regiment renders it impossible, in existing circumstances, to call in all detachments to head-quarters; but its admirable discipline, daring, and devotion at Arrah and Jugdispore, and its good conduct everywhere, have fully established its character for soldierly qualities of the highest order. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of the services which it has rendered to the state since the commencement of the present troubles; and the trust and confidence everywhere reposed in it, prove that these services are neither underrated nor disregarded. Of the men, all who have distinguished themselves for conspicuous deeds of valour and loyalty, have already been rewarded.’ As individuals, too, the Sikhs were reliable in a remarkable degree, when Hindustanis were falling away on all sides. When the troubles broke out at Benares, early in the mutiny, a Sikh chieftain, by name Rajah Soorut Singh, rendered invaluable service to the British residents, which they did not fail gratefully to remember at a later period. A few of the Company’s servants, civil and military, at Benares and other towns in that part of India, caused to be manufactured by Mr Westley Richards of Birmingham, for presentation to Soorut Singh, a splendid set of firearms, effective for use as well as superb in appearance.

We will now cross the Sone, and trace the progress of affairs in the Bundelcund and Saugor provinces.

It will be remembered, from the details given in former chapters, that the native inhabitants of Bundelcund, and other regions south of the Jumna and the Central Ganges, displayed a more turbulent tendency than those of Bengal. They had for ages been more addicted to war, and had among them a greater number of chieftains employing retainers in their pay, than the Bengalese; and they were within easier reach of the temptations thrown out by Nena Sahib, the King of Delhi, Koer Singh, and the agents of the deposed King of Oude. Lieutenant (now Captain) Osborne, the British resident at Rewah, was one who felt the full force of this state of circumstances. As he had been in August, so was he now in September, almost the only Englishman within a wide range of country southwest of Allahabad; the rajah of Rewah was faithful, but his native troops were prone to rebellion; and it was only by wonderful sagacity and firmness that he could protect both the rajah and himself from the vortex.

In a wide region eastward of Rewah, the question arose, every day throughout September, where is Koer Singh? This treacherous chieftain, who headed the Dinapoor mutineers from the day of their entering Arrah, was continually marching about with his rebel army of something like 3000 men, apparently uncertain of his plans—an uncertainty very perplexing to the British officials, who, having a mere handful of troops at their disposal, did not know where that handful might most profitably be employed. On one day Koer Singh, with his brother Ummer Singh, would be reported at Rotas, on another day at Sasseram; sometimes there was a rumour of the rebels being about to march to Rewah and Bundelcund; at others, that they were going to join the Goruckpore insurgents; and at others, again, that the Dinapoor and Ramgurh mutineers would act in concert. Wherever they went, however, plunder and rapine marked their footsteps. At one of the towns, the heirs of a zemindar, whose estates had been forfeited many years before, levied a thousand men to aid in seizing the property from the present proprietors. This was one among many proofs afforded during the mutiny, that chieftains and landowners sought to make the revolt of the native soldiery a means for insuring their own private ends, whether those ends were justifiable or not. The authorities at Patna and elsewhere endeavoured to meet these varied difficulties as best they could with their limited resources. They sent to Calcutta all the ladies and children from disturbed districts, so far as they possessed means of conveyance. They empowered the indigo-planters to raise small bodies of police force in their respective districts. They obtained the aid of two regiments of Goorkhas in the Chumparun district, by which the restoration of tranquillity might reasonably be expected. They seized the estates of Koer Singh and Ummer Singh at Arrah, as traitors. They imposed heavy fines on villages which had sent men to take active part in the disturbances. Lastly, they used all their energies to protect that part of the main trunk-road which passes near the river Sone; seeing that the march of European troops from Calcutta to the upper provinces would be materially affected by any interruption in that quarter. The newly arrived British regiments could not go up as an army, but as small detachments in bullock-wagons, and therefore were not prepared for sudden encounters with large numbers of the enemy.

The 5th irregular cavalry, who had mutinied in this part of India some weeks before, continued a system of plundering, levying contributions, and destroying public property. Every day that transpired, leaving these daring atrocities unchecked, weakened British prestige, and encouraged marauders on all sides to imitate the example so fatally set before them. The authorities felt and acknowledged this; yet, for the reasons already noticed, they could do little to check it. Captain Rattray, at the head of a portion of his Sikh police, encountered the 5th irregulars on the 8th of the month; but, as a cavalry force, they were too strong for him; they beat him in action, out-generalled him in movement, released four hundred prisoners from one of the jails, and then marched west toward the river Sone. The mutinous sowars were subsequently heard of at Tikane, Daoodnuggur, Baroon, and other places; everywhere committing great depredations. Thus was a large and important region, on either side of the main trunk-road, and extending two hundred miles along that road, kept in a state of daily agitation. The 5th irregular cavalry in one quarter, Koer Singh in another, and his brothers Ummer Singh and Nishan Singh in a third, were all busily employed in depredation; patriotism or nationality had little hold on their thoughts just then; for they plundered whomsoever had property to lose, without much regard to race or creed. The government offered large rewards for the capture of these leaders, but without effect: the rebels generally resisted this kind of temptation. Opium-crops to the value of half a million sterling were at that time ripening in the Behar and Arrah districts alone; and it was feared that all these would be devastated unless aid arrived from Calcutta.

Mr Wake, and the other civil servants who had so gallantly defended themselves at Arrah, against an enormous force of the enemy, returned to that station about the middle of September, to resume their duties; but as it was feared that Ummer Singh and the 5th irregulars would effect a junction, and attempt to reoccupy Jugdispore, those officers were authorised to fall back upon Dinapoor or Buxar, in the event of being attacked; although they themselves expressed a wish rather to remain at their posts and fortify themselves against the rebels as they had done before. The necessity of making this choice, however, did not arise. The 5th cavalry, after their victory over Rattray’s Sikhs, and during their visits to the towns and villages near the Sone, committed, as we have just said, every kind of atrocity—plundering houses, levying contributions, breaking open the zenanas of Hindoo houses, abusing the women, and destroying property too bulky to be carried away—all this they did; but for some unexplained reason, they avoided the redoubtable little band at Arrah.

The Saugor and Nerbudda provinces, of which the chief towns and stations were Banda, Jaloun, Jhansi, Saugor, Jubbulpoor, Nagode, Dumoh, Nowgong, Mundlah, and Hosungabad, were, as we have seen, in a very precarious state in the month of August. At Saugor, so early as the month of June, Brigadier Sage had brought all the Europeans into a well-armed and amply provisioned fort, guarded by a body of European gunners, and by the still faithful 31st regiment of Bengal infantry; and there the Europeans remained at the close of August, almost cut off from communication with their fellow-countrymen elsewhere. Jubbulpoor had passed through the summer months without actual mutiny; but the revolt of the 42d infantry and the 3d irregular cavalry, at neighbouring stations, and certain suspicious symptoms afforded by the 52d at Jubbulpoor itself, led Major Erskine to fortify the Residency, and provision it for six months. Banda, Jhansi, and Jaloun, had long fallen into the hands of the rebels; Mundlah and Hosungabad were at the mercy of circumstances occurring at other places; Nagode would be reliable only so long as the 50th native infantry remained true; and Dumoh would be scarcely tenable if Jubbulpoor were in danger. Thus, at the end of August, British supremacy in the Saugor and Nerbudda territories hung by a thread. The Calcutta authorities, unable to supply British troops for Bengal or Behar, were equally debarred from rendering assistance to these territories. September opened very gloomily for the officers intrusted with duties in this quarter. The Punjaub and Calcutta could only furnish trustworthy troops for the Jumna and Doab regions, where the war raged with greatest fierceness; it was from Madras and Bombay alone that aid could be expected. Fortunately, the large regions of Nagpoor and Hyderabad were nearly at peace, and thus a passage could be afforded for troops from the south which would not have been practicable had those countries been plunged in anarchy.

Towards the middle of September, Lieutenant Clark, deputy-commissioner of Jubbulpoor, learned a few facts that put him on the track of a conspiracy. It came out, on inquiry, that Rajah Shunker Shah, and many other chieftains and zemindars in the neighbourhood of Jubbulpoor, acting in concert with some of the sepoys of the 52d B. N. I., intended to attack the cantonment on the last day of the Mohurrum, murder all the Europeans, burn the cantonments, and plunder the treasury and city. By a bold and prompt movement, the chief conspirators were seized on the 14th. The lieutenant, writing to the commissioner of Nagpoor, announced the result in brief but significant language. ‘I have been fortunate enough to get conclusive evidence by means of spies, without the conspirators taking alarm; and this morning, with a party of sowars and police, bagged thirty, and two rajahs (ringleaders) among them. Of course they swing. Many of my principal zemindars, and some—I wish I knew how many—of the 52d, are in the plot.’ In Rajah Shunker’s house, among other treasonable papers, was found a sort of prayer, invoking his deity to aid him in the destruction of all Europeans, the overturning of the government, and the re-establishment of his own power. The paper was found in a silk bag in which he kept his fan, and was a scrap torn from a government proclamation issued after the massacre at Meerut. In this instance, therefore, the official expression of horror and wrath at the opening scene of the mutiny, instead of deterring, encouraged others to walk in the same bloody path. The prayer or invocation was afterwards translated from the Hindee into English, and published among the parliamentary papers.[107] The execution of the rajah and his son was something more terrible than was implied by the lieutenant’s curt announcement, ‘of course they swing.’ It was one among many examples of that ‘blowing away from guns’ to which the records of the mutiny habituated English newspaper readers. An officer stationed at Jubbulpoor at the time, after noticing the complicity of these two guilty men, describes the execution in a brief but painfully vivid way. ‘At the head of the conspiracy was Shunker Shah, the Ghond rajah, and his son. Their place of abode is about four miles from Jubbulpoor. In former days this family ruled over all this part of the country; they can trace their descent for sixty generations. The family had been deprived of everything by the Mahrattas, and were in great poverty when we took possession. Our government raised them up from this state, and gave them sufficient to support themselves comfortably; and now they shewed their gratitude by conspiring against us in our time of sore trial. The family have neither much property nor power, but the ancient name and prestige was a point on which to rally.... On the 18th, at 11 o’clock A.M., our two guns were advanced a few hundred yards in front of the Residency, covered by a company of the 33d and a few troopers, and it became known that the Ghond rajah and his son were about to be blown away from the cannon’s mouth. The old man walked up to the guns with a firm stride; the son appeared more dejected. The old man, with his snow-white hair and firm manner, almost excited compassion; and one had to remember, before such feelings could be checked, how atrociously he intended to deal with us had his conspiracy succeeded; the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. All was over in a few minutes. The scattered remains were pounced upon by kites and vultures, but what could be collected was handed over to the ranee.’

Although Lieutenant Clark was thus enabled, by mingled caution and decision, to frustrate the atrocious plot of which Jubbulpoor was to have been the theatre, he could not prevent the mutiny of the 52d native regiment. That corps revolted, albeit without perpetrating the cruelties and rapine intended. It was on the 18th that this rising took place, the troops at once marching off quietly towards Dumoh. One old subadar they tied on a horse, because he did not wish to join, and because they did not choose to leave him behind. It was supposed that the 52d had gone towards Dumoh, to capture guns there, and then return to plunder Jubbulpoor. Two days before this, namely, on the 16th, the greater part of the 50th regiment Bengal infantry threw off allegiance. Being stationed at Nagode, they suddenly rose, released the prisoners from the jail, burned the bungalows, and rendered the place no longer safe for Europeans. Mr Ellis and the other civilians fled to Paunna, while Colonel Hampton and the other military officers made their escape towards Jokhie—leaving every vestige of their property behind, except the clothes on their backs. Two companies of the regiment, remaining faithful, accompanied their officers safely to Mirzapore, a journey which occupied them twelve days.

The Europeans at Dumoh, a civil station on the road from Saugor to Jubbulpoor, were thrown into much tribulation by news of these mutinies at other places. When both the 50th and 52d regiments had ‘gone’—a term that acquired much significance in India at that time—Major Erskine, chief-commissioner of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, who happened to be at Dumoh, summoned a council of war on the 20th of September, to consider what was best to be done. It was resolved that Dumoh could not long be held against any considerable body of mutineers; and that advantage should be taken of the temporary presence of a column of Madras native troops to employ that column as an escort for the civilians and the Company’s treasure from Dumoh to Jubbulpoor. There was a detachment of the still faithful 31st at Dumoh; and this was sent to join the main body of the regiment at Saugor, to be out of the way of temptation from mutinous sepoys.

This convoy of men and money from Dumoh led to a smart military encounter. The Madras movable column which afforded the required protection numbered about 500 men of all arms, under Colonel Miller. Leaving Dumoh on the 21st, and being much obstructed in passing the river Nowtah, Colonel Miller reached Sigrampore on the 26th; where he heard that the main body of the mutineers were at Konee, on the banks of a river which the column would need to cross on its way to Jubbulpoor. The colonel at once despatched a force of about 100 men, under Lieutenant Watson, to secure the boats on the river; but the enemy baffled this officer, who had much difficulty in preserving his men. Miller then advanced with his whole column, met the enemy, and fought a brief but decisive battle, which ended in the utter rout of the rebel sepoys. If it had been a purely military affair, the colonel was strong enough to defeat a more numerous body of the enemy; but he was hampered by the presence of civilians, treasure, and 120 sepoys of the 52d, who had been disarmed at Dumoh on news of the revolt of the main body, and whom it was necessary to take with the column. It was, indeed, a strange state of things; for the disarmed men were of course eager enough to rush over and join their companions of the same regiment.

It is not matter for censure if men placed in authority at different stations, in time of peril, occasionally differed concerning the relative importance of those stations. Thus, when the 50th and 52d native regiments mutinied, a question arose which principal city, Saugor or Jubbulpoor, should be regarded as a last stronghold in the event of the British being nearly overpowered. Major Erskine, at Jubbulpoor, urged the claims of that city, as having certain facilities for the receipt of reinforcements, should such happily be afforded; and as having many European women and children within the fort, who could not be removed without danger. Brigadier Sage, on the other hand, urged—‘Whatever you do, let me retain Saugor. It is the key to Central India. It has a good fort and magazine. It is provisioned for six or eight months for three hundred men, and has thirty thousand maunds of grain in addition. It has a siege-train, which will fall into the hands of the enemy if we leave the place. It contains 170 women and children, who could not be withdrawn without danger.’ In such or similar words was the retention of Saugor advocated. The discussion happily ended by both towns being retained. Those officials of the Company, military or civil, who resolutely fortified, instead of abandoning their positions, were in most instances rewarded with success—unless the enemy were in unusually overwhelming force.

Nearly all parts of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories were in wild confusion at the close of September. The Kamptee column of Madras troops had, as we have just seen, broken up the 52d mutineers; but still those rebels lay concealed in jungles, ready for mischief whenever an opportunity might offer; while the Madrasses, distracted by many applications from different quarters, had been unable to prevent the mutinous 50th regiment, at Nagode, from marching off to join the Dinapoor mutineers near Banda. At Saugor, Brigadier Sage and the British were safe, because they were in a strong and well-provisioned fort, and because the 31st native infantry exhibited no signs of disaffection; nevertheless the whole country around was in the hands of rebellious chieftains. On one occasion he sent out the greater part of his force to attack the Rajah of Bankipore at Nurriowlee, ten miles from Saugor; but the attack was unskilfully made—it failed, and greatly lowered British prestige in the neighbourhood.

As in September, so in October, these provinces were held by a very slender tie. Nearly all the chiefs of Bundelcund, on the border, were ready to rise in rebellion at news of any discomfiture of the British. Numerous thakoors had risen, and, with their followers, were plundering the villages in every direction. At Jubbulpoor, Hosungabad, Nursingpore, Jaloun, Jhansi, Saugor, Mundlah, Dumoh, there was scarcely an English soldier; and the presence of a few hundred Madras troops alone stood between the authorities and frightful anarchy. Indeed, Jaloun, Jhansi, and Dumoh were out of British hands altogether. The commissioner of Nagpoor was unable to send up any more Madrasses from the south; Mr Grant was unable to send any from Benares; the independent and half-distrusted state of Rewah lay on one border; the thoroughly rebellious state of Banda on another—and thus Major Erskine looked with gloomy apprehensions on the fate of the provinces under his charge. As the month drew to a close, his accounts were still more dismal. In one letter he said: ‘The mass of native chiefs disbelieve in the existence of a British army; and nothing but the presence of troops among them will convince them of their error.’ Again find again were such messages and representations sent to Viscount Canning, as chief authority in India; again and again did he announce that he had no British troops to spare. To Major Erskine’s letters he replied that he ‘must say broadly and plainly that he would consider the sacrifice of the garrison in Lucknow as a far greater calamity and reproach to the government than an outbreak of the Rewah or Bundelcund states, even if followed by rebellion and temporary loss of our authority in our own territories on the Nerbudda.’ At the close of the month, Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers were somewhere between Banda and Calpee; while Captain Osborne-one of the most remarkable men whom the Indian Revolt brought into notice—still maintained his extraordinary position at Rewah.

We pass now further to the west—to the cities and towns on the Jumna river, and to the regions of Central India between that river and Bombay. Here, little need detain us until we come to Agra. Futtehpoor, Cawnpore, and Futteghur, though not in Oude, were on its frontier, and were involved in the fortunes of that province. Captain Peel’s movements with his naval brigade, in the Doab, may be left for treatment in connection with the affairs of Lucknow.

Agra experienced a loss early in September, in the death of John Russell Colvin, the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces. He fell from sickness, brought on mainly by the intense anxieties arising out of his position. He was a remarkable man, a true specimen of those civilians developed into usefulness by the unique policy of the East India Company. In England a public man becomes a statesman through a multitude of minor and exceptional causes; in India, under the Company’s ‘raj,’ statesmen were educated professedly and designedly for their work. In England, we have seen the same statesman transferred from the Exchequer to the India Board, and from thence to the Admiralty, as if the same kind of knowledge were required for all three situations; in India, the statesman’s education bore more close relation to the duties of the offices he was likely to fill. No defects in the Company’s government, no evils arising out of ‘traditional policy,’ no favouritism or nepotism—can blot out the fact that the system brought out the best qualities of the men in their service. Well will it be if the imperial government, in future ages, is served so faithfully, skilfully, and energetically in India as the Company’s government, during the last half-century, has been served by the Malcolms, Metcalfes, Munros, Birds, Thomasons, Elphinstones, Montgomerys, Outrams, Lawrences, and Colvins—most of them civilians, whose apprenticeship to Indian statesmanship began almost from boyhood.

Mr Colvin, whose death has suggested the above few remarks, had seen as much political service as almost any man in India. He was born in Calcutta, the son of a merchant engaged in the Calcutta trade. After receiving his education in England, and carrying off high honours at Haileybury, he went to India in the Company’s service in 1826; and for thirty-one years was seldom free from public duties, mostly special and local. The number of offices he served in succession was remarkably large. He was assistant to the registrar of the Sudder Court at Calcutta; assistant to the British resident at Hyderabad; assistant-secretary in the revenue and judicial department at Calcutta; secretary to the Board of Revenue in the Lower Provinces; private secretary to Governor-general Lord Auckland; British resident in Nepaul; commissioner of the Tenasserim provinces; judge of the Sudder Court; and lastly, lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—ruler over a territory containing as many inhabitants as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. All these offices he filled in succession, and the first eight qualified him for the onerous duties of the ninth and last. Throughout the mutiny, the only point on which Mr Colvin differed from Viscount Canning was in the policy of the proclamation issued on the 25th of May. It was at the time, and will ever remain, a point fairly open to discussion, whether Colvin’s proclamation[108] was or was not too lenient towards the rebellious sepoys. If Canning’s decision partook more of that of John Lawrence, it is equally certain that Colvin’s views were pretty nearly shared by Henry Lawrence, in the early stages of the mutiny. Irrespective of this question of the proclamation, Colvin’s position at Agra was one of painful difficulty. He was not so successful as Sir John Lawrence in the Punjaub, and his name has not found a place among the great men whom the mutiny brought into notice; but it would be unfair to leave unnoticed the circumstances which paralysed the ruler of Agra. A distinguished civilian, who knew both Colvin and Lawrence, and who has written under the assumed name of ‘Indophilus,’ thus compares the position of the two men: ‘Colvin, with a higher official position, had less real command over events than his neighbour in the Punjaub. John Lawrence ruled a people who had for generations cherished a religious and political feud with the people of Hindostan Proper; and Delhi was, in Sikh estimation, the accursed city drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs. John Colvin’s government was itself the focus of the insurrection. Lawrence may be said to have been his own commander-in-chief; and after a European force had been detached to Delhi immediately on the outbreak, he still had at his disposal seven European regiments, including the one sent from Bombay to Moultan, besides European artillery and a local Sikh force of about 20,000 first-rate irregulars of all arms. Colvin was merely the civil governor of the Northwest Provinces; and as the posts (dâks) were stopped, he could not even communicate with the commander-in-chief, with whom the entire disposal of the military force rested. Lawrence had three days’ exclusive knowledge by telegraph of what had taken place at Meerut and Delhi, during which interval he made his arrangements for disarming the sepoy regiments stationed in the Punjaub. Colvin had no warning; and the military insurrection had actually broken out within his government, and the mutineers were in possession of Delhi, before he could begin to act; but he promptly and vigorously did what was in his power.’ We have seen in former chapters what course Mr Colvin adopted between May and August.[109] He opened communications with the authorities all around him, as soon as he knew that the mutiny had begun; he disarmed the 44th and 67th native infantry on the 1st of June; he raised a corps of volunteer horse for service in the neighbourhood; he organised a foot-militia among the civilians and traders, for the protection of the city; and he kept a close watch on the proceedings of the Gwalior mutineers. In July occurred the mutiny of the troopers of the Kotah Contingent; then the ill-managed battle outside Agra on the 5th; then the shutting up of Mr Colvin and six thousand persons within the fort; and then the passing of two weary months, during which the lieutenant-governor was powerless through his inability to obtain trusty troops from any quarter whatever. His health and spirits failed, and he died on the 9th of September—still hemmed within the walls of the fort at Agra. Mr Reade, the leading civilian, assumed authority until orders could be received from Calcutta; Colonel Frazer afterwards received the appointment—not of lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, for that government had by this time disappeared under the force of the mutiny—but of chief-commissioner at Agra. Viscount Canning, in a government order, gracefully and properly acknowledged the merits of Mr Colvin.[110]

The Europeans resident in Agra, after Mr Colvin’s decease, were still unable to liberate themselves; for Delhi had not yet fallen, nor had English prestige been yet restored by Havelock’s success at Lucknow. The English officers felt their enforced idleness very irksome. They, like all the other Europeans, were confined within the fort; no daring military exploits could be looked forward to hopefully, because there ware scarcely any troops to command. For three months the Gwalior mutineers had been their bête noir, their object of apprehension, as being powerful and not far distant. They occasionally heard news from Gwalior, but of too uncertain a nature to satisfy their doubts. Early in September one of the officers wrote: ‘A portion of the rebel army of Gwalior has marched; but their intentions are not yet known. They still say they are coming to turn us out of the fort, and perform all sorts of gallant deeds. Had they come at first, they would have given us a good deal of trouble, as we were not prepared for a siege—guns not mounted, magazines not shell-proof, provisions not in sufficient quantity, and (worst of all) two thousand women and children without any protection from the enemy’s fire. All this is now being rapidly remedied, and now we could stand a siege with comfort. One of the greatest wants is that of tobacco; the soldiers have none; and few men know so well as they do the comfort of a pipe after a hard day’s work, whether under a broiling sun or in drenching rain.’ The British officers at Agra were embittered by becoming acquainted with the fact, that many influential natives now in rebellion were among those who made the most fervent demonstrations of loyalty when the mutiny first began.

Of the affairs of Delhi we shall speak presently. Meanwhile, it may be well to describe the movements of a distinct corps, having its origin in the capture of that city. Although General Wilson seized all the gates and buildings of the imperial city one by one, he could not prevent the escape of the mutineers from the southern gate, the opposite to that where the siege-works had been carried on. By the 21st of September, when the conquest was completed, large bodies of the rebels were far away, on their march to other scenes of struggle. The chief body marched down the right bank of the Jumna on the Muttra road, with the intention of crossing over into the Doab. Brigadier Showers was sent with a force to pursue another body of rebels in another direction; but the operations now under notice were those of the column under Colonel E. H. Greathed (of H.M. 8th foot), organised at Delhi on the 23d of September—about 3000 strong.[111] Starting on the 24th, Greathed crossed the Jumna, and marched towards Bolundshuhur. Here a body of fugitive mutineers was encountered on the 28th. A sharp action ensued, which ended in the flight of the enemy, leaving behind them two guns and much ammunition. As a consequence of this defeat, a newly set-up rajah, one Waladad Khan, abandoned the fort of Malagurh, and fled. It was in the blowing-up of this fort, by order of the colonel, that Lieutenant Home, who had so distinguished himself at the storming of the Cashmere Gate, was killed. One of his brother-officers said in a letter: ‘The loss of poor Home has thrown a cloud over all our successes. He was brave among brave men, and an honour to our service.’ Greathed advanced day after day, burning villages which were known to have been nests of insurgents. In one of those places, Koorjah, he found the skeleton of a European woman, the head cut off, and the legs hacked and cut. On the 5th of October, the column reached Allygurh, scoured through the town, and cut up a large body of rebels, taking eleven guns from them. Greathed was at Akerabad the next day, where Mungal Singh and his brother had raised the standard of rebellion; but these chieftains were killed, as well as most of their retainers. On the 9th, he reached Hattrass. At this place his movements were suddenly disturbed; he had intended to march down the Doab to aid Havelock, Outram, and Inglis; but now news from Agra reached him that led to a change of plan. To understand this, attention must be turned to the state of affairs in the Mahratta dominions of Scindia, the northern boundary of which approached very near Agra.

From the day when Scindia’s Gwalior Contingent rose in mutiny against British authority, on the 14th of June, nothing but the personal faithfulness of Scindia himself prevented the mutineers from joining their compatriots at Delhi or elsewhere. Every British officer being driven away from Gwalior, the powerful army forming the Contingent might easily have made itself master of all that part of the Mahratta dominions; but Scindia, by a remarkable exercise of steadiness and shrewdness, kept them near him. He would not make himself personally an enemy to them; neither, on the other hand, would he express approval of their act of mutiny. He still remained their paymaster, and held his power over them partly by keeping their pay in arrear. All through the months of July and August did this singular state of affairs continue. A few detachments of the Contingent had marched off from other stations, but the main body remained quiet. The Indore mutineers from Holkar’s Contingent had for some time been encamped near them at Gwalior, much against Scindia’s inclination. Early in September the two bodies disagreed concerning future plans—the Indore men wishing to speed to Delhi, the Gwalior men to Cawnpore. Some of the maharajah’s own troops, distinct from the Contingent, were seduced from their allegiance by the Indore men, and marched off with them on the 5th, with seven guns and a good store of ammunition. Some of the budmashes or vagabonds of Gwalior joined them; but the Gwalior Contingent proper still remained quiet near that city. This quietness, however, did not promise to be of long continuance. On the 7th, the native officers went to Scindia, and demanded from him food and conveyance for a march either to Agra or to Cawnpore. The maharajah’s response not being satisfactory to them, they began to seize oxen, buffaloes, mules, horses, camels, and carts from the neighbouring villagers, and a few elephants from the richer men. Some violence against Scindia himself appeared probable; but he found the main body of his own little army disposed to remain faithful, and hence the Contingent had little inducement to attack him. The landowners in the neighbourhood offered to aid him with their retainers, thus lessening the danger to which he might otherwise have been exposed. About the middle of the month a fierce struggle seemed imminent; but Scindia and his supporters continued firm, and the Contingent did not for some time attempt any manœuvre likely to be serious to the British. We can therefore follow the steps of the other army of mischief-workers.

When the miscellaneous body of Indore mutineers, Gwalior traitors, and budmashes left Gwalior, they proceeded towards the river Chumbul, which they crossed on the 7th of September, and then took possession of the fort of Dholpore, a place about thirty miles from Agra—at the point where the trunk-road from Delhi to Bombay crosses the Chumbul, and therefore a very important spot in relation to any arrival of reinforcements for the British. In that very week the final bombardment of Delhi began; and if the mutineers had marched thither, they might seriously have embarrassed General Wilson’s operations. They appear, however, to have remained near Dholpore, supporting and strengthening themselves by plunder in the neighbouring region. When Delhi fell, and its defenders escaped, the Dholpore mutineers—as we may now conveniently call them—had no motive for marching towards the imperial city; but, near the close of the month, they began to lay plans for an attack on Agra.

When October arrived, Mr Reade, and Colonels Cotton and Frazer, had to direct their attention not only to these Dholpore mutineers, but to dangerous neighbours from other quarters. A glance at a map will shew that when mutineers and marauders escaped from Delhi towards the Lower Ganges, Agra would necessarily be not far from the line of route. When, therefore, the authorities at the last-named city heard of the fall of Delhi, they naturally looked with some anxiety to the course pursued by the fugitives. They speedily heard that a crowd of mutineers, fanatics, felons, and miscreants of every description, had found their way to Muttra, and were engaged in constructing a bridge of boats over the Jumna; in order, as appeared probable, to open a communication with the Indore or Dholpore mutineers. Hence the extreme anxiety of the Agra authorities that Greathed’s column, in pursuit of the fugitive rebels, should march down the right instead of the left bank of the Jumna, in order to aid Agra, and cut off the communication with Dholpore; and hence great disappointment, when it was found that the active leader of that column was marching rapidly on towards Cawnpore—without thinking of Agra. At such a time, each officer naturally thought first and principally of the safety of the city or station for which he was responsible; and the commanders of movable columns were often embarrassed by conflicting requisitions from different quarters.

Such was the state of feeling in Agra at the end of September. Early in October, matters became more serious. The authorities received news that an attack on Agra was meditated by the rebels—comprising the 23d B. N. I. and the 1st B. N. C. of the Indore Contingent, from Mhow; a part of the fugitive forces from Delhi; and malcontents from Dholpore and the neighbourhood. Means were immediately sought for frustrating this attack. The rebels were known to be on the advance on the 6th; it was also known that on that day Colonel Greathed had arrived with his column at Akrabad, one day’s march from Allygurh, on his way towards Cawnpore. It was thereupon resolved to obtain the aid of Greathed at Agra, before he further prosecuted his march. This energetic officer, who was rapidly following up a fugitive brigade from Delhi, very unwillingly postponed an object on which he had set his heart; but the danger to Agra becoming very imminent, he turned aside to lend his aid at that point. After marching forty-four miles in twenty-eight hours—a tremendous achievement in an Indian climate—Greathed arrived at the parade-ground of Agra on the morning of the 10th of October. Before his tired troops could enjoy even three hours’ rest, they found themselves engaged in battle with the enemy, who suddenly attacked their camp. The rebels made a spirited dash with their cavalry, and opened a brisk fire with artillery half hidden behind luxuriant standing corn. Not a moment did Greathed delay. He moved to the right with a view of outflanking the enemy and capturing their guns on that side; and his arrangements in other quarters soon enabled him to charge and capture the enemy’s guns and standards. On they went, the mutineers retreating and Greathed following them up, until he reached a village three miles out on the Gwalior road. Here Colonel Cotton came up, and assumed the command; the infantry drove the rebels to the five-mile point, and the cavalry and artillery continued the pursuit; until at length the enemy were utterly routed. They lost twelve guns, and the whole of their tents, baggage, ammunition, and vehicles of every description. It was a complete discomfiture. Colonel Greathed obtained, and deservedly, high praise for the celerity and energy of his movements. By the time the battle and pursuit were over, his cavalry had marched sixty-four and his infantry fifty-four miles in thirty-six hours; while Captain Bourchier’s 9-pounder battery had come in from Hattrass, thirty miles distant, during the night without a halt. Greathed’s loss in the action was 11 killed and 56 wounded. It was a strange time for the mutineers to make an attack on Agra. During the siege of Delhi, Wilson could not have spared a single regiment from his siege-camp, nor could any other general have brought resources to bear on the relief of Agra; whereas now, in this second week of October, Greathed with a strong column was within two days’ march of the city. If they were not aware of this fact, then was their information less complete than usual; if they hoped to check his advance down the Doab, then did they wofully underrate his strength and gallantry.

While tracing briefly the progress of the movable column after this battle of Agra, it may be well to advert to a source of vexation that sometimes presented itself during the wars of the mutiny, at Agra as elsewhere. Many of the gallant men concerned in struggling against the mutineers were occasionally much perplexed by questions of seniority, at times and places when they could refer for solution neither to the governor-general nor to the commander-in-chief. Such was the case in reference to Greathed’s column. General Gowan in Sirhind, General Penny at Delhi, the chief-commissioner at Agra, all had some authority in military matters in the Northwest Provinces. Colonel Cotton, at Agra, finished the battle which Greathed began—not because it had been badly fought, but because Cotton was senior to Greathed. Again, while Greathed was marching quickly and fighting valiantly on the road to Cawnpore, after the battle of Agra, Colonel Hope Grant of the 9th Lancers, made brigadier in order that he might assume higher command, was sent out from Delhi viâ Agra to supersede him—not because he was a better officer than Greathed, but because he was senior in rank. Grant joined the column on the 19th of October, and became its leader. The change caused a busy paper-war between the generals and commissioners who had made the respective appointments, and who could not, at such a troubled time, rightly measure the relative strength of their own claims to authority. Whether under Hope Grant, however, or under Greathed, the column was in good hands. On the 19th, the column marched twenty-four miles, and entered Minpooree. A native rajah had long ruled that place during the anarchy of the provinces; but no sooner did he hear of the approach of the British than he fled—leaving behind him several guns, 14,000 pounds of powder, 230,000 rupees, and much other property, which had been taken from the Company’s officers when the mutiny began. There was no fighting, only a re-occupation. After another severe punishment of the rebels at Kanouge on the 23d, the column marched towards Cawnpore, which was reached on the 26th.

Returning to the affairs of the various Mahratta states, it may now be mentioned that the Gwalior Contingent did at last, in the month of October, make a move. They marched slowly and heavily (six regiments, four batteries, and a siege-train), leaving Gwalior on the 15th, and advancing eastward towards Jaloun and Calpee, as if with the intention of crossing the Jumna at the last-named place into the Doab; but the month came to an end without any serious demonstration on their part. Had Nena Sahib been as bold and skilful as he was vicious, he might have wrought great mischief to the English at this time. If he had placed himself at the head of the Gwalior Contingent (which was fully expected), and had marched with them southward through Bundelcund to the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, he would have picked up rebellious Bundelas at every village, and have advanced towards the Nerbudda in such strength as to render it very doubtful whether the available Madras and Bombay troops could have confronted him. He had ambition enough to place himself at the head of all the Mahratta princes, but neither skill nor courage for such a position. So far as concerns Agra, the residents continued in the fort, in no great danger, but too weak in military to engage in any extensive operations. The only contest, indeed, during the rest of the month was on the 28th, when a party from the fort sallied out, and dispersed a body of rebels assembled at Futtehpore Sikri.

The wide region comprised within the political limits of the Mahratta and Rajpootana states was in a very disturbed condition during September and October. Besides the Gwalior Contingent in Scindia’s dominions, there were Holkar’s Contingent, the Bhopal and Kotah Contingents, the Jhodpore legion, and other bodies of native troops, the partial mutiny of which kept the country in perpetual agitation. All Bengal troops were sources of mischief, for they were the very elements among which the disaffection grew up; European troops could be sent neither from Calcutta nor the Punjaub; and therefore it depended either on Bombay or Madras (chiefly the former) to send troops by whom the insurgents could be put down. These troops, for reasons already sufficiently explained, were few in number; and it was a work of great difficulty to transfer them from place to place where anarchy most prevailed; indeed, the commanding officers were often distracted by appeals to them from various quarters for aid—appeals incompatible one with another.

Colonel Lawrence had a contest with the mutineers of the Jhodpore legion, about the middle of September, in Rajpootana. He marched to and through various places, the names of which have hardly been heard of in England, such as Beaur, Chiliamas, Barr, Peeplia, Bugree, Chaputtia, and Awah; these movements took place between the 14th and the 18th of the month; and on the last-named date he encountered the rebels at Awah. He had with him 200 of H.M. 83d foot, 250 Mhairwara battalion, two squadrons of Bombay native cavalry, and 5 guns. It was an artillery attack on both sides, lasting three hours. Lawrence seems to have distrusted his own strength; he would not bring his infantry and cavalry into action, fearful of losing any of his men just at that place and time. In short, his attack failed; the rebels retained hold of Awah, and Lawrence, finding his supplies running short, retired to Beaur. The rebels had the guns of the legion with them, and worked them well. It was an untoward affair; for the Rajah of Jhodpore, friendly to the English, had just before met with a defeat of his own troops by the same legion, in an action which involved the death of Captain Monck Mason, the British resident; and now prestige was still further damaged by the retreat of Lawrence after a desultory action. The colonel had come with a small Bombay column to Ajmeer, to watch the movements of rebels in and near Ajmeer, Nuseerabad, Awah, and other places in that part of Rajpootana; and any discomfiture at such a time was likely to afford a bad example. At Kotali, Neemuch, Mundisore, Mehidpore, Indore, Mhow, Bhopal, &c., an uneasy feeling similarly prevailed, arising out of disturbances too small to be separately noticed here, but important as indicating a wide belt of disaffected country between the Jumna and the Bombay presidency. The strange character of the whole of that region, in a political sense, was well expressed by an English officer, who, writing from Neemuch, said: ‘This station is in the heart of Rajpootana, a country abounding in and surrounded by native states which compose anything but one family, and between any two of which it is very difficult to determine at any given time what relation exists. There are Holkar’s troops, and Scindia’s troops, and Salomba’s troops, and the mercenary troops of Odeypore, the Kotah Contingent, the Jeypoor, Jhodpore, Meywar, and Malwar corps, and a host more; and when any little dispute arises in the country, a sort of jumble takes place between these bodies, during which two of them at least are pretty sure to come into collision.’ These petty quarrels among the chieftains were sometimes advantageous to the British; but the soldiery were so strongly affected with mutinous tendencies, that a friendly rajah could seldom give practical value to his friendliness.

It is unnecessary to notice in detail the petty military operations of that region. No great success attended any of them. One was at Nimbhera, or Nimbhaira, between Neemuch and Nuseerabad. Here a contest took place on the 20th of September, in which a native rajah was worsted by Colonel Jackson and 350 miscellaneous troops. Another occurred some weeks later, when the Mundisore insurgents, on the 22d of October, made an attack on Jeerun, a town about ten miles from Neemuch. A force of about 400 men was at once sent out from this station, chiefly Bombay native troops, but headed by 50 of H.M. 83d foot, under Captains Simpson, Bannister, and Tucker. The enemy were found drawn up in force. Tucker brought two guns and a mortar to bear upon them, and sent his infantry to attack the town; but the enemy checked them by overpowering numbers, and captured the mortar. The cavalry now made an attack, followed by the infantry, and the mortar was speedily retaken. The enemy were driven into the fort, and their fire entirely silenced. The Neemuch force was not strong enough to take the fort at that time, but the insurgents evacuated it during the night, and marched off. The encounter was rather severe to the British officers engaged; for two of them (Captains Tucker and Read) were killed, and five wounded. The miscreants cut off Captain Tucker’s head as soon as he had fallen.

One of the most pathetic stories of that period had relation, not to a battle or a wholesale slaughter, but to the assassination of a father and two sons under very cowardly and inexplicable circumstances. Major Burton was British political agent at Kotah, a Rajpootana state of which the chief town lies northeast of Neemuch—a situation he had filled for thirteen years, always on friendly terms with the native rajah and the people generally. He had been four months at Neemuch, but returned to Kotah on the 12th of October, accompanied by two sons scarcely arrived at manhood. On the 15th, two regiments of the rajah’s native army revolted, and surrounded the Residency in which Major Burton and his sons had just taken up their abode. What followed may best be told in the words of a third son, Mr C. W. Burton, of Neemuch.[112]

Let us on to Delhi, and watch how the imperial city fared after the siege.

As soon as the conquest had been completely effected, on the 21st of September,[113] it became necessary to make arrangements for the internal government of the city, irrespective of any more permanent or important appointments. Colonel Burn was made military governor. This officer had been thirty years in the Company’s service—first in the Bengal native infantry; then in raising three native regiments on the Afghan frontier; next in the operations of the Afghan war; then in those of the Sikh war; afterwards as secretary to the commissioners of the Punjaub; and, lastly, as an officer in Nicholson’s movable column. Colonel Burn being made military governor of Delhi, Colonel Innes received the appointment of commandant of the palace. Mr Hervey Harris Greathed, who had been appointed civil commissioner for Delhi as soon as the murder of Mr Simon Fraser on the 11th of May became known, lived through all the vicissitudes of the siege, but sank through illness almost as soon as the victorious army entered the imperial city; he was succeeded in his office by Mr Saunders. Another change may here be mentioned. General Wilson, worn out by his anxieties and labours in the siege-camp, retired two or three weeks after the conquest, for the recovery of his health in the hill-country, and was succeeded in the supreme command at Delhi by General Penny—subject to any more authoritative change by order of the Calcutta government.

Within, the city of Delhi was a very desolation. Nearly all the native inhabitants left it, in dread lest the English soldiers should retaliate upon them the atrocities perpetrated by the insurgents upon defenceless Europeans. The authorities had no wish for the immediate return of these people, until it could be ascertained to what extent the traders and working population had connived at the rebellion of the sepoys. Even many weeks after all fighting had ceased in and near the city, one of the officers wrote of the state of Delhi in the following terms: ‘Every wall or bastion that faced our camp is in almost shapeless ruin; but the white marble pavilions of the palace rise unharmed along the Jumna’s bank. In one of these live the.... There is no describing the beauty and quaintness of their rooms. I long for photographs to send home. They are all of inlaid marble, with semianahs pitched in the zenana courts between. But all around speaks of awful war—the rows on rows of captured guns—the groups of English soldiers at every post; and not English only, for our brave defenders the Goorkhas, Sikhs, and Punjaubees mingle among them. A strange army indeed, with not a trace of pipeclay! It is a frightful drive from the palace to the Cashmere Gate—every house rent, riven, and tottering; the church battered, and piles of rubbish on every side. Alas! the burnt European houses and deserted shops! Desolate Delhi! and yet we are told it is clearing and much improved since the storming of the place. It has only as yet a handful of inhabitants in its great street, the Chandnee Chowk, who are all Hindoos, I believe. Many miserable wretches prowl through the camps outside the city begging for admission at the various gates; but none are admitted whose respectability cannot be vouched for. Cart-loads of ball are being daily dug out from the Moree Bastion, now a shapeless, battered mass.’

The conquerors of Delhi, wishing to prevent for ever the imperial city from becoming a stronghold for rebels, proposed to destroy at once all the fortifications. The Calcutta government, on receiving news of the final capture, telegraphed to General Wilson to the following effect: ‘The governor-general in council desires that you will at once proceed to demolish the defences of Delhi. You will spare places of worship, tombs, and all ancient buildings of interest. You will blow up, or otherwise destroy all fortifications; and you will so far destroy the walls and gates of the city as to make them useless for defence. As you will not be able to do this completely with the force at present available at Delhi, you will select the points at which the work may be commenced with the best effect, and operate there.’ After General Wilson had retired, and General Penny had assumed command at Delhi, information reached Sir John Lawrence at Lahore of the intended demolition. He evidently did not approve of the plan in its totality, and suggested delay even in commencing it, until further orders could be received from Calcutta. He thus telegraphed to Delhi on the 21st of October: ‘I do not think any danger could arise from delay. If the fortifications be dismantled, I would suggest that it be done as was the case at Lahore; we filled in the ditches by cutting down the glacis, lowered the walls, and dismantled the covering-works in front of the gates and bastions. A wall of ten or twelve feet high could do no harm, and would be very useful for police purposes. Delhi, without any walls, would be exposed to constant depredations from the Meeras, Goojurs, and other predatory races. Even such a partial demolition will cost several lacs of rupees and take a long time; at Lahore it cost two lacs, and occupied upwards of two years.’

One subject connected with the capture of Delhi was curiously illustrative of the state of the public mind as exhibited during the autumn of 1857. Anything less than a sanguinary retaliation for the atrocities committed by the natives in India was in many quarters regarded almost as a treasonable shrinking from justice. Kill, kill, kill all—was the injunction implied, if not expressed. Among the British residents in India this desire for blood was so strong, that it distempered the judgment of persons otherwise amiable and generous. Instead of acting on the principle that it is better for a few guilty to escape than for one innocent man to be punished, the doctrine extensively taught at that time reversed this rule of conduct. It is of course not difficult to account for this. The feelings of those who, a few short months before, had been peacefully engaged in the usual Anglo-Indian mode of life, were suddenly rent by a terrible calamity. Husbands, brothers, sons—wives, sisters, daughters—were not only put to death unjustly, but the black deed was accompanied by brutalities that struck horror into the hearts of all survivors. It was not at such a time that men could judge calmly. The subject is mentioned here because it points to one of the difficulties, almost without parallel in intensity, that pressed upon the nobleman whose fate it was to govern India at such a time. Every proclamation or dispatch, issued by Viscount Canning, which contained instructions to the Company’s officers tending to leniency towards any of the dark skins, was misquoted, misrepresented, violently condemned, and attributed to what in bitter scorn was called the ‘clemency of Canning.’ It required great moral courage, at such a time, to form a definite plan of action, and to maintain it in spite of clamour. Differences of opinion on these difficult matters of state policy are of course reasonable enough; the point is mentioned here only in its historical relation to an almost frenzied state of public opinion at a particular time.

The treatment of the King of Delhi was one of the subjects connected with this state of feeling. When taken a prisoner, the dethroned monarch was not shot. ‘Why is this?’ it was asked. Because Captain Hodson promised the king his life if he would surrender quietly. For a long time this gallant officer was an object of violent abuse for this line of conduct. ‘Why did Hodson dare to do this?’ was the inquiry. It was not until evidence clear and decisive had been afforded, of General Wilson’s sanction having been given to this proceeding, that the subject fell into its proper place as one open to fair and temperate discussion. Again, letters written anonymously at Delhi appeared in the Calcutta newspapers, announcing that the ex-royal family were treated with the most obsequious deference; and the ‘clemency’ was again contrasted with the ‘righteous demand for blood.’ So much of this as was untrue gradually fell out of repute; and then the simple fact became known that the king was to be tried as a traitor, but was not to be treated as a felon until found guilty. Mrs Hodson, wife to the officer who effected the capture, paid a visit to the royal captives, which she described in a highly interesting letter to an English relation, afterwards made public; whatever else it shewed, it afforded no indication that the aged profligate was treated with a degree of luxurious attention offensive to the European residents of the place.[114]

For all else, Delhi furnished nothing calling for special notice during the six weeks following the siege.

Of two columns, despatched from Delhi to pursue and punish the rebels after the siege, that under Colonel Greathed has already been noticed. A second, under Brigadier Showers, was engaged throughout October, mostly west and northwest of Delhi. Some of the petty rajahs between the Jumna and the Sutlej were in an embarrassing position; they would have drawn down on their heads eventual defeat by the British if they joined the rebels; while they were in immediate danger from the enmity of marauders and mutineers if they remained faithful to the British. To their credit be it said, most of them remained true to their treaties; they assisted the British in a time of trouble to the extent of their means. Especially was this the case in relation to the Rajahs of Jheend and Putialah, without whose friendly aid it would have scarcely been possible for Sir John Lawrence to send reinforcements from the Punjaub to General Wilson at Delhi. An exception was afforded by the Rajah of Jhujjur, whose treacherous conduct earned for him a severe defeat by Brigadier Showers about the middle of October. That officer was, later in the month, actively engaged in defeating and punishing rebels at Sonah, Bullubgurh, and other places.

Of the country north and northeast of Delhi, little need be said. Rohilcund was almost wholly in the hands of the rebels during September and October. In the districts of Bareilly, Boodayoun, Mooradabad, Shahjehanpoor, and Bijnour, the English might be reckoned by tens—so fierce had been the tempest which had swept them away. Happily Nynee Tal still remained a refuge for many non-combatants, who could not yet be safely removed to Calcutta or Bombay. Khan Bahadoor Khan—a notorious offender whose name has more than once been mentioned in these pages, and who, after being a well-paid deputy-collector in the Company’s service, shewed his gratitude by committing great atrocities as self-elected Nawab of Bareilly—planned an attack on Nynee Tal about the middle of September. He sent a force of 800 men, under his nephew, Nizam Ullie Khan. Major Ramsey, however, speedily mustered 300 Goorkhas, and about 50 miscellaneous volunteers and troopers; this force, sallying forth from Nynee Tal on the 18th, encountered the Bareilly rebels at Huldwanee, near the foot of the hills, and gave so effective a defeat to them as to prevent any repetition of the attack for a very long time.

All around the district of Meerut the movements of the rebels were sensibly checked by the fact that that important military station still remained in the hands of the British. After the first day of outbreak (10th of May), Meerut was provisioned and intrenched in such a way as to render it safe from all attacks, especially as the garrison had a good store of artillery; and as small bands of trusty troops could occasionally be spared for temporary expeditions, the mutineers were kept from any very near approach to Meerut itself. The chief annoyance was from the Goojurs and other predatory tribes, who sought to reap a golden harvest from the social anarchy around them.

Happily, the extreme northwest remained nearly at peace. The Punjaub, under the firm control of Sir John Lawrence, although occasionally disturbed by temporary acts of lawlessness, was in general tranquil. A few English troops ascended from Kurachee by way of the Indus and Moultan; and a few native regiments came from Bombay and Sinde; but the Sikhs and Mussulmans of the Punjaub itself were found to be for the most part reliable, under the able hands of Cotton and Edwardes. In Sinde a similar state of affairs was exhibited: a few isolated acts of rebellion, sufficient to set the authorities on the alert without seriously disquieting them. On one occasion a company of native artillery was disarmed at Hydrabad, on suspicion of being tainted with disloyalty. On another occasion the 21st native infantry was disarmed at Kurachee, because twenty or thirty of the men displayed bad symptoms. And on another, a few men of the 16th native infantry were detected in an attempt to excite their companions to mutiny. All these instances tended to shew, that if Sinde had been nearer to Hindostan or Oude, the Bengal portion of the army there stationed would in all probability have revolted; but being in a remote region, and among a people who had few sympathies with Brahmin sepoys, the incendiarism died out for lack of fuel.

Happily, again, the southern or peninsular portion of India was left nearly free from the curse of rebellion during the two months now under notice in Mysore, in the various provinces of the Madras presidency, in the South Mahratta country, and in the provinces around Bombay, the disturbances were few. In the Deccan, the Nizam and his prime minister remained stanch throughout; and although the city of Hyderabad was kept in much commotion by fanatical moulvies and fakeers, and by turbulent Rohillas and Deccanees, there was no actual mutiny of entire regiments, or successful scheme of rebellion. At Ahmedabad, midway between Bombay and the disturbed region of Rajpootana, one of those terrible events occurred on the 26th of October—a blowing away of five men from guns. All the officers whose duty it was to attend on those fearful occasions united in hoping that such a sight might never again meet their eyes.

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Footnote 105:

‘I told off my men rapidly, and formed them into parties, so as completely to surround and cover every outlet and corner. The main party, consisting mostly of my own particular sharpshooters and body-guard, watched the front; another moved towards the town, there to arrest an educated Bengalee, agent to the conspirators; another to the rear, to cut off escape towards the town; while my friend the Political crept quietly past some outhouses with his police, and under the palace walls awaited my signal for opening the ball.

‘Before long the ominous barking of a disturbed cur in the direction of the party sent after the prime-minister proclaimed that no time was to be lost. Off I went towards the guard-shed in front of the palace, my personal sharpshooters following at the double. The noise, of course, awoke the sleeping guard, and as they started up from their slumbers I caught one firmly by the throat; the little Goorkha next me felled with a but-end blow another of them while they were getting to arms, I having strictly forbidden my men to fire until obliged; the remainder, as we rushed in, took to flight, and my eager party wished to fire on them, which I prevented, not considering such valiant game worth powder and shot. In the darkness and confusion, no means of entrance could at once be found. My police guide, however, having been often in the palace, knew every room in it, and, thrusting himself in at a door, acted ferret to perfection, and by dint of activity, soon brought me into the presence of the rajah, who, though young in years, is old in sin: he refused to surrender or admit any one—a resolution which cooled instanter on my calling my men to set fire to the palace; he then with a bad grace delivered up to me his state-sword. A shout from the opposite doors proclaimed an entry there. The queen-mother and the rest of the female royalty and attendants were seized while trying to descend on that side. Then came a chorus of shouting and struggling, and bawling for lights and assistance; at last, a lamp being procured, we proceeded to examine the palace: we wandered in dark passages and cells, while I mounted a guard at every door. The air being confined and heated within the royal residence, I sat outside until after daybreak, and then proceeded to rummage for papers and letters; several boxes of these we appropriated, and counted out his treasure, all in gold vessels and ingots; we found a quantity of arms, spiked some guns, one of them of French make; all day we were hard at work, searching and translating papers. The prime-minister was found at his house, fast asleep. In the heat of the afternoon, we went to his residence in the town, and by dint of keeping fans going over us, carried out a thorough search. We did not get as many of his papers as we wanted, he having been told by his correspondents to destroy all letters after reading them.

‘At sunset I carried off my prisoners over the same bad ground by which we had so stealthily arrived. We were followed by about 2000 infuriated Mussulmans, crying, praying, and prostrating themselves to the object of their lingering hope of rebellion (the rajah), but we drove them off.’

Footnote 106:

‘The ejected civilians from Dorunda had come on ahead and offered our small party breakfast, which we gladly accepted. While waiting until it was ready, the chief-commissioner got an electric-telegraph dispatch from the governor-general, ordering the whole of the 53d party under Major English back again to the main trunk-road. You never saw anything like the long faces they all had at this announcement; for the commissioner had just had intelligence on which he thought he could rely, that the mutineers were still kept at bay by the party at the pass, through which they must get through to effect their escape from us; and they did not think that 250 Madras sepoys with two guns would be sufficient to attack 850 desperate men caught in a trap. Moreover, the retirement of the Europeans would run like wildfire through the district; and I heard them all say they would not answer for what might happen.’ The column did advance to Dorunda, and dispersed the miscreants; but it had to hasten to other regions, and then—‘All the residents are very much disgusted at our going back, as the moral effect of our arrival must be great, the natives here having as much idea of a European soldier as they have of a whale, never having seen either; and the fact of their being put as prisoners under a European guard frightens them more than a thousand deaths.’

Footnote 107:

Shut the mouth of slanderers, bite and Eat up backbiters, trample down the sinners, You, Sutrsingharka. Kill the British, exterminate them, Mat Chundee. Let not the enemy escape, nor the offspring of such, Oh, Singharka. Shew favour to Shunker! Support your slave! Listen to the cry of religion, Mathalka. Eat up the unclean! Make no delay! Now devour them, And that quickly, Ghormatkalka.

The words in italics are various names of the goddess Devee or Deva, ‘the destroyer.’

Footnote 108:

See p. 111.

Footnote 109:

Chap. vii., pp. 109-111. Chap. x., pp. 173, 174. Chap. xvii., pp. 282-286.

Footnote 110:

‘It is the melancholy duty of the Right Honourable the Governor-general in Council to announce the death of the Honourable John Russell Colvin, the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces.

‘Worn by the unceasing anxieties and labours of his charge, which placed him in the very front of the dangers by which of late India has been threatened, health and strength gave way; and the Governor-general in Council has to deplore with sincere grief the loss of one of the most distinguished among the servants of the East India Company.

‘The death of Mr Colvin has occurred at a time when his ripe experience, his high ability, and his untiring energy would have been more than usually valuable to the state.

‘But his career did not close before he had won for himself a high reputation in each of the various branches of administration to which he was at different times attached, nor until he had been worthily selected to fill the highest position in Northern India; and he leaves a name which not friends alone, but all who have been associated with him in the duties of government, and all who may follow in his path, will delight to honour.

‘The Right Honourable the Governor-general in Council directs that the flag shall be lowered half-mast high, and that 17 minute-guns shall be fired at the seats of government in India upon the receipt of the present notification.’

Footnote 111: H.M. 8th foot. H.M. 75th foot. 2d Punjaub infantry. 4th Punjaub infantry. H.M. 9th Lancers. 1st Punjaub cavalry. 2d Punjaub cavalry. 5th Punjaub cavalry. Two troops horse-artillery. Light field-battery. Pearson’s 9-pounder battery.

Footnote 112:

‘The political agent was himself the first to discover their approach; and, as he had only returned to Kotah three days previously from an absence of four months, he believed the number of people he saw advancing merely to be some of the chief subordinates coming to pay him the usual visit of ceremony and respect. In a second he was cruelly undeceived. The mutineers rushed into the house; the servants, both private and public, abandoned him with only one exception (a camel-driver); and the agent, his boys, and this one solitary servant fled to the top of the house for safety, snatching up such few arms as were within their reach. The fiends pursued; but the cowardly ruffians were driven back for the time by the youngest boy shooting one in the thigh. When there, they naturally hoped the agency-servants or their own would have returned with assistance from the chief; but no—all fled, and no help came. In the meantime, the mutineers proceeded to loot the house, and they (the major and his sons) saw from their position all their property carried away. A little while and two guns were brought to play upon the bungalow, the upper part of which caught fire from the lighted sticks which the miscreants from time to time threw up. Balls fell around them, the little room at the top fell in, and they were yet unhurt—and this for five long and weary hours. Major Burton wished to parley with the mutineers, in the hope they would be contented if he gave himself up, and allow his boys to escape; but his children would not allow of such a sacrifice for their sakes; and like brave men and good Christians, they all knelt down and uttered their last prayers to that God who will surely avenge their cause. All now seemed comparatively quiet, and they began to hope the danger over, and let down the one servant who was still with them on a mission to the Sikh soldiers and others, who were placed by the chief for the personal protection of the agent round his bungalow, and of whom at the time there were not less than 140, to beg of them to loosen the boat, that an escape might be attempted across the river. They said: “We have had no orders.” At this moment a shot from a pistol was fired. Scaling-ladders had been obtained, the murderers ascended the walls, and the father and his sons were at one fell stroke destroyed.... The maharajah was enabled to recover the bodies of the agent and both his sons in the evening, and they were carefully buried by his order. Dr Salder’s house was attacked at the same time with the agency-house. He was cut down outside, in sight of the agent, as was also Mr Saviell, the doctor of the dispensary in the city, and one or two others whose names are not certain.’

Footnote 113:

Chap. xviii., pp. 295-315.

Footnote 114:

‘There is a report, which has been mischievously set about, and may have mischievous consequences—namely, that the king has the whole of his retinue, and has returned to his own apartments in the palace.

‘This is perfectly untrue. I went with Mr Saunders, the civil commissioner, and his wife, to see the unfortunate and guilty wretch. We mounted a flight of stone steps, at the bottom and top of which was a European sentry. A small low door opened into a room, half of which was partitioned off with a grass-matting called chitac, behind which was a woman cooking some atrocious compound, if I might judge from the smell. In the other half was a native bedstead—that is, a frame of bamboo on four legs, with grass-rope strung across it; on this was lying and smoking a hookah an old man with a long white beard; no other article of furniture whatever was in the room, and I am almost ashamed to say that a feeling of pity mingled with my disgust at seeing a man recently lord of an imperial city, almost unparalleled for riches and magnificence, confined in a low, close, dirty room, which the lowest slave of his household would scarcely have occupied, in the very palace where he had reigned supreme, with power of life and death, untrammelled by any law, within the precincts of a royal residence as large as a considerable-sized town; streets, galleries, towers, mosques, forts, and gardens, a private and a public hall of justice, and innumerable courts, passages, and staircases. Its magnificence can only be equalled by the atrocities which have been committed there. But to go back to the degraded king. The boy, Jumma Bukht, repeated my name after Mr Saunders. The old man raised his head and looked at me, then muttered something I could not hear, and at the moment the boy, who had been called from the opposite door, came and told me that his mother, the begum, wished to see me. Mrs Saunders then took possession of me, and we went on into a smaller, darker, dirtier room than the first, in which were some eight or ten women crowding round a common “charpoy” or couch, on which was a dark, fat, shrewd, but sensual-looking woman, to whom my attention was particularly drawn. She took hold of my hand—I shuddered a little—and told me that my husband was a great warrior; but that if the king’s life and her son’s had not been promised them by the government, the king was preparing a great army which would have annihilated us. The other women stood round in silence till her speech was finished, and then crowded round, asking how many children I had, and if they were all boys; examined my dress, and seemed particularly amused by my bonnet and parasol. They were, with one exception, coarse, low-caste women, as devoid of ornament as of beauty. Zeenat Mahal asked me—a great honour, I found, which I did not appreciate—to sit down on her bed; but I declined, as it looked so dirty. Mr Saunders was much amused at my refusal, and told me it would have been more than my life was worth six months before to have done so; and I have no doubt of it.’

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