XXVI. MINOR EVENTS IN MARCH…

XXVI. MINOR EVENTS IN MARCH

Having briefly narrated in the last chapter the progress of Sir Colin Campbell’s army in Oude, from the beginning towards the close of March; it now becomes expedient to watch the operations of those military officers who, during the same month, were engaged in services in other parts of India. The achievements were not so great in magnitude or notoriety, but they do not the less require to be noticed: seeing that they illustrate the state of feeling among the native population, the fluctuations of fortune among the rebels, and the struggles of British officers amid great difficulties.

As in former chapters, there will be a convenience in beginning with the Calcutta regions, and transferring attention successively to the west, northwest, and southwest.

The Anglo-Indian capital was shorn of somewhat of its splendour during the spring months, by the absence of the governor-general at Allahabad; but in truth this was a secondary matter; for it was not a time for levees, gaieties, or vice-regal presentations and splendour. Calcutta experienced a panic so late in the history of the mutiny as the 3d of March—one of many to which a somewhat excitable population had been exposed. A telegraphic message was received from Barrackpore, to the effect that the sepoys of two native regiments at that station—the 2d and the 23d B. N. I.—were deserting in bodies of ten or twelve; and that the deserters were supposed to be making their way to Calcutta. The officers of the volunteer guards were at once requested to send pickets to certain unprotected buildings in Calcutta. Very speedily these pickets were told off; cavalry patrolled the streets all night; the artillerymen remained watchful within the fort; and the English troops present were kept under arms. The rumour proved to have been greatly exaggerated, and the suspected danger passed away—but not without causing much trepidation among the unwarlike portion of the Calcutta community.

So numerous were the European troops that arrived at Calcutta during the winter, and so obvious the necessity for increasing the strength of that branch of the army in India, that preparations were made for accommodating them within easy reach of the capital. Barrackpore, although well supplied with sepoy lines, had never held European troops in large number. It was now resolved, instead of building new European barracks at that place, to increase those at Chinsura. This town, about twenty miles from Calcutta, on the banks of the Hoogly, had already a fine European barrack and military hospital, in a very healthy spot. About the month of March, many hundred men were set to work, to increase the barrack accommodation to a level with the wants of five thousand European troops, and to raze all the buildings within five hundred yards on all sides, to form parade-grounds, &c.

In the regions north and east of Calcutta, the materials for rebellion were pretty nearly exhausted. There had from the first been only a small amount of disturbance in those districts; and it became gradually evident that the town and village population were desirous of continuing their peaceful avocations, uninterrupted by mutinous sepoys or fanatical Mohammedans.

It was in many ways fortunate that the recently acquired province of Pegu had remained peaceful during the dangerous periods of the mutiny. Had revolt or treason been at work in that quarter, the embarrassment of the government would have been seriously aggravated. Disturbances, it is true, did take place; but they were not of such magnitude as to give occasion for alarm. This was mainly owing to the policy of the King of Burmah. We had taken from him a rich province, a slice out of his empire, by a mingled course of war and politics; and he was no more likely to be content with that result than any other defeated monarch. But he was a shrewd observant man; he measured the power of England, and saw reason to believe that he would weaken rather than strengthen himself by any hostility at this time. There were not wanting those near him who urged him to a different policy. Burmah, like other countries, had its war-party, who kept up a spirit of bitterness towards the British. This party was headed by the king’s brother, and by many of the old dispossessed Burman officials of Pegu. There is reason to believe that, had the strength of the rebels in Oude remained much longer unbroken, the King of Burmah might have been drawn or driven into hostility in spite of himself. Whenever news came over from the opposite side of the Bay of Bengal, the Mohammedans resident in Burmah made the most of such parts of it as indicated a decline of the English ‘raj,’ and gave strength to a feeling among the Burmese which the king might not much longer have been able to resist. In the early part of 1857 there were four European regiments in Pegu; but the urgent demands from India had led to the withdrawal of all these, except a wing of the 2d Madras Europeans at Toungoo, and a few of H.M. 29th at Thayetmyo; and even of native Madras troops in Pegu, the number was but small. There was a time, in the autumn of that year, when the war-party might have wrought serious mischief to British interests; but when steam-frigates, corvettes, gun-boats, and regiments from various quarters began to shew themselves at Rangoon or in the Irrawaddy, or were known to be passing up the Bay towards Calcutta, the chances were altered. Instead of fighting, the king did a much wiser thing, whether from humane or from politic motives—he subscribed ten thousand rupees towards the Mutiny Relief Fund.

West and southwest of Calcutta, in a part of India very imperfectly known to Europeans, tranquillity was occasionally disturbed, not so much by mutinous sepoys, as by ambitious chieftains desirous of strengthening themselves in a time of anarchy and uncertain allegiance. In the region around Chyabassa, many petty occurrences from time to time kept the few Europeans in anxiety. There were not many rebel sepoys in that quarter, it is true; but, on the other hand, there were few troops of any kind to aid Captain Moncrieff, the senior assistant-commissioner. A semi-savage tribe, called Coles or Koles, infested the neighbourhood. On the 25th of March, three thousand of these Coles, with a medley of guns, muskets, and native weapons of all kinds, assembled at Chuckerderpore, where Moncrieff had a small camp of marines and two guns; they were, however, dispersed by a mere handful of men, and three of their guns taken. This district was kept in an agitated state mainly by the machinations of a turbulent chieftain, the Rajah of Porahat.

Let us advance, however, to those regions where the audacity of the insurgents was more seriously felt—the regions of the Middle Ganges and the Lower Jumna. The Lower Ganges, between Calcutta and Dinapoor, remained peacefully in the hands of cultivators and traders, who were glad enough to be free from the visitations of fighting-men; but from Dinapoor upwards the sources of discordance were numerous. A few mutineers lurked about, aided by a much larger proportion of desperate characters, who took service under chieftains (mostly Mohammedan) bent upon increasing their own power at the expense of the British.

The Azimghur district, nearly north of Benares, became in March the scene of a conflict which certainly gave a triumph for a time to the enemy, although it was favourable to the British in the first instance. This conflict took place on the 21st at Atrowlia, between a body of insurgents on the one side, and a small force under Colonel Millman of H.M. 37th, commandant of the Azimghur field-force. Being in camp at Koelsa, he received information from Mr Davies, magistrate of Azimghur, that a considerable body of mutineers was in the neighbourhood of Atrowlia, a place about twenty-five miles from that city. The colonel immediately set out, with about 260 infantry, cavalry, and gunners, and two pieces of ordnance—his troops being British and Madrasses. At daybreak on the 22d, he espied the enemy—chiefly sepoys of the Dinapoor brigade, who had followed the fortunes of Koer Singh—posted in several topes of mango-trees. His infantry of the 37th, his Madras cavalry under Colonel Cumberlege, and his two guns, speedily discomfited the enemy and put them to flight; but his day’s work was not ended. While his men were halting in the neighbourhood of Atrowlia, and breakfast was being prepared among the topes of trees, news was suddenly brought that the rebels were advancing in great force. Millman, immediately proceeding with some skirmishers to ascertain their strength, found them strongly posted behind a mud-wall, in the midst of topes of trees and sugar-canes. He sent back orders for his troops to advance; but the enemy increased in number so rapidly, that he could not contend against them; he retired slowly from Atrowlia to his camp at Koelsa, followed by the enemy, who fired at a distance, and endeavoured to turn his flanks. He made one dash with his cavalry; but news, or at least a rumour, reaching the camp, that no fewer than 5000 rebels were approaching, such a panic was created among his camp-followers, that many of the hackery-drivers left their carts, and all the cooks ran away. The colonel, perplexed both by his foes and his camp-followers, and conscious that his camp was untenable in case of a night-attack, and that adequate supplies would be wanting for his men—deemed it expedient to retreat to Azimghur, which he did the same day. He was compelled to abandon a portion of his tents and baggage, which fell into the hands of the enemy.

This was a vexatious and serious discomfiture. It told unfavourably in two directions; for while it paralysed the exertions of the few British officers and troops in that region, it afforded to the rebels an excuse for vaunting abroad their prowess and success. The natives, inexplicable in character to Europeans, were often incredulous to rumours of defeat among their own countrymen; but rumours on the other side spread among them with astounding rapidity, encouraging them to schemes of resistance which they might possibly otherwise have avoided.

It was a natural consequence of the withdrawal from Atrowlia, and the retreat to Azimghur, that the last-named station should itself become imperiled; for a wide range of country was thus left wholly at the mercy of Koer Singh and his associates. The British in Azimghur proceeded to intrench themselves within the jail, which was surrounded by a deep ditch; and every man was set to work to strengthen the fortifications. The rebels gradually approached, to the number of four or five thousand; and then the small garrison was fairly besieged—all the rest of the city being in the hands of the insurgents. A messenger was despatched to Benares on the 26th, to announce the state of affairs; but all that the authorities at that place could do, on the spur of the moment, was to send fifty dragoons in carts, drawn by bullocks and pushed on by coolies. A telegraphic message was at the same time sent to Allahabad; consequent upon which a wing of H.M. 13th foot, and the depôt of the 2d, started off to Benares, for service at that place or at Azimghur. There was a rumour that Koer Singh intended to attack Ghazeepore or Benares, or both, on his way from Azimghur to Arrah; and this rumour led to much entreaty for aid to the threatened stations.

It will hereafter be seen that Azimghur needed the care of Sir Colin Campbell. Meanwhile we may notice the state of affairs in a district somewhat further north.

The neighbourhood of Goruckpore was the scene of a contest early in March. At that time there were assembled about 200 men of the naval brigade, under Captain Sotheby, 200 Bengal yeomanry cavalry, 900 Goorkhas, a few Sikhs and four guns—under Colonel Rowcroft. This motley but stanch garrison was attacked on the 5th in great force by several influential rebels, who had with them an army of 12,000 men, including 3500 sepoys of mutinied Bengal regiments. Between eight o’clock and noon, Rowcroft not only defeated this greatly superior force, but chased the enemy seven miles, nearly to their encampment at Bilwa or Belwar. The enemy lost 400 or 500 in killed and wounded, eight guns, and much ammunition. Among the leaders of the rebels were the Nazim Mahomed Hussein, Rajah Dabie Buksh of Gonda, the Rajah of Churdah, and Mehndee Ali Hussein, who were all mounted on elephants. This victory was a very fortunate one; for not only was Goruckpore saved from being a second time overrun by insurgents, but Colonel Rowcroft received news that many thousand villagers on the banks of the Gogra were ready to rise in rebellion if he had been defeated. This kind of peril was constantly impressed on the minds of the British officers; the consequences of a disaster were always more than they could safely calculate.

A defeat was experienced by a small force in the Allahabad district towards the close of March, owing to the want of due information concerning the position and strength of the enemy. Two companies of H.M. 54th, a hundred Sikhs, a few Madras cavalry, and two guns, went out to attack some rebels at a place called Suraon, between Allahabad and Gopeegunje. Insufficiently informed of the locality, the force came suddenly to a spot surrounded by a jungle, in which a large body of rebels were concealed. Much to the astonishment of the magistrate of the district, those rebels possessed six pieces of artillery; a fire was opened, which wrought much mischief to the British force, and eventually compelled it to retreat. This was a small affair, but it rendered the authorities uneasy; for it shewed that within a few hours of Allahabad, where the governor-general had temporarily taken up his quarters, there were not only insurgents ready for mischief, but that those insurgents, in some way and from some source not easily accounted for, had possessed themselves of artillery.

Jung Bahadoor’s participation in the later stages of the siege of Lucknow was noticed in the last chapter. He had entered Oude from the east; and shortly before his junction with Sir Colin, his advanced division had a sharp engagement with a force of the enemy, which may briefly be noticed here. Captain Plowden was in charge of this division; and under him were a few English and many Nepaulese officers, commanding the Goorkha regiments of which the division consisted. Having received information that the Nazim Mahomed Hussein, with a force of 4000 men, intended to dispute the passage of Jung Bahadoor’s army at the road to Lucknow over the Kandoo Nuddee, Captain Plowden prepared to contest the matter with him. His division consisted of seven Goorkha regiments, about 4000 strong, with thirteen guns. On the morning of the 5th of March, he found the enemy drawn up in detached parties near the bridge; he opened fire with his guns, and then charged with infantry in line. His progress was much disturbed by an intervening space of bush-jungle and deep ravines; nevertheless his Goorkhas charged resolutely, drove back the enemy at all points, pursued them for two or three miles, killed 600 of their number, and captured a gun—without losing more than 17 in killed and wounded. Captain Plowden, in his dispatch, told how he had been aided by the Nepaulese General Khurruk Bahadoor, the two brigadiers Junga Doje and Run Sing Bahadoor, Colonel Teela Bickrum Singh Tappah, and other officers whose names present a formidable appearance. The Nepaulese army pursued its way to Lucknow, and rendered a small amount of assistance. When their services had terminated at that city, Jung Bahadoor took a few of the best regiments with him to Allahabad, on his expedition to an interview with the governor-general; but the main body of his army marched off viâ Nawabgunge, on the Fyzabad route, towards the Nepaul and Goruckpore frontier. Whether Jung Bahadoor was negotiating with Lord Canning concerning the price at which the services of the Goorkhas were to be purchased; or whether any project was afoot for transferring some of the Goorkha regiments formally to the British service—was not made publicly known; but it was understood that the main Nepaulese force would remain near Nawabgunge until after the interview between the two great personages.

Of the wildly excited province of Oude, it is scarcely necessary to say much here. The great event of the month, the siege of Lucknow, has already been recorded; the other parts of the province were still almost wholly in the hands of the insurgents. It will, however, contribute towards an understanding of the state of the province in March, if we advert to a few facts concerning the temporary occupants of the city of Lucknow, and the arrangements made by Sir Colin affecting his army.

First, a word or two concerning the soldiery. It would be quite impossible to say which regiments of the Queen’s army rendered most service or behaved most valiantly; but the defence of Lucknow had been so extraordinary in its character, that the government deemed it right to notice specially the courage and fortitude of the 32d infantry—Inglis’s main prop during his defence of the Residency from the 1st of July till the arrival of Havelock and Outram near the end of September. There was put forth an announcement to the effect that ‘her Majesty, in consideration of the enduring fortitude and persevering gallantry displayed in defence of the Residency at Lucknow, has been graciously pleased to command that the 32d be clothed, equipped, and trained as a light infantry regiment, from the 26th of February 1858. Her Majesty has also been pleased to command that the word “Lucknow” shall be borne on the regimental colour of the 32d light infantry, in commemoration of the enduring fortitude and persevering gallantry displayed in the defence of the Residency of Lucknow for eighty-seven days.’ Many of the other royal regiments had borne more fighting in the open field; but none equalled the 32d in long enduring privation and heroism, owing to the extraordinary circumstances in which the regiment had been placed.

Next, concerning the city itself, the place which had undergone so strange a series of sieges and defences. In Lucknow, after the recapture, the shopkeepers gradually returned, opened their places of business, and resumed commercial dealings. Many parts of the city had been so battered by shot and shell that the buildings were scarcely habitable; but as this only occurred to a small extent in the trading streets, there was little interruption on that ground to the return of the inhabitants. The chief obstacles were—the complicity of many of the towns-people in the proceedings of the mutineers, and the impoverishment of others by several days of fighting, anarchy, and plunder. The troops destined for the defence of the city were quartered in some among the many palaces, not so much battered by cannonading as the others. A clear space was formed around the Kaiser Bagh, by the demolition of small buildings; and operations were made for opening a wide street or avenue entirely through the city, from the iron bridge to the canal—strategic precautions, intended to give the garrison control over the city in case of a turbulent rising. Precautions were in truth still necessary. Lucknow had contained more ruffians, more desperate characters ready for any lawless enterprises, than most other cities in India; and the British authorities felt by no means certain that the lurking-places in the narrow streets were yet cleared of them. The officers bore in mind, with regret and resentment, that two of their companions had been murdered in the city when the siege might have been deemed fairly over. These two were Lieutenants Cape and Thackwell. They rode from the camp into the city, but for what purpose was not clearly known to their companions. They got off their horses, tied them to a doorpost, and went into a house. It is supposed that budmashes, prowling about, shot them; but the only certainty is that, when some of the Madras fusiliers went out to search for them, the headless trunks of the two unfortunate officers were all that remained to reveal the secret of their fate.

The details given in the last chapter will have rendered evident the fact that the escape of the rebels from Lucknow after the siege was far more complete than the English public had expected or wished. How far it disappointed those immediately responsible, no one but themselves knew. A secrecy enveloped the plans of the commander-in-chief; he told just so much as he wished to be known, and kept the rest to himself, or shared it with the governor-general. Whether foreseen or not, however, the escape of the rebels was very marked and significant. Sir Hope Grant and other cavalry leaders endeavoured to check them, but the check was of small account; in truth, the cavalry were too few for a belt of country so wide. When the fact became indisputably clear that the main body of insurgents had got away, the question arose—whither? The camping-grounds of the fugitive rebels were very imperfectly known to the British authorities. It was supposed, but on uncertain information, that, at the end of the month of March, Nena Sahib was at Bareilly, with 2000 men, and many members of his family; that the Begum of Oude was at Khyrabad, with nearly 10,000 men; that 2000 more were near Shahjehanpoor; and that Khan Bahadoor Khan was concocting some scheme of operations with the Nena, having Rohilcund for its theatre. These were the suppositions, founded on vague data.

One thing Sir Colin speedily decided on. It was useless to keep a fine army at Lucknow, while so much serious work had to be done elsewhere. As already mentioned, he broke up his ‘army of Oude’ into separate portions. Jung Bahadoor having taken his departure with his nine thousand Nepaulese, the commander-in-chief proceeded to organise columns or divisions for special service in various directions. On the 29th of March Sir Colin issued a general order, pointing to the forthcoming duties of these portions of the army. The 5th and 78th regiments were to march from the Alum Bagh to Cawnpore. The artillery at the Alum Bagh was to be divided, some to return to the camp at Lucknow, the rest to join the 5th regiment. The troops to be left at Lucknow were to be formed into a division under Sir Hope Grant. This was to comprise H.M. 20th, 28th, 33d, 53d, 90th, and 93d infantry, the 2d Dragoon Guards, three Punjaub regiments of horse, and various detachments of artillery and engineers, with Brigadiers W. Campbell and Barker as subordinate commanders. Sir Edward Lugard was to form and command a division to be called the ‘Azimghur Field-force,’ to consist of H.M. 10th regiment, various detachments of cavalry, artillery, and engineers, and whatever troops might at that time be in the Azimghur district. The infantry of this force was to form a brigade under Brigadier Douglas; and the destination was the district from which the force was named—a district, as we have lately seen, greatly endangered by the presence of a large rebel force. Indeed, so urgent was the need for aid in that quarter, that Lugard started off at once. Another division, for service in Rohilcund, was placed under the command of General Walpole. It comprised H.M. 42d, 79th, and 93d infantry, two battalions of the Rifle Brigade, the 1st Bengal Europeans, two regiments of native infantry, H.M. 7th Hussars and 9th Lancers, three regiments of Punjaub cavalry, the Naval Brigade from H.M. steamer Shannon, and various detachments of artillery and engineers. Everything portended that this division would have hot work before it—hot both in the common and the figurative sense; for the powerful sun of the month of April would soon pour down on the heads of the troops; while it was quite certain that Rohilcund contained a large number of mutinied sepoys, rebel leaders, and desperate men ready for any deeds of violence and anarchy.

It may here suitably be mentioned, that Sir Colin Campbell’s experience of Oudian warfare taught him the necessity of caution in all attacks on the forts with which that province was so fully provided. His officers would have dashed at them, as at other obstacles; but he forbade enterprises likely to be followed by losses which good guns might obviate. On the 24th of March, just when the army of Oude was about to be broken up, he issued a general order concerning the arrangements to be made for attacking such strongholds.[152]

Quitting Oude for a time, and transferring attention to the important and fertile Doab between the Ganges and the Jumna, we shall see that the month of March found that part of India still much distracted by fighting and lawless violence. True, Allahabad was in British hands at one end of it, Delhi at the other, Cawnpore and Agra at intermediate points; but nevertheless there were numerous bands of rebels roaming about the open country. Whether two or three of these towns were on river-banks just beyond the Doab, does not affect the question, which is not one of mere geographical nomenclature.

The Lower Doab was brought more fully than before within the influence of military control, by the opening of a further portion of the great trunk-railway to Futtehpoor, placing that town within a few hours’ distance of Allahabad. This opening took place on the 25th of March; when Viscount Canning, with nearly all the civil officers of the last-named city, made the inaugurating journey to Futtehpoor, amid the holiday accompaniments of flags, triumphal arches, bands of music, feasting, and speech-making. Further to the northwest, Cawnpore remained a kind of central point, whence troops could be sent to quarters where they were most needed. A few regiments only were kept there, sufficient to guard against sudden surprises. All the British who entered the place beheld with melancholy interest the cross erected near the terrible well by the men of the 32d, in memory of the women and children of that regiment, included among the victims of Nena Sahib.

There was an important town, southwest of Cawnpore, which seemed likely to be a scene of warfare. During the month of March, it became very apparent that Calpee was a spot which would speedily require attention on the part of the military authorities. When Sir Colin Campbell defeated the Gwalior mutineers at Cawnpore, many weeks earlier, they fled from that neighbourhood. Rumours spread around that a considerable portion of the defeated force had fled southwest to Calpee, fortified themselves there, and called upon the neighbouring zemindars for supplies of men and money—both of which were forthcoming. The truth of this rumour, doubtful for a time, became confirmed as the spring advanced. It was now certain that rebels in great force occupied Calpee, well supplied with artillery and other munitions of war, and eagerly watching for a chance of making an attack on Cawnpore—should that oft-besieged place be left at any time insufficiently guarded. To what extent Nena Sahib or his brothers were connected with this Calpee force, was not known. The struggles in and near that town belong to a month beyond that to which this chapter relates.

The great city of Agra remained peacefully in the hands of the British. Occasionally, small columns were sent out to attack and disperse bodies of mutineers who were working mischief in the country districts; but the formidable brigades of mutinied regiments were not in that quarter. As one instance; on the 11th of March, Brigadier Showers found it necessary to chastise some rebels at Bah, in the Agra district. He set forth with two companies of the 8th foot, 400 of the Sikh police, two guns, a howitzer, and a mortar; and encountered a motley force of 4000 rebels—comprising three troops of insurgent cavalry, three companies of infantry, and a body of escaped convicts. These ruffians had assaulted and captured the town of Bah, plundered all the houses, carried off the cattle, and murdered some of the wealthier inhabitants. This body of rebels appeared to have come from the direction of the Gwalior territories across the Chumbul. Many of their leaders had been in the civil service of the Company, but turned rebels when they thought rebellion would be more profitable. Against these men Brigadier Showers marched from Agra. A strange wild contest ensued. The enemy did not stand to fight a battle, but made use of ravines, rocks, temples, topes, and villages as places whence masked attacks might be effected. There were no roads thereabouts, and Showers experienced much difficulty in struggling through jungles and ravines.

It was often difficult for the officers in command to muster troops enough to put down these bands of insurgents. At one period during the month, Colonel Riddell marched out from Minpooree to aid in intercepting fugitives from Lucknow. While he was gone, information arrived that Etawah was threatened by a large body of rebels. No aid being available from Minpooree, a telegraphic message was sent on to Futteghur (Furruckabad); and Colonel Seaton immediately ordered a regiment of Bengal Europeans to march to the threatened spot. These minor operations were often very harassing to the troops, who had to march great distances, and wage contests which did not bring them so much glory as a regular siege or a great battle. Officers naturally preferred those battle-fields which would bring their names in honourable form into the official gazettes; and private soldiers those which might earn for some of them the Victoria Cross; but many weary months passed over some of the corps, during which the troops were engaged in harassing pursuit of marauders and ruffians whom they heartily despised, and to conquer whom brought them very little increase of military reputation.

Speaking generally, it may be said that, at the end of March, the efforts made by the British officers in the Doab were directed chiefly to prevent the escape of rebels across the Ganges from Oude. One small force was watching to this intent at and near Cawnpore; another was in the Minpooree district; a third was marching down the road from Meerut to Futteghur; while two others, under Chamberlain and Coke, were endeavouring to control the Gangetic valley between Futteghur and Roorkee.

Further to the northwest, the region around Delhi was nearly all in British hands, and the city itself wholly so—all the mutinous regiments being far away. The authorities, after Delhi had remained several months peacefully in their hands, resolved on the formation of a camel corps, under a peculiar system of organisation. It was completed by the end of March, by a native named Lalla Jotee Pershaud, under the superintendence of Captain Chalmers, assistant commissary-general. The camels, 400 in number, were selected with great care, in the Bikaneer district. The drivers were armed each with a sword and fusil; and each camel was fitted to carry a European soldier if necessary. The drivers, equivalent to troopers or cavalry-men, were carefully selected from the natives of Rajpootana. The purpose in view was to form a corps of armed men capable of moving with great rapidity to any spot where their services might be urgently needed. Lalla Jotee Pershaud was a wealthy and influential man; and it was intended to make the officering of the corps such as would render it an acceptable compliment to friendly natives of good position.

As to the city itself, no semblance of fighting was presented. The conquest by Sir Archdale Wilson, half a year before, had been so complete, that no enemy remained to fight with. The British kept just sufficient reliable troops in the place to defend it from surprise; but the authority was mainly transferred to civil commissioners, who gradually re-established order and reorganised the revenue department. The old king still resided there, waiting for his time of punishment. A special tribunal tried and executed a large number of rebels.

A curious struggle of opinions arose on the question—What should be done with Delhi? Not only within that city itself, but all over India, the controversy was maintained with much earnestness. The opinions resolved themselves into three varieties—advocating destruction, decay, and conservation, respectively. When the city was captured, a very general desire was expressed, under the influence of fierce indignation, to destroy the place altogether, leaving not one stone upon another to tell where Delhi had been—or rather, leaving the stones to tell where Delhi had ceased to be. The destructives, if these persons may thus be called, argued that Delhi should be extinguished from the list of cities, because it was the centre of disaffection, the scene of the first and worst stroke levelled at British power; that the Mohammedans of India would ever think they had a national rallying-point, so long as Delhi remained; and that the destruction of this rallying-point would impress them with an idea of British power. The place has a charm for native ears; it is a sign, a symbol, a standard, a flag of nationality, the memory of which should be effaced, as something dangerous to the future security of the British ‘raj.’ Delhi, they urged, should be regarded rather as a dynastic than a commercial capital; everything in it recalls the past greatness of a race which had just been foremost in mutiny. For all these reasons—destroy Delhi. Gradually there arose a second party, who suggested decay rather than destruction. They said: ‘Destroy Delhi, and it would be perpetually an object of regret to the followers of Islam; but Delhi decayed would excite only a feeling of contempt. No tradition of sovereignty could attach to a dirty little village in which a population of pauper Mussulmans, around the ruins of old palaces, scrambled for the charity of a contemptuous traveller.’ They recommended that the European troops at Delhi should be removed to Hansi, where they might be easily accommodated; that the arsenal should be removed to Ferozpore; or that an entirely new European city should be built, lower down the Jumna; and that Delhi should then be left to be supported by natives alone, burdened by a special taxation as a punishment for treason—this, it was believed, would gradually rob the city of all its dignity and importance. But there arose a third party, to which, it was reputed, no less a personage than Sir John Lawrence belonged, urging the preservation of Delhi. The grounds for this advice were many and important. It was pointed out, among other things—that Delhi is admirably placed, geographically and politically; that its site was selected by men who looked primarily to the maintenance of power in the northwestern regions of India; that, as a commercial entrepôt, it is the point at which the two great streams of Central Asian trade diverge to Calcutta and Bombay; that, as a military cantonment, the city commands the Jumna at the best point for crossing the river; that it is the most central point from which the marauding Goojurs and Meewatties could be controlled; that the imperial palace would form an admirable fortress, to be garrisoned by British troops; and that the walls, brought at one point within a narrower sweep, would keep out plunderers and protect the magazine.

Whatever was to be the course pursued, Delhi remained, at the period to which this chapter relates, undestroyed. The city-wall was still standing, with the breaches hastily earthed up; all the gates had been closed, except the Cashmere, Lahore, and Calcutta Gates, but none destroyed; the fractured Cashmere Gate had been replaced by a temporary wooden barrier; the English church had been painted and repaired; the college, riddled by cannon and musket balls, had been converted into a barrack; the magazine remained as poor Willoughby had left it, half blown up; and the palace had not suffered very materially from the siege. Concerning the principal street of the city, an eye-witness wrote as follows: ‘The Chandnee Chowk is the only street we have seen in India to which the terms of descriptive admiration bestowed on European cities justly apply. If the traveller does not examine details too minutely, the cheerful picturesque aspect of the Chandnee Chowk may remind him for a moment of the Parisian boulevards. In the centre of a spacious street is a double row of well-grown trees, on either side a broad roadway flanked by irregular picturesque buildings. But if we speak of this street as being in 1858 cheerful, we can allude only to its architectural structure. Neither its associations nor its own present accompaniments and accessories are other than gloomy. Every house has been plundered; and the little show of property, as it begins again under the protection of British bayonets slowly to accumulate, cannot disguise the ruin which 1857 has created. To a stranger, the population that flows up and down the shining street would seem large; but to one who saw Delhi and the Chandnee Chowk before the rebellion, it is but as the ghost of the former life of the place that moves to and fro. There is the mosque where Nadir Shah sat and witnessed his great massacre. There is the Kotwallee or police-station, whereat were exposed the bodies of murdered Europeans, and afterwards of their murderers the princes, whom Hodson slew. In front of this building stand now three large gibbets, whereon have been already justly executed between two and three hundred of those who joined in the murder and rapine of the 11th of May, and on which more culprits are destined yet to pay for their crimes. Everywhere the demeanour of the native population is more than respectful to the Europeans—it is cringing. Fear possesses every soul. Never was a conquest more thorough than is for the present that of Delhi and its neighbourhood by the British. The present disposition of the native mind in Delhi towards us, of terror and trembling obedience, is one which no wise man can wish permanently to continue. It is a disposition, however, which no wise man will deny that it was necessary temporarily to create, if the mild uniformity of British rule was ever again to be asserted in Delhi.’ In connection with these observations, it may be stated that the cringing servility of the natives, so manifest at Delhi, was by no means so evident in Oude and the Doab. A sullen haughtiness, or perhaps a fierce vindictiveness, was visible on the countenances of a very large percentage of those natives with whom the British came into contact, telling of discontent, or of hostile passion.

Of Rohilcund it is not necessary to say much in this chapter. The greater part of it still continued, as it had been for nine months, in the hands of the rebels; and in addition to this, many of the escaped mutineer regiments from Lucknow had unquestionably directed their steps to this province, to swell the numbers of those who were in arms against the British. General Walpole was sent out against them with a powerful column; what he achieved, we shall see in the proper place.

That part of Rohilcund which constitutes the ‘Hills,’ the group of healthy hill-stations at the base of the Himalaya, though nearly cut off from communication with the Jumna regions, maintained itself bravely, never once falling into the hands of the armed insurgents. Colonel M’Causland, military commandant in Kumaon, so steadily and watchfully maintained British interests in that remote hilly province, that he generally detected hostile machinations in time to frustrate them. He had chiefly Goorkhas for troops, Rohilcund rebels for opponents; and he seldom failed to baffle and defeat those rebels, whether his force were great or small. Early in March he heard that the insurgents had sent a detachment to collect revenue—that is, to plunder—at Sitargunje, a place twenty-five miles from his camp at Huldwanee. He determined to surprise them; and although the success was not so great as he could have wished, through the unexpected absence of the larger part of the enemy’s force, still those who were met with were speedily vanquished. He intrusted the enterprise to Captain Baugh, who commanded the Nepaul Contingent in the Kumaon brigade. Baugh started off on the evening of the 3d, taking with him about 220 horse and foot, and two mountain howitzers. To expedite matters, he mounted his infantry and artillery on elephants; but during the night his progress was retarded ‘by an elephant carrying one of the mountain howitzers falling sick.’ Arriving at Sitargunje early in the morning of the 4th, he found that the main body of rebels had departed on the preceding day to a village about six miles distant. Most of those remaining were within the government tehseel, a high building forty or fifty yards square; and these did not fight; they fell or escaped as their individual luck determined. Captain Baugh brought away from the place whatever he thought might be most useful. Finding that the main body of the insurgents, under Fuzul Huq, numbered not less than 5000 men, with six guns, he did not deem it prudent to march after them with his little force to Butteree, the village where they were on that day encamped, about midway between Huldwanee and Bareilly.

The Punjaub and Sirhind continued to be nearly free from anarchy. Yet there were symptoms which, if left unattended to, might have led to evil. The 4th regiment Bengal native cavalry, one of the last remaining links in that fine army, was disarmed and unhorsed at Umballa during the month of March. After ten months of faithfulness, amid the treachery of so many of their compatriots, these troopers at length exhibited a tendency to insubordination, not safely to be overlooked. In the Punjaub generally the movements of troops were very frequent and rapid, shewing that the authorities were well on the alert. Wishing to obtain a healthy military station west of the Indus, the brigadier in command laid the foundation of Campbellpore—a station named in honour of the commander-in-chief. This custom was often adopted in India: witness Jacobabad and Sleemanabad.

One of the most instructive facts brought to light during the wars of the mutiny, was the ardour with which some of the natives of India joined in waging battle with others. During the first and second Sikh wars, the sepoys of the Bengal native army unquestionably fought heroically against the Sikhs, winning battles in a way that excited the admiration of their British officers. And now the Sikhs shewed themselves equally willing to aid the British against the sepoys, and equally able to vanquish them in the field. Two inferences may legitimately be drawn from this—that success depended rather on the British officers than on the kind of troops whom they commanded; and that the maintenance of an army formed of any one nation in India is not so safe as the admixture of nationalities, each to act as a check upon the other. The subject is adverted to in this place, because the month of March witnessed the return of the Guides to Peshawur, and the honours that marked that event. It will be remembered[153] that this celebrated corps, chosen among the Punjaubees for their activity and intelligence, consisted of two small regiments, one of infantry and one of cavalry; that they made an extraordinary march of 750 miles, from Peshawur to Delhi, in the hot weather of June 1857; and that they served most gallantly in the operations against that city during the autumnal months. They remained until February in and near Delhi, and then returned to their native country. Major-general Cotton, commanding in the Peshawur division, made a point of giving the gallant fellows an honorary reception. He caused all the troops in the Peshawur cantonment to be paraded on the 16th of March. On the approach of the Guides to the parade-ground, the assembled troops saluted and the guns fired; the major-general delivered an address; a feu de joie and an ordnance salute of twenty guns followed; and the Guides marched past him in full military array. Captain Battye, who had commanded the cavalry portion of the force, was killed almost immediately on the arrival of the Guides at Delhi; but Captain Daly lived to return. Cotton addressed Daly and his companions first, welcoming them back to Peshawur; and then he addressed the Peshawur force generally, telling them of the wonderful march which the Guides had made nine months before, and of their deeds at Delhi. ‘Within three hours after reaching Delhi, the Guides engaged the enemy, and every one of their officers was wounded. For nearly four months, officers and men were almost constantly in action, sometimes twice a day. They took 600 men to Delhi, and received 200 recruits during the siege. Not one man deserted to the enemy or from the corps; but no less than 350 were killed and wounded, and 120 fell to rise no more. I need not dwell on their separate deeds of valour, their general actions, their skirmishes, or their single combats; but as a specimen of the spirit that animated the corps, I will mention that a mere boy, Singh by name, bore a wounded European soldier out of the battle.’

In connection with this subject, it may be remarked that the personal character of the British officers has always exercised a very notable influence over the native troops of India. In Brigadier Hodgson’s Opinions on the Indian Army, an anecdote is related, illustrative of the power possessed over the sepoys by any commander whose prowess and genius they had learned to value. A native officer, speaking to him of events which he had himself witnessed, said: ‘During the campaign against the Mahrattas, in the year 1804, we made a tremendous forced march of 54 miles in 30 hours, and surprised Holkar and his cavalry at Furruckabad, and routed them with great slaughter. We had marched 250 miles in 13 days. The troops had been upon very short commons for some time; and you, sir, know what a tyrant a hungry belly is. The sepahees (sepoys) began to be very loud in their grumblings, and expressed their discontent pretty freely. This was reported. A short time afterwards, Lick Sahib Bahadoor (Lord Lake) was observed riding past the column eating dry pulse. This fact spread rapidly through the ranks; and from that moment, not the whisper of a murmur was heard. I believe, sir, had a man grumbled after that, he would have run the risk of being put to death by his companions—such was the love and veneration the sepahees had for Lick Sahib Bahadoor.’

Some of the half-savage mountain tribes of Peshawur and the Afghan frontier gave occasional trouble; but neither there nor in Sinde were the authorities prevented from sending reinforcements to the more troubled provinces. In connection with Sinde, it may be mentioned that Mr Frere, commissioner of that province, communicated a singular document to Lord Elphinstone, governor of the Bombay presidency. It was not directly connected with the mutiny or its instigators; but was nevertheless deemed important by Mr Frere, as illustrating phases of Hindoo character concerning which Europeans know so little. The information was given by Mr Macdonald, deputy-collector of Larkhana, in his weekly digest under date 20th of March. We transcribe it in a foot-note.[154]

We may now conveniently turn our attention to Central India—that region, south of the Jumna, in which Mahrattas and Bundelas were so strong. We have stated in former chapters that Sir Hugh Rose, a distinguished Bombay officer, was placed in command of various regiments and detachments known collectively as the ‘Central India Field-force.’ He was gradually working his way northward to the notorious city of Jhansi, defeating rebels everywhere on his road. On the 4th of March, Sir Hugh Rose was enabled to telegraph the following news, from his camp at Peeplia: ‘Yesterday, the troops under my command forced the pass of Mudenpore, after a short but very vigorous resistance. The troops, British and native, behaved gallantly. The pass is extremely strong, and the enemy suffered severely. They numbered about 4000 or 5000 Pathans and Bundelas, and 600 or 700 sepoys of the 52d and other regiments. I sent Major Orr in pursuit; and he cut up 50 or 60 rebels, of whom a large proportion were sepoys. The enemy are scattered in every direction. They have abandoned the little fortress of Seraj, a fort or arsenal which is the property of the Rajah of Shagurh, in which I shall have a small force to keep up my communication with Saugor. I am now in communication with my first brigade (under Brigadier Stuart) at Chendaree, and this gives me command of the whole of the country up to Jhansi, with the exception of two or three forts, which I can take.’ About a week later, he sent news to Bombay that the capture of the pass of Mudenpore—on the line of hills which separated the British district of Saugor from the little state of Shagurh—and the defeat of the rebels on the 3d, had produced advantages far exceeding those at first anticipated by him. The rebels had successively abandoned several strongholds which they had possessed—first the fort of Seraj, with four guns, a rude manufactory for powder, shot and shell, carriages and tents; then the town and fort of Murrowra, with a triple line of defences; then the town and fort of Multhone; next the pass of Goonah; then the pass and town of Hurat; and lastly, the fort of Cornel Gurh. As all the passes had been fortified and barricaded, their precipitate abandonment by the rebels was fortunate for Sir Hugh. Another result was the occupation by him of the hitherto independent district of Shagurh; the rajah having joined the rebels, Sir Robert Hamilton and Sir Hugh Rose resolved to punish him by ‘annexing’ his small territory, or at least occupying it until instructions could be received from Calcutta. Accordingly, on the 10th of March, the British flag was hoisted at Murrowra, in Shagurh, in presence of Rose’s second brigade, under a salute of twenty-one guns. The encampment of the brigade at this time was about twenty-five miles from Jhansi. Rose and Hamilton were well on the alert; for Balla Sahib, brother of the Nena, was at that time heading an army of rabble, and levying contributions in various parts of Bundelcund. What troops this rebel had with him, was not clearly known; but it was found that the Rajah of Chuanpore had been mulcted by him of seven lacs of rupees; and the Rajah of Churkaree, resisting a similar demand, had had his town destroyed by fire, and was compelled to take refuge in his fort. Mr Carne, British resident in Churkaree, narrowly escaped capture at the hands of the rebels.

While Rose was thus engaged, Brigadier Stuart, with the first brigade of the Central India Field-force, was clearing out various rebel haunts in districts lying southward of Jhansi. On the morning of the 6th of March, Stuart’s column or brigade set out from his camp near the Chendaree fort, and marched six or eight miles to Khookwasas, a fort near which a large body of rebels were assembled. The route being through a thick jungle nearly the whole distance, the 25th and 86th regiments advanced cautiously, in skirmishing order. Arriving at a small pass near the fort, Stuart found that the enemy had barricaded the road, and lined the hills on either side with matchlockmen. The engineers soon cleared away the barricades; while a small party of the 86th rushed up the hills and dislodged the matchlockmen. Shortly afterwards, however, it was ascertained that the chief body of the enemy had taken up a position behind the wall of an enclosure about a mile from the fort. The 86th dashed forwards to gain this enclosure; two of the officers, Lieutenant Lewis and Captain Keating, climbed to its top before any of their men, and jumped down into the interior of the enclosure. The troops soon cleared out the enclosure, and then pursued their operations against the fort itself. Working his way steadily onwards, defeating and expelling bodies of insurgents from neighbouring villages, Stuart was at length enabled, on the 17th, to capture the fort of Chendaree itself. This place, situated in Malwah, about a hundred miles from Gwalior, is in a district which was assigned by Scindia in 1844, according to agreement with the British government, to assist in the maintenance of the Gwalior Contingent. The fort—consisting of a strong rampart of sandstone, flanked by circular towers, and crowning a high hill—was in the hands of insurgents at the date now under notice; and it was Brigadier Stuart’s duty to capture it. After cannonading on the evening of the 16th, he formed a practicable breach in the walls, and resolved to take the place by assault on the following morning. This he did very effectually. The 25th and 86th regiments, by an impetuous rush, carried everything before them. Captain Keating was severely wounded whilst foremost with the storming-party. The enemy mostly escaped, on account of the simple failure of a letter. On the preceding evening, the brigadier received a message informing him that Captain Abbott was within available distance with a considerable body of irregular cavalry; and in return a letter was despatched to Abbott, requesting him to gallop forward and invest the north side of the fort. This letter did not reach Abbott in time; and as a consequence, there was no obstacle to the escape of the rebels northward. All the guns, eight of iron and two of brass, were taken. The fort was given up to the keeping of one of Scindia’s lieutenants or soubahs, in friendly relation with the British; and the inhabitants of the town resumed their peaceful avocations, apparently glad to get rid of the presence of the rebels.

Stuart’s operations at Chendaree greatly facilitated the advance of Sir Hugh Rose towards Jhansi. He marched on, with the second brigade of his Central India Field-force, and reached that blood-stained city on the 21st of March. He gave a sketch of his operations from the 20th to the 25th in the following brief telegraphic form: ‘On the 20th my cavalry invested as much as possible the fort and town of Jhansi. The next day the rest of my force arrived. The rebels have fortified the walls of the town, and, shutting themselves up in the town and fort, have not defended the advanced position of Jhansi. The ranee has left her palace in the town, and has gone into the fort. The rebel garrison numbers about 1500 sepoys, of whom 500 are cavalry, and 10,000 Bundelas, with 30 or 40 cannon. Their position is strong; but I have occupied two good positions, one a breaching, the other a flanking one. I have been delayed by the want of a plan of Jhansi, and consequently have been obliged to make long and repeated reconnaissances. I opened a flanking fire, vertical and horizontal, yesterday (the 25th), and hope to open a breaching fire to-morrow, or at latest the next day.’ We shall see in a later page that Sir Hugh completely succeeded in his assault, early in April.

The present may be a proper place in which to advert to a matter which greatly agitated the public mind from time to time, both in England and India—namely, the conduct of the insurgents towards those of the British who unfortunately fell into their power. Jhansi was one of the stations in respect to which horror was most distressingly expressed. The morbid taste for horrors engendered by the incidents of the Revolt gave rise to many exaggerations. The terrible news from Delhi, Cawnpore, Jhansi, and other places, during the early months of the struggle, produced mischief in two ways; it created a demand for indiscriminate sanguinary vengeance; and it produced a tendency, not only to believe, but to exaggerate, all rumours of atrocities as committed by the natives. In England as well as at Calcutta, controversies almost of a fierce character arose on these points; the advocates on one side treating it as a point of honour to believe the tragedies in their worst form; while those on the other, in bitter terms demanded proof that the rumours were true. It was extremely difficult to disprove any statements concerning atrocities committed; for in most cases there were no Europeans left behind to give trustworthy testimony. Circumstances became known, during the progress of the military operations, which led to an inference that, though inhuman slaughter of innocent persons unquestionably took place soon after Delhi fell into the hands of the insurgents, it was not preceded by so much of hideous barbarity towards the women and children as had at first been reported and believed. It also became more and more evident, as time advanced, that many of the inscriptions on the wall of the slaughter-room at Cawnpore must have been written after the departure or death of the hapless persons whose writing they professed to be, by some one who failed to see the cruelty of the hoax he was perpetrating. This subject is adverted to in the present place, because the month of March lightened a little the terrible severity of the story of Jhansi, one of those which made a distressing impression on the public mind. It will be remembered[155] that, early in June of the preceding year, the British at Jhansi, upwards of fifty in number, were all put to death by the insurgents, acting at the instigation of a woman, the ranee or chieftainess of Jhansi; the destruction was so complete, that no European was left to tell the true incidents. Nine months afterwards, in the month of March, some of the English newspapers in India gave a detail of revolting indignities said to have been inflicted on the females of the party at Jhansi—greatly adding to the distress already felt by the relatives of the murdered persons. Jhansi had by that time been restored to British rule; and Captain Pinkney, superintendent of Jhansi, Jaloun, and Chendaree, determined to ascertain how far the real facts could be got at. After a diligent inquiry in various quarters, he arrived at a belief that the massacre, however barbarous, had not been deepened in atrocity by the frightful circumstances put forth in the newspapers. The truth appeared to him to be as follows: When the British in the fort were unable longer to hold out through want of food, they surrendered to the rebels, who swore that they would spare all their lives. No sooner, however, were the fort-gates opened, than the rebels entered, bound the men, and took them as well as the women and children to a place outside the city-walls called the Jokun Bagh. Here the men were placed in one group, and the women and children in another. The rebels and the ranee’s armed servants then murdered all the men, Major Skene being the first cut down by the jail darogah, one Bukshish Ali. After this the women and children were put to death with swords and spears. The dead bodies were stripped, and left two days in the Jokun Bagh, when they were all thrown into a neighbouring stream. Shortly after the writing of Captain Pinkney’s report, a letter was sent to the supreme government by Sir Robert Hamilton, political agent in Central India, in which a few of the facts were somewhat differently stated. According to his account, when the unhappy Europeans reached the Jokun Bagh, ‘they were stopped on the roadside under some trees. They were accompanied by a crowd of mutinous sepoys, irregular sowars, disaffected police, fanatic Mussulmans, men in the service of the ranee, inhabitants of the town, and rabble. Here Bukshish Ali, jail darogah, called out: “It is the ressaldar’s order that all should be killed;” and immediately cut down Captain (Major) Skene, to whom he was indebted for his situation under government. An indiscriminate slaughter of the men, women, and children then commenced; all were mercilessly destroyed, and their bodies left strewn about the road, where they remained until the third day, when, by permission of the same ressaldar, they were all buried in two gravel-pits close by.’ Execrable as this was, it was far less harrowing than the newspaper narratives which had given rise to the investigation. Captain Pinkney ascertained that the total number of Europeans thus barbarously murdered was sixty-seven, of whom just about one half were women and children. Sir Robert Hamilton caused the ground around the two gravel-pits to be cleared, and an enclosing wall to be built; he and all the other officials, on a selected day, attended a funeral-service at the spot, delivered by the Rev. Mr Schwabe, chaplain to the station; and he also planned the erection of an obelisk. Strange that India should become the ground for so many obelisks and crosses erected in memory of Europeans ruthlessly murdered by natives. One hundred and two years before, in 1756, Suraj-u-Dowlah, after conquering Calcutta from the Company’s servants, drove a hundred and forty-six adult Europeans, on a sultry June evening, into a dungeon only twenty feet square; and of those miserable creatures, a hundred and twenty-three died during the night, of heat, thirst, pressure, suffocation, and madness. An obelisk was afterwards set up, to mark this terrible ‘Black Hole of Calcutta.’ And now, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the English again found themselves engaged in erecting these damning memorials of native brutality, at Cawnpore and at Jhansi.

Leaving Jhansi and its mournful recollections for a while, we pass over from the Mahratta territories into Rajpootana; where numerous petty chieftains kept the territory in a state of much agitation. There were scarcely any of the mutinied Bengal regiments in that part of India; but the Kotah Contingent, and other auxiliary corps which had revolted, sided with some of the chieftains in hostilities against the British. So far as concerns the operations of the month of March, those of the Kotah insurgents were the chief that call for attention. We have in former pages alluded to a ‘Rajpootana Field-force,’ formed of several regiments sent up from Bombay. The first division of this force set forth from Nuseerabad on the 10th of March, for service against Kotah. It consisted of H.M. 95th foot, a wing of the 83d, the 10th Bombay infantry, the Sinde horse, and some horse and foot artillery. Siege-material of formidable character accompanied the column; comprising eighteen field-pieces, of which ten were 8-inch mortars and howitzers, and an immense supply of ammunition. The second division, that started on the following day, consisted of H.M. 72d foot, a wing of the 83d, the 1st Bombay Lancers, a mountain train, Brown’s battery, and an engineering corps. The 8th Hussars, with detachments of horse and foot artillery, were afterwards to join the columns. Several of the guns in the siege-train were drawn by elephants. Brigadier-general Lawrence accompanied this field-force, but only in a political capacity; the military command was held by General Roberts. The conquest of Kotah was looked forward to as a difficult enterprise, not only from the force of the enemy in men and guns, but from the peculiar position of the town itself. Kotah is bounded by the deep river Chumbul on one side, and by a lake on the other; and there was a probability that batteries would have to be erected on the opposite side of the river. The approach to it by land from Nuseerabad was also beset by many obstacles. It would be necessary to traverse the Mokundurra Pass, a long and narrow valley between two parallel ranges of hills, easily rendered formidable by a small number of men. It was altogether a larger and more important operation than the conquest of the numerous petty forts with which Rajpootana abounded. Many persons in India thought that those forts might safely be left to themselves; since the hill-chieftains were more frequently incited by hostility towards each other than towards the British, and since it was very little better than a waste of power to pursue them into the wilds and jungles which intersect that part of India. One favourable circumstance in connection with Kotah was, that the rajah was faithful, and as much opposed as the British to the insurgents.

The middle of the month was occupied by the march of Roberts’s force from Nuseerabad, over a difficult country. Surmounting all obstacles, the general arrived at Kotah on the 22d of March, and encamped a mile or two distant, on the north bank of the Chumbul. The rebels were in possession of the south bank, having with them a powerful array of guns, many of large calibre. The fort, the palace, and half the city, were held by the rajah, with Rajpoots and troops from Kerowlie. On the 25th, a portion of the British, about 300 in number, under Major Heatley, crossed the river, to aid the rajah at a critical moment. The rebels had that morning made a desperate attempt to escalade the walls, and drive the rajah’s troops into their only remaining stronghold, the castle; but this attempt was frustrated; had it succeeded, the rebels would have commanded the ferry over the river. Portions of H.M. 83d, and of the Bombay troops, formed the small force which crossed the river on the 25th. Two days afterwards, 600 men of H.M. 95th, with two 9-pounders, crossed over. On the 30th General Roberts was able to announce by telegraph, ‘I this day assaulted the town of Kotah with complete success, and comparatively trifling loss. No officer killed. The whole town is in my possession.’ Upwards of fifty guns were captured. The victory was gained by a clever flank-movement, which turned the enemy’s position, and rendered their defences useless. This was a point in tactics which the rebels seldom attended to sufficiently; they repeatedly lost battles by allowing their flanks to be turned.

Eastward of the Mahratta and Rajpoot territories, there were isolated bodies of insurgents in the Saugor regions, between the Jumna on the north and Nagpoor on the south. But General Whitlock, with a field-force gathered from the Madras presidency, kept these rebels under some control. His movements, however, scarcely need record here.

The South Mahratta country kept up just so much disturbance as to demand the vigilant attention of the authorities, without exciting any serious apprehension. In the month of March there was much of this disturbance, near the frontier between the two presidencies of Bombay and Madras, at Belgaum. On the one side, the Bombay government offered a large reward for the apprehension of three brothers, rebel leaders, Baba Desaee, Nena Desaee, and Hunmunt Desaee; while the governor of the Madras presidency put in force a disarming statute on his side of the frontier. One of the leaders, Hunmunt Desaee, after many contests, was driven, with the wives and families of others among the insurgents, into a tower on the summit of a peak in the Coonung range; it was a one-storied structure, with a ladder leading to an entrance trap-door. Such towers had been used by the military police in that range, and Hunmunt defended himself here as long as he could. There were other traitors in this part of the country. Towards the close of March, Mr Manson, one of the Company’s civil servants, obtained a clue to a conspiracy in which several natives—Naga Ramchunder, Balla Bhoplay, Bhow Shrof Chowdry, and others—were concerned; having for its object the collecting of guns unknown to the British authorities, and the inciting of other natives to acts of rebellion. One of these men was the chief of Jamkhundie, one a money-lender, and two others were Brahmins. The money-lender was supposed to have assisted the mutineers of Kolapore with pecuniary means for carrying on their operations. By lodging these mischief-makers in safe keeping at Belgaum and Satara, preparatory to a trial, the authorities checked an incipient disturbance.

This little patch of country, inhabited to a considerable extent by the southern Mahrattas, was the only part of the Bombay presidency south of the city itself which was in any anxiety concerning the proceedings of the insurgents. And indeed, northward of the city, there were no manifestations of rebellion short of the regions around Gujerat and Rajpootana; where even those who were disposed to be peaceful found themselves embarrassed and imperiled by the turbulence of their neighbours. In Gujerat, Sir Richmond Shakespear commenced and steadily carried on a general disarming of the population; the Guicowar or native sovereign cordially assisted him, and the two together collected many guns and thousands of stands of arms. As to the Madras presidency, it was quite at peace. From Cuttack in the north to Travancore in the south, there were no rebellious regiments, and few chieftains who ventured to endanger their safety by disputing the British ‘raj.’ In the Nagpoor and Saugor territories, belonging rather to the Bengal than to the Madras presidency, the elements of convulsion surged occasionally, but not to a very alarming extent. The Nizam’s country was troubled in a way which shews how desirable it is that orientals should not be tempted by anarchy or weakness in the governing power. The regular troops were moderately steady; but the news of mutiny elsewhere excited all the turbulent elements of the Deccan. Robber chieftains and city ruffians rose, not so much against the British, as against any who had property to lose. The town of Mulgate, held by a chieftain who commanded a motley band of Rohillas and Arabs, resisted the Nizam’s authority for some time; but it fell, and the leaders were taken prisoner.

This chapter will have shewn that, when the last day of March arrived, the attention of the military authorities in India was chiefly directed to those districts which had Azimghur, Bareilly, Calpee, and Jhansi for their chief cities, and which swarmed with large bodies of rebels ready to make a desperate resistance. It was left for the months of April and May to develop the strategic operations against those places.

Notes.

So frequent is the mention, in all matters relating to the local government of India, of ‘covenanted’ and ‘uncovenanted’ service, and so peculiar the duties of those covenanted servants who bear or bore the title of ‘collectors’—that it may be well to sketch briefly the Company’s remarkable system, so far as it refers to those two subjects. The collectors and magistrates suffered much and braved much during the mutiny, owing to their peculiarly intimate relations with the natives; and their duties deserve on that account a little attention in the present work. For many reasons it will be desirable, as in the volume generally, to adopt the past tense in speaking of this system—bearing in mind, however, that the system was fully in operation during the mutiny, except when the officials were actually driven away from their districts.

’Covenanted’ and ‘Uncovenanted’ Service.—The ‘services’ supported by the East India Company were of four kinds—civil, military, naval, and ecclesiastical. The military has already been frequently noticed; the Company supported a military force of something near three hundred thousand men, involving various engagements on the one hand with the British crown, and on the other with native princes. The naval service was limited to a force of about sixty vessels and five thousand men, employed chiefly in surveying, coast-guarding, mail-conveyance, and the prevention of piracy. The ecclesiastical service, maintained by the Company for their own servants only, consisted of three Church of England bishops, about a hundred and forty Protestant clergymen, three Roman Catholic bishops, and about eighty Roman Catholic priests. The Protestants were liberally supported; the Roman Catholics simply received a grant, in aid of larger funds to be derived by them from other quarters. But it was the civil service that constituted the most remarkable feature in the Company’s organisation, embracing all the persons engaged in the collection of revenue or the administration of justice.

The civil service was of two kinds, covenanted and uncovenanted. The uncovenanted civil servants were very much like employés in other countries, paid reasonably for their services, but having no peculiar privileges—no declared provision for life, no claim to promotion by seniority, no stipulated furlough or leave of absence, no claimable pension. They comprised Europeans, Eurasians or half-castes, and natives. Subordinate duties, fiscal and judicial, were intrusted to them, according to their range of ability and supposed honesty, as judged by the local governments. The Europeans in this class were chiefly persons who had gone out to India in some other capacity, or were sons of officers already in service in India. The European and Eurasian uncovenanted servants barely reached three thousand in number. The class was mainly composed of natives—Mohammedans more generally than Hindoos. The employment of natives as uncovenanted servants of the Company was commenced by Lord William Bentinck (1828 to 1835), and steadily increased under other governors-general: insomuch that the judicial administration of the lower courts fell almost wholly into the hands of natives. The humbler offices in the revenue department were also filled by them. A few of the uncovenanted servants received salaries ranging from £500 to £800 per annum; but in the greater number of instances the amount was far lower.

The covenanted servants comprised nominated or favoured persons who, after receiving a special education in the Company’s seminary at Haileybury, were subjected to examination in England, and then sent out to India at the Company’s expense. They entered into a covenant, prescribed by ancient custom, ‘That they shall obey all orders; that they shall discharge all debts; and that they shall treat the natives of India well.’ Until 1853 (when a system of public competition was established by the charter granted to the Company in that year), the appointment of persons to this favoured service was wholly in the patronage of the directors. After a certain amount of tuition and examination, the young men (’writers,’ as they were sometimes called) were conveyed to India, where they pursued further studies, chiefly in oriental languages, at Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay. While so studying, they received an ‘out-of-employ allowance.’ At length they commenced employment as ‘assistants’ to magistrates and collectors in country districts, as soon as they possessed a certain amount of knowledge of vernacular languages, criminal law, and revenue law. Their daily duties were partly magisterial, partly fiscal. After some years’ practice, the assistant was competent for promotion. He became collector or magistrate of a district, under regulations differing in the different presidencies. In Bengal, the offices of judge, magistrate, and collector were held by three different persons, all ‘covenanted;’ in the other presidencies the offices of magistrate and collector were held by the same person; in the ‘non-regulation provinces’ (Punjaub, Nagpoor, Sinde, &c.), all three offices were held by one person. The local government had a voice in the selection of persons to fill these offices; but the principle of promotion by seniority was extensively acted on, and was almost claimed as a right by the ‘covenanted.’ The salaries paid were very munificent. The lowest assistant received £500 per annum, and the amount rose gradually to £10,000 per annum, the salary of a member of the Supreme Council at Calcutta.

Such were the chief points of difference between the covenanted and uncovenanted services of the East India Company. It was not so much a distinction of race, colour, or creed, as a means of favouring selected persons in England, and of giving those persons a special education to fit them for civil duties in India.

* * * * *

Collectors and Collectorates.—We shall next notice in a succinct way the remarkable duties of such of the covenanted civil servants as filled the office of collector—especially in those districts where the collector was also the magistrate. In the Northwest Provinces, to which the mutiny was mainly confined, the collector-magistrate of each district was in many matters controlled by the commissioner of the province in which the district was situated; but he had in a larger degree than the commissioner an intimate knowledge of the villages and villagers of India, their incomes, hopes, fears, wants, and peculiarities; and he became more deeply involved in anxieties and dangers consequent on the mutiny.

The term ‘collector’ very inadequately expresses the status and duties of the official so named. So far from being a mere tax-gatherer, he was a revenue judge, an executive district authority, with large powers and heavy responsibilities. As collector and magistrate, he was responsible to two different departments—to the higher judicial courts for his conduct as a magistrate, and to the revenue department in all that concerned his collectorship. He had two sets of assistants, with duties clearly defined and separated. The magisterial duties being dismissed without further description, as susceptible of easy comprehension, we shall dwell only on the collectorship.

The duties of the collector were fivefold. He was collector of government revenue; registrar of landed property in his district; revenue judge between landlord and tenant; ministerial officer of courts of justice; and treasurer and accountant of the district. None but a man of varied and extensive attainments, united to zeal and industry, could adequately fulfil so many duties; many of the great names in the recent years of Indian history are those of men who laid the foundations for their greatness as collectors. The districts over which the collectors presided varied greatly in size and wealth; but in all cases they comprised several thousand villages each, and yielded revenue varying from one to two hundred thousand pounds per annum—for the whole of which the collector was responsible. In the whole of India, the collectorates were somewhat under a hundred and seventy in number, for the most part identical with districts, but in a few cases comprising whole provinces newly annexed; and these collectorates yielded, in 1856, revenue to the amount of about thirty millions sterling.

The collector-magistrate had generally two assistants, like himself ‘covenanted’ servants of the Company. Besides these there were ‘uncovenanted’ servants, European and native, sufficient in number for the duties to be rendered. The district was marked out into sub-districts containing from one to two hundred villages each. The collector resided at the head-station of the district, with a staff of clerks, writers, and record-keepers. Each sub-district was under the revenue management of a responsible native officer, who had subordinates under him to keep his accounts and conduct the details of his office. Carrying down the classification still more minutely, every village in every sub-district had its headman and its native accountant, who were in intimate correspondence concerning the revenue of the village.

The chief official of the district, as collector of government revenue, obtained this revenue mainly from three sources—land-tax, spirit and drug duty, and stamps. The second and third items were so small in amount, that many well-wishers of the Company urged the abandonment of those imposts; and at anyrate only a small share of the collector’s attention was devoted to them. The land-tax was the great source of revenue; and until the government of India undergoes an entire revolution both in spirit and in practice, such must continue to be the case. So decided was the importance of this tax compared with all others, that of the thirty millions sterling raised in 1856, no less than seventeen millions resulted from land-tax. The land-tax formed the great fund out of which the vast expenses for the executive government, military and civil, were mainly paid. Hence the importance of the revenue-collector and his land-tax duties. The assessment of the land, for the realisation of the tax, differed in different presidencies, according to the relations existing between the state, the landowners, the farmers, and the labourers. In Bengal the revenue was collected in gross from great and powerful zemindars, the state having little or nothing to do with the actual cultivators. In Madras no zemindars or great men were recognised; the state drew the tax from the ryots or cultivators, each on his own bit of land. In Bombay the Madras system existed in a modified form. In Oude nothing could be done till the annexation in 1856, when the peculiar thalookdaree system[156] laid a foundation for many troubles in the following year. In the Northwest Provinces the assessment depended on the peculiar village tenures, which had existed from time immemorial, and according to which the ownership of the soil could not be interfered with by the state so long as the village paid the revenue. Great as may have been, and great as were, the differences between the Hindoo, Mohammedan, and English governments, this village system maintained its ground century after century. The tenure of land in these provinces, recognised by the Company as among those institutions which they wished to respect, were mainly three in number:

Zemindaree—denoting those estates where the property was held collectively without any territorial division, whether the owners were one, few, or many.

Puttidaree—those estates where the property was partially or entirely divided, and held separately by the coparceners.

Bhyacharuh—estates held by coparcenary communities, where actual possession had overborne law; it was a kind of Puttidaree founded on actuality rather than right.

Whichever of these systems prevailed, the Company respected it in assessing the land-tax; and thus each piece of land was represented in the tax-books by the name of a particular tax-payer or community of tax-payers. The actual assessment, the percentage on produce, depended on circumstances specially ascertained in each district; but the two guiding principles laid down by the Company, when they established a revenue-system for the Northwest Provinces were—that the rate should be light enough to leave a wide margin of profit to the cultivators; and that it should be fixed without alteration for a considerable period of years. The collector, knowing how much was assessed upon every village or every piece of land, was armed with powers sufficient to enforce payment. Whether the assessment was ‘light’ or not, was a standing controversy between those who respectively supported the zemindaree, the ryotwaree, and the village systems. The Company’s advocates generally urged that, though the ratio of tax to produce seemed heavy, any comparison with English land-tax would be fallacious; seeing that the villagers and cultivators in India were not called upon to pay, in addition to land-tax, any such imposts as excise, tithes, church-rates, county-rates, poor-rates, or income-tax. The excellences and defects of the system, however, are not discussed here; we simply describe the system itself.

The collector, having a definite amount to receive, from a definite number of villages, represented by a definite number of persons, could neither increase nor lessen, anticipate nor postpone, the tax, without special reasons. If a district suffered from drought, the government often deferred or wholly remitted the tax; but this only under well-defined circumstances. The collector’s register recorded all changes in ownership or occupancy by death or private transfer; and as he knew each year who ought to pay, he was intrusted with certain powers to enforce payment by imprisonment, distraint of personal property, annulment of lease, sequestration of profits, transfer of defaulting share to a solvent shareholder of the same community, farming of the estate to a stranger, or sale by public auction.

In most districts, until the time of the Revolt, the collection of revenue was an easy task, occupying only a portion of the collector’s thoughts in May and June, November and December. ‘So complete the machinery,’ said a writer in the Calcutta Review, ‘so prosperous the provinces, so well adjusted the assessment, that the golden shower fell uninterruptedly; and the collector, who had without an effort of his own transmitted a royal ransom half-yearly to the public treasury, was scarcely aware of the financial feat which he and his subordinates had performed.’ But when a drought, an inundation, or any great calamity interfered with the growth or harvesting of the crop, the collector’s duties were most trying and laborious; seeing that he had to listen to petitions for relief or delay from hundreds or thousands of villages in his district.

His ordinary duties as a collector of revenue occupied only a small portion of his time and thoughts. As registrar of landed property, he kept maps and registers of land, drawn out with a degree of minuteness scarcely paralleled in any other country in the world; and these maps and registers were renewed or corrected annually, to shew the size, position, ownership, and crop of every cultivated field in the whole district. As revenue judge between landlord and tenant, he was often called upon to assist the responsible landowner to collect his rent from the cultivators, or to assist the cultivator in resisting oppression by the landlord; it was a duty requiring a knowledge both of law and of revenue matters. As a ministerial officer of the courts of justice, he had to put in force, somewhat in the manner of a sheriff, all decisions of the judge relating to land, transfers of property, or arrears of land-tax; and his local knowledge often enabled him to assist the judge in arriving at an equitable decision. As treasurer and accountant, he took care of the bags of silver coin in which the land-tax and the other taxes were chiefly paid, tested and weighed the coin before making up his accounts, paid monthly stipends to some of the military and civil officers of the district, kept a minute debtor and creditor account, and transmitted his accounts and his surplus silver to Calcutta. In addition to all these duties, the collector, considered as the European who possessed most knowledge on various subjects in his district, performed miscellaneous duties scarcely susceptible of enumeration. ‘Everything that is to be done by the executive, must be done by him, in one of his capacities; and we find him, within his jurisdiction, publican [tax-gatherer], auctioneer, sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, enlisting sergeant, sutler, slayer of wild beasts, wool-seller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter of bills, and registrar-general—in which last capacity he has also to tie the marriage-knot for those who object to the Thirty-nine Articles. Latterly, he has been made schoolmaster of his district also. Every new measure of government places an extra straw on the collector’s back. Whatever happens to be the prevailing hobby, the collector suffers. One day specimens are called for, for the Exhibitions of London or Paris; the next day, the cry is for iron and timber for the railway, or poles for the telegraph.’

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Footnote 152:

‘The commander-in-chief prohibits columns from moving to the attack of forts, whether large or small, without at least two heavy guns, or a heavy gun and a heavy howitzer. If possible, such columns should always have mortars also; namely, two 8-inch and two 5½-inch. Arrangements are to be made by the inspector-general of ordnance to insure the presence of a proportion of heavy guns, howitzers, mortars, and cohorns, at all stations where British regiments are quartered. Wherever there is a possibility of movable columns being organised, the necessary elephant and bullock draught should be maintained. When an expedition against a fort is deemed absolutely necessary, and heavy ordnance cannot be obtained, a special reference is to be made to the chief of the staff by telegraph. If, however, the station be removed from the wire, the general officer commanding the division or station must, of course, exercise a discretionary power; but the commander-in-chief begs that it may be recollected, as a principle, that, except in cases of the most absolute necessity, forts are not to be attacked with light guns only.’

Footnote 153:

Chap. xiv., p. 234.

Footnote 154:

‘A circumstance well worthy of note has taken place during the last week; it calls for remark, inasmuch as it exposes the peculiar superstitions of the Hindoo shopkeepers of this country. In the talooka of Nuseerabad, below the hills which form the western boundary of Sinde, and not far south of the jaghire of Ghybee Khan, the Sirdar of the Chandia tribe, there stands the ancient and still important town of Hamal. It is situated on a mound close to the great Western Trunk-road, which runs from the town of Dost Allee, in Kumbur, to that of Gool Mahomed Luggaree; this part of the country is annually flooded by the hill-torrents, and for this reason all the towns are built on eminences, and surrounded by strong bunds. About twelve months ago, a certain shopkeeper of the town went out to his field with his donkey to work. On returning in the evening he loaded the ass, and was proceeding homewards, when the animal fell down and died. The Hindoos of that town consider that if, through any man’s carelessness, the death of a beast of burden is caused, that man must make a pilgrimage to the town of Narrainsir, a few miles south of Lucput, in the Runn of Kutch, and there, shaving his head and performing other numerous ceremonies, expiate his fault. Consequently, when this unfortunate man returned home and reported the death of the donkey, he was at once told that, unless he immediately made the requisite pilgrimage to Narrainsir, and there expiated his fault, they would neither eat nor drink with him, nor hold any intercourse whatever with him. As the poor man thought the ass’s death was in no way brought about by any fault of his, he appealed to the punchayets (Hindoo juries of five persons each) of Larkhana, Guerrilla, and Kumbar, other large towns in the Larkhana district. They returned answer that the punchayet of Hamal was wrong in its decision, and that they acquitted the man of all blame as to the cause of the ass’s death. A controversy was at once raised throughout this part of the country, and it ended in all the punchayets of the towns of the Katcha country siding with the punchayet of Hamal, and the punchayets of the towns on the plain near the river taking part with Larkhana. The dispute came to a climax during the past week, when the Larkhana punchayet, in the name and acting for the minor towns near the river, issued a notice that the Hindoos of these towns would no longer associate with, nor have any intercourse with those of Hamal, Ghybee Dherah, and other towns of the Katcha country. This challenge was at once accepted, and the punchayets of the Katcha country issued a counter-notice, forbidding all Hindoos of their towns to hold intercourse with those of the district towns above mentioned; marriages before agreed upon have been broken off, agencies broken up, partnerships dissolved, and even the ties of relationship are no longer binding. To such an extent do the superstitious feelings of these men act upon their social conduct.’

Footnote 155:

Chap. xi., p. 179.

Footnote 156:

Chap. xxi., p. 360.

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XXVII. DISCUSSIONS ON REBEL PUNISHMENTS

Before entering on the military struggles that marked the month of April, it may be desirable to notice the phases of public feeling concerning the amount of punishment due to the mutineers and rebels in India. The discussions on this subject undoubtedly influenced the course of proceeding adopted both by the military and the civil authorities; although it may not be possible to measure the exact amount of that influence, or the exact date at which it was felt. Some of the proceedings of Viscount Canning at Calcutta, in reference to this matter, belonged to the month of March; some of the discussions in the imperial parliament, and at the India House, bearing on Canning’s line of policy, belonged to later months; but it will be useful to give a rapid sketch, in this place, of the nature of the discussion generally, and of the remarkable tone given to it by party politics in England. All reference to the debates concerning the reorganisation of the Indian government, whether at home or in India itself, may more fittingly be postponed to a later chapter.

Almost from the first, a large portion of the Anglo-Indian population cried aloud for most summary and sanguinary vengeance on rebels and mutineers of all kinds, Mohammedan and Hindoo, towns-people and country peasants. General Neill was idolised for a time by this class—not so much because he was a gallant soldier and a skilful commander, as because he was supposed to be terribly severe in his treatment of insurgents. This matter has been adverted to in former pages, as well as the torrents of abuse that were poured upon the governor-general for ‘clemency’—a word used in a mocking and bitter spirit. Many of the censors afterwards joined the ranks of those who abused the same governor-general for a policy supposed to be antagonistic to that of ‘clemency.’ The fact is again mentioned here, owing to its connection with a controversy that gave rise to formidable parliamentary struggles many months afterwards. The proceedings of four different bodies—the Calcutta government, the Board of Control, the Houses of Parliament, and the Court of Directors—must be briefly noticed to shew the course of this controversy.

At first, when the mutiny was still in its earlier stages, the friends and relations of those who had suffered barbarous treatment at the hands of the natives gave utterance to a wild demand for vengeance, springing not unnaturally from an excited state of feeling. The following, from one of the Calcutta journals, is a fair example of this kind of writing in its milder form: ‘Not the least amongst the thousand evils which will follow in the track of the rebellion is the indurating effect it will have upon the feelings of our countrywomen when the struggle is over. There are many hundreds of English ladies who lie down nightly to dream of horrors too great for utterance; who scarcely converse except upon one dreadful subject; and who would be found almost as willing as their husbands and fathers to go out and do battle with the mutineers, if they could only insure the infliction of deep and thorough vengeance. It is a contest with murderers who are not satisfied with their life’s blood, that they have to expect daily. Their very servants are perhaps in league to destroy them. They suffer almost hourly worse than the pains of death. Many have already died by homicidal hands; but more from the pangs of starvation and travel, from the agonies of terror, and the slow process of exhaustion. And all this while friends and relatives sigh vainly for the coming of the day of retribution.’ The italicised passages shew only a very moderate use of the words ‘vengeance’ and ‘retribution,’ but may suffice to indicate the feeling here adverted to.

The Calcutta government, as has been duly recorded in the proper chapters, from time to time issued orders and proclamations relating to the treatment which the mutineers were to receive, or which was to be meted out to non-military natives who should shew signs of insubordination. There was, as one instance, the line of policy contested between Mr Colvin and Lord Canning. The former issued, or intended to issue, a proclamation to the mutineers of the Northwest Provinces, in which, among other things, he promised that ‘soldiers engaged in the late disturbances, who are desirous of going to their own homes, and who give up their arms at the nearest government civil or military post, and retire quietly, shall be permitted to do so unmolested;’ whereas Lord Canning insisted that this indulgence or leniency should not be extended to any regiments which had murdered or ill-used their officers, or committed cruel outrages on other persons. Then there were several orders and statutes proclaiming martial law in the disturbed districts; appointing commissioners to try mutineers by a very summary process; authorising military officers to deal with rebel towns-people as well as with revolted sepoys; enabling the police to arrest suspected persons without the formality of a warrant; making zemindars and landowners responsible for the surrendering of any ill-doers on their estates; and other measures of a similar kind. When, in the month of July, Viscount Canning found it needful to check the over-zeal of some of the tribunals at Allahabad, who were prone to hang accused persons without sufficient evidence of their guilt, he was accused of interference with the righteous demand for blood. It is true, that these were, in the first instance, merely newspaper accusations; but as the English public looked to newspapers for the chief part of their information concerning India, these controversies gave rise to a very unhealthy excitement; and weeks, or even months, often passed before the truth could be known—as was strikingly evidenced in the case of the lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces, whose supposed ‘clemency’ (in a matter of which, as soon appeared, he knew absolutely nothing) was held over him as a reproach for nearly four months. In September appeared a proclamation at Agra, warning the natives of the possible consequences of any complicity on their parts in the proceedings of the mutineers. Part of the proclamation ran as follows: ‘The government of these provinces calls on all landowners and farmers, with their tenantry, and on all well-disposed subjects, to give all possible assistance to the authorities in bringing those outcasts (mutineers and rebels) to justice. Landowners and farmers of land, especially, are reminded of the terms of their engagement not to harbour or countenance criminals and evil-disposed persons. The government requires proofs of the fidelity and loyalty of all classes of its subjects, in recovering the arms, elephants, horses, camels, and other government property, which have been feloniously taken by the offenders. All persons are warned against purchasing or bartering for any such property of the state under the severest penalties; and rewards will be paid to those who, immediately on obtaining possession of the same, bring them to the nearest civil or military station.’

So far as concerns the imperial parliament, little took place during the year 1857 touching on the subject of the present chapter. The opposition party sought to shew that her Majesty’s ministers were responsible for the outbreak; some members of both Houses broached their views concerning the causes of the mutiny; others criticised the mode in which troops were sent to India; some condemned, others defended, Viscount Canning; many put forth suggestions concerning the future government of India; many more sought to overwhelm with guilt the East India Company; while missionaries, civil servants, Indian judges, aristocratic officers, favoured commanders, were made subjects of frequent and warm debate—but the members of the legislature generally held aloof from that excessive demand for a sanguinary policy towards the insurgents, so much dwelt on by many of the Anglo-Indians. After passing an act, containing among other provisions clauses relating to ‘The Punishment of Mutiny and Desertion of Officers and Soldiers in the Service of the East India Company,’ parliament was prorogued on the 28th of August. During the recess, the press was busy on those accusations and reclamations already adverted to—in turn correcting, and corrected by, the official documents which from time to time appeared. Commercial troubles having agitated the country during the autumn, parliament met again on the 3d of December, for a short session before Christmas. Although the purpose of meeting was prescribed and limited, the members of the legislature did not deem it necessary or desirable to remain silent on a subject so uppermost in men’s thoughts as the mutiny in India. Speeches were made, motions brought forward, explanations given, and returns ordered, on the state of the army, the mode of sending over troops, the conduct of the government, and various other matters bearing on the struggle in the East. The speech from the throne contained many allusions to that struggle, but none that bore on the mode of punishing the rebels. The Earl of Derby, in a speech on the opening-night, sought to discourage the cry for vengeance raised in many quarters. After urging that England should deal with the mutineers in justice and not in revenge, he added: ‘For every man taken with arms in his hands there ought to be a righteous punishment, and that punishment death. For those miscreants who have perpetrated unmentionable and unimaginable atrocities upon women, death is too mild a sentence. On them should be inflicted the heavier punishment—a life embittered by corporal punishment in the first instance, and afterwards doomed to the most degrading slavery. Be they Brahmins of the highest caste, they should be forced to undergo the lowest, most degrading, most hopeless slavery. But, while he would take this course, he earnestly deprecated the extension of a feeling of hostility to the whole native population. From letters which he had seen, he feared that every white man in India who had suffered in any way by the mutiny came to regard every man with a black face as his enemy. Now, that was a feeling which should be restrained, if not by Christianity, at least by motives of sound policy. Measures should be taken to convince the natives that the English are their masters; but they must also be convinced that the English are their benefactors. We should not try to govern India by the sword alone.’ This sentiment was also well expressed by Mr Mangles, chairman of the East India Company, at the Haileybury examination on the 7th of December. Addressing the assembled professors, prizemen, students, and Company’s officers present, he adverted to the sudden rupture of friendly relations in India, and added: ‘For many years to come, there must exist strong mistrust and suspicion, if not more bitter feelings, between those who rule and those who are subject. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, after the scenes which have been passed through, the treacheries and murders—and worse than murders—that have been rife throughout the land. But, gentlemen, you are bound to struggle with those feelings and subdue them. It will be your duty to remember that only a small part, an infinitesimal part, of the population of India have been engaged in these frightful and scandalous outrages.’ [Here many striking instances of fidelity were brought to notice.] ‘It would therefore be most unjust to bring the charge of treachery against the whole people of India. It will be your duty, under these circumstances, to struggle against the suspicion and distrust which have been engendered by recent events, and to endeavour to win the affections of the people over whom you are called upon to exercise power. If we cannot govern India in that way, we ought to give up the country and come away.’

When parliament met for the usual session, in February, a question was put by the Earl of Ellenborough, concerning the policy intended to be pursued towards the rebels. Adverting to a rumour of some very wholesale series of military executions in Central India, he said: ‘Without questioning the justice of the sentence in that particular case, he doubted if capital punishment was so efficacious as a severe flogging. The natives were not afraid of death, but shrank from corporal pain. Besides, it is quite impossible to hang all the mutineers, and the continued exhibition of unrelenting severity must inevitably create a blood-feud between the natives and their European masters.’ Earl Granville, on the part of the government, replied that no particular instructions had been sent out to Viscount Canning on this matter, because the utmost reliance was placed on the justice and firmness of that nobleman: he added, that he agreed in the opinion that the frequent spectacle of capital punishment must have the worst possible effect; and he concluded by stating that the governor-general was directing his thoughts towards the possibility of transporting some of the evildoers to the Andaman Islands.

Now occurred a change in political matters which threw Indian discussions into a new channel. Hitherto, the subject of the punishment of mutineers had been discussed in parliament with reference rather to persons than to property. The ministry, however, having been changed on grounds quite irrespective of Indian affairs, and the Earl of Derby having succeeded Viscount Palmerston as premier, India was dragged into the consequences of this change. The Earl of Ellenborough, admitted on all hands to be a well-informed statesman on Indian matters, however opinions might differ concerning his temper and prudence, was appointed president of the Board of Control. When governor-general of India, many years earlier, he had been in frequent collision with the East India Company, as represented both by the Court of Directors and by the Calcutta government; and it was thought probable that his new assumption of authority in Indian affairs would be marked by something notable and important. It was so. The singular termination of his ministerial career was closely and immediately connected with the subject to which this chapter relates, in a way that may now be briefly narrated.

At first this question of punishment had to be discussed by the new government in the same manner as before—that is, in relation to the sanguinary vengeance advocated by many writers of letters and newspaper articles, especially at Calcutta. On the 18th of March, Mr Rich moved in the House of Commons for the production of certain papers which he expected would throw light on this matter, he contended that the conduct of the army, in the punishment of the insurgents, was merciless and cruel. He intimated the necessity of requiring the authorities in India to act strictly up to the instructions of Lord Canning, who, he thought, deserved honour for his firmness and humanity. The Calcutta journals, he asserted, recommended that Oude should be made one wide slaughter-house, in which extermination should be the rule rather than the exception; and it was but right that the government should at once check this terrible feeling of sanguinary animosity. Most of the speakers in the debate that followed agreed in the view taken by Mr Rich; and more than one of them broached the doctrine that the insurgents in Oude ought not to be treated like rebel sepoys—seeing that, whether wisely or unwisely, they were fighting for what they deemed national independence.

During the first half of the month of April, nothing occurred in parliament involving any very great collision of opinions on this particular subject; but towards the close of the month a clashing of views on Oude affairs became manifest to the public. Throughout the first ten months of the mutiny, while Viscount Palmerston was at the head of affairs, the opposition party, in both Houses of Parliament, frequently appeared as advocates for the deposed royal family of Oude, dwelling on the injustice involved in the deposition. Much of this advocacy may have been sincere, but much also was mere special pleading; for the speakers well knew that, if in office, they would not and could not seek to undo what had been done. No sooner did a change of ministry take place, than the new occupants of office became much more cautious in denouncing the ‘annexation of Oude;’ seeing that, if an iniquity at all, it was one in which the Marquis of Dalhousie, the Calcutta government, the Court of Directors, the Crown, and both Houses of Parliament, were all implicated. Every one now saw that the practical question before the country was—not the rights or wrongs of the annexation—but the treatment of insurgents engaged in the warlike struggle. It became known that the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors had sent a letter to the governor-general in council, dated the 24th of March, relating to the treatment which it was desirable that rebels and mutineers should receive. So peculiar and anomalous were the functions of this Secret Committee, that although nominally belonging to the Court of Directors, it was little other than the mouthpiece of the president of the Board of Control. The letter was really from the Earl of Ellenborough, rather than from any one else.

Before pursuing this narrative, it may be well to say a few words concerning the organisation and functions of this Secret Committee—one of the many anomalies connected with our government of India. Mr Arthur Mills (India in 1858) described the relation between the Secret Committee, the Court of Directors, and the Board of Control, in the following terms: ‘The Court of Directors meets weekly at the East India House for the transaction of business, the ordinary details of which are discharged by three committees—1. Finance and home; 2. Political and military; 3. Revenue, judicial, and legislative. There is also a “Secret Committee,” with peculiar functions altogether different from those of the three ordinary committees. The office of the Secret Committee is purely ministerial. It receives from India all dispatches on matters with respect to which secrecy is deemed important—including those which relate to war, peace, or negotiations with native powers or states within the limits of the charter, or other states or princes; and forwards such dispatches to the Board of Control. The Secret Committee also transmits to India, after signature, dispatches prepared by that Board, which it is bound to do, under oath, “without disclosing the same.” The Secret Committee is composed, as prescribed by act of parliament, of three directors. The court may elect whom they please; but the chairman, deputy-chairman, and senior member of the court, are almost invariably appointed. The papers of the Secret Committee are in charge of the examiner at the East India House, who is clerk to the committee.... There is also a secret department in the Board of Control, for the purpose of carrying on written and oral communications with the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. The oral communications are for the most part carried on through the president personally; in the written communications he is assisted by a senior clerk, and occasionally by the secretaries of the Board. On the arrival of secret dispatches from India, the copy intended for the Board is sent to the senior clerk in the secret department, who prepares a précis of all the letters and enclosures, which he lays before the president; who thereupon gives him instructions, oral or written, for the preparation of an answer, or sometimes drafts one himself. It is then copied in official form, and transmitted to the Secret Committee of the East India House.’

The secret dispatch, produced by the authority here described, began by expressing a hope[157] that, as soon as Lucknow should fall before the conquering arm of Sir Colin Campbell, the governor-general would feel himself sufficiently strong to act towards the natives with the generosity as well as the justice which is congenial to the British character. The subsequent paragraphs laid down the propositions that it would be better, except in aggravated instances, to award punishment such as is usual against enemies captured in regular war, than against rebels and mutineers—the exceptions being those in which the fighting by the insurgents ‘exceeded the licence of legitimate hostilities;’ that the insanity of ten months ought not to blot out the recollection of a hundred years of fidelity; that the punishment of death had been far too frequently awarded; and that the governor-general ought sternly to resist the entreaties of those who would urge him to the adoption of a sanguinary policy.

The 6th of May was the date on which the battle may be said to have begun in parliament, on the policy to be pursued towards Oude. Mr Bright, in the House of Commons, asked the ministers whether there was any authenticity in a certain proclamation concerning Oude, said to have been issued by Viscount Canning; whether, if authentic, it had been issued in accordance with any directions from the home government; and, if not so sanctioned, what steps the government intended to take in relation to it? These questions came upon the House generally by surprise, as indicating a revelation of things hitherto hidden; and it was then for the first time made public, by the minister who replied to these questions—that the government had, three weeks before, received a dispatch containing a copy of the proclamation adverted to; that the matter was immediately taken into consideration by the government; that a secret dispatch had been sent off, stating the views of the government on the matter; and that there would be no objection to produce both the proclamation and the dispatch. This announcement was the forerunner of a storm, in which the passion of party was strongly mixed up. On the 7th, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Ellenborough moved for the production of certain papers, analogous to those ordered by the other House on the preceding night; and then arose a debate whether Viscount Canning had really issued the proclamation he intended; whether it was a proper proclamation to issue; whether it was right that the Earl of Ellenborough should reprimand Viscount Canning in so imperious a way as he was accused of doing; whether the secret dispatch containing that reprimand should have been kept so entirely concealed from the Court of Directors; whether it should have been sent out to Calcutta at the time it was; and whether a so-called secret dispatch ought to make its appearance among parliamentary papers, unrelieved by any comments on it by Viscount Canning. There was unquestionably something strange in the mode of proceeding; for the dispatch, although not made known to the Court of Directors until the morning of the 7th, had been communicated to certain members of both Houses on the 6th. Earl Granville urged that, if the government wished to get rid of Viscount Canning, the usual course might have been adopted for so doing; but that it was neither just nor generous to keep him in office, and yet give publicity to such insulting censure on him. The Earls of Derby and Ellenborough replied that it was not intended to dismiss Viscount Canning, or even to censure him; but to induce him to make such modifications in his proposed proclamation as would render the policy adopted in Oude less severe.

It now becomes necessary to attend to this much-canvassed proclamation itself, before noticing the further debates concerning it.

The proclamation in question, and the explanations bearing on it, were dated at a period when, from the absence of an electric telegraph between England and India, they could not of course be known in the former country. On the 3d of March, while at Allahabad, paying anxious attention to the daily telegrams received from Oude, Viscount Canning sent a proclamation and an explanatory letter to that province, relating to the treatment to be meted out to rebels.[158] Although Sir Colin Campbell commanded the army of Oude, and conducted the military operations, Sir James Outram was chief-commissioner of the province; and on his shoulders rested, at that time, all that could be effected in the way of civil government. The proclamation was to be at once a sentence, a warning, and a threat, addressed to the inhabitants of Oude. It announced that Lucknow, after months of anarchy, was now again in British hands; it dwelt on the fact that many of the citizens, even those who had shared the bounty of the government, had joined the insurgents; and it declared, that the day of retribution for evildoers had arrived. It proceeded to name six rajahs, thalookdars, and zemindars, who had remained faithful amid great temptation, and who were not only to retain their estates, but were to receive additional rewards. It promised a proportionate reward to all other chieftains who could prove that they had been loyal. With these exceptions, the whole proprietary right to the soil of Oude was declared to be forfeited to the British crown—subject only to such indulgences as might, as a matter of favour, be conceded to individuals, conditional on their immediate submission to the supreme authority, their surrendering of arms, and their steady assistance in the maintenance of order and discipline; and conditional, also, on their innocence of shedding the blood of Englishmen and Englishwomen in the cruel outrages which had taken place. The stringent and startling clause in this proclamation was that which related to the confiscation: declaring that, with the few specified exceptions, ‘the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British government, which will dispose of that right in such manner as it may seem fitting.’ In the letter to Sir James Outram accompanying this draft of a proclamation, Viscount Canning stated that the proclamation was not to be issued until Lucknow had been fully conquered by Sir Colin Campbell; and that, when so issued, it was to be addressed only to the non-military inhabitants of Oude, without in the slightest degree offering pardon or lenity to rebel sepoys. The proclamation was spoken of as a very indulgent one; seeing that it promised an exemption, almost general, from the penalties of death and imprisonment, to Oudian chieftains and others who had gone against the government; the confiscation of estates was treated as a merciful diminution of punishment, rather than as a severe measure of justice. Sir James Outram was to exercise his judgment as to the mode and the time for issuing the proclamation, in the English, Hindee, and Persian languages. He was supplied with suggestions, rather than strict instructions, how to deal with those Oudians who had been inveterate opponents of the government, but without being concerned in actual murder; how to regard those who had fought in the insurgent ranks, but shewed a willingness to surrender their arms; and how to draw a line between the chieftains on the one hand and their less responsible retainers on the other.

Such being the general character of the proposed proclamation and its accompanying letter, we proceed with the debate.

After the discussions on Friday the 7th of May, the conduct of the government underwent much discussion out of parliament; the supporters of Viscount Canning contending that the publication of the secret dispatch was unfair to that nobleman, even if the dispatch itself were defensible. On the 10th, the Earl of Shaftesbury gave notice of a resolution condemnatory of the publication; and Mr Cardwell gave notice of a similar resolution in the House of Commons. In the course of an irregular discussion, it appeared that the government had not received a single official dispatch from Viscount Canning since that which contained the draft of his proposed proclamation, and they were quite in the dark whether the proclamation had been issued, altered or unaltered. It also became known that the late president of the Board of Control, Mr Vernon Smith, had received a letter from Viscount Canning, stating that the proclamation would require an explanatory dispatch, which he had not had time to prepare.

On the next day, March 11th, parliament was surprised by an announcement that the Earl of Ellenborough, without consulting his colleagues, had resigned into the Queen’s hands his seals of office as president of the Board of Control. Amid the courteous expressions of regret on the part of the other ministers, at losing so important a coadjutor, it soon became evident that the publication of the secret dispatch had emanated from the Earl of Ellenborough, without the knowledge or consent of the Earl of Derby and the cabinet. He found that he had drawn them into trouble; and he resolved to take the whole blame on himself—resigning office to shield others from censure. There was a generosity in this which touched his colleagues. The Earl of Derby candidly admitted that there were parts of the secret dispatch which he could not quite approve, and that the publication of it was indefensible; but that he deeply regretted the resignation of the Earl of Ellenborough.

This will be the proper place in which to notice the celebrated dispatch fraught with such important consequences. On the 24th of March, after Viscount Canning’s proclamation had been penned, but long before any news concerning it could reach England, the Secret Committee wrote to him on the subject of the treatment of the rebels generally. The letter was virtually from the Earl of Ellenborough; although, on account of the absurd system of double government, it professed to emanate from a committee sitting in Leadenhall Street. The general character of this letter was noticed in a recent paragraph, and the letter itself is given in Note G; it may therefore be passed without further notice here. When, on the 12th of April, a draft-copy of Viscount Canning’s proposed proclamation reached England, the Earl of Ellenborough wrote the much-discussed ‘secret dispatch,’ purporting, as before, to come from the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors. A few days elapsed before the writing, and a few more before the forwarding, of this document. The earl[159] expressed his apprehension that the proposed proclamation would raise such a ferment in Oude as to render pacification almost impossible. He declared his belief that the mode of settling the land-tenure when the British took possession of Oude had been in many ways unjust, and had been the chief cause of the general and national character of the disaffection in that province. He asserted that the Oudians would view with dismay a proclamation which cut them off, as a nation, from the ownership of land so long cherished by them; and would deem it righteous to battle still more energetically than before against a government which could adopt such a course of policy. He went through a process of argument to shew that the Oudians regretted the dethronement of their native king; that their regret ought to be at least respected; that they had never, as a nation, acknowledged British suzerainty; that they ought not to be treated as rebels in the same sense as the inhabitants of those parts of India which had long been under British control; and that the conflict in which they had engaged should on this account be regarded rather as legitimate war than as rebellion. The haughty and stinging portions of the dispatch were contained in the fifteenth and two following clauses or paragraphs; in which the earl, addressing the greatest British functionary in India, said: ‘Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of punishment; but have, with a generous policy, extended their clemency to the great body of the people. You have acted upon a different principle. You have reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you have struck with what they will feel as the severest of punishment the mass of the inhabitants of the country. We cannot but think that the precedents from which you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to that which appears in the precedent you have made.’

Such was the celebrated secret dispatch, the writing and promulgation of which led to the resignation of the Earl of Ellenborough. That resignation produced an exciting controversy in and out of parliament. As the offender, the president of the Board of Control, had sacrificed himself, was it necessary or desirable to make the ministry generally responsible for his supposed or alleged misdeeds? Party considerations speedily became mixed up with the discussion of this question. The Whigs had recently been displaced by the Conservatives, under circumstances that occasioned much irritation; and each party availed itself of the India controversy as a handle to be employed against the other. On the one side it was contended that Viscount Canning deserved praise rather than censure, for his untiring attention to the affairs of India during a troubled period; that, even if his proposed proclamation were injudicious, it was not right to publish the secret dispatch relating thereto, until he had explained the reasons for framing his proclamation; and that the ministers ought not to be shielded from blame simply on account of the resignation of their colleague. On the other hand, the ministers endeavoured to shew that this resignation ought to be taken into account; and when this failed, they took up the cause of the Oudians, contending that the inhabitants of that province were in a different category from the other natives of India.

When the great debates on this subject came on in both Houses, on the 14th of May, the ministers dwelt forcibly on the conduct of Mr Vernon Smith, who had received a letter or letters from Viscount Canning, which he ought, in the interests of the public, to have communicated to the government, but which he shewed only to members of his own party. It was urged—and the argument made a great impression both in and out of parliament—that if the Earl of Ellenborough had known of Viscount Canning’s intention to send home an explanation concerning the intent and scope of the proclamation, it might possibly have led to a modification of the secret dispatch, or even to an abandonment of it. In the House of Lords, the case against the government was argued by Lords Shaftesbury, Argyll, Somerset, Cranworth, Grey, Newcastle, and Granville; while the arguments on the other side were maintained by Lords Ellenborough, Derby, Carnarvon, Chelmsford, and Donoughmore. The Earl of Shaftesbury had couched his resolution in such a form[160] as he thought was calculated to insure Viscount Canning fair-play whenever his intentions and proceedings should be really known. Without undertaking to defend the proclamation, in the absence of any proof whether that document had or had not undergone modification, he contended that the dispatch passed on the governor-general a cruel and unmerited censure; that this so-called ‘secret’ dispatch was evidently intended by its writer to be a public one, administering rebuke that should be known to all the world; that its publication was perilous, even seditious, inasmuch as it encouraged the people of Oude to persevere in rebellion, and virtually absolved them from all blame for their past conduct. The Earl of Ellenborough, in reply, defended every word of the dispatch; he insisted that it would be impossible to govern India peacefully even for a day, if the proclamation were acted on in its full spirit. He cared not for office; he resigned because he had unintentionally embarrassed his colleagues, not because he regretted any part of his conduct. The Earl of Derby, and other members of the cabinet, described the resolutions as a party manœuvre to overthrow the government; claimed an acquittal on the plea that their colleague had taken all the blame of the publication to himself; and complained that the governor-general had not sent one single letter to the new government, explanatory of his plans and motives. When the debate was ended, the result shewed a very close division—there being contents, 159, non-contents, 168; giving a majority of 9 for ministers.

Far more exciting and influential was the debate in the Commons on the same night. From the day when Mr Cardwell gave notice of his resolutions, the case was regarded as a serious one for the ministers; seeing that he was a distinguished member of an independent party in the House, and would be able to bring a large accession to the regular opposition votes. The very fact of the Earl of Ellenborough having resigned, seemed to afford proof that the publication of the dispatch, if not the writing of it, was disapproved by some of the ministers, and would weaken them in the approaching debate. Mr Cardwell’s resolutions,[161] like those of the Earl of Shaftesbury, did not bind the House to any approval of the much-talked-of proclamation, whether issued or unissued; they related only to the unfairness of the dispatch in the absence of further news from India, and to the still greater unfairness of making the reproof contained in that dispatch patent to all the world. The members of the Whig opposition, and all who sided with them in the debate, adhered pretty closely to this line of argument; but the ministers and their supporters travelled much further. They felt that the only justification for the dispatch and its publication was to be found in the proclamation; and they therefore gave the proclamation as black a character as it could well receive. Viscount Canning was abused in round terms as a tyrant and spoliator; and those who supported him were accused of being influenced purely by factious motives in bringing forward the resolutions. The attack against the government was maintained by Mr Cardwell, Lord John Russell, Mr Vernon Smith, Mr Lowe, Colonel Sykes, and others, and resisted by the solicitor-general, Lord Stanley, Mr Baillie, &c. The debate was adjourned to the 17th, when it became evident that many of the independent members intended to support the government—partly because they disapproved of the Canning proclamation; partly because they suspected the Whigs of an intention to make this Indian question a stepping-stone to a return to office; and partly because they condemned the conduct of the late president of the Board of Control, in withholding Canning’s letter. This last-named circumstance told very seriously against the Whig party; the Conservatives made the most of it, and won over many adherents from among the independent members. Again was the debate adjourned, to the 18th. It now became still more evident that the division-list would present an aspect far different from that at first expected; the prophesied majority for the resolutions gradually fell, and the ministers began to look confidently to a decision in their favour. A new element had entered into the case. If the Derby ministry would have resigned office when beaten, there was a sufficient number of independent members ready to carry the motion against them; but as there was a threat of a dissolution, and as many seats would be endangered by a general election, self-interest became mixed up with patriotism. Another adjournment took place, to the 20th, on which day the House was addressed by Sir James Graham, Mr Bright, Sir R. Bethell, Mr Labouchere, and other members of influence. The current of debate set in very much in favour of the government. It transpired that many eminent men in India—including Sir James Outram, Sir John Lawrence, General Mansfield, and General Franks—had all in various ways expressed an opinion that Lord Canning’s proclamation, if issued in the form originally intended, would be productive of some mischief in Oude.

This, therefore, will be a convenient place in which to notice the officially recorded opinions of Outram on the subject—the only ones which were presented before the House in a formal and undoubted manner. The documents received from India shewed that Sir James entertained many misgivings concerning the proclamation and its probable tendency. The proclamation and its accompanying letter being sent to him from Allahabad, he replied on the 8th, in a communication[162] pointing out to Viscount Canning the paragraphs which appeared to him mischievous. He declared his belief that there were not a dozen landowners throughout the whole of Oude who had not in some way or other assisted the rebels during the past struggle; and that, therefore, there would be hardly any exceptions to the sweeping confiscation proposed by the governor-general. He asserted most distinctly his conviction that, as soon as the proclamation should be made public, nearly all the chiefs and thalookdars would retire to their domains, and prepare for a desperate resistance. He expressed an opinion that the landowners had been very unjustly treated in the land-settlement after the annexation; that, apart from this, their sympathy with the rebels was an exceedingly natural feeling, under the peculiar circumstances of Oude; that it was not until the mutiny was many weeks old that they turned against us; that they ought to be regarded rather as honourable enemies than as rebels; that they would be converted into relentless enemies if their lands were confiscated, maintaining a guerrilla war which would ‘involve the loss of thousands of Europeans by battle, disease, and exposure;’ but that if their lands were insured to them, they would probably be more attached to British rule than ever they had yet been. It is evident that Sir James Outram had already discussed this subject with the governor-general, for he apologises for ‘once more’ urging his views upon his lordship. A brief reply[163] was immediately sent to this letter, proposing a very slight increase of leniency in the treatment of the landowners, but leaving the general spirit of the proclamation untouched. Later in the month, the governor-general replied more at length to the arguments of Sir James. He admitted[164] that the inhabitants of Oude were far differently placed from those of Bengal and the Northwest Provinces, in respect to allegiance to the British crown; both because the annexation had been recent, and because it had been no voluntary act on the part of the Oudians. But he would not admit that, on those grounds, the rebel thalookdars should be treated so indulgently as Outram proposed. He urged that exemption from death, transportation, and imprisonment, was a great boon, sufficiently marking the treatment of the Oudians from that of other natives. Without entering on the question whether the settlement of the land-claims had been unjust, he offered his reasons for thinking that that matter had not had much to do with the complicity of the thalookdars in the rebellion. He attributed this complicity mainly to ‘the repugnance which they feel to suffer any restraint of their hitherto arbitrary powers over those about them; to a diminution of their importance by being brought under equal laws; and to the obligation of disbanding their armed followers, and of living a peaceful and orderly life.’ He maintained that if Sir James’s suggestion were acted on, the rebels would be treated, not merely as honourable enemies, but as enemies who had won the day; and that this would be accepted by the natives as a confession of fear and weakness, encouraging them to regard rebellion as likely to be a profitable game. In short, Viscount Canning insisted on his proclamation being maintained in its chief features.

It was impossible that such a letter as that of Sir James Outram could fail, when made known, to exert a considerable influence in the House of Commons. The resemblance between it and the Earl of Ellenborough’s dispatch was very close, except in relation to discourteous and haughty language, which Outram neither did nor could use. On the 21st of May, after five nights’ debate, marked by speeches from almost all the eminent men in the House, the contest ended in a kind of drawn battle. Influenced by a great variety of motives, the opponents of the government urged upon Mr Cardwell the withdrawal of his resolutions. They did not wish to be compelled to vote. Some had been impressed by the recorded opinion of Outram, and the rumoured opinions of Lawrence and other eminent men in India; some disliked party tactics, even against their opponents; some were afraid of a general election, if their votes should lead to a dissolution of parliament. All the leaders of the Whig party joined in a wish to withdraw the resolutions; and this was done. The affair had, however, been so managed throughout as to give a good deal of triumph to the Conservative government, and to strengthen that government for the rest of the session.

What was the ultimate fate of the much-condemned proclamation, will remain to be shewn in a later page. Two further documents relating to this matter are given in Notes I and K.

Notes.

The official documents referred to in this chapter are of so much importance, in reference to the political history of the Indian Revolt, and to the opinions entertained by public men concerning the feelings of the natives, that it may be well to present the chief of them in full. Owing to the length of time necessary for the transmission of letters between England and India, two or more of these documents were crossing the ocean at the same time, in opposite directions, and therefore could not exactly partake of the nature of question and answer. We shall attempt no other classification than that of placing in one group the documents written in India; and in another those written in London—observing, in each group, the order of dates.

A.

The first document here given is a letter dictated by Viscount Canning when at Allahabad, and signed by his secretary, Mr Edmonstone. It was addressed to Sir James Outram, in his capacity of chief-commissioner of Oude, and was written at a time when the fall of Lucknow was soon expected:

‘ALLAHABAD, March 3, 1858.

‘SIR—I am directed by the Right Honourable the Governor-general, to enclose to you a copy of a proclamation which is to be issued by the chief-commissioner at Lucknow, as soon as the British troops under His Excellency the Commander-in-chief shall have possession or command of the city.

‘2. This proclamation is addressed to the chiefs and inhabitants of Oude only, and not to the sepoys.

‘3. The governor-general has not considered it desirable that this proclamation should appear until the capital is either actually in our hands or lying at our mercy. He believes that any proclamation put forth in Oude in a liberal and forgiving spirit would be open to misconstruction, and capable of perversion, if not preceded by a manifestation of our power; and that this would be especially the case at Lucknow—which, although it has recently been the scene of unparalleled heroism and daring, and of one of the most brilliant and successful feats of arms which British India has ever witnessed—is still sedulously represented by the rebels as being beyond our power to take or to hold.

‘4. If an exemption, almost general, from the penalties of death, transportation, and imprisonment, such as is now about to be offered to men who have been in rebellion, had been publicly proclaimed before a heavy blow had been struck, it is at least as likely that resistance would have been encouraged by the seeming exhibition of weakness, as that it would have been disarmed by a generous forbearance.

‘5. Translations of the proclamation into Hindee and Persian accompany this dispatch.

‘6. It will be for the chief-commissioner in communication with His Excellency the Commander-in-chief, to determine the moment at which the proclamation shall be published, and the manner of disseminating it through the province; as also the mode in which those who may surrender themselves under it shall be immediately and for the present dealt with.

‘7. This last question, considering that we shall not be in firm possession of any large portion of the province when the proclamation begins to take effect, and that the bulk of our troops, native as well as European, will be needed for other purposes than to keep guard through its districts—is one of some difficulty. It is clear, too, that the same treatment will not be applicable to all who may present themselves.

‘8. Amongst these there may be some who have been continuously in arms against the government, and who have shewn inveterate opposition to the last, but who are free from the suspicion of having put to death or injured Europeans who fell in their way.

‘9. To these men their lives are guaranteed and their honour; that is, in native acceptation—they will neither be transported across sea, nor placed in prison.

‘10. Probably the most easy and effectual way of disposing of them, in the first instance, will be to require that they shall reside in Lucknow under surveillance and in charge of an officer appointed for that purpose.

‘11. Their ultimate condition and place of residence may remain to be determined hereafter, when the chief-commissioner shall be able to report fully to the governor-general upon the individual character and past conduct of each.

‘12. There will be others who, although they have taken up arms against the government, have done so less heartily, and upon whom, for other causes, the chief-commissioner may not see reason to put restraint. These, after surrendering their arms, might be allowed to go to their homes, with such security for their peaceable conduct as the chief-commissioner may think proper to require.

‘13. One obvious security will be that of making it clearly understood by them, that the amount of favour which they shall hereafter receive, and the condition in which they shall be re-established, will be in part dependent upon their conduct after dismissal.

‘14. The permission to return to their homes must not be considered as a reinstatement of them in the possession of their lands, for the deliberate disposal of which the government will preserve itself unfettered.

‘15. There will probably be a third class, less compromised by acts of past hostility to the government, in whom the chief-commissioner may see reason to repose enough of confidence to justify their services being at once enlisted on the side of order, towards the maintenance of which in their respective districts they might be called upon to organise a temporary police.

‘16. The foregoing remarks apply to the thalookdars and chiefs of the province. As regards their followers who may make submission with them, these, from their numbers, must of necessity be dismissed to their homes. But before this is done, their names and places of residence should be registered, and they should receive a warning that any disturbance of the peace or resistance of authority which may occur in their neighbourhood, will be visited, not upon the individual offenders alone, but by heavy fines upon the villages.

‘17. I am to observe that the governor-general wishes the chief-commissioner to consider what has been above written as suggestions rather than instructions, and as indicating generally the spirit in which his lordship desires that the proclamation should be followed up, without tying down the action of the chief-commissioner in matters which may have to be judged under circumstances which cannot be foreseen.

‘18. There remains one more point for notice.

‘19. The proclamation is addressed to the chiefs and inhabitants of Oude, not to mutineers.

‘20. To the latter, the governor-general does not intend that any overture should be made at present.

‘21. But it is possible that some may surrender themselves, or seek terms, and it is necessary that the chief-commissioner should be prepared to meet any advances from them.

‘22. The sole promise which can be given to any mutineer is, that his life shall be spared; and this promise must not be made if the man belongs to a regiment which has murdered its officers, or if there be other primâ facie reason to suppose that he has been implicated in any specially atrocious crime. Beyond the guarantee of life to those who, not coming within the above-stated exception, shall surrender themselves, the governor-general cannot sanction the giving of any specific pledge.

‘23. Voluntary submission will be counted in mitigation of punishment, but nothing must be said to those who so submit themselves which shall bar the government from awarding to each such measure of secondary punishment as in its justice it may deem fitting.—I have, &c.,

(Signed) ‘G. F. EDMONSTONE.

’Allahabad, March 3, 1858.’

B.

The proclamation referred to in the above letter ran as follows:

‘PROCLAMATION.

‘The army of His Excellency the Commander-in-chief is in possession of Lucknow, and the city lies at the mercy of the British government, whose authority it has for nine months rebelliously defied and resisted.

‘This resistance, begun by a mutinous soldiery, has found support from the inhabitants of the city and of the province of Oude at large. Many who owed their prosperity to the British government, as well as those who believed themselves aggrieved by it, have joined in this bad cause, and have ranged themselves with the enemies of the state.

‘They have been guilty of a great crime, and have subjected themselves to a just retribution.

‘The capital of their country is now once more in the hands of the British troops.

‘From this day it will be held by a force which nothing can withstand, and the authority of the government will be carried into every corner of the province.

‘The time, then, has come at which the Right Honourable the Governor-general of India deems it right to make known the mode in which the British government will deal with the thalookdars, chiefs, and landholders of Oude, and their followers.

‘The first care of the governor-general will be to reward those who have been steadfast in their allegiance at a time when the authority of the government was partially overborne, and who have proved this by the support and assistance which they have given to British officers.

‘Therefore the Right Honourable the Governor-general hereby declares that

‘Drigliejjie Singh, Rajah of Bulrampore; ‘Koolwunt Singh, Rajah of Pudnaha; ‘Rao Hurdeo Buksh Singh, of Kutiaree; ‘Kasheepershaud, Thalookdar of Sissaindee; ‘Zuhr Singh, Zemindar of Gopaul Kheir; and ‘Chundeeloll, Zemindar of Moraon (Baiswarah),

are henceforward the sole hereditary proprietors of the lands which they held when Oude came under British rule, subject only to such moderate assessment as may be imposed upon them, and that those loyal men will be further rewarded in such manner and to such extent as, upon consideration of their merits and their position, the governor-general shall determine.

‘A proportionate measure of reward and honour, according to their deserts, will be conferred upon others in whose favour like claims may be established to the satisfaction of the government.

‘The governor-general further proclaims to the people of Oude that, with the above-mentioned exceptions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British government, which will dispose of that right in such manner as it may seem fitting.

‘To those thalookdars, chiefs, and landholders, with their followers, who shall make immediate submission to the chief-commissioner of Oude, surrendering their arms and obeying his orders, the Right Honourable the Governor-general promises that their lives and honour shall be safe, provided that their hands are unstained with English blood murderously shed.

‘But, as regards any further indulgence which may be extended to them, and the condition in which they may hereafter be placed, they must throw themselves upon the justice and mercy of the British government.

‘To those among them who shall promptly come forward and give to the chief-commissioner their support in the restoration of peace and order, this indulgence will be large, and the governor-general will be ready to view liberally the claims which they may thus acquire to the restitution of their former rights.

‘As participation in the murder of Englishmen and Englishwomen will exclude those who are guilty of it from all mercy, so will those who have protected English lives be specially entitled to consideration and leniency.

‘By order of the Right Honourable the Governor-general of India.

‘G. F. EDMONSTONE, Secretary to the Government of India.’

C.

Sir James Outram, not fully satisfied with this proclamation, directed his secretary, Mr Couper, to write as follows to Mr Edmonstone:

‘CAMP, CHIMLUT, March 8, 1858.

‘SIR—I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, No. 191, dated 3d inst., enclosing a proclamation to be issued to the landholders, chiefs, and inhabitants of Oude, upon the fall of the capital.

‘2. In this proclamation a hereditary title in their estates is promised to such landholders as have been steadfast in their allegiance, and, with these exceptions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated.

‘3. The chief-commissioner desires me to observe that, in his belief, there are not a dozen landowners in the province who have not themselves borne arms against us, or sent a representative to the durbar, or assisted the rebel government with men or money. The effect of the proclamation, therefore, will be to confiscate the entire proprietary right in the soil; and this being the case, it is, of course, hopeless to attempt to enlist the landowners on the side of order; on the contrary, it is the chief-commissioner’s firm conviction that as soon as the chiefs and thalookdars become acquainted with the determination of the government to confiscate their rights, they will betake themselves at once to their domains, and prepare for a desperate and prolonged resistance.

‘4. The chief-commissioner deems this matter of such vital importance, that, at the risk of being deemed importunate, he ventures to submit his views once more, in the hope that the Right Hon. the Governor-general may yet be induced to reconsider the subject.

‘5. He is of opinion that the landholders were most unjustly treated under our settlement operations, and even had they not been so, that it would have required a degree of fidelity on their part quite foreign to the usual character of an Asiatic, to have remained faithful to our government under the shocks to which it was exposed in Oude. In fact, it was not until our rule was virtually at an end, the whole country overrun, and the capital in the hands of the rebel soldiery, that the thalookdars, smarting as they were under the loss of their lands, sided against us. The chief-commissioner thinks, therefore, that they ought hardly to be considered as rebels, but rather as honourable enemies, to whom terms, such as they could without loss of dignity accept, should be offered at the termination of the campaign.

‘If these men be given back their lands, they will at once aid us in restoring order; and a police will soon be organised with their co-operation, which will render unnecessary the presence of our enormous army to re-establish tranquillity and confidence.

‘But, if their life and freedom from imprisonment only be offered, they will resist; and the chief-commissioner foresees that we are only at the commencement of a guerrilla war for the extirpation, root and branch, of this class of men, which will involve the loss of thousands of Europeans by battle, disease, and exposure. It must be borne in mind that this species of warfare has always been peculiarly harassing to our Indian forces, and will be far more so at present, when we are without a native army.

‘6. For the above reasons, the chief-commissioner earnestly requests that such landholders and chiefs as have not been accomplices in the cold-blooded murder of Europeans may be enlisted on our side by the restoration of their ancient possessions, subject to such restrictions as will protect their dependents from oppression. If his lordship agree to this proposition, it will not yet be too late to communicate his assent by electric telegraph before the fall of the city, which will probably not take place for some days. Should no such communication be received, the chief-commissioner will act upon his present instructions, satisfied that he has done all in his power to convince his lordship that they will be ineffectual to re-establish our rule on a firm basis in Oude.—I have, &c.,

(Signed) ‘G. COUPER, ‘Secretary to Chief-commissioner.

‘Chief-commissioner’s Office, Camp, Chimlut, March 8.’

D.

Mr Edmonstone, on the part of Viscount Canning, wrote the following brief reply, suggesting an additional clause to the proclamation, and promising a more detailed communication at a future time:

‘ALLAHABAD, March 10, 1853.

‘SIR—Your secretary’s letter of the 8th instant was delivered to me at an early hour this morning, by Captain F. Birch, and it will receive a detailed reply in due course.

‘Meanwhile, I am desired by the Right Honourable the Governor-general to subjoin a clause which may be inserted in the proclamation (forwarded with my letter, No. 191, of the 3d instant), after the paragraph which ends with the words, “justice and mercy of the British government.”

‘“To those amongst them who shall promptly come forward, and give to the chief-commissioner their support in the restoration of peace and order, this indulgence will be large, and the governor-general will be ready to view liberally the claims which they may thus acquire to a restitution of their former rights.”

‘2. This clause will add little or nothing to your discretionary power, but it may serve to indicate more clearly to the thalookdars the liberal spirit in which the governor-general is prepared to review and reciprocate any advances on their part.

‘3. It is expected that you will find means to translate this additional clause into the vernacular languages, and that you will be able to have copies of the proclamation, so amended, prepared in sufficient numbers for immediate use. If more should be required, the magistrate of Cawnpore will lithograph them on your requisition.

‘4. It is very important, as you will readily see, that every copy of the vernacular version of the proclamation sent to you, with my letter of the 3d instant, should be carefully destroyed.—I have, &c.,

(Signed) ‘G. F. EDMONSTONE, ‘_Secretary, Government of India, with the Governor-general_.

‘Allahabad, March 10, 1858.’

E.

It was not until after a lapse of three weeks that the promised detailed reply was sent to Sir James Outram, in the following terms:

‘ALLAHABAD, March 31, 1858.

‘SIR—In replying at once on the 10th inst. to your secretary’s letter of the 8th, in which you urged reasons against the issue of the proclamation to the thalookdars and landholders of Oude, which had been transmitted to you by the Right Hon. the Governor-general, my answer was confined to communicating to you the addition which his lordship was willing to make to that proclamation, without entering into the general questions raised in your letter. The governor-general desires me to express his hope that you will not have supposed that the arguments adduced by you were not fully weighed by him, or that your opinion upon a subject on which you are so well entitled to offer one, has not been received with sincere respect, although he was unable to concur in it.

‘2. I am now directed by his lordship to explain the grounds upon which the course advocated in your letter—namely, that such landholders and chiefs as have not been accomplices in the cold-blooded murder of Europeans should be enlisted on our side by the restoration of their ancient possessions, subject to such restrictions as will protect their dependents from oppression—is, in the opinion of the governor-general, inadmissible.

‘3. The governor-general entirely agrees with you in viewing the thalookdars and landholders of Oude in a very different light from that in which rebels in our old provinces are to be regarded. The people of Oude had been subjects of the British government for little more than one year when the mutinies broke out; they had become so by no act of their own. By the introduction of our rule many of the chiefs had suffered a loss of property, and all had experienced a diminution of the importance and arbitrary power which they had hitherto enjoyed; and it is no marvel that those amongst them who had thus been losers should, when they saw our authority dissolved, have hastened to shake off their new allegiance.

‘4. The governor-general views these circumstances as a palliation of acts of rebellion, even where hostility has been most active and systematic. Accordingly, punishment by death or imprisonment is at once put aside by the proclamation in the case of all who shall submit themselves to the government, and who are not murderers; and whilst confiscation of proprietary rights in the land is declared to be the general penalty, the means of obtaining more or less of exemption from it, and of establishing a claim to restitution of rights, have been pointed out, and are within the reach of all without injury to their honour. Nothing more is required for this than that they should promptly tender their adhesion, and help to maintain peace and order.

‘5. The governor-general considers that the course thus taken is one consistent with the dignity of the government, and abundantly lenient. To have followed that which is suggested in your secretary’s letter would, in his lordship’s opinion, have been to treat the rebels not only as honourable enemies, but as enemies who had won the day.

‘In the course of the rebellion, most of the leaders in it, probably all, have retaken to themselves the lands and villages of which they were deprived, by the summary settlement which followed the establishment of our government in Oude. If upon the capture of Lucknow by the commander-in-chief, before our strength had been seen or felt in the distant districts, and before any submission had been received or invited from them, the rights of the rebel chiefs to all their ancient possessions had been recognised by the government, it is not possible that the act would not have been viewed as dictated by fear or weakness. It would have led the people of Oude, and all who are watching the course of events in that province, to the conclusion that rebellion against the British government cannot be a losing game; and although it might have purchased an immediate return to order, it would not assuredly have placed the future peace of the province upon a secure foundation.

‘6. You observe, indeed, that the landholders were most unjustly treated under our settlement. The governor-general desires me to observe that if this were unreservedly the case, or if the proceedings of the commissioners by which many of the thalookdars were deprived of portions of their possessions had been generally unjust, he would gladly have concurred in your recommendation, and would have been ready, at the risk of any misinterpretation of the motives of the government, to reinstate the thalookdars at once in their old possessions. But it is not so. As a question of policy, indeed, the governor-general considers that it may well be doubted whether the attempt to introduce into Oude a system of village settlement in place of the old settlement under thalookdars was a wise one; but this is a point which need not be discussed here. As a question of justice, it is certain that the land and villages taken from the thalookdars had, for the most part, been usurped by them through fraud or violence.

‘7. That unjust decisions were come to by some of our local officers in investigating and judging the titles of the landowners is, the governor-general fears, too true; but the proper way of rectifying such injustice is by a re-hearing where complaint is made. This, you are aware, is the course which the governor-general is prepared to adopt, and to carry out in a liberal and conciliatory spirit. It is a very different one from proclaiming that indiscriminate restitution of all their ancient possessions is at once to be yielded to the landowners.

‘8. That the hostility of the thalookdars of Oude who have been most active against the British government has been provoked, or is excused, by the injustice with which they have been treated, would seem to be your opinion.

‘But I am to observe, that there are some facts which deserve to be weighed before pronouncing that this is the case.

‘9. No chiefs have been more open in their rebellion than the rajahs of Churda, Bhinga, and Gonda. The governor-general believes that the first of these did not lose a single village by the summary settlement, and certainly his assessment was materially reduced. The second was dealt with in a like liberal manner. The Rajah of Gonda lost about 30 villages out of 400; but his assessment was lowered by some 10,000 rupees.

‘10. No one was more benefited by the change of government than the young Rajah of Naupara. His estates had been the object of a civil war with a rival claimant for three years, and of these he was at once recognised as sole proprietor by the British government, losing only six villages out of more than a thousand. His mother was appointed guardian, but her troops have been fighting against us at Lucknow from the beginning.

‘11. The Rajah of Dhowrera, also a minor, was treated with equal liberality. Every village was settled with his family; yet these people turned upon Captain Hearsey and his party, refused them shelter, pursued them, captured the ladies, and sent them into Lucknow.

‘12. Ushruf Bux Khan, a large thalookdar in Gonda, who had long been an object of persecution by the late government, was established in the possession of all his property by us; yet he has been strongly hostile.

‘13. It is clear that injustice at the hands of the British government has not been the cause of the hostility which, in these instances at least, has been displayed towards our rule.

‘14. The moving spirit of these men and of others amongst the chiefs of Oude must be looked for elsewhere; and, in the opinion of the governor-general, it is to be found mainly in the repugnance which they feel to suffer any restraint of their hitherto arbitrary powers over those about them, to a diminution of their importance by being brought under equal laws, and to the obligation of disbanding their armed followers, and of living a peaceful and orderly life.

‘The penalty of confiscation of property is no more than a just one in such cases as have been above recited; and although considerations of policy and mercy, and the newness of our rule, prescribe a relaxation of the sentence more or less large according to the features of each case, this relaxation must be preceded by submission, and the governor-general cannot consent to offer all, without distinction, an entire exemption from penalty, and the restoration of all former possessions, even though they should not have been guilty of the murder of Europeans.—I have, &c.,

(Signed) ‘G. F. EDMONSTONE, ‘_Secretary to the Government of India, with the Governor-general_.

‘Allahabad, March 31, 1858.’

F.

The following document, though not pertaining to the affairs of Oude, may usefully be given here, bearing as it does on the treatment proposed to be adopted towards mutineers and rebels. It was written, in the name of Viscount Canning, by the secretary to the government of the Northwest Provinces, and was addressed to the functionaries of the disturbed province of Rohilcund:

‘AGRA, April 28, 1858.

‘SIR—I am directed to communicate to you the general principles which the Right Honourable the Governor-general desires to see followed by all civil and other officers who will exercise judicial or magisterial powers in Rohilcund, on the re-entry of British troops into that province.

‘2. The condition of Rohilcund has been, in some respects, peculiar. The progress of the Revolt in the interior has until lately suffered little check. The people, left to themselves, have in many quarters engaged actively in hostilities against each other; but direct opposition to British authority has been mainly confined to the several Sudder towns, to the frontier on the Ganges, and to the expeditions against Nynee Tal.

‘3. Under these circumstances, his lordship considers it just to distinguish, by a widely differing treatment, the simple bearing of arms, or even acts of social violence committed at a period when the check of lawful government was removed, from acts directly involving treason against the state, or a deliberate defiance of its authority. Excepting instances of much aggravation, it is not the wish of government that public prosecutions should be set on foot on account of offences of the former class.

‘4. Further, in respect of treason and defiance of British authority, his lordship desires that criminal proceedings shall be taken only against leaders, and against such persons, whether high or low, as have distinguished themselves by activity and rancour against the government, or by persistence in opposition to its authority after the advance of troops and the re-occupation of stations. The governor-general will admit to amnesty all other classes, even though they have borne arms on the side of the rebels, provided that they tender an early and complete submission. But continuance in opposition will exclude from pardon.

‘5. The governor-general has reason to believe that an impression exists in Rohilcund that the Mohammedan population, as such, is to be proscribed and crushed. It is likely that the rumour has been raised and fostered by the rebel leaders to excite apprehension and mistrust of the government. His lordship desires that every appropriate occasion may be taken to disabuse the people of this gross error. Such suspected rebels as may be brought to trial will be tried each by his own acts. Each will stand or fall by the line of conduct which he shall be proved to have followed. The government will maintain, as it has always maintained, a strict impartiality in its administration. Equal justice will be shared by all its subjects, whether Hindoos or Mohammedans. You will make public these views, and instruct the chief district officers to make them widely known, in such manner as may appear to be most effectual.

‘6. It will be your care, in accordance with the injunctions of his lordship’s orders, embodied in the circular order dated the 19th February, to bring forward, for early notice by the governor-general, the several examples of conspicuously faithful conduct exhibited by many of the inhabitants of Rohilcund, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty.—I have, &c.,

‘W. MUIR, ‘Sec. to Govt. NW. P.’

G.

We now transfer attention to four of the documents written in London. The first was nominally from the ‘Secret Committee,’ really from the Earl of Ellenborough, and was suggested by the state of affairs in India during the second half of the month of February:

‘The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, to the Governor-general of India in Council, March 24, 1858.

‘The telegram from Calcutta, dated the 22d ult., which arrived this morning, conveys intelligence of the concentration of the force under the commander-in-chief, and of that under Jung Bahadoor, upon Lucknow; and we trust we may indulge the expectation that, ere this, that city has been evacuated by the rebels, and that no considerable corps remains united against us in the field.

‘2. If this happy result should have been attained, it will be very satisfactory to us to learn that you have deemed yourselves sufficiently strong to be enabled to act towards the people with the generosity, as well as the justice, which are congenial to the British character.

‘3. Crimes have been committed against us which it would be a crime to forgive; and some large exceptions there must be, of the persons guilty of such crimes, from any act of amnesty which could be granted; but it must be as impossible, as it would be abhorrent from our feelings, to inflict the extreme penalty which the law might strictly award upon all who have swerved from their allegiance.

‘4. To us it appears that, whenever open resistance shall have ceased, it would be prudent, in awarding punishment, rather to follow the practice which prevails after the conquest of a country which has defended itself to the last by desperate war, than that which may perhaps be lawfully adopted after the suppression of mutiny and rebellion, such acts always being excepted from forgiveness or mitigation of punishment as have exceeded the licence of legitimate hostilities.

‘5. While we may be unable to forget the insanity which, during the last ten months, has pervaded the army and a large portion of the people, we should at the same time remember the previous fidelity of a hundred years, and so conduct ourselves towards those who have erred as to remove their delusions and their fears, and re-establish, if we can, that confidence which was so long the foundation of our power.

‘6. It would be desirable that, in every case, the disarming of a district, either by the seizure of arms or by their surrender, should precede the application to it of any amnesty; but there may be circumstances which would render expedient a different course of proceeding. Upon these exceptional cases, you and the officers acting under your orders must decide.

‘7. The disarming of a district having been effected, with exceptions, under your licence, in favour of native gentlemen, whose feelings of honour would be affected by being deprived of the privilege of wearing arms, and of any other persons in whom you may confide, we think the possession of arms should be punished in every case by a severe penalty; but unless the possession of arms should be combined with other acts, leading to the conclusion that they were retained for the perpetration of crimes, that penalty should not be death. Of course the possession of arms by Englishmen must always remain lawful.

‘8. Death has of late been but too common a punishment. It loses whatever terror it might otherwise have when so indiscriminately applied; but, in fact, in India there is not commonly a fear of death, although there ever must be a fear of pain.

‘9. In every amnestied district, the ordinary administration of the law should as soon as possible be restored.

‘10. In carrying these views into execution, you may meet with obstruction from those who, maddened by the scenes they have witnessed, may desire to substitute their own policy for that of the government; but persevere firmly in doing what you may think right; make those who would counteract you feel that you are resolved to rule, and that you will be served by none who will not obey.

‘11. Acting in this spirit, you may rely upon our unqualified support.’

H.

Three or four weeks afterwards, was written the ‘secret dispatch’ which gave rise to so vehement a debate in parliament:

‘April 19, 1858.

‘Our letter of the 24th of March 1858 will have put you in possession of our general views with respect to the treatment of the people in the event of the evacuation of Lucknow by the enemy.

‘2. On the 12th inst., we received from you a copy of the letter, dated the 3d of March, addressed by your secretary to the secretary to the chief-commissioner in Oude, which letter enclosed a copy of the proclamation to be issued by the chief-commissioner as soon as the British troops should have command of the city of Lucknow, and conveyed instructions as to the manner in which he was to act with respect to different classes of persons, in execution of the views of the governor-general.

‘3. The people of Oude will see only the proclamation.

‘4. That authoritative expression of the will of the government informs the people that six persons, who are named as having been steadfast in their allegiance, are henceforward the sole hereditary proprietors of the lands they held when Oude came under British rule, subject only to such moderate assessment as may be imposed upon them; that others in whose favour like claims may be established will have conferred upon them a proportionate measure of reward and honour; and that, with these exceptions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British government.

‘5. We cannot but express to you our apprehension that this decree, pronouncing the disinherison of a people, will throw difficulties almost insurmountable in the way of the re-establishment of peace.

‘6. We are under the impression that the war in Oude has derived much of its popular character from the rigorous manner in which, without regard to what the chief landholders had become accustomed to consider as their rights, the summary settlement had, in a large portion of the province, been carried out by your officers.

‘7. The landholders of India are as much attached to the soil occupied by their ancestors, and are as sensitive with respect to the rights in the soil they deem themselves to possess, as the occupiers of land in any country of which we have a knowledge.

‘8. Whatever may be your ultimate and undisclosed intentions, your proclamation will appear to deprive the great body of the people of all hope upon the subject most dear to them as individuals, while the substitution of our rule for that of their native sovereign has naturally excited against us whatever they may have of national feeling.

‘9. We cannot but in justice consider that those who resist our authority in Oude are under very different circumstances from those who have acted against us in provinces which have been long under our government.

‘10. We dethroned the King of Oude, and took possession of his kingdom, by virtue of a treaty which had been subsequently modified by another treaty, under which, had it been held to be in force, the course we adopted could not have been lawfully pursued; but we held that it was not in force, although the fact of its not having been ratified in England, as regarded the provision on which we rely for our justification, had not been previously made known to the King of Oude.

‘11. That sovereign and his ancestors had been uniformly faithful to their treaty engagements with us, however ill they may have governed their subjects.

‘12. They had more than once assisted us in our difficulties, and not a suspicion had ever been entertained of any hostile disposition on their part towards our government.

‘13. Suddenly the people saw their king taken from amongst them, and our administration substituted for his, which, however bad, was at least native; and this sudden change of government was immediately followed by a summary settlement of the revenue, which, in a very considerable portion of the province, deprived the most influential landholders of what they deemed to be their property—of what certainly had long given wealth, and distinction, and power to their families.

‘14. We must admit that, under these circumstances, the hostilities which have been carried on in Oude have rather the character of legitimate war than that of rebellion, and that the people of Oude should rather be regarded with indulgent consideration, than made the objects of a penalty exceeding in extent and in severity almost any which has been recorded in history as inflicted upon a subdued nation.

‘15. Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of punishment, but have, with a generous policy, extended their clemency to the great body of the people.

‘16. You have acted upon a different principle. You have reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you have struck with what they will feel as the severest of punishment the mass of the inhabitants of the country.

‘17. We cannot but think that the precedents from whom you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to that which appears in the precedent you have made.

‘18. We desire that you will mitigate in practice the stringent severity of the decree of confiscation you have issued against the landholders of Oude.

‘19. We desire to see British authority in India rest upon the willing obedience of a contented people; there cannot be contentment where there is general confiscation.

‘20. Government cannot long be maintained by any force in a country where the whole people is rendered hostile by a sense of wrong; and if it were possible so to maintain it, it would not be a consummation to be desired.’

I.

The Court of Directors, before the secret dispatch became known to them, adopted courteous language in the following letter of instructions sent to Viscount Canning, referring to an earlier communication:

‘May 5, 1858.

‘1. You will have received, by the mail of the 25th of March, a letter from the secret committee, which has since been laid before us, respecting the policy which it becomes you to pursue towards those natives of India who have recently been in arms against the authority of the British government.

‘2. That letter emphatically confirms the principles which you have already adopted, as set forth in your circular of the 31st of July 1857, by impressing upon you the propriety of pursuing, after the conquest of the revolted provinces, a course of policy distinguished by a wise and discriminating generosity. You are exhorted to temper justice with mercy, and, except in cases of extreme criminality, to grant an amnesty to the vanquished. In the sentiments expressed by the secret committee we entirely concur. While there are some crimes which humanity calls upon you to punish with the utmost severity, there are others of a less aggravated character, which it would be equally unjust and impolitic not to pardon and to forget.

‘3. The offences with which you will be called upon to deal are of three different kinds. Firstly, high crimes, instigated by malice prepense, and aggravated by treachery and cruelty. Secondly, offences the results rather of weakness than of malice, into which it is believed that many have been drawn by the contamination of example, by the fear of opposing themselves to their more powerful countrymen, or by the belief that they have been compromised by the acts of their associates, rather than by any active desire to embarrass the existing government. And, thirdly, offences of a less positive character, amounting to little more than passive connivance at evil, or at most to the act of giving such assistance to the rebels as, if not given, would have been forcibly extorted, and which in many cases it would have been death to refuse to bodies of licentious and exasperated mutineers.

‘4. It is the first only of these offences, the perpetrators of which, and their accomplices, it will be your duty to visit with the severest penalty which you can inflict; and it is, happily, in such cases of exceptional atrocity, that you will have the least difficulty in proving both the commission of the offence and the identity of the offender. In the other cases you might often be left in doubt, not only of the extent of the offence committed, but of its actual commission by the accused persons; and although we are aware that the retribution which might be righteously inflicted upon the guilty may be in some measure restricted by too much nicety of specification, and that, in dealing with so large a mass of crime, it is difficult to avoid the commission of some acts of individual injustice, we may still express our desire that the utmost exertion may be made to confine, within the smallest possible compass, these cases of uncertain proof and dubious identity, even though your retributary measures should thus fall short of what in strict justice might be inflicted.

‘5. As soon as you have suppressed the active hostility of the enemy, your first care will be the restoration of public confidence. It will be your privilege when the disorganised provinces shall no longer be convulsed by intestine disorder, to set an example of toleration and forbearance towards the subject people, and to endeavour by every means consistent with the security of the British empire in the east, to allay the irritation and suspicion, which, if suffered to retain possession of the minds of the native and European inhabitants of the country, will eventually lead to nothing less calamitous than a war of races.

‘6. In dealing with the people of Oude, you will doubtless be moved by special considerations of justice and of policy. Throughout the recent contest, we have ever regarded such of the inhabitants of that country as—not being sepoys or pensioners of our own army—have been in arms against us as an exceptional class. They cannot be considered as traitors or even rebels, for they had not pledged their fidelity to us, and they had scarcely become our subjects. Many, by the introduction of a new system of government, had necessarily been deprived of the maintenance they had latterly enjoyed; and others feared that the speedy loss of their means of subsistence must follow from the same course. It was natural that such persons should avail themselves of the opportunity presented by the distracted state of the country, to strike a blow for the restoration of the native rule, under which the permitted disorganisation of the country had so long been to them a source of unlawful profit. Neither the disbanded soldiers of the late native government, nor the great thalookdars and their retainers, were under any obligation of fidelity to our government for benefits conferred upon them. You would be justified, therefore, in dealing with them as you would with a foreign enemy, and in ceasing to consider them objects of punishment after they have once laid down their arms.

‘7. Of these arms they must for ever be deprived. You will doubtless, in prosecution of this object, address yourself in the first instance to the case of the great thalookdars, who so successfully defied the late government, and many of whom, with large bodies of armed men, appear to have aided the efforts of the mutinous soldiery of the Bengal army. The destruction of the fortified strongholds of these powerful landholders, the forfeiture of their remaining guns, the disarming and disbanding of their followers, will be amongst your first works. But, whilst you are depriving this influential and once dangerous class of people of their power of openly resisting your authority, you will, we have no doubt, exert yourself by every possible means to reconcile them to British rule, and encourage them, by liberal arrangements made in accordance with ancient usages, to become industrious agriculturists, and to employ in the cultivation of the soil the men who, as armed retainers, have so long wasted the substance of their masters and desolated the land. We believe that these landholders may be taught that their holdings will be more profitable to them under a strong government, capable of maintaining the peace of the country, and severely punishing agrarian outrages, than under one which perpetually invites, by its weakness, the ruinous arbitration of the sword.

‘8. Having thus endeavoured, on the re-establishment of the authority of the British government in Oude, to reassure the great landholders, you will proceed to consider, in the same spirit of toleration and forbearance, the condition of the great body of the people. You will bear in mind that it is necessary, in a transition state from one government to another, to deal tenderly with existing usages, and sometimes even with existing abuses. All precipitate reforms are dangerous. It is often wiser even to tolerate evil for a time, than to alarm and to irritate the minds of the people by the sudden introduction of changes which time can alone teach them to appreciate, or even, perhaps, to understand. You will be especially careful, in the readjustment of the fiscal system of the province, to avoid the imposition of unaccustomed taxes, whether of a general or of a local character, pressing heavily upon the industrial resources and affecting the daily comforts of the people. We do not estimate the successful administration of a newly acquired province according to the financial results of the first few years. At such a time we should endeavour to conciliate the people by wise concessions, and to do nothing to encourage the belief that the British government is more covetous of revenue than the native ruler whom it has supplanted.’

K.

The last document here given is a letter of instructions from the Court of Directors, kind and courteous towards the governor-general, but evidently conveying an opinion that the proposed proclamation, unless modified and acted on with caution, would be too severe for the purpose in view:

‘Political Department, 18th of May (No. 20) 1858.

‘1. The secret committee has communicated to us the governor-general’s secret letter, dated 5th March (No. 9) 1858, with its enclosures, consisting of a letter addressed to the chief-commissioner of Oude, dated 3d of March, and of the proclamation referred to therein, which was to be issued by Sir James Outram to the chiefs and inhabitants of Oude as soon as the British troops should have possession or command of the city of Lucknow.

‘2. We have also received communication of the letter addressed to your government by the secret committee, under date the 19th of April last, on the subject of the draft of proclamation.

‘3. Our political letter of the 5th of May has apprised you of our strong sense of the distinction which ought to be maintained between the revolted sepoys and the chiefs and people of Oude, and the comparative indulgence with which, equally from justice and policy, the insurgents of that country (other than sepoys) ought to be regarded. In accordance with these views, we entirely approve the guarantee of life and honour given by the proposed proclamation to all thalookdars, chiefs, and landholders, with their followers, who should make immediate submission, surrender their arms, and obey the orders of the British government, provided they have not participated in the murder “of Englishmen or Englishwomen.”

‘4. We are prepared to learn that in publicly declaring that, with the exception of the lands of six persons who had been steadfast in their allegiance, the proprietary right in the soil of the province was confiscated to the British government, the governor-general intended no more than to reserve to himself entire liberty of action, and to give the character of mercy to the confirmation of all rights not prejudicial to the public welfare, the owners of which might not, by their conduct, have excluded themselves from indulgent consideration.

‘5. His lordship must have been well aware that the words of the proclamation, without the comment on it which we trust was speedily afforded by your actions, must have produced the expectation of much more general and indiscriminate dispossession than could have been consistent with justice or with policy. We shall doubtless be informed, in due course, of the reasons which induced the governor-general to employ those terms, and of the means which, we presume, have been taken of making known in Oude the merciful character which we assume must still belong to your views. In the meantime, it is due to the governor-general that we should express our entire reliance that on this, as on former occasions, it has been his firm resolution to shew to all whose crimes are not too great for any indulgence, the utmost degree of leniency consistent with the early restoration and firm maintenance of lawful authority.

‘We accordingly have to inform you, that on receiving communication of the papers now acknowledged, the Court of Directors passed the following resolution:

‘“Resolved—That in reference to the dispatch from the secret committee to the governor-general of India, dated the 19th ult., with the documents therein alluded to, and this day laid before the Court of Directors, this court desires to express its continued confidence in the governor-general, Lord Canning, and its conviction that his measure for the pacification of Oude, and the other disturbed districts in India, will be characterised by a generous policy, and by the utmost clemency that is found to be consistent with the satisfactory accomplishment of that important object.”—We are, &c.

(Signed)

‘F. CURRIE, W. J. EASTWICK, &c. &c.

‘London, May 18, 1858.’

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Footnote 157:

See Note G, at the end of the chapter.

Footnote 158:

See notes A and B, at the end of the chapter; where many of the documents here referred to are printed in full.

Footnote 159:

See Note H.

Footnote 160:

‘1. That it appears, from papers laid upon the table of this House, that a dispatch has been addressed by the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, to the governor-general of India, disapproving a proclamation which the governor-general had informed the court he intended to issue after the fall of Lucknow.

‘2. That it is known only from intelligence that has reached this country, by correspondence published in newspapers, that the intended proclamation has been issued, and with an important modification, no official account of this proceeding having yet been received; that this House is still without full information as to the grounds upon which Lord Canning had acted, and his answer to the objections made to his intended proclamation in the dispatch of the Secret Committee cannot be received for several weeks.

‘3. That, under these circumstances, this House is unable to form a judgment on the proclamation issued by Lord Canning, but thinks it right to express its disapprobation of the premature publication by her Majesty’s ministers of the dispatch addressed to the governor-general; since this public condemnation of his conduct is calculated to weaken the authority of the governor-general of India, and to encourage those who are now in arms against this country.’

Footnote 161:

‘That this House, whilst it abstains from expressing any opinion on the policy of any proclamation which may have been issued by the governor-general of India with relation to Oude, has seen with great and serious apprehension that her Majesty’s government have addressed to the governor-general of India, through the Secret Committee of the East India directors, and have published, a dispatch condemning in strong terms the conduct of the governor-general. And this House is of opinion that such a course upon the part of her Majesty’s government must tend, under the present circumstances of India, to produce a most prejudicial effect, by weakening the authority of the governor-general, and encouraging further resistance on the part of those who are still in arms against us.’

Footnote 162:

See Note C.

Footnote 163:

See Note D.

Footnote 164:

See Note E.

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