XII. EVENTS IN THE PUNJAUB AND SINDE…

XII. EVENTS IN THE PUNJAUB AND SINDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes.

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

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

UNDER CALCUTTA GOVERNMENT.

Name. Limits. Presidency Calcutta and its vicinity, and the east and Division, northeast of Bengal. Dinapoor Division, From the Nepaul frontier, southwest towards Nagpoor. Cawnpore Division, Including Oude, the Lower Doab, and part of Bundelcund. Saugor Division, On both sides of the Nerbudda river, south of Bundelcund. Gwalior Division, Scindia’s Dominions, bordering on Rajpootana. Meerut Division, Rohilcund, from the Himalaya down to Agra and the Jumna. Sirhind Division, The Cis-Sutlej and Hill states, northwest of Delhi. Lahore Division, Eastern part of Punjaub, from Cashmere down to Sinde. Peshawur Division, Western part of Punjaub, on the Afghan frontier.

UNDER BOMBAY GOVERNMENT.

Sinde Division, On the Beloochee frontier, both sides of the Lower Indus. Rajpootana East of Sinde, and west of Scindia’s Gwalior Field-force, dominions. Northern Division, From Cutch nearly to Bombay, including Gujerat. Poonah Division, Around Bombay, and the South Mahratta country near it. Southern Division, Southernmost part of the Bombay Presidency.

UNDER MADRAS GOVERNMENT.

Nagpoor Subsidiary The recently acquired Nagpoor territory, near Force, Nizam’s states. North Division, Northern part of Madras Presidency, on sea-coast. Centre Division, Madras city, and the coast-region north and south of it.

Ceded Districts, Northwest of Madras city, towards Bombay. Mysore Division, Seringapatam, and the country once belonging to Tippoo Saib. Southern Division, Southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, towards Ceylon.

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

* * * * *

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

BENGAL ARMY, MAY 10, 1857.

Military Divisions. Europeans. Natives. Total. Presidency, 1,214 13,976 15,190 Dinapoor, 1,597 15,063 16,660 Cawnpore, 277 5,725 6,002 Oude, 993 11,319 12,312 Saugor, 327 10,627 10,954 Meerut, 3,096 18,357 21,453 Sirhind, 4,790 11,049 15,839 Lahore, 4,018 15,939 19,957 Peshawur, 4,613 15,916 20,529 Pegu, 1,763 692 2,455 —————— ——————— ——————— 22,698 118,663 141,361

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

Peshawur, 9500 Lahore, 5300 Meerut, 5000 Lucknow, 5000 Jullundur, 4000 Dinapoor, 4000 Umballa, 3800 Cawnpore, 3700 Delhi, 3600 Barrackpore, 3500 Sealkote, 3500 Benares, 3200 Rawul Pindee, 3200 Bareilly, 3000 Moultan, 3000 Saugor, 2800 Agra, 2700 Nowsherab, 2600 Jelum, 2400 Allahabad, 2300

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

MADRAS ARMY, MAY 10, 1857.

Military Divisions. Europeans. Natives. Total. Centre, 1,580 6,430 8,010 Mysore, 1,088 4,504 5,592 Malabar, 604 2,513 3,117 Northern, 215 6,169 6,384 Southern, 726 5,718 6,444 Ceded Districts, 135 2,519 2,654 South Mahratta, 16 375 391 Nagpoor, 369 3,505 3,874 Nizam’s, 1,322 5,027 6,349 Penang and Malacca, 49 2,113 2,162 Pegu, 2,880 10,154 13,034 —————— —————— —————— 10,194 49,737 59,931

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

BOMBAY ARMY, MAY 10, 1857.

Military Divisions. Europeans. Natives. Total. Bombay Garrison, 695 3,394 4,089 Southern, 283 5,108 5,391 Poonah, 1,838 6,817 8,655 Northern, 1,154 6,452 7,606 Asseerghur Fortress, 2 446 448 Sinde, 1,087 6,072 7,159 Rajpootana, 50 3,312 3,362 ————— —————— —————— 5,109 31,601 36,710

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

* * * * *

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

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Footnote 30:

The events of the mutiny relating to the Punjaub have been ably set forth in a series of papers in Blackwood’s Magazine, written by an officer on the spot.

Footnote 31:

This column was made up as follows:

1. H.M. 27th foot, from Nowsherah. 2. H.M. 24th foot, from Rawul Pindee. 3. One troop European horse-artillery, from Peshawur. 4. One light field-battery, from Jelum. 5. The Guide Corps, from Murdan. 6. The 16th irregular cavalry, from Rawul Pindee. 7. The 1st Punjaub infantry, from Bunnoo. 8. The Kumaon battalion, from Rawul Pindee. 9. A wing of the 2d Punjaub cavalry, from Kohat. 10. A half company of Sappers, from Attock.

Footnote 32:

‘Very Dear and Good Mother—On the 8th of the present month the native soldiers heard they were to be disarmed the following day. They became furious, and secretly planned a revolt. They carried their plans into execution at an early hour on the following morning. We were immediately apprised of it, and I hastened to awake our poor children, and all of us, half-clad, prayed for shelter at a Hindoo habitation. Some vehicles had been prepared for us to escape, when the servants desired us to conceal ourselves, as the sepoys were coming into the garden. We returned to our hiding-place; the soldiers arrived; they took away our carriages, and a shot was fired into the house where we were concealed. The ball passed close to where our chaplain was sitting, and slightly wounded a child in the leg. At the same moment three soldiers, well armed, presented themselves at the door. The good father, holding the holy sacrament, which he never quitted, advanced to meet them. Several of us accompanied him. “We have orders to kill you,” said the sepoys; “but we will spare you if you give us money. Go out, all, that we may see there are no men concealed here.” Having searched and found nothing, one of the soldiers raised his sabre over the chaplain, and cried out: “You shall die.” “Mercy, in the name of God!” exclaimed I. “I will open every press to shew you that there is no money concealed here.” He followed me, and having satisfied himself that there was no money, the soldiers went away. We then broke a hole in the wall of our garden, and fled into the jungle. We had scarcely escaped when thirty more sepoys entered the house; but the Almighty preserved us from this danger. We were crossing the country, when a faithful servant brought us to a house where several Europeans had taken refuge. We breathed freely there for a moment, but the government treasure was deposited there, and the house was soon attacked by the mutinous sepoys. We believed that our last hour was at hand; but the savages were too much occupied with pillage to notice us, and the Europeans escaped. At this moment a Catholic soldier offered to guide us to the fort, where we arrived at twelve o’clock. We do not know how long we shall remain in the fort. The English officers have treated us with the greatest kindness and attention, and have supplied us with provisions both for ourselves and our pupils. We trust we shall one day make our way to Bombay; but that will depend on the orders we receive from the government.’

Footnote 33:

The brigadier’s confidence in his men was conditional on their implicit obedience; and he was wont to affirm that his ‘Irregulars’ were as ‘regular’ in conduct and discipline as the Queen’s Life-guards themselves. He would allow no religious scruples to interfere with their military efficiency. On one occasion, during the Mohurram or Mohammedan religious festival in 1854, there was great uproar and noise among ten thousand Mussulmans assembled in and near his camp of Jacobabad to celebrate their religious festival. He issued a general order: ‘The commanding officer has nothing to do with religious ceremonies. All men may worship God as they please, and may act and believe as they choose, in matters of religion; but no men have a right to annoy their neighbours, or to neglect their duty, on pretence of serving God. The officers and men of the Sinde Horse have the name of, and are supposed to be, excellent soldiers, and not mad fakeers.... He therefore now informs the Sinde Irregular Horse, that in future no noisy processions, nor any disorderly display whatever, under pretence of religion or anything else, shall ever be allowed in, or in neighbourhood of, any camp of the Sinde Irregular Horse.’

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XIII. PREPARATIONS: CALCUTTA AND LONDON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

Note.

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

REGIMENTS AND STATIONS OF BENGAL ARMY—MAY 1857.

GENERAL ANSON, Commander-in-chief.

European Cavalry. 6th Carabiniers (Queen’s), Meerut. 9th Lancers (Queen’s), Umballa.

Native Regular Cavalry. 1st Regiment, Mhow. 2d Regiment, Cawnpore. 3d Regiment, Meerut. 4th Regiment, Umballa. 5th Regiment, Peshawur. 6th Regiment, Nowgong. 7th Regiment, Lucknow. 8th Regiment, Lahore. 9th Regiment, Sealkote. 10th Regiment, Ferozpore.

Irregular and Local Cavalry. 1st Bengal Ir. C., Jelum. 2d Bengal Ir. C., Goordaspore. 3d Bengal Ir. C., Jhansi. 4th Bengal Ir. C., Hansi. 5th Bengal Ir. C., Sonthal. 6th Bengal Ir. C., Moultan. 7th Bengal Ir. C., Peshawur. 8th Bengal Ir. C., Sultanpore. 9th Bengal Ir. C., Hosheapore. 10th Bengal Ir. C., Goordaspore. 11th Bengal Ir. C., Berhampore. 12th Bengal Ir. C., Segowlie. 13th Bengal Ir. C., Bareilly, 14th Bengal Ir. C., Jhansi. 15th Bengal Ir. C., Oude. 16th Bengal Ir. C., Rawul Pindee. 17th Bengal Ir. C., Shumshabad. 18th Bengal Ir. C., Peshawur. 1st Gwalior Contingent Cavalry, Gwalior. 2d Gwalior Contingent Cavalry, Augur. 1st Punjaub Cavalry, Dera Ismael. 2d Punjaub Cavalry, Dera Ismael. 3d Punjaub Cavalry, Bunnoo. 4th Punjaub Cavalry, Kohat. 5th Punjaub Cavalry, Asnee. 1st Oude Irregular Cavalry, Secrora. 2d Oude Irregular Cavalry, Lucknow. 3d Oude Irregular Cavalry, Pertabghur. Nagpoor Irregular Cavalry, Taklee.

European Infantry. 8th Ft. (Qun.’s), Cawnpore. 10th Ft. (Qun.’s), Wuzeerabad. 24th Ft. (Qun.’s), Sealkote. 27th Ft. (Qun.’s), Sealkote. 29th Ft. (Qun.’s), Thayet Mhow. 32d Ft. (Qun.’s), Kussowlie. 35th Ft. (Qun.’s), Calcutta. 52d Ft. (Qun.’s), Lucknow. 53d Ft. (Qun.’s), Dugshai. 60th Ft. (Qun.’s), Jullundur. 61st Ft. (Qun.’s), Wuzeerabad. 70th Ft. (Qun.’s), Ferozpore. 75th Ft. (Qun.’s), Rawul Pindee. 81st Ft. (Qun.’s), Lahore. 87th Ft. (Qun.’s), Peshawur. 1st Europeans (East India Company’s), Dugshai. 2d Europeans (East India Company’s), Umballa. 3d Europeans (East India Company’s), Agra.

Native Regular Infantry. 1st Regiment, Cawnpore. 2d[39] Regiment, Barrackpore. 3d Regiment, Phillour. 4th Regiment, Noorpore. 5th Regiment, Umballa. 6th Regiment, Allahabad. 7th Regiment, Dinapoor. 8th Regiment, Dinapoor. 9th Regiment, Allygurh. 10th Regiment, Futteghur. 11th Regiment, Allahabad. 12th Regiment, Nowgong and Jhansi. 13th Regiment, Lucknow. 14th Regiment, Moultan. 15th Regiment, Meerut. 16th[39] Regiment, Meean Meer. 17th Regiment, Goruckpore. 18th Regiment, Bareilly. 19th Regiment, Berhampore. 20th Regiment, Meerut. 21st Regiment, Peshawur. 22d Regiment, Fyzabad. 23d Regiment, Mhow. 24th Regiment, Peshawur. 25th Regiment, Thayet Mhow. 26th Regiment, Meean Meer. 27th Regiment, Peshawur. 28th Regiment, Shahjehanpoor. 29th Regiment, Jullundur. 30th Regiment, Agra. 31st Regiment, Barrackpore. 32d Regiment, Sonthal. 33d Regiment, Hosheapore. 34th Regiment, Barrackpore. 35th Regiment, Sealkote. 36th[40] Regiment, Jullundur. 37th[40] Regiment, Benares. 38th[41] Regiment, Delhi. 39th[41] Regiment, Jelum. 40th[41] Regiment, Dinapoor. 41st Regiment, Seetapoor. 42d Regiment, Saugor. 43d Regiment, Barrackpore. 44th Regiment, Agra. 45th Regiment, Ferozpore. 46th Regiment, Sealkote. 47th[41] Regiment, Prome. 48th Regiment, Lucknow. 49th Regiment, Meean Meer. 50th Regiment, Nagode. 51st Regiment, Peshawur. 52d Regiment, Jubbulpoor. 53d Regiment, Cawnpore. 54th Regiment, Delhi. 55th Regiment, Nowsherah. 56th Regiment, Cawnpore. 57th Regiment, Ferozpore. 58th Regiment, Rawul Pindee. 59th Regiment, Umritsir. 60th Regiment, Umballa. 61st Regiment, Jullundur. 62d Regiment, Moultan. 63d Regiment, Barrackpore. 64th Regiment, Peshawur. 65th[41] Regiment, Dinapoor. 66th[42] Regiment, Almora. 67th[41] Regiment, {Etawah. {Minpooree. 68th Regiment, Bareilly. 69th Regiment, Moultan. 70th Regiment, Barrackpore. 71st Regiment, Lucknow. 72d Regiment, Agra. 73d Regiment, Jumalpore. 74th Regiment, Cawnpore.

Irregular and Local Infantry. 1st Oude Irregular Infantry, Persadpore. 2d Oude Irregular Infantry, Secrora. 3d Oude Irregular Infantry, Gonda. 4th Oude Irregular Infantry, Lucknow. 5th Oude Irregular Infantry, Durriabad. 6th Oude Irregular Infantry, Fyzabad. 7th Oude Irregular Infantry, Lucknow. 8th Oude Irregular Infantry, Sultanpore. 9th Oude Irregular Infantry, Seetapoor. 10th Oude Irregular Infantry, Mullaong. 1st Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Gwalior. 2d Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Gwalior. 3d Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Gwalior. 4th Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Gwalior. 5th Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Seepree. 6th Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Lullutpore. 7th Gwalior Contingent Infantry, Augur. 1st Punjaub Infantry, Kohat. 2d Punjaub Infantry, Kohat. 3d Punjaub Infantry, Kohat. 4th Punjaub Infantry, Dera Ghazi. 5th Punjaub Infantry, Bunnoo. 6th Punjaub Infantry, Dera Ismael. 1st Sikh Infantry, Hazara. 2d Sikh Infantry, Kangra. 3d Sikh Infantry, Khan. 4th Sikh Infantry, Umballa. 1st Nagpoor Irregular Infantry, Seetabuldee. 2d Nagpoor Irregular Infantry, Chandah. 3d Nagpoor Irregular Infantry, Raypoor. Regiment of Guides (foot and horse), Peshawur. Regiment of Kelat-i-Ghilzi, Shubkuddur. Regiment of Loodianah (Sikhs), Benares. Regiment of Ferozpore (Sikhs), Mirzapore. Ramgurh Light Infantry, Dorunda. Hill Rangers, Bhagulpore. Nusserree Rifles, Simla. Pegu Light Infantry, Myan Owng. Sirmoor Rifles, Almora. Kumaon Battalion, Deyra. Assam Light Infantry, 1st, Debroogurh. Assam Light Infantry, 2nd Gowhatti. Mhairwarra Battalion, Bewar. Aracan Battalion, Akyab. Hurrianah Light Infantry, Hansi. Silhet Light Infantry, Cherrah. Malwah Bheel Corps, Sirdarpore. Mewar Bheel Corps, Khairwarah. Sebundee Corps, Darjeeling.

Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners. Horse-artillery, 1st Brigade: 3 European Troops. } 2 Native Troops. } Head-quarters: Horse-artillery, 2d Brigade: } Meerut. 3 European Troops. } Jullundur. 1 Native Troop. } Peshawur. Horse-artillery, 3d Brigade: } Umballa. 3 European Troops. } Cawnpore. 1 Native Troop. } Sealkote. Foot-artillery, 6 European Battalions. } Dumdum. (4 Companies each.) } Foot-artillery, 3 Native Battalions. } (6 Companies each.) }

Engineers, } Head-quarters: Sappers and Miners, 8 Companies, } Roorkee.

Mixed Corps—Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery. Shekhawuttie Battalion, Midnapore. Jhodpore Legion, Erinpoora. Malwah Contingent, Mehidpore. Bhopal Contingent, Sehore. Kotah Contingent, Kurrowlee.

REGIMENTS AND STATIONS OF MADRAS ARMY—MAY 1857.

SIR PATRICK GRANT, Commander-in-chief.

European Cavalry. 12th Lancers (Queen’s), Madras.

Native Cavalry. 1st Madras Light Cavalry, Trichinopoly. 2d Madras Light Cavalry, Sholapore. 3d Madras Light Cavalry, Bangalore. 4th Madras Light Cavalry, Kamptee. 5th Madras Light Cavalry, Bellary. 6th Madras Light Cavalry, Jaulnah. 7th Madras Light Cavalry, Secunderabad. 8th Madras Light Cavalry, Bangalore.

European Infantry. 74th Foot (Queen’s), Madras. 84th Foot (Queen’s), Burmah.[43] 1st Europeans (East India Company’s), [Persia]. 2d Europeans (East India Company’s), Burmah. 3d Europeans (East India Company’s), Secunderabad.

Native Infantry. 1st Regiment,[44] Secunderabad. 2d Regiment, Quilon. 3d Regiment, Cananore. 4th Regiment, Burmah. 5th[44] Regiment, Berhampore. 6th Regiment, Burmah. 7th Regiment, Moulmein. 8th Regiment, Rangoon. 9th Regiment, Samulcottah. 10th Regiment, Rangoon. 11th Regiment, Cananore. 12th Regiment, Madras. 13th Regiment, Moulmein. 14th Regiment, Singapore. 15th Regiment, Burmah. 16th[44] Regiment, Mangalore. 17th Regiment, Madras. 18th Regiment, Madras. 19th Regiment, Bangalore. 20th Regiment, French Rocks. 21st Regiment, Paulghaut. 22d Regiment, Secunderabad. 23d Regiment, Russelcondah. 24th[44] Regiment, Secunderabad. 25th Regiment, Trichinopoly. 26th[44] Regiment, Kamptee. 27th Regiment, Vellore. 28th Regiment, Hosungabad. 29th Regiment, Penang. 30th Regiment, Cuddapah. 31st Regiment, Vizianagram. 32d Regiment, Kamptee. 33d Regiment, Kamptee. 34th Regiment, Trichinopoly. 35th Regiment, Hurryhur. 36th[44] Regiment, Madras. 37th[45] Regiment, Burmah. 38th[44] Regiment, Singapore. 39th Regiment, Madras. 40th Regiment, Cuttack. 41st Regiment, Secunderabad. 42d Regiment, Secunderabad. 43d Regiment, Vizagapatam. 44th Regiment, Burmah. 45th Regiment, Rangoon. 46th Regiment, Henzana. 47th Regiment, Bellary. 48th Regiment, Moulmein. 49th[44] Regiment, Secunderabad. 50th Regiment, Bangalore. 51st Regiment, Pallamcottah. 52d Regiment, Mercara.

Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners. Horse-artillery, 4 European Troops. } Horse-artillery, 2 Native Troops. } Head-quarters: Foot-artillery, 4 European Battalions, } St Thomas’s Mount, (4 Companies each.) } Bangalore, Foot-artillery, 1 Native Battalion. } Kamptee, Saugor, (6 Companies.) } Secunderabad.

Engineers, Head-quarters: Fort St George. Sappers and Miners, Head-quarters: Dowlaishweram.

REGIMENTS AND STATIONS OF BOMBAY ARMY—MAY 1857.

SIR HENRY SOMERSET, Commander-in-chief.

European Cavalry. 14th Light Dragoons (Queen’s), Kirkee.

Native Regular Cavalry. 1st Lancers, Nuseerabad. 2d Light Cavalry, Rajcote. 3d Light Cavalry, [Persia.]

Native Irregular Cavalry. 1st Sinde Irregular Horse, Jacobabad. 2d Sinde Irregular Horse, Jacobabad. Poonah Irregular Horse, [Persia.] Gujerat Irregular Horse, Ahmedabad. South Mahratta Irregular Horse, [Persia.] Cutch Irregular Horse, Bhooj.

European Infantry. 64th Foot (Queen’s), [Persia.] 78th Foot (Queen’s), Poonah. 86th Foot (Queen’s), Kurachee. 1st Fusiliers (East India Company’s), Kurachee. 2d Light Infantry (East India Company’s), [Persia.] 3d Light Infantry (East India Company’s), Poonah.

Native Regular Infantry. 1st Regiment,[46] Baroda. 2d[46] Regiment, Ahmedabad. 3d Regiment, Sholapore. 4th[47] Regiment, [Persia.] 5th Regiment, Bombay. 6th Regiment, Poonah. 7th Regiment, Poonah. 8th Regiment, Baroda. 9th Regiment, Surat. 10th Regiment, Nuseerabad. 11th Regiment, Bombay. 12th Regiment, Deesa. 13th Regiment, Hydrabad. 14th Regiment, Kurachee. 15th Regiment, Bombay. 16th Regiment, Shikarpore. 17th Regiment, Bhooj. 18th Regiment, [Aden.] 19th Regiment, Mulligaum. 20th Regiment, [Persia] 21st Regiment, Neemuch. 22d Regiment, Satara. 23d Regiment, [Persia.] 24th Regiment, Ahmednuggur. 25th Regiment, Ahmedabad. 26th Regiment, [Persia.] 27th Regiment, Kolapore. 28th Regiment, Dharwar. 29th Regiment, Belgaum.

Native Irregular Infantry. 1st Belooch Battalion, Kurachee. 2d Belooch Battalion, [Persia.] Khandeish Bheel Corps, Dhurrungaum. Rutnagherry Rangers, Rutnagherry. Sawunt Waree Corps, Sawunt Waree. Satara Local Corps, Satara. Kolapore Infantry Corps, Kolapore.

Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners. Horse-artillery, 1 European Brigade. } (4 Troops.)[48] } Head-quarters: Foot-artillery, 2 European Battalions. } Bombay. (4 Companies each.) } Ahmedabad. Foot-artillery, 2 Native Battalions. } Ahmednuggur. (6 Companies each.) }

Engineers, Head-quarters: Bombay, Sappers and Miners, Head-quarters: Poonah and Aden.

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Footnote 34:

┌───────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────┐ │Presidency.│ Queen’s │Company’s │Total.│ │ │Regiments.│Regiments.│ │ ├───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────┤ │Bengal, │ 16│ 3│ 19│ │Madras, │ 4│ 3│ 7│ │Bombay, │ 4│ 3│ 7│ ├───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────┤ │ │ 24│ 9│ 33│ └───────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────┘

Footnote 35:

┌───────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────┐ │Presidency.│ Queen’s │Company’s │Total.│ │ │Regiments.│Regiments.│ │ ├───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────┤ │Bengal, │ 15│ 4│ 19│ │Madras, │ 5│ 4│ 9│ │Bombay, │ 4│ 3│ 7│ ├───────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────┤ │ │ 24│ 11│ 35│ └───────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────┘

Footnote 36:

First Division, under Major-general Stalker—

Natives, 3550 Europeans, 2270 ———— 5820

Second Division, under Brigadier-general Havelock—

Natives, 4370 Europeans, 1770 ———— 6140

Footnote 37:

In August 1857, of the whole railway distance marked out from Alexandria through Cairo to Suez, 205 miles in length, about 175 miles were finished—namely, from Alexandria to the crossing of the Nile, 65 miles; from the crossing of the Nile to Cairo, 65 miles; from Cairo towards Suez, 45 miles. The remainder of the journey consisted of 30 miles of sandy desert, not at that time provided with a railway, but traversed by omnibuses or vans.

Footnote 38:

‘According to existing regulations of some years’ standing, every soldier on his arrival in India is provided with the following articles of clothing, in addition to those which compose his kit in this country:

‘Mounted Men.—4 white jackets, 6 pair of white overalls, 2 pair of Settringee overalls, 6 shirts, 4 pair of cotton socks, 1 pair of white braces.

‘Foot-soldiers.—4 white jackets, 1 pair of English summer trousers, 5 pair of white trousers, 5 white shirts, 2 check shirts, 1 pair of white braces.

‘These articles are not supplied in this country, but form a part of the soldier’s necessaries on his arrival in India, and are composed of materials made on the spot, and best suited to the climate.

‘During his stay in India, China, Ceylon, and at other hot stations, he is provided with a tunic and shell-jacket in alternate years; and in the year in which the tunic is not issued, the difference in the value of the two articles is paid to the soldier, to be expended (by the officer commanding) for his benefit in any articles suited to the climate of the station.

‘The force recently sent out to China and India has been provided with white cotton helmet and forage-cap covers.

‘Any quantity of light clothing for troops can be procured on the spot in India at the shortest notice.’

Footnote 39:

Grenadiers.

Footnote 40:

Volunteers.

Footnote 41:

Volunteers.

Footnote 42:

Goorkhas.

Footnote 43:

Removed to Calcutta.

Footnote 44:

Rifles.

Footnote 45:

Grenadiers.

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