XVI. THE DINAPOOR MUTINY, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
After the first startling outbreak at Meerut, there was no instance of mutiny that threw consternation over a more widely spreading range of country than that at Dinapoor. This military station is in the midst of the thickly populated province of Behar, between Bengal and Oude; a province rich in opium, rice, and indigo plantations, and inhabited chiefly by a class of Hindoos less warlike than those towards the west. The Dinapoor mutiny was the one great event in the eastern half of Northern India during July and August; and on this account it may conveniently be treated as the central nucleus around which all the minor events grouped themselves. In the regions surrounding the lower course of the Ganges, and its branch the Hoogly, the disturbances were of minor character; but along both sides of the great trunk-road there was much more agitation, especially after the mutiny at the station above named. Nevertheless, it will be desirable to take a bird’s-eye glance at Bengal and Behar generally in this chapter, in relation to the events of July and August—keeping steadily in mind the 25th of July, as the day on which the occurrences at Dinapoor agitated all the natives, paralysed many of the Europeans, and led to a train of truly remarkable proceedings in and near the town of Arrah.
First, then, for Calcutta, the Anglo-Indian capital. This city was not afflicted by a mutiny, in the usual meaning of the term, at any time during the year. Many reasons might be assigned for this exemption. There were on all occasions more Europeans at Calcutta than in any other city in India, who could have presented a formidable defence-corps if they chose to combine for that purpose. There was the majesty of a vice-regal court at Calcutta, not without its effect on the impressionable minds of Asiatics. There were the head-quarters of all authority in the city, insuring the promptest measures if exigency should demand them. And lastly, Calcutta being the landing-place for most of the English troops, rebel sepoys could never hope for much chance of success in that capital. Mutiny there was not, but panic unquestionably appeared—panic among the Europeans who did not belong to the Company’s service, and whose imaginations were excited by the terrible narratives brought in from the northwest, and highly coloured during their transmission. It was an unfortunate circumstance that many of these persons were hostile to the government of Viscount Canning; and this hostility was especially displayed by those connected with the press, on account of the restrictions already adverted to. Whatever may be the varieties of opinion on the matters at issue, it is unquestionable that difficulties were thrown in the way of the executive by this want of accord. India has for a long period been rich in coteries and parties. Among military men, the Queen’s officers and the Company’s officers have had a little emulative pique; among non-military men, there has been an envy by the non-officials of the civil servants of the Company; and the military and the civilians have had their own grounds for antagonism. Calcutta, above all other places, has been marked by these sources of discord.
Towards the close of July the government deemed it prudent to ascertain what was the state of affairs in Calcutta with reference to the possession, sale, or concealment of arms. The Europeans in the city, in a state of perpetual alarm, kept up by unauthenticated paragraphs in the newspapers, had indulged a belief that the natives had lately made large purchases of arms, as if plotting mischief. Especially was this suspicion entertained when news arrived from Havelock and Neill that all the Europeans at Cawnpore had been murdered; almost wild with excitement, rage, and terror, the Calcutta community set no bounds to their apprehensions; they would fain have shot all the natives around them, in vague dread of some diabolical plot. Mr Wauchope, commissioner of police, was ordered to make strict inquiry concerning the possession of arms. He found that the sale of weapons had been very large during three mouths, but that nearly all the purchases had been made by Europeans, and that hardly a house in Calcutta, inhabited by Christians, was without one or more muskets or pistols. Many arms also had been purchased in Calcutta, and taken into the provinces for the use of indigo-planters, zemindars, and others, who naturally wished to have near them a few weapons at such a turbulent period. Of any considerable purchases of arms by the native population of Calcutta there was no proof, and the superintendent disbelieved the rumour. This was the third time in two months that the Anglo-Indian capital had been thrown into a paroxysm of terror on this subject; and although the panic was shewn to be groundless, the authorities nevertheless believed it to be expedient to cause all firearms in the city to be registered.
No small part of the agitation at Calcutta arose from the shackles on the press, already adverted to. Men of extreme opinions, and men of excited feelings, longing to pour out their thoughts on paper, found themselves less able so to do than in times gone by; there was the seizure of their printing apparatus, the infliction of a heavy fine, confronting them, and checking the movement of their pens. Sufficient transpired, however, to render manifest these two facts—that the European community at Calcutta violently hated the natives generally, and violently opposed Viscount Canning personally. There was a very general acquiescence in some such code of rules as the following, for dealing with the natives—that every mutineer who had taken up arms or quitted his ranks should be put to death; that every native, not a soldier, who aided the mutineers, should in like manner be put to death; that in every village in which a European had been murdered, a telegraph wire cut, or a dâk stolen, a swift tribunal should exercise summary justice; that every village in which a European fugitive had been insulted or refused aid should be heavily fined; and that vengeance, burning vengeance, was the only adequate measure to deal out to all who had offended. The distressing tales brought by the fugitives had much effect in keeping up the feeling denoted by such suggestions as these. It was under the influence of the same disturbed state of the public mind, that an address or petition was got up, condemnatory alike of Viscount Canning and of the East India Company; it was intended to work a considerable effect in England; but the obviously one-sided line of argument vitiated its force and damaged its reception.
As the month of July advanced, and fugitives came in from the disturbed provinces, arrangements were made for accommodating them at Calcutta, and—as we have seen—for alleviating their wants. It became also a point of much importance to provide barracks or temporary homes of some kind for the troops expected to arrive by sea from various regions. Among buildings set apart for this latter purpose were the Town Hall, the Free School, the Pleaders’ Chambers in the Sudder Court, and the Lower Orphan School at Kidderpore. Many months would necessarily elapse before troops in large numbers could arrive; but even a single regiment would require considerable space to house it before it could be sent up the country. In what way, during July and August, the English troops were sent to the seats of disturbance, has already been sufficiently noticed; some were despatched by steamers up the Ganges to Patna, Benares, and Allahabad; while the rest mostly went from Calcutta to Raneegunge by railway, and thence pursued their land-journey by any vehicles obtainable.
It may here be remarked, that when Sir Colin Campbell arrived at Calcutta, an immense amount of labour presented itself to his notice. Before he could decide whether to advance northwest to the seat of war, or to remain at the capital, he had carefully to examine the military condition of India. The records of the war department were at Simla, while the centre of authority was at Calcutta. The principal officers were scattered throughout the disturbed districts; the desultory and isolated struggles had relaxed the bond of military obedience; the reinforcements as they arrived had to be fitted into their places; the detached forces had to be brought into subordination to some general plan; and the different branches of the service had to be brought into harmony one with another. Hence Calcutta was for several weeks the head-quarters of the veteran commander-in-chief, while these all-important details of military organisation were in progress.
In the wide belt of country forming the eastern margin of India, from the Himalaya in the north to Pegu in the south, there was no mutiny properly so called during July and August. All the disturbances were limited to threatening symptoms which, if not attended to, might have proved dangerous. The nature of these symptoms may be illustrated by a few examples. At Jelpigoree, early in July, two men were detected tampering with the sepoys of the 73d N. I.; and a trooper of the 11th irregular cavalry was found guilty of insubordination. At Dinagepore the moulvies or Mussulman religious teachers began to spread seditious rumours. At Jessore, similar Mussulman tendencies were manifested. In the third week of July tranquillity prevailed throughout the divisions of Aracan, Chittagong, Dacca, Assam, and Darjeeling, comprising the belt above adverted to; and if agitation were more observable towards the close of the month, it was traceable to news of the Dinapoor mutiny, presently to be noticed. Early in August the Jelpigoree native troops were found to be in a very unsettled state, ready to mutiny at any time; and on the 15th a plot was discovered for murdering the officers and decamping towards the west. In consequence of this, orders were sent to Assam and Darjeeling to aid the Jelpigoree officers in case of need. During the remainder of August, a close watch was kept on the 73d N. I., the chief native regiment in that part of India, sufficient to prevent actual outbreaks; and native servants were disarmed during the Mohurrum or Mohammedan festival, to guard against the effects of fanaticism. Perhaps, however, the tranquillity of this eastern belt was more efficiently secured by the near neighbourhood of half-civilised border tribes, who had but little sympathy with the real Hindustanis, and were willing to enter into the Company’s service as irregular troops and armed police.
Passing westward, to the line of route along the Hoogly to the Ganges, and the country near it, we find traces of a little more turbulency, owing to the presence of a greater number of native troops. About the middle of July, the Barrackpore authorities asked for permission to disarm the villages near at hand, in order to render more effectual the previous disarming of native troops at Barrackpore itself—treated in a former chapter. Early in August the behaviour of the troops at Berhampore became suspicious; they had heard of the mutiny of the 8th N. I. at places further west, and were with difficulty kept from imitating the pernicious example. In the middle of the month, the commissioner of Bhagulpore deemed it necessary to detain two detachments of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, on their way up the Ganges, at Bhagulpore and Monghir; for the 32d native infantry, and the 5th irregular cavalry, exhibited symptoms not to be neglected. After the occurrences at Dinapoor, the region around Berhampore and Moorshedabad could no longer be kept in peace while the native troops retained their arms; it was determined therefore, by Mr Spencer the commissioner, and Colonel Macgregor the commandant, to adopt decisive measures while there was yet time. On the 1st of August, having the aid of H.M. 90th foot, they disarmed the 63d native infantry and the 11th irregular cavalry at Berhampore; and on the following day they similarly disarmed all the inhabitants of that place and of Moorshedabad. Colonel Campbell, of the 90th, who had brought that regiment from England in splendid condition in the Himalaya steamer, and who was on his way up the Ganges to the disturbed districts, was the officer who practically effected this disarming at Berhampore; he spoke of the 11th irregular cavalry as one of the most superb regiments he had ever seen, in men, horses, and equipments; they were rendered almost savage by the skill with which the colonel managed his delicate task; and they reproached the sepoys of the 63d for having submitted so quietly to the disarming. A little further up the country, at Bhagulpore, about 200 troopers of the 5th irregular cavalry mutinied on the 14th of August, taking the road towards Bowsee, but harming none of their officers; on the 15th they passed through Bowsee to Rownee; and on the 18th left Rownee for Gayah—bound for the disturbed regions in the west. At Monghir, still higher up the Ganges, a terrible commotion was produced by this occurrence; the civil commissioner shut himself up in a fort, with a few of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, and left the city to its fate; but fortunately Sir James Outram was at the time passing up the Ganges in a steamer; he rebuked this pusillanimity, and recommended the officials to shew a bolder front.
Arriving now at the Patna and Dinapoor district, we must trace the progress of affairs more in detail, to shew how the authorities were placed before, and how after, the mutiny which it is the chief object of this chapter to narrate. Patna is a large and important city, the centre of an industrious region; while Dinapoor, in the immediate vicinity, is the largest military station between Barrackpore and Allahabad. Mr Tayler, civil commissioner, was the chief authority at the one place; Major-general Lloyd was military commandant at the other; and it was essentially necessary, for the preservation of peace in all that region, that these two officials should act in harmony. We have already seen (pp. 151-154) that, about the middle of June, the Patna district became much agitated by the news of disturbances in other quarters; that the police force was thereupon strengthened, and the ghats or landing-places watched; that some of the Company’s treasure was removed to other stations; that places of rendezvous were agreed upon in case of emergency; that conspiracies among the Moslem inhabitants were more than once discovered, in concert with other conspirators at Lucknow and Cawnpore; and that on the 3d of July some of the fanatics murdered Dr Lyell, principal assistant to the opium agent. We have also seen, in the same chapter, that Dinapoor reposed upon a sort of moral volcano throughout June; that although the native troops made loud professions of loyalty, the Europeans were nevertheless in a very anxious position—all living near together, all on the alert, and most of them believing that the fidelity of the sepoys was not worth many days’ purchase. Being thus on their guard, a mutiny ought not to have occurred at their station; but it did occur, and brought disgrace to the general who was responsible for military affairs in that division.
An intelligent clue to this whole series of transactions will be obtained by tracing—first, the Dinapoor mutiny itself; then the mingled disasters and successes, blunders and heroism, at Arrah; then the effect of the mutiny on the districts of Behar north of the Ganges; and, lastly, the effects on the wide-spreading region south of that river.
The distance between the two cities is about ten miles. The barracks of the European troops at Dinapoor were situated in a large square westward of the native town; beyond this were the native lines; and most western of all, by a very injudicious arrangement, was the magazine in which the percussion-caps were stored—a matter apparently small in itself, but serious in its consequences, as we shall presently see. Major-general Lloyd, commander of the station, and of a vast military region called the Dinapoor Division, had for some weeks been an object of almost as much anxiety to the Europeans at the station as the sepoys themselves. He was advanced in years, infirm, and irresolute. Unable to mount his horse without assistance, and dreading to give orders that would have the effect of sending any European troops away from Dinapoor, he was singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties of those times. It points to some great defect in military routine, when one who had been a gallant officer in his better days was thus left in possession of a command he was no longer fitted to wield. Towards the close of July there were three regiments of Bengal native infantry at that station, the 7th, 8th, and 40th. There was also the greater portion of H.M. 10th foot, together with two companies of the 37th, and two troops of artillery. Not a British officer, except the major-general, doubted that these Europeans could have disarmed and controlled the sepoys, had the attempt been made at the proper time. The Calcutta inhabitants had petitioned the governor-general to disarm the native regiments at Dinapoor, and the officers of the Queen’s regiments at that station had all along advocated a similar measure; but General Lloyd, like many other Company’s officers, was proud of the sepoys, and trusted them to the last; and Viscount Canning placed reliance on his experience, to determine whether and when to effect this disarming. This reliance ended in unfortunate results.
On the 25th of July, the appearance of affairs led the major-general to exhibit less than his former confidence in the native troops; he shrank, it is true, from disarming them; but he sought to render their arms less dangerous by quietly removing the percussion-caps from the magazine. Now these caps had to be brought in front of the whole length of the sepoy lines on the way from the magazine to the English barracks. Early in the morning he sent the 10th and the artillery to the grand square, ready to be moved towards the sepoy lines if disturbance should occur. Two hackeries went down to the magazine under charge of an officer; the caps were placed in them; and the vehicles were drawn some distance towards the English lines. There then arose a shout among the sepoys: ‘Kill the sahibs; don’t let the caps be taken away!’ The caps were taken, however, and safely conveyed to the officers’ mess-room. The 10th were kept idle in the square or in barracks all the forenoon; while the native officers were ordered to go to the native lines, and ask the sepoys to give up the caps already issued to them. Some of the sepoys obeyed this strange demand—strange, because backed by no display of power; while some fired their muskets and threatened to shoot the officers. At the sound of these shots the 10th were ordered hastily to advance; they did so, but only to see the rebel sepoys run off as fast as their legs could carry them. Inexpressible was the mortification of the officers at this sight; three entire regiments escaped across fields, with their arms and accoutrements, to swell the ranks of the mutineers elsewhere; and so stupid had been the orders given, that there was no force at hand to stop them. The 10th, two companies of the 37th, and the artillery, all were burning to castigate these men; yet was the escape so quickly and completely effected that very few of the sepoys fell. The English destroyed the sepoy lines, but did not pursue the mutineers, for their perplexed commander would not permit them to leave him in danger. A surgeon of the 10th, on seeing the officers threatened by the sepoys, brought his hospital-guards to confront them; and even some of his patients got upon the flat roof of the hospital, and fired at the rebels. He then galloped off, and brought all the ladies and children to the barracks for safety. Every man of the 10th regiment was vexed and irritated by this day’s work; complaints against the general were loud, deep, and many; and all the officers’ letters told plainly of the general feeling among them. The regiment numbered little more than four hundred bayonets; for many men were sick in hospital, and a detachment was at Benares; but the four hundred, highly disciplined men, would not have hesitated an instant to disarm, to fight, to pursue, the three thousand rebels, had they been properly instructed and permitted so to do. During eight or ten weeks the officers of that regiment had urged the disarming of the sepoys; but their recommendations had not been listened to, and now it was too late. The general himself, on the forenoon of the 25th, went on board a steamer in the Ganges: ‘I had no horse in cantonment,’ he said. ‘My stable was two miles distant; and being unable at the time to walk far or much, I thought I should be most useful on board the steamer with guns and riflemen.’ It is deeply to be regretted that an old soldier should have been so placed as to find such an explanation necessary. As a consequence of this retreat to a place of shelter, the officers remained without commands and without a commander. Some of the mutineers embarked in boats, with the intention of going down the Ganges to Patna, or of crossing the river; but the detachment of the 37th, on shore and in the steamer, killed most of them by rifle-shots. The steamer did its work, unquestionably; but it was not the place for a military commander at such a time.
The question at once presented itself to the minds of all—whither had the rebels gone? Evidence was soon afforded that the direction taken was that of Arrah, a town twenty-four miles from Dinapoor, and separated from it by the river Sone. Arrah, as a town, was not of great importance; but it was the chief place in the district of Shahabad, and was surrounded by a country whence much revenue was obtained by the East India Company. During the troubles arising out of the mutiny, the chief authority at Arrah was the magistrate, Mr Wake—a man who, by his energy and public spirit, proved to be eminently fitted to hold power in perilous times. During the whole of June and July he had watched the progress of events with an anxious eye. Very soon after the mutiny commenced, he wrote to the authorities at Calcutta, describing the contents of certain native newspapers published about that time, and suggesting the propriety of curbing the licence of those productions. On the 10th of June he announced—with something like contempt in his manner—that most of the Europeans employed on the railway-works near Arrah had hurried away frightened by reports of mutinous symptoms at Ghazeepore and Buxar; and he dwelt on the pernicious effects of the example afforded by this timidity. About a week afterwards he induced them all to return. From time to time he applied to Dinapoor, Patna, and Calcutta, for a small detachment of troops to protect Arrah; but none could be afforded. He suspected some of the chieftains and zemindars near at hand, and more than suspected numerous disbanded sepoys who were seen in the district; to detect plots, he detained and opened letters at the post-office; but this course met with disapproval, as commencing a system liable to great abuse. There were two influential men in the neighbourhood—Baboo Koer Singh, and the Rajah of Doomraon—whose conduct Mr Wake scrutinised very closely; they professed friendship and loyalty to the government, but he doubted them. On the 11th of July, Arrah had become surrounded by so many disbanded sepoys, and natives ready for any mischief, that he applied to Patna for a party of Captain Rattray’s Sikh police, which was furnished to him.
Thus matters proceeded until the 25th of July, when rumours of something disastrous at Dinapoor arrived. Arrah was now about to become suddenly famous. The ‘Defence of Arrah’ was to be narrated in dispatches and letters, in pamphlets and books, and was to cheer up many who had been humiliated by blunders committed elsewhere. True, it was only a house defended, not a town; it was less than a score of Europeans saved, not a whole community; yet did it bring well-deserved praise to those concerned in it, and encouragement to a spirited line of conduct on the part of the Company’s civil servants elsewhere.
On the evening of the day just named, Mr Wake received express news that the native troops at Dinapoor had actually mutinied, or shewed symptoms of so doing within a few hours. On the morning of the 26th, he heard that some of the mutineers were crossing the river Sone, at a point sixteen miles from Dinapoor, and advancing upon Arrah. His Hindustani local police speedily ran away; but he and a trusty band of civilians resolved to remain at their posts. They selected the bungalow of one of their number, Mr Boyle, an engineer of the main trunk railway, and made that their fortress. Or, more correctly, it was a building which Mr Boyle had selected for some such purpose as this many days or even weeks before, when the state of affairs began to look gloomy; it was a detached two-storied house, about fifty feet square, standing within the same compound as the bungalow inhabited by Mr Boyle; he fortified it with stones and timber, and always kept some provisions in it. When the other civilians learned this, some of them smiled; but the smile became one of gratitude on the 26th of July. The Europeans who now took up their abode in this fortified house were Messrs Wake, Boyle, Littledale, Combe, Colvin, Halls, Field, Anderson, Godfrey, Cock, Tait, Hoyle, Delpeiron, De Songa, and Dacosta; and a Mohammedan deputy-collector, Syud Azimoodeen—all employed in various civil duties in or near Arrah: not a military man among them. With them were 50 Sikhs of Captain Rattray’s police battalion. The ladies and children had been sent away to a place of safety. All that the defenders could bring into the house was meat and grain for a few days’ short allowance for the Europeans, with a very scanty supply of food for the Sikhs. As to weapons, most of the Europeans, besides revolvers and hog-spears, had two double-barrelled guns each, or a gun and a rifle; they had abundance of ammunition, and wherewithal to make cartridges by thousands. Early in the morning of the 27th, nearly the whole of the Dinapoor mutineers marched into Arrah, released the prisoners in the jail, about four hundred in number, rushed to the collectorate, and looted the treasury of eighty thousand rupees. They then advanced to Boyle’s house, and kept up a galling fire against it during the whole day, finding shelter behind trees and adjacent buildings. And now did Baboo Koer Singh shew himself in his true colours; he threw off the mask of friendliness, and boldly headed the mutineers. It was afterwards ascertained that this man, supposed to be in league with Nena Sahib, had openly become a rebel instantly on hearing of the mutiny at Dinapoor: it was he who had procured the boats in which they crossed the Sone; and he formed a plan for joining the Oude insurgents after plundering the treasury of Arrah. When in front of Mr Boyle’s house, Koer Singh and his myrmidons endeavoured to bribe the Sikhs to desert; but these stanch fellows remained true to their salt. On the 28th the insurgents having brought two small cannon, the hastily defended house had then to bear a torrent of cannon-balls as well as of musket-bullets. Thus the siege continued day after day. The rebels even dragged one of the cannon up to the roof of Mr Boyle’s bungalow, about sixty yards off, whence they could fire into the defended house. ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Wake in his dispatch, ‘but the cowardice, ignorance, and want of unanimity of our enemies, prevented our fortification from being brought down about our ears.’ As fast as the strength of the attack was increased, so fast did the garrison increase their defences; to oppose a new battery, a new barricade was raised; to defeat a mine, a countermine was run out. The Sikhs worked untiringly, and seemed to glory in the gallant defence they were making. When provisions began to run low, they made a sally one night, and brought in four sheep—a precious treasure to them at such a time. Seven whole days and nights did this continue—three thousand men besieging seventy. On the last two days the cowards offered ‘terms,’ which were contemptuously rejected. On the 2d of August the mutineers marched off to the west of Arrah to fight Major Vincent Eyre; how they fared, we shall see presently; but the battle brought about the liberation of Mr Wake and his companions. Wonderful to relate, only one member of the garrison, a Sikh policeman, received a dangerous wound; all the rest escaped with mere bruises and scratches. The Sikhs were justly proud of their share in the work. During the siege, when water ran short, they dug a well underneath the house, and continued their labour till they came to a spring; when all was happily ended, they requested that the well might be built into a permanent one, as a memento of their services; and that the house itself should receive the inscription of ‘Futtehgurh’ or ‘stronghold of victory’—requests with which Mr Boyle was not at all unwilling to comply.
We must now direct attention again to Patna and Dinapoor, and notice the measures taken to check if possible the triumph of the mutineers. Mr Tayler at the one place had civil control, and General Lloyd at the other had military control, over Arrah as well as all other towns in the neighbourhood; and both felt that that station was placed in peril as soon as the mutineers moved westward from Dinapoor. Some weeks earlier, when the railway officials had hurried away from Arrah to Dinapoor in affright, Mr Tayler rebuked them, saying that, ‘this is a crisis when every Englishman should feel that his individual example is of an importance which it is difficult to calculate. It is of great consequence that Europeans should exhibit neither alarm nor panic; and that, whenever it is practicable, they should band together for mutual defence and protection.’ This rebuke aided Mr Wake’s advice in bringing the railway people back to Arrah. It may here be remarked that Mr Tayler himself was, during the early part of July, in a state of discord, not only with the natives, but with many of the Europeans at Patna. He had an unseemly wrangle with Mr Lowis the magistrate; and was himself frequently reprimanded by the lieutenant-governor of Bengal. This anarchy appears to have arisen from the fact that, at a time of much difficulty, different views were entertained concerning the best policy to be pursued—views, advocated in a way that much obstructed public business.
It was about one o’clock on the 25th that the authorities at Patna heard alarming intelligence from Dinapoor. Mr Tayler at once summoned all the Europeans resident in the city to his house, where measures of defence were planned in case of an attack. At three o’clock a distant firing announced that the mutiny had taken place; and within an hour or two came the news that the mutinous regiments had marched off towards the west. Mr Tayler made up an expeditionary force of about 100 persons—Sikhs, Nujeebs, recruits, and volunteers—and sent it off that same night towards Arrah, to watch the movements of the rebels. At dawn on the following morning, however, unfavourable news came in from many country stations; and the commissioner, uneasy about Patna and its neighbourhood, recalled the corps. Tayler and Lloyd did not work well together at that crisis. The commissioner wrote to the general on the day after the mutiny, urging him to send 50 European troops either to Chupra or to Mozufferpoor, or both, to protect those places from an attack threatened by insurgents. To this application Lloyd returned a somewhat querulous answer—that he had only 600 Europeans at Dinapoor; that he was afraid of treachery on the part of Koer Singh; that he had already been blamed by the Calcutta authorities for listening to applications for troops to defend Patna, instead of sending them on to Allahabad; and that he could render no aid for the purposes required. Mr Tayler renewed the subject by announcing that he would send 50 Sikhs to the two places named; and he strongly urged the general to send 200 men to rout the mutineers who had gone to Arrah—proposing, at the same time, the establishment of a corps of volunteer cavalry among the officers and gentlemen of Patna and Dinapoor. In most of these matters Mr Tayler appears to have judged more soundly than General Lloyd; but in one point he was fatally in error—he believed that Baboo Koer Singh of Jugdispore would remain faithful to the British government.
If the ‘defence of Arrah’ has acquired notoriety, so has the ‘disaster’ at that place—to which we must now direct attention. This disaster was peculiarly mortifying to the British, as giving a temporary triumph to the mutineers, and as involving a positive loss of many English soldiers at a critical period. The revolt at Dinapoor having occurred on Saturday the 25th of July, General Lloyd made no effort until Monday the 27th to look after the sepoys; but on that day he sent a party of the 37th foot from Dinapoor towards Arrah, for the purpose of dispersing the mutineers assembled at that place, and for rescuing the European community hemmed in there. The troops went in the Horungotta steamer; but this unfortunately went aground after three hours’ steaming, and the plan was frustrated. On the evening of Tuesday the 28th, another expedition was organised; and it was to this that the disastrous loss occurred. The steamer Bombay happening to arrive at Dinapoor in her downward passage on the Ganges, Lloyd detained it, and arranged to send a detachment on board. The Bombay was to take a certain number of troops, steam up to the spot where the Horungotta had run aground, take in tow the detachment from that steamer, and proceed up the river Sone to a landing-place as near as possible to Arrah. This river enters the Ganges at a point a few miles west of Dinapoor. Early in the morning of Wednesday the 29th, the steamer started, and after picking up the other detachment, the whole disembarked in the afternoon at Beharee Ghat—over 400 men in all, under Captain Dunbar.[65] The landing having been safely effected on the left or west bank of the Sone, the troops marched to a nullah which it was necessary to cross by means of boats. When, after a considerable delay, this was accomplished, they resumed their march, with a bright moon above them, a rough road beneath them, and a very few of the enemy in sight; and the evening was far advanced when they reached a bridge about a mile and a half short of Arrah. Here Captain Harrison of the 37th suggested that they should halt until daylight, and not incur the danger of entering the town by night; but Captain Dunbar, of the 10th, who commanded the force, overruled this suggestion, under an unfortunate impression that there would be little or no opposition. This was the fatal mistake that wrecked the whole enterprise. The troops arrived at Arrah at eleven at night, in black darkness, for the moon had set; then passed through the outskirts of the town—the 10th leading, then the Sikhs, then the 37th. Suddenly, while passing by a large tope of mango-trees, a dreadful musketry-fire flashed out of the gloom; the enemy, it now appeared, had been lying in ambush awaiting the arrival of the unsuspecting force. Mr Wake and his companions were startled by the sound of this musketry, audible enough in their beleaguered but well-defended house; they at once inferred that something wrong had occurred to British troops, and in this inference they were only too correct. The suddenness of the attack, and the blackness of the night, seem to have overwhelmed the detachment; the men lost their officers, the officers their men: some ran off the road to fire into the tope, others to obtain shelter; Dunbar fell dead; and Harrison had to assume the command of men whom, at midnight and in utter darkness, he could not see. The main body succeeded in reassembling in a field about four hundred yards from the tope; and there they remained until daylight—being joined at various periods of the night by stragglers, some wounded and some unhurt, and being fired at almost continually by the mutineers. It was a wretched humiliating night to the British. At daybreak they counted heads, and then found how severe had been their loss. Captain Harrison at once collecting the survivors into a body, marched them back ten or eleven miles to the steamer. The men had fasted so long (twenty-four hours), through some mismanagement, that they were too weak to act as skirmishers; they defended themselves as long as their ammunition lasted, but kept in column, pursued the whole way by a large body of the enemy, who picked off the poor fellows with fatal certainty. Arrived at the banks of the nullah, all organisation ceased; the men rushed to the boats in disorder; some were run aground, some drowned, some swam over, some were shot by sepoys and villagers on shore. How the rest reached the steamer, they hardly knew; but this they did know—that they had left many of their wounded comrades on shore, with the certain fate of being butchered and mutilated by the enemy. It was a mournful boat-load that the Bombay carried back to Dinapoor on the evening of the 30th of July. Captain Dunbar, Lieutenants Bagnall and Ingilby, Ensigns Erskine, Sale, Birkett, and Anderson, and Messrs Cooper and Platt (gentlemen-volunteers) were killed; Lieutenant Sandwith, Ensign Venour, and Messrs Garstin and Macdonell (gentlemen-volunteers) were wounded. Out of fifteen officers, twelve were killed or wounded. The dismal list enumerated 170 officers and men killed, and 120 wounded—290 out of 415! Havelock won half-a-dozen of his victories with no greater loss than this.
Here, then, was one disaster on the heels of another. General Lloyd’s vacillation had permitted the native troops at Dinapoor to mutiny; and now the unfortunate Captain Dunbar’s mismanagement had led to the destruction of nearly two-thirds of the force sent to rout those mutineers. Happily, Messrs Wake and Boyle, and their companions, still held out; and happily there was a gallant officer near who had the skill to command as well as the courage to fight. This officer was Major Vincent Eyre, of the artillery. Being en route up the Ganges with some guns from Dinapoor to Allahabad, and having arrived at Ghazeepore on the 28th of July, he there learned the critical position of the handful of Europeans in the house at Arrah. He applied to the authorities at Ghazeepore for permission to make an attempt to relieve Mr Wake; they gave it: he steamed back to Buxar, and there met a detachment of the 5th Fusiliers going up the Ganges. Finding the officers and men heartily willing to aid him, he formed a plan for marching a field-force from Buxar to Arrah, and there attacking the Dinapoor mutineers and their accomplice Koer Singh. Although dignified with the name of a field-force, it consisted simply of about 160 men of H.M. 5th Fusiliers under Captain L’Estrange, 12 mounted volunteers of the railway department, and three guns; but under an able commander, it was destined to prove more than a match for nearly twenty times its number of native troops. On the 30th of July, the morning when the detachment from Dinapoor retreated from Arrah under such deplorable circumstances, Eyre commenced a series of operations west of that town. He started from Buxar, and marched twenty-eight miles to Shawpoor, where he heard of the disaster that had overwhelmed Captain Dunbar’s party. He at once stated to General Lloyd, in a dispatch: ‘I venture to affirm confidently that no such disaster would have been likely to occur, had that detachment advanced less precipitately, so as to have given full time for my force to have approached direct from the opposite side; for the rebels would then have been hemmed in between the two opposing forces, and must have been utterly routed.’ Regret, however, being useless, Eyre proceeded to carry out his own plan. Hearing that the enemy intended to destroy the bridges en route, he pushed on again towards Arrah. On the 1st of August, finding the bridge at Bullowtee just cut, he hastily constructed a substitute, and marched on to Gujeratgunje by nightfall. Here he bivouacked for the night. At daybreak on the 2d he started again, and soon came in sight of the enemy, drawn up in great force in plantations on either side of the road, with inundated rice-fields in front; they had sallied out of Arrah to meet him. Perceiving that the enemy intended to turn his flanks, he boldly pushed on against their centre, penetrated it, and advanced to the village of Beebeegunje. The enemy, baffled by his tactics, gave up their first plan, and hastily sought to prevent his passage over a bridge near the village. In this they succeeded for a time, by destroying the bridge. After resting his troops a while, Eyre—seeing that the enemy had formed extensive earthworks beyond the stream, and that they occupied the houses of the village in great force—determined to make a detour to the right, and try to cross about a mile higher up. The enemy, seeing his object, followed him quickly, and attacked him with great boldness, being flushed by their recent victory over the luckless river detachment. They were nearly 2500 strong in mutinous sepoys alone, besides Koer Singh and his followers. After an hour’s hard fighting, Eyre ordered Captain L’Estrange to make a charge with infantry. Promptly and gallantly that officer obeyed the order; his skirmishers on the right turned the enemy’s flank, the guns with grape and shrapnell shells drove in the centre; and then the infantry advanced—driving the enemy, panic-stricken, in all directions. Losing no time, the major crossed the stream, and advanced through an open country to within four miles of Arrah. Here he was suddenly brought up by an impassable river, which cost him many hours’ hard labour to bridge over—obtaining, fortunately, for that purpose, the aid of labourers employed on the East Indian Railway, just close at hand. Koer Singh and the rebels were so dismayed at these proceedings, that they left Arrah altogether, and retreated in various directions. It seems almost incredible, although the detailed official list places the matter beyond all doubt, that Major Eyre, during nine hours’ severe fighting on this day, lost only 2 killed and 14 wounded.
As a means of enabling this energetic officer to follow up his success, a reinforcement was sent to him from Dinapoor on the 7th of August, consisting of 200 of H.M. 10th foot. This reinforcement entered Arrah on the next day; and a party of 100 Sikhs having arrived a day or two afterwards, the major was enabled to lay his plans for an expedition to Jugdispore, twelve miles distant, to which place Koer Singh and a large number of the mutineers had retired. The enterprise was not to be commenced without some caution; for the roads were difficult for the passage of troops at that season of the year, and the rebel chief’s fort at Jugdispore was represented as being very strong and well defended. All this, however, only whetted the desire of Eyre’s troops to try their mettle against the enemy. The force consisted of just 500 men,[66] with three guns. On the afternoon of the 11th he took his departure from Arrah, marched eight miles, and encamped for the night on the bank of the Gagur Nuddee. Resuming his progress next morning, he passed over two miles of rice-fields nearly under water, which rendered the draught of his guns very difficult. At eleven o’clock he espied some of the enemy in the village of Tola Narainpore, evidently preparing to resist his passage of a river immediately beyond. After a fight of skirmishers, Eyre opened a fire of grape which roused up a large body of the enemy concealed behind bushes. The detachment of the 10th foot, eager to emulate the previous heroism of their comrades of the 5th Fusiliers, and exasperated by their previous loss under Captain Dunbar, asked to be permitted to charge the enemy at once; Eyre consented; Captain Patterson led them on; they rushed with a shout and a cheer, and the enemy gave way before a charge which they found irresistible. The other infantry came up and assisted in dispersing the enemy from another village, Dullaur, beyond the river. This accomplished, Eyre marched a mile and a half through thick jungle to Jugdispore, maintaining a running-fight the whole way. The treacherous Koer Singh’s stronghold was but feebly defended; Eyre took possession of it early in the afternoon, and with it large stores of grain, ammunition, and warlike material. The villagers around Jugdispore immediately sent in tokens of submission to the conqueror. Here as in the former instance, Major Eyre suffered wonderfully small loss; not a man of his force was killed on this 12th of August, and only six were wounded. The enemy lost 300.
Eyre did not give Koer Singh much time to recover himself. The rebel chief fled with a few followers to the Jutowrah jungle, where he had a residence. Thither the major followed him on the 14th, or rather sent Captain L’Estrange with a detachment; but all had dispersed, sepoys and rebels alike; and L’Estrange returned after destroying residences belonging to Koer Singh and his two brothers.
It may suffice here to mention, that, so far as concerned the region south and southwest of Arrah, the remaining days of August were spent in the marching of the Dinapoor mutineers from place to place, and the plundering or threatening of many towns as they passed. The authorities would gladly have checked the course of so many armed rebels; but it became a question whether Eyre or any other officer was strong enough in Europeans to do so, and whether their aid was not more urgently needed at Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. The mutineers marched southward of Mirzapore into Bundelcund, with the treacherous Koer Singh at their head. The engineers and others connected with the works for the East Indian railway were among those most perplexed by this movement of the rebels; because the various places occupied temporarily by those persons were just in the way of the mutineers. A lady, wife to one of these officials, has recorded in a letter that she and her friends received early news on the 25th of July that something was wrong at Dinapoor; that on the 26th the rebels themselves made their appearance; that the family got into a boat on the Sone, with no property but the clothes on their backs; that they immediately rowed off towards Dinapoor as the only means of escape; and that scarcely had they embarked when they saw bungalow’s and property of every description—belonging to individuals, to the railway company, and to the East India Company—a prey to devastating flames. ‘Everything we have in the world is gone,’ said the disconsolate writer; ‘what to do, or where to go, we know not.’ It is no wonder that the letters of such sufferers contained bitter comments on the government and politics of India—bitter, but often unjust.
The effects of this mutiny of the Dinapoor sepoys were, as has already been remarked, deep and wide-spreading. It is scarcely too much to say that twenty or thirty millions of persons were thrown into agitation by it. Along the whole line of the Ganges it was felt, from Calcutta up to Allahabad; along the great trunk-road between these two cities, it was felt; in the belt of country north of the Ganges; in the belt between the Ganges and the great road; in the belt south of the great road—in all these extensive regions, the news from Dinapoor threw Christians and natives alike into a ferment. Some discontented natives had vague hopes of advantage by the threatened dissolution of the English ‘raj;’ some of the villagers dreaded the approach of marauders who made little scruple in pillaging friend as well as foe; while all the Europeans cried out as with one voice: ‘Send us reliable British troops.’ Viscount Canning had none to send; and when ship-loads of troops did at length arrive at Calcutta, they were so urgently wanted higher up the country that he could spare few or none for regions east of Allahabad.
The revenue-officers were placed in a position of trying difficulty in those days. Besides collecting the taxes on land, salt, &c., and keeping the money in the local treasuries until it could be sent safely to Calcutta, they stored up large quantities of opium at certain factories, which were in their special keeping. The Company were the purchasers of the opium from the poppy-growers, and the sellers of it (at a large profit) to British merchants at Calcutta or Bombay; and during the interval of time between the buying and selling, the opium was stored in godowns or warehouses at certain large towns. Patna was the chief of these towns; and thus the revenue-officers of that place were especially interested in the maintenance of tranquillity among the native troops in the neighbouring station at Dinapoor. Dr Lyell, as was stated in a former page, fell a victim to Mussulman fanaticism at Patna early in July, about three weeks before the mutiny at Dinapoor. On the very day before his murder, anxious for the responsibility thrown upon him, he wrote an official letter which is interesting as illustrating the matter now under consideration. He had just succeeded the chief opium-agent, lately deceased, and had under his charge opium to the enormous value of two millions sterling, together with other government property of a quarter of a million. He had endeavoured to strengthen the opium godowns by barricading the gates with timber, and raising a breastwork of chests filled with sand on the flat roofs—fearful lest an excited rabble should attack the place. He had less than twenty Europeans on whom he could rely. Major-general Lloyd at Dinapoor either could not or would not supply him with any troops; and he sent to Calcutta urgent requisitions for British troops, Sikh police, and guns. Matters became worse; Lyell himself was massacred, and the native troops at Dinapoor mutinied; then, at the end of July, the revenue-officers at Patna announced to the government that the property under their charge had accumulated to three millions sterling, and that they could not adequately protect it unless reinforcements were sent. This appeared so serious at Calcutta, that arrangements were made for throwing a few British troops, and a few reliable Sikhs, into Patna.
The region north of the Ganges and east of Oude was in a perpetual state of flutter and uneasiness during those troubled weeks. There were few troops, either native or British; but the rumours from other quarters, gaining strength as they passed from mouth to mouth, occasioned great uneasiness, especially among the Europeans engaged in indigo-planting and other industrial pursuits. There was a small military station at Segowlie, not far from the Nepaul frontier, under the charge of Major Holmes; and this officer thought proper, even before the month of June was ended, to proclaim martial law in the districts between Segowlie and Patna. Mr Tayler, commissioner at the last-named city, thought this a bold proceeding; but he sanctioned it on account of the disturbed state of the country. The Calcutta government, however, considered that the major had overstrained his authority, and rebuked him for so doing. Before he could be informed of this rebuke, Holmes had assumed absolute military control over all the region between Patna and Goruckpore—giving orders to magistrates to watch the ghats or landing-places, to arrest suspicious persons, to offer rewards for the apprehension of rebels, to keep an eye on the petty rajahs and chieftains, to strengthen the native police, and to act in all things subordinately to him as military commander throughout the districts of Sarun, Tirhoot, and Chumparun. Military men applauded this step, but the civilians took umbrage at an assumption of power not warranted by any instructions received from Calcutta. This energetic but hapless officer was not permitted to remain many weeks in the position which he had taken up; his chief troops were the 12th irregular cavalry; and these rose on the 24th of July at Segowlie, murdered him and Mrs Holmes, as well as other Europeans, and then bent their steps towards Azimghur. This atrocity caused great consternation; for the 12th had been much trusted among the native regiments, as one whose gallantry was a guarantee for its fidelity. Gallantry was exchanged for cowardice and villainy this day. While the major and his wife were riding out, four of the troopers came up to the vehicle and beheaded them both as they sat; this being the signal, the rest of the regiment rose in mutiny, murdered the surgeon, his wife, and children, plundered the treasury, and made off in the way just noticed. When this savage act became known, and when the mutiny at Dinapoor on the next following day was also known, nothing could exceed the agitation among the Europeans. At Chupra, a station nearly opposite Arrah, the Europeans at once abandoned their homes and occupations, and ran off to Dinapoor, to be behind the shelter of a few hundred English bayonets; this was, indeed, not to be wondered at, for Chupra itself was threatened by the Segowlie mutineers. On the 30th, when the events at Dinapoor became known at Calcutta, the government did all and more than all that Major Holmes had before done; they declared martial law—not only in the northern districts of Sarun, Tirhoot, and Chumparun, but also in those districts of the Patna division south of the Ganges—Patna, Behar, and Shahabad. All through the month of August, the districts north of the river were in the state just noticed; no further mutinies took place there, but the various stations were thrown into frequent panics by the threatened irruption of insurgents from other quarters. It was chiefly from Oude that these onslaughts were feared; for that province contained more rebels than any other—more natives who, without being actually soldiers, were quite ready to embark in any desperate enterprise, military or marauding, against the English.
We have said that the whole region right and left of the main trunk-road was thrown into commotion by the mutiny at Dinapoor; this was certainly the case, if we add to the disturbing causes the revolt of one or two minor corps within this region itself. To describe how the region is parcelled out into divisions, districts, and collectorates, is wholly unnecessary: few in England know, and still fewer care, much concerning these territorial details; but if the reader will roughly mark out with his eye a sweep of country four hundred miles long by a hundred and fifty in width, beginning at Moorshedabad or Midnapore, and ending at Benares, and lying on the right or south of the Ganges—he will there see that which, in July and August, was a region of perplexity. Small military stations, and much more numerous civil stations, dot this space. The dispatches relating to the events of those two months spoke of dangers and alarms at places not one half of which are known even by name to any but persons intimately connected with India—Hazarebagh, Sheergotty, Burhee, Ramgurh, Sasseram, Bhagulpore, Bagoda, Ranchee, Bowsee, Gayah, Pittorea, Raneegunge, Rownee, Dorunda, Chyebassa, Rotas, Purulia, Bancorah, Dehree, Rotasgurh—all were places either disturbed by the visits of mutineers, or thrown into commotion lest those visits should be made at a time when means of defence were scanty.
It not unfrequently happened, at that troubled period, that while the British officers were making arrangements to disarm suspected regiments, the men of those regiments anticipated that proceeding by marching off in mutiny, of course taking their arms with them. Such happened to Lieutenant Graham, commanding at Hazarebagh. Being at Dorunda on the 30th of July, and learning that the 8th B. N. I. were unreliable at Hazarebagh, he marched off with a view to disarm them; taking with him about 220 Ramgurh infantry, 30 Ramgurh cavalry, and two 6-pounder guns. On that very day, long before he could reach Hazarebagh, the sepoys rose in mutiny, plundered the treasury, and released all the prisoners. Graham soon found himself in difficulties; he could not pass his guns over the river Damoodah at Ramgurh, because his bullocks were too few and too weak; and his Ramgurh infantry shewed signs of a disposition to march back to Dorunda and take the guns with them. After an anxious night, he crossed the river on the morning of the 31st, with his few troopers; but his infantry broke their faith, and marched away with the two guns. So far, therefore, from being able to disarm a suspected regiment, the lieutenant had the mortification of hearing that the regiment had mutinied, and, in addition, of seeing his own infantry follow the pernicious example. One fact cheered Lieutenant Graham in his anxious duty; his 30 sowars remained faithful to him. When Captain Drew, who commanded the detachment at Hazarebagh, came to make his report, it appeared that the men of the 8th B. N. I. numbered just 200 bayonets, forming two companies of one of the regiments lately mutinied at Dinapoor. When news reached the captain, on the 28th, of this last-named mutiny, he made arrangements for removing the ladies and children from the station, as he had seen enough to make him distrust his own men; he also sent to Colonel Robbins at Dorunda, for the aid of Lieutenant Graham’s Ramgurh force, and to Calcutta for any available aid in the shape of European troops. Four ladies and six children were forwarded to a place of safety, and Captain Drew passed the 29th in some anxiety. On the 30th he addressed his men, praising the sepoys who in certain regiments had remained faithful while their comrades revolted; his native officers seemed to listen to him respectfully, but the sepoys maintained an ominous silence. On that same afternoon the men ran to the bells of arms, broke them open, and seized their muskets. The die was cast. All the officers, military and civil, jumped on their horses, and rode for twelve hours through jungle, reaching Bagoda on the trunk-road on the morning of the 31st; after two hours’ rest they galloped forty miles further, then took transit dâk to Raneegunge, whence they travelled to Calcutta by railway. Meanwhile the mutineers released 800 prisoners, burned the bungalows, and pillaged the treasury of seventy thousand rupees. Whether a bold front might have prevented all this, cannot now be known; Captain Drew asserted that if he and the other officers had remained, they must inevitably have been killed on the spot.
An instructive illustration was afforded towards the close of July, of the intimate connection between the rebel sepoys and the villages of Behar or Western Bengal. The government issued a proclamation, offering rewards for the apprehension of mutineers and deserters. Mr Money, magistrate at Gayah, found by inquiries that the inhabitants of the villages refused to aid in giving up such men; but he hit upon a mode of ascertaining at least the connection between the sepoys and the villages respectively. Every sepoy remitted to his village a portion of his pay, by means of remittance-bills and descriptive rolls; each bill went to the accountant; the receipt of the payee went back to the regiment; while the descriptive roll was kept and filed in the office of the magistrate, shewing the name and regiment of the remitter. Mr Money thought it useful to collect and tabulate all these descriptive rolls for two years; and thus was able to obtain a record of the name of every sepoy belonging to every village within his jurisdiction. He could thus track any rebel soldier who might return to his village in hope of escaping punishment; for the native police, if ordered to apprehend a particular man in a particular district would do so, although unwilling to initiate inquiries. The matter is noted here, as shewing how closely the ties of family were kept up by the sepoys in this regular transmission of money from the soldier in his camp to his relations in their village.
During the first half of the month of July, before the state of affairs at Dinapoor had assumed a serious import, the towns and districts recently named were troubled rather by vague apprehensions than by actual dangers. At Gayah, the chief town of a district south of Patna, the magistrate was in much anxiety; the native inhabitants, in part hopefully and in part fearfully, were looking out daily for news from the mutineers in the Jumna and Ganges regions; and he felt much doubt whether the Company’s treasury at that place was safe. So it was in most of the towns and stations; from Raneegunge, where the finished portion of the railway ended (at about a hundred and twenty miles from Calcutta), to the districts approaching Benares and Patna, magistrates and revenue-collectors, feeling their responsibility as civil servants of the Company, cried aloud to Calcutta for a few, even a very few, English troops, to set at rest their apprehensions; but Calcutta, as these pages have over and over again shewn, had no troops to spare except for the great stations further to the northwest.
As the month advanced, these symptoms of uneasiness increased in number and intensity; and when the isolated mutineers at Rownee, Monghir, Hazarebagh, &c., became intensified by the more momentous outbreak at Dinapoor, fear grew in some instances up to panic, and the Company’s officers hastened away from stations which they believed themselves unable to hold. But here, as elsewhere, difficulties raised different qualities in different minds; many of these gentlemen behaved with a heroism worthy of all praise, as Mr Wake and Mr Boyle had done at Arrah. At some of the places not a single English soldier could be seen, or was likely to be seen at that time; and under those circumstances it was a fact of high importance that Captain Rattray’s battalion of Sikh police remained stanch and true—ready to march in small detachments to any threatened spot, and always rendering good service. When the two companies of the 8th B. N. I. mutinied at Hazarebagh, towards the close of the month, and when the Ramgurh force followed their example instead of opposing them, the civilians in this wide region were really placed in great peril; Hazarebagh wished to know what Ramgurh would do, Sheergotty looked anxiously towards Gayah, and Raneegunge feared for the safety of its railway station. The Raneegunge officials, after fleeing to Calcutta, returned to their station about the middle of August, under the protection of Sikh police. The wife of one of the civil servants of the Company, writing from Raneegunge on the 7th of August, told of the sad condition in which European fugitives reached that place, coming from various disturbed districts. ‘We are overwhelmed with refugees from all places. Some of the poor creatures have come without a thing but what they have on, and I am obliged to give them all changes of clothes for a time. Many came after riding seventy miles on one horse, and one gentleman without a saddle—a doctor and two others in their night-clothes—as they started while the wretches were firing into their bungalows. My husband had to lend them clothes to go to Calcutta in.’ The telegraphic messages or written letters that passed between Calcutta and the various stations in Western Bengal, in July and August, occupy a very large space in the blue-books relating to the mutiny; they everywhere tell of officials expressing apprehensions of being obliged to flee unless reinforcements could be sent to them; and of distinct replies from the governor-general that, as he had no troops to send them, they must bear up as long as their sagacity and resolution would permit. The Europeans at Sheergotty left that station in a body, not because they were attacked, but because they saw no hope of defence if enemies should approach. Many Europeans, however, similarly placed, afterwards regretted that they had fled; instances were not few of the moral power obtained over the native mind by men who resolutely clung to their duty in moments of peril; while in those cases where the abandonment took place, ‘the thieves and rabble of the neighbourhood,’ as an eye-witness remarked, ‘plundered the cutcheries and private houses; and those who had grudges against their neighbours began to hope and to prepare for an opportunity of vengeance.’
August found matters in an equally unsettled state. Many of the magistrates and collectors now had a new difficulty. Mr Tayler, as commissioner for the whole of the Patna division, ordered such of them as were under his control to abandon their stations and come into Patna for shelter; many were quite willing to do so; but others, resolute and determined men, did not like this appearance of shrinking from their duty in time of trouble. Mr Money, the magistrate of Gayah, called a meeting of the Europeans at that station, and read Mr Tayler’s order to them; it was decided by vote to abandon the place and its treasure, and retreat to Patna. ‘We formed rather a picturesque cavalcade,’ said one of the number, ‘as we wound out from Gayah; the elephants and horses; the scarlet of the Europeans contrasting with the white dresses of the Sikh soldiery; the party of gentlemen, armed to the teeth, who rode in the midst; and the motley assemblage of writers, servants, and hangers-on that crowded in the rear.’ While on the road towards Patna, two of the gentlemen, Mr Money and Mr Hollings, feeling some humiliation at the position they were in, resolved to march back to their posts even if none others accompanied them. It happened that a few men of the 64th foot had passed through Gayah a day or two before, and Mr Money was enabled to bring them back for a short period. These two officials, it is true, were afterwards driven away from Gayah by a band of released prisoners, and fled to Calcutta; but their firmness in an hour of difficulty won for them approval and promotion from the government. This transaction at Gayah was connected with a series of quarrels which led to much partisan spirit. Mr Tayler had long been in disfavour with Mr Halliday, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, as an official of a very intractable and insubordinate character; and after the issue of the order lately adverted to, Mr Tayler was removed from his office altogether—a step that led to a storm of letters, papers, pamphlets, charges, and counter-charges, very exciting to the Calcutta community at that time, but having little permanent interest in connection with the mutiny.
As the month advanced, the government were able to send a few English troops to some of the stations above named. When Mr Halliday had learned, by telegrams and letters, that not a single European remained in Sheergotty or Bagoda, and that the native troops of the Ramgurh battalion had mutinied at Ranchee, Purulia, and elsewhere, he earnestly begged Lord Canning to send a few troops thither, or the whole region would be left at the mercy of marauding bands. This the governor-general was fortunately enabled to do, owing to the arrival about that time of troops from the China expedition.
When August ended, the Dinapoor mutineers, under Koer Singh, were marching onwards to the Jumna regions, as if with the intention of joining the mutineers in Bundelcund; the 12th irregulars, after their atrocity at Segowlie, were bending their steps towards Oude; the Ramgurh mutineers were marching westward to the Sone, as if to join Koer Singh; while the petty chieftains, liberated prisoners, and ruffians of all kinds, were looking out for ‘loot’ wherever there was a chance of obtaining it. Bengal and Behar exhibited nothing that could be dignified with the name of battles or war; it was simply anarchy, with insufficient force on the part of the authorities to restore order.
One unfortunate result of the Dinapoor mutiny was, that the Europeans contracted a sentiment of hatred towards the natives, so deadly as to defeat all the purposes of justice and fairness. When Sir James Outram was at Dinapoor, on his way up the Ganges, he found that some of the English soldiers had murdered several sepoys against whom nothing could be charged—in revenge for the terrible loss suffered at Arrah. Sir James noticed in one of his dispatches, with strong expressions of regret, the distortion of feeling thus brought about by the mutiny; distortion, because those soldiers were not, at other times, less inclined to be just and manly than the other regiments of her Majesty’s army. It was a sore trial for men, when scenes of brutal cruelty were everywhere before their eyes, coolly to draw the line between justice and vengeance, and to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty.
-----
Footnote 65:
H.M. 10th foot, 153 officers and men. H.M. 37th foot, 197 officers and men. Sikhs of police battalion, 50 officers and men. Sikhs of mutinied regiments, 15 officers and men. ——— 415
Footnote 66:
H.M. 5th Fusiliers, 137 men, under Captain L’Estrange; H.M. 10th foot, 197 men, under Captain Patterson; Sikh battalion, 150 men, under Mr Wake, of Arrah celebrity; mounted volunteers, 16, under Lieutenant Jackson.
XVII. MINOR MUTINIES: JULY AND AUGUST
The reader will easily appreciate the grounds on which it is deemed inexpedient to carry out uninterruptedly the history of the mutiny at any one spot. Unless contemporaneous events elsewhere be noticed, links in the chain of causes and effects will be wanting. We have traced the siege of Delhi down to a certain point in the line of operations; we have followed the footsteps of Havelock until he reached the ball-shattered home of the European residents at Lucknow; we have watched the more immediate effects of the Dinapoor mutiny in the regions of Bengal and Behar. It now, however, becomes necessary to inquire what was doing elsewhere during the months of July and August—how the Europeans at Agra fared, when the stations on all sides of them were in the hands of the insurgents; how far the affrighted women and tender children succeeded in finding refuge at the hill-stations of Nynee Tal and its neighbourhood; what the Mahratta followers of Scindia and Holkar were doing; to what extent Rohilcund and the Cis-Sutlej territory were thrown into anarchy; whether or not Bombay and Madras, Nagpoor and the Nizam’s country, remained at peace; how, in short, India generally was affected during the two months above named. Fortunately, this duty will not demand so full a measure of treatment as the analogous narratives for earlier months. The isolated revolts in June occupied attention in three successive Chapters[67]—because of their great number, the wide-spreading area over which they occurred, the sufferings of many of the Europeans, the romantic adventures of others, the daring bravery of nearly all, and the necessity for describing the geographical and military peculiarities of the several provinces and stations. These matters having once been treated with moderate fulness, the narrative may now proceed at an accelerated pace; insomuch that we shall be enabled, in the present chapter, to take a bird’s-eye glance at the isolated or miscellaneous events, whether mutinies or suppressions of mutiny, belonging to the months of July and August.
Let us begin by directing attention to that small but thickly populated country lying between Patna and Allahabad, and extending in the other direction from the Ganges to Nepaul. Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, Azimghur, Jounpoor, and Benares, all lie within this region; Dinapoor, Buxar, Mirzapore, Sultanpore, and Fyzabad, lie just beyond it; and towns and villages of smaller character bestrew it more thickly than any other part of India. When Henry Lawrence was dead, and Inglis powerless in Oude for anything beyond maintaining his position in Lucknow; when Wheeler had been killed at Cawnpore, and Lloyd superseded at Dinapoor; when Colvin was shut up in Agra, and could do very little as lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—there was scarcely any one who could exercise control within the region just marked out. If a magistrate, collector, or commandant, succeeded in maintaining British supremacy by mingled courage and sagacity, so far well; but he was in few instances able to exercise power beyond the limits of his own town or station. Under these circumstances, Viscount Canning created a new office, that of ‘Lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces,’ and gave it to Mr J. P. Grant, one of the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta. The object in view was to restore order to a large range of country that had been thrown into utter anarchy. The title was not, perhaps, happily chosen; for there was already a ‘Central India,’ comprising the Mahratta country around Indore or Malwah; and, moreover, a jurisdiction was hardly ‘central’ that ran up to the borders of Nepaul. Passing by this, however, the newly aggregated ‘Central Provinces’ comprised the Allahabad division, the Benares division, and the Saugor division; containing a large number of important cities and towns.
When Mr Grant assumed his new duties in August, he found that the Goruckpore district was entirely in the hands of rebels. The leader of the rebels was one Mahomed Hussein, who was at the head of a poorly armed rabble, rather than of an organised military force, and who, with that rabble, had been perpetrating acts of great barbarity. One civilian, Mr Bird, had displayed that gallant spirit which so honourably marked many of the Company’s servants: he remained behind, at his own request, when the rest of the civil officers fled from Goruckpore; he hoped to be able to maintain his position, but was forced after a time to yield to the pressure of adverse circumstances, and escape to Bettiah. The governor-general, during the month of June, accepted aid which had been offered some time previously, by Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul. In pursuance of this agreement, three thousand Goorkhas were sent down from Khatmandoo, and entered British territory northward of Goruckpore. They were ordered on shortly afterwards to Azimghur; and most of the Goruckpore officials, availing themselves of this escort, quitted the station with their movables and the government treasure. Some of the Goorkhas then remained for a time at Azimghur, while the rest went to escort the treasure to Jounpoor and Benares. While at Goruckpore, the Goorkhas assisted in disarming such native troops as were at the station. Much was expected from these hardy troops, and it is only just to observe that they generally warranted the expectation. It was late in June that the arrangement was entered into, the immediate object in view being the pacification of the very districts now under notice.
The Azimghur district had its full share in the troubles of the period. During the first half of July, mutinous sepoys from other stations were frequently threatening the town of Azimghur, and keeping the Europeans perpetually on the watch. The 65th native infantry were very turbulent in the vicinity. On a particular day the Company’s servants at the station held a council of war; some voted that Azimghur was untenable, and that a retreat should be made to Ghazeepore; but bolder councils prevailed with the majority. At last a regular battle with the enemy took place; a battle which has been described in such a lively manner by Mr Venables, deputy-magistrate of Azimghur, that we cannot do better than quote a portion of a letter in which he narrated the events of the day.[68] The action was really worthy of note even in a military sense; for a small force, headed by a civilian, defeated an enemy ten times as numerous. Mr Venables received the thanks of the government for his skill and courage on this occasion. But afterwards came a time of mortification. Of the native troops which formed his little army on the 18th, more than half belonged to the very regiment which mutinied a few days afterwards at Segowlie, after murdering their commandant, Major Holmes. Mr Venables pondered on the question: ‘Will the detachment of the 12th irregulars remain faithful at Azimghur, when another portion of the same regiment has mutinied at Segowlie?’ He thought such a proof of fidelity improbable; and therefore, he and the other Europeans sought to avert danger by removing from Azimghur to Ghazeepore, which they did on the 30th of July. The district all around the station at Azimghur remained at the mercy of lawless marauders until the arrival of the Goorkhas from Goruckpore, mentioned in the last paragraph. Then began a struggle, which should act with the most effective energy—Oudian insurgents from the west, openly hostile to the British; or Nepaul Goorkhas from the north, serving in alliance with the British—a struggle in which, it hardly need be said, many villages were reduced to ashes, and much disturbance of peaceful industry produced.
The Jounpoor district was even more completely disorganised than those of Goruckpore and Azimghur; it had been almost entirely abandoned since the first mutiny of the troops at that station in June. Not until after a Goorkha force had marched into Jounpoor in August, could the civil officers feel any safety in returning to their duties at that station.
Benares, the most important place hereabouts, became a temporary home for many officers who, by the revolt of their several native regiments, had been suddenly and unwillingly deprived of active duties; there were eight or ten of them, mostly belonging to Oude regiments which had revolted. When Jung Bahadoor agreed to send a body of Goorkha troops from Nepaul to the disturbed districts, the Calcutta government transmitted orders for some of these unemployed officers to meet those troops at Goruckpore, and act with them. Among those officers were Captain Boileau and Lieutenants Miles, Hall, and Campbell. It was early in July when this order was sent to Benares, but some weeks elapsed ere the Goorkhas reached Goruckpore. Before this co-operation with the Goorkhas took place, Benares was enabled to render a little good service against the rebels by the aid of British troops, not stationed at that place, but while on transit to the upper provinces. The gallant 78th Highlanders, journeying from Calcutta to Allahabad, were divided into portions according as the means of transport were presented, and according to the necessities of the districts through which they passed. On the 5th of July, Lieutenant-colonel Gordon, commanding the Benares district, saw the necessity of checking some insurgents near that city; and he intrusted that duty to Major Haliburton of the 78th. The major started on the morning of the 6th, with a mixed detachment of Europeans and natives, and marched eight miles on the Azimghur road. His advanced cavalry reported a large body of the enemy half a mile ahead, with their centre posted across the road, and their flanks resting on villages, partially concealed behind trees and rising-ground. Their number was about 500, aided by an equal number of villagers apparently eager for mischief. The contest was soon over, and the enemy repelled. The chief point that rendered the incident worthy of note was that a few of the 12th irregular cavalry, employed by Haliburton, shewed bad symptoms during the day; they did not charge the enemy with alacrity; and they appeared inclined to listen to the appeals made to their religious feelings by the natives whom they were called upon to oppose. These troopers belonged to the same regiment as those who afterwards mutinied at Segowlie.
After the departure of the Highlanders, this great and important Hindoo city was frequently thrown into excitement by mutinies or reports of mutinies at other places. Rumours came in early in August, to the effect that the irregular cavalry from Segowlie, after murdering their officers, were on their way to Jounpoor, thirty-five miles from Benares, with the intention of visiting Benares itself. The city contained at that time only 300 English soldiers, none of whom could safely be spared to go out and confront the rebels. The civil lines at Benares comprised that portion of the British station which contained the jails, the courts of justice, and the residences of the commissioner, judge, surgeon, &c.; it lay on the north of the Burnah River, while the military lines were on the south, the two being connected by a bridge. The civil station was thus peculiarly open to attack; and all that the authorities could do for it was to post a party of soldiers and two guns on the bridge; the prisoners were removed to the other side of the river, the courts were abandoned, and all valuable property was taken from the civil station to that of the European military in the cantonment. The Rev. James Kennedy, chaplain of the station, has in a letter mentioned a fact which shews in how agitated a state the English community at Benares were at that time;[69] illustrating in a striking way—as was more than once shewn during those turmoils in India—that the panic arising from an apprehended danger was often worse than the reality, paralysing the exertions of those who would have rendered good service had actual fighting with an open enemy commenced. No sooner had the dread of the Segowlie mutineers passed away, than an approach of those from Dinapoor was threatened. Colonel Gordon, seeing the mischief that would accrue from such a step, resolved to prevent it: he sent out his handful of English soldiers, not merely to check the approach of the rebels, but to drive them from the district altogether. Koer Singh and his rabble army did not wait for this conflict; they gave Benares a ‘wide offing,’ and bent their steps towards Mirzapore. While the few English soldiers were engaged on this duty, the sentinels left behind were aided by the residents, headed by the judge—all keeping watch and ward in turn, for the common safety.
Mirzapore, from its large size and great importance as a commercial city, and its position on the banks of the Ganges between Benares and Allahabad, was often placed in considerable peril. No mutiny actually occurred there, but the city was repeatedly threatened by mutineers from other quarters, who, if successful, would certainly have been aided by all the budmashes of the place, and by many Mussulmans higher in station than mere rabble. The European residents were perpetually on the watch. When a battery of artillery came up the Ganges en route to Allahabad, they earnestly entreated to be allowed to retain it for their own protection; but Neill, the presiding genius at that time, would not listen to this; Allahabad and Cawnpore must be thought of, and Mirzapore must shift for itself. When the affairs at Segowlie and Dinapoor became known, measures were taken for making some kind of stronghold at Mirzapore. The Europeans intrenched the largest and strongest house belonging to them, barricaded the streets, buried much property, placed other property in guarded boats on the river, and prepared for service four small guns and five hundred rounds of ammunition. On numbering heads, they found 135 persons, all of whom had separate duties or posts assigned to them in the hour of need; they also secured provision for a month. This judicious line of policy answered the desired purpose: the Dinapoor mutineers did not enter or molest Mirzapore. Those marauders passed westward along a line of route further removed from the Ganges, plundering as they went, and committing great devastation. On the 19th of August, a small force set out from Mirzapore to check those acts of violence; but the Dinapoor men generally managed to keep beyond the reach of pursuers. A little later, when other regiments had mutinied in the Saugor division, it was deemed prudent by the Calcutta authorities to send a portion of a Madras regiment, with two guns, to aid in the protection of Mirzapore.
It may here be remarked, that along the line of country immediately adjacent to the eastern frontier of Oude, the influence of that turbulent province was made abundantly manifest during the period now under notice. There were many zemindars near the border who maintained bodies of armed men on foot. A rebel chief of Sultanpore, one Mehudee Hussein, appeared to direct the movements in that region; he was one among many who received direct commissions from the rebel authorities at Lucknow, as chieftains expected to bring all their forces to bear against the British. This fact alone suffices to shew how completely Oude was at that time in the hands of the enemy.
Mr Grant, as lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces, was called upon to exercise authority in the districts of Allahabad, Futtehpoor, Cawnpore, Banda, and Humeerpoor, as well as in those of Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, Jounpoor, Benares, and Mirzapore. When he settled down at Benares as his head-quarters, towards the close of August, he found that no civil business of the Company was carried on throughout the Doab, from Allahabad to Cawnpore, except at Allahabad itself. Neill and Havelock, by the gallant operations already described, obtained military control of the great line of road; but their troops being lamentably small in number, they were nearly powerless beyond a few miles’ distance on either side of that road; while the judges and magistrates, the commissioners and collectors, had in only a few instances been able to resume their duties as civil servants of the Company. A large portion of the population, driven from their villages either by the rebel sepoys or by the British, had not yet returned; and the fertile Doab had become, for a time, almost a desert. Banda and Humeerpoor, British districts immediately south of the Doab, were temporarily but completely given up; scarcely an Englishman remained within them, unless at hide-and-seek. Some of the petty chiefs, including the rajahs of Mundah and Churkarree, remained faithful. For a time, police in the service of the Company were able to retain command in that part of the Allahabad division which lay north of the Ganges; but the Oudians, as August advanced, crossed the frontier, and gradually drove them away, thus further narrowing the belt of country within which the Company’s ‘raj’ was respected. Koer Singh, whose name has so often been mentioned, was ruler for a time south of the Jumna, with his Dinapoor mutineers; it was supposed that he had offered his services to Nena Sahib and to the King of Delhi, in hopes of some substantial authority or advantages as a reward for his co-operation. This unsettled state of the region south of the Jumna placed Lieutenant Osborne in an extraordinary position. He was, as we have already seen (p. 180), British representative at the court of the Rajah of Rewah, a place southwest of Allahabad—unimportant in itself, but surrounded by districts every one of which was in a state of anarchy. Although the young rajah was friendly to the English, and aided the lieutenant in his military plans for checking the mutineers, it was at all times uncertain how far the Rewah troops themselves could be depended on. At a somewhat later date than that to which this chapter relates, Osborne was living in a tent at Rewah, with no Englishman of any grade near him, and uncertain whether he could rely for an hour on the fidelity of the native troops belonging to the rajah—defended by little else than his own indomitable force of character. Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers had asked the rajah either to join them, or to allow them to pass through his territory; he opposed it; his troops wished it; and thus the rajah and the lieutenant were thrown into antagonism with the Rewah troops.
Another region or division placed under Mr Grant’s lieutenant-governorship, Saugor, had witnessed very great disturbance during the month of June, as has already been shewn;[70] and he found the effects of that disturbance manifested in various ways throughout July and August. Rewah, Nowgong, Jhansi, Saugor, Jubbulpoor, Hosungabad—all had suffered, either from the mutiny of troops at those towns, or by the arrival of mutineers from other stations. Nagpoor was under a different government or control; but it would not on that account have escaped the perils of those evil days, had it not been that the troops distributed over that province belonged to the Madras rather than to the Bengal army—a most important difference, as we have had many opportunities of seeing. Mr Plowden, commissioner of Nagpoor, found it comparatively easy to maintain his own territory in peace, for the reason just stated; and he used all possible exertion to bring up troops from Madras, and send them on to the Saugor province. His advice to Major Erskine was, to disarm his Bengal troops at all the stations as soon as he could obtain Madras troops; but the numbers of these latter were not sufficient to permit the carrying out of such a plan. The Saugor territory, in having the peaceful part of Bengal on the east, and Nagpoor territory on the south, was pretty safe from disturbance on those frontiers; but having the Jumna region on the north, and the Mahratta dominions on the west, it had many sources of disturbance in those directions.
In the town and military station of Saugor, the state of affairs was very remarkable. Brigadier Sage, in the month of June (p. 178), had converted a large fort into a place of refuge for the ladies and families of the officers, provisioned it for six months, placed the guns in position, and guarded the whole by a body of European gunners. This he did, not because the native regiments at the station (31st and 42d B. N. I., and 3d irregular cavalry) had mutinied, but because they appeared very unsettled, and received tempting offers from scheming chieftains in the vicinity. The Calcutta authorities called upon the brigadier for an explanation of the grounds on which he had shut up all the Europeans at Saugor, three hundred in number, in the fort, without any actual mutiny at that place; but on account of interrupted dâks and telegraphs, many weeks elapsed before the various official communications could take place, and during those weeks the brigadier was responsible for the safety of the residents. The remarkable feature in all this was, not that the native troops should mutiny, or that the Europeans should live in a fortified residence, but that one regiment should remain faithful when others at the same spot repudiated allegiance. Early in July the 42d and the cavalry endeavoured to incite the 31st to mutiny; but not only did the latter remain true to their salt—they attacked and beat off the rebels. On the 7th of the month a regular battle ensued; the 31st and some of the irregular cavalry attacking the 42d and the rest of the irregulars, and expelling them altogether from the station. ‘Well done, 31st,’ said Major Erskine, when news of this event reached Jubbulpoor. It was not merely that two infantry regiments were in antagonism; but two wings of one cavalry regiment were also at open war with each other. So delighted were the English officers of the 31st at the conduct of their men, that they were eager to join in the fray; but the brigadier would not allow this; he distrusted all these regiments alike, and would not allow the officers to place themselves in peril. Many at Saugor thought that an excess of caution was herein exhibited.
The other chief place in the province, Jubbulpoor, as shewn in a former chapter (p. 178), had been thrown into much perplexity in the month of June by the news of mutiny at Jhansi and Nuseerabad; and Major Erskine, commissioner of the province, sought how he might best prevent the pestilence from spreading southeastward. He was at Jubbulpoor with the 52d B. N. I. By a system of constant watchfulness he passed through that month without an outbreak. It was, however, a month of anxiety; for such of the ladies as did not retire to Kamptee for shelter, remained in continual dread near their husbands at Jubbulpoor, seldom taking off their clothes at night, and holding ready to flee at an hour’s warning—a state of suspense entailing almost as much suffering as mutiny itself. Early in July the Europeans fortified the Residency, and stored it with half a year’s provisions for thirty officers, thirty ladies and children, and several civilians; this was done on receipt of news that the 42d native infantry and the 3d irregular cavalry had mutinied at Saugor. The Residency was made very strong, being converted from a house into a fort; three officers were made garrison engineers, two acted as commissariat officers, and all the rest took specific duties. It became not only the stronghold, but the home, night and day, for nearly seventy persons. One of the officers who had the best means of knowing the temper of the troops, while praising the 52d for still remaining faithful under so many temptations from mutineers elsewhere, and while promising them extra pay for their fidelity, nevertheless acknowledged in a private letter that the regiment was a broken reed to rest upon. ‘To tell the truth, I doubt the regiment being much better than any other. Circumstances alone keep the sepoys quiet. There is no treasure; we merely collect enough to pay ourselves and them. If they plundered the country, they could not take away the property; as the Bundelas would loot and murder them.’ Speaking of the domestic economy of his brother-officers and their families in the fortified Residency, he said: ‘The 52d mess manage everything in the Khana peena line (eating and drinking). Ladies and gentlemen all dine together—a strange scene, quite a barrack-life. In the evening a few of us drive out; others ride and walk. We cannot afford above six or eight to leave the garrison together.’ July passed over in safety in Jubbulpoor. Early in August a relieving force arrived from the Nagpoor territory, which, nearly tranquil itself, was able to forward trusty Madras troops to regions troubled by the faithless sepoys of the Bengal army. This force consisted of the 33d Madras native infantry, a squadron of the 4th Madras cavalry, 75 European artillerymen, and six guns. Major Erskine, thus reinforced, set forth to restore order at Dumoh, and to proceed thence to Saugor; to which place a Bombay column was expected to come, viâ Indore and Bhopal. This was a part of the policy determined on by the government at that time. Calcutta could supply no troops except for the Cawnpore and Lucknow region; the Punjaub could furnish reinforcements only for the siege of Delhi; and therefore it was determined that columns should start from the Madras and Bombay presidencies, comprising no Bengal native troops, and should work their way inwards and upwards to the disturbed provinces, sweeping away mutineers wherever they encountered them. It was not until the latter part of August that the Madras movable column could safely leave the vicinity of Jubbulpoor for Dumoh and other disturbed stations, and even then Major Erskine found it necessary to retain a portion of the troops. How long the 52d remained faithful at Jubbulpoor we shall see in a future page; but it may here be remarked that the English officers of the native regiments were at that time placed in a position of difficulty hardly to be comprehended by others. They either trusted their sepoys, or felt a kind of shame in expressing distrust: if not in actual peril, they were at least mortified and vexed; for they felt their own honour touched when their regiments proved faithless.
The Bengal troops at Nagode appear to have remained untouched by mutiny until the 25th of August. On that day the 50th native infantry shewed symptoms which caused some anxiety to the officers; two days afterwards disturbances took place, and at a period somewhat beyond the limit to which this chapter is confined the bulk of the regiment mutinied, and marched off to join mutineers elsewhere. About 250 of the sepoys remained true to their colours; they escorted their officers, and all the ladies and children, safely from Nagode to Mirzapore. These divergences among the men of the same regiment greatly complicate any attempts to elucidate the causes of the Indian mutiny generally. That the sepoys were often excited by temporary and exceptional impulses, is quite certain; and such impulses were wholly beyond the power of the Europeans correctly to estimate. There was one station at which a portion of a native regiment mutinied and shot an officer; the sepoys of his company threw themselves upon his body and wept, and then—joined the mutineers!
We pass from the Saugor province to those which were nominally under the control of Mr Colvin as lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—nominally, for, being himself shut up in Agra, he exercised scarcely any control beyond the walls of the fort. Of the Doab, sufficient has already been narrated to shew in what condition that fertile region was placed during the months of July and August. Where Havelock and Neill pitched their tents, there was British supremacy maintained; but beyond the three cities of Allahabad, Futtehpoor, and Cawnpore, and the high road connecting them, British power was little more than a name. Higher up the Doab, at Etawah, Minpooree, Furruckabad, Futteghur, Allygurh, Bolundshuhur, &c., anarchy was paramount. Crossing the Ganges into Oude, the cessation of British rule was still more complete. Scarcely an Englishman remained alive throughout the whole of Oude, except in Lucknow; all who had not been killed had precipitately escaped. Almost every landowner had become a petty chieftain, with his fort, his guns, and his band of retainers. In no part of India, at no time during the mutiny, was the hostility of the villagers more strikingly shewn than in Oude: in other provinces the inhabitants of the villages often aided the British troops on the march; but when Havelock, Neill, and Outram were in Oude, every village on the road had to be conquered, as if held by an avowed enemy. It has been often said that the Indian outbreak was a revolt of soldiery, not a rebellion of a people; but in Oude the contest was unquestionably with something more than the military only. Whether their love for their deposed king was sincere or only professed, the Oudians exhibited much animosity against the British. What the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow were doing, we shall see in the proper place.
Of Agra city, and the fort or residency in which the Europeans were for safety assembled, it will be remembered (p. 173) that after peaceably but anxiously passing through the month of May, Mr Colvin, on the 1st of June, found it necessary or expedient to disarm the 44th and 67th Bengal native infantry—because two companies of those regiments had just mutinied near Muttra, and because the bulk of the regiments exhibited unmistakable signs of disaffection. This great and important city was then left under the charge of the 3d European Fusiliers, a corps of volunteer European cavalry under Lieutenant Greathed, and Captain D’Oyley’s field-battery of six guns. Most of the disarmed native troops deserted, to swell the insurgent ranks elsewhere; and in the course of the month the jail-guard deserted also. Thus June came to its end—the European residents still remaining at large, but making certain precautions for their common safety at night.
When July arrived, however, the state of affairs became much more serious. The Europeans were forced into a battle, which ended in a necessity for their shutting themselves up in the fort. The force was very weak. The 3d Europeans only numbered about 600 men, the militia and volunteers 200, and a few artillerymen belonging to the guns. Among the officers present were several who had belonged to the Gwalior Contingent, the various regiments and detachments of which had mutinied at Hattrass, Neemuch, Augur, Lullutpore, and Gwalior, on various days between the 28th of May and the 3d of July; these officers, having now no commands, were glad to render aid in any available way towards the defence of Agra. Just at this critical time, when the approach of a hostile force was imminent, the Europeans were further troubled by the sudden mutiny of the Kotah Contingent. This force—consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, about 700 men in all—having been deemed loyal and trustworthy, had been brought about a month previously to Agra from the southwest, and had during that time remained true—collecting revenue, burning disaffected villages, capturing and hanging rebels and mutineers. They were brought in from the vicinity towards the close of June, to aid if necessary against the Neemuch mutineers, and were encamped half-way between the barracks and government-house. Suddenly and unexpectedly, on the evening of the 4th, the cavalry portion of the Contingent rose in revolt, fired at their officers, killed their sergeant-major, and then marched off, followed by the infantry and the artillery—all but a few gunners, who enabled the British to retain the two guns belonging to the Contingent. This revolt startled the authorities, and necessitated a change of plan, for it had been intended to attack the Neemuch force that very evening; nay, matters were even still worse, for the Kotah villains at once joined those from Neemuch.
On the morning of Sunday the 5th of July (again Sunday!), an army of mutineers being known to be near at hand, a reconnoitring party was sent out to examine their position. The enemy were found to consist of about 4000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, with ten or twelve guns; they comprised the 72d B. N. I., the 7th Gwalior Contingent infantry, the 1st Bengal native cavalry, the Malwah Contingent cavalry—which had joined the Neemuch men at Mehidpore—and fragments of other mutinied regiments, together with a very efficient artillery corps. The arrival of the Neemuch mutineers had for some time been expected; and as soon as it was known, on the 3d, that the enemy had reached Futtehpore Sikri, about twenty miles from Agra, the ladies and children, as well as many of the civilians and traders, had as a measure of precaution abandoned their houses in the city, and gone into the fort, which had been cleaned out, made as habitable as possible, and largely supplied with provisions. The reconnoitring party returned to announce that the enemy were at Shahgunje, a village close to the lieutenant-governor’s house, three miles from the cantonment and four from the fort. The authorities at Agra resolved at once to go out and fight the enemy in open field; seeing that the native citizens had begun to think slightingly of their British masters, and that it was necessary to remove any suspicion of fear or timidity. The brigadier made up a force equal to about one-eighth of the enemy’s numbers; it consisted of seven very weak companies of the 3d European Fusiliers, the militia and volunteers, and a battery of artillery. The infantry were placed under Colonel Riddell, and the artillery under Captain D’Oyley. As to the volunteer cavalry, it was made up of a curious medley of unemployed military officers, civilians, merchants, and writers—all willing to share the common danger for the common good; but with untrained horses, and without regular cavalry drill, they laboured under many disadvantages. About 200 men of the 3d Europeans remained behind to guard the fort.
At noon, the opposing forces met. The enemy occupied a strong position behind Shahgunje, with their guns flanking the village, and the cavalry flanking the guns. The British advanced in line, with their guns on each flank, the infantry in the middle, and the mounted militia and volunteers in the rear. When about six hundred yards from the enemy, the infantry were ordered to lie down, to allow the guns to do their work against the village, from behind the houses and walls of which the enemy’s riflemen opened a very destructive fire. It was a bad omen that women were seen in the village loading the rifles and muskets and handing them to the mutineers to fire. For two hours an exchange of artillery-fire was kept up—extremely fierce; shrapnel shells, round-shot, and grape-shot, filling the air. A tumbril belonging to D’Oyley’s battery now blew up, disabling one of the guns; the enemy’s cavalry took advantage of this to gallop forward and charge; but the 3d Europeans, jumping up, let fly a volley which effectually deterred them. Most of the officers and soldiers had wished during these two hours for a bolder course of action—a capture of the enemy’s guns by a direct charge of infantry. Then followed a rapid musketry-fire, and a chasing of the enemy out of the village by most of the infantry—the rest guarding the guns. Unfortunately another tumbril blew up, disabling another gun; and, moreover, D’Oyley had used up all the ammunition which had been supplied to him. Upon this the order was given for retreat to the city; and the retreat was made—much to the mortification of the troops, for they had really won a victory. The rebels, it was afterwards known, were themselves out of ammunition, and were just about to retreat when they saw the retreat of the British; their infantry marched off towards Muttra, but their cavalry and one gun harassed the British during their return to the city. The artillery-fire of the mutineers during the battle was spoken of with admiration even by those who were every minute suffering from it; the native artillerymen had learned to use effectively against us those guns which they had been paid and fed to use in our defence. If the cavalry had been equally effective, the British would probably have been cut off to a man. This battle of Agra was a severe one to the British, for one-fourth of the small force were killed or wounded. The officers suffered much: Majors Prendergast and Thomas, Captains D’Oyley, Lamb, and Alexander, Lieutenants Pond, Fellowes, Cockburn, Williams, and Bramley, were wounded, as well as many gentlemen belonging to the volunteer horse. The loss of Captain D’Oyley was very much deplored, for he was a great favourite. While managing his guns, a shot struck him; he sat on the carriage, giving orders, in spite of his wound; but at last he fell, saying: ‘Ah, they have done for me now! Put a stone over my grave, and say I died at my guns.’ He sank the next day.
The British returned to Agra—not to the city, but to the fort; for three or four thousand prisoners had got loose during the day, and had begun to fire all the European buildings in the city. Officers and privates, civilians and ladies, all who wrote of the events at Agra at that time, told of the wild licence of that day and night. One eye-witness said: ‘Hardly a house has escaped destruction; and such houses and their contents as were not consumed by fire have been completely gutted and destroyed by other means. In fact, even if we were to leave the fort to-morrow, there are not four houses in the place with roofs remaining under which we could obtain shelter; and as for household property and other things left outside, there is not a single article in existence in serviceable order. The very doors and windows are removed, and every bit of wood torn out, so that nothing remains but the bare brick walls. Things are strewed about the roads and streets in every direction; and wherever you move you see broken chairs and tables, carriages in fragments, crockery, books, and every kind of property wantonly destroyed.’ An officer of the 3d Europeans, after describing the battle, and the return of the little force to the fort, said: ‘Immediately afterwards the work of destruction commenced, the budmashes began to plunder, bungalows on every side were set on fire—one continued blaze the whole night. I went out the next morning. ‘Twas a dreadful sight indeed; Agra was destroyed; churches, colleges, dwelling-houses, barracks, everything burned.’
But they had something more to think of than the devastation in Agra city; they had to contemplate their own situation in Agra Fort. Among the number of Europeans, some had already borne strange adversities. One officer had escaped, with his wife, in extraordinary guise, from Gwalior at the time of the mutiny of the Contingent at that place. He had been obliged to quit his wife at their bungalow in the midst of great danger, to hasten down to his regiment in the lines; and when he found his influence with his men had come to naught, and that shots were aimed at him, three sepoys resolved to save him. They took off his hat, boots, and trousers, wrapped him in a horse-cloth, huddled him between them, and passed him off as a woman. They left him on the bank of a stream, and went to fetch his wife from a position of great peril. She being too weak to walk, they made up a horse-cloth into a sort of bag, tied it to a musket, put her into it, shouldered the musket horizontally, and carried her seven miles—her husband walking by her side, barefoot over sharp stones. After meeting with further assistance, they reached Agra somewhat more in comfort. Another officer, who had likewise served in the Gwalior Contingent, and who had seen much hard service before the mutiny of his corps compelled him to flee to Agra, counted up the wreck of his property after the battle of the 5th of July, and found it to consist of ‘a coat, a shirt, the greater portion of a pair of breeches, a pair of jack-boots, one sock, a right good sword’—and a cannon-ball through his leg; yet, recognising the useful truth that grumbling and complaining are but poor medicines in a time of trouble, he bore up cheerfully, and even cheered up Mr Colvin, who was at that time nearly worn to the grave by sickness and anxiety. An officer of the 3d Europeans said in a letter: ‘I lost everything in the world.... The enemy went quietly off; but here we are; we can’t get out—no place to go to—nothing to do but to wait for assistance.’ And a few days afterwards he added: ‘Here we are like rats in a trap; there are from four to five thousand people in this fort, military and civil, Eurasians, half-castes, &c.; and when we shall get out, is a thing to be guessed at.’ A surgeon of the recently mutinied Gwalior Contingent thus spoke of what he saw around him: ‘The scene in the fort for the first few days was a trying one. All the native servants ran off. I had eleven in the morning, and at night not one. Ladies were seen cooking their own food, officers drawing and carrying water from the wells, &c. Many people were ruined, having escaped with only their clothes on their backs. We are now shut up here, five hundred fighting-men with ammunition, and about four or five thousand altogether, eagerly awaiting the arrival of European troops.’ A commissariat officer said: ‘Here we are all living in gun-sheds and casemates. The appearance of the interior is amusing, and the streets (of the fort) are named; we have Regent and Oxford Streets, the Quadrant, Burlington and Lowther Arcades, and Trafalgar Square.’ The wife of one of the officers described her strange home: ‘We are leading a very unsettled ship-like life. No one is allowed to leave the fort, except bodies of armed men. We are living in a place they call Palace Yard; it is a square, with a gallery round it, having open arches; every married couple are allowed two arches.... It is no easy matter to keep our arches clean and tidy.’ As all the Europeans in Agra went to live in the fort, the number included the staff of the Mofussilite (’Provincial European’) newspaper, one of the journals which had for some time been published in that city; the issue for the 3d of July had been printed at the usual office of the paper; but none other appeared for twelve days, when a Mofussilite was printed within the fort itself.
There was no exaggeration in the accounts of the number of persons thus strangely incarcerated. So completely were the Europeans and their native servants at Agra shut up within the fort, and so much was that place regarded as a refuge for those who had been forced to flee from other stations, that it gradually became crowded to an extraordinary degree. On the 26th of July Mr Colvin determined to take a census of all the persons who slept within the fort on that night; he did so, and found them to amount to no less a number than 5845[71]—all of whom had to be supplied with their daily food under military or garrison arrangements. More than 2000 of the number were children, who could render little or no return for the services so anxiously demanded by and for them. Provided, however, the supply of food and other necessaries were sufficient, the danger of the position was not at all comparable to that of Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore or of Brigadier Inglis at Lucknow. The fort at Agra (see wood-cut, p. 109) was a very large structure, a sort of triangle whose sides extended from three to five eighths of a mile each; it contained numerous large buildings within the walls, of which the chief were the palace of Shahjehan, the Hall of Audience built by the same emperor, and the Moti Musjid or Pearl Mosque. All the buildings were at once appropriated, in various ways, to the wants of the enormous number of persons who sought shelter therein. The defences of the place, too, were greatly strengthened; sixty guns of heavy calibre were mounted on the bastions; thirteen large mortars were placed in position; the powder-magazines were secured from accidental explosion; the external defences were improved by the levelling of many houses in the city which approached too near the fort; and preparations were completed for blowing up the superb Jumma Musjid (p. 229) if any attempt were made by a hostile force to occupy it, seeing that its upper ranges commanded the interior of the fort. The only insurgent force at that time in possession of guns and mortars powerful enough to breach strong walls was the Gwalior Contingent; and even if Scindia lost all hold over that force, Agra was provisioned for ten months, and had ammunition enough to stand a whole year’s siege. An officer of a mutinied Gwalior regiment, writing from Agra after some weeks’ confinement, said: ‘Almost all the roads are closed, and it is only by secret messengers and spies that we can get any intelligence of what is going on in the convulsed world around us. My letters from Scotland used to reach me in thirty days; now if I get one in eighty days I congratulate myself on my good-luck.... As for this fort, we can hold it against any number for months; our only fear being for the women and children, who would suffer much, and of whom we have some three thousand. The health of the troops, &c., is, thank God, excellent, and the wounded are doing well.’ Nevertheless, with all their sense of security, the Europeans within the fort had enough to do to maintain their cheerfulness. On the day and night of the 5th of July, property had been burned and despoiled in the city to an enormous amount; and most of this had belonged to the present inmates of the fort. The merchants had been prosperous, their large shops had abounded with the most costly articles of necessity and luxury—and now nearly all was gone. The military officers had of course less to lose, but their deprivation was perhaps still more complete.
Throughout July and August the state of affairs thus continued at Agra. The danger was small, but the discomforts of course numerous. Mr Colvin sent repeated applications for a relieving force. There was, however, none to aid him. His health failed greatly, and he did not bear up against the anxieties of his position with the cheerful firmness exhibited by many other of the officials at that trying time. Brigadier Polwhele, former military commandant, was superseded by Colonel Cotton when the account of the battle of the 5th of July became known at Calcutta. Occasional sallies were made from the fort, to punish isolated bodies of rebels at Futtehpore Sikri, Hattrass, and Allygurh; but the European troops were too few to be very effective in this way. The most note-worthy exploit took place during the latter half of August, when Mr Colvin requested Colonel Cotton to organise a small force for driving some mutineers from Allygurh. Major Montgomery set forth with this miniature army,[72] reached Hattrass on the 21st, and there learned that 6000 mutineers, under Ghose Mahomed Khan, náib or lieutenant of the King of Delhi, were prepared to resist him at Allygurh. Montgomery marched from Allygurh to Sarsnee on the 23d, rested for the night in an indigo factory and other buildings, and advanced on the following day to Allygurh. There ensued a sharp conflict of two hours’ duration, in gardens and enclosures outside the town; it ended in the defeat and dispersion of the enemy, who left 300 dead on the field. The battle was a gallant affair, worthy of ranking with those of Havelock; for Montgomery contended against twenty times his own number; and, moreover, many of the troops among the enemy were Ghazees or fanatic Mussulmans who engaged fiercely in hand-to-hand contests with some of his troops. His detachment of men was too small to enable him to enter and reoccupy Allygurh: he was obliged to leave that place in the hands of the rebels, and to return to Hattrass; but having replenished his stock of ammunition and supplies, he advanced again to Allygurh, held it for several days, and left a detachment there when he took his departure.
Taking leave for the present of Agra, we may briefly state that almost every other city and station in that part of India was in the hands of the enemy during the months of July and August. Delhi was still under siege; but there was scarcely a British soldier in any part of the Delhi division except in the siege-camp before Delhi itself. In the Agra division, as we have just seen, British influence extended very little further than the walls of Agra Fort. In the Meerut division, the station at that town was still held; the military lines were strongly fortified, and supplied with provisions to an extent sufficient to remove immediate anxiety. The region between Delhi and the Sutlej, containing Hansi, Hissar, Sirsa, and other towns, was fortunately kept in some order by a column under General Van Cortlandt, which moved quickly from place to place, and put down a swarm of petty chieftains who were only too ready to take advantage of the mutinies of the native troops. In the Rohilcund division scarcely a town, except up in the hills, remained under British control.
Welcome as was the refuge which the wives and children of officers found at the hill-stations in the Rohilcund and Cis-Sutlej provinces, their tranquillity was frequently disturbed by the movements of rebels. Early in August the civil commissioner of Kumaon received intelligence that an attack was contemplated on Nynee Tal by Kalee Khan, one of the myrmidons of Khan Bahadoor Khan of Bareilly, who had 3000 rabble with him; the plunder and destruction of the station being the main objects in view. Captain Ramsey, commandant at Nynee Tal, and Colonel M’Causland, commanding the troops in the various stations of Kumaon, at once determined to remove the ladies and children, two hundred in number, from Nynee Tal to Almora, further away from Bareilly: this was done; and then the colonel prepared to meet the mutineers, and confront them with a detachment of the 66th Goorkhas. Kalee Khan set forth on his mission; but when he heard that M’Causland was calmly waiting for him, he changed his plan, returned to Bareilly, and avoided a conflict, the probable result of which presented itself very clearly to his mind. At Nynee Tal, at Almora, at Mussouree, at Simla, and at other places among the cool hilly regions, ladies and children were assembled in large numbers, some with their husbands and fathers, but many sent away from scenes of strife in which those dear to them were compelled to engage. It was not all idle hopelessness with them. Englishwomen can always find some useful service to render, and are always ready to render it. A lady, writing from Mussouree on the 9th of August, said: ‘We are very busy working flannel clothes for our army before Delhi. They are very badly off for these things; and being so much exposed at such a season of the year, and in such a proverbially unhealthy locality, and fighting as they have done so nobly, they really deserve to be provided for by us.’ After enumerating the sums subscribed towards this object from various quarters, the writer went on to say: ‘Mrs —— and myself are constantly at work; for, with the exception of our tailors, and one or two others given up to us by ladies, we can get none.... Wonderful to say, though I never did such a thing in my life before, I have the management of our portion of the business, which keeps me employed from early morning till late at night. We meet, with several other ladies, at ——‘s house every day, with as many tailors as we can collect, and stitch away.’
The great and important country of the Punjaub, though not free from disturbance, was kept pretty well under control during July and August, by the energy of Sir John Lawrence and the other officers of the Company. We have seen[73] that on the 13th of May the 16th, 26th, and 49th regiments of Bengal native infantry, and the 8th Bengal cavalry, were disarmed at Meean Meer, a cantonment six miles from the city of Lahore; that on the same day the 45th and 57th native infantry mutinied at Ferozpore, while the 10th cavalry was disarmed; that during the same week, Umritsir, Jullundur, and Phillour were only saved from mutiny by the promptness and spirit of some of the officers; that on the 20th, the 55th native infantry mutinied at Murdan in the Peshawur Valley; that consequent upon this, the 24th, 27th, and 51st native infantry, and the 5th native cavalry, were on the 22d of the month disarmed in the station of Peshawur itself; that early in June, the 4th native regiment was disarmed at Noorpore; that on the 6th, the 36th and 61st native infantry, and the 6th native cavalry, mutinied at Jullundur, and marched off towards Phillour; that the 3d native cavalry, at the last-named station, mutinied on the following day, unable to resist the temptation thrown out to them by those from Jullundur; that the 14th native infantry mutinied at Jelum on the 7th of July, maintaining a fierce fight with a British detachment before their departure; that on the same day the 58th native infantry, and two companies of the 14th, were disarmed at Rawul Pindee; that on the 9th, the 46th native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, mutinied at Sealkote, and decamped towards Delhi; that towards the close of July, the disarmed 26th mutinied at Meean Meer, murdered Major Spencer, and marched off with the intention of strengthening the insurgents at Delhi; that on the 19th of August, a portion of the disarmed 10th cavalry mutinied at Ferozpore; and that on the 28th of the same month, the disarmed 51st mutinied at Peshawur, fled to the hills, and were almost annihilated. It thus appears that about a dozen regiments mutinied in the Punjaub between the middle of May and the end of August; that some of these had been previously disarmed; and that others had been disarmed without having mutinied.
A few additional words may be given here relating to the partial mutiny at Meean Meer. The four native regiments at that station, disarmed on the 13th of May, remained in their lines until the 30th of July, peaceful and without arms. On the last-named day, however, it became known to the authorities that the men meditated flight. Major Spencer of the 26th, and two native officers, were killed by the sepoys of that regiment on that day—with what weapons does not clearly appear. The murder of the unfortunate English officer deranged the plans of the troops; all were to have decamped at a given signal; but now only the 26th made off, leaving the other three regiments in their lines. The authorities, not well knowing whither the fugitives had gone, sent off three strong parties of mounted police, to Umritsir, Hurrekee, and Kussoor, the three routes towards the Sutlej. The men, however, had gone northward; but within a few days they were almost entirely destroyed, for the villagers aided the police in capturing or shooting the miserable fugitives as they marched or ran in field and jungle.
Without going over in detail any proceedings already recorded, it may be convenient to condense in a small space a narrative of Brigadier-general Nicholson’s operations in the later days of June and the first half of July with a movable column placed under his command by Sir John Lawrence. Having disarmed the 33d and 35th B. N. I., for reasons which appeared to him amply sufficient, he began on the 27th of June to retrace his steps from Phillour, and on the 5th of July he encamped at Umritsir, to overawe the 59th B. N. I., and to hold a central position whence he might march to any threatened point east or west. On the 7th, hearing of the mutiny of the 14th native infantry at Jelum, and receiving no satisfactory evidence that Colonel Ellice had been able to frustrate or defeat the mutineers, he at once resolved on a measure of precaution. He disarmed the 59th on the following morning—with very great regret; for he had nothing to censure in the conduct of the men; he took that step solely on account of the peril which, at such a time, threatened any station containing Bengal troops without British; and he added in his dispatch: ‘I beg very strongly to recommend this corps, both as regards officers and men, to the favourable consideration of government.’ On the 10th, receiving intelligence that the 46th native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, had mutinied at Sealkote, Nicholson at once disarmed the other wing of the same cavalry regiment, which formed part of his column. In the course of the same day he learned that the Sealkote mutineers intended to march eastward, through Goordaspore, Noorpore, Hoshyapoor, and Jullundur, to Delhi—endeavouring to tempt to mutiny, on their way, the 2d irregular cavalry at Goordaspore, the 4th native infantry at Noorpore, and the 16th irregular cavalry at Hoshyapoor. The problem thence arose—could Nicholson intercept these mutineers before they reached Goordaspore? He found he would have to make a forced march of forty miles in a northeast direction to effect this. He did so, by energetic exertions, in twenty hours. He came up with them at the Trimmoo ford over the Ravee, nine miles from Goordaspore, on the 12th of July—his force now consisting of H.M. 52d foot, 184 men of the Punjaub infantry, a company of the police battalion, a few irregular horse, a troop of artillery, and three guns. Nicholson defeated them after a short but sharp conflict on the river’s bank; but his horsemen were not trustworthy, and he could not pursue the enemy. About 300 mutineers, with one gun, took post on an island in the river; these, by a well-planned movement, were almost entirely annihilated on the 16th—and the ‘Sealkote mutineers’ disappeared from the scene. It was with justice that the active leader thanked his troops on the following day: ‘By a forced march of unusual length, performed at a very trying season of the year, the column has been able to preserve many stations and districts from pillage and plunder, to save more than one regiment from the danger of too close a contact with the mutineers; while the mutineer force itself, 1100 strong, notwithstanding the very desperate character of the resistance offered by it, has been utterly destroyed or dispersed.’
Let us now, as in a former chapter, glance at the state of affairs in the vast region of India southward of the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Sutlej—passing over Sinde without special mention, as being nearly free from disturbing agencies. The reader will remember[74] that among the various states, provinces, and districts of Nagpoor, Hyderabad, Carnatic, Madras, Bombay, Holkar, Scindia, Rajpootana, &c., some became subject to anarchy in certain instances during the month of June—especially the three last-named states; and we have now to shew that this anarchy continued, and in some cases extended, during July and August; but it will also be made manifest that the amount of insurgency bore a very small ratio to that in the stormy districts further north.
Of Southwestern Bengal, Orissa, and Nagpoor, it is scarcely necessary here to speak. The native troops were not influenced by a hostility so fierce, a treachery so villainous, as those in Hindostan proper; there were not so many zemindars and petty chieftains who had been wrought up to irritation by the often questionable appropriations and annexations of the Company; and there was easier access for the troops of the Madras presidency, who, as has already been more than once observed, had small sympathy with the petted sepoys and sowars of the larger presidency. The mutinies or attempts at mutiny, in these provinces, were of slight character during July and August. Mr Plowden, commissioner of Nagpoor, was enabled, with troops sent by Lord Harris from Madras, not only to maintain British supremacy throughout that large country (nearly equal in size to England and Scotland combined), but also to assist Major Erskine in the much more severely threatened territory of Saugor and Nerbudda, lying between Nagpoor and the Jumna.
The Madras presidency remained almost entirely at peace. Not only did the native troops hold their faith with the government that fed and paid them, but they cheerfully volunteered to serve against the mutinous Bengal sepoys in the north. On the 3d of July the governor in council issued a proclamation, announcing that several regiments had expressed their desire to be employed in the Northwest Provinces or wherever else their services might be required; that thanks would be publicly awarded to the native officers and men of all the regiments who had thus come forward; and that the favourable attention of the supreme government towards them would be solicited. The corps that thus proffered their services were the 3d, 11th, 16th, and 27th Madras native infantry, the 3d and 8th Madras native cavalry, a company of native foot-artillery, a troop of native horse-artillery, and a detachment of native sappers and miners. Many of these afterwards rendered good service in the battles which distinguished—and we may at the same time add devastated—Northern and Central India. Four days afterwards, Lord Harris was able to announce that other regiments—the 17th, 30th, 36th, and 47th native infantry, and the 5th native cavalry—had in a similar way come forward ‘to express their abhorrence of the traitorous conduct of the mutineers of the Bengal army, and their desire to be employed wherever their services may be required.’ Besides thus providing faithful soldiers, the governor of Madras was in a position, at various times during July and August, to send large supplies of arms, ammunition, and camp-equipage, from Madras to Calcutta. In the city of Madras itself, and in the various southern provinces and countries of Carnatic, Tanjore, Travancore, Canara, Malabar, and Mysore, the same exemption from mutiny was experienced. There were, it is true, discontents and occasional plottings, but no formidable resistance to the British power. Many persons there were who, without being rebels or open malcontents, thought that the Company had dealt harshly with the native princes, and were on that account deterred from such hearty sympathy with the British as they might otherwise possibly have manifested. An officer in the Madras army, writing when the mutiny was four months old, stated that in the previous February, when that terrible movement had not yet commenced, he went one day to take a sketch of a mosque, or rather a collection of mosques, in the suburbs of Madras—tombs that were the memorials of past Mussulman greatness. His conversation with an old man of that faith[75] left upon his mind the impression that there was a sentiment of injury borne, rights violated, nationality disregarded, conveyed in the words of his temporary companion.
There was, however, one occurrence in the Madras presidency which gave rise to much uneasiness. The 8th Madras native cavalry was ordered to march from Bangalore to Madras, and there embark for Calcutta. On arriving at a place about twenty-five miles from Madras, on the 17th of August, the men put forward a claim for the rates of pay, batta, and pension which existed before the year 1837, and which were more favourable than those of subsequent introduction. Such a claim, put forward at such a moment, was very perplexing to the officers; they hastened to Madras, and obtained the consent of the government to make conciliatory offers to the men. After a further march of thirteen miles to Poonamallee, the troopers again stopped, and declared they would not go forth ‘to war against their countrymen.’ This being an act of insubordination which of course could not be overlooked, two guns and some artillerymen were promptly brought forward; the 8th cavalry were unhorsed and disarmed, and sent to do dismounted duty at Arcot; while their horses were forthwith shipped to Calcutta, where such accessions were specially valuable. The affair caused great excitement at Madras; the volunteers were warned that their services were to be available at a moment’s notice; patrols were placed in the streets by day and night; and guns were planted in certain directions. Happily, the prompt disarming of this turbulent regiment prevented the poison from spreading further.
Bombay, like its sister presidency Madras, was affected only in a slight degree by the storms that troubled Bengal and the northwest. The Bombay troops, though, as the sequel shewed, not altogether equal in fidelity to those of Madras, did nevertheless pass through the perilous ordeal very creditably—rendering most valuable service in Rajpootana and other regions of the north. There was a wealthy and powerful native community at Bombay—that of the Parsees—which was nearly at all times ready to support the government, and which greatly strengthened the hands of Lord Elphinstone by so doing. It consisted of merchants, shipowners, and bankers, many of whom had made large fortunes in the ordinary way of trade. Those Parsees may always be distinguished from the other natives of India by something peculiar in their names—Jamsetjee, Nowrojee, Cursetjee, Bomanjee, Rustomjee, Hormuzjee, Luxmonjee, Maneekjee, Sorabjee, Furdoonjee, Soonderjee, Ruttonjee, Wassewdewjee, Dhakjee, &c. The Parsees are the descendants of those Persians who, refusing to exchange the religion of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed, migrated to India more than a thousand years ago; those still remaining in Persia are few in number and degraded in position; but those at Bombay are wealthy and active, and bear a high character both morally and intellectually. The property in the island on which the city of Bombay stands is chiefly in the hands of the Parsees; and it is usual for the European commercial firms of Bombay to have a Parsee capitalist as one of the partners. Although wearing the Asiatic costume, and adhering very rigidly to their religious customs and observances, the Parsees assimilate more than other eastern people to the social customs of Europeans: they nearly all speak English, and have it carefully taught to their children. There is something remarkable in a Parsee holding the dignity of a baronet, in English fashion; such was the case a few years ago, when a Parsee of enormous wealth, and of liberality as great as his wealth, was made by Queen Victoria a baronet under the title of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. It will at once be seen that such a body as the Parsees, having little or no sympathy with Hindustani sepoys, and having their worldly interests much bound up with the English, were likely to be sources of strength instead of weakness in troubled times. They headed an address to Lord Elphinstone, signed by about four hundred natives of various castes and creeds.[76] It was not more adulatory, not more filled with enthusiastic professions of loyalty, than many addresses presented to Viscount Canning in Bengal; but it more nearly corresponded with the conduct of those who signed it.
If Bombay city, however, remained nearly undisturbed during July and August, there were symptoms that required close watching in various districts to the north, south, and east. Kolapore, one of the places here adverted to, is distant about a hundred and eighty miles south from Bombay. It is the chief place of a raj or state of the same name, and was in the last century a scene of frequent contest between two Mahratta princes, the Peishwa of Satara and the Rajah of Kolapore, each of whom struggled against the claims to superiority put forth by the other. About half a century ago began those relations towards the Company’s government, which, as in so many other parts of India, led to the gradual extinction of the rule of the native rajah; the British govern ‘in the name of the rajah,’ but the rajah’s authority remains in abeyance. The military force belonging specially to the state, at the time of the mutiny, amounted to about ten thousand men of all arms. It was, however, among the Company’s own troops that the disaffection above adverted to took place. The 27th Bombay native infantry, without any previous symptoms of disaffection, suddenly mutinied at Kolapore, on the day of a festival called the Buckree Eed (1st of August); or rather, a portion of the regiment mutinied. While the officers were assembled in the billiard-room of their mess-house on the evening of that day, a jemadar rushed in and informed them that some of the sepoys had risen in revolt; the officers hastened out; when three of them, ignorant of the place, or bewildered in the darkness, went astray, and were taken and murdered by the mutineers. The mother of the jemadar went to the house of Major Rolland, the commanding officer, to warn the ladies of their danger, and to afford them means of escape. No sooner had the ladies hurried away, than the house was surrounded by mutineers, who, disappointed at finding it empty, revenged themselves by slaughtering the old woman. After plundering the treasury of forty thousand rupees, the mutineers retired to a religious edifice in the town, and marched off in early morning by the Phoonda Ghat towards Wagotun, on the coast. The native commissioned officers of the regiment remained faithful; none of them accompanied the mutineers. The outbreak ended most disastrously to those concerned in it. When they got some distance from Kolapore, they found themselves without food and without friends; and gradually nearly all were destroyed by detachments sent against them, headed by Major Rolland and Colonel Maughan, the latter of whom was British resident at Kolapore. There were circumstances which justify a belief that this was not so much a mutiny after the Bengal type, as an association of the bad men of the regiment for purposes of plunder.
This event at Kolapore threw the whole of the south Mahratta country into a ferment. At Poonah, Satara, Belgaum, Dharwar, Rutnagherry, Sawunt Waree, and other places, the threads of a Mohammedan conspiracy were detected; and fortunately the germs of insurrection were nipped in the bud. When Mr Rose, commissioner of Satara, found that the deposed royal family of that state were engaged in plots and intrigues, he took a small but reliable English force, entered Satara before daylight on the 6th of August, surrounded the palace, and ordered the rajah and the ranees to prepare for instant departure. Resistance being useless, the royal prisoners entered phaetons which had been brought for that purpose, and before eight o’clock they were on the way to Poonah—to be kept under the eye of the Bombay authorities until the political atmosphere should become clearer, in a navy depôt on an island near Bombay city. A plot was about the same time discovered at Poonah, concerted between the moulvies of that place and of Belgaum, for massacring the Europeans and native Christians of those stations; letters were intercepted at the Poonah post-office, which enabled the authorities to shun the coming evil. Many arrests of Mussulman conspirators were made; and it was then found that matters had gone so far as a preparation to blow up the arsenal at Poonah. The authorities at once disarmed the natives of the cantonment bazaar. From most of the out-stations, being troubled by these events, the English ladies were sent by military escort to Bombay or to Poonah. Among other measures of precaution, the remaining companies of the 27th native regiment were disarmed at Kolapore and Rutnagherry; and examples of the terrible ‘blowing away from guns’ were resorted to, to check this incipient revolution. The 28th Bombay native infantry, stationed at Dharwar, and the 29th, stationed at Belgaum, had been raised at the same time as the 27th; and a few symptoms of insubordination were manifested by sepoys of those regiments; but the timely arrival of a European regiment restored quiet. The English were greatly exasperated when the fact came to light that one of the conspirators detected at Belgaum was a moonshee who had been receiving a hundred and fifty rupees per month for instructing officers of regiments in Hindustani.
The three presidencies were all anxiously watching the state of feeling in the large and important country of Hyderabad, the dominions of the Nizam; for that country borders on Nagpoor on the northeast; while on the southeast and on the west it is conterminous with districts belonging to Madras and to Bombay respectively. Its two largest cities, Hyderabad in the southeast portion, and Aurungabad in the northwest, contained many English families belonging to military and civil servants of the Company; or at least the families were at stations not far from those cities. By the terms of various treaties between the Nizam and the Company, the latter had the right of maintaining a large military cantonment at Secunderabad, a few miles north of Hyderabad city. This cantonment was three miles in length, and was well provided with officers’ bungalows and mess-houses, European barracks, sepoy lines, horse-artillery lines, foot-artillery barracks, native bazaars, parade-ground, hospitals, arsenal, and all the other requisites for a large military station. The cavalry lines were two miles north of the cantonment, at Bowenpilly. The military station for the troops belonging to the Nizam as an independent sovereign was at Bolarum, somewhat further away from Hyderabad, but still within easy reach of Secunderabad. At the time of the mutiny the British resident at Hyderabad was placed in a position of some difficulty. Although there was a large force at Secunderabad, it comprised scarcely any British troops; and therefore, if trouble arose, he could only look to defence from natives by natives. The capital of the Deccan, or the Nizam’s territory, comprised within itself many elements of insecurity. The government and a large portion of the inhabitants were Mohammedan; the rabble of the city was numerous and ruthless; the Nizam’s own army was formed on the same model as the contingents which had so generally mutinied in Hindostan; the Company’s own forces, as just mentioned, were almost entirely native; and the city and province were at all times thronged with predatory bands of Rohillas, Afghans, Arabs, and other mercenaries, in the pay of the nobles and jaghiredars of the Hyderabad court. It is almost certain that if the Nizam had turned against us, Southern India would have been in a blaze of insurrection; but he was faithful; and his chief minister, Salar Jung, steadily supported him in all measures calculated to put down disturbance. The news of the rebel-triumph at Delhi set in tumultuous motion the turbulent Mussulmans of Hyderabad; and it has been well observed that ‘a single moment of indecision, a single act of impolicy, a single false step, or a single admission of weakness, might have turned Hyderabad into a Lucknow and made a second Oude of the Deccan.’ The Nizam, his prime minister, and the British resident, all brought sagacity and firmness to bear on the duties of their respective offices; and thus the Deccan and Southern India were saved. What might have been the case under other circumstances was foreshadowed by the events of the 17th of July. On the preceding day, intelligence was received at the Residency, which stands clear of the city, but at the distance of some few miles from the British cantonment at Secunderabad, that the mob in the city was much excited, and that a scheme was on foot to press the Nizam to attack the Residency. Notice was sent from the Residency to Salar Jung, and preparations were made. Early in the evening on the 17th, a Rohilla rabble stole forth from the city, and made for the Residency. An express was at once sent off to cantonments for aid; and in the meantime the guard, with three guns, went out to attack the insurgents. Captain Holmes plied his grape-shot effectively from the three guns; and when cavalry and horse-artillery arrived from Secunderabad, the Rohillas received a total discomfiture. This was almost the only approach to a mutiny that occurred in the portion of the Deccan near the Carnatic frontier.
Aurungabad, on the Bombay side of the Nizam’s dominions, was, in regard to mutinies, less important than Hyderabad, because more easily accessible for European troops; but more important, in so far as the sepoy regiments of Malwah and Rajpootana were nearer at hand to be affected by evil temptation. The city is about seventy miles distant from Ahmednuggur, and a hundred and seventy from Bombay. Uneasiness prevailed here so early as June. The 1st cavalry and the 2d infantry, of the corps called the Hyderabad Contingent, were stationed at Aurungabad; and of these, the former shewed signs of disaffection. Captain Abbott, commanding the regiment, found on the morning of the 13th that his men were murmuring and threatening, as if unwilling to act against mutineers elsewhere; indeed, they had sworn to murder their officers if any attempt were made to employ them in that way. Fortunately, the ressaldars—each being a native captain of a troop of cavalry, and there being therefore as many ressaldars in a regiment as there were troops or companies—remained faithful; and Captain Abbott, with Lieutenant Dowker, were enabled to discuss with these officers the state of the regiment. The ressaldars assured the captain that many of the troopers had begun to talk loudly about the King of Delhi as their rightful ruler. The resident at the court of the Nizam, through the military secretary, Major Briggs, advised Captain Abbott—seeing that no aid could be expected from any other quarter—to speak in as conciliatory a tone as possible to the men, and to promise them that they should not be required to act against the insurgents at Delhi, provided they would be obedient to other orders. Quiet was in this way restored; but it being a dangerous precedent thus to allow troops to decide where and against whom they would choose to fight, Major-general Woodburn, who had been placed in command of a movable column from Bombay, marched through Ahmednuggur to Aurungabad. This column consisted of the 28th Bombay native infantry, the 14th dragoons, Captain Woolcombe’s battery, and a pontoon train. When Woodburn arrived, he found that the ladies had all left the Aurungabad station, that the officers were living barricaded in the mess-room, and that all the Nizam’s troops exhibited unfavourable symptoms. The first native cavalry, when confronted with Woodburn’s troops, behaved in a very daring way; and about a hundred of them made off, owing to the unwillingness of the general to open fire upon them, although Abbott and Woolcombe saw the importance of so doing.
In the country north of Bombay, and between it and Malwah, many slight events occurred, sufficient to shew that the native troops were in an agitated state, as if oscillating between the opposite principles of fidelity and treachery. It was worthy of note, however, that the troops thus affected were, in very few instances, those belonging to the Company’s Bombay army; they were generally contingent corps, or Mahrattas, or Rajpoots, or men imbued with the same ideas as the Hindustanis and Oudians. Towards the close of July, a few troopers of the Gujerat Irregular Horse endeavoured to incite their companions to mutiny; they failed, and then decamped; but were pursued and captured, and then hung in presence of their own regiment.
Still further northward lies the country which, under the various names of Scindia’s territory, Holkar’s territory, Malwah, and Bhopal, has already been described as the chief seat of the Mahratta power, and which corresponds pretty nearly with the region marked out by the Company’s officials as ‘Central India.’ We have seen in former pages[77] that Scindia, chief of the Mahratta state of which Gwalior is the capital, offered the aid of his Contingent army to Mr Colvin in May; that Lieutenant Cockburn, with half a cavalry regiment of this Contingent, rendered good service in the region around Agra, until the troopers deserted him; that the fidelity of Scindia to the British alone prevented his troops generally from joining the rebels, for they belonged to the same Hindustani and Oudian families, though serving a Mahratta prince in a Mahratta state; that after certain detachments had mutinied at Neemuch and elsewhere, the main body rose in revolt at Gwalior on the 14th of June, murdered some of the English officers, drove away the rest with their families, and formally threw off all allegiance to the Company; and that Maharajah Scindia, under circumstances of great difficulty and peril, managed to keep peace at Gwalior—retaining and feeding the troops at that place, and yet discountenancing their mutinous tendencies against the British. If he had not acted with much tact and judgment, the Gwalior Contingent would have marched to Agra in a body, and greatly imperiled the British ‘raj.’ Not only did he keep those troublesome troops near him during the remaining half of June, but also during July and August. Scindia’s special army, entirely under his own control, were chiefly Mahrattas, who had little sympathy with the soldiers of the Contingent; but they were too few in number to put down the latter, and therefore he was forced to temporise—partly by persuasions and promises, partly by threats. Major Macpherson, the British political agent, and Brigadier Ramsey, the military commandant, ceased to have influence at Gwalior; it was Scindia’s good faith alone that stood the British in stead.
Holkar’s Mahratta territory, with Indore for its chief city, we have, in like manner, seen to be troubled with a mutinous spirit in the Contingent troops, partly owing to temptation from other quarters. We have briefly shewn in the chapters lately cited, that on the 28th of May the 15th and 30th Bengal native infantry revolted at Nuseerabad; that on the 2d of June, influenced by this pernicious example, the 72d B. N. I., the 7th regiment of Gwalior Contingent infantry, and the main body of the 1st Bengal native cavalry, mutinied at Neemuch; that on the 1st of July, a portion of Holkar’s Contingent rose against the British at Indore, without his wish or privity, and that he could not get even his own special troops to act against those of the Contingent; that, on the evening of the same day, the 23d Bengal native infantry, and one squadron of the 1st Bengal native cavalry, mutinied at Mhow; and that numerous British officers and their families were thrown into great misery by these several occurrences. It now remains to be stated that, during July and August, Holkar adopted nearly the same course as Scindia; he remained faithful to the British, and endeavoured to quell the mutinous spirit among his troops. Holkar possessed, however, less influence than his brother-chieftain; most of the mutineers from Indore and Mhow marched to Gwalior, and were only prevented by the shrewdness of Scindia from extending their march to Agra.
Among the troops in Rajpootana were the Deesa Field Brigade, commanded towards the close of August by Brigadier Creagh, who had under his control the troops at Deesa, those at the sanitarium on Mount Aboo, and those at Erinpoora and other places in the neighbourhood. These places were thrown into confusion during the last two weeks of the month, by the mutiny of the Jhodpore legion, consisting partly of cavalry and partly of infantry. Such of these men as were stationed at Erinpoora, about 550 in number, rose in mutiny on the 22d. They suddenly threw off their allegiance; seized the guns; made prisoners of Lieutenant Conolly and the European serjeants; plundered the bazaar and some of the native villages; burned all the officers’ bungalows, and destroyed or appropriated all that they found therein; lived in tents on the parade-ground for three days; and then marched off in the direction of Nuseerabad. The cavalry, although forming part of the same legion, and sharing in the movement, protected the Europeans from the infantry. Among the latter, it was only the Hindustani portion which revolted; there were some Bheels in the legion who remained faithful. On the preceding day (21st), about 100 men of the legion had mutinied at Mount Aboo; but as there was a detachment of H.M. 83d there, the mutineers did nothing but hastily escape. A native chieftain, the Rao of Sihori, was prompt to render any aid he could to Captain Hall at Mount Aboo. Another portion of the Jhodpore legion was at Jhodpore itself, where the mutiny placed in great peril Captain Monck Mason, British resident at that native state; by his energy, he provided an asylum for many ladies and children who had been driven from other stations; but he himself fell by the swords of a body of mutinous troopers, under circumstances of mingled cowardice and brutality.
The state of this part of India during July and August may be summed up in a few words. By the revolt of the Contingents of Scindia, Holkar, and Bhopal, and of the Jhodpore legion, English residents were driven from station to station in much peril and suffering, and English influence became for a time almost a nullity; but the native chieftains for the most part remained faithful, even though their troops revolted; and there were hopes of ultimate success from the arrival of relieving columns belonging to the Bombay army. Of that army, a few fragments of regiments occasionally displayed mutinous symptoms, but not to such a degree as to leaven the whole mass. What the officers felt through the treachery of the troops, and what their families suffered during all these strange events, need not again be described; both phases of the Revolt have received many illustrations in former pages; but this chapter may fittingly close with two short extracts from letters relating to the mutinies at the stations of Mhow and Indore. An artillery officer, commenting on the ingratitude of the sepoys towards commanders who had always used them well, said: ‘I must not forget to mention that Colonel Platt was like a father to the men; and that when he had an opportunity of leaving them and joining a European corps last summer, the men petitioned him to stay. He had been upwards of thirty years with them, and when the mutiny took place he had so much confidence in them that he rode up to their lines before we could get out. When we found him next morning, both cheeks were blown off, his back completely riddled with balls, one through each thigh, his chin smashed into his mouth, and three sabre-cuts between the cheekbone and temple; also a cut across the shoulder and the back of the neck.’ The following few words are from the letters of a lady who was among those that escaped death by flight from Indore: ‘I have already given you an account of our three days and three nights of wandering, with little rest and not much food, no clothes to change, burning sun, and deluges of rain; but —— and I, perhaps, could bear these things better than others, and suffered less. When we heard the poor famishing children screaming for food, we could but thank God that ours were not with us, but safe in England. We found kind friends here, and I am in Mrs ——‘s clothes; everything we had being gone. The destructive wretches, after we left Indore, commenced doing all the damage they could—cutting up carpets with their tulwars, smashing chandeliers, marble tables, slabs, chairs, &c.; they even cut out the cloth and lining of our carriages, hacking up the woodwork. The Residency is uninhabitable, and almost all have lost everything. I might have saved a few things in the hour and a half that elapsed between the outbreak and our retreat; but I had so relied on some of our defenders, and felt so secure of holding on, that flight never for a moment occurred to me.’
Note.
The British at the Military Stations.—The reader will have gathered, from the details given in various chapters, that the stations at which the military servants of the Company resided, in the Mofussil or country districts, bore a remarkable relation to the Indian towns and cities. They were in most cases separated from the towns by distances varying from one mile to ten, and formed small towns in themselves. Sometimes the civil officers had their bungalows and cutcheries near these military cantonments; while in other instances they were in or near the city to which the cantonment was a sort of appendage. Such, with more or less variety of detail, was the case at Patna (Dinapoor), Benares (Chunar), Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, Furruckabad (Futteghur), Agra, Delhi, Gwalior, Lahore (Meean Meer), Nagpoor (Kamptee), Indore (Mhow), Hyderabad (Secunderabad), Moorshedabad (Berhampore), Saugor, &c. The marked separation between the native and the British portions of the military stations has been described in a very animated way, by an able and distinguished correspondent of the Times, one of whose letters contains the following paragraph:
‘For six miles along the banks of the Ganges extend the ruins of the English station of Cawnpore. You observe how distinct they are from the city. The palace of the Victoria Regia at Chatsworth is not more unlike the dirty ditch in which lives the humble duck-weed—Belgravia is not more dissimilar to Spitalfields—than is the English quarter of an Indian station to the city to which it is attached. The one is generally several miles away from the other. There is no common street, no link to connect the one with the others; and the one knows nothing of the other. Here are broad roads, lined on each side with trees and walls, or with park-like grounds, inside which you can catch glimpses of gaily-painted one-storied villas, of brick, covered with cement, decorated with Corinthian colonnades, porticoes, and broad verandahs—each in its own wide park, with gardens in front, orchards, and out-offices. There are narrow, tortuous, unpaved lanes, hemmed in by tottering, haggard, miserable houses, close and high, and packed as close as they can stand (and only for that they would fall), swarming with a hungry-eyed population. The mosque and the Hindoo temple are near each other, but they both shun the church, just as the station avoids the city.... In the station there are hotels, ball-rooms, magazines, shops, where all the habits and customs of Europe, sometimes improved and refined by the influence of the East, are to be found; and when the cool of the evening sets in, out stream the carriages and horses and buggies, for the fashionable drive past the long line of detached villas within their neat enclosures, surrounded by shadowing groves and rich gardens. They pass the lines or barracks of the native infantry—a race of whom they know almost less than they do of the people of the town; and they are satisfied with the respect of action, with the sudden uprising, the stiff attitude of attention, the cold salute, regardless of the insolence and dislike of the eye; they chat and laugh, marry and are given in marriage, have their horse-races, their balls, their card-parties, their dinners, their plate, their tradesmen’s bills, their debts; in fact, their everything that English society has, and thus they lived till the deluge came upon them. We all know how nobly they stemmed its force, what heroic struggles they made against its fury. But what a surprise when it burst in upon them! What a blow to all their traditions! What a rebuke to their blind confidence! There is at the moment I write these lines a slight explosion close at hand, followed by the ascent of some dark columns of earth and bricks into the air. We are blowing up the Assembly-rooms of Cawnpore in order to clear the ground in front of the guns of our intrenchment, and billiard-rooms and ball-rooms are flying up in fragments to the skies. Is not that a strange end for all Cawnpore society to come to? Is it not a curious commentary on our rule, and on our position in India?’
-----
Footnote 67:
Chaps. ix., x., xi.: pp. 147-191.
Footnote 68:
‘On the morning of the 18th they were not a mile off, so at noon we marched through the city to meet them. Our force consisted of 160 sepoys and 100 irregular cavalry or sowars, one six-pounder, and eight men to work it. This gun was an old one that had been put up to fire every day at noon. I rigged it out with a new carriage, made shot and grape, and got it all in order. With my gun I kept the fellows in front in check; but there were too many of them. There were from 2500 to 3000 fighting-men, armed with matchlocks and swords, and many thousands who had come to plunder. They outflanked us on both sides, and the balls came in pretty fast. Men and horses were killed by my side, but, thank God, I escaped unhurt! We retired through the city to our intrenchments, followed by the enemy. They made several attacks, coming up every time within a hundred yards; but they could not stand the grape. At five P.M. they made their last attempt; but a lucky shot I made with the gun sent them to the right-about. They lost heart, and were seen no more. We killed from 150 to 200 of them, our own loss being 18 killed and wounded, and eight horses. All their wounded and a lot of others were cut up during their retreat by the rascally villagers, who would have done the same to us had the day gone against us. Our victory was complete. Not a house in Azimghur was plundered, and the whole of the rebels have since dispersed. Please God, as soon as I hear of Lucknow being relieved, I’ll be after them again. They have paid me the compliment of offering five hundred rupees for my head.’
Footnote 69:
‘In the evening there was a fearful though causeless panic at Rajghat, where the intrenchment is being made. The cry arose: “The enemy are coming.” The workmen, 3000 in number, rushed down the hill as for their lives. Prisoners who were at work tried to make their escape, and were with difficulty recovered. Gentlemen ran for their rifles; the soldiers got under arms; the gunners rushed to their guns; and altogether, there was indescribable confusion and terror. All this was the result of a succession of peals of thunder, which were mistaken for the firing of artillery!’
Footnote 70:
XI. , pp. 177-181
Footnote 71:
Men. Women. Boys. Girls. Total. Europeans, 1065 289 344 291 1989 East Indians, 443 331 429 339 1542 Native Christians, 267 177 205 209 858 Hindoos, 942 49 162 4 1157 Mohammedans, 244 10 42 3 299 ———— ——— ———— ——— ———— 2961 856 1182 846 5845
Footnote 72:
3d Europeans, 154 officers and men. Artillery, 61 officers and men. Militia, 22 officers and men. Jât matchlockmen, 70 officers and men. Two 9-pounders; one 24-pounder howitzer.
Footnote 73:
XII. , pp. 193-205
Footnote 74:
XI. , pp. 176-190
Footnote 75:
‘We were still looking at the scene and speculating upon the tenants of the tombs, when an old Mussulman came near us with a salam; he accosted us, and I asked him in whose honour the tomb had been erected. His reply struck me at the time as rather remarkable. “That,” said he, pointing to the largest, “is the tomb of the Nawab Mustapha; he reigned about 100 years ago: and that,” pointing to a smaller mausoleum near it, “is the tomb of his dewan, and it was he who counselled the nawab thus: ‘Beware of the French, for they are soldiers, and will attack and dispossess you of your country; but cherish the Englishman, for he is a merchant, and will enrich it.’ The nawab listened to that advice, and see here!” The old man was perfectly civil and respectful in his manner, but his tone was sad: it spoke the language of disappointment and hostility, if hostility were possible. In this case the man referred to our late assumption of the Carnatic, upon the death of the last nawab, who died without issue. As a general rule, never was a conquered country so mildly governed as India has been under our rule; but you can scarcely expect that the rulers we dispossessed, even though like ourselves they be foreigners, and only held the country by virtue of conquest, will cede us the precedence without a murmur.’
Footnote 76:
‘MY LORD—We, the undersigned inhabitants of Bombay, have observed with sincere regret the late lamentable spread of mutiny and disaffection among the Bengal native soldiery, and we have read with feelings of horror and indignation the accounts of the cowardly and savage atrocities perpetrated by the ruthless mutineers on such unfortunate Europeans as fell into their hands.
‘While those who have ever received at the hands of government such unvarying kindness and consideration have proved untrue to their salt and false to their colours, it has afforded us much pleasure to observe the unquestionable proof of attachment manifested by the native princes, zemindars, and people of Upper India in at once and unsolicited rallying around government and expressing their abhorrence of the dastardly and ungrateful conduct of the insurgent soldiery. Equally demanding admiration are the stanchness and fidelity displayed by the men of the Bombay and Madras armies.
‘That we have not earlier hastened to assure your lordship of our unchangeable loyalty, and to place our services at the disposal of government, has arisen from the entire absence in our minds of any apprehension of disaffection or outbreak on this side of India.
‘We still are without any fears for Bombay; but, lest our silence should be misunderstood, and with a view to allay the fears which false reports give rise to, we beg to place our services at the disposal of government, to be employed in any manner that your lordship may consider most conducive to the preservation of the public peace and safety.
‘We beg to remain, my lord, your most obedient and faithful servants,
‘NOWROJEE JAMSETJEE, &c., &c.’
Footnote 77: