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Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan · English · Gutenberg #51383 · 496,383 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cawnpore

Author: George Otto Trevelyan


        
Release date: March 6, 2016 [eBook #51383]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAWNPORE ***

CAWNPORE.




  CAWNPORE.


  BY
  G. O. TREVELYAN,
  AUTHOR OF "THE COMPETITION WALLAH."


  _THIRD EDITION._


  London and Cambridge:
  MACMILLAN AND CO.
  1866.

  _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved._




  LONDON:
  R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
  BREAD STREET HILL.




PREFACE.


The Author of this work has made it his aim to preserve a scrupulous
fidelity to the original sources of his information. The most trivial
allusions, the slightest touches, are equally authentic with the main
outlines of the story. The authorities most frequently consulted are:

1. The Depositions of sixty-three witnesses, Natives and Half-castes,
taken under the directions of Colonel Williams, Commissioner of Police
in the North-West Provinces.

2. A Narrative of Events at Cawnpore, composed by Nanukchund, a local
lawyer.

3. Captain Thomson's Story of Cawnpore.

4. The Government Narratives of the Mutiny, drawn up for the most part
by the civil officers in charge of the several districts. The Author
returns his most hearty thanks to Sir John Lawrence and the authorities
of the Calcutta Home Office, who, at the cost of great trouble to
themselves, supplied him with the copies of these invaluable documents
reserved for the use of the Indian Government.

  8, GROSVENOR CRESCENT.




CONTENTS.


                    PAGE
  THE STATION          1
  THE OUTBREAK        58
  THE SIEGE          112
  THE TREACHERY      179
  THE MASSACRE       245




CAWNPORE.




CHAPTER I.

THE STATION.


The city of Cawnpore lies on the south bank of the Ganges, which at
that spot is about a quarter of a mile in breadth, and this too in
the dry season: for, when the rains have filled the bed, the stream
measures two thousand yards from shore to shore. And yet the river
has still a thousand miles of his stately course to run before that,
by many channels and under many names, he loses himself in the waters
of the Bay of Bengal. In old times an officer appointed to Cawnpore
thought himself fortunate if he could reach his station within three
months from the day he left Fort William. But tow-ropes and punt-poles
are now things of the past, and the traveller from Calcutta arrives at
the end of his journey in little more than thirty hours.

By the treaty of Fyzabad, in 1775, the East India Company engaged to
maintain a brigade for the defence of Oude. The revenues of a rich
and extensive tract of country were appointed for the maintenance of
this force, which was quartered at Cawnpore, the principal town of
the district. In 1801, Lord Wellesley, who loved to carry matters
with a masterful hand, closed the mortgage, and the territory lapsed
to the Company, who accepted this new charge with some diffidence.
Indeed, they were not a little uneasy at the splendid rapacity of their
high-souled servant. No one understood better than he the full meaning
of the finest lines of that poet whose graceful diction none like
himself could imitate:--

  "Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento:
  Hæ tibi erunt artes: pacisque imponere morem;
  Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos."

But that policy which suited the temper of the Senate of old Rome
was not exactly of a nature to please the Directors of a Joint Stock
Company. It was very well for statesmen and generals to look for their
reward in the pages of history. It behoved City men to keep an eye on
the fluctuations of the Share list.

Thus it happened that, ever since the beginning of the last quarter
of the eighteenth century, Cawnpore had been a first-class military
station. In the spring of 1857 it had attained an importance to
which the events of the following summer gave a fatal shock. The
recent annexation of Oude was an additional motive for keeping a
strong hold on Cawnpore: for that city commanded the bridge over
which passed the high road to Lucknow, the capital of our newly
acquired province. At that time the station was occupied by three
regiments of sepoys, the First, the Fifty-third, and the Fifty-sixth
Bengal Infantry. The Second Cavalry, and a company of artillerymen,
brought up the strength of the native force to three thousand men. Of
Europeans and persons of European extraction, there were resident at
Cawnpore more than a thousand. There were the officers attached to
the sepoy battalions; sixty men of the Eighty-fourth regiment of the
British line; seventy-eight invalids belonging to the Thirty-second
regiment, then quartered at Lucknow, and destined to pass through
the most fearful trial from which ever men emerged alive; fifteen of
the Madras Fusileers; and fifty-nine of the Company's artillerymen:
in all, some three hundred soldiers of English birth. Then there
were the covenanted civilians, the aristocracy of Indian society;
the lesser officials attached to the Post-office, the Public Works,
and the Opium Departments; the Railway people; the merchants and
shopkeepers,--Europeans some, others half-castes, or, as they would
fain be called, Eurasians. There, too, (alas!) were the wives and
little ones of the men of all these classes and grades, and in no
slender proportion; for among our countrymen in India the marriage
state is in special honour. There likewise were a great number of
half-caste children belonging to the Cawnpore school, who were soon to
buy at a very dear price the privilege of having been begotten by an
European sire.

The military quarter was entirely distinct from the native city. And
here let the English reader divest himself at once of all European
ideas, and keep clear of them, as much as in him lies, during the whole
course of this narrative. Let him put aside all preconceived notions
of a barrack,--of a yard paved with rough stones, and darkened by
buildings four storeys high, at the windows of which lounge stalwart
warriors in various stages of _déshabille_, digesting their fresh
boiled-beef by the aid of a short pipe and a languid gossip. Let him
try to form to himself a picture of a military station in Northern
India, for it was within the precincts of such a station that was
played out the most terrible tragedy of our age.

The cantonments lay along the bank of the river, over a tract extending
six miles from north-west to south-east: for, wheresoever in Hindostan
Englishmen make their homes, no regard is had to economy of space. Each
residence stands in a separate "compound," or paddock, of some three
or four acres, surrounded by an uneven, crumbling mound and ditch,
with here and there a ragged hedge of prickly pear: for all over India
fences appear to exist rather for the purpose of marking boundaries
than for any protection they afford against intruders. The house, like
all houses outside the Calcutta Ditch, consists of a single storey,
built of brick, coated with white plaster;--the whole premises, if the
owner be a bachelor or a subaltern, in a most shabby and tumble-down
condition. A flight of half a dozen steps leads up to a verandah which
runs round three sides of the building. The noticeable objects here
will probably be a native tailor, working in the attitude adopted by
tailors in all lands where men wear clothes; a wretched being, squatted
on his haunches, lazily pulling the string of a punkah that passes
through a hole in the brickwork into the Sahib's bedroom, a monotonous
occupation, which from time to time he sweetens by snatches of sleep;
a Madras valet, spreading butter on the Sahib's morning toast with the
greasy wing of a fowl; and, against the windward wall, a row of jars of
porous red clay, in which water is cooling for the Sahib's morning bath.

The principal door leads at once into the sitting-room, a spacious,
ill-kept, comfortless apartment; the most conspicuous article being a
huge, oblong frame of wood and canvass suspended across the ceiling,
and the prevailing impression an overwhelming sense of the presence
of cobwebs. The furniture, which is scattered about in most unadmired
disorder, is in the last stage of dilapidation. Every article in an
Anglo-Indian household bears witness to the fact that Englishmen
regard themselves but as sojourners in the locality where fate and the
quartermaster-general may have placed them. A large rickety table in
the centre of the room is strewn with three or four empty soda-water
bottles, a half-emptied bottle of brandy, a corkscrew, glasses,
playing-cards, chessmen, an Hindostanee dictionary, an inkstand, a
revolver, a bundle of letters, a box of cigars, the supplement of
_Bell's Life_, and a few odd volumes from the regimental book-club--of
no very seductive quality, like enough, for the colonel's lady has
kept the new novels, and the doctor, who is secretary to the club, has
impounded the biographies, so that our ensign is fain to put up with
"Aids to Faith," and the third volume of the "History of the Inductive
Sciences." Then there are eight or ten chairs, a good half of which
might well claim to be invalided on the score of wounds and long
service; a couch with broken springs; a Japanese cabinet, bought as
a bargain when the old major was sold up; and an easy cane chair of
colossal dimensions, the arms of which are prolonged and flattened,
so as to accommodate the occupant with a resting-place for his feet.
In one corner stands a couple of hog-spears, supple, tough, and duly
weighted with lead and barbed with steel of proof; a regulation
sword; a buggy-whip; a hunting-crop; a double-barrelled rifle and a
shot-gun--weapons which the owner depreciates as archaic, expressing
his intention of providing himself, during his first visit to Europe,
with a complete outfit from Purdey. On nails driven into the plaster
hang a list of the men in the company to which the young fellow is
attached; a caricature of the paymaster; a framed photograph of the
cricket eleven of the public school where he was educated; and, if he
be of a humorous turn, the last wigging, or letter of admonition and
reproof, received from the colonel of his regiment.

In such a scene, and amidst such associations, does the English
subaltern wear out the weary hours of the interminable Indian day:
smoking; dozing; playing with his terrier; longing for the evening,
or for a call from a brother-officer, with whom he may discuss the
Army List, and partake of the ever-recurring refreshment of brandy
and soda-water; lazily endeavouring to get some little insight into
the languages of the hateful East by the help of a fat, fawning
native tutor, and a stupid and indecent Oordoo work on mythology;
pondering sadly on home landscapes and home recollections, as he gazes
across the sharply-defined line of shadow thrown by the roof of the
verandah into the outdoor heat and glare; with no pleasanter object
of contemplation than the Patna sheep belonging to the Station Mutton
Club, and his own modest stud, consisting of a raw-boned Australian
horse and an old Cabul pony picketed under a group of mango-trees near
the gate of the compound.

The centre apartment is flanked on either side by a smaller chamber;
both of which are employed as bedrooms, if, for the sake of company
or economy, our young friend is keeping house with some Addiscombe
chum. Otherwise, the least desirable is set apart as a lumber-room;
though, to judge from the condition of the articles in use, it is
hard to imagine what degree of shabbiness would qualify furniture to
become lumber in Bengal. The door into the Sahib's bedroom stands open,
like every other door in British India; the multitude of servants,
and the necessity for coolness, forbidding the very idea of privacy.
There stands a bedstead of wood, worm-eaten, unplaned, unpolished;
inclosed on all sides with musquito-curtains of white gauze, the edges
carefully tucked in beneath the mattress, through which is dimly
seen the recumbent form of the Sahib, clad in a silk shirt and linen
drawers, the universal nightdress of the East. The poor boy is doing
his best to recover, during the cooler morning hours, the arrears
of the sleepless night, which he has passed in a state of feverish
irritation--panting, perspiring, tossing from side to side in desire
of a momentary relief from the tortures of Prickly Heat, the curse of
young blood; anon, sallying into the verandah to rouse the nodding
punkah-puller, more happy than his wakeful master. Little of ornament
or convenience is to be seen around, save a capacious brass basin on
an iron stand, and half a dozen trunks, of shape adapted to be slung
in pairs on the hump of a bullock. An inner door affords a view into
a bath-room, paved with rough bricks; the bath consisting of a space
surrounded by a parapet some six inches high, in which the bather
stands while his servant sluices him with cold water from a succession
of jars. It may be that on a shelf at the bed's head are treasured some
objects, trifling indeed in value, but made very dear by association;
a few school prizes and leaving-books; a few sheets of flimsy pink
paper, closely written, soiled, and frayed at every fold; one or two
portraits in morocco cases, too sacred for the photographic album and
the inspection and criticism of a stranger. There is something touching
in these repositories, for they tell that, however much the lad may
appear to be absorbed in the pursuits and pleasures of the mess-room,
the parade-ground, the snipe-marsh, and the race-course, his highest
thoughts and dearest hopes are far away in that land where he is never
again to abide, until those hopes and thoughts have long been tamed and
deadened by years and troubles.

Such are the quarters of a British subaltern. The home of a married
pair may be somewhat more comfortable, and the residence of a man in
high office considerably more magnificent; but the same characteristics
prevail everywhere. A spirit of scrupulous order, and a snug domestic
air, are not to be attained in an Indian household. At best a
semi-barbarous profusion, an untidy splendour, and the absence of
sordid cares, form the compensation for the loss of English comfort.
Still, the lady must have her drawing-room, where she can display her
wedding-presents, and the purchases which she made at the Calcutta
auctions during the cold season before last. The Commissioner must
have his sanctum, where he can wallow in papers, and write letters
of censure to his collectors, letters of explanation to the Revenue
Board, and letters of remonstrance to the local military authorities.
The epicure cannot do without a roofed passage leading from his
kitchen to his parlour; nor the sporting man without a loose box for
the mare which he has entered for the Planter's Plate at Sonepore.
Then, too, gentlemen of horticultural tastes like to devote a spare
hour to superintending the labours of their gardeners: and the soil
of Cawnpore well repays attention. Most kinds of European vegetables
can be produced with success, while peaches and melons, shaddocks and
limes, grow in native abundance: together with those fruits which an
old Qui-hye loves so dearly, but which to a fresh English palate are a
poor substitute indeed for hautboys and ribstone pippins;--the mango,
with a flavour like turpentine, and the banana, with a flavour like an
over-ripe pear; the guava, which has a taste of strawberries, and the
custard-apple, which has no perceptible taste at all.

None of those institutions which render the ordinary life of the
English officer in India somewhat less monotonous and objectless were
wanting at Cawnpore. There was a church, whose fair white tower,
rising among a group of lofty trees, for more than one dull and dusty
mile greets the eyes of the traveller on the road from Lucknow. That
church, which has stood scatheless through such strange vicissitudes,
will soon be superseded by a more imposing temple, built to commemorate
the great disaster of our race. There were meeting-houses of divers
Protestant persuasions, a Roman Catholic chapel, and a mission of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. There was a race-course,
as there is in every spot throughout the East where a handful of
our countrymen have got together; a theatre, where the ladies of
the garrison with good-natured amusement witnessed cornets and
junior magistrates attempting to represent female whims and graces;
a Freemason's lodge, where the work of initiation and instruction
went merrily on in a temperature of 100° in the shade. There was a
racket-court, and a library, and news-rooms, and billiard-rooms.
There were the assembly-rooms, where dinners were given to passing
Governors-General, and balls to high official dames, where questions
of precedence were raised, and matches made and broken. There was
a breakfast club, whither men repaired after their ride to discuss
the powers that be over their morning toast, at that meal so dear to
Britons from the Himalayas to Point de Galle, and from the Sutley
to Hong-Kong, whether, as throughout Bengal, it be termed "little
breakfast," or, as at Madras, it be known by the title of "early tea."
There was the band-stand, the very heart and centre of up-country
fashion, where the wit and beauty and gallantry of the station were
nightly wont to congregate. There was the ice-club for the manufacture
and supply of that luxury which becomes a necessity under the tropic
of Cancer;--which more favoured Calcutta obtains straight from North
American lakes, with Newfoundland codfish and Pennsylvanian apples
embedded in the crystal mass. The markets were well supplied with fish,
flesh, and fowl, at a cost that would gladden the heart of an English
housewife, though Anglo-Indians complain loudly of the rise in prices,
and grumble at being forced to pay sixpence a pound for mutton, and
three shillings for a fat turkey. In the game season, quails, wild
ducks, snipe, and black partridges were cheap and abundant; and a dish
of ortolans, a treat which in Europe is confined to Italian tourists
and Parisian millionaires, was a common adjunct to the second course at
Cawnpore dinner-tables.

The quarters of the native troops presented a very different appearance
from the English bungalows. Sepoy lines, generally speaking, consist
of long rows of huts built of mud on a framework of bamboos, and
thatched with straw. Every soldier has his own doghole, in which
he keeps an inconceivable quantity of female relations, from his
grandmother downwards. There he rules supreme: for no Sahib, be he ever
so enthusiastic on the subject of sanitation and drainage, would care
to intrude upon the mysteries of a sepoy household. At the ends of
each row stand the habitations of the native officers attached to the
company: two or three cabins round a tiny court-yard, fenced in with
a mud wall a few feet in height. The sepoy, unlike a European soldier,
never becomes wholly military in his tastes and habits. The dearest
ambition of a villager is to increase the number of huts on his little
premises, and that ambition is not to be quenched even by drill and
pipe-clay.

Each of the regiments had a bazaar peculiar to itself, crowded with
people employed in supplying the wants, and ministering to the
pleasures of the battalion which honoured them with its patronage.
Sutlers, corn-merchants, rice-merchants, sellers of cotton fabrics, of
silver ornaments, of tobacco and stupefying drugs, jugglers, thieves,
swarms of prostitutes, fakeers, and Thugs, retired from business, made
up a motley and most unruly population, which was with difficulty
kept in some show of order by the energy of Sir George Parker, the
cantonment magistrate. The united crew of these dens of iniquity and
sedition did not fall short of forty thousand in number.

The sepoys were tall men, the average height in a regiment being five
feet eight inches, and, seen from a distance, in their scarlet coats
and black trousers, they presented a sufficiently military appearance.
But, on nearer inspection, there was something in the general effect
displeasing to an eye accustomed to the men of Aldershot and Chalons.
No Oriental seems at ease in European costume,--least of all in the
English uniform so dear to the heart of the old tailor colonels. The
native soldier in full dress wore a ludicrous and almost pathetic
air of uneasiness and rigidity. His clothes hung on him as though
he were a very angular wooden frame. Whether from consciousness of
the figure which he cut in his red tunic, or from an instinctive fear
of the contamination contained in Christian cloth, the sepoy was no
sooner dismissed from parade or relieved from guard than he hastened
to doff every shred of the dress provided by Government. Clad in
the unprofessional but more congenial costume of a very scanty pair
of linen drawers, he might be seen now seated over a pile of rice
or a huge bannock, cooked for him by the women of his family; now,
performing the copious ablutions, the obligation to which constitutes
the single virtue of his national religion; now, submitting the crown
of his head to the barber for a periodical shave; now, perchance,
discussing with a circle of comrades the probability of the Emperor of
the Russians joining with Brigadier Napoleon and the King of Roum in a
scheme for destroying the power of the East India Company.

His pay was seven rupees, or fourteen shillings, a month. Small as
this sum may appear to us, it was amply sufficient to endow the sepoy
with far higher social consideration than is enjoyed by a private
soldier in European countries. The purest of pure Brahmins, his faith
forbade him from spending much money on the gratification of his
appetite. The most confirmed gourmand in the battalion could never
dream of a better dinner than some coarse fish from a neighbouring
tank, flavoured by a handful of spices ground between two fragments of
a gravestone abstracted from the last English cemetery on the line
of march. Such luxuries as these could be procured at a rate that
left even the private soldier a large margin whence to provide for
any other calls that might be made upon his purse. He accordingly was
regarded as a very considerable personage by the native populace. A
peasant-proprietor or small shopkeeper thought it no small honour to
receive an offer of marriage for his daughter from a gentleman serving
in the ranks of the Company's army: and the sepoy was not slow to make
use of his matrimonial advantages. A column of native troops on the
march was accompanied from station to station by an endless string of
small carts, each containing one or two veiled ladies, presumably young
and pretty; one or two without veils, very indubitably old and ugly;
together with a swarm of dusky brats with enormous stomachs, stark
naked, with the almost nominal exception of a piece of tape fastened
round the loins.

In spite of his excellent pay, the native soldier was almost invariably
deep in debt. A strong sense of family ties, an extreme generosity
towards poor connexions, is a marked trait in the Hindoo character,
amiable indeed, but not encouraging to the student of Social Science.
Whenever an Indian official steps into an income, relations of every
degree flock from all parts of the continent to prey upon his facile
affection: and the prospect of sharing the corner of a sepoy's hut
and the parings of his pay proved sufficiently attractive to bring
into cantonments herds of country cousins from Rohilcund and Shahabad.
Neither would seven rupees a month adequately defray the occasional
extravagances enjoined by "dustoor" or custom: dustoor, the breath
of a Hindoo's nostrils, the motive of his actions, the staple of his
conversation, the tyrant of his life. It has frequently happened that
a private soldier has celebrated a marriage feast at a cost of three
hundred rupees, to obtain which he must sell himself body and soul to
one of those griping ruthless usurers who are the bugbears of Oriental
society.

At the commencement of 1857, the condition of the native army was
unsatisfactory in the highest degree. An impartial observer could not
fail at every turn to note symptoms which proved beyond the possibility
of a doubt that a bad spirit was abroad. But, unfortunately, those
who had the best opportunity for observing these symptoms were not
impartial. The officers of the old Bengal army regarded their soldiers
with a fond credulity that was above suspicion and deaf to evidence:
and no wonder: for on the fidelity of that army was staked all that
they held most dear--professional reputation, social standing, the
means of life, and, finally, life itself. It was in deference to their
pardonable but most fatal prejudices that on this ominous subject
silence was enforced during the years which preceded the outbreak.
It was to please their pride of class that the tongues of more
discerning men were tied, and their pens blunted. It was in vain that
General Jacob, the stout Lord Warden of the Scinde Marches, wrote
and expostulated with all his native energy and fire. Threatened and
frowned on by his employers, sneered at by his fellow officers as an
agitator and a busybody, he was at length brought to acknowledge that
the tone of the Bengal army was a matter on which a wise man did well
to hold his peace. That great commander, whose excellent military
judgment, matured in European camps, revolted at a state of things so
fraught with peril and scandal, learned too late that not even the
audacity of a Napier, not even the glory of Meeanee, could protect
him from the consequences of having presumed to call in question the
faith of the sepoy. As the only apparent effect of his admonitions the
turbulent and warlike province of Oude was annexed to our territory,
and the ranks of our army were swelled by the addition of thousands of
disaffected native mercenaries.

That discipline was lax, that insubordination was afoot, had long been
known by many who dared not speak out the truth. As far back as the
year 1845 there occurred a case in which a regiment broke into open
mutiny, and pelted its officers through cantonments with the material
employed in road-mending, a customary missile in Bengalee riots. A
party of native infantry on a night march presented an appearance,
absurd indeed, but to a thoughtful spectator not without serious
significance. The men straggled along, carrying in their hands some
beloved pipe, their most treasured possession, while their muskets were
carelessly flung into the bullock-carts, in which not a few sepoys were
snoring comfortably amidst the baggage. Even those on foot dozed as
they walked, with that unaccountable capacity, common to all Hindoos,
of going to sleep under the most adverse circumstances; the collar of
their great-coat turned up and kept in its place by a strip of calico;
their ears protected by folds of cloth passed underneath the chin and
fastened over the top of the head, with a regimental forage-cap perched
on the summit of this unsightly and unmartial head-gear. In some corps
men had so little respect for military rule and custom as to strip
off their uniforms even when on guard. There were those who in great
part attributed these irregularities to the abolition of corporal
punishment effected by Lord William Bentinck, that wise and true friend
of the native population of India. It is to be hoped, for the cause of
humanity and enlightenment, that men who so think are mistaken in their
opinion. It cannot, however, be denied that, whatever be the reason,
there was truth in the words spoken to a civilian by an old pensioned
native officer:--"Ah Sahib!" said the veteran, "The army has ceased to
fear."

At the siege of Mooltan, where native troops from all parts of India
were collected into one army, the vile temper of the Bengal sepoys and
the extraordinary indulgence displayed towards them by their officers
became painfully apparent. These insolent high-caste mercenaries
positively refused to labour in the trenches, and endeavoured to
induce or force the modest and trusty Bombay soldiers to follow their
example. On one occasion a mob of these rascals, being unable to
persuade a fatigue-party of Bombay men to strike work, proceeded to
revile and at length to stone their worthier comrades. A captain in a
rifle regiment marked the ringleaders, but the Bengal officers flatly
declined to take any steps in the matter, and the story was hushed
up in order that their feelings might be spared. When the Sixty-sixth
Native infantry mutinied, their chiefs endeavoured to palliate the
guilt of the regiment; but Sir Charles Napier refused to see with
any eyes save his own, and promptly disbanded the corps, which was
replaced by an excellent levy of the valiant Highlanders of Nepaul.
Sir Charles expressed great displeasure at the report sent in by the
commanding officer of the regiment, and especially at a sentence
which characterised what was in fact a shout of defiance as "a murmur
of discontent." To the very last, at a time when mutiny and murder
were rife from Peshawur to Dacca, each particular colonel was firmly
impressed with the idea that his battalion would be the Abdiel of the
army, faithful only to its oath and salt, to the recollections of
bounty-money and the hopes of pension. "Pity," writes an officer of the
Sixty-fifth regiment, "that Europeans abusing a corps cannot be strung
up." On the twenty-second of May a letter appeared in the _Englishman_
newspaper from Colonel Simpson, who commanded the Sixth Bengal Infantry
at the all-important station of Allahabad. He was very indignant at
the suspicions which had been expressed concerning the intentions of
the men under his charge, who, according to him, "evince the utmost
loyalty. So far from being mistrusted, they are our main protection."
Not many days after he was glad to escape into the fort with a ball
through his arm, while his officers were being butchered by the men
on whom he had placed so unbounded a reliance. The "staunchness" of
the sepoys was at that time so common a topic with their chiefs that
the expression became a byword among Calcutta people; for at whatever
station the colonel most loudly, pertinaciously, and angrily declared
his regiment to be "staunch," it was to that quarter that men looked
for the next tidings of massacre and outrage. It was not till he saw
his own house in flames, and the rupees from the Government treasury
scattered broad-cast over the parade-ground:--it was not till he looked
down the barrels of sepoy muskets, and heard sepoy bullets whizzing
round his ears, that an old Bengal officer could begin to believe that
his men were not as staunch as they should be; and yet, as will be
seen in the course of this narrative, there might exist a degree of
confidence and attachment which was proof even against that ordeal.

Respect for the obligations of blood-relationship is so strong in
the Hindoo mind, that jobbery and nepotism flourish in Oriental
society to an extent which would seem inconceivably audacious to the
colder imagination of a western public servant. The system of family
patronage runs through all ranks and classes. The Indian judge loves to
surround himself with kindred clerks of the court and consanguineous
ushers. The Indian superintendant of police prefers to have about him
inspectors and sergeants bound to his interest by nearer ties than
those of official dependence. The head bearer fills his master's house
with young barbarians from his native village; and, in like manner,
the veteran sepoys took measures to keep the regiment supplied with
recruits from the neighbourhood in which they themselves had been
born and bred. No strapping young Tewarry, or Pandy, who had a mind to
shoulder a Company's musket and touch the Company's rupees, had long
to wait for a place in the section of which the sergeant was his uncle
and the corporal his brother-in-law. On the other hand, a stranger was
soon driven from the regiment by that untiring and organized social
oppression, in which, if we are to believe the daily press, military
men of all nations and grades are such admirable adepts. And so it came
to pass in the course of time that the company partook of the nature of
a family, and the battalion of the nature of a clan. The consequence
was that there existed a sympathy and freemasonry throughout the ranks
of quite another tendency from that tone of regimental patriotism
and martial brotherhood, known in European armies by the title
of "_esprit-de-corps_." Such a state of things afforded peculiar
facilities for conspiring. A disaffected body of sepoys possessed the
power of a host, and the discretion of a clique. The most extensive and
perilous designs could be matured in perfect secrecy, and carried into
effect by the weight of a vast and unanimous multitude.

The real motive of the mutiny was the ambition of the soldiery.
Spoilt, flattered, and idle, in the insolence of its presumed strength
that pampered army thought nothing too good for itself, and nothing
too formidable. High-caste Brahmins all, proud as Lucifer, they
deemed that to them of right belonged the treasures and the empire
of India. Hampered with debt, they looked for the day of a general
spoliation. Chafing under restraint, they panted to indulge themselves
in unbridled rapine and licence. They were bent upon the foundation of
a gigantic military despotism. They looked forward to the time when
Soubahdars and Jemmadars should be Maharajas and Nawabs; when the taxes
should be collected by sepoy receivers-general, and paid into sepoy
treasuries; when every private should have his zenana full of the
loveliest daughters of Lahore and Rohilcund; when great landholders
from Bundelcund and Orissa should come with cases of diamonds to beg
a favourable decision from Mungul Pandy; when great merchants from
Liverpool and Marseilles should come with bags of sovereigns to ask
leave of Peer Bux to establish a factory at Mutlah or Chandernagore.
They evinced an equal contempt for all the other classes of the
inhabitants of India. They despised the excellent armies of Bombay and
Madras, and their insolence was requited with bitter aversion. They
looked down on the Ghoorkas as savages, and presumed to regard the
heroes of Chillianwallah and Ferozeshah as a conquered race; as if,
forsooth, it was sepoy prowess which, after more than one series of
fierce and dubious battles, had at length prevailed over the brave and
haughty warriors of the Punjaub. And at length, in the plenitude of
their pride and folly, they began to call in question the efficacy of
the English name.

We had, indeed, been negligent. We had been improvident even unto
madness. Some twenty thousand European troops were scattered over the
continent of India; for the security of which seventy thousand are now
held to be barely sufficient. In the May of 1857, from Meerut in the
North-west, to Dinapore in the South-east, two weak British regiments
only were to be found. In these days, a battalion of English infantry
may be placed at any important city in our dominions within the
twenty-four hours. Then, all the field-batteries throughout the entire
region of Oude, with a single exception, were manned by native gunners
and drivers. Now, in every station on the plains, the artillerymen,
the trained workmen of warfare, without whom in modern times an armed
force is helpless, are one and all our own countrymen. Then, our only
communication was along roads which the first rains turned into strips
of bog, and up rivers treacherous with crossing currents and shifting
sandbanks. Now, through the heart of every province, there run, or
soon will run, those lines of rail and lines of wire, which defy alike
season and distance.

The natives of India possess a sharp insight into matters that come
within the limits of their own sphere, but are strangely ignorant
of all that passes beyond those limits. The sepoy ringleaders knew
to a man the strength, or rather the weakness, of European force
in the North of India. But, incredible as it may appear, they were
firmly impressed with the idea that they saw with their eyes the
whole extent of our resources. Public opinion in Hindostan placed the
population of the British Isles at something over a hundred thousand
souls. This error was so universal that a native who did not share in
the hallucination was sure to be a man of superior discernment and
rare strength of mind. Hyder Ali and Runjeet Singh, the Hannibal and
the Mithridates of India, had often in their mouths the same phrase
concerning the power of the Company. They feared, they would say, not
what they saw, but what they did not see. Jung Bahadur, the far-famed
Mayor of the Palace of Nepaul, when the first dull rumour of the coming
crisis began to be bruited, paid a visit to England on purpose to learn
for himself what the state of the case really was; and returned firmly
resolved not to take part against a power which could raise at a pinch
hundreds of millions of money, and hundreds of thousands of men. On
one occasion during the troubles, a party of sepoys attacked some guns
worked by Sikh artillerymen, only to be beaten off with heavy loss. The
officer in charge of the battery was much amused at hearing one of the
men say to his comrades: "If those fools of pandies had ever been at
Battses Hotel, Vere Street, Oxford Street, they would not have come on
so boldly." On inquiry, it appeared that this judicious Punjaubee had
gone to London in the service of some Anglo-Indian; where, as he stood
at the mouth of Vere Street, he might see passing to and from Hyde
Park in a single day as many Sahibs as would stock two such towns as
Loodianah or Umritsur.

The conviction that all our available male population was already in
India began to be shaken as, regiment after regiment, brigade upon
brigade, angry fighting men of Saxon race came pouring up from Calcutta
in a continuous stream, by road, by rail, and by river. And yet that
conviction lingered long. When the magnificent array collected for the
final siege of Lucknow passed through Cawnpore, our Sikh allies would
have it that Sir Colin, like the stage manager at Astley's theatre,
marched his men in at one end of the town and out at the other, and
then brought them back outside the walls to repeat the same manoeuvre.
When the mutineers first caught sight of the Highland costume, they
cried with joy that the men of England had been exhausted, and that
the Company had been reduced to call out the women. They soon had
reason to repent their mistake, and thenceforward adopted a theory
more consistent with the fact, for they held that the petticoats were
designed to remind their wearers that they had been sent to India to
exact vengeance for the murder of the English ladies.

The insolence and greed of the soldiers, their impatience of
discipline, and their lust of power, were the effective causes of the
outbreak. But the proximate cause was the fancied insult which had been
offered to their national religion. Upon this most vexed question, a
distinguished civil servant, who held high office in Calcutta during
those eventful months, is wont to say that he could never trust the
judgment of a man who maintains that the greased cartridges had little
to do with the mutiny. There are a class of our countrymen who delight
in stigmatizing the natives of India as hypocrites and infidels. These
men affect to disbelieve in the sincerity of the religious professions
of any Mussulman who cannot resist the temptation of iced champagne, or
of any Hindoo who indulges himself in a quiet slice of the joint which
has appeared at his master's table. As if the men who are foremost to
avenge the wrongs of their creed and to thrust it down the throats of
their neighbours were always the most scrupulous in their obedience
to its precepts! As if History was not full of covetous Fathers of
the Church and polygamous Defenders of the Faith! Jehu was zealous to
destroy the priests of the House of Baal, and to burn his images with
fire: howbeit he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of
Nebat, who made Israel to sin. Archbishop Laud was emphatically a good
Churchman: and yet he too often forgot the blessing pronounced upon the
merciful by the Divine founder of his Church, and the curse uttered
against those who lade men with burdens grievous to be borne.

The mind of the sepoy reeked with religious prejudice. He had adopted
his profession in accordance with the dictates of his superstition.
He belonged to a sacred order, and his life was one long ceremony.
He could not prepare his simple food without clearing for himself a
separate plot of ground secure from the intrusion of others. Should a
stranger step into this magic ring, the food which he had cooked was
thrown untasted away. When some Bengal regiments were serving in China,
it occasionally happened that an unlucky native of the country, intent
on theft or barter, set his profane foot within the hallowed circle,
and was immediately saluted with a volley of threats and missiles from
the outraged soldier whose meal he had spoiled. The bewildered wretch
would take to flight across the camping-ground, plunging through the
kitchens, defiling dinners by the score, and, in whatever direction he
turned, rousing about his ears a swarm of indignant hungry Brahmins.
Even if the sepoy was inclined to become lax in his observances,
there were not wanting ghostly advisers to check his latitudinarian
tendencies. A battalion on march was usually preceded by two or three
fakeers, the bloated, filthy, sensual wandering friars of the East;
wild-looking fellows, in orange or salmon-coloured linen, if by good
luck they deigned to wear any clothes at all; their locks of long hair
matted in strange fashion with grease and dirt; their bodies sprinkled
with ashes and daubed with coarse paint. So pernicious and irregular a
custom was not tolerated in the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras: but
in Bengal these fellows were highly regarded by the soldiers, and did
duty as unofficial regimental chaplains.

Five parts tallow, five parts stearine, and one part wax, were the
ingredients of that unsavoury composition, the memory of which will
henceforward never perish as long as England has history and India
has tradition. Captain Boxer, of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich,
was quite unable to offer any decided opinion as to the particular
description of animal from which the tallow was derived, but was
certain that the mixture was innocent of hog's lard. Not so thought the
Brahmins of the regiments stationed in the vicinity of the capital.
About the middle of January, 1857, amidst the frivolous and ill-natured
gossip which is the chief material of Calcutta journalism, there peer
out certain vague and uncomfortable paragraphs: "A rumour has been
current among the sepoys at Dumdum and Barrackpore that they are to be
baptized, and we hear that they are greatly alarmed in consequence.
It should be explained to them that the only ceremony of the kind to
which soldiers are required to submit is the baptism of fire." Again,
a letter from Barrackpore announces that "bungalows here are set fire
to every night." On the 10th of February, "a Hindu" solemnly warns
the Governor-General thus: "My Lord, this is the most critical time
ever reached in the administration of British India. Almost all the
independent native Princes and Rajahs have been so much offended at the
late Annexation policy, that they have begun to entertain deadly enmity
to the British empire in India. Moreover, as for the internal defences
of the empire, the cartridge question has created a strenuous movement
in some portions of the Hindu sepoys, and will spread it through all
their ranks over the whole country to the great insecurity of British
rule." These notices, which we now read by the light of a terrible
experience, appear side by side with satirical poems on their more
fortunate comrades by military officers who cannot get civil employ;
advertisements of a fancy fair for the advancement of native female
education; and a proposition to appoint a committee of "eligible young
civilians" to indemnify the ladies whose Europe bonnets have been
ruined by the dust on the course. Ere many months were flown, eligible
young civilians had far other matters to occupy their attention.

At length, on the 26th of February, the Nineteenth Bengal Native
Infantry, quartered at Berhampore, being directed to parade for
exercise with blank ammunition, refused to obey the command, and in the
course of the following night turned out with a great noise of drumming
and shouting, broke open the bells of arms, and committed other acts
of open mutiny. By order of the Governor-General the regiment was
disarmed, marched down to Barrackpore, a distance of something over
a hundred miles, and there disbanded by Major-General Hearsey, who
performed his trying task with energy, discretion, and courage. As
yet there had been no blood shed; but far worse was soon to come. The
Thirty-fourth Native Infantry had for some time past been ripe for
revolt. There were nearly six hundred high-caste men in the ranks, and
the corps was stationed among local associations which fostered the
most lively emotions in the minds of men in a state of high religious
excitement. In the year 1825, Barrackpore had been the scene of a
military tumult which had been repressed with timely severity. One of
the ringleaders, a Brahmin sepoy, had been hanged in the presence of
his comrades. This man was regarded as a martyr; the spot where he met
his fate, on the edge of a large tank, was still pointed out to each
new-comer; and the brass implements with which he performed his acts
of worship had been preserved in the quarter-guard as relics of the
departed saint. Unfortunately the regiment was commanded by an officer
who thus describes himself in honest and manly language: "I beg to
state that it has been my invariable plan to act on the broad line
which Scripture enforces, that is, to speak without reserve to every
person. When I therefore address natives on the subject of religion,
whether individually or collectively, it has been no question with me
whether the person or persons I addressed belonged to this or that
regiment, or whether he is a shopkeeper, merchant, or otherwise, but I
speak to all alike, as sinners in the sight of God; and I have no doubt
that I have often in this way (indeed, am quite certain,) addressed
sepoys of my own regiment, as also of other regiments at this and other
stations where I have been quartered.... As to the question whether I
have endeavoured to convert sepoys and others to Christianity, I would
humbly reply that this has been my object; and, I conceive, it is the
aim and end of every Christian who speaks the Word of God to another,
namely, that the Lord would make him the happy instrument of converting
his neighbour to God." Did not this good Colonel forget who it was who
bade us give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast our
pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn
again and rend us?

On the 29th of March, a private of the Thirty-fourth, Mungul Pandy by
name, under the combined influence of religious frenzy and intoxicating
drugs, took into his head to swagger about in front of the lines,
musket in hand, bawling: "Come out, you blackguards! The Europeans
are upon us! From biting these cartridges we shall become infidels!
Get ready! Turn out, all of you!" This conduct in the course of time
brought down upon him the Adjutant and the serjeant-major, which in no
wise disconcerted Mungul Pandy. He shot the officer's horse, disabled
his bridle arm, and finally, with the assistance of some of the
boldest among his comrades, desperately wounded and drove off both the
Europeans. The Colonel next appeared on the stage. Here again it may
be best to quote his own words: "The native officer at length ordered
the guard to advance. They did so, six or seven paces, and halted.
The native officer returned to me, stating that none of the men would
go on. I felt it was useless going on any further in the matter. Some
one, a native in undress, mentioned to me that the sepoy in front was a
Brahmin, and that no one would hurt him. I considered it quite useless,
and a useless sacrifice of life, to order a European officer with the
guard to seize him, as he would, no doubt, have picked off the European
officer, without his receiving any assistance from the guard. I then
left the guard, and reported the matter to the Brigadier."

Fortunately there was at hand a man who had no scruple about the life
of at least one European officer. Before many minutes had elapsed
General Hearsey rode on to the parade-ground, and found it already
covered with an agitated mob of sepoys, amongst whom might here and
there be seen an English officer doing his best to prevent his men
from following the example of Mungul Pandy, who had by this time
reloaded his musket, and was now stalking about in the presence of his
regiment, which had got together round the quarter-guard, brandishing
his dripping sword, and shouting: "You have excited me to do this, and
now, you blackguards, you will not join me!" An officer called out to
Hearsey, "Have a care! His musket is loaded!" The General replied,
"Damn his musket!" an oath concerning which every true Englishman will
make the customary invocation to the Recording Angel.

Hearsey summoned the guard to advance, but the native officer answered
as before. The General, however, by a significant motion of his
revolver, gave the Jemmadar to understand that this time he had to
deal with a man of very different kidney from the Colonel. The guard,
accordingly, went forward; the Jemmadar in front, watched on either
side by a young Hearsey, pistol in hand. Their sire himself rode
straight at the mutineer, who, seeing that the game was up, turned the
muzzle to his own breast, touched the trigger with his toe, and fell,
severely hurt. He was secured, and conveyed to the hospital; and the
concourse dispersed quietly to their lines, after having been roundly
taken to task by the General for their cowardice and unsoldierlike
behaviour in standing by without moving a finger while their officers
were being cut to pieces.

Mungul Pandy was condemned by court-martial, and duly hanged on the
8th of April. At first there was some difficulty about finding an
executioner. Public opinion had become less squeamish before the year
was out. From this miserable fanatic was taken the name of "Pandy,"
which in Anglo-Indian slang signified mutineer. There were those who
loved to apply the horrible nickname of "white Pandies" to those wise
and good men who, amidst the general frenzy, preserved some spark
of justice and humanity; who would not lend their countenance to a
barbarous policy dictated by cruelty and craven fear; who refused to
devastate provinces and depopulate cities, to butcher the women of
Delhi and torture the shopkeepers of Allahabad, to confound innocent
and guilty in one vast proscription and one universal massacre: just
as, at the end of the last century, there were those who stigmatized as
"Jacobins" the English statesmen who could not be reviled or shocked
out of the belief that the king and the nobility of France had been
less sinned against than sinning; and that, in any case, it was not our
business to avenge the wrongs of alien dukes and marquisses upon the
senators who had abolished their privileges, the peasants who had shot
their game, and the board which was busily engaged in dividing their
provinces into departments.

Seven companies of the Thirty-fourth regiment were disbanded, after all
pecuniary claims had been discharged. The closing effect was dramatic
enough. General Hearsey made the men a spirited harangue, reminding
them of their misdeeds, and giving some hints as to their future
conduct which they would have done well to have laid to heart. Then
came the parting; not without tears, it is said, on both sides. The
sepoys stripped off their accoutrements, and were ferried across the
river, bag and baggage, in Government steamers, and there sent about
their business. In order to disprove the report that the Company had
designs against their religion, they were informed that every facility
would be afforded them for visiting Hindoo shrines of repute before
they bent their steps towards their villages in Oude and Bahar.

Unfortunately for themselves, the men of the two regiments broken up
at Barrackpore were bent upon doing a far less innocent service to
the cause of their faith than that of feeing, out of the arrears of
their pay, the priests of Juggernauth and Gyah. The most active and
determined among their number deliberately proceeded to spread over
the whole continent of India the tidings of the late occurrences, told
with more than Oriental exaggeration, and received with more than
Oriental credulity. No society of rich and civilized Christians, who
ever undertook to preach the gospel of peace and good-will, can have
employed a more perfect system of organization than was adopted by
these rascals, whose mission it was to preach the gospel of sedition
and slaughter. By twos and threes, in various disguises, and on divers
pretexts, they found their way to every native regiment in the three
Presidencies. Wherever they went they related how the Queen of England
had commanded that the Hindoos and Mussulmans of India should be made
Christians, come what might; how the Governor-General, the Great Lord
Sahib, had remonstrated with her, saying that he must first slay three
hundred thousand holy and learned men of both religions; how the Queen
had rejoined, "Let it then be done"; how the Great Lord Sahib had
resolved to begin with the army, and had ordered the troops to bite
cartridges smeared with the fat of cow and pig; how the sepoys at
Barrackpore had bravely resisted the tyrannous and accursed mandate;
how some had testified to the death, and some had suffered bonds and
scourging, and all had been deprived of their rank and calling, and
robbed of the pensions which they had earned by valour and fidelity
and ancient service. Then their hearers were warned that a like fate
was in store for all; that a strenuous and united effort could alone
save their freedom and their religion; and that the hour was fast
approaching when the Brahmins of the army must rule, or be for ever
slaves and Christians. Sometimes, it was a couple of fakeers perched
on an elephant; sometimes, a party of country-people on their way
to the Ganges for their annual dip in the sacred stream; a gang of
gipsies; a string of camel-drivers; or a troop of musicians escorting
a celebrated nautch-dancer to her home in Cashmere, after a successful
season in Bengal. However it might be, it invariably happened that,
a few hours after the strangers had entered the station, the bazaar
and the cantonments were in a ferment of gossip and conjecture; the
sepoys at once grew sulky and idle; the Mahomedans of the town became
insolent, and the Hindoos pert. The very domestic servants appeared
to share the contagion; the cooks got drunk, and the grooms stupid;
the water-carrier omitted to fill the bath, and the butler to ice the
Moselle; the peon spent twice his usual number of hours in conveying
a note to the next compound but one; while the bearers delighted
to insult their mistress by smoking under her window, and coming
bareheaded into her presence, whenever the Sahib and his horsewhip were
well out of the way.

To us, who from the standing-point of complete and certain knowledge
look back upon that March and April pregnant with a great and sombre
future, it seems indeed miraculous that our countrymen then resident
in India should not have entertained a suspicion of what those months
would bring forth. It appears incredible that the officers should have
lived their ordinary lives; hunting; dining; dancing; speculating on
the probable height of the thermometer, and the possible chances of
promotion; while within a few yards of their quarters the men were
debating the programme of the coming mutiny; arranging who was to shoot
down the adjutant, and who was to fire the thatch of the colonel's
bungalow; discussing their hopes of assistance from Gwalior, Nepaul,
and St. Petersburg. Can it be believed that morning after morning our
countrymen looked down the row of dark faces and gleaming eyes, and
never dreamed that in all that array, so fair and orderly to view, any
heart beat with a loftier ambition than could be satisfied by a stripe
or an epaulette; with a deadlier malice than might be gratified by the
disappointment of some rival in the good opinion of the soubahdar? And
yet, so it was. In spite of all that was said and written concerning
the childlike docility of the affectionate sepoy, confidence and regard
did not exist between the officer and the soldier. That the case had
once been far otherwise was acknowledged on all sides; and the change
was noted by military men of the old school with regret, qualified by
a slight tincture of self-satisfaction. Young subalterns retorted that
the ancient intimacy between superior and inferior was connected with
the loose habits which disgraced Anglo-Indian society in days gone
by, when the soldier pandared to the vices of his officer, or, at any
rate, was cognisant of their existence. Those who have studied cause
and effect will be slow to accept the theory that this estrangement
between the mess-room and the lines was in any great measure due to the
increased morality of the Indian army.

The root of the evil lay in the withdrawal of officers from regimental
duty for employment on the staff and in the civil posts; a custom
so dear to all who bore the great and time-honoured names, which
had been conspicuous in the Court of Directors and at the Calcutta
Council-board as far back as the time of Barwell and Warren Hastings.
And yet, though family interest received due consideration from those
who dispensed the good things of the service, it was unfortunate for
the efficiency of the Bengal army that merit did not go without a
share in the loaves and fishes. A young man on the threshold of his
profession was recommended by his father, and entreated by his sisters,
skilled like all Anglo-Indian ladies in the inscrutable mysteries of
official success, to get away from his regiment as early as possible.
The teaching of his relations was enforced by the golden words which
dropped from the lips of the Chairman of the Honourable Court, when,
on the prize-day at Addiscombe, the lad stood forth blushing with
modest pride, the Pollock medal in his hand, the sword of honour
under his arm, and a pile of military histories, emblazoned with the
arms of the academy, on the table before him. After his arrival on
Indian shores, the same advice was impressed upon him by his uncle the
Sudder judge, his cousin the junior secretary, and his school-chum the
probationary-sub-assistant-commissary-general.

Rich were the prizes open to the aspiring cadet:--rich, but far from
rare. There were the political agencies at the courts of Holkar
and Scindiah; at the seats of the ancient and romantic dynasties
of Rajpootana; at that European station whence, in dangerous
proximity, an English resident still watches with anxious glance
the intrigues and feuds which agitate the nest of Arab and Rohilla
cut-throats, who protect and terrify the Nizam of Hyderabad. There
were the Deputy Commissionerships of Oude and the Punjaub, whose
occupants enjoyed a salary almost equal to that of a Collector in
the more settled provinces, with a far greater share of power and
responsibility. There were the posts in the branches of administration
more exclusively military: the Departments of the Adjutant-General,
the Quarter-Master-General, the Commissary-General, and the
Judge-Advocate-General. Finally, there were the numerous irregular
corps in the Deccan and on the North-west Frontier, to each of which
were attached some three or four captains and subalterns, who fully
appreciated the increase of their pay, and the excitement afforded by
their critical and interesting duties. In short, appointments which
enabled officers to make money and reputation faster than was possible
for their less fortunate brethren who remained in the line were so
numerous that, after family claims had been satisfied, the surplus
sufficed to absorb all the most promising and pushing youngsters in the
Bengal Military service.

It was not only that this system drained the army of individual zeal
and talent. The professional spirit of the mass could not thrive
under so blighting an influence. The officers present with the corps
gradually ceased to take pride in the conscientious performance of
their regimental duties; for their employment upon those duties was
a standing proof that they were wanting in ability and high official
connexion. It was very difficult to throw much energy and enthusiasm
into such work as escorting treasure, guarding jails, inspecting the
cross-belts and listening to the grievances of sepoys, while a junior
lieutenant in the same battalion was coercing refractory Rajahs, or
scouring the border at the head of five hundred wild Pathan horsemen.
What wonder if, under these circumstances, men became sick at heart?
Disgusted at their position, they no longer made the welfare and
happiness of their soldiers an all-important object: and neglect
often deepened into aversion and contempt. The cadets, as was only
too natural, caught the prevailing tone. Young men fresh from home
are so shocked at the apparent deficiency of the Hindoo character of
manliness, honesty, and self-respect, the qualities which Englishmen
most regard, that, so to speak, their better impulses are apt to
render them careless of the rights and sentiments of the native
population. "Do I not well to be insolent?" is a question asked daily,
in a more or less logical form, by the majority of our countrymen in
India. It requires a larger stock of philosophy than generally falls
to the share of a lad of nineteen in a new red coat, with his first
month's pay in the pocket, to realize the conviction that an imperial
people, who undertake to govern others, must first govern themselves;
and that it is the height of folly and cruelty to subjugate a hundred
millions of men, and then abuse them because they are as God made them,
and not as we would fain have them.

And so it came to pass that to be sent back to head-quarters was "a
shame," regimental duty was "a bore," and the sepoys were "niggers."
That hateful word, which is now constantly on the tongue of all
Anglo-Indians except civilians and missionaries, made its first
appearance in decent society during the years which immediately
preceded the mutiny. The immorality of the term is only equalled by
the absurdity. To call the inhabitants of Hindostan "niggers," is just
as unreasonable as it would be for Austrian officials to designate the
subject populations of Venetia and Hungary by the collective title of
"serfs." In the eyes of an English planter, or railway-contractor,
there is no distinction of race or rank. Khoonds and Punjabees, Pariahs
and Coolin Brahmins, bazaar-porters and Rajahs with a rent-roll of half
a million, and a genealogy longer than that of Howards and Stanleys,
are "niggers" alike, one and all, with the prefix of that profane
epithet, which has been the Shibboleth of the Englishmen abroad since
the days of Philip de Comines. And so, in a Bengal corps,--whether
he were a grey-bearded Mahomedan soubahdar, the arbiter and exponent
of regimental custom and tradition, or the high-caste Rajpoot, or a
Sikh veteran marked with the scars of Sobraon,--every man knew well
that he was dubbed "nigger" by some slip of an ensign, who could not
tell his right hand from his left in any Oriental language. In such an
atmosphere how could mutual attachment exist, or mutual confidence?
How could there not exist dislike and disaffection; the bitterness of
injured pride, and of feelings misunderstood or heedlessly contemned?

There were usually some eight or nine officers actually doing duty
with a battalion. A colonel and doctor, three or four captains and
lieutenants, and three or four ensigns, formed what was in those days
considered to be a very respectable complement. The other members
of the mess were far away from head-quarters, inditing minutes at
Calcutta, deciding suits in some distant non-regulation province, or
tracking the course of the Nile through the deserts of Nubia. Such,
however, was not universally the case. Here and there might be found
a corps where the regimental tone (that unwritten and impalpable law,
not passed in words, nor enforced by overt penalties, but obeyed in
silence and without question), had ordained that staff employment was
not a legitimate object of ambition. The officers plumed themselves
upon keeping all together, and rising one with another in the
ordinary course of promotion. They shot tigers, and speared hogs,
and played whist and billiards, and meanwhile looked well after
their companies, and contrived to know something about the private
history and character of every man under their command. They voted
it unfashionable to attempt the pass examination in Hindoostanee,
success in which was an indispensable qualification for the staff: an
ordeal familiarly known as the P.H.; that pair of consonants which
are seldom far from the lips, and never out of the thoughts, of the
more aspiring subalterns of the Bengal army. And yet, averse as they
were to grammars and dictionaries, these men spoke the vernacular
languages with rare facility. But not even to such officers as these
was breathed a syllable of that fearful secret, which England would
have cheaply bought at the price of a million pounds for a single
letter. Their soldiers entertained towards them a strong and genuine
regard. It was not among the ranks which they commanded that the spirit
of sedition was born and nurtured. But in the day of wrath there was no
distinction of person. When the baneful sirocco of mutiny, called by
the imaginative Hindoo "the Devil's Wind," was abroad in the air, all
milder influences yielded before its withering blast. The consciousness
of the authority of the "Fouj ki Bheera," or "general will of the
army," was to individual men, or regiments, almost irresistible. Some
troopers in Fisher's Irregular Cavalry performed a signal act of
gallantry at Lucknow, during the early days of the outbreak, for which
they received a handsome reward. While waiting for their money in the
verandah of the commissioner's house, they fell into conversation
with certain of their fellow-villagers among his servants. "We like
our colonel," said they, "and will not allow him to be harmed; but,
if the whole army turns, we must turn too." A week elapsed, and these
men looked quietly on from their saddles, while Colonel Fisher was
shot to death by a scoundrel in the lines of the military police. Then
they threw aside all semblance of discipline; murdered the second in
command; and shouted to the adjutant, who was a general favourite,
to ride and begone, if he desired to spare them the pain of taking
his life. At one large station the men were in open mutiny, and the
officers had grouped themselves in front of the battalion, expecting
every moment the fatal volley. They agreed, however, not to abandon
hope until they had witnessed the effect produced by the presence of a
captain of old standing in the service, who was apparently loved and
trusted by the whole regiment, and especially by the grenadier company,
to which he had been attached for many years. When his approach was
announced, every eye turned towards his bungalow, which stood on the
parade-ground, close to that flank where the grenadiers were stationed.
He had not gone ten paces down the line before he fell dead, pierced by
a bullet from the ranks of his own command.

In every regiment there was a Soubahdar major, or native colonel; and
in every company a Soubahdar, who answered to a European captain,
and a Jemmadar, who answered to a European subaltern. These were
the commissioned officers, who wore swords and sashes, sat on a
court-martial, and were saluted by the rank and file. They had one
and all carried the musket, and there was no approach to friendship
or even to familiar intercourse between them and their Saxon brethren
in arms, who considered that, if they offered their soubahdar a chair
during an interview on regimental business, quite enough had been done
to mark the difference between a commissioned and a non-commissioned
sepoy. The sergeant and the corporal were represented by the havildar
and the naick; titles which make the list of killed and wounded in
Indian battles so bewildering to an English reader. Thus the Brahmin
battalion had a complete outfit of Brahmin officers; and this it was
that rendered the rebellious army so terribly efficient for evil. When
every Englishman in a corps had been murdered or scared away, the
organization none the less remained intact. The regiment was still a
military machine finished in every part, compact, flexible, and capable
as ever of a great and sustained exertion of strength and courage. This
imperfect, but, it is to be feared, tedious sketch of the composition
of our native force, as it existed before the mutiny, may well be
closed with the oracular words of Sir Charles Napier, the Cassandra of
the old Bengal army: "Your young, independent, wild cadet, will some
day find the Indian army taken out of his hands by the soubahdars. They
are steady, respectful, thoughtful, stern-looking men; very zealous and
military: the sole instructors of all our soldiers."

The native town of Cawnpore contained sixty thousand inhabitants. It
possessed no architectural beauties worthy to detain the traveller who,
from those stately landing-places whence rise, tier above tier, the
shrines and palaces of Benares, was hurrying on towards the ineffable
glories of Agra. The most remarkable feature was a spacious boulevard,
more than a hundred feet in breadth, called the Chandnee Choke, or
street of silver. This name, common to the principal avenue in all
the great cities of the north west, is a monument of the days of bad
government and a primitive commercial system. When banks were few and
robbers bold and numerous, men preferred to have some part of their
wealth about their persons and in a portable form. A minister at a
native court, however rich the harvest he might gather in during the
fitful sunshine of royal favour, thought it well to keep a handful
of diamonds and rubies in his girdle, as a provision against the day
of disgrace and flight. Now, by the help of a bill of exchange and a
single trusty agent, he may store up his gains in European stocks and
debentures far out of reach of the greediest Nizam or the neediest
Maharaja. In like manner, in old times, farmers and shopkeepers were
wont to convert their superfluous rupees into ornaments of fantastic
design for themselves, their wives, and their children. The unceasing
flow of silver towards the east, which affords to political economists
a constant sensation of pleasing bewilderment, is attributed in part to
the fact that the Indian peasant still continues to invest his earnings
on the wrists and ankles, the ears and noses of his family. Cawnpore
was noted for the excellence and cheapness of all articles made of
leather,--saddlery, boots and shoes, bottle-covers, helmets, and
cheeroot-cases. The manufacture was introduced by a colony of Chinese,
the frugal and industrious Lombards of India, who settled in the Bazaar
many years ago. A subaltern could buy a set of harness for his buggy at
something under three pounds, and thoroughly equip his hack for half
that sum: and, if he was not very particular about shape and colour, he
might pick up a serviceable country-bred horse for a hundred rupee note.

The city had an evil reputation. Situated on the frontier of two
distinct jurisdictions, it swarmed with rascals from Oude, on their
way to seek obscurity in British territory, and rascals from our
north-west provinces, on their way to seek impunity in the dominions
of the Nawab. Oonao, the half-way house on the road which led from
Cawnpore to Lucknow, gave a name to a class of murders of peculiar
atrocity. On and about that highway were constantly found the dead
bodies of travellers: sepoys, for the most part, returning to their
villages with their savings and the voucher for their pension. In most
cases a rope was drawn tightly round the neck: but the surgeons who
conducted the inquests gradually came to be of opinion that the victims
had been poisoned, or, at any rate, stupefied, by being induced to
smoke tobacco mixed with a noxious drug. The police exerted themselves
in vain to obtain a clue to the mystery. Whenever a fresh officer of
note was appointed to the district, the murderers made a point of
presenting him with a "nuzzur," or "offering," in the shape of a larger
than usual batch of corpses. The difficulty of detection was increased
by an odious custom well known to all Anglo-Indian magistrates, which
here flourished with extraordinary vigour. A malicious Hindoo will
deliberately mangle the body of a person who has died from a natural
cause, and fling it on the ground of some neighbour to whom the scamp
may happen to bear a grudge. The unfortunate recipient finds himself
involved in the consequences dreaded by the poor people in the Arabian
Nights, when the hunchback was choked by a fishbone beneath their
hospitable roof.

Bajee Rao, the Peishwa of Poonah, was the last monarch of one of
those great Mahratta dynasties which long shared the sovereignty of
the Central Highlands and the plunder of all Hindostan. So near a
neighbour could not fail to be guilty of the amount of "treachery,"
"faithlessness," and "bad internal government," necessary to justify
the annexation of his dominions. Urged by that painful necessity of
taking what belongs to others, which is the inevitable result of all
our dealings with Oriental powers, we dethroned Bajee Rao, confiscated
his territories, and assigned him a residence at Bithoor, a small town
twelve miles up the river from Cawnpore. Here he lived until his death
in princely state, inasmuch as the Company always behaved with great
generosity towards the princes whom it had plundered, after the manner
of those open-handed thieves of fiction who fling back a couple of
broad pieces to the traveller whom they have eased of his purse and
watch. Bithoor was pleasantly situated upon the banks of the sacred
stream, and was peculiarly suited to be the Saint Juste in which a
retired Brahmin ruler might be content to end his days; for the spot
was held in singular favour by Brahma. Here, after the creation had
been accomplished, the deity had sacrificed a hecatomb, in token that
his great work was good. The pin which fastened the divine sandal was
picked up in after days, and inserted in the steps of the principal
landing-place, where it may still be seen by the incredulous. At the
full moon in November, prodigious crowds of pilgrims assemble from all
parts of India to celebrate the present god with frankincense, and
flowers, and barbarous music, and drunken frenzy. With his traditions
and his greyhounds, his annuity of eighty thousand pounds, and his
host of retainers, Bajee Rao led a splendid and not unhappy existence.
But the old Mahratta had one sore trial. He had no son to inherit his
possessions, perpetuate his name, and apply the torch to his funeral
pyre: for the last office, so the inflexible law of his religion
ordained, might be performed by none other than a filial hand. In
this strait he had recourse to adoption, a ceremony which, by Hindoo
law, entitles the favoured person to all the rights and privileges
of an heir born of the body. His choice fell upon an individual who,
according to some, was the son of a Poonah corn-merchant, while others
say that he was born in great poverty at a miserable village in the
vicinity of Bombay. The name of this man was Seereek Dhoondoo Punth:
but the execration of mankind has found his cluster of titles too long
for use, and prefers the more familiar appellation of "the Nana."

Bajee Rao died in 1851, and the heir forthwith put in a demand for the
continuance of the pension which the Company had granted to his adopted
father. The claim was disallowed, and the Nana, who at length began
to despair of prevailing upon the Calcutta authorities, determined
to go to the fountain-head, and accordingly despatched an agent to
London. For this purpose he selected his confidential man of business,
Azimoolah Khan, a clever adventurer, who began life as kitmutgar, or
footman, in an Anglo-Indian family. In spite of his disadvantages,
he acquired a thorough acquaintance with the English and French
languages. He subsequently became a pupil, and thence a teacher, in
the Government School at Cawnpore; in which position he attracted the
notice of the Nana. Azimoolah arrived in town during the height of the
season of 1854, and was welcomed with open arms by that portion of
society which makes no inquiries into the antecedents of an aspirant
to its favour, provided he be not a fellow-countryman or Christian.
According to the creed of this class, every Hindoo was necessarily a
prince, just as every Maronite is a martyr, and every Pole a patriot.
Azimoolah speedily became a lion, and obtained more than even a lion's
share of the sweetest of all flattery. The ladies voted him charming.
Handsome and witty, endowed with plenty of assurance and an apparent
abundance of diamonds and Cashmere shawls, the ex-kitmutgar seemed as
fine a gentleman as the prime minister of Nepaul, or the Maharaja of
the Punjaub. On the first day of the great vengeance, when Havelock's
forlorn hope came to Bithoor, grim and eager, straight from the brink
of the fatal well, our soldiers discovered amongst the possessions of
this scoundrel letters from more than one titled lady couched in terms
of the most courteous friendship. An indiscretion for which a sneer
would be too severe a punishment, at such a moment excited bitter and
painful emotion.

Great as were the successes which the agent of the Nana gained on his
own account in Mayfair, he was able to effect very little for his
master in Leadenhall Street and Westminster. In the reports which he
transmitted to Bithoor he attributed his failure to the bribes which
the Board of Control and the Privy Council had eaten at the hands of
the East Indian Company; an explanation which appeared satisfactory to
the Maharaja. On his way home Azimoolah passed through Constantinople
at the time when our fortune in the Crimea was at the lowest ebb.
During the mid-gloom of that terrible winter there was much talk among
those who did not love us concerning the decadence of England and the
youthful vigour of the Russian power. Of such gossip the clever Asiatic
collected an ample budget, in order to console his baffled employer
with cheery vaticinations relating to the approaching downfall of the
British rule.

Although the Nana had failed in his attempt on the public purse, his
wealth was still conspicuous even among the colossal incomes of Indian
landholders. He had contrived to secure to himself the whole property
of the ex-Peishwa; and strange stories were told about the means by
which this end had been accomplished. The nephew of Bajee Rao started
a claim for one half of his uncle's estate, which moiety he valued at
more than three millions. The suit was dismissed, and the plaintiff
never ceased to affirm that "the palm of the judge had been greased by
the Nana:" but too much attention must not be paid to this declaration;
for, whenever a native accuses the bench of corruption, he simply
means that he has lost his case. It is certain that the Maharaja kept
in confinement against their will the widows of his predecessor; for
whose younger daughter he planned a marriage inconsistent with the
rules and traditions of the family: an act of outrageous tyranny in the
estimation of High Brahmins. He wedded the eldest sister to a husband
whom she was never allowed to see; and, when her death occurred after
no long interval, it was whispered about the neighbourhood that there
had been very foul play in every sense of the word. Those fictitious
tales of vice and atrocity, with which literary hacks of the vilest
class feed the corrupt imaginations of their readers, too often find a
parallel in the realities of a great oriental household. The doctrine
of personal rights has no existence within the walls of a zenana.
Nowhere was the mystery of iniquity deeper and darker than in the
palace of Bithoor, which was indeed a worthy nest for such a vulture.
There were rooms in that palace horribly unfit for any human eye, where
both European and native artists had done their best to gratify a
master who was willing to incur any expense for the completion of his
loathsome picture-gallery.

In the apartments open to the inspection of English visitors there
was nothing which could shock either modesty or humanity, though a
Sahib of fastidious taste might take exception to the arrangement of
the furniture and the decorations. The habits of an Oriental are so
simple, his wants so few, that the most Anglified Hindoo gentleman
can never acquire himself, and still less impart to his servants
a thorough acquaintance with our complicated domestic appliances.
There is something very droll in the sanctum occupied by the eldest
son of a rich native family; where, by a display of Western art and
civilization, "Young Bengal" excites the envy of his contemporaries,
and scandalises those among his relatives who belong to the old school.
A cast from an exquisite statuette of Thorwaldsen stands side by side
with a gilt shepherdess, or Highlander, or other specimen of that
vulgar ware which with us has long been banished from the farmhouse to
the cottage. A copy of some Roman or Florentine Madonna hangs next to
a coloured print of a ballet-dancer; while a proof signed by Holman
Hunt or Millais is flanked by "Facing a Bullfinch" and "Swishing a
Rasper" from the classical collection of Mr. Fores, of Piccadilly. Over
a sideboard of carved oak has long ceased to tick a veneered clock,
daubed with the representation of the Exchange at Philadelphia; and
round the tent-table of some deceased or insolvent ensign are gathered
half a dozen chairs which once graced the boudoir of a vice-regal
dame. No Eastern Anglo-maniac possessed a more heterogeneous collection
than the Nana, who, living far from Calcutta, the centre of exotic
fashion, was reduced to content himself with whatever treasures might
come into the market at casual up-country sales. A gentleman of some
literary reputation, who was entertained by the Maharaja in days gone
by, thus describes the Bithoor ménage:--"I sat down to a table twenty
feet long (it had originally been the mess-table of a cavalry regiment)
which was covered with a damask table-cloth of European manufacture,
but instead of a dinner napkin there was a bedroom towel. The soup--for
the steward had everything ready--was served up in a trifle-dish which
had formed part of a dessert service belonging to the Ninth Lancers--at
all events the arms of that regiment were upon it; but the plate into
which I ladled it with a broken tea-cup was of the old willow pattern.
The pilau which followed the soup was served upon a huge plated
dish, but the plate from which I ate it was of the very commonest
description. The knife was a bone-handled affair; the spoon and fork
were silver, and of Calcutta make. The plated side-dishes, containing
vegetables, were odd ones; one was round, the other oval. The pudding
was brought in upon a soup-plate, of blue and gold pattern, and the
cheese was placed before me on a glass dish belonging to a dessert
service. The cool claret I drank out of a richly cut champagne glass,
and the beer out of an American tumbler of the very worst quality."

The Maharaja had a large and excellent stable of horses, elephants, and
camels; a well-appointed kennel; and a menagerie of pigeons, falcons,
peacocks, and apes, which would have done credit to any Oriental
monarch, from the days of Solomon downwards. His armoury was stocked
with weapons of every age and country, from a masterpiece of Purdey, to
the bow and arrows used by the Hillmen of Orissa. His reception-rooms
sparkled with mirrors and chandeliers that had come direct from
Birmingham; and his equipages had stood within the twelvemonth in the
warehouses of Longacre. He possessed a vast store of gold and silver
plate; and his wardrobe overflowed with shawls and jewellery, which
on gala days were regarded with longing eyes by the Cawnpore ladies.
Nor did they lack frequent opportunities of contemplating the Maharaja
in his panoply of kincob and Cashmere scarfs, crowned with a tiara of
pearls and diamonds, and girt with old Bajee Rao's sword of state,
which report valued at three lacs of rupees. For the Nana seldom missed
an occasion for giving a ball or a banquet in European style to the
society of the station; although he would never accept an entertainment
in return, because our Government, which refused to regard him as
a royal personage, would not allow him the compliment of a salute.
Nor did he treat his guests with the semi-barbarous discourtesy
evinced by some native hosts, who pass the evening seated among a
group of courtiers, scrutinizing the dancers through a lorgnette, and
apparently regarding the whole proceeding as a ballet arranged for
their individual amusement. The Maharaja mixed freely with the company;
inquired after the health of the Major's lady; congratulated the judge
on his rumoured promotion to the Sudder Court; joked the assistant
magistrate about his last mishap in the hunting-field; and complimented
the belle of the evening on the colour she had brought down from Simla.
His wealth was abundant enough to allow of any vagaries of hospitality
and personal extravagance, and does not seem to have been seriously
impaired even by the expense entailed by a crowd of lazy myrmidons
whom he kept about his person; a folly common to all high-born and
opulent Hindoos. Every native landlord, who can induce his neighbours
to dignify him with the title of Rajah, delights in flourishing about
the country under the escort of a host of blackguards;--the horsemen
armed with lances and old cavalry swords, and mounted on raw-boned,
long-tailed horses, smeared with coarse paint;--the infantry straggling
along under the weight of clubs, partizans, brass blunderbusses, and
long matchlocks, of which the stock is studded with glass beads, and
the muzzle shaped into the semblance of a dragon's mouth. The Nana kept
several hundreds of these scamps in idleness and insolence. He provided
them with four rupees a month, and a suit of clothes once a year; an
allowance which they eked out by plundering the peasants for twenty
miles round, and extorting an intermittent blackmail from the tradesmen
of Cawnpore.

At the time of the mutiny the Nana was about thirty-six years of
age. His complexion was sallow; his features strongly marked, and not
unpleasing. Like all Mahrattas, both head and face were shaven clean.
He was fat with that unhealthy corpulence which marks the Eastern
voluptuary. The circumstances under which a young Rajah comes to
maturity leave him a very scant chance of obtaining perfection, moral
or physical. From his earliest years he is surrounded by flatterers and
pandars. While still a child in the harem, it is the object of every
one, beginning with his own mother, to obtain his ear by adulation,
and by the freemasonry of corrupt discourse. During his boyhood he
has no little peers on whom to exert his faculties for emulation and
self-denial; and, when he has arrived at man's estate, he may look in
vain for any object of honourable ambition amidst the dead level of
national dependence. He never walks, save from his divan to his bath;
never mounts one of the huge cream-coloured steeds, which on high
feast-days amble behind his palanquin in melancholy cavalcade; never
knows the sensation of honest fatigue and wholesome hunger. No whim
ungratified; every propensity cherished and pampered; incapable of
effort; incognizant of duty; he is vicious with deeper than Parisian
immorality, and listless with more than Belgravian ennui. Long before
the age at which a high-born Englishman makes his choice of Hercules
between balls and blue-books, the effete sensuality of a Hindoo noble
is reduced to seek gratification in the illicit charms of Indian hemp
and French brandy. What wonder that in middle life he is flabby and
gross beyond hope and compass; too feeble for manly exercise, too
self-indulgent to practise a self-denying regimen?

The Maharaja of Bithoor exhibited a lively interest in the proceedings
of our Government at home and abroad, in our history, our arts, our
religion, and our customs; although he was entirely ignorant of our
language. He subscribed to all the leading Anglo-Indian journals,
which were translated to him daily by an individual who had been
unlucky enough to exchange a situation on the East Indian Railroad
for the post of English Professor in the household of the Nana. The
Rajah played billiards admirably, while he was yet slim enough to bend
over the table without inconvenience. He especially delighted in the
game, because it afforded him an opportunity for mixing on familiar
terms with the officers of the garrison. Nothing could exceed the
cordiality which he constantly displayed in his intercourse with our
countrymen. The persons in authority placed an implicit confidence
in his friendliness and good faith, and the ensigns emphatically
pronounced him a capital fellow. He had a nod or a kind word for every
Sahib in the station. There were hunting-parties and jewellery for
the men, and picnics and shawls for the ladies. If a subaltern's wife
required change of air, the Rajah's carriage was at the service of
the young couple, and the European apartments at Bithoor were put in
order to receive them. If a civilian had overworked himself in court,
he had but to speak the word, and the Rajah's elephants were sent on
to the Oude jungles. But none the less did he never for an instant
forget the grudge which he bore our nation. While his face was all
smiles, in his heart of hearts he brooded over the judgment of the
Company, and the wrong of his despised claim. From his hour of repulse
to his hour of vengeance his life was one long irony. Thenceforward
his story would more fitly be told in the wild and mysterious rhythms
of the old Greek drama than in sober English prose; for in truth
that story finds no parallel, save in the ghastly tales which hang
like a mist of blood round the accursed house of Pelops. The lads
who, with his sapphires and rubies glistening on their fingers, sat
laughing round his Thyestean table, had one and all been doomed to
die by a warrant that admitted of no appeal. He had sworn that the
injustice should be expiated by the blood of women who had never heard
his grievance named;--of babies who had been born years after the
question of that grievance had passed into oblivion. The great crime
of Cawnpore blackens the page of history with a far deeper stain than
Sicilian Vespers, or September massacres: for this atrocious act was
prompted, not by diseased and mistaken patriotism, nor by the madness
of superstition, nor yet by incontrollable fear that knew not pity.
The motives of the deed were as mean as the execution was cowardly and
treacherous. Among the subordinate villains there might be some who
were possessed by bigotry and class-hatred: but the chief of the gang
was actuated by no higher impulses than ruffled pride and disappointed
greed.




CHAPTER II.

THE OUTBREAK.


During the spring of 1857 the native society of Hindostan presented
those remarkable phenomena which, in an Asiatic community, are the
infallible symptoms of an approaching convulsion. The atmosphere was
alive with rumours, of the nature peculiar to India;--strange and
inconsequent fragments of warning or prediction, which, with reverent
credulity, are passed from mouth to mouth throughout a million
homesteads. No one can tell whence the dim whisper first arose, or
what it may portend; it is received as a voice from heaven, and sent
forward on its course without comment or delay; for the Hindoo people,
like the Greeks of ancient time, hold Rumour to be divine. Some of
these unwritten oracles undoubtedly grew spontaneously from the talk
of men, and were to be regarded merely as indications of the agitated
and uneasy condition of the public mind; but, beyond all question, some
secret influence was at work to advertise, so to speak, the mutiny. The
ringleaders of that gigantic conspiracy advisedly undertook to impress
upon the world at large the idea that something was coming, the like of
which had not been known before. Manifold and variously expressed as
were the prevailing reports, all had one and the same tendency. With
a thousand tongues, and in a thousand forms, they spoke of a great
trial that awaited the national religions; a trial from which they
were eventually to emerge unscathed and victorious. A prophecy had
long been current, that the hundredth year from the battle of Plassy
would witness the downfall of the English rule; and the hundredth
year had arrived. A mandate had of late gone forth from the palace of
Delhi, enjoining the Mahommedans at all their solemn gatherings to
recite a song of lamentation, indited by the royal musician himself,
which described in touching strains the humiliation of their race,
and the degradation of their ancient faith, once triumphant from the
Northern snows to the Southern strait, but now trodden under the foot
of the infidel and the alien. In January, the peasants of Bengal were
repeating to each other a sentence apparently devoid of meaning, "Sub
lal hoga," "everything is to become red." Some referred this dubious
announcement to the probable extension of our empire over the whole
continent, when the scarlet coats of our soldiers would be seen at
Hyderabad and Khatmandoo, in Cashmere and Travancore; while others
hinted that there was something thicker than water, and of a deeper
crimson than a British uniform. Side by side with like ambiguous
sayings, were more plain-spoken assertions concerning cartridges
smeared with lard, and flour mixed with the ground bones of cow and
pig, and other treacherous devices by which the demon who swayed the
sceptre of Hindostan, the impalpable but omnipotent Kumpani, aimed at
the destruction of sect and caste, and the universal establishment
of Christianity. And, finally, during the early days of March, every
hamlet in the Gangetic provinces received from its neighbour the
innocent present of two chupatties, or bannocks of salt and dough,
which form the staple food of the population. This far-famed token,
the fiery cross of India, had no definite signification. It notified
generally that men would do well to keep themselves prepared, for that
something was in the air. In after days, one who had learned their
effect by bitter experience, likened the chupatties to the cake of
barley-bread which foreshadowed the destruction of the host of Midian.
And so, from hand to hand, and from house to house, and from village
to village, the mysterious symbol flew, and spread through the length
and breadth of the land confusion and questioning, a wild terror, and
a wilder hope. Truly, it may be said that, as in Judæa of old, there
was distress of nations, and perplexity; men's hearts failing them for
fear, and for looking after those things that were coming on the earth.

Meanwhile, at Cawnpore, people ate, and drank, and married, and gave
in marriage, and led the ordinary life of an up-country station. The
magistrate grumbled because the judge acquitted too large a per centage
of his committals; and the collector pronounced himself ill-used
because the revenue board would not allow him an additional lac of
rupees for his pet embankment; and the subalterns complained that
the police-magistrate did not permit them to impress men to act as
beaters at less than the market rate of wages; and the captains, by
the aid of the mess-room army-list, made those intricate calculations
which are the delight of military men and the despair of civilians;
and the ladies, those, at least, on whom during the past cold season
Fortune and Hymen had smiled, began to allow that the weather had grown
too warm for dancing, though still eminently favourable for morning
calls; and one talked of sending her children home; and another of
going herself to the hills; and, towards the end of April, a party of
disbanded Brahmins of the Nineteenth regiment came from the west, and
spread through the Sepoy lines strange tales of greased cartridges, and
gibbets, and midnight tumults, and officers cut down in the midst of
the parade-ground.

Before the month of May was half over, the English residents at
Cawnpore were beginning to be made uneasy by the disagreeable character
of the intelligence from Agra. Something had happened at Meerut, and it
was feared that something had happened at Delhi. Guns had been heard
all the night of the tenth. European travellers from the north-west,
whose arrival had been confidently expected, did not make their
appearance. A party of the police had gone out to look for them, but
met nobody except a young Sepoy trotting down the road on a cavalry
troop-horse, who refused to answer any questions. But in the meanwhile,
by those secret channels through which in eastern regions bad news
travels with more than proverbial celerity, it was well known in the
bazaar that the Third Light Cavalry had turned upon their officers;
that murder and arson had been the order of the day; that the vast
native garrison of Delhi had risen to a man, and had butchered every
Englishman on whom they could lay their hands; that mutiny had gotten
to itself a nucleus and a stronghold in the capital of the Mogul.
These tidings caused great excitement throughout the cantonments, and,
especially, in the lines of the Second Cavalry, to whose regiment the
corps which had set the example of sedition stood next on the rolls of
the Bengal army.

The officer in command of the Cawnpore division was Major-General Sir
Hugh Wheeler, K.C.B. At the outbreak of the troubles, many of our
most important stations were entrusted to the charge of men who had
won their spurs at Seringapatam, and might well have been content
to have closed their career at Mooltan. It was to our shame as a
military nation that, during such a crisis, the fortunes of England
too often depended on the anility of invalids who should have been
comfortably telling their stories of the Mahratta war in the pump-rooms
of Cheltenham and Buxton. History blushes to chide these veterans
for shortcomings incidental to their age. It is hardly just to blame
them for prating of Lord Lake, and whimpering about the unsoldierlike
appearance which the troops presented without their stocks and with
their sun-helmets, at a time when younger warriors would have been
disarming, and blowing from guns, and securing treasure, and throwing
up earthworks, and sending the women and children down the river to
Calcutta. In this his second half-century of Indian service, Sir Hugh
was among the oldest members of the old school of Bengal officers. He
worshipped his sepoys; spoke their language like one of themselves;
and, indeed, had testified to his predilection for the natives of
Hindostan by the strongest proof which it is in the power of a man to
give. Short and spare, he still rode and walked like a soldier: and
appears to have been capable of as much exertion as could reasonably be
expected from an Englishman who had spent beneath an Indian sun more
than two-thirds of his seventy-five years. On the eighteenth of May, he
despatched the following message to the seat of Government:

"All well at Cawnpore. Quiet, but excitement continues among the
people. The final advance on Delhi will soon be made. The insurgents
can only be about 3,000 in number, and are said to cling to the walls
of Delhi, where they have put up a puppet-king. I grudge the escape of
one of them. Calm and expert policy will soon reassure the public mind.
The plague is, in truth, stayed."

The reader need not be alarmed at the length of the telegraphic news
from Cawnpore. There is but little more to come.

For in truth the plague was very far from stayed. The soldiery knew
their own strength, and were well inclined to turn the knowledge to
profit. There were schoolmasters who might have taught them a lesson
of quite another description: but it was a far cry to Barrackpore,
and there was no Hearsay at hand. It happens that a native lawyer,
Nanukchund by name, took the precaution to keep a full and faithful
journal, from the fifteenth of May onwards. This man was bound to
our interest by the indissoluble tie of a common fear. A personal
enemy of the Nana, he was actually engaged in conducting the suit
instituted by the nephew of Bajee Rao to establish his claim to the
half of his uncle's estate. With genuine Hindoo sagacity, he foresaw
the approaching struggle, and the ultimate triumph of the English
power; and conjectured that a record of events compiled with accuracy,
slightly tinged by a somewhat ostentatious loyalty, would certainly
procure him credit, and, possibly, a comfortable official income. Two
days before Sir Hugh made his cheerful report to the Governor-General,
Nanukchund looked in on a friend employed at the Treasury, and there
heard the native officers of the guard uttering traitorous language,
while their men amused themselves by quarrelling with the townsfolk who
went to the Treasury on business. They detained people who came out
with money or stamp-papers, and would not release them till ordered
to do so by the Soubahdar. "It began to be evident," says this shrewd
observer, "that nobody had any authority but the Soubahdars and the
sepoys."

At length the symptoms of the growing malady became too patent to be
disregarded even by the most sanguine physician. It came to the ears
of the General that the son of a trooper in the Second Cavalry had
been boasting to his schoolfellows that he was in the secret of what
his father's regiment intended to do for the good cause. And, about
the same time, one Khan Mahomed, a sepoy of the Fifty-sixth, took upon
himself to assert that on the fifth of the next month the native troops
were to be deprived of their arms, assembled under the pretence of
getting their pay, and then and there blown up from a mine constructed
by the European officers in the intervals of billiards. This singularly
unpleasant prophet seems to have been without honour in his own
battalion. His comrades brought information to the adjutant, who gave
himself no trouble about the matter, beyond telling them that the story
was all a lie. Thereupon Khan Mahomed went to the cavalry lines, where
he found an audience more ready to accept his tale. On this occasion he
imported some squadrons of English troopers, who were to be equipped
with the swords and horses of his hearers. The regiment was soon in a
panic of rage and fear. It became necessary to take immediate measures.
The incendiary was put in irons, and an urgent application for aid
telegraphed to Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence was roused from his bed at
midnight, and by break of day all the available post-carriages in the
station were rolling along towards Cawnpore, crammed inside and out
with English soldiers.

But, in an hour of evil omen, Sir Hugh bethought himself of invoking
the assistance of a more dubious ally. The Nana had lately paid a visit
to the capital of Oude, under pretence of seeing the lions of the
place. The arrogance of his manner, and the discourtesy of his sudden
and unannounced departure, had attracted the attention of Mr. Gubbins,
the Financial Commissioner, who communicated to General Wheeler his
suspicions, backed by the opinion of Sir Henry Lawrence. It may be that
the fatal step was first suggested by the warning of wiser men. It may
be that the idea had long been familiar to the mind of the infatuated
veteran. At all events, the sole answer to the remonstrance from
Lucknow was a message, dated the twenty-second of May, stating that
"two guns, and three hundred men, cavalry and infantry, furnished by
the Maharaja of Bithoor, came in this morning."

On their march to Cawnpore, these scoundrels furnished a striking proof
of their discipline and good faith. Chimna Apa, a man of some property,
who supplied the nephew of Bajee Rao with the means of carrying on his
law-suit, was driving out of town in the direction of Bithoor, when he
unexpectedly came upon this formidable array commanded by the rival
litigant. Apa, like a sensible fellow, jumped off his conveyance,
and ran into a neighbouring ravine. The Nana's people appropriated a
valuable sword and five hundred rupees, which the fugitive had left
behind in his haste, cudgelled the servants, and went off declaring
that the master had better look to himself, as the British rule would
only last a few days longer. This specimen of the services which these
new protectors were likely to render to the cause of law and order
was brought to the notice of the authorities; but they had gone too
far to draw back. The Nana took up his quarters in the midst of the
houses occupied by the civilians and their families; the Treasury,
which contained upwards of a hundred thousand pounds, was put under the
custody of his body-guard; and it was even proposed that the ladies and
children should be placed in sanctuary in Bithoor palace.

There were some, however, who scrupled to entrust the honour of England
and the lives of her daughters to the exclusive guardianship of a
discontented Mahratta. At their instigation the General set to work
in a dilatory spirit to provide an asylum where, if the worst should
befall, we might shelter, for a while at least, the relics of our name
and power. He does not appear to have thought of the magazine, which
was admirably adapted for defence. A mud wall, four feet high, was
thrown up round the buildings which composed the old dragoon hospital,
and ten guns of various calibre were placed in position round the
intrenchment, by which name the miserable contrivance was dignified.
Orders were given to lay in supplies for twenty-five days. The stock of
rice, butter, salt, tea, sugar, rum, beer, and preserved meats looked
well enough on paper. But the master's eye, which in India is even more
essential than elsewhere, was entirely wanting. The contractors behaved
after their kind. Peas and flour formed the bulk of the supplies, and
even these were ridiculously insufficient. The regimental officers,
who had no very lively confidence in Sir Hugh as a caterer, sent
in large contributions of liquor and hermetically-sealed tins from
their mess-stores. The tangible results of a fortnight's labour and
supervision, at a time when every hour was precious, and every day
priceless, consisted in a few cart-loads of coarse native food, and a
fence not high enough to keep out an active cow. Utterly insufficient
as they were, the sight of these preparations had a most unfortunate
influence upon the minds of the sepoys. The timid were seriously
alarmed by the hostile attitude adopted by our countrymen. The bolder
spirits rejoiced to witness so plain a confession of apprehension on
the part of their officers; while the more honest and trustworthy
among their number would say to each other: "The sahibs have lost all
confidence in us, and we shall never get over it." Where there is a
will, there is a way, even in such a strait. And where there is half a
will, there is a way likewise; but it leads whither it is not good that
brave men should go, to disaster and discomfort, to bootless sacrifice
and inglorious ruin. During these days Azimoolah, while walking with a
lieutenant who had been a great favourite at Bithoor, pointed to the
fortification which was then in progress, and said:--

"What do you call that place you are making out in the plain?"

"I am sure I don't know," was the reply.

Azimoolah suggested that it should be called "The Fort of Despair."
"No, no;" answered the Englishman, "we will call it the Fort of
Victory:" an observation that was received by his companion with an
air of incredulous assent, which he must have acquired in West End
drawing-rooms.

And now ensued a period of ceaseless dread, of suspicion that never
slumbered, of suspense hardly preferable to the most terrible
certainty. The women and children spent the nights within the circuit
of the intrenchment, while their husbands, with devotion that merited
a better reward, pitched their tents among the sepoy huts, and so took
what sleep they might. On the twentieth of May, flames broke out after
dark in the lines of the First Native Infantry. In a moment the station
was on the alert. Men hurried on their clothes, and clutched revolvers
from under their pillows. Guns loaded with grape were trundled down to
a preconcerted rendezvous. It was no easy matter to persuade people
that so ill-timed a conflagration could be altogether accidental. The
twenty-fourth of the month was the festival of the Eed: a season which
Mahommedans celebrate with the blood of sheep and goats, though on this
occasion there was serious cause to apprehend lest, in their religious
enthusiasm, they should pant for nobler victims. Sir Hugh telegraphed
to Lucknow his belief that nothing could avert a rising. The feast,
however, passed off without any disturbance. The Mussulmans in our
ranks paid their respects to their officers; acknowledged with apparent
gratitude the customary present of a fat Patna sheep; and protested
that, come what might, they would be faithful to their leaders:--a
statement that was accepted for as much as it was worth.

But these alternations of confidence and alarm gradually settled down
into chronic gloom. On the return of the Queen's birthday the usual
compliment was omitted, lest the natives should interpret the firing
of the salute as a signal for revolt. Even military loyalty dared not
do honour to our sovereign in a garrison that was still nominally her
own. A sergeant's wife was making some purchases in the bazaar, when a
man, whose martial gait and spruce appearance clearly proclaimed the
sepoy in undress, accosted the poor woman in these words:--"Ah! you
will none of you come here much oftener; you will not be alive another
week." Our countrymen began to keep watch all night by turns, armed to
the teeth. As on a burning ship, when the sea runs high, and the last
boat has been swamped or dashed to pieces, the crew wait with clenched
teeth till the fire has reached the magazine, and say, "Now it is
coming;" and again, "Now;" so the Englishmen at Cawnpore, ignorant what
each day might bring forth, certain only that the catastrophe was not
remote, sat, pistol in hand, and expected the inevitable. Some families
endeavoured to get down to Allahabad ere it was yet too late. But the
roads swarmed with rebellious peasantry, and liberated jail-birds: the
shallows in the river forbade all passage in this the eighth month of
the annual drought; and escape was found to be impracticable. Whatever
destiny might have in store was to be shared by all alike.

During the closing days of May, people were writing hard to catch the
Home Mail: and they did well, for it was their last. Strange, beyond
conception of poet strange and sad, must have been the contents of
that Cawnpore mail-bag. Imagine Colonel Ewart seated at his desk in a
tent surrounded by line behind line of huts and camp-fires, in and
about which are swaggering hundreds of insolent, faithless mercenaries.
Picture that scene, and then read: "I do not wish to write gloomily,
but there is no use in disguising the fact, that we are in the utmost
danger; and, as I have said, if the troops do mutiny, my life must
almost certainly be sacrificed; but I do not think they will venture to
attack the intrenched position which is held by the European troops, so
I hope in God that my wife and child will be saved.

"And now, dear A----, farewell. If, under God's providence, this be the
last time I am to write to you, I entreat you to forgive all I have
ever done to trouble you, and to think kindly of me. I know you will be
everything a mother can be to my boy. I cannot write to him this time,
dear little fellow. Kiss him for me. Kind love to my brothers."

So spoke the stout soldier, fearing not for himself, but for a wife who
was worthy of the husband, as her own words show. "My dear child," she
says, "is looking very delicate. My prayer is that she may be spared
much suffering. The bitterness of death has been tasted by us many
times during the last fortnight, and, should the reality come, I hope
we may find strength to meet it with a truly Christian courage. It is
not hard to die oneself, but to see a dear child suffer and perish,
that is the hard, the bitter trial, and the cup which I must drink,
should God not deem it fit that it should pass from me. My companion,
Mrs. Hillersdon, is delightful. Poor young thing, she has such a
gentle spirit, so unmurmuring, so desirous to meet the trial rightly,
unselfish and sweet in every way. She has two children, and we feel
that our duty to our little ones demands that we should exert ourselves
to keep up health and spirits as much as possible." That is the temper
with which the mothers of Englishmen should die, if die they must.

"Such nights of anxiety," she continues, "I would never have believed
possible, and the days are full of excitement. Another fortnight, we
expect, will decide our fate; and, whatever it may be, I trust we
shall be able to bear it. If these are my last words to you, you will
remember them lovingly, and always bear in mind that your affection
and the love we have ever had for each other is an ingredient of
comfort in these bitter times." Such was the tone of the letters which,
thence and at that season, went forth to spread a terrible solicitude
through many an English household. Very different from the tender
confidences and innocent gossip, the reminiscences of sick leave and
the anticipations of furlough, the directions to milliners and the
inquiries about boarding-schools, which are the ordinary materials of
the Home Correspondence from an Indian station.

Meanwhile, the Nana was in intimate communication with the ringleaders
of the Second Cavalry. The black sheep of the regiment were wont to
hold meetings at the quarters of a trooper named Shumshoodeen Rhan, and
of Teeka Sing, a Hindoo Soubahdar, who, by his audacity and energy,
had gained an ascendency among his colleagues. These gatherings were
attended by Jwala Pershad, a hanger-on at Bithoor Palace, and Muddud
Ali, who had lately resigned the service of the Maharaja and taken to
horse-dealing, but who still used to visit his former master in the
way of business. At length, Teeka Sing had the honour of an interview
with the Nana himself, during which, according to the story current
among his comrades, the Soubahdar spoke to this effect: "You have come
to take charge of the magazine and treasury of the English; we all,
Hindoos and Mahommedans, have united for our religions, and the whole
Bengal army has become one in purpose. What do you say to it?" The Nana
replied: "I, also, am at the disposal of the army." This very essential
question having been so frankly answered, arrangements were made for
a final consultation. One June evening, after dusk, the Maharaja,
accompanied by his brother Bala and the ubiquitous Azimoolah, repaired
to a landing-place on the Ganges, whither his emissaries had conducted
Teeka Sing and his associates. The whole party seated themselves in a
boat, and talked earnestly for the space of two hours. They appear to
have arrived at a satisfactory conclusion; for, next day, Shumshoodeen
wetted his prospective honours at the house of Azeezun, a favourite
courtesan of the Second Cavalry troopers. In his tipsy fondness he told
the girl that in a day or two the Nana would be paramount, and promised
to stuff her house with gold mohurs from roof to cellar.

The Maharaja endeavoured to conceal his movements by shifting his
residence to and fro between Bithoor and the cantonments; but he was
closely watched by the spies of those among his own countrymen who had
reason to dread his elevation. If British authority were to perish, if
the sepoys and their new ally were in power but for a single week, it
would go ill indeed with all who had ever crossed the Nana in love,
law, or speculation. And, especially, any who had concern in the great
law-suit would do well to look to themselves, litigant, paymaster,
witness, and counsel alike. As early as the twenty-sixth of May, the
sharp-sighted advocate, whose diary has been already quoted, drew up
an account of the embryo conspiracy, and sent it in the form of a
petition to the magistrate of the Station; "Who," says Nanukchund,
"gave no heed to my petition, and got so vexed with me that I cannot
describe his anger. He said to me, 'You have all along been speaking
ill of the Nana, and filing suits against him in the civil courts. I
cannot pay attention to any representation from a person so hostile
to the Nana.' I replied that those affairs had no connexion with the
present question, that the Nana had long harboured enmity to the
Government, and a great number of rascals belonged to his party; that
he (the Magistrate) would remember my caution, and that I had obtained
certain intelligence, as the men of the Nana's household communicated
it to Chimna Apa, my client. The Magistrate would listen to nothing. In
despair, I did nothing further than keep a copy of the petition in my
book. It is a hopeless case. Let us see what will be the end of all
this neglect." A dramatist of ancient Greece would have attributed such
obstinate blindness to the malice of some injured deity, misleading
to their bane those whom he had marked for destruction. There is a
Goddess of Delusion in the eternal order of things no less than in the
Æschylean mythology.

The last mail had already left Cawnpore. At nine o'clock on the night
of the third of June, went forth the last telegraphic message that ever
reached the outer world. Thus it ran:--

  "_Sir Hugh Wheeler to the Secretary to the Government of India._

  "All the orders and proclamations have been sent express, as the
  telegraph communication between this and Agra is obstructed.

  "Sir Henry Lawrence having expressed some uneasiness, I have just
  sent him by post carriages out of my small force two officers and
  fifty men of Her Majesty's 84th Foot; conveyance for more not
  available. This leaves me weak, but I trust to holding my own until
  more Europeans arrive."

So it was. Prompted by a genuine sentiment of chivalry, Sir Hugh not
only sent back the Lucknow reinforcement that had arrived during the
previous week, but increased it by a detachment from his own scanty
command. He doubtless considered that, at such a time, a loan of
English bayonets should bear high interest. And it was well for these
men that they were removed from the doomed garrison to a field where
they might fight not without some prospect of life, some hope of
victory. Those who were marked to remain and die were enough to do
their country loss.

As in a frame predisposed to disease the slightest irregularity is
productive of fatal results, so now at Cawnpore the smouldering fires
of discontent and distrust were inflamed by an incident which at
ordinary times would have passed almost without remark. There was
resident at the station a cashiered subaltern whom it would be cruel
to name; one of those miserable men who had sought relief from the
mental vacuity and physical prostration of an Indian military life in
the deadly solace of excess. This officer, whether in the wantonness
of drink, or the horror of shattered nerves, fired a shot at a cavalry
patrol who challenged him as he reeled out of his bungalow into the
darkness. He missed his aim, as was natural under the circumstances;
but the trooper lodged a complaint in the morning, and a court-martial
was assembled which acquitted the Englishman, on the ground that he
was intoxicated at the time, and that his musket had gone off under
a mistake. The sepoys, familiar as they were with the brutality of
low Europeans and the vagaries of military justice, would at a less
critical season have expressed small surprise either at the outrage or
the decision. But now their blood was up, and their pride awake, and
they were not inclined to overrate the privileges of an Anglo-Saxon,
or the sagacity of a military tribunal. The men of the Second Cavalry
muttered angrily that possibly their own muskets might go off by
mistake before very long, and this significant expression became
proverbial throughout the whole native force. Additional point was
given to the grim humour of the soldiery by the unwonted sight of the
corpses of an English lady and gentleman, which, floating down the
river from some distant scene of death, had turned aside into the canal
that traversed the city of Cawnpore. Ganges was yet to bear many such
dire burdens. Though wires had been cut, and mails burnt, and every
road blockaded, these silent but unimpeachable messengers, in virtue
of the safe-conduct granted to them alone, were long destined to carry
from station to station the tidings of woe and dismay.

The end was not remote. That despair deferred, which had long made
sick the hearts of our countrymen,--that great fear which was their
companion day and night,--had now reached their consummation.
On Thursday, the fourth of June: while far away on the banks of
pleasant Thames, Eton was celebrating the birthday of her patron
monarch with recitations from Julius Cæsar, and copious libations of
unwonted champagne: at Cawnpore the men of the Second Cavalry were
sharpening sabres, and distributing ammunition, and secreting their
families and their property in the back-slums of the native city.
In the mid-darkness of the succeeding night, when men were in their
first sleep, three reports of a pistol, and a sudden and brilliant
conflagration, showed that the hour had arrived. Teeka Sing, who was
on picket duty with his troop, set the example of sedition, which was
speedily followed by the entire corps. Some ran to set alight the
house of the English riding-master; some to make a bonfire of the
horse-litter; others to secure the treasure-chest and the colours.
These last were stoutly opposed by the old Soubahdar-major, or native
Colonel, who was cut down at his post after a gallant resistance.
Then the regiment, mounted and accoutred, drew up on the high road.
A bugle sounded, and two horsemen left the ranks, and went towards
the lines of the First Native Infantry, and there cried in a loud
voice through the gloom: "Our Soubahdar-major sends his compliments
to the Soubahdar-major of the First, and wishes to know the reason of
this delay, as the cavalry are drawn up on the road." Hereupon the
sepoys, ignorant that the man in whose name they were invoked was at
that moment lying senseless and bleeding in the quarter-guard as a
punishment for his loyalty--ignorant of this, and perhaps not much
caring--began to load their muskets, and hurry on their cross-belts,
and pack up their valuables. Colonel Ewart was at once on the spot,
and in vain endeavoured to recall his soldiers to their allegiance,
saying to them in the Hindoostanee tongue: "My children! my children!
this is not your usual conduct. Do not so great a wickedness!" But it
was too late for argument or entreaty. The battalion turned out in a
body, fraternized with the mutinous troopers, and marched off in their
company towards Nawabgunge, the North-west suburb of Cawnpore, where
lay the Treasury and the Magazine.

Meanwhile the alarm spread through the station. The Adjutants of the
Fifty-third and Fifty-sixth regiments got their sepoys together on the
parade-ground, and kept them under arms till the sun was well above
the horizon. Then the Colonel of the Fifty-sixth marched his battalion
down to the deserted lines of the Second Cavalry, collected and secured
the horses and arms which had been left behind by the mutineers,
and finally permitted his men to doff their uniforms and cook their
breakfasts. The Major of the Fifty-third likewise dismissed his
regiment, and at the same time summoned into the entrenchment all his
native officers, commissioned and non-commissioned. At such a crisis it
was singularly injudicious to leave the men to themselves, especially
as in this corps the Soubahdars and Jemmadars were for the most part
free from the taint of disaffection, and might have done much towards
keeping the rank and file to their allegiance. During their absence a
trooper of the Second Cavalry rode in among the huts with a message
from the company of the Fifty-third which was posted at the Government
Treasury, to the effect that the guard would allow no division of the
spoil until their own regiment was on the spot to claim its share.
Ere long four or five grenadiers of the Fifty-sixth were observed to
steal across to the neighbouring lines, and soon after they were seen
talking eagerly and in a low voice with a sergeant and private of the
light company. Presently these two men shouted out: "Glory be to the
great God! Gentlemen, prepare for action!" and a rush was made on the
quarter-guard. The sergeant broke open the treasure-chest, and the
private seized the colours. The native Captain who was in charge of
the precious deposit stood his ground like a man; but he was fired at,
hustled, and overpowered by numbers. In an instant all was uproar,
confusion, and terror. The sergeant of the fourth company burst into
tears, and ran to fetch the Adjutant; the soldiers of the fifth and
light companies flung on their coats, loaded their muskets, and crammed
their girdles with the regimental rupees; while the remainder of
the corps came of their own accord on to the parade-ground with the
intention of placing themselves under the command of their officers.
Unfortunately at this moment Sir Hugh Wheeler, prompt with an ill-timed
energy, and wary with a misplaced distrust, ordered the guns of the
intrenchment to open fire upon the wavering multitude. At first the
sepoys of the Fifty-third seemed unwilling to believe that their
commander had adopted this cruel and uncourteous method of intimating
to them that he dispensed with their services: but the third round
proved too strong a test for their loyalty. They broke and fled along
the main road: the greater part never stopping until they had joined
the mutineers at Nawabgunge: though a considerable number preferred to
conceal themselves in an adjacent ravine until such time as it should
please Sir Hugh to allow them to come within gunshot of their own
officers.

So went the Fifty-third. The story of the revolt of the Fifty-sixth is
told with characteristic Hindoo simplicity by Khoda Bux, a commissioned
officer of that regiment. He says: "I was sleeping in my house between
twelve and one A.M., when Hossain Bux, Havildar, Grenadier Company,
came and awoke me, and said, 'What? Are you not awake? There is a row
in the cavalry lines, three reports of a pistol, and the Quarter-master
Sergeant's bungalow is on fire.' I was astonished, and ordered the
regiment to turn out, and went to give information to the Adjutant.
He came out of his tent, and went with me to parade, and asked if the
regiment was ready. I said, 'Yes, it is ready.' He said, 'Where is it?'
I said, 'In front of the bells of arms.' He ordered them to form up
in front of the quarter-guard. I formed them up, and made them ready.
I received orders that, if any cavalry man came, he was instantly to
be shot. In this way we passed the night with our officers. No one
took off his uniform. The cavalry having mutinied went away to Delhi.
In the morning the Adjutant ordered us to take off our uniforms, and
eat our dinners. Then the guards were placed, and we took off our
uniforms. The colonel came to us, and asked what Naick was on duty at
the elephant sheds, as the cavalry and First Native Infantry wanted
four elephants, which were under a guard of a Naick and four sepoys
of the regiment, and he was greatly pleased they had refused to give
them up, and that he was so content with the Naick that he should
make him an Havildar. I said it was Gunga Deen, Naick, First Company.
The First Regiment mutinied like the cavalry, and went away. After
this the Colonel said, 'Bhowany Singh, Soubahdar, has been wounded by
these mutineers. I will go and see him.' I and Annundeedeen, Havildar
Major, went with the Colonel to the Cavalry Hospital, and saw Bhowany
Singh, who was wounded. The Colonel was very much pleased with him. The
Colonel then went to his bungalow, and I and Annundeedeen went to our
lines, and, having taken off our uniforms, began to smoke; when Chain
Singh, Havildar, came and said, 'Jemmadar, the regiment is turning
out.' I asked by whose orders, and why. He said, 'I don't know.' I
went outside, and saw that the Havildar was dreadfully frightened, and
was buttoning his coat. I went with him to my company, and saw some
of the men in the tent packing up their clothes, and others throwing
them away. I asked them what was the matter, and why they were getting
ready. They said, 'The Fifty-third regiment is getting ready, and so
are we.' I said, 'Your regiment is the Fifty-sixth; what have you to do
with the Fifty-third? It would be better for you first to shoot me, and
then to do what you like afterwards.' Many of the men said, 'You are
our senior officer; we will not kill you. Come with us.' I said, 'Very
well; I will get ready, and come with you.' I went out of the tent very
slowly for about a hundred yards, and then ran as fast as I could to
the intrenchment, and told the Colonel and Adjutant that the regiment
had mutinied. They said, 'Come with us, and we will see.' I said, 'Oh,
gentlemen, all the regiment has mutinied, and are your enemies. It is
not right for you to go to them.'"

While Khoda Bux was in search of his Colonel it happened that one of
the round shots, fired with a view of frightening away the Sepoys of
the Fifty-third rolled among the camp-kitchens of the Fifty-sixth.
Hereupon Gunga Rai, a grenadier of an excitable and suspicious
temperament, called out that they were all going to be killed, and took
to his heels in the direction of Nawabgunge, followed by the whole mob
of his comrades.

And now the ship had struck the reef towards which she had long been
drifting, and had gone to pieces in the twinkling of an eye. It only
remained for the crew to provision the boats and knock together some
sort of a raft, as in that hour of sudden and bewildering peril best
they might. Our officers at once proceeded to gather up the relics of
the native force. Some went the round of the huts, while others, by the
aid of a bugler, ferretted out the men who had sought a hiding-place in
the ravine. There were found in all some eighty soldiers whose sense of
duty had been stronger than their fear of the English nine-pounders.
During the rest of the day, these sepoys were employed in carting
and conveying within the intrenchment the muskets, ammunition, and
accoutrements which were lying about in the lines. Meanwhile many of
our countrymen commenced preparations for instant flight. All that day
a stream of luggage and furniture was passing to and fro between the
European quarter and the principal landing-places. In that season of
uncertainty and danger, natives who followed the calling of porters
and carriers could not be procured in the bazaar, so the work had to
be done by the domestic servants. A sense of comparative relief now
began to prevail throughout the community. Our officers felt that the
time had arrived when they might consult without dishonour the security
of themselves and their families. Their occupation was gone; and it
seemed very well that their lives had not gone likewise. The blow had
fallen; and they survived. They knew the worst; and that worst was
better than the best which they had foreseen. Their military pride
had been hurt by the sight of their battalion running from them like
a parcel of street-boys at the appearance of a policeman; but in the
cowardice of the sepoys lay the salvation of the officers. Besides,
not only was it extremely improbable that the mutineers would ever
venture again within range of Sir Hugh's artillery, but there existed
a powerful attraction to draw them in quite another direction. Delhi
was the centre towards which gravitated all the wandering atoms of
sedition. There the green flag of the prophet had been unfurled, and
the ancient imperial faith was again dominant. There, on his ancestral
throne, sat the descendant of Shah Jehan, _roi fainéant_ no longer, but
endowed with a lurid splendour of princely independence. There, with
arms dyed to the elbows in European blood, mustered the heroes of the
great outbreak--the men who had hated with the deepest hate, and dared
with the most headlong and effectual daring. Thither, to swell the
ranks of that Prætorian guard, swarmed from every corner of Northern
India all who had reason to covet the ruin of England, or to dread her
triumph. And thither, as our countrymen were well aware, the Cawnpore
mutineers designed to go without delay. Under a firm impression that
all instant risk was at an end, a considerable number of officers
passed the night of the fifth July in their private residences without
the circuit of the intrenchment. Confidence had succeeded to distrust,
cheerful activity to sombre and passive expectation. The faces of the
sepoys were turned towards far Delhi. On the way to Allahabad, by road
or by river, there was nothing which could stop armed and determined
men. Their professional feelings wounded, but their throats uncut and
their honour untarnished, there was good hope that within a month they
might be smoking their cheroots in the verandah of the United Service
Club in safe and luxurious Calcutta.

But it was not so to be. The rebellion had already gotten to itself
a chief, and the chief had matured for himself a policy. When the
mutineers had arrived at Nawabgunge they were given to understand that
the Nana was in the neighbourhood. Accordingly he was waited on by a
deputation of native officers and troopers who addressed him in these
words: "Maharaja, a kingdom awaits you if you join our enterprise,
but death if you side with our enemies." The ready reply was, "What
have I to do with the British? I am altogether yours." The envoys then
requested him to lead the troops to Delhi. He assented to their desire;
and ended by placing his hand on the head of each of the party, and
swearing fidelity to the national cause. Then the rebels returned to
their comrades, and the business of spoliation began. The mutineers
first marched in a body to the Treasury: the keeper of the keys was
terrified into surrendering his charge: the doors were unlocked, and
silver to the value of near a hundred thousand pounds sterling was
distributed among the ranks of the four regiments. Then the concourse
dispersed in search of plunder and mischief. Some broke open the
jail, and turned loose upon society the concentrated rascality of one
of the most rascally districts in our Eastern dominions. Others set
fire to the magistrate's office and the Court House; and, in a fit
of irrational malice, made a bonfire of all the Records, civil and
criminal alike. Others again, after parading about with a flag hoisted
upon the back of an elephant, vented their spite by cutting the cables
of the bridge of boats, great part of which floated down the river. All
European houses at the west end of the station were burned and sacked.
An unhappy overseer of highways was fired upon, not without effect, and
hunted along the road, the construction of which he had been engaged in
superintending. When they had done as much damage as could be got into
a single morning the mutineers packed their more valuable booty about
their persons; filled a long caravan of carts with their property,
their domestic gods, and their female relations of every degree; set
forth on their adventurous journey; and, after a very easy afternoon's
march, halted at Kullianpore, the first stage on the Delhi road.

But as soon as the deputation from the rebel army had left the presence
of the Nana his most trusted advisers unanimously adjured him to give
up the idea of accompanying the march on Delhi; and especially his âme
damnée, Azimoolah, urged that if he allowed himself to be absorbed
into the court of the Mogul he would lose all power and influence:
that it would be far more politic to bring into subjection the country
round Cawnpore, and so command all the avenues by which the English
reinforcements could penetrate into the heart of the disaffected
regions: that when once possessed of the keys of Delhi and the Punjaub
he might bargain with the rebels for the captain-generalship of
their armies, and the universal sovereignty of the north of India;
and then, with twenty myriads of bayonets and sabres at his back,
he might sweep down the valley of the Ganges, and wreak, once and
for ever, his vengeance on the detested race; fight, on this its
hundredth anniversary, a Plassey very different from the last; renew
the Black Hole of Calcutta under happier auspices, and on a far more
generous scale; and so teach those Christian dogs what it was to flout
a Mahratta and cheat a Brahmin of royal blood. The eloquence of the
ci-devant footman fired the Maharaja, who accordingly ordered his
elephants and pushed on for Kullianpore, attended by his brothers Bala
and Baba Bhut, and the indispensable Azimoolah. The ringleaders of the
mutiny expressed their pleasure in being blessed once more with the
light of his countenance, but displayed very little inclination to
give up the idea of Delhi. On the contrary, they suggested that the
Nana should stay behind at Cawnpore, and garrison the Magazine with
his own retainers, while they themselves prosecuted their expedition
towards the North West. To this Bala, a man of execrable temper,
which, however, he appears to have been able to curb on occasion,
replied that Sir Hugh Wheeler and his Europeans would make themselves
very unpleasant to the defenders of the Magazine, and proposed that
the mutineers should first return and clear out the intrenchment and
then go off to Delhi. At this point the Maharaja threw in a prospect
of unlimited pillage and an offer of a gold anklet to each sepoy,
which produced an instant and favourable effect upon his audience. The
mutineers agreed to retrace their steps, and not leave the station
until they had put all the English to the sword. As a pledge of their
earnest intention to carry out his desires they unanimously saluted
the Nana as their Rajah, and proceeded forthwith to choose leaders who
should command them in the field. Soubahdar Teeka Sing, the prime mover
of the revolt, was appointed chief of the cavalry, with the title of
General. Jemmadar Dulgunjun Sing became Colonel of the Fifty-third, and
Soubahdar Gunga Deen Colonel of the Fifty-sixth.

There is a certain significance in these names: for they indicate that,
in the opinion, at any rate, of the mutineers themselves, the boldest
and most active among the authors of the mutiny were not Mussulmans,
but Hindoos. The belief that such was in fact the case is now very
generally entertained by our most thoughtful and observant public
servants: but that belief is singularly unpalatable to the mass of the
Anglo-Indian community. It was the fashion at the time to attribute
the outbreak to the machinations of the Mahomedan population. Those
ambitious zealots (such was the creed of the day) had never forgiven
us for ousting them from their ancient pre-eminence. It was said that
the professors of a proselytizing faith would never be reconciled to
Nazarene domination; that the professors of an aggressive faith would
never brook that others than they should assert the lofty privileges of
an imperial race. And so our countrymen contended that every follower
of the prophet was at heart a rebel and a traitor, and, therefore,
must necessarily be at the bottom of all the rebellion and treachery
in the land. The habit of assuming that men who hold certain opinions
must be bent upon a certain course of action, and the habit of using
that assumption to justify our own injustice is, and always has been,
peculiarly English. Our ancestors took it for granted that their Roman
Catholic countrymen were haunted by an incessant longing to compass the
death of their own sovereign, and insisted upon treating as fanatics
and assassins honest north-country squires who desired to compass
nothing except the death of a bitch-fox. Our grandfathers took it for
granted that every radical was a Jacobin, and that every Jacobin slept
upon thorns as long as clergymen kept their glebes, and marquises
kept their heads. Our fathers, and, it is to be feared, not a few
of our brothers, took it for granted that every Jew fixed his hopes
exclusively upon the day when his venerable faith should again flourish
in its pristine haunts, and regarded England as a place of pleasant but
not unprofitable exile; and, as a fitting corollary to so plausible
a proposition, we deduced the conviction that Baron Rothschild would
sacrifice the prosperity of his constituency to the interests of the
New Jerusalem.

In the year 1857, our passion for visiting upon people the crimes
which we thought they were bound by their tenets to commit ran riot
throughout the north of India. Our proverbial tendency to give a dog a
bad name and hang him was most barbarously and literally exemplified in
the case of the unfortunate Moslem. After the capture of Delhi, every
member of a class of religious enthusiasts named Ghazees were hung, as
it were, _ex officio_; and it is to be feared that a vindictive and
irresponsible judge, who plumed himself upon having a good eye for
a Ghazee, sent to the gallows more than one individual, whose guilt
consisted in looking as if he belonged to a sect which, probably, was
hostile to our religion. It would have been equally humane and logical
if the ministers of Queen Elizabeth had burned as a Jesuit every one
who was bald on the crown of his head. The city of Patna, where the
Mahomedan element was large and influential, was the favourite bugbear
of the Calcutta alarmists. Happily for them, the officer in charge of
that city shared their suspicions and prejudices, and afforded them
inexpressible delight by discovering secret meetings, by intercepting
treasonable correspondence, and by arresting leading bankers on the
charge of harbouring mutineers. And yet, while tumult and massacre were
rife in the great towns of Oude and the North-west, the disturbances
in Patna were confined to one partial _émeute_, and one unpremeditated
murder. At length the Governor of Bengal, tired of requesting to be
informed why people had been executed in an irregular manner; sick of
listening to the complaints of shopkeepers who were not allowed to
leave their houses after nine at night, and disciples of Mahomedan
professors whose studies were interrupted by the incarceration of their
teachers, superseded the Commissioner, and appointed a successor,
who at once gave his confidence to an able official of the Mahomedan
persuasion. From that day forward Patna was as quiet as Madras.

No act of fidelity or self-sacrifice could exempt a Mussulman from
the hatred and distrust of a large section of Anglo-Indian society.
Syed Azimoodeen, whom Lord William Bentinck had thought worthy of his
friendship and esteem, was among the defenders of the house at Arrah.
The besiegers had set a price on his head, and had offered to spare
the lives of the little garrison if he and one other were surrendered
to their vengeance. As a reward for his loyalty, he became for some
months subsequently the popular theme of abuse in the Anglo-Saxon
papers. "Is it, or is it not the fact," so writes a correspondent,
"that Syed Azimoodeen supplied the mutineers with information as to
the hiding-places of English fugitives? Is it, or is it not the fact
that Coer Sing gave particular injunctions to the sepoys, that, when
the house was stormed, Syed Azimoodeen should be excepted from the
slaughter?" This production proved too strong for the digestion even
of the constant reader of a Calcutta journal. A few days afterwards
there appeared a communication inquiring whether it was or was not the
fact that Coer Sing had given particular orders that the bullets fired
against the house should not hit Azimoodeen, and that, when the mine
exploded, he should be dropped on to a feather-bed placed in the middle
of the compound. But who can wonder at any excess of folly and ferocity
in a publication which could stoop to insert a letter recommending the
rack for "respectable Mahomedans?" When there were some hopes that an
overflow of the river would complete the desolation of our Gangetic
provinces, an Englishman was found inhuman enough to put these words on
paper: "We accorded great favours to the rascally Mussulmans, but the
rains are acting so as to nullify all our indulgences."

During the progress of the revolt, the apprehensions of our countrymen
always became more intense at the approach of the great anniversaries
of the Mahomedan religion. In the early summer, the festival of the
Eed was to many an Anglo-Indian household a season of unspeakable
anxiety, for men dreaded lest to themselves, as to the Egyptians in
old time, the ceremony should prove a veritable Passover, solemnized
by the death of their first-born. Later in the year came the Mohurrum,
the most august and touching of all Oriental rites. It is impossible
even for a Christian and an European to look on without emotion when
the insignia of the mighty dead are borne along,--the crimson standard
of the brother who perished by the sword, and the green standard of
the brother who perished by poison:--when, midst a forest of silver
staves and silken banners, are led the chargers of the heroes; while
behind streams along a dense multitude, beating their breasts, and
reciting in sad cadence the immutable formula of lamentation. Though
nigh twelve hundred years have passed since the tragedy was enacted,
the unfeigned earnestness and melancholy of the mourners excite in the
spectator sympathy far more acute than is accorded even to the funeral
of a contemporary. In the year 1857, Englishmen sat booted and spurred,
pistol in belt and saddle on horse; and listened, as the tramp of feet,
mingled with the clapping of hands and the dull murmur of "Ah me, for
Hosein! Ah me, for Hassan!" died away in the distance. And yet the Eed
and the Mohurrum passed without bloodshed; and men ceased to fear for
their lives, and began to tremble for their cherished theory. And, in
truth, it was just as probable that the Mahomedans of India should
succeed in inciting to rebellion a hundred thousand Brahmin sepoys, by
working upon their religious susceptibilities, as that the Orangemen
of Ireland should organize and direct the Roman Catholic population in
a crusade against the English Crown. However little may be the love
lost between the rival creeds in the Emerald Isle, there is quite as
small waste of that sentiment in the case of the rival superstitions
of our Eastern dominions. On this question, so important when viewed
with respect to the relations between ourselves and the class of our
subjects most worthy of our consideration and regard, the eyes of our
compatriots might have been opened at an early stage of the troubles
by the report of a Court of Inquiry, which sat upon the disturbance at
Barrackpore. That court, "from the evidence before them, are of opinion
that the Sikhs and Mussulmans of the Thirty-fourth Regiment of Native
Infantry are trustworthy soldiers of the State, but that the Hindoos
generally of that corps are not trustworthy." But there is a blindness
which it is idle to foment with the application of common sense, or
to couch with the incisive point of fact; the blindness of terror and
rage, and vengeance seeking in the dark for a victim and a pretext.

At dawn on the morning of the sixth of June, Sir Hugh Wheeler
received a letter, in which the Nana announced his intention of at
once commencing the attack. Our officers were summoned within the
intrenchment, where, for a fortnight past, the women and children had
already been in sanctuary. The order was obeyed with soldier-like
promptitude, intensified by the consciousness of imminent peril. It
fared ill with those who had indulged in a fond anticipation that
their next change of lodging would be to Allahabad and Calcutta.
With no notice of quarter, or month, or week; with no valuation for
fixtures, or inventory of furniture, they were called upon to shift to
a residence held on short and uncertain tenure, and at a fearful rent.
There was no time for packing, or even for selection. There was not
leisure to snatch a parting cup of coffee, or a handful of cigars, or
an armful of favourite books, or a pith-helmet that had been tested
by many a long day's tiger-shooting under the blazing Indian sun.
All possessions, however hardly earned and highly prized,--all dear
memorials of home and love,--were to be alike abandoned to the coming
foe. He who, in that close and burning night of the mid summer, had on
his house-top courted a little air and sleep, might not stay to take
anything out of his house. He who had been on some early service in the
field might not return back to take his clothes. Few and happy were
they who had secured a single change of raiment; and those who, in the
hurry of the moment, had stayed to dress themselves from head to foot,
were by comparison not unfortunate. Half-clad, unbreakfasted, confused,
and breathless, our countrymen huddled like shipwrecked sea-farers
into the precincts of the fatal earthwork, which they entered only to
suffer, and left only to die.

For that fortification had been erected under evil auspices. As of Hiel
the Bethelite, so it may be said of poor Sir Hugh, that he marked out
the ground in his first-born, and set up the épaulement in the youngest
of his household. A chief, whose military eye had not been dulled by
age, would have discerned the rare capabilities for defence afforded
by the magazine, which consisted of an immense walled inclosure,
containing numerous buildings and an inexhaustible store of guns and
ammunition. The position was watered, and at the same time protected in
the rear, by the Ganges. The public offices and the treasury were in
the immediate vicinity, so that the records and the money might have
been placed in safety at the cost of a few hours' labour. The doors
of the jail would have been commanded by our cannon, and at least one
tributary to the flood of disorder pent within its bounds. The native
government officials, who for the most part resided at Nawabgunge,
might have remained in communication with the civil authorities within
the fortress; and the garrison could have been readily supplied with
provisions from the loyal villages in the neighbourhood, and, indeed,
from the city itself; which, says our old friend Nanukchund, "was like
a certain wife who used to act up to the wishes of her husband, because
she feared him, and then could also protect herself; but, when her
husband died, she found herself under other people's control, and lived
in licence." He further observes that "the Sahibs did the reverse of
wisdom. They made the intrenchment far out in the plain and outside
the city, without reflecting that, in case of mutiny breaking out,
it would be surrounded by the rebels on all four sides, who would be
assisted by the artillery of the Magazine, and the Government treasure
so temptingly thrown in their way. Thus, to illustrate the proverb, the
Sahibs put a sword into the enemy's hand, and thrust their own heads
forward."

Such was indeed the case. If the choice of the site for our place
of refuge had been confided to Azimoolah and Teeka Sing, they could
not have selected one more favourable for the attack. The Dragoon
hospital stood in the centre of a vast open space, flat with the
flatness of Bengal, on the south bank of the canal which separated
the military quarter from the Native city, the bridge of boats, the
civil station, and the magazine. The establishment consisted of two
single-storied barracks surrounded by spacious verandahs; each intended
to afford accommodation for a company of a hundred men. The building
that was somewhat the larger of the two was thatched with straw,
which circumstance alone rendered the position untenable. The other
was roofed with concrete, a condition usually expressed by the word
"pucka;" that ubiquitous adjective which is the essential ingredient
of Anglo-Indian conversation. Both houses were constructed of thin
brickwork, hardly proof against the rays of an Eastern sun, and far too
frail to resist a twenty-four pound shot. The hospital was provided
with a due modicum of cooking sheds and servants' huts; and in front
of the thatched barrack was a well, protected by a slight parapet. By
order of Sir Hugh these premises had been enclosed in a mud-wall of
the shape of a rectangular parallelogram; four feet in height; three
feet in thickness at the base; and twenty-four inches at the crest,
which was therefore pervious to a bullet from an Enfield rifle. The
batteries were constructed by the very simple expedient of leaving an
aperture of a size proportioned to the number of the guns: so that our
artillerymen served their pieces, as in the field, with their persons
entirely exposed to the fire of the enemy.

Behind those slender bulwarks was gathered a mixed and feeble company,
to the full sum of a thousand souls. Of these, four hundred and
sixty-five were men, of every age and profession. Their wives and grown
daughters were about two hundred and eighty in number, and their little
ones at least as many. All who were able to bear arms, twenty score
by count, were at once called together, and told off in batches under
their respective officers. The north side of the intrenchment, facing
the river, was strengthened by a poor little triangular outwork, which
our garrison entitled "the Redan;" as if to cheer themselves, during
their cruel and inglorious struggle, with a reminiscence of chivalrous
European warfare. This important post was entrusted to Major Vibart, of
the Second Cavalry, assisted by Captain Jenkins. At the north-eastern
corner, Lieutenants Ashe and Sotheby superintended a battery of one
twenty-four pounder howitzer and two nine-pounders. Captain Kempland
had charge of the east curtain, while at the south-eastern angle stood
three nine-pounder guns under the charge of Lieutenants Eckford,
Burney, and Delafosse; of whom one was destined to show upon happier
fields of battle how the soldiers of Cawnpore fought and bled. Next
in order came the main-guard, held by Lieutenant Turnbull, and
flanked by a tiny rifled piece carrying a three-pound ball, which was
manned by a detachment under the orders of Major Prout. Towards the
north, Lieutenants Dempster and Martin directed the working of three
nine-pounders; and their next neighbour was Captain Whiting, who felt
the Redan with his right, and thus closed the circuit of the defence.
The general supervision of the artillery devolved upon Major Larkins;
but that officer was incapacitated by illness from taking a very active
part in the operations.

There was no time to be lost. While the commanders of the various posts
were choosing their parties, and placing their sentries, and dispensing
their share of the arms and ammunition, already the roar of great
guns, and the clouds of black smoke rising fast and frequent in the
north-west quarter, told them that the warning of the Nana was no empty
menace. As when, during some great hurricane, such as of late passed
o'er pale Calcutta, the tidal wave comes surging up the river, unlooked
for and irresistible, leaving in its track desolation and ruin, the
wrecks of ships and the corpses of men--so on that morning, over doomed
Cawnpore, swept the returning flood of mutiny and misrule. At break of
day the whole rebel array poured down the Delhi road in a compact body,
with the Maharaja at their head, who had good reason to be proud of his
following. It was a force which would have done credit to any Mahratta
chief in the palmiest days of that redoubted race. There was an entire
regiment of excellent cavalry, well mounted and equipped. There was a
detachment of gunners and drivers from the Oude Artillery, who had been
despatched as a loan from Lucknow to Cawnpore, just in time to enable
them to take part in the revolt. There were the Nana's own myrmidons,
who made up by attachment to his cause what they wanted in military
skill. Lastly, there were three fine battalions of Bengal sepoys, led
by experienced sepoy officers, armed with English muskets, and trained
by English discipline. When the mutineers arrived at the outskirts
of the station, Teeka Sing, the General, postponing his private gain
and malice to the public good, repaired at once to the magazine,
and spent the morning in securing a fleet of thirty boats which lay
beneath the walls, laden with shot, shell, and heavy cannon. The guns
in serviceable order he sent off towards the intrenchment on carriages
drawn by Government bullocks; and those which were not in condition
for immediate use, he compelled the artificers of the establishment to
brush up on the Government lathes. But the main body of the insurgents
displayed no such foresight or self-control. They kept close order no
longer, but spread themselves out to the right and left, and, robbing,
burning, and murdering as they went, bore southwards over the civil
quarter and the native city. Sir George Parker and a party of his
friends, who, inobservant of the coming storm, were lingering over
their last breakfast in his pleasant villa, had barely time to fly
for their lives. Four office-clerks, who lived together in a shop on
the banks of the canal, after a valiant resistance, were smoked out
of their lodging, and slain as they fled. The troopers of the Second
Cavalry galloped up and down the lanes of the black town, hunting
for Englishmen; and the low-caste Mahomedans of the bazaar--the
sword-polishers, the cotton-spinners, and the dealers in silver
ornaments--joined eagerly in the chase. One European was run down and
worried to death in a garden. Another, a gentleman advanced in age,
had concealed himself in a hut near the posting-house, in company with
his wife, his little daughter, and his son, a boy of sixteen years.
The wretched family were tracked to their hiding-place, arrested,
and dragged before the Nana, who ordered them for instant execution;
and they were happy at least in this, that they died together, and
without delay. Proclamation was made that every building in which
shelter had been given to Europeans, Eurasians, or Christians of any
extraction, should first be plundered, and then razed to the ground.
This announcement provided the rebels with a pretext for breaking open
and ransacking the dwellings of many respectable natives. Buddree Nath,
the commissariat contractor, who was accused of secreting Lady Wheeler
and her daughters, lost the savings of a lifetime in the course of a
single hour. The scum of the city made the most of their period of
licence, and, when any portable property came in their way, took good
care not to inquire very closely into the creed of the owner. Among
others, the King of Oude is supposed to have suffered a heavy loss.
Forty thousand rupees belonging to a Hindoo merchant were taken from a
cart which stood in the premises of the post-office, and removed into
the most blackguard districts of the neighbourhood. A gang of cavalry
soldiers went down the Street of Silver, the main thoroughfare of the
town, beating in the doors of the cloth-merchants and money-changers,
insulting the trembling tradesmen, and carrying off all the valuables
on which they could lay their hands. Meanwhile, those mutineers whose
religious spite overcame their desire for lucre, were deriving intense
enjoyment from the occupation of cannonading the church. Another large
company of Brahmin sepoys, whose orthodox indignation took a more
practical turn, and could not content itself with the somewhat tame
pastime of persecuting senseless brick and plaster, marched off to the
Mahomedan quarter; bombarded the residence of the Nunhey Nawab, the
most influential Mussulman noble of the vicinity; blew open the gates;
smashed the glass-ware and the porcelain; appropriated the contents
of the wardrobe and the plate-chest; and told the master of the house
to consider himself a prisoner. They then proceeded to take into
custody other leading gentlemen of the same persuasion, and returned
to the Nana loaded with spoil, and followed by a line of sedan-chairs
containing the persons of their captives.

As the morning advanced, the reports of the musketry and the tumult
of voices grew more and more distinct to the ears of our countrymen.
Nearer and ever nearer rolled the flames of the blazing houses, and
the white puffs which betokened the presence of artillery. At length,
stung by a generous impatience, Lieutenant Ashe took out his guns to
reconnoitre, accompanied by some five and twenty volunteers. The party
had barely gone forward a quarter of a mile, when they caught sight
of the rebel van, which had already passed the canal, and occupied in
force the neighbourhood of the bridge. Our people returned faster than
they went, and not all; for one, at least, Lieutenant Ashburner, was
never again seen or heard of; and poor Mr. Murphy, of the East Indian
Railway, brought back with him a wound, to which he succumbed before
the day was out. He enjoyed the melancholy honour of being buried in
a solitary coffin which had been found in a corner of the hospital;
and shared with one other, a lady who died of fever, enviable in that
she was the first, the privilege of being decently interred within the
precincts of the intrenchment. There soon came to be scanty leisure
for funeral rites. At ten o'clock the mutineers fired their first
shot, from a nine-pounder gun, which they had brought down to the
vacant lines of the First Infantry. The ball struck the crest of the
mud wall, and glided over into the smaller barrack, where it broke the
leg of an unhappy native footman, who breathed his last in the course
of the afternoon. This terrible and unwonted visitor, the precursor
of many, scared indoors a large assembly of ladies and children who
were sitting and playing in and about the verandahs; and sent to their
posts the fighting men, most of whom had now their earliest experience
of the sensation produced by the whizzing rush of a round shot; an
ominous sound, which, ere long, became familiar to them as the click
of the billiard-ball to a marker, or the buzz of the tennis-ball to an
_habitué_ of Princes' Club.

And so the siege had begun. The first stroke had been played in that
momentous contest, of which the stake was a thousand English lives;
since nothing remained for our countrymen to protect save their bare
existences and the empty shadow of the British rule. The first game
had gone against us. The Nana had won the regiments; and the regiments
had won their colours, their weapons, and their pay. Why needed they
to grudge the losers their breath? Why, for a possession of no value,
except to the owner, should they deliberately commence a hazardous and
protracted match of double or quits? Power and authority, treasures
and munitions, the sinews and the muscles of war, had alike passed
over to the sepoys. What temptation was there to run the manifold
public chances of battle, and incur the personal risk which none can
avoid who bring angry Englishmen to bay, in order to destroy a handful
of disheartened invalids and civilians; scarcely numerous enough to
escort their women and children in safety to Allahabad through the
perils of eddies, and quicksands, and bands of highwaymen recruited and
emboldened in those months of general anarchy?

But it came to pass that their heart was hardened, and they would
not let our people go. The ringleaders of the mutiny knew well that
their position was one of utmost hazard. They had been too criminal to
be forgiven, and too successful to be forgotten. Henceforward their
aim was to implicate their comrades beyond the hope of pardon; to
place between them and their former condition of life a gulf filled
with English blood. And when the Nana exhorted his followers to slay
and spare not, he spoke to willing ears; for between them and our
countrymen there existed a degree of mutual distrust which could only
end in mutual extermination. The minds of men were so agitated and
disordered by anger and uneasiness, that the sole chance of life for
either party lay in the utter destruction of the other. Already quarter
was no longer given, and, indeed, could hardly be said to be worth the
asking. A European knew that, if one set of Pandies entertained any
qualms of compassion or gratitude, the next squad who came across him
would infallibly cut his throat; and a sepoy knew that, if his captors
took the trouble to drag him about in their train for a few days, the
magistrate at the first station on the road would have him hung before
the officer in command of the party had emerged from the bath-room.
This was no generous rivalry of national vigour and skill and prowess.
Little of military science was here, and less of military courtesy.
With clenched teeth and bated breath, the Brahmin and the Saxon closed
for the death-grapple; well aware that, when once their fingers were on
each other's throats, one only of the combatants would ever rise from
the trampled sand.

As soon as the Rubicon of insurrection had been passed; as soon as the
gauntlet of sedition had been thrown; the first care of the mutineers
was to get rid of all who had been the witnesses of their guilt, and
who might hereafter be the judges. No sepoy felt secure of his neck and
plunder as long as one solitary Englishman remained on Indian soil; for
our revolted mercenaries shared to the full that strange mixture of
veneration, bewilderment, aversion, and terror, with which our Eastern
subjects still regard that extraordinary people who, in the course of
a single decade, expanded from a handful of clerks and factors to a
galaxy of warriors and proconsuls. It is hardly possible for a man
brought up amidst European scenes and associations to realize the idea
conceived of him and his countrymen by a thoroughbred Hindoo. On the
one hand, the natives must acknowledge our vast superiority in the arts
of war and rule. Our railways, and steamships, and Armstrong guns,
are tangible facts which cannot be slighted. They must be perfectly
alive to the knowledge that we have conquered them, and are governing
them in a more systematic and downright manner than they have ever
been governed before. But, on the other hand, many of our usages must
appear in their eyes most debased and revolting. It is difficult to
imagine the horror with which a punctilious and devout Brahmin cannot
but regard a people who eat the flesh of cow and pig, and drink various
sorts of strong liquors from morning till night. It is at least as hard
for such a man to look up to us as his betters, morally and socially,
as it would be for us to place among the most civilized nations of the
world a population which was in the habit of dining on human flesh, and
intoxicating itself daily with laudanum and salvolatile. The peculiar
qualities which mark the Englishman are peculiarly distasteful to the
Oriental, and are sure to be widely distorted when seen from his point
of view. Our energy and earnestness appear oppressive and importunate
to the languid, voluptuous aristocracy of the East. Our very honesty
seems ostentatious and contemptible to the wily and tortuous Hindoo
mind. That magnificent disregard of _les convenances_, which among
Continental nations is held to be a distinguishing mark of our
countrymen, is inexplicable and hateful to a race who consider external
pomp and reticent solemnity to be the necessary accompaniments of rank,
worth, and power. Add the mysterious awe by which we are shrouded in
the eyes of the native population, which very generally attributes to
magic our uniform success in everything we take in hand, and you will
have some notion of the picture presented to the Brahmin imagination
by an indefatigable, public-spirited, plain-spoken, beer-drinking,
cigar-smoking, tiger-shooting, public servant. We should not be far
wrong if we were content to allow that we are regarded by the natives
of Hindostan as a species of quaint and somewhat objectionable demons,
with a rare aptitude for fighting and administration; foul and degraded
in our habits, though with reference to those habits not to be judged
by the same standard as ordinary men; not altogether malevolent, but
entirely wayward and unaccountable; a race of demi-devils, neither
quite human, nor quite supernatural; not wholly bad, yet far from
perfectly beneficent; who have been settled down in the country
by the will of fate, and seem very much inclined to stay there by
our own. With this impression on his mind the Bengal sepoy desired
with a nervous and morbid anxiety to get quit of the Sahibs by fair
means or foul. He did not care to expose us to unnecessary misery
and humiliation; to torture our men, or to outrage our women. His
sole object was to see the last of us: to get done with us for good
and for ever. Ignorant beyond conception of European geography and
statistics, he had convinced himself that, if once the Anglo-Indians
of every sex and age were killed off, from the Governor General to the
serjeant-major's baby, there did not exist the wherewithal to replace
them. And therefore he said in his heart: "Come, and let us destroy
them together. Let us cut them off from being a nation, that their name
may be no more in remembrance." He conceived that Great Britain had
been drained dry of men to recruit the garrison of our Asiatic empire;
that our home population consisted of nurses and children, of invalids
who had left the East for a while in quest of health, and veterans
who had retired to live at ease on their share of the treasures of
Hindostan. He fancied that the tidings of a general massacre of our
people would render our island a home of helpless mourners: he found
that those tidings changed it into a nest of reckless and pitiless
avengers. He believed our power to be a chimera, and he discovered
it to be a hydra. He learned too late that he had digged a pit for
himself, and had fallen into the ditch which he had made; that his
mischief and his violent dealings had come down upon his own head: that
Englishmen were many, and that, when the occasion served, their feet
too were not slow to shed blood: that our soldiers could kill within
the year more heathen than our missionaries had converted in the course
of a century: that our social science talk about the sacredness of
human life, and our May Meeting talk concerning our duty towards those
benighted souls for whom Christ died, meant that we were to forgive
most of those who had never injured us, plunder none but such as were
worth robbing, and seldom hang an innocent Hindoo if we could catch a
guilty one: that the great principles of mercy and justice and charity
must cease to be eternally true until the injured pride of a mighty
nation had been satisfied, its wrath glutted, and its sway restored.

But though apprehension and dislike had inspired the rebels with a
determination to destroy every English man off the face of the land,
had they no feeling of ruth for the sufferings and the fate of our
women? Never in European warfare has the sword been deliberately
pointed at a female breast; save during those rare seasons, indelible
from memory and inexpiable by national remorse, when, after the mad
carnage of a successful escalade, drunkenness and licence have ruled
the hour. If the Nana knew the valour and strength of our officers too
well to allow him to be merciful, how came it that he did not respect
the weakness of our ladies? No one can rightly read the history of
the mutinies unless he constantly takes into account the wide and
radical difference between the views held by Europeans and Asiatics
with reference to the treatment and position of the weaker sex. We,
who still live among the records and associations of chivalry, horrify
Utilitarians and Positivists by persisting in regarding women as
goddesses. The Hindoos, who allow their sisters and daughters few
or no personal rights,--the Mahomedans, who do not even allow them
souls,--cannot bring themselves to look upon them as better than
playthings. The pride of a Mussulman servant is painfully wounded by a
scolding from the mistress of the house, and he takes every opportunity
of showing his contempt for her by various childish impertinences.
Among the numberless symptoms of our national eccentricity, that which
seems most extraordinary to a native is our submitting to be governed
by a woman. And as a Hindoo fails to appreciate the social standing
of an English lady, so it is to be feared that he gives her little
credit for her domestic virtues. Her free and unrestrained life excites
in his mind the most singular and unjust ideas. To see women walking
in public, driving about in open carriages, dining, and talking, and
dancing with men connected with them neither by blood nor marriage,
never fails to produce upon him a false and unfortunate impression.[1]
And therefore it happened that a sepoy corporal, whose estimate of an
European lady was curiously compounded of contempt, disapprobation,
and misconception, was little adapted to entertain those sentiments of
knightly tenderness and devotion which Petrarch and Cowley have handed
down to us from the days of Bayard and Henry of Navarre. In the eyes of
such a man every Englishwoman was but the mother of an English child,
and every English child was a sucking tyrant. The wolves, with their
mates and whelps, had been hounded into their den, and now or never was
the time to smoke them out, and knock on the head the whole of that
formidable brood. And so, on the first Saturday of that June--these,
bent on a wholesale butchery; those, prepared to play the man for their
dear life, and for lives dearer still,--with widely different hope, but
with equal resolution, on either side of the meagre rampart besiegers
and besieged mustered for the battle.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In "The Mirror of Indigo," a vernacular drama which has gained for
itself a niche in Indian history, and contributed a rather remarkable
page to the Law Reports of the Calcutta tribunals, the following
passage occurs in a conversation between two native women:--

_Reboti._ Moreover, the wife of the Indigo-planter, in order to make
her husband's case strong, has sent a letter to the Magistrate, since
it is said that the Magistrate hears her words most attentively.

_Aduri._ I saw the lady. She has no shame at all. When the Magistrate
of the district (whose name occasions great terror) goes riding about
through the village, the lady also rides on horseback with him. Riding
about on a horse! Because the aunt of Kezi once laughed before the
elder brother of her husband all people ridiculed her: while this was
the Magistrate of the district.




CHAPTER III.

THE SIEGE.


The intelligence of the revolt speedily travelled over all surrounding
districts, and attracted to the spot the entire available blackguardism
of the neighbourhood. The disloyal and insolvent landholders for thirty
miles about called out their tenantry and retainers, and made the best
of their way to Cawnpore. As when the redoubted Hebrew captain founded
an asylum in the cave of Adullam, so now unto the leaders of the mutiny
gathered themselves every one that was in distress, and every one that
was in debt, and every one that was discontented. Thus immutable is
the constitution of Oriental society:--unchanged by thirty centuries;
unchangeable, perchance, by thirty more. Some chieftains brought two
hundred armed followers; others four hundred. One Rajah came with a
tail of forty score: while Bhowany Sing, whom Nanukchund designates as
"that old and notorious scoundrel," marched into the rebel camp at the
head of twelve hundred matchlock-men. No one seems to have entertained
any doubt as to the final extinction of our sway. The old order of
things had disappeared for ever, and it behoved any feudal leader who
had ambition or necessities to be present and ready to assert himself
ere the new order was definitely established. The Nana was first to
seize the occasion by the forelock. A trusty adherent was sent to
Bithoor with an escort of twenty horse to announce the commencement of
the Mahratta rule. It was a terrible hour for the personal enemies of
him who had assumed the prime authority. As soon as it became known
that their master was in power, the idle ruffians who swarmed in his
palace at once proceeded to gratify his spite and their own wanton
cruelty. They forced the doors of Goordeen, who acted as agent to the
widows of Bajee Rao, the late Peishwa; knocked down his house about
his ears; slew his people; and ended by blowing him from the mouth of
a cannon. They seized the attendants of Chimna Apa, who pulled the
strings of the law-suit brought against the Maharaja by his cousin;
loaded them with chains; and informed them that they were to be put
to death as soon as the captors could find leisure to cut off their
hands and noses. Nanukchund, who had been the leading counsel in the
case, was warned in time of the impending danger. He sent word to his
juniors to provide for their own safety, and himself sought concealment
in an unfurnished house belonging to one of his friends, whence he
observed the progress of the insurrection with a penetration that was
occasionally distorted by present terror and the anticipation of future
advancement.

On the morning of Sunday, the seventh of June, a proclamation in two
languages was issued at Cawnpore from the press of a schoolmaster, and
distributed by his pupils, adjuring all true Hindoos and Mussulmans to
unite in defence of their religions, and rally round the person of the
Nana. Neither Mussulmans nor Hindoos were slow to obey the call. The
residents of the Butcher's Ward forthwith set up the green standard,
and were joined by the dregs of the population. Respectable Mahomedans
at first held aloof; but next day the banner was removed to an open
square, south of the canal, whither a large and influential body of
the faithful repaired to do homage to the symbol of their religion.
Azeezun, the Demoiselle Théroigne of the revolt, appeared on horseback
amidst a group of her admirers, dressed in the uniform of her favoured
regiment, armed with pistols, and decorated with medals. A priest of
high consideration seated himself beneath the flag, rosary in hand,
and endeavoured by prayer and meditation to ascertain whether the
day was propitious for an attack upon the stronghold of the infidel.
His piety, however, was cut short by a round-shot from Lieutenant
Dempster's battery, which sent the assemblage of believers scuttling to
the nearest cover: upon which the holy man bundled together his beads,
tucked up his robes, and made off with a precipitation not altogether
consistent with the doctrine of fatalism.

Meanwhile throughout and around the town were being gathered in the
gleanings of that harvest of murder. A miserable family of the name of
Mackintosh was discovered lurking under a bridge disguised in native
clothes, their faces stained with pitiful want of skill in imitation
of the Hindoo complexion. A road overseer was caught with his wife and
children to the north of the station; and another person employed in
the same department, who had found a temporary refuge beneath the roof
of an individual whom he had formerly obliged with a contract, was now
turned adrift, and taken by the bloodhounds who were scouring the city.
To each and all of these capture was death, instant inexorable. The
Maharaja had despatched a party of sepoys to the residence of Mr Edward
Greenway, a man of considerable property, who had given shelter to an
officer recently cashiered by court-martial. This gentleman now proved
that, in whatever military qualities he might have been deficient,
courage, at least, was not amongst them; for he defended the threshold
of his host until the last cartridge had been expended, and then walked
in among the assailants, and bade them cut his throat: an invitation
to which they eagerly responded. Then they secured Mr. Greenway, his
wife, his sister, and his little ones, and brought them as prisoners
to the Nana; who ordered them into confinement with the expectation of
obtaining a ransom, and the intention of killing them whether or not
the money was forthcoming. He, for one, had no notion of permitting his
avarice to clash with his barbarity.

As the excitement of tracking down and unearthing Englishmen began to
languish on account of the growing scarcity of victims, the mutineers
gradually betook themselves to the more serious business of the siege.
During the whole of Saturday Teeka Sing had been hard at work in the
Arsenal, mounting the great guns, and despatching them successively to
the scene of action. As fast as each piece arrived, it was placed in
position, and manned by a party of volunteers. By noon on Sunday the
cordon of batteries was complete, and our intrenchment was raked by
twenty-four pound shot from every quarter of the compass. Now became
patent to the most inexperienced eye the fatal and irremediable defects
of the site which our general had selected for the fortification. The
Dragoon Hospital was entirely surrounded by large and solid buildings,
at distances varying from three to eight hundred yards: buildings from
which the assailants derived protection at least as effectual as that
afforded to the garrison by their improvised defences. From roof and
window poured a shower of bullets during the hours of daylight, while
after dusk troops of sepoys hovered about within pistol-shot, and made
the night hideous with incessant volleys of musketry. Henceforward,
there was but little sleep for our countrymen.

The annals of warfare contain no episode so painful as the story of
this melancholy conflict. It is a story which needs not comment or
embellishment. Whether related in the inornate language of official
correspondence, or in the childish phraseology of Hindoo evidence, it
moves to tears as surely as the pages in which the greatest of all
historians tells, as only he can tell, the last agony of the Athenian
host in Sicily. The sun never before looked on such a sight as a
crowd of women and children cooped within a small space, and exposed
during twenty days and nights to the concentrated fire of thousands
of muskets and a score of heavy cannon. At first every projectile
which struck the barracks was the signal for heartrending shrieks,
and low wailing more heartrending yet: but, ere long, time and habit
taught them to suffer and to fear in silence. Before the third evening
every window and door had been beaten in. Next went the screens, the
piled-up furniture, and the internal partitions: and soon shell and
ball ranged at will through and through the naked rooms. Some ladies
were slain outright by grape or round-shot. Others were struck down by
bullets. Many were crushed beneath falling brickwork, or mutilated by
the splinters which flew from shattered sash and panel. Happy were they
whose age and sex called them to the front of the battle, and dispensed
them from the spectacle of this passive carnage. Better to hear more
distinctly the crackle of the sepoy musketry, and the groans of wounded
wife and sister more faintly. If die they both must, such was the
thought of more than one husband, it was well that duty bade them die
apart.

Never did men fight with more signal determination against more fearful
odds. Not at Fontenoy, not at Arcot, not at Albuera was British
endurance so stubborn, or British valour so conspicuous. For, while
the besiegers worked their guns under cover, the artillerymen of the
besieged stood erect upon the bare plain. While the besiegers possessed
unbounded store of huge mortars and battering-guns, the besieged had
a few cannon too small for efficacious service in the field. While
disease and the accidents of combat hourly diminished the numbers of
those within, the ranks without were daily swollen by regiments of
recent mutineers and fresh clans of rebels. But circumstances such as
these are best adapted to exhibit the strange humour of the English
warrior. With all that was most dear at their backs, and in front
all that was most hateful, and, in their view, most contemptible,
undaunted and not uncheerful our countrymen bore up the fray. From
the very earliest days of the attack it became apparent that old Sir
Hugh was unequal to the exposure and fatigue involved in the conduct
of the struggle, and in the inspection and re-distribution of the
posts, a labour rendered only too severe by the deadly fire of the
enemy. In such a strait men act as acted those ten thousand Greeks,
whose memory will never fade, when by the banks of far Euphrates their
chief had been slain and their allies scattered to the winds. "Then,"
says Xenophon, "Clearchus took the command, and the rest obeyed; not
as having chosen him by formal election, but because they saw that
he, and he alone, had the temper of a general." The Clearchus of
Cawnpore was Captain Moore, an officer in charge of the invalids of
the thirty-second foot. He was a tall, fair, blue-eyed man, glowing
with animation and easy Irish intrepidity. Wheresoever there was most
pressing risk, and wheresoever there was direst wretchedness, his
presence was seldom long wanting. Under the rampart; at the batteries;
in some out-picket, where men were dropping like pheasants under a
fearful cross-fire; in some corner of the hospital, to a brave heart
more fearful still, where lay the mangled forms of those young and
delicate beings whom war should always spare:--ever and everywhere
was heard his sprightly voice speaking words of encouragement, of
exhortation, of sympathy, and even of courteous gallantry. Wherever
Moore had passed he left men something more courageous, and women
something less unhappy. It is well when such leaders are at hand. It
is ill when they are discovered and promoted too late to undo the evil
that has been already done.

Across the south-western angle of the intrenchment ran a line of
barracks which were still in course of erection. They each measured
some two hundred feet in length, and were constructed of red brick,
which had not as yet received that coat of white plaster that reduces
all Anglo-Indian house decoration to a uniformity of colour diversified
only by the various degrees of age and shabbiness. Of these, the
buildings marked in the plan by the numbers 2, 3, and 4 were in close
proximity to the corner of our fortification, the entire extent
of which they commanded, inasmuch as their walls had been already
completed to an elevation of forty feet. None of the others had been
raised to a height of more than two or three yards from the level of
the ground. The floors had not been laid, nor the bamboo poles removed,
which, rudely spliced together, form the cheap but frail scaffolding
of Hindoo architecture: and the ground both within and without, along
the whole row, was thickly covered with piles of the materials used in
the progress of the works. From the very first the sepoys possessed
the northern half of the range: but they never succeeded in obtaining
a hold on Barrack Number Four, which was defended by a party of civil
engineers, who had been employed upon the East Indian railroad. These
gentlemen, over and above that indigenous aptitude for conflict
common to all Englishmen of the upper classes, had acquired, during
years spent in surveying, a trained sharpness of vision and a correct
judgment of distance which rendered them peculiarly dangerous when
placed behind the sights of an Enfield rifle. For three days these
amateurs baffled every attempt of the enemy: but at the end of that
period the assaults became so fierce and frequent that they were not
sorry to accept the services of a fighting man by profession. And so
there came across to them from the redan Captain Jenkins, a valiant
soldier, foredoomed to a death of anguish extraordinary even at such a
time.

Whether the mutineers were aware of this introduction of the military
element, or whether they already had learned to respect civilian skill
and bravery, from this time forth they desisted from their efforts in
that quarter, and turned their attention to the southernmost of the
unfinished erections, which they proceeded to occupy in great force.
Hereupon Lieutenant Glanville was posted with a small detachment in
the adjoining barrack, which thenceforward was recognised by both
parties as the key of our position. What the farm of Hougoumont was at
Waterloo,--what the sand-bag battery was at Inkerman,--that was Barrack
Number Two in the death-wrestle of Cawnpore. How furious was the
strife,--how desperate the case of the little garrison, may be gathered
from the fact that, though only sixteen in number, they had a surgeon
to themselves, who never lacked ample employment. Glanville came under
his hands, desperately wounded: and the vacancy thus caused was soon
after supplied by Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson of the Fifty-sixth Native
Infantry. This officer did his best to lose a life which destiny seemed
determined to preserve in order that England might know how, in their
exceeding distress, her sons had not been unmindful of her ancient
honour. "My sixteen men," he writes, "consisted in the first instance
of Ensign Henderson of the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry, five or six
of the Madras fusileers, two plate-layers from the railway works, and
some men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment. The first instalment was soon
disabled. The Madras fusileers were armed with the Enfield rifle, and
consequently they had to bear the brunt of the attack. They were all
shot at their posts. Several of the Eighty-fourth also fell: but, in
consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as a loss in my
little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a reinforcement
from the intrenchment. Sometimes a civilian, sometimes a soldier came.
The orders given us were, not to surrender with our lives, and we did
our best to obey them."

Nothing contributed so much to check the spread of the rebellion of
1857 as the individual courage and pugnacity of our countrymen resident
in the East. Civil and military alike, they were all skilled in the
use of weapons, and cool in the presence of personal danger. Such a
habit of body and mind they acquired both for policy and for pleasure.
Every Anglo-Indian is well aware that he is one of an imperial race,
holding its own in the midst of a subject population by dint of
foresight and martial prowess. There were villages of evil reputation
which on the day of assessment the collector preferred to visit on
the back of the steadiest Arab in his stables, with a favourite
hog spear carelessly balanced beside his right stirrup. There were
notorious bits of road where the traveller felt more comfortable if
he heard from time to time the lock of his revolver clanking against
the soda-water bottles in the pocket of his palanquin. Never was there
a better training-school for warfare than the Indian hunting-field.
A man who has heard unmoved above his head the scream of a crippled
elephant;--who behind his trusty Westley Richards has awaited, calm and
collected, the last rush of a wounded tiger;--need not doubt what his
behaviour may be in any possible emergency. He who, like more than one
true sportsman, has hardly crawled away, bloody knife in hand, from
the embrace of a dying bear:--who has kept at bay a forty-inch boar
with the butt of his shivered lance;--will not be at a loss how to meet
the charge of a mutinous trooper. The rebels found to their cost that
the Sahibs, like old stalkers of large game, were seldom foolhardy
and never remiss:--that they were neither fluttered by peril nor
over-excited by success:--that they rarely failed to make the most of
what cover they could get, and still more rarely wasted a cartridge.
Lieutenant Thomson contrived a sort of perch half-way up the wall of
his barrack, in which he stationed a young officer, named Stirling, of
high repute as a marksman, who soon proved that a rebel running home
to his dinner was at least as easy to hit as an ibex bounding down the
crags in a Himalayan valley, or a blue cow dodging in and out amidst
the trunks of an Oude forest.

The whole of this range of buildings not included within our posts was
literally alive with sepoys. They could distinctly be heard scampering
along in troops, like rats behind an antique wainscot, chattering,
yelling, or screaming under the emotion of the moment. From door, and
window, and drain, and loophole they fired away at our stronghold,
accompanying each shot with a taunt, conveying, in Oriental fashion,
a random but painful statement concerning a remote ancestress of the
person addressed. Ever and anon a fanatic, inspired by some vile drug,
would issue forth into the open, brandishing his sword, in order
to indulge himself in a dance of defiance; on all which occasions
Lieutenant Stirling took good care that the performance should not meet
with an encore. When the enemy became more than usually troublesome,
the picket which was most hardly pressed would invite their neighbours
to come over and assist them: and then the combined force of some
thirty bayonets sallied forth to sweep the line of barracks, chasing
the foe before them; killing the boldest and slowest of foot; knocking
on the head such as were drunk or asleep; shooting down those who,
in their anxiety to get a good aim, had ensconced themselves too
high up to be able to climb down on so short a notice; and driving
the rest out, and across the plain: at which point the gunners of
the intrenchment took up the work, and plied the flying multitude
with grape and canister. During one of the earliest of these sorties
eleven mutineers were captured, and brought into the intrenchment. As
no sentry could just then be spared from the front, they were placed
under the charge of Bridget Widdowson, a stalwart dame, wife of a
private of the Thirty-second Regiment. Secured by the very insufficient
contrivance of a single rope, passed from wrist to wrist, they sat
quietly on the ground like good school-children, while the matron
walked up and down in front of the row, drawn sword in hand. After
she had been relieved by a warder of the other sex, they all managed
to slip off: and from that time forward it was generally understood
that prisoners were to be left on the spot where they had been caught,
with the jackal and the vulture as their jailers. A captive, as long
as he remained in custody, was a consumer of precious food; and at
once became the most dangerous of spies, if he succeeded in making his
escape to the rebel lines with a report of our destitute condition.

On Friday, the twelfth, the insurgents made their first general assault
upon our position. The cavalry, who on that day had been the first
in the career of sedition, were now with some difficulty prevailed
upon to dismount and lead the way to glory; but after the loss of two
of their number they concluded that enough had been done to sustain
the credit of their branch of the service, and retired to console
themselves for their repulse in the opium shops of the suburbs. The
sepoy infantry next advanced to try their fortune, followed by all the
rabble of the bazaars. They came on like men, but they went where there
were men likewise. It was not thus that our rampart might be won. Every
English soldier had ready to his hand from three to ten muskets loaded
with ball and slug: for there was a plentiful stock of small-arms
within the fortification. The civilian held his thumb pressed tight
upon the hammer of a pet smoothbore, with a charge of Number Four
shot for close quarters snugly packed in the left-hand barrel. The
officer in command of the battery was feeling for the leaden tip in
each chamber of his revolver, as he gave his final order to take time
and aim below the cross-belts. Our people were composed and confident.
Sending quiet shots from behind a wall into the middle of a crowd
was child's play compared with the daylong hazard of the crashing
cannonade. After a short but bitter engagement the assailants withdrew,
leaving on the field many of their comrades. Profiting by this harsh
lesson they returned henceforward to their old tactics, and applied
themselves to pound out the life of our garrison by an unremitting
storm of ball, and bomb, and bullet.

Few, and ever fewer, in number; overmatched in weight of metal;
ill-provided with ammunition, and protected by not an inch of cover,
our artillerymen still sustained the hot debate. Lieutenant Ashe
went through his work with a display of professional interest that
would not have disgraced Sir William Armstrong during a trial match at
Shoeburyness. After each round the besiegers saw with astonishment the
zealous young Sahib leap on the heel of the discharged gun, spy-glass
in hand, heedless of the missiles which were chirping round his ears.
Unfortunately eight out of our ten pieces were nine-pounders, and
the supply of nine-pound balls was soon expended. Reduced to load
with shot a size too small, our officers could not secure accuracy in
their practice. The gunners in our south-eastern battery had suffered
much from a small piece which the sepoys had contrived to hoist into
position amidst the _débris_ of one among the half-built barracks.
Lieutenant Delafosse, after despatching a number of six-pound balls
in the direction of the embrasure without any perceptible result, at
length resolved to bring the matter to a conclusion in one way or
another. He rammed down three cannon-balls, filled up the chinks with
grape, bade his men stand back, and fired off this portentous charge.
To h

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