at the cost of their lives, stood
resolutely
at their posts.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
Holmes, Indian Mutiny, pp.
55-6.
; Idem, pp: 57 599.
• Cf. Lee-Warner, op. cit. II, 257 sqq. ; also Baird, op. cit. pp. 168, 355.
>
>
## p. 172 (#208) ############################################
172
THE MUTINY
>
the Brahman recruit whom he was supposed to command; but men
of low caste who would have been glad to serve were often rejected.
"High caste—that is to say mutiny”, wrote Sir Charles Napier, who
warmly praised the sepoys of the Bombay and Madras presidencies,
“is encouraged”; “some day or other”, he prophesied of Delhi,
“much mischief will be hatched within those walls, and no European
troops at hand. Lhave no confidence in the allegiance of your high-
caste mercenaries”. 1 The disproportion between the numbers of the
British and the native troops was glaring. At the close of Dalhousie's
administration the latter amounted to two hundred and thirty-three
thousand, the former, who, moreover, were so distributed that their
controlling power was impaired, to less than forty-six thousand, and
the disproportion was increased in the same year in consequence of
the Persian War. Dalhousie, pointing out that the Crimean War had
begotten rumours injurious to British prestige, pleaded earnestly for
a diminution of the native and a corresponding increase of the British
troops; but for more than two years his suggestions were not brought
formally under the notice of the directors. 2
Another reform, which Dalhousie had planned and his successor
carried out, intensified the fears which the Bengal army had long felt
for their caste. Six regiments only were liable for general service, of
which three were in 1856 quartered in Pegu. Two were entitled to be
relieved within a few months; but none of the other three was
available. It was therefore impossible under the existing regulations
to send regiments by sea to the Burmese coast, and the overland route
was in part impassable. The Madras army was enlisted for general
service; but the presidency was unwilling to arouse discontent among
its own troops by calling upon them to garrison a country which lay
properly within the sphere of the Bengal army. Confronted by
necessity, the governor-general issued a general order, decreeing that
no recruit should thenceforward be accepted who would not under-
take to go whithersoever his services might be required. “There is
no fear”, he wrote a few months later, “of feelings of caste being
excited by the new enlistment regulations";' but, being a new-comer,
he did not realise that the Bengal army was a brotherhood, in which
military service was hereditary. Recruiting officers complained that
men of high caste, whose religious scruples were aroused by the
thought of being liable to cross the sea, had begun to shrink from
entering the service which their fathers and their brethren had flocked
to join, and old sepoys were whispering to each other their fears that
the oaths of the new recruits might be binding also upon themselves.
Two other changes, apparently trivial, increased the prevalent dis-
content. Sepoys declared unfit for foreign service were no longer to
1 The Times, 24 July, 1857, and History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there,
2 Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 285.
3 Holmes, op. cit. p. 76.
p. 1o n.
## p. 173 (#209) ############################################
THE GREASED CARTRIDGES
173
be allowed to retire on pensions, but to be employed in cantonment
duty, and all sepoys were thenceforth to pay the regular postage for
their letters instead of having them franked by their commandant.
The men were now in a mood to believe any lie that reflected dis-
credit upon the government. Seeing that the warlike Sikhs were
favoured by the recruiting sergeants, they fancied that a Sikh army
was to be raised to supersede them. Agitators assured them that
Lord Canning had been sent to India to convert them, and pointed
to the General Service Enlistment order as the first step. A manifesto
recently published by missionaries was interpreted as an official in-
vitation to embrace Christianity, and when the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal issued a reassuring proclamation, the bigoted Muham-
madans of the Patna division refused to believe him. 1 Certain British
officers, indeed, preached the Gospel to their men with the enthusiasm
of Cromwell's Ironsides, and incurred the displeasure of government
by their proselytising zeal. Meanwhile the Nana Sahib, dilating
upon the annexation of Oudh, was trying to stir up native chieftains
against the British, and there is reason to believe that he and other
disaffected princes had long been tampering with the sepoys. : British
officers, who no longer kept native mistresses, knew little of what was
disturbing the minds of their men; but even in the Panjab rumours
were current of approaching mutiny. Finally, an old Hindu prophecy
was circulated; in 1857, the centenary of Plassey, the Company's rule
was to be destroyed. "
The incident that precipitated the Mutiny is known to all the world.
One day in January, 1857, a lascar at Dum-Dum, near Calcutta,
asked a Brahman sepoy to give him some water from his drinking cup.
The Brahman refused, saying that the cup would be contaminated
by the lips of a low-caste man: the lascar retorted that the Brahman
would soon lose his caste, for cartridges, greased with the fat of cows
or swine, were being manufactured by the government, and every
sepoy would be obliged to bite them before loading his rifle. It needs
a sympathetic imagination to gauge the shock under which the mind
of that Brahman reeled. Greased cartridges had been sent to India
from England four years before. The adjutant-general of the Bengal
army warned the board, which was then vested with military authority,
that none should be issued to native troops until it had been ascertained
that the grease was inoffensive; but the warning was neglected. The
cartridges were issued to certain regiments, merely to test how the
climate would affect the grease, and were accepted without demur.
In 1856 similar cartridges, to be used with the new Enfield rifle, began
to be made up in India, and Brahman workers handled the grease
1 Kaye, Sepoy War (ed. 1872), 1, 472-3.
• Cf. Canning to Granville, 9 April, 1857 (Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, 1, 245); also
Memorials of Sir H. B. Edwardes, 11, 251 n. ; Holmes, op. cit. p. 78.
; Kaye, op. cit. 1, 579.
• Holmes, op. cit. p. 79. Cf. Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life (ed. 1920), p. 340.
## p. 174 (#210) ############################################
174
THE MUTINY
+
without complaint; but, after the lascar blurted out his taunt, no
cartridges greased either with beef-fat or with lard were ever issued
to any sepoys, except to one Gurkha regiment, at their own request.
Nevertheless the delusion, due to the neglect of the adjutant-
general's warning, was ineradicable. 1 The story rapidly spread. The
Brahmans of Calcutta and the agents of the king of Oudh, who was
living in the suburb of Garden Reach, eagerly turned it to account. 2
The responsible officer at Dum-Dum promptly reported it, and
General Hearsey, commanding the presidency division, appended to
the report a recommendation that the sepoys at Dum-Dum, where
alone the new cartridges were immediately to be issued, should be
allowed to grease their own; but in consequence of official delay, he
was not informed of the approval of his suggestion until 28 January,
and by that time the sepoys at Barrackpore, convinced that the story
was true, were setting fire to officers' bungalows. The governor-
general directed that greased cartridges might be issued at rifle depôts,
provided that the lubricant were composed only of mutton-fat and
wax; but it soon became evident that such precautions were futile.
On 26 February the 19th Native Infantry at Berhampore, whose
suspicions had been allayed by the explanation of their commandant,
took alarm on hearing from detachments of the 34th, which had been
foolishly allowed to march thither from Barrackpore, that the lascar
had told the truth, and refused to receive their percussion caps for the
next day's parade. The commandant, instead of explaining the un-
reasonableness of their fears, threatened them with condign punish-
ment, but, having no means of enforcing his threat, was obliged to
forgo the parade. The men continued to perform their ordinary
duties; but their disobedience could not be ignored, and, as it was
impossible to punish it without British troops, the governor-general
sent for the 84th Regiment from Rangoon. Meanwhile the sepoys at
Barrackpore were becoming more and more excited. Though they
had been allowed to grease their own cartridges, they fancied that
the cartridge paper must contain objectionable fat, and when, after
analysis, it was declared to be harmless, they refused to credit the
report. Hearsey, who thoroughly understood the sepoys' mentality,
tried in vain to convince them that there was nothing to fear. Canning
accepted a suggestion that they should be allowed to avoid tasting
the paper by pinching off the ends of the cartridges; but, as might
have been expected, the concession was useless. Hearsey had thought-
lessly told the 34th that the mutinous 19th was to be disbanded, and
they disregarded his assurance that no punishment was in store for
them. On 29 March a sepoy named Mangal Pandy murderously
attacked the adjutant; while others belaboured their officers with the
butt-ends of their muskets, one alone came to the rescue; and the
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cil. I, Appendix, Addendum.
• Idem, 1, 493
## p. 175 (#211) ############################################
CANNING'S HESITATION
175
mutiny was quelled only by the prompt intervention of Hearsey.
Next day, British troops having at length arrived, the 19th was dis-
banded at Barrackpore, and cheered the old general as they marched
away; but the 34th, whose offences had been far graver, were dif-
ferently treated. Though Mangal Pandy was executed after the lapse
of ten days, the men who had struck their officers were left unpunished
for five weeks. The governor-general, fearing that prompt retribution
would intensify the mutinous temper of the army, wasted several days
in discussing with his council the justice of inflicting punishment, and
finally, when the remonstrances of General Anson, the commander-
in-chief, impelled him to come to a decision, spent four more days in
weighing the claims of individuals to mercy.
Meanwhile the news of the growing unrest was awakening Muham-
madan fanaticism at Delhi, where there were no British troops. It was
believed that Russian invaders would soon expel the British from
India, and the titular king's courtiers looked forward to a general
mutiny which would restore his sovereignty. ' At Ambala, where the
native officers in the school of musketry, though they avowed that
they and their men were satisfied that the cartridges were harmless,
begged to be excused from using them lest they should be treated as
outcasts, the decision that they must be used was followed by incen-
diarism; and at Lucknow an irregular regiment broke into open
mutiny.
On 6 May the mutinous 34th was disbanded. Stripped of their
uniforms, the men trampled under foot their caps, which, as they had
paid for them, they had been allowed to retain, and left the parade
ground in a bitter mood. When the order for their disbandment was
read aloud at the military stations in Northern India, the sepoys, on
learning that the crime, so solemnly denounced, had been punished
not by death, but by mere dismissal, did not conceal their contempt
for the government.
“Lord Dalhousie”, said the late Marquess of Tweeddale, who had
served under him, “would have stopped the Mutiny. " If the judg-
ment was hasty, it pointed to an opinion which unprejudiced ob-
servers deliberately formed. Endowed with many noble qualities,
Canning lacked robustness of character. He could never decide, even
on the most urgent questions, ụntil he had anxiously investigated
every tittle of evidence: his conscientiousness degenerated into scru-
pulousness; and he was more ready to take precautions against
injustice to the innocent than to punish the guilty. While he was
trying to coax the sepoys into obedience, he failed to see that to reason
away each successive development of morbid fancy would only
stimulate its fertility. But he was about to receive a rude awakening.
At Meerut, some forty miles north-east of Delhi, two regiments of
native infantry and one of native cavalry were quartered, together
· Holmes, op. cit. p. 91.
a
## p. 176 (#212) ############################################
176
THE MUTINY
with a battalion of the both Rifles, a regiment of dragoons, a troop of
horse artillery, and a light field battery-the strongest British force
at any station in the North-Western Provinces. On 23 April Colonel
Smyth, of the native cavalry, one of the few British officers who had
discerned the growing disloyalty of the Bengal army, ordered a parade
of the skirmishers of his regiment for the following morning, intending
to take advantage of the order for pinching off the ends of the cart-
ridges to give a final explanation to the men. The cartridges that were
to be issued were of the kind which they had long used. Smyth
explained that the order had been framed in consideration for their
scruples; but of ninety skirmishers five only would even touch the
cartridges. Smyth broke off the parade and ordered a native court of
enquiry to assemble. It appeared from their report that the mutineers
had been influenced not by suspicion of the cartridges, but by fear of
public opinion. By order of the commander-in-chief they were tried
by a native court-martial and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment,
half of which was remitted in favour of the younger men by General
Hewitt, the commander of the division. On Saturday, 9 May, the
mutineers' sentences were published in the presence of the whole
brigade. As the men were being led away, they yelled out curses at
their colonel; but the jail was left without a British guard. During
the rest of the day there was extraordinary stillness in the quarters of
the native troops. A native officer reported to an English subaltern
that the men were determined to release their comrades; but the
colonel and the brigadier, Archdale Wilson, ridiculed the story. On
Sunday evening the British battalion was assembling for church
parade when a cry was raised, “The Rifles and Artillery are coming
to disarm all the native regiments”, and an outbreak was precipitated,
which had not been definitely pre-arranged. Some hundreds of the
troopers broke open the jail and released the prisoners. Smyth,
thinking that it was his duty to warn Hewitt and Wilson, never went
near his regiment; but Captain Craigie and Lieutenant Melville
Clarke brought their own troops to the parade-ground in perfect
order. The infantry regiments were listening quietly to the remon-
strances of their officers when a trooper, galloping past, shouted that
the Europeans were coming to disarm them; the colonel of the 11th
was shot dead by men of the 20th; and the two regiments, joined by
swarms of budmashes, dispersed to plunder and to slay. An officer
rode to the telegraph office to warn the authorities at Delhi, but found
that the wire had been cut. Hewitt, an infirm old man, did nothing.
Wilson sent the dragoons, who were hastening to charge the mutineers,
on a futile errand to the jail, and when, at the head of the artillery
and the rifles, he reached the infantry lines, he found that the sepoys
were not there. 1
1 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 96 sqq. and references there cited. Cf. Wilson's letters to his wife,
ap. Journal of the United Services Institution of India, 1923.
>
## p. 177 (#213) ############################################
THE OUTBREAK
177
a
On the morning of 11 May the cavalry rode into Delhi, entered the
precincts of the palace, where they were joined by the king's de-
pendents, and, after releasing the prisoners in the jail, proceeded with
the infantry, which presently followed them, to murder every Euro-
pean whom they met and to fire every European dwelling which they
passed. In the telegraph office, outside the city, two young signallers,
hearing the uproar and being informed by native messengers of the
atrocities that were being enacted, found time before they escaped
to warn the authorities of the Panjab. The officer in charge of the
magazine, after defending it for three hours, finding that he could no
longer repel his assailants, blew up the stores of ammunition which it
contained and destroyed some hundreds of mutineers; but the briga-
dier, without a single company of British soldiers, could effect nothing.
One of his three regiments, indeed, remained respectful: but the others
were mutinous; several officers were murdered; and at sunset, after he
had waited vainly for succour from Meerut, he was compelled to
retreat with the surviving officers and those women and children who
were in his charge. The miseries suffered in that flight hardened British
hearts to inflict a fierce revenge; but the survivors told with gratitude
of kindness shown to them in their distress by Hindus through whose
villages they had passed. 1
Two days after the seizure of Delhi the governor-general received
the news. "Immediately he sent for all the reinforcements within his
reach, and empowered his trusted lieutenants, Henry and John
Lawrence, to act as they might think best in Oudh and the Panjab;
but, deluded by telegrams from the lieutenant-governor of the North-
Western Provinces, who predicted that in a few days all danger would
a
be over, he rejected an offer from the governor of Bombay to send a
steamer to England with dispatches. The commander-in-chief, who,
like almost everyone else, had failed to understand the earlier symp-
toms of mutiny, and was therefore unprepared, found himself ham-
pered by want of transport and of stores. John Lawrence implored
him to free himself for action by disarming the regiments at Ambala,
and then to strike a decisive blow at Delhi; but, though the civil
officers in the Cis-Satlej states, aided by loyal Sikh chieftains, collected
carriage and supplies, he thought it best to wait for reinforcements.
At length, overruled by the insistence of the governor-general, he
moved from Ambala to Karnal, intending to march thence on 1 June;
but on 27 May he died of cholera,
Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded to the command of the army
assembled at Karnal, marched immediately for Delhi. Brigadier
Wilson, who had already left Meerut in obedience to Anson, was
expected to join him. For more than a fortnight the force which he
commanded had remained inactive. Hewitt had made no attempt
to re-establish British authority; and the villagers in the surrounding
1 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 104 sqq. and references there cited.
CRIVI
12
## p. 178 (#214) ############################################
178
THE MUTINY
country, believing that every Englishman in Meerut had perished,
relapsed into anarchy. Wilson twice defeated mutineers who had
advanced from Delhi to oppose him, and on 7 June, reinforced by a
Gurkha battalion, joined Barnard, whose troops had avenged the
sufferings of British fugitives by many cruel deeds, a few miles north of
the city. Next day the mutineers, who had occupied a strong position
on the north-western outskirts, were again defeated; and the victors,
encamping on the Ridge, looked down upon the high wall, with its
bastions and massive gates, which encompassed the imperial city, the
white marble dome and tall minarets of the Jamma Masjid, the lofty
red walls and the round towers of the palace overhanging the sparkling
waters of the Jumna. They had boasted that they would recapture
Delhi on the day of their arrival; but on the Ridge they were to
remain for many weary weeks. To understand what they achieved
and suffered, it is necessary to trace the outline of events in other parts
of the peninsula.
The effects of the outbreak at Meerut had been instantly felt in the
Doab—that part of the North-Western Provinces which extended
between the Jumna and the Ganges. After Wilson marched to join
Barnard, the only British troops available were one regiment and one
battery at Agra, the headquarters of the government. The lieutenant-
governor, John Colvin, who, on hearing the news of the seizure of
Delhi, proposed to take refuge in the fort, was soon persuaded that
there was no real danger. His subordinates, however, were becoming
convinced that, although he had proved himself an excellent adminis-
trator in times of peace, he lacked the qualities required to cope with
difficulties which it was impossible wholly to overcome. ” After a
succession of mutinies in outlying stations he issued a proclamation,
for which Canning ordered him to substitute another, more precisely
worded, promising lenient treatment to all mutineers who would give
up their arms, except those who had instigated revolt or taken part in
the murder of Europeans; but it was answered by another mutiny,
and on the following day, yielding to the magistrate, he ordered the
native regiments at Agra to be disarmed. Had he done so a fortnight
earlier, a wing of the British regiment would have been set free, and
much disorder might have been prevented. The infection had already
spread to Rohilkhand. Before the end of the first week in June every
regiment in that division had mutinied; many Europeans had been
murdered; Khan Bahadur Khan, a Muhammadan pensioner of the
government, had proclaimed himself the viceroy of the king of Delhi;
and as he was not strong enough to keep the peace, anarchy was
rampant.
The history of the Mutiny in the Doab and in Rohilkhand furnishes
the most important evidence for determining the nature of the rising.
The hesitating demeanour of many mutineers, the practical loyalty
1 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 568–73. But cf. Colvin, Life of J. R. Colvin, pp. 190 599.
## p. 179 (#215) ############################################
THE DOAB AND ROHILKHAND
179
of others, which cannot be explained away on any theory of dissimula-
tion, up to the very day of mutiny, the fact that few detachments
committed themselves until the news that others had done so or the
infection of civil disturbances overcame their fidelity, and that some-
times a mere accident occasioned the outbreak, prove that, however
carefully the ringleaders may have endeavoured to secure concerted
action, the movement was most imperfectly organised. "Sir", said
a loyal Brahman sepoy to a British officer, “there is one knave and
nine fools; the knave compromises the others, and then tells them it
is too late to draw back. "
Historically, however, it is more important to learn how the civil
population acted than to analyse the phenomena of the Mutiny itself.
When the defection of the Bengal army threatened the raj with
destruction, Hindus and Muhammadans alike, though, notwith-
standing their grievances, they acknowledged its benevolence, justice
and efficiency, relapsed into the turbulent habits of their ancestors.
Rajas summoned their retainers and proclaimed their resolve to
establish their authority as vassals of the king of Delhi. Muhammadan
fanatics waved green flags and shouted for the revival of the supremacy
of Islam. Rajputs and Jats renewed old feuds and fought with one
another to the death. Gujars robbed the mail-carts, plundered peace-
ful villages, and murdered the villagers. The police, who had
generally been recruited from the dangerous classes, felt that nothing
was to be gained by supporting a doomed government, and joined
the criminals. Dispossessed landowners assembled their old tenants,
and hunted out the speculators who had bought up their estates.
Insolvent debtors mobbed and slaughtered the money-lenders. Sati
and other barbarous customs revived. Public works ceased; civil
justice could only be administered in a few favoured spots; education
was either stopped or frequently interrupted. In short, excepting the
summary administration of criminal justice and a partial collection
of the revenue, the organism of government was paralysed. 1
On the other hand, many landowners were passively, and some few
actively, loyal. More than one moulvi had the courage to proclaim
that rebellion was a sin, and a fair proportion of Indian officials, some.
at the cost of their lives, stood resolutely at their posts. Finally, except
hardened criminals, hereditary robbers, and those who knew that they
could expect no mercy, the people acquiesced readily enough in the
re-establishment of regular government.
Much depended upon the protected princes, and fortunately
Sindhia, influenced by his prime minister, Dinkar Rao, and the
political agent, Charters Macpherson, remained steadily. loyal,
keeping the Gwalior contingent and his own army, both of which
were ripe for mutiny, inactive within his territory. In Rajputana, the
inhabitants of which, under loyal native rulers, were generally well-
1 Cf. e. g. Durand, Life of Sir A. Lyall, p. 69.
a
12-2
## p. 180 (#216) ############################################
180
THE MUTINY
disposed, the eldest of the famous Lawrence brothers upheld British
authority, despite mutinies at Nimach and Nasirabad, throughout
the crisis;but at Agra towards the end of June the approach of the
mutineers compelled Colvin to remove the English women and
children into the fort, where he had hitherto forbidden them to take
refuge. Brigadier Polwhele, the military chief, who, believing that
the mutineers intended to join their comrades at Delhi, had resolved
to remain on the defensive, allowed himself to be persuaded to attack
them, and suffered a defeat: but the garrison, thanks to Sindhia and
Dinkar Rao, who still contrived to keep their troops inactive, escaped
a siege; and throughout the summer volunteers, raised by the magis-
trate and collector of Meerut, did much to restore order in his
district.
Meanwhile important events occurred along the line between
Calcutta and Delhi. Fortunately, during the three weeks that followed
the outbreak at Meerut, the sepoys remained absolutely passive. But
the governor-general, deceived by this lull, failed to take full ad-
vantage of it. Rejecting offers made by various bodies to serve as
volunteers for the protection of Calcutta, on the ground that "the
mischief caused by a passing and groundless panic had already been
arrested”, he refused to disarm the sepoys at Barrackpore because
he trusted the profession of loyalty which they were careful to make,
and feared that the troops at other places might be exasperated.
Towards the middle of June he found it necessary to authorise both
these measures, which, if they had been adopted in time, would
have enabled him to send two British regiments to threatened stations.
Meanwhile, however, he had been diligently preparing for the arrival
of the expected reinforcements; and the undeserved odium which he
incurred by the famous “Clemency Order” and various local enact-
ments in no respect weakened his authority.
Fortunately Patna, the most important provincial town in the
Presidency of Bengal, was in strong hands. William Tayler, the com-
missioner, had had a dispute with the lieutenant-governor, Frederick
Halliday, who intended to transfer him, on the first colourable pretext,
to another post. There was not a single British soldier at Patna, and
at Dinapore, only ten miles off, the British regiment was detained by
the necessity of watching the sepoy troops, which Canning refused to
disarm. A Sikh battalion, which Tayler summoned to his assistance,
arrived on 8 June; but the commandant reported that it had been
insulted on the march by the rural population. Halliday insisted that
a mutiny of the Dinapore sepoys was inconceivable, and General
Lloyd, the commander of the division, whom Tayler urged to disarm
1 Cf. George Lawrence, Reminiscences, pp. 278 sqq.
: Major Williams, Narrative, pp. 11, 12, 14; Bunlop, Service and Adventures with the
Khakee Ressalah.
• Cf. Parl. Papers, 1857, XXX, 20-3.
## p. 181 (#217) ############################################
PATNA
181
them, replied that he could keep them under control. Left to his own
resources, Tayler arrested three moulvis, who directed the Wahabis
--the most dangerous Muhammadans in the city—knowing that he
would thus ensure the obedience of their disciples, and, feeling that
he was now master of the situation, required all the citizens to sur-
render their weapons. A riot which broke out on 3 July was sup-
pressed by the Sikhs, and the ringleaders were hanged. " Supported
by three Indians, who gave him information which only natives could
obtain, Tayler was able to keep order in the city; but the outlying
districts were still imperilled. British troops were about to pass through
Dinapore; but Canning left Lloyd to decide whether he would use
them. Unable to nerve himself to take the decisive step, the latter
thought it enough to remove the percussion caps from the magazine,
and afterwards, though the British force was then at dinner, ordered
the sepoys to surrender those which they carried. They replied by
firing on their officers, and, joined by a Rajput noble, Kunwar Singh,
who had been ungenerously treated by the Revenue Board of Bengal,
made a raid upon Arrah, the chief town of the most turbulent district
in the Patna division. The European residents, warned of their
approach and reinforced by fifty Sikhs, whom Tayler had sent to their
assistance, took refuge in a small building, which had been fortified
and provisioned by its provident owner. A force sent by Lloyd to the
rescue was ambushed and overwhelmed; but the little garrison con-
tinued to repel every attack, Major Vincent Eyre of the Bengal
Artillery, who, though he had been ordered to proceed to Allahabad,
assumed the responsibility of attempting to succour them, and per-
suaded the commandant of an infantry detachment to serve under
him, defeated the rebels near Arrah, thus not only relieving the
garrison, but quelling an insurrection which had threatened the whole
of Bengal and restoring the safety of communication between Calcutta
and the north-west. Before this success, however, Tayler, foreseeing
that if the garrison should be overpowered, the besiegers would over-
run the province of Bihar, ordered the district officers at the most
exposed stations to withdraw to Patna. Halliday, stigmatising the
order as an act of cowardice, dismissed him from his post; but at a
later time, while many of the foremost men in India declared their
conviction that he had saved Bihar, two ex-members of Canning's
council, retracting the censure which they had joined in passing upon
him, added their testimony to the value of his services, and the chief
of the three moulvis whom he had arrested was sent to the Andaman
Islands as a convicted felon. While Tayler was crushing rebellion in
Bihar, the valley of the Ganges was in peril. In Benares, as dangerous
a stronghold of Brahminical as Patna of Muhammadan fanaticism,
1 Tayler, Thirty-eight Years in India, 11, 237 599.
· Holmes, op. cit. pp. 195 sqq. and references.
• Tayler, op. cit. 11, 242 599.
## p. 182 (#218) ############################################
182
THE MUTINY
there were only thirty English gunners to watch the 37th Native
Infantry, a regiment of Irregular Cavalry, and the Ludhiana Sikhs.
On 4 June it was known that the sepoys at an outlying station had
mutinied, and as a hundred and fifty British soldiers from Dinapore
were by this time on the spot, Colonel Neill of the ist Madras
Fusiliers, who had arrived on the previous day with a detachment of
his corps, persuaded the brigadier to disarm the Bengal regiment. The
affair, for which the brigadier declared himself responsible, was mis-
managed. Panic-stricken by the approach of the British troops, the
men fired at their officers; the Sikhs, some of whom were disloyal,
while the rest were apprehensive of treachery, charged the guns; and
a disaster was barely averted by a swift discharge of grape. The
sedition that followed in the city was suppressed by the judge, aided
by influential Indians; Neill put to death all the mutineers who were
caught; and in the surrounding country, which was placed by the
governor-general under martial law, rebels, suspects, and even dis-
orderly boys were executed by infuriated officers and unofficial
British residents who volunteered to serve as hangmen.
Neill had already pushed on for Allahabad, which, standing at the
confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges, commanded the communi-
cation between the lower and the upper provinces of Northern India.
Yet, though Outram had implored both Canning and Anson to
provide for its safety, it had been left without a single British soldier
until, after the outbreak at Meerut, sixty invalid artillerymen arrived.
On 19 May the 6th Native Infantry volunteered to march against
Delhi; on 6 June, after their confiding colonel had read to them a letter
in which the governor-general expressed his gratitude for their offer,
they mutinied, and murdered five of their officers. Sedition, pillage and
arson followed; the railway works were destroyed; and the telegraph
wires were torn down. The fort, indeed, was saved by Captain
Brasyer of the Ludhiana Sikhs, who, constraining his men, though
they had just heard of the slaughter of their comrades at Benares, to
support him, disarmed a company, forming part of the garrison, of
the regiment that had mutinied; but though a detachment of the
Madras Fusiliers arrived on the next day, anarchy was rampant when
Neill appeared with forty of his men. Within a week, despite physical
prostration, he restored order in the fort, where British volunteers
were demoralised by drunkenness, and by ruthless severity suppressed
all disturbance in the districts. Conjointly with Brasyer he had saved
the most important post between Calcutta and Cawnpore, and con-
verted it into an advanced base. But while he strove to discriminate
between the innocent and the guilty, volunteers and Sikhs slaughtered
every Indian whom they met, and villages, from which harmless old
men and women with infants at their breasts were forced to flee, were
remorselessly burned. The Old Testament was then revered, and
Neill, who was preparing to dispatch a column to Cawnpore under
## p. 183 (#219) ############################################
CAWNPORE
183
Major Renaud of the Madras Fusiliers, gave him instructions (which
Havelock approved) in the spirit of Joshua.
The garrison of Cawnpore consisted of four sepoy regiments, with
which were associated fifty-nine British gunners and a few invalids.
Sir Hugh Wheeler, who commanded the division, determined imme-
diately after the outbreak at Meerut to secure a refuge for the non-
combatants. The only defensible position was the magazine, a strong
roomy building, protected on its northern side by the Ganges; but
Wheeler decided against it on the ground that before he could occupy
it he would be obliged to withdraw its sepoy guard, which migl::
precipitate a rising. The sepoy regiments, if they mutinied, would,
he
believed, hasten at once to Delhi, and, at the worst, he would only have
to repel a mob of budmashes before succourshould arrive. It is probable
that, if he had waited for reinforcements, which he was soon to receive,
he could have occupied the magazine without resistance; but he con-
tented himself with throwing up an entrenchment, which any active
lad could leap over, near the north-eastern corner of the town. On
4 June the native cavalry, followed by the ist Infantry, mutinied.
Next day, the 56th was persuaded to join them. The bulk of the 53rd
was still standing its ground when Wheeler impulsively ordered his
artillery to fire, and all but eighty, who to the last remained faithful,
fled. The Nana Sahib, whose palace was near Cawnpore, promised to
lead the mutineers to Delhi, but, influenced by one of his advisers,
persuaded them to remain and besiege the entrenchment.
For three weeks the little garrison—some four hundred English
fighting men, more than seventy of whom were invalids, with the
faithful sepoys, defended their women and children against a con-
tinuous fire, enduring hunger, thirst, exposure to the midsummer sun,
the torture of wounds for which they had no remedy, and, finally,
despair. On the seventh day and on the centenary of Plassey the
besiegers attempted an assault, but were resolutely repelled. Two
days later the Nana offered a safe passage to Allahabad to every
member of the garriso. . "who had not been connected with the acts
of Lord Dalhousie”. Wheeler reluctantly accepted the offer. Next
day terms of surrender were arranged, including a proviso that the
defenders should be allowed to retain their arms; but the guns were
to be delivered over to the enemy. On the morning of the 27th a wan
and ragged company quitted the entrenchment, and, surrounded by
a great crowd of onlookers, proceeded to embark on thatched barges,
which the Nana had provided. Tantia Topi, his trusted counsellor,
superintended the arrangements.
Immediately afterwards the thatch, strewn with glowing cinders,
burst into flame; grape-shot and bullets, fired by sepoys who had been
posted behind cover, poured into the throng; troopers rode into the
water and sabred the women. Suddenly a messenger from the Nana
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cit. 11, 268 n.
## p. 184 (#220) ############################################
184
THE MUTINY
ordered that no more women or children were to be killed, and the
survivors, a hundred and twenty-five, were dragged back to the town.
The only boat that escaped, without oars, rudder, or food, was fired
upon by sepoys who moved along the bank. On the third day it
drifted into a side current. Descrying villagers and sepoys about to
attack them, two officers, a sergeant, and eleven privates leaped
ashore, scattered the crowd, and fought their way back-to find that
the boat had drifted far away. The officers, Mowbray Thomson and
Delafosse, who with two privates alone survived the ordeals of that
day, found shelter, after swimming six miles, with a friendly raja of
Oudh. The boat was overtaken, and the passengers—wounded men,
women and children—were brought back to Cawnpore. The women
and children were incarcerated in one building with the hundred and
twenty-five who had survived the first massacre; the men were put
to death. A few days later the captives were transferred to a small
house called the Bibigarh, where, with fugitives from the Doab, whose
companions had been already slain by order of the Nana, they were
subjected to the grossest indignities. On 15 July the Nana heard that
his troops had been defeated by an avenging army. The few men who
had been suffered to live thus far were instantly killed in his presence;
the women and children, after sepoys had refused to shoot them, were
hacked to death by a band of ruffians. Perhaps, as it has been alleged,
he was persuaded by a woman in his zenana to permit the final
massacre; at all events it is probable that revenge for the cruelties
committed by Englishmen and Sikhs at Benares, at Allahabad, and
on Renaud's march, was one motive for the tragedy of Cawnpore. 1
Throughout the Mutiny Cawnpore was linked closely with Luck-
now, the capital of Oudh. Sir Henry Lawrence, who had been
appointed chief commissioner in January, speedily redressed the
wrongs committed by his predecessor. He had spent his official life
in toiling for the welfare of Indians; his sympathetic nature won their
devotion and the love of his own countrymen; and no one was better
fitted to prepare for the ordeal which he foresaw. “I have struck up
a friendship”, he wrote to Canning, "with two of the best and
wealthiest of the chiefs, and am on good terms with all. ” He im-
prisoned a moulvi, who preached a holy war at Faizabad. But he
knew that with the sepoys conflict was inevitable; and a durbar, held
in his private garden before he heard of the outbreak at Meerut, in
which he exhorted representatives of the sepoy regiments to pay no
heed to agitators, and rewarded individuals who had proved their
fidelity, was regarded by those who attended it as a sign of fear.
Lawrence intended that the Europeans, in case a siege should
become inevitable, should take refuge in the residency and its out-
lying buildings, which stood on a plateau bounded on the north by
the Gumti, a tributary of the Ganges. The roof of the principal
1 Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 227 sqq. and references.
## p. 185 (#221) ############################################
LUCKNOW
185
edifice commanded a view of the city and its environs. Eastward and
westward along the southern bank of the river extended an irregular
space, covered by palaces and mosques, surrounded with gardens:
beyond them a vast maze of sordid streets stretched southward and
eastward as far as a canal, which entered the river three miles east
of the residency and was crossed by the Cawnpore road.
Lawrence began his preparations by amending the distribution of
the troops. The only British regiment—the 32nd Foot—was quartered
in barracks about a mile and a half east of the residency, while five
regiments of native infantry and one of cavalry were located at various
points within the city and on both sides of the river. On 16 May
Lawrence, yielding to the financial commissioner, Martin Gubbins,
and the military authorities, moved a detachment of the 32nd to the
residency, then at th« mercy of a sepoy guard. Next day he trans-
ferred the women and children of the regiment to the residency, sent
the remaining companies to watch the native troops in a cantonment
north of the river, and stationed a corps of Europeans and picked
sepoys
in the Machi Bhawan, a dilapidated fort, west of the residency,
which would overawe the city and might be useful as a temporary
post. Two days later, having been invested at his own request with
plenary military power, he assumed command of the whole force in
Oudh. He had already begun to repair the Machi Bhawan; a few
days later he set to work on the residency and its annexes; and soon
afterwards the English ladies were warned to take refuge there with
their children. Gubbins urged him to disarm the native regiments;
but, fearing that to do so would impel the troops at outlying stations
to mutiny, and knowing that loyal sepoys would be needed to aid in
defending the residency, he refused. On the 30th mutiny broke out
in the cantonments north of the city, and three officers were murdered;
but morethan five hundred sepoys sided with the British; and, although
on the next day there was a rising in the city, Lawrence had posted
a force to guard the connecting road, and thus prevented the mu-
tineers from abetting the rioters. “We now”, he wrote to Canning,
"know our friends and enemies. "
Nevertheless the mutiny produced disastrous effects. Hitherto the
country districts had been tranquil: the courts of justice remained
open: and the revenue was punctually paid. But in the first few days
of June the sepoys at every ctation rose. Many officers, many Euro-
peans, were murdered; but many fugitives owed their lives to Indians
whose hearts had been won by the sympathy with which Lawrence
redressed their wrongs. The talukdars, of course, ejected those upon
whom their estates had been bestowed, plundered rich citizens, and
wreaked vengeance upon old antagonists; but very few aided the
mutineers, and some actually sent supplies to Lawrence for provi-
sioning the residency.
Meanwhile in Lucknow mutineers were being daily hanged, and,
## p. 186 (#222) ############################################
186
THE MUTINY
although after the outbreak the Indian merchants no longer carried on
business, the administration of justice was not interrupted, and order
was fairly well maintained. But under the grievous announcements
from the districts Lawrence's health broke down, and he was forced
to delegate his powers to a council, of which Gubbins was appointed
president. Three days later, hearing with indignation that his col-
league was bent upon getting rid of those sepoys who had not yet been
disarmed, he resumed his authority, and devoted himself, despite
a mutiny of the military police, to the work of strengthening the
residency. Gubbins, however, was constantly urging him to attack the
rebels assembling in the neighbourhood; and gradually, perhaps sub-
consciously, he allowed himself to be persuaded. 1 On the last day of
June, although his preparations were incomplete, he marched in a
north-easterly direction against the advanced guard. Before the
march began the British troops who formed a part of his force were
exhausted by many days and nights of labour; and they had advanced
little more than three miles when the colonel, supported by one of
the surgeons, declared that they were unfit to go into action. Brigadier
Inglis, to whom this protest had been made, was asked by Lawrence's
aide-de-camp whether they could go on, and replied, evasively but
significantly, “Of course they could, if ordered”. About a mile
farther, near the village of Chinhat, they encountered the enemy and
suffered an overwhelming defeat, but succeeded, though with the loss
of one-third of their number, in reaching the entrenchment. In a
scene of terror and confusion the siege began. Next day by Lawrence's
order the Machi Bhawan was blown up, and, while the mutineers
were plundering the city, the detachment that had occupied it
marched noiselessly to reinforce the garrison. On 2 July, while Indian
servants, tempted by extraordinary rates of pay, were working
feverishly at unfinished bastions and terrified women were praying
in their rooms, Lawrence, who, despite his final error, had made a
defence possible, was mortally wounded by the bursting of a shell;
and two days later, after giving his last instructions to Inglis and
imploring him never to surrender, he died, mourned by all.
Less than a thousand British soldiers, aided by about a hundred and
fifty civilians and seven hundred loyal sepoys, were now besieged by
some ten thousand disciplined troops and a band of talukdars' re-
tainers. Fortunately, the besiegers were under incompetent leaders,
whom they treated with contempt. The entrenchment, about a mile
in circuit, enclosed detached houses and other buildings, the defences
of which-mud banks and trenches, palisades, crows-feet, and similar
obstacles-were still incomplete. On the east, south and west, how-
ever, outlying buildings served as a protection against artillery, and
made it impossible for storming parties to advance in strength: the
one open space where the besiegers could assemble for a general
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cit. in, 669-71.
а
## p. 187 (#223) ############################################
HAVELOCK
187
assault or plant batteries to breach the defences was on the north,
where a high bank, scarped and strengthened by a parapet, formed
the strongest part of the position. Still, no place within was safe.
Though the gunnery of the besiegers was erratic, sharpshooters kept
up a galling fire from the surrounding houses. Numerous mines were
sunk with the object of breaching the defences; but almost all were
stopped or destroyed before they could reach their aim. On 21 July
a sepoy pensioner, named Angad, made his way into the entrench-
ment, and announced that Havelock, having thrice defeated the Nana,
was in possession of Cawnpore; but weeks passed away, and the
expected relief did not arrive. Three several assaults were vigorously
repelled; but the defenders, whose numbers daily diminished, were
becoming exhausted by incessant toil, and disease still further wasted
their ranks. The chief of the commissariat was disabled; and though
there was actually sufficient grain to last for many months, Inglis
supposed that the stock was nearly exhausted, and reduced the rations.
Towards the end of August Angad appeared with a letter containing
the warning that Havelock could not arrive before twenty-five days
and the ominous injunction, "Do not negotiate, but rather perish
sword in hand”. On 16 September, when more than a third of the
British soldiers had fallen, he was sent out with dispatches for the last
time. 1
Henry Havelock, who had fought with distinction in Burma,
Afghanistan, Gwalior and the Panjab, had abandoned the ambition
which he had qualified himself by constant study to fulfil, when, old
and physically feeble but in spirit indomitable, he was appointed to
command an army for the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow. A few
hours before the siege of the residency began he reached Allahabad.
On the same day Renaud started for Cawnpore at the head of the
little column which Neill had organised; on 3 July the destruction of
Wheeler's force was announced, and a few days later Havelock, with
a thousand British soldiers, a hundred and thirty of Brasyer's Sikhs,
twenty volunteer troops and six guns, began his march. Charred
ruins of forsaken villages, corpses hanging from trees along the road,
testified that Renaud had even exceeded his instructions. On the
12th Havelock overtook him; within the next three days, although he
was obliged to reinforce Neill with a hundred of the Sikhs and to
disarm Renaud's mutinous cavalry, he gained three victories; and on
the 16th, beneath the fiercest sun which the soldiers had yet felt, he
defeated five thousand men, whom the Nana himself commanded.
Next day the victors entered Cawnpore and, hurrying to the Bibigarh,
sa w bullet-marks, sword-cuts, clotted blood, shreds of clothing, and
women's long tresses—the signs of the final massacre.
A week elapsed before Havelock was able to push on. Neill, who
arrived on 20 July, was to defend the recovered city; and Havelock,
1 Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 244 599.
## p. 188 (#224) ############################################
188
THE MUTINY
being unable to place more than three hundred men at his disposal,
fortified the position close to the river, which he ordered him to
occupy. The bridge had been destroyed by mutineers, and it was with
great difficulty that the passage of the river, which, swollen by the
rains, was flowing with torrential force, was accomplished in suc-
cessive trips by boats. On the 25th Havelock, whose force now num-
bered fifteen hundred, resumed his march. After two more victories
he had advanced about half the way when, reflecting that his little
army was daily wasted by cholera and the enemy's fire, that the
recent mutiny at Dinapore would delay reinforcements, and that, if
he persisted, hundreds must still fall before he could approach the
residency, he reluctantly decided to return. From Mangalwar, only
five miles from Cawnpore, which he reached on the last day of July,
he wrote to inform Neill that he could not attempt to relieve Lucknow
until he received a reinforcement of a thousand men and anoiher
battery of guns. Aglow with indignation, Neill presumed to admonish
his superior, who sternly replied: “Understand. . . . that a considera-
tion of the obstruction which would arise to the public service. . .
alone prevents me from placing you under immediate arrest".
Nevertheless, reinforced by no more than one company of British
infantry and a half-battery, and hearing from Calcutta that for two
months he must expect no more, he once more set his face towards
Lucknow, advanced to the point which he had reached before, and
there gained his seventh victory. But the reasons that had before
compelled him to retreat were hardly less cogent now. The mutinous
Gwalior contingent was reported to be threatening Cawnpore; the
zamindars, encouraged by his recent retirement, were arming their
matchlockmen; the cholera was unabated. Anxiously considering
what his duty required, he returned again to Mangalwar. The resolve,
as he himself recorded, was the most painful that he had ever formed.
Meanwhile Neill, believing thať "severity at the first is mercy in
the end”, had determined to avenge the massacre in the Bibigarh by
a punishment that should never be forgotten. Every prisoner whom
he considered especially guilty was to remove the stain of blood from
an allotted space. “The task”, so ran the order,
will be made as revolting to his feelings as possible, and the Provost-Marshal will
use the lash in forcing anyone objecting to complete his task. After properly
cleaning up his portion, the culprit is to be immediately hanged.
But Neill, who had told his chief that his retreat had destroyed the
prestige of England, was compelled to appeal to him for help; for
four thousand rebels were threatening to overwhelm his little force.
Havelock, resolved to show that he was undismayed, first advanced
again and routed them, then recrossed the Ganges and re-entered
Cawnpore. The talukdars of Oudh, who, with a few exceptions, had
hitherto remained passive, now began for the most part, under
pressure from the rebel durbar, to send their retainers into the field.
; Idem, pp: 57 599.
• Cf. Lee-Warner, op. cit. II, 257 sqq. ; also Baird, op. cit. pp. 168, 355.
>
>
## p. 172 (#208) ############################################
172
THE MUTINY
>
the Brahman recruit whom he was supposed to command; but men
of low caste who would have been glad to serve were often rejected.
"High caste—that is to say mutiny”, wrote Sir Charles Napier, who
warmly praised the sepoys of the Bombay and Madras presidencies,
“is encouraged”; “some day or other”, he prophesied of Delhi,
“much mischief will be hatched within those walls, and no European
troops at hand. Lhave no confidence in the allegiance of your high-
caste mercenaries”. 1 The disproportion between the numbers of the
British and the native troops was glaring. At the close of Dalhousie's
administration the latter amounted to two hundred and thirty-three
thousand, the former, who, moreover, were so distributed that their
controlling power was impaired, to less than forty-six thousand, and
the disproportion was increased in the same year in consequence of
the Persian War. Dalhousie, pointing out that the Crimean War had
begotten rumours injurious to British prestige, pleaded earnestly for
a diminution of the native and a corresponding increase of the British
troops; but for more than two years his suggestions were not brought
formally under the notice of the directors. 2
Another reform, which Dalhousie had planned and his successor
carried out, intensified the fears which the Bengal army had long felt
for their caste. Six regiments only were liable for general service, of
which three were in 1856 quartered in Pegu. Two were entitled to be
relieved within a few months; but none of the other three was
available. It was therefore impossible under the existing regulations
to send regiments by sea to the Burmese coast, and the overland route
was in part impassable. The Madras army was enlisted for general
service; but the presidency was unwilling to arouse discontent among
its own troops by calling upon them to garrison a country which lay
properly within the sphere of the Bengal army. Confronted by
necessity, the governor-general issued a general order, decreeing that
no recruit should thenceforward be accepted who would not under-
take to go whithersoever his services might be required. “There is
no fear”, he wrote a few months later, “of feelings of caste being
excited by the new enlistment regulations";' but, being a new-comer,
he did not realise that the Bengal army was a brotherhood, in which
military service was hereditary. Recruiting officers complained that
men of high caste, whose religious scruples were aroused by the
thought of being liable to cross the sea, had begun to shrink from
entering the service which their fathers and their brethren had flocked
to join, and old sepoys were whispering to each other their fears that
the oaths of the new recruits might be binding also upon themselves.
Two other changes, apparently trivial, increased the prevalent dis-
content. Sepoys declared unfit for foreign service were no longer to
1 The Times, 24 July, 1857, and History of the Siege of Delhi by an Officer who served there,
2 Lee-Warner, op. cit. 11, 285.
3 Holmes, op. cit. p. 76.
p. 1o n.
## p. 173 (#209) ############################################
THE GREASED CARTRIDGES
173
be allowed to retire on pensions, but to be employed in cantonment
duty, and all sepoys were thenceforth to pay the regular postage for
their letters instead of having them franked by their commandant.
The men were now in a mood to believe any lie that reflected dis-
credit upon the government. Seeing that the warlike Sikhs were
favoured by the recruiting sergeants, they fancied that a Sikh army
was to be raised to supersede them. Agitators assured them that
Lord Canning had been sent to India to convert them, and pointed
to the General Service Enlistment order as the first step. A manifesto
recently published by missionaries was interpreted as an official in-
vitation to embrace Christianity, and when the lieutenant-governor
of Bengal issued a reassuring proclamation, the bigoted Muham-
madans of the Patna division refused to believe him. 1 Certain British
officers, indeed, preached the Gospel to their men with the enthusiasm
of Cromwell's Ironsides, and incurred the displeasure of government
by their proselytising zeal. Meanwhile the Nana Sahib, dilating
upon the annexation of Oudh, was trying to stir up native chieftains
against the British, and there is reason to believe that he and other
disaffected princes had long been tampering with the sepoys. : British
officers, who no longer kept native mistresses, knew little of what was
disturbing the minds of their men; but even in the Panjab rumours
were current of approaching mutiny. Finally, an old Hindu prophecy
was circulated; in 1857, the centenary of Plassey, the Company's rule
was to be destroyed. "
The incident that precipitated the Mutiny is known to all the world.
One day in January, 1857, a lascar at Dum-Dum, near Calcutta,
asked a Brahman sepoy to give him some water from his drinking cup.
The Brahman refused, saying that the cup would be contaminated
by the lips of a low-caste man: the lascar retorted that the Brahman
would soon lose his caste, for cartridges, greased with the fat of cows
or swine, were being manufactured by the government, and every
sepoy would be obliged to bite them before loading his rifle. It needs
a sympathetic imagination to gauge the shock under which the mind
of that Brahman reeled. Greased cartridges had been sent to India
from England four years before. The adjutant-general of the Bengal
army warned the board, which was then vested with military authority,
that none should be issued to native troops until it had been ascertained
that the grease was inoffensive; but the warning was neglected. The
cartridges were issued to certain regiments, merely to test how the
climate would affect the grease, and were accepted without demur.
In 1856 similar cartridges, to be used with the new Enfield rifle, began
to be made up in India, and Brahman workers handled the grease
1 Kaye, Sepoy War (ed. 1872), 1, 472-3.
• Cf. Canning to Granville, 9 April, 1857 (Fitzmaurice, Life of Granville, 1, 245); also
Memorials of Sir H. B. Edwardes, 11, 251 n. ; Holmes, op. cit. p. 78.
; Kaye, op. cit. 1, 579.
• Holmes, op. cit. p. 79. Cf. Meadows Taylor, Story of my Life (ed. 1920), p. 340.
## p. 174 (#210) ############################################
174
THE MUTINY
+
without complaint; but, after the lascar blurted out his taunt, no
cartridges greased either with beef-fat or with lard were ever issued
to any sepoys, except to one Gurkha regiment, at their own request.
Nevertheless the delusion, due to the neglect of the adjutant-
general's warning, was ineradicable. 1 The story rapidly spread. The
Brahmans of Calcutta and the agents of the king of Oudh, who was
living in the suburb of Garden Reach, eagerly turned it to account. 2
The responsible officer at Dum-Dum promptly reported it, and
General Hearsey, commanding the presidency division, appended to
the report a recommendation that the sepoys at Dum-Dum, where
alone the new cartridges were immediately to be issued, should be
allowed to grease their own; but in consequence of official delay, he
was not informed of the approval of his suggestion until 28 January,
and by that time the sepoys at Barrackpore, convinced that the story
was true, were setting fire to officers' bungalows. The governor-
general directed that greased cartridges might be issued at rifle depôts,
provided that the lubricant were composed only of mutton-fat and
wax; but it soon became evident that such precautions were futile.
On 26 February the 19th Native Infantry at Berhampore, whose
suspicions had been allayed by the explanation of their commandant,
took alarm on hearing from detachments of the 34th, which had been
foolishly allowed to march thither from Barrackpore, that the lascar
had told the truth, and refused to receive their percussion caps for the
next day's parade. The commandant, instead of explaining the un-
reasonableness of their fears, threatened them with condign punish-
ment, but, having no means of enforcing his threat, was obliged to
forgo the parade. The men continued to perform their ordinary
duties; but their disobedience could not be ignored, and, as it was
impossible to punish it without British troops, the governor-general
sent for the 84th Regiment from Rangoon. Meanwhile the sepoys at
Barrackpore were becoming more and more excited. Though they
had been allowed to grease their own cartridges, they fancied that
the cartridge paper must contain objectionable fat, and when, after
analysis, it was declared to be harmless, they refused to credit the
report. Hearsey, who thoroughly understood the sepoys' mentality,
tried in vain to convince them that there was nothing to fear. Canning
accepted a suggestion that they should be allowed to avoid tasting
the paper by pinching off the ends of the cartridges; but, as might
have been expected, the concession was useless. Hearsey had thought-
lessly told the 34th that the mutinous 19th was to be disbanded, and
they disregarded his assurance that no punishment was in store for
them. On 29 March a sepoy named Mangal Pandy murderously
attacked the adjutant; while others belaboured their officers with the
butt-ends of their muskets, one alone came to the rescue; and the
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cil. I, Appendix, Addendum.
• Idem, 1, 493
## p. 175 (#211) ############################################
CANNING'S HESITATION
175
mutiny was quelled only by the prompt intervention of Hearsey.
Next day, British troops having at length arrived, the 19th was dis-
banded at Barrackpore, and cheered the old general as they marched
away; but the 34th, whose offences had been far graver, were dif-
ferently treated. Though Mangal Pandy was executed after the lapse
of ten days, the men who had struck their officers were left unpunished
for five weeks. The governor-general, fearing that prompt retribution
would intensify the mutinous temper of the army, wasted several days
in discussing with his council the justice of inflicting punishment, and
finally, when the remonstrances of General Anson, the commander-
in-chief, impelled him to come to a decision, spent four more days in
weighing the claims of individuals to mercy.
Meanwhile the news of the growing unrest was awakening Muham-
madan fanaticism at Delhi, where there were no British troops. It was
believed that Russian invaders would soon expel the British from
India, and the titular king's courtiers looked forward to a general
mutiny which would restore his sovereignty. ' At Ambala, where the
native officers in the school of musketry, though they avowed that
they and their men were satisfied that the cartridges were harmless,
begged to be excused from using them lest they should be treated as
outcasts, the decision that they must be used was followed by incen-
diarism; and at Lucknow an irregular regiment broke into open
mutiny.
On 6 May the mutinous 34th was disbanded. Stripped of their
uniforms, the men trampled under foot their caps, which, as they had
paid for them, they had been allowed to retain, and left the parade
ground in a bitter mood. When the order for their disbandment was
read aloud at the military stations in Northern India, the sepoys, on
learning that the crime, so solemnly denounced, had been punished
not by death, but by mere dismissal, did not conceal their contempt
for the government.
“Lord Dalhousie”, said the late Marquess of Tweeddale, who had
served under him, “would have stopped the Mutiny. " If the judg-
ment was hasty, it pointed to an opinion which unprejudiced ob-
servers deliberately formed. Endowed with many noble qualities,
Canning lacked robustness of character. He could never decide, even
on the most urgent questions, ụntil he had anxiously investigated
every tittle of evidence: his conscientiousness degenerated into scru-
pulousness; and he was more ready to take precautions against
injustice to the innocent than to punish the guilty. While he was
trying to coax the sepoys into obedience, he failed to see that to reason
away each successive development of morbid fancy would only
stimulate its fertility. But he was about to receive a rude awakening.
At Meerut, some forty miles north-east of Delhi, two regiments of
native infantry and one of native cavalry were quartered, together
· Holmes, op. cit. p. 91.
a
## p. 176 (#212) ############################################
176
THE MUTINY
with a battalion of the both Rifles, a regiment of dragoons, a troop of
horse artillery, and a light field battery-the strongest British force
at any station in the North-Western Provinces. On 23 April Colonel
Smyth, of the native cavalry, one of the few British officers who had
discerned the growing disloyalty of the Bengal army, ordered a parade
of the skirmishers of his regiment for the following morning, intending
to take advantage of the order for pinching off the ends of the cart-
ridges to give a final explanation to the men. The cartridges that were
to be issued were of the kind which they had long used. Smyth
explained that the order had been framed in consideration for their
scruples; but of ninety skirmishers five only would even touch the
cartridges. Smyth broke off the parade and ordered a native court of
enquiry to assemble. It appeared from their report that the mutineers
had been influenced not by suspicion of the cartridges, but by fear of
public opinion. By order of the commander-in-chief they were tried
by a native court-martial and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment,
half of which was remitted in favour of the younger men by General
Hewitt, the commander of the division. On Saturday, 9 May, the
mutineers' sentences were published in the presence of the whole
brigade. As the men were being led away, they yelled out curses at
their colonel; but the jail was left without a British guard. During
the rest of the day there was extraordinary stillness in the quarters of
the native troops. A native officer reported to an English subaltern
that the men were determined to release their comrades; but the
colonel and the brigadier, Archdale Wilson, ridiculed the story. On
Sunday evening the British battalion was assembling for church
parade when a cry was raised, “The Rifles and Artillery are coming
to disarm all the native regiments”, and an outbreak was precipitated,
which had not been definitely pre-arranged. Some hundreds of the
troopers broke open the jail and released the prisoners. Smyth,
thinking that it was his duty to warn Hewitt and Wilson, never went
near his regiment; but Captain Craigie and Lieutenant Melville
Clarke brought their own troops to the parade-ground in perfect
order. The infantry regiments were listening quietly to the remon-
strances of their officers when a trooper, galloping past, shouted that
the Europeans were coming to disarm them; the colonel of the 11th
was shot dead by men of the 20th; and the two regiments, joined by
swarms of budmashes, dispersed to plunder and to slay. An officer
rode to the telegraph office to warn the authorities at Delhi, but found
that the wire had been cut. Hewitt, an infirm old man, did nothing.
Wilson sent the dragoons, who were hastening to charge the mutineers,
on a futile errand to the jail, and when, at the head of the artillery
and the rifles, he reached the infantry lines, he found that the sepoys
were not there. 1
1 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 96 sqq. and references there cited. Cf. Wilson's letters to his wife,
ap. Journal of the United Services Institution of India, 1923.
>
## p. 177 (#213) ############################################
THE OUTBREAK
177
a
On the morning of 11 May the cavalry rode into Delhi, entered the
precincts of the palace, where they were joined by the king's de-
pendents, and, after releasing the prisoners in the jail, proceeded with
the infantry, which presently followed them, to murder every Euro-
pean whom they met and to fire every European dwelling which they
passed. In the telegraph office, outside the city, two young signallers,
hearing the uproar and being informed by native messengers of the
atrocities that were being enacted, found time before they escaped
to warn the authorities of the Panjab. The officer in charge of the
magazine, after defending it for three hours, finding that he could no
longer repel his assailants, blew up the stores of ammunition which it
contained and destroyed some hundreds of mutineers; but the briga-
dier, without a single company of British soldiers, could effect nothing.
One of his three regiments, indeed, remained respectful: but the others
were mutinous; several officers were murdered; and at sunset, after he
had waited vainly for succour from Meerut, he was compelled to
retreat with the surviving officers and those women and children who
were in his charge. The miseries suffered in that flight hardened British
hearts to inflict a fierce revenge; but the survivors told with gratitude
of kindness shown to them in their distress by Hindus through whose
villages they had passed. 1
Two days after the seizure of Delhi the governor-general received
the news. "Immediately he sent for all the reinforcements within his
reach, and empowered his trusted lieutenants, Henry and John
Lawrence, to act as they might think best in Oudh and the Panjab;
but, deluded by telegrams from the lieutenant-governor of the North-
Western Provinces, who predicted that in a few days all danger would
a
be over, he rejected an offer from the governor of Bombay to send a
steamer to England with dispatches. The commander-in-chief, who,
like almost everyone else, had failed to understand the earlier symp-
toms of mutiny, and was therefore unprepared, found himself ham-
pered by want of transport and of stores. John Lawrence implored
him to free himself for action by disarming the regiments at Ambala,
and then to strike a decisive blow at Delhi; but, though the civil
officers in the Cis-Satlej states, aided by loyal Sikh chieftains, collected
carriage and supplies, he thought it best to wait for reinforcements.
At length, overruled by the insistence of the governor-general, he
moved from Ambala to Karnal, intending to march thence on 1 June;
but on 27 May he died of cholera,
Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded to the command of the army
assembled at Karnal, marched immediately for Delhi. Brigadier
Wilson, who had already left Meerut in obedience to Anson, was
expected to join him. For more than a fortnight the force which he
commanded had remained inactive. Hewitt had made no attempt
to re-establish British authority; and the villagers in the surrounding
1 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 104 sqq. and references there cited.
CRIVI
12
## p. 178 (#214) ############################################
178
THE MUTINY
country, believing that every Englishman in Meerut had perished,
relapsed into anarchy. Wilson twice defeated mutineers who had
advanced from Delhi to oppose him, and on 7 June, reinforced by a
Gurkha battalion, joined Barnard, whose troops had avenged the
sufferings of British fugitives by many cruel deeds, a few miles north of
the city. Next day the mutineers, who had occupied a strong position
on the north-western outskirts, were again defeated; and the victors,
encamping on the Ridge, looked down upon the high wall, with its
bastions and massive gates, which encompassed the imperial city, the
white marble dome and tall minarets of the Jamma Masjid, the lofty
red walls and the round towers of the palace overhanging the sparkling
waters of the Jumna. They had boasted that they would recapture
Delhi on the day of their arrival; but on the Ridge they were to
remain for many weary weeks. To understand what they achieved
and suffered, it is necessary to trace the outline of events in other parts
of the peninsula.
The effects of the outbreak at Meerut had been instantly felt in the
Doab—that part of the North-Western Provinces which extended
between the Jumna and the Ganges. After Wilson marched to join
Barnard, the only British troops available were one regiment and one
battery at Agra, the headquarters of the government. The lieutenant-
governor, John Colvin, who, on hearing the news of the seizure of
Delhi, proposed to take refuge in the fort, was soon persuaded that
there was no real danger. His subordinates, however, were becoming
convinced that, although he had proved himself an excellent adminis-
trator in times of peace, he lacked the qualities required to cope with
difficulties which it was impossible wholly to overcome. ” After a
succession of mutinies in outlying stations he issued a proclamation,
for which Canning ordered him to substitute another, more precisely
worded, promising lenient treatment to all mutineers who would give
up their arms, except those who had instigated revolt or taken part in
the murder of Europeans; but it was answered by another mutiny,
and on the following day, yielding to the magistrate, he ordered the
native regiments at Agra to be disarmed. Had he done so a fortnight
earlier, a wing of the British regiment would have been set free, and
much disorder might have been prevented. The infection had already
spread to Rohilkhand. Before the end of the first week in June every
regiment in that division had mutinied; many Europeans had been
murdered; Khan Bahadur Khan, a Muhammadan pensioner of the
government, had proclaimed himself the viceroy of the king of Delhi;
and as he was not strong enough to keep the peace, anarchy was
rampant.
The history of the Mutiny in the Doab and in Rohilkhand furnishes
the most important evidence for determining the nature of the rising.
The hesitating demeanour of many mutineers, the practical loyalty
1 Holmes, op. cit. pp. 568–73. But cf. Colvin, Life of J. R. Colvin, pp. 190 599.
## p. 179 (#215) ############################################
THE DOAB AND ROHILKHAND
179
of others, which cannot be explained away on any theory of dissimula-
tion, up to the very day of mutiny, the fact that few detachments
committed themselves until the news that others had done so or the
infection of civil disturbances overcame their fidelity, and that some-
times a mere accident occasioned the outbreak, prove that, however
carefully the ringleaders may have endeavoured to secure concerted
action, the movement was most imperfectly organised. "Sir", said
a loyal Brahman sepoy to a British officer, “there is one knave and
nine fools; the knave compromises the others, and then tells them it
is too late to draw back. "
Historically, however, it is more important to learn how the civil
population acted than to analyse the phenomena of the Mutiny itself.
When the defection of the Bengal army threatened the raj with
destruction, Hindus and Muhammadans alike, though, notwith-
standing their grievances, they acknowledged its benevolence, justice
and efficiency, relapsed into the turbulent habits of their ancestors.
Rajas summoned their retainers and proclaimed their resolve to
establish their authority as vassals of the king of Delhi. Muhammadan
fanatics waved green flags and shouted for the revival of the supremacy
of Islam. Rajputs and Jats renewed old feuds and fought with one
another to the death. Gujars robbed the mail-carts, plundered peace-
ful villages, and murdered the villagers. The police, who had
generally been recruited from the dangerous classes, felt that nothing
was to be gained by supporting a doomed government, and joined
the criminals. Dispossessed landowners assembled their old tenants,
and hunted out the speculators who had bought up their estates.
Insolvent debtors mobbed and slaughtered the money-lenders. Sati
and other barbarous customs revived. Public works ceased; civil
justice could only be administered in a few favoured spots; education
was either stopped or frequently interrupted. In short, excepting the
summary administration of criminal justice and a partial collection
of the revenue, the organism of government was paralysed. 1
On the other hand, many landowners were passively, and some few
actively, loyal. More than one moulvi had the courage to proclaim
that rebellion was a sin, and a fair proportion of Indian officials, some.
at the cost of their lives, stood resolutely at their posts. Finally, except
hardened criminals, hereditary robbers, and those who knew that they
could expect no mercy, the people acquiesced readily enough in the
re-establishment of regular government.
Much depended upon the protected princes, and fortunately
Sindhia, influenced by his prime minister, Dinkar Rao, and the
political agent, Charters Macpherson, remained steadily. loyal,
keeping the Gwalior contingent and his own army, both of which
were ripe for mutiny, inactive within his territory. In Rajputana, the
inhabitants of which, under loyal native rulers, were generally well-
1 Cf. e. g. Durand, Life of Sir A. Lyall, p. 69.
a
12-2
## p. 180 (#216) ############################################
180
THE MUTINY
disposed, the eldest of the famous Lawrence brothers upheld British
authority, despite mutinies at Nimach and Nasirabad, throughout
the crisis;but at Agra towards the end of June the approach of the
mutineers compelled Colvin to remove the English women and
children into the fort, where he had hitherto forbidden them to take
refuge. Brigadier Polwhele, the military chief, who, believing that
the mutineers intended to join their comrades at Delhi, had resolved
to remain on the defensive, allowed himself to be persuaded to attack
them, and suffered a defeat: but the garrison, thanks to Sindhia and
Dinkar Rao, who still contrived to keep their troops inactive, escaped
a siege; and throughout the summer volunteers, raised by the magis-
trate and collector of Meerut, did much to restore order in his
district.
Meanwhile important events occurred along the line between
Calcutta and Delhi. Fortunately, during the three weeks that followed
the outbreak at Meerut, the sepoys remained absolutely passive. But
the governor-general, deceived by this lull, failed to take full ad-
vantage of it. Rejecting offers made by various bodies to serve as
volunteers for the protection of Calcutta, on the ground that "the
mischief caused by a passing and groundless panic had already been
arrested”, he refused to disarm the sepoys at Barrackpore because
he trusted the profession of loyalty which they were careful to make,
and feared that the troops at other places might be exasperated.
Towards the middle of June he found it necessary to authorise both
these measures, which, if they had been adopted in time, would
have enabled him to send two British regiments to threatened stations.
Meanwhile, however, he had been diligently preparing for the arrival
of the expected reinforcements; and the undeserved odium which he
incurred by the famous “Clemency Order” and various local enact-
ments in no respect weakened his authority.
Fortunately Patna, the most important provincial town in the
Presidency of Bengal, was in strong hands. William Tayler, the com-
missioner, had had a dispute with the lieutenant-governor, Frederick
Halliday, who intended to transfer him, on the first colourable pretext,
to another post. There was not a single British soldier at Patna, and
at Dinapore, only ten miles off, the British regiment was detained by
the necessity of watching the sepoy troops, which Canning refused to
disarm. A Sikh battalion, which Tayler summoned to his assistance,
arrived on 8 June; but the commandant reported that it had been
insulted on the march by the rural population. Halliday insisted that
a mutiny of the Dinapore sepoys was inconceivable, and General
Lloyd, the commander of the division, whom Tayler urged to disarm
1 Cf. George Lawrence, Reminiscences, pp. 278 sqq.
: Major Williams, Narrative, pp. 11, 12, 14; Bunlop, Service and Adventures with the
Khakee Ressalah.
• Cf. Parl. Papers, 1857, XXX, 20-3.
## p. 181 (#217) ############################################
PATNA
181
them, replied that he could keep them under control. Left to his own
resources, Tayler arrested three moulvis, who directed the Wahabis
--the most dangerous Muhammadans in the city—knowing that he
would thus ensure the obedience of their disciples, and, feeling that
he was now master of the situation, required all the citizens to sur-
render their weapons. A riot which broke out on 3 July was sup-
pressed by the Sikhs, and the ringleaders were hanged. " Supported
by three Indians, who gave him information which only natives could
obtain, Tayler was able to keep order in the city; but the outlying
districts were still imperilled. British troops were about to pass through
Dinapore; but Canning left Lloyd to decide whether he would use
them. Unable to nerve himself to take the decisive step, the latter
thought it enough to remove the percussion caps from the magazine,
and afterwards, though the British force was then at dinner, ordered
the sepoys to surrender those which they carried. They replied by
firing on their officers, and, joined by a Rajput noble, Kunwar Singh,
who had been ungenerously treated by the Revenue Board of Bengal,
made a raid upon Arrah, the chief town of the most turbulent district
in the Patna division. The European residents, warned of their
approach and reinforced by fifty Sikhs, whom Tayler had sent to their
assistance, took refuge in a small building, which had been fortified
and provisioned by its provident owner. A force sent by Lloyd to the
rescue was ambushed and overwhelmed; but the little garrison con-
tinued to repel every attack, Major Vincent Eyre of the Bengal
Artillery, who, though he had been ordered to proceed to Allahabad,
assumed the responsibility of attempting to succour them, and per-
suaded the commandant of an infantry detachment to serve under
him, defeated the rebels near Arrah, thus not only relieving the
garrison, but quelling an insurrection which had threatened the whole
of Bengal and restoring the safety of communication between Calcutta
and the north-west. Before this success, however, Tayler, foreseeing
that if the garrison should be overpowered, the besiegers would over-
run the province of Bihar, ordered the district officers at the most
exposed stations to withdraw to Patna. Halliday, stigmatising the
order as an act of cowardice, dismissed him from his post; but at a
later time, while many of the foremost men in India declared their
conviction that he had saved Bihar, two ex-members of Canning's
council, retracting the censure which they had joined in passing upon
him, added their testimony to the value of his services, and the chief
of the three moulvis whom he had arrested was sent to the Andaman
Islands as a convicted felon. While Tayler was crushing rebellion in
Bihar, the valley of the Ganges was in peril. In Benares, as dangerous
a stronghold of Brahminical as Patna of Muhammadan fanaticism,
1 Tayler, Thirty-eight Years in India, 11, 237 599.
· Holmes, op. cit. pp. 195 sqq. and references.
• Tayler, op. cit. 11, 242 599.
## p. 182 (#218) ############################################
182
THE MUTINY
there were only thirty English gunners to watch the 37th Native
Infantry, a regiment of Irregular Cavalry, and the Ludhiana Sikhs.
On 4 June it was known that the sepoys at an outlying station had
mutinied, and as a hundred and fifty British soldiers from Dinapore
were by this time on the spot, Colonel Neill of the ist Madras
Fusiliers, who had arrived on the previous day with a detachment of
his corps, persuaded the brigadier to disarm the Bengal regiment. The
affair, for which the brigadier declared himself responsible, was mis-
managed. Panic-stricken by the approach of the British troops, the
men fired at their officers; the Sikhs, some of whom were disloyal,
while the rest were apprehensive of treachery, charged the guns; and
a disaster was barely averted by a swift discharge of grape. The
sedition that followed in the city was suppressed by the judge, aided
by influential Indians; Neill put to death all the mutineers who were
caught; and in the surrounding country, which was placed by the
governor-general under martial law, rebels, suspects, and even dis-
orderly boys were executed by infuriated officers and unofficial
British residents who volunteered to serve as hangmen.
Neill had already pushed on for Allahabad, which, standing at the
confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges, commanded the communi-
cation between the lower and the upper provinces of Northern India.
Yet, though Outram had implored both Canning and Anson to
provide for its safety, it had been left without a single British soldier
until, after the outbreak at Meerut, sixty invalid artillerymen arrived.
On 19 May the 6th Native Infantry volunteered to march against
Delhi; on 6 June, after their confiding colonel had read to them a letter
in which the governor-general expressed his gratitude for their offer,
they mutinied, and murdered five of their officers. Sedition, pillage and
arson followed; the railway works were destroyed; and the telegraph
wires were torn down. The fort, indeed, was saved by Captain
Brasyer of the Ludhiana Sikhs, who, constraining his men, though
they had just heard of the slaughter of their comrades at Benares, to
support him, disarmed a company, forming part of the garrison, of
the regiment that had mutinied; but though a detachment of the
Madras Fusiliers arrived on the next day, anarchy was rampant when
Neill appeared with forty of his men. Within a week, despite physical
prostration, he restored order in the fort, where British volunteers
were demoralised by drunkenness, and by ruthless severity suppressed
all disturbance in the districts. Conjointly with Brasyer he had saved
the most important post between Calcutta and Cawnpore, and con-
verted it into an advanced base. But while he strove to discriminate
between the innocent and the guilty, volunteers and Sikhs slaughtered
every Indian whom they met, and villages, from which harmless old
men and women with infants at their breasts were forced to flee, were
remorselessly burned. The Old Testament was then revered, and
Neill, who was preparing to dispatch a column to Cawnpore under
## p. 183 (#219) ############################################
CAWNPORE
183
Major Renaud of the Madras Fusiliers, gave him instructions (which
Havelock approved) in the spirit of Joshua.
The garrison of Cawnpore consisted of four sepoy regiments, with
which were associated fifty-nine British gunners and a few invalids.
Sir Hugh Wheeler, who commanded the division, determined imme-
diately after the outbreak at Meerut to secure a refuge for the non-
combatants. The only defensible position was the magazine, a strong
roomy building, protected on its northern side by the Ganges; but
Wheeler decided against it on the ground that before he could occupy
it he would be obliged to withdraw its sepoy guard, which migl::
precipitate a rising. The sepoy regiments, if they mutinied, would,
he
believed, hasten at once to Delhi, and, at the worst, he would only have
to repel a mob of budmashes before succourshould arrive. It is probable
that, if he had waited for reinforcements, which he was soon to receive,
he could have occupied the magazine without resistance; but he con-
tented himself with throwing up an entrenchment, which any active
lad could leap over, near the north-eastern corner of the town. On
4 June the native cavalry, followed by the ist Infantry, mutinied.
Next day, the 56th was persuaded to join them. The bulk of the 53rd
was still standing its ground when Wheeler impulsively ordered his
artillery to fire, and all but eighty, who to the last remained faithful,
fled. The Nana Sahib, whose palace was near Cawnpore, promised to
lead the mutineers to Delhi, but, influenced by one of his advisers,
persuaded them to remain and besiege the entrenchment.
For three weeks the little garrison—some four hundred English
fighting men, more than seventy of whom were invalids, with the
faithful sepoys, defended their women and children against a con-
tinuous fire, enduring hunger, thirst, exposure to the midsummer sun,
the torture of wounds for which they had no remedy, and, finally,
despair. On the seventh day and on the centenary of Plassey the
besiegers attempted an assault, but were resolutely repelled. Two
days later the Nana offered a safe passage to Allahabad to every
member of the garriso. . "who had not been connected with the acts
of Lord Dalhousie”. Wheeler reluctantly accepted the offer. Next
day terms of surrender were arranged, including a proviso that the
defenders should be allowed to retain their arms; but the guns were
to be delivered over to the enemy. On the morning of the 27th a wan
and ragged company quitted the entrenchment, and, surrounded by
a great crowd of onlookers, proceeded to embark on thatched barges,
which the Nana had provided. Tantia Topi, his trusted counsellor,
superintended the arrangements.
Immediately afterwards the thatch, strewn with glowing cinders,
burst into flame; grape-shot and bullets, fired by sepoys who had been
posted behind cover, poured into the throng; troopers rode into the
water and sabred the women. Suddenly a messenger from the Nana
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cit. 11, 268 n.
## p. 184 (#220) ############################################
184
THE MUTINY
ordered that no more women or children were to be killed, and the
survivors, a hundred and twenty-five, were dragged back to the town.
The only boat that escaped, without oars, rudder, or food, was fired
upon by sepoys who moved along the bank. On the third day it
drifted into a side current. Descrying villagers and sepoys about to
attack them, two officers, a sergeant, and eleven privates leaped
ashore, scattered the crowd, and fought their way back-to find that
the boat had drifted far away. The officers, Mowbray Thomson and
Delafosse, who with two privates alone survived the ordeals of that
day, found shelter, after swimming six miles, with a friendly raja of
Oudh. The boat was overtaken, and the passengers—wounded men,
women and children—were brought back to Cawnpore. The women
and children were incarcerated in one building with the hundred and
twenty-five who had survived the first massacre; the men were put
to death. A few days later the captives were transferred to a small
house called the Bibigarh, where, with fugitives from the Doab, whose
companions had been already slain by order of the Nana, they were
subjected to the grossest indignities. On 15 July the Nana heard that
his troops had been defeated by an avenging army. The few men who
had been suffered to live thus far were instantly killed in his presence;
the women and children, after sepoys had refused to shoot them, were
hacked to death by a band of ruffians. Perhaps, as it has been alleged,
he was persuaded by a woman in his zenana to permit the final
massacre; at all events it is probable that revenge for the cruelties
committed by Englishmen and Sikhs at Benares, at Allahabad, and
on Renaud's march, was one motive for the tragedy of Cawnpore. 1
Throughout the Mutiny Cawnpore was linked closely with Luck-
now, the capital of Oudh. Sir Henry Lawrence, who had been
appointed chief commissioner in January, speedily redressed the
wrongs committed by his predecessor. He had spent his official life
in toiling for the welfare of Indians; his sympathetic nature won their
devotion and the love of his own countrymen; and no one was better
fitted to prepare for the ordeal which he foresaw. “I have struck up
a friendship”, he wrote to Canning, "with two of the best and
wealthiest of the chiefs, and am on good terms with all. ” He im-
prisoned a moulvi, who preached a holy war at Faizabad. But he
knew that with the sepoys conflict was inevitable; and a durbar, held
in his private garden before he heard of the outbreak at Meerut, in
which he exhorted representatives of the sepoy regiments to pay no
heed to agitators, and rewarded individuals who had proved their
fidelity, was regarded by those who attended it as a sign of fear.
Lawrence intended that the Europeans, in case a siege should
become inevitable, should take refuge in the residency and its out-
lying buildings, which stood on a plateau bounded on the north by
the Gumti, a tributary of the Ganges. The roof of the principal
1 Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 227 sqq. and references.
## p. 185 (#221) ############################################
LUCKNOW
185
edifice commanded a view of the city and its environs. Eastward and
westward along the southern bank of the river extended an irregular
space, covered by palaces and mosques, surrounded with gardens:
beyond them a vast maze of sordid streets stretched southward and
eastward as far as a canal, which entered the river three miles east
of the residency and was crossed by the Cawnpore road.
Lawrence began his preparations by amending the distribution of
the troops. The only British regiment—the 32nd Foot—was quartered
in barracks about a mile and a half east of the residency, while five
regiments of native infantry and one of cavalry were located at various
points within the city and on both sides of the river. On 16 May
Lawrence, yielding to the financial commissioner, Martin Gubbins,
and the military authorities, moved a detachment of the 32nd to the
residency, then at th« mercy of a sepoy guard. Next day he trans-
ferred the women and children of the regiment to the residency, sent
the remaining companies to watch the native troops in a cantonment
north of the river, and stationed a corps of Europeans and picked
sepoys
in the Machi Bhawan, a dilapidated fort, west of the residency,
which would overawe the city and might be useful as a temporary
post. Two days later, having been invested at his own request with
plenary military power, he assumed command of the whole force in
Oudh. He had already begun to repair the Machi Bhawan; a few
days later he set to work on the residency and its annexes; and soon
afterwards the English ladies were warned to take refuge there with
their children. Gubbins urged him to disarm the native regiments;
but, fearing that to do so would impel the troops at outlying stations
to mutiny, and knowing that loyal sepoys would be needed to aid in
defending the residency, he refused. On the 30th mutiny broke out
in the cantonments north of the city, and three officers were murdered;
but morethan five hundred sepoys sided with the British; and, although
on the next day there was a rising in the city, Lawrence had posted
a force to guard the connecting road, and thus prevented the mu-
tineers from abetting the rioters. “We now”, he wrote to Canning,
"know our friends and enemies. "
Nevertheless the mutiny produced disastrous effects. Hitherto the
country districts had been tranquil: the courts of justice remained
open: and the revenue was punctually paid. But in the first few days
of June the sepoys at every ctation rose. Many officers, many Euro-
peans, were murdered; but many fugitives owed their lives to Indians
whose hearts had been won by the sympathy with which Lawrence
redressed their wrongs. The talukdars, of course, ejected those upon
whom their estates had been bestowed, plundered rich citizens, and
wreaked vengeance upon old antagonists; but very few aided the
mutineers, and some actually sent supplies to Lawrence for provi-
sioning the residency.
Meanwhile in Lucknow mutineers were being daily hanged, and,
## p. 186 (#222) ############################################
186
THE MUTINY
although after the outbreak the Indian merchants no longer carried on
business, the administration of justice was not interrupted, and order
was fairly well maintained. But under the grievous announcements
from the districts Lawrence's health broke down, and he was forced
to delegate his powers to a council, of which Gubbins was appointed
president. Three days later, hearing with indignation that his col-
league was bent upon getting rid of those sepoys who had not yet been
disarmed, he resumed his authority, and devoted himself, despite
a mutiny of the military police, to the work of strengthening the
residency. Gubbins, however, was constantly urging him to attack the
rebels assembling in the neighbourhood; and gradually, perhaps sub-
consciously, he allowed himself to be persuaded. 1 On the last day of
June, although his preparations were incomplete, he marched in a
north-easterly direction against the advanced guard. Before the
march began the British troops who formed a part of his force were
exhausted by many days and nights of labour; and they had advanced
little more than three miles when the colonel, supported by one of
the surgeons, declared that they were unfit to go into action. Brigadier
Inglis, to whom this protest had been made, was asked by Lawrence's
aide-de-camp whether they could go on, and replied, evasively but
significantly, “Of course they could, if ordered”. About a mile
farther, near the village of Chinhat, they encountered the enemy and
suffered an overwhelming defeat, but succeeded, though with the loss
of one-third of their number, in reaching the entrenchment. In a
scene of terror and confusion the siege began. Next day by Lawrence's
order the Machi Bhawan was blown up, and, while the mutineers
were plundering the city, the detachment that had occupied it
marched noiselessly to reinforce the garrison. On 2 July, while Indian
servants, tempted by extraordinary rates of pay, were working
feverishly at unfinished bastions and terrified women were praying
in their rooms, Lawrence, who, despite his final error, had made a
defence possible, was mortally wounded by the bursting of a shell;
and two days later, after giving his last instructions to Inglis and
imploring him never to surrender, he died, mourned by all.
Less than a thousand British soldiers, aided by about a hundred and
fifty civilians and seven hundred loyal sepoys, were now besieged by
some ten thousand disciplined troops and a band of talukdars' re-
tainers. Fortunately, the besiegers were under incompetent leaders,
whom they treated with contempt. The entrenchment, about a mile
in circuit, enclosed detached houses and other buildings, the defences
of which-mud banks and trenches, palisades, crows-feet, and similar
obstacles-were still incomplete. On the east, south and west, how-
ever, outlying buildings served as a protection against artillery, and
made it impossible for storming parties to advance in strength: the
one open space where the besiegers could assemble for a general
1 Cf. Kaye, op. cit. in, 669-71.
а
## p. 187 (#223) ############################################
HAVELOCK
187
assault or plant batteries to breach the defences was on the north,
where a high bank, scarped and strengthened by a parapet, formed
the strongest part of the position. Still, no place within was safe.
Though the gunnery of the besiegers was erratic, sharpshooters kept
up a galling fire from the surrounding houses. Numerous mines were
sunk with the object of breaching the defences; but almost all were
stopped or destroyed before they could reach their aim. On 21 July
a sepoy pensioner, named Angad, made his way into the entrench-
ment, and announced that Havelock, having thrice defeated the Nana,
was in possession of Cawnpore; but weeks passed away, and the
expected relief did not arrive. Three several assaults were vigorously
repelled; but the defenders, whose numbers daily diminished, were
becoming exhausted by incessant toil, and disease still further wasted
their ranks. The chief of the commissariat was disabled; and though
there was actually sufficient grain to last for many months, Inglis
supposed that the stock was nearly exhausted, and reduced the rations.
Towards the end of August Angad appeared with a letter containing
the warning that Havelock could not arrive before twenty-five days
and the ominous injunction, "Do not negotiate, but rather perish
sword in hand”. On 16 September, when more than a third of the
British soldiers had fallen, he was sent out with dispatches for the last
time. 1
Henry Havelock, who had fought with distinction in Burma,
Afghanistan, Gwalior and the Panjab, had abandoned the ambition
which he had qualified himself by constant study to fulfil, when, old
and physically feeble but in spirit indomitable, he was appointed to
command an army for the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow. A few
hours before the siege of the residency began he reached Allahabad.
On the same day Renaud started for Cawnpore at the head of the
little column which Neill had organised; on 3 July the destruction of
Wheeler's force was announced, and a few days later Havelock, with
a thousand British soldiers, a hundred and thirty of Brasyer's Sikhs,
twenty volunteer troops and six guns, began his march. Charred
ruins of forsaken villages, corpses hanging from trees along the road,
testified that Renaud had even exceeded his instructions. On the
12th Havelock overtook him; within the next three days, although he
was obliged to reinforce Neill with a hundred of the Sikhs and to
disarm Renaud's mutinous cavalry, he gained three victories; and on
the 16th, beneath the fiercest sun which the soldiers had yet felt, he
defeated five thousand men, whom the Nana himself commanded.
Next day the victors entered Cawnpore and, hurrying to the Bibigarh,
sa w bullet-marks, sword-cuts, clotted blood, shreds of clothing, and
women's long tresses—the signs of the final massacre.
A week elapsed before Havelock was able to push on. Neill, who
arrived on 20 July, was to defend the recovered city; and Havelock,
1 Cf. Holmes, op. cit. pp. 244 599.
## p. 188 (#224) ############################################
188
THE MUTINY
being unable to place more than three hundred men at his disposal,
fortified the position close to the river, which he ordered him to
occupy. The bridge had been destroyed by mutineers, and it was with
great difficulty that the passage of the river, which, swollen by the
rains, was flowing with torrential force, was accomplished in suc-
cessive trips by boats. On the 25th Havelock, whose force now num-
bered fifteen hundred, resumed his march. After two more victories
he had advanced about half the way when, reflecting that his little
army was daily wasted by cholera and the enemy's fire, that the
recent mutiny at Dinapore would delay reinforcements, and that, if
he persisted, hundreds must still fall before he could approach the
residency, he reluctantly decided to return. From Mangalwar, only
five miles from Cawnpore, which he reached on the last day of July,
he wrote to inform Neill that he could not attempt to relieve Lucknow
until he received a reinforcement of a thousand men and anoiher
battery of guns. Aglow with indignation, Neill presumed to admonish
his superior, who sternly replied: “Understand. . . . that a considera-
tion of the obstruction which would arise to the public service. . .
alone prevents me from placing you under immediate arrest".
Nevertheless, reinforced by no more than one company of British
infantry and a half-battery, and hearing from Calcutta that for two
months he must expect no more, he once more set his face towards
Lucknow, advanced to the point which he had reached before, and
there gained his seventh victory. But the reasons that had before
compelled him to retreat were hardly less cogent now. The mutinous
Gwalior contingent was reported to be threatening Cawnpore; the
zamindars, encouraged by his recent retirement, were arming their
matchlockmen; the cholera was unabated. Anxiously considering
what his duty required, he returned again to Mangalwar. The resolve,
as he himself recorded, was the most painful that he had ever formed.
Meanwhile Neill, believing thať "severity at the first is mercy in
the end”, had determined to avenge the massacre in the Bibigarh by
a punishment that should never be forgotten. Every prisoner whom
he considered especially guilty was to remove the stain of blood from
an allotted space. “The task”, so ran the order,
will be made as revolting to his feelings as possible, and the Provost-Marshal will
use the lash in forcing anyone objecting to complete his task. After properly
cleaning up his portion, the culprit is to be immediately hanged.
But Neill, who had told his chief that his retreat had destroyed the
prestige of England, was compelled to appeal to him for help; for
four thousand rebels were threatening to overwhelm his little force.
Havelock, resolved to show that he was undismayed, first advanced
again and routed them, then recrossed the Ganges and re-entered
Cawnpore. The talukdars of Oudh, who, with a few exceptions, had
hitherto remained passive, now began for the most part, under
pressure from the rebel durbar, to send their retainers into the field.
