The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8

This interesting train of adventures we have followed to its close, as illustrating so many points connected with the state of India at the time; but now attention must be brought back to the month of May.

West of the Rohilcund district, and northwest of Allygurh and its neighbouring cluster of towns, lie Meerut and Delhi, the two places at which the atrocities were first manifested. Meerut, after the departure of the three mutinous regiments on the night of the 10th of May, and the revolt of the Sappers and Miners a few days afterwards, remained unmolested. Major-general Hewett was too strong in European troops to be attacked, although his force took part in many operations against the rebels elsewhere. Several prisoners, proved to have been engaged in the murderous work of the 10th, were hanged. On the other hand, many sowars of the 3d native cavalry, instead of going to Delhi, spread terror among the villagers near Meerut. One of the last military dispatches of the commander-in-chief was to Hewett, announcing his intention to send most of his available troops from Kurnaul by Bhagput and Paniput, to Delhi, and requesting Hewett to despatch from Meerut an auxiliary force. This force he directed should consist of two squadrons of carabiniers, a wing of the 60th Rifles, a light field-battery, a troop of horse-artillery, a corps of artillerymen to work the siege-train, and as many sappers as he could depend upon. General Anson calculated that if he left Umballa on the 1st of June, and if Hewett sent his force from Meerut on the 2d, they might meet at Bhagput on the 5th, when a united advance might be made upon Delhi; but, as we shall presently see, the hand of death struck down the commander-in-chief ere this plan could be carried out; and the force from Meerut was placed at the disposal of another commander, under circumstances that will come under notice in their proper place.

Delhi, like Cawnpore, must be treated apart from other towns. The military proceedings connected with its recapture were so interesting, and carried on over so long a period; it developed resources so startlingly large among the mutineers, besieging forces so lamentably small on the part of the British – that the whole will conveniently form a subject complete in itself, to be treated when collateral events have been brought up to the proper level. Suffice it at present to say, that the mutineers over the whole of the north of India looked to the retention of Delhi as their great stronghold, their rock of defence; while the British saw with equal clearness that the recapture of that celebrated city was an indispensable preliminary to the restoration of their prestige and power in India. All the mutineers from other towns either hastened to Delhi, or calculated on its support to their cause, whatever that cause may have been; all the available British regiments, on the other hand, few indeed as they were, either hastened to Delhi, or bore it in memory during their other plans and proceedings.

Just at the time when the services of a military commander were most needed in the regions of which Agra is the centre, and when it was necessary to be in constant communication with the governor-general and authorities, General Anson could not be heard of; he was supposed at Calcutta to be somewhere between Simla and Delhi; but dâks and telegraphs had been interfered with, and all remained in mystery as to his movements. Lawrence at Lucknow, Ponsonby at Benares, Wheeler at Cawnpore, Colvin at Agra, Hewett at Meerut, other commanders at Allahabad, Dinapoor, and elsewhere – all said in effect: ‘We can hold our own for a time, but not unless Delhi be speedily recaptured. Where is the commander-in-chief?’ Viscount Canning sent messages in rapid succession, during the second half of the month of May, entreating General Anson to bring all his power to bear on Delhi as quickly as possible. Duplicate telegrams were sent by different routes, in hopes that one at least might reach its destination safely; and every telegram told the same story – that British India was in peril so long as Delhi was not in British hands, safe from murderers and marauders. Major-general Sir Henry Barnard, military commander of the Umballa district, received telegraphic news on the 11th of May of the outrages at Meerut and Delhi; and immediately sent an aid-de-camp to gallop off with the information to General Anson at Simla, seventy or eighty miles distant. The commander-in-chief at once hastened from his retirement among the hills. Simla, as was noticed in a former page, is one of the sanataria for the English in India, spots where pure air and moderate temperature restore to the jaded body some of the strength, and to the equally jaded spirits some of the elasticity, which are so readily lost in the burning plains further south. The poorer class among the Europeans cannot afford the indulgence, for the cost is too great; but the principal servants of the Company often take advantage of this health-restoring and invigorating climate – where the average temperature of the year is not above 55° F. The question has been frequently discussed, and is not without cogency, whether the commander-in-chief acted rightly in remaining at that remote spot during the first twenty weeks in the year, when so many suspicious symptoms were observable among the native troops at Calcutta, Dumdum, Barrackpore, Berhampore, Lucknow, Meerut, and Umballa. He could know nothing of the occurrences at those places but what the telegraphic wires and the postal dâks told him; nevertheless, if they told him the truth, and all the truth, it seems difficult to understand, unless illness paralysed his efforts, why he, the chief of the army, remained quiescent at a spot more than a thousand miles from Calcutta.

Startled by the news, the commander-in-chief quitted Simla, and hastened to Umballa, the nearest military station on the great Indian highway. It then became sensibly felt, both by Anson and Barnard, how insufficient were the appliances at their disposal. The magazines at Umballa were nearly empty of stores and ammunition; the reserve artillery-wagons were at Phillour, eighty miles away; the native infantry were in a very disaffected state; the European troops were at various distances from Umballa; the commissariat officers declared it to be almost impossible to move any body of troops, in the absence of necessary supplies for a column in the field; and the medical officers dwelt on the danger of marching troops in the hot season, and on the want of conveyance for sick and wounded. In short, almost everything was wanting, necessary for the operations of an army. The generals set to work, however; they ordered the 2d European Fusiliers to hasten from Subathoo to Umballa; the Nusseree Battalion to escort a siege-train and ammunition from Phillour to Umballa; six companies of the Sappers and Miners to proceed from Roorkee to Meerut; and the 4th Irregular Cavalry to hold themselves in readiness at Hansi. Anson at the same time issued the general order, already adverted to, inviting the native regiments to remain true to their allegiance, explaining the real facts concerning the cartridges, and reiterating the assurances of non-intervention with the religious and caste scruples of the men. On the 17th there were more than seven regiments of troops at Umballa – namely, the Queen’s 9th Lancers, the 4th Light Cavalry Lancers, the Queen’s 75th foot, the 1st and 2d European Fusiliers, the 5th and 60th native infantry, and two troops of European horse-artillery; but the European regiments were all far short of their full strength. Symptoms soon appeared that the 5th and 60th native infantry were not to be relied upon for fidelity; and General Anson thereupon strengthened his force at Umballa with such European regiments as were obtainable. He was nevertheless in great perplexity how to shape his course; for so many wires had been cut and so many dâks stopped, that he knew little of the progress of events around Delhi and Agra. Being new to India and Indian warfare, also, and having received his appointment to that high command rather through political connections than in reference to any experience derived from Asiatic campaigning, he was dependent on those around him for suggestions concerning the best mode of grappling with the difficulties that were presented. These suggestions, in all probability, were not quite harmonious; for it has long been known that, in circumstances of emergency, the civil and military officers of the Company, viewing occurrences under different aspects or from different points of view, often arrived at different estimates as to the malady to be remedied, and at different suggestions as to the remedy to be applied. At the critical time in question, however, all the officers, civil as well as military, assented to the conclusion that Delhi must be taken at any cost; and on the 21st of May, the first division of a small but well-composed force set out from Umballa on the road to Delhi. General Anson left on the 25th, and arrived on the 26th at Kurnaul, to be nearer the scene of active operations; but there death carried him off. He died of cholera on the next day, the 27th of May.

With a governor-general a thousand miles away, the chief officers at and near Kurnaul settled among themselves as best they could, according to the rules of the service, the distribution of duties, until official appointments could be made from Calcutta. Major-general Sir Henry Barnard became temporary commander, and Major-general Reid second under him. When the governor-general received this news, he sent for Sir Patrick Grant, a former experienced adjutant-general of the Bengal army, from Madras, to assume the office of commander-in-chief; but the officers at that time westward of Delhi – Barnard, Reid, Wilson, and others – had still the responsibility of battling with the rebels. Sir Henry Barnard, as temporary chief, took charge of the expedition to Delhi – with what results will be shewn in the proper place.

The regions lying west, northwest, and southwest of Delhi have this peculiarity, that they are of easier access from Bombay or from Kurachee than from Calcutta. Out of this rose an important circumstance in connection with the Revolt – namely, the practicability of the employment of the Bombay native army to confront the mutinous regiments belonging to that of Bengal. It is difficult to overrate the value of the difference between the two armies. Had they been formed of like materials, organised on a like system, and officered in a like ratio, the probability is that the mutiny would have been greatly increased in extent – the same motives, be they reasonable or unreasonable, being alike applicable to both armies. Of the degree to which the Bombay regiments shewed fidelity, while those of Bengal unfurled the banner of rebellion, there will be frequent occasions to speak in future pages. The subject is only mentioned here to explain why the western parts of India are not treated in the present chapter. There were, it is true, disturbances at Neemuch and Nuseerabad, and at various places in Rajpootana, the Punjaub, and Sinde; but these will better be treated in later pages, in connection rather with Bombay than with Calcutta as head-quarters. Enough has been said to shew over how wide an area the taint of disaffection spread during the month of May – to break out into something much more terrible in the next following month.

Notes

Indian Railways.– An interesting question presents itself, in connection with the subject of the present chapter – Whether the Revolt would have been possible had the railways been completed? The rebels, it is true, might have forced up or dislocated the rails, or might have tampered with the locomotives. They might, on the other hand, if powerfully concentrated, have used the railways for their own purposes, and thus made them am auxiliary to rebellion. Nevertheless, the balance of probability is in favour of the government – that is, the government would have derived more advantage than the insurgents from the existence of railways between the great towns of India. The difficulties, so great as to be almost insuperable, in transporting troops from one place to another, have been amply illustrated in this and the preceding chapters; we have seen how dâk and palanquin bearers, bullocks and elephants, ekahs and wagons, Ganges steamers and native boats, were brought into requisition, and how painfully slow was the progress made. The 121 miles of railway from Calcutta to Raneegunge were found so useful, in enabling the English soldiers to pass swiftly over the first part of their journey, that there can hardly be a doubt of the important results which would have followed an extension of the system. Even if a less favourable view be taken in relation to Bengal and the Northwest Provinces, the advantages would unquestionably have been on the side of the government in the Bombay and Madras presidencies, where disaffection was shewn only in a very slight degree; a few days would have sufficed to send troops from the south of India by rail, viâ Bombay and Jubbulpoor to Mirzapore, in the immediate vicinity of the regions where their services were most needed.

Although the Raneegunge branch of the East Indian Railway was the only portion open in the north of India, there was a section of the main line between Allahabad and Cawnpore nearly finished at the time of the outbreak. This main line will nearly follow the course of the Ganges, from Calcutta up to Allahabad; it will then pass through the Doab, between the Ganges and the Jumna, to Agra; it will follow the Jumna from Agra up to Delhi; and will then strike off northwestward to Lahore – to be continued at some future time through the Punjaub to Peshawur. During the summer of 1857, the East India Company prepared, at the request of parliament, an exact enumeration of the various railways for which engineering plans had been adopted, and for the share-capital of which a minimum rate of interest had been guaranteed by the government. The document gives the particulars of about 3700 miles of railway in India; estimated to cost £30,231,000; and for which a dividend is guaranteed to the extent of £20,314,000, at a rate varying from 4½ to 5 per cent. The government also gives the land, estimated to be worth about a million sterling. All the works of construction are planned on a principle of solidity, not cheapness; for it is expected they will all be remunerative. Arrangements are everywhere made for a double line of rails – a single line being alone laid down until the traffic is developed. The gauge is nine inches wider than the ‘narrow gauge’ of English railways. The estimated average cost is under £9000 per mile, about one-fourth of the English average.

Leaving out of view, as an element impossible to be correctly calculated, the amount of delay arising from the Revolt, the government named the periods at which the several sections of railway would probably be finished. Instead of shewing the particular portions belonging respectively to the five railway companies – the East Indian, the Great Indian Peninsula, the Bombay and Central India, the Sinde, and the Madras – we shall simply arrange the railways into two groups, north and south, and throw a few of the particulars into a tabulated form.

The plans for an Oude railway were drawn up, comprising three or four lines radiating from Lucknow; but the project had not, at that time, assumed a definite form.

’Headman’ of a Village.– It frequently happened, in connection with the events recorded in the present chapter, that the headman of a village either joined the mutineers against the British, or assisted the latter in quelling the disturbances; according to the bias of his inclination, or the view he took of his own interests. The general nature of the village-system in India requires to be understood before the significancy of the headman’s position can be appreciated. Before the British entered India, private property in land was unknown; the whole was considered to belong to the sovereign. The country was divided, by the Mohammedan rulers, into small holdings, cultivated each by a village community under a headman; for which a rent was paid. For convenience of collecting this rent or revenue, zemindars were appointed, who either farmed the revenues, or acted simply as agents for the ruling power. When the Marquis of Cornwallis, as governor-general, made great changes in the government of British India half a century ago, he modified, among other matters, the zemindary; but the collection of revenue remained.

Whether, as some think, villages were thus formed by the early conquerors; or whether they were natural combinations of men for mutual advantage – certain it is that the village-system in the plains of Northern India was made dependent in a large degree on the peculiar institution of caste. ‘To each man in a Hindoo village were appointed particular duties which were exclusively his, and which were in general transmitted to his descendants. The whole community became one family, which lived together and prospered on their public lands; whilst the private advantage of each particular member was scarcely determinable. It became, then, the fairest as well as the least troublesome method of collecting the revenue to assess the whole village at a certain sum, agreed upon by the tehsildar (native revenue collector) and the headman. This was exacted from the latter, who, seated on the chabootra, in conjunction with the chief men of the village, managed its affairs, and decided upon the quota of each individual member. By this means, the exclusive character of each village was further increased, until they have become throughout nearly the whole of the Indian peninsula, little republics; supplied, owing to the regulations of caste, with artisans of nearly every craft, and almost independent of any foreign relations.’[14 - Irving: Theory and Practice of Caste.]

Not only is the headman’s position and duties defined; but the whole village may be said to be socially organised and parcelled out by the singular operation of the caste principle. Each village manages its internal affairs; taxes itself to provide funds for internal expenses, as well as the revenue due to the state; decides disputes in the first instance; and punishes minor offences. Officers are selected for all these duties; and there is thus a local government within the greater government of the paramount state. One man is the scribe of the village; another, the constable or policeman; a third, the schoolmaster; a fourth, the doctor; a fifth, the astrologer and exorciser; and so of the musician, the carpenter, the smith, the worker in gold or jewels, the tailor, the worker in leather, the potter, the washerman – each considers that he has a prescriptive right to the work in his branch done within the village, and to the payment for that work; and each member of his family participates in this prescriptive right. This village-system is so interwoven with the habits and customs of the Hindoos, that it outlives all changes going on around. Sir T. Metcalfe, who knew India well, said: ‘Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindoo, Patan, Mogul, Mahratta, Sikh, English, are all masters in turn; but the village community remains the same. In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves. If a hostile army passes through the country, the village communities collect their cattle within their walls, and let the enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be directed against themselves, and the force employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly villages at a distance; but when the storm has passed over, they return and resume their occupations. If a country remain for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the village cannot be inhabited, the scattered villages nevertheless return whenever the power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the places of their fathers; the same site for their village, the same positions for the houses, the same lands will be reoccupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when the village was depopulated; and it is not a trifling matter that will drive them out, for they will often maintain their post through times of disturbance and convulsion, and acquire strength sufficient to resist pillage and oppression with success. This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered.’[15 - Report of Select Committee of House of Commons, 1832.]

It is easily comprehensible how, in village communities thus compactly organised, the course of proceeding adopted by the headman in any public exigency becomes of much importance; since it may be a sort of official manifestation of the tendencies of the villagers generally.

CHAPTER VIII.

TREACHERY AND ATROCITIES AT CAWNPORE

No other events connected with the Revolt in India made so deep an impression on the public mind, or produced so utter an astonishment and dismay, as those relating to Cawnpore – the treachery of an arch-villain, and the sufferings that resulted therefrom. The mystery that for so many weeks veiled the fate of the victims heightened the painful interest; for none in England knew how the troubles in May gave rise to the miseries in June, and these to the horrors of July, until nearly all were dead who could faithfully have recorded the progress of events. Now that the main incidents are known, they come upon the reader almost with the force of a tragic drama; associating themselves in succession with five scenes – the intrenchment, the boats, the ghat, the house of slaughter, the well – the intensity deepening as the plot advances towards its end.

So unutterably revolting were the indignities to which some of the unfortunates were subjected, at Cawnpore as at other places, that no one dared to speak or write fully of them; even men, hardy and world-worn men, almost shrank from whispering the details to each other. Vague generalities of language were employed, in sheer dismay lest the use of precise words should lift too high the veil that hid the hideous scene. So much was this felt, so much were the facts understated, that persons of unblemished moral character almost regretted the reticence of the press. A nobleman held in very high estimation, the Earl of Shaftesbury, on one occasion expressed at a public meeting a wish that the daily journals would proceed one stage further in making the mournful tale known: on the ground that Englishmen, by learning more of the real truth, would appreciate more fully the sufferings of our countrymen and countrywomen, the heroism and Christian patience with which those sufferings were borne, and the necessity for (not vengeance, but) retributive justice on those who had ordered and executed the devilish barbarities. It is not a trifling compliment to the delicacy of the English press, that a Christian nobleman should thus have suggested less scruple, less reserve, in the treatment of a most trying subject. In every narrative of these mournful events, the reader feels, and must continue to feel, that the worst is left unsaid.

The first matters to treat are – the locality in which, and the native chieftain by whom, these wrongs were inflicted. Cawnpore, a terrible word to English readers, is the name both of a district and of its chief town. The district, a part of the Doab or delta between the Ganges and the Jumna, is included within the government of the Northwestern Provinces. The city of Cawnpore is on the right bank of the Ganges, about two hundred and seventy miles below Delhi; and the river flows down nearly a thousand miles below this point to Calcutta; the land-distance, however, from Cawnpore to Calcutta is between six and seven hundred miles. The Ganges here is sometimes more than a mile in width at and soon after the rainy season, and is at such time very difficult to be crossed by bodies of troops. Cawnpore is an important city to the British in India, both commercially and in a military sense. The ghat or landing-place, in peaceful times, is a scene of great liveliness and bustle. When Skinner was there, ‘Every description of vessel that can be imagined was collected along the bank. The pinnace, which with its three masts and neat rigging might have passed for a ship; budgerows, the clumsiest of all clumsy things, with their sterns several times higher than their bows; the bauleahs, ugly enough, but lightly skimming along like gondolas compared with the heavy craft around them; the drifting haystacks, which the country-boats appear to be when at a distance, with their native crews straining every nerve upon their summits, and cheering themselves with a wild and not unfrequently a sweet song; panswees shooting swiftly down the stream, with one person only on board, who sits at the head, steering with his right hand, rowing with his foot, and in the left hand holding his pipe. A ferry-boat constantly plying across the stream adds to the variety of the scene, by its motley collection of passengers – travellers, merchants, fakeers, camels, bullocks, and horses – all crowded together. The vessels fastened to the shore are so closely packed, that they appear to be one mass, and, from their thatched roofs and low entrances, might easily pass for a floating village.’ Cawnpore is (or rather was) remarkable in its military arrangements. The cantonment, six miles long by half a mile broad, often contained, before the Revolt, a native population of fifty thousand persons, besides sixty thousand in the city itself, irrespective of military and Europeans. The native infantry of the station encamped here in the cool part of the year, when there were regular streets and squares of canvas stretching over an immense space; each regiment was provided with its bazaar; in the rear and far beyond the lines, were the bivouacs of every kind of camp-followers, in immense numbers. All these, with many hundred bungalows or lodges of officers and European residents, gave great animation to the cantonment. The bungalows, though tiled or thatched, were here, as in other parts of India, large and commodious; each standing pleasantly in the midst of its compound or enclosure, richly planted with grapes, peaches, mangoes, shaddocks, plantains, melons, oranges, limes, guavas, and other fruits especially acceptable in a hot climate. There was accommodation for seven thousand troops, but the number actually stationed there was generally much less. In accordance with the Company’s regulations, the English military officers, whether of European or native regiments, always resided within the cantonment where their services were required; while the civilians, although residing chiefly in the suburbs, had their offices and places of business within the city itself. There were thus, to some extent, two sets of English residents.

The next point to render clear is, the position of the man who so fatally influenced the affairs at Cawnpore in the summer months of 1857. Nena Sahib was his name to an English eye and tongue, and as Nena Sahib he will ever be execrated; but that was his titular or honorary, not his real name, which appears to have been Dhundu Punt or Dhoondhoopunt. When called the Nena or Náná, the Nena Sahib, the Peishwa, the Maharajah, the Nena Bahadoor, he was recognised by one of his oriental titles of honour. Let him to us be the Nena Sahib. There was a motive, however inadequate in the estimate of persons possessing a spark of human feeling, for the black treachery and monstrous cruelty of this man. He had a quarrel with the East India Company: a quarrel which the Company had nearly forgotten, but not he. The disagreement arose out of the prevalent Eastern custom of adoption, in default of legitimate male heirs. Bithoor, a town six or eight miles from Cawnpore, and within the same district, had long been the residence of the chief of the Mahrattas or Peishwa, with whom, as with other native princes, the Company had had many negotiations and treaties. Bithoor itself, a town of about fourteen thousand inhabitants, possesses numerous Hindoo temples, and several ghats or flights of steps giving access to the Ganges, to which the Brahmins and their followers frequently resort for the purpose of ritual ablution. The place is not without fortification, but it does not take rank among the strongholds of India. The last chief, Maharajah Bajee Rao Peishwa, died in 1851; and in consequence of that event, a jaghire or estate, near the town, which had been bestowed upon him during pleasure by the Company, lapsed to the government, and was subjected to the general regulations in force in Cawnpore. Being sonless, he had adopted a son, or indeed two sons – not merely to inherit the vast wealth which belonged to him independently of the arrangements with the Company, but also to perform certain filial duties which high-caste Hindoos deem it necessary to their religion that a son should perform. This adoption was legal so far as concerned the Peishwa’s personal property; but the Company would not admit its validity in relation to a pension of £50,000 per annum which he had been in the habit of receiving. A slight obscurity in the wording of an official document led to some doubt on this matter. On the 1st of June 1818, Sir John Malcolm, on the part of the Company, signed a treaty with Bajee Rao, granting a pension to the rajah and his family. This has since been interpreted, by the Bithoor intriguers, as a perpetual grant to the heirs; but there is abundant evidence that Sir John and the Company meant the pension to be for Bajee Rao’s life only, to be shared by his family then living. Nine years afterwards, namely, in 1827, Bajee Rao adopted two children, Suddchoo Rao and Dhundu Punt, the one four years and the other two years and a half old; they were the sons of two Brahmins, natives of the Deccan, who had come to reside at Bithoor about a year before. There is no evidence that Bajee Rao ever considered these two adopted sons, or either of them, entitled to a continuance of the Company’s pension; although Dhundu Punt may very possibly have thrown out frequent hints, to sound the Company on this subject. It has been supposed that when the old King of Delhi was reproclaimed after the Meerut outbreak, he offered to acknowledge the Nena Sahib, Dhundu Punt, as the proper successor of the Peishwa of Bithoor, on condition of receiving his aid and allegiance. This was probably true, but would not suffice, without the incentive of private animosity, to account for his subsequent actions. So little was known of him in England when the Revolt began, that doubt prevailed whether he was really the adopted son of Bajee Rao; some writers asserting that that honour had been conferred upon another Dhundu Punt, and that the Nena himself was the eldest son of the rajah’s subadar, Ramchunder Punt.

If hatred ruled his heart during the six years from 1851 to 1857, he must indeed have been a consummate hypocrite; for the English were always courteously received by him at his petty court, and generally came away impressed in his favour – impressed, however, at the same time, with a conviction that he entertained a sort of hope that the Queen of England would graciously befriend him in his contest with the Calcutta government, the Court of Directors, and the Board of Control, all of whom disputed his adoptive claims. He had a curious taste for mingling the English with the oriental in his palace at Bithoor. An English traveller, who visited him a few years before the Revolt, and was received with an amount of flattery that appeared to have a good deal of shrewd calculation in it, found the rooms set apart for him decked with English furniture arranged in the most incongruous manner – a chest of drawers and a toilet-table in the sitting-room; a piano and a card-table in the bedroom; tent-tables and camp-stools in the same room with elegant drawing-room tables and chairs; a costly clock by the side of cheap japan candlesticks; good prints from Landseer’s pictures, in juxtaposition with sixpenny coloured plates of Wellington and Napoleon; sacred prints, and prints of ballet-girls and Epsom winners – all kinds were mingled indiscriminately, as if simply to make a show. The guest was most struck by the oriental compliments he received from the Nena, and by the odd attempt to provide English furniture where English habits and customs were so little known; yet there were not wanting dark tints to the picture. He heard rumours ‘that two women of rank were kept in a den not far from my apartments, and treated like wild beasts; and that a third, a beautiful young creature, had recently been bricked up in a wall, for no other fault than attempting to escape.’ An agent of the Nena, one Azimullah, resided some time in London, about the year 1855; he came to England to advocate the Nena’s claims, and managed to ingratiate himself with many persons moving in the upper circles of society, by his manifest abilities, his winning grace, his courtesy to all with whom he came into relation. Yet there were strange fits of moody silence observable in him; and when the failure of his mission became evident, he was heard to throw out dark mysterious threats, which were disregarded at the time, but were brought vividly to recollection afterwards, when the deeds of his master forced themselves into notice.

It will presently be seen that Nena Sahib, whatever were his thoughts at the time, did not depart, when the Revolt commenced, from his usual demeanour towards the English; he was courteous to them, and was always courteously saluted by them when he rode past.

How interesting it is – nay, how affecting – to trace the mode in which the unfortunate Europeans at Cawnpore became gradually shut out from communication with the external world; neither knowing what was occurring east and west of them, nor able to communicate news of their own sufferings! In May, messages and letters passed to and from them; in June, authentic intelligence was superseded by painful rumours; in July, a deadly silence was followed by a horrible revelation.

When the Meerut and Delhi outbreaks occurred, the attention of the civil and military authorities was turned to the importance of securing Cawnpore: because of its native troops, its store of ammunition, its large treasury, its considerable English population, and its position on the Ganges and the great road. Sir Henry Lawrence, knowing that Sir Hugh Wheeler’s force in European troops was weak, sent him fifty English infantry in the third week in May, and also sent the aid (aid as it was hoped to be) of two squadrons of Oude irregular horse. But Lucknow could ill spare these armed men, and hence the telegrams already briefly adverted to. First, Lawrence to Canning: ‘Cawnpore to be reinforced with all speed. When may her Majesty’s 84th be expected?’ Then Canning to Lawrence: ‘It is impossible to place a wing of Europeans at Cawnpore in less time than twenty-five days.’ Then Wheeler to Canning: ‘All is quiet here, but impossible to say how long it will continue so.’ Next a telegram from Benares, announcing that every possible exertion would be made to send on troops to Cawnpore as fast as they came from Calcutta. Then, on the 25th, Wheeler telegraphed to Canning: ‘Passed anxious night and day, in consequence of a report on very good authority that there would be an outbreak during one or the other. All possible preparations to meet it, but I rejoice to say that none occurred.’ On this, Lawrence sent his earnest message recommending the establishment of ekah dâks – anything at any expense – to carry troops on to Cawnpore. Towards the close of the month, about seventy men of the Queen’s 84th reached the city; and Sir Hugh telegraphed ‘All quiet:’ at the same time making very evident the existence of anxiety on his mind concerning his prospects. The governor-general telegraphed to him: ‘Your anxious position is well understood; and no means have been neglected to give you aid.’ On another day Sir Hugh telegraphed: ‘All quiet still, but I feel by no means certain it will continue so. The civil and military are depending entirely upon me for advice and assistance.’ He announced to Lawrence that he had been obliged to send irregular cavalry to clear the roads of insurgent ruffians; and added, ‘Europeans are arriving but very slowly here.’ The dilemma and doubt were painful to all; for Viscount Canning had few troops to send up from Calcutta, and no facilities for sending them rapidly; while, on the other hand, he did not know that death had cut off General Anson ere an advance could be made to Delhi and Cawnpore from the northwest. Hence such telegrams as the following from Canning to Anson: ‘Cawnpore and Lucknow are severely pressed, and the country between Delhi and Cawnpore is passing into the hands of the rebels. It is of the utmost importance to prevent this, and to relieve Cawnpore; but nothing but rapid action will do this… It is impossible to overrate the importance of shewing European troops between Delhi and Cawnpore.’ Sir Hugh Wheeler’s anxieties did not relate wholly to Cawnpore; he knew that a wide region depended on that city for its continuance in loyalty. By the 2d of June only ninety European troops had reached him. On the next day he telegraphed that the population was much excited, and that unfavourable reports were coming in from the districts between Cawnpore and Lucknow. To make matters worse, Lawrence was becoming weak at the last-named place, and Wheeler sent him fifty-two of his highly cherished English troops – a number that shews how precious, from its scarcity, this military element was regarded by the two commanders. ‘This leaves me weak,’ said Wheeler; and well might he say so. Then occurred the cutting of the telegraph wires on all sides of Cawnpore, and the stoppage of the dâk-runners. After this, all was doubt and mystery, for it was only by stealthy means that letters and messages could leave or enter that city. By degrees there reached the Company’s officers at Lucknow, Allahabad, and Benares, indirect news telling of disaster – of a rebellious rising of the native troops at Cawnpore; of the mutineers being aided and abetted by the Nena Sahib of Bithoor; of all the Europeans taking refuge in an intrenched barrack; of the forlorn band being regularly besieged in that spot; of terrible sufferings being endured; and of the soldiers and civilians, the women and children, being brought to death by numerous privations. The commissioner at Benares, when these rumours of disaster reached him, telegraphed to Calcutta: ‘May God Almighty defend Cawnpore; for no help can we afford.’ And so it was throughout June – Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Agra, all were equally unable to send aid to the beleaguered garrison. Gradually the messages became fewer, and the rumours darker; escaped fugitives and native messengers came in stealthily to one or other of the neighbouring towns; and men talked of a massacre at Cawnpore of English fugitives from Futtehgur, of another massacre of English in boats bound for Calcutta, of women and children placed in confinement, and of Nena Sahib’s cruelty.

Such was the condition of Cawnpore as viewed from without, by those who could necessarily know but little of the truth. Let us now enter and trace the course of events as experienced by the sufferers themselves.

There is abundant evidence that, previous to the actual outbreak at Cawnpore, the native troops – consisting of the 1st, 53d, and 56th B. N. I., and the 2d native cavalry – were much agitated by the rumours of mutiny elsewhere; and that the European inhabitants felt sensibly the paucity of English soldiers at that place. A lady, the wife of the magistrate and collector of Cawnpore – one of those who, with all her family, were barbarously slaughtered in cold blood a few weeks afterwards – writing to her friends on the 15th of May, said: ‘Cawnpore is quiet, and the regiments here are stanch; but there is no saying that they would remain long so if they came in contact with some of their mutinous brethren. We have only about a hundred European soldiers here altogether, and six guns… Down-country, from Meerut to Dinapore, there is but one regiment of Europeans, of which we have a hundred.’ Nevertheless, although the sepoys at Cawnpore were restless, an impression prevailed that, even if they joined in the mutiny, and marched off to Delhi, they would not inflict any injury on the military commander, Sir Hugh Wheeler, or the other English officers, who were much respected by them. The general thought it right to obtain correct though secret information from spies who mixed among the men in the cantonment; and these spies reported that the three infantry regiments, except a few refractory sepoys, appeared well disposed towards the government; whereas the 2d native cavalry, discontented and surly, had sent their families to their homes, to be out of danger, and were in the habit of holding nightly meetings or punchayets (a kind of jury of five persons, one of the Hindoo institutions of very ancient formation), in their lines, to concert measures of insubordination. These troopers endeavoured to bring over the foot regiments to a scheme for rising in revolt, seizing the government treasure, marching off to Delhi, and presenting that treasure to the newly restored Mogul as a token of their allegiance. The European inhabitants were numerous; for they comprised not only the officers and civilians with their families, but European merchants, missionaries, engineers, pensioners, &c., and also many nonresidents, who had either come to Cawnpore from parts of the country supposed to be less protected, or had been stopped there on their way up-country by the mutineers in the Doab. These, relying on the report concerning the apparently favourable feeling among the native infantry, made no immediate attempt to quit the place. Sir Hugh Wheeler, however, did not deem it consistent with his duty to remain unprepared. Cawnpore is built on a dead level, without stronghold or place of refuge, and could not long be held against a rebel besieging force; the cantonment was at a considerable distance; and the general resolved on making some sort of defensive arrangement irrespective both of the city and the cantonment. He secured sufficient boats to convey the whole of the Europeans down the Ganges if danger should appear; and he formed a plan for protection at night in an intrenched position. This stronghold, if so it may be called, afterwards rendered memorable as ‘the Intrenchment,’ was a square plot of ground on the grand military parade, measuring about two hundred yards in each direction; within it were two barrack hospitals, a few other buildings, and a well; while the boundary was formed by a trench and parapet or breastwork of earth, intended to be armed and defended in case of attack. The intrenchment was entirely distinct both from the city and from the cantonment, and was further from the Ganges than either of them, about a quarter of a mile out of the Allahabad and Cawnpore high road. On the side of it furthest from the river were several barracks in course of construction. It was not intended that the European civilians should at once enter the intrenchment, but that they should regard that spot as a place of shelter in time of need. Sir Hugh brought into this place a supply of grain, rice, salt, sugar, tea, coffee, rum, beer, &c., calculated at thirty days’ consumption for one thousand persons. He gave orders to the assistant-commissary to blow up the magazine if a mutiny should take place; while the collector was instructed to convey all the Company’s cash, estimated at ten or twelve lacs of rupees, from the treasury in the city to the cantonment – an instruction which, as we shall see, he was able only to obey in part. As another precaution, the executive commissariat and pay-officers, with all their records and chests, were removed into bungalows adjacent to the intrenchment. There is reason to believe that the ringleaders among the native troops sought to terrify the rest into mutiny by representing that the digging, which had been seen actively in progress at the intrenchment, was the beginning of the construction of a series of mines, intended to blow them all up.

One of the most painful considerations associated with these events in May was, that the heartless man who afterwards wrought such misery was trustingly relied upon as a friend. The magistrate’s wife, in a series of letters before adverted to, wrote under date May 16th: ‘Should the native troops here mutiny, we should either go into cantonments, or to a place called Bithoor, where the Peishwa’s successor resides. He is a great friend of C – ‘s [the magistrate’s], and is a man of enormous wealth and influence; and he has assured C – that we should all be quite safe there. I myself would much prefer going to the cantonment, to be with the other ladies; but C – thinks it would be better for me and our precious children to be at Bithoor.’ Again, on the 18th: ‘If there should be an outbreak here, dearest C – has made all the necessary arrangements for me and the children to go to Bithoor. He will go there himself, and, with the aid of the rajah, to whose house we are going, he will collect and head a force of fifteen hundred fighting-men, and bring them into Cawnpore to take the insurgents by surprise. This is a plan of their own, and is quite a secret; for the object of it is to come on the mutineers unawares.’ Here, then, in the month of May, was Nena Sahib plotting with the English against the mutineers. It was on the 20th that Sir Hugh, rendered uneasy by the symptoms around, sent to Lucknow for three hundred European soldiers; but as Sir Henry Lawrence could hardly spare one-sixth of that number, arrangements were made for accommodating as many English families as possible in the cantonment, and for fitting up the intrenchment as a place of refuge. On the 21st, the magistrate, with Wheeler’s consent, wrote to the Nena, begging him to send the aid of a few of his Mahratta troops. The native soldiers being hutted in the cantonment, and the few English soldiers barracked in the intrenchment, it was speedily determined that – while the English officers should sleep at the cantonment, to avoid shewing distrust of the native troops – their wives and families, and most of the civilians, should remain at night in the intrenchment, under protection of English soldiers. On the first night of this arrangement, ‘there were an immense number of ladies and gentlemen assembled in the intrenchment; and oh! what an anxious night it was! The children added much to our distress and anxiety,’ said the lady whose letters were lately quoted; ‘it was some hours before I could get them to sleep. I did not lie down the whole night. Extraordinary it was, and most providential too, that we had a thunderstorm that night, with a good deal of rain, which cooled the air a little; had it not been for this, we should have suffered much more.’ An English officer, in relation to this same night, said: ‘Nearly all the ladies in the station were roused out of their houses, and hurried off to the barracks. The scene in the morning you can imagine. They were all huddled together in a small building, just as they had left their houses. On each side were the guns drawn up; the men had been kept standing by them all night through the rain, expecting an instant attack. There are few people now in the station but believe this attack had been intended, and had merely been delayed on finding us so well prepared.’ On the last day of the month – a day that seems to have ended all communication from this hapless lady to her friends in England – she wrote: ‘We are now almost in a state of siege. We sleep every night in a tent pitched by the barracks, with guns behind and before. We are intrenched, and are busy getting in a month’s provisions in case of scarcity. For the first four or five nights, we scarcely closed our eyes… Last night, the sepoys of the 1st regiment threatened to mutiny, and poor Mrs Ewart was in dreadful distress when Colonel Ewart went to sleep in the lines, according to orders; and he himself fully expected to be killed before morning; but, thank God, all passed off quietly. The general remains in the barracks day and night, to be at hand if anything should happen. We still pass the day at the Ewarts’ house; but at night every one returns to the barracks, which is a wretched place… Poor Mrs – has quite lost her reason from terror and excitement. Oh! it is a hard trial to bear, and almost too much; but the sight of the children gives us strength and courage.’

Colonel Ewart, mentioned in the above paragraph, and Major Hillersdon, were the commandants of the 1st and 53d native regiments, respectively; they lived in pleasant bungalows outside Cawnpore; but at this perilous time they slept near their men in the cantonment, while their families took refuge within the intrenchment. Mrs Ewart – destined, like the magistrate’s wife, to be in a few weeks numbered among the outraged and slaughtered – wrote like her of the miseries of their position, even at that early period of their privation. Speaking of the interior of the intrenchment, she said: ‘We have a tent, which is, of course, more private and comfortable for the night; and at present there is no occasion to spend days as well as nights there, though many people do so. This is fortunate, since the weather is fearfully hot. God grant that we may not be exposed to such suffering as a confinement within that intrenchment must entail; even should we be able to bear it, I know not how our poor little ones could go through the trial.’ The general feelings of the English in the place towards the close of May cannot be better conveyed than in the following words: ‘We are living face to face with great and awful realities – life and property most insecure, enemies within our camp, treachery and distrust everywhere. We can scarcely believe in the change which has so suddenly overcast all the pleasant repose and enjoyment of life. We are almost in a state of siege, with dangers all around us – some seen, some hidden… Major Hillersdon joins us daily at our four o’clock dinner, and we stay together till half-past seven, when we go to our melancholy night-quarters, behind guns and intrenchments. My husband betakes himself to his couch in the midst of his sepoys; and you can fancy the sort of nights we have to pass. These are real trials, but we have not experienced much actual physical suffering yet.’ In another letter she further described the intrenchment and barracks as they were at night: ‘We returned to those melancholy night-quarters. Oh, such a scene! Men, officers, women and children, beds and chairs, all mingled together inside and outside the barracks; some talking or even laughing, some very frightened, some defiant, others despairing. Such sickening sights these for peaceful women; and the miserable reflection that all is caused not by open foes, but by the treachery of those we had fed and pampered, honoured and trusted, for so many years.’ Colonel Ewart, in probably the last letter received from him by his friends in England, wrote on the 31st: ‘The treasury, containing some ten or twelve lacs of rupees, is situated five miles from the cantonment. It has hitherto been thought inexpedient to bring the treasure into the cantonment; but the general has now resolved on making the attempt to-morrow. Please God, he will succeed. He is an excellent officer, very determined, self-possessed in the midst of danger, fearless of responsibility – that terrible bugbear that paralyses so many men in command.’ This was the character generally given to Sir Hugh Wheeler, who was much liked and trusted. The state of suspense in which the officers themselves were placed, not knowing whether revolt and outrage would speedily mark the conduct of regiments that had up to that moment remained faithful, was well expressed in a letter written by one of the infantry officers: ‘I only wish that I might get orders to go out with my regiment, or alone with my company, against some of the mutineers; so that we could put the men to the test, and see whether they really mean to stick to us or not, and end this state of suspense.’

Numerous scraps of local information, portions of letters, diaries, conversations, and scarcely intelligible messages, in English, Hindustani, and Persian, help to make up the materials out of which alone a connected narrative of the events at Cawnpore can be prepared. These would all have been very insufficient, had it not fortunately happened that an officer of the Company, an educated man, lived to record upon paper his experience of four weeks spent in the intrenchment, and three subsequent weeks of imprisonment in the city. This was Mr Shepherd, belonging to the commissariat department. How his life was saved, and how those dear to him were savagely butchered, will be seen further on; at present, it will suffice to remark that he lived to prepare, for the information of the government, a record of all he knew on this dreadful subject; and that the record thus prepared contains more information than any other brought to light amid that dismal wreck of human hopes and human existence.

When the month of June opened, symptoms became so unfavourable that the non-military Christian residents thought it expedient to move from the city, and obtain shelter in the English church and other buildings near the intrenchment. Day after day small portions of cash, and Company’s papers of various kinds, were brought by the commissariat officers to head-quarters. The collector, acting on Sir Hugh’s instructions, had endeavoured to bring the Company’s treasure from the city to the intrenchment; but he met too much opposition to enable him to effect this, save in part; and the aid of three or four hundred men was obtained from Nena Sahib, to guard the treasury and its contents. What was passing through the heart of that treacherous man at the time, none but himself could know; but the English officers, whether forgetful or not of his grudge against the Company, seem to have acted as though they placed reliance on him. On the 3d, it being thought improper to keep any public money under the sepoy guard at the office, the commissariat treasure-chest, containing about thirty-four thousand rupees in cash, together with numerous papers and account-books, was brought into the intrenchment, and placed in the quarter-guard there. In short, nothing was deemed safe by Wheeler and the other officials, unless it was under their own immediate care.

On the 5th of June arrived the crisis which was to tax to the utmost the firmness and courage, the tact and discrimination, the kindness and thoughtfulness, of the general on whom so many lives now depended. He had appealed, and appealed in vain, for reinforcements from other quarters: no one possessed troops that could readily be sent to him; and he had therefore to meet his troubles manfully, with such resources as were at hand. At two o’clock in the morning, after a vain attempt to draw the native infantry from their allegiance, the 2d cavalry rose in a body, gave a great shout, mounted their horses, set fire to the bungalow of their quarter-master-sergeant, and took possession of thirty-six elephants in the commissariat cattle-yard. The main body then marched off towards Nawabgunge; while the ringleaders remained behind to assail once more the honesty of the infantry. The 1st regiment N. I. yielded to the temptation, and marched out of the lines about three o’clock; but before doing so, the sepoys shewed a lingering affection for the English officers of the regiment; those officers had for some time been in the habit of sleeping in the quarter-guard of the regiment, to indicate their confidence in the men; and now the men begged them – nay, forced them – to go into the intrenchment, as a means of personal safety. An alarm gun was fired, and all the non-combatants were brought from the church-compound into the intrenchment – a necessary precaution, for burning bungalows were seen in various directions. A few days previously, a battery of Oude horse-artillery had been sent from Lucknow by Lawrence to aid Wheeler at Cawnpore; and this battery was, about seven o’clock on the eventful morning of the 5th, ordered with a company of English troops to pursue the two mutinous regiments. But here a dilemma at once presented itself. Could the 53d and 56th regiments be relied upon? Sir Hugh thought not; and therefore he countermanded the order for the pursuit of the other two regiments. The wisdom of this determination was soon shewn; for about ten o’clock the whole of the native officers of the 53d and 56th came to the general and announced that their hold over the fidelity of the men was gone. While they were yet speaking, a bugle was heard, and the two regiments were seen to march off to join their companions at Nawabgunge; any attempt on the English being checked by the pointing of a gun at them. The apparently faithful native officers were directed to organise a few stragglers who had not joined the mutineers; they left the intrenchment for this purpose, but did not return: whether they joined in the revolt, or went quietly to their own homes to avoid the resentment of the sepoys, was not fully known. As soon as possible, carts were sent to the cantonment to bring away the sick from the hospital, and such muskets and other property as might be useful. In consequence of this, the two hospitals or barracks in the intrenchment became very much crowded, many of the people being compelled to sleep in the open air through want of room. All the civilians were then armed, and directed what they should do for the common good. The Oude artillery, shewing signs of being smitten by the prevailing mania for revolt, were disarmed and dismissed that same evening.

The scene must now be shifted, to shew Nena Sahib’s share in the work. Rumours came to the intrenchment that when the rebels reached Nawabgunge, he quitted Bithoor and came out to meet them; that he placed himself at their head; that they all went together to the treasury; that he carried off a large amount of government treasure on the government elephants; and that he gave up the rest to the sepoys as a prize. Thereupon the papers were burnt, and the treasury and the collector’s office destroyed. The sepoys guarding the magazine would not allow that building to be blown up by the government officer; the mutineers brought as many country carts as they could procure, and carried off a considerable quantity of baggage and ammunition. All then marched off to Kullianpore, being one stage on the road to Delhi, except a few troopers who remained to finish the work of destruction among the bungalows. The Oude artillery, lately disarmed and dismissed by Wheeler, now went to Nena Sahib, and laid before him a plan for attacking the intrenchment, concerning which they were able to give much information. They reported that the cantonment contained many guns, and much powder and ammunition, with which the intrenchment might safely be attacked. There was another fact favourable to the rebels. One end of the great Ganges Canal enters the river near Cawnpore; and it had been contemplated by the government to send a large store of shot and shell by that canal up to Roorkee, through Allygurh and Meerut; but as the Doab and Rohilcund were in too disturbed a state to permit this, thirty-five boats laden with shot and shell were this day lying in the canal near the cantonment. This large store of ammunition the rebel artillerymen suggested should be at once seized; and the advice was acted on. A native inhabitant, who afterwards gave information to the English, said that when the Nena openly took part with the rebels, he released four hundred prisoners in the town, whose fetters he ordered to be knocked off; ‘and having opened the door of the armoury, he gave the order that whatever prisoner was willing to follow him should arm himself with gun, pistol, or sword, as he liked best’ – a story highly probable, though not within the power of Mr Shepherd to confirm. Before the Nena finally committed himself to a course of rebellion and war, the 1st native infantry made their head subadar a general; and the general then promoted all the havildars and naiks to be subadars and jemadars.

Two officers of the 56th regiment were fortunate enough to be away from Cawnpore and the cantonment altogether, on the day of the mutiny. They had been sent with two hundred men to Ooral, a village or town at some distance, on the 2d of June. When that regiment mutinied at the cantonment, and when the news of the mutiny reached Ooral, the two hundred did not long delay in following their example. The officers, seeing their danger, at once galloped off, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs, and their swords and revolvers. Their tale was as full of adventure as many that have already occupied these pages. They found their way to Calpee, to Humeerpoor, to various places; they met with two brother-officers escaping from mutineers at Humeerpoor; the four rowed boats, swam rivers, entered villages where they were plundered of their weapons and clothes, roamed through jungles, fed on chupatties and water when they could obtain such fare, picked up bits of native clothing, encountered friendly Hindoos at one time and marauding enemies at another. Of the two officers from Cawnpore, one died mad in the jungle, from heat, thirst, and suffering; but the other, Ensign Browne, joined the body of English troops at Futtehpoor, after thirty-seven days of wandering. All the other English officers of the four native regiments appear to have been at or near Cawnpore at the time of the outbreak; and all were called upon to bear their bitter share in the woes that followed – woes rendered more distressing by falling equally on innocent women and children as on themselves – nay, much more heavily.

The sun rose upon an anxious scene on the 6th of June. Sir Hugh Wheeler and nearly all the Europeans – men, women, and children – military, civilians, and servants – were crowded within the intrenchment; while the rebel troops, four regiments and an artillery battery, had not only abandoned their allegiance, but were about to besiege those who were lately their masters. The rebels brought into requisition all the government work-people and the bullocks, in the town and cantonment, to drag guns into position near the intrenchment, and to convey thither a store of powder and ammunition. They brought six guns (two of them 18-pounders) to bear in a line, and opened fire about ten o’clock in the forenoon. Instantly a bugle sounded within the intrenchment; and every man, from the highest officers down to the clerks and the drummers, flew to arms, and took up the position assigned to him. There was only a breast-high earthen parapet, bounded by a small trench, between the besiegers and the besieged: hence there was nothing but indomitable courage and unceasing watchfulness that could enable the English to hold their own against the treacherous native troops. Here, then, were nine hundred persons[16 - The number of persons in the intrenchment on that day will probably never be accurately known; but Mr Shepherd, from the best materials available to him, made the following estimate:] hemmed into a small space, forming their citadel, while the surrounding country was wholly in the hands of the rebels. Out of the nine hundred, barely one-third were fighting-men; while considerably more than one-third were women and children, to be fed and protected at all hazards. The few guns within the intrenchment answered those from without; but all the men not employed with those guns crouched down behind the breastwork, under the hot wind and scorching sun of a June day, ready to defend the spot with musketry if a nearer attack were made. The rebels did not attempt this; they adopted the safer course of bringing up their guns nearer to the beleaguered place. Sir Hugh Wheeler had eight pieces of ordnance – two brass guns of the Oude battery, two long 9-pounders, and four smaller; he had also a good store of ammunition, buried underground, and had thus a defensive power of some importance. On the other hand, his anxieties were great; for one of the two buildings (they had been used as hospitals for European troops) was thatched, liable to be fired by a chance shot; the commissariat officers were unable to bring in more supplies; the shelter was direfully insufficient for nine hundred persons in a fierce Indian climate; and the women and children could do little or nothing to assist in the defence of all.

The native informant, above adverted to, states that when Nena Sahib found the mutineers about to depart to Delhi, ‘he represented to the native officers that it would not be correct to proceed towards Delhi until they had entirely destroyed the officers and European soldiers, and women and children of the Christian religion; and that they should, if possible, by deceiving the officers, accomplish this grand object, or they would be good for nothing.’ Such words were certainly consistent with the machinations of a villain who sought a terrible revenge for some injury, real or pretended; but they do not the less illustrate the remarkable subtlety and secretiveness of the Hindoo character, so long concealing a deadly hatred under a friendly exterior. This same native, who was in Cawnpore at the time, further said: ‘In the city it was as if the day of judgment had come, when the sepoys of the infantry and the troopers of the cavalry, the jingling of whose sword-scabbards and the tread of whose horses’ feet resounded on all sides, proceeded with guns of various sizes, and ammunition, from the magazine through the suburbs of Cawnpore towards the intrenchment.’ In relation to the conduct of native servants of the Company on that day, Mr Shepherd said: ‘None of the native writers, Bengalees and others in government offices or merchants’ employ, went into the intrenchment; they remained in the city, where they appear to have received much annoyance from the mutineers; and some had to hide themselves to save their lives. The (native) commissariat contractors’ [those who supplied provisions and stores for the troops, ordered and paid for by the head commissary] ‘all discontinued their supplies from the 6th; or rather, were unable to bring them in, from the way the mutineers surrounded the intrenchment on all sides, permitting no ingress or egress at any time except under cover of night.’ Those natives must, in truth, have been placed in a perplexing position, between employers whom they wished to serve but could not, and rebels who sought to tamper with their honesty.

Another day broke, revealing a further strengthening of the rebels’ attack. They increased their number of guns, four of which were 24-pounders; and with the shot from these guns not only were many valuable men struck down, but the walls and verandahs of the hospitals pierced, spreading terror among the helpless inmates. There was but one well within the intrenchment; and so hot was the fire from without, that, to use the words of Mr Shepherd, ‘it was as much as giving a man’s life-blood to go and draw a bucket of water; and while there was any water remaining in the large jars, usually kept in the verandah for the soldiers’ use, nobody ventured to the well; but after the second day, the demand became so great that a bheestee bag of water was with difficulty got for five rupees, and a bucket for a rupee. Most of the servants deserted, and it therefore became a matter of necessity for every person to fetch his own water, which was usually done during the night, when the enemy could not well direct their shots.’ What was the degree of thirst borne under these circumstances, none but the forlorn garrison could ever know. As there was no place under which to shelter live cattle, some of the animals were let loose, and others slaughtered; entailing a necessary exhaustion of meat-rations after three or four days. The commissariat servants, however, now and then managed to get hold of a stray bullock or cow near the intrenchment at night, which served for a change. Not only was it difficult to obtain suitable food to eat, but the native servants took every opportunity to escape, and the cooking was in consequence conducted under very sorry conditions.

The tale of accumulated suffering need not, and indeed cannot, be followed day by day: several days must be grouped together, and the general character of the incidents noted – so far as authentic recitals furnish the materials. Meat, as has just been intimated, soon became scarce; hogsheads of rum and malt liquor were frequently burst by cannon-balls, but the supply still remained considerable; chupatties and rice were the chief articles of food for all. The English found their troubles increase in every way: the rebels at first fired only cannon on them; but by degrees, after burning the English church and all other buildings around and near the intrenchment, the sepoys masked themselves behind the ruined walls, and kept up an almost incessant fire of musketry, shooting down many who might have escaped the cannon-balls. There were seven unfinished barracks outside the intrenchment, three of them at about a furlong distance. These were scenes of many an exciting encounter. Captain Moore of the 32d foot, a gallant and intrepid officer, often encountered the rebels near those places. He would send some of his men, with field-telescopes, to watch the position of the enemy’s guns, from the roof of one of the barracks, as a guidance for the besieged; and as soon as these men were attacked, a handful of gallant companions would rush out of the intrenchment, and drive off the assailants with a fire of musketry. The enemy having no cannon on this side, a sort of drawn battle ensued: the besiegers holding three or four of the barracks, and the besieged maintaining a hold of the three nearest to the intrenchment After a while, the enemy brought one gun round to this quarter; but twenty English made a sortie at midnight on the 11th, spiked the gun, and returned safely. Whenever fighting on anything like terms of equality took place, the European troops proved themselves a match for many times their number of natives; but any daring achievements for effectual liberation were rendered nugatory by the presence of so many helpless women and children, whose safety was the first thought in the minds of the men, whether civilians or military. Numbers of the poor creatures died within the first week, from illness, heat, fright, want of room, want of proper food and care. In the obituary of many an English newspaper, when news of the terrible calamity had crossed the ocean, might be read that such a one, probably an officer’s wife, had ‘died in the intrenchment at Cawnpore;’ what that intrenchment meant, few readers knew, and fewer knew what sufferings had preceded the death. The dead bodies were thrown into a well outside the intrenchment, lest they should engender disease by any mode of burial within the crowded and stifling enclosure; and even this sad office could only be rendered under a shower of shot and shell. ‘The distress was so great,’ says Mr Shepherd, ‘that none could offer a word of consolation to his friend, or attempt to administer to the wants of each other. I have seen the dead bodies of officers, and tenderly brought-up young ladies of rank (colonels’ and captains’ daughters), put outside the verandah amongst the rest, to await the time when the fatigue-party usually went round to carry the dead to the well; for there was scarcely room to shelter the living.’

During all these days, Cawnpore itself, and the country between it and the intrenchment, became prey to a marauding host of sepoys, liberated prisoners, and ruffians of every kind. The native before adverted to, one Nujeer Jewarree, referring to this period, said: ‘In whatever shop the sepoys entered to ask for sugar or rice, they plundered everything belonging to the citizen that they could find; so much so, that plunder and oppression were the order of the day. Every violent man did what came into his mind; and the troopers got possession of a note, the value of which amounted to twenty-five thousand rupees, belonging to Eman-u-Dowlah and Bakir Ali. One troop, or thereabouts, left the cantonment and proceeded to the buildings in which the civil and revenue and judicial courts were held, and commenced firing them. In the city and gardens there was so much villainy committed that travelling became dangerous, and to kill a man was quite easy. They (the marauders) committed deeds of oppression and plundered each other; some forcibly cut the grain out of the fields, and others were occupied in picking up plundered property. He then spoke of the houses and offices of certain English merchants and traders – Greenway, Crump, Mackintosh, Reid, Marshall, Kirk, &c. – and of the ‘lacs’ of treasure that were plundered from each; too vaguely estimated to be relied on in detail, but evidently denoting a scene of unscrupulous pillage. Another native, Nerput, presently to be noticed more particularly, said: ‘Zemindars of the neighbourhood are fighting among themselves in payment of old quarrels; sepoys, making for their homes with plundered treasure, have been deprived of their plunder, and, if any opposition is made, immediately murdered. Such few Europeans as had remained beyond the intrenchment, were caught and put to death.’

The native authority just referred to states (although the statement is not confirmed by Mr Shepherd), that on the 9th of June Sir Hugh Wheeler sent a message to Nena Sahib, demanding why he had thus turned against the English, who had hitherto been treated by him in a friendly spirit; and why he was causing the death of innocent women and children – to which the Nena gave no other reply than from the cannon’s mouth.

One day was so much like another, after the actual commencement of the siege, that the various narrators make little attempt to record the particular events of each. Every day brought its miseries, until the cup nearly overflowed. The food was lessening; the water was difficult to obtain; strength was sinking; lives were being rapidly lost; the miscreant rebels were accumulating in greater and greater number outside the intrenchment; the two buildings were becoming every day more and more riddled with shot; the wounded had their wretchedness increased by the absence of almost everything needful to the comfort of the sick; the hearts of the men were wrung with anguish at seeing the sufferings borne by the women; and the women found their resolution and patience terribly shaken when they saw their innocent little ones dying from disease and want.

A scene was presented on the 13th that filled every one with horror. The officers and their families had hitherto lived chiefly in tents, within the intrenchment; but the rebels now began to fire red-hot shot, which not only necessitated the removal of the tents, but ignited the thatch-roof of one of the two hospitals. This building contained the wives and children of the common soldiers, and the sick and wounded. The flames spread so rapidly, and the dire confusion among the wretched creatures was such, that forty of the helpless invalids were burned to death before aid could reach them. The rebels appeared to have calculated on all the men within the intrenchment rushing to save the victims from the flames, leaving the besiegers to enter with musket and sword; and so threatening was the attack, so close the approach of the enemy, that the Europeans were forced to remain watchful at their frail earthen defence-work, despite their wish to rescue the shrieking sufferers in the hospital. Nearly all the medicines and the surgical instruments were at the same time destroyed by the fire, affording a hopeless prospect to those who might afterwards fall ill or be wounded. The rebels by this time amounted to four thousand in number, and their attacks increased in frequency and closeness; but the besieged had not yielded an inch; every man within the intrenchment, a few only excepted, was intrusted with five or six muskets, all of which were kept ready loaded, to pour a fire into any insurgents who advanced within musket-shot. Bayonets and swords were also ready at hand, for those who could use them. The condition of every one was rendered more deplorable than before by this day’s calamity; the fire had wrought such mischief that many of the men, who had until then occasionally sheltered themselves under a roof for a few hours at a time, were now forced to remain permanently in the open air, exposed to a fierce Indian sun at a date only one week before the summer solstice. That many were struck down by coup de soleil at such a time may well be conceived. The poor ladies, too, and the wives of the soldiers, were rendered more desolate and comfortless than ever, by the destruction of much of their clothing during the fire, as well as of many little domestic comforts which they had contrived to bring with them in their hurried flight from their homes in the city or the cantonment.

What transpired outside the intrenchment, none of the captives knew; and even at later times it was difficult to ascertain the real truth. The native chronicler already referred to speaks of many deeds of cruelty, but without affording means of verification. On one day, he says, a family was seen approaching from the west in a carriage; the husband was at once killed; the others, ‘one lady and one grown-up young lady and three children,’ were brought before the Nena, who ordered them to be instantly put to death. ‘The lady begged the Nena to spare her life; but this disgraceful man would not in any way hearken to her, and took them all into the plain. At that time the sun was very hot, and the lady said: “The sun is very hot, take me into the shade;” but no one listened. On four sides the children were catching hold of their mother’s gown and saying: “Mamma, come to the bungalow and give me some bread and water.” At length, having been tied hand to hand, and made to stand up on the plain, they were shot down by pistol-bullets.’ This story, touching amid all its quaintness of recital, was probably quite true in its main features. Another lady, whom he calls the wife of Mukan Sahib, merchant, and who had been hiding for four or five days in the garden of her bungalow, ‘came out one evening, and was discovered. She had through fear changed her appearance by putting on an Hindustani bodice, and folding a towel around her head. She was taken before the Nena, who ordered her to be killed. The writer of this journal having gone in person, saw the head of that lady cut off, and presented as a nazir (gift of royalty).’ There can be no question that the vicinity of Cawnpore was at that time in a frightful state. Not only were mutinous sepoys and sowars engaged in hostilities against the ‘Feringhees,’ whom they had so lately served, and whose ‘salt’ they had eaten; but many of the ambitious petty rajahs and chieftains took advantage of the anarchy to become leaders on their own special account; plunderers and released prisoners were displaying all their ferocious recklessness; while timid, sneaking villagers, too cowardly to be openly aggressive, were in many instances quite willing to look complacently at deeds of savage brutality, if those deeds might leave a little loot, or plunder, as their share. Consequently, when any English refugees from other towns passed that way, their chance of safety was small indeed.

Before tracing the course of events in the intrenchment during the third week in June, we must advert to another calamity. The griefs and sufferings endured by the English soldiers and residents at Cawnpore did not fill up the measure of Nena Sahib’s iniquity. Another stain rests on his name in connection with the fate of an unfortunate body of fugitives from Futteghur. It is an episode in the great Cawnpore tragedy; and must be narrated in this place, in connection with the events of the month.

Futteghur, as will be seen by reference to a map, is situated higher up the Ganges than Cawnpore, near Furruckabad. Practically, it is not so much a distinct town, as the military station or cantonment for the place last named. Furruckabad itself is a city of sixty thousand inhabitants; handsome, cleaner, and more healthy than most Indian cities, carrying on a considerable trading and banking business, and standing in the centre of a fertile and cultivated region. It has no other fortifications than a sort of mud-fort connected with the native nawab’s residence. When this nawab became, like many others, a stipendiary of the modern rulers of India, the British built a military cantonment at Futteghur, about three miles distant, on the right bank of the river. Towards the close of May, Futteghur contained the 10th regiment Bengal native infantry, together with a few other native troops. Among the chief English officers stationed there, were General Goldie, Colonels Smith and Tucker; Majors Robertson, Phillot, and Munro; Captains Phillimore and Vibert; Lieutenants Simpson, Swettenham, and Fitzgerald; and Ensigns Henderson and Eckford. The troops displayed much insubordination as the month closed; and on the 3d of June the symptoms were so threatening, that it was deemed prudent to arrange for sending off the women and children for safety to Cawnpore – in ignorance that the Europeans in that city were in a still more perilous state. Boats had already been procured, and held in readiness for any such exigency. On the next day the 10th infantry exhibited such ominous signs of mutiny, that a large party of the English at once took to their boats. After a short voyage, finding the natives on the banks of the Ganges likely to be troublesome, the fugitives resolved on separating themselves into two parties; one, headed by Mr Probyn, the Company’s collector, and consisting of about forty persons, sought refuge with a friendly zemindar named Herden Buksh, living about twelve miles from Futteghur, on the Oude side of the river; while the other party proceeded on the voyage down the Ganges to Cawnpore. This last-named party amounted to more than a hundred and twenty persons, nearly all non-combatants; missionaries, merchants, indigo planters, estate stewards, agents, collectors, clerks, shopkeepers, schoolmasters, post and dâk agents – such were the male members of this hapless band of fugitives; most of them had wives; and the children far exceeded the adults in number. It is pitiable, knowing as we now know the fate that was in store for them, to read such entries as the following, in a list of the occupants of the boats – ‘Mr and Mrs Elliott and five children;’ ‘Mr and Mrs Macklin and eight children;’ ‘Mr and Mrs Palmer and nine children.’

So few persons survived from Futteghur, that it is not certain at what places and on what days they separated into parties; nor how many lives were lost on the way; but there is evidence that while some pursued their way down the Ganges without much interruption until they reached Bithoor, others went back to Futteghur. This retrograde movement was due to two causes; for while, on the one hand, the officers trusted to a report that the sepoys had returned to a sense of their duty; Herden Buksh, on the other, was threatened by the Oude mutineers if he harboured any of the English. We will follow the fortunes of this second party. From about the 12th to the 18th of June there was a lull in the station; but on the last-named day the 10th infantry broke out in earnest, and being joined by the mutinous 41st from the other side of the Ganges, seized the treasure and threatened the officers. There were about a hundred Europeans now in the place; and as the river was at the time too low to render a boat-voyage to Cawnpore safe, it was resolved to defend a post or fort at Futteghur, and there remain till succour arrived. Out of the hundred there were scarcely more than thirty fighting-men, so numerous were the women and children; nevertheless, Colonel Smith, of the 10th, organised the whole, and prepared for the worst. He had a fair store both of ammunition and of food within the fort. Until the 4th of July they maintained a manly struggle against the mutineers, holding their fort until they could hold it no longer. Colonel Tucker and one of the civil officers were shot in the head while acting as artillerymen; General Goldie was slightly wounded, as was likewise one of his daughters; and many other casualties occurred. The besieged had great difficulty in making a covered-way to protect their servants, to enable them to pass to and fro with the meals for the ladies and children, who were collected in a room or godown overlooked by a two-storied house held by the insurgents. Then commenced a voyage full of miseries, in boats that contained all the Europeans still remaining at that spot. First the rebels fired on the boats as they rowed along; then one of the boats ran aground; then a boatful of rebels approached, and the ladies in the stranded boat jumped overboard to avoid capture. Death by bullets, death by drowning, took place every hour; and the fugitives were thrown into such dire confusion that none could help the rest. Some crept on shore, and wandered about the fields to escape detection; others found shelter under friendly roofs; one boat-load succeeded in prosecuting their voyage down to Cawnpore, or rather Bithoor.

There were thus two sets of Futteghur fugitives; one that reached the clutches of the Nena towards the middle of June; the other, much smaller, that was spared that fate until the middle of July. So complete was the destruction of both, however; so sweeping the death-stroke hurled against them by Nena Sahib, that the details of their fate have been but imperfectly recorded. Towards the close of June, Mr Court and Colonel Neill, at Allahabad, received information touching the events at Cawnpore from a native named Nerput, an opium gomashta or agent at the last-named city; he gave them or sent them a narrative written in Persian, portions of which were afterwards translated and published among the official papers. Nerput was one of the few who wrote concerning the arrival of the first party of Futteghur fugitives at Cawnpore. Under the date of June the 12th he said: ‘Report that Europeans were coming in boats to relieve Cawnpore; and two companies sent westward to make inquiries. They found that a hundred and twenty-six men, women, and children, were in boats, sick.’ Another narrative of the Futteghur calamity simply states, that when the unhappy fugitives arrived at the part of the Ganges opposite Bithoor, Nena Sahib ‘stopped their boats, brought the fugitives on shore, and shot every one. He then tied their bodies together, and threw them into the river.’ A native resident at Cawnpore, who was examined a few weeks afterwards by Colonel Neill concerning his knowledge of the atrocities committed by the rajah, and of the sufferings borne by the English, gave an account of the Futteghur catastrophe corresponding nearly with those derived from other quarters. He states that on the 12th of June, just as the customary daily cannonading of the intrenchment was about to recommence, a report came in that Europeans were approaching from the west. Immediately a troop of cavalry and two companies of infantry were sent to reconnoitre (probably to the vicinity of Bithoor). There were found three boats, containing about a hundred and thirty men, women, and children. ‘The troopers seized them all and took them to the Nena, who ordered that they should all be killed; and sundry Rampoorie troopers of the Mussulmans of the 2d Cavalry, whom the Nena kept with him for the express purpose, killed them all. Among them was a young lady, the daughter of some general. She addressed herself much to the Nena, and said: “No king ever committed such oppression as you have, and in no religion is there any order to kill women and children. I do not know what has happened to you. Be well assured that by this slaughter the English will not become less; whoever may remain will have an eye upon you.” But the Nena paid no attention, and shewed her no mercy; he ordered that she should be killed, and that they should fill her hands with powder and kill her by the explosion.’

The fate of the second party of fugitives from Futteghur will be noticed presently. We must return now to the unfortunate occupants of the intrenchment at Cawnpore.

When three weeks of the month of June had transpired, the rebels, joined by a number of ruffians who had crossed over the Ganges from Oude, made a more determined effort than ever to capture the intrenchment; they had made the subadar-major of the 1st N. I. a sort of general over them; and he swore to vanquish the weakened garrison, or die in the attempt. They brought large bales of cotton, which they rolled along the ground, and approached in a crouching position under cover of these bales, firing their muskets at intervals. About a hundred sepoys thus advanced within a hundred and fifty yards of the intrenchment, backed up by a strong body, who seemed bent on storming the position. In this, as in every former attempt, they failed; their leader was struck down, nearly two hundred were killed or wounded by a fire of grape-shot, and the rest driven back to their former distance. At the very same time, contests were maintained on all sides of the enclosure; for what with musketeers in the unfinished barracks, guns and mortars in four different directions, and rifle-pits approached under cover of zigzags, the rebels maintained a tremendous fire upon the besieged. Wheeler’s guns, under a gallant young officer, St George Ashe, were manned at all hours, loaded and fired with great quickness and precision, and pointed in such directions as might produce most mischief among the enemy. But the contest was unequal in this as in most other particulars; one gun after another was disabled by the more powerful artillery of the insurgents – until the eight were reduced to six, then to four, three, and at last two. As the forlorn garrison became weaker and weaker, so did the heroic men redouble their exertions in defence. One day a shot from the enemy blew up an ammunition-wagon within the intrenchment; and then it became a question of terrible import how to prevent the other wagons from being ignited. Lieutenant Delafosse, a young officer of the once trusted but now disloyal 53d, ran forward, laid himself down under the wagons, picked up and threw aside the burning fragments, and covered the flaming portions with handfuls of earth – all the while subject to a fearful cannonading from a battery of six guns, aimed purposely by the enemy at that spot! Two soldiers ran to him, with two buckets of water; and all three succeeded in rescuing the other ammunition-wagons from peril, and in returning from the dangerous spot in safety.