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

Here this chapter may close. We have seen that on the morning of Monday the 11th of May, the European inhabitants of Delhi arose from their beds in peace; and that by the close of the same day there was not a single individual of the number whose portion was not death, flight, or terrified concealment. So far as the British rule or influence was concerned, it was at an end. The natives remained masters of the situation; their white rulers were driven out; and a reconquest, complete in all its details, could alone restore British rule in Delhi. At what time, in what way, and by whom, that reconquest was effected, will remain to be told in a later portion of this work. Much remains to be narrated before Delhi will again come under notice.

CHAPTER VI.

LUCKNOW AND THE COURT OF OUDE

Another regal or once-regal family, another remnant of Moslem power in India, now comes upon the scene – one which has added to the embarrassment of the English authorities, by arraying against them the machinations of deposed princes as well as the discontent of native troops; and by shewing, as the King of Delhi had shewn in a neighbouring region, that a pension to a sovereign deprived of his dominions is not always a sufficient medicament to allay the irritation arising from the deprivation. What and where is the kingdom of Oude; of what rank as an Indian city is its capital, Lucknow; who were its rulers; why and when the ruling authority was changed – these matters must be clearly understood, as a preliminary to the narrative of Sir Henry Lawrence’s proceedings about the time of the outbreak.

Oude, considered as a province of British India, and no longer as a kingdom, is bounded on the north and northeast by the territory of Nepaul; on the east by the district of Goruckpore; on the southeast by those of Azimghur and Jounpoor; on the south by that of Allahabad; on the southwest by the districts of the Doab; and on the northwest by Shahjehanpoor. It is now about thrice the size of Wales; but before the annexation, Oude as a kingdom included a larger area. On the Nepaul side, a strip of jungle-country called the Terai, carries it to the base of the sub-Himalaya range. This Terai is in part a wooded marsh, so affected by a deadly malaria as to be scarcely habitable; while the other part is an almost impassable forest of trees, underwood, and reeds, infested by the elephant, the rhinoceros, the bear, the wild hog, and other animals. Considered generally, however, Oude surpasses in natural advantages almost every other part of India – having the Ganges running along the whole of its southwest frontier, a varied and fertile soil, a genial though hot climate, and numerous facilities for irrigation and water-carriage. It cannot, however, be said that man has duly aided nature in the development of these advantages; for the only regularly made road in the whole province is that from Lucknow to Cawnpore: the others being mostly wretched tracks, scarcely passable for wheel-carriages. The railway schemes of the Company include a line through Oude, which would be of incalculable benefit; but no definite contract had been made at the time when the Revolt commenced; nor would such a railway be profitable until the trunk-line is finished from Calcutta to Benares and Allahabad. Although the Mohammedans have, through many ages, held the ruling power in Oude, the Hindoos are greatly more numerous; and nearly the whole of the inhabitants, five millions in number, speak the Hindostani language; whereas those nearer Calcutta speak Bengali. As shewing the kind of houses in which Europeans occasionally sought concealment during the disturbances, the following description of the ordinary dwelling-places of Oude may be useful. They are generally built either of unburnt brick, or of layers of mud, each about three feet in breadth and one foot high. The roofs are made of square beams, placed a foot apart, and covered with planks laid transversely; over these are mats, and a roofing of well-rammed wet clay half a yard in thickness. The walls are carried to a height six or seven feet above the upper surface of the roof, to afford a concealed place of recreation for the females of the family; and during the rainy season this small elevated court is covered with a slight awning of bamboos and grass. Though so simply and cheaply constructed, these houses are very durable. Around the house there is usually a verandah, covered with a sloping tiled roof. Inside, the beams overhead are exposed to view, without any ceiling. The floors are of earth, well beaten down and smoothed, and partially covered with mats or cotton carpets. In the front of the house is a chabootra or raised platform of earth, open to the air at the sides, and provided with a roof of tiles or grass supported on pillars. This platform is a pleasant spot on which neighbours meet and chat in the cool of the evening. The dwellings of the wealthy natives of course present an aspect of greater splendour; while those of the Europeans, in the chief towns, partake of the bungalow fashion, already described.

There are few towns of any distinction in Oude compared with the area of the province; and of these few, only two will need to be mentioned in the present chapter. As for the city whence the province originally obtained its name – Oude, Oudh, or Ayodha – it has fallen from its greatness. Prinsep, Buchanan, and other authorities, regard it as the most ancient, or at any rate one of the most ancient, among the cities of Hindostan. Some of the coins found in Oude are of such extreme antiquity, that the characters in which their legends are graven are totally unknown. Buchanan thinks that the city was built by the first Brahmins who entered India, and he goes back to a date fourteen hundred years before the Christian era for its foundation; while Tod and Wilford claim for Oude an origin even six centuries earlier than that insisted on by Buchanan. The value of such estimates may not be great; they chiefly corroborate the belief that Oude is a very ancient city. With its eight thousand inhabitants, and its mud and thatch houses, the grandeur of Oude lives in the past; and even this grandeur is in antiquity rather than in splendour; for the ruins and fragments give a somewhat mean idea of the very early Hindoo architecture to which they belong. On the eastern side of the town are extensive ruins, said to be those of the fort of Rama, king of Oude, celebrated in the mythological and romantic legends of India. According to Buchanan: ‘The heaps of bricks, although much seems to have been carried away by the river, extend a great way – that is, more than a mile in length, and half a mile in width – and, although vast quantities of materials have been removed to build the Mohammedan Ayodha or Fyzabad, yet the ruins in many parts retain a very considerable elevation; nor is there any reason to doubt that the structure to which they belonged was very large, when we consider that it has been ruined for above two thousand years.’ A spot among the ruins is still pointed out by the reverential Hindoos from which Rama took his flight to heaven, carrying all the people of the city with him: a hypothetical emigration which had the effect of leaving Oude desolate until a neighbouring king repopulated it, and embellished it with three hundred and sixty temples. The existing buildings connected with the Hindoo faith are four establishments kept up in honour of the fabled monkey-god, the auxiliary of Rama; they have annual revenues, settled on them by one of the rulers of Oude; they are managed by maliks or spiritual superiors; and the revenues are dispensed to several hundreds of bairagis or religious ascetics, and other lazy Hindoo mendicants – no Mussulman being ever admitted within the walls.

Lucknow, however, is the city to which our attention will naturally be most directed – Lucknow, as the modern capital of the kingdom or province; as a city of considerable importance, political, military, commercial, and architectural; and as a scene of some of the most memorable events in the Revolt.

The city of Lucknow stands on the right bank of the river Goomtee, which is navigable thence downwards to its confluence with the Ganges between Benares and Ghazeepore. It is rather more than fifty miles distant from Cawnpore, and about a hundred and thirty from Allahabad. As Cawnpore is on the right bank of the Ganges, that majestic river intervenes between the two towns. The Goomtee is crossed at Lucknow by a bridge of boats, a bridge of substantial masonry, and an iron bridge – an unusual fulness of transit-channels in an Indian city. Lucknow displays a varied, lively, and even brilliant prospect, when viewed from a position elevated above the level of the buildings; but, once in the streets, the traveller has his dream of beauty speedily dissipated; for oriental filth and abomination meet his eye on all sides. The central portion of the city, the most ancient, is meanly built with mud-houses roofed with straw; many of them are no better than booths of mats and bamboos, thatched with leaves or palm-branches. The streets, besides being dirty, are narrow and crooked, and are dismally sunk many feet below the level of the shops. The narrow avenues are rendered still less passable by the custom of employing elephants as beasts of burden: unwieldy animals which almost entirely block up the way. In the part of the city occupied by Europeans, however, and containing the best public buildings, many of the streets are broad and lively. Until 1856, when Oude was annexed to British India, Lucknow was, to a stranger, one of the most remarkable cities of the east, in regard to its armed population. Almost every man went armed through the streets. One had a matchlock, another a gun, another a pistol; others their bent swords or tulwars; others their brass-knobbed buffalo-hide shields. Men of business and idlers – among all alike it was a custom to carry arms. The black beards of the Mussulmans, and the fierce moustaches of the Rajpoots, added to the warlike effect thus produced. Oude was the great storehouse for recruits for the Company’s native army; and this naturally gave a martial bent to the people. The Company, however, deemed it a wise precaution to disarm the peaceful citizens at the time of the annexation.

Three or four structures in and near Lucknow require separate description. One is the Shah Nujeef, or Emanbarra of Azof-u-Dowlah, a model of fantastic but elegant Mohammedan architecture. English travellers have poured out high praise upon it. Lord Valentia said: ‘From the brilliant white of the composition, and the minute delicacy of the workmanship, an enthusiast might suppose that genii had been the artificers;’ while Bishop Heber declared: ‘I have never seen an architectural view which pleased me more, from its richness and variety, as well as the proportions and general good taste of its principal features.’ The structure consists of many large buildings surrounding two open courts. There are three archways to connect the courts; and in the centre of these is the tomb of the founder, watched by soldiers, and attended by moullahs perpetually reading the Koran. This structure is often called the king’s Emanbarra or Imaumbarah, a name given to the buildings raised by that sect of Moslems called Sheahs, for the celebration of the religious festival of the Mohurrum. Every family of distinction has its own emanbarra, large or small, gorgeous or simple, according to the wealth of its owner, who generally selects it as his own burial-place. The central hall of the Shah Nujeef, the king’s emanbarra, is of vast size and very magnificent; and the combination of Moslem minarets with Hindoo-pointed domes renders the exterior remarkably striking; nevertheless the splendour is diminished by the poverty of the materials, which are chiefly brick coated with chunam or clay cement. Near or connected with this building is the Roumee Durwaza or Gate of the Sultan, having an arch in the Saracenic style. Another public building is the mosque of Saadut Ali, one of the former nawabs of Oude; its lofty dome presents a remarkable object as seen from various parts of the city; and, being provided with terraces without and galleries within, it is especially attractive to a sight-seer. Southeast of the city, and near the river, is a fantastic mansion constructed by Claude Martine, a French adventurer who rose to great wealth and power at the late court of Lucknow. He called it Constantia, and adorned it with various kinds of architectural eccentricities – minute stucco fretwork, enormous lions with lamps instead of eyes, mandarins and ladies with shaking heads, gods and goddesses of heathen mythology, and other incongruities. The house is large, and solidly built of stone; and on the topmost story is the tomb of Martine; but his body is deposited in a sarcophagus in one of the lower apartments. The favourite residence of the former nawabs and kings of Oude was the Dil Koosha or ‘Heart’s Delight,’ a richly adorned palace two miles out of the city, and placed in the middle of an extensive deer-park. When Colonel (afterwards General Sir James) Outram was appointed British resident at the court of Lucknow, about a year before the annexation, the Dil Koosha was set apart for his reception; and the whole ceremonial illustrated at once the show and glitter of oriental processions, and the honour paid to the Englishman. As soon as the colonel arrived at Cawnpore from Calcutta, the great officers of state were sent from Lucknow to prepare for his reception. After crossing the Ganges, and thereby setting foot in the Oude dominions, he entered a royal carriage replete with gold and velvet; a procession was formed of carriages, cavalry, and artillery, which followed the fifty miles of road to the capital. On the next day, the king was to have met the colonel half-way between the city palace and the Dil Koosha; but being ill, his place was taken by the heir-apparent. The one procession met the other, and then both entered Lucknow in state. A Lucknow correspondent of a Bombay journal said: ‘Let the reader imagine a procession of more than three hundred elephants and camels, caparisoned and decorated with all that barbaric pomp could lavish, and Asiatic splendour shower down; with all the princes and nobles of the kingdom blazing with jewels, gorgeous in apparel, with footmen and horsemen in splendid liveries, swarming on all sides; pennons and banners dancing in the sun’s rays, and a perfect forest of gold and silver sticks, spears, and other insignia of imperial and royal state.’

A work of remarkable character has appeared, relating to Lucknow and the court of Oude. It is called the Private Life of an Eastern King, and has been edited from the notes of an Englishman who held a position in the household of the king of Oude, Nussir-u-Deen, in 1834 and following years.[9 - By Mr Knighton, author of Forest Life in Ceylon.] Though the name of the author does not appear, the work is generally accepted as being trustworthy, so many corroborations of its statements having appeared in other quarters. Speaking of the king’s palace within the city, this writer says: ‘The great extent of the buildings, generally called the king’s palace, surprised me in the first instance. It is not properly a palace, but a continuation of palaces, stretching all along the banks of the Goomtee, the river on which Lucknow is built. In this, however, the royal residence in Oude but resembles what one reads of the Seraglio at Constantinople, the khan’s residence at Teheran, and the imperial buildings of Pekin. In all oriental states, the palaces are not so much the abode of the sovereign only, as the centre of the government: little towns, in fact, containing extensive lines of buildings occupied by the harem and its vast number of attendants; containing courts, gardens, tanks, fountains, and squares, as well as the offices of the chief ministers of state. Such is the case in Lucknow. One side of the narrow Goomtee – a river not much broader than a middle-sized London street – is lined by the royal palace; the other is occupied by the rumna or park, in which the menagerie is (or was) maintained… There is nothing grand or striking about the exterior of the palace, the Fureed Buksh, as it is called. Its extent is the only imposing feature about it; and this struck me more forcibly than any magnificence or loftiness of structure would have done.’

These few topographical and descriptive details concerning Oude and its two capitals, the former and the present, will prepare us to enter upon a subject touching immediately the present narrative: namely, the relations existing between the East India Company and the Oudians, and the causes which have generated disaffection in the late royal family of that country. It will be needful to shew by what steps Oude, once a Hindoo kingdom, became under the Mogul dynasty a Mohammedan nawabship, then a nawab-viziership, then under British protection a Mohammedan kingdom, and lastly an Anglo-Indian province.

Whether or not historians are correct in asserting that Oude was an independent Hindoo sovereignty fourteen hundred years before the Christian era, and that then, for an indefinite number of centuries, it was a Hindoo dependency of a prince whose chief seat of authority was at Oojein – it seems to be admitted that Bakhtiar Khilzi, towards the close of the twelfth century, was sent to conquer the country for the Mohammedan sovereign at that time paramount in the north of India; and that Oude became at once an integral part of the realm of the emperor of Delhi. Under the powerful Baber, Oude was a lieutenancy or nawabship: the ruler having sovereign power within his dominions, but being at the same time a vassal of the Great Mogul. This state of things continued until about a century ago, when the weakening of the central power at Delhi tempted an ambitious nawab of Oude to throw off the trammels of dependency, and exercise royalty on his own account. At that time the Mohammedan rulers of many states in Northern India were troubled by the inroads of the fierce warlike Mahrattas; and although the nawabs cared little for their liege lord the emperor, they deemed it expedient to join their forces against the common enemy. One result of this struggle was, that the nawab of Oude was named ‘perpetual’ nawab – the first loosening of the imperial chain. The nawab-vizier, as he was now called, never afterwards paid much allegiance to the sovereign of Delhi: nay, the effete Mogul, in 1764, asked the British to defend him from his ambitious and disobedient neighbour. This assistance was so effectively given, that in the next year the nawab-vizier was forced to sue humbly for peace, and to give up some of his possessions as the price of it. One among many stipulations of the East India Company, in reference to the military forces allowed to be maintained by native princes, was made in 1768, when the nawab-vizier was limited to an army of 35,000 troops; namely, 10,000 cavalry, 10,000 sepoys or infantry, 5000 matchlockmen, 500 artillery, and 9500 irregulars. In 1773, Warren Hastings had become so completely involved in the perplexities of Indian politics, and made treaties so unscrupulously if he could thereby advance the interests of the Company – that Company which he served with a zeal worthy of a better cause – that he plotted with the nawab-vizier against the poor decrepit Mogul: the nawab to obtain much additional power and territory, and the British to obtain large sums of money for assisting him. When the next nawab-vizier, Azof-u-Dowlah, assumed power in Oude in 1775, he hastened to strengthen himself by an alliance with the now powerful British; he gave up to them some territory; they agreed to protect him, and to provide a certain contingent of troops, for which he was to pay an annual sum. This was the complicated way in which the Company gained a footing in so many Indian provinces and kingdoms. It was in 1782 that that shameful proceeding took place, which – though Warren Hastings obtained an acquittal concerning it at his celebrated trial in the House of Lords – has indubitably left a stain upon his name; namely, the spoliation of two begums or princesses of Oude, and the cruel punishment, almost amounting to torture, of some of their dependents. The alleged cause was an arrear in the payment of the annual sum due from the nawab. Even if the debt were really due, the mode of extorting the money, and the selection of the persons from whom it was extorted, can never be reconciled to the principles of even-handed justice. The truth may be compressed into a short sentence – the Company being terribly in want of money to carry on a war against Hyder Ali, the governor-general determined to obtain a supply from some or other of the native princes in Northern India; and those natives being often faithless, he did not hesitate to become faithless to them. During the remainder of the century, the Company increased more and more its ‘protection’ of the nawab-vizier, and received larger and larger sums in payment for that protection. Azof-u-Dowlah was succeeded in 1797 by Vizier Ali, and he in 1798 by Saadut Ali.

We come now to the present century. In 1801, the Marquis Wellesley placed the relations with Oude on a new footing: he relinquished a claim to any further subsidy from the nawab-vizier, but obtained instead the rich districts of Allahabad, Azimghur, Goruckpore, and the Southern Doab, estimated to yield an annual revenue of nearly a million and a half sterling. Oude was larger than England before this date; but the marquis took nearly half of it by this transaction. Matters remained without much change till 1814, when Saadut Ali was succeeded by Ghazee-u-Deen Hyder. During the war between the British and the Nepaulese, soon afterwards, the nawab-vizier of Oude lent the Company two millions sterling, and received in return the Terai or jungle-country between Oude and Nepaul. A curious system of exchanges, this; for after receiving rich districts instead of money, the Company received money in return for a poor district inhabited chiefly by wild beasts. In 1819, the Company allowed Ghazee-u-Deen Hyder to renounce the vassal-title of nawab-vizier, which was a mockery as connected with the suzerainty of the now powerless Emperor of Delhi, and to become King of Oude – a king, however, with a greater king at his elbow in the person of the British resident at the court of Lucknow. The Company again became a borrower from Ghazee, during the Mahratta and Burmese wars. In 1827, the throne of Oude was ascended by Nussir-u-Deen Hyder – an aspirant to the throne who was favoured in his pretensions by the Company, and who was, as a consequence, in bitter animosity with most of his relations during the ten years of his reign. Complicated monetary arrangements were frequently made with the Company, the nature and purport of which are not always clearly traceable; but they generally had the effect of increasing the power of the Company in Oude. On the death of Nussir, in 1837, a violent struggle took place for the throne. He, like other eastern princes, had a large number of sons; but the Company would not acknowledge the legitimacy of any one of them; and the succession therefore fell upon Mahomed Ali Shah, uncle to the deceased sovereign. The begum or chief wife of Nussir fomented a rebellion to overturn this arrangement; and it cost Colonel (afterwards General) Low, resident at Lucknow, much trouble to preserve peace among the wrangling members of the royal family.

Now approaches the arrangement which led to the change of rulers. Oude had been most miserably governed during many years. The king and his relations, his courtiers and his dependents, grasped for money as a substitute for the political power which they once possessed; and in the obtainment of this money they scrupled at no atrocities against the natives. The court, too, was steeped in debaucheries of the most licentious kind, outraging the decencies of life, and squandering wealth on the minions who ministered to its pleasures. The more thoughtful and large-hearted among the Company’s superior servants saw here what they had so often seen elsewhere: that when the Company virtually took possession of a native state, and pensioned off the chief and his family, a moral deterioration followed; he was not allowed to exercise real sovereignty; he became more intensely selfish, because he had nothing to be proud of, even if he wished to govern well; and he took refuge in the only oriental substitute – sensual enjoyment. When Mahomed Ali Shah died in 1842, and his son, Umjud Ali Shah, was sanctioned by the Company as king, a pledge was exacted and a threat foreshadowed: the pledge was, that such reforms should be made by the king as would contribute to the tranquillity and just government of the country; the threat was, that if he did not do this, the sovereignty would be put an end to, and the Company would take the government into its own hands. In 1847, Umjud Ali Shah was succeeded by his son, Wajid Ali Shah: a king who equalled or surpassed his predecessors in weakness and profligacy, and under whom the state of matters went from bad to worse. The Marquis of Dalhousie was governor-general when matters arrived at a crisis. There can be no question that the Company, whatever may be said about aggressive views, wished to see the millions of Oude well and happily governed; and it is equally unquestionable that this wish had not been gratified. The engagement with Umjud Ali Shah had assumed this form: ‘It is hereby provided that the King of Oude will take into his immediate and earnest consideration, in concert with the British resident, the best means of remedying the existing defects in the police, and in the judicial and revenue administration of his dominions; and that if his majesty should neglect to attend to the advice and counsel of the British government or its local representative, and if (which God forbid!) gross and systematic oppression, anarchy, and misrule, should hereafter at any time prevail within the Oude dominions, such as seriously to endanger the public tranquillity, the British government reserves to itself the right of appointing its own officers to the management of whatsoever portion of the Oude territory, either to a small or great extent, in which such misrule as that above alluded to may have occurred, for so long a period as it may deem necessary.’ The marquis, finding that thirteen years had presented no improvement in the internal government of Oude, resolved to adopt decisive measures. He drew up a treaty, whereby the administration of the territory of Oude was to be transferred to the British government: ample provision being made for the dignity, affluence, and honour of the king and his family. The king refused to sign the treaty, not admitting the allegations or suppositions on which it was based; whereupon the marquis, acting with the sanction of the Company and of the imperial government in London, announced all existing treaties to be null and void, and issued a proclamation declaring that the government of the territories of Oude was henceforth vested exclusively and for ever in the East India Company. The governor-general in his minute, it will be remembered, spoke of this transfer of power in the following brief terms: ‘The kingdom of Oude has been assumed in perpetual government by the Honourable East India Company; in pursuance of a policy which has so recently been under the consideration of the Honourable Court, that I deem it unnecessary to refer to it more particularly here.’

Everything tends to shew that the king violently opposed this loss of his regal title and power. When the governor-general and the resident at Lucknow waited on him with the draft of the proposed treaty, towards the close of 1855, he not only refused to sign it, but announced his intention to proceed to England, with a view of obtaining justice from Queen Victoria against the Company. This the marquis would not prevent; but he intimated that the king must travel, and be treated by the Company’s servants, as a private individual, if he adopted this step. The stipend for the royal family was fixed by the Company – of course without the consent of the king and his relations – at £120,000 per annum. The reasons for putting an end to the title of King of Oude were thus stated, in a document addressed by the directors of the East India Company to the governor-general of India in council, many months after the transfer of power had been effected, and only a short time before the commencement of the Revolt: ‘Half a century ago, our new and critical position among the Mohammedans of Northwestern India compelled us to respect the titular dignity of the Kings of Delhi. But the experiences of that half-century have abundantly demonstrated the inconveniences of suffering an empty nominal sovereignty to descend from generation to generation; and the continuance of such a phantom of power must be productive of inconvenience to our government, and we believe of more mortification than gratification to the royal pensioners themselves. It fosters humiliating recollections; it engenders delusive hopes; it is the fruitful source of intrigues that end in disappointment and disgrace. The evil is not limited to the effect produced upon the members of the royal house: prone to intrigue themselves, they become also a centre for the intrigues of others. It is natural, also, that the younger members of such a family should feel a greater repugnance than they otherwise would to mix with the community and become industrious and useful subjects. Strongly impressed with these convictions, we therefore observe with satisfaction that no pledge or promise of any kind with regard to the recognition by our government of the kingly title after the death of the present titular sovereign, Wajid Ali Shah, has been made to him or to his heirs.’ The reasoning in this declaration is probably sound; but it does not apply, and was not intended to apply, to the original aggressive movements of the Company. Because the shadow of sovereignty is not worth retaining without the substance, it does not necessarily follow that the Company was right in taking the substance fifty-five years earlier: that proceeding must be attacked or defended on its own special ground, by any one who wishes to enter the arena of Indian politics.

It appears from this document, that four of the British authorities at Calcutta – the Marquis of Dalhousie, General Anson, Mr Dorin, and Mr Grant – had concurred in opinion that, as the king refused to sign the treaty, he should, as a punishment, be denied many of the privileges promised by that treaty. They proposed that the annual stipend of twelve lacs of rupees (£120,000) should be ‘reserved for consideration’ after the demise of the king – that is, that it should not necessarily be a perpetual hereditary stipend. To this, however, Colonel Low, who had been British resident at Lucknow, very earnestly objected. He urged that the king’s sons were so young, that they could not, in any degree, be blamed for his conduct in not signing the proposed treaty; that they ought not to be made to lose their inheritance through the father’s fault; that the father, the king, would in any case be pretty severely punished for his obstinacy; and that it would not be worthy of a great paramount state, coming into possession of a rich territory, to refuse a liberal stipend to the descendants of the king. These representations were listened to, and a pension to the amount already named was granted to the king and his heirs – ‘not heirs according to Mohammedan usages, but only those persons who may be direct male descendants of the present king, born in lawful wedlock.’ A difficult duty was left to the Calcutta government, to decide how many existing persons had a claim to be supported out of the pension, seeing that an eastern king’s family is generally one of great magnitude; and that, although he has many wives and many children, they fill various ranks in relation to legitimacy. The Company proposed, if the king liked the plan, that one-third of the pension should be commuted into a capital sum, with which jaghires or estates might be bought, and vested in the family for the use of the various members – making them, in fact, zemindars or landed proprietors, having something to do instead of leading lives of utter idleness. In what light the directors viewed the large and important army of Oude, will be noticed presently; but in reference to the transfer of mastership itself, they said: ‘An expanse of territory embracing an area of nearly twenty-five thousand square miles, and containing five million of inhabitants, has passed from its native prince to the Queen of England without the expenditure of a drop of blood, and almost without a murmur. The peaceable manner in which this great change has been accomplished, and the tranquillity which has since prevailed in all parts of the country, are circumstances which could not fail to excite in us the liveliest emotions of thankfulness and pleasure.’ This was written, be it remembered – and the fact is full of instruction touching the miscalculations of the Company – less than two months before the cartridge troubles began, and while the mysterious chupatties were actually in circulation from hand to hand.

The deposed King of Oude did not go to England, as he had threatened; he went to Calcutta, and took up his abode, in April 1856, at Garden Reach, in the outskirts of that city, attended by his late prime minister, Ali Nuckee Khan, and by several followers. The queen, however, achieved the adventurous journey to the British capital, taking with her a numerous retinue. This princess was not, in accordance with European usages, the real Queen of Oude; she was rather a sort of queen-dowager, the king’s mother, and was accompanied by the king’s brother and the king’s son – the one claiming to be heir-presumptive, the other heir-apparent. All felt a very lively interest in the maintenance of the regal power and revenues among the members of the family, and came to England in the hope of obtaining a reversal of the governor-general’s decree. They left Lucknow in the spring of 1856, and arrived in England in August. An attempt was made by an injudicious agent to enlist public sympathy for them by an open-air harangue at Southampton. He bade his hearers picture to themselves the suppliant for justice, ‘an aged queen, brought up in all the pomp and luxury of the East, the soles of whose feet were scarcely allowed to tread the ground, laying aside the prejudices of travel, and undertaking a journey of some ten thousand miles, to appeal to the people of England for justice;’ and the ‘fellow-countrymen’ were then exhorted to give ‘three cheers’ for the royal family of Oude – which they undoubtedly did, in accordance with the usual custom of an English assemblage when so exhorted; but this momentary excitement soon ceased, and the oriental visitors settled in London for a lengthened residence. What official interviews or correspondence took place concerning the affairs of Oude, was not publicly known; but there was an evident disinclination on the part both of the government and the two Houses of parliament to hold out any hopes of a reversal of the policy adopted by the East India Company; and the ex-royal family of Oude maintained no hold on the public mind, except so far as the turbaned and robed domestics attracted the attention of metropolitan sight-seers. In what fashion these suppliants disowned and ignored the Revolt in India, a future chapter will shew.

The reader will, then, picture to himself the state of Oude at the period when the Revolt commenced. The deposed king was at Calcutta; his mother and other relations were in London; while the whole governing power was in the hands of the Company’s servants. Sir Henry Lawrence, a man in whom sagacity, energy, and nobleness of heart were remarkably combined, had succeeded Sir James Outram as resident, or rather chief-commissioner, and now held supreme sway at Lucknow.

It is important here to know in what light the East India Company regarded the native army of Oude, at and soon after the annexation. In the directors’ minute, of December 1856, just on the eve of disturbances which were quite unexpected by them, the subject was thus touched upon: ‘The probable temper of the army, a force computed on paper at some 60,000 men of all arms, on the announcement of a measure which threw a large proportion of them out of employment, and transferred the remainder to a new master, was naturally a source of some anxiety to us. In your scheme for the future government and administration of the Oude provinces, drawn up on the 4th of February, you proposed the organisation of an Oude irregular force, into which you suggested the absorption of as large a number of the disbanded soldiers of the king as could be employed in such a corps, whilst others were to be provided for in the military and district police; but you observed at the same time that these arrangements would not absorb one-half of the disbanded troops. To the remainder you determined to grant pensions and gratuities, graduated according to length of service. There were no better means than these of palliating a difficulty which could not be avoided. But only partial success was to be expected from so partial a measure. As a further precaution, the chief-commissioner deemed it expedient to promise pensions of one hundred rupees per month to the commandants of the regiments of the late king, some sixty in number, conditional on their lending their cordial co-operation to the government in this crisis, and provided that their regiments remained quiet and loyal. We recognise the force of the chief-commissioner’s argument in support of these grants; and are willing to adopt his suggestion that, in the event of any of these men accepting office as tuhseeldars or other functionaries under our government, the amount of their pensions should still be paid to them.’ It was found that the King of Oude had allowed the pay of his soldiers to run into arrear. On this point the directors said: ‘The army, a large number of whom are necessarily thrown out of employment, and who cannot immediately find, even if the habits of their past lives fitted them for, industrial occupations, are peculiarly entitled to liberal consideration. It is doubtless true that, as stated by the chief-commissioner, the soldiery of Oude have “fattened on rapine and plunder;” and it is certain that the servants of the Oude government enriched themselves at the expense of the people. But this was only part of the system under which they lived; nothing better, indeed, was to be expected from men whose pay, after it had been tardily extracted from the treasury, was liable to be withheld from them by a fraudulent minister. Whatever may have been the past excesses and the illicit gains of the soldiers, it was the duty of the British government in this conjuncture to investigate their claims to the arrears of regular pay alleged to be due to them by the Oude government, and, having satisfied ourselves of the justice of these claims, to discharge the liabilities in full. We observe with satisfaction that this has been done… We concur, moreover, in the very judicious remark made by Viscount Canning, in his minute of the 5th of March, “that a few lacs[10 - Lacs or lakhs of rupees: a lac being 100,000, value about £10,000.] spent in closing the account, without injustice, and even liberality, will be well repaid if we can thereby smooth down discontent and escape disturbance.”’

The plan adopted, therefore, was to disband the army of the deposed king, pay up the arrears due by him to the soldiers, re-enlist some of the discharged men to form a new Oude force in the Company’s service, and give pensions or gratuities to the remainder.

We are now in a condition to follow the course of events at Lucknow during the months of April and May 1857: events less mutinous and tragical than those at Meerut and Delhi, but important for their consequences in later months.

It was in the early part of April that the incident occurred at Lucknow concerning a medicine-bottle, briefly adverted to in a former chapter: shewing the existence of an unusually morbid feeling on the subjects of religion and caste. Dr Wells having been seen to taste some medicine which he was about to administer to a sick soldier, to test its quality, the Hindoos near at hand refused to partake of it, lest the taint of a Christian mouth should degrade their caste. They complained to Colonel Palmer, of the 48th native regiment, who, as he believed and hoped, adopted a conciliatory course that removed all objection. This hope was not realised, however; for on that same night the doctor’s bungalow was fired and destroyed by some of the sepoys, whom no efforts could identify. Very soon afterwards, nearly all the huts of the 13th regiment were burned down, under similarly mysterious circumstances.

Sir Henry Lawrence’s difficulties began with the vexatious cartridge-question, as was the case in so many other parts of India. Towards the close of April, Captain Watson found that many of the recruits or younger men in his regiment, the 7th Oude infantry, evinced a reluctance to bite the cartridges. Through some oversight, the new method of tearing instead of biting had not been shewn to the sepoys at Lucknow; and there was therefore sufficient reason for adopting a conciliatory course in explaining the matter to them. The morbid feeling still, however, remained. On the 1st of May, recusancy was again exhibited, followed by an imprisonment of some of the recruits in the quarter-guard. The native officers of the regiment came forward to assure Captain Watson that this disobedience was confined to the ‘youngsters,’ and that the older sepoys discountenanced it. He believed them, or seemed to do so. On the 2d he addressed the men, pointing out the folly of the conduct attributed to the young recruits, and exhorting them to behave more like true soldiers. Though listened to respectfully, he observed so much sullenness and doggedness among the troops, that he brought the matter under the notice of his superior officer, Brigadier Grey. The native officers, when put to the test, declined taking any steps to enforce obedience; they declared their lives to be in danger from the men under them, should they do so. The brigadier, accompanied by Captains Watson and Barlow, at once went to the lines, had the men drawn up in regular order, and put the question to each company singly, whether it was willing to use the same cartridges which had all along been employed. They refused. The brigadier left them to arrange plans for the morrow; placing them, however, under safe guard for the night. On the morning of the 3d, the grenadier company (picked or most skilful company) of the regiment went through the lines, threatening to kill some of the European officers; and soon afterwards the tumult became so serious, that the fulfilment of the threat seemed imminent. By much entreaty, the officers, European and native, allayed in some degree the excitement of the men. While this was going on, however, at the post or station of Moosa Bagh, a messenger was sent by the intriguers of the 7th regiment to the cantonment at Murreeoun, with a letter inciting the 48th native infantry to join them in mutiny. This letter was fortunately brought, by a subadar true to his duty, to Colonel Palmer, the commandant. Prompt measures were at once resolved upon. A considerable force – consisting of the 7th Oude cavalry, the 4th Oude infantry, portions of the 48th and 71st Bengal infantry, a portion of the 7th Bengal cavalry, a wing of her Majesty’s 32d, and a field-battery of guns – was sent from the cantonment to the place where the recusants were posted. The mutineers stood firm for some time; but when they saw cannon pointed at them, some turned and fled with great rapidity, while others quietly gave up their arms. The cavalry pursued and brought back some of the fugitives. The 7th Oude irregular infantry regiment, about a thousand strong, was thus suddenly broken into three fragments – one escaped, one captured, and one disarmed. A letter from the Rev. Mr Polehampton, chaplain to the English residents at Lucknow, affords one among many proofs that Sunday was a favourite day for such outbreaks in India – perhaps purposely so selected by the rebellious sepoys. The 3d of May was Sunday: the chaplain was performing evening-service at the church. ‘Towards the end of the prayers, a servant came into church, and spoke first to Major Reid, of the 48th; and then to Mr Dashwood, of the same regiment. They both went out, and afterwards others were called away. The ladies began to look very uncomfortable; one or two went out of church; one or two others crossed over the aisle to friends who were sitting on the other side; so that altogether I had not a very attentive congregation.’ When it was found that the officers had been called out to join the force against the mutineers, the chaplain ‘felt very much inclined to ride down to see what was going on; but as the Moosa Bagh is seven miles from our house, and as I should have left my wife all alone, I stayed where I was. I thought of what William III. said when he was told that the Bishop of Derry had been shot at the ford at the Battle of the Boyne, “What took him there?”’

The course of proceeding adopted by Sir Henry Lawrence on this occasion was quite of an oriental character, as if suggested by one who well knew the Indian mind. He held a grand military durbar, to reward the faithful as well as to awe the mutinous. In the first instance he had said that the government would be advised to disband the regiment, with a provision for re-enlisting those who had not joined the rebels; but pending the receipt of instructions from Calcutta, he held his durbar (court; levee; hall of audience). Four native soldiers – a havildar-major, a subadar, and a sepoy of the 48th regiment, and a sepoy of the 13th – who had proved themselves faithful in an hour of danger, were to be rewarded. The lawn in front of the residency was carpeted, and chairs were arranged on three sides of a square for some of the native officers and sepoys; while a large verandah was filled with European officials, civil and military, upwards of twenty in number. Sir Henry opened the proceedings with an address in the Hindostani language, full of point and vigour. After a gorgeous description of the power and wealth of the British nation – overwrought, perhaps, for an English ear, but well suited to the occasion – he adverted to the freedom of conscience in British India on matters of religion: ‘Those amongst you who have perused the records of the past must well know that Alumghir in former times, and Hyder Ali in later days, forcibly converted thousands and thousands of Hindoos, desecrated their fanes, demolished their temples, and carried ruthless devastation amongst the household gods. Come to our times; many here present well know that Runjeet Singh never permitted his Mohammedan subjects to call the pious to prayer – never allowed the Afghan to sound from the lofty minarets which adorn Lahore, and which remain to this day a monument to their munificent founders. The year before last a Hindoo could not have dared to build a temple in Lucknow. All this is changed. Who is there that would dare now to interfere with our Hindoo or Mohammedan subjects?’ He contrasted this intolerance of Mohammedan and Hindoo rulers in matters of religion with the known scruples of the British government; and told his hearers that the future would be like the present, in so far as concerns the freedom of all religions over the whole of India. He rebuked and spurned the reports which had been circulated among the natives, touching meditated insult to their faith or their castes. He adverted to the gallant achievements of the Company’s native troops during a hundred years of British rule; and told how it pained him to think that disbandment of such troops had been found necessary at Barrackpore and Berhampore. And then he presented the bright side of his picture: ‘Now turn to these good and faithful soldiers – Subadar Sewak Tewaree, Havildar Heera Lall Doobey, and Sipahi Ranura Doobey, of the 48th native infantry, and to Hossein Buksh, of the 13th regiment – who have set to you all a good example. The first three at once arrested the bearer of a seditious letter, and brought the whole circumstance to the notice of superior authority. You know well what the consequences were, and what has befallen the 7th Oude irregular infantry, more than fifty of whose sirdars and soldiers are now in confinement, and the whole regiment awaits the decision of government as to its fate. Look at Hossein Buksh of the 13th, fine fellow as he is! Is he not a good and faithful soldier? Did he not seize three villains who are now in confinement and awaiting their doom. It is to reward such fidelity, such acts and deeds as I have mentioned, and of which you are all well aware, that I have called you all together this day – to assure you that those who are faithful and true to their salt will always be amply rewarded and well cared for; that the great government which we all serve is prompt to reward, swift to punish, vigilant and eager to protect its faithful subjects; but firm, determined, resolute to crush all who may have the temerity to rouse its vengeance.’ After a further exhortation to fidelity, a further declaration of the power and determination of the government to deal severely with all disobedient troops, Sir Henry arrived at the climax of his impassioned and vigorous address: ‘Advance, Subadar Sewak Tewaree – come forward, havildar and sepoys – and receive these splendid gifts from the government which is proud to number you amongst its soldiers. Accept these honorary sabres; you have won them well: long may you live to wear them in honour! Take these sums of money for your families and relatives; wear these robes of honour at your homes and your festivals; and may the bright example which you have so conspicuously set, find, as it doubtless will, followers in every regiment and company in the army.’ To the subadar and the havildar-major were presented each, a handsomely decorated sword, a pair of elegant shawls, a choogah or cloak, and four pieces of embroidered cloth; to the other two men, each, a decorated sword, a turban, pieces of cloth, and three hundred rupees in cash. Hossein Buksh was also made a naik or corporal.

Let not the reader judge this address and these proceedings by an English standard. Sir Henry Lawrence knew well what he was doing; for few of the Company’s servants ever had a deeper insight into the native character than that eminent man. There had been, in the Company’s general system, too little punishment for misconduct, too little reward for faithfulness, among the native troops: knowing this, he adopted a different policy, so far as he was empowered to do.

When the news of the Lucknow disturbance reached Calcutta, a course was adopted reminding us of the large amount of written correspondence involved in the mode of managing public affairs. The governor-general, it may here be explained, was assisted by a supreme council, consisting of four persons, himself making a fifth; and the council was aided by four secretaries, for the home, the foreign, the military, and the financial affairs of India. All these officials were expected to make their inquiries, communicate their answers, state their opinions, and notify their acts in writing, for the information of the Court of Directors and the Board of Control in London; and this is one reason why parliamentary papers touching Indian affairs are often so voluminous. At the period in question, Viscount Canning, Mr Dorin, General Low, Mr Grant, and Mr Peacock, were the five members of council, each and all of whom prepared ‘minutes’ declaratory of their opinions whether Sir Henry Lawrence had done right or wrong in threatening to disband the mutinous 7th regiment. The viscount wished to support the chief-commissioner at once, in a bold method of dealing with the disaffected. Mr Dorin went further. He said: ‘My theory is that no corps mutinies that is well commanded;’ he wished that some censure should be passed on the English officers of the 7th, and that the men of that regiment should receive more severe treatment than mere disbanding. General Low advocated a course midway between the other two; but at the same time deemed it right to inquire how it happened that the men had been required to bite the cartridges; seeing that instructions had already been issued from head-quarters that the platoon exercises should be conducted without this necessity. Mr Grant’s minute was very long; he wanted more time, more reports, more examinations, and was startled at the promptness with which Lawrence had proposed to act. Mr Peacock also wanted further information before deciding on the plan proposed by the ruling authority at Oude. The governor-general’s minute was written on the 9th; the other four commented on it on the 10th; the governor-general replied to their comments on the 11th; and they commented on his reply on the 12th. Thus it arose that the tedious system of written minutes greatly retarded the progress of business at Calcutta.

There cannot be a better opportunity than the present for adverting to the extraordinary services rendered by the electric telegraph in India during the early stages of the Revolt, when the mutineers had not yet carried to any great extent their plan of cutting the wires. We have just had occasion to describe the routine formalities in the mode of conducting business at Calcutta; but it would be quite indefensible to withhold admiration from the electro-telegraphic system established by the East India Company. This matter was touched upon in the Introduction; and the middle of May furnished wonderful illustrations of the value of the lightning-messenger. Let us fix our attention on two days only – the 16th and 17th of May – less than one week after the commencement of violent scenes at Meerut and Delhi. Let us picture to ourselves Viscount Canning at Calcutta, examining every possible scheme for sending up reinforcements to the disturbed districts; Sir John Lawrence at Lahore, keeping the warlike population of the Punjaub in order by his mingled energy and tact; Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, surrounded by Oudians, whom it required all his skill to baffle; Mr Colvin at Agra, watching with an anxious eye the state of affairs in the Northwest Provinces; General Anson at Simla, preparing, as commander-in-chief, to hasten down to the Delhi district; Lord Elphinstone at Bombay, as governor of that presidency; and Lord Harris, filling an analogous office at Madras. Bearing in mind these persons and places, let us see what was done by the electric telegraph on those two busy days – deriving our information from the voluminous but ill-arranged parliamentary papers on the affairs of India: papers almost useless without repeated perusals and collations.

First, then, the 16th of May. Sir Henry Lawrence sent one of his pithy, terse telegrams[11 - The word telegram, denoting a message sent, as distinguished from the telegraph which sends it, has been a subject of much discussion among Greek scholars, concerning the validity of the grammatical basis on which it is formed; but as the new term is convenient for its brevity and expressiveness, and as it has been much used by the governor-general and the various officers connected with India, it will occasionally be employed in this work.] from Lucknow to Calcutta, to this effect: ‘All is quiet here, but affairs are critical; get every European you can from China, Ceylon, and elsewhere; also all the Goorkhas from the hills. Time is precious.’ On the same day he sent another: ‘Give me plenary military power in Oude; I will not use it unnecessarily. I am sending two troops of cavalry to Allahabad. Send a company of Europeans into the fort there. It will be good to raise regiments of irregular horse, under good officers.’ In the reverse direction – from Calcutta to Lucknow – this message was sent: ‘It appears that the regiment of Ferozpore [Sikhs] has already marched to Allahabad, and that, under present circumstances, no part of that regiment can be spared.’ And another, in like manner answering a telegram of the same day: ‘You have full military powers. The governor-general will support you in everything you think necessary. It is impossible to send a European company to Allahabad; Dinapoor must not be weakened by a single man. If you can raise any irregulars that you can trust, do so at once. Have you any good officers to spare for the duty?’ All this, be it remembered was telegraphed to and from two cities six or seven hundred miles apart. On the same day, questions were asked, instructions requested, and information given, between Calcutta, on the one hand, and Agra, Gwalior, Meerut, Cawnpore, and Benares on the other. Passing thence to Bombay – twelve hundred miles from Calcutta by road, and very much more by telegraph-route – we find the two governors conversing through the wires concerning the English troops which had just been fighting in Persia, and those about being sent to China; all of whom were regarded with a longing eye by the governor-general at that critical time. Viscount Canning telegraphed to Lord Elphinstone on the 16th: ‘Two of the three European regiments which are returning from Persia are urgently wanted in Bengal. If they are sent from Bombay to Kurachee, will they find conveyance up the Indus? Are they coming from Bushire in steam or sailing transports? Let me know immediately whether General Ashburnham is going to Madras.’ The general here named was to have commanded the troops destined for China. The replies and counter-replies to this on the 17th, we will mention presently. Lord Harris, on this same day of activity, sent the brief telegram: ‘The Madras Fusiliers will be sent immediately by Zenobia; but she is hardly fit to take a whole regiment.’ This was in reply to a request transmitted shortly before.

Next, the 17th of May. Sir Henry Lawrence telegraphed from Lucknow: ‘You are quite right to keep Allahabad safe. We shall do without Sikhs or Goorkhas. We have concentrated the troops as much as possible, so as to protect the treasury and magazine, and keep up a communication. A false alarm last night.’ He sent another, detailing what he had done in managing the turbulent 7th regiment. In the reverse direction, a message was sent to him, that ‘The artillery invalids at Chunar, about 109 in number, have been ordered to proceed to Allahabad immediately.’ The telegrams were still more numerous than on the 16th, between the various towns mentioned in the last paragraph, in Northern India. From Bombay, Lord Elphinstone telegraphed to ask whether an extra mail-steamer should be sent off to Suez with news for England; and added: ‘The 64th will arrive in a few days from Bushire; their destination is Bengal; but we can keep them here available, or send them round to Calcutta if you wish it.’ To which the governor-general replied from Calcutta, still on the same day, expressing his wishes about the mail, and adding: ‘If you can send the 64th to Calcutta by steam, do so without any delay. If steam is not available, I will wait for an answer to my last message before deciding that they shall come round in sailing-vessels. Let me know when you expect the other European regiments and the artillery, and what steam-vessels will be available for their conveyance. Have you at present a steam-vessel that could go to Galle to bring troops from there to Calcutta? This must not interfere with the despatch of the 64th.’ Another, from Lord Elphinstone, on the very same day, announced that the best of the Indus boats were in Persia; that it would be impossible to send up three European regiments from Kurachee to the Punjaub, within any reasonable time, by the Indus boats then available; that he nevertheless intended to send one regiment, the 1st Europeans, by that route; and that the 2d Europeans were daily expected from Persia. He further said: ‘Shall I send them round to Calcutta; and shall I send the 78th also? General Ashburnham leaves this to-day by the steamer for Galle, where he expects to meet Lord Elgin; he is not going to Madras.’ While this was going on between Calcutta and Bombay, Madras was not idle. The governor-general telegraphed to Lord Harris, to inform him of the mutiny, on the previous day, of the Sappers and Miners who went from Roorkee to Meerut; and another on the same day, replying to a previous telegram, said: ‘If the Zenobia cannot bring all the Fusiliers, the remainder might be sent in the Bentinck, which will be at Madras on the 26th; but send as many in the Zenobia as she will safely hold. Let me know when the Zenobia sails, and what force she brings.’ If we had selected three days instead of two, as illustrating the wonders of the electric telegraph, we should have had to narrate that on the third day, the 18th of May, Lord Harris announced that the Fusiliers would leave Madras that evening; that Viscount Canning thanked him for his great promptness; that Lord Elphinstone received instructions to send one of the three regiments up the Indus, and the other two round to Calcutta; that he asked and received suggestions about managing a Beloochee regiment at Kurachee; and that messages in great number were transmitted to and from Calcutta, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and other large towns.

The imagination becomes almost bewildered at contemplating such things. Between the morning of the 16th of May and the evening of the 17th, the great officers of the Company, situated almost at the extreme points of the Indian empire – east, west, north, and south – were conversing through four thousand miles of wire, making requests, soliciting advice, offering services, discussing difficulties, weighing probabilities, concerting plans; and all with a precision much greater than if they had been writing letters to one another, in ordinary official form, in adjoining rooms of the same building. It was, perhaps, the greatest triumph ever achieved up to that time by the greatest of modern inventions – the electric telegraph.

We shall find the present part of the chapter an equally convenient place in which to notice a series of operations strikingly opposed to those just described – slow travelling as compared with quick telegraphy. It is full of instruction to see how earnestly anxious Viscount Canning was to send troops up to the northern provinces; and how he was baffled by the tardiness of all travelling appliances in India. The railway was opened only from Calcutta to Raneegunge, a very small portion of the distance to the disturbed districts. The history of the peregrinations of a few English troops in May will illustrate, and will receive illustration from, the matters treated in Chapter I.

The European 84th regiment, it will be remembered, had been hastily brought from Rangoon in the month of March, to assist in disbanding the sepoys who had shewn disaffection at Barrackpore and Berhampore. When the troubles began at Meerut and Delhi, in May, it was resolved to send on this regiment; and the governor-general found no part of his onerous duties more difficult than that of obtaining quick transmission for those troops. On the 21st of May he telegraphed to Benares: ‘Pray instruct the commissariat officer to prepare cooking-pots and other arrangements for the 84th regiment, now on its way to Benares; and the barrack department to have cots ready for them.’ On the 23d, Sir Henry Lawrence asked: ‘When may her Majesty’s 84th be expected at Cawnpore?’ to which an answer was sent on the following day: ‘It is impossible to convey a wing of Europeans to Cawnpore (about six hundred and thirty miles) in less time than twenty-five days. The government dâk and the dâk companies are fully engaged in carrying a company of the 84th to Benares, at the rate of 18 men a day. A wing of the Madras Fusiliers arrived yesterday, and starts to-day; part by bullock-train, part by steamer. The bullock-train can take 100 men per day, at the rate of thirty miles a day. The entire regiment of the Fusiliers, about 900 strong, cannot be collected at Benares in less than 19 or 20 days. About 150 men who go by steam will scarcely be there so soon. I expect, that from this time forward troops will be pushed upwards at the rate of 100 men a day from Calcutta; each batch taking ten days to reach Benares; from Benares they will be distributed as most required. The regiments from Pegu, Bombay, and Ceylon will be sent up in this way. Every bullock and horse that is to be had, except just enough to carry the post, is retained; and no troops will be sent by steam which can be sent more quickly by other means.’ These details shew that Cawnpore and Benares were both asking for troops at the same time; and that the governor-general, even if he possessed the soldiers, had not the means of sending them expeditiously. On the 24th, a message was sent to Raneegunge, ordering that a company of Madras troops might be well attended to, when they arrived by railway from Calcutta; and on the next day, Benares received notice to prepare for four companies proceeding thither by bullock-train, one company per day. The Benares commissioner announced the arrival of fifteen English soldiers, as if that were a number to be proud of, and stated that he would send them on to Cawnpore. (It will be seen, on reference to a map, that Benares lies in the route to almost all the upper and western provinces, whether by road or by river.) The Raneegunge agent telegraphed on the 26th: ‘If the men reach Sheergotty, there is no difficulty in conveying them to Benares; the only difficulty is between Raneegunge and Sheergotty. Ekahs are not, I think, adapted for Europeans; nor do I think that time would be gained.’ An ekah or ecka, we may here remark, is a light pony-gig on two wheels, provided with a cloth cushion on which the rider (usually a native) sits cross-legged. It shews the nature of Indian travelling, to find the officials discussing whether English soldiers should be thus conveyed – one cushioned vehicle to convey each cross-legged soldier. At Benares, the commissioner borrowed from the rajah the use of a house in which to lodge the English troops as fast as they came; and he sent them on by dâk to Allahabad and Cawnpore. Nevertheless Sir Henry Lawrence, disturbed by ominous symptoms, wished for ekahs, dâks – anything that would give him English soldiers. He telegraphed on this day: ‘I strongly advise that as many ekah-dâks be laid as possible, from Raneegunge to Cawnpore, to bring up European troops. Spare no expense;’ and on the next day he received the reply: ‘Every horse and carriage, bullock and cart, which could be brought upon the road, has been collected, and no means of increasing the number will be neglected.’ On the 27th it was announced from Benares that ‘the steamer had stuck,’ and that all the land-dâks were being used that could possibly be procured. On the same day the Allahabad commissioner spoke hopefully of his plan that – by the aid of 1600 siege-train bullocks from that place, 600 from Cawnpore, the government bullocks, the private wagon-trains, and magazine carts – he might be able to send 160 Europeans per day up to Cawnpore. On the 28th, the Calcutta authorities sent a telegram to Benares, to announce that ‘Up to the 1st of June seven dâk-carriages will be despatched daily, with one officer and 18 soldiers. On the 1st of June, and daily afterwards, there will be despatched nine dâk-carriages, with one officer and 24 Europeans; and 28 bullock-carts, with one officer, 90 Europeans, a few followers, and provisions to fill one cart. The Calcutta steamer and flat, with four officers, 134 Europeans, and proportion of followers; and the coal-steamer, with about the same numbers, will reach Benares on the 10th or 11th of June.’ From this it will be seen that a ‘dâk-carriage’ conveyed three soldiers, and a ‘bullock-cart’ also three, the ‘followers’ probably accompanying them on foot. The Benares commissioner on the same day said: ‘Happily we have good metalled roads all over this division’ – thereby implying what would have been the result if the roads were not good. The use of bullocks was more particularly adverted to in a telegram of the 30th of May: ‘Gun-bullocks would be most useful between Raneegunge and the Sone, if they could be sent from Calcutta in time; if there are carts, the daily dispatches can be increased; not otherwise. Gun-bullocks would save a day, as they travel quicker than our little animals.’ Immediately afterwards, forty-six elephants were sent from Patna, and one hundred from Dacca and Barrackpore, to Sheergotty, to assist in the transport of troops. On a later occasion, when more troops had arrived from England, Viscount Canning sent two steamers from Calcutta to Pegu, to bring over cargoes of elephants, to be used as draught-animals!

Thus it continued, day after day – all the servants of the Company, civil and military, calculating how long it would take to send driblets of soldiers up the country; and all harassed by this dilemma – that what the Ganges steamers gained in roominess, they lost by the sinuosities of the river; and that what the dâks and bullock-trains gained by a direct route, they lost by the inevitable slowness of such modes of conveyance, and the smallness of the number of soldiers that could be carried at a time. Thankful that they possessed telegraphs, the authorities had little to be thankful for as concerned railways or roads, vehicles or horses.

We now return to the proceedings of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow.

Before the collective minutes of the five members of the Supreme Council were fully settled, he had acted on the emergency which gave rise to them. He held a court of inquiry; the result of which was that two subadars, a jemadar, and forty-four sepoys of the mutinous 7th were committed to prison; but he resolved not at present to disband the regiment. His grand durbar has been already described. In the middle of the month, as just shewn, he sent many brief telegrams indicating that, though no mutinies had occurred at Lucknow, there was nevertheless need for watchfulness. He had asked for the aid of some Sikhs, but said, on the 18th: ‘As there is difficulty, do not send the Sikhs to Lucknow.’ On the next day, his message was: ‘All very well in city, cantonment, and country;’ but after this, the elements of mischief seemed to be gathering, although Lawrence prepared to meet all contingencies resolutely. ‘All quiet,’ he said on the 21st, ‘but several reports of intended attacks on us.’ He was, however, more solicitous about the fate of Cawnpore, Allahabad, and Benares, than of Lucknow.

The military position of Sir Henry towards the last week in May was this. He had armed four posts for his defence at Lucknow. In one were four hundred men and twenty guns; in another, a hundred Europeans and as many sepoys; in another was the chief store of powder, well under command. A hundred and thirty Europeans, two hundred sepoys, and six guns, guarded the treasury; the guns near the residency being under European control. The old magazine was denuded of its former contents, as a precautionary measure. Six guns, and two squadrons of the 2d Oude irregular cavalry, were at the Dâk bungalow, half-way between the residency and the cantonment. In the cantonment were three hundred and forty men of her Majesty’s 32d, with six European guns, and six more of the Oude light field-battery. By the 23d of the month, nearly all the stores were moved from the old magazine to one of the strongholds, where thirty guns and one hundred Europeans were in position, and where ten days’ supplies for five hundred men were stored. On the 29th, Lawrence’s telegram told of ‘great uneasiness at Lucknow. Disturbances threatened outside. Tranquillity cannot be much longer maintained unless Delhi be speedily captured.’ The residency, a place rendered so memorable by subsequent events, must be here noticed. The cantonment was six miles from the city, and the residency was itself isolated from the rest of Lucknow. The Rev. Mr Polehampton, describing in his letter the occurrences about the middle of May, said: ‘The sick have been brought to the residency; so have the women; and the residency is garrisoned by 130 men of the 32d, and by the battery of native artillery. All the ladies, wives of civilians, who live in different parts of the city, have come into the residency. By the residency, I mean a piece of ground a good deal elevated above the rest of the city, allotted by the King of Oude, when he first put himself under British “protection” some fifty years ago, to the British civil residents. It is walled round almost entirely; on one side native houses abut upon it, but on the other three sides it is tolerably clear. Roads without gates in some places connect it with the city; but it is not at all a bad place to make a stand – certainly the best in Lucknow, to which it is a sort of acropolis. The residency contains the chief-commissioner’s house, Mr Gubbins’s, Mr Ommaney’s, Foyne’s, the post-office, city hospital, electric-telegraph office, church, etc.’ The ever-memorable defence made by a little band of English heroes in this ‘acropolis’ of Lucknow, will call for our attention in due time. Mr Polehampton spoke of the gravity with which Sir Henry Lawrence regarded the state of public affairs; and of the caution which led him to post one English soldier at every gun, to watch the native artillerymen. The chaplain had means of knowing with what assiduity crafty lying men tried to gain over the still faithful sepoys to mutiny. ‘Another most absurd story they have got hold of, which came out in the examination of some of the mutineers before Sir Henry Lawrence. They say that in consequence of the Crimean war there are a great many widows in England, and that these are to be brought out and married to the Rajahs in Oude; and that their children, brought up as Christians, are to inherit all the estates! The natives are like babies – they will believe anything.’ – Babies in belief, perhaps; but fiends in cruelty when excited.

The last two days of May were days of agitation at Lucknow. Many of the native troops broke out in open mutiny. They consisted of half of the 48th regiment, about half of the 71st, some few of the 13th, and two troops of the 7th cavalry – all of whom fled towards Seetapoor, a town nearly due north of Lucknow. Lawrence, with two companies of her Majesty’s 32d, three hundred horse, and four guns, went in pursuit; but the horse, Oude native cavalry, evinced no zeal; and he was vexed to find that he could only get within round-shot of the mutineers. He took thirty prisoners – a very inadequate result of the pursuit. Many disaffected still remained in Lucknow; four bungalows were burned, and a few English officers shot. The city was quiet, but the cantonment was in a disturbed state. In his last telegrams for the month, the chief-commissioner, who was also chief military authority, used these words: ‘It is difficult to say who are loyal; but it is believed the majority are so; only twenty-five of the 7th cavalry proved false;’ and he further said: ‘The faithful remnants of three infantry regiments and 7th cavalry, about seven hundred men, are encamped close to the detachment of two hundred of her Majesty’s 32d and four European guns.’ Even then he did not feel much uneasiness concerning the city and cantonment of Lucknow: it was towards other places, Cawnpore especially, that his apprehensive glance was directed.

What were the occurrences at Lucknow, and in other towns of the territory of Oude, in June, will be better understood when the progress of the Revolt in other places during May has been narrated.

CHAPTER VII.

SPREAD OF DISAFFECTION IN MAY

The narrative has now arrived at a stage when some kind of classification of times and places becomes necessary. There were special reasons why Delhi and Lucknow should receive separate attention, connected as those two cities are with deposed native sovereigns chafed by their deposition; but other cities and towns now await notice, spread over many thousand square miles of territory, placed in various relations to the British government, involved in various degrees in mutinous proceedings, and differing much in the periods at which the hostile demonstrations were made. Two modes of treatment naturally suggest themselves. The towns might be treated topographically, beginning at Calcutta, and working westward towards the Indus; this would be convenient for reference to maps, but would separate contemporaneous events too far asunder. Or the occurrences might be treated chronologically, beginning from the Meerut outbreak, and advancing, as in a diary, day by day throughout the whole series; this would facilitate reference to dates, but would ignore local connection and mutual action. It may be possible, however, to combine so much of the two methods as will retain their advantages and avoid their defects; there may be groups of days and groups of places; and these groups may be so treated as to mark the relations both of sequence and of simultaneity, of causes and of co-operation. In the present chapter, a rapid glance will be taken over a wide-spread region, to shew in what way and to what degree disaffection spread during the month of May. This will prepare us for the terrible episode at one particular spot – Cawnpore.

To begin, then, with Bengal – the fertile and populous region between the Anglo-Indian city of Calcutta and the sacred Hindoo city of Benares; the region watered by the lower course of the majestic Ganges; the region inhabited by the patient, plodding, timid Bengalee, the type from which Europeans have generally derived their idea of the Hindoo: forgetting, or not knowing, that Delhi and Agra, Cawnpore and Lucknow, exhibit the Hindoo character under a more warlike aspect, and are marked also by a difference of language. A fact already mentioned must be constantly borne in mind – that few Bengalees are (or were) in the Bengal army: a population of forty millions furnished a very small ratio of fighting men.

Although not a scene of murder and atrocity during the Revolt, Calcutta requires a few words of notice here: to shew the relation existing between the native and the European population, and the importance of the city as the head-quarters of British India, the supreme seat of legislation and justice, the residence of the governor-general, the last great city on the course down the Ganges, and the port where more trade is conducted than in all others in India combined.

Calcutta stands on the left bank of the Hoogly, one of the numerous streams by which the Ganges finds an outlet into the sea. There are no less than fourteen of these streams deep enough for the largest craft used in inland navigation, but so narrow and crooked that the rigging of vessels often becomes entangled in the branches of the trees growing on the banks. The delta formed by these mouths of the Ganges, called the Sunderbunds, is nearly as large as Wales; it is little else than a cluster of low, marshy, irreclaimable islands, very unhealthy to the few natives living there, and left almost wholly to tigers, wild buffaloes, wild boars, and other animals which swarm there in great numbers. The Hoogly is one of the few really navigable mouths of the Ganges; and by this channel Calcutta has free access by shipping to the sea, which is about a hundred miles distant. The city, extending along the river four or five miles, covers an area of about eight square miles. A curved line nearly bounds it on the land-side, formed by the Mahratta ditch, a defence-work about a century old. Beyond the ditch, and a fine avenue called the Circular Road, the environs are studded with numerous suburbs or villages which may be considered as belonging to the city: among these are Nundenbagh, Bahar-Simla, Sealdah, Entally, Ballygunge, Bhowaneepore, Allipore, Kidderpore, Seebpore, Howrah, and Sulkea. The three last are on the opposite or west bank of the river, and contain the dock-yards, the ship-building establishments, the railway station, the government salt-warehouses, and numerous extensive manufactories. The approach to the city from the sea presents a succession of attractive features. First, a series of elegant mansions at a bend in the river called Garden Reach, with lawns descending to the water’s edge; then the anchorage for the Calcutta and Suez mail-steamers; then the dock-yards; next the canal junction, the arsenal and Fort William. Above these is the Chowringhee, once a suburb, but now almost as closely built as Calcutta itself, containing the Esplanade, the Town Hall, the Government House, and many European residences. ‘Viewed from Garden Reach,’ says Mr Stocqueler, ‘the coup d’œil is one of various and enchanting beauty. Houses like palaces are studding the bank on the proper left of the river, and a verdure like that of an eternal summer renovates the eye, so long accustomed to the glitter of the ocean. Anon, on your left, appears the semi-Gothic Bishop’s College; and in front of you, every moment growing more distinct, are beheld a forest of stately masts, a noble and beautiful fortress, a thousand small boats, of shapes new and undreamed of by the visitant, skimming over the stream; the larger vessels of the country, pleasant to look upon even for their strange dis-symmetry and consequent unwieldiness; the green barge or budgerow, lying idly for hire; and the airy little bauleahs, with their light venetianed rooms.’ All this relates to the portion of the city lying south or seaward of the Chandpaul Ghat, the principal landing-place. Northward of this stretches a noble strand, on which are situated the Custom-house, the New Mint, and other government offices.

It must be noted that, although the chief British city in India, Calcutta in ordinary times contains no less than seventy times as many natives as English – only six thousand English out of more than four hundred thousand inhabitants. Even if Eurasians (progeny of white fathers and native mothers) be included, the disparity is still enormous; and is rendered yet more so by the many thousands of natives who, not being inhabitants, attend Calcutta at times for purposes of trade or of worship. Many wild estimates were made a few years ago concerning the population of Calcutta, which was sometimes driven up hypothetically to nearly a million souls; but a census in 1850 determined the number to be four hundred and seventeen thousand persons, living in sixty-two thousand houses and huts. The Hindoos alone exceed two hundred and seventy thousand. Circumstances of site, as well as the wishes and convenience of individuals, have led the Europeans to form a community among themselves, distinct from the native Calcutta. Many natives, it is true, live in the southern or British town; but very few British live in the northern or native town. The latter differs little from Indian towns generally, except in the large size of the dwellings belonging to the wealthy inhabitants. The southern town is European in appearance as in population; it has its noble streets, sumptuous government offices, elegant private residences surrounded with verandahs. On the esplanade is situated Fort William (the official name given to Calcutta in state documents), one of the strongest in India; it is octagonal, with three sides towards the river, and the other five inland; and it mounts more than six hundred guns. Whatever force holds Fort William may easily reduce Calcutta to ashes. The public buildings, which are very numerous, comprise the following among others – the Government House, that cost £130,000; the Town Hall, in the Doric style; the Supreme Court of Judicature; the Madrissa and Hindoo Colleges; the Martinière, an educational establishment founded by Martine the Frenchman, who has been mentioned in connection with Lucknow; the Metcalfe Hall; the Ochterlony Monument; the Prinsep Testimonial; the Calcutta Asiatic Society’s Rooms; St Paul’s Cathedral, the finest Christian church in India; the Bishop’s Palace and College; the European Female Orphan Asylum; the Botanic Gardens. The Episcopalians, the National and the Free Churches of Scotland, the Independents, the Baptists, the Roman Catholics, the Armenians, the Jews, the Greeks – all have places of worship in Calcutta. The native temples and mosques are of course much more numerous, amounting to two hundred and fifty in number.

Concerning the inhabitants, the English comprise the Company’s civil and military servants, a few members of the learned professions, merchants, retail-dealers, and artisans. Of the native Hindoos and Mohammedans, exclusive of the degraded castes of the former, it is supposed that one-third are in the service of the English, either as domestic servants, or as under-clerks, messengers, &c. A majority of the remainder pick up a living on the street or the river – carrying palanquins as bearers, carrying parcels as coolies, rowing boats, attending ships, &c. The native artisans, shopkeepers, and market-people, fill up the number.

It will be remembered, from the details given in Chapter II., that the authorities at Calcutta, during the first four months of the year, were frequently engaged in considering the transactions at Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore, connected with the cartridge grievances. These did not affect the great city itself, the inhabitants of which looked on as upon events that concerned them only remotely. When the middle of May arrived, however, and when the startling news from Meerut and Delhi became known, an uneasy feeling resulted. There was in Calcutta a kind of undefined alarm, a vague apprehension of some hidden danger. At that time there were six companies of the 25th Bengal infantry, and a wing of the 47th Madras infantry, barracked on the esplanade between the Coolie Bazaar and the fort. They were without ammunition. There were, however, detachments of two other regiments acting as guards in the fort, provided with ten rounds of ammunition per man. It came to light that, on the 17th of May, the men of the 25th asked the guards privately to be allowed to share this ammunition, promising to aid them in capturing the fort during the following night. This treason was betrayed by the guards to the town-major, who at once ordered bugles to sound, and preparations to be made for defending the fort; the drawbridges were raised, the ladders withdrawn from the ditches, additional guards placed upon the arsenal, European sentries placed at various points on the ramparts, and armed patrols made to perambulate the fort during the night. The refractory sepoys, thus checked, made no attempt to carry out their nefarious project. An express was at once sent off to Dumdum for the remaining portion of her Majesty’s 53d regiment, to join their comrades already at Calcutta. Although the immense value of these English troops was at once felt, the inhabitants of Calcutta were thrown into great excitement by the rumoured outbreak; they talked of militia corps and volunteer corps, and they purchased muskets and powder, rifles and revolvers, so rapidly, that the stores of the dealers were speedily emptied.

Two demonstrations of loyalty – or rather two sets of demonstrations – were made on this occasion, one from the Christian inhabitants, and one from the natives. The mutineers found head-quarters not quite suited for their operations; order was soon restored; and then all parties came forward to state how faithful, contented, and trustworthy they were. It is not without interest to glance at some of these demonstrations. One was from the Calcutta Trade Association, which held a meeting on the 20th of May. The resolution agreed to was to the effect that ‘This body do send up to government a statement that they are prepared to afford the government every assistance in their power towards the promotion of order and the protection of the Christian community of Calcutta, either by serving as special constables or otherwise, in such manner as may appear most desirable to government; and at the same time suggesting to government that their services should be availed of in some manner, as they deem the present crisis a most serious one, and one in which every available means should be brought into action for the suppression of possible riot and insurrection.’ The answer given by the governor-general in council to the address sent up in virtue of this resolution is worthy of note; shewing, as it does, how anxious he was to believe, and to make others believe, that the mutiny was very partial, and that the sepoy army generally was sound at heart. He thanked the Trade Association for the address; he announced that he had no apprehension whatever of riot or insurrection amongst any class of the population at Calcutta; he asserted his possession of sufficient means to crush any such manifestation if it should be made; but at the same time he admitted the prudence of civilians enrolling themselves as special constables, ready for any emergency. In reference, however, to an opinion in the address that the sepoys generally exhibited a mutinous spirit, he expressed uneasiness at such an opinion being publicly announced. ‘There are in the army of this presidency many soldiers, and many regiments who have stood firm against evil example and wicked counsels, and who at this moment are giving unquestionable proof of their attachment to the government, and of their abhorrence of the atrocious crimes which have lately been perpetrated in the Northwestern Provinces. It is the earnest desire of the governor-general in council that honourable and true-hearted soldiers, whose good name he is bound to protect, and of whose fidelity he is confident, should not be included in a condemnation of rebels and murderers.’ Alas, for the ‘honourable and true-hearted soldiers!’

Another movement of the same kind was made by the Freemasons of Calcutta – a body, the numbers of which are not stated. They passed a resolution on the same day, ‘That at the present crisis it is expedient that the masonic fraternity should come forward and offer their services to government, to be employed in such manner as the governor-general may deem most expedient.’

The Armenians resident in the city met on the following day, and agreed to a series of resolutions which were signed by Apcar, Avdall, Agabeb, and others of the body – declaratory of their apprehension for the safety of Calcutta and its inhabitants; their sincere loyalty to the British government; their grateful appreciation of its mild and paternal rule; and their fervent hope that the energetic measures adopted would suffice to quell the insurrectionary spirit: concluding, ‘We beg most respectfully to convey to your lordship in council the expression of our willingness and readiness to tender our united services to our rulers, and to co-operate with our fellow-citizens for maintaining tranquillity and order in the city.’ The Armenians, wherever settled, are a peaceful people, loving trade better than fighting: their adhesion to the government was certain.