or Mahomedan rulers of India, became the focus of the great and
ever-memorable mutiny which made our Indian Empire run with blood
during the year 1857. Of this mutiny among the native Indian troops,
or sepoys, in British pay, some ugly signs had already been observed
early in the year; but it was only on the 10th of May that military
revolt openly raised its terrible head at Meerut--a place about forty
miles north-east of Delhi. There were several causes of this rebellion,
but perhaps the chief one was the fact that the native troops had been
forced to use greased cartridges, which their religious principles or
prejudices forbade them even to touch, as being encased with the fat
of so unclean an animal as a pig. Out of respect for their scruples on
this head, new rules had been made allowing the sepoys to tear, instead
of bite, off the ends of the cartridges; but even this concession did
not satisfy them, and, for positively refusing to touch the cartridges
that were offered them, about a squadron of native cavalry at Meerut
were sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. In presence of the whole
garrison, they were stripped of their uniforms, fitted with fetters,
and marched off to prison, yelling out curses at their colonel as they
went. Next evening the storm of evil and long-pent-up passions broke
loose. The sepoy regiments at Meerut rose in open revolt, rushed to
the gaol and released their comrades, murdered some of their English
officers and their wives, plundered and slew like demons, and, leaving
the place running with blood and wrapt in flames, fled to Delhi, the
great stronghold of the Mahomedan dynasty and faith. So sudden and
sanguinary had been this outburst against the British rule and name
that the English commanders--all but a few whose energetic counsel
was rejected--lost their heads completely for the time being, as if
paralysed with astonishment and unbelief; and by the time they had
recovered their senses the fugitive mutineers were safe within the
walls of Delhi.
Standing on the right, or western, bank of the Jumna, which is here
about a quarter of a mile broad, Delhi had a circumference of about
seven miles and a population of nearly 200,000. In its palmiest days
the city was said to have covered an area of twenty square miles. At
the time of the mutiny it formed a magnificent collection of temples,
mosques, and palaces. Of the mosques the chief was that of the Jumma
Musjid, or great Mahomedan cathedral--a truly noble structure,
towering above the rest of the city. Again, there was the mosque of
Roushan-ud-Daulah, where, in 1739, Nadir Shar sat and witnessed the
massacre of the unfortunate inhabitants. But that was nothing to what
the present king of Delhi, Bahadoor Shah, was now about to look upon.
Under the English, this descendant of Timour the Tartar had become
the mere shadow of a king, and the thought that he was no longer a
potentate, but a mere puppet in the hands of the real masters of India,
had inflamed his heart against them with a passion which only needed
a spark of fire to set it in a blaze. That spark was supplied by the
sudden advent of the mutineers from Meerut on the 11th of May.
Crossing the Jumna by the bridge of boats they swarmed into the
courtyard of the palace, where they were eagerly joined by the royal
guards. Captain Douglas, the commander of these guards, rushed down
from the presence of the King to quiet the turmoil, but his presence
only made it worse. He was joined by Mr. Fraser, the Commissioner, and
Mr. Hutchinson, the Collector; but the surging, roaring crowd closed in
upon them with murder in their eyes The Englishmen attempted flight,
Captain Douglas flinging himself into the moat; but he was badly hurt
by his fall, while Mr. Hutchinson was also wounded. As these two were
being carried to the apartments over the palace gateway, Mr. Fraser
made one last effort to appease the multitude; but while in the act
of speaking he was cut down and hewn to pieces. The whole ferocious
crew then rushed to the upper rooms, where Mr. Jennings, the Chaplain,
his daughter, and a young lady friend were tending the wounds of
Captain Douglas and Mr. Hutchinson. Bursting open the doors, the dark,
demoniacal throng poured in and hacked them to pieces. Then the sepoys,
maddened with blood, streamed forth from the palace, and, accompanied
by the scum of the city--the very vilest of mankind--flew to the
European quarters, where they slew, burned, ravished, and raged without
mercy--tossing English babies up on the points of their bayonets, and
committing the most inhuman barbarities on their mothers, of which
the very description would still bring burning tears to the eyes. An
English telegraph clerk heard the awful uproar, but even when the flood
of murder came surging towards him he went on with his work--click,
click, click--flashing his warning message up to the authorities at the
various military stations in the Punjab. “The sepoys,” he wired, “have
come in from Meerut and are burning everything. Mr. Todd is dead, and,
we hear, several Europeans. We must shut up.” The last click died away.
The red-handed rebels burst in, and the staunch, cool-headed signaller
died at his post, as most of his English countrymen did, and all were
prepared to do, on that awful day of blood.
[Illustration: “THE COOL-HEADED SIGNALLER DIED AT HIS POST.”]
Among these Englishmen in Delhi none acted with greater heroism than
Lieutenant Willoughby--a “shy, refined, boyish-looking subaltern,”
scarce capable of saying “Bo!” to a goose in piping times of peace,
though his friends well knew what his spirit could be in the hour
of danger. On this terrible day Willoughby chanced to be in charge
of the magazine, containing vast stores of ammunition which he knew
would be coveted by the mutineers. At once taking in the situation, he
sent for help to Brigadier Graves, who was in command of the native
garrison outside the city in its cantonments; but no help came, and
for the simple reason that at this very time the English officers of
this garrison were being massacred by their mutinous men. Willoughby
could not trust his own native troops, but he had eight of his own
countrymen, whom he knew to be as staunch as steel--Lieutenants
Forrest and Raynor, Conductors (_i.e._ warrant-officers of the
Ordnance Department) Buckley, Shaw, and Scully; Sub-Conductor Crow;
and Sergeants Edwards and Stewart. Barricading the outer gates of the
magazine, Willoughby placed guns there, double-charged with grape,
which made the mutineers pause: but not for long.
Encouraged by the reports of their scouts, who had been sent out to see
whether there was yet any prospect of English succour arriving from
Meerut, they at last sent to demand the surrender of the magazine, “in
the name of the King of Delhi,” who had meanwhile assumed the title of
Sovereign of all Hindostan. To this insulting request only one answer
was possible--none at all. Then the red-handed hordes of murderers
came on against the magazine with ladders to scale the walls, and were
mown down by the grape-shot of Willoughby’s guns. But the gaps made in
their ranks were swiftly filled by fresh men swarming up the ladders,
and within fifty yards they poured upon the “noble nine” Englishmen
below a deadly shower of bullets. Two of them fell mortally wounded,
but Forrest and Buckley, heedless of the leaden hail, continued to
work their guns with a coolness as if on parade. At last they were
struck--one in the hand and another in the head, and the guns could now
be worked no longer. A loud shout of triumph rose from the mutineers,
but this was shouting before they were out of the wood.
Willoughby saw that his case was now indeed desperate. He had kept
the rebels at bay for about three hours, during which time he had
repeatedly run to the bastion to strain his eyes and see whether he
could discern the coming of any English help from Meerut. But neither
from Meerut nor from the cantonments outside the city walls did any
help make its appearance; and now the rebels were bursting in upon
him in a roaring, bloodthirsty crowd. His countrymen at Meerut had
not been true to him; but he would be true to himself. Foreseeing the
possibility of his defences being forced, he had taken other measures
of precaution. A train had been laid from the powder store to a tree
standing in the magazine yard, and by this tree stood Conductor Scully,
who had heroically volunteered to fire the train at a given signal
from his chief. For this signal the time had come when the guns of
Willoughby could no longer be worked. Then he quietly gave the order
to Buckley, who raised his hat to Scully, who in turn fired the train;
and in a moment more the city of Delhi was shaken to its foundations
as with the shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a terrific roar of
thunder and the flames and smoke of a volcano.
Scully fell an immortal martyr to the cause of his country, but with
himself he blew into the air more than a thousand rebels, and, above
all things, baulked the mutineers of their inestimable prey--the
magazine. Four of the “noble nine,” wounded, shattered, and bruised,
made good their retreat from the ruins; but the heroic Willoughby only
survived to be murdered on his way to Meerut. Never has the Victoria
Cross been given for a more heroic deed than the defence and blowing up
of the Delhi magazine; and it was well said that the 300 Spartans, who
in the summer morning sat “combing their long hair for death” in the
passes of Thermopylæ, have not earned a loftier estimate for themselves
than these nine modern Englishmen.
While the fight for the magazine had been going on, a tragedy of equal
horror was taking place at the Cashmere Gate, and in the cantonments
beyond the city walls. At both these places the sepoys had shot down
or bayoneted their English officers, and when the magazine blew up,
the natives of the 38th Regiment, throwing off the mask, suddenly
fired a volley at their officers, three of whom fell dead. “Two of the
survivors,” writes an historian of that awful time, “rushed up to the
bastion of the main guard and jumped down thirty feet into the ditch
below. The rest were following, when, hearing the shrieks of the women
in the guard-room, they ran back under a storm of bullets to rescue
them. The women were shuddering as they looked down the steep bank, and
asking each other whether it would be possible to descend, when a round
shot whizzing over their heads warned them not to hesitate. Fastening
their belts and handkerchiefs together, the officers let themselves
down, and then, having helped the women to follow, carried them with
desperate struggles, up the opposite side,” whence the fugitives could
reach the jungle. At the cantonments the fate of the English--women,
children, and a few surviving officers--was something similar, and then
began that piteous flight, with all its frightful sufferings, which
hardened the hearts of the British to inflict a terrible revenge.
Meanwhile, in the city of Delhi itself rebellion was triumphant and
merciless. All the Europeans that could be found were massacred and
tortured in the most barbarous manner. Some fifty of them at the first
sound of alarm had barricaded themselves--men and women--in one of the
strongest houses of the English quarter. But they were ill-armed and
without supplies, and what could they do against the furious rabble
or ruffians who besieged them? They were dragged to the palace and
lodged in a dungeon without windows, and with only one door. After
five days these were all taken out into a courtyard and butchered in
cold blood, their mangled bodies being piled on carts and thrown into
the Jumna. That was on the 16th May--five days after the arrival of
the mutineers from Meerut; and now Delhi had been cleansed of its last
Christian. Murder and rapine, arson and outrages which cannot even be
named, had done their fell work, and the English _Raj_, or rule,
had been trampled underfoot no less at Delhi than at Cawnpore, Lucknow,
and other centres of revolt. The climax of the rebellion had now been
reached, but there still had to come the inevitable anti-climax. The
blood of hundreds of English men, and women, and children, wantonly
slaughtered, was crying aloud for vengeance, and a terrible vengeance
it would be.
The mill-wheels of God, it has been said, grind slowly if surely;
but rarely had they turned round so slowly as they now seemed to be
doing after the terrible news from Delhi reached Meerut and the chief
places in the Punjab. The mutiny had broken out so suddenly that the
authorities were at first quite unable to cope with it, and precious
time had to elapse before the army of retribution could be got to
take the road. But meanwhile a cheerful and plucky spirit prevailed
both amongst officers and men, notwithstanding all their fatigues,
privation, and sickness; and if there was one man more than another,
as his brother afterwards wrote of him, who helped to inspire and keep
up this spirit--if there was one more than another who merited that
which a Roman would have considered the highest praise, that he never
despaired of his country--it was Lieutenant Hodson, of the 1st Bengal
Fusiliers, formerly of the Guides. “I can but rejoice,” he wrote,
“that I am employed again; certain, too, as I am, that the star of Old
England will shine brighter in the end, and we shall hold a prouder
position than ever. The crisis is an awful one, but with God and our
Saxon arms to aid us, I have firm faith in the result.”
“Hodson is at Umballa, I know,” wrote an officer at Meerut; “and I’ll
bet he will force his way through, and open up communication between
the Commander-in-Chief and ourselves. At about 3 o’clock that night
I heard my advanced sentries firing. I rode off to see what was the
matter, and they told me that a part of the enemy’s cavalry was
approaching their post. When day broke in galloped Hodson! He had left
Kurnal (seventy-five miles off) at 9 o’clock the night before, with one
led horse and an escort of Sikh cavalry, and, as I anticipated, here he
was with despatches for Wilson! How I quizzed him for approaching an
armed post at night without knowing the parole! Hodson rode straight
to Wilson, had his interview, a bath, breakfast, and two hours’ sleep,
and then rode back the seventy-five miles, having to fight his way for
about thirty miles of the distance.” It was no wonder that another
officer, writing to his wife at this time, said: “Hodson’s gallant
deeds more resemble a chapter from the life of Bayard or Amadis de Gaul
than the doings of a subaltern of the nineteenth century. The only
feeling mixed with admiration for him is envy.” “The pace pleased him”
(the Commander-in-Chief, General Anson), wrote Hodson himself, “for he
ordered me to raise a Corps of Irregular Horse, and appointed me its
commandant.”
At last, after a delay which nearly fretted to death the hearts of
men like Hodson, the bulk of the army of vengeance started from
Umballa under General Anson, who was presently, however, stricken down
with cholera and carried off. He was succeeded by General Sir Henry
Barnard in the chief command of the Delhi field force, consisting of
only three Brigades, totalling about 3,000 Europeans, 1,000 native
troops, and twenty-two guns--a poor enough army, surely, to be sent to
recapture Delhi, with its hordes of highly-disciplined and well-armed
sepoys behind its cannon-bristling walls. The plan of operations was
that the two Umballa Brigades should advance to Baghput, where they
would be joined by the Meerut Brigade, under Archdale Wilson, and then
sweep on to the work of vengeance at Delhi. As it was the hottest
season of the year, with its burning suns and blistering airs, the
men rested in their tents during the day, and marched by night. “The
nights were delicious,” wrote one who took part in the campaign; “the
stars bright in the deep dark sky, the fireflies flashing from bush
to bush, and the air, which in Europe would have been called warm and
close, was cool and refreshing to cheeks that had felt the hot wind
during the day. Along the road came the heavy roll of the guns, mixed
with the jingling of bits, and the clanking of the steel scabbards of
the cavalry. The infantry marched on behind with a dull, deep tread;
long lines of baggage-camels and bullock-carts, with the innumerable
sutlers and camp-servants, toiled along for miles in the rear, while
the gigantic elephants stalked over bush and stone by the side of the
road.”
[Illustration:
[_Photo.: Frith, Reigate._
JUMMA MUSJID, DELHI.]
The Meerut Brigade, being much nearer Delhi, set out on its march some
days later than the Umballa force, and it had to fight its desperate
way to the point of junction. After three nights’ marching the Meerut
column, at dawn on May 30th, reached the village of Ghazi-ud-din-Nagar,
near the river Hindun, about ten miles from Delhi; and here the bugler
had barely time to call to arms when the rebels opened fire with heavy
guns placed on a ridge. “The first few rounds from the insurgent guns,”
wrote an eye-witness, “were admirably aimed, plunging through our camp;
but they were ably replied to by our two eighteen-pounders in position,
under Lieutenant Light, and Major Tombs’ troop, most admirably led by
Lieutenant-Colonel Murray-Mackenzie, who, raking them in flank with
his six-pounders, first made their fire unsteady, and in a short time
silenced the heavy guns.” At the same time the 60th Rifles went for the
rebels in a most spirited manner, and captured several of their heavy
guns. But in doing so Captain Andrews and four of his men were blown up
by the explosion of an ammunition waggon fired by one of the mutineers.
The 6th Dragoon Guards, or Carabineers, then charged and completed the
rout of the rebels, who left in the hands of their victors all their
ordnance, ammunition, and stores. That night the officers drank in
solemn silence to the memory of their brave departed comrades, who were
buried at dawn beside a babool tree.
[Illustration: “THE OFFICERS THEN, HAVING HELPED THE
WOMEN TO FOLLOW, CARRIED THEM UP THE OPPOSITE SIDE.”
(_p._ 123).]
Next day, which was Whit-Sunday, the rebels again returned to the
attack, for they had been taunted with cowardice on presenting
themselves at Delhi, and reinforced in order that they might redeem
their reputation by hurling back the advancing force of Feringhees,
or hated Franks--the name by which the English were known in India.
But again the hurling back was all on the side of the sepoys, and once
again they were sent scampering home to Delhi, though the English, at
death’s door almost with the scorching heat and their parching thirst,
were unable to follow up this second victory of theirs by pursuit.
Twenty-three of the enemy lay together in one ditch, and for three
miles the road to Delhi was strewn with dead bodies. The English had to
mourn the loss of four officers and fifty men--among the former being
Napier, an ensign of the Rifles, so active, so full of life, so brave,
that he won the love and admiration of all. A bullet struck his leg,
and the moment he was brought into camp it had to be amputated. During
the operation never a sigh betrayed any sensation of pain. “I shall
never lead the Rifles again,” he plaintively murmured; “I shall never
lead the Rifles again.” A few weeks later the brave and generous lad
was laid in his grave.
Next day the Meerut Brigade, which had done all the fighting hitherto,
was reinforced by a battalion of Goorkhas, who were so overjoyed at the
prospect of another fight that they threw somersaults and cut capers
like so many mountebanks. But, much to their disappointment, the enemy
did not return. Six days later the whole Meerut force crossed the Jumna
and joined General Barnard’s Umballa Brigade at Alipur, being loudly
cheered as they marched into headquarters camp with the captured guns
and other trophies of their victories.
A day or two previously the intrepid Hodson had again been on the
war-path. It was impossible for Barnard to move forward on Delhi
without knowing something of the positions of the rebels in front of
the city, and who but Hodson should volunteer to ride on and discover
all that his commander wished to know! Taking with him a few troopers,
he rode, as he wrote, “right up to the Delhi parade-ground, and the
few Sowars (or native horsemen) whom I met galloped away like mad at
the sight of one white face. Had I had a hundred Guides with me I
would have gone up to the very walls.” A day or two later (8th July)
he wrote:--“Here we are, safe and sound, after having driven the enemy
out of their position in the cantonments up to and into the walls of
Delhi. I write a line in pencil on the top of a drum to say that I am
mercifully untouched, and none the worse for a very hard morning’s
work. Our loss has been considerable, the rebels having been driven
from their guns at the point of the bayonet.”
This was a reference to the battle of Badli-Ki-Serai, where the 75th
(Stirlingshire) Regiment and the 60th Rifles again carried the day by
a magnificent bayonet charge, though at a cost of 53 killed and 130
wounded, while the rebel loss amounted to about 1,000. The British loss
had been severe; but the victory was worth the price, for the enemy had
now been forced to surrender to their conqueror a commanding position,
from which he could attack them with the greatest advantage, and the
rebels had been driven ignominiously by a force far inferior to their
own to take refuge within the walls of the city from which they had but
lately expelled every Christian whom they had not slaughtered.
So here then, at last, on the 8th of June, our tiny British force had
established itself in front of walled and embattled Delhi. Had anything
so audacious, not to say impudent, ever been heard of before in the
annals of warfare? Troy, surely, was mere child’s play to this, and
Sebastopol a game of battledore. But weakness of numbers can sometimes
be made up for by strength of inspiration; and every British soldier
felt his heart swell to the size of that of twenty men when he looked
around the cantonments before Delhi and beheld the still extant traces
of the late massacre of his countrymen--the marks of blood, the broken
furniture, the blackened walls, the shreds of ladies’ dresses, and even
the locks of their hair, and, more maddening than all, the tiny boots
of English babies who had been barbarously slaughtered and tossed up
on the bayonets of the rebels. What the British soldiers, heroically
strong in their numerical weakness, now longed with a fierce and
overmastering desire to do was to cross bayonets with those incarnate
fiends whom they had already swept back behind the walls of Delhi.
These walls, with a circumference of about seven miles, were made of
large blocks of grey freestone, crowned by a good loopholed parapet.
At intervals along the circumference they were provided with bastions,
each armed with ten, twelve, or fourteen guns, a hundred and fourteen
in all, in addition to sixty field-guns. The city had ten gates,
strong, and aptly named after the cities or provinces towards which
they opened--Cashmere, Cabul, Lahore, etc. The walls were about
twenty-four feet in height, while in front ran a dry ditch, twenty-five
feet wide and about twenty feet deep. The counter-scarp--_i.e._
the outer side of the ditch--and the glacis, or smooth open slope
leading away from the edge of the ditch, were such as to move the
admiration of the English engineers. One side of the city, the eastern,
was washed by the broad and deep Jumna, and could not be thought of.
On the other hand, with his tiny force, it was equally impossible for
Barnard to invest the whole place. So he selected the northern front of
the city as the object of his attack when he should be in possession of
heavy enough siege-artillery to breach the wall and let in the avenging
flood.