THE INDIAN MUTINY
In the early part of 1857 I was stationed at Cork Harbour in command
of a few men on Spike Island, a period of tranquillity after all the
anxieties of the great Crimean war. The tranquillity, however, was not
destined to last very long. One day towards the end of May I crossed
the harbour to call on a gentleman in the neighbourhood who had just
returned from Cork, and on my asking if there was any news, he said
that a remarkable telegram had been received from India that a native
regiment at Meerut had killed its English officers and was marching on
Delhi. That was the first news of the great Mutiny. It also stated that
the natives in parts of India were passing chew-patties from village
to village. What was a chew-patty? Nobody could tell us. It turned out
to be a sort of pancake; but why the natives should specially pass
round pancakes, and presumably eat them, as a signal of rebellion no
one could explain. Week after week the news became more serious, and
troops of all arms were sent off in large numbers round the Cape.
Towards the end of July, being in London, I received information that
the Duke of Cambridge had appointed me Assistant Adjutant-General of
the batteries of Royal Artillery, then on their voyage; and about the
middle of August I left _viâ_ Egypt. There was, of course, no Suez
canal in those days, and the railway from Alexandria only went as far
as Cairo.
Generals Dupuis and Windham, and many other officers, were of the
party; and from Cairo we had to cross the desert (about ninety miles)
in uncomfortable carriages like bathing machines. There was no steamer
at Suez, and we were detained a week at that dismal village of the
desert, receiving occasional news that matters were becoming worse
and worse in India. The only hotel was crowded with English officers,
with little to eat and not a drop of water except what was brought in
skins on camels from the Nile, nearly 100 miles away. At last, however,
the 'Bentinck' arrived, carried us slowly down the Red Sea, with the
thermometer at 96 degrees; in a week we were at Aden, thermometer still
rising, and ten days afterwards at Galle. At Madras we heard of the
fall of Delhi, and on October 5 our long voyage in the 'Bentinck' came
to an end, and we steamed up the Hoogly to Calcutta. Several years
afterwards, when inspecting the defences of the river with Sir William
Mansfield, the Commander-in-Chief, we came across the wreck of the
'Bentinck' lying in a field at some distance from shore, and found that
a short time previously she had been caught by a tidal wave called 'a
great bore,' and was thrown up high and dry in the field. In the course
of my career I have occasionally met a great bore, but never to be so
completely stranded as was the case with the old steamer.
Matters were in a somewhat critical condition on our arrival at
Calcutta, for although the fall of Delhi had given a severe blow to the
mutineers, still we had no force of much strength to take the field;
and the garrison of Lucknow under Outram and Havelock, with many women
and children, were entirely surrounded, mere scraps of intelligence
only arriving from them occasionally. I had several interviews with Sir
Colin Campbell, who was very anxious to collect a sufficient force for
the relief of Lucknow. During October troops of all arms arrived in
quick succession after a three months' voyage round the Cape, but the
great difficulty was transport. The railway extended to Raneegunge, 120
miles up country, but beyond that point our means only enabled us to
push forward about 100 men a day, either in bullock carts or by march.
Another difficulty was the provision of horses for the artillery. In
fact, the whole of Central India from Delhi to Lucknow was practically
in the possession of the mutineers, who fortunately had no generals
to lead them, and were content for the most part to hover about and
pillage as they could. Slowly, however, as our forces in a long thin
line marched upwards towards Allahabad and Cawnpore, the tide began to
turn, and on October 27 the Commander-in-Chief left Calcutta for the
North.
The general conditions of the Mutiny campaign formed, indeed, a
striking contrast to those of the Crimean war. In the latter case,
the allied armies--English, French, Sardinian, and Turkish--amounting
to nearly 200,000 men, had been virtually shut up in a corner, and
compelled to fight a series of battles on the same ground, in order
to gain possession of the Russian stronghold. In the present instance
the circumstances were all the other way. A vast continent was in a
great measure over-run, and its munitions and military stores were
temporarily in the hands of a great mutinous army, more or less in
sympathy with the inhabitants; whilst the English troops in small
scattered detachments, often hundreds of miles apart, were fighting a
succession of battles, with their communications precarious, and for
the moment without the power of concentration.
To a stranger landing in India for the first time, knowing nothing of
the language or the customs of the people, more especially in the
middle of a revolution, there were many minor personal perplexities,
especially about servants. Their very titles were embarrassing.
Bearers, kitmagars, dhobies, durzees, bheesties, chuprassies,
punkah-wallahs, hookahbadars, syces, and others. What were their
duties? That was the point. Because in India, as we soon found, one
man will only do his own mite of work, and scorns the idea of making
himself generally useful. Any attempt to enlarge the sphere of their
duties would lead, so we were told, to loss of caste. There were, of
course, exceptional cases, such as that of the native servant who, on
being asked by a new-comer as to his caste, replied, 'Same caste as
master, drink brandy sahib.' Owing to the great influx of officers from
home, all in a hurry to be off, servants were especially difficult
to find. I was fortunate enough to get an old fellow whose name was
Buktum Hassan to take care of me. He could not speak a word of English,
and slept away his time on a mat outside my door. I believe he was a
bearer, and a Hindoo, but he would not come near me at dinner time.
Subsequently I procured another servant, who condescended to wait on
me at dinner, but I was cautioned not on any account to eat ham in
his presence. Curry and rice he did not object to. Two Sepoys, also,
were appropriated for my service as orderlies. They were tall, dark,
spare men, and all day waited patiently in the corridor in uniform,
strictly buttoned up, with belts and boots. The first evening they said
something, which being interpreted was that they wished to go home:
they then proceeded to take off all their clothes, except a loin cloth,
made them up into a bundle, and leaving them in a corner of my room,
marched happily away.
The greater portion of the batteries from England having arrived,
General Dupuis and his staff followed the Commander-in-Chief up country
on November 12. The journey to Benares occupied five days, and from
Raneegunge we were conveyed in dawk gharries about eighty miles a day,
passing on the road every few hours detachments of troops of all arms,
hurrying forward, some in bullock carts, some on the march. Portions
of the road, especially near the river Soane, were unsafe from the
vicinity of straggling parties of mutineers, and we had to be protected
occasionally by an escort.
Remaining a few hours in a bungalow outside Benares, we found time
to pay a hurried visit to this celebrated city. As an instance of
the precarious nature of our long line of communications, it may be
mentioned that although its inhabitants were in a restless, disaffected
condition, the garrison only consisted of a weak company of infantry
and two field guns. On the morning after our arrival I was informed
that 'the elephant was at the door,' in readiness to take us into the
city. It had no howdah, so we climbed up and sat on a large stuffed
mattress. The environs consisted of tombs, temples, ruins, mosques, and
gardens. The streets were crammed with people, and with little Brahminy
bulls wandering about; in some parts the elephant was too wide for the
narrow, tortuous passages, so that we had to dismount and walk. In one
Hindoo temple which we visited, a fanatic, or possibly a lunatic, was
seated in a niche. He was quite naked and covered with dust, but, oddly
enough, had a fuschia flower lying on the top of his shaven head. He
sat perfectly mute and still, and took no apparent notice of anybody,
so that it was impossible to ascertain what object he expected to
accomplish by so sedentary and monotonous an existence.
We were rather a large party at the hotel bungalow, some being officers
newly arrived and others who had served for years in the country, and
who were very good natured in giving us information. Colonel David
Wood, of the Horse Artillery, was one of the newcomers, and had a habit
occasionally of assuming ignorance on minor points which perhaps was
not always genuine. During dinner he turned gravely to one of the old
Indian officers and said, 'Can you tell me, what is a dhobie?' They
all laughed, and it was explained that a dhobie was a man who washed
your clothes. Wood, still quite grave, said: 'Oh, that accounts for
the difficulty. I told mine to clean my horse, and he refused. I will
discharge him tomorrow.' The old Indian officer, however, assured him
that a dhobie was absolutely necessary. Wood replied that he never
required washing on active service. 'You must surely have your shirts
washed,' was the rejoinder. 'Not at all,' said Wood. 'I always wear a
flannel shirt in the field, and as soon as it gets dirty or worn out I
throw it away and put on another.'