movement, as it points more or less obscurely to the ulterior purposes
of the mutineers, and the temper in which they pursue those purposes.
In a newspaper of Saturday, August 15, we observe the following
sentence introductory to a most unsatisfactory discussion of the
Indian revolt:--'The mutiny in India, from the uninterrupted nature of
its progress, and its rapid spread through every considerable station,
shows a power of combination and determination which has never before
been given credit for to the native Indian mind.' This passage is
cited by us, not for anything plausible in its views, but for the
singular felicity of contradiction which fortunately it offers to
every indication of the true disposable ability that is now, or ever
has been, at the service of the insurgents. This, indeed, is rapidly
becoming of very subordinate importance; since the ablest rebel,
without an army, must be contemptible enough. But with a view to the
larger question--What quality of opposition is ever likely to be
brought into play against us, not in merely military displays, but in
the secret organisation of plots and local tumults, propagated over
extensive provinces? Some degree of anxiety is reasonable under any
possible condition of the army; and this being so, it is satisfactory
to observe, now in 1857, the same childishness and defect of plan and
coherent purpose as have ever characterised the oriental mind. No
foresight has been exhibited; no concert between remote points; no
preparation; no tendency towards combined action. And, on the other
hand, it is most justly noticed by a new London paper, of the same
date--namely, the _People_--that it is perfectly dazzling to the mind
to review over the whole face of India, under almost universal
desertion, the attitude of erectness and preparation assumed by the
scattered parties of our noble countrymen--'everywhere' (says the
_People_) 'driven to bay, and everywhere turning upon and scattering
all assailants. From all parts is the same tale. No matter how small
the amount of the British force may be, if it were but a captain's
company, it holds its own.' On the other hand, what single success
have the rebels achieved? Most valiant, no doubt, they have shown
themselves in hacking to pieces poor fugitive women, most intrepid in
charging a column of infants. Else, what have they to show? Delhi is
the solitary post which they have for the moment secured; but even
that through the incomprehensible failure of the authorities at
Meerut, and not through any vigour manifested by themselves. Any
uneasiness which still possesses the minds of close observers fastens
upon these two points--first, upon the disarmings, as distinguished
from the desertions; secondly, upon the amount, and probable
equipment, and supposed route of stragglers. It is now said that the
mutiny has burned itself out from mere defect of fuel; there _can_ be
no more revolts of sepoys, seeing that no sepoys now remain to revolt;
that is, of the Bengal force. But in this general statement a great
distinction is neglected. Regiments once disarmed, if also _stripped
of their private arms_, whether deserters or not, are of slight
account; but the grave question is this--how many of (say seventy)
regiments have gone off _previously_ to the disarming. Even in that
case, the most favourable for _them_ where arms are secured, it is
true that ammunition will very soon fail them; but still their
bayonets will be available; and we believe that the East India
infantry carry swords. A second anxiety connects itself with the vast
number of vagrant marauding soldiers, having power to unite, and to
assail small detached stations or private bungalows. Yet, again, in
cases known specially to ourselves, the inhabitants of such small
insulated stations had rapidly fortified the buildings best fitted for
defence. Already, by the 18th of May, in a station not far from Delhi,
this had been effected; every native servant, male or female, had been
discharged instantly; and perhaps they would be able to strengthen
themselves with artillery. The horrors also of the early murders at
Delhi would be likely to operate beneficially, by preventing what
otherwise is sure to happen--namely, the disposition to relax in
vigilance as first impressions wear off. Considering, upon the whole,
the amount of regiments that may be assumed as absolutely disarmed and
neutralised; and, on the other hand, counting the 5000 and upwards of
troops intercepted on their route to Hong-Kong, and adding these to at
least 25,000 of Queen's troops previously in the country, counting
also the faithful section of the Sikhs, the Ghoorkas, and others that
could be relied on, the upshot must be, that at least 40,000 troops of
the best quality are scattered between the Hoogly and the Sutlege (or,
in other words, between Calcutta and Loodiana[59]). Beyond a few
casual outrages on some small scale, we hope that no more of bloody
tragedies can be _now_ (August 25) apprehended. But we, that have dear
friends in Bengal, must, for weeks to come, feel restless and anxious.
Still, this is a great mitigation of the horror that besieged our
anticipations six weeks ago.
[Footnote 59: '_Loodiana_:'--The very last station in Bengal, on going
westwards to the Indus. In Runjeet Singh's time this was for many
years the station at which we lodged our Affghan pensioner, the Shah
Soojah--too happy, had he never left his Loodiana lodgings.]
But, having thrown a glance at the shifting aspects of the danger, now
let us alight for a moment on the cause of this dreadful outbreak. We
have no separate information upon this part of the subject, but we
have the results of our own vigilant observations upon laying this
and that together; and so much we will communicate. From the first, we
have rejected incredulously the immoderate effects ascribed to the
greased cartridges; and not one rational syllable is there in the
pretended rumours about Christianising the army. Not only is it
impossible that folly so gross should maintain itself against the
unremitting evidence of facts, all tending in the opposite direction;
but, moreover, under any such idle solution as this, there would still
remain another point unaccounted for, and _that_ is the frantic hatred
borne towards ourselves by many of the rebellious troops. Some of our
hollow friends in France, Belgium, &c., profess to read in this hatred
an undeniable inference that we must have treated the sepoys harshly,
else how explain an animosity so deadly. To that argument we have a
very brief answer, such as seems decisive. The Bengalese sepoy,[60]
when most of all pressed for some rational explanation of his fury,
never once thought of _this_ complaint; besides which, it is too
notorious that our fault has always lain the other way. Heavily
criminal, in fact, we had been by our lax discipline; and in
particular, the following most scandalous breach of discipline must
have been silently connived at for years by British authorities.
Amongst the outward forms of respect between man and man, there is
none that has so indifferently belonged to all nations, as the act of
rising from a sedentary posture for the purpose of expressing respect.
Most other forms of respect have varied with time and with place. The
ancient Romans, for instance, never bowed; and amongst orientals, you
are thought to offer an insult if you uncover your head. In this
little England of ours, who could fancy two stout men curtseying to
each other? Yet this they did, and so recently as in Shakspere's days.
To use his words, they 'crook'd the pregnant hinges of the knee.'
Sometimes they curtseyed with the right knee singly, sometimes with
both, as did Romeo to the fiery Tybalt. Many and rapid, therefore,
were the changes in ceremonial forms, at least with us, the changeable
men of Christendom; else how could it happen that, two hundred and
fifty years back, men of rank in England should have saluted each
other by forms that now would be thought to indicate lunacy? And yet,
violent as the spirit of change might otherwise be, one thing never
changed--the expression of respect between man and man by rising from
their seats.
'Utque viro sancto _chorus assurrexerit_ omnis'
is a record belonging to the eldest of days; and that it belonged not
to the eldest times only, but also to the highest rank, is involved in
a memorable anecdote from the last days of Julius Cæsar. He, the
mighty dictator--
'Yes, he, the foremost man of all this world'--
actually owed his assassination, under one representation, to the
burning resentment of his supposed aristocratic hauteur in a public
neglect of this very form. A deputation of citizens, on a matter of
business, had found him seated, and to their immeasurable disgust, he
had made no effort even to rise. His friends excused him on the
allegation, whether true or not, that at the moment he was physically
incapacitated from rising by a distressing infirmity. It might be so:
as Shakspere elsewhere observes, the black silk patch knows best
whether there is a wound underneath it. But, if it were _not_ so, then
the imperial man paid the full penalty of his offence, supposing the
rancorous remembrance of that one neglect were truly and indeed what
armed the Ides of March against his life. But, were this story as
apocryphal as the legends of our nurseries, still the bare possibility
that 'the laurelled majesty'[61] of that mighty brow should have been
laid low by one frailty of this particular description--this
possibility recalls us clamorously to the treasonable character of
such an insolence, when practised systematically for the last eighteen
months by a Pagan hound, by a sepoy from Lucknow or Benares, towards
his British commanding officer. Shall it have been possible that the
founder of the Roman empire died for having ignored the decencies of
human courtesy, perhaps through momentary inattention, by wandering of
thoughts, or by that collapse of energy which sometimes steps between
our earnest intentions and their fulfilment--this man, so august,
shall he have expiated by a bloody death one fleeting moment of
forgetfulness? and yet, on the other hand, under our Indian
government, the lowest of our servants, a mass of carrion from a
brotherhood of Thugs, shall have had free license to insult the
leaders of the army which finds bread for him and his kindred? That
the reader may understand what it is that we are talking of--not very
long ago, in one of the courts-martial occasioned by some explosions
of tentative insubordination preliminary to the grand revolt, a
British officer, holding the rank of lieutenant, made known to the
court, that through the last twelve or eighteen months he had been
struck and shocked by one alarming phenomenon within the cantonments
of the sepoys: formerly, on his entering the lines, the men had risen
respectfully from their seats as he walked along; but since 1854, or
thereabouts, they had insolently looked him in the face, whilst
doggedly retaining their seats. Now this was a punishable breach of
discipline, which in our navy _would_ be punished without fail. Even a
little middy, fresh from the arms of his sisters or his nurse, and who
does not bear any royal commission, as an ensign or cornet in the
army, is thus supported in the performance of his duty, and made
respectable in the eyes of his men, though checked in all explosions
of childish petulance--even to this child, as an officer in command,
respect is exacted; and on the finest arena of discipline ever
exhibited to the world, it is habitually felt that from open
disrespect to the ruin of all discipline the steps of descent are
rapid. This important fact in evidence as to the demeanour of the
sepoy, throws a new light upon the whole revolt. Manifestly it had
been moulding and preparing itself for the last two years, or more.
And those authorities who had tolerated Colonel Wheler for months,
might consistently tolerate this presumption in the sepoy for a year.
[Footnote 60: For the sake of readers totally unacquainted with the
subject, it may be as well to make an explanation or two. The East
India regiments generally run to pretty high numbers--1000 or 1200.
The _high_ commissioned officers, as the captain, lieutenant, &c., are
always British; but the _non-commissioned_ officers are always native
Hindoos--that is, sepoys. For instance, the _naïk_, or corporal; the
_havildar_, or serjeant:--even of the _commissioned_ officers, the
_lowest_ are unavoidably native, on account of the native private.
Note that _sepoy_, as colloquially it is called, but _sipahee_, as in
books it is often written, does not mean Hindoo or Hindoo soldier, but
is simply the Hindoo word for _soldier_.]
[Footnote 61: '_The laurelled majesty_,' &c.:--A flying reference to a
grand expression--_majestas laurea frontis_--which occurs in a Latin
supplement to the _Pharsalia_ by May, an English poet, contemporary
with the latter days of Shakspere.]
* * * * *
We had, in reliance upon receiving fuller materials for discussion by
the Eastern mail _arriving_ in the middle of August, promised by
anticipation two heads for our review, which, under the imperfect
explanations received, we are compelled to defer. Meantime, upon each
of these two heads we shall point the attention of our readers to one
or two important facts, First, as regards the sepoy revolt considered
in relation to the future pecuniary burdens on the Bengal exchequer,
it ought to be remembered, that, if (according to a very loose report)
the Company shall finally be found to have lost twenty millions of
rupees, or two millions sterling, by the looting of many local
treasuries, it will, on the other hand, have saved, upon forfeited
pay, and (which is much more important) upon, forfeited pensions, in
coming years, a sum nearly corresponding. Secondly, this _loot_ or
plunder must have served the public interest in a variety of ways. It
must have cramped the otherwise free motions of the rebels; must have
given multiplied temptations to desertion; must have instilled
jealousies of each other, and want of cordial co-operation in regard
to the current plans, and oftentimes murderous animosities in regard
to past transactions--divisions of spoil, or personal competitions.
Thus far, if nothing had been concerned more precious than money, it
is by no means clear that the _public_ service (as distinct from the
interest of private individuals, whose property has been destroyed)
will be found to have very seriously suffered.
The other head, which concerns the probable relation of this
astonishing revolt to the wisdom of our late Indian administration,
finds us, for the present, enveloped in a mystery the most
impenetrable that history, in any of its darkest chapters, has
offered. We have a war on foot with Southern China, or rather with
Canton; and what may be the Chinese object in that war, is hitherto an
impenetrable mystery. But darker and more unfathomable is the mystery
which invests the sepoy insurrection. Besides the notorious fact that
no grievances, the very slightest, have been alleged, it must also be
remembered that we first and solely made a provision for the invalided
and for the superannuated soldier--a thing unheard of throughout Asia.
And this golden reversion, the poor infatuated savages have _wilfully_
renounced! The sole _sure_ result, from this most suicidal of revolts,
is--that unpitied myriads of sepoys will be bayonetted, thousands will
be hanged, and nearly all will lose their pensions.
II.
PASSING NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.
(_October, 1857._)
An English historian--one amongst many--of our British India, having
never happened to visit any part of that vast region, nor, indeed, any
part of the East, founded upon that accident a claim to a very
favourable distinction. It was, Mr. Mill argued, desirable--it was a
splendid advantage--NOT to have seen India. This advantage he singly,
amongst a crowd of coming rivals and precursors, might modestly plead;
and to that extent he pretended to a precedency amongst all his
competitors.
The whole claim, and the arguments which supported it, wore the aspect
of a paradox; and a paradox it certainly was--but not, therefore, a
falsehood. A paradox, as I have many times explained, or proposition
contradicting the _doxa_ or public opinion, not only may be true, but
often has been the leading truth in capital struggles of opinion. Not
only the true doctrine, but also, in some branches of science, the
very fundamental doctrine, that which at this day furnishes a
foundation to all the rest, originally came forward as a violent and
revolting, paradox.[62] It is possible enough, therefore, that the
Indian historiographer may have been right, and not merely speciously
ingenious. It is something of a parallel case, which we may all have
known through the candid admissions of the Duke of Wellington, that
the battle of Waterloo might by possibility have been reported as
satisfactorily, on the 18th of June, 1815, from the centre of London
smoke, as from the centre of that Belgian smoke which sat in heavy
clouds throughout the day upon the field of battle. Now and then, it
is true, these Belgian clouds drew up in solemn draperies, and
revealed the great tragic spectacle lying behind them for a brief
interval. But they closed up again, and what the spectator saw through
these fugitive openings would have availed him little indeed, unless
in so far as it was extended and interpreted by _information_ issuing
from the British staff. But this information would have been not less
material and effectual towards a history of the mighty battle, if
furnished to a man sitting in a London drawing-room, than if furnished
to a reporter watching as an eye-witness at Hougoumont.
[Footnote 62: This truth, for the sake of making it more impressive, I
threw long ago into this antithetic form; and I will not scruple, out
of any fear that I may be reproached with repeating myself, to place
it once again on record:--'Not _that_ only is strictly a paradox,
which, being false, is popularly regarded as true;' but that also, and
in a prodigiously greater extent, which, being true, is popularly
regarded as false.]
This one Waterloo illustration, if thoughtfully applied, might yield a
justification for the paradoxical historian. Much more, therefore,
might it yield a justification for us at home, who, sitting at ten
thousand miles' distance, take upon us to better the Indian reports
written on the spot, to correct their errors of haste, or to improve
them by showing the inferences which they authorise. We, who write
upon the awful scenes of India at far-distant stations, do not so
truly enjoy _unequal_ advantages, as we enjoy varying and _dissimilar_
advantages.
According to the old proverb, the bystander sees more of the game than
those who share too closely in its passions. And assuredly, if it were
asked, what it is that we who write upon Indian news aspire to effect,
I may reply frankly, that, if but by a single suggestion any one of us
should add something to the illumination of the great sepoy
conspiracy--whether as to its ultimate purpose, or as to its
machinery, or as to its wailing hopes, or if but by the merest trifle
any one of us should take away something from the load of anxious
terrors haunting the minds of all who have relations in India--that
man will have earned his right to occupy the public ear. For my own
part, I will not lose myself at present, when so much darkness
prevails on many leading questions, in any views too large and
theoretic for our present condition of light. And that I may not be
tempted into doing so, I will proceed without regard to any systematic
order, taking up, exactly as chance or preponderant interest may offer
them, any urgent questions of the hour, before the progress of events
may antiquate them, or time may exhale their flavour. This desultory
and moody want of order has its attractions for many a state of
nervous distraction. Every tenth reader may happen to share in the
distraction, so far as it has an Indian origin. The same deadly
anxiety on behalf of female relatives, separated from their male
protectors in the centre of a howling wilderness, now dedicated as an
altar to the dark Hindoo goddess of murder, may, in the reader also,
as well as in the writer on Indian news, periodically be called on to
submit to the insurmountable aggravation of delay. In such a case,
what is good for one may be good for another. The same inexpressible
terrors, so long as Nena Sahibs and other miscreant sons of hell are
roaming through the infinite darkness, may prompt the same fretfulness
of spirit; the same deadly irritation and restlessness, which cannot
but sharpen the vision of fear, will sharpen also that of watching
hope, and will continually read elements of consolation or trust in
that which to the uninterested eye offers only a barren blank.
EUROPEANS.
I am not sorry that the first topic, which chance brings uppermost, is
one which overflows with the wrath of inexhaustible disgust. What
fiend of foolishness has suggested to our absurd kinsmen in the East,
through the last sixty years, to generalise themselves under the name
of _Europeans_? As if they were ashamed of their British connections,
and precisely at that moment when they are leaving England, they begin
to assume continental airs; when bidding farewell to Europe, they
begin to style themselves _Europeans_, as if it were a greater thing
to take up a visionary connection with the Continent, than to found a
true and indestructible nobility upon their relationship to the one
immortal island of this planet. There is no known spot of earth which
has exerted upon the rest of the planet one-thousandth part of the
influence which this noble island has exercised over the human
race--exercised through the noblest organs; and yet, behold! these
coxcombs of our own blood have no sooner landed on Indian soil, than
they are anxious to disclaim the connection. Such at least is the
_apparent_ construction of their usage. But mark the illogical
consequences which follow. A noble British regiment suddenly, and for
no rational purpose, receives a new baptism, and becomes a European
regiment. The apologist for this folly will say, that a British
regiment does not necessarily exclude Germans, for instance. But I
answer that it _does_. The British Government have, during this very
month of September, 1857, declared at Frankfort (in answer to
obstinate applications from puppies who fancy that we cannot tame our
rebels without _their_ assistance), '_that the British army, by its
constitution, does not admit foreigners_.' But suppose that accidents
of aristocratic patronage have now and then privately introduced a few
Germans or Swedes into a very few regiments, surely this accident,
improbable already, was not _more_ probable when the regiment was
going away for twenty years (the old term of expatriation) to a
half-year's distance from the Rhine and the Danube. The Germanism of
the regiment might altogether evaporate in the East, but could not
possibly increase. Next, observe this; if we must lose our
nationality, and transmute ourselves into Europeans, for the very
admirable reason that we were going away to climates far remote from
Germany, then, at least, we ought not to call our native troops
_sepoys_, but _Asiatics_. In this way only will there be any logical
parity of antithesis. Scripturally, we are the children of Japheth;
and, as all Asiatics are the sons of Shem, then we shall be able to
mortify their conceit, by calling to their knowledge our biblical
prophecy, that the sons of Japheth shall sit down in the tents of
Shem. But, thirdly, even thus we should find ourselves in a dismal
chaos of incoherences; for what is to become of 'Jack'? Must our
sailors be re-baptised? Must Jack also be a _European_? Think of
Admiral Seymour reporting to the Admiralty as a leader of Europeans!
and exulting in having circumvented Yeh by Her Majesty's European
crews! And then, lastly, come the Marines: must they also qualify for
children of Europe? Was there ever such outrageous folly? One is sure,
in the fine picturesque words of Chaucer, that, 'for very filth and
shame,' neither admiral nor the youngest middy would disgrace himself
by such ridiculous finery from the rag-fair of cosmopolitan swindling.
The real origin of so savage an absurdity is this:--Amongst the
commercial bodies of the three presidencies in all the leading cities,
it became a matter of difficulty often to describe special individuals
in any way legally operative. Your wish was to distinguish him from
the native merchant or banker; but to do this by calling him a British
merchant, &c., was possibly not true, and legally, therefore, not
safe. He might be a Dane, a Russian, or a Frenchman; he was described,
therefore, in a more generalising way, as a European. But a case so
narrow as _that_--a case for pawnbrokers and old clothesmen--ought not
to regulate the usage of great nations. Grand and spirit-stirring
(especially in a land far _distant_ from home) are the recollections
of towns or provinces connected with men's nativities. And poisonous
to all such ancestral inspirations are the rascally devices of shroffs
and money-changers.
DELHI.
That man--I suppose we are all agreed--who commanded in Meerut on
Sunday the tenth day of May, in the year of Christ one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-seven, a day which will furnish an epoch for ever to
the records of civilisation--that man who _could_ have stopped the
bloody kennel of hounds, but did _not_, racing in full cry to the
homes of our unsuspecting brothers and sisters in Delhi--it were good
for that man if he had not been born. He had notice such as might have
wakened the dead early in the afternoon (2 or 3 o'clock P.M., I
believe), and yet, at the end of a long summer day, torchlight found
him barely putting his foot into the stirrup. And why into the stirrup
at all? For what end, on what pretence, should he ever have played out
the ridiculous pantomime and mockery of causing the cavalry to mount?
Two missions there were to execute on that fatal night--first, to save
our noble brothers and sisters at Delhi from a ruin that was destined
to be total; secondly, to inflict instant and critical retribution
upon those who had already opened the carnival of outrage, before they
left Meerut. Oh, heaven and earth! heart so timid was there in all
this world, sense of wrong so callous, as not to leap with frenzy of
joy at so sublime a summons to wield the most impassioned functions of
Providence--namely, hell-born destroyers to destroy in the very
instant of their fancied triumph, and suffering innocence to raise
from the dust in the very crisis of its last despairing prostration.
Reader! it is not exaggeration--many a heart will bear witness in
silence that it is _not_--if I should say that men exist, who would
gladly pay down thirty years of life in exchange for powers so
heavenly for redressing earthly wrongs. To the infamous torpor on that
occasion, and the neglect of the fleeting hour that struck the signal
for delivery and vengeance, are due many hundreds of the piteous
outrages that have since polluted Bengal. Do I mean that, if the rebel
capture of Delhi had been prevented, no subsequent outrages would have
followed? By no means. Other horrors would have been perpetrated; but
that first and greatest (always excepting the case of Cawnpore) would
by all likelihood have been intercepted.[63]
[Footnote 63: Here observe there were 2300 admirable British troops,
and about 700 men of the mutineers, who might then have been attacked
at a great advantage, whilst dispersed on errands of devastation.
Contrast with these proportions the heroic exertions of the noble
Havelock--fighting battle after battle, with perhaps never more than
1700 or 1800 British troops; and having scarcely a gun but what he
captured from the enemy. And what were the numbers of his enemy? Five
thousand in the earlier actions, and 10,000 to 12,000 in the last.]