watching of the revolt, appeared, by any plausible construction of
events, to have been the primal movers in this hideous convulsion?
Individual opinions on this question, and such as could plead a weight
of authority in regard to experience, to local advantages for
conjecture, and to official opportunities for overlooking intercepted
letters, there have been many; and at first (say from May 10 to the
end of June), in the absence of any strong counter-arguments, some of
these were entitled to the full benefit of their _personal_ weight
(such weight, I mean, as could be drawn from the position or from the
known character of him who announced the opinion). But now--namely,
on the 15th of December (or, looking to India, say the 10th of
November)--we are entitled to something weightier. And what _is_ there
which generally would be held weightier? First, there are the
confessions of dying criminals;--I mean, that, logically, we must
reserve such a head, as likely to offer itself sooner or later.
Tempers vary as to obduracy, and circumstances vary. All men will not
share in the obstinacy of partisan pride; or not, by many degrees,
equally. And again, some amongst the many thousands who leave families
will have favours to ask. They all know secretly the perfect
trustworthiness of the British Government. And when matters have come
to a case of choice between a wife and children, in the one scale, and
a fraternity consciously criminal, in the other, it may be judged
which is likely to prevail. What through the coercion of mere
circumstances--what through the entreaties of wife and children,
co-operating with such circumstances--or sometimes through weakness of
nature, or through relenting of compunction--it is not to be doubted
that, as the cohesion of party begins rapidly to relax under
approaching ruin, there will be confessions in abundance. For as yet,
under the timid policy of the sepoys--hardly ever venturing out of
cover, either skulking amongst bushy woodlands, or sneaking into
house-shelter, or slinking back within the range of their great
guns--it has naturally happened that our prisoners have been
exceedingly few. But the decisive battle before Lucknow will tell us
another story. There will at last be cavalry to _reap_ the harvest
when our soldiery have won it. The prisoners will begin to accumulate
by thousands; executions will proceed through week after week; and a
large variety of cases will yield us a commensurate crop of
confessions. These, when they come, will tell us, no doubt, most of
what the sepoys can be supposed to know. But, meantime, how much is
_that_? Too probably, except in the case of here and there some
specially intelligent or specially influential sepoy officer,
indispensable as a go-between to the non-military conspirators moving
in darkness behind the rebel army, nothing at all was communicated to
the bulk of the privates, beyond the mere detail of movements required
by the varying circumstantialities of each particular case. But of the
ultimate purpose, of the main strategic policy, or of the transcendent
interests over-riding the narrow counsels that fell under the
knowledge of the illiterate soldier, since no part was requisite to
the fulfilment of each man's separate duty, no part would be
communicated. It is barely possible that so much light as may be won
from confessions, combined with so much further light as may be
supposed to lurk amongst the mass of unexamined papers left behind
them by the rebels at Delhi, might tell us something important. But
any result to be expected from the Delhi papers is a doubtful
contingency. It is uncertain whether they will ever be brought under
the review of zeal united to sagacity sufficient for sustaining a
search purely disinterested. Promising no great triumph for any
literary purpose, proving as little, perhaps, one way or other, as the
mathematician in the old story complained that the _Æneid_
proved--these papers, unless worked by an enamoured bookworm (or
paperworm), will probably be confiscated to some domestic purpose, of
singeing chickens or lighting fires.
But, in any case, whether speaking by confessions or by the varied
memoranda (orders to subaltern officers, resolutions adopted by
meetings, records of military councils, petitions, or suggestions on
the public service, addressed to the king, &c.), abandoned in the
palace at Delhi, the soldier can tell no more than he knew, which,
under any theory of the case, must have been very little. Better,
therefore, than all expectations fixed on the vile soldiery, whom, in
every sense, and in all directions, I believe to have been brutally
ignorant, and through their ignorance mainly to have been used as
blind servile instruments--better and easier it would be to examine
narrowly whether, in the whole course and evolution of this stupendous
tragedy, there may not be found some characterising feature or
distinguishing incident, that may secretly report the agency, and
betray, by the style and character of the workmanship, _who_ might be
the particular class of workmen standing at the centre of this
unparalleled conspiracy. I think that we stand in this dilemma:
either, on the one hand, that the miserable sepoys, who were the sole
acting managers, were also the sole contrivers of the plot--in which
case we can look for further light only to the judicial confessions;
or, on the other hand, that an order of agents far higher in rank than
any subaltern members of our army, and who were enabled by this rank
and corresponding wealth to use these soldiers as their dupes and
tools, stood in the background, holding the springs of the machinery
in their hands, with a view to purposes transcending by far any that
could ever suggest themselves to persons of obscure station, having no
prospect of benefiting by their own fullest success. In this case, we
shall learn nothing from the confessions of those who must, upon a
principle of mere self-preservation, have been excluded from all real
knowledge of the dreadful scheme to which they were made parties,
simply as perpetrators of its murders and outrages. Here it is equally
vain to look for revelations from the mercenary workers, who know
nothing, or from the elevated leaders, who know all, but have an
interest of life and death in dissembling their knowledge. Revelations
of any value from those who cannot, and from those who will not,
reveal the ambitious schemes communicated to a very few, are alike
hopeless. In default of these, let us examine if any one incident, or
class of incidents, in the course of these horrors, may not have made
a self-revelation--a silent but significant revelation, pointing the
attention of men to the true authors, and simultaneously to the final
purposes, of this mysterious conspiracy.
Now, it has not escaped the notice of many people that two most
extraordinary classes of outrages, perpetrated or attempted, have
marked a very large majority of the mutinous explosions; outrages that
were in the last degree unnatural, as out of harmony with the whole
temper and spirit of intercourse generally prevailing between the
sepoys and their British officers. The case is peculiarly striking. No
reproach on the character of their manners was ever alleged against
their British officers by any section or subdivision of the sepoy
soldiery. Indeed, the reproach, where any existed, ran in the very
opposite channel. Too great indulgence to the sepoy, a spirit of
concession too facile to their very whims and caprices, and generally
too relaxed a state of discipline--these features it was of the
British bearing towards the native soldiery which too often, and
reasonably, provoked severe censures from the observing. The very
case[66] which I adduced some months back, where an intelligent
British officer, in the course of his evidence before some
court-martial, mentioned, in illustration of the decaying discipline,
that for some considerable space of time he had noticed a growing
disrespect on the part of the privates; in particular, that, on coming
into the cantonments of his own regiment, the men had ceased to rise
from their seats, and took no notice of his presence--this one
anecdote sufficiently exemplified the quality of the errors prevailing
in the deportment of our countrymen to their native soldiery; and that
it would be ludicrous to charge them with any harshness or severity of
manner. Such being too notoriously the case, whence could possibly
arise the bloody carnage by which, in almost every case, the sepoys
inaugurated, or tried to inaugurate, their emancipation from British
rule? Our continental neighbours at first grossly misinterpreted the
case; and more excusably than in many other misinterpretations.
Certainly it was unavoidable at first to read, in this frenzy of
bloodshed, the vindictive retaliations of men that had suffered
horrible and ineffable indignities at our hands. It was apparently the
old case of African slaves in some West Indian colony--St. Domingo,
for instance--breaking loose from the yoke, and murdering (often with
cruel torments) the whole households of their oppressors. But a month
dissipated these groundless commentaries. The most prejudiced
Frenchman could not fail to observe that no sepoy regiment ever
alluded to any rigour of treatment, or any haughtiness of demeanour.
His complaints centred in the one sole subject of religion; even as to
which he did not generally pretend to any certain knowledge, but
simply to a very strong belief or persuasion that we secretly
meditated, not that we openly avowed or deliberately pursued, a
purpose of coercing him into Christianity. This, were it even true,
though a false and most erroneous policy, could not be taxed with
ill-will. A man's own religion, if it is sincerely such, is that which
he profoundly believes to be the truth. Now, in seeking to inoculate
another with that which sincerely he believes to be eminently the
truth, though proceeding by false methods, a man acts in a spirit of
benignity. So that, on all hands, the hellish fury of the sepoy was
felt to be unnatural, artificially assumed, and, by a reasonable
inference, was held to be a mask for something else that he wished to
conceal. But what? What was that something else which he wished to
conceal? The sepoy simulated, in order that he might dissimulate. He
pretended a wrong sustained, that he might call away attention from a
wrong which he designed. At this point I (and no doubt in company with
multitudes beside that had watched the case) became sensible of an
alien presence secretly intruding into this pretended quarrel of the
native soldier. It was no sepoy that was moving at the centre of this
feud: the objects towards which it ultimately tended were not such as
could by possibility interest the poor, miserable, idolatrous native.
What was _he_ to gain by the overthrow of the British Government? The
poor simpleton, who had been decoyed into this monstrous field of
strife, opened the game by renouncing all the vast advantages which he
and his children to the hundredth generation might draw from the
system of the Company, and entered upon a career towards distant
objects that for _him_ have absolutely no meaning or intelligible
existence. At this point it was that two enigmas, previously
insoluble, suddenly received the fullest explanation:--
1. What was the meaning of that hellish fury suddenly developed
towards officers with whom previously the sepoy had lived on terms of
reciprocal amity?
2. What cause had led to that incomprehensible enmity manifested, in
the process of these ferocious scenes, towards the wives and children
of the officers? Surely, if his wish were to eliminate their families
from the Indian territory, that purpose was sufficiently secured by
the massacre of him whose exertions obtained a livelihood for the rest
of the household.
[Footnote 66: This case was entirely misapprehended by a journalist
who happened to extract the passage. He understood me to mean that
this particular mode of disrespect to their British officers had
operated as a _cause_ of evil; whereas I alleged it simply as an
evidence and exponent of evil habits criminally tolerated amongst the
very lowest orders of our mercenary troops.]
It was tolerably certain that the widows and their children would not
remain much longer in the Indian territory, when it no longer offered
them an asylum or a livelihood. Now, since personally, and viewed
apart from their husbands, these ladies could have no interest for
the murdering sepoys, it became more and more unintelligible on what
principle, steady motive, or fugitive impulse, these incarnate demons
could persist in cherishing any feeling whatever to those poor, ruined
women, who, when their anchorage should be cut away by the murder of
their husbands, would become mere waifs and derelicts stranded upon
the Indian shores.
These had seemed at first two separate mysteries not less hard to
decipher than the primal mystery of the mutiny itself. But now all
became clear; whatsoever might be the composition, or character, or
final objects of that tyranny which had decoyed the sepoys under its
yoke, one thing was certain--namely, that the childishness and levity
of the Hindoo sepoy made it difficult in excess to gain any lasting
hold over his mind, or consequently to count upon his lasting
services. But to this general difficulty there had now supervened one
signal aggravation, in a shape hateful to those who encountered
it--namely, the attractions of the British service, which service
would be no sooner abjured than it would be passionately regretted.
Here lay the rock which threatened the free movement of the
insurrection. It was evidently determined by those who meant to
appropriate the services of the sepoys, that they should have no
retreat, no opening for recovering a false step, in the well-known
mercy of the British Government. For _them_ it was resolved that there
should be no _locus penitentiæ_ left open. In order to close for ever
that avenue to all hope of forgiveness, the misleaders of the soldiery
urged them into those atrocities which every nation upon earth has
heard of with horror. The mere fact of these atrocities indicates at
once the overruling influence of such men as Nena Sahib, determined to
place a bar of everlasting separation between the native army and that
government which might else have reclaimed the erring men, had their
offences lain within the reach of lawful forgiveness. The conspirators
having thus divorced the ruling power, as they idly flattered
themselves, from all martial resources, doubtless assumed the work of
revolution already finished by midsummer-day of this present year. And
this account of the course through which that attempted revolution
travelled--according to which, not the sepoys, who could have had no
ambition such as is implied in that attempt, but Indian princes and
rajahs, standing in the background, were the true originators of the
movement--finds an indirect justification of its own accuracy in the
natural solution which it furnishes to those infernal massacres, which
else, as they must remain for ever without a parallel, will also
remain for ever without an intelligible motive. These atrocities were
exacted from the sepoys by the conclave of princes as tests of their
sincerity. Such doubtless was the argument for this exaction, the
ostensible plea put forward to the miserable reptiles who were seduced
into this treason, by the promise no doubt of sharing in the fruits of
the new and mighty revolution. Such pleas were for the sepoy. But for
himself and his own secret benefit the princely seducer needed all
that he could obtain of such accursed acts, as the means sure and
sudden of making the separation between the soldier and the government
more and more irreparable.
So much for the massacre of his officers: but a different reason
availed for the more diabolical outrages upon women and their
children. The murder of the _men_ was extorted from the sepoy as a
kind of sacrifice. With _them_ the reptile had lived upon terms of
humanising intercourse; and, vile as he was, in many cases this must
have slowly ripened into some mode of regard and involuntary esteem;
so that, in murdering the man, oftentimes a sepoy was making a real
(if trifling) sacrifice. But for females he cared nothing at all. And
in my opinion they perished on a very different principle. The male
murders were levied as pledges for the benefit of the princes, and
very distinctly understood to be levied _against_ the wishes of the
sepoy. But in the female sacrifice all parties concurred--sepoy and
prince, tempted and tempter alike. I require you to murder this
officer, as a pledge of your real hostility (which else might be a
pure pretence) to the government. But the murder of the officer's wife
and child rested on a motive totally different--namely,
this:--Throughout Hindostan no feature in the moral aspects of the
British nature could have been so conspicuous or so impressive as the
tenacity of purpose, the persistency, and the dogged resolution never
to relax a grasp once taken. Consequently, had the _men_ of our
nation, and they separately from the women, scattered themselves here
and there over the land (as they have long done in China, for
instance), then, perhaps, the natives, when finding themselves in
conflict with this well-known principle of imperishable tenacity,
would be liable to a sentiment of despair, as in a contest with fate.
And that sentiment would paralyse the Hindoos when entering upon a
struggle for unrooting the British from Hindostan. But here suddenly,
Woman steps in to aid the Hindoo. For the Briton, it is notorious,
would never loosen his hold, more than his compatriot the bull-dog.
But that scene which a man had faced steadily upon his own account, he
shrinks from as a husband or a father. Hence the sepoy attacks upon
women and children.
From hurried writing, it is to be feared that I may have done slight
justice to my own views. Let me conclude this head therefore by
briefly _resuming_.
The argument for tracing back the great conspiracy to the discontented
rajahs is--that otherwise, and supposing the mutiny raised for objects
specially affecting the sepoys, they would _not_ have massacred their
officers. _They_ must have desired to leave an opening for pardon in
the event of failure. That crime was exacted to compromise the native
army effectually with the government. But this in many ways was sure
to operate ruinously for the sepoy interests, and could therefore have
found a sufficient motive only with the native princes.
But the _female_ sacrifice was welcome to all parties. For no doubt
they represented the British officer as saying:--So long as the danger
affected only myself, I would never have relaxed my hold on India; but
now, when the war threatens our women and children, India can no
longer be a home for _us_.
Another urgent question concerns the acts of the Bengal Government.
Many unfounded charges, as in a case of infinite confusion and hourly
pressure, must be aimed at the Governor-General: the probability of
such charges, and the multiplied experience of such charges, makes
reasonable men cautious--in fact, unduly so; and the excess of
caution reacts upon Lord Canning's estimation too advantageously. Lord
Dalhousie is missed; his energy would have shown itself conspicuously
by this time. For surely in such a case as the negotiation with
Bahadoor Jung of Nepaul, as to the Ghoorkas, there can be no doubt _at
present_, though a great doubt, unfairly indulgent to Lord Canning,
was encouraged at first, that most imbecile oscillation governed the
Calcutta counsels. And it is now settled that this oscillation turned
entirely upon a petty personal motive. A subordinate officer had
accepted the Nepaul offer, and by that unauthorised acceptance had
intruded upon the prerogative of Lord Canning. The very same
cause--this jealous punctiliousness of exacting vanity, and not any
wish to enforce the severities of public justice--interfered to set
aside the proclamation of Mr. Colvin at Agra. The insufficiency again
of the steps taken as to Nena Sahib speaks the same language. In this
very journal, full six weeks earlier than in the Calcutta
proclamation, the offer of a large sum[67] for this man's head had
been suggested. That offer was never kept sufficiently before the
public eye. But a grosser neglect than this, as affecting the
condition of many thousands, and not of any single villain, was the
non-employment of the press in pursuing the steps of the mutineers.
Everywhere, as fast as they appeared in any strength, brief handbills
should have been circulated--circumstantially relating their defeats,
exposing their false pretences, and describing their prospects. Once
only the government attempted such a service; and blundered so far as
to urge against the sepoys a reproach which must have been
unintelligible both to them and to all native readers.
[Footnote 67: And imperfectly as the offer was advertised, it seems to
have had considerable effect. Apparently it has extinguished the
Nena's power to show himself, and to move about with freedom. He is
now distrustful and jealous--often no doubt with very little reason.]
Again, a question even more practical and instant arises as to the
modes of public vengeance.
1. If, when finally defeated, and in a military sense destroyed, on
some signal field of battle, the mutineers should fly to the hills in
the great ranges, or the jungle, the main fear would arise not from
_them_, but from the weak compromising government, that would show
itself eager to treat, and make what the Roman law calls a
_transactio_, or half-and-half settlement with any body of sepoys that
showed a considerable strength. But, in such a case, besides that the
rebels, having now no Delhi, will have scanty ammunition, our best
resource would be found in the Spanish bloodhounds of Cuba, which we
British used fifty years back for hunting down the poor negro Maroons
in Jamaica, who were not by a thousand degrees so criminal as the
sepoys.
2. That no wrong is done to the Bengal Government by this anticipation
of an eventual compromise, may be judged by the assertion (resting
apparently on adequate authority), that even at this hour that
government are making it a subject for deliberation and doubt--whether
the sepoys have forfeited their pensions! Doubtless, the Delhi and
Cawnpore exploits merit good-service pensions for life!
3. Others by millions, who come to these questions in a far nobler
spirit, fear that at any rate, and with every advantage for a
righteous judgment, too many of the worst sepoys laden with booty may
find means to escape. To these I would suggest that, after all, the
appropriate, worst, and most hellish of punishments for hellish
malefactors, is mortification and utter ruin in every one of their
schemes. What is the thrust of a bayonet or the deepest of sabre-cuts?
These are over in a few moments. And I with others rejoiced therefore
that so many escaped from Delhi for prolonged torment. That torment
will be found in the ever-rankling deadly mortification of knowing
that in all things they and their wicked comrades have failed; and
that in the coming spring, and amongst the resurrections of spring,
when all will be finished, and the mighty storm will have wheeled
away, there remains for the children of hell only this surviving
consciousness--that the total result has been the awakening of our
Indian Government, and the arming it for ever against a hideous peril,
that might else have overwhelmed it unprepared in an hour of
slumbering weakness. Such a game is played but once; and, having
failed, never again can it be repeated.
ON NOVELS.
(_Two pages written in a Lady's Album._[68])