MARCH UP COUNTRY--FUTTEHPORE--CAWNPORE
By the 25th of September the whole of the Ninety-Third were once more
together in Chinsurah, and on the 28th the first company, the grenadiers
under Captain Middleton, started by rail for Raneegunge _en route_ for
Lucknow, and a company followed daily in regular rotation till the light
company left Chinsurah on the 7th of October. From Raneegunge to Benares
the old bullock-train was arranged with relays of bullocks from eight to
ten miles apart, according to the nature of the road, and six men were
told off to each cart to ride and march by relief. Thus we proceeded,
making an average advance of from twenty-five to thirty miles daily,
halting every day about ten o'clock for cooking, resuming our march
about four o'clock, and so on through the night for coolness; the
bullocks did not average more than two and a half miles per hour, and
there was always considerable delay at the different stations, changing
teams. In this way my company reached Benares on the 17th of October.
From Benares we proceeded by detachments of two or three companies to
Allahabad; the country between Benares and Allahabad, being overrun by
different bands of mutineers, was too dangerous for small detachments of
one company. My company reached Allahabad on the 19th of October. There
we were supplied with the usual Indian field equipment of tents, etc. By
this time the railway had been pushed on in the direction of Cawnpore to
a place called Lohunga, about forty-eight miles from Allahabad, but no
stations were built. On the 22nd of October my company, with three
others, left Allahabad, packed into open trucks or waggons used by the
railway contractors for the construction of the line. From Lohunga we
commenced our daily marches on foot, with our tents on elephants, _en
route_ for Cawnpore.
By this time a considerable force had assembled at Allahabad, consisting
of artillery from the Cape, Peel's Naval Brigade, detachments of the
Fifth Fusiliers, the Fifty-Third, and Ninetieth Light Infantry. But the
only complete regiment was the Ninety-Third Highlanders, over a thousand
men, in splendid condition, armed with the Enfield rifle, and, what was
of more importance, well drilled to the use of it.
After leaving Lohunga, the first place of note which we reached was
Futtehpore, seventy-two miles from Allahabad. At Futtehpore I met some
native Christians whom I had first seen in Allahabad, and who were, or
had been, connected with mission work, and could speak English. They had
returned from Allahabad to look after property which they had been
obliged to abandon when they fled from Futtehpore on the outbreak of the
Mutiny. These men all knew Dr. Duff, or had heard of him, and were most
anxious to talk to Dr. Duff's countrymen, as they called the
Highlanders. From one of them I heard of the brave defence made by a
solitary Englishman who refused to leave his post, and as I have never
seen this alluded to in any of the histories of the Mutiny, I shall
relate it.
When the insurrection broke out, Mr. Robert Tucker was the judge of
Futtehpore, and like his namesake of Salvation Army fame, he combined
the missionary with the civil-servant, and used to preach to the
natives, who listened to him with seeming respect, but with concealed
hatred in their hearts. One of the most regular attendants at these
Christian meetings in the judge's house was a Mahommedan named Hikmut
Oollah Khan, the native head of the police in Futtehpore, and Mr. Tucker
had unbounded confidence in the friendship of this man and in the
loyalty of the police. On the first certain signs of disturbance in the
station Mr. Tucker despatched all the Christians, native and European,
to Allahabad, but refused to move himself. My informant told me that he
had stayed with the brave judge till the last, and had made his escape
to Allahabad after Mr. Tucker was killed; but I had no means of testing
the truth of that statement. He further stated that Mr. Tucker had sent
away all the Christians to Allahabad during the night, and next day
about noon he sent for Hikmut Oollah Khan, who had neglected to make his
usual morning report, with an intimation that the judge wished to see
him and his loyal police to make arrangements for the protection of the
Treasury and other Government property. The "loyal and friendly" Hikmut
Oollah Khan sent back a reply that it was then too hot for him to come
out, and that the judge _sahib_ need not trouble himself about the
Treasury. Considering that the Government of the English was at an end,
the police would take care of the Treasury for the Badshah of Delhi, to
whom it rightly belonged, and till the cool of the evening the judge
_sahib_ might repeat his Kaffir prayers, when the "loyal and friendly"
Hikmut Oollah Khan, with a detachment of his loyal police, would come
and give his Kaffir soul a quick despatch to Jehunnum. Such was the
loyalty of Mr. Tucker's trusted and pampered friend!
The message of Hikmut Oollah Khan opened the eyes of the too confiding
judge, but he did not flinch from his duty. Mr. Tucker had been a mighty
hunter in his day, and possessed a good assortment of offensive and
defensive arms, such as rifles, fowling-pieces, and hog-spears. He
carefully arranged his ammunition and loaded every rifle and
fowling-piece which he had, strongly barricaded the doors and windows of
his house, and then sat quietly down to read his Bible. At sunset he saw
a large body of the police, with the green banner of Islam and Hikmut
Oollah Khan at their head, entering his compound. They advanced, and
called on Mr. Tucker to surrender in the name of the Badshah of Delhi,
and if he wished his life to be spared, he could have it on condition
that he accepted the religion of Mahommed. This he resolutely refused
to do, and tried to reason with the police, to which they replied by a
volley. Mr. Tucker returned the fire, and before the doors of his house
could be forced he had killed sixteen and wounded many more, when he
fell pierced by both spears and bullets. So died the brave and
God-fearing Robert Tucker, the glory of the Bengal Civil Service, and
thus ended the defence of Futtehpore by one solitary Englishman against
hundreds of rebels.
When the detachment of which my company formed part, marched through
Futtehpore, it was rumoured that the Banda and Dinapore mutineers,
joined by large bodies of _budmashes_,[2] numbering over ten thousand
men, with three batteries of regular artillery, mustering eighteen guns,
had crossed the Jumna, and were threatening our communications with
Allahabad. Owing to this report, No. 2, or Captain Cornwallis's company
of the Ninety-Third, was left in the fort at Futtehpore to guard
provisions, etc., as that post had been greatly strengthened by a party
of sappers and was formed into a depot for commissariat stores and
ammunition, which were being pushed on by every available mode of
conveyance from Allahabad. We left Futtehpore on the 25th of October,
and arrived at Cawnpore on the morning of the 27th, having marched the
forty-six miles in two days.
When we reached Cawnpore we found everything quiet, and Brigadier
Wilson, of the Sixty-Fourth Regiment, in command. Wheeler's immortal
entrenchment was deserted, but a much stronger one had lately been
built, or rather was still under construction on the right (the
Cawnpore) bank of the Ganges, to protect the bridge of boats crossing
into Oude. This place was constructed of strong and well-planned
earthworks, and every available coolie in Cawnpore was at work, from
daylight till dark, strengthening the place. Bastions and ramparts were
being constructed of every conceivable material, besides the usual
gabions and fascines. Bales of cotton were built into the ramparts, bags
of every size and shape, soldiers' knapsacks, etc., were filled with
earth; in brief, everything that could possibly hold a few spadefuls of
earth, and could thereby assist in raising a defensive breast-work, had
been appropriated for building the parapet-walls, and a ditch of
considerable depth and width was being excavated. On my recent visit to
Cawnpore I looked for this fort in vain. Eventually I learned from
Colonel Baddeley that it was some time ago dismantled and converted into
the Government Harness and Saddlery Factory, the ramparts having been
levelled and the ditch filled in with earth.
The day before we reached Cawnpore, a strong column from Delhi had
arrived under command of Sir Hope Grant, and was encamped on the plain
near the spot where the railway station now stands. The detachment of
the Ninety-Third did not pitch tents, but was accommodated in some
buildings, on which the roofs were still left, near General Wheeler's
entrenchment. My company occupied the _dak_ bungalow, which, on my
revisit to Cawnpore, appeared to me to have given place to the present
Victoria Hotel.
After a few hours' rest, we were allowed to go out in parties of ten or
twelve to visit the horrid scene of the recent treachery and massacre.
The first place my party reached was General Wheeler's so-called
entrenchment, the ramparts of which at the highest places did not exceed
four feet, and were so thin that at the top they could never have been
bullet-proof! The entrenchment and the barracks inside of it were
complete ruins, and the only wonder about it was how the small force
could have held out so long. In the rooms of the building were still
lying strewn about the remains of articles of women's and children's
clothing, broken toys, torn pictures, books, pieces of music, etc. Among
the books, I picked up a New Testament in Gaelic, but without any name
on it. All the blank leaves had been torn out, and at the time I formed
the opinion that they had been used for gun-waddings, because, close
beside the Testament, there was a broken single-barrelled duck gun,
which had evidently been smashed by a 9-pounder shot lying near. I
annexed the Testament as a relic, and still have it. The Psalms and
Paraphrases in Gaelic verses are complete, but the first chapter of
Matthew and up to the middle of the seventh verse of the second chapter
are wanting. The Testament must have belonged to some Scotch Highlander
in the garrison. I have more than once thought of sending it home to the
Highland Society as a relic of the Mutiny.
From the entrenchment we went to the Suttee Chowrah _ghat_, where the
doomed garrison were permitted to embark in the boats in which they were
murdered, and traces of the treachery were still very plain, many
skeletons, etc., lying about unburied among the bushes.
We then went to see the slaughter-house in which the unfortunate women
and children had been barbarously murdered, and the well into which
their mangled bodies were afterwards flung. Our guide was a native of
the ordinary camp-follower class, who could speak intelligible
barrack-room English. He told us that he had been born in a battery of
European artillery, in which his forefathers had been shoeblacks for
unknown generations, and his name, he stated, was "Peshawarie," because
he had been born in Peshawur, when the English occupied it during the
first advance to Caubul. His apparent age coincided with this statement.
He claimed to have been in Sir Hugh Wheeler's entrenchment with the
artillery all the time of the siege, and to have had a narrow escape of
his life at the last. He told us a story which I have never seen
mentioned elsewhere, that the Nana Sahib, through a spy, tried to bribe
the commissariat bakers who had remained with the English to put arsenic
into the bread, which they refused to do, and that after the massacre of
the English at the _ghat_ the Nana had these bakers taken and put alive
into their own ovens, and there cooked and thrown to the pigs. These
bakers were Mahommedans. Of course, I had no means of testing the truth
of this statement.[3] Our guide showed no desire to minimise the horrors
of the massacre and the murders to which he said he had been an
eye-witness. However, from the traces, still too apparent, the bare
facts, without exaggeration, must have been horrible enough. But with
reference to the women and children, from the cross-questions I put to
our guide, I then formed the opinion, which I have never since altered,
that most of the European women had been most barbarously murdered, but
not dishonoured, with the exception of a few of the young and
good-looking ones, who, our guide stated, were forcibly carried off to
become Mahommedans. But I need not dwell on these points. These are the
opinions I formed in October, 1857, three months after the massacre, and
nothing which I have since learnt during my thirty-five years' residence
in India has led me to alter them.
Most of the men of my company visited the slaughter-house and well, and
what we there saw was enough to fill our hearts with feelings which I
need not here dwell on; it was long before those feelings could be
controlled. On the date of my visit a great part of the house had not
been cleaned out; the floors of the rooms were still covered with
congealed blood, littered with trampled, torn dresses of women and
children, shoes, slippers, and locks of long hair, many of which had
evidently been severed from the living scalps by sword-cuts. But among
the traces of barbarous torture and cruelty which excited horror and a
desire for revenge, one stood out prominently beyond all others. It was
an iron hook fixed into the wall of one of the rooms in the house, about
six feet from the floor. I could not possibly say for what purpose this
hook had originally been fixed in the wall. I examined it carefully, and
it appeared to have been an old fixture, which had been seized on as a
diabolic and convenient instrument of torture by the inhuman wretches
engaged in murdering the women and children. This hook was covered with
dried blood, and from the marks on the whitewashed wall, it was evident
that a little child had been hung on to it by the neck with its face to
the wall, where the poor thing must have struggled for long, perhaps in
the sight of its helpless mother, because the wall all round the hook on
a level with it was covered with the hand-prints, and below the hook
with the foot-prints, in blood, of a little child.
At the time of my visit the well was only about half-filled in, and the
bodies of the victims only partially covered with earth. A gallows, with
three or four ropes ready attached, stood facing the slaughter-house,
half-way between it and the well; and during my stay three wretches were
hanged, after having been flogged, and each made to clean about a square
foot of the blood from the floor of the house. Our guide told us that
these men had only been captured the day before, tried that morning, and
found guilty as having assisted at the massacre.
During our visit a party of officers came to the slaughter-house, among
whom was Dr. Munro, Surgeon of the Ninety-Third, now Surgeon-General Sir
William Munro. When I saw him he was examining the hook covered with
dried blood and the hand and foot-prints of the child on the wall, with
the tears streaming down his cheeks. He was a most kind-hearted man, and
I remember, when he came out of the house, that he cast a look of pity
on the three wretches about to be hanged, and I overheard him say to
another officer who was with him: "This is horrible and unchristian to
look at; but I do hope those are the same wretches who tortured the
little child on the hook inside that room." At this time there was no
writing either in pencil or charcoal on the walls of the
slaughter-house. I am positive on this point, because I looked for any
writing. There was writing on the walls of the barracks inside General
Wheeler's entrenchment, but not on the walls of the slaughter-house,
though they were much splashed with blood and slashed with sword-cuts,
where blows aimed at the victims had evidently been dodged and the
swords had struck the walls. Such marks were most numerous in the
corners of the rooms. The number of victims butchered in the house,
counted and buried in the well by General Havelock's force, was one
hundred and eighteen women and ninety-two children.
Up to the date of my visit, a brigade-order, issued by Brigadier-General
J. G. S. Neill, First Madras Fusiliers, was still in force. This order
bears date the 25th of July, 1857. I have not now an exact copy of it,
but its purport was to this effect:--That, after trial and condemnation,
all prisoners found guilty of having taken part in the murder of the
European women and children, were to be taken into the slaughter-house
by Major Brace's _mehter_[4] police, and there made to crouch down, and
with their mouths lick clean a square foot of the blood-soaked floor
before being taken to the gallows and hanged. This order was carried out
in my presence as regards the three wretches who were hanged that
morning. The dried blood on the floor was first moistened with water,
and the lash of the warder was applied till the wretches kneeled down
and cleaned their square foot of flooring. This order remained in force
till the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell in Cawnpore on the 3rd of
November, 1857, when he promptly put a stop to it as unworthy of the
English name and a Christian Government. General Neill has been much
blamed for this order; but in condemning the action we must not overlook
the provocation. The general saw more of the horrors of Cawnpore than I
did; but what I saw, and the stories which were told by natives who
claimed to have been eye-witnesses of the horrible scenes which they
described, were enough to make the words _mercy_ and _pardon_ appear a
mockery; and in passing judgment on him we must not forget the
proclamations of the Nana Sahib. These have often been published, and I
will only give one extract bearing on the murder of the women and
children. The extract is as follows, and was part of a proclamation
placarded all over Cawnpore: "To extinguish a fire and leave a spark, to
kill a snake and preserve its young, is not the wisdom of men of sense."
However, let General Neill speak for himself. The following is a copy of
one of his own letters, taken from Colonel White's _Reminiscences_. On
page 135 he writes: "_The Well and Slaughter-house, Cawnpore_.--My
object was to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly,
and barbarous deed, and to strike terror into the rebels. The first I
caught was a _subadar_ or native officer, a high-caste Brahmin, who
tried to resist my order of the 25th of July 1857, to clean the very
blood which he had helped to shed; but I made the provost-marshall do
his duty, and a few lashes compelled the miscreant to accomplish his
work. When done he was taken out and immediately hanged, and buried in a
ditch by the roadside. No one who has witnessed the scenes of murder,
mutilation, and massacre can ever listen to the word 'mercy' as
applicable to these fiends."
As already said, before condemning General Neill's order we must give
due weight to the terrible provocation, the horrible scenes he saw, and
the still more horrible stories he heard related by natives who either
had or pretended to have been eye-witnesses of the facts they described.
Even after the lapse of thirty-five years such horrors cannot be calmly
contemplated; they can only be hinted at here. Such stories were common
in camp, and believed not only by the soldiers in the ranks, but by
officers of position; and in judging General Neill's order we must give
due weight to the passionate nature of the man, and recollect that
General Havelock, his senior, must have approved of the order, or he
would have cancelled it.
But enough of massacre and revenge for the present; I shall return to
General Neill's order when I describe my revisit to Cawnpore. In the
meantime I should much like to know whether the late Major A. H. S.
Neill, who commanded the Central India Horse, and was shot on parade by
Sowar Mazar Ali, at Augur, Central India, on the 14th of March, 1887,
was a son of General Neill of Mutiny fame. Mazar Ali was sentenced to
death by Sir Lepel Griffin, as Governor-General's agent; but I did not
see a full account of the trial, and I ask for the above information to
corroborate a statement made to me, on my late visit to the scenes of
the Mutiny, by a native who admitted that he had been an armourer in the
rebel force at Cawnpore, but had joined the English after the defeat of
the Gwalior Contingent in December, 1857.[5]
General Hope Grant's brigade and part of the Ninety-Third Highlanders
crossed the bridge of boats at Cawnpore, and entered Oude on the 30th of
October, with a convoy of provisions and ammunition _en route_ to
Lucknow. My company, with three others, remained in Cawnpore three days
longer, and crossed into Oude on the 2nd of November, encamping a short
distance from the bridge of boats.
On the morning of the 3rd a salute was fired from the mud fort on the
Cawnpore side, from which we learned, to the great delight of the
Ninety-Third, that Sir Colin Campbell had come up from Calcutta. Shortly
after the salute some of our officers joined us from the Cawnpore side,
and gave us the news, which had been brought by the Commander-in-Chief,
that a few days before three companies of the Fifty-Third and Captain
Cornwallis's company, No. 2, of the Ninety-Third, which had been left at
Futtehpore, with part of the Naval Brigade under Captain William Peel,
had formed a force of about five hundred men under the command of
Colonel Powell of the Fifty-Third, marched out from Futtehpore to a
place called Khujwah, and attacked and beaten the Banda and Dinapore
mutineers, numbering over ten thousand, who had been threatening our
communications with Allahabad. The victory for some time had been
doubtful, as the mutineers were a well-equipped force, strongly posted
and numbering more than twenty to one of the attacking force, possessing
moreover, three well-drilled batteries of artillery, comprising eighteen
guns. Colonel Powell was killed early in the action, and the command
then devolved on Captain Peel of the Naval Brigade. Although hard
pressed at first, the force eventually gained a complete and glorious
victory, totally routing the rebels, capturing most of their guns, and
driving the remnant of them across the Jumna, whence they had come. The
company of the Ninety-Third lost heavily, having one officer wounded and
sixteen men killed or wounded. The officer, Lieutenant Cunyngham (now
Sir R. K. A. Dick-Cunyngham of Prestonfield, Edinburgh), was reported to
have lost a leg, which caused general sorrow and regret throughout the
regiment, as he was a most promising young officer and very popular with
the men. During the day when more correct and fuller reports came in, we
were all very glad to hear that, although severely wounded, the
lieutenant had not lost a limb, and that the surgeons considered they
would not only be able to save his leg, but that he might be fit to
return to duty in a few months, which he eventually did, and was present
at the siege of Lucknow.
During the afternoon of the 3rd of November more stores of provisions
and ammunition crossed the river with some of Peel's 24-pounder guns,
and on the morning of the 4th, long before daylight, we were on the
march for Lucknow, under command of Colonel Leith-Hay, leaving Cawnpore
and its horrors behind us, but neither forgotten nor disregarded. Every
man in the regiment was determined to risk his life to save the women
and children in the Residency of Lucknow from a similar fate. None were
inclined to pay any heed to the French maxim that _les represailles sont
toujours inutiles_, nor inclined to ponder and moralise on the lesson
and warning given by the horrible catastrophe which had overtaken our
people at Cawnpore. Many too were inclined to blame the
Commander-in-Chief for having cancelled the brigade order of General
Neill.
Before concluding this chapter I wish my readers to note that I merely
describe facts as they appeared to me in 1857. Nothing is further from
my intention than to revive the old race-hatreds. The real causes of the
Mutiny and its horrors have yet to be written. I merely mention facts to
show the incentive the troops had to make light of forced marches, under
short rations and a double load of ammunition for want of other means of
carriage, with an overwhelming enemy in front, and no means whatever of
obtaining reinforcements or recovering from a defeat.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Bad characters, scoundrels.
[3] This story was current in Upper India at the time.
[4] Sweeper, scavenger; one of the lowest castes.
[5] See Appendix A.