THE WELL
Not until many months later did Malcolm learn the true cause of
Roshinara Begum's anxiety that he and his friends should hasten to
Meerut, and let it be known on the way that they came from Cawnpore. Yet
there were those in Bithoor that night who fully appreciated the
tremendous influence on the course of political events that the
direction of Winifred's flight might exercise. The girl herself little
dreamed she was such an important personage. But that is often the case
with those who are destined to make history. In this instance, the
balking of a Brahmin prince's passions was destined to change the whole
trend of affairs in northern India.
Nana Sahib escorted Mayne from Meerut to Cawnpore because the
safeguarding of the Judicial Commissioner of Oudh was a strong card to
play in that parlous game of empire. As he traveled south reports
reached him on every hand that nothing could now stop the spread of the
Mutiny, and, with greater certainty in his plans came a project that he
would not have dared to harbor even a week earlier.
Winifred, naturally a high-spirited and lively girl, soon recovered
from the fright of that fateful Sunday evening. She had seen little of
the tragedy enacted in Meerut; she knew less of its real horrors.
Notwithstanding the intense heat the open-air life of the march was
healthy, and, in many respects, agreeable. The Nana was a courteous and
considerate host. He took good care that his secret intelligence of
occurrences at Delhi and other stations should remain hidden from Mayne,
and, while his ambitions mounted each hour, he cast many a veiled glance
at the graceful beauty of the fair English girl who moved like a sylph
among the brown-skinned satyrs surrounding her.
Once the party had reached Bithoor the Nana's tone changed. Instead of
sending his European guests into Cawnpore, whence safe transit to
Calcutta was still practicable, he kept them in his palace, on the
pretext that the roads were disturbed. He contrived, at first, to
hoodwink Mr. Mayne by giving him genuine news of the wholesale outbreak
in the North-West, and by adding wholly false tidings of massacres at
Allahabad, Benares, and towns in Upper Bengal. At last, when Mayne
insisted on going into Cawnpore, the native threw aside pretense, said
he could not "allow" him to depart, and virtually made uncle and niece
prisoners.
But he treated them well. A clear-headed Brahmin, to whom intrigue was
the breath of life, was not likely to make the mistake of being too
precipitate in his actions. The wave of religious fanaticism sweeping
over the land might recede as rapidly as it had risen. Muslim and Hindu,
Pathan and Brahmin, hereditary foes who fraternized to-day, might be at
each other's throats to-morrow. So the Nana was a courteous jailer.
Beyond the loss of their liberty the captives had nothing to complain
of, and he met Mayne's vehement reproaches with unmoved good humor,
protesting all the while that he was acting for the best.
Winifred took fright, however. Her woman's intuition looked beneath the
mask. For her uncle's sake she kept her suspicions to herself, but she
suffered much in secret, and her distress might well have moved a man of
finer character to sympathy. Each time she met the Nana he treated her
with more apparent friendliness. She recoiled from his advances as she
might shrink from a venomous snake.
Fortunately there were others in Bithoor who understood the Brahmin's
motives, and saw therein the germ of failure for their own plans. Nana
Sahib was an exceedingly important factor in the success of the scheme
that meditated the re-establishment of the Mogul dynasty. Recognized by
the Mahrattas, the great warlike race of western India, as their leader,
looked on as the pivot of Hindu support to the Mohammedan monarchy, it
was absolutely essential that he should captain the rebel garrison of
Cawnpore in a triumphant march to Delhi. For that reason a marriage
distasteful to both had already been arranged between him and the
Roshinara Begum. For that reason he had traveled to many centers of
disaffection during the months of March and April, winning doubtful
Hindu princes to the side of Bahadur Shah, by his tact and ready
diplomacy. For that reason too, the native officers of the first
regiments in revolt at Cawnpore made him swear, even at the twelfth
hour, that he would lead them to Delhi.
His unforeseen infatuation for an Englishwoman might upset the
carefully-laid plot. Under other conditions a dose of poison would have
removed poor Winifred from the scene, but that simple expedient was not
to be thought of, as the Nana's vengeful disposition was sufficiently
well known to his associates to make them fear the outcome. Therefore
they left nothing to chance, and actually brought the Princess Roshinara
post haste from the north, believing that her presence would insure the
inconstant wooer's return with her at the right moment.
While the majority pulled in one way there was an active minority that
wished the Nana to set up an independent kingdom. His nephew and his
Mohammedan friend, Azim-ullah, were convinced that their faction would
lose all influence as soon as their chief was swallowed up in the
maelstrom of the imperial court. If Winifred supplied the spell that
kept the Nana at Bithoor, they were quite content that it should be
allowed to exercise its power.
Hence, Malcolm's arrival gave the Begum a chance that her quick wit
seized upon. Why not, she argued, connive at the Englishwoman's escape,
and let it become known that she had fled back to Meerut? When the Nana
returned from Cawnpore, flushed with wine and conquest, this should be
the first news that greeted him, and his amorous rage would go hand in
hand with the other considerations that urged his immediate departure
for the Mogul capital. That was not the device of a woman who loved--it
savored rather of the cool state-craft of a Lucrezia Borgia.
No more curious mixture of plot and counterplot than this minor chapter
of the Bithoor romance came to light during that disastrous upheaval in
India. Never did events of the utmost magnitude hinge on incidents so
trivial to the community at large. A truculent thief like Abdul Huq was
able to defeat the intent of a king's daughter, and a couple of alert
troopers, riding to a bluff overlooking the river, could report that
they saw the budgerow on which the sahib-log escaped drifting down
stream towards Cawnpore! Thus the intrigue miscarried twice. Winifred
was free; the clear inference to be drawn from the boat's course was
that her uncle and Malcolm would bring her straight to the protection of
their friends in the cantonment.
There was a scene of violence, nearly culminating in murder, when Nana
Sahib came to Bithoor at dawn. He met the scorn of Roshinara with a
furious insolence that stopped short of bloodshed only on account of the
prudence still governing most of his actions. Not yet was he drunk with
power. That madness was soon to obsess him. But he lent a willing ear to
the counsels of Rao Sahib and Azim-ullah. Soon after daybreak he
galloped to Kulianpur, on the road to Delhi, whither some thousands of
sepoys had already gone, and harangued them eloquently on the glory,
not to speak of the loot, they would acquire by attacking the accursed
English at Cawnpore.
They were easily swayed. Acclaiming the Nana as a prince worthy of
obedience they marched after him, and thus sealed the doom of many
hundreds of unhappy beings who thought until that moment they would be
spared the dreadful fate that had befallen other stations.
Oddly enough, the high-born Brahmin who now saw his hopes of regal power
in a fair way towards realization placed one act of soldierly courtesy
to his credit before he made his name a synonym for all that is base and
despicable in the conduct of warfare. He wrote a letter to Sir Hugh
Wheeler warning the gallant old general that he might expect to be
attacked forthwith. Perhaps it is straining a point to credit him with
any sense of fair play. The letter may have been a last flicker of
respect for the power of Britain, and inspired by a haunting fear of the
consequences if the Mutiny failed. It is probable he wished to provide
written proof of a plea that he was an unwilling agent in the clutch of
a mutinous army. However that may be, he wrote, and never did letter
carry more bitter disappointment to a Christian community.
Sir Hugh Wheeler having decided, most unfortunately as it happened,
against occupying the strongly-built magazine on the river bank as a
refuge, had constructed a flimsy entrenchment on a level plain close to
the native lines. He was sure the sepoys would revolt, but he believed
they would hurry off to Delhi, and he refused to give them an excuse for
rebellion by seizing the magazine. Towards the end of May he wrote to
Henry Lawrence at Lucknow for help, and Lawrence generously sent him
fifty men of the 32d and half a battery of guns, though even this small
force could ill be spared from the capital of Oudh. Sir Hugh made the
further mistake of crediting Nana Sahib's professions of loyalty. He
actually entrusted the Treasury to the protection of the Nana's
retainers, in spite of Lawrence's plainly-worded warning that the
Brahmin's recent movements placed him under grave suspicion.
Nevertheless, Wheeler acted with method. His judgment was clear, if
occasionally mistaken, and he had every reason to believe that the only
attacks he would be called on to repel would be made by the bazaar mob.
On the night of June 4th, the thousand men, women and children who had
gathered behind the four-foot mud wall that formed the entrenchment were
left unmolested by the mutineers. During the 5th they watched the
destruction of their bungalows, and knew that the rebels were plundering
the city, robbing rich native merchants quite as readily as they killed
any Europeans who were not under Wheeler's charge. Late that day came
Nana Sahib's letter. It was a bitter disappointment, but "the valiant
never taste death but once," and the Britons in Cawnpore resolved to
teach the mutineers that the men who had conquered them many times in
the field could repeat the lesson again and again.
About ten o'clock on the morning of the 6th, flames rising from houses
near at hand gave evidence of the approach of the rebels. Irregular
spurts of musketry heralded the appearance of confused masses of armed
men. A cannon-ball crashed through the mud wall and bounded across the
enclosure. A bugle sounded shrilly and the defenders ran to their posts.
The wailing of women and the cries of frightened children, helpless
creatures only half protected by two barracks situated in the southern
corner of the entrenchment, mingled with the din of the answering guns,
and in that fatal hour the siege of Cawnpore began.
In the tear-stained story of humanity there has never been aught to
surpass the thrilling record of Cawnpore. It contains every element of
heroism and tragedy. Four hundred English soldiers, seventy of whom were
invalids, with a few dozens of civilians and faithful sepoys--standing
behind a breast-high fortification that would not stop a bullet--exposed
to the fierce rays of an Indian sun--ill-fed, almost waterless, and
driven to numb despair by the sufferings of their loved ones--these men,
enduring all and daring all, held at bay four thousand well-armed,
well-housed, and well-fed troops for twenty-one days.
Not for a moment was the strain relaxed. Day and night the rebels poured
into the entrenchment a ceaseless hail of iron and lead. Cannon-balls,
solid and red-hot, shells with carefully arranged time fuses, and
bullets from those self-same cartridges that the superfine feelings of
Brahmin soldiers forbade them to touch, were hurled at the hapless
garrison from all quarters. In the first week every gunner in the place
was killed or wounded. Women and children were shot as though they were
in the front line of the defense. No corner was safe from the enemy's
fire. Every human being behind that absurdly inadequate wall was exposed
to constant and equal danger.
Here is an extract from Holmes's history:
"A private was walking with his wife when a single bullet
killed him, broke both her arms, and wounded an infant she was
carrying. An officer was talking with a comrade at the main
guard when a musket-ball struck him; and, as he was limping
painfully to the barracks to have his wound dressed, Lieutenant
Mowbray-Thomson of the 56th, who was supporting him, was struck
also, and both fell helplessly to the ground. Presently as
Thomson lay wofully sick of his wound, another officer came to
condole with him, and he too received a wound from which he
died before the end of the siege. Young Godfrey Wheeler, a son
of the General, was lying wounded in one of the barracks when
a round shot crashed through the walls of the room and carried
off his head in the sight of his mother and sisters. Little
children, straggling outside the wall, were deliberately shot
down."
On the night of June the 11th a red-hot cannon-ball set fire to one of
the barracks which was used as a hospital. The flames inspired the
enemy's gunners to fresh efforts and provided them with an excellent
target, yet the garrison dared all perils of gun-fire and falling
rafters and masonry, while they rescued the inmates. It is on record
that the gallant men of the 32d, when the flames had subsided, though a
heavy fusillade was still kept up by the rebels, were seen raking the
ashes in order to find their lost medals, the medals they had won in the
deadly fighting that preceded the fall of Sevastopol.
On the next day the sepoy army, though so boastful and vainglorious,
dared to make their first attempt to carry the entrenchment by assault.
By one bold charge they must have crushed the defenders, if by sheer
weight of numbers alone. They advanced, with fiendish yells and much
seeming confidence. But they could not face those stern warriors who
lined the shattered wall. After a short but fierce struggle they fled,
leaving the plain littered with corpses.
So the safer bombardment was renewed, its fury envenomed by the
conscious disparity of the besiegers when they tried to press home the
attack. Each day the garrison dwindled; each day the rebels received
fresh accessions of strength. Of the few guns mounted in the British
position, one had lost its muzzle, another was thrown from its carriage
and two were so battered by the enemy's artillery that they could not be
used. The hospital fire had destroyed all the surgical instruments and
medical stores, so the wounded had to lie waiting for death, while those
who still bore arms eked out existence on a daily dole of a handful of
flour and a few ounces of split peas.
Yet the men of Cawnpore fought on, while their wives and sisters and
daughters helped uncomplainingly, making up packets of ammunition,
loading rifles for the men to fire, and even giving their stockings to
the gunners to provide cases for grape-shot.
There was only one well inside the entrenchment. Knowing its paramount
importance, the rebels mounted guns in such wise that a constant fire
could be kept up throughout the night on that special point. Yet there
never was lacking a volunteer, either man or woman, to go to that well
and obtain the precious water. It remains to this day a mournful relic
of the siege, with its broken gear and shattered circular wall, while
the indentations made by such of the cannon-balls as failed to dislodge
the masonry are plain to be seen.
The sepoys spared none. Tiny children, tottering to the well in broad
daylight, were pelted with musketry. Conceivably that might be war. When
beleaguered people will not yield humanity must stand aside and weep.
There was a deed to come that was not war, but the black horror of
abomination, worthy of the excesses of a man-eating tiger, though shorn
of the tiger's excuse that he kills in order that he may live. The well
in the entrenchment was the Well of Life. There was another well in
Cawnpore destined to be the Well of Death.
If proof were needed of the extraordinary condition of India during the
early period of the Mutiny, it was given by an incident that occurred
soon after the first assault was beaten off. In broad daylight, while
the garrison were maintaining the unceasing duel of cannon and small
arms, they were astounded by the spectacle of a British officer
galloping across the plain. He was fired at by the sepoys, of course,
but horse and man escaped untouched and the low barrier was leaped
without effort. The newcomer was Lieutenant Bolton of the 7th Cavalry.
Sent out from Lucknow on district duty he was suddenly deserted by his
men, and he rode alone towards Cawnpore, the nearest British station.
Unhappily the story of that adventurous ride is lost for ever. Poor
Bolton supplied Cawnpore's last re-enforcement.
Sir Hugh Wheeler, ably seconded in the defense by Captain Moore of the
32d, sent out emissaries, Eurasians and natives, to seek aid from
Lucknow and Allahabad, the one about thirty-five, the other a hundred
miles distant. Lawrence wrote "with a breaking heart" that he could
spare no troops from Lucknow. The messengers never even reached
Allahabad.
On June 23 the Nana's hosts again nerved themselves for a desperate
attack, and again were they flung off from that tumble-down wall. Then,
all their valor fled, they fell back on a foul device. A white woman,
Mrs. Henry Jacobi, who had been taken prisoner early in the month,
crossed the plain holding a white flag. Wheeler and Moore and other
senior officers went to meet her. She carried a letter from Nana Sahib,
offering safe conduct to Allahabad for all the garrison "except those
who were connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie."
Now Dalhousie resigned the vice-royalty in February, 1856. It was he who
had refused to continue to Nana Sahib the Peishwa's pension; assuredly
there was none in Cawnpore responsible for the acts of a former viceroy.
At any rate, whatsoever that curious reservation meant, the majority of
the staff were opposed to surrender. Unfortunately Captain Moore, whose
bravery was in the mouths of all, who, though wounded and ill, had been
"the life and soul of the defense," persuaded Sir Hugh Wheeler and the
others that an honorable capitulation was their sole resource. Succor
could not arrive, he argued, and they were in duty bound to save the
surviving civilians and the women and children.
So an armistice was agreed to on June 26, and representatives of both
sides met to discuss terms. It was arranged that the garrison should
evacuate their position, surrender their guns and treasure, retain their
rifles and a quantity of ammunition, and be provided with river
transport to Allahabad.
The Nana asked that the defenders should march out that night. Wheeler
refused.
"I shall renew the bombardment, and put every one of you to death in a
few days," threatened the Brahmin.
"Try it," said the Englishman. "I still have enough powder left to blow
both armies into the air."
But the Nana meant to have no more fighting on equal terms. He signed
the treaty, the guns were given up, and, on the night of June 26th,
peace reigned within the ruined entrenchment.
Next morning that glorious garrison quitted the shot-torn plain they had
hallowed by their deeds. And even the rebels pitied them. "As the wan
and ragged column filed along the road, the women and children in
bullock-carriages or on elephants, the wounded in palanquins, the
fighting men on foot, sepoys came clustering round the officers they had
betrayed, and talked in wonder and admiration of the surpassing heroism
of the defense."
Those men of the rank and file at least were soldiers. They knew nothing
of the awful project concocted by the Nana and his chief associates, Rao
Sahib, Tantia Topi, and Azim-ullah.
The procession made its way slowly towards the river, three quarters of
a mile to the east. No doubt there were joyful hearts even in that
sorrow-laden band. Men and women must have thought of far-off homes in
England, and hoped that God would spare them to see their beloved
country once more. Even the children, wide-eyed innocents, could not
fail to be thankful that the noise of the guns had ceased, while the
wounded were cheered by the belief that food and stores in plenty would
soon be available.
At the foot of a tree-clad ravine leading to the Ganges were stationed a
number of heavy native boats, with thatched roofs to shield the
occupants from the sun. They were partly drawn up on the mud at the
water's edge to render easy the work of embarkation. Without hurry or
confusion, the wounded, and the women and children, were placed on
board.
Then some one noticed that the thatch on one of the boats was smoking,
and it was found that glowing charcoal had been thrust into the straw.
About the same time it was discovered that the boats had neither oars,
nor rudders, nor supplies of food. Before the dread significance of
these things became clear, a bugle-call rang out. At once, both banks of
the river became alive with armed sepoys, and a murderous rifle-fire was
opened on the crowded boats. Guns, hidden among the trees, belched
red-hot shot and grape at them, and the smoldering straw of the thatched
roofs burst into flames.
Awakened to the unspeakable treachery of their foe, officers and men
rushed into the water and strove with might and main to shove the boats
into deep water. They failed, for the unwieldy craft had been hauled
purposely too high.
Here Ashe and Moore, and Bolton, hero of that lonely ride through the
enemy's country, fell. Here, too, men shot their own wives and children
rather than permit them to fall into the hands of the fiends who had
planned the massacre. Savage troopers urged their horses into the water
and slashed cowering women with their sabers. Infants were torn from
their mothers' arms, and tossed by sepoys from bayonet to bayonet. The
sick and wounded, lying helpless in the burning craft, died in the agony
of fire, and the few bold spirits who even in that ghastly hour tried to
beat off their cowardly assailants were surrounded and shot down by
overwhelming numbers.
One heavily-laden boat was dragged into the stream, and a few officers
and men clambered on board. The voyage they made would supply material
for an epic. They were followed along the banks and pursued by armed
craft on the river. They fought all day and throughout the night, and,
when the ungoverned boat ran ashore during a wild squall of wind and
rain at daybreak, the surviving soldiers, a sergeant and eleven men,
headed by Mowbray-Thomson of the 56th, and Delafosse of the 53d, sprang
out and charged some hundreds of sepoys and hostile villagers who had
gathered on the bank.
The craven-hearted gang yielded before the Englishmen's fierce
onslaught. The tiny band turned to fight their way back, and found that
the boat had drifted off again! Then they seized a Hindu temple on the
bank and held it until the sepoys piled burning timber against the rear
walls and threw bags of powder on the fire!
Fixing bayonets and leaving the sergeant dead in the doorway, they
charged again into the mass of the enemy. Six fell. The remainder
reached the river, threw aside their guns, and plunged boldly in. Two
were shot while swimming, and one man, unable to swim any distance,
coolly made his way ashore again and faced his murderers until he sank
beneath their blows.
Mowbray-Thomson, Delafosse, and Privates Murphy and Sullivan, swam six
miles with the stream, and were finally rescued and helped by a friendly
native.
Those four were all who came alive out of the Inferno of Cawnpore. The
boat, after clearing the shoal, was captured by the mutineers. Major
Vibart of the 2d Cavalry, who was so severely wounded that he could not
join in the earlier fighting, and some eighty helpless souls under his
command, were brought back to the city of death. There, by orders of the
Nana, the men were slain forthwith and the women and children were taken
to a building in which they found one hundred and twenty-five others,
who had been spared for the Brahmin's own terrible purposes from the
butchery at Massacre Ghat on the 27th.
Returning to Bithoor the Nana was proclaimed Peishwa amid the booming of
cannon and the plaudits of his retainers. He passed a week in drunken
revels and debauchery, and when, in ignorance of its fate, a small
company of European fugitives from Fategarh sought refuge at Cawnpore,
he amused himself by having all the men but three killed in his
presence. These three and the women and children who accompanied them,
were sent to a small house known as the Bibigarh, in which the whole of
the captives, now numbering two hundred and eleven, were imprisoned.
Many died, and they were happiest. The survivors were subjected to every
indignity, given the coarsest food, and forced to grind corn for their
conqueror, who, early in July, took up his abode in a large building at
Cawnpore overlooking the house in which the unhappy people were penned.
But the period of their earthly sufferings was drawing to a close. An
avenging army was moving swiftly up the Grand Trunk Road from Allahabad.
The Nana's nephew and two of his lieutenants, leading a large force
against the British, were badly defeated. On the 15th of July came the
alarming tidings that the Feringhis were only a day's march from the
city.
The Furies must have chosen that date. The Nana, the man who thought
himself fit to be a king, decided that Havelock would turn back if there
were no more English left in Cawnpore! So as a preliminary to the
greater tragedy, five men who had escaped death thus far--no one knows
whence two of them came--were brought forth and slaughtered at the feet
of the renowned Peishwa. Then a squad of sepoys were told to "shoot all
the women and children in the Bibigarh through the windows of the
house."
Poor wretches--they were afraid to refuse, yet their gorge rose at the
deed, and they fired at the ceiling!
Such weakness was annoying to the puissant Brahmin. He selected two
Mohammedan butchers, an Afghan, and two out-caste Hindus, to do his
bidding. Armed with long knives these five fiends entered the shambles.
Alas, how can the scene that followed be described!
Yet, not even then was the sacrifice complete. Some who were wounded but
not killed, a few children who crept under the garments of their dead
mothers, lived until the morning. Not all the native soldiers were so
lost to human sympathies that they did not shudder at the groans and
muffled cries that came all night from the house of sorrow. Some of them
have left records of sights and sounds too horrible to translate from
their Eastern tongue.
But the rumble of distant guns told the destroyer that his short-lived
hour of triumph was nearly sped. In a paroxysm of rage and fear, he gave
the final order, and the Well of Cawnpore thereby attained its ghastly
immortality. By his command all that piteous company of women and
children, the living and the dead together, were thrown into a deep well
that stood in the garden of Bibigarh--the House of the Woman.
It was thus that Nana Sahib strove to cloak his crime. Yet never did
foul murderer flaunt deed more glaringly in the face of Heaven. Fifty
years have passed, myriads of human beings have lived and died since the
well swallowed the Nana's victims, but the memory of those gracious
women, of those golden-haired children, of those dear little infants
born while the guns thundered around the entrenchment, shall endure
forever. The Nana sought oblivion and forgetfulness for his sin. He
earned the anger of the gods and the malediction of the world, then and
for all time.