CHAPTER III.

THE SIEGE.

The intelligence of the revolt speedily travelled over all surrounding

districts, and attracted to the spot the entire available blackguardism

of the neighbourhood. The disloyal and insolvent landholders for thirty

miles about called out their tenantry and retainers, and made the best

of their way to Cawnpore. As when the redoubted Hebrew captain founded

an asylum in the cave of Adullam, so now unto the leaders of the mutiny

gathered themselves every one that was in distress, and every one that

was in debt, and every one that was discontented. Thus immutable is

the constitution of Oriental society:--unchanged by thirty centuries;

unchangeable, perchance, by thirty more. Some chieftains brought two

hundred armed followers; others four hundred. One Rajah came with a

tail of forty score: while Bhowany Sing, whom Nanukchund designates as

"that old and notorious scoundrel," marched into the rebel camp at the

head of twelve hundred matchlock-men. No one seems to have entertained

any doubt as to the final extinction of our sway. The old order of

things had disappeared for ever, and it behoved any feudal leader who

had ambition or necessities to be present and ready to assert himself

ere the new order was definitely established. The Nana was first to

seize the occasion by the forelock. A trusty adherent was sent to

Bithoor with an escort of twenty horse to announce the commencement of

the Mahratta rule. It was a terrible hour for the personal enemies of

him who had assumed the prime authority. As soon as it became known

that their master was in power, the idle ruffians who swarmed in his

palace at once proceeded to gratify his spite and their own wanton

cruelty. They forced the doors of Goordeen, who acted as agent to the

widows of Bajee Rao, the late Peishwa; knocked down his house about

his ears; slew his people; and ended by blowing him from the mouth of

a cannon. They seized the attendants of Chimna Apa, who pulled the

strings of the law-suit brought against the Maharaja by his cousin;

loaded them with chains; and informed them that they were to be put

to death as soon as the captors could find leisure to cut off their

hands and noses. Nanukchund, who had been the leading counsel in the

case, was warned in time of the impending danger. He sent word to his

juniors to provide for their own safety, and himself sought concealment

in an unfurnished house belonging to one of his friends, whence he

observed the progress of the insurrection with a penetration that was

occasionally distorted by present terror and the anticipation of future

advancement.

On the morning of Sunday, the seventh of June, a proclamation in two

languages was issued at Cawnpore from the press of a schoolmaster, and

distributed by his pupils, adjuring all true Hindoos and Mussulmans to

unite in defence of their religions, and rally round the person of the

Nana. Neither Mussulmans nor Hindoos were slow to obey the call. The

residents of the Butcher's Ward forthwith set up the green standard,

and were joined by the dregs of the population. Respectable Mahomedans

at first held aloof; but next day the banner was removed to an open

square, south of the canal, whither a large and influential body of

the faithful repaired to do homage to the symbol of their religion.

Azeezun, the Demoiselle Théroigne of the revolt, appeared on horseback

amidst a group of her admirers, dressed in the uniform of her favoured

regiment, armed with pistols, and decorated with medals. A priest of

high consideration seated himself beneath the flag, rosary in hand,

and endeavoured by prayer and meditation to ascertain whether the

day was propitious for an attack upon the stronghold of the infidel.

His piety, however, was cut short by a round-shot from Lieutenant

Dempster's battery, which sent the assemblage of believers scuttling to

the nearest cover: upon which the holy man bundled together his beads,

tucked up his robes, and made off with a precipitation not altogether

consistent with the doctrine of fatalism.

Meanwhile throughout and around the town were being gathered in the

gleanings of that harvest of murder. A miserable family of the name of

Mackintosh was discovered lurking under a bridge disguised in native

clothes, their faces stained with pitiful want of skill in imitation

of the Hindoo complexion. A road overseer was caught with his wife and

children to the north of the station; and another person employed in

the same department, who had found a temporary refuge beneath the roof

of an individual whom he had formerly obliged with a contract, was now

turned adrift, and taken by the bloodhounds who were scouring the city.

To each and all of these capture was death, instant inexorable. The

Maharaja had despatched a party of sepoys to the residence of Mr Edward

Greenway, a man of considerable property, who had given shelter to an

officer recently cashiered by court-martial. This gentleman now proved

that, in whatever military qualities he might have been deficient,

courage, at least, was not amongst them; for he defended the threshold

of his host until the last cartridge had been expended, and then walked

in among the assailants, and bade them cut his throat: an invitation

to which they eagerly responded. Then they secured Mr. Greenway, his

wife, his sister, and his little ones, and brought them as prisoners

to the Nana; who ordered them into confinement with the expectation of

obtaining a ransom, and the intention of killing them whether or not

the money was forthcoming. He, for one, had no notion of permitting his

avarice to clash with his barbarity.

As the excitement of tracking down and unearthing Englishmen began to

languish on account of the growing scarcity of victims, the mutineers

gradually betook themselves to the more serious business of the siege.

During the whole of Saturday Teeka Sing had been hard at work in the

Arsenal, mounting the great guns, and despatching them successively to

the scene of action. As fast as each piece arrived, it was placed in

position, and manned by a party of volunteers. By noon on Sunday the

cordon of batteries was complete, and our intrenchment was raked by

twenty-four pound shot from every quarter of the compass. Now became

patent to the most inexperienced eye the fatal and irremediable defects

of the site which our general had selected for the fortification. The

Dragoon Hospital was entirely surrounded by large and solid buildings,

at distances varying from three to eight hundred yards: buildings from

which the assailants derived protection at least as effectual as that

afforded to the garrison by their improvised defences. From roof and

window poured a shower of bullets during the hours of daylight, while

after dusk troops of sepoys hovered about within pistol-shot, and made

the night hideous with incessant volleys of musketry. Henceforward,

there was but little sleep for our countrymen.

The annals of warfare contain no episode so painful as the story of

this melancholy conflict. It is a story which needs not comment or

embellishment. Whether related in the inornate language of official

correspondence, or in the childish phraseology of Hindoo evidence, it

moves to tears as surely as the pages in which the greatest of all

historians tells, as only he can tell, the last agony of the Athenian

host in Sicily. The sun never before looked on such a sight as a

crowd of women and children cooped within a small space, and exposed

during twenty days and nights to the concentrated fire of thousands

of muskets and a score of heavy cannon. At first every projectile

which struck the barracks was the signal for heartrending shrieks,

and low wailing more heartrending yet: but, ere long, time and habit

taught them to suffer and to fear in silence. Before the third evening

every window and door had been beaten in. Next went the screens, the

piled-up furniture, and the internal partitions: and soon shell and

ball ranged at will through and through the naked rooms. Some ladies

were slain outright by grape or round-shot. Others were struck down by

bullets. Many were crushed beneath falling brickwork, or mutilated by

the splinters which flew from shattered sash and panel. Happy were they

whose age and sex called them to the front of the battle, and dispensed

them from the spectacle of this passive carnage. Better to hear more

distinctly the crackle of the sepoy musketry, and the groans of wounded

wife and sister more faintly. If die they both must, such was the

thought of more than one husband, it was well that duty bade them die

apart.

Never did men fight with more signal determination against more fearful

odds. Not at Fontenoy, not at Arcot, not at Albuera was British

endurance so stubborn, or British valour so conspicuous. For, while

the besiegers worked their guns under cover, the artillerymen of the

besieged stood erect upon the bare plain. While the besiegers possessed

unbounded store of huge mortars and battering-guns, the besieged had

a few cannon too small for efficacious service in the field. While

disease and the accidents of combat hourly diminished the numbers of

those within, the ranks without were daily swollen by regiments of

recent mutineers and fresh clans of rebels. But circumstances such as

these are best adapted to exhibit the strange humour of the English

warrior. With all that was most dear at their backs, and in front

all that was most hateful, and, in their view, most contemptible,

undaunted and not uncheerful our countrymen bore up the fray. From

the very earliest days of the attack it became apparent that old Sir

Hugh was unequal to the exposure and fatigue involved in the conduct

of the struggle, and in the inspection and re-distribution of the

posts, a labour rendered only too severe by the deadly fire of the

enemy. In such a strait men act as acted those ten thousand Greeks,

whose memory will never fade, when by the banks of far Euphrates their

chief had been slain and their allies scattered to the winds. "Then,"

says Xenophon, "Clearchus took the command, and the rest obeyed; not

as having chosen him by formal election, but because they saw that

he, and he alone, had the temper of a general." The Clearchus of

Cawnpore was Captain Moore, an officer in charge of the invalids of

the thirty-second foot. He was a tall, fair, blue-eyed man, glowing

with animation and easy Irish intrepidity. Wheresoever there was most

pressing risk, and wheresoever there was direst wretchedness, his

presence was seldom long wanting. Under the rampart; at the batteries;

in some out-picket, where men were dropping like pheasants under a

fearful cross-fire; in some corner of the hospital, to a brave heart

more fearful still, where lay the mangled forms of those young and

delicate beings whom war should always spare:--ever and everywhere

was heard his sprightly voice speaking words of encouragement, of

exhortation, of sympathy, and even of courteous gallantry. Wherever

Moore had passed he left men something more courageous, and women

something less unhappy. It is well when such leaders are at hand. It

is ill when they are discovered and promoted too late to undo the evil

that has been already done.

Across the south-western angle of the intrenchment ran a line of

barracks which were still in course of erection. They each measured

some two hundred feet in length, and were constructed of red brick,

which had not as yet received that coat of white plaster that reduces

all Anglo-Indian house decoration to a uniformity of colour diversified

only by the various degrees of age and shabbiness. Of these, the

buildings marked in the plan by the numbers 2, 3, and 4 were in close

proximity to the corner of our fortification, the entire extent

of which they commanded, inasmuch as their walls had been already

completed to an elevation of forty feet. None of the others had been

raised to a height of more than two or three yards from the level of

the ground. The floors had not been laid, nor the bamboo poles removed,

which, rudely spliced together, form the cheap but frail scaffolding

of Hindoo architecture: and the ground both within and without, along

the whole row, was thickly covered with piles of the materials used in

the progress of the works. From the very first the sepoys possessed

the northern half of the range: but they never succeeded in obtaining

a hold on Barrack Number Four, which was defended by a party of civil

engineers, who had been employed upon the East Indian railroad. These

gentlemen, over and above that indigenous aptitude for conflict

common to all Englishmen of the upper classes, had acquired, during

years spent in surveying, a trained sharpness of vision and a correct

judgment of distance which rendered them peculiarly dangerous when

placed behind the sights of an Enfield rifle. For three days these

amateurs baffled every attempt of the enemy: but at the end of that

period the assaults became so fierce and frequent that they were not

sorry to accept the services of a fighting man by profession. And so

there came across to them from the redan Captain Jenkins, a valiant

soldier, foredoomed to a death of anguish extraordinary even at such a

time.

Whether the mutineers were aware of this introduction of the military

element, or whether they already had learned to respect civilian skill

and bravery, from this time forth they desisted from their efforts in

that quarter, and turned their attention to the southernmost of the

unfinished erections, which they proceeded to occupy in great force.

Hereupon Lieutenant Glanville was posted with a small detachment in

the adjoining barrack, which thenceforward was recognised by both

parties as the key of our position. What the farm of Hougoumont was at

Waterloo,--what the sand-bag battery was at Inkerman,--that was Barrack

Number Two in the death-wrestle of Cawnpore. How furious was the

strife,--how desperate the case of the little garrison, may be gathered

from the fact that, though only sixteen in number, they had a surgeon

to themselves, who never lacked ample employment. Glanville came under

his hands, desperately wounded: and the vacancy thus caused was soon

after supplied by Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson of the Fifty-sixth Native

Infantry. This officer did his best to lose a life which destiny seemed

determined to preserve in order that England might know how, in their

exceeding distress, her sons had not been unmindful of her ancient

honour. "My sixteen men," he writes, "consisted in the first instance

of Ensign Henderson of the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry, five or six

of the Madras fusileers, two plate-layers from the railway works, and

some men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment. The first instalment was soon

disabled. The Madras fusileers were armed with the Enfield rifle, and

consequently they had to bear the brunt of the attack. They were all

shot at their posts. Several of the Eighty-fourth also fell: but, in

consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as a loss in my

little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a reinforcement

from the intrenchment. Sometimes a civilian, sometimes a soldier came.

The orders given us were, not to surrender with our lives, and we did

our best to obey them."

Nothing contributed so much to check the spread of the rebellion of

1857 as the individual courage and pugnacity of our countrymen resident

in the East. Civil and military alike, they were all skilled in the

use of weapons, and cool in the presence of personal danger. Such a

habit of body and mind they acquired both for policy and for pleasure.

Every Anglo-Indian is well aware that he is one of an imperial race,

holding its own in the midst of a subject population by dint of

foresight and martial prowess. There were villages of evil reputation

which on the day of assessment the collector preferred to visit on

the back of the steadiest Arab in his stables, with a favourite

hog spear carelessly balanced beside his right stirrup. There were

notorious bits of road where the traveller felt more comfortable if

he heard from time to time the lock of his revolver clanking against

the soda-water bottles in the pocket of his palanquin. Never was there

a better training-school for warfare than the Indian hunting-field.

A man who has heard unmoved above his head the scream of a crippled

elephant;--who behind his trusty Westley Richards has awaited, calm and

collected, the last rush of a wounded tiger;--need not doubt what his

behaviour may be in any possible emergency. He who, like more than one

true sportsman, has hardly crawled away, bloody knife in hand, from

the embrace of a dying bear:--who has kept at bay a forty-inch boar

with the butt of his shivered lance;--will not be at a loss how to meet

the charge of a mutinous trooper. The rebels found to their cost that

the Sahibs, like old stalkers of large game, were seldom foolhardy

and never remiss:--that they were neither fluttered by peril nor

over-excited by success:--that they rarely failed to make the most of

what cover they could get, and still more rarely wasted a cartridge.

Lieutenant Thomson contrived a sort of perch half-way up the wall of

his barrack, in which he stationed a young officer, named Stirling, of

high repute as a marksman, who soon proved that a rebel running home

to his dinner was at least as easy to hit as an ibex bounding down the

crags in a Himalayan valley, or a blue cow dodging in and out amidst

the trunks of an Oude forest.

The whole of this range of buildings not included within our posts was

literally alive with sepoys. They could distinctly be heard scampering

along in troops, like rats behind an antique wainscot, chattering,

yelling, or screaming under the emotion of the moment. From door, and

window, and drain, and loophole they fired away at our stronghold,

accompanying each shot with a taunt, conveying, in Oriental fashion,

a random but painful statement concerning a remote ancestress of the

person addressed. Ever and anon a fanatic, inspired by some vile drug,

would issue forth into the open, brandishing his sword, in order

to indulge himself in a dance of defiance; on all which occasions

Lieutenant Stirling took good care that the performance should not meet

with an encore. When the enemy became more than usually troublesome,

the picket which was most hardly pressed would invite their neighbours

to come over and assist them: and then the combined force of some

thirty bayonets sallied forth to sweep the line of barracks, chasing

the foe before them; killing the boldest and slowest of foot; knocking

on the head such as were drunk or asleep; shooting down those who,

in their anxiety to get a good aim, had ensconced themselves too

high up to be able to climb down on so short a notice; and driving

the rest out, and across the plain: at which point the gunners of

the intrenchment took up the work, and plied the flying multitude

with grape and canister. During one of the earliest of these sorties

eleven mutineers were captured, and brought into the intrenchment. As

no sentry could just then be spared from the front, they were placed

under the charge of Bridget Widdowson, a stalwart dame, wife of a

private of the Thirty-second Regiment. Secured by the very insufficient

contrivance of a single rope, passed from wrist to wrist, they sat

quietly on the ground like good school-children, while the matron

walked up and down in front of the row, drawn sword in hand. After

she had been relieved by a warder of the other sex, they all managed

to slip off: and from that time forward it was generally understood

that prisoners were to be left on the spot where they had been caught,

with the jackal and the vulture as their jailers. A captive, as long

as he remained in custody, was a consumer of precious food; and at

once became the most dangerous of spies, if he succeeded in making his

escape to the rebel lines with a report of our destitute condition.

On Friday, the twelfth, the insurgents made their first general assault

upon our position. The cavalry, who on that day had been the first

in the career of sedition, were now with some difficulty prevailed

upon to dismount and lead the way to glory; but after the loss of two

of their number they concluded that enough had been done to sustain

the credit of their branch of the service, and retired to console

themselves for their repulse in the opium shops of the suburbs. The

sepoy infantry next advanced to try their fortune, followed by all the

rabble of the bazaars. They came on like men, but they went where there

were men likewise. It was not thus that our rampart might be won. Every

English soldier had ready to his hand from three to ten muskets loaded

with ball and slug: for there was a plentiful stock of small-arms

within the fortification. The civilian held his thumb pressed tight

upon the hammer of a pet smoothbore, with a charge of Number Four

shot for close quarters snugly packed in the left-hand barrel. The

officer in command of the battery was feeling for the leaden tip in

each chamber of his revolver, as he gave his final order to take time

and aim below the cross-belts. Our people were composed and confident.

Sending quiet shots from behind a wall into the middle of a crowd

was child's play compared with the daylong hazard of the crashing

cannonade. After a short but bitter engagement the assailants withdrew,

leaving on the field many of their comrades. Profiting by this harsh

lesson they returned henceforward to their old tactics, and applied

themselves to pound out the life of our garrison by an unremitting

storm of ball, and bomb, and bullet.

Few, and ever fewer, in number; overmatched in weight of metal;

ill-provided with ammunition, and protected by not an inch of cover,

our artillerymen still sustained the hot debate. Lieutenant Ashe

went through his work with a display of professional interest that

would not have disgraced Sir William Armstrong during a trial match at

Shoeburyness. After each round the besiegers saw with astonishment the

zealous young Sahib leap on the heel of the discharged gun, spy-glass

in hand, heedless of the missiles which were chirping round his ears.

Unfortunately eight out of our ten pieces were nine-pounders, and

the supply of nine-pound balls was soon expended. Reduced to load

with shot a size too small, our officers could not secure accuracy in

their practice. The gunners in our south-eastern battery had suffered

much from a small piece which the sepoys had contrived to hoist into

position amidst the _débris_ of one among the half-built barracks.

Lieutenant Delafosse, after despatching a number of six-pound balls

in the direction of the embrasure without any perceptible result, at

length resolved to bring the matter to a conclusion in one way or

another. He rammed down three cannon-balls, filled up the chinks with

grape, bade his men stand back, and fired off this portentous charge.

To his surprise and delight his own gun did not burst, and nothing more

was ever heard of the tiresome little antagonist. The same officer,

somewhat later in the siege, was in the north-eastern battery when the

carriage of a cannon was ignited by an unlucky accident. The situation

was most critical, for the woodwork, which had stood beneath the

June sun until it was dry as tinder, blazed furiously, and there was

imminent risk of a general explosion of all the powder in the battery.

The rebels discerned the opportunity, and concentrated their fire upon

the spot where Delafosse, stretched at length on his back beneath the

gun, was pulling down the burning splinters and scattering earth upon

the flames. By the aid of two private soldiers he extinguished the

conflagration, though eighteen pound and twenty-four pound shot were

flying past at the rate of six a minute. With such examples before

them, people of no class or calling were behindhand in acts of daring

when the common safety was at stake. One Jacobi, a coachmaker by trade,

and, to judge from his appellation, a person of mixed parentage,

descried on the roof of the magazine a fire-ball, which he mistook for

a live shell. Under this impression he clambered up, secured the object

of his apprehension, and heaved it over the breastwork with a sigh of

relief. There was many a Cross of Victoria earned in that camp, where

victory was not, nor any reasonable chance of victory.

But the contest was too unequal to last long. By the end of the first

week our fifty-nine artillerymen had all been killed or wounded at

their posts. Of the officers to whom the charge of the guns had

originally been entrusted, few had escaped unhurt from the hail of

lead and iron, or the hardly less deadly rays of the Indian noon.

Sunstroke had killed Major Prout. Captain Kempland was stretched on

the floor of the barrack, dazed and powerless. His next in command,

Lieutenant Eckford, a soldier of high promise and an accomplished

gentleman, while snatching half an hour's repose under the roof of

the verandah, was struck full on the heart by a cannon-ball. In the

west quarter Dempster had been shot dead, and from the same battery

Martin had been carried into the hospital with a bullet in his lungs.

For a while volunteers endeavoured to supply the place of the trained

gunners; and all was done that could be expected from bandsmen, and

opium agents, and telegraph clerks firing six-pound balls out of

damaged nine-pounders, while exposed without protection to a murderous

discharge from siege guns and heavy mortars. There could be only one

termination to such a business. Our only howitzer was knocked clean

off its carriage. One cannon lost the entire muzzle. Some had their

sides beaten in, some their vents blown out. At length our park of

artillery was reduced to a couple of pieces, which were withdrawn under

cover, loaded with grape, and reserved for the purpose of repelling

an assault. And even of these the bore had been injured to such an

extent that the canister could not be driven home. Our poor ladies,

accordingly, in rivalry of those somewhat apocryphal Carthaginian dames

who twisted their hair into bowstrings, gave up their stockings to

supply the case for a novel but not unserviceable cartridge. Since the

days when the shopmen of Londonderry loaded their quaint old ordnance

with brick-bats wrapped in strips of gutter-piping, necessity has,

perhaps, never been brought to bed with a more singular offspring.

As our reply waned more faint and ever fainter, the fire of the enemy

continued to augment in volume, in rapidity, and in precision. The list

of individual casualties mounted up in increasing ratio, and before

long our misfortunes culminated in a wholesale disaster. Grave fears

had been entertained for the security of the thatched barrack by every

man who had the common sense to see that fire would burn straw. There

were found some who, with admirable self-devotion, had scrambled on

to that lead-bespattered slope, and essayed to cover with tiles and

rubbish the inflammable material of the roof. On the eighth evening of

the bombardment a lighted carcase settled among the rafters, and the

whole building was speedily in a blaze. It happened most unfortunately

that this barrack, as affording the better shelter and the less

confined space, had been selected for the accommodation of our wounded

and our sick. No effort was spared, no hazard shunned to rescue those

who could not help themselves: but in spite of everything which could

be tried two brave men perished a little sooner than their fellows, and

by a rather more distressing fate. That was indeed a night of horror.

The roar of the flames, lost every ten seconds in the peal of the rebel

artillery; the whistle of the great shot; the shrieks of the sufferers,

who forgot their pain in the helpless anticipation of a sudden and

agonizing death; the groups of crying women and children huddled

together in the ditch; the stream of men running to and fro between the

houses, laden with sacks of provisions, and kegs of ammunition, and

private property of value, and living burdens more precious still; the

guards crouching silent and watchful, finger on trigger, each at his

station along the external wall; the forms of countless foes, revealed

now and again by the fitful glare, prowling around through the outer

gloom;--these sights and sounds combined to form a scene and a chorus

which will be ever memorable to the trio of actors who lived through

the catastrophe of that awful drama.

Captain Moore thought it well to give the enemy an early and convincing

proof that the spirit of our people was not broken by this great

calamity. At the dead of the ensuing night he stole out from the

intrenchment with fifty picked men at his heels in the direction of

the chapel and the racket-court. Beginning from this point, the party

hurried down the rebel lines under favour of the darkness, doing

whatever rapid mischief was practicable. They surprised in untimely

slumber some native gunners, who never waked again; spiked and rolled

over several twenty-four pounders; gratified their feelings by blowing

up a piece which had given them especial annoyance; and got back,

carrying in their arms four of their number, and leaving another

behind:--a service brilliant indeed, but barren of results: for the

sepoys had only to resolve on the calibre that they preferred, and the

number of canon which they could conveniently work, and then take at

will from the arsenal so inconsiderately placed at their disposal. This

chivalrous act, one among many such, at that time passed without reward

or public approval. When in a water-logged vessel men are toiling for

their lives, who observes whether his neighbour does more or less

at the pumps than he, provided all do their utmost? And when they

have betaken themselves to the boats, and are rowing against time and

famine, who cares which of the crew feathers most neatly, and which

reaches forward with the straightest back? This was no set duel of

civilized nations: no stately tournament, wherein the champions fight

beneath the eyes of a friendly people, ready with their praise and

sympathy; where wounds are bandaged with a ribbon, and self-sacrifice

entitles the hero to a corner in our modern Walhalla, the columns of

the daily press. Rare were those who here had leisure or heart to take

note, and they who survived to make report were rarer still. As during

the ages before Atrides came on earth countless chieftains, unwept,

unknown, sank into eternal oblivion because they lacked a sacred bard:

so at Cawnpore many a soldier brave as Hodson of Hodson's Horse, nobly

prodigal of himself as William Peel of the Shannon, dared, and fell,

and was forgotten for want of a special correspondent. Correspondence

there was, containing much earnest entreaty for a rescue and some

unconscious eloquence; but too important matter had to be compressed

into too small a compass to admit of panegyric or recommendation for

honours and advancement. Several urgent missives found their way

to Lucknow, rolled tightly into quills, sealed up, and hidden with

mysterious art in and about the person of Hindoo messengers;--so

curiously stowed away that in some cases it took almost as long to

produce as to convey the note: though, if the rebels chanced to

intercept the despatch, they generally abridged the operation by

cutting in pieces the ill-starred courier. On the middle day of June

the Lucknow surgeons extracted the following lines from the nose or

ear of a native who had been fortunate and adroit enough to elude the

manifold perils which beset those forty miles of road:--

"_From Sir H. M. Wheeler, K.C.B. to Martin Gubbins, Esq._

"My dear Gubbins,

"We have been besieged since the sixth by the Nana Sahib, joined by

the whole of the native troops, who broke out on the morning of the

fourth. The enemy have two 24-pounders, and several other guns. We

have only eight 9-pounders. The whole Christian population is with

us in a temporary intrenchment, and our defence has been noble and

wonderful, our loss heavy and cruel. We want aid, aid, aid! Regards

to Lawrence.

"Yours, &c.

H. M. Wheeler.

"14th June.

Quarter-past 8, P.M.

"P.S.--If we had 200 men we could punish the scoundrels and aid you."

The nature of the reply may be gathered from an acknowledgment which it

elicited from Captain Moore. The anniversary seems to have inspired his

pen. Brief and manly, cheerful and yet thoughtful, it is such a letter

as an English officer should write on the eighteenth of June.

"_From Captain Moore, H.M. 32d Foot._

"_18th June_, 10, P.M.

"Sir,

"By desire of Sir Hugh Wheeler, I have the honour to acknowledge

your letter of the 16th.

"Sir Hugh regrets you cannot send him the 200 men, as he believes

with their assistance we could drive the insurgents from Cawnpore,

and capture their guns.

"Our troops, officers, and volunteers have acted most nobly, and

on several occasions a handful of men have driven hundreds before

them. Our loss has been chiefly from the sun, and their heavy

guns. Our rations will last a fortnight, and we are still well

supplied with ammunition. Our guns are serviceable. Report says

that troops are advancing from Allahabad, and any assistance might

save our garrison. We, of course, are prepared to hold out to the

last. It is needless to mention the names of those who have been

killed, or died. We trust in God, and if our exertions here assist

your safety, it will be a consolation to know that our friends

appreciate our devotion. Any news of relief will cheer us.

"Yours, &c.

"J. Moore, Captain,

"32d Regiment.

"By order."

And now commenced to our brethren and sisters a period of unspeakable

woe; the ante-chamber of ruin; the penultimate syllable of their dismal

story. After the destruction of the thatched barrack, dearth of

house-room forced two hundred of our women and children to spend twelve

days of twice twelve hours without ceiling over head or flooring under

foot. At night they lay on the bare ground, exposed to every noxious

influence and exhalation that was abroad in the air; and in the morning

they rose, those among them who rose at all, to endure, bareheaded

often, and always roofless, the blazing fury of the tropical beams.

The men off guard attempted to contrive for them a partial protection,

by stretching canvas screens across a framework of muskets and poles;

but these canopies were soon fired by the rebel shells, and the poor

creatures were reduced to cower beneath the shelter of our earthwork,

feebly chasing the shadow thrown by the sun as he rose and set. It is

impossible for a home-staying Englishman to realize the true character

of the great troubles in 1857, unless he constantly bears in mind that

all which he reads was devised, and done, and endured beneath the

vertical rays of an Eastern summer, and in a temperature varying from a

hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty-eight degrees in the shade.

If there are any whose experience of heat is limited to a field-day at

Wimbledon in the month of August, or to a tramp over Norfolk stubbles

when the dogs are too thirsty to work, and the boy has carried off the

beer to the wrong spinney, they will obtain a more just notion from a

sad tale simply told than from pages of unscientific rhetoric.

This is what befell Mrs. M----, the wife of the surgeon at a certain

station on the southern confines of the insurrection. "I heard," she

says, "a number of shots fired, and, looking out, I saw my husband

driving furiously from the mess-house, waving his wip. I ran to him,

and, seeing a bearer with my child in his arms, I caught her up,

and got into the buggy. At the mess-house we found all the officers

assembled, together with sixty sepoys, who had remained faithful. We

went off in one large party, amidst a general conflagration of our late

homes. We reached the caravanserai at Chattapore the next morning, and

thence started for Callinger. At this point our sepoy escort deserted

us. We were fired upon by matchlock-men, and one officer was shot

dead. We heard, likewise, that the people had risen at Callinger, so

we returned, and walked back ten miles that day. M---- and I carried

the child alternately. Presently Mrs. Smalley died of sunstroke. We had

no food amongst us. An officer kindly lent us a horse. We were very

faint. The major died, and was buried; also the serjeant-major, and

some women. The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were

fired at again by matchlock-men, and changed direction for Allahabad.

Our party consisted of nine gentlemen, two children, the serjeant, and

his wife. On the morning of the twentieth, Captain Scott took Lottie on

to his horse. I was riding behind my husband, and she was so crushed

between us. She was two years old on the first of the month. We were

both weak through want of food and the effect of the sun. Lottie and I

had no head-covering. M---- had a sepoy's cap I found on the ground.

Soon after sunrise we were followed by villagers armed with clubs

and spears. One of them struck Captain Scott's horse on the leg. He

galloped off with Lottie, and my poor husband never saw his child

again. We rode on several miles, keeping away from villages, and then

crossed the river. Our thirst was extreme. M---- had dreadful cramps,

so that I had to hold him on the horse. I was very uneasy about him.

The day before I saw the drummer's wife eating chupatties, and asked

her to give a piece to the child, which she did. I now saw water in a

ravine. The descent was steep and our only drinking-vessel was M----'s

cap. Our horse got water, and I bathed my neck. I had no stockings,

and my feet were torn and blistered. Two peasant's came in sight, and

we were frightened, and rode off. The serjeant held our horse, and

M---- put me up and mounted. I think he must have got suddenly faint,

for I fell, and he over me, on the road, when the horse started off.

Some time before he said, and Barber, too, that he could not live many

hours. I felt he was dying before we came to the ravine. He told me his

wishes about his children and myself, and took leave. My brain seemed

burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the serjeant let go the

horse, and it went off; so, that escape was cut off. We sat down on the

ground waiting for death. Poor fellow! he was very weak; his thirst

was frightful, and I went to get him water. Some villagers came, and

took my rupees and watch. I took off my wedding-ring, and twisted it in

my hair, and replaced the guard. I tore off the skirt of my dress to

bring water in, but it was no use, for when I returned, my beloved's

eyes were fixed, and, though I called, and tried to restore him, and

poured water into his mouth, it only rattled in his throat. He never

spoke to me again. I held him in my arms till he sank gradually down.

I felt frantic, but could not cry. I was alone. I bound his head and

face in my dress, for there was no earth to bury him. The pain in my

hands and feet was dreadful. I went down to the ravine, and sat in the

water on a stone, hoping to get off at night, and look for Lottie. When

I came back from the water, I saw that they had not taken her little

watch, chain, and seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an hour,

about thirty villagers came. They dragged me out of the ravine, and

took off my jacket, and found the little chain. They then dragged me to

a village, mocking me all the way, and wondering whom I was to belong

to. The whole population came to look at me. I asked for a bedstead,

and lay down outside the door of a hut. They had dozens of cows, and

yet refused me milk. When night came, and the village was quiet, some

old woman brought me a leaf-full of rice. I was too parched to eat,

and they gave me water. The morning after, a neighbouring Rajah sent a

palanquin and a horseman to fetch me, who told me that a little child

and three sahibs had come to his master's house." And so the mother

found her lost one, "greatly blistered," poor little darling. It is not

for Europeans in India to pray that their flight be not in the winter.

These women had spent their girlhood in the pleasant watering-places

and country homes of our island, surrounded by all of English comfort

and refinement that Eastern wealth could buy. Their later years had

slipped away amidst the secure plenty and languid ease of an European

household in India. In spacious saloons, alive with swinging punkahs;

where closed and darkened windows excluded the heated atmosphere, and

produced a counterfeit night, while through a mat of wetted grass

poured a stream of artificial air; with piles of ice, and troops of

servants, and the magazines of the preceding month, and the sensation

novels of the preceding season, monotonous, but not ungrateful, the

even days flew by. Early married life has in Bengal peculiar charms.

Settled down in some out-station, with no society save that of a

casual road-surveyor or a distant planter, the world forgetting, and

by the world remembered only at such times as there is talk concerning

the chances of official promotion, the young pair have full leisure

and a fair plea for indulging in that delicious habit of mutual

selfishness which changes existence into a perpetual honeymoon, until

that sorrowful epoch, when the children are too old to be kept any

longer in the enervating climate of Hindostan; when the period arrives

for writing to mothers-in-law, and sisters, and London bankers, and

Brighton schoolmasters; when even the pale pet of four years old, who

still answers to the name of baby, must go home at the beginning of

next cold season, and ought to have gone before the end of last. Then

begin the troubles of an Anglo-Indian family.

But though such ladies are often destined to endure the wearing anxiety

of an unnatural separation, they never know what it is to experience

a moment of physical privation. The services of menials, who make up

by their number and obsequiousness what they lack in energy,--the

unwearied attention of an affectionate partner and friend shield them

from distress and excuse them from exertion. To have slept four in a

cabin on board an outward-bound steamer,--to have passed a night in a

palanquin, or a day at a posting-house where there was no tea, and only

milk enough for the little ones;--had hitherto appeared to the Cawnpore

ladies the last conceivable extremity of destitution and discomfort.

Now, the Red Sea in July would have been to them an Elysium, and a

luncheon on Peninsular and Oriental ale and cheese a priceless banquet.

By a sudden turn of fortune they had been placed beneath the heel of

those beings whom they had ever regarded with that unconscious aversion

and contempt of race which is never so intense as in a female breast.

Those who were to them most dear and trusted were absent from their

side, save when a not unkindly bullet released the husband from his

post, and restored him to the wife, if but to die. Accustomed to those

frequent ablutions which, in England at least a duty, are in India a

necessity, they had not a single spongeful of water for washing from

the commencement to the close of the siege. They who, from childhood

upwards, in the comprehensive and pretty phrase which ladies love, "had

had everything nice about them," were now herded together in fetid

misery, where delicacy and modesty were hourly shocked, though never

for a moment impaired. Unshod, unkempt, ragged and squalid, haggard

and emaciated, parched with drought and faint with hunger, they sat

waiting to hear that they were widows. Each morning deepened the

hollow in the youngest cheek, and added a new furrow to the fairest

brow. Want, exposure, and depression, speedily decimated that hapless

company. In those regions, a hideous train of diseases stand always

within call: fever, and apoplexy, and the fell scourge of cholera,

and dysentery, plague more ghastly still. It was of fever that Miss

Brightman died, worn out with nursing a boy who had been shot through

his first red coat. Sir George Parker, the cantonment magistrate,

complained of sickness and headache, accompanied by a sensation of

drowsiness and oppression, which gradually deepened into insensibility,

and thence into death. Such, too, was the fate of Colonel Williams of

the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry, and of the Rev. Joseph Rooney, the

Catholic priest, in spite of the devoted care of the Irish soldiery.

The horrors which all shared and witnessed overset the balance of more

than one highly-wrought organization. A missionary of the Propagation

Society, as each day drew in, would bring his aged mother into the

verandah for a breath of the evening. At length a musket-ball, shot, we

may hope, at a venture, struck down the poor old lady with a painful

wound. Her sufferings affected the reason of her son, and he died a

raving maniac. Woe was it in those days unto them that were with child.

There were infants born during the terrible three weeks;--infants

who had no future. There were women who underwent more than all the

anguish of maternity, with less than none of the hope and joy. The

medical stores had all been destroyed in the conflagration. There

remained no drugs, and cordials, and opiates; no surgical instruments

and appliances to cure, to alleviate, or to deaden. Perhaps it was as

well that the absence of saws and tourniquets rendered impracticable

the more critical operations: for here, as at Lucknow, it was found

that, during the months of an Indian summer, within the circuit of a

beleagured fortification the consequences of amputation were invariably

fatal. Science could not regret that she was powerless, when her most

successful effort would hardly have prolonged an agony.

But, besides the Nana, another foe, ruthless and pertinacious as he,

had broken ground in front of our bulwarks. If our people had eaten as

freely as they had fought, their provisions would have been consumed

within the ten days: and human abstinence and endurance could not eke

out the slender stock beyond the limit of some three weeks. Already

the tins of preserved meats were empty, and the meal had fallen low in

the casks; and many barrels had been tapped by the enemy's shot, and

the rest were ominously light. The store of luxuries contributed from

the regimental mess-rooms had been shared by all ranks alike. A noble

equality and fraternity reigned through the little republic.

During that year our countrymen in India often debated, in a spirit by

no means of idle speculation, whether a member of a blockaded force

had a right to reserve food and drink for the exclusive support of

himself, his family, and his intimate associates. That period was

fruitful in questions of novel and momentous sophistry: questions to

be found in no closet compilation of Ethics and Dialectics. Would a

man be justified in shooting his wife if it was evident that she would

otherwise fall alive into the power of the mutineers? Would a European

flying for his life be guilty of murder if he blew out the brains of

an innocent villager who had unwittingly viewed him as he broke cover,

and who might therefore give information to the pursuers of blood?

Morally guilty, that is to say: for it is difficult to conceive the

circumstances under which a European would have been found legally

guilty of the murder of a native during the year 1857. Might a colonel

call out his men, and then mow them down with grape if it was certain

that the regiment was on the eve of a revolt? Might he if it was almost

certain? If it was most likely? If it was barely possible? These points

were raised and determined off hand by stern casuists, who, with a

thrust or a shot, broke off the horns of a dilemma which would have

sorely tried the subtlety of a Whately.

Theories differed as to the lawfulness of a private store in time of

siege: but the defenders of Cawnpore were right in their practice. For

in the last extremity of war his own life is not more important to an

individual than the life of his neighbour. A community of warriors

striving by a fair and equitable division to extract from their hoard

of victual all the collective material of strength and valour which

it may contain, presents surely an aspect more philosophical, as well

as more elevated, than an association of selfish and suspicious men,

comrades only in name, resembling nothing so much as jurymen vying to

starve each other out by help of concentrated meat lozenges. During the

first few days the private soldiers fared sparingly, but, for them,

poor fellows, delicately enough. "Here might be seen one," says Captain

Thomson, "trudging away from the main-guard laden with a bottle of

champagne, a tin of preserved herrings, and a pot of jam for his mess

allowance. There would be another with salmon, rum, and sweetmeats

for his inheritance." But very soon the dainties came to an end, and

the allowance was scantier than ever. It was a favourite saying among

the generation of military men, who in Europe kept unwilling holiday

between the day of Waterloo and the day of Alma, that an Englishman

fights best when he is full, and an Irishman when he is drunk. And yet

nowhere in the chronicles of our army does there exist the record of

doughtier deeds than were done in the June of '57 by Englishmen whose

daily sustenance was a short gill of flour, and a short handful of

split peas; by Irishmen who had no stimulant save their own bravery

and a rare sip of putrid water.

Numerous attempts were made by friends without to mend the fare of the

garrison, which were for the most part defeated by the vigilance of the

sepoys. A baker of the town, who had been footman in an Anglo-Indian

family, was detected smuggling a basket of bread into the intrenchment.

The culprit perhaps fondly imagined that Azimoolah would have had

mercy upon him in consideration of their common antecedents; but, if

he entertained such an expectation, he was doomed to disappointment.

Much credit is due to Zuhooree, an official in the Department of

Abkaree, a mysterious branch of the Revenue, the periodical occurrence

of which in the Indian budget has vexed the souls of a succession of

English financiers. This person put himself into communication with

Major Larkins of the Artillery, and sent into the fortification, as

opportunity served, most acceptable parcels of bread and eggs, with

occasional bottles of milk and liquid butter. At length, on the night

of the fourteenth of June, fifteen of his emissaries, among whom were

two women, were caught as they endeavoured to glide through the cordon

of sentries under cover of the flurry and consternation of our sortie.

They were all blown from guns, but not before the captors had elicited

from them the name of their employer. It was high time for Zuhooree

to look to his safety. Already his family had been imprisoned and

maltreated on an unfounded charge of Christianity, and the rebel camp

was a dangerous stage on which to play the part of good Obadiah. He

accordingly left by stealth for Allahabad, bearing with him a letter of

commendation from Major Larkins, attested by a gold ring set with five

diamonds, which belonged to the wife of that officer.

Our people did what they could to help themselves. A fat bull, sacred

to Brahma, finding nothing to eat in the streets, inasmuch as the

corn-dealers had closed their booths for fear of the sepoys, came

grazing along the plain until he arrived within range of our profane

rifles. To shoot down this pampered monster, the fakeer of the animal

world,[2] was no considerable feat for marksmen who could hit a black

buck running at a distance of a hundred and fifty paces. The difficulty

consisted in the retrieving of the game, which lay full three hundred

yards from our rampart, on a plain swept by the fire of the insurgents.

Inside our place, however, courage was more plentiful than beef; and

eight or ten volunteers professed themselves ready to follow Captain

Moore, who was first at any feast which partook of the nature of a

fray. The party provided themselves with a stout rope, which they

fastened round the legs and horns of the beast, and dragged home their

prize amidst a storm of cheers and bullets, alive but not unscathed.

In the banquet which ensued the defenders of the outposts had no part.

On the other hand, they sometimes enjoyed luxuries of their own. A

pariah dog, seduced by blandishments never before lavished upon one of

his despised race, was tempted within the walls and thence into the

camp-kettle of Barrack Number Two. Towards that building, as towards

the lion's den in the fable, pointed the footsteps of every kind of

quadruped, and from it none. An aged horse, whose younger days had been

spent in the ranks of the Irregular Cavalry, was killed, roasted, and

eaten up in two meals by the combined pickets. The head was converted

into soup, and sent into the intrenchment for the use of some favoured

ladies; no explanations being offered or demanded concerning the nature

of the stock. Captain Halliday, of the Fifty-ninth Native Infantry, who

had come across on a morning visit, begged a portion for his poor wife,

who was lying in the hospital, sick unto death of the small-pox. On his

way back, walking, it may be, too slowly for security through dread of

spilling one precious drop, he fell never to rise again. In the midst

of every action and every movement, during the hours of labour and the

minutes of refreshment, unlooked for and unavoidable the mortal stroke

descended.

For by day and night the fire never ceased. The round shot crashed and

spun through the windows, raked the earthwork, and skipped about the

open ground in every corner of our position. The bullets cut the air,

and pattered on the wall like hail. The great shells rolled hissing

along the floors and down the trenches, and, bursting, spread around

them a circle of wrack, and mutilation, and promiscuous destruction. In

their blind and merciless career those iron messengers spared neither

old nor young, nor combatants nor sufferers, but flew ever onwards,

inflicting superfluous wounds and unavailing destruction. A single bomb

killed or maimed seven married women, who were seated in the ditch;

killed Jacobi, a watchmaker, namesake of the intrepid coachwright;

killed too the cashiered officer whose drunken freak had done something

to accelerate the outbreak. There were those who endured in one day a

double or a treble bereavement; while in some families none remained

to mourn. Colonel Williams died of apoplexy, and his wife, disfigured

and tortured by a frightful hurt in the face, would fain have rejoined

her husband. On the fifteenth of June Miss Mary Williams was stunned

by a fall of the ceiling, and expired in the arms of a wounded sister,

unconscious of her loving care. Two daughters survived--for a while.

Mistress White was walking with a twin child at either shoulder, and

her good man, a private of the Thirty-second, by her side. The same

ball slew the father, broke both elbows of the mother, and severely

injured one of the orphans. Captain Reynolds lost an arm and his life

by a cannon-shot; and Mrs. Reynolds, whose wrist had been pierced by

a musket ball, sank under fever and sorrow. A half-caste tradesman

and his daughter, crouching behind an empty barrel, too late and

together discovered that their shelter was inadequate. A son of Sir

Hugh was reclining on a sofa, faint with recent loss of blood;--one

sister at his feet, and another, with both his parents, busied about

his wants in different parts of the room;--when an uninvited and a

fatal guest entered the doorway, and left the lad a headless corpse.

No less than three subalterns attached to the same regiment as young

Wheeler lost their heads within the redan. Lieutenant Jervis of the

Engineers was walking to his battery through a shower of lead, with a

gait of calm grandeur, as if he were pacing the Eden Garden beneath

the eye-glasses of Calcutta beauty. In vain his comrades raised their

wonted shout of "Run, Jervis! Run!" He never returned to head-quarters.

He never reached his post. A grape-shot passed through the body of Mr.

Heberden, as he was handing some water to a lady. This gentleman, the

most undaunted and unaffected of the brave and simple men of science

employed upon the East Indian railroad, lay on his face for a whole

week without a murmur or a sigh, but not, we may well believe, without

a tacit prayer for the relief which came at last. Mr. Hillersdon,

the magistrate of the station, was dashed in pieces by a twenty-four

pound ball, while talking in the verandah to his wife, weak from an

unseasonable confinement. A few days elapsed, and a shot, less cruel

than some, displaced an avalanche of bricks which put an end to her

short widowhood. But poverty of language does not permit to continue

the list of horrors. In such a catalogue the synonyms of death are soon

exhausted, and give place to a grim tautology.

"The frequency of our casualties," writes Captain Thomson, "may be

understood by the history of one hour. Lieutenant Prole had come to

the main-guard to see Armstrong, the adjutant of the Fifty-third

Native Infantry, who was unwell. While engaged in conversation with

the invalid, Prole was struck by a musket-ball in the thigh, and fell

to the ground. I put his arm upon my shoulder, and holding him round

the waist, endeavoured to hobble across the open to the barrack, in

order that he might obtain the attention of the surgeons there. While

thus employed a ball hit me under the right shoulder-blade, and we

fell to the ground together, and were picked up by some privates,

who dragged us both back to the main-guard. While I was lying on the

ground, wofully sick from the wound, Gilbert Bax, of the Forty-eighth

Native Infantry, came to condole with me, when a bullet pierced

his shoulder-blade, causing a wound from which he died before the

termination of the siege."

The youngest were the least to be pitied. In such a plight, ignorance

of happier days was indeed bliss:--ignorance that there was a fair

world without, where people laughed merrily, and slept soundly, and

lived in the anticipations of enjoyment, not in the terrors of death.

To the small children the present was very weary; but, reasoning in

their way, they concluded that that present could not last much longer.

It must come to an end like the tiresome journey up the great river,

when the barge stuck fast in the mud, and mamma cried, and papa called

the boatman by that Hindoostanee name which they themselves were always

whipped for using. The restraint of our protracted incarceration was to

them intolerably irksome. There was neither milk, nor pudding, nor jam,

nor mangoes, nor any one to cuddle them, or sing to them, or listen to

their romances, and their wishes, and their grievances. The gentleman

who once was most kind to them would now come home from shooting all

black, and grimy, and with a rough beard, and would stand at the table

and eat quickly, and then run out again without taking any notice

of them: and some day or other he would be carried in on a shutter,

looking so pale and weak: and some day, perhaps, he never came back

at all. When they asked a lady to scold the servants for getting them

such a nasty breakfast, she only kissed them, and sobbed, and called

them poor darlings. They sorely missed the fond and patient bearer,

that willing playmate and much-enduring slave, whom Mrs. Sherwood's

charming tale has rendered a household word in English schoolrooms.

Left to their own tiny discretions, the dear creatures, unconscious of

danger, would toddle out of the crowded barrack, and betake themselves

to some primitive game which demanded no very elaborate provision of

toys. What was it to them that every half minute a big black ball came

hopping along amidst puffs of dust, or that little things which they

could not see flew about humming louder than cock-chafers or bumble

bees? With unexampled barbarity the sepoy sharpshooters forbore to

respect these innocent groups. The peril, which some incurred through

inexperience, was sought by others under the pressure of despondency.

One unhappy woman, unable to support the burden of her existence, ran

out from the shelter of the walls leading in each hand a child, and

was dragged back, despite of herself, by a private soldier, who freely

risked his life to preserve that which she was bent on losing. Not a

few native domestics refused to desert their employers. Over-worked and

under-thanked, with short-commons, and, if captured by the mutineers,

a shorter shrift, they stayed on, not for the sake of their pittance

of wages, but actuated solely by the ties of duty, gratitude, and

attachment. Most of them were soon dismissed from service, for no

fault, and with no warning. Three were killed by the explosion of a

shell. Another was shot through the head as he was hurrying to the

outposts intent upon serving his master's dinner before it had time to

cool. An ayah, while dandling an infant, lost both her legs by the blow

of a cannon-ball. That was in truth a dismal nursery.

Want of water was a constant and growing evil. At the best, a single

well would have furnished a pitiably insufficient supply for a thousand

mouths during an Indian June: and that well was from the first the

favourite target of the hostile artillerymen. Guns were trained on to

the exact spot; so that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day,

and by night the creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower

of grape. The framework of beam and brick which protected the drawers

was soon shot away. The machinery went next, and the buckets were

thenceforward hauled up hand over hand from a depth of more than sixty

feet. The Hindoo water-carriers were slain early in the siege, and

their place was supplied by English soldiers, who nominally were paid

at the rate of five rupees for every pail: though the brave fellows

knew that, when a few days had gone by, it would matter little in

whose hands the silver might happen to lie. That water was purchased

with blood and not with money. John Mackillop, of the Civil Service,

veiling devotion under a jocose pretence of self-depreciation, told

his friends that, though no fighting man, he was willing to make

himself useful where he could, and accordingly claimed to be appointed

Captain of the Well. His tenure of the office was prolonged beyond his

own expectation. It was not till a week had passed that he was laid

dying on a bed in the hospital with a grape-shot in the groin. His

last words expressed a desire that the lady to whom he had promised

a drink should not be disappointed. For some days a few gallons were

procured at a frightful hazard from a tank situated on the south-east

of the intrenchment. Those who were conscious how dear a price was

paid for every draught, thirsted in silence; but the babies kept up a

perpetual moan more terrible to some stout souls than a ten minutes'

hobble across the plain, a heavy skinful of water round the loins,

and an ounce of lead in the ankle. Captain Thomson saw the children of

his brother officers "sucking the pieces of old water-bags, putting

scraps of canvass and leather straps into the mouth to try and get

a single drop of moisture upon their parched lips." The distress of

our countrymen was enhanced by the plague of dust to which Cawnpore

is subject on account of the character of the soil. A traveller who

visited the station ten or twelve years before the mutiny, complains

that he got no gratification out of a grand review from which he

had promised himself much pleasure, because the show was throughout

enveloped in clouds which totally concealed it from his eyes.

There was yet another well, which yielded nothing then: which will

yield nothing till the sea, too, gives up her dead. It lay two hundred

yards from the rampart, beneath the walls of the unfinished barracks.

Thither at an hour varied nightly, for fear lest the rebel shot should

swell the funeral, with stealthy step and scant attendance the slain of

the previous day were borne. When morning broke the battle raged around

that sepulchre. Overhead the cannon roared, and men charged to and fro.

But those below rested none the less peacefully; their last cartridge

bitten; their last achievement performed: their last pang of hunger

and affliction undergone and already forgotten. There were deposited,

within the space of three weeks, two hundred and fifty English people,

a fourth by tale of the whole garrison. As in a season of trouble and

lawlessness men bury away their jewels and their gold against the

return of tranquillity and order: so the survivors committed to the

faithful mould their dear treasures, trusting that time and the fortune

of war would enable our country to honour her lost ones with a more

solemn rite, and a worthier tomb. Brief was the service whispered on

the brink of that sad well in the sultry summer night. It was much,

when they came to the grave, while the corpse was being made ready to

be laid into the earth, if the priest then said: "In the midst of life

we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord,

who for our sins art justly displeased?"

"Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most

merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal

death."

And again, while the earth was being cast upon the body by some

standing by, the priest might with the assent of all declare that it

was of His great mercy that it had pleased Almighty God to take unto

Himself the soul of the dear brother there departed.

Throughout the siege public worship, at stated hours, and of prescribed

length and form, neither did nor could take place: but the spirit

and the essential power of religion were not wanting. The station

chaplain, Mr. Moncrieff, made it his concern that no one should die

or suffer without the consolations of Christianity. And whenever he

could be spared from the hospital, this shepherd of a pest-stricken

flock, he would go the round of the batteries, and read a few Prayers

and Psalms to the fighting folk. With heads bent, and hands folded

over the muzzles of their rifles; soothed, some by genuine piety, some

by the associations of gladsome Christmas mornings and drowsy Sunday

afternoons spent in the aisle of their village church; they listened

calmly to the familiar words, those melancholy and resolute men. Each

congregation was more thin than the last. There were always present

some two or three to whom never again would grace be given to join with

accord in the common supplication. The people of Cawnpore might say in

the language used in a like strait by a brave and God-fearing soldier,

the Greatheart of English History:--"Indeed we are at this time a very

crazy company; yet we live in His sight, and shall work the time that

is appointed us, and shall rest after that in peace."

The condition of the besieged presented a complete contrast to the

state of things on the other side of the wall. The numbers and the

hopes of the insurgents mounted daily. Every morning some new Rajah or

Nawab paraded through the suburbs in his palanquin bright with silver

poles and silken hangings, preceded by drums, and standards, and led

chargers, and followed by a stream of lancers and matchlocks. Every

evening a fresh eruption of scoundrelism surged up from the narrow

crooked alleys and foul bazaars of the black city. Nor were the Hindoos

and Mahomedans of the revolted battalions left without the satisfaction

and encouragement of learning what great deeds had been wrought

elsewhere by the champions of the united faiths. In the month of June

the following document found its way from Delhi to Cawnpore:--

"_To all Hindoos and Mussulmans, Citizens and Servants of

Hindostan, the Officers of the Army now at Delhi and Meerut send

Greeting._

"It is well known that in these days all the English have entertained

these evil designs--first to destroy the religion of the whole

Hindostani army, and then to make the people Christians by compulsion.

Therefore we, solely on account of our religion, have combined with the

people, and have not spared alive one infidel, and have re-established

the Delhi dynasty on these terms, and thus act in obedience to orders

and receive double pay. Hundreds of guns and a large amount of treasure

have fallen into our hands; therefore it is fitting that whoever of

the soldiers and the people dislike turning Christians should unite

with one heart and act courageously, not leaving the seed of these

infidels remaining. For any quantity of supplies delivered to the army

the owners are to take the receipts of the officers; and they will

receive double payment from the Imperial Government. Whoever shall in

these times exhibit cowardice, or credulously believe the promises of

those impostors, the English, shall very shortly be put to shame for

such a deed; and, rubbing the hands of sorrow, shall receive for their

fidelity the reward the ruler of Lucknow got. It is further necessary

that all Hindoos and Mussulmans unite in this struggle, and, following

the instructions of some respectable people, keep themselves secure, so

that good order may be maintained, the poorer classes kept contented,

and they themselves be exalted to rank and dignity; also, that all,

so far as it is possible, copy this proclamation, and despatch it

everywhere, so that all true Hindoos and Mussulmans may be alive and

watchful, and fix it in some conspicuous place (but prudently, to avoid

detection), and strike a blow with a sword before giving circulation to

it. The first pay of the soldiers of Delhi will be thirty rupees per

month for a trooper, and ten rupees for a footman. Nearly one hundred

thousand men are ready; and there are thirteen flags of the English

regiments, and about fourteen standards from different parts, now

raised aloft for our religion, for God, and the conqueror; and it is

the intention of Cawnpore to root out the seed of the Devil. This is

what we of the army here wish."

This message was succeeded by a proclamation issued from the peacock

throne, in which the Mogul promised a monthly wage of twelve rupees

and a respectable estate to every sepoy who would rally to the

banner of the ancient dynasty. He likewise ordained that no cows

should thenceforward be killed throughout the land, and finished by

pronouncing a malediction upon the head of any one who should intercept

the imperial courier. The wretch was doomed to eat pork and beef: and,

as the messenger was eventually hanged by an English officer of the

Seventieth Infantry, it may be presumed that the curse has by this time

been fulfilled to the letter.

The rebel cause was soon strengthened by a more valuable reinforcement

than either the posse comitatus of the province, or the sympathy

of the Delhi mutineers. At the village of Chowbeypore, on the Great

North Road, had been stationed a detachment from the garrison of

Lucknow, comprising a squadron of native cavalry, and two companies of

sepoys, commanded by Captain Staples, four subalterns, and a European

serjeant-major. At about two o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, the

ninth of June, these gentlemen were roused from their luncheon by the

sound of a bugle playing the "Assembly." Rushing forth, they demanded

why so strange a liberty had been taken, and were told that it was by

the orders of the Nana. At the mention of this ill-omened name our

officers flung themselves on horseback, and rode for dear life, with

all the disadvantages resulting from ignorance of the country and a

bad start. That was a run in which the game was allowed no law. The

Captain was shot down from his saddle, and cut in pieces where he

lay. Two Englishmen took to the water like hunted stags, and there

miserably perished. Two others were headed by a mob of villagers, and

driven back among the sabres and pistols of their pursuers. Lieutenant

Bolton alone, by dint of hard riding, escaped to Cawnpore with a

bullet-hole in his cheek;--if escape it may be called, which was only

the postponement of death. After a chase of sixteen miles he reached

the neighbourhood of the town at nightfall; passed unobserved through

the lines of the mutineers; and camped out on the plain, waiting until

dawn should disclose to him the outline of the intrenchment. Our

sentries, astonished by the apparition of a cavalier riding at the

earthwork through the twilight like a mounted Remus, fired, and struck

his horse. No one, however, was surprised to find that even a crippled

steed could clear those defences at a leap. The fugitive was heartily

greeted by his countrymen, and entertained with such hospitality as

their situation would admit. Wounded and exhausted as he was, he proved

well worth his keep.

The troops who had revolted at Chowbeypore marched into Cawnpore,

bringing with them three English heads in a basket, and taking up on

their way a toll-keeper named Joseph Carter, and his wife; a young

person, who was daily expecting her first baby. This offering, combined

agreeably to his taste of the dead and the living, was mightily

acceptable to the Nana. With fraternal kindness he made a present

of the grisly trophies to Bala Rao, who exposed them in his saloon,

and gave a sort of conversazione at which they formed the leading

attraction. Mr. Carter was shot, as a matter of course; and his little

widow would have shared his fate, had not the relicts of the late

Peishwa, the step-mothers by adoption of the Maharaja, felt a womanly

commiseration for one so tender and so afflicted. The good ladies

begged hard for this single example of clemency, and begged in vain. At

length their pride of sex was roused against such determined brutality

towards a woman who had so lately been a wife, and was so soon to be a

mother, and they threatened to commit suicide unless their petition was

granted. The Nana then gave way, and permitted his relatives to carry

off their protégée to the apartments appropriated to the females in

the palace at Bithoor, where they placed her under the charge of an

experienced Mahomedan nurse. He insisted, however, that she should be

considered as under custody, and appointed a squad of troopers to see

that she was forthcoming whenever it might suit his will and pleasure.

He never lost sight of a victim. He boasted the worst half of, at any

rate, one kingly quality,--an unerring memory.

On the next Friday the remnant of the native force which had mutinied

at Benares made their appearance on the opposite side of the river. The

exit of these gentlemen from the Holy City had not been of a nature to

gratify their conceit, and their entry into Cawnpore was the reverse

of triumphant. They straggled up, jaded and dispirited, without any

semblance of martial order, some on horseback, and others perched up in

the uncomfortable country-carts of Hindostan, which seem to have been

devised with the express object of conveying the least possible amount

of freight with the greatest expenditure of traction power. Their

condition excited the contempt and cupidity of the officials appointed

to superintend the river traffic in the interest of the Nana; who

accordingly refused to ferry across these shabby auxiliaries for less

than a rupee per head. Considering that the majority of the passengers

were of pure Sikh blood, their spirit must indeed have been broken

before they could have endured such insolence and extortion.

On the fifteenth of June, a welcome message was brought to the Maharaja

from the Meer Nawab, a Mussulman of rank, who sent word that he

was coming up from the eastward with a couple of thousand regular

infantry, and a full complement of artillery. Azimoolah resolved that

his subordinates should not have an opportunity of repeating their

conduct of the previous week. Every mark of respect was to be displayed

towards so august and puissant a chieftain. The bridge contractors were

commissioned to collect barges for the transit of the expected allies,

and the confectioners of the town received instructions to prepare for

their refreshment a ménu, containing all those dishes of sweetened

animal food so nauseous to a European palate. On the morrow the Nawab

arrived at the head of two fine regiments, which had been raised on the

occasion of Lord Dalhousie's annexation, amidst the deep but suppressed

uneasiness of all who gave the native mind credit for the human

qualities of ambition, shame, and patriotism;--of all who believed the

Hindoo capable of any loftier sentiment than the desire to curry favour

with an English magistrate, touch a hundred rupees per mensem from an

English treasury, talk broken Addison, and read the "Deserted Village"

in the original. On the rolls of our army these battalions were styled

the Fourth and Fifth Oude Locals: but sepoys have invariably some

pet title for their own corps, (in most cases a corruption of the

name of its first colonel,) more suited to the Indian tongue than our

complicated military nomenclature. Thus the First, the Fifty-third, and

the Fifty-sixth Bengal Native Infantry, were spoken of familiarly as

"Gillises," "Lamboorn's," and "Garsteen's." The Oude soldiers under

the Meer Nawab were known to themselves and their compatriots as the

men of the Nadiree and the Akhtaree Regiments.

When the new-comers caught sight of the fortress which had hitherto

baffled the ingenuity and courage of their associates, they expressed

no small contempt for the generalship of the Nana, but bade him be at

his ease, for that they would engage to put him in possession of the

intrenchment after they had enjoyed a day's rest and surfeit. And so,

on the eighteenth of June, at the hour when, exactly two and forty

years before, the French tirailleurs were swarming through the woods

of Hougoumont up to the loopholes of the wall which they never passed,

the Oude mutineers charged in a mass across the plain, and over our

rampart; bore down the defenders; overturned a gun; and seemed for a

moment in a fair way of justifying their vaunt. A moment only: for,

without waiting for orders, angry Sahibs came running from all sides

to the rescue. Our people slewed round a nine-pounder; gave them first

some stockingfuls of grape, and then an English rush; and sent them

back to their master fewer and wiser than they came.

The rebel position presented an aspect animated and picturesque

in a high degree. To the north of our fortification, between the

Racket-court and the Chapel of Ease, was planted a battery well

armed with mortars and twenty-four pounder cannon. In this region

the command was taken by the Nunhey Nawab, the Mahomedan grandee,

who, with Bakur Ali, and others, had been plundered and imprisoned

by the Brahmins during their first outbreak of religious spite. The

high-spirited Moslem soldiery at once refused to brook this outrage,

and began to talk of setting up the Nawab's claim to royalty against

that of the Maharaja: upon which the latter released his prisoners,

and thenceforward behaved towards them rather as an equal than as a

master. The Nana's rival showed both judgment and vigour. He beat up

all the pensioned veterans of the neighbourhood who had formerly served

in the artillery, and employed work-people of both sexes in keeping him

supplied with red-hot shot. On one occasion an apprentice to the trade

took it into his head to try the experiment of heating a loaded shell,

and succeeded in blowing up a woman and five men, including, we may

presume, himself. The Nawab passed most of his time in the gallery of

the Racket-court, where, in the late afternoon of more quiet days, had

lolled a cluster of chatty Englishmen; opening bottles of soda-water;

chaffing the players with the threadbare raillery that suffices for the

simple taste of a limited community; descending in parties of four,

cheroot in mouth, when the cry of "game-ball all" warned them that

their turn was come. Occasionally he would issue forth to see how his

gunners were getting on, and to watch the effect of their practice

through a telescope. A half-caste Christian, who had disguised himself

as a Mahomedan with admirable skill, gives an interesting account of

what passed in this quarter. He says, "I saw Nunhey Nawab coming to

the batteries accompanied by a number of troopers, and sepoys, and

his own attendants also; and I was told by the people that the Nawab

had received a post of great dignity, and was in command of a battery.

About one o'clock I came close to Major-General Wheeler's bungalow,

and, finding a piece of mat in the compound, lay down on it, and saw

several troopers going about, forcing people to carry water to the

batteries. Hearing an uproar I rose from the place where I was, when

a trooper, seeing me, told me that it was a great shame for a young

Mussulman like me to be thus idling away my time, and that I should

assist at the batteries. He also told me that a young man, the son of

Kurrum Ali, the one-eyed, a pensioned soubahdar, was sent for by the

Nawab, and had laid a gun so precisely that the shot carried away a

portion of one of the barracks within the intrenchment, for which he

received a reward of ninety rupees, and a shawl. I replied to this

that I possessed no arms, and had never been a soldier." It was no

wonder that a battery where the service was conducted on so open-handed

a system soon became the popular resort. The lovely Azeezun made

this spot her head-quarters. She appears to have exercised a strange

fascination over our good friend Nanukchund, so frequently does she

appear in the course of his narrative. Whether he cherished towards her

a sneaking kindness; or a grudge for some past incivility; or, as is

most probable, both the one and the other, he certainly never leaves

her alone for many pages together. In his quaint way he writes:--"It

shows great daring in Azeezun, that she is always armed and present in

the batteries, owing to her attachment to the cavalry; and she takes

her favourites among them aside, and entertains them with milk, &c. on

the public road."

The Meer Nawab planted the cannon, which he had brought with him across

the river, on the south-east of our position, near the Artillery Mess

House. This manoeuvre forthwith debarred the garrison from obtaining

occasional and perilous access to the tank; a privation the more

severely felt, because the Oude men, bent on avenging their repulse,

worked their pieces with a will, and kept up at point-blank range so

hot a fire upon the mouth of our well that the drawing of water was a

deed of heroism by night, and in daylight an act of insanity. In the

west, Bakur Ali, who had shared with the Nunhey Nawab his disgrace

and his restoration to favour, bombarded our outposts from among the

stables of the Second Cavalry; while in and about the lines of the

First Native Infantry stood a number of heavy guns, known by the

collective appellation of "the Sepoy Battery," under cover of which

a Jemmadar, who fancied himself gifted with a turn for engineering,

was sinking a mine by the aid of some invalid sappers and miners,

whom he had persuaded to place themselves at his disposal. In the

south-west direction was a stately mansion, which formerly held rank

as a charitable institution, under the title of the "Salvador," a name

which the effeminate articulation of the native had long before this

converted into the "Savada." As the Mahomedan faction mustered strong

in the vicinity of the Racket-court, so the Savada soon became the

centre of Hindoo influence. It was the special haunt of the Nana. Here

were his ministers, his diviners, his courtiers, and the prisoners

from whom he purposed to extort something besides their breath. Here

was the battery which went by his name. Here was the tent of his most

able and ardent partizan, Teeka Sing, the generalissimo. Here too, in

an agreeable corner of the grounds, under the shade of a conspicuous

grove, conveniently remote alike from the camp of the Moslem and the

muzzles of the English artillery, was pitched his own pavilion; for he

seems to have inherited the Mahratta preference for canvas over brick

and mortar. The chiefs of that hardy and unquiet race seldom had a

tight roof over their heads until they were laid beneath some mausoleum

of fair white marble, sparkling with cornelian and jasper and lapsis

lazuli, constructed out of the spoils and the tribute of nations.

The mutineers showed every intention of enjoying their spell of

liberty and domination. These revolted regiments were rapidly turning

into mobs. The work of the batteries was left to the retainers of

ambitious Rajahs; to pensioned gunners; and to such amateurs as had

a stomach for fighting, and a taste for the shawls and cash lavished

by the Nunhey Nawab. The sepoys, meanwhile, lounged in the shops

which fringed the canal, eating sweetstuff with schoolboy avidity,

and drinking sherbet to their hearts' content; or swaggered along the

streets with a nonchalance copied from their reminiscences of the

fashionable frequenters of the band-stand, criticizing the driving of

those among their comrades who had been fortunate enough to lay their

hands upon a buggy belonging to a British officer. No decent people

were to be seen in the public places. No business was done in the main

thoroughfares. The tradesmen, in piteous trepidation, eyed the passing

scamps from behind their shutters, consoling their enforced idleness by

recollecting in what angle of the garden their money was interred, and

framing excuses against the probable visit of the Nana's tax-collector,

or the possible return of the English authorities. The opium-sellers

and the innkeepers, who in these days anterior to Mr. Wilson's budget

had not attained to the dignity of licensed victuallers, alone drove a

thriving trade. The warriors of the Religions smoked, and chewed, and

snored supine, clad in cotton drawers and a pair of clumsy shoes; their

necks encircled by the Brahminical thread, token of their privileged

and sacred extraction. To this costume they superadded a red coat, at

such times as the stings of conscience, or the reproaches of priest

and paramour, drove them out to get a lazy shot at the infidels and an

appetite for their curry.

The earliest care of the Nana had been to set on foot a respectable

municipal organization. With this object in view, he appointed to

the chief magistracy in the city one Hoolass Sing, who may have been

a traitor, but was, apparently, only a time-server. This person was

chosen by the advice of a deputation composed of the leading townsmen;

a tent-maker, a jeweller, and a dealer in opiates. Hoolass Sing

had no sinecure. It was only by the exercise of judicious firmness,

alternating with seasonable pliability, that he contrived to protect

Cawnpore from the rapacity of the soldiery, and the wrath of those

rural nobles whose paternal acres had been sold by the English

Government to recover arrears of land-tax, and purchased by moneyed

cits, who wished to cut a figure in country society. The duty of

victualling the troops was committed to a blind gentleman of the name

of Moolla, who, doubtless, saw quite well enough to water the rice

and omit to sift the meal. A burlesque judicial court was formed of

Azimoolah, Jwala, Pershad, and other creatures of the Maharaja; and

presided over by Baba Bliut, who delivered his decisions seated on a

billiard-table in Mr. Duncan's hotel. This tribunal passed a variety of

sentences without establishing any very valuable precedent. Once, in an

unaccountable fit of morality, it sentenced a luckless rogue to lose

his hand for theft; but, for obvious and selfish reasons, the judges

appear to have refrained from again taking cognizance of this crime.

A Mahomedan butcher was condemned to mutilation for having killed a

cow; and certain individuals were paraded through the town on donkeys,

"for disreputable livelihood:" a punishment which, when the charge was

made known, must have excited very general sympathy and indignation.

Gradually this body, like the Committee of Public Safety in the French

Revolution, assumed to itself a supervision over every department of

the administration. When the powder ran short, the principal dealer

in saltpetre was thrown into prison, until he produced the requisite

quantity of that article. A native merchant was required to provide

cloaks for half a battalion, at the rate of two and threepence a-piece;

a scale of payment which must have inspired him with an unaffected

regret for the liberal contracts of the old Company. With a keener

relish, Baba Bhut undertook to account for the Englishmen who still

lurked about, watching for an opportunity of slipping away to Allahabad

or Agra. On the eleventh of June, Mr. Williams, a writer in one of the

public offices, was traced out and slaughtered. Two days subsequently,

the head of young Mr. Duncan was brought into his own father's house.

The murderer was rewarded with the present of a pound, and the porter

got a couple of rupees.

At the expiration of a fortnight, an event occurred which, for a while,

afforded to the beseiged people a more suggestive and agreeable matter

of conversation than the rise of the mercury in the tube, and the

sinking of the flour in the barrels. A native water-carrier skulked

over from the opposite lines, and gave out that, on account of his

love and respect for the Sahibs, he had set his heart upon being the

first to bring them the good news; that there were two companies of

white soldiers on the other side of the Ganges, who were supposed to

have marched down from Lucknow; that they had guns with them, and were

making as if they would cross the river on the morrow; that the rebel

camp was in a panic, and that everybody was saying how much he had

all along intended to do for the Sahibs, had he only dared. Next day

he turned up again with the intelligence that the Europeans had been

detained on the opposite bank by an unexpected flood, but that they

were busily engaged in knocking together rafts, and might be looked for

within the forty-eight hours. Those hours passed, and twice and thrice

those hours, and there came not the aspect of help, nor the renewal of

confidence, nor the welcome sight of light faces, nor the welcome sound

of approaching artillery. The soi-disant water-carrier made no third

appearance. His two first visits had taught him all that Azimoolah

desired to know of our impoverished and defenceless plight.

Our spies were less lucky; or it may be that the sturdy and

straightforward British nature cannot promptly adapt itself to those

frauds which are proverbially fair in war. There was in the garrison

a soldier named Blenman, an Eurasian by birth, astute, and singularly

courageous, but in temper uncertain, and impatient of control. There,

and at that time, such a man was worth his weight in meal or powder,

and his superiors did well to humour him. Cool, observant, and bold to

temerity, the most delicate and hazardous of services had for him an

innate attraction. After trying his wings in some partial flights, he

prepared for a great and final enterprise, and volunteered to penetrate

as far as Allahabad with a report of our calamities, and an appeal for

instant succour. He disguised himself as a native cook, an easy task,

for his complexion showed that he had far more than the due share of

maternal blood; and sallied forth with a pistol and fifteen rupees

stuffed into his cotton drawers. He passed unnoticed or unsuspected no

less than seven horse pickets. The eighth stopped, and searched him, in

spite of his asseverations that he was a poor leather-dresser, taking

a walk through the night air, after working all day in a close alley

over the saddles and holsters of the gentlemen troopers of the Second

Cavalry. Too plausible to be killed off-hand, and too questionable to

be neglected, he was stripped and sent back whence he came, with no

other information than that the investment of our position was even

more strict and complete than had been apprehended.

A half-caste government official offered to make an attempt to obtain

intelligence, and to bribe over some of the influential citizens of

Cawnpore, on condition that Sir Hugh would permit his family to leave

the intrenchment. His terms were accepted. He set forth, but was

at once detected, and taken before the Maharaja, who sentenced him

to three years' imprisonment with hard labour; a unique example of

leniency, curious, as proving how firmly that usurper was persuaded

that his rule would now be permanent. Ghouse Mahomed, a faithful sepoy

of the Fifty-sixth, succeeded in getting farther than his predecessors.

He crept along the ground in the darkness, until he met two or three

men with four yoke of oxen taking supplies to the Savada house. He

told them that he was going to the city to buy some grave clothes for

his brother, a brave who had died that day for the good cause in one

of the advanced batteries. He was allowed to proceed upon his pious

errand; but, when he reached the native town, it was as much as he

could do to conceal himself from the inquisition of the rebel police.

Many emissaries were despatched from our fortification, but Blenman

alone returned. The others, through the months subsequent to our

re-occupation of the district, came straggling in, as they could effect

their escape from the camp of the fugitive Nana, with noses slit, and

hands or ears chopped off by an ignorant and inhuman operator.

The remaining contents of the Cawnpore budget derive their principal

interest from a consideration of the circumstances under which they

were produced. Not even at such a season would Englishmen put their

deeper feelings within an envelope; and the gossip of the station in

that June was hardly calculated to enliven a correspondence. On the

night of Sunday, the twenty-first, Major Vibart transmitted these lines

to Lucknow:--

"We have been cannonaded for six hours a day by twelve guns. This

evening, in three hours, upwards of thirty shells [mortars] were thrown

into the intrenchment. This has occurred daily for the last eight days.

An idea may be formed of our casualties, and how little protection

the barracks afford to the women. Any aid, to be effective, must be

immediate. In event of rain falling, our position would be untenable.

"According to telegraphic despatches received previous to the outbreak,

a thousand Europeans were to have been here on the fourteenth instant.

This force may be on its way up. Any assistance you can send might

co-operate with it. Nine-pounder ammunition, chiefly cartridges, is

required. Should the above force arrive, we can, in return, insure

the safety of Lucknow. Being simply a military man, General Wheeler

has no power to offer bribes in land and money to the insurgents, nor

any means whatever of communicating with them. You can ascertain the

best means of crossing the river. Nujuffgurh Ghaut is suggested. It

is earnestly requested that whatever is done may be effected without

a moment's delay. We have lost about a third of our original number.

The enemy are strongest in artillery. They appear not to have more

than four hundred or five hundred infantry. They move their guns with

difficulty, by means of unbroken bullocks. The infantry are great

cowards, and easily repulsed.

"By order,

"G. V. VIBART, Major."

In the following letter there is one sad touch: the widower writing

over his elbow "on the floor," "in the midst of the greatest dirt,

noise, and confusion."

"I was agreeably surprised to receive your most welcome letter of the

twenty-first, the messenger of which managed cleverly to find his way

here; but that surprise was exceeded by the astonishment felt by us

all, at the total want of knowledge you seem to be in regarding our

position and prospects; while we have been, since the sixth of the

month, equally in the dark respecting the doings of the world around

us. Your loss at Lucknow is frightful, in common with that of us all;

for, since the date referred to, every one here has been reduced to

ruin. On that date they commenced their attack, and fearfully have

they continued now for eighteen days and nights; while the condition

of misery experienced by all is utterly beyond description in this

place. Death and mutilation, in all their forms of horror, have been

daily before us. The numerical amount of casualties has been frightful,

caused both by sickness and the implements of war, the latter having

been fully employed against our devoted garrison by the villainous

insurgents, who have, unluckily, been enabled to furnish themselves

therewith from the repository which contained them. We await the

arrival of succour with the most anxious expectation, after all our

endurance and sufferings; for that, Sir Henry Lawrence has been applied

to by Sir Hugh, and we hope earnestly it will be afforded, and that

immediately, to avert further evil. If he will answer that appeal

with 'deux cents soldats Britanniques,' we shall be doubtless at once

enabled to improve our position in a vital manner: and we deserve

that the appeal should be so answered forthwith. You will be grieved

to learn that among our casualties from sickness my poor dear wife

and infant have been numbered. The former sank on the twelfth, and

the latter on the nineteenth. I am writing this on the floor, and in

the midst of the greatest dirt, noise, and confusion. Pray urge our

reinforcement to the Chief Commissioner.

"Yours,

"L. M. WIGGENS."

The employment of the French sentence is worthy of remark. During these

troubled times, every modern language was pressed into our service; and

more than one old field-officer mustered up his school reminiscences of

the Anabasis and the Iliad, to compose a bulletin, curiously blended

of Attic, Æolic, and Aldershot, which would have puzzled Grote or

Hermann at least as much as it could possibly perplex any mutineer or

highwayman who might chance to intercept the messenger.

Things had got to a terrible pass on our side of the wall. All the

present sweetness of existence was long since vanished, and the last

flicker of future hope had now died away. But, moved by a generous

despair and an invincible self-respect, our people still fought on. By

daring and vigilance, by countless shifts and unremitting labour, they

staved off ruin for another day, and yet another. At rare intervals

behind the earthwork they stood--gaunt and feeble likenesses of

men,--clutching with muffled fingers the barrels of their muskets,

which glowed with heat intolerable to the naked hand, so fierce was

the blaze of the summer sun. Straining their ears to catch any fancied

sounds of distant cannonading, they gazed across the plain to where the

horizon faded into a fantastic mirage, which mocked their fevered eyes

with fair scenes of forest, and mountain, and with infinite expanses

of glassy water broken by golden islets; while in the foreground the

jackals prowled about the debated space, and the pariah dogs snarled at

the grey crows, and slunk away from the spots where the great vultures

sat in obscene and sulky conclave. Dim must have been the thoughts,

confused the images, which flitted through their wearied intellect;

indistinct memories of home and youth; faint regrets, and fainter

resolutions; fitful yearnings for dear beings whom they would never

again behold. One would surmise how his mother in far-off England would

bear her sorrow, and who would be selected to break the news. Another

would calculate dates, and try to convince himself that his boy at

Rugby should have got the scholarship examination off his mind before

the receipt of the fatal tidings. But, whatever might be the subject of

contemplation, no smile relieved the stolid apathy of their careworn

features, save when dejection was for an instant charmed away by the

buoyant audacity of Moore. "He was a strong man. In the dark perils of

war, in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar

of fire, when it had gone out in all the others." Brave and vivacious

himself, he was the cause that bravery and vivacity were in other

men. It was not that he had less at stake than those around him: for

his wife and children were in the entrenchment. When the vicissitudes

of battle called her husband to the outposts, Mrs. Moore would step

across with her work, and spend the day beneath a little hut of bamboos

covered with canvas, which the garrison of Barrack Number Two had

raised for her in their most sheltered corner. Seldom had fair lady a

less appropriate bower.

The twenty-third of June, 1757, was the date of the great rout

that placed Bengal beneath the sway of the foreigner. In 1857 the

ringleaders of the mutiny had fixed on the dawning of that day as

the signal for a general rebellion over the entire north of India;

but the outbreak at Meerut and the massacre of Delhi precipitated

and weakened the blow. In that dread year those awful events were to

us as saving mercies. At Cawnpore, however, the Nana and his crew,

actuated by a partiality for the celebration of centenaries not

altogether confined to Asiatics, were bent upon effecting something

worthy of the occasion. All through the night of the twenty-second

the defenders of the outlying barracks were kept on the alert by

sounds which betokened that the sepoys in the adjacent buildings were

more than usually numerous and restless. Lieutenant Thomson sent to

head-quarters for a reinforcement; but Moore replied that he could

spare nobody except himself and Lieutenant Delafosse. In the course of

a few minutes the pair arrived, and at once sallied forth armed, one

with a sword, and the other with an empty musket. Moore shouted out,

"Number one to the front!" and the enemy, taking it for granted that

the well-known word of command would bring upon them a full company

of Sahibs with fixed bayonets and cocked revolvers, broke cover and

ran like rabbits. But towards morning they returned in force, and

attacked with such determined ferocity that there remained more dead

Hindoos outside the doorway than there were living Europeans within.

At the same moment the main fortification was assaulted by the whole

strength of the insurrection. Field guns, pulled along by horses and

bullocks, were brought up within a few hundred yards, unlimbered, and

pointed at our wall. The troopers, who had bound themselves by the

most solemn oath of their religion to conquer or to perish, charged

at a gallop in one quarter; while in another advanced the dense array

of infantry, preceded by a host of skirmishers, who rolled before

them great bundles of cotton, proof against our bullets. It was all

in vain. Our countrymen, too, had their anniversary to keep. They

shot down the teams which tugged the artillery. They fired the bales,

drove the sharpshooters back upon the columns, and sent the columns to

the right-about in unseemly haste. They taught the men of the Second

Cavalry that broken vows, and angered gods, and the waters of Ganges

poured fruitlessly on the perjured head were less terrible than British

valour in the last extremity. The contest was short but sharp. The

defeated combatants retired to brag and to carouse; the victors to

brood, to sicken, and to starve. That evening a party of sepoys drew

near our lines, made obeisance after their fashion, and requested leave

to bury the slain. This acknowledgment of an empty triumph, which would

have spread a lively joy throughout the ranks of an old Spartan army

even in the most desperate strait, was but a poor consolation to these

Englishmen under the shadow of their impending doom.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] These Brahminee bulls are the standing nuisance of Indian city

life. They saunter along the public way, laying the shops under

contribution, frightening the women, and disgusting the equestrians.

To strike them is a high crime, social and religious. To kill them

involves present death, and future damnation. At every turn may be seen

some old fellow with a platterful of grain in his hand, alluring one

of these creatures away from his store. The authorities of Calcutta

at length took courage, collected all the Brahminee bulls, and put

them in the carts of the Government scavengers. When Scindiah paid his

last visit to the capital, he was much scandalized at so impious a

regulation, and expressed his desire to buy up the animals, and restore

them to their former condition of life. But he wisely refrained, when

it was represented to him that, the moment his back was turned, the

bulls would again find their way into the public service.