THE STORY OF
THE INDIAN MUTINY
[Illustration: Interior of Well at Cawnpore.
_Frontispiece_]
THE STORY OF
THE INDIAN MUTINY
BY
ASCOTT R. HOPE
AUTHOR OF
"MEN OF THE BACKWOODS," "YOUNG TRAVELLERS' TALES,"
ETC.
_WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS_
[Illustration]
LONDON
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1896
[_All rights reserved_]
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.
PREFACE
The story of the great Indian Mutiny has often been told in whole or in
part. In this book, while historical outlines are carefully preserved,
it is attempted to throw into relief the more picturesque episodes,
and to bring out illustrative incidents of personal adventure likely
to attract young readers. With such a theme, if any reader will only
suffer some needful gravity in the introduction, he may be promised
a narrative of heroism and romance which the dullest treatment could
hardly make unexciting.
A.R.H.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INDIA: ITS PEOPLES AND RULERS 1
II. THE OUTBREAK 24
III. THE SPREAD OF INSURRECTION 45
IV. THE CONFLAGRATION 72
V. THE CITIES OF REFUGE 92
VI. THE FALL OF DELHI 138
VII. THE DEFENCE OF LUCKNOW 164
VIII. LORD CLYDE'S CAMPAIGNS 199
IX. THE EXTINCTION 227
APPENDIX 241
THE STORY OF
THE INDIAN MUTINY
CHAPTER I
INDIA: ITS PEOPLES AND RULERS
A troubled history has all along been that of the great tongue of land
which, occupying the same position in Asia as Italy in Europe, is equal
to half our continent, with a population growing towards three hundred
millions. Far back into fabulous ages, we see it threatened by mythical
or shadowy conquerors, Hercules, Semiramis, Sesostris, Cyrus; whelmed
beneath inroads of nameless warriors from Central Asia; emerging first
into historical distinctness with Alexander the Great's expedition to
the valley of the Indus, from which came that familiar name given to
dark-skinned races on both sides of the globe. Our era brought in new
wars of spoil or of creed; Tartars, Arabs, Turcomans and Afghans in
turn struggled among each other for its ancient wealth; and India knew
little peace till it had passed under the dominion of a company of
British merchants, who for a century held it by the sword as proudly as
any martial conqueror.
This rich region having always invited conquest, its present population
is seen to consist of different layers left by successive invasions.
First, we have fragments of a pre-historic people, chiefly in the hill
districts to which they were driven ages ago, whose very tribe-names,
meaning _slaves_ or _labourers_, sometimes tell how once they became
subject to stronger neighbours; but behind them again there are traces
of even older aborigines. Next, the open parts of the country are found
over-run by a fair-skinned Aryan race, of the same stock as ourselves,
whose pure descendants are the high-caste Brahmins and Rajpoots of our
day, while a mixture of their blood with that of the older tribes has
produced the mass of the Hindoo inhabitants. Over them lie patches of
another quality of flesh and blood, deposited by the fresh streams of
Moslem inroad, as in the case of our Saxons and Normans. But whereas
with us, Briton, Saxon and Norman are so welded into one nation, unless
in mountainous retreats, that most Englishmen hardly know what blood
runs mingled in their veins, here a very imperfect fusion has taken
place between varied peoples, held jealously aloof by pride of race,
by superstition, by hatred of rival faiths, and still speaking many
different languages, with the mongrel mixture called Hindostani as
the main means of intercommunication. The peculiarity of the latest
conquest, our own, is that the dominant strangers show small desire to
settle for life in the country subject to them, yet we have added a new
element in the half-caste or Eurasian strain, through which, also, and
but slightly by other means, have we been able to affect the religious
belief of this motley population.
Religion may be taken as the keynote of Indian life and history.
While our ancestors were still dark-minded barbarians, their Aryan
kinsmen, migrating to Hindostan, had developed a singular degree of
culture, especially in religious thought. Before Greece or Rome became
illustrious, the hymns of the Vedas bespeak lofty ideas of the unseen,
and the Brahminical priesthood appear as philosophers, legislators and
poets of no mean rank. The first historical notices of India show a
high level, not only of material but of moral civilization, as well as
a manly temper of warriors well able to defend the soil they had won.
This enervating climate, however, with its easy efforts for existence,
has proved an influence of degeneracy, and most clearly so in the
matter of belief. Good seed, which here sprang up so quickly, was
always apt to wither under a too scorching sun, or to run to rank
foliage rather than to fruit. Early Brahminism, itself a marked
growth in thought, after a time began to be choked by the heathenism
it had overshadowed. It sent out a new shoot in Buddhism, a faith of
noble ideals, which to this day surpasses all others in the number of
its adherents. This, in turn, became a jungle of sapless formulas,
and after a thousand years died out on the land of its birth. Then
grew up modern Hindooism, a union of Brahminical dreams of divinity
and Buddhist love for humanity, interwoven with the aboriginal
superstitions, the whole forming a tangled maze, where the great
Hindoo trinity of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva
the Destroyer, take Protean shapes as a pantheon of innumerable gods,
amid which higher minds may turn upwards seeking one Almighty Spirit,
but the vulgar crowd fix their attention rather on grotesque idols,
base fetishes, symbols of fear and sensuality, fitly adored with
degrading rites and barbarous observances. All efforts have hitherto
little availed to clear this deeply-rooted wilderness of misbelief.
Enlightened Hindoos, who see the errors of their religion, yet find
it difficult to shake off the mental slavery of the "unchangeable
East." Our missionaries have to deplore the little real success that
attends their efforts. Beneath the sweltering sky of Hindostan,
spiritual life remains a day-dream or a nightmare; reformers are ever
silenced by fanatics; virtues are frittered down into foolish scruples;
harmful customs cumber the ground, hindering the growth of progressive
institutions.
The great encumbrance of Indian life is the system of caste, doubly
fostered by religion and pride of race. Originally the conquering
Aryans became divided into _Brahmins_ or priests, _Rajpoots_ or
warriors, and _Vaisyas_ or husbandmen, still distinguished as the
"twice-born" castes, who wear the sacred thread, badge of this
spiritual aristocracy; while under the common name of _Sudras_ or
serfs, were included all the despised aboriginal tribes. Then the mixed
population, formed by amalgamation between the latter and the lower
ranks of their masters, went on splitting up into other recognized
castes, as the superior classes, who took a pride in keeping their
stock pure, grew themselves divided among separate tribes or castes;
and thus arose a complex segregation of society into countless bodies,
cut off from each other by almost impassable barriers of rank and
occupation. There are now thousands of these castes, marked out by
descent, by calling, or by locality, the members of which cannot
intermarry, may seldom eat together, and must not touch food cooked by
an inferior; even the shadow of an outsider falling upon his meal might
cause a high-caste Hindoo to throw it away and go fasting. Each trade
is a separate caste, each order of servant; and the man who makes his
master's bed would shrink from the touch of the sweeper who cleans out
his bath-room. Yet caste does not always coincide with social position;
a powerful prince may be born of a low caste, and the native officer
who gives orders to a high-caste Brahmin in the ranks, must bow before
him when his sacred character is to be enlisted for the services of a
family festival.
The origin of this organized exclusion becomes illustrated by the
conduct of our own countrymen in India, among whom any penniless
subaltern is apt to display at the best a haughty tolerance for the
high-titled descendants of native kings, while he holds aloof from
Englishmen of inferior station, and openly despises the half-caste
Eurasian, who in turn affects contempt for the heathen Hindoo. We,
indeed, have common sense enough, or at least sense of humour, not
to let our prejudices degenerate into the ridiculous scrupulosity
which forbids a Rajah to dine in the same room with his guests, or a
coolie to set profane lips to his neighbour's drinking vessel. Railway
travelling, military service, association with Europeans, cannot but
do much to break down these burdensome restrictions; and enlightened
natives, in public or in private, begin to neglect them, though it is
to be feared that they too often copy the worse rather than the better
parts of our example. But among the mass of the ignorant people, the
least infringement of the rules of caste is looked upon with horror,
and to become an outcast _pariah_, through any offence against them, is
the ruin in this world which it seems in the next.
Another main barrier to progress here, has long been the slavish
condition of women, not improved by the next creed which came to
modify Hindoo institutions. Buddhism was hardly extinct in India,
when Mohamedan incursions began to put a strain of new blood into the
physical degeneration of the Hindoos, and though the Crescent, except
in parts, has never superseded the symbols of the older religion, these
two, dwelling side by side, could not be without their reaction on
each other's practice. It was the north of the peninsula that became
most frequently overflowed by inroads of its Moslem neighbours, while
Hindooism was left longer unassailed in the south, where also the
aboriginal fetish worships had of old their citadels. Even in the north
the conquests of Islam were long temporary and partial, irruptions of
pirates or mountain-robbers, able to prey upon the wealth of India
only through the want of cohesion among its Rajpoot lords. These early
invaders either returned with their booty, or remained to quarrel over
it between themselves, or were spoiled of it by fresh swarms from
beyond the Himalayas.
By the beginning of the thirteenth century, we find a Mohamedan empire
set up at Delhi by a dynasty known as the Slave Kings, who, before
long, gave place to rival adventurers. The power of the Crescent
now began to extend into Southern India, yet revolts of vassals and
viceroys kept it continually unstable. At the close of next century,
the redoubtable Tamerlane captured Delhi, giving it up to an orgy of
slaughter; but this devastating conqueror retired beyond the mountains
and left India divided between warring princes, Hindoo and Moslem. Four
generations later, Tamerlane's descendant Baber returned to make more
enduring conquests; then it was by his grandson, Akbar, that the Mogul
empire became firmly founded.
Akbar the Great, whose long reign roughly coincides with that of our
Queen Elizabeth, was rarely enlightened for an Oriental despot. By a
policy of religious toleration, he won over the Hindoo princes, while
he reduced the independent Mohamedan chiefs under his authority, and
did much towards welding Northern India into a powerful union of
provinces, ruled through his lieutenants. His less wise heirs, cursed
by self-indulgent luxury and by family discords, added to the splendour
rather than to the strength of this dominion. Its last famous reign
was that of Aurungzebe, covering the second half of the seventeenth
century. A bigoted Mohamedan, he alienated the Hindoos by persecution,
while he spent many years in conquering the independent Moslem kings of
the south, only to ripen the decay of his vast empire. After his death,
it began to go to pieces like that of Alexander the Great. His feeble
successors dwindled into puppets in the hands of one or another artful
minister. Their satraps at a distance, under various titles, asserted
a practical autocracy. And now had sprung up a new Hindoo power, the
warlike hordes of the Mahrattas, whose great leader Sivajee, from his
hill-forts among the Western Ghauts, began to make these ravaging
horsemen feared far and wide, till their raids were the terror of all
India.
Among the quickly-fading glories of the Mogul Empire, almost unnoticed
came the appearance of the new strangers who would inherit it. The
Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, when all the gorgeous East was still a wonderland
of wealth in Christian imaginations. Then followed the Dutch, who,
however, fixed their chief attention upon the spice islands of the
Archipelago. On the last day of A.D. 1600, the East India Company was
incorporated by royal charter at London, none yet dreaming to what
greatness it would rise. A few years later, an English ambassador, sent
by James I., made his way to the Court of the Great Mogul, and received
assurances of favour and encouragement for trade. About the same
time, our first settlement was made on the Coromandel coast. In 1615
a factory was established at Surat, on the other side of India; then,
half-a-century later, the head-quarters of the enterprise were shifted
to Bombay, ceded by Portugal in 1661, which, being an island, seemed
safe from Sivajee's plundering horsemen.
In the meanwhile, other trading stations had been acquired in
Bengal. At the end of the century, the Company is found taking a
more independent stand, purchasing land, erecting fortifications,
and arming its servants to resist the dangers which threatened trade
in this disordered region. Such was the humble origin of the three
Presidencies of Madras, Bombay, and Bengal, the last of which became
the most important, and its chief station, Calcutta, the residence of
the Governor-General.
Other European nations appeared in the field, but our only formidable
rival here was France, the Portuguese making little of their claim
to monopoly, now represented by the settlements of Goa, best known
as the breeding place for a mongrel race of servants. One more stock
of emigrants must not be omitted from mention. Centuries before a
European ship had touched India, a remnant of Persian fire-worshippers,
flying from Mohamedan persecution, settled upon the west coast, where,
though few in numbers, by their wealth, intelligence, and commercial
enterprise, these Parsees have grown to be an influential element in
the population, excelling, like the Jews in Europe, as traders and men
of business.
The eighteenth century saw the ruin of Aurungzebe's empire going on
apace. Sikhs and Rajpoots threw off its yoke; hereditary kingdoms were
clutched for themselves out of the wreck by its ambitious viceroys; in
1739 the Persian Nadir Shah plundered the treasures of Delhi; after
him came fresh hordes of Afghan horsemen. The greatest power in India
was now the Mahratta Confederacy, under hereditary ministers bearing
the title of Peshwa, who, like the Mayors of the Palace in Old France,
usurped all real power, keeping Sivajee's unworthy heirs in sumptuous
seclusion; a form of government that has often been brought about
in Oriental States. The Peshwas, with their capital at Poona, ruled
over the Deccan, the great tableland of the south; but the Mahratta
incursions were carried as far as Delhi and Calcutta; and throughout
India reigned a lawless disorder, inviting the interference of any hand
strong enough to seize the opportunity.
It was the French who, having failed as traders, first sought to
make political profit out of this confusion. Dupleix, Governor of
Pondicherry, conceived lofty ideas of founding a new empire under the
shadow of the old one, and to this end, began by trying to get rid of
his English neighbours. In 1746 Madras was captured by the French,
to be restored indeed at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; but though
there came peace in Europe between the two nations, their East India
Companies remained at jealous war. Dupleix, mixing in the intrigues of
native ambition, made himself, for a time, predominant in the south;
and we seemed like to lose all hold here, but for the appearance on the
scene of one who was to prove arbiter of India's destinies.
Every one knows how the young subaltern Robert Clive, by his gallant
defence of Arcot, suddenly sprang into fame, and at once turned the
scale of prestige in favour of his countrymen. The French went on
losing influence, till, in 1761, it was the turn of their settlements
to be conquered. Dupleix died in disgrace with his ungrateful
sovereign, while Clive was heaped with honours and rewards, soon earned
by services in another field of action.
Before the French were fully humbled in the south, he had been summoned
to Calcutta to chastise the despicable Nawab of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah,
for that notorious atrocity of the "Black Hole," where nearly a hundred
and fifty Englishmen were shut up in a stifling den not twenty feet
square, from which few of them came out alive. Following Dupleix's
example, Clive plunged into political intrigue, and undertook to
supplant Surajah Dowlah by a prince of his own choosing. At Plassey,
with three thousand men, only a third of them Europeans, he routed the
tyrant's army, fifty thousand strong--a momentous battle that counts
as the foundation of our sovereignty in India. A new Nawab was set up,
nominally under appointment from Delhi, but really as the servant of
the English Company, who now obtained a considerable grant of land as
well as an enormous sum in compensation for their losses by Surajah
Dowlah's occupation of Calcutta. A few years later their nominee was
dethroned in favour of a more compliant one, who also had to pay
handsomely for his elevation. He ventured to rebel, but to no purpose.
Lord Clive pushed the English arms as far as Allahabad; and henceforth,
with whatever puppet on the throne and with whatever show of homage to
the high-titled suzerain at Delhi, the Company were the actual masters
of Bengal.
All over India spread the renown of Clive's small but well-trained
Sepoy army. His subjugation of the effeminate Bengalees, Macaulay may
well compare to a war of sheep and wolves; but this young English
officer went on to defy the more warlike levies of the north-west. He
seized the Dutch settlements that threatened armed rivalry in Bengal;
he almost extinguished the French ones. A harder task he had in curbing
the rapacity of his own countrymen, who, among the temptations that
beset such rapid ascendancy, bid fair to become the worst oppressors of
their virtual subjects.
The next great ruler of Bengal was Warren Hastings, who organized a
system of administration for the territory conquered by Clive, and
began with collecting the revenues directly through the hands of
English officers. Private greed was now restrained; but the Governor
must justify his policy and satisfy his employers, by sending home
large sums of money, which in the long run had to be wrung from the
unhappy natives; and this necessity led the agents of the Directors
into many questionable acts. It was a great step from the fortified
trading posts of last century to levying taxes and tribute, maintaining
an army and navy, selling provinces and dictating to princes. But by
this time the conscience of the English people was being roused, and
it began to be understood how India, for all its princely treasures,
was the home of a poor and much-enduring population, which our duty
should be to protect rather than to spoil. Returning to England,
Warren Hastings was solemnly impeached before the House of Lords for
his high-handed oppression. That famous trial, in which more than one
English Cicero denounced our pro-consul as a second Verres, dragged
itself out for seven years, and ended in a verdict of acquittal,
which posterity has not fully confirmed, yet with the recognition
of extenuating circumstances in the novelty and difficulty of the
criminal's office.
We now held the valley of the Ganges up to Benares, and were soon
making further acquisitions in that direction. In the Bombay Presidency
we came into collision with the Mahrattas, in Madras with Hyder Ali,
the tyrant of Mysore. The result of these wars proved our arms not
so invincible as in the case of the timid Bengalees, but more than
one gallant action made native princes cautious how they trifled with
our friendship. Fortunately for us, the mutual jealousy of neighbour
potentates prevented them from combining to drive our small armies out
of India, and we were able to deal with them one by one. We had now no
European rival to fear, though more than one Indian despot kept French
troops in his service, or natives trained and officered by Frenchmen.
Napoleon Bonaparte, most illustrious of French adventurers, had an eye
to romantic conquest in the East; but we know how he found occupation
elsewhere, and did not come here to meet the adversary who in the
end proved his master. For it was in India that Wellington won his
first laurels, under his brother, Lord Wellesley, a Governor-General
resolute to make England paramount over the ruins of the Mogul Empire.
The Nizam of Hyderabad was persuaded to dismiss his French guards, and
become the vassal of England, as his descendant still is. Tippoo, Hyder
Ali's son, fell at the renowned storm of his stronghold, Seringapatam,
in the last year of the century. The Mahrattas were attacked in the
Deccan, where Wellington gained the battle of Assaye, while in the
north Lord Lake mastered Delhi and Agra. But the princes of this great
confederacy were not fully humbled till the third Mahratta war in 1818,
under the Governorship of Lord Hastings; before which the Goorkhas of
the Himalayas, and the Pindaree robbers of Central India, had also
been taught the lesson of submission. Presently we were carrying
our arms across the sea, and wresting Assam from the Burmese. The
crowning exploit of this victorious period was the siege of Bhurtpore,
a fortress believed in India to be impregnable, from which in 1805
an English army had fallen back, but now in 1827 its capture went
far to make the natives look on us as irresistible. The once-dreaded
name of the Emperor was a cloak for our power, as it had been for the
Mahrattas', while Calcutta had taken the place of Delhi as capital,
through the primacy of Bengal among the three Presidencies, whose
bounds had stretched to touch each other all across India.
Lord William Bentinck, who now became Governor-General, earned a
different kind of glory by his sympathetic labours for the true welfare
of the millions whom those wide conquests had placed under our rule. He
began to make war on the crimes of barbarous superstition--the burning
of hapless widows, the murders of infants, the secret assassinations
by fanatical devotees. But with his successor opened a new series
of campaigns that were not always illustrious to the British arms.
Russia had taken the place of France as the bugbear of our Indian
predominancy. Alarmed by Muscovite intrigues in Afghanistan, Lord
Auckland entered upon a course of unwise and disastrous interference
with the politics of that country. We succeeded in dethroning the
usurper, Dost Mahomed, of whom we could more easily have made an
ally. But in 1841 the people of Cabul rose against us; our army of
occupation had to retreat in the depth of winter; assailed by hardy
mountain tribes, they perished miserably among the rocks of the Khyber
Pass; and out of thousands only one man reached Jellalabad to tell the
tale. Sale's brave defence of that poor fortress did something towards
retrieving our disgrace, and next year an avenging army returned to
work bootless destruction at Cabul, leaving a legacy of ill-will that
has been dearly inherited by our own generation.
More substantial conquests followed. Scindia, one of the old Mahratta
princes, was brought more effectively under British control. At the
same time, the Moslem Ameers of Scinde were overcome by Sir Charles
Napier. We then stood face to face with the last great independent
power of Hindostan, and the foeman who proved most worthy of our steel.
The Sikhs, a manly race, originally a sect of Hindoo reformers, had
risen from Mogul persecution to become lords of the Punjaub, "country
of the five rivers," which all along has been the great battle-field
of Indian history. Runjeet Singh, their masterful ruler for forty
years, had carefully avoided a struggle with the British, which soon
after his death was brought on by the turbulent bellicosity of the
people, made audacious through our Afghan reverses. The two Sikh
wars of 1845 and 1848 were marked by long and desperate battles;
Sobraon, Chillianwallah, and Goojerat are remembered for the bravery
and the slaughter on both sides, but finally the Punjaub was over-run,
disarmed, and turned into a British province.
Several smaller states also were annexed about this time, through the
failure of legitimate heirs, and our Government's refusal to recognize
the Hindoo custom of adoption. A second Burmese war resulted in the
acquisition of another province beyond the Gulf of Bengal. Lastly, the
King of Oudh, whose incapable tyranny seemed beyond cure, had to submit
to be pensioned off and see his ill-governed dominions pass under
British administration. This signalized the end of Lord Dalhousie's
term of vigorous government, who, while carrying out a policy of
somewhat high-handed annexation, had shown himself not less active in
the construction of roads, canals, railways, telegraph lines, and in
all ways accomplished much to extend, consolidate, and develop what,
partly by accident, partly by force of circumstances, and partly by
far-seeing design, had in less than a century become a mighty empire.
There might well be elephants then alive that had served us when we
were struggling to keep a precarious foothold on the coasts of India.
Such great and rapid changes could not be worked without leaving sore
grudges and dangerous cankers of discontent. Our policy had been so
much dictated by selfish strength, that it is no wonder if the natives
should conceive respect rather than love for us. Even after higher
motives began to come into play, our best intentions were apt to be
misunderstood by those placed under us, or to be foiled by our own want
of sympathy with and our ignorance of their feelings. The strong points
and the weak ones of the two races are almost poles apart, and neither
has proved ready to learn from the other. Our characteristic virtues of
truth and honesty are hardly comprehensible to the slavish Oriental,
who for his part displays a flattering courtesy and gentle kindliness,
with which appears in harsh contrast our frankly blunt masterfulness,
often degenerating into insolence of manner and foolish contempt for
all that is not English. While many of our best officers have shown
a spirit of enlightened and conscientious interest in their duties,
the average Briton, who goes out to India merely to gain money more
easily than at home, is unhappily too seldom the man to conciliate the
prejudices of those whom he treats as contemptible "niggers," knowing
and caring little about their ancient civilization. The very pride
of our superiority seems against us: other conquerors, more willing
to let themselves down to the level of the conquered, have proved
less unsuccessful in winning their good-will. Still, these natives
cannot but come to see the advantage of having rulers whose word may
be trusted. For long, honest efforts have been made to exercise among
all sects and classes an even-handed justice, hitherto little known
in India, the chief hindrance to which lies in the corruption of the
native subordinates, on whom our magistrates have largely to rely for
the details of their administration.
At all events, the mass of the population, broken to the yoke of many
masters, had accepted ours with apparent resignation, even if they
might soon forget the grinding tyrannies from which we had delivered
them. Some fiercer spirits muttered their hatred, but kept silence
before our authorities. Some real grievances, here and there, passed
too much unnoticed, and sufferings brought about by over-taxation or
other injustice worked through the hasty inexperience of officials.
In certain large towns, the suppressed rage of hostile believers
was not always restrained from breaking into riot at the great
religious festivals, but these outbreaks we could easily put a stop
to; and the differences of creed and caste seemed our best security
against any dangerous combination to expel us. Some princes, whose
quasi-independent states were allowed to lie like islands among our
fully-conquered territory, might at times uneasily remember the martial
glories of their predecessors, but knew well how they held their idle
sceptres only on our sufferance, and took care not to neglect any hint
of good behaviour offered them by the British resident at their courts,
as real an authority as the Peshwas or Nizams of the past.
From the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from Beloochistan to the borders
of China, England was recognized as the Paramount Power of this vast
country, over which at length reigned the _Pax Britannica_, and seemed
little like to be seriously disturbed when, in 1856, Lord Canning came
out as Governor-General.