THE CONFLAGRATION
On the second day after the rising at Meerut, Calcutta had been
electrified by a telegram from Agra. The central government seemed at
first hardly to realize the gravity of the crisis. But when further
bad news came in, Lord Canning recognized that our Indian Empire was
at stake, and began to act with an energy, in which his character and
his inexperience of Indian affairs had made him hitherto wanting; and
if to some he seemed still deficient in grasp of such perilous affairs,
it may be said of him that he never lost his head, as did others whose
counsels were more vehement. He looked around for every European
soldier within reach; he called for aid on Madras and Ceylon; he
ordered the troops returning from the war happily ended in Persia, to
be sent at once to Calcutta; he took upon himself the responsibility of
arresting an expedition on its way from England to make war in China,
but now more urgently needed for the rescue of India. Weeks must pass,
however, before he could assemble a force fit to cope with the mutiny,
while every English bayonet was demanded at a dozen points nearer the
capital, and the Government knew not how far to trust its embarrassing
native army.
All was confusion, suspicion, and doubt, when the first measures of
precaution suggested by the danger might prove the very means of
inflaming it. The practical question, anxiously debated in so many
cases, was whether or no to disarm the Sepoys, at the risk of hurrying
other detachments into mutiny, and imperilling the lives of English
people, helpless in their hands. Most officers of Sepoy regiments,
indeed, refused to believe that their own men could be untrue, and
indignantly protested against their being disarmed--a blind confidence
often repaid by death at the hands of these very men, when their turn
came to break loose from the bonds of discipline. But one treacherous
tragedy after another decided the doubt, sometimes too late; and where
it was still thought well to accept the Sepoys' professions of loyalty,
they were vigilantly guarded by English soldiers, who thus could not be
spared to march against the open mutineers.
Paralyzed by want of trustworthy troops, Lord Canning could do
little at present but give his lieutenants in the North-West leave to
act as they thought best--leave which they were fain in any case to
take, the rebellion soon cutting them off from communication with the
seat of Government. But there, most fortunately, were found men fit
to deal with the emergency, and to create resources in what to some
might have seemed a hopeless situation. At the season when the Mutiny
broke out, English officials who can leave their posts willingly take
refuge at the cool hill-stations of the Himalayas. General Anson, the
Commander-in-Chief, had betaken himself to Simla, the principal of
these sanatoriums, lying north of Delhi and of the military station
at Umballa. Here the alarming news came to cut short his holiday.
Naturally reluctant to believe the worst, he yet could not but order a
concentration of troops at Umballa, where he arrived in the course of
three or four days.
A more masterful spirit was already at work upon the scene of action,
if not by his personal presence, through the zealous colleagues
inspired by his teaching and example as a ruler of men. Sir John
Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub, had also been recalled on
his way to the hills, to find himself practically independent governor
of that side of India. At once rising to the emergency, as soon as
he had taken the first measures, already anticipated indeed by his
deputies, for the safety of his own province, he saw that the one thing
to be aimed at was the recovery of Delhi, the very name of which would
be a tower of strength to the mutineers. The Commander-in-Chief's
eyes were mainly open to the difficulties of such an enterprise; and
the staff, fettered by red-tape, cried out upon the impossibility of
advancing in the unprepared state of his army. Lawrence never ceased to
urge that, with or without guns and stores, everything must be risked
to strike an immediate blow at Delhi, which might check the spread of
rebellion by restoring our lost prestige. His tireless subordinates
did the impossible in collecting supplies and means of transport.
Anson, urged to the same effect by the Governor-General as by Lawrence,
doubtfully agreed to lose no time in carrying out their policy of a
march on Delhi. This is not the only instance throughout the Indian
Mutiny where the hesitations and weakness of military men were
happily overruled by the resolute counsels of civilians. The ordinary
precautions of warfare had often to be disregarded in the struggle now
at hand.
The difficulties, indeed, might well have seemed appalling. At
Umballa itself, an abortive attempt at mutiny had taken place on the
fatal 10th. General Anson, who, like some other Queen's officers, had
hitherto been apt to despise the Sepoys, now went to the other extreme
in flattering them, and let their officers hamper him by a promise that
they should not be disarmed. At his back, the fashionable station of
Simla was thrown into panic by a disturbance among the Goorkhas posted
there. Hundreds of English people fled to the woods and mountains in
terror, till it was found that the Goorkhas could easily be brought to
reason. They luckily showed no fellow-feeling with the Bengal Sepoys;
and soldiers from this warlike mountain race served us well throughout
the Mutiny. The native princes of the neighbourhood also gave timely
help of their troops and by furnishing supplies.
Within a fortnight were gathered at Umballa three English infantry
regiments, the 9th Lancers, and twelve field-guns, with one regiment
and one squadron of natives whom it was not safe to leave behind.
Carts had been collected by the hundred, camels and elephants by the
thousand, and a numerous train of camp-followers, without whom an
Indian army can hardly move. Ammunition was brought up from the arsenal
at Philour, one of the Punjaub strongholds, secured just in time to
prevent it falling into treacherous hands. A siege-train, hastily
prepared here, had to be escorted by Sepoys, who might at any moment
break into revolt. The Sutlej, swollen with melting snows, threatened
to break down the bridge by which communication was kept up with this
important point; and, not two hours after the train had passed, the
bridge in fact gave way. Then there were delays through unmanageable
bullocks ploughing over heavy sands and roads deluged by rain. The
first day's labour of twenty hours brought the train only seven miles
on its long route.
Without waiting for it, on May 25, Anson advanced to Kurnaul, the
rallying-point of the Delhi fugitives. But cholera, a feller foe than
the Sepoy, had already attacked his soldiers. One of the first victims
was the Commander-in-Chief, who died on the 27th, broken by ill-health
and the burden of a task too heavy for him. Another kind of General, it
was said by impatient critics, would have been in Delhi a week before.
But this was easier to say than to do, and certainly the destruction of
his small and ill-provided army, hurled forward without due precaution,
might have proved the loss of India.
Anson was succeeded in command by Sir Henry Barnard, an officer of
Crimean distinction, who had been only a few weeks in India. His first
acts showed no want of energy. Leaving the siege-train to follow at
its slow pace, he moved upon Delhi at the end of the month, his men
marching eagerly under the fierce June sun, in burning desire to avenge
the slaughter of their country-people. And now began those cruel
reprisals by which our victory was so darkly stained. Angry suspicion
was all the evidence needed to condemn the natives, guilty and innocent
alike, who, after a hasty show of trial, were often mocked and tortured
before execution at the hands of Christians turned into savages. The
Sepoy regiment which marched with the column from Umballa had to be
sent away, to protect them against the suspicious resentment of their
English comrades, as much as in anticipation of the treachery which
soon displayed itself among them.
A few days' march brought together the main body and Brigadier Wilson's
force from Meerut, which had lain there shamefully inactive for three
weeks, but now did much to retrieve its character by two encounters
under such a burning sun that the exhausted soldiers could not follow
up their victory. The whole army numbered little over three thousand
Englishmen, with whom Barnard pushed forward to where, five miles
north of Delhi, a horde of mutineers lay waiting to dispute his
advance, strongly posted at Budlee-ka-Serai.
Here on June 8th was fought the first important battle of the war.
Nothing could resist this handful of British soldiers, terrible in
their vengeful passion. Blinded by the glare, now choked by dust, now
wading knee-deep in water, through all obstacles, the infantry dashed
up to the rebel guns; the Lancers, having made a stealthy circuit,
charged upon the enemy's rear; the field artillery took them in the
flank; and they fled in confusion, pressed hard by the eager though
jaded victors. On the Ridge without the city the Sepoys made another
stand, but were again swept back from this strong position. After
sixteen hours' marching and fighting, under a sun whose rays were
almost as fatal as bullets, the English soldiers encamped among the
burned quarters of the Cantonment, and from the Ridge beheld the domes
and minarets of that famous city, which already they looked upon as
regained.
But not next day, as they had fondly hoped, nor next week, nor for
weary months, were they to pass the high red wall and heavy bastions
that defiantly confronted them. Even had those walls lain flat as
Jericho's, it were madness to have thrown some couple of thousand
bayonets into the narrow crooked streets of a city swarming with
fanatical foemen, besides a Sepoy garrison many times the number of the
assailants. Open still on all sides but one, Delhi was the rendezvous
of bands of mutineers flocking into it from various quarters; from
first to last it is said to have held forty thousand of them--a strange
reversal of the rules of war, which require that a besieging force
shall at least outnumber the besieged! Still, in the first few days,
Barnard did entertain the notion of carrying the place by a _coup de
main_, but allowed himself to be dissuaded, to the disgust of certain
ardent and youthful spirits.
There was then nothing for it but to remain camped behind the Ridge,
awaiting reinforcements and the coming up of the siege-train. In this
position, the rear defended by a canal, and with a wall of rocky
heights in front, our army was practically besieged rather than
besieging. Their field artillery could make little impression on the
walls, nearly a mile off, while the enemy's heavier guns sent shot
among them night and day. So great was the want of ammunition that
two annas apiece were offered for cannon balls, which natives risked
their lives in picking up to be fired back into the city--balls which
sometimes could hardly be handled by Europeans in the burning heat.
Sunstroke struck them down as by lightning; half the officers of one
regiment were thus disabled in a single day. The over-tasked force
had often to fight all day and to watch all night. The enemy used his
superiority of numbers by continual harassing attacks, in front, in
flank, and at last in the rear. The day was a remarkable one which
passed without fighting. In six weeks, twenty combats were counted. On
the 23rd of June, the Centenary of Plassey, a particularly formidable
assault was made, and repulsed after a long day's fighting, to the
discouragement of the Sepoys, whom false prophecies had led to believe
that this date was to be fatal to us. Now, as always, the skulking
foe could never stand to face British bayonets in the open; but their
stealthy onsets were favoured by the wilderness of tangled ravines,
gardens, walls, ruins, tombs, thickets, and deserted houses, which gave
them cover right up to our entrenchments.
Through the losses of these continual encounters, as well as through
disease and exposure, our scanty force would soon have melted away, if
reinforcements had not begun to come in towards the end of June. But
now also came the rainy season, multiplying the ravages of fever and
cholera. Poor General Barnard was so worn out by the strain of his
almost hopeless task that he could neither eat nor sleep. Early in July
he died, like his predecessor, of cholera. General Reed took up the
command, but at the end of a week, finding the burden too heavy for
his feeble health, gave it over to Brigadier Wilson, who at one time
had almost retired in despair, and would probably have done so if not
cheered and strengthened by one who, at a distance, was all along the
moving spirit of this marvellous siege.
Sir John Lawrence it is, with his lieutenants, Montgomery, Herbert
Edwardes, Neville Chamberlain, John Nicholson, who are on all hands
hailed as foremost among the saviours of our Indian empire. The
Punjaub, where Lawrence bore rule at this crisis, home of the warlike
Sikhs, might have been judged our weakest point, yet he turned it
into a source of strength. Our latest and hardest conquest as it was,
conquerors and conquered had learned to respect one another as worthy
foemen, while its manly population bore a contemptuous ill-will towards
the rebel Sepoys, and, themselves divided between Sikh and Moslem,
did not readily find common cause to make against the English. From
this mingled population, Lawrence quickly began to enlist excellent
soldiers, weeding out also the Punjaub Sepoys from the ranks of their
East-country comrades, to form the nucleus of new corps. Punjaubees,
Afghans, Pathans, all the most martial and restless spirits of the
frontier, eagerly came forward for our service; and thus the very men
from whom we had most to fear became serviceable allies in the time of
need.
The old Sepoy regiments were for the most part disarmed one by one,
some of them disbanded, as opportunity or suspicion counselled, yet
not till more than one had made attempts at mutiny that ended ill for
themselves. Lawrence, earnest in urging mercy when the time came for
it, was resolute in trampling out the early sparks of disaffection.
Forty mutinous Sepoys at once were blown away from the mouths of
guns. The dangerous districts were scoured by a movable column under
Nicholson, a man worshipped almost as a god by his Sikh followers. The
Afghan frontier had also to be watched, lest old enemies there should
take this chance of falling upon us from behind when our hands were so
full of fighting in front. And at the same time it was necessary to
keep a careful eye upon our new levies, lest they in turn should grow
too formidable.
Fortunate it was that the neighbouring native princes proved friendly,
lending the aid of their troops to keep the peace, or giving more
substantial assistance to the representative of that power which they
had learned to look upon as paramount. Lawrence, governing a population
of twenty millions, cut off from communication with his superiors,
was made by force of circumstances dictator of Northern India. Not
for nearly three months did a message from Calcutta reach him by the
circuitous way of Bombay. The generals in the field, though owing him
no formal obedience, gave in to the energy of his character and the
weight of his experience. The well-provided arsenals and magazines of
the Punjaub, saved from the hands of the mutineers by his vigorous
action, became now the base of supplies against Delhi. Thither he kept
forwarding a continual stream of stores, transport, men and money,
which he had to raise by somewhat forced loans among the rich natives.
Thus, in spite of a painful ailment, in spite of his longing for home
and rest, he throughout masterfully maintained the British prestige
within his own boundaries, while ever pressing on the capture of Delhi,
as the blow which would paralyze rebellion all over India. When the
great enterprise seemed on the point of failure, as a last resource he
sent Nicholson's column to the front, leaving himself with only four
thousand European soldiers scattered among the millions of the Punjaub,
for whom that one man's strong hand was equal to a host of fighters.
Still the siege of Delhi dragged on its costly length. We must leave it
for the meanwhile to see what thrilling and momentous scenes were being
enacted in other parts of India, and to follow the preparations made
for attacking the mutiny from the further side.
Calcutta was in a state of bewildered dismay, not to be calmed
by official hopes for a speedy end to the insurrection, and soon
increasing daily with worse and worse news from up-country. From
Allighur, from Muttra, from Bareilly, from Moradabad, from Jhansi, from
other points, one after another, came sickening tales of revolt and
massacre, which would not lose in the telling. The only news of other
places was an ominous silence. The great stations of Agra, Cawnpore,
and Lucknow were presently cut off by a raging sea of rebellion.
Rohilcund, old nursery of warriors, was overflowed, and the Doab, that
fertile region between the Jumna and the Ganges, down whose thickly
peopled valleys poured the irresistible flood of disorder. The tide
rose to the sacred cities of Allahabad and Benares. Beyond, there were
risings in Rajpootana. At Gwalior, the Maharajah's Sepoy contingent,
after a time, broke away to play a considerable part in coming
battles. Everywhere regiments, believed faithful, were going off like
the guns of a burning ship.
The leaven of agitation naturally spread into the two other
Presidencies, where the English officials could have no quiet rest
till the danger in Bengal should be over. But the organization of the
Madras and Bombay armies was not so dangerous for their rulers. Here
men of various creeds and castes were more thoroughly mixed together
in the ranks, which in Bengal had been allowed to consist too much of
fellow-believers, and of cliques of the same family, caste or locality,
turning every company into a clan animated by a common feeling apart
from that of soldierly duty; nor, outside of Bengal, were the regiments
permitted to be accompanied by squalid fakirs, to keep alive their
superstitious zeal.
When Patna and Dinapore gave signs of commotion, not four hundred
miles from Calcutta, the people of the capital might well look to see
peril at their doors. They loudly accused Lord Canning as wanting to
the exigency. He certainly seemed to go too far in trying to allay
alarm by putting a calm face upon his inward anxiety. He forbore, as
long as possible, to show distrust of the Sepoys in Eastern Bengal;
he hesitated about accepting a contingent of Goorkhas offered him
from Nepaul; he delayed in letting the inhabitants arm for their
own defence. Not for a month did he allow them to form volunteer
corps, and at the same time was forced to disarm the Sepoys at the
neighbouring stations of Dum-Dum and Barrackpore. But rumours of what
the Sepoys there had intended were already at work, producing a panic
through Calcutta, where one Sunday in the middle of June a great part
of the Europeans and Eurasians hastened to barricade themselves in
their houses, or fled to the fort and the shipping for refuge from
an imaginary foe, while the poor natives lay hid, trembling on their
own account, expecting quite as groundlessly to be massacred by the
white soldiers. The ludicrous terror of this "Panic Sunday" will long
be remembered as a joke against the Calcutta people, who only towards
evening began to see they had nothing to fear. Next day their restored
confidence was strengthened by the arrest of the King of Oudh, who held
a quasi-state in his palace near the city, and whose retainers were
believed to have been plotting, with the now harmless Sepoys at the
neighbouring stations, for a great Christian massacre.
A day or two later, Sir Patrick Grant, Commander of the Madras army,
arrived to assume command in Bengal. He did not feel himself equal
to taking the field in person, but made the fortunate choice of
Brigadier-General Havelock to advance against the rebels, as soon as
there should be an army ready to lead. The officer, who during the last
months of his life was to burst forth as a popular hero, had passed
obscurely a long life of eastern military service. In India, indeed,
he was well known for the earnest piety which had leavened the ranks
of his comrades. "Havelock's Saints," a name given in mockery, became
a title of honour, when it was found that the little band among whom
he preached and prayed so zealously were the best and most trustworthy
soldiers of the regiment. By his superiors he had been recognized as a
brave and intelligent officer; and he had served creditably in Burma,
in Afghanistan, in the Punjaub, and in Persia, without attracting much
public notice or rising to high command. Now, at length, this saintly
veteran, all his life a careful student of the art of war, had the
chance to show what he was as a general; but not till June 25 could he
leave Calcutta, picking up as he went the scattered fragments of his
force, which had been pushed on to meet immediate needs of succour.
A month earlier, Neill with the 1st Madras Fusiliers had gone on as
forerunner of the help that would by and by be pouring in to the
rescue of our imperilled countrymen. As far as Allahabad he could
travel by railway, yet he did not arrive there for nearly three weeks,
delayed through turning aside to repress mutiny at Benares, and by
making grim examples to teach the cowering natives that the British
_raj_ was still to be feared. At Allahabad he found his presence
sorely needed by a handful of Europeans shut up in the fort along with
a band of hardly controllable Sikhs. The mutiny here had been marked
by painful as well as curious features. The Sepoys at first showed
themselves enthusiastically loyal, giving every sign of affection to
their officers, then rose against them in a sudden fit of cruel fury,
immediately after volunteering, with apparent heartiness, to march
against their comrades at Delhi. Seven or eight boy-ensigns were
murdered by the regiment they had just joined. The rebels bombarded
the locomotives on the new railway, which they took for mysterious
engines of warfare. There were the usual sickening massacres of women
and children. A general destruction had reigned without check, in which
helpless Hindoo pilgrims came off almost as ill as the Christians at
the hands of a Mohamedan mob. This short triumph of disorder was with
terrible and too little discriminating justice chastised by Neill,
stern Scotchman that he was. What between the mutineers and the British
soldiery, the inhabitants of the district had cause to rue these
troubles; and again our civilization was disgraced by a blind fury
of vengeance. Neill was more successful in restoring order among the
populace than in restraining his own soldiers, who gave way to excesses
of drink that fatally nursed the seeds of cholera, when not a man could
be spared from the trying task before them.[2]
By the end of June, Havelock reached Allahabad, to take the head of
an army that hardly numbered two thousand fighters. Nineteen officers
and men made all his cavalry. But such news here met him, he could not
lose a day in flinging this small force among myriads of bitter foes,
at whose mercy lay the lives of many Christian women and children.
Yet it was no horde of undisciplined savages from whom he must wrest
those hapless captives. Throughout the war, our troops had to face,
at enormous odds of number, ranks trained and armed by ourselves,
supplied from our own captured stores, and in a large degree led by the
establishment of native officers whom we had taught how battles should
be won. Never perhaps has it been so well proved, as by the result of
this apparently unequal conflict, what advantage lies in pride and
strength of race!
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: One of the severest punishments inflicted on mutineers
was forcing them under the lash, before being hanged, to sweep up the
blood of their supposed victims, so as, in their ideas, to pollute
them to all eternity. A generation later, this General Neill's son was
murdered, it is said, by the vengeful son of a native officer thus
punished.]