MEERUT, AND THE REBEL-FLIGHT TO DELHI.
The first week in May marked a crisis in the affairs of British India.
It will ever remain an insoluble problem, whether the hideous atrocities
that followed might have been prevented by any different policy at that
date. The complainings and the disobedience had already presented
themselves: the murders and mutilations had not yet commenced; and there
are those who believe that if a Lawrence instead of a Hewett had been at
Meerut, the last spark that ignited the inflammable materials might have
been arrested. But this is a kind of cheap wisdom, a prophecy after the
event, an easy mode of judgment, on which little reliance can be placed.
Taking the British officers in India as a body, it is certain that they
had not yet learned to distrust the sepoys, whom they regarded with much
professional admiration for their external qualifications. The Brahmins
of the Northwest Provinces—a most important constituent, as we have
seen, of the Bengal army—are among the finest men in the world; their
average height is at least two inches greater than that of the English
soldiers of the line regiments; and in symmetry they also take the lead.
They are unaddicted to drunkenness; they are courteous in demeanour, in
a degree quite beyond the English soldier; and it is now known that the
commanding officers, proud of the appearance of these men on parade, too
often ignored those moral qualities without which a good soldier is an
impossible production. Whether, when the disturbances became known, the
interpretation was favourable to the sepoys, depended much on the
peculiar bias in the judgment of each officer. Some believed that the
native soldier was docile, obedient, and loyal as long as his religious
prejudices were respected; that he was driven to absolute frenzy by the
slightest suspicion, whether well or ill grounded, of any interference
with his creed or his observances; that he had been gradually rendered
distrustful by the government policy of forbidding suttee and
infanticide, by the withholding of government contributions to Hindoo
temples and idol-ceremonies, by the authorities at Calcutta subscribing
to missionary societies, and lastly by the affair of the greased
cartridges; and that the sensibilities of Brahminism, thus vitally
outraged, prepared the native mind for the belief that we designed to
proceed by some stratagem or other to the utter and final abolition of
caste. This interpretation is wholly on the Hindoo side, and is
respectful rather than otherwise to the earnestness and honesty of the
Brahmins. Other officers, however, directed their attention at once to
the Mohammedan element in the army, and authoritatively pronounced that
the Hindoo sepoys were simply dupes and tools in the hands of the
Moslem. These interpreters said—We have superseded the Mohammedan power
in India; we have dethroned the descendants of the great Aurungzebe and
the greater Akbar; we have subjected the mogul’s lieutenants or nawabs
to our authority; we have lately extinguished the last remaining
monarchy in Northern India held by a son of the Faithful; we have
reduced a conquering and dominant race to a position of inferiority and
subserviency; and hence their undying resentment, their implacable
hatred, their resolute determination to try one more struggle for
supremacy, and their crafty employment of simple bigoted Hindoos as
worthy instruments when sufficiently excited by dark hints and bold
lies.
[Illustration:
PART OF
INDIA
Chief Scene of
THE MUTINIES OF 1857
W. & R. CHAMBERS LONDON & EDINBURGH
]
But there was one fact which all these officers admitted, when it was
too late to apply a remedy. Whether the Hindoo or the Mohammedan element
was most disturbed, all agreed that the British forces were ill placed
to cope with any difficulties arising out of a revolt. Doubt might be
entertained how far the disloyalty among the native troops would extend;
but there could be no doubt that European troops were scanty, just at
the places where most likely to be needed. There were somewhat over
twenty thousand Queen’s troops at the time in India, with a few others
on the way thither. Of these, as has been shewn in a former page, the
larger proportion was with the Bengal troops; but instead of being
distributed in the various Bengal and Oude provinces, they were rather
largely posted at two extreme points, certainly not less than two
thousand miles apart—on the Afghan frontier of the Punjaub, and on the
Burmese frontier of Pegu. Four regiments of the Queen’s army were
guarding the newly annexed country of the Punjaub, while three others
were similarly holding the recent conquests in Pegu. What was the
consequence, in relation to the twelve hundred miles between Calcutta
and the Sutlej? An almost complete denudation of European troops: a
surrendering of most of the strongholds to the mercy of the sepoys. Only
one European regiment at Lucknow, and none other in the whole of Oude;
two at Meerut, one at Agra, one at Dinapoor, and one at Calcutta—none at
Cawnpore or Allahabad. The two great native capitals of India—Delhi, of
the Mohammedans: Benares, of the Hindoos—had not one European regiment
in them. Indeed, earlier in the year, Calcutta itself had none; but the
authorities, as narrated in the last chapter, became so uneasy at the
thought of being without European supporters at the seat of government,
that they sent to Rangoon in Pegu for one of the Queen’s regiments, and
did not venture upon the Barrackpore disbandments until this regiment
had arrived. The lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces,
comprising Delhi and the surrounding regions, had in his whole
government only three European regiments, and a sepoy army, soon found
to be faithless. Oude had a considerable native force; but Bengal proper
had very few troops of any kind. In short, the Company’s forces were
almost as unfavourably distributed as they could possibly be, to stem
the Revolt at its beginning; and there may not be much hazard in
assuming that the natives were as well acquainted with this fact as the
British.
The reader will find it useful to bear in mind, that the unfavourable
symptoms during the first four months of the year did not present
themselves in those districts which were afterwards associated with such
terrible deeds. Meerut and Delhi, Dinapoor and Ghazeepore, Benares and
Allahabad, Cawnpore and Lucknow, Mirzapore and Agra—these were not in
open disaffection during the period under notice, however much the
elements for a storm may have been gathering. It was at Dumdum,
Barrackpore, and Berhampore, on the Hoogly branch of the Lower
Ganges—and at Umballa near the Sutlej, separated from them by more than
a thousand miles—that the insubordination was chiefly shewn. Now,
however, the scene shifts to the Jumna and the Upper Ganges—with which
it will be well to become familiar by means of maps. Especially must the
positions of Meerut and Delhi be attended to, in relation to the events
detailed in this and the next following chapters.
Meerut, as a district, is a part of the Doab or delta enclosed between
the rivers Ganges and Jumna; but it is Meerut the town with which this
narrative is concerned. It came into the possession of the British in
1836, and is now included in the territories of Northwest Bengal. The
town, standing on the small river Kalee Nuddee, is about equidistant
from the Ganges and the Jumna, twenty-five or thirty miles from each,
and nearly nine hundred miles from Calcutta. Meerut is interesting to
the Indian antiquary in possessing some good architectural remains of
mosques and pagodas; and to the European residents, in possessing one of
the largest and finest Christian churches in India, capable of
accommodating three thousand persons, and provided with a good organ;
but the houses of the natives are wretchedly built, and the streets
narrow and dirty, as in most oriental towns. It is as a military
station, however, that Meerut is most important. The cantonment is two
miles north of the town, and is divided into two portions by a small
branch of the river, over which two bridges have been thrown. The
northern half of the cantonment contains lines for the accommodation of
a brigade of horse-artillery, a European cavalry corps, and a regiment
of European infantry—separated respectively by intervals of several
hundred yards. In front of these is a fine parade-ground, a mile in
width and four miles in length, having ample space for field-battery
practice and the manœuvres of horse-artillery; with a heavy battery on
the extreme right. Overlooking the parade are the barracks, with
stables, hospitals, riding-schools, canteens, and other military
offices. The barracks consist of a series of separate brick-built
low-roofed structures, each comprising one large and lofty room,
surrounded by a spacious enclosed verandah, divided into apartments for
the non-commissioned officers and the families of married men. Behind
the barracks, in a continued line three deep, are the bungalows or
lodges of the officers, each surrounded by a garden about a hundred
yards square. The opposite or southern half of the cantonment is mainly
occupied by the huts (not barracks) for native troops, and by the
detached bungalows for the officers who command them. This description,
applicable in some degree to many parts of India, may assist in
conveying an idea of the manner in which the European officers have
usually been lodged at the cantonments—in detached bungalows at no great
distance from the huts of the native troops: it may render a little more
intelligible some of the details of the fearful tragedies about to be
narrated. Before the Revolt, it was customary to keep at Meerut a
regiment of European cavalry, a regiment of European infantry, one of
native cavalry, and three of native infantry, besides horse and foot
artillery. The station is a particularly healthy one; and, both
politically and geographically, is an important place to the British
rulers of India.
Meerut, in some respects, was one of the last towns in which the mutiny
might have been expected to commence; for there was no other place in
the Northwest Provinces containing at the time so many English troops.
There were the 60th (Rifle) regiment, 1000 strong; the 6th Dragoon
Guards or Carabineers, 600 strong (but not fully mounted); a troop of
horse-artillery; and 500 artillery recruits—altogether about 2200 men,
with a full complement of officers. The native troops were but little
more numerous: comprising the 3d Bengal cavalry, and the 11th and 20th
Bengal infantry. In such a relative state of the European and native
forces, no one for an instant would have admitted the probability of a
revolt being successful at such a time and place.
Although it was not until the second week in May that those events took
place which carried grief and mourning into so many families, Meerut
began its troubles in the latter part of the preceding month. The troops
at this station had not been inattentive to the events transpiring in
Lower Bengal; they knew all the rumours concerning the greased
cartridges; they had been duped into a belief in the truth of those
rumours; and, moreover, emissaries had been at work among them,
instilling into their minds another preposterous notion—that the
government had plotted to take away their caste and insult their
religion, by causing the pulverised bones of bullocks to be mixed up
with the flour sold in the public markets or bazaars. Major-general
Hewett, commanding the military division of which Meerut was the chief
station, sought by every means to eradicate from the minds of the men
these absurd and pernicious ideas; he pointed out how little the
government had to gain by such a course, how contrary it would be to the
policy adopted during a hundred years, and how improbable was the whole
rumour. He failed, however, in his appeal to the good sense of the men;
and equally did the European officers of the native regiments fail: the
sepoys or infantry, the sowars or cavalry, alike continued in a
distrustful and suspicious state. Many British officers accustomed to
Indian troops aver that these men had been rendered more insubordinate
than ever by the leniency of the proceedings at Barrackpore and
Berhampore; that disbandment was not a sufficiently severe punishment
for the offences committed at those places; that the delay in the
disbanding was injurious, as denoting irresolution on the part of the
authorities at Calcutta; and that the native troops in other places had
begun to imbibe an opinion that the government were afraid of them. But
whatever be the amount of truth in this mode of interpretation, certain
it is that the troops at Meerut evinced a mutinous spirit that caused
great uneasiness to their commanders. Bungalows and houses were set on
fire, no one knew by whom; officers were not saluted as had been their
wont; and whispers went about that the men intended to adopt a bold
course in reference to the greased cartridges.
The military authorities on the spot resolved to put this matter to the
test. On the 23d of April, Colonel Smyth, the English commander of the
3d regiment of native Bengal cavalry, ordered a parade of the
skirmishers of his regiment with carabines on the following morning, to
shew them the newly introduced mode of adjusting their cartridges
without biting, hoping and believing that they would be gratified by
this indication of the willingness of the government to consult their
feelings in the matter. He caused the havildar-major and the
havildar-major’s orderly to come to his house, to shew them how it was
to be done; and the orderly fired off a carabine under the new system.
At night, however, uneasiness was occasioned by the burning down of the
orderly’s tent, and of a horse-hospital close to the magazine. Although
this act of incendiarism looked ominous, the colonel nevertheless
determined to carry out his object on the morrow. Accordingly, on the
morning of the 24th, the troops assembled on parade; and the
havildar-major fired off one cartridge to shew them how it was to be
done. The men demurred, however, to the reception of the cartridges,
though the same in kind as had been used by them during a long period,
and _not_ the new cartridges. An investigation ensued, which was
conducted on the 25th by Major Harrison, deputy-judge advocate. On being
examined, the men admitted that they could discern nothing impure in the
composition or glazing of the paper; but added that they had _heard_ it
was unclean, and believed it to be so. The inquiry, after a few
conciliatory observations on the part of the judge, ended in the men
expressing contrition for their obstinacy, and promising a ready
obedience in the use of the cartridges whenever called upon.
A hope was now entertained that the difficulties had been smoothed away;
but this hope proved to be fallacious. Major-general Hewett, wishing to
put an end to the stupid prejudice, and to settle at once all doubts as
to the obedience of the men, ordered a parade of the 3d cavalry for the
morning of the 6th of May. On the evening of the 5th, preparatory to the
parade, cartridges were given out to the men, the same in quality as
those which had been freely in use during many years. Eighty-five of the
sowars or troopers—either still incredulous on the grease-question, or
resolved to mutiny whether with just cause or not—positively refused to
receive the cartridges. This conduct, of course, could not be
overlooked; the men were taken into custody, and tried by a
court-martial; they were found guilty of a grave military offence, and
were committed to imprisonment with hard labour, for periods varying
from six to ten years. The governor-general, seeing the necessity of
promptitude at this crisis, had just sent orders to the military
stations that the judgments of all court-martials should be put in force
instantly, as a means of impressing the troops with the seriousness of
their position; and Major-general Hewett, acting on these instructions,
proceeded on the 9th to enforce the sentence of the court-martial. A
European guard of 60th Rifles and Carabiniers was placed over the
convicted men; and at daybreak the whole military force at the station
was assembled on the rifle parade-ground. All were there—the European
60th, Carabiniers, and artillery—the native 3d, 11th, and 20th. The
European cannon, carbines, and rifles were loaded, to prepare for any
emergency. The eighty-five mutineers of the 3d native cavalry were
marched upon the ground; they were stripped of their uniforms and
accoutrements; they were shackled with irons riveted on by the
armourers. While this was being done, very meaning looks were exchanged
between the culprits and the other sowars of the same regiment—the
former looking reproachfully at the latter, while the latter appeared
gloomy and crestfallen: it was evident that the unconvicted men had
promised to resist and prevent the infliction of the degrading
punishment on their convicted associates; but it was equally evident
that the presence of so many armed European troops would have rendered
any attempt at rescue worse than useless. The manacles having been
adjusted, the men were marched off to jail. And herein a grave mistake
appears to have been committed. Instead of keeping a watchful eye over
these men at such a perilous time, and retaining them under a guard of
European troops until the excitement had blown over, they were sent to
the common jail of Meerut, two miles distant from the cantonment, and
there handed over to the police or ordinary civil power of the town. How
disastrous was the result of this course of proceeding, we shall
presently see. The native troops, when the culprits had been removed
from the parade-ground, returned to their lines furious with
indignation—at least the 3d cavalry were so, and they gradually brought
over the infantry to share in their indignant feelings. It was a
degrading punishment, unquestionably: whether the remainder of the
native troops at the station would be terrified or exasperated by it,
was just the problem which remained to be solved. All the afternoon and
evening of that day were the men brooding and whispering, plotting and
planning. Unfortunately, the European officers of native regiments were
accustomed to mix so seldom with their men, that they knew little of
what occurred except on parade-ground: this plotting was only known by
its fruits. Judged by subsequent events, it appears probable that the
native troops sent emissaries to Delhi, forty miles distant, to announce
what had occurred, and to plan an open revolt. The prime plotters were
the 3d; the 20th were nearly as eager; but the 11th, newly arrived at
Meerut, held back for some time, although they did not betray the rest.
Little did the European inhabitants, their wives and their children, at
Meerut, dream what was in store for them on Sunday the 10th of May—a day
of peace in the eyes of Christians. It was on the 9th that the sentence
of the court-martial on the eighty-five mutineers was enforced: it was
on the 10th that the Revolt, in its larger sense, began. Whether these
two events stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect, is a
question not easily to be answered; but it may safely be asserted that
the Revolt would not have resulted from the punishment unless the men
had been generally in a state of disaffection. The Sunday opened as most
Sundays open in India, quiet and uneventful, and remained so till
evening. Ladies and families were then going to evening-service at the
church. Some of them passed the mess-room of the 3d cavalry, and there
saw servants looking towards the road leading to the native infantry
lines. Something was evidently wrong. On inquiry it appeared that a
mutiny had broken out, and that fighting was going on in the bazaar.
Crowds of armed men soon hurried that way; and families who had been on
the route to church, drove or walked back in haste to escape danger. So
it was on all sides: whoever on that evening ventured forth, found that
blood-shedding instead of church-service would fill their thoughts. The
Rev. Mr Smyth, chaplain of Meerut, while driving to church for the seven
o’clock service, met two of the 60th Rifles covered with blood; and on
reaching the church, he saw buggies and carriages driving away in great
confusion, and a body of people pointing to a column of fire and smoke
in the direction of the city: frequent shots were heard, amid the cries
of a large mob. In another direction the wife of an officer in the 3d
cavalry, going like other Europeans to church, and startled like them by
sounds of violence, saw a private of the Carabiniers unarmed, and
running for very life from several men armed with _latthies_ or long
sticks: she stopped her carriage and took in the English soldier; but
the men continued to strike at him until the vehicle rolled away. This
lady, on reaching her bungalow in haste and dismay, was the first to
give notice to her husband that something was wrong among the native
troops: he instantly started off on foot to the lines, without waiting
for his horse. In another part of the scene, an English officer of the
11th native infantry, at about six o’clock on that evening, while in his
bungalow preparing for a ride with Colonel Finnis of the same regiment,
had his attention attracted to his servants, and those in the bungalows
of other officers, going down towards the front of the several compounds
or gardens, and looking steadily into the lines or cantonment of the
regiment. He heard a buzzing, murmuring noise, which at first he deemed
of no consequence; but as it continued and increased, he hastily
finished dressing and went out. Scarcely had he reached his gate, when
he heard the sound of firearms, which his practised ear at once told him
were loaded with ball-cartridge. An European non-commissioned officer
came running towards him, with others, and exclaimed: ‘For God’s sake,
sir, leave! Return to your bungalow, change that dress, and fly!’
Shortly afterwards shots came into his own compound; and the
havildar-major of the 11th, rushing terrified and breathless into the
bungalow, exclaimed: ‘Fly, sahib—fly at once! the regiments are in open
mutiny, and firing on their officers; and Colonel Finnis has just been
shot in my arms!’ The officer mounted and started off—at first
leisurely—because ‘a Briton does not like actually running away under
any circumstances;’ but when the havildar-major (native sergeant-major)
advised him to gallop off to the European cavalry lines, he saw that the
suggestion was good; and he immediately started—over a rugged and barren
plain, cut up by nullahs and ravines—towards the lines of the Queen’s
Carabiniers.
When these, and a dozen similar mysteries, came to receive their
solution, it was found that a mutiny had indeed broken out. Shortly
before five o’clock on that Sunday afternoon, the men of the 3d native
cavalry, and of the 20th native infantry, rushed out of their lines on a
given signal, and proceeded to the lines of the 11th native infantry,
all fully armed. After a little hesitation, their comrades joined them;
and then all three regiments proceeded to open acts of violence. Colonel
Finnis of the 11th, the moment he heard of this startling proceeding,
rode to the parade-ground, harangued the men, and endeavoured to induce
them to return to their duty. Instead of listening to him, the men of
the 20th fired a volley, and he fell, riddled with bullets—the first
victim of the Indian Revolt. The other officers present, feeling that
their remaining longer on the ground would effect no good, escaped.
Whether a daring man might have stemmed the torrent, cannot now be told:
no one attempted it after Finnis’s death; his brother-officers were
allowed to escape to the lines of the artillery and the Carabiniers, on
the other side of the encampment. So far as the accounts are
intelligible, the first shots appear to have been fired by the 20th, the
11th joining afterwards in the violence.
While the infantry were thus engaged, the ominous but natural step was
taken by the 3d cavalry of releasing their eighty-five imprisoned
companions—ominous, because those men, enraged at their incarceration,
would join in the disorder with heated blood and excited passions. The
troopers proceeded to the jail, set their companions free, armed them,
and invited them to share in the mutiny. All this was evidently
preconcerted; for native smiths were at hand to strike off the manacles.
Yelling and threatening, the whole returned to the lines; and then
commenced the direful mischief. Within a very short time, all three
regiments became busily engaged in burning and murdering. But this was
not all; when the eighty-five troopers were liberated, the other
prisoners in the jail, _twelve hundred_ in number, were set at liberty
at the same time; and then the scum of Indian society entered into the
scenes of violence with demoniac relish, adding tenfold to the horrors
perpetrated by the sepoys and sowars. The mutineers and the ruffians set
fire to nearly all the bungalows of the native lines, and to the
government establishments near at hand, murdering, as they went, the
Europeans who fell in their way. The bungalows being mostly thatched
with straw, the destruction was very rapid; the cowardly assailants,
setting fire to the thatch, waited till the flames had driven out the
inmates of the bungalow, and then fell upon them as assassins. The
conflagrations were accompanied by the yells of the rioters and the
shrieks of the sufferers, rendered more terrible by the approach of
darkness. The rabble of the bazaar, and the lowest portion of the
population generally, as if intoxicated by release from the dread of
Europeans, now joined the mutineers and the released felons, and the
horrors thickened. On all sides shot up columns of flame and smoke; on
all sides were heard the shouts and curses of some, the cries and
lamentations of others. One redeeming feature—there may have been
others—marked these proceedings; the sepoys of the 11th, in most
instances, connived at the escape of their officers—nay, strove
earnestly to save them: it was not by men of his own regiment that poor
Colonel Finnis had been shot down.
A few individual examples, drawn from the simple but painful narratives
of eye-witnesses, will shew in what way misery and death were brought
into homes where the peace of a Christian Sabbath had reigned only a few
hours before.
The Rev. Mr Smyth, after returning hurriedly from the church where he
had intended to perform divine service, took shelter in the house of an
officer of the artillery in the English lines. Shots had just before
been aimed at that officer and his wife by eight or ten sepoys of the
artillery depôt or school, while standing at the very gate of their
compound; and yet Mr Smyth himself was saluted respectfully by several
sepoys during his hurried retreat—shewing the strange mixture of
deference and ferocity exhibited by these misguided men. Presently
afterwards another shot was heard, a horse was seen galloping past with
a buggy; and it was soon found that the surgeon and the veterinary
surgeon of the 3d cavalry had been wounded and mutilated. The clergyman
escaped unhurt, to learn and to mourn over the events transpiring in
other parts of the town and cantonment.
A captain of horse, the husband of the lady mentioned in a former
paragraph, hastened on the first news from his bungalow to the lines of
the 3d cavalry, in which he commanded a troop. He was respected by his
men, who offered him no hurt, and who seemed to hesitate for a time
whether to join the rest in mutiny or not. Soon, however, the mania
infected them; and the captain, seeing the jail opened and the prisoners
liberated, hastened back. The road from the town to the cantonment was
in an uproar; the infantry and the bazaar-people were in crowds, armed
and firing; and he saw one of the miscreant troopers stab to death an
Englishwoman, the wife of the Meerut hotel-keeper, as she passed. Soon a
ball whizzed past his own car, and he saw one of his own troopers aiming
at him; he shouted: ‘Was that meant for me?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply; ‘I
will have your blood!’ The captain detected this man as one whom he had
been obliged to punish for carelessness and disobedience. The man fired
again, but again missed his aim; and although the other troopers did not
join in this, they made no attempt to check or seize the assailant. The
captain, abandoned gradually by all but a very few troopers, at length
reached the European lines, where he took part in the proceedings
afterwards adopted. Meanwhile the poor wife had passed two hours of
terrible suspense. Believing at first that the carabinier whom she had
saved might have been the main object of attack, she hid his uniform,
dressed him in a coat of her husband’s, and bade him sit with herself
and family, for mutual safety. Out of doors she heard shots and shouts,
and saw houses burning. In the next bungalow, speedily fired, was the
wife of an adjutant lately arrived from England; she was entreated to
come over for shelter, but not arriving, servants were sent in to seek
her. A horrid sight met them: the hapless lady lay on the floor in a
pool of blood, dead, and mutilated in a way that the pen refuses to
describe. The noises and flames increased; eight or ten flaming
bungalows were in sight at once; and many a struggle took place between
the captain’s servants and the mutineers, during which it was quite
uncertain whether one more burning, one more massacre, would ensue.
Troopers rushed into the bungalow, endeavouring to fire it; while
others, with a lingering affection towards the family of their officer,
prevented them. The husband arrived, in speechless agony concerning the
safety of those dear to him. Wrapped in black stable-blankets, to hide
their light dresses, all left the house amid a glare of flame from
neighbouring buildings, and hid under trees in the garden; whence they
sped to a small ruin near at hand, where, throughout the remainder of
the night, they crouched listening to the noises without. Bands of armed
men passed in and out of the bungalow compound during the night, and
were only prevented from prosecuting a search, by an assurance from the
domestics that the officer’s family had effected their escape. When
morning came, the (now) houseless Europeans, with about twenty troopers
who remained faithful to the last—though agitated by strange waverings
and irresolution—left the place, taking with them such few clothes and
trinkets as could be hastily collected, and started off for the
Carabiniers’ lines, passing on their way the smouldering ruins of many
bungalows and public buildings.
Howsoever the narratives might vary in details, in substance they were
all alike; they spoke of a night of burning, slaughter, and dismay.
Wherever there was a bungalow, the European inhabitants of which did not
succeed in escaping to the English lines, there was murder perpetrated.
The escape of Mr Greathed, civil commissioner for Meerut, was a narrow
one. His house—flat-roofed, as it fortunately happened—was one of the
first attacked by the mutineers: at the first alarm, Mr and Mrs Greathed
fled to the roof; thither, on the least intimation from any of the
servants, the miscreants would have followed them; but the servants
persisted that the family had departed; and the assailants, after
searching every room in the house, took their departure. One officer
after another, as he rushed from his bungalow to call his men back to
their allegiance, was shot down; and wherever the mutineers and their
ruffian companions brought murder into a house, they mingled with the
murder a degree of barbarity quite appalling and unexpected. There were
a few Europeans in the town and vicinity not connected with the military
department; and these, unless they effected their escape, were treated
like the rest; rank, age, and sex were equally disregarded—or, if sex
made any difference, women, gentle English women, were treated more
ruthlessly than men. An officer of the 20th, living in his bungalow with
his wife and two children, was sought out by the ruffians: the father
and mother were killed; but a faithful ayah snatched up the two children
and carried them off to a place of safety—the poor innocents never again
saw their parents alive. An English sergeant was living with his wife
and six children beyond the limits of the cantonment; he and three of
his little ones were massacred in a way that must for very shame be left
untold: the mother, with the other three, all bleeding and mutilated,
managed to crawl to the European lines about midnight.
With what inexpressible astonishment were the narratives of these deeds
heard and perused! Men who had been in India, or were familiar with
Indian affairs, knew that the sepoys had before risen in mutiny, and had
shot their officers; but it was something strange to them, a terrible
novelty, that tender women and little children—injuring none, and
throwing a halo of refinement around all—should be so vilely treated as
to render death a relief. The contrast to all that was considered
characteristic of the Hindoo was so great, that to this day it remains
to many an Indian veteran a horrid enigma—a mystery insoluble even if
his heart-sickness would lead him to the attempt. Be it remembered that
for a whole century the natives had been largely trusted in the
relations of social life; and had well justified that trust. Many an
English lady (it has been observed by an eloquent reviewer, whose words
we have before quoted) has travelled from one end of the country to the
other—along desert roads, through thick jungles, or on vast solitary
rivers—miles and miles away from the companionship of white men, without
the slightest anxiety. Her native servants, Mohammedans and Hindoos,
were her protectors; and she was as safe in such custody as in an
English home. Her slightest caprice was as a law to her attendants.
These swarthy bearded men, ready at her beck, ever treated her with the
most delicate respect, ever appeared to bear about with them a
chivalrous sense of the sacredness of their charge. Not a word or a
gesture ever alarmed her modesty or excited her fear; and her husband,
father, brother never hesitated to confide her to such guardianship. It
was in the year 1857 that the charm of this delicate fidelity was first
broken; and broken so appallingly, that men were long incredulous that
such things could be.
But the children, the sabred and mangled little ones—that these could be
so treated by the same natives, was more astounding to the Anglo-Indians
than even the treatment of the women. ‘Few of our countrymen have ever
returned from India without deploring the loss of their native servants.
In the nursery they are, perhaps, more missed than in any other part of
the establishment. There are, doubtless, hundreds of English parents in
this country who remember with feelings of kindliness and gratitude the
_nusery_ bearers, or male nurses, who attended their children. The
patience, the gentleness, the tenderness with which these white-robed
swarthy Indians attend the little children of their European masters,
surpass even the love of women. You may see them sitting for hour after
hour, with their little infantine charges, amusing them with toys,
fanning them when they slumber, brushing away the flies, or pacing the
verandah with the little ones in their arms, droning the low monotonous
lullaby which charms them to sleep; and all this without a shadow on the
brow, without a gesture of impatience, without a single petulant word.
No matter how peevish, how wayward, how unreasonable, how exacting the
child may be, the native bearer only smiles, shews his white teeth, or
shakes his black locks, giving back a word of endearment in reply to
young master’s imperious discontent. In the sick-room, doubly gentle and
doubly patient, his noiseless ministrations are continued through long
days, often through long nights, as though hunger and weariness were
human frailties to be cast off at such a time. It is little to say that
these poor hirelings often love their master’s children with greater
tenderness than their own. Parted from their little charges, they may
often be seen weeping like children themselves; and have been known, in
after-years, to travel hundreds of miles to see the brave young ensign
or the blooming maiden whom they once dandled in their arms.’ These men,
it is true, were domestic servants, not sepoys or soldiers fighting in
the army of the Company; but it is equally true that the British
officers, almost without exception, trusted implicitly to the sepoys who
acted as orderlies or servants to them; and that those orderlies shewed
themselves worthy of the trust, by their scrupulous respect to the
ladies of each household, and their tender affection for the little ones
born under the roof of the bungalow. Hence the mingled wonderment and
grief when fiend-like cruelties suddenly destroyed the charm of this
reliance.
Allowing the veil to remain, at present, drawn over still greater
horrors in other places, it must be admitted that the principal
atrocities at Meerut were perpetrated by the twelve hundred miscreants
liberated from the jail, aided by the general rabble of the town. The
native troops had something in their thoughts besides firing bungalows
and murdering a few Europeans; they had arranged some sort of plot with
the native troops of Delhi; and they set out in a body for that city
long before the deplorable transactions at Meerut had ceased. Those
scenes continued more or less throughout the night; officers and their
wives, parents and their children, were not relieved from the agony of
suspense before morning broke.
[Illustration:
Laboratory at Meerut.
]
The number massacred at Meerut on this evening and night was not so
large as the excited feelings of the survivors led them to imply; but it
was large to them; for it told of a whole cluster of happy homes
suddenly broken up, of bungalows reduced to ashes, of bleeding corpses
brought in one by one, of children rendered fatherless, of property
consumed, of hopes blasted, of confidence destroyed. The European
soldiers, as will presently be seen, soon obtained the mastery so far as
Meerut was concerned; but the surviving women and children had still
many hours, many days, of discomfort and misery to bear. The School of
Instruction near the artillery laboratory became the place of shelter
for most of them; and this place was much crowded. How mournfully does
it tell of large families rendered homeless to read thus: ‘We are in a
small house at one end of the place, which consists of one large room
and verandah rooms all round; and in this miserable shed—for we can
scarcely call it anything else—there are no less than forty-one
souls’—then are named thirteen members of one family, ten of another,
three other families of four each, and two others of three each—‘besides
having in our verandah room the post-office, and arranging at present a
small room adjoining the post-office as the telegraph-office.’ Some of
the houseless officers and their families found temporary homes in the
sergeants’ rooms of the European lines; space was found for all,
although amid much confusion; and one of the refugees writes of ‘a crowd
of helpless babies’ that added to the misery of the scene. Adverting to
others like herself, she remarks: ‘Ladies who were mere formal
acquaintances now wring each other’s hands with intense sympathy; what a
look there was when we first assembled here!—all of us had stared death
in the face.’
Let us turn now to a question which has probably presented itself more
than once to the mind of the reader during the perusal of these sad
details—What were the twenty-two hundred European troops doing while the
three native regiments were imbuing their hands in the blood of innocent
women and children? Could not they have intervened to prevent the
atrocities? It must be borne in mind that these fine English troops, the
Carabiniers and 60th Rifles, with artillery, were nearly equal in number
to the rebels; and that, if quickly moved, they would have been a match
for five or ten times their number. Whether or not they _were_ quickly
moved, is just the question at issue. Major-general Hewett’s dispatch to
the adjutant-general thus describes the course adopted as soon as the
outbreak became known to him: ‘The artillery, Carabiniers, and 60th
Rifles were got under arms; but by the time we reached the native
infantry parade-ground, it was too dark to act with efficiency in that
direction; consequently, the troops retired to the north of the nullah,
so as to cover the barracks and officers’ lines of the artillery,
Carabiniers, and 60th Rifles; which were, with the exception of one
house, preserved; though the insurgents—for I believe the mutineers had
by that time retired by the Allygurh and Delhi roads—burned the vacant
Sapper and Miner lines.’
One thing is quite certain—the mutineers were not pursued: they were
allowed to go to Delhi, there to raise the standard of rebellion in a
still more alarming way. The Carabiniers, it is true, were deficient in
horses to join in pursuit; but this might assuredly have been obviated
by precautionary arrangements during the many days on which the 3d
native cavalry had shewn symptoms of insubordination. An officer of the
11th native infantry, who narrowly escaped death in his gallop to the
European cantonment, accompanied the Queen’s regiments to the scene of
anarchy; but there is evidence that he considered the movements somewhat
tardy. ‘It took us a long time, in my opinion,’ he says, ‘to get ready,
and it was dark before the Carabiniers were prepared to start in a
body.’ In the latitude of Meerut, we may remark, in the second week in
May, darkness can hardly come on until near seven o’clock, whereas the
outbreak occurred two hours earlier. He continues: ‘When the Carabiniers
were mounted, we rode off at a brisk trot, through clouds of suffocating
dust, and darkness, in an easterly direction, and along a narrow
road—_not advancing in the direction of the conflagration_, but, on the
contrary, leaving it behind on our right rear. In this way we proceeded
for some two or three miles, to my no small surprise, when suddenly the
“halt” was sounded, and we faced about, retracing our steps, and verging
off to our left. Approaching the conflagration, we debouched on the left
rear of the native infantry lines, which of course were all in a blaze.
Skirting along behind these lines, we turned them at the western end,
and wheeling up to the left, came upon the 11th parade-ground, where, at
a little distance, we found the horse-artillery and her Majesty’s 60th
Rifles. It appears that the three regiments of mutineers had by this
time commenced dropping off to the westward to the Delhi road, for here
some firing took place between them and the Rifles; and presently the
horse-artillery, coming to the front and unlimbering, opened upon a
copse or wood in which they had apparently found cover, with heavy
discharges of grape and canister, which rattled among the trees; and all
was silent again. The horse-artillery now limbered up again, and wheeled
round; and here I joined them, having lost the Carabiniers in the
darkness. By this time, however, the moon arose. The horse-artillery
column, with Rifles at its head, moving across the parade-ground, we
entered the long street turning from the southward behind the light
cavalry lines. There it was that the extent and particulars of the
conflagration first became visible; and, passing the burning bungalow of
the adjutant of the 11th native infantry, we proceeded along the
straight road or street, flanked on both sides with flaming and crashing
houses in all stages of combustion and ruin; the Rifles occasionally
firing volleys as we proceeded. It was by this time past ten o’clock;
and having made the entire circuit of the lines, we passed up to the
east of them, and, joined by the Carabiniers and Rifles, bivouacked for
the night.’
Collating various accounts of this evening’s events, it becomes evident
that the military movements of the Europeans were anything but prompt.
Even if the two regiments and the artillery could not have reached the
scene of tumult before dark—a supposition not at all borne out—still it
seems strange that all should have ‘bivouacked for the night’ at the
very time when three mutinous native regiments were on the way to Delhi.
Hasty critics, as is usual in such circumstances, at once condemned the
military commander at Meerut; and an ex-governor-general, dwelling, in
his place in the House of Lords, on the occurrences in India, spoke in a
contemptuous tone of ‘an unknown man named Hewett’ as one whose
misconduct had allowed the rebel troops to escape from Meerut to Delhi.
It was hard for a soldier who had served for forty years in India,
without once returning to his native country, to find contumely thus
hurled at him; it is one of the bitter things to which public men are
subjected, not only from anonymous writers, but from other public men
whose names carry authority with them. A near relation of the
major-general afterwards took up his defence, urging that it might have
been unwise policy to send the only European troops in pursuit to Delhi,
at a time when the magazines and stores at Meerut required so much
attention. The defence may possibly be insufficient; but the history of
the Crimean war had shewn how hastily Lord Raglan had been accused of
offences, things committed and things omitted, for which he was
afterwards known not to have been responsible; and this experience ought
to have suggested caution to assailants, especially remembering how long
a time must often elapse between an accusation and a refutation, during
which time the wound is festering. Declining years certainly did not
prevent the officer whose name is now under notice from taking a part in
the operations, such as they were, of the English troops at Meerut;
although in his sixty-eighth year, he slept on the ground among the
guns, like his men, on the 10th of May, and for fourteen consecutive
nights he did the same; while for many following weeks he never doffed
his regimentals, except for change of apparel, night or day. Whether
such details are trivial or not, depends on the nature of the
accusations. It is only the hasty judgments of those at a distance that
are here commented on; the dissatisfaction of the Calcutta authorities
will be adverted to in a future page.
The sympathies of the Europeans at Meerut were drawn in a forcible way
towards the inmates of a convent and school at Sirdhana—an establishment
remarkable as existing in that part of India. We must go back sixty
years to understand this. Towards the close of the last century, there
was a Cashmerian bayadère or dancing-girl, who became associated with a
German adventurer, and then, by a course of unscrupulous intrigue and
fearless sanguinary measures, obtained possession of three considerable
jaghires or principalities in the region around and between Meerut and
Delhi. These cities, as well as Agra and others in the Doab, were at
that time in the hands of the great Mahratta chief, Dowlut Rao Scindia.
After a series of brilliant victories, the British obtained possession
of the Doab in 1803, but awarded a petty sovereignty to the female
adventurer, who became thenceforth known as the Begum Sumroo. She
retained her queendom until her death in 1836, after which the three
jaghires passed into the hands of the British. This remarkable woman,
during the later years of her life, professed the Roman Catholic faith;
she had a spacious and handsome palace at Sirdhana, about twelve miles
from Meerut; and near it she built a Catholic church, imitative on a
small scale of St Peter’s at Rome, with a beautiful altar inlaid with
mosaics and precious stones. Out of twelve thousand inhabitants in
Sirdhana, about one-tenth now profess themselves Christians, having
imitated the begum in her change of religion; and there is a Christian
convent there, containing a number of priests, nuns, and pupils. When,
therefore, the outrages occurred at Meerut, apprehensions naturally
arose concerning the fate of the European women and girls at this
convent. About five days after the Revolt commenced, rumours came in
that the inmates of the convent at Sirdhana were in peril; and it was
only by great exertions that the postmaster at Meerut was enabled to
bring some of them away. A letter written in reference to this
proceeding said: ‘The poor nuns begged of him, when he was coming away,
to try and send them some help; he tried all he could to get a guard to
escort them to this station, but did not succeed; and yesterday morning
(16th of May), having given up the idea of procuring a guard from the
military authorities, he went round, and by speaking to some gentlemen,
got about fifteen persons to volunteer their services, to go and rescue
the poor nuns and children from Sirdhana; and I am happy to say they
succeeded in their charitable errand without any one having been
injured.’
It will be remembered that, during the burnings and murderings at Meerut
on the evening of the 10th, most of the mutineers of the three regiments
started off to Delhi. They took, as was afterwards found, the high road
from Meerut, and passing the villages of Begumabad, Moradnuggur,
Furrucknuggur, and Shahderuh, reached Delhi early on Monday; the
infantry making forced marches, and the cavalry riding near them for
support. Proof was soon afforded that the native troops in that city, or
some of them, had been waiting for the mutineers, prepared to join them
in an organised attack on the Europeans. What aspect that attack put on,
and what were the calamities to which it gave rise, will be narrated in
the next two chapters.
Many days elapsed before Meerut recovered its tranquillity. Such men of
the 3d, 11th, and 20th regiments as remained faithful—especially the
11th, of whom there were more than a hundred—were received at the
cantonment, and their previous insubordination pardoned on account of
their subsequent fidelity; but still there were many causes for anxiety.
In the major-general’s first report on the disasters, he said: ‘Nearly
the whole of the cantonment and Zillah police have deserted.’ These
police or watchmen are referred to by an officer familiar with the
district, who says: ‘Round about Meerut and Delhi there are two or three
peculiar castes or tribes, something similar to our gipsies, only
holding human life at less value, and which in former days gave constant
trouble. Of late years, they have lived in more peace and quietness,
contenting themselves with picking up stray cattle and things that did
not belong to them. They have now, however, on the earliest occasion
broken out again, and have been guilty of all kinds of depredations.
Skinner’s Horse was originally raised to keep these people in order,
about the time of Lord Lake; such men have hitherto been necessary at
Meerut, Delhi, and those parts, as watchmen; every one was obliged to
keep one, to avoid being robbed to a certainty.’ The Meerut inhabitants
had thus, in addition to their other troubles, the knowledge that gangs
of desperadoes would be likely to acquire renewed audacity through the
defection of the native police.
It was soon ascertained that the dâk communications on many of the roads
were cut off, and the military commandant found much difficulty in
transmitting intelligence to the seat of government. Five days after the
great outbreak, another cause of uneasiness ensued. Six companies of
native Sappers and Miners arrived at Meerut from Roorkee, under their
commander, Major Fraser. The place here named is interesting in a
twofold point of view. Being situated in one of the most elevated sites
in the Doab between the Jumna and the Ganges, about eighty miles north
of Meerut, it was selected as the head-quarters for operations on the
great Ganges Canal, the noblest British work in India; and here has been
made a magnificent aqueduct nine hundred feet in length, with arches of
fifty feet span. This aqueduct, and the necessary workshops and
model-rooms of the engineers, have converted the place from a small
village to a considerable station. Roorkee also contains an
establishment called the ‘Thomason College,’ for affording instruction
in civil engineering to Europeans and natives. When the native Sappers
and Miners, about eight hundred strong, arrived at Meerut from this
place, on the 16th of May—either excited by the news of the late
occurrences, or moved by some other impulse—they suddenly shot their
commanding officer, and made off for the open country. A force of the
Carabiniers and horse-artillery went in pursuit of them, and shot down
many; but a greater number escaped, probably to Delhi. Such of the
companies as did not attempt flight were disarmed and carefully watched.
[Illustration:
Dâk Runner.
]
Too soon, alas! did the Europeans at Meerut know that atrocities were
being committed at Delhi. By twos and threes did fugitives come in, glad
to sacrifice all else for the sake of very life. Now several officers of
the 38th native regiment; now a merchant and his family; now officers of
the 74th and their families; now civil servants of the Company; now
officers of the 54th—all toil-worn, dirty, ragged, hungered, weighed
down by the miseries of their forty miles’ flight from brutal
assailants: women, as is usual with Englishwomen, bearing their share of
these miseries with the truest heroism. All was doubt as to the
occurrences in other quarters; dâks were cut off, telegraphic wires were
severed; the wishes and orders of the governor-general at one place, and
the commander-in-chief at another, could not yet be known. On the night
of the outbreak, two Europeans had endeavoured to travel by dâk from
Meerut to Delhi; they encountered the rebels, and were murdered; and
this was the commencement of indications, afterwards abundant enough,
that the roads were no longer safe. All that was certain was, that a
sudden social earthquake had overturned the homes of families distant
nine hundred miles from Calcutta, bringing death to many, mourning and
loss to others, distrust and anxiety to all.