LUCKNOW AND THE COURT OF OUDE.
Another regal or once-regal family, another remnant of Moslem power in
India, now comes upon the scene—one which has added to the embarrassment
of the English authorities, by arraying against them the machinations of
deposed princes as well as the discontent of native troops; and by
shewing, as the King of Delhi had shewn in a neighbouring region, that a
pension to a sovereign deprived of his dominions is not always a
sufficient medicament to allay the irritation arising from the
deprivation. What and where is the kingdom of Oude; of what rank as an
Indian city is its capital, Lucknow; who were its rulers; why and when
the ruling authority was changed—these matters must be clearly
understood, as a preliminary to the narrative of Sir Henry Lawrence’s
proceedings about the time of the outbreak.
Oude, considered as a province of British India, and no longer as a
kingdom, is bounded on the north and northeast by the territory of
Nepaul; on the east by the district of Goruckpore; on the southeast by
those of Azimghur and Jounpoor; on the south by that of Allahabad; on
the southwest by the districts of the Doab; and on the northwest by
Shahjehanpoor. It is now about thrice the size of Wales; but before the
annexation, Oude as a kingdom included a larger area. On the Nepaul
side, a strip of jungle-country called the Terai, carries it to the base
of the sub-Himalaya range. This Terai is in part a wooded marsh, so
affected by a deadly malaria as to be scarcely habitable; while the
other part is an almost impassable forest of trees, underwood, and
reeds, infested by the elephant, the rhinoceros, the bear, the wild hog,
and other animals. Considered generally, however, Oude surpasses in
natural advantages almost every other part of India—having the Ganges
running along the whole of its southwest frontier, a varied and fertile
soil, a genial though hot climate, and numerous facilities for
irrigation and water-carriage. It cannot, however, be said that man has
duly aided nature in the development of these advantages; for the only
regularly made road in the whole province is that from Lucknow to
Cawnpore: the others being mostly wretched tracks, scarcely passable for
wheel-carriages. The railway schemes of the Company include a line
through Oude, which would be of incalculable benefit; but no definite
contract had been made at the time when the Revolt commenced; nor would
such a railway be profitable until the trunk-line is finished from
Calcutta to Benares and Allahabad. Although the Mohammedans have,
through many ages, held the ruling power in Oude, the Hindoos are
greatly more numerous; and nearly the whole of the inhabitants, five
millions in number, speak the Hindostani language; whereas those nearer
Calcutta speak Bengali. As shewing the kind of houses in which Europeans
occasionally sought concealment during the disturbances, the following
description of the ordinary dwelling-places of Oude may be useful. They
are generally built either of unburnt brick, or of layers of mud, each
about three feet in breadth and one foot high. The roofs are made of
square beams, placed a foot apart, and covered with planks laid
transversely; over these are mats, and a roofing of well-rammed wet clay
half a yard in thickness. The walls are carried to a height six or seven
feet above the upper surface of the roof, to afford a concealed place of
recreation for the females of the family; and during the rainy season
this small elevated court is covered with a slight awning of bamboos and
grass. Though so simply and cheaply constructed, these houses are very
durable. Around the house there is usually a verandah, covered with a
sloping tiled roof. Inside, the beams overhead are exposed to view,
without any ceiling. The floors are of earth, well beaten down and
smoothed, and partially covered with mats or cotton carpets. In the
front of the house is a chabootra or raised platform of earth, open to
the air at the sides, and provided with a roof of tiles or grass
supported on pillars. This platform is a pleasant spot on which
neighbours meet and chat in the cool of the evening. The dwellings of
the wealthy natives of course present an aspect of greater splendour;
while those of the Europeans, in the chief towns, partake of the
bungalow fashion, already described.
There are few towns of any distinction in Oude compared with the area of
the province; and of these few, only two will need to be mentioned in
the present chapter. As for the city whence the province originally
obtained its name—Oude, Oudh, or Ayodha—it has fallen from its
greatness. Prinsep, Buchanan, and other authorities, regard it as the
most ancient, or at any rate one of the most ancient, among the cities
of Hindostan. Some of the coins found in Oude are of such extreme
antiquity, that the characters in which their legends are graven are
totally unknown. Buchanan thinks that the city was built by the first
Brahmins who entered India, and he goes back to a date fourteen hundred
years before the Christian era for its foundation; while Tod and Wilford
claim for Oude an origin even six centuries earlier than that insisted
on by Buchanan. The value of such estimates may not be great; they
chiefly corroborate the belief that Oude is a _very_ ancient city. With
its eight thousand inhabitants, and its mud and thatch houses, the
grandeur of Oude lives in the past; and even this grandeur is in
antiquity rather than in splendour; for the ruins and fragments give a
somewhat mean idea of the very early Hindoo architecture to which they
belong. On the eastern side of the town are extensive ruins, said to be
those of the fort of Rama, king of Oude, celebrated in the mythological
and romantic legends of India. According to Buchanan: ‘The heaps of
bricks, although much seems to have been carried away by the river,
extend a great way—that is, more than a mile in length, and half a mile
in width—and, although vast quantities of materials have been removed to
build the Mohammedan Ayodha or Fyzabad, yet the ruins in many parts
retain a very considerable elevation; nor is there any reason to doubt
that the structure to which they belonged was very large, when we
consider that it has been ruined for above two thousand years.’ A spot
among the ruins is still pointed out by the reverential Hindoos from
which Rama took his flight to heaven, carrying all the people of the
city with him: a hypothetical emigration which had the effect of leaving
Oude desolate until a neighbouring king repopulated it, and embellished
it with three hundred and sixty temples. The existing buildings
connected with the Hindoo faith are four establishments kept up in
honour of the fabled monkey-god, the auxiliary of Rama; they have annual
revenues, settled on them by one of the rulers of Oude; they are managed
by _maliks_ or spiritual superiors; and the revenues are dispensed to
several hundreds of _bairagis_ or religious ascetics, and other lazy
Hindoo mendicants—no Mussulman being ever admitted within the walls.
Lucknow, however, is the city to which our attention will naturally be
most directed—Lucknow, as the modern capital of the kingdom or province;
as a city of considerable importance, political, military, commercial,
and architectural; and as a scene of some of the most memorable events
in the Revolt.
The city of Lucknow stands on the right bank of the river Goomtee, which
is navigable thence downwards to its confluence with the Ganges between
Benares and Ghazeepore. It is rather more than fifty miles distant from
Cawnpore, and about a hundred and thirty from Allahabad. As Cawnpore is
on the right bank of the Ganges, that majestic river intervenes between
the two towns. The Goomtee is crossed at Lucknow by a bridge of boats, a
bridge of substantial masonry, and an iron bridge—an unusual fulness of
transit-channels in an Indian city. Lucknow displays a varied, lively,
and even brilliant prospect, when viewed from a position elevated above
the level of the buildings; but, once in the streets, the traveller has
his dream of beauty speedily dissipated; for oriental filth and
abomination meet his eye on all sides. The central portion of the city,
the most ancient, is meanly built with mud-houses roofed with straw;
many of them are no better than booths of mats and bamboos, thatched
with leaves or palm-branches. The streets, besides being dirty, are
narrow and crooked, and are dismally sunk many feet below the level of
the shops. The narrow avenues are rendered still less passable by the
custom of employing elephants as beasts of burden: unwieldy animals
which almost entirely block up the way. In the part of the city occupied
by Europeans, however, and containing the best public buildings, many of
the streets are broad and lively. Until 1856, when Oude was annexed to
British India, Lucknow was, to a stranger, one of the most remarkable
cities of the east, in regard to its armed population. Almost every man
went armed through the streets. One had a matchlock, another a gun,
another a pistol; others their bent swords or _tulwars_; others their
brass-knobbed buffalo-hide shields. Men of business and idlers—among all
alike it was a custom to carry arms. The black beards of the Mussulmans,
and the fierce moustaches of the Rajpoots, added to the warlike effect
thus produced. Oude was the great storehouse for recruits for the
Company’s native army; and this naturally gave a martial bent to the
people. The Company, however, deemed it a wise precaution to disarm the
peaceful citizens at the time of the annexation.
Three or four structures in and near Lucknow require separate
description. One is the Shah Nujeef, or Emanbarra of Azof-u-Dowlah, a
model of fantastic but elegant Mohammedan architecture. English
travellers have poured out high praise upon it. Lord Valentia said:
‘From the brilliant white of the composition, and the minute delicacy of
the workmanship, an enthusiast might suppose that genii had been the
artificers;’ while Bishop Heber declared: ‘I have never seen an
architectural view which pleased me more, from its richness and variety,
as well as the proportions and general good taste of its principal
features.’ The structure consists of many large buildings surrounding
two open courts. There are three archways to connect the courts; and in
the centre of these is the tomb of the founder, watched by soldiers, and
attended by moullahs perpetually reading the Koran. This structure is
often called the king’s Emanbarra or Imaumbarah, a name given to the
buildings raised by that sect of Moslems called Sheahs, for the
celebration of the religious festival of the Mohurrum. Every family of
distinction has its own emanbarra, large or small, gorgeous or simple,
according to the wealth of its owner, who generally selects it as his
own burial-place. The central hall of the Shah Nujeef, the king’s
emanbarra, is of vast size and very magnificent; and the combination of
Moslem minarets with Hindoo-pointed domes renders the exterior
remarkably striking; nevertheless the splendour is diminished by the
poverty of the materials, which are chiefly brick coated with chunam or
clay cement. Near or connected with this building is the Roumee Durwaza
or Gate of the Sultan, having an arch in the Saracenic style. Another
public building is the mosque of Saadut Ali, one of the former nawabs of
Oude; its lofty dome presents a remarkable object as seen from various
parts of the city; and, being provided with terraces without and
galleries within, it is especially attractive to a sight-seer. Southeast
of the city, and near the river, is a fantastic mansion constructed by
Claude Martine, a French adventurer who rose to great wealth and power
at the late court of Lucknow. He called it Constantia, and adorned it
with various kinds of architectural eccentricities—minute stucco
fretwork, enormous lions with lamps instead of eyes, mandarins and
ladies with shaking heads, gods and goddesses of heathen mythology, and
other incongruities. The house is large, and solidly built of stone; and
on the topmost story is the tomb of Martine; but his body is deposited
in a sarcophagus in one of the lower apartments. The favourite residence
of the former nawabs and kings of Oude was the Dil Koosha or ‘Heart’s
Delight,’ a richly adorned palace two miles out of the city, and placed
in the middle of an extensive deer-park. When Colonel (afterwards
General Sir James) Outram was appointed British resident at the court of
Lucknow, about a year before the annexation, the Dil Koosha was set
apart for his reception; and the whole ceremonial illustrated at once
the show and glitter of oriental processions, and the honour paid to the
Englishman. As soon as the colonel arrived at Cawnpore from Calcutta,
the great officers of state were sent from Lucknow to prepare for his
reception. After crossing the Ganges, and thereby setting foot in the
Oude dominions, he entered a royal carriage replete with gold and
velvet; a procession was formed of carriages, cavalry, and artillery,
which followed the fifty miles of road to the capital. On the next day,
the king was to have met the colonel half-way between the city palace
and the Dil Koosha; but being ill, his place was taken by the
heir-apparent. The one procession met the other, and then both entered
Lucknow in state. A Lucknow correspondent of a Bombay journal said: ‘Let
the reader imagine a procession of more than three hundred elephants and
camels, caparisoned and decorated with all that barbaric pomp could
lavish, and Asiatic splendour shower down; with all the princes and
nobles of the kingdom blazing with jewels, gorgeous in apparel, with
footmen and horsemen in splendid liveries, swarming on all sides;
pennons and banners dancing in the sun’s rays, and a perfect forest of
gold and silver sticks, spears, and other insignia of imperial and royal
state.’
A work of remarkable character has appeared, relating to Lucknow and the
court of Oude. It is called the _Private Life of an Eastern King_, and
has been edited from the notes of an Englishman who held a position in
the household of the king of Oude, Nussir-u-Deen, in 1834 and following
years.[10] Though the name of the author does not appear, the work is
generally accepted as being trustworthy, so many corroborations of its
statements having appeared in other quarters. Speaking of the king’s
palace within the city, this writer says: ‘The great extent of the
buildings, generally called the king’s palace, surprised me in the first
instance. It is not properly a palace, but a continuation of palaces,
stretching all along the banks of the Goomtee, the river on which
Lucknow is built. In this, however, the royal residence in Oude but
resembles what one reads of the Seraglio at Constantinople, the khan’s
residence at Teheran, and the imperial buildings of Pekin. In all
oriental states, the palaces are not so much the abode of the sovereign
only, as the centre of the government: little towns, in fact, containing
extensive lines of buildings occupied by the harem and its vast number
of attendants; containing courts, gardens, tanks, fountains, and
squares, as well as the offices of the chief ministers of state. Such is
the case in Lucknow. One side of the narrow Goomtee—a river not much
broader than a middle-sized London street—is lined by the royal palace;
the other is occupied by the _rumna_ or park, in which the menagerie is
(or was) maintained.... There is nothing grand or striking about the
exterior of the palace, the Fureed Buksh, as it is called. Its extent is
the only imposing feature about it; and this struck me more forcibly
than any magnificence or loftiness of structure would have done.’
These few topographical and descriptive details concerning Oude and its
two capitals, the former and the present, will prepare us to enter upon
a subject touching immediately the present narrative: namely, the
relations existing between the East India Company and the Oudians, and
the causes which have generated disaffection in the late royal family of
that country. It will be needful to shew by what steps Oude, once a
Hindoo _kingdom_, became under the Mogul dynasty a Mohammedan
_nawabship_, then a _nawab-viziership_, then under British protection a
Mohammedan _kingdom_, and lastly an Anglo-Indian _province_.
Whether or not historians are correct in asserting that Oude was an
independent Hindoo sovereignty fourteen hundred years before the
Christian era, and that then, for an indefinite number of centuries, it
was a Hindoo dependency of a prince whose chief seat of authority was at
Oojein—it seems to be admitted that Bakhtiar Khilzi, towards the close
of the twelfth century, was sent to conquer the country for the
Mohammedan sovereign at that time paramount in the north of India; and
that Oude became at once an integral part of the realm of the emperor of
Delhi. Under the powerful Baber, Oude was a lieutenancy or nawabship:
the ruler having sovereign power within his dominions, but being at the
same time a vassal of the Great Mogul. This state of things continued
until about a century ago, when the weakening of the central power at
Delhi tempted an ambitious nawab of Oude to throw off the trammels of
dependency, and exercise royalty on his own account. At that time the
Mohammedan rulers of many states in Northern India were troubled by the
inroads of the fierce warlike Mahrattas; and although the nawabs cared
little for their liege lord the emperor, they deemed it expedient to
join their forces against the common enemy. One result of this struggle
was, that the nawab of Oude was named ‘perpetual’ nawab—the first
loosening of the imperial chain. The nawab-vizier, as he was now called,
never afterwards paid much allegiance to the sovereign of Delhi: nay,
the effete Mogul, in 1764, asked the British to defend him from his
ambitious and disobedient neighbour. This assistance was so effectively
given, that in the next year the nawab-vizier was forced to sue humbly
for peace, and to give up some of his possessions as the price of it.
One among many stipulations of the East India Company, in reference to
the military forces allowed to be maintained by native princes, was made
in 1768, when the nawab-vizier was limited to an army of 35,000 troops;
namely, 10,000 cavalry, 10,000 sepoys or infantry, 5000 matchlockmen,
500 artillery, and 9500 irregulars. In 1773, Warren Hastings had become
so completely involved in the perplexities of Indian politics, and made
treaties so unscrupulously if he could thereby advance the interests of
the Company—that Company which he served with a zeal worthy of a better
cause—that he plotted with the nawab-vizier against the poor decrepit
Mogul: the nawab to obtain much additional power and territory, and the
British to obtain large sums of money for assisting him. When the next
nawab-vizier, Azof-u-Dowlah, assumed power in Oude in 1775, he hastened
to strengthen himself by an alliance with the now powerful British; he
gave up to them some territory; they agreed to protect him, and to
provide a certain contingent of troops, for which he was to pay an
annual sum. This was the complicated way in which the Company gained a
footing in so many Indian provinces and kingdoms. It was in 1782 that
that shameful proceeding took place, which—though Warren Hastings
obtained an acquittal concerning it at his celebrated trial in the House
of Lords—has indubitably left a stain upon his name; namely, the
spoliation of two begums or princesses of Oude, and the cruel
punishment, almost amounting to torture, of some of their dependents.
The alleged cause was an arrear in the payment of the annual sum due
from the nawab. Even if the debt were really due, the mode of extorting
the money, and the selection of the persons from whom it was extorted,
can never be reconciled to the principles of even-handed justice. The
truth may be compressed into a short sentence—the Company being terribly
in want of money to carry on a war against Hyder Ali, the
governor-general determined to obtain a supply from some or other of the
native princes in Northern India; and those natives being often
faithless, he did not hesitate to become faithless to them. During the
remainder of the century, the Company increased more and more its
‘protection’ of the nawab-vizier, and received larger and larger sums in
payment for that protection. Azof-u-Dowlah was succeeded in 1797 by
Vizier Ali, and he in 1798 by Saadut Ali.
We come now to the present century. In 1801, the Marquis Wellesley
placed the relations with Oude on a new footing: he relinquished a claim
to any further subsidy from the nawab-vizier, but obtained instead the
rich districts of Allahabad, Azimghur, Goruckpore, and the Southern
Doab, estimated to yield an annual revenue of nearly a million and a
half sterling. Oude was larger than England before this date; but the
marquis took nearly half of it by this transaction. Matters remained
without much change till 1814, when Saadut Ali was succeeded by
Ghazee-u-Deen Hyder. During the war between the British and the
Nepaulese, soon afterwards, the nawab-vizier of Oude lent the Company
two millions sterling, and received in return the Terai or
jungle-country between Oude and Nepaul. A curious system of exchanges,
this; for after receiving rich districts instead of money, the Company
received money in return for a poor district inhabited chiefly by wild
beasts. In 1819, the Company allowed Ghazee-u-Deen Hyder to renounce the
vassal-title of nawab-vizier, which was a mockery as connected with the
suzerainty of the now powerless Emperor of Delhi, and to become _King_
of Oude—a king, however, with a greater king at his elbow in the person
of the British resident at the court of Lucknow. The Company again
became a borrower from Ghazee, during the Mahratta and Burmese wars. In
1827, the throne of Oude was ascended by Nussir-u-Deen Hyder—an aspirant
to the throne who was favoured in his pretensions by the Company, and
who was, as a consequence, in bitter animosity with most of his
relations during the ten years of his reign. Complicated monetary
arrangements were frequently made with the Company, the nature and
purport of which are not always clearly traceable; but they generally
had the effect of increasing the power of the Company in Oude. On the
death of Nussir, in 1837, a violent struggle took place for the throne.
He, like other eastern princes, had a large number of sons; but the
Company would not acknowledge the legitimacy of any one of them; and the
succession therefore fell upon Mahomed Ali Shah, uncle to the deceased
sovereign. The begum or chief wife of Nussir fomented a rebellion to
overturn this arrangement; and it cost Colonel (afterwards General) Low,
resident at Lucknow, much trouble to preserve peace among the wrangling
members of the royal family.
Now approaches the arrangement which led to the change of rulers. Oude
had been most miserably governed during many years. The king and his
relations, his courtiers and his dependents, grasped for money as a
substitute for the political power which they once possessed; and in the
obtainment of this money they scrupled at no atrocities against the
natives. The court, too, was steeped in debaucheries of the most
licentious kind, outraging the decencies of life, and squandering wealth
on the minions who ministered to its pleasures. The more thoughtful and
large-hearted among the Company’s superior servants saw here what they
had so often seen elsewhere: that when the Company virtually took
possession of a native state, and pensioned off the chief and his
family, a moral deterioration followed; he was not allowed to exercise
real sovereignty; he became more intensely selfish, because he had
nothing to be proud of, even if he wished to govern well; and he took
refuge in the only oriental substitute—sensual enjoyment. When Mahomed
Ali Shah died in 1842, and his son, Umjud Ali Shah, was sanctioned by
the Company as king, a pledge was exacted and a threat foreshadowed: the
pledge was, that such reforms should be made by the king as would
contribute to the tranquillity and just government of the country; the
threat was, that if he did _not_ do this, the sovereignty would be put
an end to, and the Company would take the government into its own hands.
In 1847, Umjud Ali Shah was succeeded by his son, Wajid Ali Shah: a king
who equalled or surpassed his predecessors in weakness and profligacy,
and under whom the state of matters went from bad to worse. The Marquis
of Dalhousie was governor-general when matters arrived at a crisis.
There can be no question that the Company, whatever may be said about
aggressive views, wished to see the millions of Oude well and happily
governed; and it is equally unquestionable that this wish had not been
gratified. The engagement with Umjud Ali Shah had assumed this form: ‘It
is hereby provided that the King of Oude will take into his immediate
and earnest consideration, in concert with the British resident, the
best means of remedying the existing defects in the police, and in the
judicial and revenue administration of his dominions; and that if his
majesty should neglect to attend to the advice and counsel of the
British government or its local representative, and if (which God
forbid!) gross and systematic oppression, anarchy, and misrule, should
hereafter at any time prevail within the Oude dominions, such as
seriously to endanger the public tranquillity, the British government
reserves to itself the right of appointing its own officers to the
management of whatsoever portion of the Oude territory, either to a
small or great extent, in which such misrule as that above alluded to
may have occurred, for so long a period as it may deem necessary.’ The
marquis, finding that thirteen years had presented no improvement in the
internal government of Oude, resolved to adopt decisive measures. He
drew up a treaty, whereby the administration of the territory of Oude
was to be transferred to the British government: ample provision being
made for the dignity, affluence, and honour of the king and his family.
The king refused to sign the treaty, not admitting the allegations or
suppositions on which it was based; whereupon the marquis, acting with
the sanction of the Company and of the imperial government in London,
announced all existing treaties to be null and void, and issued a
proclamation declaring that the government of the territories of Oude
was henceforth vested exclusively and for ever in the East India
Company. The governor-general in his minute, it will be remembered,
spoke of this transfer of power in the following brief terms: ‘The
kingdom of Oude has been assumed in perpetual government by the
Honourable East India Company; in pursuance of a policy which has so
recently been under the consideration of the Honourable Court, that I
deem it unnecessary to refer to it more particularly here.’
Everything tends to shew that the king violently opposed this loss of
his regal title and power. When the governor-general and the resident at
Lucknow waited on him with the draft of the proposed treaty, towards the
close of 1855, he not only refused to sign it, but announced his
intention to proceed to England, with a view of obtaining justice from
Queen Victoria against the Company. This the marquis would not prevent;
but he intimated that the king must travel, and be treated by the
Company’s servants, as a _private individual_, if he adopted this step.
The stipend for the royal family was fixed by the Company—of course
without the consent of the king and his relations—at £120,000 per annum.
The reasons for putting an end to the title of King of Oude were thus
stated, in a document addressed by the directors of the East India
Company to the governor-general of India in council, many months after
the transfer of power had been effected, and only a short time before
the commencement of the Revolt: ‘Half a century ago, our new and
critical position among the Mohammedans of Northwestern India compelled
us to respect the titular dignity of the Kings of Delhi. But the
experiences of that half-century have abundantly demonstrated the
inconveniences of suffering an empty nominal sovereignty to descend from
generation to generation; and the continuance of such a phantom of power
must be productive of inconvenience to our government, and we believe of
more mortification than gratification to the royal pensioners
themselves. It fosters humiliating recollections; it engenders delusive
hopes; it is the fruitful source of intrigues that end in disappointment
and disgrace. The evil is not limited to the effect produced upon the
members of the royal house: prone to intrigue themselves, they become
also a centre for the intrigues of others. It is natural, also, that the
younger members of such a family should feel a greater repugnance than
they otherwise would to mix with the community and become industrious
and useful subjects. Strongly impressed with these convictions, we
therefore observe with satisfaction that no pledge or promise of any
kind with regard to the recognition by our government of the kingly
title after the death of the present titular sovereign, Wajid Ali Shah,
has been made to him or to his heirs.’ The reasoning in this declaration
is probably sound; but it does not apply, and was not intended to apply,
to the original aggressive movements of the Company. Because the shadow
of sovereignty is not worth retaining without the substance, it does not
necessarily follow that the Company was right in taking the substance
fifty-five years earlier: that proceeding must be attacked or defended
on its own special ground, by any one who wishes to enter the arena of
Indian politics.
It appears from this document, that four of the British authorities at
Calcutta—the Marquis of Dalhousie, General Anson, Mr Dorin, and Mr
Grant—had concurred in opinion that, as the king refused to sign the
treaty, he should, as a punishment, be denied many of the privileges
promised by that treaty. They proposed that the annual stipend of twelve
lacs of rupees (£120,000) should be ‘reserved for consideration’ after
the demise of the king—that is, that it should not necessarily be a
perpetual hereditary stipend. To this, however, Colonel Low, who had
been British resident at Lucknow, very earnestly objected. He urged that
the king’s sons were so young, that they could not, in any degree, be
blamed for his conduct in not signing the proposed treaty; that they
ought not to be made to lose their inheritance through the father’s
fault; that the father, the king, would in any case be pretty severely
punished for his obstinacy; and that it would not be worthy of a great
paramount state, coming into possession of a rich territory, to refuse a
liberal stipend to the descendants of the king. These representations
were listened to, and a pension to the amount already named was granted
to the king and his heirs—‘not heirs according to Mohammedan usages, but
only those persons who may be direct male descendants of the present
king, born in lawful wedlock.’ A difficult duty was left to the Calcutta
government, to decide how many existing persons had a claim to be
supported out of the pension, seeing that an eastern king’s family is
generally one of great magnitude; and that, although he has many wives
and many children, they fill various ranks in relation to legitimacy.
The Company proposed, if the king liked the plan, that one-third of the
pension should be commuted into a capital sum, with which jaghires or
estates might be bought, and vested in the family for the use of the
various members—making them, in fact, zemindars or landed proprietors,
having something to do instead of leading lives of utter idleness. In
what light the directors viewed the large and important army of Oude,
will be noticed presently; but in reference to the transfer of
mastership itself, they said: ‘An expanse of territory embracing an area
of nearly twenty-five thousand square miles, and containing five million
of inhabitants, has passed from its native prince to the Queen of
England without the expenditure of a drop of blood, and almost without a
murmur. The peaceable manner in which this great change has been
accomplished, and the tranquillity which has since prevailed in all
parts of the country, are circumstances which could not fail to excite
in us the liveliest emotions of thankfulness and pleasure.’ This was
written, be it remembered—and the fact is full of instruction touching
the miscalculations of the Company—less than two months before the
cartridge troubles began, and while the mysterious chupatties were
actually in circulation from hand to hand.
The deposed King of Oude did not go to England, as he had threatened; he
went to Calcutta, and took up his abode, in April 1856, at Garden Reach,
in the outskirts of that city, attended by his late prime minister, Ali
Nuckee Khan, and by several followers. The queen, however, achieved the
adventurous journey to the British capital, taking with her a numerous
retinue. This princess was not, in accordance with European usages, the
real Queen of Oude; she was rather a sort of queen-dowager, the king’s
mother, and was accompanied by the king’s brother and the king’s son—the
one claiming to be heir-presumptive, the other heir-apparent. All felt a
very lively interest in the maintenance of the regal power and revenues
among the members of the family, and came to England in the hope of
obtaining a reversal of the governor-general’s decree. They left Lucknow
in the spring of 1856, and arrived in England in August. An attempt was
made by an injudicious agent to enlist public sympathy for them by an
open-air harangue at Southampton. He bade his hearers picture to
themselves the suppliant for justice, ‘an aged queen, brought up in all
the pomp and luxury of the East, the soles of whose feet were scarcely
allowed to tread the ground, laying aside the prejudices of travel, and
undertaking a journey of some ten thousand miles, to appeal to the
people of England for justice;’ and the ‘fellow-countrymen’ were then
exhorted to give ‘three cheers’ for the royal family of Oude—which they
undoubtedly did, in accordance with the usual custom of an English
assemblage when so exhorted; but this momentary excitement soon ceased,
and the oriental visitors settled in London for a lengthened residence.
What official interviews or correspondence took place concerning the
affairs of Oude, was not publicly known; but there was an evident
disinclination on the part both of the government and the two Houses of
parliament to hold out any hopes of a reversal of the policy adopted by
the East India Company; and the ex-royal family of Oude maintained no
hold on the public mind, except so far as the turbaned and robed
domestics attracted the attention of metropolitan sight-seers. In what
fashion these suppliants disowned and ignored the Revolt in India, a
future chapter will shew.
The reader will, then, picture to himself the state of Oude at the
period when the Revolt commenced. The deposed king was at Calcutta; his
mother and other relations were in London; while the whole governing
power was in the hands of the Company’s servants. Sir Henry Lawrence, a
man in whom sagacity, energy, and nobleness of heart were remarkably
combined, had succeeded Sir James Outram as resident, or rather
chief-commissioner, and now held supreme sway at Lucknow.
It is important here to know in what light the East India Company
regarded the native army of Oude, at and soon after the annexation. In
the directors’ minute, of December 1856, just on the eve of disturbances
which were quite unexpected by them, the subject was thus touched upon:
‘The probable temper of the army, a force computed on paper at some
60,000 men of all arms, on the announcement of a measure which threw a
large proportion of them out of employment, and transferred the
remainder to a new master, was naturally a source of some anxiety to us.
In your scheme for the future government and administration of the Oude
provinces, drawn up on the 4th of February, you proposed the
organisation of an Oude irregular force, into which you suggested the
absorption of as large a number of the disbanded soldiers of the king as
could be employed in such a corps, whilst others were to be provided for
in the military and district police; but you observed at the same time
that these arrangements would not absorb one-half of the disbanded
troops. To the remainder you determined to grant pensions and
gratuities, graduated according to length of service. There were no
better means than these of palliating a difficulty which could not be
avoided. But only partial success was to be expected from so partial a
measure. As a further precaution, the chief-commissioner deemed it
expedient to promise pensions of one hundred rupees per month to the
commandants of the regiments of the late king, some sixty in number,
conditional on their lending their cordial co-operation to the
government in this crisis, and provided that their regiments remained
quiet and loyal. We recognise the force of the chief-commissioner’s
argument in support of these grants; and are willing to adopt his
suggestion that, in the event of any of these men accepting office as
tuhseeldars or other functionaries under our government, the amount of
their pensions should still be paid to them.’ It was found that the King
of Oude had allowed the pay of his soldiers to run into arrear. On this
point the directors said: ‘The army, a large number of whom are
necessarily thrown out of employment, and who cannot immediately find,
even if the habits of their past lives fitted them for, industrial
occupations, are peculiarly entitled to liberal consideration. It is
doubtless true that, as stated by the chief-commissioner, the soldiery
of Oude have “fattened on rapine and plunder;” and it is certain that
the servants of the Oude government enriched themselves at the expense
of the people. But this was only part of the system under which they
lived; nothing better, indeed, was to be expected from men whose pay,
after it had been tardily extracted from the treasury, was liable to be
withheld from them by a fraudulent minister. Whatever may have been the
past excesses and the illicit gains of the soldiers, it was the duty of
the British government in this conjuncture to investigate their claims
to the arrears of regular pay alleged to be due to them by the Oude
government, and, having satisfied ourselves of the justice of these
claims, to discharge the liabilities in full. We observe with
satisfaction that this has been done.... We concur, moreover, in the
very judicious remark made by Viscount Canning, in his minute of the 5th
of March, “that a few lacs[11] spent in closing the account, without
injustice, and even liberality, will be well repaid if we can thereby
smooth down discontent and escape disturbance.”’
The plan adopted, therefore, was to disband the army of the deposed
king, pay up the arrears due by him to the soldiers, re-enlist some of
the discharged men to form a new Oude force in the Company’s service,
and give pensions or gratuities to the remainder.
We are now in a condition to follow the course of events at Lucknow
during the months of April and May 1857: events less mutinous and
tragical than those at Meerut and Delhi, but important for their
consequences in later months.
It was in the early part of April that the incident occurred at Lucknow
concerning a medicine-bottle, briefly adverted to in a former chapter:
shewing the existence of an unusually morbid feeling on the subjects of
religion and caste. Dr Wells having been seen to taste some medicine
which he was about to administer to a sick soldier, to test its quality,
the Hindoos near at hand refused to partake of it, lest the taint of a
Christian mouth should degrade their caste. They complained to Colonel
Palmer, of the 48th native regiment, who, as he believed and hoped,
adopted a conciliatory course that removed all objection. This hope was
not realised, however; for on that same night the doctor’s bungalow was
fired and destroyed by some of the sepoys, whom no efforts could
identify. Very soon afterwards, nearly all the huts of the 13th regiment
were burned down, under similarly mysterious circumstances.
Sir Henry Lawrence’s difficulties began with the vexatious
cartridge-question, as was the case in so many other parts of India.
Towards the close of April, Captain Watson found that many of the
recruits or younger men in his regiment, the 7th Oude infantry, evinced
a reluctance to bite the cartridges. Through some oversight, the new
method of tearing instead of biting had not been shewn to the sepoys at
Lucknow; and there was therefore sufficient reason for adopting a
conciliatory course in explaining the matter to them. The morbid feeling
still, however, remained. On the 1st of May, recusancy was again
exhibited, followed by an imprisonment of some of the recruits in the
quarter-guard. The native officers of the regiment came forward to
assure Captain Watson that this disobedience was confined to the
‘youngsters,’ and that the older sepoys discountenanced it. He believed
them, or seemed to do so. On the 2d he addressed the men, pointing out
the folly of the conduct attributed to the young recruits, and exhorting
them to behave more like true soldiers. Though listened to respectfully,
he observed so much sullenness and doggedness among the troops, that he
brought the matter under the notice of his superior officer, Brigadier
Grey. The native officers, when put to the test, declined taking any
steps to enforce obedience; they declared their lives to be in danger
from the men under them, should they do so. The brigadier, accompanied
by Captains Watson and Barlow, at once went to the lines, had the men
drawn up in regular order, and put the question to each company singly,
whether it was willing to use the same cartridges _which had all along
been employed_. They refused. The brigadier left them to arrange plans
for the morrow; placing them, however, under safe guard for the night.
On the morning of the 3d, the grenadier company (picked or most skilful
company) of the regiment went through the lines, threatening to kill
some of the European officers; and soon afterwards the tumult became so
serious, that the fulfilment of the threat seemed imminent. By much
entreaty, the officers, European and native, allayed in some degree the
excitement of the men. While this was going on, however, at the post or
station of Moosa Bagh, a messenger was sent by the intriguers of the 7th
regiment to the cantonment at Murreeoun, with a letter inciting the 48th
native infantry to join them in mutiny. This letter was fortunately
brought, by a subadar true to his duty, to Colonel Palmer, the
commandant. Prompt measures were at once resolved upon. A considerable
force—consisting of the 7th Oude cavalry, the 4th Oude infantry,
portions of the 48th and 71st Bengal infantry, a portion of the 7th
Bengal cavalry, a wing of her Majesty’s 32d, and a field-battery of
guns—was sent from the cantonment to the place where the recusants were
posted. The mutineers stood firm for some time; but when they saw cannon
pointed at them, some turned and fled with great rapidity, while others
quietly gave up their arms. The cavalry pursued and brought back some of
the fugitives. The 7th Oude irregular infantry regiment, about a
thousand strong, was thus suddenly broken into three fragments—one
escaped, one captured, and one disarmed. A letter from the Rev. Mr
Polehampton, chaplain to the English residents at Lucknow, affords one
among many proofs that Sunday was a favourite day for such outbreaks in
India—perhaps purposely so selected by the rebellious sepoys. The 3d of
May was Sunday: the chaplain was performing evening-service at the
church. ‘Towards the end of the prayers, a servant came into church, and
spoke first to Major Reid, of the 48th; and then to Mr Dashwood, of the
same regiment. They both went out, and afterwards others were called
away. The ladies began to look very uncomfortable; one or two went out
of church; one or two others crossed over the aisle to friends who were
sitting on the other side; so that altogether I had not a very attentive
congregation.’ When it was found that the officers had been called out
to join the force against the mutineers, the chaplain ‘felt very much
inclined to ride down to see what was going on; but as the Moosa Bagh is
seven miles from our house, and as I should have left my wife all alone,
I stayed where I was. I thought of what William III. said when he was
told that the Bishop of Derry had been shot at the ford at the Battle of
the Boyne, “What took him there?”’
The course of proceeding adopted by Sir Henry Lawrence on this occasion
was quite of an oriental character, as if suggested by one who well knew
the Indian mind. He held a grand military durbar, to reward the faithful
as well as to awe the mutinous. In the first instance he had said that
the government would be advised to disband the regiment, with a
provision for re-enlisting those who had not joined the rebels; but
pending the receipt of instructions from Calcutta, he held his durbar
(court; levee; hall of audience). Four native soldiers—a havildar-major,
a subadar, and a sepoy of the 48th regiment, and a sepoy of the 13th—who
had proved themselves faithful in an hour of danger, were to be
rewarded. The lawn in front of the residency was carpeted, and chairs
were arranged on three sides of a square for some of the native officers
and sepoys; while a large verandah was filled with European officials,
civil and military, upwards of twenty in number. Sir Henry opened the
proceedings with an address in the Hindostani language, full of point
and vigour. After a gorgeous description of the power and wealth of the
British nation—overwrought, perhaps, for an English ear, but well suited
to the occasion—he adverted to the freedom of conscience in British
India on matters of religion: ‘Those amongst you who have perused the
records of the past must well know that Alumghir in former times, and
Hyder Ali in later days, forcibly converted thousands and thousands of
Hindoos, desecrated their fanes, demolished their temples, and carried
ruthless devastation amongst the household gods. Come to our times; many
here present well know that Runjeet Singh never permitted his Mohammedan
subjects to call the pious to prayer—never allowed the Afghan to sound
from the lofty minarets which adorn Lahore, and which remain to this day
a monument to their munificent founders. The year before last a Hindoo
could not have dared to build a temple in Lucknow. All this is changed.
Who is there that would dare _now_ to interfere with our Hindoo or
Mohammedan subjects?’ He contrasted this intolerance of Mohammedan and
Hindoo rulers in matters of religion with the known scruples of the
British government; and told his hearers that the future would be like
the present, in so far as concerns the freedom of all religions over the
whole of India. He rebuked and spurned the reports which had been
circulated among the natives, touching meditated insult to their faith
or their castes. He adverted to the gallant achievements of the
Company’s native troops during a hundred years of British rule; and told
how it pained him to think that disbandment of such troops had been
found necessary at Barrackpore and Berhampore. And then he presented the
bright side of his picture: ‘Now turn to these good and faithful
soldiers—Subadar Sewak Tewaree, Havildar Heera Lall Doobey, and Sipahi
Ranura Doobey, of the 48th native infantry, and to Hossein Buksh, of the
13th regiment—who have set to you all a good example. The first three at
once arrested the bearer of a seditious letter, and brought the whole
circumstance to the notice of superior authority. You know well what the
consequences were, and what has befallen the 7th Oude irregular
infantry, more than fifty of whose sirdars and soldiers are now in
confinement, and the whole regiment awaits the decision of government as
to its fate. Look at Hossein Buksh of the 13th, fine fellow as he is! Is
he not a good and faithful soldier? Did he not seize three villains who
are now in confinement and awaiting their doom. It is to reward such
fidelity, such acts and deeds as I have mentioned, and of which you are
all well aware, that I have called you all together this day—to assure
you that those who are faithful and true to their salt will always be
amply rewarded and well cared for; that the great government which we
all serve is prompt to reward, swift to punish, vigilant and eager to
protect its faithful subjects; but firm, determined, resolute to crush
all who may have the temerity to rouse its vengeance.’ After a further
exhortation to fidelity, a further declaration of the power and
determination of the government to deal severely with all disobedient
troops, Sir Henry arrived at the climax of his impassioned and vigorous
address: ‘Advance, Subadar Sewak Tewaree—come forward, havildar and
sepoys—and receive these splendid gifts from the government which is
proud to number you amongst its soldiers. Accept these honorary sabres;
you have won them well: long may you live to wear them in honour! Take
these sums of money for your families and relatives; wear these robes of
honour at your homes and your festivals; and may the bright example
which you have so conspicuously set, find, as it doubtless will,
followers in every regiment and company in the army.’ To the subadar and
the havildar-major were presented each, a handsomely decorated sword, a
pair of elegant shawls, a choogah or cloak, and four pieces of
embroidered cloth; to the other two men, each, a decorated sword, a
turban, pieces of cloth, and three hundred rupees in cash. Hossein Buksh
was also made a naik or corporal.
Let not the reader judge this address and these proceedings by an
English standard. Sir Henry Lawrence knew well what he was doing; for
few of the Company’s servants ever had a deeper insight into the native
character than that eminent man. There had been, in the Company’s
general system, too little punishment for misconduct, too little reward
for faithfulness, among the native troops: knowing this, he adopted a
different policy, so far as he was empowered to do.
When the news of the Lucknow disturbance reached Calcutta, a course was
adopted reminding us of the large amount of written correspondence
involved in the mode of managing public affairs. The governor-general,
it may here be explained, was assisted by a supreme council, consisting
of four persons, himself making a fifth; and the council was aided by
four secretaries, for the home, the foreign, the military, and the
financial affairs of India. All these officials were expected to make
their inquiries, communicate their answers, state their opinions, and
notify their acts in writing, for the information of the Court of
Directors and the Board of Control in London; and this is one reason why
parliamentary papers touching Indian affairs are often so voluminous. At
the period in question, Viscount Canning, Mr Dorin, General Low, Mr
Grant, and Mr Peacock, were the five members of council, each and all of
whom prepared ‘minutes’ declaratory of their opinions whether Sir Henry
Lawrence had done right or wrong in threatening to disband the mutinous
7th regiment. The viscount wished to support the chief-commissioner at
once, in a bold method of dealing with the disaffected. Mr Dorin went
further. He said: ‘My theory is that no corps mutinies that is well
commanded;’ he wished that some censure should be passed on the English
officers of the 7th, and that the men of that regiment should receive
more severe treatment than mere disbanding. General Low advocated a
course midway between the other two; but at the same time deemed it
right to inquire how it happened that the men had been required to bite
the cartridges; seeing that instructions had already been issued from
head-quarters that the platoon exercises should be conducted without
this necessity. Mr Grant’s minute was very long; he wanted more time,
more reports, more examinations, and was startled at the promptness with
which Lawrence had proposed to act. Mr Peacock also wanted further
information before deciding on the plan proposed by the ruling authority
at Oude. The governor-general’s minute was written on the 9th; the other
four commented on it on the 10th; the governor-general replied to their
comments on the 11th; and they commented on his reply on the 12th. Thus
it arose that the tedious system of written minutes greatly retarded the
progress of business at Calcutta.
There cannot be a better opportunity than the present for adverting to
the extraordinary services rendered by the electric telegraph in India
during the early stages of the Revolt, when the mutineers had not yet
carried to any great extent their plan of cutting the wires. We have
just had occasion to describe the routine formalities in the mode of
conducting business at Calcutta; but it would be quite indefensible to
withhold admiration from the electro-telegraphic system established by
the East India Company. This matter was touched upon in the
Introduction; and the middle of May furnished wonderful illustrations of
the value of the lightning-messenger. Let us fix our attention on two
days only—the 16th and 17th of May—less than one week after the
commencement of violent scenes at Meerut and Delhi. Let us picture to
ourselves Viscount Canning at Calcutta, examining every possible scheme
for sending up reinforcements to the disturbed districts; Sir John
Lawrence at Lahore, keeping the warlike population of the Punjaub in
order by his mingled energy and tact; Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow,
surrounded by Oudians, whom it required all his skill to baffle; Mr
Colvin at Agra, watching with an anxious eye the state of affairs in the
Northwest Provinces; General Anson at Simla, preparing, as
commander-in-chief, to hasten down to the Delhi district; Lord
Elphinstone at Bombay, as governor of that presidency; and Lord Harris,
filling an analogous office at Madras. Bearing in mind these persons and
places, let us see what was done by the electric telegraph on those two
busy days—deriving our information from the voluminous but ill-arranged
parliamentary papers on the affairs of India: papers almost useless
without repeated perusals and collations.
First, then, the 16th of May. Sir Henry Lawrence sent one of his pithy,
terse telegrams[12] from Lucknow to Calcutta, to this effect: ‘All is
quiet here, but affairs are critical; get every European you can from
China, Ceylon, and elsewhere; also all the Goorkhas from the hills. Time
is precious.’ On the same day he sent another: ‘Give me plenary military
power in Oude; I will not use it unnecessarily. I am sending two troops
of cavalry to Allahabad. Send a company of Europeans into the fort
there. It will be good to raise regiments of irregular horse, under good
officers.’ In the reverse direction—from Calcutta to Lucknow—this
message was sent: ‘It appears that the regiment of Ferozpore [Sikhs] has
already marched to Allahabad, and that, under present circumstances, no
part of that regiment can be spared.’ And another, in like manner
answering a telegram of the same day: ‘You have full military powers.
The governor-general will support you in everything you think necessary.
It is impossible to send a European company to Allahabad; Dinapoor must
not be weakened by a single man. If you can raise any irregulars that
you can trust, do so at once. Have you any good officers to spare for
the duty?’ All this, be it remembered was telegraphed to and from two
cities six or seven hundred miles apart. On the same day, questions were
asked, instructions requested, and information given, between Calcutta,
on the one hand, and Agra, Gwalior, Meerut, Cawnpore, and Benares on the
other. Passing thence to Bombay—twelve hundred miles from Calcutta by
road, and very much more by telegraph-route—we find the two governors
conversing through the wires concerning the English troops which had
just been fighting in Persia, and those about being sent to China; all
of whom were regarded with a longing eye by the governor-general at that
critical time. Viscount Canning telegraphed to Lord Elphinstone on the
16th: ‘Two of the three European regiments which are returning from
Persia are urgently wanted in Bengal. If they are sent from Bombay to
Kurachee, will they find conveyance up the Indus? Are they coming from
Bushire in steam or sailing transports? Let me know immediately whether
General Ashburnham is going to Madras.’ The general here named was to
have commanded the troops destined for China. The replies and
counter-replies to this on the 17th, we will mention presently. Lord
Harris, on this same day of activity, sent the brief telegram: ‘The
Madras Fusiliers will be sent immediately by _Zenobia_; but she is
hardly fit to take a whole regiment.’ This was in reply to a request
transmitted shortly before.
[Illustration:
SIR HENRY LAWRENCE.
]
[Illustration:
Residency at Lucknow.
]
Next, the 17th of May. Sir Henry Lawrence telegraphed from Lucknow: ‘You
are quite right to keep Allahabad safe. We shall do without Sikhs or
Goorkhas. We have concentrated the troops as much as possible, so as to
protect the treasury and magazine, and keep up a communication. A false
alarm last night.’ He sent another, detailing what he had done in
managing the turbulent 7th regiment. In the reverse direction, a message
was sent to him, that ‘The artillery invalids at Chunar, about 109 in
number, have been ordered to proceed to Allahabad immediately.’ The
telegrams were still more numerous than on the 16th, between the various
towns mentioned in the last paragraph, in Northern India. From Bombay,
Lord Elphinstone telegraphed to ask whether an extra mail-steamer should
be sent off to Suez with news for England; and added: ‘The 64th will
arrive in a few days from Bushire; their destination is Bengal; but we
can keep them here available, or send them round to Calcutta if you wish
it.’ To which the governor-general replied from Calcutta, still on the
same day, expressing his wishes about the mail, and adding: ‘If you can
send the 64th to Calcutta by steam, do so without any delay. If steam is
not available, I will wait for an answer to my last message before
deciding that they shall come round in sailing-vessels. Let me know when
you expect the other European regiments and the artillery, and what
steam-vessels will be available for their conveyance. Have you at
present a steam-vessel that could go to Galle to bring troops from there
to Calcutta? This must not interfere with the despatch of the 64th.’
Another, from Lord Elphinstone, on the very same day, announced that the
best of the Indus boats were in Persia; that it would be impossible to
send up three European regiments from Kurachee to the Punjaub, within
any reasonable time, by the Indus boats then available; that he
nevertheless intended to send one regiment, the 1st Europeans, by that
route; and that the 2d Europeans were daily expected from Persia. He
further said: ‘Shall I send them round to Calcutta; and shall I send the
78th also? General Ashburnham leaves this to-day by the steamer for
Galle, where he expects to meet Lord Elgin; he is not going to Madras.’
While this was going on between Calcutta and Bombay, Madras was not
idle. The governor-general telegraphed to Lord Harris, to inform him of
the mutiny, on the previous day, of the Sappers and Miners who went from
Roorkee to Meerut; and another on the same day, replying to a previous
telegram, said: ‘If the _Zenobia_ cannot bring all the Fusiliers, the
remainder might be sent in the _Bentinck_, which will be at Madras on
the 26th; but send as many in the _Zenobia_ as she will safely hold. Let
me know when the _Zenobia_ sails, and what force she brings.’ If we had
selected three days instead of two, as illustrating the wonders of the
electric telegraph, we should have had to narrate that on the third day,
the 18th of May, Lord Harris announced that the Fusiliers would leave
Madras that evening; that Viscount Canning thanked him for his great
promptness; that Lord Elphinstone received instructions to send one of
the three regiments up the Indus, and the other two round to Calcutta;
that he asked and received suggestions about managing a Beloochee
regiment at Kurachee; and that messages in great number were transmitted
to and from Calcutta, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and
other large towns.
The imagination becomes almost bewildered at contemplating such things.
Between the morning of the 16th of May and the evening of the 17th, the
great officers of the Company, situated almost at the extreme points of
the Indian empire—east, west, north, and south—were conversing through
four thousand miles of wire, making requests, soliciting advice,
offering services, discussing difficulties, weighing probabilities,
concerting plans; and all with a precision much greater than if they had
been writing letters to one another, in ordinary official form, in
adjoining rooms of the same building. It was, perhaps, the greatest
triumph ever achieved up to that time by the greatest of modern
inventions—the electric telegraph.
We shall find the present part of the chapter an equally convenient
place in which to notice a series of operations strikingly opposed to
those just described—slow travelling as compared with quick telegraphy.
It is full of instruction to see how earnestly anxious Viscount Canning
was to send troops up to the northern provinces; and how he was baffled
by the tardiness of all travelling appliances in India. The railway was
opened only from Calcutta to Raneegunge, a very small portion of the
distance to the disturbed districts. The history of the peregrinations
of a few English troops in May will illustrate, and will receive
illustration from, the matters treated in Chapter I.
The European 84th regiment, it will be remembered, had been hastily
brought from Rangoon in the month of March, to assist in disbanding the
sepoys who had shewn disaffection at Barrackpore and Berhampore. When
the troubles began at Meerut and Delhi, in May, it was resolved to send
on this regiment; and the governor-general found no part of his onerous
duties more difficult than that of obtaining _quick_ transmission for
those troops. On the 21st of May he telegraphed to Benares: ‘Pray
instruct the commissariat officer to prepare cooking-pots and other
arrangements for the 84th regiment, now on its way to Benares; and the
barrack department to have cots ready for them.’ On the 23d, Sir Henry
Lawrence asked: ‘When may her Majesty’s 84th be expected at Cawnpore?’
to which an answer was sent on the following day: ‘It is impossible to
convey a wing of Europeans to Cawnpore (about six hundred and thirty
miles) in less time than twenty-five days. The government dâk and the
dâk companies are fully engaged in carrying a company of the 84th to
Benares, at the rate of 18 men a day. A wing of the Madras Fusiliers
arrived yesterday, and starts to-day; part by bullock-train, part by
steamer. The bullock-train can take 100 men per day, at the rate of
thirty miles a day. The entire regiment of the Fusiliers, about 900
strong, cannot be collected at Benares in less than 19 or 20 days. About
150 men who go by steam will scarcely be there so soon. I expect, that
from this time forward troops will be pushed upwards at the rate of 100
men a day from Calcutta; each batch taking ten days to reach Benares;
from Benares they will be distributed as most required. The regiments
from Pegu, Bombay, and Ceylon will be sent up in this way. Every bullock
and horse that is to be had, except just enough to carry the post, is
retained; and no troops will be sent by steam which can be sent more
quickly by other means.’ These details shew that Cawnpore and Benares
were both asking for troops at the same time; and that the
governor-general, even if he possessed the soldiers, had not the means
of sending them expeditiously. On the 24th, a message was sent to
Raneegunge, ordering that a company of Madras troops might be well
attended to, when they arrived by railway from Calcutta; and on the next
day, Benares received notice to prepare for four companies proceeding
thither by bullock-train, one company per day. The Benares commissioner
announced the arrival of _fifteen_ English soldiers, as if that were a
number to be proud of, and stated that he would send them on to
Cawnpore. (It will be seen, on reference to a map, that Benares lies in
the route to almost all the upper and western provinces, whether by road
or by river.) The Raneegunge agent telegraphed on the 26th: ‘If the men
reach Sheergotty, there is no difficulty in conveying them to Benares;
the only difficulty is between Raneegunge and Sheergotty. _Ekahs_ are
not, I think, adapted for Europeans; nor do I think that time would be
gained.’ An ekah or ecka, we may here remark, is a light pony-gig on two
wheels, provided with a cloth cushion on which the rider (usually a
native) sits cross-legged. It shews the nature of Indian travelling, to
find the officials discussing whether English soldiers should be thus
conveyed—one cushioned vehicle to convey each cross-legged soldier. At
Benares, the commissioner borrowed from the rajah the use of a house in
which to lodge the English troops as fast as they came; and he sent them
on by dâk to Allahabad and Cawnpore. Nevertheless Sir Henry Lawrence,
disturbed by ominous symptoms, wished for ekahs, dâks—anything that
would give him English soldiers. He telegraphed on this day: ‘I strongly
advise that as many ekah-dâks be laid as possible, from Raneegunge to
Cawnpore, to bring up European troops. _Spare no expense_;’ and on the
next day he received the reply: ‘Every horse and carriage, bullock and
cart, which could be brought upon the road, has been collected, and no
means of increasing the number will be neglected.’ On the 27th it was
announced from Benares that ‘the steamer had stuck,’ and that all the
land-dâks were being used that could possibly be procured. On the same
day the Allahabad commissioner spoke hopefully of his plan that—by the
aid of 1600 siege-train bullocks from that place, 600 from Cawnpore, the
government bullocks, the private wagon-trains, and magazine carts—he
might be able to send 160 Europeans per day up to Cawnpore. On the 28th,
the Calcutta authorities sent a telegram to Benares, to announce that
‘Up to the 1st of June seven dâk-carriages will be despatched daily,
with one officer and 18 soldiers. On the 1st of June, and daily
afterwards, there will be despatched nine dâk-carriages, with one
officer and 24 Europeans; and 28 bullock-carts, with one officer, 90
Europeans, a few followers, and provisions to fill one cart. The
Calcutta steamer and flat, with four officers, 134 Europeans, and
proportion of followers; and the coal-steamer, with about the same
numbers, will reach Benares on the 10th or 11th of June.’ From this it
will be seen that a ‘dâk-carriage’ conveyed three soldiers, and a
‘bullock-cart’ also three, the ‘followers’ probably accompanying them on
foot. The Benares commissioner on the same day said: ‘Happily we have
good metalled roads all over this division’—thereby implying what would
have been the result if the roads were _not_ good. The use of bullocks
was more particularly adverted to in a telegram of the 30th of May:
‘Gun-bullocks would be most useful between Raneegunge and the Sone, if
they could be sent from Calcutta in time; if there are carts, the daily
dispatches can be increased; not otherwise. Gun-bullocks would save a
day, as they travel quicker than our little animals.’ Immediately
afterwards, forty-six elephants were sent from Patna, and one hundred
from Dacca and Barrackpore, to Sheergotty, to assist in the transport of
troops. On a later occasion, when more troops had arrived from England,
Viscount Canning sent two steamers from Calcutta to Pegu, to bring over
cargoes of elephants, to be used as draught-animals!
Thus it continued, day after day—all the servants of the Company, civil
and military, calculating how long it would take to send driblets of
soldiers up the country; and all harassed by this dilemma—that what the
Ganges steamers gained in roominess, they lost by the sinuosities of the
river; and that what the dâks and bullock-trains gained by a direct
route, they lost by the inevitable slowness of such modes of conveyance,
and the smallness of the number of soldiers that could be carried at a
time. Thankful that they possessed telegraphs, the authorities had
little to be thankful for as concerned railways or roads, vehicles or
horses.
We now return to the proceedings of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow.
Before the collective minutes of the five members of the Supreme Council
were fully settled, he had acted on the emergency which gave rise to
them. He held a court of inquiry; the result of which was that two
subadars, a jemadar, and forty-four sepoys of the mutinous 7th were
committed to prison; but he resolved not at present to disband the
regiment. His grand durbar has been already described. In the middle of
the month, as just shewn, he sent many brief telegrams indicating that,
though no mutinies had occurred at Lucknow, there was nevertheless need
for watchfulness. He had asked for the aid of some Sikhs, but said, on
the 18th: ‘As there is difficulty, do not send the Sikhs to Lucknow.’ On
the next day, his message was: ‘All very well in city, cantonment, and
country;’ but after this, the elements of mischief seemed to be
gathering, although Lawrence prepared to meet all contingencies
resolutely. ‘All quiet,’ he said on the 21st, ‘but several reports of
intended attacks on us.’ He was, however, more solicitous about the fate
of Cawnpore, Allahabad, and Benares, than of Lucknow.
The military position of Sir Henry towards the last week in May was
this. He had armed four posts for his defence at Lucknow. In one were
four hundred men and twenty guns; in another, a hundred Europeans and as
many sepoys; in another was the chief store of powder, well under
command. A hundred and thirty Europeans, two hundred sepoys, and six
guns, guarded the treasury; the guns near the residency being under
European control. The old magazine was denuded of its former contents,
as a precautionary measure. Six guns, and two squadrons of the 2d Oude
irregular cavalry, were at the Dâk bungalow, half-way between the
residency and the cantonment. In the cantonment were three hundred and
forty men of her Majesty’s 32d, with six European guns, and six more of
the Oude light field-battery. By the 23d of the month, nearly all the
stores were moved from the old magazine to one of the strongholds, where
thirty guns and one hundred Europeans were in position, and where ten
days’ supplies for five hundred men were stored. On the 29th, Lawrence’s
telegram told of ‘great uneasiness at Lucknow. Disturbances threatened
outside. Tranquillity cannot be much longer maintained unless Delhi be
speedily captured.’ The residency, a place rendered so memorable by
subsequent events, must be here noticed. The cantonment was six miles
from the city, and the residency was itself isolated from the rest of
Lucknow. The Rev. Mr Polehampton, describing in his letter the
occurrences about the middle of May, said: ‘The sick have been brought
to the residency; so have the women; and the residency is garrisoned by
130 men of the 32d, and by the battery of native artillery. All the
ladies, wives of civilians, who live in different parts of the city,
have come into the residency. By the residency, I mean a piece of ground
a good deal elevated above the rest of the city, allotted by the King of
Oude, when he first put himself under British “protection” some fifty
years ago, to the British civil residents. It is walled round almost
entirely; on one side native houses abut upon it, but on the other three
sides it is tolerably clear. Roads without gates in some places connect
it with the city; but it is not at all a bad place to make a
stand—certainly the best in Lucknow, to which it is a sort of acropolis.
The residency contains the chief-commissioner’s house, Mr Gubbins’s, Mr
Ommaney’s, Foyne’s, the post-office, city hospital, electric-telegraph
office, church, etc.’ The ever-memorable defence made by a little band
of English heroes in this ‘acropolis’ of Lucknow, will call for our
attention in due time. Mr Polehampton spoke of the gravity with which
Sir Henry Lawrence regarded the state of public affairs; and of the
caution which led him to post _one_ English soldier at every gun, to
watch the native artillerymen. The chaplain had means of knowing with
what assiduity crafty lying men tried to gain over the still faithful
sepoys to mutiny. ‘Another most absurd story they have got hold of,
which came out in the examination of some of the mutineers before Sir
Henry Lawrence. They say that in consequence of the Crimean war there
are a great many widows in England, and that these are to be brought out
and married to the Rajahs in Oude; and that their children, brought up
as Christians, are to inherit all the estates! The natives are like
babies—they will believe anything.’—Babies in belief, perhaps; but
fiends in cruelty when excited.
The last two days of May were days of agitation at Lucknow. Many of the
native troops broke out in open mutiny. They consisted of half of the
48th regiment, about half of the 71st, some few of the 13th, and two
troops of the 7th cavalry—all of whom fled towards Seetapoor, a town
nearly due north of Lucknow. Lawrence, with two companies of her
Majesty’s 32d, three hundred horse, and four guns, went in pursuit; but
the horse, Oude native cavalry, evinced no zeal; and he was vexed to
find that he could only get within round-shot of the mutineers. He took
thirty prisoners—a very inadequate result of the pursuit. Many
disaffected still remained in Lucknow; four bungalows were burned, and a
few English officers shot. The city was quiet, but the cantonment was in
a disturbed state. In his last telegrams for the month, the
chief-commissioner, who was also chief military authority, used these
words: ‘It is difficult to say who are loyal; but it is believed the
majority are so; only twenty-five of the 7th cavalry proved false;’ and
he further said: ‘The faithful remnants of three infantry regiments and
7th cavalry, about seven hundred men, are encamped close to the
detachment of two hundred of her Majesty’s 32d and four European guns.’
Even then he did not feel much uneasiness concerning the city and
cantonment of Lucknow: it was towards other places, Cawnpore especially,
that his apprehensive glance was directed.
What were the occurrences at Lucknow, and in other towns of the
territory of Oude, in June, will be better understood when the progress
of the Revolt in other places during May has been narrated.
[Illustration:
Ekah, or Officer’s Travelling Wagon.
]
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Footnote 10:
By Mr Knighton, author of _Forest Life in Ceylon_.
Footnote 11:
Lacs or lakhs of rupees: a lac being 100,000, value about £10,000.
Footnote 12:
The word _telegram_, denoting a message sent, as distinguished from
the _telegraph_ which sends it, has been a subject of much discussion
among Greek scholars, concerning the validity of the grammatical basis
on which it is formed; but as the new term is convenient for its
brevity and expressiveness, and as it has been much used by the
governor-general and the various officers connected with India, it
will occasionally be employed in this work.
[Illustration:
General View of CALCUTTA from Fort William.
]