TO THE DEATH!
A curious building, isn't it? I mean that one right in front of us. It
is something like a very large and many-sided crown, built of stone and
set upon the ground. The sides are pierced with windows of the same sort
as those seen in churches, and on each of the angles there is a little
pinnacle. It rises up serenely against the soft blue sky of this early
morning. We are far from Delhi now, having arrived at Cawnpore late last
night, and we have come out here first thing this morning. It is only
seven now.
Cawnpore! The Mutiny! Those two things rush simultaneously into the
mind, for Cawnpore is associated with the most awful scenes of the
Mutiny, and no Briton can ever think of it without those scenes flashing
before him.
Come nearer and pass inside the crown and you will see in the centre a
great angel of the usual sort, with high sweeping wings, holding palm
branches folded across its breast. It marks the Well of Cawnpore.
You know that story, of course, and yet, as we sit here, on the very
spot where it all happened, with the Indian sky above us, we cannot help
recalling it once more. In telling it I shall not dwell on the agonies
and bloodshed which have hallowed this place for ever; they are done
with, and those who suffered have been at rest for nearly sixty years.
The deep peace around us overlies their torments and forbids us to think
too much of the darker side of the picture. But the heroism, the
courage, the indomitable spirit that animated these men and women, these
things live for ever, rising up from the earth in a flood of inspiration
for all who pass over the place.
[Illustration: THE WELL OF CAWNPORE.]
There are certain little animals called Tasmanian devils, who do not
know what it is to give in; they die fighting and attack their
persecutors as long as one limb hangs on to another; of such stuff were
the people besieged at Cawnpore. They were encamped here on a wretched
piece of flat ground, quite open except for a low mud wall, which anyone
could have jumped over easily. There were about nine hundred and fifty
of them altogether, some soldiers, some civilians, some women and
children and a few native soldiers who remained loyal. Outside were
unending hordes of natives well armed and well trained, because the
greater part were the men of the native regiments who had mutinied,
known by the name of Sepoys. A few huts built of thin brick were all the
shelter the beleaguered people had; they were constantly under a
shrieking storm of bullets and shells, and were ringed around by steel.
You would have said two days at the outside would see the end of it, and
that then the black hordes would sweep clean over that field, having
wiped out the garrison completely; but so amazing is the power of pluck
that those within held the hordes at bay for twenty-three days! They not
only prevented any single Sepoy from getting inside alive, but they
constantly sallied out and acted on the defensive, burning their
enemies' defences and killing scores of them, while thousands fled in
confusion before them! The sublime impudence of it! And all the time
they were short of food; women and children were laid in holes in the
earth covered with planks to protect them from the bullets. And
water--ah, that was the worst--water had to be fetched from a well which
was quite exposed in the midst of the encampment, and the Sepoys kept up
an incessant fire on it. We are now beside it, this well where water was
drawn at the price of blood, and yet volunteers were never lacking. The
very ground our feet now rest upon was ringed around with the bodies of
those who laid down their lives for the women and children. There was
another well, a little distance off, now marked by an Iona cross, and to
this, under cover of night, the British conveyed their dead for burial.
[Illustration: AN INDIAN OFFICER OF THE CAMEL CORPS.]
Read the inscription that circles round the wall of the well now in
front of us:--
"Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian
people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel, Nana Dhundu
Pant of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the
well below, on the fifteenth day of July 1857."
Yes, we have not come to the end yet!
When the bloodthirsty tyrant, better known as Nana Sahib, found he could
not crack this nut, when he realised that his whole army was held at bay
by a few hundreds of determined spirits--there were only three hundred
fighting men to begin with, and they were daily killed--he made terms
with them, promising to send the survivors safely in boats down the
river if they would give in. Desperate as they were, without food or
water, without shade from the killing glare of the Indian summer sun,
the brave men held their heads high and only accepted on condition they
marched out under arms with so many rounds of ammunition to each man.
This was granted.
Now leave the well and follow that heroic band who went down to the
river on that blazing day some sixty years ago. It is about a mile away.
The little garrison now numbered some four hundred and fifty all told,
the half of what they had been three weeks before. Blackened with the
sun and smoke and gunpowder, so as to rival the Sepoys in complexion,
tattered and worn and wounded, but yet with courage undaunted, they went
down to the river.
[Illustration: NANA SAHIB.]
There is another building here, an arcade on the banks facing the placid
stream; it has a tower behind and a broad flight of stairs, a ghaut, as
it is called, flanked by walls running down to the margin. But on that
day long ago there was nothing of this, nothing but a number of clumsy
boats with thatched roofs to keep the sun off, native fashion. As the
English took their places in them, suddenly a bugle rang out, and at
that signal the native boatmen sprang from their places and splashed
ashore; up rose an army of Sepoys from the scrub on the banks, and death
was rained on the victims of the blackest deed of treachery ever written
in the annals of the world. Standing here on these smooth steps which
mark the place it is difficult even to picture that scene of horror.
Many were killed outright, many mortally wounded and torn, one hundred
and twenty-five were dragged ashore and brutally killed afterwards; it
was they who were thrown into the well; but three boats got away down
the stream. Two went ashore and all the occupants were killed by the
merciless brutes who lined the banks. The other had men in it, men who
were filled with a madness of wrath that knew no bounds. In spite of
their own condition, in spite of the odds against them, they leaped like
tigers on the foe whenever they got the chance. They were followed by
the natives, who fired on them repeatedly from a safe distance, and
again and again the dead had to be east into the stream. Yet when a
Sepoy boat ran against a sandbank, twenty or so of the powder-blackened
Englishmen sprang out into the water and raced with fury to kill them,
though the boat contained three times their own number. It is good to
read how they wiped out all but those who escaped in terror by swimming!
At last only fourteen of the English were left alive and they got
hopelessly penned in a backwater. These men charged the army of Sepoys
on the banks and made them keep their distance. They secured themselves
in a tiny temple on the margin of the river and killed all who
approached. At length, seeing preparations made for blowing them up with
gunpowder, they charged out; seven who could swim made for the river,
the other six (one was dead) rushed straight at the mass of Sepoys and
dealt death on every side before they fell.
Four of the seven eventually outdistanced their persecutors and reached
safety, and then, alas! one died.
It is good to hear that an avenging army descended on Cawnpore, though
too late to save the remnant of the captives. The Sepoys were smitten
hip and thigh, and thousands paid with their lives for those other lives
they had spared not. Nana Sahib fled and was never heard of again.
Stripped of all his wealth and luxury he must have skulked from place to
place like a plague-tainted rat, till death took him and he went to meet
the souls of the hundreds he had treacherously and brutally massacred.
It is finished! The price has been paid; the native has learnt that it
is not well to meddle with white men. And we must not forget that
hundreds of natives remained faithful, and gave their lives to save
those of our fellow-countrymen.
As we wander back through the park in the sunshine, now growing fierce
and strong, toward the Memorial Church showing above the trees, the
chief feeling is not of bitterness but of pride. That little band,
whose courage was unquenchable and untamable, were not picked men and
women, but just an ordinary crowd made up of soldiers and civilians and
their wives and children, yet not one act of selfishness or cowardice
remains to stain their record. When the last extremity came, sloth and
indifference and selfishness dropped off like sloughs and only devotion
and bravery shone out. It is grand to belong to a race which holds these
qualities as the highest good.
One incident more. When the tyrant had brought his handful of captives
up from the river he found there were a few men among them. So before he
started to massacre the women and babies he sent for the men to come
forth to instant death; he dared not leave even half a dozen men of the
untamable breed, who are "little used to lie down at the bidding of any
man," among them, even unarmed.
The men came forth, and among them was a lad of fourteen; he was only a
year older than you, but he preferred to be reckoned among the men
rather than to hide behind the women's petticoats. He chose a soldier's
death and he had it, for he fell pierced by bullets with the rest.
[Illustration: BATHING IN THE GANGES.]