The traveller up the country from Calcutta does not speedily reach
places the names of which vividly recall the episodes of the great
Mutiny. It is a chance if, as the train passes Dinapore, he remembers
the defection of the Sepoy brigade stationed there which Koer Singh
seduced from its allegiance. Arrah may possibly recall a dim memory of
Wake's splendid defence of Boyle's bungalow and of Vincent Eyre's
dashingly executed relief of the indomitable garrison. Benares is a
little off the main line--Benares, on the parade ground of which Neill
first put down that peremptory foot of his, where Olpherts was so quick
with those guns of his, and where Jim Ellicott did his grim work with
noose and cross-beam until long after the going down of the summer sun.
But when the traveller's eye first rests on the gray ramparts of
Akbar's hoary fortress in the angle where the Ganges and the Jumna meet
and blend one with another, the reality of the Mutiny begins to impress
itself upon him. Allahabad was the scene of a terrible tragedy; it was
also the point of departure whence Havelock set forward on Cawnpore
with his column, not indeed of rescue, but of retribution. The journey
from Allahabad to Cawnpore, although perchance performed in the night,
is not one to be slept through by any student of the story of the great
rebellion. The Indian moon pours her flood of light on the little knoll
hard by Futtehpore, where Havelock stood when Jwala Pershad's first
round shot came lobbing, through his staff in among the camp kettles of
the 64th. That village beyond the mango tope is Futtehpore itself,
whence the rebel sowars swept headlong down the trunk road till Maude's
guns gave them the word to halt. The pools are dry now through which,
when Hamilton's voice had rung out the order--"Forward, at the double!"
the light company of the Ross-shire Buffs splashed recklessly past the
abandoned Sepoy guns, in their race with the grenadier company of the
64th that had for its goal the Pandy barricade outside the village. In
that cluster of mud huts--its name is Aoong--the gallant Rénaud fell
with a shattered thigh, as he led his "Lambs" up to the _épaulement_
which covered its front. One fight a day is fair allowance anywhere,
but those fellows whom Havelock led were gluttons for fighting.
Spanning that deep rugged nullah there, down which the Pandoo flows
turbulently in the rainy season, is the bridge across which in the
afternoon of the morning of Aoong, Stephenson with his Fusiliers dashed
into the Sepoy battery and bayoneted the gunners before they could make
up their minds to run away. And it was in the gray morning following
the day of that double battle (the 15th of July) that the General,
having heard for the first time that there were still alive in Cawnpore
a number of women and children who had escaped the massacre of the
boats, told his men what he knew. "With God's help," shouted Havelock,
with a break in his voice that was like a sob, as he stood with his hat
off and his hand on his sword--"with God's help, men, we will save
them, or every man die in the attempt!" One answer came back in a great
cheer; but a sadder answer to the aspiration, a bitter truth that made
that aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of
the day before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking
the Well was receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to
slacken its pace on approaching the station, it is passing over the
field of the first--the creditable--battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the
butchery Nana Sahib (Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the
last stand against the avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed
the screen for Hamilton's turning movement. It needs little imagination
to recall the scene. Close by, at the cross-roads, stands the Sepoy
battery, and those horsemen still nearer are reconnoitring sowars.
Beyond the road the Highlanders are deploying on the plain as they
clear the sheltering flank of the mango trees, amidst a grim silence
broken only by the crash of the bursting shells and the cries of the
bullock-drivers as the guns rattle on to open fire from the reverse
flank. The flush rises in Hamilton's face and the eyes of him begin to
sparkle, as he shouts "Ross-shire Buffs, wheel into line!" and then
"Forward!" Quick as lightning the trails of the Sepoy guns are swung
round and shot and shell come crashing through the ranks, while the
rebel infantry, with a swiftness which speaks well for their British
drill, show a front against this inroad on their flank. In silent grim
imperturbability the Highland line stalks steadily on with the long
springy step to be learned only on the heather. Now they are within
eighty yards of the muzzles of the guns, and they can see the colour of
the mustaches of the men plying and supporting them. Then Hamilton,
with his sword in the air and his face all ablaze with the fighting
blood in him, turns round in the saddle, shouts "Charge!" and bids the
pipers to strike up. Wild and shrill bursts over that Indian plain the
rude notes of the Northern music. But louder yet, drowning them and the
roll of the artillery, rings out that Highland war-cry that has so
often presaged victory to British arms. The Ross-shire men are in and
over the guns ere the gunners have time to drop their lint-stocks and
ramming-rods; they fall with bayonets at the charge upon the supporting
infantry, and the supporting infantry go down where they huddle
together, lacking the opportunity to break and run away in time. But
the battle rages all day, and the white soldiers, as they fight their
way slowly forward, hear the bursts of military music that greet the
Nana as he moves from place to place, _not_ in the immediate front.
Barrow and his handful of cavalry volunteers crash into the thick of
them with the informal order to his men, "Give point, lads; damn cuts
and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by the side of the gallant and
ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot, brings the 64th on at the
double against the great 24-pounder on the Cawnpore road that is
vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls and the battle
ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of the elation
of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the sun, had
throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, that the women and
children in Cawnpore had been butchered on the afternoon of the day
before, while Stephenson and his Fusiliers were carrying the bridge of
the Pandoo Nuddee.
The railway station of Cawnpore is distant more than a mile from the
cantonment. Close to the road and not far from the station, the
explorer easily finds the massive pile of the "Savada House," now
allotted as residences for railway officials. English children play now
in the corridors once thronged by the minions of the Nana, for here
were his headquarters during part of the siege. Its verandas all day
long were full of ministers, diviners, courtiers, and creatures. Here
strolled the supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted
favourite of home society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the
Nana's war minister, had his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree
there. In that other clump of trees, where an ayah is tickling a white
baby into laughter, was the pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited
the Mahratta preference for canvas over bricks and mortar. And here,
while the crackle of the musketry fire and the din of the big guns came
softened on the ear by distance, sat the adopted son of the Peishwa
while Jwala Pershad came for orders about the cavalry, and Bala Rao,
his brother, explained his devices for harassing the sahibs, and Tantia
Topee, Hoolass Sing, Azimoolah, and the Nana himself devised the scheme
of the treachery. But the Savada House has even a more lurid interest
than this. Hither the women and children whom an unkind fate had spared
from dying with the men were brought back from the Ghaut of Slaughter.
You may see the two rooms into which 125 unfortunates were huddled
after that march from before the presence of one death into the
presence of another. As they plodded past the intrenchment so long
held, and across the plain to the Nana's pavilion, "I saw," says a
spectator, "that many of the ladies were wounded. Their clothes had
blood upon them. Two were badly hurt and had their heads bound up with
handkerchiefs; some were wet, covered with mud and blood, and some had
their dresses torn; but all had clothes. I saw one or two children
without clothes. There were no men in the party, but only some boys of
twelve or thirteen. Some of the ladies were barefoot." Hither, too,
were sent later the women of that detachment of the garrison which had
got off from the ghaut in the boat defended by Vibart, Ashe, Delafosse,
Bolton, Moore, and Thomson, and which had been captured at Nuzzufghur
by Baboo Ram Bux. It had been for those people a turbulent departure
from the Suttee Chowra Ghaut, but it was a yet more fearful returning.
"They were brought back," testified a spy; "sixty sahibs, twenty-five
memsahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the sahibs to be
separated from the memsahibs, and shot by the 1st Bengal Native
Infantry.... 'Then,' said one of the memsahibs, 'I will not leave my
husband. If he must die I will die with him.' So she ran and sat down
behind her husband, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said
this, the other memsahibs said, 'We also will die with our husbands,'
and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their husbands said,
'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers,
and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is
pleasant and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a
broad, flat, treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of
foliage, above which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and
flat tops of a long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while
around the rest of the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the
cantonment. Near the centre of this level space there is an irregular
enclosure defined by a shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in
the middle of this enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly
satisfactory structure known as the "Memorial Church." It is built on
the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very focus of the
agony of the siege. It is impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of
amazement, pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to
this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. The heart
swells and the eyes fill as one, standing here with all the arena of
the heroism lying under one's eyes, recalls the episodes of the
glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant
valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he passed, left men
something more courageous and women something less unhappy," the
reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the deadly
rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy
and fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot
and giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with
drought, and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were
widows." And what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not
a foot of all the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such
as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work
here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the
world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is
it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised
line on the smooth _maidan_. The enclosure now existing has no
reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure merely
surrounds the graveyard, in the midst of which stands the "Memorial
Church," a structure that cannot be commended from an architectural
point of view. But the space enclosed around its gaunt red walls is
pregnant with painful interest. We come first on a railed-in memorial
tomb, bearing an inscription in raised letters, on a cross let into the
tessellated pavement: "In three graves within this enclosure lie the
remains of Major Edward Vibart, 2nd Bengal Cavalry, and about seventy
officers and soldiers, who, after escaping from the massacre at
Cawnpore on the 27th June 1857, were captured by the rebels at
Sheorapore, and murdered on the 1st July." The inmates of these graves
were originally buried elsewhere, and were removed hither when the
enclosure was formed. In another part of the enclosure is a raised
tomb, the slab of which bears the inscription: "This stone marks a spot
which lay within Wheeler's intrenchment, and covers the remains and is
sacred to the memory of those who were the first to meet their death
when beleaguered by mutineers and rebels in June 1857." Two only lie in
this grave, Mr. Murphy and a lady who died of fever. These two perished
on the first day of the siege and had the exclusive privilege of being
decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. After the
first day of the siege there was scant leisure for funeral rites. To
find the last resting-place of the remaining dead of this siege, we
must quit the enclosure and walk across the _maidan_ to a spot among
the trees by the roadside under the shadow of No. 4 Barrack. There was
an empty well here when the siege begun; three weeks after, when the
siege ended, this well contained the bodies of 250 British people. With
daylight the battle raged around that sepulchre, but when the night
came the slain of the day were borne thither with stealthy step and
scant attendance. Now the well is filled up, and above it, inside a
small ornamental enclosure formed by iron railings, there rises a
monument which bears the following inscription: "In a well under this
enclosure were laid by the hands of their fellows in suffering the
bodies of men, women, and children, who died hard by during the heroic
defence of Wheeler's intrenchment when beleaguered by the rebel Nana."
Below the inscription is this apposite quotation from Psalm cxli. 7:
"Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and
cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the
Lord." At the corners of the flower-plot are small crosses bearing
individual names. One commemorates Sir George Parker, the cantonment
magistrate; a second, Captain Jenkins; a third, Lieutenant Saunders and
the men of the 84th Regiment; a fourth, Lieutenant Glanville and the
men of the Madras Fusiliers; and here, too, lies stout-hearted yet
tender-hearted John MacKillop of the Civil Service the hero of another
well, that from which the team of buffaloes are now drawing water to
make the mortar for the Memorial Church. Thence was procured the water
for the garrison and it was a target also for the rebel artillery, so
that the appearance of a man with a pitcher by day and by night the
creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape. But John
MacKillop, "not being a fighting-man," made himself useful as he
modestly put it, for a week as captain of the Well, till a grape-shot
sent him to that other well thence never to return.
The Memorial Church is in the form of a cross, and now that it has been
finished is not destitute of beauty as regards its interior. Perhaps it
is in place, but the noblest monument that could commemorate Cawnpore
would have been the maintenance, for the wonder of the world unto all
time, of the intrenchment and what it surrounded, as nearly as possible
in the condition in which they were left on the evacuation of the
garrison. The grandest monument in the world is the Residency of
Lucknow, which remains and is kept up substantially in the condition in
which it was left when Sir Colin Campbell brought out its garrison in
November 1857; and the Cawnpore intrenchment would have been a still
nobler memorial as the abiding testimony to a defence even more
wonderful, although unfortunately unsuccessful, than that of Lucknow.
But the Memorial Church of Cawnpore will always be interesting by
reason of its site and of the memorial tablets on the walls of its
interior. In the left transept is a tablet "To the memory of the
Engineers of the East Indian Railway, who died and were killed in the
great insurrection of 1857; erected in affectionate remembrance by
their brother Engineers in the North-West Provinces." On the left side
of the nave are several tablets. One is to the memory of poor young
John Nicklen Martin, killed in the battle at Suttee Chowra Ghaut.
Another commemorates three officers, two sergeants, two corporals, a
drummer, and twenty privates of the 34th Regiment, killed at the
(second) Battle of Cawnpore on the 28th November 1857; the day on which
the Gwalior Contingent, seduced into rebellion by Tantia Topee, made
itself so unpleasant to General Windham, the "Cawnpore Runners," and
other regiments of that officer's command. A third tablet is "To the
memory of A.G. Chalwin, 2nd Light Cavalry, and his wife Louisa, who
both perished during the siege of Cawnpore in July 1857. These are they
which came out of great tribulation." A fourth commemorates Captain
Gordon and Lieutenant Hensley, of the 82nd Foot, also victims of the
Gwalior Contingent. In the right of the nave there is a tablet "Sacred
to the memory of Philip Hayes Jackson, who, with Jane, his wife, and
her brother Ralf Blyth Croker, were massacred by rebels at Cawnpore on
27th June." Another is to Lieutenant Angelo, of the 16th Grenadiers
Bengal Native Infantry, who also fell in the boat massacre; and a third
is to the memory of the gallant Stuart Beatson, who was Havelock's
adjutant-general, and who, dying as he was of cholera, did his work at
Pandoo Nuddee and Cawnpore in a _dhoolie_. In the right transept are
tablets in memory of the officers of the Connaught Rangers, and of the
officers and men of the 32nd Cornwall Regiment "who fell in defence of
Lucknow and Cawnpore and subsequent campaign"--fourteen officers and
448 "women and men." And here, too, is perhaps the most affecting
memorial of any--a tablet "In memory of Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Wainwright,
Miss Wainwright, Mrs. Hill, forty-three soldiers' wives and fifty-five
children, murdered in Cawnpore in 1857."
It is easy enough now to follow the footsteps of Mrs. Moore, dangerous
as was that journey of hers, from the intrenchment to the corner of No.
2 Barrack, which she was wont to make when her husband went on duty
there to strengthen the hands of Mowbray Thomson. There is no trace now
and the very memory of its whereabouts is lost, of the bamboo hut in a
sheltered corner which the garrison of this exposed post built for the
brave gentlewoman. But No. 2 Barrack, except that it is finished and
tenanted, stands now very much as it did when Glanville first, and when
he fell then Mowbray Thomson, defended with a success which seems so
wonderful when we look at the place defended and its situation. The
garrison was not always the same. "My sixteen men," writes Thomson,
"consisted in the first instance of Ensign Henderson of the 56th Native
Infantry, five or six of the Madras Fusiliers, two plate-layers, and
some men of the 84th. The first instalment was soon disabled. The
Madras Fusiliers were all shot at their posts. Several of the 84th also
fell, but in consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as
a loss in my little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a
reinforcement from the intrenchment. Sometimes a soldier, sometimes a
civilian, came. The orders given us were not to surrender with our
lives, and we did our best to obey them." And in a line with No. 2
Barrack is No. 4 Barrack, held with equal stanchness by a party of
Civil Engineers who had been employed on the East Indian Railroad, and
who had for their commander Captain Jenkins. Seven of the engineers
perished in defence of this post.
There is nothing more to see on the _maidan_, and one feels his anger
rising at the obliteration of everything that might help towards the
localisation of associations. Let us leave the scene of the defence and
follow the track of the defenders as they marched down to the scene of
the great treachery. The distance from the intrenchment to the ghaut is
barely a mile. Think of that stirrup-cup--that _doch an dhorras_--of
cold water, in which the hapless band pledged one another. The noble
Moore cheerily leads the way down the slope to the bridge with the
white rails with an advance guard of a handful of his 32nd men. The
palanquins with the women, the children, and the wounded follow, the
latter bandaged up with strips of women's gowns and petticoats, and
fragments of shirt-sleeves. And then come the fighting-men--a gallant,
ragged, indomitable band. A martinet colonel would stand aghast--for
save a regimental button here and there, he would find it hard to
recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad for British soldiers.
But let who might incline to disown these few war-worn men in their
dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches, their foes know
them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs with no
dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his
shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in
the hollow eye. The wooden bridge with the white rails spans at right
angles a rough irregular glen which widens out as it approaches the
river, some three hundred yards distant from the bridge. It is a mere
footpath that leaves the road on the hither side of the bridge, and
skirting the dry bed of the nullah touches the river close to the old
temple. By this footpath it was that our countrymen and countrywomen
passed down to the cruel ambush which had been laid for them in the
mouth of the glen. There are few to whom the details of that fell scene
are not familiar. What a contrast between the turmoil and devilry of it
and the serene calmness of the all but solitude the ghaut now presents!
On the knolls of the farther side snug bungalows nestle among the
trees, under the veranda of one of which a lady is playing with her
children. The village of Suttee Chowra on the bluff on the left of the
ghaut, where Tantia Topee's sepoys were concealed, no longer exists; a
pretty bungalow and its compound occupy its site. The little temple on
the water's edge by the ghaut is slowly mouldering into decay; on the
plaster of the coping of its river wall you may still see the marks of
the treacherous bullets. The stair which, built against its wall, led
down to the water's edge, has disappeared. Tantia Topee's dispositions
for the perpetration of the treachery could not now succeed, for the
Ganges has changed its course and there is deep water close in shore at
the ghaut. In the stream nearest to the Oude side the river has cast up
a long narrow dearah island, in the fertile mud of which melons are
cultivated where once whistled the shot from the guns on the Oude side
of the river. A Brahmin priest is placidly sunning himself on the river
platform of the temple over the dome of which hangs the foliage of a
peepul tree. A dhobie is washing the shirts of a sahib in the stream
that once was dyed with the blood of the sahibs. There is no monument
here, no superfluous reminder of the terrible tragedy. The man is not
to be envied whose eyes are dry, and whose heart beats its normal
pulsations, while he stands here alone on this spot so densely peopled
by associations at once so tragic and so glorious.
The scene of the final massacre lies some distance higher up the river.
As we cross the Ganges canal, the native city lying on our left, there
rises up before us the rich mass of foliage that forms the outer screen
of the beautiful Memorial Gardens. The hue of the greenery would be
sombre but for the blossoms which relieve it, emblem of the divine hope
which mitigated the gloom of despair for our countrywomen who perished
so cruelly in this balefully historic spot. Of the Beebeeghur, the term
by which among the natives is known the bungalow where the massacre was
perpetrated, not one stone now remains on another but neither its
memory nor its name will be lost for all time. Natives are strolling in
the shady flower-bordered walks of the Memorial Gardens, the
prohibition which long debarred their entrance having been wisely
removed. In the centre of the garden rises, fringed with cypresses, a
low mound, the summit of which is crowned by a circular screen, or
border, of light and beautiful open-work architecture. The circular
space enclosed is sunken, and from the centre of this sunken space
there rises a pedestal on which stands the marble presentment of an
angel. There is no need to explain what episode in the tragic story
this monument commemorates; the inscription round the capital of the
pedestal tells its tale succinctly indeed, but the words burn.
"Sacred," it runs, "to the perpetual memory of the great company of
Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were
cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel, Nana Doondoo Punth of
Blithoor; and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on
the 15th day of July 1857." A few paces to the north-west of the
monument is the spot where stood the bungalow in which the massacre was
done; and now, where the sight they saw maddened our countrymen long
ago to a frenzy of revenge, there bloom roses and violets. And a step
farther on, in a thicket of arbor vitae trees and cypresses, is the
Memorial Churchyard, with its many nameless mounds, for here were
buried not a few who died during the long occupation of Cawnpore, and
in the combats around it. Here there is a monument to Thornhill, the
Judge of Futtehghur, Mary his wife, and their two children, who
perished in the massacre. Thornhill was one of the males brought out
from the bungalow and shot earlier in the afternoon than when the
women's time came. Another monument bears this inscription: "Sacred to
the memory of the women and children of the 32nd, this monument is
raised by twenty men of the same regiment, who were passing through
Cawnpore, 21st Nov. 1857." And among the tombstones are those of
gallant Douglas Campbell of the 78th, Woodford of the 2nd Battalion
Rifle Brigade, and Young of the 4th Bengal Native Infantry.