THE BATTLES AT DELHI.
1857.
The Indian Mutiny had really its outbreak at Delhi, to which place the
mutineers fled when they had taken the fatal step which was to bring
death to so many, and which was to weld the Indian Empire closer to
Britain.
The imperial city of Delhi was destined to play an important part
in the mutiny, and early in May, 1857, the mutineers, inflamed with
preliminary successes and inspired by a religious frenzy, entered
Delhi. Mr. Simon Frazer, the Commissioner, tried to stem the tide
by closing the seven gates of the city, but his orders were tardily
obeyed, and the mutineers poured into the city, carrying havoc wherever
they went. The bungalows in the Durya Gunge were soon in flames, and
every European was slaughtered. No white man or woman could venture
forth and hope to return alive, for the rebel soldiers, having tasted
blood, were determined to have their appetites whetted. Mr. Frazer
ventured out in his buggy to the residence of the Delhi princes, but
was seized, and after a desperate struggle was hacked to pieces. His
head was struck off, and, horrible to relate, was carried through the
streets in barbarous triumph.
Terrible were the tragedies enacted within the walls, and the hapless
Europeans calmly waited death, for they knew that they would receive no
mercy. At the palace fort the rebels asked to see Captain Douglas, who
commanded the guard, and on that brave officer appearing, he was shot
down ere he could utter a word. In their hunt for victims they ascended
to the murdered officer’s quarters, and found there the chaplain of the
station, Rev. Mr. Jennings, and his daughter, who had lately arrived
from England to be married. They were deaf to her agonising cries and
prayers for mercy, and butchered her father before her eyes. After
subjecting the poor girl to awful indignities, they hacked her to
pieces.
The Delhi arsenal, was at the time of the outbreak the largest in
India, and it was well that Britain had brave and capable officers at
this quarter. The powder magazine was included in the arsenal, although
there was another at the cantonments about two miles from the walls
of the city, where three battalions of Bengal infantry were posted.
The mutineers intended to attack this point (the arsenal), and Sir
T. Metcalfe on the morning that the insurgents initiated the attack
closed up the gate at the bridge. He did not suspect that the princes
and members of the royal family were hand-in-glove with the mutineers,
but his eyes were opened when he saw the rebels march through the
palace, which could only have been done through the complicity of the
princes. There were only six Britons to defend the arsenal, in charge
of sullen and stubborn men whom they dreaded to trust. Guns were posted
at every point where attack was possible, and right nobly did the
gallant half-dozen prepare to sell their lives dearly in defence of
the position. The mutineers were now having the full support of the
natives of Delhi, and armed guards came boldly to the arsenal, and
demanded its surrender in the name of the King of Delhi. This request
was treated with the silent contempt which it deserved, and then the
King of Delhi showed his hand by declaring that he would send men with
scaling ladders to scale the walls. When these ladders did arrive, the
native portion of the garrison availed themselves of this opportunity
to desert their posts, and, swarming down the ladders, left the gallant
six alone. Outside the howling mass of insurgents, waving their tulwars
on high and calling upon the defenders to come out and be killed.
Inside, every man of the six--Lieutenants Forrest and Willoughby,
Sergeant Stewart, and Conductors Crow, Buckley, and Scully--were cool
and calm at their respective posts.
The enemy now began to appear on the top of the walls, and the garrison
poured a deadly grape fire upon these customers until the ammunition
became almost exhausted. The natives who had deserted the garrison had
given valuable information to the rebels as to the position of the
guns. Forrest and Buckley were firing and loading the guns as fast as
they could, and while the unequal struggle lasted they mowed down the
closely-packed rebels. And this they did under a heavy musketry fire
at forty yards’ range. It was not until the last round that Buckley
had his arm shot and Forrest received two balls in one of his hands.
Willoughby had determined that the rebels would never secure the
magazine and all its valuable store. A train of powder had been laid by
Conductor Scully, and when all seemed lost, the Lieutenant gave orders
to blow up the magazine.
The fire rushed along the trains of powder, and then an awful crash
and roar which seemed to split the earth and rend the vault of heaven
told the rebels that they had been thwarted by the Feringhee. The whole
magazine with its deadly contents was hurled into the air, and fell,
burying hundreds of the rebels in the ruins.
Meanwhile the brave defenders had made a dash for liberty and reached
the Cashmere gate. The brave Willoughby was captured while hiding in
the jungle, and, after terrible torture, was mercifully put to death.
Simultaneous with the attack upon the magazines things were going hard
with the surviving Christian population. The infuriated cowards who
glutted their appetite for blood by the massacre of helpless women and
children, had gone too far to turn back, for they knew that if the
Feringhees became victorious they would all perish. They broke into the
bank, and Mr. Beresford, the manager, with his wife and five children,
perished. They devised the torturing death of cutting their victims’
throats slowly with broken glass, and it was in this cruel manner that
the bank manager and his family were murdered.
All the public buildings and churches were plundered, and robbery and
murder was rampant in the streets of the city. A sepoy when he takes
service, makes a vow to remain true to his salt, _i.e._, true to their
employers. This vow was even more binding in the case of those who had
sworn to serve the Queen of Britain, even with their lives, but we
shall see how the crafty natives who wore the Queen’s uniform and her
medals evaded their vow and yet, in their own opinion, remained true to
their salt.
Colonel Ripley was despatched from the cantonments with the 54th Bengal
native infantry, which had remained loyal, and the line of march lay
towards the Cashmere gate. They obeyed their officers with alacrity,
and marched boldly forward. Suddenly fifteen troopers of the rebel 3rd
cavalry came dashing out to meet them, brandishing their blood-smeared
swords. The treachery of the 54th was soon made apparent, for, on the
approach of the Sowars they wheeled to the side of the road and left
their officers unguarded in the troopers’ path. The maniac mutineers
dashed upon the bewildered officers and shot or cut them down. Colonel
Ripley had his pistols with him, and shot two troopers before being
killed. When the slaughter was complete, the bloodstained troopers
dismounted, and, walking amongst the treacherous 54th, shook hands and
complimented their fellow-villains on their action.
The Brigadier at the cantonments had now only the 38th and 74th to fall
back upon, both native regiments, in whose fidelity he could put little
trust. At all events he formed them into line, posting the 38th on the
road that led to the Cashmere gate. As long as possible news of the
mutiny of the 54th was kept from the other regiments, but when at last
they heard it, they showed evident symptoms of mutiny. When the awful
crash of the exploded magazine fell upon their ears, the outburst came.
“Deen! Deen!” they shouted, signifying “Faith!” and rushed to their
arms, which had been piled. They seized the guns, shot the commandant’s
horse, and were soon in a state of complete insubordination.
The first regard of British officers and men in time of danger,
whether it be on sea or land, is for the women and children, and now
that the sepoys had shown themselves in their true colours, it was
absolutely imperative, if the women and children were to be saved from
terrible torture, that they should be removed to either Meerut or
Kurnool, cities which were meanwhile loyal and unaffected. Brigadier
Metcalfe sounded the retire, and those who could find conveyances were
fortunate, as in most cases the native drivers had bolted with the
horses and vehicles.
In the guard-house at the Cashmere gate a number of women and children,
along with several officers, were huddled. Major Abbott, who was in
charge, made the attempt to get the helpless females to the shelter of
the cantonments, and ordered them to be placed on the gun carriages.
The rebel sepoys opened a murderous fire on the carriages, and the
ground was soon strewn with the dead and wounded. Several reached the
shelter of Brigadier Metcalfe’s house, from whence they were conducted
to the river Jumna, where they were allowed to make their escape as
best they could.
We need not dwell upon the harrowing details of the adventures of those
who escaped. They wandered about the jungle, starving and bruised.
Delicately-nurtured women clinging to their babes went raving mad, and
many perished. The villagers were every whit as brutal and cruel as
the rebel soldiery, and men boasted publicly of outraging white women
and then cutting off their breasts. It makes one’s blood boil to think
of the awful indignities, the almost incredible tortures, and the slow
lingering death which was the fate of our innocent and helpless women
and children.
Certain nations accused us of wanton cruelty in the slaying of the
rebels at the time when the hand of retribution, guided by Sir Colin
Campbell, fell upon the inhuman monsters who had weltered and gloried
in the shedding of Christian blood. Could the stab of the bayonet,
blowing from the cannon’s mouth or death by hanging ever atone for the
fearful sufferings of the pure and innocent? In our humanity we scorned
to devise new tortures or have recourse to those of the Inquisition
to avenge the massacre of the Christian women who had been outraged
and done to death. If those who escaped to the jungle suffered untold
agony, it was nothing to that which the women who remained in Delhi had
to undergo. An officer who had to be an unwilling witness of many of
the scenes tells the following blood-curdling story:--
“The sepoys took forty-eight females, most of them girls from ten to
fourteen, many delicately nurtured ladies, and kept them for the base
purposes of the heads of the insurrection for a whole week. At the
end of that time they made them strip themselves, and gave them up to
the lowest of the people to abuse in broad daylight in the streets of
Delhi. They then commenced the work of torturing them to death, cutting
off their breasts, fingers, and noses. One lady was three days in
dying. They flayed the face of another lady, and made her walk naked
through the streets.”
A number of officers, women, and children sought refuge in a mosque,
where they were without food and water for several days. The men could
have endured the hunger and thirst, but the suffering of the women and
little children was intense. On the fourth day they treated with the
sepoys, who on their oath swore to spare their lives and take them
before the king. The men laid down their arms that they might get water
for the suffering ones, and the whole party quitted the shelter of
the mosque. They were instantly seized, and every one killed, eight
officers, eight ladies, and eleven children perishing. The children
were swung by the heels, and their brains dashed out in the presence of
the parents.
On every side were traces of murder and pillage, and it is said that
even greater ferocity, if that were possible, was used at Delhi than
by the great assassin Nana Sahib at Cawnpore. Certainly the atrocities
practised are unequalled in barbarity and cruelty, and coming from men
who had broken our bread and eaten our salt, they demanded the most
condign punishment. Delhi was now in full possession of the mutineers,
and this ancient city, with its hundred mosques and minarets, seemed
lost to the British Empire, for the 200,000 inhabitants were in no way
reluctant to accept the change in government.
The king, seeing that Fortune had so far smiled on the insurgents,
put himself at the head of the new movement. This crafty monarch,
whose kingdom lay within the walls of the city, had a love of pomp and
panoply, and no doubt delighted his followers by a State procession
through the city to the palace of the Moguls. This is an immense
edifice of more than a mile in circumference. The wall which surrounds
it is over thirty feet in height, and besides serving as a kingly
residence, it thus stands as a gigantic fortress.
The princes of the royal house were also concerned in the spread of
the mutiny, Prince Mirza Mogul being commander-in-chief of the army,
and his brother Mirza Abubeker, general of the cavalry. Although
they had foully murdered many of their officers, the sepoys, to give
them credit, did not run amok altogether, but put themselves under
the command of native officers of inferior rank, who were now given
high commands. They also knew that Britain would not let them hold
undisturbed possession of the town, so they set about preparing
defences in order to withstand a siege. Heavy guns were mounted on the
bastions, and the guards were strengthened at the seven gates.
The mutiny was not long in spreading throughout the provinces, and
regiment after regiment rose in insurrection, and either murdered their
officers or fled to Delhi. From every part tidings came to Agra of a
general rising, and it was not safe for any British officer to place
himself at the head of any native regiment. The sepoys would swear
undying fidelity at one moment, and the next might be either butchering
their officers or on the road to join the main band of rebels at Delhi.
Will our men be faithful? was the question many an officer had to put
to himself, for they were not to be trusted, despite all their vows.
The British regiments, manned and officered by Europeans, had to
pass through many perils, and undoubtedly they did good service in
punishing the flying rebels. They shot and bayonetted the sepoys who
had mutinied, and only took prisoner those of higher caste, and those
who had set themselves up in the leadership of the work of mutiny.
These rascals were reserved for another fate, either at the hands
of the hangman, or, greater punishment still in the eyes of a true
believer--blown from the cannon’s mouth.
This form of punishment may have been brutal, but it was thoroughly
deserved, and the swift death cannot be likened to the lingering
tortures to which the women and children of our own flesh and blood
had to submit. As this method of punishment became common as the
mutiny proceeded, a description of the scene at an execution may be of
interest:--
“Three sides of a hollow square facing inwards was formed. On the
fourth side of the square were drawn up the guns, ten 9-pounders,
which were to be used for the execution. The prisoners, under a strong
European guard, were then marched into the square, their crimes and
sentences read aloud to them and at the head of each regiment; they
were then marched round the square and up to the guns. The first ten
were picked out, their eyes bandaged, and they were bound to the guns,
with their backs against the muzzles and their arms fastened backwards
to the wheels. The port fires were lighted, and at a signal from the
artillery major the guns were fired.
It was a horrid sight that then met the eye. A regular shower of human
fragments--of heads, arms, and legs--appeared in the air, whirling
through the smoke; and when that cleared away, these fragments
lying on the ground--fragments of Hindoos and of Mussulmans mixed
together--were all that remained of those ten mutineers. Three times
more this was repeated; but so great is the disgust we all feel for the
atrocities committed by the rebels, that we had no room in our hearts
for any feeling of pity. Perfect callousness was depicted on every
European face; a look of grim satisfaction could even be seen in the
countenances of the gunners serving the guns. But far different was the
effect on the native portion of the spectators. Their black faces grew
ghastly pale as they gazed breathlessly at the awful spectacle.
You must know that this is really the only form in which death has
any terror for a native. If he is hanged or shot, he knows that his
friends or relatives will be allowed to claim his body and will give
him the funeral rites required by his religion; if a Hindoo, that his
body will be burned with all due ceremonies, and if a Mussulman, that
his remains will be secretly interred, as directed in the Koran. But if
sentenced to death in this form, he knows that his body will be blown
into a thousand pieces, and that it will be altogether impossible for
his relatives, however devoted to him, to be sure of picking up all the
fragments of his own particular body; and the thought that perhaps a
limb of someone of a different religion to himself might possibly be
burned or buried with the remainder of his own body, is agony to him.
But notwithstanding this, it was impossible for the mutineers’ direst
hater not to feel some degree of admiration for the way in which they
met their deaths. Nothing in their lives became them like the leaving
of them. Of the whole party, only two showed any signs of fear, and
they were bitterly reproached by the others for so disgracing their
race. They certainly died like men. After the first ten had been
disposed of, the next batch, who had been looking on all the time,
walked up to the guns quite calmly and unfalteringly, and allowed
themselves to be blindfolded and tied up without moving a muscle or
showing the slightest sign of fear or even concern.”
The army of vengeance which was to stamp out the mutiny and punish
the mutineers, was pushing on from Umballa. The great vortex of the
mutiny was at Delhi, and the rebels had such excellent fortifications
and were so well armed and provisioned, that a prolonged siege was
anticipated. There were many princes with large bands of followers who
as yet had taken no part on either side. They were wise as Solomon in
their judgment, for they deferred taking the great step until they saw
how the game was to go. These princes and chiefs of the Delhi provinces
were loyal enough, but, like the rebel sepoys, they would turn round
and cut our throats if it was to profit them in any way. Holkar and
Scindia had already sent their contingents to Agra for service under
the British flag, and now the Rajahs of Jheend and Puttiala, two
powerful chiefs, sent well-drilled horsemen, and the Rajah of Bhurtpur
gave his specially-trained bodyguard. These men were good fighters,
and would remain loyal and true to their salt as long as their Rajah
willed. General Barnard, who was in command of the troops, pushed on as
fast as he could to Delhi, and sent Brigadier Wilson with an advance
guard to clear a path.
The gallant Brigadier came up with the enemy at a place known as
Ghazee-ood-deen-nugger on the 30th of May, and distant about 15 miles
from Delhi. The rebels were present in large numbers, and had some
heavy guns to which they trusted in keeping their position. Wilson
at once saw that the small iron suspension bridge over the river
Hindon would form a key to his own attack, and two companies of the
60th Rifles were told off to keep the bridge at all hazards, while
a detachment of the 6th Dragoon Guards, with four guns, went along
the riverside to turn the enemy’s flank. The 60th at the bridge were
exposed to a heavy fire from the insurgents’ guns, and had to be
reinforced. It was plainly evident that the rebels were aware that if
they lost this position an important point in the capture of the city
would be gained. They handled their guns with great skill, but when the
60th dashed among them with the bayonet they blanched, wavered, and
turned tail, leaving the guns in the hands of the Rifles.
“Remember the ladies! remember the babies!” was the battle-cry of the
60th, as they flashed on with gleaming bayonets, and many a mother and
many a child were amply avenged in the terrible slaughter they wrought.
Fleeing from the infuriated and victorious troops, the sepoys fled
helter-skelter towards Delhi, leaving their guns and hundreds of dead
and dying on the field. The Carbineers, who added to the death-roll in
the course of the pursuit, chased the fleeing horde to within a few
miles of the city. Yet they were not cowed, for, despite the lesson
they had received, they were back in greater numbers to the banks of
the Hindon the following day. They opened fire with their muskets and
big guns, and for two hours there was nothing heard but the boom of
the guns and the rattle of musketry. The rebel fire began to slacken,
and it was now the time for close combat. Once again the 60th defiled
across the bridge, with the 6th Dragoon Guards as support. Alternately
firing and charging, the British rushed the rising ground, on which
the rebels were posted, and once again the mutineers had to fly to the
sheltering walls of Delhi. Our men were too fagged out to pursue, but
there was not an inch of fight in the fleeing mass, and many of them
cast their swords and guns away in their panic.
The British burned a village which afforded shelter for the enemy,
and were content to take a well-won rest. General Barnard was daily
expected, and the Brigadier calmly waited, undisturbed by the
faint-hearted mutineers, until such time as the General would order a
grand advance upon the Imperial City.