Note.

At the end of the last chapter a table was given of the number of troops, European and native, in all the military divisions of India, on the day when the mutiny commenced at Meerut. It will be convenient to present here a second tabulation on a wholly different basis—giving the designations of the regiments instead of the numbers of men, and naming the stations instead of the divisions in which they were cantoned or barracked. This will be useful for purposes of reference, in relation to the gradual annihilation of the Bengal Hindustani army. The former table applied to the 10th of May 1857; the present will apply to a date as near this as the East India Register will permit—namely, the 6th of May; while the royal troops in India will be named according to the Army List for the 1st of May—a sufficiently near approximation for the present purpose. A few possible sources of error may usefully be pointed out. 1. Some or other of the India regiments were at all times moving from station to station; and these movements may in a few cases render it doubtful whether a particular corps had or had not left a particular station on the day named. 2. The station named is that of the head-quarters and the bulk of the regiment: detachments may have been at other places. 3. The Persian and Chinese wars disturbed the distribution of troops belonging to the respective presidencies. 4. The disarming and disbanding at Barrackpore and Berhampore are not taken into account; for they were not known in London at the time of compiling the official list. 5. The Army List, giving an enumeration of royal regiments in India, did not always note correctly the actual stations at a particular time. These sources of error, however, will not be considerable in amount.

REGIMENTS AND STATIONS OF BENGAL ARMY—MAY 1857.
General Anson, Commander-in-chief.
European Cavalry.
6thCarabiniers (Queen’s),Meerut.
9thLancers (Queen’s),Umballa.
Native Regular Cavalry.
1stRegiment,Mhow.
2dRegiment,Cawnpore.
3dRegiment,Meerut.
4thRegiment,Umballa.
5thRegiment,Peshawur.
6thRegiment,Nowgong.
7thRegiment,Lucknow.
8thRegiment,Lahore.
9thRegiment,Sealkote.
10thRegiment,Ferozpore.
Irregular and Local Cavalry.
1stBengal Ir. C.,Jelum.
2dBengal Ir. C.,Goordaspore.
3dBengal Ir. C.,Jhansi.
4thBengal Ir. C.,Hansi.
5thBengal Ir. C.,Sonthal.
6thBengal Ir. C.,Moultan.
7thBengal Ir. C.,Peshawur.
8thBengal Ir. C.,Sultanpore.
9thBengal Ir. C.,Hosheapore.
10thBengal Ir. C.,Goordaspore.
11thBengal Ir. C.,Berhampore.
12thBengal Ir. C.,Segowlie.
13thBengal Ir. C.,Bareilly,
14thBengal Ir. C.,Jhansi.
15thBengal Ir. C.,Oude.
16thBengal Ir. C.,Rawul Pindee.
17thBengal Ir. C.,Shumshabad.
18thBengal Ir. C.,Peshawur.
1stGwalior Contingent Cavalry,Gwalior.
2dGwalior Contingent Cavalry,Augur.
1stPunjaub Cavalry,Dera Ismael.
2dPunjaub Cavalry,Dera Ismael.
3dPunjaub Cavalry,Bunnoo.
4thPunjaub Cavalry,Kohat.
5thPunjaub Cavalry,Asnee.
1stOude Irregular Cavalry,Secrora.
2dOude Irregular Cavalry,Lucknow.
3dOude Irregular Cavalry,Pertabghur.
Nagpoor Irregular Cavalry,Taklee.
European Infantry.
8thFt. (Qun.’s),Cawnpore.
10thFt. (Qun.’s),Wuzeerabad.
24thFt. (Qun.’s),Sealkote.
27thFt. (Qun.’s),Sealkote.
29thFt. (Qun.’s),Thayet Mhow.
32dFt. (Qun.’s),Kussowlie.
35thFt. (Qun.’s),Calcutta.
52dFt. (Qun.’s),Lucknow.
53dFt. (Qun.’s),Dugshai.
60thFt. (Qun.’s),Jullundur.
61stFt. (Qun.’s),Wuzeerabad.
70thFt. (Qun.’s),Ferozpore.
75thFt. (Qun.’s),Rawul Pindee.
81stFt. (Qun.’s),Lahore.
87thFt. (Qun.’s),Peshawur.
1stEuropeans (East India Company’s),Dugshai.
2dEuropeans (East India Company’s),Umballa.
3dEuropeans (East India Company’s),Agra.
Native Regular Infantry.
1stRegiment,Cawnpore.
2d[[39]]Regiment,Barrackpore.
3dRegiment,Phillour.
4thRegiment,Noorpore.
5thRegiment,Umballa.
6thRegiment,Allahabad.
7thRegiment,Dinapoor.
8thRegiment,Dinapoor.
9thRegiment,Allygurh.
10thRegiment,Futteghur.
11thRegiment,Allahabad.
12thRegiment,Nowgong and Jhansi.
13thRegiment,Lucknow.
14thRegiment,Moultan.
15thRegiment,Meerut.
16th[[39]]Regiment,Meean Meer.
17thRegiment,Goruckpore.
18thRegiment,Bareilly.
19thRegiment,Berhampore.
20thRegiment,Meerut.
21stRegiment,Peshawur.
22dRegiment,Fyzabad.
23dRegiment,Mhow.
24thRegiment,Peshawur.
25thRegiment,Thayet Mhow.
26thRegiment,Meean Meer.
27thRegiment,Peshawur.
28thRegiment,Shahjehanpoor.
29thRegiment,Jullundur.
30thRegiment,Agra.
31stRegiment,Barrackpore.
32dRegiment,Sonthal.
33dRegiment,Hosheapore.
34thRegiment,Barrackpore.
35thRegiment,Sealkote.
36th[[40]]Regiment,Jullundur.
37th[[40]]Regiment,Benares.
38th[[41]]Regiment,Delhi.
39th[[41]]Regiment,Jelum.
40th[[41]]Regiment,Dinapoor.
41stRegiment,Seetapoor.
42dRegiment,Saugor.
43dRegiment,Barrackpore.
44thRegiment,Agra.
45thRegiment,Ferozpore.
46thRegiment,Sealkote.
47th[[41]]Regiment,Prome.
48thRegiment,Lucknow.
49thRegiment,Meean Meer.
50thRegiment,Nagode.
51stRegiment,Peshawur.
52dRegiment,Jubbulpoor.
53dRegiment,Cawnpore.
54thRegiment,Delhi.
55thRegiment,Nowsherah.
56thRegiment,Cawnpore.
57thRegiment,Ferozpore.
58thRegiment,Rawul Pindee.
59thRegiment,Umritsir.
60thRegiment,Umballa.
61stRegiment,Jullundur.
62dRegiment,Moultan.
63dRegiment,Barrackpore.
64thRegiment,Peshawur.
65th[[41]]Regiment,Dinapoor.
66th[[42]]Regiment,Almora.
67th[[41]]Regiment,{Etawah.
{Minpooree.
68thRegiment,Bareilly.
69thRegiment,Moultan.
70thRegiment,Barrackpore.
71stRegiment,Lucknow.
72dRegiment,Agra.
73dRegiment,Jumalpore.
74thRegiment,Cawnpore.
Irregular and Local Infantry.
1stOude Irregular Infantry,Persadpore.
2dOude Irregular Infantry,Secrora.
3dOude Irregular Infantry,Gonda.
4thOude Irregular Infantry,Lucknow.
5thOude Irregular Infantry,Durriabad.
6thOude Irregular Infantry,Fyzabad.
7thOude Irregular Infantry,Lucknow.
8thOude Irregular Infantry,Sultanpore.
9thOude Irregular Infantry,Seetapoor.
10thOude Irregular Infantry,Mullaong.
1stGwalior Contingent Infantry,Gwalior.
2dGwalior Contingent Infantry,Gwalior.
3dGwalior Contingent Infantry,Gwalior.
4thGwalior Contingent Infantry,Gwalior.
5thGwalior Contingent Infantry,Seepree.
6thGwalior Contingent Infantry,Lullutpore.
7thGwalior Contingent Infantry,Augur.
1stPunjaub Infantry,Kohat.
2dPunjaub Infantry,Kohat.
3dPunjaub Infantry,Kohat.
4thPunjaub Infantry,Dera Ghazi.
5thPunjaub Infantry,Bunnoo.
6thPunjaub Infantry,Dera Ismael.
1stSikh Infantry,Hazara.
2dSikh Infantry,Kangra.
3dSikh Infantry,Khan.
4thSikh Infantry,Umballa.
1stNagpoor Irregular Infantry,Seetabuldee.
2dNagpoor Irregular Infantry,Chandah.
3dNagpoor Irregular Infantry,Raypoor.
Regiment of Guides (foot and horse),Peshawur.
Regiment of Kelat-i-Ghilzi,Shubkuddur.
Regiment of Loodianah (Sikhs),Benares.
Regiment of Ferozpore (Sikhs),Mirzapore.
Ramgurh Light Infantry,Dorunda.
Hill Rangers,Bhagulpore.
Nusserree Rifles,Simla.
Pegu Light Infantry,Myan Owng.
Sirmoor Rifles,Almora.
Kumaon Battalion,Deyra.
Assam Light Infantry, 1st,Debroogurh.
Assam Light Infantry, 2ndGowhatti.
Mhairwarra Battalion,Bewar.
Aracan Battalion,Akyab.
Hurrianah Light Infantry,Hansi.
Silhet Light Infantry,Cherrah.
Malwah Bheel Corps,Sirdarpore.
Mewar Bheel Corps,Khairwarah.
Sebundee Corps,Darjeeling.
Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners.
Horse-artillery,1st Brigade:
3 European Troops.}
2 Native Troops.}Head-quarters:
Horse-artillery,2d Brigade:}Meerut.
3 European Troops.}Jullundur.
1 Native Troop.}Peshawur.
Horse-artillery,3d Brigade:}Umballa.
3 European Troops.}Cawnpore.
1 Native Troop.}Sealkote.
Foot-artillery,6 European Battalions.}Dumdum.
(4 Companies each.)}
Foot-artillery,3 Native Battalions.}
(6 Companies each.)}
Engineers, }Head-quarters:
Sappers and Miners,8 Companies,}Roorkee.
Mixed Corps—Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery.
Shekhawuttie Battalion,Midnapore.
Jhodpore Legion,Erinpoora.
Malwah Contingent,Mehidpore.
Bhopal Contingent,Sehore.
Kotah Contingent,Kurrowlee.
REGIMENTS AND STATIONS OF MADRAS ARMY—MAY 1857.
Sir Patrick Grant, Commander-in-chief.
European Cavalry.
12thLancers (Queen’s),Madras.
Native Cavalry.
1stMadras Light Cavalry,Trichinopoly.
2dMadras Light Cavalry,Sholapore.
3dMadras Light Cavalry,Bangalore.
4thMadras Light Cavalry,Kamptee.
5thMadras Light Cavalry,Bellary.
6thMadras Light Cavalry,Jaulnah.
7thMadras Light Cavalry,Secunderabad.
8thMadras Light Cavalry,Bangalore.
European Infantry.
74thFoot (Queen’s),Madras.
84thFoot (Queen’s),Burmah.[[43]]
1stEuropeans (East India Company’s),[Persia].
2dEuropeans (East India Company’s),Burmah.
3dEuropeans (East India Company’s),Secunderabad.
Native Infantry.
1stRegiment,[[44]]Secunderabad.
2dRegiment,Quilon.
3dRegiment,Cananore.
4thRegiment,Burmah.
5th[[44]]Regiment,Berhampore.
6thRegiment,Burmah.
7thRegiment,Moulmein.
8thRegiment,Rangoon.
9thRegiment,Samulcottah.
10thRegiment,Rangoon.
11thRegiment,Cananore.
12thRegiment,Madras.
13thRegiment,Moulmein.
14thRegiment,Singapore.
15thRegiment,Burmah.
16th[[44]]Regiment,Mangalore.
17thRegiment,Madras.
18thRegiment,Madras.
19thRegiment,Bangalore.
20thRegiment,French Rocks.
21stRegiment,Paulghaut.
22dRegiment,Secunderabad.
23dRegiment,Russelcondah.
24th[[44]]Regiment,Secunderabad.
25thRegiment,Trichinopoly.
26th[[44]]Regiment,Kamptee.
27thRegiment,Vellore.
28thRegiment,Hosungabad.
29thRegiment,Penang.
30thRegiment,Cuddapah.
31stRegiment,Vizianagram.
32dRegiment,Kamptee.
33dRegiment,Kamptee.
34thRegiment,Trichinopoly.
35thRegiment,Hurryhur.
36th[[44]]Regiment,Madras.
37th[[45]]Regiment,Burmah.
38th[[44]]Regiment,Singapore.
39thRegiment,Madras.
40thRegiment,Cuttack.
41stRegiment,Secunderabad.
42dRegiment,Secunderabad.
43dRegiment,Vizagapatam.
44thRegiment,Burmah.
45thRegiment,Rangoon.
46thRegiment,Henzana.
47thRegiment,Bellary.
48thRegiment,Moulmein.
49th[[44]]Regiment,Secunderabad.
50thRegiment,Bangalore.
51stRegiment,Pallamcottah.
52dRegiment,Mercara.
Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners.
Horse-artillery,4 European Troops.}
Horse-artillery,2 Native Troops.}Head-quarters:
Foot-artillery,4 European Battalions,
(4 Companies each.)		}
}		St Thomas’s Mount, Bangalore,
Foot-artillery,1 Native Battalion.
(6 Companies.)		}
}		Kamptee, Saugor, Secunderabad.
Engineers,Head-quarters: Fort St George.
Sappers and Miners,Head-quarters: Dowlaishweram.
REGIMENTS AND STATIONS OF BOMBAY ARMY—MAY 1857.
Sir Henry Somerset, Commander-in-chief.
European Cavalry.
14thLight Dragoons (Queen’s),Kirkee.
Native Regular Cavalry.
1stLancers,Nuseerabad.
2dLight Cavalry,Rajcote.
3dLight Cavalry,[Persia.]
Native Irregular Cavalry.
1stSinde Irregular Horse,Jacobabad.
2dSinde Irregular Horse,Jacobabad.
Poonah Irregular Horse,[Persia.]
Gujerat Irregular Horse,Ahmedabad.
South Mahratta Irregular Horse,[Persia.]
Cutch Irregular Horse,Bhooj.
European Infantry.
64thFoot (Queen’s),[Persia.]
78thFoot (Queen’s),Poonah.
86thFoot (Queen’s),Kurachee.
1stFusiliers (East India Company’s),Kurachee.
2dLight Infantry (East India Company’s),[Persia.]
3dLight Infantry (East India Company’s),Poonah.
Native Regular Infantry.
1stRegiment,[[46]]Baroda.
2d[[46]]Regiment,Ahmedabad.
3dRegiment,Sholapore.
4th[[47]]Regiment,[Persia.]
5thRegiment,Bombay.
6thRegiment,Poonah.
7thRegiment,Poonah.
8thRegiment,Baroda.
9thRegiment,Surat.
10thRegiment,Nuseerabad.
11thRegiment,Bombay.
12thRegiment,Deesa.
13thRegiment,Hydrabad.
14thRegiment,Kurachee.
15thRegiment,Bombay.
16thRegiment,Shikarpore.
17thRegiment,Bhooj.
18thRegiment,[Aden.]
19thRegiment,Mulligaum.
20thRegiment,[Persia]
21stRegiment,Neemuch.
22dRegiment,Satara.
23dRegiment,[Persia.]
24thRegiment,Ahmednuggur.
25thRegiment,Ahmedabad.
26thRegiment,[Persia.]
27thRegiment,Kolapore.
28thRegiment,Dharwar.
29thRegiment,Belgaum.
Native Irregular Infantry.
1stBelooch Battalion,Kurachee.
2dBelooch Battalion,[Persia.]
Khandeish Bheel Corps,Dhurrungaum.
Rutnagherry Rangers,Rutnagherry.
Sawunt Waree Corps,Sawunt Waree.
Satara Local Corps,Satara.
Kolapore Infantry Corps,Kolapore.
Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners.
Horse-artillery,1 European Brigade.}
(4 Troops.)[[48]]}Head-quarters:
Foot-artillery,2 European Battalions.}Bombay.
(4 Companies each.)}Ahmedabad.
Foot-artillery,2 Native Battalions.}Ahmednuggur.
(6 Companies each.)}
Engineers, Head-quarters: Bombay,
Sappers and Miners, Head-quarters: Poonah and Aden.

Jumma Musjid, Agra.—Mosque built by Shah Jehan in 1656.

[34].

Presidency.Queen’s Regiments.Company’s Regiments.Total.
Bengal,16319
Madras,437
Bombay,437
24933

[35].

Presidency.Queen’s Regiments.Company’s Regiments.Total.
Bengal,15419
Madras,549
Bombay,437
241135

[36]. First Division, under Major-general Stalker—

Natives,3550
Europeans,2270
————
5820

Second Division, under Brigadier-general Havelock—

Natives,4370
Europeans,1770
————
6140

[37]. In August 1857, of the whole railway distance marked out from Alexandria through Cairo to Suez, 205 miles in length, about 175 miles were finished—namely, from Alexandria to the crossing of the Nile, 65 miles; from the crossing of the Nile to Cairo, 65 miles; from Cairo towards Suez, 45 miles. The remainder of the journey consisted of 30 miles of sandy desert, not at that time provided with a railway, but traversed by omnibuses or vans.

[38]. ‘According to existing regulations of some years’ standing, every soldier on his arrival in India is provided with the following articles of clothing, in addition to those which compose his kit in this country:

‘Mounted Men.—4 white jackets, 6 pair of white overalls, 2 pair of Settringee overalls, 6 shirts, 4 pair of cotton socks, 1 pair of white braces.

‘Foot-soldiers.—4 white jackets, 1 pair of English summer trousers, 5 pair of white trousers, 5 white shirts, 2 check shirts, 1 pair of white braces.

‘These articles are not supplied in this country, but form a part of the soldier’s necessaries on his arrival in India, and are composed of materials made on the spot, and best suited to the climate.

‘During his stay in India, China, Ceylon, and at other hot stations, he is provided with a tunic and shell-jacket in alternate years; and in the year in which the tunic is not issued, the difference in the value of the two articles is paid to the soldier, to be expended (by the officer commanding) for his benefit in any articles suited to the climate of the station.

‘The force recently sent out to China and India has been provided with white cotton helmet and forage-cap covers.

‘Any quantity of light clothing for troops can be procured on the spot in India at the shortest notice.’

[39]. Grenadiers.

[40]. Volunteers.

[41]. Volunteers.

[42]. Goorkhas.

[43]. Removed to Calcutta.

[44]. Rifles.

[45]. Grenadiers.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE SIEGE OF DELHI: JUNE AND JULY.

While these varied scenes were being presented; while sepoy regiments were revolting throughout the whole breadth of Northern India, and a handful of British troops was painfully toiling to control them; while Henry Lawrence was struggling, and struggling even to death, to maintain his position in Oude; while John Lawrence was sagaciously managing the half-wild Punjaub at a troublous time; while Wheeler at Cawnpore, and Colvin at Agra, were beset in the very thick of the mutineers; while Neill and Havelock were advancing up the Jumna; while Canning was doing his best at Calcutta, Harris and Elphinstone at Madras and Bombay, and the imperial government at home, to meet the trying difficulties with a determined front—while all this was doing, Delhi was the scene of a continuous series of operations. Every eye was turned towards that place. The British felt that there was no security for their power in India till Delhi was retaken; the insurgents knew that they had a rallying-point for all their disaffected countrymen, so long as the Mogul city was theirs; and hence bands of armed men were attracted thither by antagonistic motives. Although the real siege did not commence till many weary weeks had passed, the plan and preparations for it must be dated from the very day when the startling news spread over India that Delhi had been seized by rebellious sepoys, under the auspices of the decrepit, dethroned, debauched representative of the Moguls.

It was, as we have already seen (p. [70]), on the morning of Monday the 11th of May, that the 11th and 20th regiments Bengal native infantry, and the 3d Bengal cavalry, arrived at Delhi after a night-march from Meerut, where they had mutinied on the preceding evening. At Delhi, we have also seen, those mutineers were joined by the 38th, 54th, and 74th native infantry. It was on that same 11th of May that evening saw the six mutinous regiments masters of the imperial city; and the English officers and residents, their wives and children, wanderers through jungles and over streams and rivers. What occurred within Delhi on the subsequent days is imperfectly known; the few Europeans who could not or did not escape were in hiding; and scanty notices only have ever come to light from those or other sources. A Lahore newspaper, three or four months afterwards, gave a narrative prepared by a native, who was within Delhi from the 21st of May to the 23d of June. Arriving ten days after the mutiny, he found the six regiments occupying the Selimgurh and Mohtabagh, but free to roam over the city; where the sepoys and sowars, aided by the rabble of the place, plundered the better houses and shops, stole horses from those who possessed them, ‘looted’ the passengers who crossed the Jumna by the bridge of boats, and fought with each other for the property which the fleeing British families had left behind them. After a few days, something like order was restored, by leaders who assumed command in the name of the King of Delhi. This was all the more necessary when new arrivals of insurgent troops took place, from Allygurh, Minpooree, Agra, Muttra, Hansi, Hissar, Umballa, Jullundur, Nuseerabad, and other places. The mutineers did not, at any time, afford proof that they were really well commanded; but still there was command, and the defence of the city was arranged on a definite plan. As at Sebastopol, so at Delhi; the longer the besiegers delayed their operations, the greater became the number of defenders within the place, and the stronger the defence-works.

It must be remembered, in tracing the history of the siege of Delhi, that every soldier necessary for forming the siege-army had to be brought from distant spots. The cantonment outside the city was wholly in the hands of the rebels; and not a British soldier remained in arms in or near the place. Mr Colvin at Agra speedily heard the news, but he had no troops to send for the recapture. General Hewett had a British force at Meerut—unskilfully handled, as many persons thought and still think; and it remained to be seen what arrangements the commander-in-chief could make to render this and other forces available for the reconquest of the important city.

Major-general Sir Henry Barnard was the medium of communication on this occasion. Being stationed at Umballa, in command of the Sirhind military division, he received telegraphic messages on the 11th of May from Meerut and Delhi, announcing the disasters at those places. He immediately despatched his aid-de-camp to Simla, to point out the urgent need for General Anson’s presence on the plains instead of among the hills. Anson, hearing this news on the 12th, first thought about his troops, and then about his own movements. Knowing well the extreme paucity of European regiments in the Delhi and Agra districts, and in all the region thence eastward to Calcutta, he saw that any available force to recover possession of Delhi must come chiefly from Sirhind and the Punjaub. Many regiments were at the time at the hill-stations of Simla, Dugshai, Kussowlie, Deyrah Dhoon, Subathoo, &c., where they were posted during a time of peace in a healthy temperate region; but now they had to descend from their sanitaria to take part in stern operations in the plains. The commander-in-chief sent instant orders to transfer the Queen’s 75th foot from Kussowlie to Umballa, the 1st and 2d Bengal Europeans from Dugshai to Umballa, the Sirmoor battalion from Deyrah Dhoon to Meerut, two companies of the Queen’s 8th foot from Jullundur to Phillour, and two companies of the Queen’s 81st foot, together with one company of European artillery, from Lahore to Umritsir. These orders given, General Anson himself left Simla on the evening of the 14th, and arrived at Umballa early on the 15th. Before he started, he issued the proclamation already adverted to, announcing to the troops of the native army generally that no cartridges would be brought into use against the conscientious wishes of the soldiery; and after he arrived at Umballa, fearing that his proclamation had not been strong enough, he issued another, to the effect that no new cartridges whatever should be served out—thereby, as he hoped, putting an end to all fear concerning objectionable lubricating substances being used; for he was not aware how largely hypocrisy was mixed up with sincerity in the native scruples on this point.

Anson and Barnard, when together at Umballa, had to measure well the forces available to them. The Umballa magazines were nearly empty of stores and ammunition; the artillery wagons were in the depôt at Phillour; the medical officers dreaded the heat for troops to move in such a season; and the commissariat was ill supplied with vehicles and beasts of burden and draught. The only effectual course was found to be, that of bringing small detachments from many different stations; and this system was in active progress during the week following Anson’s arrival at Umballa. On the 16th, troops came into that place from Phillour and Subathoo. On the 17th arrived three European regiments from the Hills,[[49]] which were shortly to be strengthened by artillery from Phillour. The prospect was not altogether a cheering one, for two of the regiments at the station were Bengal native troops (the 5th and 60th), on whose fidelity only slight reliance could be placed at such a critical period. In order that no time might he lost in forming the nucleus of a force for Delhi, some of the troops were despatched that same night; comprising one wing of a European regiment, a few horse, and two guns. On successive days, other troops took their departure as rapidly as the necessary arrangements could be made; but Anson was greatly embarrassed by the distance between Umballa and the station where the siege-guns were parked; he knew that a besieging army would be of no use without those essential adjuncts; and it was on that account that he was unable to respond to Viscount Canning’s urgent request that he would push on rapidly towards Delhi.

On the 23d of May, Anson sketched a plan of operations, which he communicated to the brigadiers whose services were more immediately at his disposal. Leaving Sir Henry Barnard in command at Umballa, he proposed to head the siege-army himself. It was to consist[[50]] of three brigades—one from Umballa, under Brigadier Halifax; a second from the same place, under Brigadier Jones; and a third from Meerut, under Brigadier Wilson. He proposed to send off the two brigades from Umballa on various days, so that all the corps should reach Kurnaul, fifty miles nearer to Delhi, by the 30th. Then, by starting on the 1st of June, he expected to reach Bhagput on the 5th, with all his Umballa force except the siege-train, which might possibly arrive on the 6th. Meanwhile Major-general Hewett was to organise a brigade at Meerut, and send it to Bhagput, where it would form a junction with the other two brigades. Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur being a somewhat important post, as a key to the Upper Doab, it was proposed that Brigadier Wilson should leave a small force there—consisting of a part of the Sirmoor battalion, a part of the Rampore horse, and a few guns—while he advanced with the rest of his brigade to Bhagput. Lastly, it was supposed that the Meerut brigade, by starting on the 1st or 2d of June, could reach the rendezvous on the 5th, and that then all could advance together towards Delhi. Such was General Anson’s plan—a plan that he was not destined to put in execution himself.

It will be convenient to trace the course of proceeding in the following mode—to describe the advance of the Meerut brigade to Bhagput, with its adventures on the way; then to notice in a similar way the march of the main body from Umballa to Bhagput; next the progress of the collected siege-army from the last-named town to the crest or ridge bounding Delhi on the north; and, lastly, the commencement of the siege-operations themselves—operations lamentably retarded by the want of a sufficient force of siege-guns.

Sir Henry Barnard.

Major-general Hewett, at Meerut, proceeded to organise a brigade in accordance with the plan laid down by General Anson: retaining at his head-quarters a force sufficient to protect Meerut and its neighbourhood. It was on the 27th of May that this brigade was ready, and that Colonel Archdall Wilson was placed in command of it—a gallant officer afterwards better known as Brigadier or General Wilson. The brigade was very small; comprising less than 500 of the 60th Rifles, 200 of the Carabiniers, one battery and a troop of artillery. They started on the evening of the 27th; and after marching during the cooler hours of the 28th and 29th, encamped on the morning of the 30th at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur (Ghazee-u-deen Nuggur, Guznee de Nuggur). This was a small town or village on the left bank of the river Hindoun, eighteen miles east of Delhi, important as commanding one of the passages over that river from Meerut, the passage being by a suspension-bridge.

On that same day, the 30th of May, Brigadier Wilson was attacked by the insurgents, who had sallied forth from Delhi for this purpose, and who were doubtless anxious to prevent a junction of the Meerut force with that from Kurnaul. The enemy appeared in force on the opposite side of the river, with five guns in position. Wilson at once sent a body of Rifles to command the suspension-bridge; while a few Carabiniers were despatched along the river-bank to a place where they were able to ford. The insurgents opened fire with their five heavy guns; whereupon the brigadier sent off to the attacked points all his force except sufficient to guard his camp; and then the contest became very brisk. The Rifles, under Colonel Jones, were ordered to charge the enemy’s guns; they rushed forward, disregarding grape and canister shot, and advanced towards the guns. When they saw a shell about to burst, they threw themselves down on their faces to avoid the danger, then jumped up, and off again. They reached the guns, drove away the gunners, and effected a capture. The enemy, beaten away from the defences of the bridge, retreated to a large walled village, where they had the courage to stand a hand-to-hand contest for a time—a struggle which no native troops could long continue against the British Rifles. As evening came on, the enemy fled with speed to Delhi, leaving behind them five guns, ammunition, and stores. Colonel Coustance followed them some distance with the Carabiniers; but it was not deemed prudent to continue the pursuit after nightfall. In this smart affair 11 were killed, 21 wounded or missing. Captain Andrews, with four of his riflemen, while taking possession of two heavy pieces of ordnance on the causeway, close to the toll-house of the bridge, were blown up by the explosion of an ammunition-wagon, fired by one of the sepoy gunners.

The mutineers did not allow Brigadier Wilson to remain many hours quiet. He saw parties of their horse reconnoitring his position all the morning of the 31st; and he kept, therefore, well on the alert. At one o’clock the enemy, supposed to be five thousand in number, took up a position a mile in length, on a ridge on the opposite side of the Hindoun, and about a mile distant from Wilson’s advanced picket. Horse-artillery and two 18-pounders were at once sent forward to reply to this fire, with a party of Carabiniers to support; while another party, of Rifles, Carabiniers, and guns, went to support the picket at the bridge. For nearly two hours the contest was one of artillery alone, the British guns being repeatedly and vainly charged by the enemy’s cavalry; the enemy’s fire then slackening, and the Rifles having cleared a village on the left of the toll-bar, the brigadier ordered a general advance. The result was as on the preceding day; the mutineers were driven back. The British all regretted they could not follow, and cut up the enemy in the retreat; but the brigadier, seeing that many of his poor fellows fell sun-stricken, was forced to call them back into camp when the action was over. This victory was not so complete as that on the preceding day; for the mutineers were able to carry off all their guns, two heavy and five light. The killed and wounded on the side of the English were 24 in number, of whom 10 were stricken down by the heat of the sun—a cause of death that shews how terrible must have been the ordeal passed through by all on such a day. Among the officers, Lieutenant Perkins was killed, and Captain Johnson and Ensign Napier wounded.

After the struggle of the 31st of May, the enemy did not molest Wilson in his temporary camp at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur. He provided for his wounded, refitted his brigade, and waited for reinforcements. On the morning of the 3d of June he was joined by another hundred of the 60th Rifles from Meerut, and by a Goorkha regiment, the Sirmoor battalion, from Deyrah Dhoon; and then lost no time in marching to the rendezvous. The route taken was very circuitous, hilly, and rugged; and the brigade did not reach the rendezvous head-quarters at Bhagput till the morning of the 6th.

We have now to trace the fortunes of the Umballa force. It was on the 23d of May, as has been shewn, that General Anson put forth the scheme for an advance towards Delhi, in which the brigade from Meerut was to take part. He left Umballa on the 24th, and reached Kurnaul on the 25th. All the proposed regiments and detachments from Umballa had by that time come in to Kurnaul except two troops of horse-artillery; but as the siege-train was far in arrear, Anson telegraphed to Calcutta that he would not be in a position to advance from Kurnaul towards Delhi until the 31st of the month. On the 26th, the commander-in-chief’s plans were ended by the ending of his life; an attack of cholera carried him off in a few hours. He hastily summoned Sir Henry Barnard from Umballa; and his last words were to place the Delhi force under the command of that officer. At that time news and orders travelled slowly between Calcutta and the northwest; for dâks were interrupted and telegraph wires cut; and it was therefore necessary that the command should at once be given to some one, without waiting for sanction from the governor-general. Viscount Canning heard the news on the 3d of June, and immediately confirmed the appointment of Sir Henry to the command of the siege-army; but that confirmation was not known to the besiegers till long afterwards. Major-general Reed, by the death of Anson, became provisional commander-in-chief; and he left Rawul Pindee on the 28th of May to join the head-quarters of the siege-army, but without superseding Barnard. It was a terrible time for all these generals: Anson and Halifax had both succumbed to cholera; Reed was so thoroughly broken down by illness that he could not command in person; and Barnard was summoned from a sick-bed by the dying commander-in-chief.

Sir Henry Barnard did not feel justified in advancing from Kurnaul until heavier guns than those he possessed could arrive from the Punjaub. On the 31st, a 9-pounder battery—those already at hand being only 6-pounders—came into camp; and the march from Kurnaul to Paniput commenced on that evening. Sir Henry expected to have met Brigadier Wilson at Raee, where there was a bridge of boats over the Jumna; but through some misconstruction or countermanding of orders, Wilson had taken a much more circuitous route by Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur, and could not join the Umballa brigade at the place or on the day expected. Barnard, after a brief sojourn and a slight change of plan, sent out elephants to aid in bringing forward the Meerut brigade, and advanced with the greater portion of his own force to Alipore (or Aleepore), where he arrived on the morning of the 5th of June. The chief artillery force being with the Meerut brigade, Sir Henry waited for Wilson, who effected a junction with him on the 6th; and on the 7th, the united forces were reorganised, at a point so near Delhi that the troops looked forward eagerly to a speedy encounter with the enemy.

Many of the soldiers who thus assembled at a place distant only a few miles from the famous city, which they all hoped soon to retake from the hands of the enemy, had marched great distances. Among the number was the corps of Guides, whose march was one of those determined exploits of which soldiers always feel proud, and to which they point as proof that they shrink not from fatigue and heat when a post of duty is assigned to them. This remarkable corps was raised on the conclusion of the Sutlej campaign, to act either as regular troops or as guides and spies, according as the exigencies of the service might require. The men were chosen for their sagacity and intelligence, as well as for their courage and hardihood. They were inhabitants of the Punjaub, but belonged to no one selected race or creed; for among them were to be found mountaineers, borderers, men of the plains, and half-wild warriors. Among them nearly all the dialects of Northern India were more or less known; and they were as familiar with hill-fighting as with service on the plains. They were often employed as intelligencers, and in reconnoitring an enemy’s position. They were the best of all troops to act against the robber hill-tribes, with whom India is so greatly infested. Among the many useful pieces of Indian service effected by Sir Henry Lawrence, was the suggestion of this corps; and Lord Hardinge, when commander-in-chief, acted on it in 1846. The corps was at first limited to one troop of cavalry and two companies of artillery, less than three hundred men in all; but the Marquis of Dalhousie afterwards raised it to three troops and six companies, about eight hundred and fifty men, commanded by four European officers and a surgeon. The men were dressed in a plain serviceable drab uniform. Their pay was eight rupees per month for a foot-soldier, and twenty-four for a trooper. These, then, were the Guides of whom English newspaper-readers heard so much but knew so little. They were stationed at a remote post in the Punjaub, not far from the Afghan frontier, when orders reached them to march to Delhi, a distance of no less than 750 miles. They set off, horse and foot together, and accomplished the distance in twenty-eight days—a really great achievement in the heat of an Indian summer; they suffered much, of course; but all took pride in their work, and obtained high praise from the commander-in-chief. One of the English officers afterwards declared that he had never before experienced the necessity of ‘roughing’ it as on this occasion. Captain Daly commanded the whole corps, while Captain Quintin Battye had special control of that portion of it which consisted of troopers.

The Guides, as has just been shewn, were an exceptional corps, raised among the natives for a peculiar service. But the siege-army contained gallant regiments of ordinary troops, whose marching was little less severe. One of these was the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers; a British regiment wholly belonging to the Company, and one which in old times was known as Lord Lake’s ‘dear old dirty shirts.’ On the 13th of May it was at Dugshai, a sanatarium and hill-station not far from Simla. Major Jacob rode in hastily from Simla, announced that Meerut and Delhi were in revolt, and brought an order for the regiment to march down to Umballa forthwith, to await further orders. At five o’clock that same day the men marched forth, with sixty rounds in pouch, and food in haversack. After a twenty-four miles’ walk they refreshed on the ground, supping and sleeping as best they could. At an hour after midnight they renewed their march, taking advantage—as troops in India are wont to do—of the cool hours of the night; they marched till six or seven, and then rested during the heat of the day at Chundeegurh. From five till ten in the evening they again advanced, and then had supper and three hours’ rest at Mobarrackpore. Then, after a seven hours’ march during the night of the 14th-15th, they reached Umballa—having accomplished sixty miles in thirty-eight hours. Here they were compelled to remain some days until the arrangements of the general in other directions were completed; and during this detention many of their number were carried off by cholera. At length four companies were sent on towards Kurnaul on the 17th, under Captain Dennis; while the other companies did not start till the 21st. The two wings of the regiments afterwards effected a junction, and marched by Paniput, Soomalka, and Sursowlie, to Raee, where they arrived on the 31st of May. Under a scorching sun every day, the troops were well-nigh beaten down; but the hope of ‘thrashing the rebels at Delhi’ cheered them on. One officer speaks of the glee with which he and his companions came in sight of a field of onions, ‘all green above and white below,’ and of the delightful relish they enjoyed during a temporary rest. The regiment, after remaining at Raee till the morning of the 5th of June, was then joined by its commandant, Colonel Welchman. Forming now part of Brigadier Showers’ brigade, the 1st Europeans marched to Alipore, where its fortunes were mixed up with those of the other troops in the besieging army.

Many at Calcutta wondered why Barnard did not make a more rapid advance from Paniput and Raee to Alipore; and many at Raee wondered why Wilson did not come in more quickly from Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur. The brigadier was said to have had his plans somewhat changed by suggestions from one of the Greatheds (Mr H. H. Greathed was agent, and Lieutenant W. H. Greathed, aid-de-camp, for the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces in the camp of the siege-army); while Sir Henry was anxious both to secure Wilson’s co-operation as soon as he started, and to preserve the health of his men during the trying season of heat. It is greatly to the credit of him and all the officers, that the various regiments, notwithstanding their long marches and fierce exposure to heat, reached Delhi in admirable health—leaving cholera many miles behind them. Having been joined by a siege-train on the 6th of June, and by Brigadier Wilson’s forces on the 7th, Barnard began at once to organise his plans for an advance. The reinforcements brought by Wilson were very miscellaneous;[[51]] but they had fought well on the banks of the Hindoun, and were an indispensable aid to the general. Major-general Reed arrived from Rawul Pindee at midnight, not to take the command from Barnard, but to sanction the line of proceedings as temporary commander-in-chief.

It was at one o’clock on the morning of the 8th of June that the siege-army set out from Alipore, to march the ten miles which separate that village from Delhi. Some of the reinforcements, such as the Guides, had not yet arrived; but the troops which formed the army of march on this morning, according to Sir Henry’s official dispatch, were as noted below.[[52]] They advanced to a village, the name of which is variously spelt in the dispatches, letters, and maps as Badulla Serai, Bardul-ki-Serai, Badulee-ke-Serai, Bardeleeke Serai, Budleeka Suraee, &c., about four miles from Delhi. Here the fighting began; here the besiegers came in contact with the enemy who had been so long sought. When within a short distance of the village, the sepoy watch-fires were seen (for day had scarcely yet broken). Suddenly a report was heard, and a shot and shell came roaring down the road to the advancing British force; and then it became necessary to plan a mode of dealing with the enemy, who were several thousands in number, in a strongly intrenched position, with artillery well served. Sir Henry Barnard intrusted Brigadiers Showers, Graves, and Grant with distinct duties—the first to advance with his brigade on the right of the main trunk-road; the second to take the left of the same road; and the third to cross the canal, advance quietly, and recross in the rear of the enemy’s position at such a time as a signal should direct them to effect a surprise. The guns were placed in and on both sides of the road. When the hostile forces met, the enemy opened a severe fire—a fire so severe, indeed, that the general resolved to stop it by capturing the battery itself. This was effected in a gallant manner by the 75th foot and the 1st Europeans; it was perilous work, for the troops had to pass over open ground, with very little shelter or cover. Several officers were struck down at this point; but the most serious loss was produced by a cannon-shot which killed Colonel Chester, adjutant-general of the army. The battery was charged so determinedly that the artillerymen were forced to flee, leaving their guns behind them; while the advance of the other two brigades compelled them to a general flight. Colonel Welchman, of the 1st Fusiliers, in his eagerness galloped after three of the mutineers and cut one of them down; but the act would have cost him his own life, had not a private of his regiment come opportunely to his aid.

A question now arose, whether to halt for a while, or push on towards Delhi. It was between five and six o’clock on a summer morning; and Barnard decided that it would be advisable not to allow the enemy time to reassemble in or near the village. The men were much exhausted; but after a hasty taste of rum and biscuit, they resumed their march. Advancing in two columns, Brigadiers Wilson and Showers fought their way along the main trunk-road; while Barnard and Graves turned off at Azadpore by the road which led through the cantonment of Delhi—a cantonment lately in the hands of the British authorities, but now deserted. This advance was a continuous fight the whole way: the rebels disputing the passage inch by inch. It then became perceptible that a rocky ridge which bounds Delhi on the north was bristling with bayonets and cannon, and that the conquest of this ridge would be a necessary preliminary to an approach to Delhi. Barnard determined on a rapid flank-movement to turn the right of the enemy’s position. With a force consisting of the 60th Rifles under Colonel Jones, the 2d Europeans under Captain Boyd, and a troop of horse-artillery under Captain Money, Sir Henry rapidly advanced, ascended the ridge, took the enemy in flank, compelled them to flee, and swept the whole length of the ridge—the enemy abandoning twenty-six guns, with ammunition and camp-equipage. The Rifles rendered signal service in this movement; taking advantage of every slight cover, advancing closer to the enemy’s guns than other infantry could safely do, and picking off the gunners. Brigadier Wilson and his companions were enabled to advance by the main road; and he and Barnard met on the ridge. From that hour the besieging army took up its position before Delhi—never to leave it till months of hard fighting had made them masters of the place. During the struggle on the ridge, two incidents greatly exasperated the troops: one was the discovery that a captured cart, which they supposed to contain ammunition, was full of the mangled limbs and trunks of their murdered fellow-Christians; the other was that two or three Europeans were found fighting for and with the rebels—probably soldiers of fortune, ready to sell their services to the highest bidders. Every European—and it was supposed that Delhi contained others of the kind—so caught was sure to be cut to pieces by the enraged soldiery, with a far more deadly hatred than sepoys themselves could have inspired. This day’s work was not effected without serious loss. Colonel Chester, we have said, was killed; as were Captains Delamain and Russell, and Lieutenant Harrison. The wounded comprised Colonel Herbert; Captains Dawson and Greville; Lieutenants Light, Hunter, Davidson, Hare, Fitzgerald, Barter, Rivers, and Ellis; and Ensign Pym. In all, officers and privates, there were 51 killed and 133 wounded. Nearly 50 horses were either killed or wounded.

Here, then, in the afternoon of the 8th of June, were the British posted before Delhi. It will be necessary to have a clear notion of the relative positions of the besiegers and the besieged, to understand the narrative which is to follow. Of Delhi itself an account is given elsewhere, with a brief notice of the defence-works;[[53]] but the gates and bastions must here be enumerated somewhat more minutely, as the plan of the siege mainly depended on them. A small branch or nullah of the Jumna is separated from the main stream by a sand-bank which forms an island; the junction or rejoining of the two takes place where the Jumna is crossed by a bridge of boats, and where the old fort called the Selimgurh was built. Beginning at this point, we trace the circuit of the wall and its fortifications. From the Selimgurh the wall borders—or rather bordered (for it will be well to speak in the past tense)—the nullah for about three-quarters of a mile, in a northwest direction, marked by the Calcutta Gate, a martello tower, the Kaila Gate, the Nuseergunje Bastion, and the Moree or Moira Bastion. The wall then turned sharply to the west, or slightly southwest; and during a length of about three-quarters of a mile presented the Moree Bastion just named, the Cashmere Gate, the Moree Gate, and the Shah Bastion. To this succeeded a portion about a mile in length, running nearly north and south, and marked by the Cabool Gate, a martello tower, Burn Bastion, the Lahore Gate, and the Gurstin Bastion. Then, an irregular polygonal line of two miles in length carried the wall round to the bank of the Jumna, by a course bending more and more to the east; here were presented the Turushkana Gate, a martello tower, the Ajmeer Gate, the Akbar Bastion, another martello tower, the Ochterlony Bastion, the Turcoman Gate, a third and a fourth martello towers, and the Delhi Gate. Lastly, along the bank of the river for a mile and a half, and separated from the water at most times by a narrow sandy strip, was a continuation of the wall, broken by the Wellesley and Nawab Bastions, the Duryagunje Gate, a martello tower, the Rajghat Gate, the wall of the imperial palace, and the defence-wall entirely surrounding the Selimgurh. Such were the numerous gates, bastions, and towers at that period; many parts of the wall and bastions were formed of masonry twelve feet thick, and the whole had been further strengthened by the rebels during four weeks of occupation. Outside the defences was a broad ditch twenty feet deep from the ground, or thirty-five from the top of the wall.

The position taken up by the besiegers may be thus briefly described. The camp was pitched on the former parade-ground of the deserted encampment, at a spot about a mile and a half from the northern wall of the city, with a rocky ridge acting as a screen between it and the city. This ridge was commanded by the rebels until the afternoon of the 8th; but from that time it was in the hands of the besiegers. The British line on this ridge rested on the left on an old tower used as a signal-post, often called the Flagstaff Tower; at its centre, upon an old mosque; and at its right, upon a house with enclosures strongly placed at the point where the ridge begins to slope down towards the plain. This house, formerly occupied by a Mahratta chief named Hindoo Rao, was generally known as Hindoo Rao’s house. Owing to the ridge being very oblique in reference to the position of the city, the right of the line was of necessity thrown much forward, and hence Hindoo Rao’s house became the most important post in the line. Near this house, owing to its commanding position, the British planted three batteries; and to protect these batteries, Rifles, Guides, and Sirmoor Goorkhas were posted within convenient distance. Luckily for the British, Hindoo Rao’s house was ‘pucka-built,’ that is, a substantial brick structure, and bore up well against the storm of shot aimed at it by the rebels.

When the British had effected a permanent lodgment on the ridge, with the camp pitched in the old cantonment behind the ridge as a screen, the time had arrived when the detailed plan for the siege was to be determined, if it had not been determined already. Some military critics averred that Sir Henry Barnard, only acquainted in a slight degree with that part of India, displayed indecision, giving and countermanding orders repeatedly, and leaving his subordinates in doubt concerning the real plan of the siege. Others contended that the sudden assumption of command on the death of General Anson, the small number of troops, and the want of large siege-guns, were enough to render necessary great caution in the mode of procedure. The truth appears to be, that the rebels were found stronger in Delhi, than was suspected before the siege-army approached close to the place; moreover, they had contested the advance from Alipore more obstinately than had been expected—shewing that, though not equal to British soldiers, it would not be safe to despise their prowess. The plan of attack would obviously depend upon the real or supposed defensive measures of the besieged. If the rebels risked a battle outside the walls, they might very likely be defeated and followed into the city and palace; but then would come a disastrous street-fighting against enemies screened behind loopholed walls, and firing upon besiegers much less numerous than themselves. Or the half-crumbled walls might easily be scaled by active troops; but as these troops would be a mere handful against large numbers, their success would be very doubtful. A third plan, suggested by some among the many advisers of that period, was to make an attack by water, or on the river-side. The Jumna is at certain times so shallow at Delhi as to be almost fordable, and leaving a strip of sand on which batteries might be planted; these batteries might breach the river-wall of the palace, and so disturb the garrison as to permit a large body of the besiegers to enter under cover of the firing; but a rise in the river would fatally affect this enterprise. A fourth plan suggested was to attack near the Cashmere Gate, on the north side of the city; the siege-army would in this case be protected on its left flank by the river, and might employ all its force in breaching the wall between the gate and the river; the guns would render the mainguard untenable; when the assault was made, it would be on a part where there is much vacant ground in the interior; and the besieging troops would have a better chance than if at once entangled among the intricacies of loopholed houses. Any project for starving out the garrison, if it ever entered the mind of any soldier, was soon abandoned; the boundary was too extensive, the gates too many, and the besiegers too few, to effect this.

Hindoo Rao’s House—Battery in front.

During the early days after the arrival of the British, indications appeared of an intention to blow open the Cashmere Gate, and effect a forcible entry into the city at once; but these indications soon ceased; and the besiegers found themselves compelled rather to resist attacks than to make them; for the enemy, strong in numbers, made repeated sorties from the various gates of the city, and endeavoured to dislodge the British. One such sortie was made about noon on the 9th, within twenty-four hours after the arrival of the besiegers; the enemy were, however, easily repulsed, and driven in again. The corps of Guides met with a loss on this day which occasioned much regret. Among those who accompanied the hardy men all the way from the Afghan frontier was Captain Quintin Battye, a young officer much beloved as commandant of the cavalry portion of the corps. They arrived on the 8th; and on the next day poor Battye was shot through the body; he lived twenty-four hours in great agony, and then sank. The Guides had a large share in this day’s work; many of them fell, in dislodging the enemy from a rocky position which they temporarily occupied. On the 10th a little skirmishing took place, but not so serious as on the preceding day; it was found, however, that the white shirts of the men were a little too conspicuous; and they underwent an extemporaneous process of dyeing to deepen the colour. On the 12th, early in the morning, the enemy made a sudden attack on both flanks; but all points were speedily defended. They were first driven back on the left; then, after a repulse on the right, they advanced a second time under the cover of thickly wooded gardens near the Subzee Mundee—a suburb of Delhi about a mile and a quarter northwest of the Cabool Gate. Major Jacob was then sent against them with some of the Bengal Europeans; he beat them back till they got beyond the suburb, and then returned to the camp. This morning’s affair was supposed to have cost the enemy 250 men; the British loss was very small. On this day, the British had the mortification of seeing two regiments of Rohilcund mutineers, the 60th native infantry and the 4th native cavalry, enter Delhi with bands playing and colours flying; the defiant manner was quite as serious an affair as the augmentation of the strength of the garrison. On the 13th a large enclosure in advance of the British left, known as Metcalfe House, was occupied by them, and the erection of a battery of heavy guns and mortars commenced.

Not a day passed without some such struggles as have just been adverted to. The besieging of the city had not really commenced, for the British had not yet a force of artillery sufficient for that purpose; indeed, they were now the besieged rather than the besiegers; for the enemy came out of the city—horse, foot, and guns—and attempted to effect a surprise on one part or other of the position on the ridge. Against the battery at Metcalfe House a sortie was made on the 15th, and another was made on the same day at the right of the line. On the 17th an exciting encounter took place. A shot from the city struck the corner of Hindoo Rao’s house, and glancing off, killed Lieutenant Wheatley of the Goorkhas. It was then suspected that the enemy, besides their attacks on this house in front, were throwing up a battery outside the western gates of the town, at a large building known as the Eedghah, formerly used as a serai. Thereupon a force was immediately organised, consisting of horse-artillery, cavalry, Goorkhas, and Rifles, to drive them away from that position. They passed through the Subzee Mundee to the Eedghah, drove out the enemy, and captured the only gun which had yet been placed there. One of the officers on this duty had a finger shot off, a bullet through the wrist, another through the cheek, and another which broke the collar-bone; yet he recovered, to fight again.

On the 19th of June it came to the knowledge of Brigadier Grant that the enemy intended to attack the camp in the rear; and as the safety of the camp had been placed under his keeping, he made instant preparations to frustrate the insurgents. These troops are believed to have been augmentations of the insurgent forces, consisting of the 15th and 30th native regiments from Nuseerabad. The brigadier advanced with six guns and a squadron of lancers to reconnoitre, and found the enemy in position half a mile in rear of the Ochterlony Gardens, northwest of the camp. Troops quickly arrived, and a rapid exchange of fire began, the enemy being strong in artillery as well as in infantry. Just as the dusk of the evening came on, the enemy, by a series of skilful and vigorous attacks, aided by well-served artillery, very nearly succeeded in turning the flank of the British, and in capturing two guns; but both these disasters were frustrated. The dusk deepened into darkness; but the brigadier felt that it would not do to allow the enemy to occupy that position during the night. A charge was made with great impetuosity by horse and foot, with so much success, that the enemy were driven back quite into the town. The brigadier had to regret the loss of Colonel Yule of the 9th Lancers, who was knocked off his horse, and not found again by his men till next morning; when they were shocked to see him dead and mangled, with both thighs broken, a ball through the head just over the eyes, his throat cut, and his hands much gashed. He had been on leave of absence in Cashmere, but directly he heard of the work to be done, travelled night and day till he reached his regiment just before its arrival at Delhi. Lieutenant Alexander was also among the killed. Captain Daly of the Guides, and six other officers, were wounded. All the officers of the Guides, but one, received wounds. Altogether, the day’s fighting resulted to the British in the loss of 19 killed and 77 wounded; and it was a source of much regret that a few of these fell by the hands of their own comrades, while fighting in some confusion as darkness approached. No less than sixty horses fell. The brigadier did not fail to mention the names of three private soldiers—Thomas Hancock, John Purcell, and Roopur Khan—who behaved with great gallantry at a critical moment.

Sir Henry Barnard, for very cogent reasons, watched every movement on the part of the mutineers who sallied forth from Delhi. On the 22d, he saw a body of them come out of the city; and as they were not seen to return at night, he suspected a masked attack. At six in the evening, he sent out a party of infantry, Guides, and Sappers, to demolish two bridges which carried the great road across a canal westward of the camp, and over which the enemy were in the habit of taking their artillery and columns when they wished to attack the camp in the rear; this was a work of six hours, warmly contested but successfully accomplished. On the 23d, Sir Henry, expecting a valuable convoy from the Punjaub, adopted prompt measures for its protection. He sent out a strong escort, which safely brought the convoy into camp. Scarcely had this been effected, when his attention was drawn to the right of his position, near Hindoo Rao’s house. It was afterwards ascertained that the enemy, remembering the 23d of June as the centenary of the battle of Plassy, had resolved to attempt a great victory over the British on that day; incited, moreover, by the circumstance that two festivals, one Mussulman and the other Hindoo, happened to occur on that day; and they emerged from the city in vast force to effect this. They commenced their attack on the Subzee Mundee side, having a strong position in a village and among garden-walls. Here a combat was maintained during the whole of the day, for the rebels continued their attacks with much pertinacity; they lodged themselves in loopholed houses, a serai, and a mosque, whence they could not be dislodged till they had wrought much mischief by musketry. At length, however, they were driven back into the city. The value of the precaution taken on the preceding evening, in destroying the bridges, was made fully evident; for the rebels were unable to cross the canal to get to the rear of the camp. The 1st Europeans had a desperate contest in the Subzee Mundee, where street-fighting, and firing from windows and house-tops, continued for many hours. The British troops suffered terribly from the heat of the midsummer sun, to which they were exposed from sunrise to sunset. Many officers were brought away sun-struck and powerless. The Guides fought for fifteen hours uninterruptedly, with no food, and only a little water. At one o’clock, when the enemy were strengthened by large reinforcements from the city, the Guides found themselves without ammunition, and had to send back to the camp for more; but as great delay occurred, they were in imminent peril of annihilation. Fortunately a corps of Sikhs, who had arrived at camp that morning, rushed forward at a critical moment, and aided the Guides in driving back the enemy. One of the incidents of the day has been thus narrated, shewing how little scruple a Goorkha felt when he met a sepoy: ‘In the intense heat, a soldier of the 2d Europeans and a Goorkha sought the shade and protection of a house near the Subzee Mundee, a window of which looked into a lane where they were seated. Not long had they rested when, from the open window, was seen to project the head of a sepoy. Now all Hindoos have what ladies at home call “back-hair,” and this is usually turned up into a knot; by this the unlucky wretch was at once seized, and before he could even think of resistance, his head was at a stroke severed from his body by the sharp curved knife of the Goorkha!’ This day’s work was in every way very severe, and shewed the besiegers that the rebels were in great strength. Lieutenant Jackson was killed; Colonel Welchman, Captain Jones, and Lieutenant Murray, wounded. The total loss of the day was 39 killed and 121 wounded. The enemy’s loss was very much larger; indeed, one of the estimates raised the number up to a thousand. The loss appears to have somewhat dispirited the mutineers, for they made very few attacks on the following three days.

But although there was a temporary cessation, Sir Henry Barnard, in his official dispatches, shewed that he was much embarrassed by this condition of affairs. His forces were few; those of the enemy were very large; and the attacks were rendered more harassing by the uncertainty of the point on which they would be made, and the impossibility of judging whether they were about to be made on more points than one. The onslaughts could only be successfully repulsed by the untiring and unflinching gallantry of a small body of men. The enemy, instead of being beleaguered within Delhi, were free to emerge from the city and attack the besiegers’ position. The British did not complain: it was not their wont; but they suffered greatly from this harassing kind of warfare. Reinforcements were slowly coming in; in the last week of June the Europeans numbered about three thousand; and they were well satisfied with the native corps who fought by their side—the Guides, the Goorkhas, and the Sikhs—all of whom joined very heartily in opposing the rebel sepoys. The siege-material at this time consisted of five batteries, mounting about fifteen guns and mortars, placed on various points of the ridge; the bombardment of the city by these guns was not very effective, for the distance averaged nearly a mile, and the guns were not of large calibre.

The interval from the 23d to the 30th of June passed much in the same way as the two preceding weeks; the British siege-guns wrought very little mischief to the city; while the enemy occasionally sallied forth to attack either the camp or the works on the ridge. It was often asserted, and facts seemed to corroborate the statement, that when mutinous regiments from other places appeared before Delhi, they were not afforded reception and shelter until they had earned it by making an attack on the British position; and thus it happened that the besiegers were opposed by a constantly increasing number of the enemy. The defenders of the garrison fitted up a large battery on the left of the Cashmere Gate, one at the gate itself, one at the Moree Gate, one at the Ajmeer Gate, and one directly opposite Hindoo Rao’s house; against these five batteries, for a long time, the British had only three; so that the besieged were stronger than the besiegers in every way. The gunners, too, within Delhi, were fully equal to those of the siege-army in accuracy of aim; their balls and shells fell near Hindoo Rao’s house so thickly as to render that post a very perilous one to hold. One shell entered the gateway, and killed eight or nine officers and men who were seeking shelter from the mid-day heat.

The General and his Staff at the Mosque Picket before Delhi.

It was pretty well ascertained, before June was half over, that Delhi was not to be taken by a coup de main; and when Sir John Lawrence became aware of that fact, he sent reinforcements down from the Punjaub as rapidly as they could be collected. Every sepoy regiment that was either disbanded or disarmed lessened his own danger, for he trusted well in his Sikhs, Punjaubees, and Guides; and on that account he was able to send Europeans and artillery. The reserve and depôt companies of the regiments already serving before Delhi were sent down from the hills to join their companions. A wing of H.M. 61st foot, a portion of the 8th, artillery from Jullundur, and artillerymen from Lahore, followed the Guides and Sikhs, and gradually increased the besieging force. Then came Punjaub rifles and Punjaub light horse; and there were still a few Hindustani cavalry and horse-artillery in whom their officers placed such unabated confidence that they were permitted to take part in the siege-operations, on the ground that there were Europeans enough to overawe them if they became unruly. These reinforcements of course came in by degrees: we mention them all in one paragraph, but many weeks elapsed before they could reach the Delhi camp. Fortunately, supplies were plentiful; the country between Delhi and the Sutlej was kept pretty free from the enemy; and the villagers were glad to find good customers for the commodities they had to sell. It hence arose that, during the later days of June, the British were well able to render nugatory all sallies made by the enemy; they had food and beverages in good store; and they were free from pestilential diseases. On the other hand, they suffered intensely from the heat; and were much dissatisfied at the small progress made towards the conquest of the city. Some expressed their dissatisfaction by adverse criticisms on the general’s tactics; while others admitted that a storming of Delhi would not be prudent without further reinforcements. As to the heat, the troops wrote of it in all their letters, spoke of it in all their narrations. One officer, who had seventy-two hours of outpost-duty on a plain without the slightest shelter, described his sensation in the daytime as if ‘a hot iron had been going into his head.’ On a certain day, when some additional troops arrived at camp after a twenty-two miles’ march, they had scarcely lain down to rest when they were ordered out to repel an attack by the enemy: they went, and gallantly did the work cut out for them; but some of them ‘were so exhausted that they sank down on the road, even under fire, and went off to sleep.’

July arrived. Brigadier Chamberlain had recently joined the camp, and reinforcements were coming in; but on the other hand the rebels were increasing their strength more rapidly than the British. The enemy began the month by an attack which tried the prowess of the Guides and Punjaubees, in a manner that brought great praise to those corps. In the afternoon of the 1st, Major Reid, who was established with the head-quarters of the Sirmoor battalion at Hindoo Rao’s house, observed the mutineers turning out in great force from the Ajmeer and Turcoman Gates, and assembling on the open plain outside. Then, looking round on his rear right, he saw a large force, which was supposed to have come out of Delhi on the previous day; comprising thirteen guns and mortars, besides cavalry and infantry. The two forces joined about a mile from the Eedghah Serai. At sunset 5000 or 6000 infantry advanced, passed through the Pahareepore and Kissengunje suburbs, and approached towards the British lines, taking cover of the buildings as they passed. The extreme right of the line was attacked at the Pagoda picket, which was held only by 150 Punjaubees and Guides, under Captain Travers. Major Reid sent him a message to reserve his fire till the enemy approached near, in order to husband his resources; while 150 British were being collected to send to his aid. Throughout the whole night did this little band of 300 men resist a large force of infantry and artillery, never yielding an inch, but defending the few works which had been constructed in that quarter. At daybreak, the enemy renewed the attacks with further troops; but Reid brought a few more of his gallant fellows to repel them. Evening, night, morning, noon, all passed in this way; and it was not until the contest had continued twenty-two hours that the enemy finally retired into the city. There may have been sufficient military reasons why larger reinforcements were not sent to Major Reid from the camp behind the ridge; but let the reasons have been what they may, the handful of troops fought in the ratio of hundreds against thousands, and never for an instant flinched during this hard day’s work. Major Reid had the command of all the pickets and defence-works from Hindoo Rao’s house to the Subzee Mundee. During the first twenty-eight days of the siege, his positions were attacked no fewer than twenty-four times; yet his singular medley of troops—Rifles, Guides, Sikhs, Punjaubees, Goorkhas, &c.—fought as if for one common cause, without reference to differences of religion or of nation. The officers, in these and similar encounters, often passed through an ordeal which renders their survival almost inconceivable. An artillery officer, in command of two horse-artillery guns, on one occasion was surprised by 120 of the enemy’s cavalry; he had no support, and could not apply his artillery because his guns were limbered up. He fired four barrels of his revolver and killed two men; and then knocked a third off his horse by throwing his empty pistol at him. Two horsemen thereupon charged full tilt, and rolled him and his horse over. He got up, and seeing a man on foot coming at him to cut him down, rushed at him, got inside his sword, and hit him full in the face with his fist. At that moment he was cut down from behind; and was only saved from slaughter by a brother-officer, who rode up, shot one sowar and sabred another, and then carried him off, bleeding but safe.

On the 2d, the Bareilly mutineers—or rather Rohilcund mutineers from Bareilly, Moradabad, and Shahjehanpoor, consisting of five regiments and a battery of artillery—crossed the Jumna and marched into Delhi, with bands playing and colours flying—a sight sufficiently mortifying to the besiegers, who were powerless to prevent it; for any advance in that direction would have left the rear of their camp exposed. It afterwards became known that the Bareilly leader was appointed general within Delhi. The emergence of a large body of the enemy from the city on the night of the 3d of July, induced Sir Henry Barnard to send Major Coke to oppose them; with a force made up of portions of the Carabiniers, 9th Lancers, 61st foot, Guides, Punjaubees, horse and foot artillery. Coke started at two in the morning of the 4th. He went to Azadpore, the spot where the great road and the road from the cantonment met. He found that the enemy had planned an expedition to seize the British depôt of stores at Alipore, and to cut off a convoy expected to arrive from the Punjaub. When the major came up with them near the Rohtuk road, he at once attacked them. During many hours, his troops were confronted with numbers greatly exceeding their own; and what with the sun above and swamps below, the major’s men became thoroughly exhausted by the time they returned to camp. The rebels, it was true, were driven back; but they got safely with their guns into Delhi; and thus was one more added to the list of contests in which the besiegers suffered without effecting anything towards the real object of the siege. The enemy’s infantry on this occasion seem to have comprised the Bareilly men. An officer of the Engineers, writing concerning this day’s work, said: ‘The Bareilly rascals had the impudence to come round to our rear, and our only regret is that one of them ever got back. I was out with the force sent against them, and cannot say that I felt much pity for the red-coated villains with “18,” “28,” and “68” on their buttons.’ This officer gives expression to the bitter feeling that prevailed generally in the British camp against the ‘Pandies’[[54]] or mutinous sepoys, for their treachery, black ingratitude, and cruelty. ‘This is a war in its very worst phase, for generosity enters into no one’s mind. Mercy seems to have fled from us; and if ever there was such a thing as war to the knife, we certainly have it here. If any one owes these sepoys a grudge, I think I have some claim to one; but I must say that I cannot bring myself to put my sword through a wounded man. I cannot say that I grieve much when I see it done, as it invariably is; but grieve or not as you please—he is a clever man who can now keep back a European from driving his bayonet through a sepoy, even in the agonies of death.’ These were the motives and feelings that rendered the Indian mutiny much more terrible than an ordinary war. In allusion to sentiments at home, that the British soldiers were becoming cruel and blood-thirsty, the same officer wrote to a friend: ‘If you hear any such sentiments, by all means ship off their propounder to this country at once. Let him see one half of what we have seen, and compare our brutality with that of the rebels; then send him home again, and I think you will find him pretty quiet on the subject for the rest of his life.’

A new engineer officer, Colonel Baird Smith, arrived to supersede another whose operations had not met with approval. The colonel took into consideration, with his commander, a plan for blowing in the Moree and Cashmere Gates, and escalading the Moree and Cashmere Bastions; but the plan was abandoned on account of the weakness of the siege-army.

The 5th of July was marked by the death of Major-general Sir Henry Barnard, who had held practical command of the Delhi field-force during about five weeks, and had during that time borne much anxiety and suffering. He knew that his countrymen at Calcutta as well as in England would be continually propounding the question, ‘Why is Delhi not yet taken?’ and the varied responsibilities connected with his position necessarily gave him much disquietude. During the fierce heat of the 4th he was on horseback nearly all day, directing the operations against the Bareilly mutineers. Early on the following morning he sent for Colonel Baird Smith, and explained his views concerning the mode in which he thought the siege-operations should be carried on; immediately afterwards he sent for medical aid; and before many hours had passed, he was a corpse. Many of his friends afterwards complained that scant justice was done to the memory of Sir Henry Barnard; in the halo that was destined to surround the name of Wilson, men forgot that it was his predecessor who had borne all the burden of collecting the siege-force, of conducting it to the ridge outside Delhi, and of maintaining a continued series of conflicts almost every day for five or six weeks.

Major-general Reed, invalid as he was, immediately took the command of the force after Barnard’s death; leaving, however, the active direction mainly to Brigadier Chamberlain. It became every day more and more apparent that, notwithstanding reinforcements, the British artillery was too weak to cope with that of the enemy—whose artillerymen, taught by those whom they now opposed, had become very skilful; and whose guns were of heavier metal. The besiegers’ batteries were still nearly a mile from the walls, for any nearer position could not be taken up without terrible loss. To effect a breach with a few 18-pounders at this distance was out of the question; and although the field-guns were twenty or thirty in number, they were nearly useless for battering down defences.

The attacks from the enemy continued much as before, but resistance to them became complicated by a new difficulty. There were two regiments of Bengal irregular cavalry among the troops in the siege-army, and there were a few ‘Poorbeahs’ or Hindustanis in the Punjaub regiments. These men were carefully watched from the first; and it became by degrees apparent that they were a danger instead of an aid to the British. Early in the month a Brahmin subadar in a Punjaubee regiment was detected inciting his companions-in-arms to murder their officers, and go over to Delhi, saying it was God’s will the Feringhee ‘raj’ should cease. One of the Punjaubees immediately revealed this plot to the officers, and the incendiary was put to death that same evening. The other Poorbeahs in the regiment were at once paid up, and discharged from the camp—doubtless swelling the number of insurgents who entered Delhi. Again, on the 9th, a party of the enemy’s cavalry, while attempting an attack on the camp, was joined by some of the 9th irregulars belonging to the siege-army, and with them tried to tempt the men of the native horse-artillery. They were beaten back; and the afternoon of the same day, the 9th of July, was marked by one of the many struggles in the Subzee Mundee, all of which ended by the enemy being driven into Delhi. If the rebel infantry had fought as well as the artillery, it might have gone hard with the besiegers, for the sallies were generally made in very great force. The rebels counted much on the value of the Subzee Mundee; as a suburb, it had been rendered a mass of ruins by repeated conflicts, and these ruins precisely suited the sepoy mode of fighting. The sepoys found shelter in narrow streets and old houses, and behind garden-walls, besides being protected by heavy guns from the city. In this kind of skirmishing they were not far inferior to their opponents; but in the open field, and especially under a charge with the bayonet, they were invariably beaten, let the disparity of numbers be what it might. All the officers, in their letters, spoke of the terrible efficacy of the British bayonet; the sepoys became paralysed with terror when this mode of attack was resorted to. On one occasion they were constructing a defensive post at the Eedghah; the British attacked it and drove in the entrance; there was no exit on the other side, and the defenders were all bayoneted in the prison-house which they had thus unwittingly constructed for themselves.

On the morning of the 14th, the mutineers poured out in great numbers, and attacked the batteries at Hindoo Rao’s house, and the picket in the Subzee Mundee. The troops stationed at those places remained on the defensive till three o’clock in the afternoon, struggling against a force consisting of many regiments of insurgent infantry, a large body of cavalry, and several field-pieces. It was indeed a most determined attack, supported, moreover, by a fire of heavy artillery from the walls. Why it was that so many hours elapsed before succour was sent forth, is not very clear; but the troops who had to bear the brunt of this onslaught comprised only detachments of the 60th and 75th foot, with the Goorkhas of the Sirmoor battalion and the infantry of the Guides. A column was formed, however, at the house above named, under Brigadier Showers, consisting of the 1st Punjaub infantry, the 1st Europeans, and six horse-artillery guns. Then commenced a double contest; Showers attacking the enemy at the picket-house, and Major Reid at Hindoo Rao’s house. After a fierce struggle the enemy were driven back into the city, and narrowly escaped losing some of their guns. It was a day’s work that could not be accomplished without a serious loss. None of the officers, it is true, were killed in the field; but the list of wounded was very large, comprising Brigadier Chamberlain (at that time adjutant-general of the army), and Lieutenants Roberts, Thompson, Walker, Geneste, Carnegie, Rivers, Faithful, Daniell, Ross, Tulloch, Chester, Shebbeare, Hawes, Debrett, and Pollock. Tho wounding of so many subalterns shews how actively different companies of troops must have been engaged. Altogether, the operations of this day brought down 15 men killed and 193 officers and men wounded.

The heat was by this time somewhat alleviated by rains, which, however, brought sickness and other discomforts with them. Men fell ill after remaining many hours in damp clothes; and it was found that the fierce heat was, after all, not so detrimental to health. Many young officers, it is true, lately arrived from England, and not yet acclimatised, were smitten down by sun-stroke, and a few died of apoplexy; but it is nevertheless true that the army was surprisingly healthy during the hot weather. One of the Carabiniers, writing in the rainy season, said: ‘The last three days have been exceedingly wet; notwithstanding which we are constantly in the saddle; no sooner has one alarm subsided than we are turned out to meet the mutineers in another quarter.’ An officer of Sappers, employed in blowing up a bridge, said: ‘We started about two P.M., and returned about twelve at night drenched through and thoroughly miserable, it having rained the whole time.’

The state of affairs in the middle of July was peculiar. It seemed to the nation at home that the army of Delhi ought to be strong enough to retake the city, especially when a goodly proportion of the number were Europeans. Yet that this was not the case, was the opinion both of Reed and of Wilson; although many daring spirits in the army longed to breach the walls and take the place by storm. Twelve hundred wounded and sick men had to be tended; all the others were kept fully employed in repelling the sallies of the enemy. Major-general Reed, who ought never to have assumed the command at all—so broken-down was he in health—gave in altogether on the 17th, after the wounding of Chamberlain; he named Brigadier Wilson, who had brought forward the Meerut brigade, as his successor. The new commander immediately wrote to Sir John Lawrence a letter (in French, as if distrusting spies), in which he candidly announced that it would be dangerous and disastrous to attempt a storm of the city; that the enemy were in great force, well armed, strong in position, and constantly reinforced by accessions of insurgent regiments; that they daily attacked the British, who could do little more than repel the attacks; that his army was gradually diminishing by these daily losses; that it would be impossible to take Delhi without at least one more European regiment and two more Sikh regiments from the Punjaub; and that if those additions did not speedily reach him, he would be obliged to raise the siege, retreat to Kurnaul, and leave the country all around Delhi to be ravaged by the mutineers. This letter shewed the gravity with which Brigadier Wilson regarded the state of matters at that critical time. Lawrence fully recognised the importance of the issue, for he redoubled his exertions to send 900 European Fusiliers and 1600 Punjaubees to the camp.

General Reed’s resignation was twofold. He resigned the provisional command-in-chief of the Bengal army as soon as he was officially informed of the assumption of that office by Sir Patrick Grant; and he resigned the command of the Delhi field-force to Brigadier Wilson, because his health was too far broken to permit him to take part in active duties. It was the virtual ending of his part in the wars of the mutiny; he went to the hills, in search of that health which he could never have recovered in the plains.

Among the many contests in the second half of the month was one near Ludlow Castle, a name given to the residence of Mr Fraser, the commissioner of Delhi, one of those foully murdered on the 11th of May. This house was within half a mile of the Cashmere Gate, near the river; the enemy were found to be occupying it; but their works were attacked and destroyed by a force under Brigadier Showers; while Sir T. Metcalfe’s house, further northward, was taken and strengthened as a defensive post by the British.

Mr Colvin, writing from Agra to Havelock on the 22d of July, giving an account of such proceedings at Delhi as had come to his knowledge, made the following observations on the character which the struggle had assumed: ‘The spirit by which both Hindoos and Mohammedans act together at Delhi is very remarkable. You would well understand a gathering of Mohammedan fanatical feeling at that place; but what is locally, I find, known by the name of “Pandyism,” is just as strong. Pandies are, among the Hindoos, all Brahmins. What absurd, distorted suspicions of our intentions (which have been so perfectly innocent towards them) may have been first worked upon, it is scarcely possible to say; but the thing has now got beyond this, and it is a struggle for mastery, not a question of mistrust or discontent. Mohammedans seem to be actively misleading Hindoos for their own purposes. Sir Patrick Grant will not know the Bengal army again. The Goorkhas, Sikhs, and Punjaubee Mohammedans have remained quite faithful, and done their duty nobly at Delhi; the bad spirit is wholly with the Poorbeahs.’ Mr Greathed, Colvin’s commissioner with the siege-army, made every attempt to ascertain, by means of spies and deserters, what were the alleged and what the real motives for the stubborn resistance of the mutineers to British rule. He wrote on this subject: ‘The result of all questionings of sepoys who have fallen into our hands, regarding the cause of the mutiny, is the same. They invariably cite the “cartouche” (cartridge) as the origin; no other cause of complaint has been alluded to. His majesty of Delhi has composed a couplet, to the effect that the English, who boast of having vanquished rods of iron, have been overthrown in Hindostan by a single cartridge. A consciousness of power had grown up in the army, which could only be exercised by mutiny. The cry of the cartridges brought the latent spirit of revolt into action.’ Mr Muir of Agra, commenting on these remarks, said: ‘I fully believe this to be the case with the main body of the sepoys. There were ringleaders, no doubt, who had selfish views, and possibly held correspondence with the Delhi family, &c.; but they made use of the cartridge as their argument to gain over the mass of the army to the belief that their caste was threatened.’

General Wilson.

It will be unnecessary to trace day by day the struggles outside Delhi. They continued as before; but the frequency was somewhat lessened, and the danger also, for the defence-works on the ridge had been much strengthened. Every bridge over the canal was blown up, except that on the main road to Kurnaul and Umballa; and thus the enemy could not easily attack the camp in the rear. It was not yet really a siege, for the British poured very few shot or shell into the city or against the walls. It was not an investment; for the British could not send a single regiment to the southwest, south, or east of the city. It was little more than a process of waiting till further reinforcements could arrive.

At the close of July, Brigadier Wilson forwarded to the government a very exact account of the state of his army, shewing what were his resources for maintaining the siege on the one hand, and repelling attacks by the enemy on the other. We present the chief particulars in a foot-note, in an altered and more condensed form.[[55]] It appears that out of this army of something more than 8000 men, above 1100 were rendered non-effective by sickness or wounds; that of the whole number of effectives, just about one-half were Europeans, belonging either to the Queen’s or to the Company’s army; and that no European corps, except perhaps the Lancers, comprised more than a fractional percentage of a full regiment. A return sent in about the middle of the month had comprised 300 men of the 4th and 17th Bengal irregular cavalry; but the omission of this element at the end of the month shewed that those dangerous companions had been got rid of. The corps of Guides and Goorkhas had in a fortnight diminished from an aggregate number of 923 to 571—so rapidly had those gallant men been brought down by balls, bullets, and cholera. Ranked among the artillery and engineers were many hundred syces and bildars, natives who merely aided in certain labouring operations; and among the Sappers and Miners the Punjaubees were only just learning their trade.

Engineer Officers in Battery before Delhi.

The casualty list of officers was a very serious one. From the time when Brigadier Wilson encountered the enemy at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur at the end of May, till he made up his report at the end of July, the officers who were killed or wounded were 101 in number. Anson, Barnard, Reed, Chamberlain, Halifax, Graves—nearly all the general officers except Wilson and Showers, were either dead or in some way disabled; and these frequent changes in command doubtless affected the organisation and movements of the army.

Brigadier Wilson made every attempt, while doing the best he could with his own forces, to ascertain the number and components of those possessed by the enemy. Military commanders always aim at the acquisition of such knowledge, effected by a species of espionage which, however opposed to general feeling at other times, is deemed quite fair in war. From the 11th of May, when the troubles began in Delhi, to the end of July, there arrived in the city mutinous regiments from Meerut, Hansi, Muttra, Lucknow, Nuseerabad, Jullundur, Ferozpore, Bareilly, Jhansi, Gwalior, Neemuch, Allygurh, Agra, Rohtuk, Jhuggur, and Allahabad. The list given in a note[[56]] is taken from the official dispatch, which was itself a record of information obtained from various native sources; but after making allowance for the fact that portions only of many of the regiments had entered Delhi, and that the numbers had been considerably lessened by the thirty or more encounters which had taken place outside the walls, the military authorities brought down the supposed number to a much lower limit than had before been named—namely, 4000 disciplined cavalry, and 12,000 infantry, besides 3000 undisciplined levies. The rebels retained the formidable defensive artillery which they found in Delhi, and brought thirty field-guns also with them; but these guns were lessened in number one-half by successive seizures made by the British.

The condition and proceedings of the rebels within the city could, of course, be known only imperfectly. The old king was looked up to by all as the centre of authority, but it is probable that his real power was small. Where regiments had arrived from so many different quarters, we may suppose that the apportionment of military command was no easy matter; and indeed there was, throughout, little evidence that the rebel force had one head, one leader whose plans were obeyed by all. The Lahore Chronicle some time afterwards printed a narrative by a native, of a residence in Delhi from the 13th to the 30th of July. Such narratives can seldom be relied on; but so far as it went, this revelation spoke of great discord among the leaders; great discontent among the troops because their pay was in arrear; great perplexity on the part of the old king because he had not funds enough to pay so large an army; and great plundering of the citizens by the rude soldiery, who deemed themselves masters of the situation. ‘When the sepoys,’ said this native, ‘find out a rich house in the city, they accuse the owner after the following manner, in order to plunder his property. They take a loaf of bread and a bottle of grog with them, and make a noise at the door and break it in pieces, get into the house, take possession of the cash and valuables, and beat the poor householder, saying: “Where is the Englishman you have been keeping in your house?” When he denies having done so, they just shew him the bread and the bottle, and say: “How is it that we happened to find these in your house? We are quite sure there was an Englishman accommodated here, whom you quietly sent elsewhere before our arrival.” Soon after, the talk is over, and the poor man is disgracefully put into custody, where there is no inquiry made to prove whether he is innocent or guilty; he cannot get his release unless he bribes the general.’ The known attributes of oriental cunning give a strong probability to this curious story.

Here, for the present, we take leave of the siege of Delhi, and of the stage at which it had arrived by the end of July. Much has to be narrated, in reference to other places, other generals, other operations, before the final capture of the imperial city will call for description.

Bullock-wagon.

[46]. Grenadiers.

[47]. Rifles.

[48]. The first troop of horse-artillery was called Leslie’s Troop.

[49]. The troops at Umballa on the 17th comprised:

Queen’s 75th foot.}Weak: only 1800
1st Bengal European Fusiliers.}bayonets in all.
2d Bengal European Fusiliers.}
5th Bengal native infantry.
60th Bengal native infantry.
Queen’s 9th Lancers.
4th Bengal cavalry.
Two troops European horse-artillery.

[50].

1st Umballa{Queen’s 75th foot.
Brigade.{1st Bengal Europeans.
Brigadier Halifax.{Two squadrons 9th Lancers.
{One troop horse artillery.
{2d Bengal Europeans.
2d Umballa{60th native infantry.
Brigade.{Two squadrons 9th Lancers.
Brigadier Jones.{One squadron 4th Bengal Lancers.
{One troop horse-artillery.
{One wing Queen’s 60th Rifles.
Meerut{Two squadrons Carabiniers.
Brigade.{One light field-battery.
Brigadier Wilson.{One troop horse-artillery.
{Native Sappers (if reliable).
{120 artillerymen.

[51].

[52].

[53]. Chapter iv., pp. [63]-[65].

[54]. After the execution of Mungal Pandy at Barrackpore on the 8th of April, for mutiny, the rebel sepoys acquired the soubriquet of ‘Pandies’—especially those belonging to the Brahmin caste.

[55].

Infantry—Officers and Men.
H.M. 8th foot, head-quarters,188
H.M. 61st foot, head-quarters,296
H.M. 75th foot, head-quarters,513
H.M. 60th Rifles, head-quarters,299
1st European Bengal Fusiliers,520
2d European Bengal Fusiliers,556
Guide Infantry,275
Sirmoor battalion, Goorkhas,296
1st Punjaub Infantry,725
4th Sikh Infantry,345
————=4023
Cavalry—
H.M. Carabiniers,153
H.M. 9th Lancers,428
Guide Cavalry,338
1st Punjaub Cavalry,148
2d Punjaub Cavalry,110
5th Punjaub Cavalry, (at Alipore),116
————=1293
Artillery and Engineers—
Artillery, European and Native,1129
Bengal Sappers and Miners,209
Punjaub Sappers and Miners,264
————=1602
————
6918

Besides these effectives, there were as non-effectives, 765 sick + 351 wounded = 1116.

[56]. Bengal native infantry: 3d, 9th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 20th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 36th, 38th, 44th, 45th, 54th, 57th, 60th, 61st, 67th, 68th, 72d, 74th, 78th.

Other native infantry: 5th and 7th Gwalior Contingent, Kotah Contingent, Hurrianah battalion; together with 2600 miscellaneous infantry.

Native cavalry: Portions of five or six regiments, besides others of the Gwalior and Malwah Contingents.

Sir Henry Havelock.

CHAPTER XV.
HAVELOCK’S CAMPAIGN: ALLAHABAD TO LUCKNOW.

If there be one name that stands out in brighter colours than any other connected with the mutiny in India, perhaps it is that of Henry Havelock. There are peculiar reasons for this. He came like a brilliant meteor at a time when all else was gloomy and overshadowed. Anson had died on the way to Delhi; Barnard had died in the camp before that city; Reed had retired, broken down by age and sickness; Wilson had not yet shewn whether he could work out victory at the great Mogul capital; Wheeler was falling, or had fallen, a miserable victim to the treachery of Nena Sahib; Henry Lawrence was no more; Hewett and Lloyd were under a cloud, for mismanagement as military commanders—all this had rendered the British nation grieved and irritated; and men fiercely demanded ‘Who’s to blame?’—as if it were necessary to seek relief by wreaking vengeance on some persons or other. It was a crisis that pressed heavily on Viscount Canning; but it was at the same time a crisis that insured fervid gratitude to any general who could achieve victories with small means. Such a general was Havelock. The English public knew little of him, although he was well known in India. Commencing his career as a soldier in 1816, Henry Havelock had borne his full share in all a soldier’s varied fortune. He went to India in 1823; engaged in the Burmese war in 1824; took part in a mission to the court of Siam in 1826; was promoted from lieutenant to captain in 1838; took an active share in the stirring scenes of the Afghan campaign, which brought him a brevet majority, and the order of C. B.; acted as Persian interpreter to generals Elphinstone, Pollock, and Gough; fought at Gwalior in 1843; became brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1844; fought with the bravest in 1845 at Moodkee, Ferozshah, and Sobraon; and in 1846 received the appointment of deputy adjutant-general of the Queen’s troops at Bombay. An Indian climate during so many years having told—in its customary sad way—on his constitution, Henry Havelock returned for a sojourn in England. Returning to Bombay in 1851, he became brevet colonel; and in after years he was appointed quarter-master-general, and then adjutant-general, of the whole of the Queen’s troops in India. When the war with Persia broke out, he took command of one of the divisions in 1857; and when that war was ended, he returned to Bombay. All this was known to official persons in India, but very few of the particulars were familiar to the general public in the home-country; hence, when Havelock’s victories were announced, the public were surprised as if by the sudden appearance of a great genius. That he bore so heavy a responsibility, or suffered such intense mental anxiety, as Wheeler at Cawnpore, Inglis at Lucknow, or Colvin at Agra, is not probable; for he had not hundreds of helpless women and children under his charge; but the astonishing victories he achieved with a mere handful of men, and the moral influence he thereby acquired for the British name throughout the whole of the Doab, well entitled him to the outburst of grateful feeling which the nation was not slow to exhibit. The only danger was, lest this hero-worship should render the nation blind for a time to the merits of other generals.

Neill and Havelock, who worked so energetically together in planning the relief of Lucknow, were brought from other regions of India to take part in the operations on the Ganges. Neill, as colonel of the 1st Madras European Fusiliers, accompanied that regiment to Calcutta, and thence proceeded up the country to Benares, where his contest with the rebels first began. Havelock, landing at Bombay from Persia, set off by steam to go to Calcutta; he was wrecked on the way near Ceylon, and experienced much perilous adventure before he could proceed on his journey. At Calcutta—where he arrived, in the same steamer which brought Sir Patrick Grant, on the 17th of June—he received the appointment of brigadier-general,[[57]] to command such a force as could be hastily collected for the relief, first of the Europeans at Cawnpore, and then of those at Lucknow; and it was towards the close of June that he made his appearance at Allahabad.

Sufficient has been stated in former chapters to shew what was the state of affairs at that time. Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, and Delhi were either in the hands of the rebels, or were so beset by them that no British commander was able to assist his brother-officers. Oude, the Doab, and Rohilcund were in deplorable anarchy; and it depended either upon Viscount Canning at Calcutta, or Sir John Lawrence at Lahore, to send aid to the disturbed districts. Lawrence, as we have seen, and as we shall see again in a future chapter, with admirable energy and perseverance, sent such assistance as enabled Wilson to conquer Delhi; while Canning, under enormous difficulty, sent up troops to Allahabad by scores and fifties at a time, as rapidly as he could collect them at Calcutta.

Brigadier Neill preceded Havelock in the operations connected with the repression of the mutiny in the Doab and adjacent regions. His own regiment, the 1st Madras European Fusiliers, had been ordered to proceed to Persia in the spring, but had received counter-orders in consequence of the sudden termination of the war in that country. While at Bombay, uncertain whether commands might be received to proceed to China, the regiment heard the news of a revolt among the Bengal troops; and very speedily, both Persia and China were forgotten in matters of much greater exigency and importance. After making the voyage back from Bombay to Madras, the regiment proceeded to Calcutta, and the men were then sent up the country as rapidly as possible to Benares, some by road and the rest by steamers. Neill himself reached that city on the 3d of June, and was immediately engaged, as we have already seen (p. [154]), in disarming a mutinous regiment, and in maintaining order in the vicinity. After six days of incessant work at Benares, the brigadier, hearing of the mutiny at Allahabad, started off on the 9th to render service in that region. With what a powerful hand he put down the rebels; with what stern and prompt firmness he retained possession of that important city, the ‘key to Upper India’—has already been briefly shewn.[[58]] The various corps of the Madras Fusiliers reached Benares and Allahabad by degrees; and fragments of other European regiments were sent up as fast as possible, as the nucleus of a little army forming at Allahabad.

The 1st of July may be taken as the day that marked the commencement of General Havelock’s career in relation to the Indian Revolt. He and his staff arrived at Allahabad on that day, after a rapid journey from Calcutta. A few hours before his arrival, the first relieving column had been sent off by Neill towards Cawnpore: consisting of 200 Madras Fusiliers, 200 of the 84th foot, 300 Sikhs, and 120 irregular cavalry, under Major Renaud; and a second, of larger proportions, was to follow in a week or ten days’ time. The immediate object held in view, in the march of both columns, was to liberate Sir Hugh Wheeler and his hapless companions at Cawnpore; and, if this were accomplished, the second work to be done was to advance and relieve Sir Henry Lawrence and the British at Lucknow. It was not at that time known that, before the second column could start from Allahabad, both Wheeler and Lawrence had been numbered with the dead. Neill superseded the officer previously in command at Allahabad; Havelock superseded Neill in command of the relieving force; we shall have to speak of Outram superseding Havelock; and we have already spoken of Patrick Grant superseding Reed, and of Colin Campbell superseding Grant. All these supersessions were in virtue of military routine, depending either on seniority, or on the exercise of a right to make appointments. If these various officers had been unsuccessful, the system of supersession would have been attacked by adverse judges as the cause of the failure; but there was so much nobility of mind displayed by four or five of the gallant men here named, that the vexation often caused by supersession was much alleviated; while the nation at large had ample reason to admire and be thankful for the deeds of arms that accompanied generosity of feeling.

On the 3d, an auxiliary force under Captain Spurgin, left Allahabad for Cawnpore, irrespective of the two columns. It consisted only of 100 Madras Europeans armed with rifles, 12 artillerymen, and two 6-pounder guns; it went by steamer up the Ganges, partly in order to control the mutineers on the banks, but in part also on account of the paucity of means for land-conveyance. No steamer had had much success in that part of the Ganges; and hence great interest was felt in the voyage of the Brahmaputra. As a first difficulty, the engineers, having no coals, were obliged to forage for wood every day on shore. On the second day of the trip, this foraging had to be protected by half the force, against a body of 500 insurgents on the Oude bank, provided with a large piece of ordnance; the wood was not obtained without a regular battle, in which 50 English ‘thrashed’—to use a very favourite term among the soldiers—just ten times their number of rebels, and captured their gun. On they went, struggling against the rapid stream of the Ganges, and never making more than two miles an hour. The enemy hovered on the banks, and sent several round shot into the little iron steamer—a sort of irritation that kept the crew and soldiers well on the alert. Day after day passed in this way, Captain Spurgin timing his movements so as to accord with the march of the land-columns. The steamer reached Cawnpore on the 17th, just a fortnight after the departure from Allahabad—a degree of slowness not altogether dependent on the difficulty of the navigation, but partly due to the necessity of not advancing more rapidly than the columns could fight their way on shore.

The dismal news gradually reached Allahabad that some dreadful calamity had occurred at Cawnpore. This information led Havelock to modify his plans and quicken his movements; and, full of heart, he transmitted to Calcutta the telegram already quoted, to the effect that ‘1000 Europeans, 1000 Goorkhas, and 1000 Sikhs, with 8 or 10 guns, will thrash everything.’ Among the troops he collected was a handful of volunteer cavalry, consisting chiefly of officers who had been left without command by the mutiny of their respective native regiments, or had narrowly escaped massacre; the number amounted only to a score; but it comprised just the sort of men who would be ready for any enterprise at such a time.

Major Renaud had every reason to be satisfied with the gallantry of the Madras Fusiliers—to which corps he belonged—and of the other troops who aided in forming his small column, in various minor operations during the first nine days of the march from Allahabad. He everywhere pacified the country by punishing the ringleaders in mutiny and rebellion wherever and whenever they fell into his hands. Suddenly, however, he found himself placed in an awkward position on the 10th. Cawnpore had fallen; the British at that station had either been killed or thrown into prison; and the rebel force thus freed from occupation had rapidly pushed down to the vicinity of Futtehpoor—a town which had been in the hands of the rebels since the 9th of June (see p. [172]). That force was at least 3500 strong, with 12 guns; whereas Renaud had at that time only 820 men and 2 guns. General Havelock, becoming aware of this state of things, saw that his force ought to join that of Renaud as quickly as possible. He marched twenty miles on the 11th, under a frightful sun, to Synee; then, after resting a few hours, he and his troops resumed their march at eleven o’clock in the evening, overtook Renaud during the night, and marched with him by moonlight to Khaga, five miles short of Futtehpoor. His little army consisted of about 2000 men, made up of a curious collection of fragments from various regiments; and as it was destined to achieve great results with limited resources, it may be interesting to tabulate the component elements of this admirable little band.[[59]] Havelock’s information proved to be better than that of the enemy, for when he sent forward Colonel Tytler with a reconnaissance, the enemy supposed they had only Renaud’s small force to contend with; they fired on the colonel and his escort, and pushed forward two guns and a force of infantry and cavalry. When the enemy began to cannonade his front and threaten his right and left, Havelock saw that the time was come to undeceive them: he would have preferred to give his worn-out soldiers a few hours’ rest; but this was not now to be thought of, as, to use his own words, ‘it would have injured the morale of the troops to permit them thus to be bearded.’ The work before him was sufficiently formidable; for there was only the main trunk-road by which to approach Futtehpoor easily; the fields on either side were covered with a depth of two or three feet of water; there were many enclosures of great strength, with high walls; and in front of the city were many villages, hillocks, and mango-groves which the enemy occupied in force. Havelock placed his eight guns on and near the main road, protected by 100 riflemen of the 64th; the infantry came up at deploying distance, covered by rifle-skirmishers; and the cavalry moved forward on the flanks. The struggle was literally decided in ten minutes. The enemy saw a few riflemen approach; but they knew little of the Enfield rifle; and were panic-stricken with the length and accuracy of its range; they shrank back in astonishment; and then Captain Maude, who had dashed over the swamps with his artillery, poured into them a fire so rapid and accurate as to complete their discomfiture. Three guns were abandoned at once, and Havelock steadily advanced, with the 64th commanding the centre, the 78th the right, the 84th and the Sikhs the left. He drove the enemy before him at every point, capturing their guns one by one; the garden enclosures, the barricades on the road, the city wall, the streets of Futtehpoor, all were gained in turn. The enemy retreated right through the city, till they reached a mile beyond it; but they then attempted to make a stand. This attempt gave Havelock some trouble, because his infantry were almost utterly exhausted by fatigue, and because the few irregular horse shewed symptoms of a tendency to go over to the enemy unless narrowly watched. Again the guns and rifles came to the front, and again they attacked in a manner so irresistible as to put the enemy effectively to flight. Havelock thus became master of Futtehpoor, and parked 12 captured guns. It was with a justifiable pride that the general, in sending his list of ‘casualties,’ remarked that it was ‘perhaps the lightest that ever accompanied the announcement of such success. Twelve British soldiers were struck down by the sun, and never rose again;’ but not one was either killed or wounded in the action; his casualties, 6 killed and 3 wounded, were among his native troops. The truth seems to be, that the enemy were dismayed, first by finding that Havelock had joined Renaud, and then by the wonderful range of the Enfield rifles. ‘Our fight was fought neither with musket, nor bayonet, nor sabre, but with Enfield rifles and cannon; so we took no prisoners. The enemy’s fire scarcely reached us; ours, for four hours, allowed him no repose.’ It was with good cause that he thanked and congratulated his troops on the following day, in a ‘morning order,’ short but pithy.[[60]]

While encamped at Kullenpore or Kullianpore, on the 14th, to which he had marched after a sojourn at Futtehpoor sufficient to afford his troops that rest which had become absolutely necessary, Havelock sent off a brief telegram, announcing that his capture of artillery at Futtehpoor would enable him to substitute nine excellent field-guns for six of lighter calibre, and also to bring into action two light 6-pounders.

This, then, was the brigadier-general’s first victory over the rebels; it elated his own troops, and checked the audacity of those to whom he was opposed. Neill, meanwhile, was anxiously watching at Allahabad. He had worked hard to organise and send off the first portion of the force under Renaud, the second under Spurgin, and the third under Havelock. He had received from Renaud, on the 4th of the month, information which rendered only too probable the rumour that an act of black treachery on the part of Nena Sahib at Cawnpore had been followed by a wholesale destruction of hapless fugitives in boats on the Ganges. Neill was thus especially anxious that Renaud should advance at once with the first column, and Spurgin with the detachment up the river; but Havelock saw reason why those officers should somewhat delay their advance until he could come up to them, in order that all might if possible enter Cawnpore together.

Havelock, after marching and resting on the 13th and 14th, came up again with the enemy on the 15th. When approaching the small stream called the Pandoo Nuddee, it became important to him to ascertain what was the state of the bridge which carried the high road over that river, at a spot about twenty miles from Cawnpore. The stream was too deep to be fordable at that season: hence the importance of obtaining command of the bridge. His intelligencers ascertained that the enemy intended to dispute his passage at the village of Aong, four miles short of the Nuddee; by means of two guns commanding the high road, skirmishers on the right and left of those guns, and cavalry to hover on the flanks of any advancing force. This information being obtained, Havelock sent forward his skirmishers on the right and left of the road; then his volunteer cavalry on the road itself; then the ten guns in line, mostly on the left of the road; and then the infantry in line—the 64th and 84th on the right flank; the 78th, Fusiliers, and Sikhs, on the left. The struggle ahead was not a severe one, for the enemy receded as the British under Colonel Tytler advanced; but Havelock was much harassed by the attempts of the hostile cavalry to get into his rear and plunder his baggage: attempts that required much exertion from his infantry to resist, seeing that the thickly wooded country interfered with the effect of cannon and musketry. The enemy after a time abandoned guns, tents, ammunition, and other materials of war, and made a hasty retreat through the village.

This difficulty over, Havelock prepared for another struggle at the Pandoo Nuddee, which it was necessary for him to cross as speedily as possible. He rested and refreshed his troops for a few hours, and advanced the same afternoon, on a fiercely hot July day. The enemy had not destroyed the bridge, but had placed two guns in épaulement to command it at the opposite side of the stream. Captain Maude disposed his artillery so as to bring a converging fire upon the two guns of the enemy; while the Madras Fusiliers commenced a fire with Enfield rifles to pick off the gunners. The two guns were fired directly down the road at the advancing British column; but after Maude had somewhat checked this fire, the Fusiliers gallantly closed, rushed upon the bridge, and captured both guns—an exploit in which Major Renaud was wounded. The mutineers precipitately retreated. Thus did the brigadier-general achieve two victories in one day—those of Aong and Pandoo Nuddee. True, the victories were not great in a military sense; but they were effected over a numerous force by a mere handful of troops, who fought after wearying marches under a solar heat such as residents in England can with difficulty imagine. Havelock had only 1 man killed during these two actions; 25 were wounded. The loss of the enemy was at least ten times greater; but the chief result of the battles was the dismay into which Nena Sahib was thrown.

General Havelock, like other commanders at that critical time, found the native Bengal troops in his force not to be trusted. Their conduct in presence of the enemy on the 12th excited his suspicion; it was, indeed, worse than doubtful; and on the 14th he found it necessary to disarm and dismount his sowars of the 13th Irregulars and 3d Oude Irregulars—at the same time threatening with instant death any one of their number who should attempt to escape. One of the officers at Allahabad who joined the volunteer cavalry, and had opportunity of observing the conduct of the irregulars at the battle of Futtehpoor, wrote thus concerning it: ‘On seeing the enemy, Palliser called to the men to charge, and dashed on; but the scoundrels scarcely altered their speed, and met the enemy at the same pace that they came down towards us. Their design was evident; they came waving their swords to our men, and riding round our party, making signs to them to go over to their side. When our men thus hung back, a dash out would certainly have ended in our being cut up.’ During a subsequent skirmish, ‘our rear-men turned tail and left us, galloping back as hard as their horses could go; and we were forced to commence a regular race for our necks.... I write this with shame and grief; but it was no fault of Palliser’s or ours.’ Havelock saw the necessity of disarming and dismounting such fellows.

The scene of operations now approaches Cawnpore, that city of unutterable horrors! It was a desperate struggle that Nena Sahib made to retain the supremacy he had obtained at Cawnpore. He probably cared little for kings of Delhi or for greased cartridges, provided he could maintain a hold of sovereign power. When he had broken faith with Sir Hugh Wheeler, and had carried his treachery to the extent of indiscriminate slaughter in the Ganges boats, he naturally hoped to become leader of the rebellious sepoys. In this object, however, he did not wholly succeed; he and his immediate followers were Mahrattas; the mutineers were mostly Hindustanis; and the latter made little account of the Nena’s claim to sovereignty. Had the issue depended upon the infantry sepoys, who were in chief part Hindoos, and who chiefly looked for plunder, his projects might speedily have come to an end; but the cavalry sepoys, being mostly Mohammedans, and exhibiting a more deadly hatred towards the British, more readily joined him in a combined plan of operations, and drew the sepoys to act with them. Leaving Delhi to be held by the large body of mutineers, Nena Sahib took upon himself the office of crushing any British force that might make its appearance from Allahabad. When he heard that Renaud had started with his little band, he got together a force of sowars, sepoys, Mahrattas, artillery, and rabble; having motives of fear as well as of self-interest to induce him to prevent the advance of his opponent. Not knowing that Renaud had been joined by Havelock, the Mahratta chieftain sent bodies of troops sufficient, as he believed, to check the advance; but when the gallant general swept everything before him, the arch-fiend of Bithoor saw that the matter was becoming serious. He had had experience of the indomitable resistance, under accumulated suffering, of the hapless Sir Hugh Wheeler and his companions; but now a British general had to be encountered in the open field. So far as is known, it appears that as soon as he heard of the passage of the Pandoo Nuddee by Havelock, Nena Sahib ordered the slaughter of all the captives yet remaining alive at Cawnpore—in order either that the dead might tell no tales, or that he might wreak vengeance on the innocent for the frustration of his plans. Having committed this bloody deed, he went out with an army, and took up a position at Aherwa, the point at which the road to the cantonment branches out from the main trunk-road to Cawnpore city. Nena Sahib commanded five villages, with numerous intrenchments, armed with seven guns; and in the rear was his infantry. Havelock, after advancing sixteen miles from the Pandoo Nuddee to Aherwa during the night of the 15th, and after measuring the strength of this force, saw that his troops would be shot down in alarming numbers before the guns could be silenced and the intrenchments carried; he resolved, therefore, on a flank-movement on the enemy’s left. As a preliminary, he left his camp and baggage under proper escort at Maharajpoor, a few miles in the rear; and gave his sunburnt and exhausted troops two or three hours’ rest in a mango-grove during mid-day of the 16th, until the fierce heat should have somewhat abated. The hour of struggle having arrived, Havelock quietly wheeled his force round to the left flank of the enemy’s position, behind a screen of clumps of mango. When the enemy detected this manœuvre, great sensation was displayed; a body of horse was soon sent to the left, and cannon opened fire in that direction. Then came a series of operations in which the superb qualities of British infantry were strikingly displayed. Villages were attacked and captured one after another, by fragments of regiments so small that one marvels how the enemy could have yielded before them. One such exploit is thus narrated in Havelock’s own language: ‘The opportunity had arrived, for which I have long anxiously waited, of developing the prowess of the 78th Highlanders. Three guns of the enemy were strongly posted behind a lofty hamlet, well intrenched. I directed this regiment to advance; and never have I witnessed conduct more admirable. They were led by Colonel Hamilton, and followed him with surpassing steadiness and gallantry under a heavy fire. As they approached the village, they cheered and charged with the bayonet, the pipes sounding the pibroch. Need I add that the enemy fled, the village was taken, and the guns captured?’ After three or four villages had thus changed hands, the enemy planted a 24-pounder gun on the cantonment road in such a position as to work much mischief upon Havelock, whose artillery cattle were so worn out with heat and fatigue that they could not drag the guns onward to a desired position. The Nena appearing to have in project a renewed attack, Havelock resolved to anticipate him; he cheered on his infantry to a capture of the 24-pounder; they rushed along the road amid a storm of grape-shot from the enemy, and never slackened till they had reached the gun and captured it. Especially was the 64th, led by Major Stirling, conspicuous in this bold enterprise. The enemy lost all heart; they retreated, blew up the magazine of Cawnpore on their way, and then went on to Bithoor.

Plan of action near Cawnpore, July 16, 1857.

Thus was fought the battle of Cawnpore, the conquest of which place had for so many weeks been anxiously looked forward to by the British. True, they had heard, and under too great a variety of detail to warrant disbelief, that Sir Hugh Wheeler and his gallant companions had been most treacherously murdered by the ruthless chieftain of Bithoor; but yet a hope clung to them that some of their compatriots at least might be alive at Cawnpore. On this 16th of July, Havelock’s small force was lessened by the loss of 6 killed and 98 wounded or missing—a loss wonderfully slight under the circumstances, but serious to him. Captain Currie of the 84th received a wound so desperate that he sank under it in a few hours; Major Stirling was slightly wounded; Captain Beatson, attacked with cholera on the morning of the fight, held up with heroic bearing during the whole day, but died soon afterwards. The enemy lost seven guns on this day, of which three were 24-pounders.

Some of the Europeans bore an almost incredible amount of hard labour on this day of fierce July heat. One, a youth of eighteen who had joined the volunteer cavalry, had been on picket all the preceding night, with no refreshment save biscuit and water; he then marched with the rest sixteen miles during the forenoon; then stood sentry for an hour with the enemy hovering around him; then fought during the whole afternoon; then lay down supperless to rest at nightfall, holding his horse’s bridle the while; then mounted night-guard from nine till eleven o’clock; and then had his midnight sleep broken by an alarm from the enemy. It was on this occasion, too, that Lieutenant Marshman Havelock, son of the general, to whom he acted as aid-de-camp, performed a perilous duty in such a way as to earn for himself the Victoria Cross—a badge of honour established in 1856 for acts of personal heroism. The general thus narrated the incident, in one of his dispatches: ‘The 64th regiment had been much under artillery-fire, from which it had severely suffered. The whole of the infantry were lying down in line, when, perceiving that the enemy had brought out the last reserved gun, a 24-pounder, and were rallying round it, I called up the regiment to rise and advance. Without any other word from me, Lieutenant Havelock placed himself on his horse, in front of the centre of the 64th, opposite the muzzle of the gun. Major Stirling, commanding the regiment, was in front, dismounted; but the lieutenant continued to move steadily on in front of the regiment at a foot-pace, on his horse. The gun discharged shot until the troops were within a short distance, when it fired grape. In went the corps, led by the lieutenant, who still steered steadily on the gun’s muzzle until it was mastered by a rush of the 64th.’ It is difficult for civilians adequately to comprehend the cool courage required in an act like this; where a soldier walks his horse directly up in front of a large piece of cannon which is loaded and fired at him and his comrades as rapidly as possible.

What the British troops saw when they entered Cawnpore, has already engaged our attention (pp. [142]-[145]). None could ever forget it to their dying day. It was on the 17th of July that Havelock, after a night’s rest for his exhausted troops, entered the city, and learned the hideous revelations of the slaughter-room and the well. What steps were immediately taken in Cawnpore, has been noticed in the chapter just cited; and the dismal story need not be repeated. The general could not wait to attend to those matters at that time; he had still to learn what were the movements of Nena Sahib after the battle of the preceding day—whether the Mahratta intended or not to make a stand in his palace at Bithoor. Sending forward part of his troops therefore on the afternoon of the 17th, he found the enemy in a very strong position. Their force consisted of the insurgent 31st and 42d Bengal infantry from Saugor, the 17th from Fyzabad, sepoys from various other regiments, troops of the cavalry regiments, and a portion of Nena Sahib’s Mahrattas—about 4000 men in all. The plain in front of Bithoor, diversified by thickets and villages, had two streams flowing through it, not fordable, and only to be crossed by two narrow bridges. The enemy held both bridges, and defended them well. The streams prevented Havelock from turning the enemy’s flanks; and when his infantry assaulted the position, they were received with heavy rifle and musketry fire. After an hour of very severe struggle, he effected a crossing, drove them back, captured their guns, and chased them towards Sorajpore. He had no cavalry to maintain a pursuit—indeed the want of cavalry was felt sadly by him in every one of his battles. This contest cost the enemy about 250 men, the British about one-fifth of the number; in this last-named list was included only one officer, Captain Mackenzie of the 78th Highlanders, who was slightly wounded.

Here, then, was one part of the enterprise accomplished. Cawnpore had been recaptured, and the road cleared of rebels between that place and Allahabad. It was on the 30th of June that Renaud had left the last-named place with the first division, and on the 3d of July that Spurgin had set off with the detachment by steamer. It was on the 7th that Havelock had placed himself at the head of the second division, and marched forth to overtake the two others—carrying with him the recollection of a scowl from many of the Mussulman inhabitants of the city. He had seen, as he went along, evidences of Renaud’s stern energy, in the number of rebellious sepoys hanging from gibbets and trees by the roadside. He and his troops had made ordinary Indian marches the first three or four days, in alternate rain and fierce heat, and within sight of destroyed bungalows and devastated homesteads; but when the news from Renaud arrived, forced marches were made. Then came the battle of Futtehpoor on the 12th, that of Aong on the morning of the 14th, that of Pundoo Nuddee on the afternoon of the same day, that of Cawnpore on the 16th, and that of Bithoor on the 17th—five victories in six days, spreading the fame of Havelock far and wide throughout the surrounding districts. The future tactics had then to be resolved upon. Cawnpore had been recovered, although the garrison could not be saved; but there was another British garrison, another group of suffering British women and children, to be thought of—at Lucknow. The general well knew how desperate was the work before him, with the reduced and sickened force at his command; but he was not the man to shrink from making an attempt, at least, to relieve Brigadier Inglis and his companions. Feeling the urgent need of more troops, and the imperative necessity of holding Cawnpore safely while he himself advanced into Oude, Havelock had already sent to Allahabad, requesting Neill to come if possible in person to Cawnpore, and to bring reinforcements with him. It was easier for Neill to respond to the first of these two appeals than to the second; he would have gone anywhere, borne any amount of fatigue, to share in the good work; but he found himself already reduced to so few troops at Allahabad as to be barely able to maintain that place. Nevertheless, after counting heads and measuring strength, he ventured to draft off 227 men of the 84th foot from his little force; he started them forth on the 15th, partly by bullock-trains, to reach Cawnpore on the 20th. He himself set out on the 16th—the day of the battle of Cawnpore—leaving Allahabad under the command of Captain Drummond Hay of the 78th Highlanders, until Colonel O’Brien could arrive. After a rapid journey, Neill reached Cawnpore, took military command of that place and its neighbourhood, and assisted Havelock in the preparations necessary for crossing the Ganges into Oude. One great necessity was perceived on the instant by both generals; English soldiers, with all their good qualities, are prone to drink; and Havelock soon found, to use his own words, that ‘half his men would be needed to keep the other half from getting drunk’ if they had easy access to liquor; he therefore bought up all spare beverages in Cawnpore, and placed them in the hands of the commissariat. A calamity much grieved the little army at this time. Major Renaud, who had so successfully brought forward the first column from Allahabad, sank under the effects of a wound he had received. A bullet had hit him above the knee, forcing part of the scabbard of his sword into the wound, and causing much suffering; amputation seemed to afford some relief, but only for a time; he died soon after the arrival of Neill, who had highly valued him as a trusty officer in his own Madras Fusiliers.

Glancing at a map, we see that the high road from Cawnpore to Lucknow is broken at its very commencement by the river Ganges, which, at this point, varies from five hundred to two thousand yards in width. There is, of course, no bridge here; and as the stream is usually very rapid, the transport of troops necessarily becomes slow, difficult, and dangerous work. Havelock began to cross on the 20th of July, but many days elapsed before the task was completed. The Brahmaputra steamer, which brought Spurgin’s detachment to Cawnpore on the 17th, was, with a few open boats, the only available resource for this work. By the 23d, about 1100 of his troops had crossed over into Oude—every boat-load having to battle against a broad and swift current. All possible baggage was left behind, each man taking with him a very small supply of clothing and food.

On the 20th, Havelock sent a short telegram to the commander-in-chief—announcing that Nena Sahib’s followers appeared to be deserting him; that he had fled from Bithoor; that the British had re-entered that place on the 19th; and that the palace had been reduced to ashes, and 13 guns captured. On the next day a further communication was sent to the effect that three more guns, and a number of animals, had been brought along from Bithoor, and that the magazine had been blown up. Subsequent events proved that the Nena, though forced to flee, still retained a body of troops under his command.

When the brigadier-general, on the 23d of July, had so far succeeded in transporting his gallant little army over the majestic Ganges; and when his sanguine hopes had led him to believe that he could conquer Lucknow in two or three days, then arose in his mind the important strategic question—What next? Should he remain in Oude after the capture of Lucknow, and effect the thorough reconquest of that province; or should he hastily recross the Ganges, march to Agra, liberate Colvin and the other Europeans in the fort, pick up any available force there, and advance to aid in the siege of Delhi? Sir Patrick Grant, who was commander-in-chief at that time, was solicited by telegram for an answer to this query. He strenuously recommended that Havelock, once in Oude, should remain there if possible. ‘If he merely relieves the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow, and, after accomplishing that object, instantly recrosses the Ganges into our own provinces, it will be thought and believed throughout India that he had signally failed to reconquer Oude, and that he was driven out of the province by force of arms. The insurgents, though beaten before Lucknow, would assuredly collect again, and follow up the retiring army, prevent supplies from coming into camp, and reduce our troops to great straits and hazards when recrossing the Ganges—the passage of which, even when wholly unopposed, the brigadier-general describes as having been a very difficult and tedious operation.’ This exactly coincided with Havelock’s own view; and he therefore turned a deaf ear to all applications for aid made to him by the commanders at Agra and Delhi.

It was not until the 25th that Havelock, after seeing his army safely across the river, made the passage himself from the Doab into Oude. Neill, with a very small number of troops, prepared to hold Cawnpore safely during Havelock’s absence. He re-established British power throughout the place; offered government rewards for bringing in captured rebels and public property; appointed Captain Bruce to the post of superintendent of the police and intelligence departments; purchased troop-horses in the neighbouring districts; and made arrangements for keeping the road open and unmolested between Cawnpore and Allahabad. All this he did, besides taking care of Havelock’s sick and wounded, with a force of only 300 men—such was the result of the bravery of a soldier and the skill of a commander, when combined in the same person.

When Havelock had advanced six miles from the Ganges, at a place called Mungulwar, he was met by a messenger who had succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the insurgents at Lucknow, and had brought a plan of that city prepared by Major Anderson, together with some brief but valuable information from Brigadier Inglis. The details were partly written in Greek character, as a measure of precaution. Havelock now saw the full importance and difficulty of the work before him. His own little band was reduced to 1500 men, supported by 10 badly equipped and manned guns. On the other hand, he learned that the enemy had intrenched and covered with guns the long bridge across the Sye (Saee) at Bunnee, and had made preparations for destroying it if the passage were forced. Nor was his rear less imperiled than his front; for Nena Sahib had collected 3000 men and several guns, with which he intended to get between Havelock and the Ganges, to cut off his retreat. Nothing but the anxious dangers and difficulties of the Europeans at Lucknow would have induced the gallant man to advance under such perilous odds. He said in one of his dispatches to the government on the 28th: ‘The communications convince me of the extreme delicacy and difficulty of any operation to relieve Inglis; it shall be attempted, however, at every risk.’ Could he have known how anxiously the beleaguered British in the Residency at Lucknow was looking for him, his heart would have bled for them; Major Anderson had sent him a military plan, but the messenger was too much imperiled to bring any lengthened narrative.

The battle of Onao or Oonao was one of the most surprising of the series in which Havelock was engaged. His passage towards Lucknow was disputed on the 29th by the enemy, who had taken up a strong position. Their right was protected by a swamp which could neither be forced nor turned; their advanced corps was in a garden enclosure which assumed the form of a bastion; and the rest of their force was posted in and behind a village, the houses of which were loopholed and defended by 15 guns. The passage between the village and the town of Onao was very narrow; but along this passage the attack had to be made—because the swamp precluded an advance on the one flank, while the flooded state of the country equally rendered the other impassable. The attack was commenced by the 78th Highlanders and the 1st Fusiliers, who, with two guns, soon drove the enemy out of the bastioned enclosure; but when they approached the village, they were exposed to a hot fire from the loopholed houses. A party of the 84th foot advanced in aid; and then a determined struggle ensued; the village was set on fire, but still the enemy resisted with a bravery worthy of a better cause. At length the passage between the town and the village was forced; and then the enemy were seen drawn up in great strength in an open plain—infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Nevertheless Havelock attacked them, captured their guns, and put the horse and foot to flight. During all this time a large detachment of Nena Sahib’s troops, under Jupah Singh, threatened the left flank of the British, in the not unreasonable hope of being able to annihilate such a handful of men. No sooner had Havelock given his troops two or three hours’ rest, than he advanced from Onao to Busherutgunje. This was a walled town, with wet ditches, a gate defended by a round tower, four pieces of cannon on and near the tower, loopholed and strengthened buildings within the walls, and a broad and deep pond or lake beyond the town. Havelock sent the Highlanders and Fusiliers, under cover of the guns, to capture the earthworks and enter the town; while the 64th made a flank movement on the left, and cut off the communication from the town by a chaussée and bridge over the lake. His few horse could do nothing for want of open ground on which to manœuvre; but his guns and his infantry soon captured the place and drove the enemy before them. In these two battles on one day, he had 12 killed and 76 wounded; while the enemy is supposed to have lost half as many men as Havelock’s whole force. He also captured 19 guns, but as he had no gunners to work them, or horses to draw them, they were destroyed—two by spiking, and seventeen by shot. In a dispatch relating to this day’s hard work, the general, after describing the brief but desperate contest among the loopholed houses, said: ‘Here some daring feats of bravery were performed. Private Patrick Cavanagh, of the 64th, was cut literally in pieces by the enemy, while setting an example of distinguished gallantry. Had he lived I should have deemed him worthy of the Victoria Cross; it could never have glittered on a more gallant breast.’ This mode of noticing the merit of private soldiers endeared Havelock to his troops. Cavanagh had been the first to leap over a wall from behind which it was necessary to drive the enemy; he found himself confronted by at least a dozen troopers, two or three of whom he killed; but he was cut to pieces by the rest before his comrades could come to his aid.

It must have been with a pang of deep regret that the general, hitherto successful in every encounter, found it necessary, on the 31st of July, to make his first retrograde movement. He never scrupled to attack thousands of the enemy with hundreds of his own troops, in open battle; the odds, whether five to one or ten to one, did not deter him; but when his whole force, his miniature army of operations, became reduced to little more than the number for one full regiment, the question arose whether any men would be left at all, after fighting the whole distance to Lucknow. He had no means for crossing the Sye river or the great canal, as the enemy had taken care either to destroy or to guard all the bridges; and in every military requirement—except courage—his force was becoming daily weaker. Besides officers and men who had been killed or wounded in fair fight, numbers had been struck down by the sun; while others, through exposure to swamps and marshes, had been seized with cholera, diarrhœa, and dysentery; insomuch that Havelock was losing at the rate of fifty men a day. In addition to all this, as he could leave no men behind him to keep open the communication with Cawnpore, he was obliged to take all his sick and wounded with him. His little band being now reduced by battle and disease to 1364 men, he determined on receding two short marches, to wait until reinforcements of some kind could reach him. Colonel Tytler, his quartermaster-general, strongly confirmed the necessity of this retreat. He saw no possibility of more than 600 men reaching Lucknow alive and in fighting condition; and they would then have had two miles of street-fighting before reaching the Residency. He recommended a retreat from Busherutgunje to Mungulwar; and this retreat was made under the earnest hope that aid would arrive soon enough to permit an advance to Lucknow within a week—aid most urgently needed, seeing that the garrison at that place was becoming very short of provisions. The troops, of course, were a little disheartened by this retrograde movement. They rested in Busherutgunje from the early morning of the 30th to the afternoon, when they received the order to retreat. It was not till after the reasons were explained to them, that his gallant companions in arms could at all reconcile themselves to this order from the general. They marched back that evening to Onao, and the following morning to Mungulwar.

The month of August began under dispiriting circumstances to Havelock. His chance of reaching Lucknow was smaller than ever; although greater than ever was the need of the garrison at that place for his assistance. He sent back his sick and wounded from Mungulwar to Cawnpore, across the Ganges, and committed them to Neill’s keeping. He explained to that general the reasons for his retreat, and asked for further reinforcements if such were by any means obtainable. Neill was able simply to send a few dozens of men, bringing Havelock’s effective number up to about 1400. With these he set about reorganising his little band during the first three days of the month—counting each man as if he had been a gem above price. Every native had been got rid of; all his troops were British; and therefore, few as they were, he felt entire reliance on them. On the 4th he sent out his handful of volunteer cavalry to reconnoitre the Lucknow road, to see what had become of the enemy. The troopers dashed through Onao without interruption; but on approaching Busherutgunje they saw ample evidence that the enemy were endeavouring to block up the line of communication, by occupying in force a series of hamlets between the town and the lake beyond it. The cavalry, having thus obtained news critically important to the general, galloped back the same evening to Onao, where they were joined by Havelock and his force from Mungulwar. After a night’s bivouac at Onao, the British marched forth in early morn, and met their old enemy for a second time at Busherutgunje. Havelock, after a reconnaissance, resolved to deceive the enemy by a show of cavalry in front, while he sent round guns and infantry to turn their flanks. This manœuvre completely succeeded; the enemy were surprised, shelled out of the town, and pursued by the bayonet and the rifle through the whole of the hamlets to an open plain beyond. They suffered much, but safely drew off all their guns except two. Though a victory for Havelock, shewing the high qualities of his men, it was not one that cheered him much. The enemy were still between him and Lucknow, and he would have to encounter them again and again, with probably great reinforcements on their side, ere he could succeed in the object he had at heart. The morning of the 6th of August rose gloomily to him; for he was forced to a conclusion that an attack on Lucknow was wholly beyond his force. He returned from Busherutgunje through Onao to his old quarters at Mungulwar; and when encamped there, wrote or telegraphed to the commander-in-chief that he must abandon his long-cherished enterprise until strengthened. All his staff-officers joined in the opinion that to advance now to Lucknow would be ‘to court annihilation,’ and would, moreover, seal the doom of the heroic Inglis in that city—seeing that that officer could not possibly hold out without the hopeful expectation, sooner or later, of relief from Cawnpore. ‘I will remain,’ added Havelock in his notification, ‘till the last moment in this position (Mungulwar), strengthening it, and hourly improving my bridge-communication with Cawnpore, in the hope that some error of the enemy may enable me to strike a blow against them, and give the garrison an opportunity of blowing up their works and cutting their way out.’ Havelock’s army now only just exceeded 1000 effective men—a number absurd to designate as an army, were it not for its brilliant achievements. Between Mungulwar and Lucknow it was known that there were three strong posts, defended by 50 guns and 30,000 men. Every village on the road, too (this being, in the turbulent province of Oude), was found to be occupied by zemindars deadly hostile to the British. Neill had only 500 reliable troops at Cawnpore, of whom one-half were on the sick-list. Who can wonder, then, that even a Havelock shrank from an advance to Lucknow at such a time?

Plan of action near Bithoor, August 16, 1857.

From the evening of the 6th to the morning of the 11th was the small overworked column encamped at Mungulwar—fighting against cholera as a more dreaded opponent than rebellious sepoys, and keeping a guarded watch on the distrusted Oudians around. On the 11th, however, this sojourn was disturbed; and the British found themselves called upon to meet the enemy for the third time at the town of Busherutgunje. Early in the morning Havelock received information that 4000 rebels, with some guns, had advanced from Nawabgunge to that place. It did not suit his views to have such a hostile force in position within a few hours’ march of him; he therefore put his column in motion. His advanced guard drove the enemy’s parties out of Onao; but when he marched onward to the vicinity of Busherutgunje, he found the enemy far more numerous than he had expected—spread out to a great distance right and left, and strongly intrenched in the centre. Havelock saw reasons for postponing his attack till the following day. He returned to Onao, where his troops bivouacked on the wet ground amid much discomfort, and after a very scanty supper. Such men, however, were not likely to make the worst of their troubles; they rose on the 12th, ready to vanquish the enemy in their usual style. In the two former battles of Busherutgunje, the enemy had depended chiefly on defences in and behind the town; but in this instance they had adopted the plan of intrenching the village of Boursekee Chowkee, in advance of the town. Havelock was much retarded in bringing his battery and supporting troops across the deep and wide morasses which protected the enemy’s front, during which operation the enemy’s shot and shell caused him some loss; but when these obstacles were surmounted, and his artillery brought into play, the 78th Highlanders, without firing a shot, rushed with a cheer upon the principal redoubt, and captured two out of the three horse-battery guns with which it was armed. The enemy’s extreme left being also turned, they were soon in full retreat. But here, as before, the victory was little more than a manifestation of British superiority in the field of battle; the enemy lost six to one of the British, but still they remained on or near the Lucknow road. The brigadier, just alike to his humble soldiers and to his brother-officers, did not fail to mention the names of those who particularly distinguished themselves. On one occasion it was his own son Lieutenant Havelock; on another it was Patrick Cavanagh the private; and now it was Lieutenant Crowe of the 78th Highlanders, who, on this 12th of August, had been the first man to climb into the enemy’s redoubt at Boursekee Chowkee—an achievement which afterwards brought him the Victoria cross.

The conqueror for the third time retreated from Busherutgunje to Mungulwar, of course a little weaker in men than in the morning. Havelock’s object, in this third retreat, was not merely to reach Mungulwar, but to recross the Ganges to Cawnpore, there to wait for reinforcements before making another attempt to relieve Lucknow. The advance of the 4000 rebels on the 11th had been mainly with the view of cutting off the little band of heroes during this embarkation; but the battle of the 12th frustrated this; and by evening of the 13th the whole of the British had crossed the Ganges from the Oude bank to the Cawnpore bank, by a bridge of boats and a boat-equipage which Colonel Tytler and Captain Crommelin had used indefatigable exertions to prepare.

There can be no question that this retreat was regarded by the insurgents as a concession to their superior strength, as an admission that even a Havelock could not penetrate to Lucknow at that time; it elated them, and for the same reason it depressed the little band who had achieved so much and suffered so severely. The general himself was deeply grieved, for the prestige of the British name, but more immediately for the safety of Brigadier Inglis and his companions. But though grieved, he was too good a soldier to despond: he looked at his difficulties manfully. Those difficulties were indeed great. While he was fighting in Oude, bravely but vainly striving to advance to Lucknow, Nena Sahib had been collecting a motley assemblage of troops near Bithoor, for the purpose of re-establishing his power in that region. A whole month had been available to him for this purpose, from the middle of July to the middle of August; and during this time there had been assembled the 31st and 42d native infantry from Saugor, the 17th from Fyzabad, portions of the 34th disbanded at Barrackpore, troops of three mutinied cavalry regiments, and odds and ends of Mahrattas. The Nena had imitated Havelock in crossing into Oude, but had afterwards recrossed into the Doab, with the evident intention of attacking Neill’s weak force at Cawnpore. Bithoor he reoccupied without difficulty, for Neill had no troops to station at that place, but now he planned an advance to Cawnpore itself. As soon as Havelock had brought his column across the Ganges on the 13th, the two generals concerted a plan; they resolved to rest the troops on the 14th, attack Nena Sahib’s left wing on the 15th, and march to Bithoor on the 16th. Neill, with a mere handful of men, went out of his intrenchment, surprised the enemy’s left, and drove them with precipitation from the vicinity of Cawnpore. This done, Havelock laid his plan for a third visit to Bithoor on the 16th. He marched out with about 1300 men—nearly all that he and Neill possessed between them—and came up to the enemy about mid-day. They had established a position in front of Bithoor, which Havelock characterised as one of the strongest he had ever seen. They had two guns and an earthen redoubt in and near a plantation of sugar and castor-oil plants, intrenched quadrangles filled with troops, and two villages with loopholed houses and walls. Havelock, after surveying the position, sent his artillery along the main road; consisting of Maude’s battery, which had already rendered such good service, and Olphert’s battery, recently forwarded from Allahabad under Lieutenant Smithett. While the guns proceeded along the main road, the infantry advanced in two wings on the right and left. After a brief exchange of artillery-fire, the 78th Highlanders and the Madras Fusiliers advanced in that fearless way which struck such astonishment and panic into the mutineers; they captured and burned a village, then forced their way through a sugar-plantation, then took the redoubt, then captured two guns placed in a battery, and drove the rebels before them at every point. The battery, redoubt, quadrangles, villages, and plantations having been thus conquered, the British crossed a bridge over a narrow but unfordable stream, and pursued the enemy into and right through the town of Bithoor. Beyond this it was impossible to pursue them, for Havelock had now scarcely a dozen troopers, and his infantry were utterly exhausted by marching and fighting during a fiercely hot day. The 64th and 84th foot, with the Ferozpore Sikhs, were disabled from taking a full share in the day’s operations, by a bend or branch of the unfordable stream which intercepted their intended line of march; the chief glory of the day rested with the 78th Highlanders and the Madras Fusiliers. Havelock, in his dispatch relating to this battle, said: ‘I must do the mutineers the justice to pronounce that they fought obstinately; otherwise they could not for a whole hour have held their own, even with such advantages of ground, against my powerful artillery-fire.’ Worn out with fatigue, the British troops bivouacked that night near Bithoor; and on the 17th they returned to Cawnpore. They had been fighting for six or seven weeks under an Indian sun, almost from the day of their leaving Allahabad. ‘Rest they must have,’ said Neill, in one of his pithy telegrams. Captain Mackenzie, of the Highlanders, was among those who received wounds on this day.

This may be regarded as terminating the Havelock campaign in the strict sense of the term; that is, the campaign in which he was undisputed chief. He was destined, before the hand of death struck him down, to fight again against the rebellious sepoys, but under curious relations towards a brother-officer—relations strikingly honourable to both, as will presently be explained. A wonderful campaign it must indeed be called. Between the 12th of July and the 17th of August, Havelock had fought and won three battles in the Doab east of Cawnpore, three in the vicinity of Cawnpore and Bithoor, and four in Oude—ten battles in thirty-seven days; and this against an enemy manifold superior in numbers, and with an army which naturally became weaker by each battle, until at length its fighting power was almost extinguished.

Precarious, indeed, was the state to which Havelock’s little force was reduced. Shells, balls, bullets, sabres, heat, fatigue, and disease, laid his poor fellows low; while his constant cry for reinforcements was—not unheeded, certainly—but left unsatisfied. The cry was everywhere the same—‘Send us troops;’ and the reply varied but little: ‘We have none to send.’ On the 19th of August, he had 17 officers and 466 men sick at Cawnpore; while those who were not sick were so exhausted as to be scarcely fit for active service. Havelock and Neill thirsted to encourage their handful of men by some brilliant achievement; but the one essential would be the relief of Lucknow, and for this they were not strong enough. The rebels, encouraged by this state of affairs, assembled in great force on the Oude side of the Ganges; they threatened to cross at Cawnpore, at a spot twelve miles lower down, and at Futtehpoor; while, on the other side, the Gwalior Contingent threatened the small British force from Calpee. Havelock telegraphed to the commander-in-chief: ‘I could bring into the field 8 good guns, but the enemy are reported to have 29 or 30; these are great odds, and my 900 soldiers may be opposed to 5000 organised troops. The loss of a battle would ruin everything in this part of India.’ After deducting his sick and wounded, and two detachments to guard the cantonment and the road to it, he had only 700 men ready for the field—perhaps the smallest ‘army’ that modern warfare has exhibited. Every day the general became more earnest and urgent in the language of his telegrams; he was quite willing to ‘fight anything, and at any odds;’ but his failure of victory would be ruinous at such a critical time. There were 5000 Gwalior troops threatening his rear on the Jumna; there were 20,000 Oudians watching him from the other side of the Ganges; there were 12,000 of the enemy on his left at Furruckabad; and to oppose these 37,000 armed and disciplined soldiers, he had only 700 effective men! The contrast would have been ridiculous, but for the moral grandeur which gave almost a sublimity to the devotedness of this little band. On the 21st, he announced that unless reinforcements arrived soon, he would be compelled to abandon all his hopes and plans, and return to Allahabad, whence he had started on his career of conquest seven weeks before. He endeavoured, meanwhile, to strengthen his position at Cawnpore, and to send off sick and wounded to Allahabad, as a temporary relief.

It would not be easy to decide who was beset by most anxiety towards the close of August—Havelock or Inglis. The former, after his vain attempt to reach Lucknow, wrote a note on the 4th which happily reached Inglis; telling him of what had occurred, and adding, ‘You must aid us in every way, even to cutting your way out, if we can’t force our way in. We have only a small force.’ This note reached Inglis on the 15th; he wrote a reply on the 16th, which—after the messenger had been exposed to seven days of great peril—Havelock received on the 23d. This reply told how terrible was the position of the Lucknow garrison—120 sick and wounded; 220 women, and 230 children; food and all necessaries scanty; disease and filth all about them; officers toiling like common labourers from morning till night; soldiers and civilians nearly worn out with fatigue; enemy attacking every day, and forming mines to blow up the feeble intrenchments; and no means of carriage even if the garrison succeeded in quitting the place. The remaining days of the month were spent by Havelock inactively but hopefully. True, he was becoming almost invested by the rebels at Cawnpore, who saw that his handful of men could do little against them; but, on the other hand, telegraphic communication was well kept up with Allahabad, Benares, and Calcutta. He learned that Canning, Campbell, and Outram were busily engaged in sending up every possible reinforcement to him; and he wrote again and again to Inglis, urging him to remain firm to the last, in the cheerful trust that aid would come before the last act of despair—a surrender to the insurgents at Lucknow. There was mention of nearly 2000 men being either on their way or about to start from Calcutta, belonging to the 5th, 64th, 78th, 84th, and 90th regiments, the Madras Fusiliers, and the artillery; and there were confident hopes expressed of great service being rendered by the Naval Brigade, 500 ‘blue jackets,’ under Captain Peel, who left Calcutta by steamer on the 20th. The governor-general knew that Brigadier Inglis had a quarter of a million sterling of government money under his charge in the Residency of Lucknow; and he sent telegrams to Havelock and Neill, urging them, if possible, to convey instructions to Inglis not to care about the money, but rather to use it in any way that might best contribute to the liberation of his heroic and suffering companions.

New names now appear upon the scene—those of Outram and Campbell. Major-general Sir James Outram, after successfully bringing the Persian war to an end, had been appointed by the governor-general to the military command of the Dinapoor and Cawnpore divisions; succeeding Wheeler, who was killed at Cawnpore, and Lloyd, who had fallen into disgrace at Dinapoor. This was a very important trust, seeing that it placed under his control all the British officers engaged in the various struggles at Lucknow, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, Dinapoor, &c. He arrived at Dinapoor to assume this command on the 18th of August, two days after the date when Havelock had ended his series of ten battles. It happened, too, that Sir Colin Campbell arrived in India about the same time, to fill the office of commander-in-chief of all the armies of the crown and the Company in India. For a period of two months, Sir Patrick Grant had superintended military matters, remaining in consultation with Viscount Canning at Calcutta, and corresponding with the generals in the various provinces and divisions. Now, however, Sir Patrick returned to his former post at Madras, and Sir Colin assumed military command in his stead—remaining, like him, many weeks at Calcutta, where he could better organise an army than in the upper provinces. Campbell and Outram, the one at Calcutta and the other at Dinapoor, speedily settled by telegram that every possible exertion should be made to send up reinforcements to Havelock and Neill at Cawnpore; and that those gallant men should be encouraged to hold on, and not retreat from their important position. Outram had formed a plan entirely distinct from that in which Havelock was concerned—namely, to advance from Benares direct to Lucknow viâ Jounpoor, a route altogether northeast of the Ganges and the Doab; and to relieve Brigadier Inglis and the devoted garrison of that city. When, however, it became known that Inglis could not cut his way out of Lucknow without powerful assistance, and that Havelock himself was in danger at Cawnpore, Sir Colin Campbell suggested to Sir James Outram a reconsideration of his plan; pointing out that an advance of a hundred and fifty miles from Benares to Lucknow, through a country mostly in the hands of the enemy, would under any circumstances be very perilous; and submitting that a march by Allahabad to Cawnpore might probably be better. The great problem in effect was—how could Outram best assist Havelock and Neill, and how could all three best liberate Inglis from his difficulties? To solve this problem, the few remaining days of August, and the month of September, were looked forward to with anxiety.

The plan of operations once agreed upon, Sir James Outram engaged in it as quickly as possible. On the 1st of September, having made the necessary military arrangements for the safety of the Dinapoor region, he arrived at Allahabad, making a brief sojourn at Benares on his way. He took with him 90 men of H.M. 90th foot—a small instalment of the forces with which he hoped to strengthen Havelock’s little band. Three days afterwards, 600 men of the same regiment reached Allahabad by steamers—a slow and sure way which the government was forced to adopt owing to the miserable deficiency in means of land-transport. No time was lost in making these valuable troops available. Reckoning up the various fragments of regiments which had arrived at Allahabad since Havelock took his departure from that place two months before, Outram found them to amount to something over 1700 men; he set off himself on the 5th with a first column of 673 men; Major Simmonds started on the same day with a second column of 674; about 90 more followed on the 6th; and 300 remained to guard Allahabad, and to form the nucleus for further reinforcements. On the 7th, Outram was at Hissa, progressing at a rate that would probably carry him to Cawnpore by the 15th—all his men eagerly hoping to have a brush with the ‘Pandies,’ and to aid in augmenting the gallant little band under Havelock.

While Sir James was on his march, he received information that a party of insurgents from Oude were about to cross the Ganges into Doab, at a place called Koondun Puttee, between Allahabad and Futtehpoor, and about twenty miles from the last-named town. Seeing the importance of frustrating this movement, he made arrangements accordingly. Being at Thureedon on the 9th of September, he placed a small force under the charge of Major Vincent Eyre, who had lately much distinguished himself at Arrah; consisting of 100 of H.M. 5th, and 50 of the 64th regiments, mounted on elephants, with two guns, tents, two days’ cooked provisions, and supplies for three days more. These troops, not sorry at being selected for such a novel enterprise, started off and reached Hutgong by dusk on the 10th, where they were joined by 40 troopers of the 12th Irregular Horse under Captain Johnson. Eyre, after resting his men, made a moonlight march to Koondun Puttee, where he arrived at daybreak. The enemy, in surprise, rushed hastily to their boats, with a view of recrossing the Ganges into Oude; but this escape was not allowed to them. The sword, musket, rifle, and cannon brought them down in such numbers that hardly any saw Oude again. The number of the enemy was about 300; a number not large, but likely to prove very disastrous if they had obtained command of the road between Allahabad and Cawnpore. Havelock evidently attached much importance to this service, for he said in his dispatch: ‘I now consider my communications secure, which otherwise must have been entirely cut off during our operations in Oude; and a general insurrection, I am assured, would have followed throughout the Doab had the enemy not been destroyed—they being but the advanced-guard of more formidable invaders.’ This work achieved, the different columns continued their march, until at length they safely reached Cawnpore.

Brigadier-general Neill.

The three generals—Outram, Havelock, and Neill—met on the 15th of September at Cawnpore, delighted at being able to reinforce each other for the hard work yet to be done. And now came a manifestation of noble self-denial, a chivalrous sacrifice of mere personal inclination to a higher sense of justice. Outram was higher in rank as a military officer, and held a higher command in that part of India; he might have claimed, and officially was entitled to claim, the command of the forthcoming expedition; but he, like others, had gloried in the deeds of Havelock, and was determined not to rob him of the honour of relieving Lucknow. On the 16th, Sir James Outram issued an order,[[61]] in which, among other things, he announced that Havelock had been raised from brigadier-general to major-general; that that noble soldier should have the opportunity of finishing what he had so well begun; that Outram would accompany him as chief-commissioner of Oude, and would fight under him as a volunteer, without interfering with his command; and that Havelock should not be superseded in the command by Outram until the relief of Lucknow should have been achieved. It was a worthy deed, marking, as Havelock well expressed it, ‘characteristic generosity of feeling;’ he announced it to his troops by an order on the same day, and ‘expressed his hope that they would, by their exemplary and gallant conduct in the field, strive to justify the confidence thus reposed in them.’

The two generals wished at once to ascertain from Calcutta what were the views of Viscount Canning and Sir Colin Campbell concerning any ulterior proceedings at Lucknow. Outram sent a telegram to Canning to inquire whether, if Lucknow were recaptured, it should be held at all hazards, as a matter of success and prestige. The governor-general at once sent back a reply: ‘Save the garrison; never mind our prestige just now, provided you liberate Inglis; we will recover prestige afterwards. I cannot just now send you any more troops. Save the British in the Residency, and act afterwards as your strength will permit.’ The two generals proceeded to act on these instructions. Just two months had elapsed since Havelock had made his appearance at Cawnpore as a victor; and it was with great pain and anxiety that he had been forced to allow those two months to pass away without sending one single soldier, one single ration of food, to the forlorn band who so wonderfully stood their ground in the Residency at Lucknow. Now, however, he looked forward with brighter hopes; Outram was with him, under relations most friendly and honourable; and both generals were fully determined to suffer any sacrifice rather than leave Inglis and his companions unrelieved.

Outram himself planned the organisation of the new force for operations in Oude; but he placed Havelock at the head of it, and took care that Neill should have a share in the glory.[[62]] It consisted of two brigades of infantry, one of cavalry, one of artillery, and an engineer department.

It was on the 19th of September that the two generals crossed with this army into Oude, making use for that purpose of a bridge of boats over the Ganges, most laboriously constructed by Captain Crommelin. The enemy, assembled near the banks, retired after a nominal resistance to Mungulwar. The heavy guns and the baggage were crossed over on the 20th. On the 21st the British again came up with the enemy, turned their right flank, drove them from their position, inflicted on them a severe loss, and captured four guns. With the heroism of a true soldier, Sir James Outram headed one of the charges that brought about this victory; serving as a volunteer under Havelock. The enemy were not permitted to destroy the Bunnee bridge over the Sye; and thus the victors were enabled to pursue their route towards Lucknow. On the 23d, Havelock again found himself in presence of the enemy, who had taken up a strong position; their left posted in the enclosure of the Alum Bagh—a place destined to world-wide notoriety—and their centre and right on low hills. Alum Bagh is so near Lucknow that firing in the city could be distinctly heard; and Havelock therefore gave a volley with his largest guns, to tell the beleaguered garrison that aid was near. The British, in order to encounter the enemy, had to pass straight along the high road between morasses, during which they suffered much from artillery; but when once enabled to deploy to the right and left, they gradually gained an advantage, and added another to the list of their victories—driving the enemy before them, but at the same time suffering severely from the large numbers and the heavy firing of those to whom they were opposed. They had been marching three days under a perfect deluge of rain, irregularly fed, and badly housed in villages. Havelock determined, therefore, to pitch camp, and to give his exhausted troops one whole day’s rest on the 24th.

At last came the eventful day, the 25th of September, when the beleaguered garrison at Lucknow were to experience the joy of seeing those whose arrival had been yearned for during so long and anxious a period. Early on that morning, after depositing his baggage and tents under an escort in the Alum Bagh, Havelock pursued his march. The 1st brigade, with Outram attached to it as a volunteer, drove the enemy from a succession of gardens and walled enclosures; while the other brigades supported it. From the bridge of the Char Bagh over the canal, to the Residency at Lucknow, was a distance in a straight line of about two miles; and this interval was cut by trenches, crossed by palisades, and intersected by loopholed houses. Progress in this direction being so much obstructed, Havelock resolved to deploy along a narrow road that skirted the left bank of the canal. On they went, until they came opposite the palace of Kaiser or Kissurah Bagh, where two guns and a body of insurgents were placed; and here the fire poured out on them was so tremendous that, to use the words of the general, ‘nothing could live under it;’ his troops had to pass a bridge partly under the influence of this fire; but immediately afterwards they received the shelter of buildings adjacent to the palace of Fureed Buksh. Darkness now coming on, it was at one time proposed that the force should halt for the night in and near the court of this palace; but Havelock could not bear the idea of leaving the Residency for another night in the hands of the enemy; he therefore ordered his trusty Highlanders, and little less trusty Sikhs, to take the lead in the tremendous ordeal of a street-fight through the large city of Lucknow. It was a desperate struggle, but it was for a great purpose—and it succeeded. On that night, within the British Residency, Havelock and Outram clasped hands with Inglis, and listened to the outpourings of full hearts all around them. The sick and the wounded, the broken-down and the emaciated, the military and the civilians, the officers and the soldiers, the women and the children—all within the Residency had passed a day of agonised suspense, unable to help in their own deliverance; but when at length Havelock’s advanced column could be seen in a street visible from the buildings of the Residency—then broke forth such a cheer as none can know but those placed in similar circumstances.

When General Havelock penned a hasty dispatch narrating the events of this day, he said: ‘To form a notion of the obstacles overcome, a reference must be made to the events that are known to have occurred at Buenos Ayres and Saragossa. Our advance was through streets of flat-roofed and loopholed houses, each forming a separate fortress. I am filled with surprise at the success of operations which demanded the efforts of 10,000 good troops.’ The advantage cost him dearly. Sir James Outram received a flesh-wound in the arm early in the day, but nothing could subdue his spirit; though faint from loss of blood, he continued till the end of the operations to sit on his horse, from which he only dismounted at the gate of the Residency. Greatest loss of all was that of the gallant and energetic Brigadier-general Neill, who from the 3d of June to the 25th of September had been almost incessantly engaged in conflicts with the enemy, in and between the cities of Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. He fell, to fight no more. From the time when he left his native home in Ayrshire, a stripling sixteen years of age, he had passed thirty years of his life in service, and had been a trusty and trusted officer.[[63]] But although the loss of Neill was the most deplored, on account of the peculiar services which he had rendered, Havelock had to lament the melancholy list of gallant officers who had equally desired to shew themselves as true soldiers on this day.[[64]] No less than ten officers were either killed or wounded in the 78th Highlanders alone—shewing how terrible must have been the work in which that heroic regiment led. The whole list of casualties comprised 119 officers and men killed, 339 wounded, and 77 missing. Of these last Havelock said: ‘I much fear that, some or all, they have fallen into the hands of a merciless foe.’ Thus was the force reduced by more than five hundred men in one day.

On the evening of this day, the 25th of September, Major-general Havelock, within the Residency at Lucknow, gave back to Sir James Outram the charge which had so generously been intrusted to him. He became second in command to one who had all day fought chivalrously under him as a volunteer. Here, then, this chapter may end. It was the last day of Havelock’s campaign as an independent commander. What else he did before disease ended his valuable life; what the Lucknow garrison had effected to maintain their perilous position during so many weary weeks; what were the circumstances that rendered necessary many more weeks of detention in the Residency; by whom and at what time they were really and finally relieved—are subjects that will engage our attention in future pages.

[57]. It may be useful to note, for readers unfamiliar with military matters, the meaning of the words brevet and brigadier. A brevet is a commission, conferring on an officer a degree of rank next above that which he holds in his particular regiment; without, however, conveying the power of receiving the corresponding pay. Besides being honorary as a mark of distinction, it qualifies the officer to succeed to the full possession of the higher rank on a vacancy occurring, in preference to one not holding a brevet. In the British army brevet rank only applies to captains, majors, and lieutenant-colonels. A brigadier is a colonel or other officer of a regiment who is made temporarily a general officer for a special service, in command of a brigade, or more than one regiment. It is not a permanent rank, but is considered as a stepping-stone to the office of major-general. Many Indian officers who were colonels when the Indian mutiny began, such as Henry Lawrence and Neill, were appointed brigadier-generals for a special service, and rose to higher rank before the mutiny was ended.

[58]. Chapter ix., pp. [159]-[161].

[59].

British Troops:
H.M. 64th foot (from Persia),435men; Major Stirling.
H.M. 78th Highlanders (from Persia),284men; Col. Hamilton.
H.M. 84th foot (from Pegu),190men; Lieut. Ayrton.
1st Madras Fusiliers (from Madras),376men; Major Renaud.
Voluntary cavalry (from Allahabad),20men; Capt. Barrow.
Royal artillery (from Ceylon),98men; Capt. Maude.
————
1403
Native Troops:
Regiment of Ferozpore (Sikhs),448men; Capt. Brasyer.
13th Irr. Cav., and 3d Oude Cav.,95men; Lieut. Palliser.
Artillery,18men;
————
561

Colonel Tytler and Captain Beatson officiated as quarter-master-general and adjutant-general of the force, irrespective of particular regiments.

[60]. ‘Brigadier-general Havelock thanks his soldiers for their arduous exertion of yesterday, which produced, in four hours, the strange result of a whole army driven from a strong position, eleven guns captured, and their whole force scattered to the winds, without the loss of a single British soldier!

‘To what is this astonishing effect to be attributed? To the fire of the British artillery, exceeding in rapidity and precision all that the brigadier-general has ever witnessed in his not short career; to the power of the Enfield rifle in British hands; to British pluck, that good quality that has survived the revolution of the hour; and to the blessing of Almighty God on a most righteous cause—the cause of justice, humanity, truth, and good government in India.’

[61]. ‘The important duty of first relieving the garrison of Lucknow has been intrusted to Major-general Havelock, C.B.; and Major-general Outram feels that it is due to this distinguished officer, and to the strenuous and noble exertions which he has already made to effect that object, that to him should accrue the honour of the achievement.

‘Major-general Outram is confident that the great end for which General Havelock and his brave troops have so long and so gloriously fought will now, under the blessing of Providence, be accomplished.

‘The major-general, therefore, in gratitude for and admiration of the brilliant deeds in arms achieved by General Havelock and his gallant troops, will cheerfully waive his rank on the occasion, and will accompany the force to Lucknow in his civil capacity as chief-commissioner of Oude, tendering his military services to General Havelock as a volunteer.

‘On the relief of Lucknow, the major-general will resume his position at the head of the forces.’

[62].

‘FIRST INFANTRY BRIGADE.

‘The 5th Fusiliers; 84th regiment; detachments 64th foot and 1st Madras Fusiliers:—Brigadier-general Neill commanding, and nominating his own brigade staff.

‘SECOND INFANTRY BRIGADE.

‘Her Majesty’s 78th Highlanders; her Majesty’s 90th Light Infantry; and the Sikh regiment of Ferozpore:—Brigadier Hamilton commanding, and nominating his own brigade staff.

‘THIRD (ARTILLERY) BRIGADE.

‘Captain Maude’s battery; Captain Olphert’s battery; Brevet-Major Eyre’s battery:—Major Cope to command, and to appoint his own staff.

‘CAVALRY.

‘Volunteer cavalry to the left; Irregular cavalry to the right:—Captain Barrow to command.

‘ENGINEER DEPARTMENT.

‘Chief-engineer, Captain Crommelin; assistant-engineers, Lieutenants Leonard and Judge.

‘Major-general H. Havelock, C.B., to command the force.’

[63]. The Queen afterwards gave to the brigadier-general’s wife the title which she would have acquired in the regular way if her gallant husband had lived a few weeks longer—that of Lady Neill.

[64]. Officers Killed.—Brigadier-general Neill; Brigade-major Cooper; Lieutenant-colonel Bazely; Captain Pakenham; Lieutenants Crump, Warren, Bateman, Webster, Kirby, Poole, and Moultrie.

Officers Wounded.—Major-general Sir J. Outram; Lieutenant-colonel Tytler; Captains Becher, Orr, Hodgson, Crommelin, Olphert, L’Estrange, Johnson, Lockhart, Hastings, and Willis; Lieutenants Sitwell, Havelock, Lynch, Palliser, Swanston, Birch, Crowe, Swanson, Grant, Jolly, Macpherson, Barry, Oakley, Woolhouse, Knight, Preston, Arnold, and Bailey. Some of the wounded officers afterwards died of their wounds.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE DINAPOOR MUTINY, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

After the first startling outbreak at Meerut, there was no instance of mutiny that threw consternation over a more widely spreading range of country than that at Dinapoor. This military station is in the midst of the thickly populated province of Behar, between Bengal and Oude; a province rich in opium, rice, and indigo plantations, and inhabited chiefly by a class of Hindoos less warlike than those towards the west. The Dinapoor mutiny was the one great event in the eastern half of Northern India during July and August; and on this account it may conveniently be treated as the central nucleus around which all the minor events grouped themselves. In the regions surrounding the lower course of the Ganges, and its branch the Hoogly, the disturbances were of minor character; but along both sides of the great trunk-road there was much more agitation, especially after the mutiny at the station above named. Nevertheless, it will be desirable to take a bird’s-eye glance at Bengal and Behar generally in this chapter, in relation to the events of July and August—keeping steadily in mind the 25th of July, as the day on which the occurrences at Dinapoor agitated all the natives, paralysed many of the Europeans, and led to a train of truly remarkable proceedings in and near the town of Arrah.

First, then, for Calcutta, the Anglo-Indian capital. This city was not afflicted by a mutiny, in the usual meaning of the term, at any time during the year. Many reasons might be assigned for this exemption. There were on all occasions more Europeans at Calcutta than in any other city in India, who could have presented a formidable defence-corps if they chose to combine for that purpose. There was the majesty of a vice-regal court at Calcutta, not without its effect on the impressionable minds of Asiatics. There were the head-quarters of all authority in the city, insuring the promptest measures if exigency should demand them. And lastly, Calcutta being the landing-place for most of the English troops, rebel sepoys could never hope for much chance of success in that capital. Mutiny there was not, but panic unquestionably appeared—panic among the Europeans who did not belong to the Company’s service, and whose imaginations were excited by the terrible narratives brought in from the northwest, and highly coloured during their transmission. It was an unfortunate circumstance that many of these persons were hostile to the government of Viscount Canning; and this hostility was especially displayed by those connected with the press, on account of the restrictions already adverted to. Whatever may be the varieties of opinion on the matters at issue, it is unquestionable that difficulties were thrown in the way of the executive by this want of accord. India has for a long period been rich in coteries and parties. Among military men, the Queen’s officers and the Company’s officers have had a little emulative pique; among non-military men, there has been an envy by the non-officials of the civil servants of the Company; and the military and the civilians have had their own grounds for antagonism. Calcutta, above all other places, has been marked by these sources of discord.

Towards the close of July the government deemed it prudent to ascertain what was the state of affairs in Calcutta with reference to the possession, sale, or concealment of arms. The Europeans in the city, in a state of perpetual alarm, kept up by unauthenticated paragraphs in the newspapers, had indulged a belief that the natives had lately made large purchases of arms, as if plotting mischief. Especially was this suspicion entertained when news arrived from Havelock and Neill that all the Europeans at Cawnpore had been murdered; almost wild with excitement, rage, and terror, the Calcutta community set no bounds to their apprehensions; they would fain have shot all the natives around them, in vague dread of some diabolical plot. Mr Wauchope, commissioner of police, was ordered to make strict inquiry concerning the possession of arms. He found that the sale of weapons had been very large during three mouths, but that nearly all the purchases had been made by Europeans, and that hardly a house in Calcutta, inhabited by Christians, was without one or more muskets or pistols. Many arms also had been purchased in Calcutta, and taken into the provinces for the use of indigo-planters, zemindars, and others, who naturally wished to have near them a few weapons at such a turbulent period. Of any considerable purchases of arms by the native population of Calcutta there was no proof, and the superintendent disbelieved the rumour. This was the third time in two months that the Anglo-Indian capital had been thrown into a paroxysm of terror on this subject; and although the panic was shewn to be groundless, the authorities nevertheless believed it to be expedient to cause all firearms in the city to be registered.

Major Vincent Eyre.

No small part of the agitation at Calcutta arose from the shackles on the press, already adverted to. Men of extreme opinions, and men of excited feelings, longing to pour out their thoughts on paper, found themselves less able so to do than in times gone by; there was the seizure of their printing apparatus, the infliction of a heavy fine, confronting them, and checking the movement of their pens. Sufficient transpired, however, to render manifest these two facts—that the European community at Calcutta violently hated the natives generally, and violently opposed Viscount Canning personally. There was a very general acquiescence in some such code of rules as the following, for dealing with the natives—that every mutineer who had taken up arms or quitted his ranks should be put to death; that every native, not a soldier, who aided the mutineers, should in like manner be put to death; that in every village in which a European had been murdered, a telegraph wire cut, or a dâk stolen, a swift tribunal should exercise summary justice; that every village in which a European fugitive had been insulted or refused aid should be heavily fined; and that vengeance, burning vengeance, was the only adequate measure to deal out to all who had offended. The distressing tales brought by the fugitives had much effect in keeping up the feeling denoted by such suggestions as these. It was under the influence of the same disturbed state of the public mind, that an address or petition was got up, condemnatory alike of Viscount Canning and of the East India Company; it was intended to work a considerable effect in England; but the obviously one-sided line of argument vitiated its force and damaged its reception.

As the month of July advanced, and fugitives came in from the disturbed provinces, arrangements were made for accommodating them at Calcutta, and—as we have seen—for alleviating their wants. It became also a point of much importance to provide barracks or temporary homes of some kind for the troops expected to arrive by sea from various regions. Among buildings set apart for this latter purpose were the Town Hall, the Free School, the Pleaders’ Chambers in the Sudder Court, and the Lower Orphan School at Kidderpore. Many months would necessarily elapse before troops in large numbers could arrive; but even a single regiment would require considerable space to house it before it could be sent up the country. In what way, during July and August, the English troops were sent to the seats of disturbance, has already been sufficiently noticed; some were despatched by steamers up the Ganges to Patna, Benares, and Allahabad; while the rest mostly went from Calcutta to Raneegunge by railway, and thence pursued their land-journey by any vehicles obtainable.

It may here be remarked, that when Sir Colin Campbell arrived at Calcutta, an immense amount of labour presented itself to his notice. Before he could decide whether to advance northwest to the seat of war, or to remain at the capital, he had carefully to examine the military condition of India. The records of the war department were at Simla, while the centre of authority was at Calcutta. The principal officers were scattered throughout the disturbed districts; the desultory and isolated struggles had relaxed the bond of military obedience; the reinforcements as they arrived had to be fitted into their places; the detached forces had to be brought into subordination to some general plan; and the different branches of the service had to be brought into harmony one with another. Hence Calcutta was for several weeks the head-quarters of the veteran commander-in-chief, while these all-important details of military organisation were in progress.

In the wide belt of country forming the eastern margin of India, from the Himalaya in the north to Pegu in the south, there was no mutiny properly so called during July and August. All the disturbances were limited to threatening symptoms which, if not attended to, might have proved dangerous. The nature of these symptoms may be illustrated by a few examples. At Jelpigoree, early in July, two men were detected tampering with the sepoys of the 73d N. I.; and a trooper of the 11th irregular cavalry was found guilty of insubordination. At Dinagepore the moulvies or Mussulman religious teachers began to spread seditious rumours. At Jessore, similar Mussulman tendencies were manifested. In the third week of July tranquillity prevailed throughout the divisions of Aracan, Chittagong, Dacca, Assam, and Darjeeling, comprising the belt above adverted to; and if agitation were more observable towards the close of the month, it was traceable to news of the Dinapoor mutiny, presently to be noticed. Early in August the Jelpigoree native troops were found to be in a very unsettled state, ready to mutiny at any time; and on the 15th a plot was discovered for murdering the officers and decamping towards the west. In consequence of this, orders were sent to Assam and Darjeeling to aid the Jelpigoree officers in case of need. During the remainder of August, a close watch was kept on the 73d N. I., the chief native regiment in that part of India, sufficient to prevent actual outbreaks; and native servants were disarmed during the Mohurrum or Mohammedan festival, to guard against the effects of fanaticism. Perhaps, however, the tranquillity of this eastern belt was more efficiently secured by the near neighbourhood of half-civilised border tribes, who had but little sympathy with the real Hindustanis, and were willing to enter into the Company’s service as irregular troops and armed police.

Passing westward, to the line of route along the Hoogly to the Ganges, and the country near it, we find traces of a little more turbulency, owing to the presence of a greater number of native troops. About the middle of July, the Barrackpore authorities asked for permission to disarm the villages near at hand, in order to render more effectual the previous disarming of native troops at Barrackpore itself—treated in a former chapter. Early in August the behaviour of the troops at Berhampore became suspicious; they had heard of the mutiny of the 8th N. I. at places further west, and were with difficulty kept from imitating the pernicious example. In the middle of the month, the commissioner of Bhagulpore deemed it necessary to detain two detachments of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, on their way up the Ganges, at Bhagulpore and Monghir; for the 32d native infantry, and the 5th irregular cavalry, exhibited symptoms not to be neglected. After the occurrences at Dinapoor, the region around Berhampore and Moorshedabad could no longer be kept in peace while the native troops retained their arms; it was determined therefore, by Mr Spencer the commissioner, and Colonel Macgregor the commandant, to adopt decisive measures while there was yet time. On the 1st of August, having the aid of H.M. 90th foot, they disarmed the 63d native infantry and the 11th irregular cavalry at Berhampore; and on the following day they similarly disarmed all the inhabitants of that place and of Moorshedabad. Colonel Campbell, of the 90th, who had brought that regiment from England in splendid condition in the Himalaya steamer, and who was on his way up the Ganges to the disturbed districts, was the officer who practically effected this disarming at Berhampore; he spoke of the 11th irregular cavalry as one of the most superb regiments he had ever seen, in men, horses, and equipments; they were rendered almost savage by the skill with which the colonel managed his delicate task; and they reproached the sepoys of the 63d for having submitted so quietly to the disarming. A little further up the country, at Bhagulpore, about 200 troopers of the 5th irregular cavalry mutinied on the 14th of August, taking the road towards Bowsee, but harming none of their officers; on the 15th they passed through Bowsee to Rownee; and on the 18th left Rownee for Gayah—bound for the disturbed regions in the west. At Monghir, still higher up the Ganges, a terrible commotion was produced by this occurrence; the civil commissioner shut himself up in a fort, with a few of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, and left the city to its fate; but fortunately Sir James Outram was at the time passing up the Ganges in a steamer; he rebuked this pusillanimity, and recommended the officials to shew a bolder front.

Arriving now at the Patna and Dinapoor district, we must trace the progress of affairs more in detail, to shew how the authorities were placed before, and how after, the mutiny which it is the chief object of this chapter to narrate. Patna is a large and important city, the centre of an industrious region; while Dinapoor, in the immediate vicinity, is the largest military station between Barrackpore and Allahabad. Mr Tayler, civil commissioner, was the chief authority at the one place; Major-general Lloyd was military commandant at the other; and it was essentially necessary, for the preservation of peace in all that region, that these two officials should act in harmony. We have already seen (pp. [151]-[154]) that, about the middle of June, the Patna district became much agitated by the news of disturbances in other quarters; that the police force was thereupon strengthened, and the ghats or landing-places watched; that some of the Company’s treasure was removed to other stations; that places of rendezvous were agreed upon in case of emergency; that conspiracies among the Moslem inhabitants were more than once discovered, in concert with other conspirators at Lucknow and Cawnpore; and that on the 3d of July some of the fanatics murdered Dr Lyell, principal assistant to the opium agent. We have also seen, in the same chapter, that Dinapoor reposed upon a sort of moral volcano throughout June; that although the native troops made loud professions of loyalty, the Europeans were nevertheless in a very anxious position—all living near together, all on the alert, and most of them believing that the fidelity of the sepoys was not worth many days’ purchase. Being thus on their guard, a mutiny ought not to have occurred at their station; but it did occur, and brought disgrace to the general who was responsible for military affairs in that division.

An intelligent clue to this whole series of transactions will be obtained by tracing—first, the Dinapoor mutiny itself; then the mingled disasters and successes, blunders and heroism, at Arrah; then the effect of the mutiny on the districts of Behar north of the Ganges; and, lastly, the effects on the wide-spreading region south of that river.

The distance between the two cities is about ten miles. The barracks of the European troops at Dinapoor were situated in a large square westward of the native town; beyond this were the native lines; and most western of all, by a very injudicious arrangement, was the magazine in which the percussion-caps were stored—a matter apparently small in itself, but serious in its consequences, as we shall presently see. Major-general Lloyd, commander of the station, and of a vast military region called the Dinapoor Division, had for some weeks been an object of almost as much anxiety to the Europeans at the station as the sepoys themselves. He was advanced in years, infirm, and irresolute. Unable to mount his horse without assistance, and dreading to give orders that would have the effect of sending any European troops away from Dinapoor, he was singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties of those times. It points to some great defect in military routine, when one who had been a gallant officer in his better days was thus left in possession of a command he was no longer fitted to wield. Towards the close of July there were three regiments of Bengal native infantry at that station, the 7th, 8th, and 40th. There was also the greater portion of H.M. 10th foot, together with two companies of the 37th, and two troops of artillery. Not a British officer, except the major-general, doubted that these Europeans could have disarmed and controlled the sepoys, had the attempt been made at the proper time. The Calcutta inhabitants had petitioned the governor-general to disarm the native regiments at Dinapoor, and the officers of the Queen’s regiments at that station had all along advocated a similar measure; but General Lloyd, like many other Company’s officers, was proud of the sepoys, and trusted them to the last; and Viscount Canning placed reliance on his experience, to determine whether and when to effect this disarming. This reliance ended in unfortunate results.

On the 25th of July, the appearance of affairs led the major-general to exhibit less than his former confidence in the native troops; he shrank, it is true, from disarming them; but he sought to render their arms less dangerous by quietly removing the percussion-caps from the magazine. Now these caps had to be brought in front of the whole length of the sepoy lines on the way from the magazine to the English barracks. Early in the morning he sent the 10th and the artillery to the grand square, ready to be moved towards the sepoy lines if disturbance should occur. Two hackeries went down to the magazine under charge of an officer; the caps were placed in them; and the vehicles were drawn some distance towards the English lines. There then arose a shout among the sepoys: ‘Kill the sahibs; don’t let the caps be taken away!’ The caps were taken, however, and safely conveyed to the officers’ mess-room. The 10th were kept idle in the square or in barracks all the forenoon; while the native officers were ordered to go to the native lines, and ask the sepoys to give up the caps already issued to them. Some of the sepoys obeyed this strange demand—strange, because backed by no display of power; while some fired their muskets and threatened to shoot the officers. At the sound of these shots the 10th were ordered hastily to advance; they did so, but only to see the rebel sepoys run off as fast as their legs could carry them. Inexpressible was the mortification of the officers at this sight; three entire regiments escaped across fields, with their arms and accoutrements, to swell the ranks of the mutineers elsewhere; and so stupid had been the orders given, that there was no force at hand to stop them. The 10th, two companies of the 37th, and the artillery, all were burning to castigate these men; yet was the escape so quickly and completely effected that very few of the sepoys fell. The English destroyed the sepoy lines, but did not pursue the mutineers, for their perplexed commander would not permit them to leave him in danger. A surgeon of the 10th, on seeing the officers threatened by the sepoys, brought his hospital-guards to confront them; and even some of his patients got upon the flat roof of the hospital, and fired at the rebels. He then galloped off, and brought all the ladies and children to the barracks for safety. Every man of the 10th regiment was vexed and irritated by this day’s work; complaints against the general were loud, deep, and many; and all the officers’ letters told plainly of the general feeling among them. The regiment numbered little more than four hundred bayonets; for many men were sick in hospital, and a detachment was at Benares; but the four hundred, highly disciplined men, would not have hesitated an instant to disarm, to fight, to pursue, the three thousand rebels, had they been properly instructed and permitted so to do. During eight or ten weeks the officers of that regiment had urged the disarming of the sepoys; but their recommendations had not been listened to, and now it was too late. The general himself, on the forenoon of the 25th, went on board a steamer in the Ganges: ‘I had no horse in cantonment,’ he said. ‘My stable was two miles distant; and being unable at the time to walk far or much, I thought I should be most useful on board the steamer with guns and riflemen.’ It is deeply to be regretted that an old soldier should have been so placed as to find such an explanation necessary. As a consequence of this retreat to a place of shelter, the officers remained without commands and without a commander. Some of the mutineers embarked in boats, with the intention of going down the Ganges to Patna, or of crossing the river; but the detachment of the 37th, on shore and in the steamer, killed most of them by rifle-shots. The steamer did its work, unquestionably; but it was not the place for a military commander at such a time.

The question at once presented itself to the minds of all—whither had the rebels gone? Evidence was soon afforded that the direction taken was that of Arrah, a town twenty-four miles from Dinapoor, and separated from it by the river Sone. Arrah, as a town, was not of great importance; but it was the chief place in the district of Shahabad, and was surrounded by a country whence much revenue was obtained by the East India Company. During the troubles arising out of the mutiny, the chief authority at Arrah was the magistrate, Mr Wake—a man who, by his energy and public spirit, proved to be eminently fitted to hold power in perilous times. During the whole of June and July he had watched the progress of events with an anxious eye. Very soon after the mutiny commenced, he wrote to the authorities at Calcutta, describing the contents of certain native newspapers published about that time, and suggesting the propriety of curbing the licence of those productions. On the 10th of June he announced—with something like contempt in his manner—that most of the Europeans employed on the railway-works near Arrah had hurried away frightened by reports of mutinous symptoms at Ghazeepore and Buxar; and he dwelt on the pernicious effects of the example afforded by this timidity. About a week afterwards he induced them all to return. From time to time he applied to Dinapoor, Patna, and Calcutta, for a small detachment of troops to protect Arrah; but none could be afforded. He suspected some of the chieftains and zemindars near at hand, and more than suspected numerous disbanded sepoys who were seen in the district; to detect plots, he detained and opened letters at the post-office; but this course met with disapproval, as commencing a system liable to great abuse. There were two influential men in the neighbourhood—Baboo Koer Singh, and the Rajah of Doomraon—whose conduct Mr Wake scrutinised very closely; they professed friendship and loyalty to the government, but he doubted them. On the 11th of July, Arrah had become surrounded by so many disbanded sepoys, and natives ready for any mischief, that he applied to Patna for a party of Captain Rattray’s Sikh police, which was furnished to him.

Thus matters proceeded until the 25th of July, when rumours of something disastrous at Dinapoor arrived. Arrah was now about to become suddenly famous. The ‘Defence of Arrah’ was to be narrated in dispatches and letters, in pamphlets and books, and was to cheer up many who had been humiliated by blunders committed elsewhere. True, it was only a house defended, not a town; it was less than a score of Europeans saved, not a whole community; yet did it bring well-deserved praise to those concerned in it, and encouragement to a spirited line of conduct on the part of the Company’s civil servants elsewhere.

Mr Boyle’s house at Arrah, defended for seven days against 3000 rebels.

On the evening of the day just named, Mr Wake received express news that the native troops at Dinapoor had actually mutinied, or shewed symptoms of so doing within a few hours. On the morning of the 26th, he heard that some of the mutineers were crossing the river Sone, at a point sixteen miles from Dinapoor, and advancing upon Arrah. His Hindustani local police speedily ran away; but he and a trusty band of civilians resolved to remain at their posts. They selected the bungalow of one of their number, Mr Boyle, an engineer of the main trunk railway, and made that their fortress. Or, more correctly, it was a building which Mr Boyle had selected for some such purpose as this many days or even weeks before, when the state of affairs began to look gloomy; it was a detached two-storied house, about fifty feet square, standing within the same compound as the bungalow inhabited by Mr Boyle; he fortified it with stones and timber, and always kept some provisions in it. When the other civilians learned this, some of them smiled; but the smile became one of gratitude on the 26th of July. The Europeans who now took up their abode in this fortified house were Messrs Wake, Boyle, Littledale, Combe, Colvin, Halls, Field, Anderson, Godfrey, Cock, Tait, Hoyle, Delpeiron, De Songa, and Dacosta; and a Mohammedan deputy-collector, Syud Azimoodeen—all employed in various civil duties in or near Arrah: not a military man among them. With them were 50 Sikhs of Captain Rattray’s police battalion. The ladies and children had been sent away to a place of safety. All that the defenders could bring into the house was meat and grain for a few days’ short allowance for the Europeans, with a very scanty supply of food for the Sikhs. As to weapons, most of the Europeans, besides revolvers and hog-spears, had two double-barrelled guns each, or a gun and a rifle; they had abundance of ammunition, and wherewithal to make cartridges by thousands. Early in the morning of the 27th, nearly the whole of the Dinapoor mutineers marched into Arrah, released the prisoners in the jail, about four hundred in number, rushed to the collectorate, and looted the treasury of eighty thousand rupees. They then advanced to Boyle’s house, and kept up a galling fire against it during the whole day, finding shelter behind trees and adjacent buildings. And now did Baboo Koer Singh shew himself in his true colours; he threw off the mask of friendliness, and boldly headed the mutineers. It was afterwards ascertained that this man, supposed to be in league with Nena Sahib, had openly become a rebel instantly on hearing of the mutiny at Dinapoor: it was he who had procured the boats in which they crossed the Sone; and he formed a plan for joining the Oude insurgents after plundering the treasury of Arrah. When in front of Mr Boyle’s house, Koer Singh and his myrmidons endeavoured to bribe the Sikhs to desert; but these stanch fellows remained true to their salt. On the 28th the insurgents having brought two small cannon, the hastily defended house had then to bear a torrent of cannon-balls as well as of musket-bullets. Thus the siege continued day after day. The rebels even dragged one of the cannon up to the roof of Mr Boyle’s bungalow, about sixty yards off, whence they could fire into the defended house. ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Wake in his dispatch, ‘but the cowardice, ignorance, and want of unanimity of our enemies, prevented our fortification from being brought down about our ears.’ As fast as the strength of the attack was increased, so fast did the garrison increase their defences; to oppose a new battery, a new barricade was raised; to defeat a mine, a countermine was run out. The Sikhs worked untiringly, and seemed to glory in the gallant defence they were making. When provisions began to run low, they made a sally one night, and brought in four sheep—a precious treasure to them at such a time. Seven whole days and nights did this continue—three thousand men besieging seventy. On the last two days the cowards offered ‘terms,’ which were contemptuously rejected. On the 2d of August the mutineers marched off to the west of Arrah to fight Major Vincent Eyre; how they fared, we shall see presently; but the battle brought about the liberation of Mr Wake and his companions. Wonderful to relate, only one member of the garrison, a Sikh policeman, received a dangerous wound; all the rest escaped with mere bruises and scratches. The Sikhs were justly proud of their share in the work. During the siege, when water ran short, they dug a well underneath the house, and continued their labour till they came to a spring; when all was happily ended, they requested that the well might be built into a permanent one, as a memento of their services; and that the house itself should receive the inscription of ‘Futtehgurh’ or ‘stronghold of victory’—requests with which Mr Boyle was not at all unwilling to comply.

We must now direct attention again to Patna and Dinapoor, and notice the measures taken to check if possible the triumph of the mutineers. Mr Tayler at the one place had civil control, and General Lloyd at the other had military control, over Arrah as well as all other towns in the neighbourhood; and both felt that that station was placed in peril as soon as the mutineers moved westward from Dinapoor. Some weeks earlier, when the railway officials had hurried away from Arrah to Dinapoor in affright, Mr Tayler rebuked them, saying that, ‘this is a crisis when every Englishman should feel that his individual example is of an importance which it is difficult to calculate. It is of great consequence that Europeans should exhibit neither alarm nor panic; and that, whenever it is practicable, they should band together for mutual defence and protection.’ This rebuke aided Mr Wake’s advice in bringing the railway people back to Arrah. It may here be remarked that Mr Tayler himself was, during the early part of July, in a state of discord, not only with the natives, but with many of the Europeans at Patna. He had an unseemly wrangle with Mr Lowis the magistrate; and was himself frequently reprimanded by the lieutenant-governor of Bengal. This anarchy appears to have arisen from the fact that, at a time of much difficulty, different views were entertained concerning the best policy to be pursued—views, advocated in a way that much obstructed public business.

It was about one o’clock on the 25th that the authorities at Patna heard alarming intelligence from Dinapoor. Mr Tayler at once summoned all the Europeans resident in the city to his house, where measures of defence were planned in case of an attack. At three o’clock a distant firing announced that the mutiny had taken place; and within an hour or two came the news that the mutinous regiments had marched off towards the west. Mr Tayler made up an expeditionary force of about 100 persons—Sikhs, Nujeebs, recruits, and volunteers—and sent it off that same night towards Arrah, to watch the movements of the rebels. At dawn on the following morning, however, unfavourable news came in from many country stations; and the commissioner, uneasy about Patna and its neighbourhood, recalled the corps. Tayler and Lloyd did not work well together at that crisis. The commissioner wrote to the general on the day after the mutiny, urging him to send 50 European troops either to Chupra or to Mozufferpoor, or both, to protect those places from an attack threatened by insurgents. To this application Lloyd returned a somewhat querulous answer—that he had only 600 Europeans at Dinapoor; that he was afraid of treachery on the part of Koer Singh; that he had already been blamed by the Calcutta authorities for listening to applications for troops to defend Patna, instead of sending them on to Allahabad; and that he could render no aid for the purposes required. Mr Tayler renewed the subject by announcing that he would send 50 Sikhs to the two places named; and he strongly urged the general to send 200 men to rout the mutineers who had gone to Arrah—proposing, at the same time, the establishment of a corps of volunteer cavalry among the officers and gentlemen of Patna and Dinapoor. In most of these matters Mr Tayler appears to have judged more soundly than General Lloyd; but in one point he was fatally in error—he believed that Baboo Koer Singh of Jugdispore would remain faithful to the British government.

If the ‘defence of Arrah’ has acquired notoriety, so has the ‘disaster’ at that place—to which we must now direct attention. This disaster was peculiarly mortifying to the British, as giving a temporary triumph to the mutineers, and as involving a positive loss of many English soldiers at a critical period. The revolt at Dinapoor having occurred on Saturday the 25th of July, General Lloyd made no effort until Monday the 27th to look after the sepoys; but on that day he sent a party of the 37th foot from Dinapoor towards Arrah, for the purpose of dispersing the mutineers assembled at that place, and for rescuing the European community hemmed in there. The troops went in the Horungotta steamer; but this unfortunately went aground after three hours’ steaming, and the plan was frustrated. On the evening of Tuesday the 28th, another expedition was organised; and it was to this that the disastrous loss occurred. The steamer Bombay happening to arrive at Dinapoor in her downward passage on the Ganges, Lloyd detained it, and arranged to send a detachment on board. The Bombay was to take a certain number of troops, steam up to the spot where the Horungotta had run aground, take in tow the detachment from that steamer, and proceed up the river Sone to a landing-place as near as possible to Arrah. This river enters the Ganges at a point a few miles west of Dinapoor. Early in the morning of Wednesday the 29th, the steamer started, and after picking up the other detachment, the whole disembarked in the afternoon at Beharee Ghat—over 400 men in all, under Captain Dunbar.[[65]] The landing having been safely effected on the left or west bank of the Sone, the troops marched to a nullah which it was necessary to cross by means of boats. When, after a considerable delay, this was accomplished, they resumed their march, with a bright moon above them, a rough road beneath them, and a very few of the enemy in sight; and the evening was far advanced when they reached a bridge about a mile and a half short of Arrah. Here Captain Harrison of the 37th suggested that they should halt until daylight, and not incur the danger of entering the town by night; but Captain Dunbar, of the 10th, who commanded the force, overruled this suggestion, under an unfortunate impression that there would be little or no opposition. This was the fatal mistake that wrecked the whole enterprise. The troops arrived at Arrah at eleven at night, in black darkness, for the moon had set; then passed through the outskirts of the town—the 10th leading, then the Sikhs, then the 37th. Suddenly, while passing by a large tope of mango-trees, a dreadful musketry-fire flashed out of the gloom; the enemy, it now appeared, had been lying in ambush awaiting the arrival of the unsuspecting force. Mr Wake and his companions were startled by the sound of this musketry, audible enough in their beleaguered but well-defended house; they at once inferred that something wrong had occurred to British troops, and in this inference they were only too correct. The suddenness of the attack, and the blackness of the night, seem to have overwhelmed the detachment; the men lost their officers, the officers their men: some ran off the road to fire into the tope, others to obtain shelter; Dunbar fell dead; and Harrison had to assume the command of men whom, at midnight and in utter darkness, he could not see. The main body succeeded in reassembling in a field about four hundred yards from the tope; and there they remained until daylight—being joined at various periods of the night by stragglers, some wounded and some unhurt, and being fired at almost continually by the mutineers. It was a wretched humiliating night to the British. At daybreak they counted heads, and then found how severe had been their loss. Captain Harrison at once collecting the survivors into a body, marched them back ten or eleven miles to the steamer. The men had fasted so long (twenty-four hours), through some mismanagement, that they were too weak to act as skirmishers; they defended themselves as long as their ammunition lasted, but kept in column, pursued the whole way by a large body of the enemy, who picked off the poor fellows with fatal certainty. Arrived at the banks of the nullah, all organisation ceased; the men rushed to the boats in disorder; some were run aground, some drowned, some swam over, some were shot by sepoys and villagers on shore. How the rest reached the steamer, they hardly knew; but this they did know—that they had left many of their wounded comrades on shore, with the certain fate of being butchered and mutilated by the enemy. It was a mournful boat-load that the Bombay carried back to Dinapoor on the evening of the 30th of July. Captain Dunbar, Lieutenants Bagnall and Ingilby, Ensigns Erskine, Sale, Birkett, and Anderson, and Messrs Cooper and Platt (gentlemen-volunteers) were killed; Lieutenant Sandwith, Ensign Venour, and Messrs Garstin and Macdonell (gentlemen-volunteers) were wounded. Out of fifteen officers, twelve were killed or wounded. The dismal list enumerated 170 officers and men killed, and 120 wounded—290 out of 415! Havelock won half-a-dozen of his victories with no greater loss than this.

Here, then, was one disaster on the heels of another. General Lloyd’s vacillation had permitted the native troops at Dinapoor to mutiny; and now the unfortunate Captain Dunbar’s mismanagement had led to the destruction of nearly two-thirds of the force sent to rout those mutineers. Happily, Messrs Wake and Boyle, and their companions, still held out; and happily there was a gallant officer near who had the skill to command as well as the courage to fight. This officer was Major Vincent Eyre, of the artillery. Being en route up the Ganges with some guns from Dinapoor to Allahabad, and having arrived at Ghazeepore on the 28th of July, he there learned the critical position of the handful of Europeans in the house at Arrah. He applied to the authorities at Ghazeepore for permission to make an attempt to relieve Mr Wake; they gave it: he steamed back to Buxar, and there met a detachment of the 5th Fusiliers going up the Ganges. Finding the officers and men heartily willing to aid him, he formed a plan for marching a field-force from Buxar to Arrah, and there attacking the Dinapoor mutineers and their accomplice Koer Singh. Although dignified with the name of a field-force, it consisted simply of about 160 men of H.M. 5th Fusiliers under Captain L’Estrange, 12 mounted volunteers of the railway department, and three guns; but under an able commander, it was destined to prove more than a match for nearly twenty times its number of native troops. On the 30th of July, the morning when the detachment from Dinapoor retreated from Arrah under such deplorable circumstances, Eyre commenced a series of operations west of that town. He started from Buxar, and marched twenty-eight miles to Shawpoor, where he heard of the disaster that had overwhelmed Captain Dunbar’s party. He at once stated to General Lloyd, in a dispatch: ‘I venture to affirm confidently that no such disaster would have been likely to occur, had that detachment advanced less precipitately, so as to have given full time for my force to have approached direct from the opposite side; for the rebels would then have been hemmed in between the two opposing forces, and must have been utterly routed.’ Regret, however, being useless, Eyre proceeded to carry out his own plan. Hearing that the enemy intended to destroy the bridges en route, he pushed on again towards Arrah. On the 1st of August, finding the bridge at Bullowtee just cut, he hastily constructed a substitute, and marched on to Gujeratgunje by nightfall. Here he bivouacked for the night. At daybreak on the 2d he started again, and soon came in sight of the enemy, drawn up in great force in plantations on either side of the road, with inundated rice-fields in front; they had sallied out of Arrah to meet him. Perceiving that the enemy intended to turn his flanks, he boldly pushed on against their centre, penetrated it, and advanced to the village of Beebeegunje. The enemy, baffled by his tactics, gave up their first plan, and hastily sought to prevent his passage over a bridge near the village. In this they succeeded for a time, by destroying the bridge. After resting his troops a while, Eyre—seeing that the enemy had formed extensive earthworks beyond the stream, and that they occupied the houses of the village in great force—determined to make a detour to the right, and try to cross about a mile higher up. The enemy, seeing his object, followed him quickly, and attacked him with great boldness, being flushed by their recent victory over the luckless river detachment. They were nearly 2500 strong in mutinous sepoys alone, besides Koer Singh and his followers. After an hour’s hard fighting, Eyre ordered Captain L’Estrange to make a charge with infantry. Promptly and gallantly that officer obeyed the order; his skirmishers on the right turned the enemy’s flank, the guns with grape and shrapnell shells drove in the centre; and then the infantry advanced—driving the enemy, panic-stricken, in all directions. Losing no time, the major crossed the stream, and advanced through an open country to within four miles of Arrah. Here he was suddenly brought up by an impassable river, which cost him many hours’ hard labour to bridge over—obtaining, fortunately, for that purpose, the aid of labourers employed on the East Indian Railway, just close at hand. Koer Singh and the rebels were so dismayed at these proceedings, that they left Arrah altogether, and retreated in various directions. It seems almost incredible, although the detailed official list places the matter beyond all doubt, that Major Eyre, during nine hours’ severe fighting on this day, lost only 2 killed and 14 wounded.

As a means of enabling this energetic officer to follow up his success, a reinforcement was sent to him from Dinapoor on the 7th of August, consisting of 200 of H.M. 10th foot. This reinforcement entered Arrah on the next day; and a party of 100 Sikhs having arrived a day or two afterwards, the major was enabled to lay his plans for an expedition to Jugdispore, twelve miles distant, to which place Koer Singh and a large number of the mutineers had retired. The enterprise was not to be commenced without some caution; for the roads were difficult for the passage of troops at that season of the year, and the rebel chief’s fort at Jugdispore was represented as being very strong and well defended. All this, however, only whetted the desire of Eyre’s troops to try their mettle against the enemy. The force consisted of just 500 men,[[66]] with three guns. On the afternoon of the 11th he took his departure from Arrah, marched eight miles, and encamped for the night on the bank of the Gagur Nuddee. Resuming his progress next morning, he passed over two miles of rice-fields nearly under water, which rendered the draught of his guns very difficult. At eleven o’clock he espied some of the enemy in the village of Tola Narainpore, evidently preparing to resist his passage of a river immediately beyond. After a fight of skirmishers, Eyre opened a fire of grape which roused up a large body of the enemy concealed behind bushes. The detachment of the 10th foot, eager to emulate the previous heroism of their comrades of the 5th Fusiliers, and exasperated by their previous loss under Captain Dunbar, asked to be permitted to charge the enemy at once; Eyre consented; Captain Patterson led them on; they rushed with a shout and a cheer, and the enemy gave way before a charge which they found irresistible. The other infantry came up and assisted in dispersing the enemy from another village, Dullaur, beyond the river. This accomplished, Eyre marched a mile and a half through thick jungle to Jugdispore, maintaining a running-fight the whole way. The treacherous Koer Singh’s stronghold was but feebly defended; Eyre took possession of it early in the afternoon, and with it large stores of grain, ammunition, and warlike material. The villagers around Jugdispore immediately sent in tokens of submission to the conqueror. Here as in the former instance, Major Eyre suffered wonderfully small loss; not a man of his force was killed on this 12th of August, and only six were wounded. The enemy lost 300.

Eyre did not give Koer Singh much time to recover himself. The rebel chief fled with a few followers to the Jutowrah jungle, where he had a residence. Thither the major followed him on the 14th, or rather sent Captain L’Estrange with a detachment; but all had dispersed, sepoys and rebels alike; and L’Estrange returned after destroying residences belonging to Koer Singh and his two brothers.

It may suffice here to mention, that, so far as concerned the region south and southwest of Arrah, the remaining days of August were spent in the marching of the Dinapoor mutineers from place to place, and the plundering or threatening of many towns as they passed. The authorities would gladly have checked the course of so many armed rebels; but it became a question whether Eyre or any other officer was strong enough in Europeans to do so, and whether their aid was not more urgently needed at Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. The mutineers marched southward of Mirzapore into Bundelcund, with the treacherous Koer Singh at their head. The engineers and others connected with the works for the East Indian railway were among those most perplexed by this movement of the rebels; because the various places occupied temporarily by those persons were just in the way of the mutineers. A lady, wife to one of these officials, has recorded in a letter that she and her friends received early news on the 25th of July that something was wrong at Dinapoor; that on the 26th the rebels themselves made their appearance; that the family got into a boat on the Sone, with no property but the clothes on their backs; that they immediately rowed off towards Dinapoor as the only means of escape; and that scarcely had they embarked when they saw bungalow’s and property of every description—belonging to individuals, to the railway company, and to the East India Company—a prey to devastating flames. ‘Everything we have in the world is gone,’ said the disconsolate writer; ‘what to do, or where to go, we know not.’ It is no wonder that the letters of such sufferers contained bitter comments on the government and politics of India—bitter, but often unjust.

The effects of this mutiny of the Dinapoor sepoys were, as has already been remarked, deep and wide-spreading. It is scarcely too much to say that twenty or thirty millions of persons were thrown into agitation by it. Along the whole line of the Ganges it was felt, from Calcutta up to Allahabad; along the great trunk-road between these two cities, it was felt; in the belt of country north of the Ganges; in the belt between the Ganges and the great road; in the belt south of the great road—in all these extensive regions, the news from Dinapoor threw Christians and natives alike into a ferment. Some discontented natives had vague hopes of advantage by the threatened dissolution of the English ‘raj;’ some of the villagers dreaded the approach of marauders who made little scruple in pillaging friend as well as foe; while all the Europeans cried out as with one voice: ‘Send us reliable British troops.’ Viscount Canning had none to send; and when ship-loads of troops did at length arrive at Calcutta, they were so urgently wanted higher up the country that he could spare few or none for regions east of Allahabad.

The revenue-officers were placed in a position of trying difficulty in those days. Besides collecting the taxes on land, salt, &c., and keeping the money in the local treasuries until it could be sent safely to Calcutta, they stored up large quantities of opium at certain factories, which were in their special keeping. The Company were the purchasers of the opium from the poppy-growers, and the sellers of it (at a large profit) to British merchants at Calcutta or Bombay; and during the interval of time between the buying and selling, the opium was stored in godowns or warehouses at certain large towns. Patna was the chief of these towns; and thus the revenue-officers of that place were especially interested in the maintenance of tranquillity among the native troops in the neighbouring station at Dinapoor. Dr Lyell, as was stated in a former page, fell a victim to Mussulman fanaticism at Patna early in July, about three weeks before the mutiny at Dinapoor. On the very day before his murder, anxious for the responsibility thrown upon him, he wrote an official letter which is interesting as illustrating the matter now under consideration. He had just succeeded the chief opium-agent, lately deceased, and had under his charge opium to the enormous value of two millions sterling, together with other government property of a quarter of a million. He had endeavoured to strengthen the opium godowns by barricading the gates with timber, and raising a breastwork of chests filled with sand on the flat roofs—fearful lest an excited rabble should attack the place. He had less than twenty Europeans on whom he could rely. Major-general Lloyd at Dinapoor either could not or would not supply him with any troops; and he sent to Calcutta urgent requisitions for British troops, Sikh police, and guns. Matters became worse; Lyell himself was massacred, and the native troops at Dinapoor mutinied; then, at the end of July, the revenue-officers at Patna announced to the government that the property under their charge had accumulated to three millions sterling, and that they could not adequately protect it unless reinforcements were sent. This appeared so serious at Calcutta, that arrangements were made for throwing a few British troops, and a few reliable Sikhs, into Patna.

The region north of the Ganges and east of Oude was in a perpetual state of flutter and uneasiness during those troubled weeks. There were few troops, either native or British; but the rumours from other quarters, gaining strength as they passed from mouth to mouth, occasioned great uneasiness, especially among the Europeans engaged in indigo-planting and other industrial pursuits. There was a small military station at Segowlie, not far from the Nepaul frontier, under the charge of Major Holmes; and this officer thought proper, even before the month of June was ended, to proclaim martial law in the districts between Segowlie and Patna. Mr Tayler, commissioner at the last-named city, thought this a bold proceeding; but he sanctioned it on account of the disturbed state of the country. The Calcutta government, however, considered that the major had overstrained his authority, and rebuked him for so doing. Before he could be informed of this rebuke, Holmes had assumed absolute military control over all the region between Patna and Goruckpore—giving orders to magistrates to watch the ghats or landing-places, to arrest suspicious persons, to offer rewards for the apprehension of rebels, to keep an eye on the petty rajahs and chieftains, to strengthen the native police, and to act in all things subordinately to him as military commander throughout the districts of Sarun, Tirhoot, and Chumparun. Military men applauded this step, but the civilians took umbrage at an assumption of power not warranted by any instructions received from Calcutta. This energetic but hapless officer was not permitted to remain many weeks in the position which he had taken up; his chief troops were the 12th irregular cavalry; and these rose on the 24th of July at Segowlie, murdered him and Mrs Holmes, as well as other Europeans, and then bent their steps towards Azimghur. This atrocity caused great consternation; for the 12th had been much trusted among the native regiments, as one whose gallantry was a guarantee for its fidelity. Gallantry was exchanged for cowardice and villainy this day. While the major and his wife were riding out, four of the troopers came up to the vehicle and beheaded them both as they sat; this being the signal, the rest of the regiment rose in mutiny, murdered the surgeon, his wife, and children, plundered the treasury, and made off in the way just noticed. When this savage act became known, and when the mutiny at Dinapoor on the next following day was also known, nothing could exceed the agitation among the Europeans. At Chupra, a station nearly opposite Arrah, the Europeans at once abandoned their homes and occupations, and ran off to Dinapoor, to be behind the shelter of a few hundred English bayonets; this was, indeed, not to be wondered at, for Chupra itself was threatened by the Segowlie mutineers. On the 30th, when the events at Dinapoor became known at Calcutta, the government did all and more than all that Major Holmes had before done; they declared martial law—not only in the northern districts of Sarun, Tirhoot, and Chumparun, but also in those districts of the Patna division south of the Ganges—Patna, Behar, and Shahabad. All through the month of August, the districts north of the river were in the state just noticed; no further mutinies took place there, but the various stations were thrown into frequent panics by the threatened irruption of insurgents from other quarters. It was chiefly from Oude that these onslaughts were feared; for that province contained more rebels than any other—more natives who, without being actually soldiers, were quite ready to embark in any desperate enterprise, military or marauding, against the English.

We have said that the whole region right and left of the main trunk-road was thrown into commotion by the mutiny at Dinapoor; this was certainly the case, if we add to the disturbing causes the revolt of one or two minor corps within this region itself. To describe how the region is parcelled out into divisions, districts, and collectorates, is wholly unnecessary: few in England know, and still fewer care, much concerning these territorial details; but if the reader will roughly mark out with his eye a sweep of country four hundred miles long by a hundred and fifty in width, beginning at Moorshedabad or Midnapore, and ending at Benares, and lying on the right or south of the Ganges—he will there see that which, in July and August, was a region of perplexity. Small military stations, and much more numerous civil stations, dot this space. The dispatches relating to the events of those two months spoke of dangers and alarms at places not one half of which are known even by name to any but persons intimately connected with India—Hazarebagh, Sheergotty, Burhee, Ramgurh, Sasseram, Bhagulpore, Bagoda, Ranchee, Bowsee, Gayah, Pittorea, Raneegunge, Rownee, Dorunda, Chyebassa, Rotas, Purulia, Bancorah, Dehree, Rotasgurh—all were places either disturbed by the visits of mutineers, or thrown into commotion lest those visits should be made at a time when means of defence were scanty.

It not unfrequently happened, at that troubled period, that while the British officers were making arrangements to disarm suspected regiments, the men of those regiments anticipated that proceeding by marching off in mutiny, of course taking their arms with them. Such happened to Lieutenant Graham, commanding at Hazarebagh. Being at Dorunda on the 30th of July, and learning that the 8th B. N. I. were unreliable at Hazarebagh, he marched off with a view to disarm them; taking with him about 220 Ramgurh infantry, 30 Ramgurh cavalry, and two 6-pounder guns. On that very day, long before he could reach Hazarebagh, the sepoys rose in mutiny, plundered the treasury, and released all the prisoners. Graham soon found himself in difficulties; he could not pass his guns over the river Damoodah at Ramgurh, because his bullocks were too few and too weak; and his Ramgurh infantry shewed signs of a disposition to march back to Dorunda and take the guns with them. After an anxious night, he crossed the river on the morning of the 31st, with his few troopers; but his infantry broke their faith, and marched away with the two guns. So far, therefore, from being able to disarm a suspected regiment, the lieutenant had the mortification of hearing that the regiment had mutinied, and, in addition, of seeing his own infantry follow the pernicious example. One fact cheered Lieutenant Graham in his anxious duty; his 30 sowars remained faithful to him. When Captain Drew, who commanded the detachment at Hazarebagh, came to make his report, it appeared that the men of the 8th B. N. I. numbered just 200 bayonets, forming two companies of one of the regiments lately mutinied at Dinapoor. When news reached the captain, on the 28th, of this last-named mutiny, he made arrangements for removing the ladies and children from the station, as he had seen enough to make him distrust his own men; he also sent to Colonel Robbins at Dorunda, for the aid of Lieutenant Graham’s Ramgurh force, and to Calcutta for any available aid in the shape of European troops. Four ladies and six children were forwarded to a place of safety, and Captain Drew passed the 29th in some anxiety. On the 30th he addressed his men, praising the sepoys who in certain regiments had remained faithful while their comrades revolted; his native officers seemed to listen to him respectfully, but the sepoys maintained an ominous silence. On that same afternoon the men ran to the bells of arms, broke them open, and seized their muskets. The die was cast. All the officers, military and civil, jumped on their horses, and rode for twelve hours through jungle, reaching Bagoda on the trunk-road on the morning of the 31st; after two hours’ rest they galloped forty miles further, then took transit dâk to Raneegunge, whence they travelled to Calcutta by railway. Meanwhile the mutineers released 800 prisoners, burned the bungalows, and pillaged the treasury of seventy thousand rupees. Whether a bold front might have prevented all this, cannot now be known; Captain Drew asserted that if he and the other officers had remained, they must inevitably have been killed on the spot.

An instructive illustration was afforded towards the close of July, of the intimate connection between the rebel sepoys and the villages of Behar or Western Bengal. The government issued a proclamation, offering rewards for the apprehension of mutineers and deserters. Mr Money, magistrate at Gayah, found by inquiries that the inhabitants of the villages refused to aid in giving up such men; but he hit upon a mode of ascertaining at least the connection between the sepoys and the villages respectively. Every sepoy remitted to his village a portion of his pay, by means of remittance-bills and descriptive rolls; each bill went to the accountant; the receipt of the payee went back to the regiment; while the descriptive roll was kept and filed in the office of the magistrate, shewing the name and regiment of the remitter. Mr Money thought it useful to collect and tabulate all these descriptive rolls for two years; and thus was able to obtain a record of the name of every sepoy belonging to every village within his jurisdiction. He could thus track any rebel soldier who might return to his village in hope of escaping punishment; for the native police, if ordered to apprehend a particular man in a particular district would do so, although unwilling to initiate inquiries. The matter is noted here, as shewing how closely the ties of family were kept up by the sepoys in this regular transmission of money from the soldier in his camp to his relations in their village.

During the first half of the month of July, before the state of affairs at Dinapoor had assumed a serious import, the towns and districts recently named were troubled rather by vague apprehensions than by actual dangers. At Gayah, the chief town of a district south of Patna, the magistrate was in much anxiety; the native inhabitants, in part hopefully and in part fearfully, were looking out daily for news from the mutineers in the Jumna and Ganges regions; and he felt much doubt whether the Company’s treasury at that place was safe. So it was in most of the towns and stations; from Raneegunge, where the finished portion of the railway ended (at about a hundred and twenty miles from Calcutta), to the districts approaching Benares and Patna, magistrates and revenue-collectors, feeling their responsibility as civil servants of the Company, cried aloud to Calcutta for a few, even a very few, English troops, to set at rest their apprehensions; but Calcutta, as these pages have over and over again shewn, had no troops to spare except for the great stations further to the northwest.

As the month advanced, these symptoms of uneasiness increased in number and intensity; and when the isolated mutineers at Rownee, Monghir, Hazarebagh, &c., became intensified by the more momentous outbreak at Dinapoor, fear grew in some instances up to panic, and the Company’s officers hastened away from stations which they believed themselves unable to hold. But here, as elsewhere, difficulties raised different qualities in different minds; many of these gentlemen behaved with a heroism worthy of all praise, as Mr Wake and Mr Boyle had done at Arrah. At some of the places not a single English soldier could be seen, or was likely to be seen at that time; and under those circumstances it was a fact of high importance that Captain Rattray’s battalion of Sikh police remained stanch and true—ready to march in small detachments to any threatened spot, and always rendering good service. When the two companies of the 8th B. N. I. mutinied at Hazarebagh, towards the close of the month, and when the Ramgurh force followed their example instead of opposing them, the civilians in this wide region were really placed in great peril; Hazarebagh wished to know what Ramgurh would do, Sheergotty looked anxiously towards Gayah, and Raneegunge feared for the safety of its railway station. The Raneegunge officials, after fleeing to Calcutta, returned to their station about the middle of August, under the protection of Sikh police. The wife of one of the civil servants of the Company, writing from Raneegunge on the 7th of August, told of the sad condition in which European fugitives reached that place, coming from various disturbed districts. ‘We are overwhelmed with refugees from all places. Some of the poor creatures have come without a thing but what they have on, and I am obliged to give them all changes of clothes for a time. Many came after riding seventy miles on one horse, and one gentleman without a saddle—a doctor and two others in their night-clothes—as they started while the wretches were firing into their bungalows. My husband had to lend them clothes to go to Calcutta in.’ The telegraphic messages or written letters that passed between Calcutta and the various stations in Western Bengal, in July and August, occupy a very large space in the blue-books relating to the mutiny; they everywhere tell of officials expressing apprehensions of being obliged to flee unless reinforcements could be sent to them; and of distinct replies from the governor-general that, as he had no troops to send them, they must bear up as long as their sagacity and resolution would permit. The Europeans at Sheergotty left that station in a body, not because they were attacked, but because they saw no hope of defence if enemies should approach. Many Europeans, however, similarly placed, afterwards regretted that they had fled; instances were not few of the moral power obtained over the native mind by men who resolutely clung to their duty in moments of peril; while in those cases where the abandonment took place, ‘the thieves and rabble of the neighbourhood,’ as an eye-witness remarked, ‘plundered the cutcheries and private houses; and those who had grudges against their neighbours began to hope and to prepare for an opportunity of vengeance.’

August found matters in an equally unsettled state. Many of the magistrates and collectors now had a new difficulty. Mr Tayler, as commissioner for the whole of the Patna division, ordered such of them as were under his control to abandon their stations and come into Patna for shelter; many were quite willing to do so; but others, resolute and determined men, did not like this appearance of shrinking from their duty in time of trouble. Mr Money, the magistrate of Gayah, called a meeting of the Europeans at that station, and read Mr Tayler’s order to them; it was decided by vote to abandon the place and its treasure, and retreat to Patna. ‘We formed rather a picturesque cavalcade,’ said one of the number, ‘as we wound out from Gayah; the elephants and horses; the scarlet of the Europeans contrasting with the white dresses of the Sikh soldiery; the party of gentlemen, armed to the teeth, who rode in the midst; and the motley assemblage of writers, servants, and hangers-on that crowded in the rear.’ While on the road towards Patna, two of the gentlemen, Mr Money and Mr Hollings, feeling some humiliation at the position they were in, resolved to march back to their posts even if none others accompanied them. It happened that a few men of the 64th foot had passed through Gayah a day or two before, and Mr Money was enabled to bring them back for a short period. These two officials, it is true, were afterwards driven away from Gayah by a band of released prisoners, and fled to Calcutta; but their firmness in an hour of difficulty won for them approval and promotion from the government. This transaction at Gayah was connected with a series of quarrels which led to much partisan spirit. Mr Tayler had long been in disfavour with Mr Halliday, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, as an official of a very intractable and insubordinate character; and after the issue of the order lately adverted to, Mr Tayler was removed from his office altogether—a step that led to a storm of letters, papers, pamphlets, charges, and counter-charges, very exciting to the Calcutta community at that time, but having little permanent interest in connection with the mutiny.

As the month advanced, the government were able to send a few English troops to some of the stations above named. When Mr Halliday had learned, by telegrams and letters, that not a single European remained in Sheergotty or Bagoda, and that the native troops of the Ramgurh battalion had mutinied at Ranchee, Purulia, and elsewhere, he earnestly begged Lord Canning to send a few troops thither, or the whole region would be left at the mercy of marauding bands. This the governor-general was fortunately enabled to do, owing to the arrival about that time of troops from the China expedition.

When August ended, the Dinapoor mutineers, under Koer Singh, were marching onwards to the Jumna regions, as if with the intention of joining the mutineers in Bundelcund; the 12th irregulars, after their atrocity at Segowlie, were bending their steps towards Oude; the Ramgurh mutineers were marching westward to the Sone, as if to join Koer Singh; while the petty chieftains, liberated prisoners, and ruffians of all kinds, were looking out for ‘loot’ wherever there was a chance of obtaining it. Bengal and Behar exhibited nothing that could be dignified with the name of battles or war; it was simply anarchy, with insufficient force on the part of the authorities to restore order.

One unfortunate result of the Dinapoor mutiny was, that the Europeans contracted a sentiment of hatred towards the natives, so deadly as to defeat all the purposes of justice and fairness. When Sir James Outram was at Dinapoor, on his way up the Ganges, he found that some of the English soldiers had murdered several sepoys against whom nothing could be charged—in revenge for the terrible loss suffered at Arrah. Sir James noticed in one of his dispatches, with strong expressions of regret, the distortion of feeling thus brought about by the mutiny; distortion, because those soldiers were not, at other times, less inclined to be just and manly than the other regiments of her Majesty’s army. It was a sore trial for men, when scenes of brutal cruelty were everywhere before their eyes, coolly to draw the line between justice and vengeance, and to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty.

[65].

H.M. 10th foot,153officers and men.
H.M. 37th foot,197officers and men.
Sikhs of police battalion,50officers and men.
Sikhs of mutinied regiments,15officers and men.
———
415

[66]. H.M. 5th Fusiliers, 137 men, under Captain L’Estrange; H.M. 10th foot, 197 men, under Captain Patterson; Sikh battalion, 150 men, under Mr Wake, of Arrah celebrity; mounted volunteers, 16, under Lieutenant Jackson.

CHAPTER XVII.
MINOR MUTINIES: JULY AND AUGUST.

The reader will easily appreciate the grounds on which it is deemed inexpedient to carry out uninterruptedly the history of the mutiny at any one spot. Unless contemporaneous events elsewhere be noticed, links in the chain of causes and effects will be wanting. We have traced the siege of Delhi down to a certain point in the line of operations; we have followed the footsteps of Havelock until he reached the ball-shattered home of the European residents at Lucknow; we have watched the more immediate effects of the Dinapoor mutiny in the regions of Bengal and Behar. It now, however, becomes necessary to inquire what was doing elsewhere during the months of July and August—how the Europeans at Agra fared, when the stations on all sides of them were in the hands of the insurgents; how far the affrighted women and tender children succeeded in finding refuge at the hill-stations of Nynee Tal and its neighbourhood; what the Mahratta followers of Scindia and Holkar were doing; to what extent Rohilcund and the Cis-Sutlej territory were thrown into anarchy; whether or not Bombay and Madras, Nagpoor and the Nizam’s country, remained at peace; how, in short, India generally was affected during the two months above named. Fortunately, this duty will not demand so full a measure of treatment as the analogous narratives for earlier months. The isolated revolts in June occupied attention in three successive Chapters[[67]]—because of their great number, the wide-spreading area over which they occurred, the sufferings of many of the Europeans, the romantic adventures of others, the daring bravery of nearly all, and the necessity for describing the geographical and military peculiarities of the several provinces and stations. These matters having once been treated with moderate fulness, the narrative may now proceed at an accelerated pace; insomuch that we shall be enabled, in the present chapter, to take a bird’s-eye glance at the isolated or miscellaneous events, whether mutinies or suppressions of mutiny, belonging to the months of July and August.

Let us begin by directing attention to that small but thickly populated country lying between Patna and Allahabad, and extending in the other direction from the Ganges to Nepaul. Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, Azimghur, Jounpoor, and Benares, all lie within this region; Dinapoor, Buxar, Mirzapore, Sultanpore, and Fyzabad, lie just beyond it; and towns and villages of smaller character bestrew it more thickly than any other part of India. When Henry Lawrence was dead, and Inglis powerless in Oude for anything beyond maintaining his position in Lucknow; when Wheeler had been killed at Cawnpore, and Lloyd superseded at Dinapoor; when Colvin was shut up in Agra, and could do very little as lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—there was scarcely any one who could exercise control within the region just marked out. If a magistrate, collector, or commandant, succeeded in maintaining British supremacy by mingled courage and sagacity, so far well; but he was in few instances able to exercise power beyond the limits of his own town or station. Under these circumstances, Viscount Canning created a new office, that of ‘Lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces,’ and gave it to Mr J. P. Grant, one of the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta. The object in view was to restore order to a large range of country that had been thrown into utter anarchy. The title was not, perhaps, happily chosen; for there was already a ‘Central India,’ comprising the Mahratta country around Indore or Malwah; and, moreover, a jurisdiction was hardly ‘central’ that ran up to the borders of Nepaul. Passing by this, however, the newly aggregated ‘Central Provinces’ comprised the Allahabad division, the Benares division, and the Saugor division; containing a large number of important cities and towns.

When Mr Grant assumed his new duties in August, he found that the Goruckpore district was entirely in the hands of rebels. The leader of the rebels was one Mahomed Hussein, who was at the head of a poorly armed rabble, rather than of an organised military force, and who, with that rabble, had been perpetrating acts of great barbarity. One civilian, Mr Bird, had displayed that gallant spirit which so honourably marked many of the Company’s servants: he remained behind, at his own request, when the rest of the civil officers fled from Goruckpore; he hoped to be able to maintain his position, but was forced after a time to yield to the pressure of adverse circumstances, and escape to Bettiah. The governor-general, during the month of June, accepted aid which had been offered some time previously, by Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul. In pursuance of this agreement, three thousand Goorkhas were sent down from Khatmandoo, and entered British territory northward of Goruckpore. They were ordered on shortly afterwards to Azimghur; and most of the Goruckpore officials, availing themselves of this escort, quitted the station with their movables and the government treasure. Some of the Goorkhas then remained for a time at Azimghur, while the rest went to escort the treasure to Jounpoor and Benares. While at Goruckpore, the Goorkhas assisted in disarming such native troops as were at the station. Much was expected from these hardy troops, and it is only just to observe that they generally warranted the expectation. It was late in June that the arrangement was entered into, the immediate object in view being the pacification of the very districts now under notice.

The Azimghur district had its full share in the troubles of the period. During the first half of July, mutinous sepoys from other stations were frequently threatening the town of Azimghur, and keeping the Europeans perpetually on the watch. The 65th native infantry were very turbulent in the vicinity. On a particular day the Company’s servants at the station held a council of war; some voted that Azimghur was untenable, and that a retreat should be made to Ghazeepore; but bolder councils prevailed with the majority. At last a regular battle with the enemy took place; a battle which has been described in such a lively manner by Mr Venables, deputy-magistrate of Azimghur, that we cannot do better than quote a portion of a letter in which he narrated the events of the day.[[68]] The action was really worthy of note even in a military sense; for a small force, headed by a civilian, defeated an enemy ten times as numerous. Mr Venables received the thanks of the government for his skill and courage on this occasion. But afterwards came a time of mortification. Of the native troops which formed his little army on the 18th, more than half belonged to the very regiment which mutinied a few days afterwards at Segowlie, after murdering their commandant, Major Holmes. Mr Venables pondered on the question: ‘Will the detachment of the 12th irregulars remain faithful at Azimghur, when another portion of the same regiment has mutinied at Segowlie?’ He thought such a proof of fidelity improbable; and therefore, he and the other Europeans sought to avert danger by removing from Azimghur to Ghazeepore, which they did on the 30th of July. The district all around the station at Azimghur remained at the mercy of lawless marauders until the arrival of the Goorkhas from Goruckpore, mentioned in the last paragraph. Then began a struggle, which should act with the most effective energy—Oudian insurgents from the west, openly hostile to the British; or Nepaul Goorkhas from the north, serving in alliance with the British—a struggle in which, it hardly need be said, many villages were reduced to ashes, and much disturbance of peaceful industry produced.

The Jounpoor district was even more completely disorganised than those of Goruckpore and Azimghur; it had been almost entirely abandoned since the first mutiny of the troops at that station in June. Not until after a Goorkha force had marched into Jounpoor in August, could the civil officers feel any safety in returning to their duties at that station.

Benares, the most important place hereabouts, became a temporary home for many officers who, by the revolt of their several native regiments, had been suddenly and unwillingly deprived of active duties; there were eight or ten of them, mostly belonging to Oude regiments which had revolted. When Jung Bahadoor agreed to send a body of Goorkha troops from Nepaul to the disturbed districts, the Calcutta government transmitted orders for some of these unemployed officers to meet those troops at Goruckpore, and act with them. Among those officers were Captain Boileau and Lieutenants Miles, Hall, and Campbell. It was early in July when this order was sent to Benares, but some weeks elapsed ere the Goorkhas reached Goruckpore. Before this co-operation with the Goorkhas took place, Benares was enabled to render a little good service against the rebels by the aid of British troops, not stationed at that place, but while on transit to the upper provinces. The gallant 78th Highlanders, journeying from Calcutta to Allahabad, were divided into portions according as the means of transport were presented, and according to the necessities of the districts through which they passed. On the 5th of July, Lieutenant-colonel Gordon, commanding the Benares district, saw the necessity of checking some insurgents near that city; and he intrusted that duty to Major Haliburton of the 78th. The major started on the morning of the 6th, with a mixed detachment of Europeans and natives, and marched eight miles on the Azimghur road. His advanced cavalry reported a large body of the enemy half a mile ahead, with their centre posted across the road, and their flanks resting on villages, partially concealed behind trees and rising-ground. Their number was about 500, aided by an equal number of villagers apparently eager for mischief. The contest was soon over, and the enemy repelled. The chief point that rendered the incident worthy of note was that a few of the 12th irregular cavalry, employed by Haliburton, shewed bad symptoms during the day; they did not charge the enemy with alacrity; and they appeared inclined to listen to the appeals made to their religious feelings by the natives whom they were called upon to oppose. These troopers belonged to the same regiment as those who afterwards mutinied at Segowlie.

After the departure of the Highlanders, this great and important Hindoo city was frequently thrown into excitement by mutinies or reports of mutinies at other places. Rumours came in early in August, to the effect that the irregular cavalry from Segowlie, after murdering their officers, were on their way to Jounpoor, thirty-five miles from Benares, with the intention of visiting Benares itself. The city contained at that time only 300 English soldiers, none of whom could safely be spared to go out and confront the rebels. The civil lines at Benares comprised that portion of the British station which contained the jails, the courts of justice, and the residences of the commissioner, judge, surgeon, &c.; it lay on the north of the Burnah River, while the military lines were on the south, the two being connected by a bridge. The civil station was thus peculiarly open to attack; and all that the authorities could do for it was to post a party of soldiers and two guns on the bridge; the prisoners were removed to the other side of the river, the courts were abandoned, and all valuable property was taken from the civil station to that of the European military in the cantonment. The Rev. James Kennedy, chaplain of the station, has in a letter mentioned a fact which shews in how agitated a state the English community at Benares were at that time;[[69]] illustrating in a striking way—as was more than once shewn during those turmoils in India—that the panic arising from an apprehended danger was often worse than the reality, paralysing the exertions of those who would have rendered good service had actual fighting with an open enemy commenced. No sooner had the dread of the Segowlie mutineers passed away, than an approach of those from Dinapoor was threatened. Colonel Gordon, seeing the mischief that would accrue from such a step, resolved to prevent it: he sent out his handful of English soldiers, not merely to check the approach of the rebels, but to drive them from the district altogether. Koer Singh and his rabble army did not wait for this conflict; they gave Benares a ‘wide offing,’ and bent their steps towards Mirzapore. While the few English soldiers were engaged on this duty, the sentinels left behind were aided by the residents, headed by the judge—all keeping watch and ward in turn, for the common safety.

Mirzapore, from its large size and great importance as a commercial city, and its position on the banks of the Ganges between Benares and Allahabad, was often placed in considerable peril. No mutiny actually occurred there, but the city was repeatedly threatened by mutineers from other quarters, who, if successful, would certainly have been aided by all the budmashes of the place, and by many Mussulmans higher in station than mere rabble. The European residents were perpetually on the watch. When a battery of artillery came up the Ganges en route to Allahabad, they earnestly entreated to be allowed to retain it for their own protection; but Neill, the presiding genius at that time, would not listen to this; Allahabad and Cawnpore must be thought of, and Mirzapore must shift for itself. When the affairs at Segowlie and Dinapoor became known, measures were taken for making some kind of stronghold at Mirzapore. The Europeans intrenched the largest and strongest house belonging to them, barricaded the streets, buried much property, placed other property in guarded boats on the river, and prepared for service four small guns and five hundred rounds of ammunition. On numbering heads, they found 135 persons, all of whom had separate duties or posts assigned to them in the hour of need; they also secured provision for a month. This judicious line of policy answered the desired purpose: the Dinapoor mutineers did not enter or molest Mirzapore. Those marauders passed westward along a line of route further removed from the Ganges, plundering as they went, and committing great devastation. On the 19th of August, a small force set out from Mirzapore to check those acts of violence; but the Dinapoor men generally managed to keep beyond the reach of pursuers. A little later, when other regiments had mutinied in the Saugor division, it was deemed prudent by the Calcutta authorities to send a portion of a Madras regiment, with two guns, to aid in the protection of Mirzapore.

It may here be remarked, that along the line of country immediately adjacent to the eastern frontier of Oude, the influence of that turbulent province was made abundantly manifest during the period now under notice. There were many zemindars near the border who maintained bodies of armed men on foot. A rebel chief of Sultanpore, one Mehudee Hussein, appeared to direct the movements in that region; he was one among many who received direct commissions from the rebel authorities at Lucknow, as chieftains expected to bring all their forces to bear against the British. This fact alone suffices to shew how completely Oude was at that time in the hands of the enemy.

Mr Grant, as lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces, was called upon to exercise authority in the districts of Allahabad, Futtehpoor, Cawnpore, Banda, and Humeerpoor, as well as in those of Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, Jounpoor, Benares, and Mirzapore. When he settled down at Benares as his head-quarters, towards the close of August, he found that no civil business of the Company was carried on throughout the Doab, from Allahabad to Cawnpore, except at Allahabad itself. Neill and Havelock, by the gallant operations already described, obtained military control of the great line of road; but their troops being lamentably small in number, they were nearly powerless beyond a few miles’ distance on either side of that road; while the judges and magistrates, the commissioners and collectors, had in only a few instances been able to resume their duties as civil servants of the Company. A large portion of the population, driven from their villages either by the rebel sepoys or by the British, had not yet returned; and the fertile Doab had become, for a time, almost a desert. Banda and Humeerpoor, British districts immediately south of the Doab, were temporarily but completely given up; scarcely an Englishman remained within them, unless at hide-and-seek. Some of the petty chiefs, including the rajahs of Mundah and Churkarree, remained faithful. For a time, police in the service of the Company were able to retain command in that part of the Allahabad division which lay north of the Ganges; but the Oudians, as August advanced, crossed the frontier, and gradually drove them away, thus further narrowing the belt of country within which the Company’s ‘raj’ was respected. Koer Singh, whose name has so often been mentioned, was ruler for a time south of the Jumna, with his Dinapoor mutineers; it was supposed that he had offered his services to Nena Sahib and to the King of Delhi, in hopes of some substantial authority or advantages as a reward for his co-operation. This unsettled state of the region south of the Jumna placed Lieutenant Osborne in an extraordinary position. He was, as we have already seen (p. [180]), British representative at the court of the Rajah of Rewah, a place southwest of Allahabad—unimportant in itself, but surrounded by districts every one of which was in a state of anarchy. Although the young rajah was friendly to the English, and aided the lieutenant in his military plans for checking the mutineers, it was at all times uncertain how far the Rewah troops themselves could be depended on. At a somewhat later date than that to which this chapter relates, Osborne was living in a tent at Rewah, with no Englishman of any grade near him, and uncertain whether he could rely for an hour on the fidelity of the native troops belonging to the rajah—defended by little else than his own indomitable force of character. Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers had asked the rajah either to join them, or to allow them to pass through his territory; he opposed it; his troops wished it; and thus the rajah and the lieutenant were thrown into antagonism with the Rewah troops.

Another region or division placed under Mr Grant’s lieutenant-governorship, Saugor, had witnessed very great disturbance during the month of June, as has already been shewn;[[70]] and he found the effects of that disturbance manifested in various ways throughout July and August. Rewah, Nowgong, Jhansi, Saugor, Jubbulpoor, Hosungabad—all had suffered, either from the mutiny of troops at those towns, or by the arrival of mutineers from other stations. Nagpoor was under a different government or control; but it would not on that account have escaped the perils of those evil days, had it not been that the troops distributed over that province belonged to the Madras rather than to the Bengal army—a most important difference, as we have had many opportunities of seeing. Mr Plowden, commissioner of Nagpoor, found it comparatively easy to maintain his own territory in peace, for the reason just stated; and he used all possible exertion to bring up troops from Madras, and send them on to the Saugor province. His advice to Major Erskine was, to disarm his Bengal troops at all the stations as soon as he could obtain Madras troops; but the numbers of these latter were not sufficient to permit the carrying out of such a plan. The Saugor territory, in having the peaceful part of Bengal on the east, and Nagpoor territory on the south, was pretty safe from disturbance on those frontiers; but having the Jumna region on the north, and the Mahratta dominions on the west, it had many sources of disturbance in those directions.

In the town and military station of Saugor, the state of affairs was very remarkable. Brigadier Sage, in the month of June (p. [178]), had converted a large fort into a place of refuge for the ladies and families of the officers, provisioned it for six months, placed the guns in position, and guarded the whole by a body of European gunners. This he did, not because the native regiments at the station (31st and 42d B. N. I., and 3d irregular cavalry) had mutinied, but because they appeared very unsettled, and received tempting offers from scheming chieftains in the vicinity. The Calcutta authorities called upon the brigadier for an explanation of the grounds on which he had shut up all the Europeans at Saugor, three hundred in number, in the fort, without any actual mutiny at that place; but on account of interrupted dâks and telegraphs, many weeks elapsed before the various official communications could take place, and during those weeks the brigadier was responsible for the safety of the residents. The remarkable feature in all this was, not that the native troops should mutiny, or that the Europeans should live in a fortified residence, but that one regiment should remain faithful when others at the same spot repudiated allegiance. Early in July the 42d and the cavalry endeavoured to incite the 31st to mutiny; but not only did the latter remain true to their salt—they attacked and beat off the rebels. On the 7th of the month a regular battle ensued; the 31st and some of the irregular cavalry attacking the 42d and the rest of the irregulars, and expelling them altogether from the station. ‘Well done, 31st,’ said Major Erskine, when news of this event reached Jubbulpoor. It was not merely that two infantry regiments were in antagonism; but two wings of one cavalry regiment were also at open war with each other. So delighted were the English officers of the 31st at the conduct of their men, that they were eager to join in the fray; but the brigadier would not allow this; he distrusted all these regiments alike, and would not allow the officers to place themselves in peril. Many at Saugor thought that an excess of caution was herein exhibited.

Fort at Agra, from the river Jumna.

The other chief place in the province, Jubbulpoor, as shewn in a former chapter (p. [178]), had been thrown into much perplexity in the month of June by the news of mutiny at Jhansi and Nuseerabad; and Major Erskine, commissioner of the province, sought how he might best prevent the pestilence from spreading southeastward. He was at Jubbulpoor with the 52d B. N. I. By a system of constant watchfulness he passed through that month without an outbreak. It was, however, a month of anxiety; for such of the ladies as did not retire to Kamptee for shelter, remained in continual dread near their husbands at Jubbulpoor, seldom taking off their clothes at night, and holding ready to flee at an hour’s warning—a state of suspense entailing almost as much suffering as mutiny itself. Early in July the Europeans fortified the Residency, and stored it with half a year’s provisions for thirty officers, thirty ladies and children, and several civilians; this was done on receipt of news that the 42d native infantry and the 3d irregular cavalry had mutinied at Saugor. The Residency was made very strong, being converted from a house into a fort; three officers were made garrison engineers, two acted as commissariat officers, and all the rest took specific duties. It became not only the stronghold, but the home, night and day, for nearly seventy persons. One of the officers who had the best means of knowing the temper of the troops, while praising the 52d for still remaining faithful under so many temptations from mutineers elsewhere, and while promising them extra pay for their fidelity, nevertheless acknowledged in a private letter that the regiment was a broken reed to rest upon. ‘To tell the truth, I doubt the regiment being much better than any other. Circumstances alone keep the sepoys quiet. There is no treasure; we merely collect enough to pay ourselves and them. If they plundered the country, they could not take away the property; as the Bundelas would loot and murder them.’ Speaking of the domestic economy of his brother-officers and their families in the fortified Residency, he said: ‘The 52d mess manage everything in the Khana peena line (eating and drinking). Ladies and gentlemen all dine together—a strange scene, quite a barrack-life. In the evening a few of us drive out; others ride and walk. We cannot afford above six or eight to leave the garrison together.’ July passed over in safety in Jubbulpoor. Early in August a relieving force arrived from the Nagpoor territory, which, nearly tranquil itself, was able to forward trusty Madras troops to regions troubled by the faithless sepoys of the Bengal army. This force consisted of the 33d Madras native infantry, a squadron of the 4th Madras cavalry, 75 European artillerymen, and six guns. Major Erskine, thus reinforced, set forth to restore order at Dumoh, and to proceed thence to Saugor; to which place a Bombay column was expected to come, viâ Indore and Bhopal. This was a part of the policy determined on by the government at that time. Calcutta could supply no troops except for the Cawnpore and Lucknow region; the Punjaub could furnish reinforcements only for the siege of Delhi; and therefore it was determined that columns should start from the Madras and Bombay presidencies, comprising no Bengal native troops, and should work their way inwards and upwards to the disturbed provinces, sweeping away mutineers wherever they encountered them. It was not until the latter part of August that the Madras movable column could safely leave the vicinity of Jubbulpoor for Dumoh and other disturbed stations, and even then Major Erskine found it necessary to retain a portion of the troops. How long the 52d remained faithful at Jubbulpoor we shall see in a future page; but it may here be remarked that the English officers of the native regiments were at that time placed in a position of difficulty hardly to be comprehended by others. They either trusted their sepoys, or felt a kind of shame in expressing distrust: if not in actual peril, they were at least mortified and vexed; for they felt their own honour touched when their regiments proved faithless.

The Bengal troops at Nagode appear to have remained untouched by mutiny until the 25th of August. On that day the 50th native infantry shewed symptoms which caused some anxiety to the officers; two days afterwards disturbances took place, and at a period somewhat beyond the limit to which this chapter is confined the bulk of the regiment mutinied, and marched off to join mutineers elsewhere. About 250 of the sepoys remained true to their colours; they escorted their officers, and all the ladies and children, safely from Nagode to Mirzapore. These divergences among the men of the same regiment greatly complicate any attempts to elucidate the causes of the Indian mutiny generally. That the sepoys were often excited by temporary and exceptional impulses, is quite certain; and such impulses were wholly beyond the power of the Europeans correctly to estimate. There was one station at which a portion of a native regiment mutinied and shot an officer; the sepoys of his company threw themselves upon his body and wept, and then—joined the mutineers!

We pass from the Saugor province to those which were nominally under the control of Mr Colvin as lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—nominally, for, being himself shut up in Agra, he exercised scarcely any control beyond the walls of the fort. Of the Doab, sufficient has already been narrated to shew in what condition that fertile region was placed during the months of July and August. Where Havelock and Neill pitched their tents, there was British supremacy maintained; but beyond the three cities of Allahabad, Futtehpoor, and Cawnpore, and the high road connecting them, British power was little more than a name. Higher up the Doab, at Etawah, Minpooree, Furruckabad, Futteghur, Allygurh, Bolundshuhur, &c., anarchy was paramount. Crossing the Ganges into Oude, the cessation of British rule was still more complete. Scarcely an Englishman remained alive throughout the whole of Oude, except in Lucknow; all who had not been killed had precipitately escaped. Almost every landowner had become a petty chieftain, with his fort, his guns, and his band of retainers. In no part of India, at no time during the mutiny, was the hostility of the villagers more strikingly shewn than in Oude: in other provinces the inhabitants of the villages often aided the British troops on the march; but when Havelock, Neill, and Outram were in Oude, every village on the road had to be conquered, as if held by an avowed enemy. It has been often said that the Indian outbreak was a revolt of soldiery, not a rebellion of a people; but in Oude the contest was unquestionably with something more than the military only. Whether their love for their deposed king was sincere or only professed, the Oudians exhibited much animosity against the British. What the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow were doing, we shall see in the proper place.

Of Agra city, and the fort or residency in which the Europeans were for safety assembled, it will be remembered (p. [173]) that after peaceably but anxiously passing through the month of May, Mr Colvin, on the 1st of June, found it necessary or expedient to disarm the 44th and 67th Bengal native infantry—because two companies of those regiments had just mutinied near Muttra, and because the bulk of the regiments exhibited unmistakable signs of disaffection. This great and important city was then left under the charge of the 3d European Fusiliers, a corps of volunteer European cavalry under Lieutenant Greathed, and Captain D’Oyley’s field-battery of six guns. Most of the disarmed native troops deserted, to swell the insurgent ranks elsewhere; and in the course of the month the jail-guard deserted also. Thus June came to its end—the European residents still remaining at large, but making certain precautions for their common safety at night.

When July arrived, however, the state of affairs became much more serious. The Europeans were forced into a battle, which ended in a necessity for their shutting themselves up in the fort. The force was very weak. The 3d Europeans only numbered about 600 men, the militia and volunteers 200, and a few artillerymen belonging to the guns. Among the officers present were several who had belonged to the Gwalior Contingent, the various regiments and detachments of which had mutinied at Hattrass, Neemuch, Augur, Lullutpore, and Gwalior, on various days between the 28th of May and the 3d of July; these officers, having now no commands, were glad to render aid in any available way towards the defence of Agra. Just at this critical time, when the approach of a hostile force was imminent, the Europeans were further troubled by the sudden mutiny of the Kotah Contingent. This force—consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, about 700 men in all—having been deemed loyal and trustworthy, had been brought about a month previously to Agra from the southwest, and had during that time remained true—collecting revenue, burning disaffected villages, capturing and hanging rebels and mutineers. They were brought in from the vicinity towards the close of June, to aid if necessary against the Neemuch mutineers, and were encamped half-way between the barracks and government-house. Suddenly and unexpectedly, on the evening of the 4th, the cavalry portion of the Contingent rose in revolt, fired at their officers, killed their sergeant-major, and then marched off, followed by the infantry and the artillery—all but a few gunners, who enabled the British to retain the two guns belonging to the Contingent. This revolt startled the authorities, and necessitated a change of plan, for it had been intended to attack the Neemuch force that very evening; nay, matters were even still worse, for the Kotah villains at once joined those from Neemuch.

On the morning of Sunday the 5th of July (again Sunday!), an army of mutineers being known to be near at hand, a reconnoitring party was sent out to examine their position. The enemy were found to consist of about 4000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, with ten or twelve guns; they comprised the 72d B. N. I., the 7th Gwalior Contingent infantry, the 1st Bengal native cavalry, the Malwah Contingent cavalry—which had joined the Neemuch men at Mehidpore—and fragments of other mutinied regiments, together with a very efficient artillery corps. The arrival of the Neemuch mutineers had for some time been expected; and as soon as it was known, on the 3d, that the enemy had reached Futtehpore Sikri, about twenty miles from Agra, the ladies and children, as well as many of the civilians and traders, had as a measure of precaution abandoned their houses in the city, and gone into the fort, which had been cleaned out, made as habitable as possible, and largely supplied with provisions. The reconnoitring party returned to announce that the enemy were at Shahgunje, a village close to the lieutenant-governor’s house, three miles from the cantonment and four from the fort. The authorities at Agra resolved at once to go out and fight the enemy in open field; seeing that the native citizens had begun to think slightingly of their British masters, and that it was necessary to remove any suspicion of fear or timidity. The brigadier made up a force equal to about one-eighth of the enemy’s numbers; it consisted of seven very weak companies of the 3d European Fusiliers, the militia and volunteers, and a battery of artillery. The infantry were placed under Colonel Riddell, and the artillery under Captain D’Oyley. As to the volunteer cavalry, it was made up of a curious medley of unemployed military officers, civilians, merchants, and writers—all willing to share the common danger for the common good; but with untrained horses, and without regular cavalry drill, they laboured under many disadvantages. About 200 men of the 3d Europeans remained behind to guard the fort.

At noon, the opposing forces met. The enemy occupied a strong position behind Shahgunje, with their guns flanking the village, and the cavalry flanking the guns. The British advanced in line, with their guns on each flank, the infantry in the middle, and the mounted militia and volunteers in the rear. When about six hundred yards from the enemy, the infantry were ordered to lie down, to allow the guns to do their work against the village, from behind the houses and walls of which the enemy’s riflemen opened a very destructive fire. It was a bad omen that women were seen in the village loading the rifles and muskets and handing them to the mutineers to fire. For two hours an exchange of artillery-fire was kept up—extremely fierce; shrapnel shells, round-shot, and grape-shot, filling the air. A tumbril belonging to D’Oyley’s battery now blew up, disabling one of the guns; the enemy’s cavalry took advantage of this to gallop forward and charge; but the 3d Europeans, jumping up, let fly a volley which effectually deterred them. Most of the officers and soldiers had wished during these two hours for a bolder course of action—a capture of the enemy’s guns by a direct charge of infantry. Then followed a rapid musketry-fire, and a chasing of the enemy out of the village by most of the infantry—the rest guarding the guns. Unfortunately another tumbril blew up, disabling another gun; and, moreover, D’Oyley had used up all the ammunition which had been supplied to him. Upon this the order was given for retreat to the city; and the retreat was made—much to the mortification of the troops, for they had really won a victory. The rebels, it was afterwards known, were themselves out of ammunition, and were just about to retreat when they saw the retreat of the British; their infantry marched off towards Muttra, but their cavalry and one gun harassed the British during their return to the city. The artillery-fire of the mutineers during the battle was spoken of with admiration even by those who were every minute suffering from it; the native artillerymen had learned to use effectively against us those guns which they had been paid and fed to use in our defence. If the cavalry had been equally effective, the British would probably have been cut off to a man. This battle of Agra was a severe one to the British, for one-fourth of the small force were killed or wounded. The officers suffered much: Majors Prendergast and Thomas, Captains D’Oyley, Lamb, and Alexander, Lieutenants Pond, Fellowes, Cockburn, Williams, and Bramley, were wounded, as well as many gentlemen belonging to the volunteer horse. The loss of Captain D’Oyley was very much deplored, for he was a great favourite. While managing his guns, a shot struck him; he sat on the carriage, giving orders, in spite of his wound; but at last he fell, saying: ‘Ah, they have done for me now! Put a stone over my grave, and say I died at my guns.’ He sank the next day.

The British returned to Agra—not to the city, but to the fort; for three or four thousand prisoners had got loose during the day, and had begun to fire all the European buildings in the city. Officers and privates, civilians and ladies, all who wrote of the events at Agra at that time, told of the wild licence of that day and night. One eye-witness said: ‘Hardly a house has escaped destruction; and such houses and their contents as were not consumed by fire have been completely gutted and destroyed by other means. In fact, even if we were to leave the fort to-morrow, there are not four houses in the place with roofs remaining under which we could obtain shelter; and as for household property and other things left outside, there is not a single article in existence in serviceable order. The very doors and windows are removed, and every bit of wood torn out, so that nothing remains but the bare brick walls. Things are strewed about the roads and streets in every direction; and wherever you move you see broken chairs and tables, carriages in fragments, crockery, books, and every kind of property wantonly destroyed.’ An officer of the 3d Europeans, after describing the battle, and the return of the little force to the fort, said: ‘Immediately afterwards the work of destruction commenced, the budmashes began to plunder, bungalows on every side were set on fire—one continued blaze the whole night. I went out the next morning. ‘Twas a dreadful sight indeed; Agra was destroyed; churches, colleges, dwelling-houses, barracks, everything burned.’

But they had something more to think of than the devastation in Agra city; they had to contemplate their own situation in Agra Fort. Among the number of Europeans, some had already borne strange adversities. One officer had escaped, with his wife, in extraordinary guise, from Gwalior at the time of the mutiny of the Contingent at that place. He had been obliged to quit his wife at their bungalow in the midst of great danger, to hasten down to his regiment in the lines; and when he found his influence with his men had come to naught, and that shots were aimed at him, three sepoys resolved to save him. They took off his hat, boots, and trousers, wrapped him in a horse-cloth, huddled him between them, and passed him off as a woman. They left him on the bank of a stream, and went to fetch his wife from a position of great peril. She being too weak to walk, they made up a horse-cloth into a sort of bag, tied it to a musket, put her into it, shouldered the musket horizontally, and carried her seven miles—her husband walking by her side, barefoot over sharp stones. After meeting with further assistance, they reached Agra somewhat more in comfort. Another officer, who had likewise served in the Gwalior Contingent, and who had seen much hard service before the mutiny of his corps compelled him to flee to Agra, counted up the wreck of his property after the battle of the 5th of July, and found it to consist of ‘a coat, a shirt, the greater portion of a pair of breeches, a pair of jack-boots, one sock, a right good sword’—and a cannon-ball through his leg; yet, recognising the useful truth that grumbling and complaining are but poor medicines in a time of trouble, he bore up cheerfully, and even cheered up Mr Colvin, who was at that time nearly worn to the grave by sickness and anxiety. An officer of the 3d Europeans said in a letter: ‘I lost everything in the world.... The enemy went quietly off; but here we are; we can’t get out—no place to go to—nothing to do but to wait for assistance.’ And a few days afterwards he added: ‘Here we are like rats in a trap; there are from four to five thousand people in this fort, military and civil, Eurasians, half-castes, &c.; and when we shall get out, is a thing to be guessed at.’ A surgeon of the recently mutinied Gwalior Contingent thus spoke of what he saw around him: ‘The scene in the fort for the first few days was a trying one. All the native servants ran off. I had eleven in the morning, and at night not one. Ladies were seen cooking their own food, officers drawing and carrying water from the wells, &c. Many people were ruined, having escaped with only their clothes on their backs. We are now shut up here, five hundred fighting-men with ammunition, and about four or five thousand altogether, eagerly awaiting the arrival of European troops.’ A commissariat officer said: ‘Here we are all living in gun-sheds and casemates. The appearance of the interior is amusing, and the streets (of the fort) are named; we have Regent and Oxford Streets, the Quadrant, Burlington and Lowther Arcades, and Trafalgar Square.’ The wife of one of the officers described her strange home: ‘We are leading a very unsettled ship-like life. No one is allowed to leave the fort, except bodies of armed men. We are living in a place they call Palace Yard; it is a square, with a gallery round it, having open arches; every married couple are allowed two arches.... It is no easy matter to keep our arches clean and tidy.’ As all the Europeans in Agra went to live in the fort, the number included the staff of the Mofussilite (’Provincial European’) newspaper, one of the journals which had for some time been published in that city; the issue for the 3d of July had been printed at the usual office of the paper; but none other appeared for twelve days, when a Mofussilite was printed within the fort itself.

There was no exaggeration in the accounts of the number of persons thus strangely incarcerated. So completely were the Europeans and their native servants at Agra shut up within the fort, and so much was that place regarded as a refuge for those who had been forced to flee from other stations, that it gradually became crowded to an extraordinary degree. On the 26th of July Mr Colvin determined to take a census of all the persons who slept within the fort on that night; he did so, and found them to amount to no less a number than 5845[[71]]—all of whom had to be supplied with their daily food under military or garrison arrangements. More than 2000 of the number were children, who could render little or no return for the services so anxiously demanded by and for them. Provided, however, the supply of food and other necessaries were sufficient, the danger of the position was not at all comparable to that of Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore or of Brigadier Inglis at Lucknow. The fort at Agra (see wood-cut, p. [109]) was a very large structure, a sort of triangle whose sides extended from three to five eighths of a mile each; it contained numerous large buildings within the walls, of which the chief were the palace of Shahjehan, the Hall of Audience built by the same emperor, and the Moti Musjid or Pearl Mosque. All the buildings were at once appropriated, in various ways, to the wants of the enormous number of persons who sought shelter therein. The defences of the place, too, were greatly strengthened; sixty guns of heavy calibre were mounted on the bastions; thirteen large mortars were placed in position; the powder-magazines were secured from accidental explosion; the external defences were improved by the levelling of many houses in the city which approached too near the fort; and preparations were completed for blowing up the superb Jumma Musjid (p. [229]) if any attempt were made by a hostile force to occupy it, seeing that its upper ranges commanded the interior of the fort. The only insurgent force at that time in possession of guns and mortars powerful enough to breach strong walls was the Gwalior Contingent; and even if Scindia lost all hold over that force, Agra was provisioned for ten months, and had ammunition enough to stand a whole year’s siege. An officer of a mutinied Gwalior regiment, writing from Agra after some weeks’ confinement, said: ‘Almost all the roads are closed, and it is only by secret messengers and spies that we can get any intelligence of what is going on in the convulsed world around us. My letters from Scotland used to reach me in thirty days; now if I get one in eighty days I congratulate myself on my good-luck.... As for this fort, we can hold it against any number for months; our only fear being for the women and children, who would suffer much, and of whom we have some three thousand. The health of the troops, &c., is, thank God, excellent, and the wounded are doing well.’ Nevertheless, with all their sense of security, the Europeans within the fort had enough to do to maintain their cheerfulness. On the day and night of the 5th of July, property had been burned and despoiled in the city to an enormous amount; and most of this had belonged to the present inmates of the fort. The merchants had been prosperous, their large shops had abounded with the most costly articles of necessity and luxury—and now nearly all was gone. The military officers had of course less to lose, but their deprivation was perhaps still more complete.

Throughout July and August the state of affairs thus continued at Agra. The danger was small, but the discomforts of course numerous. Mr Colvin sent repeated applications for a relieving force. There was, however, none to aid him. His health failed greatly, and he did not bear up against the anxieties of his position with the cheerful firmness exhibited by many other of the officials at that trying time. Brigadier Polwhele, former military commandant, was superseded by Colonel Cotton when the account of the battle of the 5th of July became known at Calcutta. Occasional sallies were made from the fort, to punish isolated bodies of rebels at Futtehpore Sikri, Hattrass, and Allygurh; but the European troops were too few to be very effective in this way. The most note-worthy exploit took place during the latter half of August, when Mr Colvin requested Colonel Cotton to organise a small force for driving some mutineers from Allygurh. Major Montgomery set forth with this miniature army,[[72]] reached Hattrass on the 21st, and there learned that 6000 mutineers, under Ghose Mahomed Khan, náib or lieutenant of the King of Delhi, were prepared to resist him at Allygurh. Montgomery marched from Allygurh to Sarsnee on the 23d, rested for the night in an indigo factory and other buildings, and advanced on the following day to Allygurh. There ensued a sharp conflict of two hours’ duration, in gardens and enclosures outside the town; it ended in the defeat and dispersion of the enemy, who left 300 dead on the field. The battle was a gallant affair, worthy of ranking with those of Havelock; for Montgomery contended against twenty times his own number; and, moreover, many of the troops among the enemy were Ghazees or fanatic Mussulmans who engaged fiercely in hand-to-hand contests with some of his troops. His detachment of men was too small to enable him to enter and reoccupy Allygurh: he was obliged to leave that place in the hands of the rebels, and to return to Hattrass; but having replenished his stock of ammunition and supplies, he advanced again to Allygurh, held it for several days, and left a detachment there when he took his departure.

Taking leave for the present of Agra, we may briefly state that almost every other city and station in that part of India was in the hands of the enemy during the months of July and August. Delhi was still under siege; but there was scarcely a British soldier in any part of the Delhi division except in the siege-camp before Delhi itself. In the Agra division, as we have just seen, British influence extended very little further than the walls of Agra Fort. In the Meerut division, the station at that town was still held; the military lines were strongly fortified, and supplied with provisions to an extent sufficient to remove immediate anxiety. The region between Delhi and the Sutlej, containing Hansi, Hissar, Sirsa, and other towns, was fortunately kept in some order by a column under General Van Cortlandt, which moved quickly from place to place, and put down a swarm of petty chieftains who were only too ready to take advantage of the mutinies of the native troops. In the Rohilcund division scarcely a town, except up in the hills, remained under British control.

Welcome as was the refuge which the wives and children of officers found at the hill-stations in the Rohilcund and Cis-Sutlej provinces, their tranquillity was frequently disturbed by the movements of rebels. Early in August the civil commissioner of Kumaon received intelligence that an attack was contemplated on Nynee Tal by Kalee Khan, one of the myrmidons of Khan Bahadoor Khan of Bareilly, who had 3000 rabble with him; the plunder and destruction of the station being the main objects in view. Captain Ramsey, commandant at Nynee Tal, and Colonel M’Causland, commanding the troops in the various stations of Kumaon, at once determined to remove the ladies and children, two hundred in number, from Nynee Tal to Almora, further away from Bareilly: this was done; and then the colonel prepared to meet the mutineers, and confront them with a detachment of the 66th Goorkhas. Kalee Khan set forth on his mission; but when he heard that M’Causland was calmly waiting for him, he changed his plan, returned to Bareilly, and avoided a conflict, the probable result of which presented itself very clearly to his mind. At Nynee Tal, at Almora, at Mussouree, at Simla, and at other places among the cool hilly regions, ladies and children were assembled in large numbers, some with their husbands and fathers, but many sent away from scenes of strife in which those dear to them were compelled to engage. It was not all idle hopelessness with them. Englishwomen can always find some useful service to render, and are always ready to render it. A lady, writing from Mussouree on the 9th of August, said: ‘We are very busy working flannel clothes for our army before Delhi. They are very badly off for these things; and being so much exposed at such a season of the year, and in such a proverbially unhealthy locality, and fighting as they have done so nobly, they really deserve to be provided for by us.’ After enumerating the sums subscribed towards this object from various quarters, the writer went on to say: ‘Mrs —— and myself are constantly at work; for, with the exception of our tailors, and one or two others given up to us by ladies, we can get none.... Wonderful to say, though I never did such a thing in my life before, I have the management of our portion of the business, which keeps me employed from early morning till late at night. We meet, with several other ladies, at ——‘s house every day, with as many tailors as we can collect, and stitch away.’

The great and important country of the Punjaub, though not free from disturbance, was kept pretty well under control during July and August, by the energy of Sir John Lawrence and the other officers of the Company. We have seen[[73]] that on the 13th of May the 16th, 26th, and 49th regiments of Bengal native infantry, and the 8th Bengal cavalry, were disarmed at Meean Meer, a cantonment six miles from the city of Lahore; that on the same day the 45th and 57th native infantry mutinied at Ferozpore, while the 10th cavalry was disarmed; that during the same week, Umritsir, Jullundur, and Phillour were only saved from mutiny by the promptness and spirit of some of the officers; that on the 20th, the 55th native infantry mutinied at Murdan in the Peshawur Valley; that consequent upon this, the 24th, 27th, and 51st native infantry, and the 5th native cavalry, were on the 22d of the month disarmed in the station of Peshawur itself; that early in June, the 4th native regiment was disarmed at Noorpore; that on the 6th, the 36th and 61st native infantry, and the 6th native cavalry, mutinied at Jullundur, and marched off towards Phillour; that the 3d native cavalry, at the last-named station, mutinied on the following day, unable to resist the temptation thrown out to them by those from Jullundur; that the 14th native infantry mutinied at Jelum on the 7th of July, maintaining a fierce fight with a British detachment before their departure; that on the same day the 58th native infantry, and two companies of the 14th, were disarmed at Rawul Pindee; that on the 9th, the 46th native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, mutinied at Sealkote, and decamped towards Delhi; that towards the close of July, the disarmed 26th mutinied at Meean Meer, murdered Major Spencer, and marched off with the intention of strengthening the insurgents at Delhi; that on the 19th of August, a portion of the disarmed 10th cavalry mutinied at Ferozpore; and that on the 28th of the same month, the disarmed 51st mutinied at Peshawur, fled to the hills, and were almost annihilated. It thus appears that about a dozen regiments mutinied in the Punjaub between the middle of May and the end of August; that some of these had been previously disarmed; and that others had been disarmed without having mutinied.

A few additional words may be given here relating to the partial mutiny at Meean Meer. The four native regiments at that station, disarmed on the 13th of May, remained in their lines until the 30th of July, peaceful and without arms. On the last-named day, however, it became known to the authorities that the men meditated flight. Major Spencer of the 26th, and two native officers, were killed by the sepoys of that regiment on that day—with what weapons does not clearly appear. The murder of the unfortunate English officer deranged the plans of the troops; all were to have decamped at a given signal; but now only the 26th made off, leaving the other three regiments in their lines. The authorities, not well knowing whither the fugitives had gone, sent off three strong parties of mounted police, to Umritsir, Hurrekee, and Kussoor, the three routes towards the Sutlej. The men, however, had gone northward; but within a few days they were almost entirely destroyed, for the villagers aided the police in capturing or shooting the miserable fugitives as they marched or ran in field and jungle.

Without going over in detail any proceedings already recorded, it may be convenient to condense in a small space a narrative of Brigadier-general Nicholson’s operations in the later days of June and the first half of July with a movable column placed under his command by Sir John Lawrence. Having disarmed the 33d and 35th B. N. I., for reasons which appeared to him amply sufficient, he began on the 27th of June to retrace his steps from Phillour, and on the 5th of July he encamped at Umritsir, to overawe the 59th B. N. I., and to hold a central position whence he might march to any threatened point east or west. On the 7th, hearing of the mutiny of the 14th native infantry at Jelum, and receiving no satisfactory evidence that Colonel Ellice had been able to frustrate or defeat the mutineers, he at once resolved on a measure of precaution. He disarmed the 59th on the following morning—with very great regret; for he had nothing to censure in the conduct of the men; he took that step solely on account of the peril which, at such a time, threatened any station containing Bengal troops without British; and he added in his dispatch: ‘I beg very strongly to recommend this corps, both as regards officers and men, to the favourable consideration of government.’ On the 10th, receiving intelligence that the 46th native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, had mutinied at Sealkote, Nicholson at once disarmed the other wing of the same cavalry regiment, which formed part of his column. In the course of the same day he learned that the Sealkote mutineers intended to march eastward, through Goordaspore, Noorpore, Hoshyapoor, and Jullundur, to Delhi—endeavouring to tempt to mutiny, on their way, the 2d irregular cavalry at Goordaspore, the 4th native infantry at Noorpore, and the 16th irregular cavalry at Hoshyapoor. The problem thence arose—could Nicholson intercept these mutineers before they reached Goordaspore? He found he would have to make a forced march of forty miles in a northeast direction to effect this. He did so, by energetic exertions, in twenty hours. He came up with them at the Trimmoo ford over the Ravee, nine miles from Goordaspore, on the 12th of July—his force now consisting of H.M. 52d foot, 184 men of the Punjaub infantry, a company of the police battalion, a few irregular horse, a troop of artillery, and three guns. Nicholson defeated them after a short but sharp conflict on the river’s bank; but his horsemen were not trustworthy, and he could not pursue the enemy. About 300 mutineers, with one gun, took post on an island in the river; these, by a well-planned movement, were almost entirely annihilated on the 16th—and the ‘Sealkote mutineers’ disappeared from the scene. It was with justice that the active leader thanked his troops on the following day: ‘By a forced march of unusual length, performed at a very trying season of the year, the column has been able to preserve many stations and districts from pillage and plunder, to save more than one regiment from the danger of too close a contact with the mutineers; while the mutineer force itself, 1100 strong, notwithstanding the very desperate character of the resistance offered by it, has been utterly destroyed or dispersed.’

Let us now, as in a former chapter, glance at the state of affairs in the vast region of India southward of the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Sutlej—passing over Sinde without special mention, as being nearly free from disturbing agencies. The reader will remember[[74]] that among the various states, provinces, and districts of Nagpoor, Hyderabad, Carnatic, Madras, Bombay, Holkar, Scindia, Rajpootana, &c., some became subject to anarchy in certain instances during the month of June—especially the three last-named states; and we have now to shew that this anarchy continued, and in some cases extended, during July and August; but it will also be made manifest that the amount of insurgency bore a very small ratio to that in the stormy districts further north.

Of Southwestern Bengal, Orissa, and Nagpoor, it is scarcely necessary here to speak. The native troops were not influenced by a hostility so fierce, a treachery so villainous, as those in Hindostan proper; there were not so many zemindars and petty chieftains who had been wrought up to irritation by the often questionable appropriations and annexations of the Company; and there was easier access for the troops of the Madras presidency, who, as has already been more than once observed, had small sympathy with the petted sepoys and sowars of the larger presidency. The mutinies or attempts at mutiny, in these provinces, were of slight character during July and August. Mr Plowden, commissioner of Nagpoor, was enabled, with troops sent by Lord Harris from Madras, not only to maintain British supremacy throughout that large country (nearly equal in size to England and Scotland combined), but also to assist Major Erskine in the much more severely threatened territory of Saugor and Nerbudda, lying between Nagpoor and the Jumna.

The Madras presidency remained almost entirely at peace. Not only did the native troops hold their faith with the government that fed and paid them, but they cheerfully volunteered to serve against the mutinous Bengal sepoys in the north. On the 3d of July the governor in council issued a proclamation, announcing that several regiments had expressed their desire to be employed in the Northwest Provinces or wherever else their services might be required; that thanks would be publicly awarded to the native officers and men of all the regiments who had thus come forward; and that the favourable attention of the supreme government towards them would be solicited. The corps that thus proffered their services were the 3d, 11th, 16th, and 27th Madras native infantry, the 3d and 8th Madras native cavalry, a company of native foot-artillery, a troop of native horse-artillery, and a detachment of native sappers and miners. Many of these afterwards rendered good service in the battles which distinguished—and we may at the same time add devastated—Northern and Central India. Four days afterwards, Lord Harris was able to announce that other regiments—the 17th, 30th, 36th, and 47th native infantry, and the 5th native cavalry—had in a similar way come forward ‘to express their abhorrence of the traitorous conduct of the mutineers of the Bengal army, and their desire to be employed wherever their services may be required.’ Besides thus providing faithful soldiers, the governor of Madras was in a position, at various times during July and August, to send large supplies of arms, ammunition, and camp-equipage, from Madras to Calcutta. In the city of Madras itself, and in the various southern provinces and countries of Carnatic, Tanjore, Travancore, Canara, Malabar, and Mysore, the same exemption from mutiny was experienced. There were, it is true, discontents and occasional plottings, but no formidable resistance to the British power. Many persons there were who, without being rebels or open malcontents, thought that the Company had dealt harshly with the native princes, and were on that account deterred from such hearty sympathy with the British as they might otherwise possibly have manifested. An officer in the Madras army, writing when the mutiny was four months old, stated that in the previous February, when that terrible movement had not yet commenced, he went one day to take a sketch of a mosque, or rather a collection of mosques, in the suburbs of Madras—tombs that were the memorials of past Mussulman greatness. His conversation with an old man of that faith[[75]] left upon his mind the impression that there was a sentiment of injury borne, rights violated, nationality disregarded, conveyed in the words of his temporary companion.

There was, however, one occurrence in the Madras presidency which gave rise to much uneasiness. The 8th Madras native cavalry was ordered to march from Bangalore to Madras, and there embark for Calcutta. On arriving at a place about twenty-five miles from Madras, on the 17th of August, the men put forward a claim for the rates of pay, batta, and pension which existed before the year 1837, and which were more favourable than those of subsequent introduction. Such a claim, put forward at such a moment, was very perplexing to the officers; they hastened to Madras, and obtained the consent of the government to make conciliatory offers to the men. After a further march of thirteen miles to Poonamallee, the troopers again stopped, and declared they would not go forth ‘to war against their countrymen.’ This being an act of insubordination which of course could not be overlooked, two guns and some artillerymen were promptly brought forward; the 8th cavalry were unhorsed and disarmed, and sent to do dismounted duty at Arcot; while their horses were forthwith shipped to Calcutta, where such accessions were specially valuable. The affair caused great excitement at Madras; the volunteers were warned that their services were to be available at a moment’s notice; patrols were placed in the streets by day and night; and guns were planted in certain directions. Happily, the prompt disarming of this turbulent regiment prevented the poison from spreading further.

SKETCH MAP
TO ILLUSTRATE
HAVELOCK’S OPERATIONS
DURING JULY & AUGUST.
1857
From a Government Survey.

Bombay, like its sister presidency Madras, was affected only in a slight degree by the storms that troubled Bengal and the northwest. The Bombay troops, though, as the sequel shewed, not altogether equal in fidelity to those of Madras, did nevertheless pass through the perilous ordeal very creditably—rendering most valuable service in Rajpootana and other regions of the north. There was a wealthy and powerful native community at Bombay—that of the Parsees—which was nearly at all times ready to support the government, and which greatly strengthened the hands of Lord Elphinstone by so doing. It consisted of merchants, shipowners, and bankers, many of whom had made large fortunes in the ordinary way of trade. Those Parsees may always be distinguished from the other natives of India by something peculiar in their names—Jamsetjee, Nowrojee, Cursetjee, Bomanjee, Rustomjee, Hormuzjee, Luxmonjee, Maneekjee, Sorabjee, Furdoonjee, Soonderjee, Ruttonjee, Wassewdewjee, Dhakjee, &c. The Parsees are the descendants of those Persians who, refusing to exchange the religion of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed, migrated to India more than a thousand years ago; those still remaining in Persia are few in number and degraded in position; but those at Bombay are wealthy and active, and bear a high character both morally and intellectually. The property in the island on which the city of Bombay stands is chiefly in the hands of the Parsees; and it is usual for the European commercial firms of Bombay to have a Parsee capitalist as one of the partners. Although wearing the Asiatic costume, and adhering very rigidly to their religious customs and observances, the Parsees assimilate more than other eastern people to the social customs of Europeans: they nearly all speak English, and have it carefully taught to their children. There is something remarkable in a Parsee holding the dignity of a baronet, in English fashion; such was the case a few years ago, when a Parsee of enormous wealth, and of liberality as great as his wealth, was made by Queen Victoria a baronet under the title of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. It will at once be seen that such a body as the Parsees, having little or no sympathy with Hindustani sepoys, and having their worldly interests much bound up with the English, were likely to be sources of strength instead of weakness in troubled times. They headed an address to Lord Elphinstone, signed by about four hundred natives of various castes and creeds.[[76]] It was not more adulatory, not more filled with enthusiastic professions of loyalty, than many addresses presented to Viscount Canning in Bengal; but it more nearly corresponded with the conduct of those who signed it.

If Bombay city, however, remained nearly undisturbed during July and August, there were symptoms that required close watching in various districts to the north, south, and east. Kolapore, one of the places here adverted to, is distant about a hundred and eighty miles south from Bombay. It is the chief place of a raj or state of the same name, and was in the last century a scene of frequent contest between two Mahratta princes, the Peishwa of Satara and the Rajah of Kolapore, each of whom struggled against the claims to superiority put forth by the other. About half a century ago began those relations towards the Company’s government, which, as in so many other parts of India, led to the gradual extinction of the rule of the native rajah; the British govern ‘in the name of the rajah,’ but the rajah’s authority remains in abeyance. The military force belonging specially to the state, at the time of the mutiny, amounted to about ten thousand men of all arms. It was, however, among the Company’s own troops that the disaffection above adverted to took place. The 27th Bombay native infantry, without any previous symptoms of disaffection, suddenly mutinied at Kolapore, on the day of a festival called the Buckree Eed (1st of August); or rather, a portion of the regiment mutinied. While the officers were assembled in the billiard-room of their mess-house on the evening of that day, a jemadar rushed in and informed them that some of the sepoys had risen in revolt; the officers hastened out; when three of them, ignorant of the place, or bewildered in the darkness, went astray, and were taken and murdered by the mutineers. The mother of the jemadar went to the house of Major Rolland, the commanding officer, to warn the ladies of their danger, and to afford them means of escape. No sooner had the ladies hurried away, than the house was surrounded by mutineers, who, disappointed at finding it empty, revenged themselves by slaughtering the old woman. After plundering the treasury of forty thousand rupees, the mutineers retired to a religious edifice in the town, and marched off in early morning by the Phoonda Ghat towards Wagotun, on the coast. The native commissioned officers of the regiment remained faithful; none of them accompanied the mutineers. The outbreak ended most disastrously to those concerned in it. When they got some distance from Kolapore, they found themselves without food and without friends; and gradually nearly all were destroyed by detachments sent against them, headed by Major Rolland and Colonel Maughan, the latter of whom was British resident at Kolapore. There were circumstances which justify a belief that this was not so much a mutiny after the Bengal type, as an association of the bad men of the regiment for purposes of plunder.

This event at Kolapore threw the whole of the south Mahratta country into a ferment. At Poonah, Satara, Belgaum, Dharwar, Rutnagherry, Sawunt Waree, and other places, the threads of a Mohammedan conspiracy were detected; and fortunately the germs of insurrection were nipped in the bud. When Mr Rose, commissioner of Satara, found that the deposed royal family of that state were engaged in plots and intrigues, he took a small but reliable English force, entered Satara before daylight on the 6th of August, surrounded the palace, and ordered the rajah and the ranees to prepare for instant departure. Resistance being useless, the royal prisoners entered phaetons which had been brought for that purpose, and before eight o’clock they were on the way to Poonah—to be kept under the eye of the Bombay authorities until the political atmosphere should become clearer, in a navy depôt on an island near Bombay city. A plot was about the same time discovered at Poonah, concerted between the moulvies of that place and of Belgaum, for massacring the Europeans and native Christians of those stations; letters were intercepted at the Poonah post-office, which enabled the authorities to shun the coming evil. Many arrests of Mussulman conspirators were made; and it was then found that matters had gone so far as a preparation to blow up the arsenal at Poonah. The authorities at once disarmed the natives of the cantonment bazaar. From most of the out-stations, being troubled by these events, the English ladies were sent by military escort to Bombay or to Poonah. Among other measures of precaution, the remaining companies of the 27th native regiment were disarmed at Kolapore and Rutnagherry; and examples of the terrible ‘blowing away from guns’ were resorted to, to check this incipient revolution. The 28th Bombay native infantry, stationed at Dharwar, and the 29th, stationed at Belgaum, had been raised at the same time as the 27th; and a few symptoms of insubordination were manifested by sepoys of those regiments; but the timely arrival of a European regiment restored quiet. The English were greatly exasperated when the fact came to light that one of the conspirators detected at Belgaum was a moonshee who had been receiving a hundred and fifty rupees per month for instructing officers of regiments in Hindustani.

The three presidencies were all anxiously watching the state of feeling in the large and important country of Hyderabad, the dominions of the Nizam; for that country borders on Nagpoor on the northeast; while on the southeast and on the west it is conterminous with districts belonging to Madras and to Bombay respectively. Its two largest cities, Hyderabad in the southeast portion, and Aurungabad in the northwest, contained many English families belonging to military and civil servants of the Company; or at least the families were at stations not far from those cities. By the terms of various treaties between the Nizam and the Company, the latter had the right of maintaining a large military cantonment at Secunderabad, a few miles north of Hyderabad city. This cantonment was three miles in length, and was well provided with officers’ bungalows and mess-houses, European barracks, sepoy lines, horse-artillery lines, foot-artillery barracks, native bazaars, parade-ground, hospitals, arsenal, and all the other requisites for a large military station. The cavalry lines were two miles north of the cantonment, at Bowenpilly. The military station for the troops belonging to the Nizam as an independent sovereign was at Bolarum, somewhat further away from Hyderabad, but still within easy reach of Secunderabad. At the time of the mutiny the British resident at Hyderabad was placed in a position of some difficulty. Although there was a large force at Secunderabad, it comprised scarcely any British troops; and therefore, if trouble arose, he could only look to defence from natives by natives. The capital of the Deccan, or the Nizam’s territory, comprised within itself many elements of insecurity. The government and a large portion of the inhabitants were Mohammedan; the rabble of the city was numerous and ruthless; the Nizam’s own army was formed on the same model as the contingents which had so generally mutinied in Hindostan; the Company’s own forces, as just mentioned, were almost entirely native; and the city and province were at all times thronged with predatory bands of Rohillas, Afghans, Arabs, and other mercenaries, in the pay of the nobles and jaghiredars of the Hyderabad court. It is almost certain that if the Nizam had turned against us, Southern India would have been in a blaze of insurrection; but he was faithful; and his chief minister, Salar Jung, steadily supported him in all measures calculated to put down disturbance. The news of the rebel-triumph at Delhi set in tumultuous motion the turbulent Mussulmans of Hyderabad; and it has been well observed that ‘a single moment of indecision, a single act of impolicy, a single false step, or a single admission of weakness, might have turned Hyderabad into a Lucknow and made a second Oude of the Deccan.’ The Nizam, his prime minister, and the British resident, all brought sagacity and firmness to bear on the duties of their respective offices; and thus the Deccan and Southern India were saved. What might have been the case under other circumstances was foreshadowed by the events of the 17th of July. On the preceding day, intelligence was received at the Residency, which stands clear of the city, but at the distance of some few miles from the British cantonment at Secunderabad, that the mob in the city was much excited, and that a scheme was on foot to press the Nizam to attack the Residency. Notice was sent from the Residency to Salar Jung, and preparations were made. Early in the evening on the 17th, a Rohilla rabble stole forth from the city, and made for the Residency. An express was at once sent off to cantonments for aid; and in the meantime the guard, with three guns, went out to attack the insurgents. Captain Holmes plied his grape-shot effectively from the three guns; and when cavalry and horse-artillery arrived from Secunderabad, the Rohillas received a total discomfiture. This was almost the only approach to a mutiny that occurred in the portion of the Deccan near the Carnatic frontier.

Aurungabad, on the Bombay side of the Nizam’s dominions, was, in regard to mutinies, less important than Hyderabad, because more easily accessible for European troops; but more important, in so far as the sepoy regiments of Malwah and Rajpootana were nearer at hand to be affected by evil temptation. The city is about seventy miles distant from Ahmednuggur, and a hundred and seventy from Bombay. Uneasiness prevailed here so early as June. The 1st cavalry and the 2d infantry, of the corps called the Hyderabad Contingent, were stationed at Aurungabad; and of these, the former shewed signs of disaffection. Captain Abbott, commanding the regiment, found on the morning of the 13th that his men were murmuring and threatening, as if unwilling to act against mutineers elsewhere; indeed, they had sworn to murder their officers if any attempt were made to employ them in that way. Fortunately, the ressaldars—each being a native captain of a troop of cavalry, and there being therefore as many ressaldars in a regiment as there were troops or companies—remained faithful; and Captain Abbott, with Lieutenant Dowker, were enabled to discuss with these officers the state of the regiment. The ressaldars assured the captain that many of the troopers had begun to talk loudly about the King of Delhi as their rightful ruler. The resident at the court of the Nizam, through the military secretary, Major Briggs, advised Captain Abbott—seeing that no aid could be expected from any other quarter—to speak in as conciliatory a tone as possible to the men, and to promise them that they should not be required to act against the insurgents at Delhi, provided they would be obedient to other orders. Quiet was in this way restored; but it being a dangerous precedent thus to allow troops to decide where and against whom they would choose to fight, Major-general Woodburn, who had been placed in command of a movable column from Bombay, marched through Ahmednuggur to Aurungabad. This column consisted of the 28th Bombay native infantry, the 14th dragoons, Captain Woolcombe’s battery, and a pontoon train. When Woodburn arrived, he found that the ladies had all left the Aurungabad station, that the officers were living barricaded in the mess-room, and that all the Nizam’s troops exhibited unfavourable symptoms. The first native cavalry, when confronted with Woodburn’s troops, behaved in a very daring way; and about a hundred of them made off, owing to the unwillingness of the general to open fire upon them, although Abbott and Woolcombe saw the importance of so doing.

In the country north of Bombay, and between it and Malwah, many slight events occurred, sufficient to shew that the native troops were in an agitated state, as if oscillating between the opposite principles of fidelity and treachery. It was worthy of note, however, that the troops thus affected were, in very few instances, those belonging to the Company’s Bombay army; they were generally contingent corps, or Mahrattas, or Rajpoots, or men imbued with the same ideas as the Hindustanis and Oudians. Towards the close of July, a few troopers of the Gujerat Irregular Horse endeavoured to incite their companions to mutiny; they failed, and then decamped; but were pursued and captured, and then hung in presence of their own regiment.

Still further northward lies the country which, under the various names of Scindia’s territory, Holkar’s territory, Malwah, and Bhopal, has already been described as the chief seat of the Mahratta power, and which corresponds pretty nearly with the region marked out by the Company’s officials as ‘Central India.’ We have seen in former pages[[77]] that Scindia, chief of the Mahratta state of which Gwalior is the capital, offered the aid of his Contingent army to Mr Colvin in May; that Lieutenant Cockburn, with half a cavalry regiment of this Contingent, rendered good service in the region around Agra, until the troopers deserted him; that the fidelity of Scindia to the British alone prevented his troops generally from joining the rebels, for they belonged to the same Hindustani and Oudian families, though serving a Mahratta prince in a Mahratta state; that after certain detachments had mutinied at Neemuch and elsewhere, the main body rose in revolt at Gwalior on the 14th of June, murdered some of the English officers, drove away the rest with their families, and formally threw off all allegiance to the Company; and that Maharajah Scindia, under circumstances of great difficulty and peril, managed to keep peace at Gwalior—retaining and feeding the troops at that place, and yet discountenancing their mutinous tendencies against the British. If he had not acted with much tact and judgment, the Gwalior Contingent would have marched to Agra in a body, and greatly imperiled the British ‘raj.’ Not only did he keep those troublesome troops near him during the remaining half of June, but also during July and August. Scindia’s special army, entirely under his own control, were chiefly Mahrattas, who had little sympathy with the soldiers of the Contingent; but they were too few in number to put down the latter, and therefore he was forced to temporise—partly by persuasions and promises, partly by threats. Major Macpherson, the British political agent, and Brigadier Ramsey, the military commandant, ceased to have influence at Gwalior; it was Scindia’s good faith alone that stood the British in stead.

Mount Aboo—Military Sanitarium in Rajpootana.

Holkar’s Mahratta territory, with Indore for its chief city, we have, in like manner, seen to be troubled with a mutinous spirit in the Contingent troops, partly owing to temptation from other quarters. We have briefly shewn in the chapters lately cited, that on the 28th of May the 15th and 30th Bengal native infantry revolted at Nuseerabad; that on the 2d of June, influenced by this pernicious example, the 72d B. N. I., the 7th regiment of Gwalior Contingent infantry, and the main body of the 1st Bengal native cavalry, mutinied at Neemuch; that on the 1st of July, a portion of Holkar’s Contingent rose against the British at Indore, without his wish or privity, and that he could not get even his own special troops to act against those of the Contingent; that, on the evening of the same day, the 23d Bengal native infantry, and one squadron of the 1st Bengal native cavalry, mutinied at Mhow; and that numerous British officers and their families were thrown into great misery by these several occurrences. It now remains to be stated that, during July and August, Holkar adopted nearly the same course as Scindia; he remained faithful to the British, and endeavoured to quell the mutinous spirit among his troops. Holkar possessed, however, less influence than his brother-chieftain; most of the mutineers from Indore and Mhow marched to Gwalior, and were only prevented by the shrewdness of Scindia from extending their march to Agra.

Among the troops in Rajpootana were the Deesa Field Brigade, commanded towards the close of August by Brigadier Creagh, who had under his control the troops at Deesa, those at the sanitarium on Mount Aboo, and those at Erinpoora and other places in the neighbourhood. These places were thrown into confusion during the last two weeks of the month, by the mutiny of the Jhodpore legion, consisting partly of cavalry and partly of infantry. Such of these men as were stationed at Erinpoora, about 550 in number, rose in mutiny on the 22d. They suddenly threw off their allegiance; seized the guns; made prisoners of Lieutenant Conolly and the European serjeants; plundered the bazaar and some of the native villages; burned all the officers’ bungalows, and destroyed or appropriated all that they found therein; lived in tents on the parade-ground for three days; and then marched off in the direction of Nuseerabad. The cavalry, although forming part of the same legion, and sharing in the movement, protected the Europeans from the infantry. Among the latter, it was only the Hindustani portion which revolted; there were some Bheels in the legion who remained faithful. On the preceding day (21st), about 100 men of the legion had mutinied at Mount Aboo; but as there was a detachment of H.M. 83d there, the mutineers did nothing but hastily escape. A native chieftain, the Rao of Sihori, was prompt to render any aid he could to Captain Hall at Mount Aboo. Another portion of the Jhodpore legion was at Jhodpore itself, where the mutiny placed in great peril Captain Monck Mason, British resident at that native state; by his energy, he provided an asylum for many ladies and children who had been driven from other stations; but he himself fell by the swords of a body of mutinous troopers, under circumstances of mingled cowardice and brutality.

The state of this part of India during July and August may be summed up in a few words. By the revolt of the Contingents of Scindia, Holkar, and Bhopal, and of the Jhodpore legion, English residents were driven from station to station in much peril and suffering, and English influence became for a time almost a nullity; but the native chieftains for the most part remained faithful, even though their troops revolted; and there were hopes of ultimate success from the arrival of relieving columns belonging to the Bombay army. Of that army, a few fragments of regiments occasionally displayed mutinous symptoms, but not to such a degree as to leaven the whole mass. What the officers felt through the treachery of the troops, and what their families suffered during all these strange events, need not again be described; both phases of the Revolt have received many illustrations in former pages; but this chapter may fittingly close with two short extracts from letters relating to the mutinies at the stations of Mhow and Indore. An artillery officer, commenting on the ingratitude of the sepoys towards commanders who had always used them well, said: ‘I must not forget to mention that Colonel Platt was like a father to the men; and that when he had an opportunity of leaving them and joining a European corps last summer, the men petitioned him to stay. He had been upwards of thirty years with them, and when the mutiny took place he had so much confidence in them that he rode up to their lines before we could get out. When we found him next morning, both cheeks were blown off, his back completely riddled with balls, one through each thigh, his chin smashed into his mouth, and three sabre-cuts between the cheekbone and temple; also a cut across the shoulder and the back of the neck.’ The following few words are from the letters of a lady who was among those that escaped death by flight from Indore: ‘I have already given you an account of our three days and three nights of wandering, with little rest and not much food, no clothes to change, burning sun, and deluges of rain; but —— and I, perhaps, could bear these things better than others, and suffered less. When we heard the poor famishing children screaming for food, we could but thank God that ours were not with us, but safe in England. We found kind friends here, and I am in Mrs ——‘s clothes; everything we had being gone. The destructive wretches, after we left Indore, commenced doing all the damage they could—cutting up carpets with their tulwars, smashing chandeliers, marble tables, slabs, chairs, &c.; they even cut out the cloth and lining of our carriages, hacking up the woodwork. The Residency is uninhabitable, and almost all have lost everything. I might have saved a few things in the hour and a half that elapsed between the outbreak and our retreat; but I had so relied on some of our defenders, and felt so secure of holding on, that flight never for a moment occurred to me.’