Note.

Brigadier Inglis’s Dispatch.—In order that the narrative contained in the foregoing chapter might not be interrupted by too many extracts from official documents, little has been said of the report which Brigadier Inglis drew up of the siege soon after the arrival of Outram and Havelock. So vividly, however, and in all respects so worthily, did that report or dispatch portray the trying difficulties of the position, and the heroic conduct of the garrison, that it may be well to give a portion of it in this place.

‘The right honourable the governor-general in council will feel that it would be impossible to crowd within the limits of a dispatch even the principal events, much less the individual acts of gallantry, which have marked this protracted struggle. But I can conscientiously declare my conviction, that few troops have ever undergone greater hardships, exposed as they have been to a never-ceasing musketry-fire and cannonade. They have also experienced the alternate vicissitudes of extreme wet and of intense heat, and that, too, with very insufficient shelter from either, and in many places without any shelter at all. In addition to having had to repel real attacks, they have been exposed night and day to the hardly less harassing false alarms which the enemy have been constantly raising. The insurgents have frequently fired very heavily, sounded the advance, and shouted for several hours together, though not a man could be seen: with the view, of course, of harassing our small and exhausted force. In this object they succeeded, for no part has been strong enough to allow of a portion only of the garrison being prepared in the event of a false attack being turned into a real one; all, therefore, had to stand to their arms and to remain at their posts until the demonstration had ceased; and such attacks were of almost nightly occurrence. The whole of the officers and men have been on duty night and day during the 87 days which the siege had lasted up to the arrival of Sir J. Outram, G.C.B. In addition to this incessant military duty, the force has been nightly employed in repairing defences, in moving guns, in burying dead animals, in conveying ammunition and commissariat stores from one place to another, and in other fatigue-duties too numerous and too trivial to enumerate here. I feel, however, that any words of mine will fail to convey any adequate idea of what the fatigue and labours have been—labours in which all ranks and all classes, civilians, officers, and soldiers, have all borne an equally noble part. All have together descended into the mine, and have together handled the shovel for the interment of the putrid bullocks; and all, accoutred with musket and bayonet, have relieved each other on sentry without regard to the distinctions of rank, civil or military. Notwithstanding all these hardships, the garrison has made no less than five sorties, in which they spiked two of the enemy’s heaviest guns, and blew up several of the houses from which they had kept up their most harassing fire. Owing to the extreme paucity of our numbers, each man was taught to feel that on his own individual efforts alone depended in no small measure the safety of the entire position. This consciousness incited every officer, soldier, and man, to defend the post assigned to him with such desperate tenacity, and to fight for the lives which Providence had intrusted to his care with such dauntless determination, that the enemy, despite their constant attacks, their heavy mines, their overwhelming numbers, and their incessant fire, could never succeed in gaining one single inch of ground within the bounds of this straggling position, which was so feebly fortified, that had they once obtained a footing in any of the outposts the whole place must inevitably have fallen.

‘If further proof be wanting of the desperate nature of the struggle which we have, under God’s blessing, so long and so successfully waged, I would point to the roofless and ruined houses, to the crumbled walls, to the exploded mines, to the open breaches, to the shattered and disabled guns and defences, and lastly, to the long and melancholy list of the brave and devoted officers and men who have fallen. These silent witnesses bear sad and solemn testimony to the way in which this feeble position has been defended.

‘During the early part of these vicissitudes, we were left without any information whatever regarding the posture of affairs outside. An occasional spy did indeed come in with the object of inducing our sepoys and servants to desert; but the intelligence derived from such sources was, of course, entirely untrustworthy. We sent our messengers, daily calling for aid, and asking for information, none of whom ever returned until the 26th day of the siege; when a pensioner named Ungud came back with a letter from General Havelock’s camp, informing us that they were advancing with a force sufficient to bear down all opposition, and would be with us in five or six days. A messenger was immediately despatched, requesting that on the evening of their arrival on the outskirts of the city two rockets might be sent up, in order that we might take the necessary measures for assisting them while forcing their way in. The sixth day, however, expired, and they came not; but for many evenings after, officers and men watched for the ascension of the expected rockets, with hopes such as make the heart sick. We knew not then, nor did we learn until the 29th of August—or 35 days later—that the relieving force, after having fought most nobly to effect our deliverance, had been obliged to fall back for reinforcements; and this was the last communication we received until two days before the arrival of Sir James Outram, on the 25th of September.

‘Besides heavy visitations of cholera and small-pox, we have also had to contend against a sickness which has almost universally pervaded the garrison. Commencing with a very painful eruption, it has merged into a low fever, combined with diarrhœa; and although few or no men have actually died from its effects, it leaves behind a weakness and lassitude which, in the absence of all material sustenance, save coarse beef, and still coarser flour, none have been able entirely to get over. The mortality among the women and children, and especially among the latter, from these diseases and from other causes, has been perhaps the most painful characteristic of the siege. The want of native servants has also been a source of much privation. Owing to the suddenness with which we were besieged, many of these people, who might perhaps have otherwise proved faithful to their employers, but who were outside the defences at the time, were altogether excluded. Very many more deserted, and several families were consequently left without the services of a single domestic. Several ladies have had to tend their children, and even to wash their own clothes, as well as to cook their scanty meals, entirely unaided. Combined with the absence of servants, the want of proper accommodation has probably been the cause of much of the disease with which we have been afflicted.

‘I cannot refrain from bringing to the prominent notice of his lordship in council the patient endurance and the Christian resignation which have been evinced by the women of this garrison. They have animated us by their example. Many, alas! have been made widows and their children fatherless in this cruel struggle. But all such seem resigned to the will of Providence; and many—among whom may be mentioned the honoured names of Birch, of Polehampton, of Barbor, and of Gall—have, after the example of Miss Nightingale, constituted themselves the tender and solicitous nurses of the wounded and dying soldiers in the hospital.’

[After enumerating the officers and civilians who had wrought untiringly in the good cause, Brigadier Inglis did ample justice to the humbler combatants.]

‘Lastly, I have the pleasure of bringing the splendid behaviour of the soldiers—namely, the men of her Majesty’s 32d foot, the small detachment of her Majesty’s 84th foot, the European and native artillery, the 13th, 48th, and 71st regiments of native infantry, and the Sikhs of the respective corps—to the notice of the government of India. The losses sustained by her Majesty’s 32d, which is now barely 300 strong, by her Majesty’s 84th, and by the European artillery, shew at least that they knew how to die in the cause of their countrymen. Their conduct under the fire, the exposure, and the privations which they have had to undergo, has been throughout most admirable and praiseworthy.

‘As another instance of the desperate character of our defence, and the difficulties we have had to contend with, I may mention that the number of our artillerymen was so reduced, that on the occasion of an attack, the gunners, aided as they were by men of her Majesty’s 32d foot, and by volunteers of all classes, had to run from one battery to another wherever the fire of the enemy was hottest, there not being nearly enough men to serve half the number of guns at the same time. In short, at last the number of European gunners was only 24, while we had, including mortars, no less than 30 guns in position.

‘With respect to the native troops, I am of opinion that their loyalty has never been surpassed. They were indifferently fed and worse housed. They were exposed, especially the 13th regiment, under the gallant Lieutenant Aitken, to a most galling fire of round-shot and musketry, which materially decreased their numbers. They were so near the enemy that conversation could be carried on between them; and every effort, persuasion, promise, and threat, was alternately resorted to in vain to seduce them from their allegiance to the handful of Europeans, who, in all probability, would have been sacrificed by their desertion.’

[94]. Chap. vi., pp. [82]-[96]. Chap. x., pp. [163]-[165]. Chap, xv., pp. [247]-[263].

[95].

General staff,9
Brigade staff,5
Artillery,9
Engineers,3
H.M. 32d foot,22
H.M. 84th foot,2
7th Bengal native cavalry,13
13th Bengal native infantry,10
41st Bengal native infantry,11
48th Bengal native infantry,14
71st Bengal native infantry,11
Oude brigade,26
Various officers,9
Civil service,9
Surgeons,2
Chaplains,2
Ladies,69
Ladies, children of,68
Other women,171
Other women, children of,196
Uncovenanted servants,125
Martinière school,8
———
794

Another account gave the number 865, including about 50 native children in the Martinière school.

[96]. Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow, from its Commencement to its Relief. By L. E. Ruutz Rees, one or the Survivors.

A Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow, written for the Perusal of Friends at Home.

A Personal Journal of the Siege of Lucknow. By Captain R. P. Anderson, 25th Regiment N. I., commanding an outpost.

The Defence of Lucknow: a Diary recording the Daily Events during the Siege of the European Residency. By a Staff-officer.

[97]. In a former chapter (p. [84]), a brief notice is given of Claude Martine, a French adventurer who rose to great wealth and influence at Lucknow, and who lived in a fantastic palace called Constantia, southeastward of the city. His name will, however, be more favourably held in remembrance as the founder of a college, named by him the Martinière, for Eurasian or half-caste children. This college was situated near the eastern extremity of the city; but when the troubles began, the principals and the children removed to a building hastily set apart for them within the Residency enclosure. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary, whose husband was connected as a pastor with the Martinière, thus speaks of this transfer: ‘The Martinière is abandoned, and I suppose we shall lose all our remaining property, which we have been obliged to leave to its fate, as nothing more can be brought in here. We got our small remnant of clothes; but furniture, harp, books, carriage-horses, &c., are left at the Martinière. The poor boys are all stowed away in a hot close native building, and it will be a wonder if they don’t get ill.’

[98]. The wood-cut at p. [93] represents a part of the Residency in this limited sense of the term; the view at p. [82] will convey some notion of the appearance of the city of Lucknow as seen from the terrace-roof of this building. The plan on next page will give an idea of the Residency before siege; and in the next Part will be given a plan of the Residency under siege, shewing the relation which the enemies’ guns bore to those of the besieged.

[99]. Mr Rees relates a strange anecdote in connection with this retreat from the Muchee Bhowan to the Residency: ‘We saved all but one man, who, having been intoxicated, and concealed in some corner, could not be found when the muster-roll was called. The French say, Il y a un Dieu pour les ivrognes; and the truth of the proverb was never better exemplified than in this man’s case. He had been thrown into the air, had returned unhurt to mother-earth, continued his drunken sleep again, had awaked next morning, found the fort to his surprise a mass of deserted ruins, and quietly walked back to the Residency without being molested by a soul; and even bringing with him a pair of bullocks attached to a cart of ammunition. It is very probable that the débris of these extensive buildings must have seriously injured the adjacent houses and many of the rebel army—thus giving the fortunate man the means of escaping.

[100]. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary gives an affecting account of the hour that succeeded the wounding of Sir Henry Lawrence. She, with her husband, was at that time in the house of Dr Fayrer, a surgeon who had more than once urged upon Sir Henry the paramount duty of cherishing his own life as one valuable to others even if slighted by himself. ‘He was brought over to this house immediately. —— prayed with him, and administered the Holy Communion to him. He was quite sensible, though his agony was extreme. He spoke for nearly an hour, quite calmly, expressing his last wishes with regard to his children. He sent affectionate messages to them and to each of his brothers and sisters. He particularly mentioned the Lawrence Asylum, and entreated that government might be urged to give it support. He bade farewell to all the gentlemen who were standing round his bed, and said a few words of advice and kindness to each.... There was not a dry eye there; every one was so deeply affected and grieved at the loss of such a man.’

It may here be stated that the Queen afterwards bestowed a baronetcy on Sir Henry’s eldest son, Alexander Lawrence; to whom also the East India Company voted a pension of £1000 per annum.

[101]. The Jersey Times of December 10, 1857, contained what professed to be an extract of a letter from M. de Bannerol, a French physician in the service of Mussur Rajah, dated October 8, and published in Le Pays (Paris paper), giving an account of the feelings of the Christian women shut up within Lucknow just before their relief. It went on to state how Jessie Brown, a corporal’s wife, cheered the party in the depth of their terrors and despair, by starting up and declaring that, amidst the roar of the artillery, she caught the faint sound of the slogan of the approaching Highlanders, particularly that of the Macgregor, ‘the grandest of them a’!’ The soldiers intermitted firing to listen, but could hear nothing of the kind, and despair once more settled down upon the party. After a little interval, Jessie broke out once more with words of hope, referring to the sound of the Highland bagpipes, which the party at length acknowledged they heard; and then by one impulse, all fell on their knees, ‘and nothing was heard but the bursting sob and the voice of prayer.’ The tale has made so great an impression on the public mind, that we feel much reluctance in expressing our belief that it is either wholly a fiction, or only based slightly in fact. What excited our distrust from the first was the allusion to the slogans or war-cries of the respective clans—things which have had no practical existence for centuries, and which would manifestly be inappropriate in regiments composed of a miscellany of clansmen, not to speak of the large admixture of Lowlanders. We are assured that the story is looked upon in the best-informed quarters as purely a tale of the imagination.

[102]. See chap. xv., p. [263].

[103]. Sir Henry Lawrence; Major Banks; Lieutenant-colonel Case, Captains Steevens, Mansfield, Radcliffe, and M’Cabe, 32d foot; Captain Francis, 13th N. I.; Lieutenants Shepherd and Archer, 7th native cavalry; Captain Hughes, 57th N. I.; Major Anderson and Captain Fulton, engineers; Captain Simons, artillery.

[104]. Colonel Master and Captain Boileau, 7th N.C.; Major Apthorp and Captain Sanders, 41st N.I.; Captain Germon and Lieutenants Aitken and Loughnan, 13th N.I.; Captain Anderson, 25th N.I.; Lieutenant Graydon, 44th N.I.; Lieutenant Longmore, 71st N.I.; Mr Schilling, principal of the Martinière College.

Mr Colvin, Lieutenant-governor of Northwest Provinces.

CHAPTER XX.
MINOR CONFLICTS: SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER.

Leaving for a while the affairs of Lucknow—which by the progress of events had become far more important than those of Delhi or of any other city in India—we may conveniently devote the present chapter to a rapid glance at the general state of affairs during the months of September and October: noticing only such scenes of discord, and such military operations, as arose immediately out of the Revolt. The subject may be treated in the same style as in Chapter xvii., relating to the months of July and August, but more briefly; for, in truth, so few Bengal native regiments now remained ‘true to their salt,’ that the materials for further mutiny were almost exhausted.

Of Calcutta, and the region around it on all sides, little need be said. Mutiny in that neighbourhood would not have been easy during the autumn months; for British troops were gradually arriving, who would speedily have put down any rebellious risings. Sometimes alarms agitated the civilians and traders in the city; but nothing really serious called for notice. The ex-king of Oude continued to be watched carefully at Calcutta. Whatever honeyed phrases may have been used to render his detention more palatable, none of the government officers placed any reliance on his fidelity or peacefulness. In truth, if he had displayed those qualities, after being compelled to witness the annexation of his country to the British raj, he would have been something more (or less) than oriental. At various times during the summer and autumn months, scrutinising inquiries were made into the conduct of the king and his retainers. Thus, on the 16th of August, a person who had for some time resided at Calcutta, under the assumed title of Bishop of Bagdad, but whose real name was Syed Hossein Shubber, was with five others arrested, for complicity in plots affecting the British government; and, consequent on papers discovered, three retainers of the king were arrested about a week afterwards. The government kept secret the details of these affairs, pending further inquiry; but it was apparent enough that mischief was fermenting in the minds of the royal prisoner’s retainers. Unquestionably many natives sincerely believed the king to have been an ill-used man—an opinion shared also by many Europeans—and they did not deem it treason to aid him in his misfortunes.

Much to the vexation of the government, the district of Assam, little known to Europeans except as a region where tea is experimentally grown, was drawn into the vortex of trouble early in September. Many of the sepoys of the 1st Assam native infantry came from the neighbourhood of Arrah, and were closely related to one regiment (the 40th) of the Dinapoor mutineers; while others were from the estates of Koer Singh. When, therefore, the news of the Dinapoor mutiny became known, the Assam regiment was thrown into much agitation. There was a rajah in Assam, one Saring Kunderpessawar Singh, who secretly engaged in treasonable correspondence, and who received offers of support from the Arrah men of the Assam regiment, if he would openly break with the British. There were also Hindustanis in the 2d Assam native regiment; while the artillery companies at Debrooghur were entirely Hindustanis. It was known likewise that many of the neighbouring tribes were in a disaffected state, and that a religious mendicant was rapidly moving about with some secret but apparently mischievous purpose. By degrees a plot was discovered. The conspirators planned on a given day to murder all the Christians in Assam, and then plunder the stations. Fortunately this project was known in time. The Calcutta government having no soldiers to spare, organised a force of English seamen, trained as gunners, and sent them by a steamer up the Brahmaputra to Debrooghur, to be employed as the local authorities might deem advisable. One of the circumstances connected with this movement illustrates the antagonism between governing authorities and newspaper writers on military matters—an antagonism frequently felt during the Indian Revolt as during the Russian war. A responsible leader wishes to keep his plans of strategy secret from the enemy; a newspaper writer wishes to give as much news as possible on all subjects; and these two modes of procedure do not always flow in harmonious concord. Mr Halliday, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, in reporting on this Assam affair, said: ‘The utmost care was taken to despatch the force to Assam with the secrecy necessary to prevent its destination being known; but it is feared that this intention has been frustrated by the ill-judged publication of the departure of the steamer, and notification of its objects, by the Calcutta papers. It is hoped that this injudicious proceeding may not be attended with the serious results that would ensue from a revolt in the province in its present unprotected state. Such an untoward contingency was feared by the officers in Assam, who pointed out the urgent necessity of extreme care being observed in preventing the promulgation of the transmission, before its arrival, of any European force that might be sent; lest the knowledge of the approach of aid should cause a premature explosion of the expected revolt.’ The force consisted of 100 armed sailors, with two 12-pounder guns; they set out on the 11th of September, under the charge of Lieutenant Davies, in the steamer Horungotta; and were to be at the disposal of Colonel Jenkins on arriving in Assam. As a curious example of the different light in which different tribes were at this time viewed, it may be stated that all the men of the 1st Assam infantry who were not Hindustanis were called in from the outposts to Debrooghur, as a protection in case the remainder of the regiment should mutiny. Captain Lowther, commanding a corps of Goorkhas, was sent from another station to capture the rajah; this he managed admirably, and in so doing, effectually crushed the incipient mutiny. The captain, in a private letter, told in excellent style the story of his expedition; from which we will extract so much as relates to the night-scene in the rajah’s palace at Debrooghur.[[105]]

Some weeks afterwards, towards the close of October, Mr Halliday entertained much distrust of the 73d Bengal native infantry, of which two companies were at Dacca, and the main body at Jelpigoree, near the Bhotan frontier. By precautionary measures, however, he prevented for a time any actual outbreak of this particular regiment.

There were reasons why the towns on the banks of the Lower Ganges remained tolerably free from rebellion during the months now under notice. English regiments, in wings or detachments, were sent up the river in flats tugged by steamers, from Calcutta towards Upper India; and the turbulent rabble of the towns were awed into quietness by the vicinity of these red-coats. Berhampore, Moorshedabad, Rajmahal, Bhagulpore, Monghir, Patna, Dinapoor, Buxar, Ghazeepore, Benares, Mirzapore—all felt the benefit of this occasional passing of British troops along the Ganges, in the moral effect produced on the natives. True, the arrivals at Calcutta were few and far apart until October was well advanced; true, many of the troops were sent by land along the main trunk-road, for greater expedition; true, those who went by water were too urgently needed in the Doab and in Oude to be spared for intermediate service at the towns above named; but, nevertheless, the mere transit of a few English regiments effected much towards the tranquillising of Bengal. Early in the month of August, Lord Elgin had come to Calcutta, and placed at the disposal of Lord Canning two war-steamers, the Shannon and the Pearl; and from among the resources of these steamers was organised a splendid naval brigade, consisting of 400 able British seamen, and no less than ten of the enormous 68-pounder guns which such seamen know so well how to handle. They started from Calcutta up the Hoogly and the Ganges, under the command of Captain Peel, who had so gallantly managed a naval-battery in the Crimea during the siege of Sebastopol. If such a man could fret, he would have fretted at the slowness of his voyage. Week after week elapsed, without his reaching those districts where his services would be invaluable. Half of August and the whole of September thus passed wearily away in this most tedious voyage. The upward passage is always tardy, against the stream; and his ponderous artillery rendered slowness still more slow. It was not until the 30th of September that he, with 286 men of his brigade, arrived at Benares. Hastening on, he arrived with 94 men at Allahabad on the 3d of October; and four days afterwards the rest joined him, with their enormous guns and store of ammunition. A small naval brigade, under Captain Sotheby, was placed at the disposal of the Patna authorities, to be used against certain insurgents in the neighbourhood.

The portion of Bengal north of the Ganges was almost entirely free from disturbance during these two months; but the parallel portion of Behar was in a very different state. The actual mutinies there had been few in number, for in truth there had not been many native troops quartered in that region; but the rebellious chieftains and zemindars were many, each of whom could command the services of a body of retainers ready for any mischief. Patna, in September, as in earlier months, was disturbed rather by anarchy in other regions than by actual mutinies within the city itself. In what way the Dinapoor troubles affected it, we have seen in an earlier chapter. Its present difficulties lay rather with the districts north and northwest of the city, where the revenue collectors had been driven from place to place by mutinous sepoys, and by petty chieftains who wished to strengthen themselves at the expense of the English ‘raj.’ The abandonment of Goruckpore by the officials, in a moment of fright, had had the effect of exposing the Chupra, Chumparun, and Mozufferpoor districts to the attacks of rebels, especially such as had placed themselves under the banner of the Mussulman chieftain Mahomed Hussein Khan, the self-appointed ‘ruler in the name and on behalf of the King of Oude.’ This man had collected a considerable force, and had organised a species of government at Goruckpore. The military power in the hands of the Company’s servants in the Chupra and Tirhoot districts consisted chiefly of a few Sikhs of the police battalion, quite unequal to the resistance of an incursion by Mahomed Hussein. The civilians of those districts sent urgent applications to Patna for military aid. But how could this be furnished? Troops and artillery were so imperatively demanded at Cawnpore, to aid the operations at Lucknow, that none could be detained on their passage up the river; the Dinapoor garrison, reduced by the mutiny and its consequences, could only spare a few troops for Patna itself; the troops going up the main trunk-road from Calcutta to Upper India could barely afford time and strength to encounter the Ramgurh insurgents, without attempting anything north of the Ganges. There happened, however, to be a Madras regiment passing up by steamer to Allahabad; and permission was obtained to detain a portion of this regiment for service in the Goruckpore region; while the Rajahs of Bettiah and Hutwah were encouraged to maintain a friendly attitude in support of the British authorities. The rebel or rather rabble forces under Mahomed Hussein were ill armed and worse disciplined; and it was probable that a few men of the 17th M. N. I., with a few Sikhs, could have beaten them at any time; but it was felt necessary to reoccupy Goruckpore at once, to prevent the neighbouring zemindars and thalookdars from joining the malcontents.

That Lord Canning accepted an offer of several Goorkha regiments, from Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul, has been stated in a former chapter; but a very long time elapsed before those hardy little troops were enabled to render much service. The process of collecting them at Khatmandoo and elsewhere occupied several weeks, and it was not until the beginning of September that they reached Jounpoor, a station in the very heart of the disturbed districts. Even then, there was much tardiness in bringing them into active service; for the English officers appointed to command them did not at first understand the difference of management required by Hindustani sepoys and Nepaulese Goorkhas. Happily, an opportunity occurred for remedying this defect. A smart affair on the 20th of September afforded the Goorkhas an opportunity of shewing their gallantry. Colonel Wroughton, military commandant at Jounpoor, having heard that Azimghur was threatened with an attack by 8000 rebels under Madhoo Singh of Atrowlia, resolved to send a regiment of Goorkhas from Jounpoor to strengthen the force already at Azimghur. They started at once, marched the distance in a day and a half, and reached the threatened city on the evening of the 19th. This was the Shere regiment of Jung Bahadoor’s force, under Colonel Shumshere Singh, a Nepaulese officer. At a very early hour on the morning of the 20th, it was ascertained that a large body of rebels had assembled in and near the neighbouring village of Mundoree. A force of 1200 men, mostly belonging to three Goorkha regiments, was immediately sent out to disperse them—Captain Boileau commanding, Colonel Shumshere Singh heading the Goorkhas, and Mr Venables (whose prowess had already been displayed in the same district) taking charge of a small body of local horse. Finding that the rebels were posted in a clump of trees and in a jheel behind the village, Captain Boileau directed Shumshere Singh to advance his Goorkhas at double pace. This was done, despite the fire from several guns; the little Goorkhas charged, drove the enemy away towards Captangunje, and captured three brass guns and all the camp-equipage. Mr Venables was seen wherever the fighting was thickest; he was up at the first gun taken, and killed three of the enemy with his own hand. About 200 of the enemy were laid low in this brief encounter, and one-sixth of this number on the part of the victors.

This little battle of Mundoree had a moral effect, superadded to the immediate dispersing of a body of rebels. It shewed the soldierly conduct of the Goorkhas, who had marched fifty miles in two days, and then won a battle in a kind of country to which they were unaccustomed. It proved the intrepidity of one of the civil servants of the Company, whose sterling qualities were brought forth at a critical time. Moreover, it dissipated a prejudice against the Goorkhas formed by some of the British officers. These troops had hitherto remained nearly inactive in the region between Nepaul and the Ganges. Jung Bahadoor had sent them, under a native officer, Colonel Puhlwan Singh, to be employed wherever the authorities deemed best. Colonel Wroughton, and other British officers, formed an opinion that the Nepaulese troops were incapable of rapid movement, and that their native officers dreaded the responsibility of independent action. Mr Grant, lieutenant-governor of the Central Provinces, in an official letter to Colonel Wroughton after the battle of Mundoree, pointed out that this opinion had been very detrimental to the public service, in discouraging any employment of the Goorkhas. He added: ‘It was natural to expect that foreigners, and those foreigners mountaineers, unaccustomed either to the plains or to their inhabitants, should at first feel some awkwardness in the new position in which they were placed, with everything strange around them. The sagacity of Jung Bahadoor had already foreseen this difficulty; and it was at his earnest desire that British officers were attached to the Goorkha force, to encourage the officers and men, and to explain how operations should be carried on in such a country and such a climate as that in which they now for the first time marched, and against such an enemy as they now for the first time met.... The lieutenant-governor will now confidently look to you that the Goorkha force is henceforth actively employed in the service for which it was placed at the disposal of the British government by the Nepaulese.’ It must be borne in mind, to prevent confusion, that this Goorkha force, lent by Jung Bahadoor, was distinct from the Goorkha battalions of Sirmoor and Kumaon, often mentioned in former chapters; those battalions were part of the Bengal native army, fortunately consisting of Goorkhas instead of ‘Pandies;’ whereas the new force was a Nepaulese army, lent for a special purpose.

Mr Grant, the temporarily appointed lieutenant-governor just mentioned, employed all his energies throughout September and October in promoting the transit of British troops from the lower to the upper provinces, to aid in the operations at Cawnpore and Lucknow. He could not, however, forget the fact that the eastern frontier of Oude adjoined the British districts of Goruckpore, Jounpoor, and Azimghur; and that the Oude rebels were continually making demonstrations on that side. He longed for British troops, to strengthen and encourage the Goorkhas in his service, and occasionally applied for a few; but he, as all others, was told that the relief of the residents at Lucknow must precede, and be paramount over, all other military operations whatever. Writing to Lord Canning from Benares on the 15th of October, he said: ‘It is a point for consideration, how much longer it will be otherwise than imprudent to continue to send the whole of the daily arrivals of Europeans nearly half-way round the province of Oude, in order to create a pressure upon the rear of the mutineers and insurgents of that province from the direction of Cawnpore and Lucknow, whilst our home districts are left thus open to them in their front.’ He expressed a hope that the Punjaub and Delhi regions would be able to supply nearly troops enough for immediate operations at Lucknow; and that a portion of the British regiments sent up from the lower provinces would be permitted to form the nucleus of a new army at Benares, for operations on the eastern frontier of Oude. Many weeks elapsed, however, before this suggestion could meet with practical attention.

Thus it was throughout the districts of Goruckpore, Jounpoor, Azimghur, and others eastward of Oude and north of the Ganges. If the British had had to contend only with mutinied sepoys and sowars, victory would more generally and completely have attended their exertions; but rebellious chieftains were numerous, and these, encouraged by the newly established rebel government at Lucknow, continually harassed the British officials placed in charge of those districts. The colonels, captains, judges, magistrates, collectors—all cried aloud for more European troops; their cries were heeded at Calcutta, but could not be satisfied, for reasons already sufficiently explained.

Let us cross the Ganges, and watch the state of affairs in the southwestern districts of Bengal and Behar during the months of September and October.

Throughout this wide region, the troubles arose rather from sepoys already rebellious, than from new instances of mutiny. Preceding chapters have shewn that the 8th Bengal native infantry mutinied at Hazarebagh on the 30th of July; that the infantry of the Ramgurh battalion followed the pernicious example on the next day; that the 5th irregular cavalry mutinied at Bhagulpore on the 14th of August; and that the 7th, 8th, and 40th regiments of native infantry which mutinied at Dinapoor on the 25th of July, kept the whole of Western Bengal in agitation throughout August, by rendering uncertain in which direction they would march, under the rebel chieftain, Koer Singh. The only additional mutiny, in this region, was that of the 32d native infantry, presently to be noticed. The elements of anarchy were, however, already numerous and violent enough to plunge the whole district into disorder. Some of the towns were the centres of opium-growing or indigo-producing regions; many were surrounded simply by rice or cornfields; others, again, were military stations, at which the Company were accustomed to keep troops; while several were dâk or post stations, for the maintenance of communication along the great trunk-road from Calcutta to Benares. But wherever and whatever they may have been, these towns were seldom at peace during the months now under notice. The towns-people and the surrounding villagers were perpetually affected by rumours that the mutinous 5th cavalry were coming, or the mutinous 8th infantry, or the Ramgurh mutineers, or those from Dinapoor. For, it must be borne in mind, we are now treating of a part of India inhabited chiefly by Bengalees, a race too timid to supply many fighting rebels—too fond of quiet industry willingly to belt on the sword or shoulder the matchlock. They may or may not have loved the British; if not, they would rather intrigue than fight against them. In the contest arising out of the mutiny, these Bengalees suffered greatly. The mutineers, joined by the released vagabonds from the jails, too frequently plundered all alike, Feringhee and native; and the quiet trader or cultivator had much reason to dread the approach of such workers of mischief. The Europeans, few in number, and oppressed with responsibility, knew not which way to turn for aid. Revenue collectors, with many lacs of the Company’s rupees, feared for the safety of their treasure. Military officers, endeavouring with a handful of troops to check the passage of mutineers, were bewildered by the vague and conflicting intelligence which reached them. Officials at the dâk-stations, impressed daily by stringent orders from Calcutta to keep open the main line of road for the passage of English troops to Upper India, were in perpetual anxiety lest bands of mutineers should approach and cut off the dâks altogether. Every one begged and prayed the Calcutta government to send him a few trusty troops; every one assured the government that the salvation of that part of India depended on the request being acceded to.

Dorunda, sixty miles south of Hazarebagh, was a scene of violence on the 11th of September. The Ramgurh mutineers destroyed the public and private buildings at this place, plundered the town, committed great atrocities on the towns-people, beheaded a native surgeon belonging to the jail, and marched off in the direction of Tikhoo Ghat, taking with them four guns and a large amount of plunder and ammunition. Their apparent intention was to march through the Palamow district, and effect a junction with Koer Singh, with whom they had been in correspondence. Only four men of the Ramgurh irregular cavalry were of the party; all the rest were infantry. The cavalry, remaining faithful as a body, seized the first opportunity of joining their officers at Hazarebagh. This was another instance of divergence between the two parts of one corps, wholly inexplicable to the British officers, who could offer no reason why the infantry had lapsed, while the cavalry remained faithful. In this part of India the mutineers were not supported by the zemindars or landowners, as in other districts; and hence the few British troops were better enabled to lay plans for the frustration of these workers of mischief. Captain Fischer, Captain Dalton, Major English, Captain Oakes, Captain Davies, Captain Rattray, Lieutenant Graham, Lieutenant Birch, and other officers, were in command of small bodies of troops in this region during the greater part of the month; these troops consisted of Madras natives, Sikhs, and a very few British; and the numerous trifling but serviceable affairs in which they were engaged bore relation to the regiments which had mutinied at Ramgurh, Bhagulpore, and Dinapoor, and to the chieftains and marauders who joined those disloyal soldiers.

For the reasons already assigned, however, the British troops were very few in number; while the Madras troops were so urgently needed in the more turbulent Saugor provinces, that they could barely be spared for service in Bengal. Regiments had not at that time begun to arrive very rapidly from England; the few that did land at Calcutta, were eagerly caught up for service in the Doab and Oude. In most instances, the aid which was afforded by English troops to the region now under notice, depended on a temporary stoppage of a regiment or detachment on its passage to the upper provinces; in urgent cases, the government ordered or permitted a small British force to diverge from its direct line of march, and render aid to a Bengal town or station at a particular juncture. Such was the case with H.M. 53d foot. Major English, with a wing of this regiment, had a contest with the Ramgurh mutineers on the 29th of September. He marched from Hazarebagh to Sillis Chowk, where he heard news of these insurgents; and by further active movements he came up with them on the 2d of October, just as they had begun to plunder the town of Chuttra. The mutineers planted two guns so as to play upon the British; but the latter, in the way which had by this time become quite common with their comrades in India, determined to attack and take the guns by a fearless advance. On they went, through rice-fields, behind rocks and underwood, through lanes and round buildings, running and cheering, until they had captured four guns in succession, together with ammunition, ten elephants, and other warlike appliances, and sent the enemy fleeing. The officers dashed on at the head of their respective parties of men in a way that astonished the enemy; and the major, viewing these enterprises with the eye of a soldier, said in his dispatch: ‘It was splendid to see them rush on the guns.’ His loss was, however, considerable; 5 killed and 33 wounded out of three companies only. In addition to military trophies, Major English took fifty thousand rupees of the Company’s treasure from the mutineers, who, like mutineers elsewhere, regarded the revenue collections as fair booty when once they had thrown off allegiance. During the operations of the 53d in this region—one, in many parts of which British soldiers had never been seen—an instance was afforded of the dismay into which the civilians were sometimes thrown by the withdrawal of trusty troops; it was narrated in a letter written by an officer of that regiment.[[106]]

The native regiments were often distributed in detachments at different stations; and it frequently happened—as just adverted to—for reasons wholly inexplicable to the authorities, that some of those component elements remained faithful long after others had mutinied. Such was the case in reference to the 32d B. N. I. Two companies of that regiment, stationed at Deoghur in the Sonthal district, rose in mutiny on the 9th of October, murdered Lieutenant Cooper and the assistant-commissary, looted the bazaar, and then marched off to Rohnee, taking with them Lieutenant Rennie as a prisoner. Two other companies of the regiment were at that time en route from Burhait to Soorie, while the headquarter companies were at Bowsee. The authorities at Calcutta at once sought to ascertain what was the feeling among the men at the stations just named; but, pending these inquiries, orders were given to despatch a wing of H.M. 13th foot from Calcutta to the Sonthal district, to control the mutineers. Major English was at that time going to the upper provinces with a detachment of H.M. 53d foot; but he was now ordered to turn aside for a while, and aid in pacifying the district before pursuing his journey to Benares. Although the remaining companies of the native 32d did afterwards take rank among the mutineers, they were ‘true to their salt’ for some time after the treachery of their companions had become known.

This 32d mutinous regiment succeeded in crossing the Sone river, with the intention of joining Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers—a feat managed in a way that greatly mortified Major English’s 53d. On the 20th of October the wing of this latter regiment proceeded from Sheergotty to Gayah, to reassure the uneasy officials at that station; and on the 22d they started again, to intercept the mutineers. After much hot and wearying marching, they returned to Gayah, without having encountered the mutineers, one portion of whom had crossed the Sone. Some days later, news arrived that the second portion of the 32d, that which had not at first mutinied, was, in like manner, marching towards the river. On the 1st of November the 53d started in pursuit, marched thirty miles during the night to Hurwa, rested a while, marched ten miles further to Nowada during the evening, and came up with the mutineers in the night. A skirmish by moonlight took place, greatly to the advantage of the rebels, who had a better knowledge of the country than their opponents. The sepoys did not want to fight, they wished to march towards the Sone; and this they did day after day until the 6th, followed closely all the way by the British. The pursued outstripped the pursuers, and safely crossed the river—much to the vexation of the major and his troops. One of the officers present has said: ‘This was very provoking; for if we had but caught them, we should have got as much credit for it as for Chuttra. The country we went through was, for the most part, over swampy rice-fields; when we gave up the pursuit we had gone 130 miles in 108 hours; and, on our return to Gayah, we had been 170 miles in exactly one week. After the second day we sent our tents and bedding back; so that we marched as lightly as possible, and were by that means able to give the men an occasional lift on the elephants.’

Throughout these miscellaneous and often desultory operations in Bengal, if the Sikhs had proved faithless, all would have gone to ruin. It was more easy to obtain a thousand Sikhs than a hundred British, and thus they were made use of as a sort of military police, irrespective of the regular regiments raised in the Punjaub. Few circumstances are more observable throughout the Revolt, than the fidelity of these men. Insubordination there was, certainly, in some instances, but not in sufficient degree to affect the character of the whole. Captain Rattray’s Sikhs have often been mentioned. These were a corps of military police, formed for rendering service in any part of Bengal; and in the rendering of this service they were most admirable. The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, in a paper drawn up early in September, said: ‘The commandant of the Sikh Police Battalion has pleaded strongly on his own behalf, and on that of his men, for the assembling of the scattered fragments of his corps, to enable them to strike such a blow as to prove the high military spirit and discipline of the regiment. The urgent necessities which caused the separation of Captain Rattray’s regiment renders it impossible, in existing circumstances, to call in all detachments to head-quarters; but its admirable discipline, daring, and devotion at Arrah and Jugdispore, and its good conduct everywhere, have fully established its character for soldierly qualities of the highest order. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of the services which it has rendered to the state since the commencement of the present troubles; and the trust and confidence everywhere reposed in it, prove that these services are neither underrated nor disregarded. Of the men, all who have distinguished themselves for conspicuous deeds of valour and loyalty, have already been rewarded.’ As individuals, too, the Sikhs were reliable in a remarkable degree, when Hindustanis were falling away on all sides. When the troubles broke out at Benares, early in the mutiny, a Sikh chieftain, by name Rajah Soorut Singh, rendered invaluable service to the British residents, which they did not fail gratefully to remember at a later period. A few of the Company’s servants, civil and military, at Benares and other towns in that part of India, caused to be manufactured by Mr Westley Richards of Birmingham, for presentation to Soorut Singh, a splendid set of firearms, effective for use as well as superb in appearance.

We will now cross the Sone, and trace the progress of affairs in the Bundelcund and Saugor provinces.

It will be remembered, from the details given in former chapters, that the native inhabitants of Bundelcund, and other regions south of the Jumna and the Central Ganges, displayed a more turbulent tendency than those of Bengal. They had for ages been more addicted to war, and had among them a greater number of chieftains employing retainers in their pay, than the Bengalese; and they were within easier reach of the temptations thrown out by Nena Sahib, the King of Delhi, Koer Singh, and the agents of the deposed King of Oude. Lieutenant (now Captain) Osborne, the British resident at Rewah, was one who felt the full force of this state of circumstances. As he had been in August, so was he now in September, almost the only Englishman within a wide range of country southwest of Allahabad; the rajah of Rewah was faithful, but his native troops were prone to rebellion; and it was only by wonderful sagacity and firmness that he could protect both the rajah and himself from the vortex.

In a wide region eastward of Rewah, the question arose, every day throughout September, where is Koer Singh? This treacherous chieftain, who headed the Dinapoor mutineers from the day of their entering Arrah, was continually marching about with his rebel army of something like 3000 men, apparently uncertain of his plans—an uncertainty very perplexing to the British officials, who, having a mere handful of troops at their disposal, did not know where that handful might most profitably be employed. On one day Koer Singh, with his brother Ummer Singh, would be reported at Rotas, on another day at Sasseram; sometimes there was a rumour of the rebels being about to march to Rewah and Bundelcund; at others, that they were going to join the Goruckpore insurgents; and at others, again, that the Dinapoor and Ramgurh mutineers would act in concert. Wherever they went, however, plunder and rapine marked their footsteps. At one of the towns, the heirs of a zemindar, whose estates had been forfeited many years before, levied a thousand men to aid in seizing the property from the present proprietors. This was one among many proofs afforded during the mutiny, that chieftains and landowners sought to make the revolt of the native soldiery a means for insuring their own private ends, whether those ends were justifiable or not. The authorities at Patna and elsewhere endeavoured to meet these varied difficulties as best they could with their limited resources. They sent to Calcutta all the ladies and children from disturbed districts, so far as they possessed means of conveyance. They empowered the indigo-planters to raise small bodies of police force in their respective districts. They obtained the aid of two regiments of Goorkhas in the Chumparun district, by which the restoration of tranquillity might reasonably be expected. They seized the estates of Koer Singh and Ummer Singh at Arrah, as traitors. They imposed heavy fines on villages which had sent men to take active part in the disturbances. Lastly, they used all their energies to protect that part of the main trunk-road which passes near the river Sone; seeing that the march of European troops from Calcutta to the upper provinces would be materially affected by any interruption in that quarter. The newly arrived British regiments could not go up as an army, but as small detachments in bullock-wagons, and therefore were not prepared for sudden encounters with large numbers of the enemy.

The 5th irregular cavalry, who had mutinied in this part of India some weeks before, continued a system of plundering, levying contributions, and destroying public property. Every day that transpired, leaving these daring atrocities unchecked, weakened British prestige, and encouraged marauders on all sides to imitate the example so fatally set before them. The authorities felt and acknowledged this; yet, for the reasons already noticed, they could do little to check it. Captain Rattray, at the head of a portion of his Sikh police, encountered the 5th irregulars on the 8th of the month; but, as a cavalry force, they were too strong for him; they beat him in action, out-generalled him in movement, released four hundred prisoners from one of the jails, and then marched west toward the river Sone. The mutinous sowars were subsequently heard of at Tikane, Daoodnuggur, Baroon, and other places; everywhere committing great depredations. Thus was a large and important region, on either side of the main trunk-road, and extending two hundred miles along that road, kept in a state of daily agitation. The 5th irregular cavalry in one quarter, Koer Singh in another, and his brothers Ummer Singh and Nishan Singh in a third, were all busily employed in depredation; patriotism or nationality had little hold on their thoughts just then; for they plundered whomsoever had property to lose, without much regard to race or creed. The government offered large rewards for the capture of these leaders, but without effect: the rebels generally resisted this kind of temptation. Opium-crops to the value of half a million sterling were at that time ripening in the Behar and Arrah districts alone; and it was feared that all these would be devastated unless aid arrived from Calcutta.

Mr Wake, and the other civil servants who had so gallantly defended themselves at Arrah, against an enormous force of the enemy, returned to that station about the middle of September, to resume their duties; but as it was feared that Ummer Singh and the 5th irregulars would effect a junction, and attempt to reoccupy Jugdispore, those officers were authorised to fall back upon Dinapoor or Buxar, in the event of being attacked; although they themselves expressed a wish rather to remain at their posts and fortify themselves against the rebels as they had done before. The necessity of making this choice, however, did not arise. The 5th cavalry, after their victory over Rattray’s Sikhs, and during their visits to the towns and villages near the Sone, committed, as we have just said, every kind of atrocity—plundering houses, levying contributions, breaking open the zenanas of Hindoo houses, abusing the women, and destroying property too bulky to be carried away—all this they did; but for some unexplained reason, they avoided the redoubtable little band at Arrah.

The Saugor and Nerbudda provinces, of which the chief towns and stations were Banda, Jaloun, Jhansi, Saugor, Jubbulpoor, Nagode, Dumoh, Nowgong, Mundlah, and Hosungabad, were, as we have seen, in a very precarious state in the month of August. At Saugor, so early as the month of June, Brigadier Sage had brought all the Europeans into a well-armed and amply provisioned fort, guarded by a body of European gunners, and by the still faithful 31st regiment of Bengal infantry; and there the Europeans remained at the close of August, almost cut off from communication with their fellow-countrymen elsewhere. Jubbulpoor had passed through the summer months without actual mutiny; but the revolt of the 42d infantry and the 3d irregular cavalry, at neighbouring stations, and certain suspicious symptoms afforded by the 52d at Jubbulpoor itself, led Major Erskine to fortify the Residency, and provision it for six months. Banda, Jhansi, and Jaloun, had long fallen into the hands of the rebels; Mundlah and Hosungabad were at the mercy of circumstances occurring at other places; Nagode would be reliable only so long as the 50th native infantry remained true; and Dumoh would be scarcely tenable if Jubbulpoor were in danger. Thus, at the end of August, British supremacy in the Saugor and Nerbudda territories hung by a thread. The Calcutta authorities, unable to supply British troops for Bengal or Behar, were equally debarred from rendering assistance to these territories. September opened very gloomily for the officers intrusted with duties in this quarter. The Punjaub and Calcutta could only furnish trustworthy troops for the Jumna and Doab regions, where the war raged with greatest fierceness; it was from Madras and Bombay alone that aid could be expected. Fortunately, the large regions of Nagpoor and Hyderabad were nearly at peace, and thus a passage could be afforded for troops from the south which would not have been practicable had those countries been plunged in anarchy.

Towards the middle of September, Lieutenant Clark, deputy-commissioner of Jubbulpoor, learned a few facts that put him on the track of a conspiracy. It came out, on inquiry, that Rajah Shunker Shah, and many other chieftains and zemindars in the neighbourhood of Jubbulpoor, acting in concert with some of the sepoys of the 52d B. N. I., intended to attack the cantonment on the last day of the Mohurrum, murder all the Europeans, burn the cantonments, and plunder the treasury and city. By a bold and prompt movement, the chief conspirators were seized on the 14th. The lieutenant, writing to the commissioner of Nagpoor, announced the result in brief but significant language. ‘I have been fortunate enough to get conclusive evidence by means of spies, without the conspirators taking alarm; and this morning, with a party of sowars and police, bagged thirty, and two rajahs (ringleaders) among them. Of course they swing. Many of my principal zemindars, and some—I wish I knew how many—of the 52d, are in the plot.’ In Rajah Shunker’s house, among other treasonable papers, was found a sort of prayer, invoking his deity to aid him in the destruction of all Europeans, the overturning of the government, and the re-establishment of his own power. The paper was found in a silk bag in which he kept his fan, and was a scrap torn from a government proclamation issued after the massacre at Meerut. In this instance, therefore, the official expression of horror and wrath at the opening scene of the mutiny, instead of deterring, encouraged others to walk in the same bloody path. The prayer or invocation was afterwards translated from the Hindee into English, and published among the parliamentary papers.[[107]] The execution of the rajah and his son was something more terrible than was implied by the lieutenant’s curt announcement, ‘of course they swing.’ It was one among many examples of that ‘blowing away from guns’ to which the records of the mutiny habituated English newspaper readers. An officer stationed at Jubbulpoor at the time, after noticing the complicity of these two guilty men, describes the execution in a brief but painfully vivid way. ‘At the head of the conspiracy was Shunker Shah, the Ghond rajah, and his son. Their place of abode is about four miles from Jubbulpoor. In former days this family ruled over all this part of the country; they can trace their descent for sixty generations. The family had been deprived of everything by the Mahrattas, and were in great poverty when we took possession. Our government raised them up from this state, and gave them sufficient to support themselves comfortably; and now they shewed their gratitude by conspiring against us in our time of sore trial. The family have neither much property nor power, but the ancient name and prestige was a point on which to rally.... On the 18th, at 11 o’clock A.M., our two guns were advanced a few hundred yards in front of the Residency, covered by a company of the 33d and a few troopers, and it became known that the Ghond rajah and his son were about to be blown away from the cannon’s mouth. The old man walked up to the guns with a firm stride; the son appeared more dejected. The old man, with his snow-white hair and firm manner, almost excited compassion; and one had to remember, before such feelings could be checked, how atrociously he intended to deal with us had his conspiracy succeeded; the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. All was over in a few minutes. The scattered remains were pounced upon by kites and vultures, but what could be collected was handed over to the ranee.’

Although Lieutenant Clark was thus enabled, by mingled caution and decision, to frustrate the atrocious plot of which Jubbulpoor was to have been the theatre, he could not prevent the mutiny of the 52d native regiment. That corps revolted, albeit without perpetrating the cruelties and rapine intended. It was on the 18th that this rising took place, the troops at once marching off quietly towards Dumoh. One old subadar they tied on a horse, because he did not wish to join, and because they did not choose to leave him behind. It was supposed that the 52d had gone towards Dumoh, to capture guns there, and then return to plunder Jubbulpoor. Two days before this, namely, on the 16th, the greater part of the 50th regiment Bengal infantry threw off allegiance. Being stationed at Nagode, they suddenly rose, released the prisoners from the jail, burned the bungalows, and rendered the place no longer safe for Europeans. Mr Ellis and the other civilians fled to Paunna, while Colonel Hampton and the other military officers made their escape towards Jokhie—leaving every vestige of their property behind, except the clothes on their backs. Two companies of the regiment, remaining faithful, accompanied their officers safely to Mirzapore, a journey which occupied them twelve days.

The Europeans at Dumoh, a civil station on the road from Saugor to Jubbulpoor, were thrown into much tribulation by news of these mutinies at other places. When both the 50th and 52d regiments had ‘gone’—a term that acquired much significance in India at that time—Major Erskine, chief-commissioner of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, who happened to be at Dumoh, summoned a council of war on the 20th of September, to consider what was best to be done. It was resolved that Dumoh could not long be held against any considerable body of mutineers; and that advantage should be taken of the temporary presence of a column of Madras native troops to employ that column as an escort for the civilians and the Company’s treasure from Dumoh to Jubbulpoor. There was a detachment of the still faithful 31st at Dumoh; and this was sent to join the main body of the regiment at Saugor, to be out of the way of temptation from mutinous sepoys.

This convoy of men and money from Dumoh led to a smart military encounter. The Madras movable column which afforded the required protection numbered about 500 men of all arms, under Colonel Miller. Leaving Dumoh on the 21st, and being much obstructed in passing the river Nowtah, Colonel Miller reached Sigrampore on the 26th; where he heard that the main body of the mutineers were at Konee, on the banks of a river which the column would need to cross on its way to Jubbulpoor. The colonel at once despatched a force of about 100 men, under Lieutenant Watson, to secure the boats on the river; but the enemy baffled this officer, who had much difficulty in preserving his men. Miller then advanced with his whole column, met the enemy, and fought a brief but decisive battle, which ended in the utter rout of the rebel sepoys. If it had been a purely military affair, the colonel was strong enough to defeat a more numerous body of the enemy; but he was hampered by the presence of civilians, treasure, and 120 sepoys of the 52d, who had been disarmed at Dumoh on news of the revolt of the main body, and whom it was necessary to take with the column. It was, indeed, a strange state of things; for the disarmed men were of course eager enough to rush over and join their companions of the same regiment.

It is not matter for censure if men placed in authority at different stations, in time of peril, occasionally differed concerning the relative importance of those stations. Thus, when the 50th and 52d native regiments mutinied, a question arose which principal city, Saugor or Jubbulpoor, should be regarded as a last stronghold in the event of the British being nearly overpowered. Major Erskine, at Jubbulpoor, urged the claims of that city, as having certain facilities for the receipt of reinforcements, should such happily be afforded; and as having many European women and children within the fort, who could not be removed without danger. Brigadier Sage, on the other hand, urged—‘Whatever you do, let me retain Saugor. It is the key to Central India. It has a good fort and magazine. It is provisioned for six or eight months for three hundred men, and has thirty thousand maunds of grain in addition. It has a siege-train, which will fall into the hands of the enemy if we leave the place. It contains 170 women and children, who could not be withdrawn without danger.’ In such or similar words was the retention of Saugor advocated. The discussion happily ended by both towns being retained. Those officials of the Company, military or civil, who resolutely fortified, instead of abandoning their positions, were in most instances rewarded with success—unless the enemy were in unusually overwhelming force.

Nearly all parts of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories were in wild confusion at the close of September. The Kamptee column of Madras troops had, as we have just seen, broken up the 52d mutineers; but still those rebels lay concealed in jungles, ready for mischief whenever an opportunity might offer; while the Madrasses, distracted by many applications from different quarters, had been unable to prevent the mutinous 50th regiment, at Nagode, from marching off to join the Dinapoor mutineers near Banda. At Saugor, Brigadier Sage and the British were safe, because they were in a strong and well-provisioned fort, and because the 31st native infantry exhibited no signs of disaffection; nevertheless the whole country around was in the hands of rebellious chieftains. On one occasion he sent out the greater part of his force to attack the Rajah of Bankipore at Nurriowlee, ten miles from Saugor; but the attack was unskilfully made—it failed, and greatly lowered British prestige in the neighbourhood.

As in September, so in October, these provinces were held by a very slender tie. Nearly all the chiefs of Bundelcund, on the border, were ready to rise in rebellion at news of any discomfiture of the British. Numerous thakoors had risen, and, with their followers, were plundering the villages in every direction. At Jubbulpoor, Hosungabad, Nursingpore, Jaloun, Jhansi, Saugor, Mundlah, Dumoh, there was scarcely an English soldier; and the presence of a few hundred Madras troops alone stood between the authorities and frightful anarchy. Indeed, Jaloun, Jhansi, and Dumoh were out of British hands altogether. The commissioner of Nagpoor was unable to send up any more Madrasses from the south; Mr Grant was unable to send any from Benares; the independent and half-distrusted state of Rewah lay on one border; the thoroughly rebellious state of Banda on another—and thus Major Erskine looked with gloomy apprehensions on the fate of the provinces under his charge. As the month drew to a close, his accounts were still more dismal. In one letter he said: ‘The mass of native chiefs disbelieve in the existence of a British army; and nothing but the presence of troops among them will convince them of their error.’ Again find again were such messages and representations sent to Viscount Canning, as chief authority in India; again and again did he announce that he had no British troops to spare. To Major Erskine’s letters he replied that he ‘must say broadly and plainly that he would consider the sacrifice of the garrison in Lucknow as a far greater calamity and reproach to the government than an outbreak of the Rewah or Bundelcund states, even if followed by rebellion and temporary loss of our authority in our own territories on the Nerbudda.’ At the close of the month, Koer Singh and the Dinapoor mutineers were somewhere between Banda and Calpee; while Captain Osborne-one of the most remarkable men whom the Indian Revolt brought into notice—still maintained his extraordinary position at Rewah.

We pass now further to the west—to the cities and towns on the Jumna river, and to the regions of Central India between that river and Bombay. Here, little need detain us until we come to Agra. Futtehpoor, Cawnpore, and Futteghur, though not in Oude, were on its frontier, and were involved in the fortunes of that province. Captain Peel’s movements with his naval brigade, in the Doab, may be left for treatment in connection with the affairs of Lucknow.

Agra experienced a loss early in September, in the death of John Russell Colvin, the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces. He fell from sickness, brought on mainly by the intense anxieties arising out of his position. He was a remarkable man, a true specimen of those civilians developed into usefulness by the unique policy of the East India Company. In England a public man becomes a statesman through a multitude of minor and exceptional causes; in India, under the Company’s ‘raj,’ statesmen were educated professedly and designedly for their work. In England, we have seen the same statesman transferred from the Exchequer to the India Board, and from thence to the Admiralty, as if the same kind of knowledge were required for all three situations; in India, the statesman’s education bore more close relation to the duties of the offices he was likely to fill. No defects in the Company’s government, no evils arising out of ‘traditional policy,’ no favouritism or nepotism—can blot out the fact that the system brought out the best qualities of the men in their service. Well will it be if the imperial government, in future ages, is served so faithfully, skilfully, and energetically in India as the Company’s government, during the last half-century, has been served by the Malcolms, Metcalfes, Munros, Birds, Thomasons, Elphinstones, Montgomerys, Outrams, Lawrences, and Colvins—most of them civilians, whose apprenticeship to Indian statesmanship began almost from boyhood.

Mr Colvin, whose death has suggested the above few remarks, had seen as much political service as almost any man in India. He was born in Calcutta, the son of a merchant engaged in the Calcutta trade. After receiving his education in England, and carrying off high honours at Haileybury, he went to India in the Company’s service in 1826; and for thirty-one years was seldom free from public duties, mostly special and local. The number of offices he served in succession was remarkably large. He was assistant to the registrar of the Sudder Court at Calcutta; assistant to the British resident at Hyderabad; assistant-secretary in the revenue and judicial department at Calcutta; secretary to the Board of Revenue in the Lower Provinces; private secretary to Governor-general Lord Auckland; British resident in Nepaul; commissioner of the Tenasserim provinces; judge of the Sudder Court; and lastly, lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces—ruler over a territory containing as many inhabitants as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. All these offices he filled in succession, and the first eight qualified him for the onerous duties of the ninth and last. Throughout the mutiny, the only point on which Mr Colvin differed from Viscount Canning was in the policy of the proclamation issued on the 25th of May. It was at the time, and will ever remain, a point fairly open to discussion, whether Colvin’s proclamation[[108]] was or was not too lenient towards the rebellious sepoys. If Canning’s decision partook more of that of John Lawrence, it is equally certain that Colvin’s views were pretty nearly shared by Henry Lawrence, in the early stages of the mutiny. Irrespective of this question of the proclamation, Colvin’s position at Agra was one of painful difficulty. He was not so successful as Sir John Lawrence in the Punjaub, and his name has not found a place among the great men whom the mutiny brought into notice; but it would be unfair to leave unnoticed the circumstances which paralysed the ruler of Agra. A distinguished civilian, who knew both Colvin and Lawrence, and who has written under the assumed name of ‘Indophilus,’ thus compares the position of the two men: ‘Colvin, with a higher official position, had less real command over events than his neighbour in the Punjaub. John Lawrence ruled a people who had for generations cherished a religious and political feud with the people of Hindostan Proper; and Delhi was, in Sikh estimation, the accursed city drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs. John Colvin’s government was itself the focus of the insurrection. Lawrence may be said to have been his own commander-in-chief; and after a European force had been detached to Delhi immediately on the outbreak, he still had at his disposal seven European regiments, including the one sent from Bombay to Moultan, besides European artillery and a local Sikh force of about 20,000 first-rate irregulars of all arms. Colvin was merely the civil governor of the Northwest Provinces; and as the posts (dâks) were stopped, he could not even communicate with the commander-in-chief, with whom the entire disposal of the military force rested. Lawrence had three days’ exclusive knowledge by telegraph of what had taken place at Meerut and Delhi, during which interval he made his arrangements for disarming the sepoy regiments stationed in the Punjaub. Colvin had no warning; and the military insurrection had actually broken out within his government, and the mutineers were in possession of Delhi, before he could begin to act; but he promptly and vigorously did what was in his power.’ We have seen in former chapters what course Mr Colvin adopted between May and August.[[109]] He opened communications with the authorities all around him, as soon as he knew that the mutiny had begun; he disarmed the 44th and 67th native infantry on the 1st of June; he raised a corps of volunteer horse for service in the neighbourhood; he organised a foot-militia among the civilians and traders, for the protection of the city; and he kept a close watch on the proceedings of the Gwalior mutineers. In July occurred the mutiny of the troopers of the Kotah Contingent; then the ill-managed battle outside Agra on the 5th; then the shutting up of Mr Colvin and six thousand persons within the fort; and then the passing of two weary months, during which the lieutenant-governor was powerless through his inability to obtain trusty troops from any quarter whatever. His health and spirits failed, and he died on the 9th of September—still hemmed within the walls of the fort at Agra. Mr Reade, the leading civilian, assumed authority until orders could be received from Calcutta; Colonel Frazer afterwards received the appointment—not of lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, for that government had by this time disappeared under the force of the mutiny—but of chief-commissioner at Agra. Viscount Canning, in a government order, gracefully and properly acknowledged the merits of Mr Colvin.[[110]]

Camp within the Fort, Agra.—From a Photograph.

The Europeans resident in Agra, after Mr Colvin’s decease, were still unable to liberate themselves; for Delhi had not yet fallen, nor had English prestige been yet restored by Havelock’s success at Lucknow. The English officers felt their enforced idleness very irksome. They, like all the other Europeans, were confined within the fort; no daring military exploits could be looked forward to hopefully, because there ware scarcely any troops to command. For three months the Gwalior mutineers had been their bête noir, their object of apprehension, as being powerful and not far distant. They occasionally heard news from Gwalior, but of too uncertain a nature to satisfy their doubts. Early in September one of the officers wrote: ‘A portion of the rebel army of Gwalior has marched; but their intentions are not yet known. They still say they are coming to turn us out of the fort, and perform all sorts of gallant deeds. Had they come at first, they would have given us a good deal of trouble, as we were not prepared for a siege—guns not mounted, magazines not shell-proof, provisions not in sufficient quantity, and (worst of all) two thousand women and children without any protection from the enemy’s fire. All this is now being rapidly remedied, and now we could stand a siege with comfort. One of the greatest wants is that of tobacco; the soldiers have none; and few men know so well as they do the comfort of a pipe after a hard day’s work, whether under a broiling sun or in drenching rain.’ The British officers at Agra were embittered by becoming acquainted with the fact, that many influential natives now in rebellion were among those who made the most fervent demonstrations of loyalty when the mutiny first began.

Of the affairs of Delhi we shall speak presently. Meanwhile, it may be well to describe the movements of a distinct corps, having its origin in the capture of that city. Although General Wilson seized all the gates and buildings of the imperial city one by one, he could not prevent the escape of the mutineers from the southern gate, the opposite to that where the siege-works had been carried on. By the 21st of September, when the conquest was completed, large bodies of the rebels were far away, on their march to other scenes of struggle. The chief body marched down the right bank of the Jumna on the Muttra road, with the intention of crossing over into the Doab. Brigadier Showers was sent with a force to pursue another body of rebels in another direction; but the operations now under notice were those of the column under Colonel E. H. Greathed (of H.M. 8th foot), organised at Delhi on the 23d of September—about 3000 strong.[[111]] Starting on the 24th, Greathed crossed the Jumna, and marched towards Bolundshuhur. Here a body of fugitive mutineers was encountered on the 28th. A sharp action ensued, which ended in the flight of the enemy, leaving behind them two guns and much ammunition. As a consequence of this defeat, a newly set-up rajah, one Waladad Khan, abandoned the fort of Malagurh, and fled. It was in the blowing-up of this fort, by order of the colonel, that Lieutenant Home, who had so distinguished himself at the storming of the Cashmere Gate, was killed. One of his brother-officers said in a letter: ‘The loss of poor Home has thrown a cloud over all our successes. He was brave among brave men, and an honour to our service.’ Greathed advanced day after day, burning villages which were known to have been nests of insurgents. In one of those places, Koorjah, he found the skeleton of a European woman, the head cut off, and the legs hacked and cut. On the 5th of October, the column reached Allygurh, scoured through the town, and cut up a large body of rebels, taking eleven guns from them. Greathed was at Akerabad the next day, where Mungal Singh and his brother had raised the standard of rebellion; but these chieftains were killed, as well as most of their retainers. On the 9th, he reached Hattrass. At this place his movements were suddenly disturbed; he had intended to march down the Doab to aid Havelock, Outram, and Inglis; but now news from Agra reached him that led to a change of plan. To understand this, attention must be turned to the state of affairs in the Mahratta dominions of Scindia, the northern boundary of which approached very near Agra.

From the day when Scindia’s Gwalior Contingent rose in mutiny against British authority, on the 14th of June, nothing but the personal faithfulness of Scindia himself prevented the mutineers from joining their compatriots at Delhi or elsewhere. Every British officer being driven away from Gwalior, the powerful army forming the Contingent might easily have made itself master of all that part of the Mahratta dominions; but Scindia, by a remarkable exercise of steadiness and shrewdness, kept them near him. He would not make himself personally an enemy to them; neither, on the other hand, would he express approval of their act of mutiny. He still remained their paymaster, and held his power over them partly by keeping their pay in arrear. All through the months of July and August did this singular state of affairs continue. A few detachments of the Contingent had marched off from other stations, but the main body remained quiet. The Indore mutineers from Holkar’s Contingent had for some time been encamped near them at Gwalior, much against Scindia’s inclination. Early in September the two bodies disagreed concerning future plans—the Indore men wishing to speed to Delhi, the Gwalior men to Cawnpore. Some of the maharajah’s own troops, distinct from the Contingent, were seduced from their allegiance by the Indore men, and marched off with them on the 5th, with seven guns and a good store of ammunition. Some of the budmashes or vagabonds of Gwalior joined them; but the Gwalior Contingent proper still remained quiet near that city. This quietness, however, did not promise to be of long continuance. On the 7th, the native officers went to Scindia, and demanded from him food and conveyance for a march either to Agra or to Cawnpore. The maharajah’s response not being satisfactory to them, they began to seize oxen, buffaloes, mules, horses, camels, and carts from the neighbouring villagers, and a few elephants from the richer men. Some violence against Scindia himself appeared probable; but he found the main body of his own little army disposed to remain faithful, and hence the Contingent had little inducement to attack him. The landowners in the neighbourhood offered to aid him with their retainers, thus lessening the danger to which he might otherwise have been exposed. About the middle of the month a fierce struggle seemed imminent; but Scindia and his supporters continued firm, and the Contingent did not for some time attempt any manœuvre likely to be serious to the British. We can therefore follow the steps of the other army of mischief-workers.

When the miscellaneous body of Indore mutineers, Gwalior traitors, and budmashes left Gwalior, they proceeded towards the river Chumbul, which they crossed on the 7th of September, and then took possession of the fort of Dholpore, a place about thirty miles from Agra—at the point where the trunk-road from Delhi to Bombay crosses the Chumbul, and therefore a very important spot in relation to any arrival of reinforcements for the British. In that very week the final bombardment of Delhi began; and if the mutineers had marched thither, they might seriously have embarrassed General Wilson’s operations. They appear, however, to have remained near Dholpore, supporting and strengthening themselves by plunder in the neighbouring region. When Delhi fell, and its defenders escaped, the Dholpore mutineers—as we may now conveniently call them—had no motive for marching towards the imperial city; but, near the close of the month, they began to lay plans for an attack on Agra.

When October arrived, Mr Reade, and Colonels Cotton and Frazer, had to direct their attention not only to these Dholpore mutineers, but to dangerous neighbours from other quarters. A glance at a map will shew that when mutineers and marauders escaped from Delhi towards the Lower Ganges, Agra would necessarily be not far from the line of route. When, therefore, the authorities at the last-named city heard of the fall of Delhi, they naturally looked with some anxiety to the course pursued by the fugitives. They speedily heard that a crowd of mutineers, fanatics, felons, and miscreants of every description, had found their way to Muttra, and were engaged in constructing a bridge of boats over the Jumna; in order, as appeared probable, to open a communication with the Indore or Dholpore mutineers. Hence the extreme anxiety of the Agra authorities that Greathed’s column, in pursuit of the fugitive rebels, should march down the right instead of the left bank of the Jumna, in order to aid Agra, and cut off the communication with Dholpore; and hence great disappointment, when it was found that the active leader of that column was marching rapidly on towards Cawnpore—without thinking of Agra. At such a time, each officer naturally thought first and principally of the safety of the city or station for which he was responsible; and the commanders of movable columns were often embarrassed by conflicting requisitions from different quarters.

Lieutenant Home, Bengal Engineers.

Such was the state of feeling in Agra at the end of September. Early in October, matters became more serious. The authorities received news that an attack on Agra was meditated by the rebels—comprising the 23d B. N. I. and the 1st B. N. C. of the Indore Contingent, from Mhow; a part of the fugitive forces from Delhi; and malcontents from Dholpore and the neighbourhood. Means were immediately sought for frustrating this attack. The rebels were known to be on the advance on the 6th; it was also known that on that day Colonel Greathed had arrived with his column at Akrabad, one day’s march from Allygurh, on his way towards Cawnpore. It was thereupon resolved to obtain the aid of Greathed at Agra, before he further prosecuted his march. This energetic officer, who was rapidly following up a fugitive brigade from Delhi, very unwillingly postponed an object on which he had set his heart; but the danger to Agra becoming very imminent, he turned aside to lend his aid at that point. After marching forty-four miles in twenty-eight hours—a tremendous achievement in an Indian climate—Greathed arrived at the parade-ground of Agra on the morning of the 10th of October. Before his tired troops could enjoy even three hours’ rest, they found themselves engaged in battle with the enemy, who suddenly attacked their camp. The rebels made a spirited dash with their cavalry, and opened a brisk fire with artillery half hidden behind luxuriant standing corn. Not a moment did Greathed delay. He moved to the right with a view of outflanking the enemy and capturing their guns on that side; and his arrangements in other quarters soon enabled him to charge and capture the enemy’s guns and standards. On they went, the mutineers retreating and Greathed following them up, until he reached a village three miles out on the Gwalior road. Here Colonel Cotton came up, and assumed the command; the infantry drove the rebels to the five-mile point, and the cavalry and artillery continued the pursuit; until at length the enemy were utterly routed. They lost twelve guns, and the whole of their tents, baggage, ammunition, and vehicles of every description. It was a complete discomfiture. Colonel Greathed obtained, and deservedly, high praise for the celerity and energy of his movements. By the time the battle and pursuit were over, his cavalry had marched sixty-four and his infantry fifty-four miles in thirty-six hours; while Captain Bourchier’s 9-pounder battery had come in from Hattrass, thirty miles distant, during the night without a halt. Greathed’s loss in the action was 11 killed and 56 wounded. It was a strange time for the mutineers to make an attack on Agra. During the siege of Delhi, Wilson could not have spared a single regiment from his siege-camp, nor could any other general have brought resources to bear on the relief of Agra; whereas now, in this second week of October, Greathed with a strong column was within two days’ march of the city. If they were not aware of this fact, then was their information less complete than usual; if they hoped to check his advance down the Doab, then did they wofully underrate his strength and gallantry.

While tracing briefly the progress of the movable column after this battle of Agra, it may be well to advert to a source of vexation that sometimes presented itself during the wars of the mutiny, at Agra as elsewhere. Many of the gallant men concerned in struggling against the mutineers were occasionally much perplexed by questions of seniority, at times and places when they could refer for solution neither to the governor-general nor to the commander-in-chief. Such was the case in reference to Greathed’s column. General Gowan in Sirhind, General Penny at Delhi, the chief-commissioner at Agra, all had some authority in military matters in the Northwest Provinces. Colonel Cotton, at Agra, finished the battle which Greathed began—not because it had been badly fought, but because Cotton was senior to Greathed. Again, while Greathed was marching quickly and fighting valiantly on the road to Cawnpore, after the battle of Agra, Colonel Hope Grant of the 9th Lancers, made brigadier in order that he might assume higher command, was sent out from Delhi viâ Agra to supersede him—not because he was a better officer than Greathed, but because he was senior in rank. Grant joined the column on the 19th of October, and became its leader. The change caused a busy paper-war between the generals and commissioners who had made the respective appointments, and who could not, at such a troubled time, rightly measure the relative strength of their own claims to authority. Whether under Hope Grant, however, or under Greathed, the column was in good hands. On the 19th, the column marched twenty-four miles, and entered Minpooree. A native rajah had long ruled that place during the anarchy of the provinces; but no sooner did he hear of the approach of the British than he fled—leaving behind him several guns, 14,000 pounds of powder, 230,000 rupees, and much other property, which had been taken from the Company’s officers when the mutiny began. There was no fighting, only a re-occupation. After another severe punishment of the rebels at Kanouge on the 23d, the column marched towards Cawnpore, which was reached on the 26th.

Returning to the affairs of the various Mahratta states, it may now be mentioned that the Gwalior Contingent did at last, in the month of October, make a move. They marched slowly and heavily (six regiments, four batteries, and a siege-train), leaving Gwalior on the 15th, and advancing eastward towards Jaloun and Calpee, as if with the intention of crossing the Jumna at the last-named place into the Doab; but the month came to an end without any serious demonstration on their part. Had Nena Sahib been as bold and skilful as he was vicious, he might have wrought great mischief to the English at this time. If he had placed himself at the head of the Gwalior Contingent (which was fully expected), and had marched with them southward through Bundelcund to the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, he would have picked up rebellious Bundelas at every village, and have advanced towards the Nerbudda in such strength as to render it very doubtful whether the available Madras and Bombay troops could have confronted him. He had ambition enough to place himself at the head of all the Mahratta princes, but neither skill nor courage for such a position. So far as concerns Agra, the residents continued in the fort, in no great danger, but too weak in military to engage in any extensive operations. The only contest, indeed, during the rest of the month was on the 28th, when a party from the fort sallied out, and dispersed a body of rebels assembled at Futtehpore Sikri.

The wide region comprised within the political limits of the Mahratta and Rajpootana states was in a very disturbed condition during September and October. Besides the Gwalior Contingent in Scindia’s dominions, there were Holkar’s Contingent, the Bhopal and Kotah Contingents, the Jhodpore legion, and other bodies of native troops, the partial mutiny of which kept the country in perpetual agitation. All Bengal troops were sources of mischief, for they were the very elements among which the disaffection grew up; European troops could be sent neither from Calcutta nor the Punjaub; and therefore it depended either on Bombay or Madras (chiefly the former) to send troops by whom the insurgents could be put down. These troops, for reasons already sufficiently explained, were few in number; and it was a work of great difficulty to transfer them from place to place where anarchy most prevailed; indeed, the commanding officers were often distracted by appeals to them from various quarters for aid—appeals incompatible one with another.

Colonel Lawrence had a contest with the mutineers of the Jhodpore legion, about the middle of September, in Rajpootana. He marched to and through various places, the names of which have hardly been heard of in England, such as Beaur, Chiliamas, Barr, Peeplia, Bugree, Chaputtia, and Awah; these movements took place between the 14th and the 18th of the month; and on the last-named date he encountered the rebels at Awah. He had with him 200 of H.M. 83d foot, 250 Mhairwara battalion, two squadrons of Bombay native cavalry, and 5 guns. It was an artillery attack on both sides, lasting three hours. Lawrence seems to have distrusted his own strength; he would not bring his infantry and cavalry into action, fearful of losing any of his men just at that place and time. In short, his attack failed; the rebels retained hold of Awah, and Lawrence, finding his supplies running short, retired to Beaur. The rebels had the guns of the legion with them, and worked them well. It was an untoward affair; for the Rajah of Jhodpore, friendly to the English, had just before met with a defeat of his own troops by the same legion, in an action which involved the death of Captain Monck Mason, the British resident; and now prestige was still further damaged by the retreat of Lawrence after a desultory action. The colonel had come with a small Bombay column to Ajmeer, to watch the movements of rebels in and near Ajmeer, Nuseerabad, Awah, and other places in that part of Rajpootana; and any discomfiture at such a time was likely to afford a bad example. At Kotali, Neemuch, Mundisore, Mehidpore, Indore, Mhow, Bhopal, &c., an uneasy feeling similarly prevailed, arising out of disturbances too small to be separately noticed here, but important as indicating a wide belt of disaffected country between the Jumna and the Bombay presidency. The strange character of the whole of that region, in a political sense, was well expressed by an English officer, who, writing from Neemuch, said: ‘This station is in the heart of Rajpootana, a country abounding in and surrounded by native states which compose anything but one family, and between any two of which it is very difficult to determine at any given time what relation exists. There are Holkar’s troops, and Scindia’s troops, and Salomba’s troops, and the mercenary troops of Odeypore, the Kotah Contingent, the Jeypoor, Jhodpore, Meywar, and Malwar corps, and a host more; and when any little dispute arises in the country, a sort of jumble takes place between these bodies, during which two of them at least are pretty sure to come into collision.’ These petty quarrels among the chieftains were sometimes advantageous to the British; but the soldiery were so strongly affected with mutinous tendencies, that a friendly rajah could seldom give practical value to his friendliness.

It is unnecessary to notice in detail the petty military operations of that region. No great success attended any of them. One was at Nimbhera, or Nimbhaira, between Neemuch and Nuseerabad. Here a contest took place on the 20th of September, in which a native rajah was worsted by Colonel Jackson and 350 miscellaneous troops. Another occurred some weeks later, when the Mundisore insurgents, on the 22d of October, made an attack on Jeerun, a town about ten miles from Neemuch. A force of about 400 men was at once sent out from this station, chiefly Bombay native troops, but headed by 50 of H.M. 83d foot, under Captains Simpson, Bannister, and Tucker. The enemy were found drawn up in force. Tucker brought two guns and a mortar to bear upon them, and sent his infantry to attack the town; but the enemy checked them by overpowering numbers, and captured the mortar. The cavalry now made an attack, followed by the infantry, and the mortar was speedily retaken. The enemy were driven into the fort, and their fire entirely silenced. The Neemuch force was not strong enough to take the fort at that time, but the insurgents evacuated it during the night, and marched off. The encounter was rather severe to the British officers engaged; for two of them (Captains Tucker and Read) were killed, and five wounded. The miscreants cut off Captain Tucker’s head as soon as he had fallen.

One of the most pathetic stories of that period had relation, not to a battle or a wholesale slaughter, but to the assassination of a father and two sons under very cowardly and inexplicable circumstances. Major Burton was British political agent at Kotah, a Rajpootana state of which the chief town lies northeast of Neemuch—a situation he had filled for thirteen years, always on friendly terms with the native rajah and the people generally. He had been four months at Neemuch, but returned to Kotah on the 12th of October, accompanied by two sons scarcely arrived at manhood. On the 15th, two regiments of the rajah’s native army revolted, and surrounded the Residency in which Major Burton and his sons had just taken up their abode. What followed may best be told in the words of a third son, Mr C. W. Burton, of Neemuch.[[112]]

Let us on to Delhi, and watch how the imperial city fared after the siege.

As soon as the conquest had been completely effected, on the 21st of September,[[113]] it became necessary to make arrangements for the internal government of the city, irrespective of any more permanent or important appointments. Colonel Burn was made military governor. This officer had been thirty years in the Company’s service—first in the Bengal native infantry; then in raising three native regiments on the Afghan frontier; next in the operations of the Afghan war; then in those of the Sikh war; afterwards as secretary to the commissioners of the Punjaub; and, lastly, as an officer in Nicholson’s movable column. Colonel Burn being made military governor of Delhi, Colonel Innes received the appointment of commandant of the palace. Mr Hervey Harris Greathed, who had been appointed civil commissioner for Delhi as soon as the murder of Mr Simon Fraser on the 11th of May became known, lived through all the vicissitudes of the siege, but sank through illness almost as soon as the victorious army entered the imperial city; he was succeeded in his office by Mr Saunders. Another change may here be mentioned. General Wilson, worn out by his anxieties and labours in the siege-camp, retired two or three weeks after the conquest, for the recovery of his health in the hill-country, and was succeeded in the supreme command at Delhi by General Penny—subject to any more authoritative change by order of the Calcutta government.

Within, the city of Delhi was a very desolation. Nearly all the native inhabitants left it, in dread lest the English soldiers should retaliate upon them the atrocities perpetrated by the insurgents upon defenceless Europeans. The authorities had no wish for the immediate return of these people, until it could be ascertained to what extent the traders and working population had connived at the rebellion of the sepoys. Even many weeks after all fighting had ceased in and near the city, one of the officers wrote of the state of Delhi in the following terms: ‘Every wall or bastion that faced our camp is in almost shapeless ruin; but the white marble pavilions of the palace rise unharmed along the Jumna’s bank. In one of these live the.... There is no describing the beauty and quaintness of their rooms. I long for photographs to send home. They are all of inlaid marble, with semianahs pitched in the zenana courts between. But all around speaks of awful war—the rows on rows of captured guns—the groups of English soldiers at every post; and not English only, for our brave defenders the Goorkhas, Sikhs, and Punjaubees mingle among them. A strange army indeed, with not a trace of pipeclay! It is a frightful drive from the palace to the Cashmere Gate—every house rent, riven, and tottering; the church battered, and piles of rubbish on every side. Alas! the burnt European houses and deserted shops! Desolate Delhi! and yet we are told it is clearing and much improved since the storming of the place. It has only as yet a handful of inhabitants in its great street, the Chandnee Chowk, who are all Hindoos, I believe. Many miserable wretches prowl through the camps outside the city begging for admission at the various gates; but none are admitted whose respectability cannot be vouched for. Cart-loads of ball are being daily dug out from the Moree Bastion, now a shapeless, battered mass.’

The conquerors of Delhi, wishing to prevent for ever the imperial city from becoming a stronghold for rebels, proposed to destroy at once all the fortifications. The Calcutta government, on receiving news of the final capture, telegraphed to General Wilson to the following effect: ‘The governor-general in council desires that you will at once proceed to demolish the defences of Delhi. You will spare places of worship, tombs, and all ancient buildings of interest. You will blow up, or otherwise destroy all fortifications; and you will so far destroy the walls and gates of the city as to make them useless for defence. As you will not be able to do this completely with the force at present available at Delhi, you will select the points at which the work may be commenced with the best effect, and operate there.’ After General Wilson had retired, and General Penny had assumed command at Delhi, information reached Sir John Lawrence at Lahore of the intended demolition. He evidently did not approve of the plan in its totality, and suggested delay even in commencing it, until further orders could be received from Calcutta. He thus telegraphed to Delhi on the 21st of October: ‘I do not think any danger could arise from delay. If the fortifications be dismantled, I would suggest that it be done as was the case at Lahore; we filled in the ditches by cutting down the glacis, lowered the walls, and dismantled the covering-works in front of the gates and bastions. A wall of ten or twelve feet high could do no harm, and would be very useful for police purposes. Delhi, without any walls, would be exposed to constant depredations from the Meeras, Goojurs, and other predatory races. Even such a partial demolition will cost several lacs of rupees and take a long time; at Lahore it cost two lacs, and occupied upwards of two years.’

One subject connected with the capture of Delhi was curiously illustrative of the state of the public mind as exhibited during the autumn of 1857. Anything less than a sanguinary retaliation for the atrocities committed by the natives in India was in many quarters regarded almost as a treasonable shrinking from justice. Kill, kill, kill all—was the injunction implied, if not expressed. Among the British residents in India this desire for blood was so strong, that it distempered the judgment of persons otherwise amiable and generous. Instead of acting on the principle that it is better for a few guilty to escape than for one innocent man to be punished, the doctrine extensively taught at that time reversed this rule of conduct. It is of course not difficult to account for this. The feelings of those who, a few short months before, had been peacefully engaged in the usual Anglo-Indian mode of life, were suddenly rent by a terrible calamity. Husbands, brothers, sons—wives, sisters, daughters—were not only put to death unjustly, but the black deed was accompanied by brutalities that struck horror into the hearts of all survivors. It was not at such a time that men could judge calmly. The subject is mentioned here because it points to one of the difficulties, almost without parallel in intensity, that pressed upon the nobleman whose fate it was to govern India at such a time. Every proclamation or dispatch, issued by Viscount Canning, which contained instructions to the Company’s officers tending to leniency towards any of the dark skins, was misquoted, misrepresented, violently condemned, and attributed to what in bitter scorn was called the ‘clemency of Canning.’ It required great moral courage, at such a time, to form a definite plan of action, and to maintain it in spite of clamour. Differences of opinion on these difficult matters of state policy are of course reasonable enough; the point is mentioned here only in its historical relation to an almost frenzied state of public opinion at a particular time.

Colonel Burn, Military Governor of Delhi.

The treatment of the King of Delhi was one of the subjects connected with this state of feeling. When taken a prisoner, the dethroned monarch was not shot. ‘Why is this?’ it was asked. Because Captain Hodson promised the king his life if he would surrender quietly. For a long time this gallant officer was an object of violent abuse for this line of conduct. ‘Why did Hodson dare to do this?’ was the inquiry. It was not until evidence clear and decisive had been afforded, of General Wilson’s sanction having been given to this proceeding, that the subject fell into its proper place as one open to fair and temperate discussion. Again, letters written anonymously at Delhi appeared in the Calcutta newspapers, announcing that the ex-royal family were treated with the most obsequious deference; and the ‘clemency’ was again contrasted with the ‘righteous demand for blood.’ So much of this as was untrue gradually fell out of repute; and then the simple fact became known that the king was to be tried as a traitor, but was not to be treated as a felon until found guilty. Mrs Hodson, wife to the officer who effected the capture, paid a visit to the royal captives, which she described in a highly interesting letter to an English relation, afterwards made public; whatever else it shewed, it afforded no indication that the aged profligate was treated with a degree of luxurious attention offensive to the European residents of the place.[[114]]

For all else, Delhi furnished nothing calling for special notice during the six weeks following the siege.

Of two columns, despatched from Delhi to pursue and punish the rebels after the siege, that under Colonel Greathed has already been noticed. A second, under Brigadier Showers, was engaged throughout October, mostly west and northwest of Delhi. Some of the petty rajahs between the Jumna and the Sutlej were in an embarrassing position; they would have drawn down on their heads eventual defeat by the British if they joined the rebels; while they were in immediate danger from the enmity of marauders and mutineers if they remained faithful to the British. To their credit be it said, most of them remained true to their treaties; they assisted the British in a time of trouble to the extent of their means. Especially was this the case in relation to the Rajahs of Jheend and Putialah, without whose friendly aid it would have scarcely been possible for Sir John Lawrence to send reinforcements from the Punjaub to General Wilson at Delhi. An exception was afforded by the Rajah of Jhujjur, whose treacherous conduct earned for him a severe defeat by Brigadier Showers about the middle of October. That officer was, later in the month, actively engaged in defeating and punishing rebels at Sonah, Bullubgurh, and other places.

Of the country north and northeast of Delhi, little need be said. Rohilcund was almost wholly in the hands of the rebels during September and October. In the districts of Bareilly, Boodayoun, Mooradabad, Shahjehanpoor, and Bijnour, the English might be reckoned by tens—so fierce had been the tempest which had swept them away. Happily Nynee Tal still remained a refuge for many non-combatants, who could not yet be safely removed to Calcutta or Bombay. Khan Bahadoor Khan—a notorious offender whose name has more than once been mentioned in these pages, and who, after being a well-paid deputy-collector in the Company’s service, shewed his gratitude by committing great atrocities as self-elected Nawab of Bareilly—planned an attack on Nynee Tal about the middle of September. He sent a force of 800 men, under his nephew, Nizam Ullie Khan. Major Ramsey, however, speedily mustered 300 Goorkhas, and about 50 miscellaneous volunteers and troopers; this force, sallying forth from Nynee Tal on the 18th, encountered the Bareilly rebels at Huldwanee, near the foot of the hills, and gave so effective a defeat to them as to prevent any repetition of the attack for a very long time.

All around the district of Meerut the movements of the rebels were sensibly checked by the fact that that important military station still remained in the hands of the British. After the first day of outbreak (10th of May), Meerut was provisioned and intrenched in such a way as to render it safe from all attacks, especially as the garrison had a good store of artillery; and as small bands of trusty troops could occasionally be spared for temporary expeditions, the mutineers were kept from any very near approach to Meerut itself. The chief annoyance was from the Goojurs and other predatory tribes, who sought to reap a golden harvest from the social anarchy around them.

Happily, the extreme northwest remained nearly at peace. The Punjaub, under the firm control of Sir John Lawrence, although occasionally disturbed by temporary acts of lawlessness, was in general tranquil. A few English troops ascended from Kurachee by way of the Indus and Moultan; and a few native regiments came from Bombay and Sinde; but the Sikhs and Mussulmans of the Punjaub itself were found to be for the most part reliable, under the able hands of Cotton and Edwardes. In Sinde a similar state of affairs was exhibited: a few isolated acts of rebellion, sufficient to set the authorities on the alert without seriously disquieting them. On one occasion a company of native artillery was disarmed at Hydrabad, on suspicion of being tainted with disloyalty. On another occasion the 21st native infantry was disarmed at Kurachee, because twenty or thirty of the men displayed bad symptoms. And on another, a few men of the 16th native infantry were detected in an attempt to excite their companions to mutiny. All these instances tended to shew, that if Sinde had been nearer to Hindostan or Oude, the Bengal portion of the army there stationed would in all probability have revolted; but being in a remote region, and among a people who had few sympathies with Brahmin sepoys, the incendiarism died out for lack of fuel.

Happily, again, the southern or peninsular portion of India was left nearly free from the curse of rebellion during the two months now under notice in Mysore, in the various provinces of the Madras presidency, in the South Mahratta country, and in the provinces around Bombay, the disturbances were few. In the Deccan, the Nizam and his prime minister remained stanch throughout; and although the city of Hyderabad was kept in much commotion by fanatical moulvies and fakeers, and by turbulent Rohillas and Deccanees, there was no actual mutiny of entire regiments, or successful scheme of rebellion. At Ahmedabad, midway between Bombay and the disturbed region of Rajpootana, one of those terrible events occurred on the 26th of October—a blowing away of five men from guns. All the officers whose duty it was to attend on those fearful occasions united in hoping that such a sight might never again meet their eyes.

Ruins near Kootub Minar, Delhi.

[105]. ‘I told off my men rapidly, and formed them into parties, so as completely to surround and cover every outlet and corner. The main party, consisting mostly of my own particular sharpshooters and body-guard, watched the front; another moved towards the town, there to arrest an educated Bengalee, agent to the conspirators; another to the rear, to cut off escape towards the town; while my friend the Political crept quietly past some outhouses with his police, and under the palace walls awaited my signal for opening the ball.

‘Before long the ominous barking of a disturbed cur in the direction of the party sent after the prime-minister proclaimed that no time was to be lost. Off I went towards the guard-shed in front of the palace, my personal sharpshooters following at the double. The noise, of course, awoke the sleeping guard, and as they started up from their slumbers I caught one firmly by the throat; the little Goorkha next me felled with a but-end blow another of them while they were getting to arms, I having strictly forbidden my men to fire until obliged; the remainder, as we rushed in, took to flight, and my eager party wished to fire on them, which I prevented, not considering such valiant game worth powder and shot. In the darkness and confusion, no means of entrance could at once be found. My police guide, however, having been often in the palace, knew every room in it, and, thrusting himself in at a door, acted ferret to perfection, and by dint of activity, soon brought me into the presence of the rajah, who, though young in years, is old in sin: he refused to surrender or admit any one—a resolution which cooled instanter on my calling my men to set fire to the palace; he then with a bad grace delivered up to me his state-sword. A shout from the opposite doors proclaimed an entry there. The queen-mother and the rest of the female royalty and attendants were seized while trying to descend on that side. Then came a chorus of shouting and struggling, and bawling for lights and assistance; at last, a lamp being procured, we proceeded to examine the palace: we wandered in dark passages and cells, while I mounted a guard at every door. The air being confined and heated within the royal residence, I sat outside until after daybreak, and then proceeded to rummage for papers and letters; several boxes of these we appropriated, and counted out his treasure, all in gold vessels and ingots; we found a quantity of arms, spiked some guns, one of them of French make; all day we were hard at work, searching and translating papers. The prime-minister was found at his house, fast asleep. In the heat of the afternoon, we went to his residence in the town, and by dint of keeping fans going over us, carried out a thorough search. We did not get as many of his papers as we wanted, he having been told by his correspondents to destroy all letters after reading them.

‘At sunset I carried off my prisoners over the same bad ground by which we had so stealthily arrived. We were followed by about 2000 infuriated Mussulmans, crying, praying, and prostrating themselves to the object of their lingering hope of rebellion (the rajah), but we drove them off.’

[106]. ‘The ejected civilians from Dorunda had come on ahead and offered our small party breakfast, which we gladly accepted. While waiting until it was ready, the chief-commissioner got an electric-telegraph dispatch from the governor-general, ordering the whole of the 53d party under Major English back again to the main trunk-road. You never saw anything like the long faces they all had at this announcement; for the commissioner had just had intelligence on which he thought he could rely, that the mutineers were still kept at bay by the party at the pass, through which they must get through to effect their escape from us; and they did not think that 250 Madras sepoys with two guns would be sufficient to attack 850 desperate men caught in a trap. Moreover, the retirement of the Europeans would run like wildfire through the district; and I heard them all say they would not answer for what might happen.’ The column did advance to Dorunda, and dispersed the miscreants; but it had to hasten to other regions, and then—‘All the residents are very much disgusted at our going back, as the moral effect of our arrival must be great, the natives here having as much idea of a European soldier as they have of a whale, never having seen either; and the fact of their being put as prisoners under a European guard frightens them more than a thousand deaths.’

[107].

Shut the mouth of slanderers, bite and

Eat up backbiters, trample down the sinners,

You, Sutrsingharka.

Kill the British, exterminate them,

Mat Chundee.

Let not the enemy escape, nor the offspring of such,

Oh, Singharka.

Shew favour to Shunker!

Support your slave!

Listen to the cry of religion,

Mathalka.

Eat up the unclean!

Make no delay!

Now devour them,

And that quickly,

Ghormatkalka.

The words in italics are various names of the goddess Devee or Deva, ‘the destroyer.’

[108]. See p. [111].

[109]. Chap. vii., pp. [109]-[111]. Chap. x., pp. [173], 174. Chap. xvii., pp. [282]-[286].

[110]. ‘It is the melancholy duty of the Right Honourable the Governor-general in Council to announce the death of the Honourable John Russell Colvin, the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces.

‘Worn by the unceasing anxieties and labours of his charge, which placed him in the very front of the dangers by which of late India has been threatened, health and strength gave way; and the Governor-general in Council has to deplore with sincere grief the loss of one of the most distinguished among the servants of the East India Company.

‘The death of Mr Colvin has occurred at a time when his ripe experience, his high ability, and his untiring energy would have been more than usually valuable to the state.

‘But his career did not close before he had won for himself a high reputation in each of the various branches of administration to which he was at different times attached, nor until he had been worthily selected to fill the highest position in Northern India; and he leaves a name which not friends alone, but all who have been associated with him in the duties of government, and all who may follow in his path, will delight to honour.

‘The Right Honourable the Governor-general in Council directs that the flag shall be lowered half-mast high, and that 17 minute-guns shall be fired at the seats of government in India upon the receipt of the present notification.’

[111].

[112]. ‘The political agent was himself the first to discover their approach; and, as he had only returned to Kotah three days previously from an absence of four months, he believed the number of people he saw advancing merely to be some of the chief subordinates coming to pay him the usual visit of ceremony and respect. In a second he was cruelly undeceived. The mutineers rushed into the house; the servants, both private and public, abandoned him with only one exception (a camel-driver); and the agent, his boys, and this one solitary servant fled to the top of the house for safety, snatching up such few arms as were within their reach. The fiends pursued; but the cowardly ruffians were driven back for the time by the youngest boy shooting one in the thigh. When there, they naturally hoped the agency-servants or their own would have returned with assistance from the chief; but no—all fled, and no help came. In the meantime, the mutineers proceeded to loot the house, and they (the major and his sons) saw from their position all their property carried away. A little while and two guns were brought to play upon the bungalow, the upper part of which caught fire from the lighted sticks which the miscreants from time to time threw up. Balls fell around them, the little room at the top fell in, and they were yet unhurt—and this for five long and weary hours. Major Burton wished to parley with the mutineers, in the hope they would be contented if he gave himself up, and allow his boys to escape; but his children would not allow of such a sacrifice for their sakes; and like brave men and good Christians, they all knelt down and uttered their last prayers to that God who will surely avenge their cause. All now seemed comparatively quiet, and they began to hope the danger over, and let down the one servant who was still with them on a mission to the Sikh soldiers and others, who were placed by the chief for the personal protection of the agent round his bungalow, and of whom at the time there were not less than 140, to beg of them to loosen the boat, that an escape might be attempted across the river. They said: “We have had no orders.” At this moment a shot from a pistol was fired. Scaling-ladders had been obtained, the murderers ascended the walls, and the father and his sons were at one fell stroke destroyed.... The maharajah was enabled to recover the bodies of the agent and both his sons in the evening, and they were carefully buried by his order. Dr Salder’s house was attacked at the same time with the agency-house. He was cut down outside, in sight of the agent, as was also Mr Saviell, the doctor of the dispensary in the city, and one or two others whose names are not certain.’

[113]. Chap. xviii., pp. [295]-[315].

[114]. ‘There is a report, which has been mischievously set about, and may have mischievous consequences—namely, that the king has the whole of his retinue, and has returned to his own apartments in the palace.

‘This is perfectly untrue. I went with Mr Saunders, the civil commissioner, and his wife, to see the unfortunate and guilty wretch. We mounted a flight of stone steps, at the bottom and top of which was a European sentry. A small low door opened into a room, half of which was partitioned off with a grass-matting called chitac, behind which was a woman cooking some atrocious compound, if I might judge from the smell. In the other half was a native bedstead—that is, a frame of bamboo on four legs, with grass-rope strung across it; on this was lying and smoking a hookah an old man with a long white beard; no other article of furniture whatever was in the room, and I am almost ashamed to say that a feeling of pity mingled with my disgust at seeing a man recently lord of an imperial city, almost unparalleled for riches and magnificence, confined in a low, close, dirty room, which the lowest slave of his household would scarcely have occupied, in the very palace where he had reigned supreme, with power of life and death, untrammelled by any law, within the precincts of a royal residence as large as a considerable-sized town; streets, galleries, towers, mosques, forts, and gardens, a private and a public hall of justice, and innumerable courts, passages, and staircases. Its magnificence can only be equalled by the atrocities which have been committed there. But to go back to the degraded king. The boy, Jumma Bukht, repeated my name after Mr Saunders. The old man raised his head and looked at me, then muttered something I could not hear, and at the moment the boy, who had been called from the opposite door, came and told me that his mother, the begum, wished to see me. Mrs Saunders then took possession of me, and we went on into a smaller, darker, dirtier room than the first, in which were some eight or ten women crowding round a common “charpoy” or couch, on which was a dark, fat, shrewd, but sensual-looking woman, to whom my attention was particularly drawn. She took hold of my hand—I shuddered a little—and told me that my husband was a great warrior; but that if the king’s life and her son’s had not been promised them by the government, the king was preparing a great army which would have annihilated us. The other women stood round in silence till her speech was finished, and then crowded round, asking how many children I had, and if they were all boys; examined my dress, and seemed particularly amused by my bonnet and parasol. They were, with one exception, coarse, low-caste women, as devoid of ornament as of beauty. Zeenat Mahal asked me—a great honour, I found, which I did not appreciate—to sit down on her bed; but I declined, as it looked so dirty. Mr Saunders was much amused at my refusal, and told me it would have been more than my life was worth six months before to have done so; and I have no doubt of it.’

Lucknow, from the Observatory.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE RESCUE AT LUCKNOW, BY SIR COLIN CAMPBELL.

A little care is needed to avoid confusion in the use of the words ‘siege,’ ‘defence,’ and ‘relief,’ relating to Lucknow—so peculiar and complicated were the military operations in and near that city during the mutiny. In the first place, there was the defence of the Residency by Brigadier Inglis, during July, August, and September: the mutineers and rebels in the city itself being the besiegers. Secondly, in the closing week of September, came the siege of Lucknow city by the British under Havelock, Outram, and Neill: the rebels being the besieged, and Inglis’s little band, still shut up within the Residency enclosure, being unable to take an active part in the operations. Next, for a further period of seven or eight weeks, a renewed defence of the British position was maintained by Havelock, Outram, and Inglis—the mutineers and rebels being, as in the first instance, the besiegers. Then, in the third week of November, occurred a siege of the city by Sir Colin Campbell: the mutineers and rebels being the defenders, and the British inmates of the Residency being enabled to aid the operations of the commander-in-chief. After this, there was another defence of the Alum Bagh against the rebels by Outram, and another siege of Lucknow by Campbell. It follows, therefore, that the ‘siege,’ the ‘defence,’ or the ‘relief’ of Lucknow should not be mentioned without defining the period to which the expression refers.

With this explanatory remark, the scope of the present chapter may be easily shewn. In former pages[[115]] the eventful defence of the Residency at Lucknow from the beginning of July to near the close of September, by Brigadier Inglis, was described; together with the arrival of a small army under Havelock and Outram, and the terrible conflict in the streets of the city. In the present chapter the sequel of the story will be given—shewing how it arose that Havelock and Outram could not escort the suffering women and children, sick and wounded, from Lucknow to a place of safety; how they struggled on for eight weeks longer; what preparations Sir Colin Campbell made to collect an army of relief; how he fought his way to Lucknow; and by what felicitous arrangements he safely brought away those who, from sex, age, sickness, or wounds, were unable to defend themselves against a fierce and relentless enemy.

On the 26th of September, when a few hours’ sleep had closed the agitating proceedings of the previous day, it was found that the ‘relief’ of Lucknow was a relief rather in name than in substance. Sir Henry Havelock surrendered the command which had been generously left in his hands up to this time by a superior officer; Brigadier Inglis surrendered the military control of the intrenched position, or rather continued to hold it under the supervision of another; while Sir James Outram, in virtue of an arrangement previously made, assumed the leadership of all the British forces, and the exercise of all British power, throughout Oude. At present, this leadership and power were of humble dimensions, for he commanded very little more of the province than the few acres at the Residency and the Alum Bagh. Of the gallant troops, under 3000 in number, who, led by Havelock, Outram, and Neill, had left Cawnpore on the 19th of September, nearly one-third were stricken down by the time the Residency was reached. The survivors were too few in number to form a safe escort for the women and children from Lucknow to Cawnpore; the march would have been an awful one, marked by bloodshed at every step; the soldiers, distracted by the double duties of protectors and combatants, would have been too weak for either. They brought muscle and sinew to aid in constructing countermines and batteries; they enlarged the area of the intrenched or fortified position—but they could not rescue those who had so long borne the wonderful siege.

Some of the troops, in charge of guns, baggage, and baggage animals, had defended a position outside the Residency enclosure during the night; and arrangements were now made to secure the new or enlarged area—including the Clock Tower, the Jail, a mosque, the Taree Kothee, the Chuttur Munzil palace, the Fureed Buksh palace, the Pyne Bagh, and other buildings and gardens. It was not without severe fighting and much loss on the 26th that the wounded were placed in safety, the guns secured, and the new position fortified. When these palaces, which had until now been respected, were conquered from the enemy, they were regarded as fair military spoil. The buildings formed a labyrinth of court-yards, inner gardens, balconies, gateways, passages, verandahs, rotundas, outhouses, and pavilions; and all became a scene of plunder. ‘Everywhere,’ says Mr Rees, ‘might be seen people helping themselves to whatever they pleased. Jewels, shawls, dresses, pieces of satin, silk, broadcloths, coverings, rich embroidered velvet saddles for horses and elephants, the most magnificent divan carpets studded with pearls, dresses of cloth of gold, turbans of the most costly brocade, the finest muslins, the most valuable swords and poniards, thousands of flint-guns, caps, muskets, ammunition, cash, books, pictures, European clocks, English clothes, full-dress officers’ uniforms, epaulettes, aiguillettes, manuscripts, charms; vehicles of the most grotesque forms, shaped like fish, dragons, and sea-horses; imauns or representations of the Prophet’s hands, cups, saucers, cooking-utensils, china-ware sufficient to set up fifty merchants in Lombard Street, scientific instruments, ivory telescopes, pistols; and (what was better than all) tobacco, tea, rice, grain, spices, and vegetables.’ There is no proof that much order was observed in the partition or distribution; every one appears to have helped himself to what he pleased; and many collected large stores of useful and ornamental articles which they afterwards sold at high prices. There was a good deal of luxurious living for the first few days, on the savoury provisions found in the palaces; and we may in some degree imagine how this was enjoyed, after such sorry rations of chupatties, stewed peas, and morsels of tough gun-bullock beef. There was, perhaps, something undignified in all this scrambling spoliation that jars with one’s notions of heroism and exalted courage; but military men are accustomed to overlook it in the moment of victory.

When Sir James Outram clearly ascertained that the rebels and mutineers, instead of escaping from the city, were closing in more and more resolutely, he saw that no departure would be practicable either for officers or men, military or civilians, women or children. He endeavoured to open negotiations with Maun Singh, a powerful thalookdar or landowner;[[116]] to win him over to the side of the British, and thereby lessen the difficulties of the position; but the wily Oudian, balancing the relative advantages of loyalty and rebellion, gave specious answers on which no dependence could be placed. It became necessary to prepare for a new defence against a new siege. All the old ‘garrisons’ were strengthened, and new ones formed; all the guns and mortars were placed in effective positions, and all the soldiers told off to regular duties. As Outram and Havelock had brought scarcely any provisions with them into the Residency; and as those found in the palaces were articles of luxury rather than of solid food, a very careful commissariat adjustment became necessary—it being now evident that the daily rations must of necessity be small in quantity and coarse in quality. The enemy renewed their old system of firing, day after day, into the British position; they broke down the bridges over canals and small streams between the Residency and the Alum Bagh; and they captured, or sought to capture, every one who attempted to leave the intrenchment. On the other hand, the British made frequent sorties, to capture guns, blow up buildings, and dislodge parties of the enemy. Six days after the entry of Outram and Havelock, a soldier was found under circumstances not a little strange. Some of the garrison having sallied forth to capture two guns on the Cawnpore road, a private of the Madras Europeans was discovered in a dry well, where the poor fellow had been hiding several days. He had fortunately some tea-leaves and biscuits in his pockets, on which he had managed to support life; he had heard the enemy all round him, but had not dared to utter a sound. The well contained the dead body of a native sepoy; and the atmosphere hence became so pestilential and frightful that the poor European was wont to creep out at night to breathe a little fresh air. Great was his joy when at length he heard friendly voices; he shouted loudly for help, in spite of his exhausted state, and was barely saved from being shot by his countrymen as a rebel, so black and filthy was his appearance.

Throughout the month of October did this state of affairs in Lucknow continue. Outram had brought his guns into the intrenchment by clearing a passage for them through the palaces; he had destroyed Phillips’ or Philip’s Battery, with which the enemy had been accustomed greatly to annoy the garrison; he had blown up and cleared away a mass of buildings on the Cawnpore road; he had strengthened all the points of the position held by himself and Havelock; but still he could neither send aid to the Alum Bagh, nor receive aid from it. He could do nothing but maintain his position, until Sir Colin Campbell should be able to advance from Cawnpore with a new army. A few messages, in spite of the enemy’s vigilance, were sent and received. Outram was glad to learn that a convoy of provisions had reached the Alum Bagh from Cawnpore, and that Greathed was marching down the Doab with a column from Delhi. As for Lucknow itself, matters remained much as before—sorties, firing, blowing up, &c.; but it must at the same time be admitted that Outram was more favourably placed in this respect than Inglis had been; his fighting-men were three or four times as numerous, and were thus enabled to guard all the posts with an amount of labour less terribly exhausting. Danger was, of course, not over; cannon-balls and bullets still did their work. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary on one day recorded: ‘An 18-pounder came through our unfortunate room; it broke the panel of the door, and knocked the whole of the barricade down, upsetting everything. My dressing-table was sent flying through the door, and if the shot had come a little earlier, my head would have gone with it. The box where E. usually sits to nurse baby was smashed flat.’ Breakfasts of chupatties and boiled peas were now seldom relieved by better fare; many a diner rose from his meal nearly as hungry as when he sat down. Personal attire was becoming more and more threadbare. Poor Captain Fulton’s very old flannel-shirt, time-worn and soiled, sold by auction for forty-five rupees—four pounds ten shillings sterling.

Little news could be obtained from the city itself, beyond the limits of the British position; but that little tended to shew that the rebels had set up a natural son of the deposed king as ‘Padishah’ of Oude, as a sort of tributary prince to the King of Delhi. Being a child only eight or ten years old, the real power was vested in a minister and a council of state. The minister was one Shirreff-u-Dowlah; the commander-in-chief was Hissamut-u-Dowlah; the council of state was formed of the late king’s principal servants, the chieftains and thalookdars of Oude, and the self-elected leaders of the rebel sepoys; while the army was officered in the orthodox manner by generals, brigadiers, colonels, majors, captains, subalterns, &c. There was a strange sort of democracy underlying the despotism; for the sepoys elected their officers, and the officers their commander; and as those who built up felt that they had the right to pull down, the tenure of office was very precarious. The mongrel government at Lucknow was thus formed of three elements—regal, aristocratic, and military, each trusting the other two only so far as self-interest seemed to warrant. The worst news received was that a small body of Europeans, including Sir Mountstuart Jackson and his sister, fugitives from Seetapoor, were in the hands of the rebels, in one of the palaces in Lucknow, and that a terrible fate impended over them.

The Residency and its Defences, Lucknow.

November began with very low resources, but with raised hopes; for it was known that the commander-in-chief was busily making arrangements for a final relief of the garrison. Brigadier—or, as his well-earned initials of K.C.B. now entitled him to be called, Sir John—Inglis remained in command of the old or Residency intrenchment; Sir Henry Havelock took charge of the new or palatial position; while Sir James Outram commanded the whole. Labour being abundant, great improvements were made in all parts; sanitary plans were carried out, and hospitals made more comfortable; overcrowded buildings were eased by the occupancy of other places; cool weather brought increase of health; and improvements were visible in every particular except two—food and raiment. On the 9th of the month, Mr Cavanagh, who in more peaceful times had been an ‘uncovenanted servant’ of the Company, or clerk to a civil officer in Lucknow, made a journey on foot to a point far beyond the Alum Bagh under most adventurous circumstances,[[117]] to communicate in person full details of what was passing within the Residency, to concert plans in anticipation of the arrival of Sir Colin, and perhaps to act as a guide through the labyrinthine streets of the city. As an immediate consequence of this expedition, a system of semaphore telegraphy was established from the one post to the other, by which it was speedily known that Mr Cavanagh had succeeded in his bold attempt, and that Sir Colin arrived at the Alum Bagh on the 11th. Arrangements were now at once made to aid the advance of the commander-in-chief as effectively as possible. Day after day Havelock sent out strong parties to clear some of the streets and buildings in the southeastern half of the city—blowing up batteries and houses, and dislodging the enemy, in order to lessen the amount of resistance which Sir Colin would inevitably encounter.[[118]]

All this time, while the British in Lucknow were stoutly maintaining their ground against the enemy, some of their companions-in-arms—near at hand, but as inaccessible as if fifty miles distant—had their own troubles to bear. The position of the small detachment at the Alum Bagh was as trying as it was unexpected. When Havelock left a few hundred soldiers at that post, with four guns, vehicles, animals, baggage, ammunition stores, camp-followers, sick, and wounded, he never for an instant supposed that he would be cut off from them, and that the Residency and the Alum Bagh would be the objects of two separate and distinct sieges. Such, however, was the case. Not a soldier could go from the one place to the other; and it was with the utmost difficulty that a messenger could convey a small note rolled up in a quill. The place, however, was tolerably well armed and fortified; and as the enemy did not swarm in any great numbers between it and Cawnpore, reinforcements were gradually able to reach the Alum Bagh, although they could not push on through the remaining four miles to the Residency. On the 3d of October, a convoy of 300 men of the 64th regiment, with provisions, under Major Bingham, started from Cawnpore, and safely reached the Alum Bagh; he could not penetrate further, but the supplies thus obtained at the Alum Bagh itself were very valuable. On the 14th, a second convoy, under Major M’Intyre of the 78th Highlanders, was despatched; but he was attacked by the enemy in such force, that he could not reach the Alum Bagh; he returned, and had some difficulty in preventing the supplies from falling into the hands of the enemy. Another attempt afterwards succeeded. Colonel Wilson, commanding at Cawnpore, received the small detachments of British troops sent up from time to time from the lower provinces, as well as the supplies coming in from every quarter. His duty was, not to make conquests, but to send men and provisions to the Alum Bagh or the Residency as often as any opportunity occurred for so doing, he knew that the Alum Bagh batteries commanded all the approaches, and that the ground was cleared and exposed for five hundred yards on all sides; he did not therefore apprehend any serious calamity to the miscellaneous force shut up in that place, provided he could send provisions in good time. The three or four miles from the Alum Bagh to the Residency were, it is true, beset by difficulties of a most formidable character; bridges were broken, and lines of intrenchment formed, while mutineers and rebels occupied the district in great force; but they directed their attention rather to the Residency than to the Alum Bagh, thereby leaving the latter comparatively unmolested. Much sickness arose within the place, owing to the deficiency of space and of fresh air; and in the intervals between the arrivals of the convoys, provisions were scanty, and the distress was considerable. Nevertheless, the occupants of the Alum Bagh, with such men as Havelock and Inglis near them, never for an instant thought of succumbing; they would fight and endure till aid arrived.

Having thus watched the proceedings of the beleaguered garrisons at the Residency and the Alum Bagh, we may now trace the footsteps of Sir Colin Campbell, in his operations for their relief.

The commander-in-chief, as has already been stated, remained at Calcutta many weeks after his arrival in India. He was called upon to remodel the whole military machinery, and to arrange with the governor-general the system of strategy which would be most desirable under the actual state of affairs. He watched with intense interest the progress of events on the banks of the Jumna and the Ganges. He gave due praise to Wilson for the conquest of Delhi, and to Greathed for the conquering march through the Doab. He admired, as a soldier might well admire, the struggles of Havelock’s gallant little army ere Outram had joined him; the combined operations of Havelock and Outram; and the wonderful defence made by Inglis against a host of opponents. He sent up from Calcutta, as soon as they arrived, reinforcements for the lamentably small British army; and he sent orders for brigading and marshalling, at Allahabad and at Cawnpore, such troops as could arrive from Calcutta on the one hand, and from Delhi on the other. At last, he himself departed from Calcutta on the 28th of October, travelling like a courier, narrowly escaping capture by rebels on the way, and arriving at Cawnpore on the 3d of November—utterly heedless of the glitter and trappings that usually surround a commander-in-chief in India.

By what steps the various regiments reached Cawnpore, need not be traced in detail. As fast as they arrived, so did some degree of tranquillity succeed to anarchy. A portion of railway had for some weeks been finished from Allahabad to Lohunda, forty-two miles towards Futtehpoor, but had been stopped in its working by the mutiny; arrangements were now made, however, for bringing it into use, and for finishing the section between Lohunda and Futtehpoor. The English regiments, from China and elsewhere, went up from Calcutta by road or river, in the modes so often described; and were engaged in occasional skirmishes on the way, at times and places which have in like manner been mentioned. Benares was the converging point for the road and river routes; from thence the troops went up by Mirzapore to Allahabad; thence to Lohunda by rail; and, lastly, to Futtehpoor and Cawnpore by road-march or bullock-vehicles. A column under Colonel Berkeley was on its way; another under Colonel Hinde was in or near Rewah; another under Colonel Longden was near Jounpoor; while Colonel Wroughton, with the Goorkhas furnished by Jung Bahadoor, was on the Goruckpore frontier of Oude. True, some of these so-called columns were scarcely equal to one regiment in strength; but each formed a nucleus around which other troops might accumulate. Greathed’s column, now better known as Hope Grant’s, was the main element in Sir Colin’s present force. It crossed the Ganges from Cawnpore into Oude on the 30th of October, about 3500 strong, with 18 guns, and advanced without opposition towards the Alum Bagh, near which it encamped, and awaited the arrival of the commander-in-chief.

A little may usefully be said here concerning the proceedings of the naval brigade, already noticed as having been placed under the command of Captain Peel, and as having arrived safely at Allahabad after a very wearisome voyage up the Ganges. On the 4th of October Sir Colin Campbell, then at Calcutta, telegraphed to Peel: ‘In the course of about a week there will be a continuous stream of troops, at the rate of about ninety a day, passing into Allahabad, which I trust will not cease for the next three months.’ Captain Peel was employed during October in facilitating the passage of troops and artillery up to Cawnpore. On the 20th Lieutenant Vaughan joined him, bringing 126 more naval officers and seamen, which raised the strength of the naval brigade to 516. Most of these new arrivals were sailors of the merchant service at Calcutta, who had agreed with much alacrity to join the brigade. On the 23d he sent off 100 seamen to Cawnpore, in charge of four siege train 24-pounders. On the 27th he despatched 170 more, in charge of four 24-pounders and two 8-inch howitzers; and on the same day a military escort was provided for a large amount of ammunition. Next, Captain Peel himself started for Cawnpore; and was soon afterwards joined on the road by Colonel Powell with the head-quarters of H.M. 53d regiment. Rather unexpectedly, a battle took place on the way. While at Thurea, on the 31st, news reached them that the Dinapoor mutineers, with three guns, had crossed the Jumna, and were about either to attack Futtehpoor, or to march towards Oude. Powell and Peel had with them troops and sailors numbering altogether about 700, in charge of a large and valuable convoy of siege and other stores: They marched that same evening to the camping-ground of Futtehpoor, where they were joined by some of the 93d Highlanders; and on the morning of the 1st of November a column of about 500 men marched twenty-four miles to Kudjna. The enemy were here found, with their guns commanding the road, their right occupying a high embankment, screened by a grove, and their left on the other side of the road. A part of the column advanced against the guns, while the rest rendered support on either side. A sharp battle of two hours’ duration ensued, during which the enemy kept up so severe a fire of musketry that many of the English fell, including Colonel Powell, who received a musket-ball in the forehead. Captain Peel, although a sailor, then took the command; he carried a force round the upper end of the embankment, divided the enemy, and drove them from all their positions, capturing their camp and two of their tumbrils. His men were so worn out by 72 miles of marching in three days, that he could not organise a pursuit. Collecting his dead and wounded, which amounted in number to no less than 95, he marched back to Binkee; and after a little rest, the column, minus those who fell in this battle, continued the march towards Cawnpore. It was supposed the enemy numbered not fewer than 4000 men, of whom one half were mutinous sepoys from the Bengal army, and the other half rebels whom they had picked up on the way. After leaving some of his men at Cawnpore, to serve as artillerymen, Peel advanced with his heavy guns, and about 250 sailors, towards the Alum Bagh.

Understanding, then, that regiments and detachments of various kinds were working their way, at the close of October and early in November, towards Cawnpore, and across the Ganges into Oude, we may resume our notice of Sir Colin Campbell’s movements.

Remaining at Cawnpore no longer than was necessary to organise his various military arrangements, the commander-in-chief crossed the Ganges on the 9th of November, and joined Hope Grant’s column on the same day at camp Buntara, six miles short of the Alum Bagh. Wishing to have the aid of other detachments which were then on the road, he remained at Buntara till the morning of the 12th, when he started with the force which he had collected with so much trouble.[[119]] Advancing towards the Alum Bagh, he defeated a party of the enemy in a skirmish at a small fort called Jellalabad, a little way to the right of the main road, and five or six miles from the city. This fort being taken and blown up, Sir Colin pushed on and encamped for the night outside the Alum Bagh. Knowing that Havelock and Outram two months before had suffered severely in cutting their way through the city, Campbell now formed a plan of approach at the extreme eastern or rather southeastern suburb, and of battering down the enemy’s defences step by step, and day after day, so as to form a passage for his infantry with comparatively small loss. This he had reason to hope; because there was a large open space at that end of the city, which—although containing many mosques, palaces, and other buildings—had few of those deep narrow lanes which had proved so dangerous to the former force. Hence the tactics of the next few days were to consist of a series of partial sieges, each directed against a particular stronghold, and each capture to form a base of operations for attacks on other posts nearer the heart of the city, until at length the Residency could be reached. The palaces, buildings, and gardens that would be encountered in this route were the Dil Koosha palace and park, the Martinière college, the Secunder Bagh, the Shah Nujeef, the palace Mess-house, the Observatory, the Motee Mehal, the Keisah or Kaiser Bagh, and various palatial buildings, of which the names are not clearly rendered; until at length those posts would be reached (the Chuttur Munzil, the Pyne Bagh, the Fureed Buksh palace, the Clock Tower, and the Taree Kothee) which were held by Havelock, and lastly those (the Residency and the other buildings within Inglis’s original intrenchment) which were held by Outram.

After changing the garrison at the Alum Bagh, giving a little rest to troops who had recently had much heavy marching, and receiving an addition of about 650 men[[120]] from Cawnpore, Sir Colin commenced his arduous operations on the morning of the 14th, with a miscellaneous force of about 4000 men. As he approached the Dil Koosha park, the leading troops encountered a long line of musketry-fire; he quickly sent up reinforcements; and after a running-fight of about two hours, he drove the enemy down the hill to the Martinière college, across the garden and park of the Martinière, and far beyond the canal. This was effected without any great loss on either side. Campbell had now secured the Dil Koosha (’Heart’s Delight’) and the Martinière (Martine’s college for half-caste children). Hope Grant’s brigade, flanked by Bourchier’s field-battery and Peel’s heavy guns, was brought to the side of the canal (which enters the river Goomtee close to the Martinière), where they effectually kept the enemy in check. When night came, Sir Colin found he had made a good beginning; he had not only secured the easternmost buildings of Lucknow, but he had brought with him fourteen days’ provisions for his own troops, and an equal proportion for those under Outram and Havelock; he had also brought all his heavy baggage (except tents, left at the Alum Bagh), and was therefore prepared to make a stand for several days at the Dil Koosha if necessary.

After further completing his arrangements on the 15th, and exchanging messages or signals with Havelock and Outram, the commander-in-chief resumed his operations on the 16th. Leaving every description of baggage at the Dil Koosha, and supplying every soldier’s haversack with three days’ food, he crossed the canal and advanced to the Secunder Bagh—a high-walled enclosure of strong masonry, about a hundred and twenty yards square, loopholed on all sides for musketry, and held in great force by the enemy. Opposite to it was a village at a distance of about a hundred yards, also loopholed and guarded by musketeers. After a determined struggle of two hours, during which artillery and infantry were brought to bear against them in considerable force, the enemy were driven out of the Secunder Bagh, the village, and a range of barracks hard by—all of which speedily became valuable strongholds to the conquerors. Sir Colin described this as a very desperate encounter, no less than 2000 of the enemy having fallen, chiefly after the storming of the Secunder Bagh itself by parties of the 53d and 93d regiments, aided by the 4th Punjaub infantry and a few miscellaneous troops. Indeed the enemy, well armed, crowded the Secunder Bagh in such numbers, that he said ‘there never was a bolder feat of arms’ than the storming. Captain Peel’s naval siege-train then went to the front, and advanced towards the Shah Nujeef—a domed mosque with a garden, which had been converted into a strong post by the enemy; the wall of the enclosure had been loopholed with great care; the entrance had been covered by a regular work in masonry; and the top of the building had been crowned with a parapet. Peel was aided by a field-battery and some mortars; while the village to the left had been cleared of the enemy by Brigadier Hope and Colonel Gordon. A heavy cannonade was maintained against the Shah Nujeef for no less a space than three hours. The enemy defended the post very obstinately, keeping up an unceasing fire of musketry from the mosque and the defences in the garden. At last Sir Colin ordered the place to be stormed, which was effected in an intrepid manner by the 93d Highlanders, a battalion of detachments, and the naval brigade. In his dispatch, the commander-in-chief said: ‘Captain Peel led up his heavy guns with extraordinary gallantry to within a few yards of the building, to batter the massive stone-walls. The withering fire of the Highlanders effectually covered the naval brigade from great loss; but it was an action almost unexampled in war. Captain Peel behaved very much as if he had been laying the Shannon alongside an enemy’s frigate.’

While Sir Colin and his troops were thus engaged, Havelock contributed towards the success of the general plan by the capture of a range of buildings in advance of the palace of Fureed Buksh. It had been agreed by signal and secret message, that as soon as Sir Colin should reach the Secunder Bagh, the outer wall of the advance garden of the Fureed Buksh (Havelock’s most eastern post), in which the enemy had before made several breaches, should be blown in by mines previously prepared; that two powerful batteries erected in the enclosure should then open on the insurgents in front; and that after the desired effect had been produced, the troops should storm two buildings known as the Hern Khana or Deer-house and the Engine-house. This was successfully accomplished. At about eleven o’clock, the operations began. The mines were exploded; the wall was demolished; the works beyond were shelled by mortars; two of the mines at the Hern Khana were charged with destructive effect; and the infantry—eager for a little active work after being many weeks pent up within their intrenchment—dashed through the Chuttur Munzil and carried all before them, capturing the several buildings which had been marked out by previous arrangement.

Thus ended the important operations of the 16th, sanguinary in Sir Colin’s force, but much less so in that of Havelock—operations during which the Secunder Bagh, the Shah Nujeef, the Hern Khana, the Engine-house, and many minor buildings, were captured. On the 17th, the commander-in-chief, after overcoming many obstacles, opened a communication between the canal and the left rear of a range of barracks, that facilitated his subsequent proceedings. Captain Peel meanwhile began to operate with his now famous naval brigade against a building called in the maps the Mess-house—a large structure, defended by a ditch twelve feet broad, and scarped with masonry, and by a loopholed mud-wall beyond the ditch. As a part of Sir Colin’s general plan—that of employing artillery as much as possible, to save his infantry—a cannonading was continued for several hours against this Mess-house; and then it was stormed and taken without much difficulty by various detachments of the 53d, the 90th, the Punjaubees, and other regiments. This done, the troops pressed forward with great vigour, and lined a wall that separated the Mess-house from the Motee Mehal (’Pearl Palace’). This last-named place consisted of a wide enclosure containing many buildings. Here the enemy determined to make one last desperate stand; they fought with energy and determination for an hour, but then gave way. Sir Colin’s troops broke an opening through the wall, aided by the sappers, and then they poured through, rushing onward until they reached the part of the city which for seven or eight weeks had been in the hands of Havelock. On the evening of this day the British found themselves in possession of nearly the whole river-side of Lucknow from the iron bridge to the Dil Koosha.

It may not be amiss here to mention that these operations during the second decade of November were conducted by the following officers: Sir Colin Campbell commanded the whole. General Mansfield officiated as chief of the staff. Brigadier Hope Grant was in immediate command of the column, formerly known as Greathed’s, which constituted the chief part of Sir Colin’s force. Colonel Greathed, now raised to brigadier-general as a mark of Sir Colin’s estimate of his services, commanded one of the brigades of infantry. Brigadiers Russell and Adrian Hope took two other infantry brigades. Brigadier Little commanded the cavalry, Brigadier Crauford the artillery, Lieutenant Lennox the engineers, and Captain Peel the naval brigade. The operations brought the honorary distinction of K.C.B. to Grant and Peel, who became Sir James Hope Grant and Sir William Peel. Sir Colin’s advance to the Residency, however, with the collateral struggles to which it gave rise, was severe in its results to his force, though less so than the operations of Outram and Havelock in September. He had to mourn the loss of 122 killed and 345 wounded. Out of this number there were 10 officers killed and 33 wounded. Sir Colin himself received a slight wound, but not such as to check his activity for an hour.[[121]] The loss of the enemy was frightfully severe; the exact amount was not known to the British, but it must have reached three or four thousand. They fought at the Secunder Bagh and the Shah Nujeef with a fierceness which rendered immense slaughter inevitable; for Peel’s powerful artillery swept them down fearfully.

Whether the transports of joy that animated the British in Lucknow on the 17th of November were equal in intensity to those which had broken forth fifty-three days before, can never be exactly measured; men’s emotions are not susceptible of such nice estimate. Suffice it to say, that as Inglis, on the 25th of September, had warmly grasped the hands of his deliverers Havelock and Outram; so did Outram, Havelock, and Inglis now welcome with all fervour Sir Colin Campbell and those who with him had just fought their way through the hostile streets of Lucknow. Then, when a few hours had enabled the new-comers to spread forth some of the supplies which their commissariat had provided, and the old inmates had done what little they could to render quiet eating and drinking possible—then were experienced once again the luxuries of wheaten bread, fresh butter, oranges, and other articles which are never luxuries save to those who have been long unable to obtain them. And then the feast of letters and newspapers from England was scarcely less delightful; for so close had been the investment of the Residency, that the inmates had been practically shut out from the world during the greater part of the summer and autumn.

The jubilation was, however, soon ended. Almost immediately on Sir Colin’s arrival, an announcement was made that every European was to leave Lucknow and retire to Cawnpore. Many in the garrison had fondly hoped that the success of the commander-in-chief would have restored British control over the city; that comfort was about to succeed discomfort; that officers and civilians would resume their former duties under their former easy conditions; and that the ladies and children might rest a while in quiet, to recover health and strength before retiring to Calcutta or to the Hills. But such was not to be. Campbell had come to Lucknow almost solely to liberate them; and his plan of strategy—or, more probably, the number of available troops at his command—did not permit him to leave his small force in the Oudian capital; for there was hot work to look forward to. The enemy, notwithstanding their losses, still numbered fifty thousand fighting-men in and near Lucknow, shewing no symptoms of retreat, but rather a determination to defend the rest of the city street by street. To attack them further would have been to sacrifice a force already much reduced, and to risk the necessity for a third relief. Sir Colin issued an order, therefore, not only that all were to depart, but to depart quickly. The sick and wounded were to be removed directly from the Residency to the Dil Koosha—a distance of four miles in a straight line, but five or six if it were necessary to take a circuitous route to avoid the enemy; the women and children were to follow the same route on the next day; and the bulk of the soldiers were to depart when all else had been provided for. An encampment was prepared in the Dil Koosha park, with such necessaries and comforts as could be hastily brought together for sick, wounded, women, and children. The sojourn at the Dil Koosha was to be a brief one, sufficient only for the organisation of a convoy to Cawnpore. Only a small amount of personal baggage was allowed for each person; and thus those who possessed property were forced to leave most of it behind. The property, it is true, was very scanty; but the garrison felt vexed at leaving even a trifle as a booty to the rebels. As the ordnance stores and the Company’s treasure (twenty-three lacs of rupees, safely preserved through all the trying scenes of half a year) were to be removed to the Dil Koosha about the same time as the non-combatants, and as all this was to be effected without exciting the suspicions of the rebels, the utmost vigilance and caution were needed.

The exodus from the Residency, and the escape to the Dil Koosha, through nearly the whole length of the city of Lucknow, will never be forgotten by those who took part therein. Many delicate ladies, unprovided with vehicles or horses, had to walk over five or six miles of very rough ground, exposed at one place to the fire of the enemy’s musketry. The authoress of the Lady’s Diary, with two other ladies, secured a carriage to convey them. ‘We had a pair of starved horses of Mr Gubbins’s to drag us; but the wretched animals had been on siege-fare so long that they had forgotten the use of their legs, and had no strength, so came to a stand-still every five minutes, invariably choosing the most dangerous parts of the road for their halt. At one place we were under so hot a fire that we got out and ran for our lives—leaving the vehicle to its fate; and two poor natives, who were helping to push it on behind, were shot. At the Fureed Buksh we had to wait a long time, as the carriage could not be got through a gateway till some stores were cleared away. Some of the officers of the 90th invited us inside, and gave us wine and water, which was very refreshing. We walked after that every step of the way to Secunderabad [Secunder Bagh], where we all had to wait several hours till doolies arrived to take on all the women; and we proceeded under a strong escort to Dil Koosha. The road to Secunderabad was frightfully dangerous in places. In one spot we were passing a 24-pounder manned by some sailors of the naval brigade; they all called out to us to bend low and run as fast as we could; we had hardly done so when a volley of grape whizzed over our heads and struck a wall beyond. At Secunderabad we found the place overflowing with women and children of the Lucknow garrison.... At about nine o’clock P.M. we started again in doolies. The crowd and confusion were excessive, the enemy hovering round and firing occasional shots, and we were borne along in the most solemn silence; the only sounds were the tramp, tramp, tramp of the doolie-bearers and the screaming of the jackals. It was an awful time; one felt as if one’s life hung in a balance, with the fate we had so long dreaded; but our merciful Father, who has protected us through so many and great dangers, brought us in safety to Dil Koosha, where we arrived about two o’clock in the morning.’ They found shelter in the hastily prepared Dil Koosha encampment, already mentioned; and then, for the first time during five months, they snatched a little sleep beyond the Residency intrenchment. Mrs (now Lady) Inglis behaved on this occasion in a manner worthy of her name; a doolie or hospital-litter was prepared for her accommodation; but she refused it, in order that the sick and wounded might be better attended to. Mr Rees gives an extract from a letter of this lady, in which the incidents of the day are narrated nearly in the same terms as by the chaplain’s wife; but the following few additional facts may be given: ‘The road was quite safe except in three places, where it was overlooked by the enemy’s position, and where we had to run. One poor woman was wounded at one of these places. We arrived at Secunder Bagh about six, and found every one assembled there, awaiting an escort and doolies to carry us on. When I tell you that upwards of two thousand men had been hastily buried there the day before, you can fancy what a place it was.... We were regaled with tea and plenty of milk, and bread and butter—luxuries we had not enjoyed since the commencement of our troubles. At ten o’clock we recommenced our journey; most of the ladies were in palanquins, but we had a covered-cart drawn by two obstinate bullocks. We had a force of infantry and cavalry with us, but had not proceeded half a mile when the column was halted, and an order sent back for reinforcements; some noise was heard, and it was believed we might be attacked. However, it proved a false alarm; and after two disagreeable and rather anxious hours, we arrived safely at the Dil Koosha, and were quartered in tents pitched for our reception.’ The charnel-house at the Secunder Bagh, mentioned in this extract, was the place where most of the slaughter of the enemy had occurred, and where the dead bodies had been hastily interred; the atmosphere around it was for many days in a frightful state.

The military movement in this evacuation of the Residency was spoken of by Sir Colin, in his official dispatch, as something masterly. He told how Outram so planned that each corps and regiment, each detachment and picket, should be able to march out silently in the dead of the night, without exciting suspicion among the myriads of enemies near; and yet that there should be guns and riflemen so posted as to repel the enemy if they should attempt any serious molestation of the retiring troops. It must be remembered that Outran and Havelock’s gallant and much-enduring men had many things to effect after the non-combatants had departed from the Residency. They were called upon to bring away as many of the stores as could conveniently be conveyed, and to destroy those which, if left behind, would too much strengthen the enemy; they had to escort and protect their weaker companions, and to maintain a bombardment of the Kaiser Bagh and other posts, to deceive the enemy. The last of the men came out as quietly and cautiously as possible, in the dead of the night between the 22d and 23d of November, leaving lights burning, that the departure might not be suspected. They silently passed through the streets and roads, and safely reached the Dil Koosha. Captain Waterman, through some misconception, was left behind, and found himself, at two o’clock in the morning, the only living man in the intrenched position which had lately been so crowded. The situation was a terrible one, surrounded as he was by fifty thousand vindictive armed enemies. In an agony of mind, he ran past the Taree Kothee, the Fureed Buksh, the Chuttur Munzil, the Motee Mehal, the Secunder Bagh, and the Martinière, to the Dil Koosha, which he reached in a state of mental and bodily prostration. Sir Colin was among the last to leave the place. So cleverly was the evacuation managed (without the loss of one man), that the enemy continued to fire into the Residency enclosure long after the British had quitted it. What the scene was among the women and children, we have just been informed; what it was among the soldiers, is well described in a letter from one of the officers: ‘An anxious night indeed that was! We left at twelve o’clock, having withdrawn all our guns from position, so that if the scoundrels had only come on, we should have had to fight every inch of our way while retiring; but the hand of Providence, which had watched the little garrison for so long a time, never left it to the last. The eye of the wicked was blinded while we marched breathlessly with beating hearts from our post, and, forming into line, walked through the narrow defiles and trenches leading from the ever-memorable Bailey guard. Out we went, while the enemy’s guns still pounded the old wall, and while the bullets still whistled over the buildings; and, after a six miles’ walk in ankle-deep sand, we were halted in a field and told to make ourselves comfortable for the night. Here we were in a pretty plight. Nothing to cover ourselves, while the cold was intense; so we lay down like so many sheep huddled together to keep ourselves warm, and so lay till the morning, when we rose stiff and cold, with a pretty prospect of the chance of finding our servants in a camp of 9000 men.’

The world-renowned ‘Residency’ at Lucknow being thus abandoned, it may be well to give in a note[[122]] Sir James Outram’s comments on the eight weeks’ defence of that place, as a sequel to Brigadier Inglis’s account (p. [336]) of the previous three months’ defence before Outram arrived. To Outram was due the planning and execution of the strategical movement by which the evacuation of the Residency was accomplished. The commander-in-chief, in a general order issued on the 23d, thus spoke of it: ‘The movement of retreat last night, by which the final rescue of the garrison was effected, was a model of discipline and exactness. The consequence was, that the enemy was completely deceived, and the force retired by a narrow, tortuous lane—the only line of retreat open—in the face of fifty thousand enemies, without molestation.’[[123]]

Great and universal was the grief throughout the camp when the rumour rapidly spread that Havelock, the gallant Christian soldier, was dead. He shared the duties of Outram at the Dil Koosha on the 23d and 24th, but died the next day, stricken down by dysentery, brought on by over-fatigue. All men talked of him as a religious as well as a brave man—as one, more than most men of his time, who resembled some of the Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A few words may give the outline of his career. Henry Havelock was born near Sunderland in 1795. He was educated at the Charterhouse, and then studied for the bar for a short time; but afterwards adopted the military profession, following the example of his elder brother William. He entered the 95th regiment just after the battle of Waterloo, and during forty-two years saw a good deal of active service. After serving eight years in the United Kingdom, he exchanged into the 13th regiment, and went to India in 1823. He joined in the first Burmese war, of which he afterwards wrote and published a narrative. He served in various capacities twenty-three years before he became a captain, having no patronage in high places to facilitate his advancement. Then he served in the Afghan campaign, of which he wrote a memoir; and took a leading part in the memorable defence of Jelalabad. Rising gradually in office and in influence, he served in later periods at Gwalior, Moodkee, Ferozshah, Sobraon, the Sutlej, and other scenes of battle. When the Persian war broke out at the close of 1856, he was put in command of one division of the Anglo-Indian army; and when that war ended, he returned to India. What he achieved during 1857 the foregoing pages have shewn. All classes in England mourned his death. The Duke of Cambridge as commander-in-chief, Lords Palmerston and Panmure as ministers of the crown, the Earl of Derby as chief representative of the party at that time in opposition, the Court of Directors, the Court of Proprietors, the corporation of London, public functionaries and municipal bodies, religious and missionary societies—all sought to pay respect to the noble soldier who was at once pious, daring, and skilful. His widow, made Lady Havelock in virtue of his knighthood, received a pension of £1000 a year. His son received a baronetcy from the Queen, the rank of major from the commander-in-chief, and a pension of £1000 a year from the House of Commons. The public afterwards took up the subject of a monument to the hero, and a provision for his daughters, as matters not unworthy of support by voluntary efforts independent of the government. With or without a monument, the name of Henry Havelock will be held in grateful remembrance by the nation.

Sir Colin Campbell, like all around him, mourned the loss of his gallant coadjutor; but his thoughts had no time to dwell on that topic. He had to think of the living, to plan the march from the Dil Koosha to the Alum Bagh, and thence onward to Cawnpore. Certain state-prisoners had to be guarded, as well as the women and children, the sick and the wounded, the treasure and the stores. The whole army was thrown into two divisions: one under Brigadier Hope Grant, to form an escort from the Dil Koosha to the Alum Bagh; the other, under Outram, to keep the enemy at bay until the convoy was safely on its road. It was on the 24th that this novel and picturesque procession set out. The distance to the Alum Bagh was about four miles; and over the whole length of very rough road was a stream of bullock-carriages, palanquins, carts, camels, elephants, guns, ammunition and store wagons, soldiers, sailors (of the naval brigade), sick, wounded, women, children, and prisoners. The delays were great, the stoppages many, the fatigue distressing, the dust annoying; and all gladly rested their weary limbs at the Alum Bagh when night came.

It had been fully intended to afford the troops and their convoy several days’ repose at the Alum Bagh; but on the 27th, Sir Colin was surprised to hear very heavy firing in the direction of Cawnpore. No news had reached him from that place for several days; therefore fearing some disaster, he felt it necessary to push forward as quickly as possible. Leaving Outram in command of part of the force at the Alum Bagh, and placing the rest under the immediate command of Hope Grant, he resumed his march at nine o’clock on the morning of the 28th. Messages now reached him, telling of a reverse which General Windham had suffered at Cawnpore, at the hands of the Gwalior mutineers. Sir Colin hastened forward, convoy and all; but he and a few officers took the start, and galloped on to Cawnpore that same night. The nature of Windham’s disaster will come for notice in the next chapter; here we have only to speak of its immediate effect upon Sir Colin’s plans. The enormous train of helpless women, children, sick, and wounded, could cross the Ganges and quit Oude only by a bridge of boats; if that were broken, the result might be tragical indeed. Orders were sent for the heavy guns to hurry on, and to take up such a position as would prevent the enemy from destroying or attacking the bridge; while a mixed force of infantry, cavalry, and horse-artillery was to cross quickly, and command the Cawnpore end of the bridge. Happily all this was effected just in time. When the passage was rendered safe, the artillery, the remaining troops, and the non-combatants, were ordered to file over the bridge; this they did, occupying the bridge in a continuous stream for thirty hours—unmolested, owing to Sir Colin’s prompt plans, by the enemy’s guns. All having safely crossed, the troops encamped around the ruinous old intrenchment rendered memorable by the gallant spirit and hapless fate of Sir Hugh Wheeler; while the women, children, sick, and wounded, were put temporarily into occupation of the old foot-artillery lines.

Fort of Alum Bagh, near Lucknow.

Although Sir Colin Campbell abandoned Lucknow for a while, he did not abandon the Alum Bagh. This post, a compact enclosure, capable of being defended on all sides, would afford an important base for future operations if maintained. Taking Hope Grant’s division back with him to Cawnpore, he left Outram with three to four thousand men to hold the Alum Bagh against all odds, furnishing him with as large a supply as possible of provisions and stores. This force consisted of all the remaining or available companies of H.M. 5th, 78th, 84th, and 90th foot, the Madras Europeans, the Ferozpore Sikhs, three field-batteries, some heavy guns, two squadrons of the military train acting as dragoons, and a body of irregular cavalry. While the enemy were busily engaged in refortifying the city, so as to make it more formidable than ever, Sir James was making the Alum Bagh proof against all their attacks. The position thus occupied included not only the Alum Bagh itself, but a standing camp about three-quarters of a mile distant, and the bridge of Bunnee, which was separately held by 400 Madras sepoys and two guns.

Serious work and anxious thoughts occupied the mind of the commander-in-chief. He could do little in active military operations while so many helpless beings were depending on him for protection. Hence the sojourn of those who, from sex, age, or sickness, could render no active service at Cawnpore, was rendered as brief as possible. Vehicles, animals, provisions, and stores, were quickly collected; and on the 3d of December the march was resumed towards Allahabad—under an escort of H.M. 34th foot, two guns, and some cavalry. How the released Europeans fared on their journey; how they were cheered and greeted at Allahabad; how they felicitated themselves on once again sleeping in safety; and how they ultimately reached Calcutta by steamers on the Ganges—need not be told in detail. Let it suffice to say that when the ladies and children, with the invalided officers, who had passed through so wonderful a series of events, were approaching Calcutta, Lord Canning issued a notification, in which he said: ‘No one will wish to obtrude upon those who are under bereavement or sickness any show of ceremony which shall impose fatigue or pain. The best welcome which can be tendered upon such an occasion is one which shall break in as little as possible upon privacy and rest. But the rescue of these sufferers is a victory beyond all price; and in testimony of the public joy with which it is hailed, and of the admiration with which their heroic endurance and courage are viewed,’ it was ordered that a royal salute should be fired from the ramparts of Fort William as soon as the steamer arrived; that all ships-of-war in the river should be dressed in honour of the day; that officers would be appointed to conduct the passengers on shore; and that the state-barges of the governor-general should be in attendance.

Thus ended a great achievement. The women, children, sick, and wounded, who had to be brought away from the very heart of a city swarming with deadly enemies, and escorted through a country beset by mutinous sepoys and rebellious chieftains, were not fewer than two thousand in number. Let it be remembered, that while this helpless train of persons was on the way through Oude, behind them was the enormous hostile force of Lucknow, while in front of them were the Gwalior mutineers flushed by a recent victory. That all should have passed through this perilous ordeal with scarcely the loss of one life, reflects lasting credit on the generals who planned and executed the manœuvre. Of the five noble officers whose names are imperishably connected with the extraordinary sieges and defences of Lucknow—Inglis, Havelock, Neill, Outram, and Campbell—two fell before the grateful thanks of their countrymen at home could reach them; but the remaining three, when Christmas arrived, had the infinite satisfaction of knowing that their arduous labours had been rewarded by the safe arrival, at or near Calcutta, of the tender and weakened, the broken-down and invalided—those who had so long formed the European community in the Lucknow Residency.