Before coming to that part of the story, let us turn from the provinces now deluged by rebellion, to see what was being done elsewhere to make head against such a torrent.
THE CONFLAGRATION
On the second day after the rising at Meerut, Calcutta had been electrified by a telegram from Agra. The central government seemed at first hardly to realize the gravity of the crisis. But when further bad news came in, Lord Canning recognized that our Indian Empire was at stake, and began to act with an energy, in which his character and his inexperience of Indian affairs had made him hitherto wanting; and if to some he seemed still deficient in grasp of such perilous affairs, it may be said of him that he never lost his head, as did others whose counsels were more vehement. He looked around for every European soldier within reach; he called for aid on Madras and Ceylon; he ordered the troops returning from the war happily ended in Persia, to be sent at once to Calcutta; he took upon himself the responsibility of arresting an expedition on its way from England to make war in China, but now more urgently needed for the rescue of India. Weeks must pass, however, before he could assemble a force fit to cope with the mutiny, while every English bayonet was demanded at a dozen points nearer the capital, and the Government knew not how far to trust its embarrassing native army.
All was confusion, suspicion, and doubt, when the first measures of precaution suggested by the danger might prove the very means of inflaming it. The practical question, anxiously debated in so many cases, was whether or no to disarm the Sepoys, at the risk of hurrying other detachments into mutiny, and imperilling the lives of English people, helpless in their hands. Most officers of Sepoy regiments, indeed, refused to believe that their own men could be untrue, and indignantly protested against their being disarmed—a blind confidence often repaid by death at the hands of these very men, when their turn came to break loose from the bonds of discipline. But one treacherous tragedy after another decided the doubt, sometimes too late; and where it was still thought well to accept the Sepoys' professions of loyalty, they were vigilantly guarded by English soldiers, who thus could not be spared to march against the open mutineers.
Paralyzed by want of trustworthy troops, Lord Canning could do little at present but give his lieutenants in the North-West leave to act as they thought best—leave which they were fain in any case to take, the rebellion soon cutting them off from communication with the seat of Government. But there, most fortunately, were found men fit to deal with the emergency, and to create resources in what to some might have seemed a hopeless situation. At the season when the Mutiny broke out, English officials who can leave their posts willingly take refuge at the cool hill-stations of the Himalayas. General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief, had betaken himself to Simla, the principal of these sanatoriums, lying north of Delhi and of the military station at Umballa. Here the alarming news came to cut short his holiday. Naturally reluctant to believe the worst, he yet could not but order a concentration of troops at Umballa, where he arrived in the course of three or four days.
A more masterful spirit was already at work upon the scene of action, if not by his personal presence, through the zealous colleagues inspired by his teaching and example as a ruler of men. Sir John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub, had also been recalled on his way to the hills, to find himself practically independent governor of that side of India. At once rising to the emergency, as soon as he had taken the first measures, already anticipated indeed by his deputies, for the safety of his own province, he saw that the one thing to be aimed at was the recovery of Delhi, the very name of which would be a tower of strength to the mutineers. The Commander-in-Chief's eyes were mainly open to the difficulties of such an enterprise; and the staff, fettered by red-tape, cried out upon the impossibility of advancing in the unprepared state of his army. Lawrence never ceased to urge that, with or without guns and stores, everything must be risked to strike an immediate blow at Delhi, which might check the spread of rebellion by restoring our lost prestige. His tireless subordinates did the impossible in collecting supplies and means of transport. Anson, urged to the same effect by the Governor-General as by Lawrence, doubtfully agreed to lose no time in carrying out their policy of a march on Delhi. This is not the only instance throughout the Indian Mutiny where the hesitations and weakness of military men were happily overruled by the resolute counsels of civilians. The ordinary precautions of warfare had often to be disregarded in the struggle now at hand.
The difficulties, indeed, might well have seemed appalling. At Umballa itself, an abortive attempt at mutiny had taken place on the fatal 10th. General Anson, who, like some other Queen's officers, had hitherto been apt to despise the Sepoys, now went to the other extreme in flattering them, and let their officers hamper him by a promise that they should not be disarmed. At his back, the fashionable station of Simla was thrown into panic by a disturbance among the Goorkhas posted there. Hundreds of English people fled to the woods and mountains in terror, till it was found that the Goorkhas could easily be brought to reason. They luckily showed no fellow-feeling with the Bengal Sepoys; and soldiers from this warlike mountain race served us well throughout the Mutiny. The native princes of the neighbourhood also gave timely help of their troops and by furnishing supplies.