Very different was the case of Lucknow, capital of Oudh, a vast expanse of hovels and palaces, situated on the banks of the Goomtee, amid a rich country famed as the garden of India. With its straggling suburbs, it covered a space six miles long and about half as broad, including groups of stately temples, palaces and pleasure-gardens. The central part of the city was densely populated, and the chief streets offered a lively scene, thronged as they were with natives in the picturesque costumes of all parts of India, with rich palanquins, with stately elephants, and camels in gay caparisons, with gorgeously-attired cavaliers and their swaggering attendants. Every man in those days went armed, frays and outrages being too common under the weak tyranny of the lately deposed sovereign; even beggars demanded charity almost at the point of the sword, and it was a point of prudence as well as of honour for every dignitary to surround himself with a retinue of formidable warriors.
Over this swarm of dangerous elements Sir Henry Lawrence now held rule, worthy brother of the Punjaub administrator. There were four Lawrence brothers, who all manfully played parts in the Mutiny. Among them Henry seems to have been the most lovable, distinguished as a philanthropist not less than as a statesman and a soldier. The institutions which he founded for the education of soldiers' children in India still attest his benevolence towards his own people. He had singular sympathy with and knowledge of the natives, yet there was no sentimentalism in his earnest desire for their welfare, and when the time came for stern repression he would not shrink from the uncongenial task. On the earliest disturbances, he telegraphed to Calcutta asking to be invested with full powers to deal with them; then, prematurely aged as he was by hard work and sickness, strained every nerve to meet the emergency, which seems to have taken him not so much by surprise as in the case of other high officers.
Discontent was strong in the newly-annexed kingdom of Oudh; and already had Lawrence had to quell an attempt at mutiny caused by the greased cartridges, before the native troops raised the standard of rebellion at Delhi. Foreboding the worst from the news of what had happened on the Jumna, he exerted himself to calm and conciliate the Sepoys at Lucknow, and for a time succeeded in preserving an appearance of order, under which, however, the signs of mischief brewing did not escape his watchful eye. The Residency, his palatial quarters, with the public offices and houses about it, stood upon a slight rising ground near the river, overlooking the greater part of the city. From the first, Lawrence began to turn this position into a fort of refuge, storing here guns, ammunition, and supplies, as also in the Muchee Bhawun, an imposing native fortress not far off. For garrison, part of the 32nd Regiment, the only English troops he had, were moved in from their Cantonments outside, and the Christian population soon abandoned their homes for the asylum of the Residency. Yet at this time it was in no state for serious defence; even weeks later, few foresaw the hot siege it would undergo. Before long there appeared cause for actively pushing on the work. Early in May there was a mutinous demonstration that luckily could be appeased without bloodshed, but it too plainly showed the temper of the Sepoys.
By the end of the month, the women and children were all ordered in from the Cantonments. Business was now at a standstill, and English people venturing into the streets met everywhere with scared as well as scowling faces, many of the better class fearing to lose the safety of our Government, while the turbulent elements of the population eagerly awaited the signal for general lawlessness.
Sir Henry Lawrence has been blamed because, like other leaders on whom rested the same responsibility, he delayed to disarm the Sepoy regiments at Lucknow, fearing chiefly to bring about the mutiny of others who, at various points in Oudh, still openly obeyed their officers. Holding to his policy of pretended confidence, on May 30th he was warned that a general mutiny would break out at evening gun-fire. He went to dine in the Cantonments, as if no danger were to be feared; and at the report of the nine o'clock gun, he remarked with a smile to his informant, "Your friends are not punctual." But scarcely were the words out of his mouth than a crackle of musketry came from the lines. Calmly ordering his native guard to load, though for all he knew it might be to shoot him on the spot, Lawrence hastened to overawe their mutinous comrades. Only one whole regiment had broken out, most of whose officers had time to escape with their lives. The Sepoys, however, shot their brigadier as he tried to recall them to obedience, and two other Englishmen were murdered, one a young cornet of seventeen lying sick in his bungalow. For this small bloodshed the mutineers consoled themselves by burning and plundering the abandoned bungalows, till Lawrence came upon them at the head of an English detachment, before whom they soon took to flight, yet not till the firing and glare had spread wide alarm among the Europeans.
Of the two other Sepoy regiments, some five or six hundred men fell in under their officers' orders; the rest kept out of the way, or went off to the mutineers. Next morning, Lawrence followed them on to the race-course, where they had retreated, and they fled afresh from the English artillery, though not till the fugitive Sepoys had been joined by the greater part of a cavalry regiment, for want of whom effectual pursuit could not be made. In the course of the day there was an abortive mob-rising within the city, easily put down by the native police, a number of insurgents being captured and executed.
The English leaders tried to encourage themselves by the thought that this long-dreaded mine had gone off with so little mischief, and that now, at least, they knew their friends from their enemies. But they did not foresee how fast would spread the madness which in so many cases suddenly affected bodies hitherto faithful even against their own comrades. A few days later, the police also mutinied and made off, pursued by artillery, and a force of volunteer cavalry hastily raised among the Europeans. Still a few hundred Sepoys, who had stuck to their colours, were stationed beside English soldiers at the Residency and the Muchee Bhawun; and, on an appeal to their loyalty, a considerable number of old native pensioners, some of them blind and crippled, presented themselves to stand by the Government whose salt they had eaten so long.
Among the reminiscences of that trying time, young readers will be especially interested in those of Mr. E.H. Hilton, an Eurasian gentleman still living in Lucknow, to show with pride the carbine he bore as a school-boy through the siege, and to say quaeque ipse miserrima vidi, if he remember as much from school-books, which may well have been driven out of his head by the experiences of his last days at school.
Mr. Hilton, then well on in his teens, was in 1857 one of the senior boys of the Martinière College, at which his parents held the posts of Sergeant-Superintendent and Matron. This institution, also known as Constantia House, from the motto Labore et Constantia inscribed on its front, is one of the lions of Lucknow. Founded at the beginning of our century by General Claude Martin, a French soldier of fortune, it has given a good education to thousands of European and half-caste boys; nor is this the only educational endowment due to his munificence. The Martinière, as it is commonly called, a huge, fantastic, straggling mansion in a pleasant park some mile or two out of the city, was the founder's residence during his lifetime, and afterwards his monument and tomb, for he had himself buried in a vault below the spacious halls and dormitories, now alive with the lads whom that singular Frenchman had at heart to educate in the English language and religion. At the time of the Mutiny, there were sixty-five resident pupils, who had naturally to share the forebodings and alarms of that terrible spring.
When all the other Christians stood on their guard, Mr. Schilling, Principal of the Martinière, prepared to defend his charge against any sudden attack. A small party, first of Sepoys, and when they could no longer be trusted, of English soldiers, was stationed at the College. The elder boys were armed with muskets or carbines. Stores of food and water were collected; and Mr. Hilton tells us how the first taste his school-fellows had of the trials of the Mutiny was the frequent bursting of earthen water-jars, which drenched the boys in the dormitory below. The centre of the building was barricaded with bricks, sand-bags, boxes of old books and crockery, anything that could be turned to account. The boys still did their school-work in the long open wings, but with orders to make for the centre, thus turned into a citadel, as soon as the alarm-bell rang. One boy always stood on the look-out; and, as may be supposed, there were several false alarms, when a troop of grass-cutters' ponies, or the dark edge of a dust-storm was taken by the nervous young sentinels for an advancing army.