The Story of the Indian Mutiny

by A. R. Hope Moncrieff

Yet with them also things went not so smoothly as at first. The booty, over which they were apt to quarrel, began to be exhausted. The Sepoys could hardly be brought to face the wall of fire that ever girdled their desperate victims. The dissensions among rival believers grew strong. Their leader, jealous and suspicious of the increasing power of the Moslem party, was impatient to seal his authority in the blood of those stubborn Christians. Force failing so long, he fell back on treachery. When the siege had lasted three weeks, the garrison received a grandiloquent summons from Nana Sahib, proposing surrender on condition of receiving a safe passage to Allahabad.

General Wheeler was inclined to scorn this offer; but Moore and others, who had well earned the right to advise prudence, urged that no chivalrous pride should prevent them considering the inevitable fate of so many non-combatants. Their provisions were almost at an end. Trust in such an enemy might be doubtful, but it was the one hope of life for the women and children, if no relief came, and whence could it come? Had they only themselves to care for, these officers might have cut a way through their mutinous Sepoys. As it was, they stooped to negotiate, and on June 26th agreed to deliver up their battered works and guns, the Nana consenting that they should march out under arms, and promising means of conveyance and victuals to carry them down the river. The only difficulty was a demand on his part to take possession the same night; but when the English plenipotentiaries threatened to blow up their magazine rather, he gave in to let them wait till next morning. Through the night he was busy with his cruel counsellors, and to one named Tantia Topee, afterwards better known as a rebel general, he committed the execution of the blackest plot in this dark history.

That night our country-people slept their first quiet sleep for long, which to most of them was to be their last on earth. To some this strange stillness seemed disquieting after the din of three dreadful weeks. Early in the morning, gathering up what valuables and relics of the terrible sojourn could be borne away, they left their ruined abode with mingled emotions, on litters, carriages, and elephants, or marching warily in front and rear of the long train, were escorted down to the river by soldiers, now the Nana's, lately their own, amid a vast crowd of half-scowling, half-wondering natives. The Ghaut, or landing-steps, lay nearly a mile off, approached through the dry bed of a torrent lined at its mouth with houses and timber. About this hollow way Tantia Topee had concealed hundreds of men and several guns. As soon as the head of that slow procession reached the river-side, a bugle sounded, a line of Sepoys closed the head of the ravine to cut off retreat, and from every point of cover there broke forth a murderous roar as thousands of balls and bullets were hailed upon the entrapped crowd below.

The embarkation had already begun; the foremost of the English had laid their arms in the boats, and taken off their coats to the work; the wounded and children were being lifted on board and placed under the thatched roofs of these clumsy vessels. But at that signal the boatmen had all deserted, after setting the thatch on fire, and some unhappy creatures were burned to death, while others plunged into the water, vainly seeking escape from the balls splashing around them. On land also a fearful slaughter was going on. Some of the Englishmen tried to return the fire; some laboured to push off the boats, which had purposely been stuck fast in the sand. Only three were launched, one of which drifted across to the opposite bank, and there fell into the hands of another band of slaughterers. The second appears to have made a little way down the river before being disabled by a round shot. The third got off clear, floating along the sluggish current, a target for ambushed cannon and musketry, through which swam several brave men, some to sink beneath the reddened stream, some to reach that sole ark of deliverance. The rest remained at the traitor's mercy. After most of them had been shot down, their false escort of troopers dashed into the water to finish the bloody work, stabbing women and tearing children in pieces. The General was butchered here, with his young daughter, unless, as would appear from some accounts, Sir Hugh survived in a dying state on board the escaped boat. Here died the chaplain, beginning a prayer. A whole girls' school and their mistress perished wretchedly. Nearly five hundred in all must have fallen on the banks or in that fatal ravine, when a messenger arrived from the Nana, ordering to kill the men, but to spare such women and children as still survived. A hundred and twenty-five, half dead with terror, drenched with mud and blood, were collected from the carnage and brought to Cawnpore.

The one boat which had escaped was crowded with about a hundred persons, dead and living, including some of the chief heroes of the defence. There is no more thrilling tale in fiction than the adventures of that hopeless crew. They had no oars; their rudder was soon broken by a shot. Paddling with bits of plank, they slowly drifted down the Ganges, fired at from either bank. More than once they stuck fast in the sand, and at night the women had to be disembarked before the cumbrous craft could be got off. By daylight they had come only a few miles from Cawnpore. Again were they attacked from the bank, and found themselves pursued by a boat filled with armed men. The torrential rains of an Indian summer burst upon them. They were obliged to tear off the thatched roof of the boat, as the enemy had tried to set it on fire. The second night found them helplessly aground; but a hurricane came to their aid, and the boat floated off before morning, only to drift into a backwater. There they grounded once more, and the enemy soon gathered about them in overpowering numbers.

Some dozen men, under Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson, waded on shore to beat back the assailants, while the rest made an effort to shove off the boat. This little party, sent out on what seemed a forlorn hope, in the end furnished the only survivors; their leader was one of four who lived to tell the tale. Desperately charging the mob of Sepoys and peasants on the bank, they drove them back for some distance, but soon found themselves surrounded by overwhelming numbers. Without the loss of a man, however, though not without wounds, they cut their way back to the shore, to find the boat gone. Expecting to catch it up, they pushed on down the stream, but could see nothing of it, and had to shift for themselves as best they could. Spread out in open order to give less mark for bullets, they held together, loading and firing upon the rabble that pressed at their heels, yet not too near, like a cowardly pack of wolves. When the hunted Englishmen had toiled some two or three miles barefoot over rough ground, a temple appeared in the distance, for which the officer shaped his course. Mowbray Thomson himself, in his Story of Cawnpore, describes the last stand made here by this remnant of its garrison.

"I instantly set four of the men crouching in the doorway with bayonets fixed, and their muskets so placed as to form a cheval-de-frise in the narrow entrance. The mob came on helter-skelter, in such maddening haste that some of them fell or were pushed on to the bayonets, and their transfixed bodies made the barrier impassable to the rest, upon whom we, from behind our novel defence, poured shot upon shot into the crowd. The situation was the more favourable to us, in consequence of the temple having been built upon a base of brickwork three feet from the ground, and approached by steps on one side....

"Foiled in their attempts to enter our asylum, they next began to dig at its foundation; but the walls had been well laid, and were not so easily to be moved as they expected. They now fetched faggots, and from the circular construction of the building they were able to place them right in front of the doorway with impunity, there being no window or loop-hole in the place through which we could attack them, nor any means of so doing, without exposing ourselves to the whole mob at the entrance. In the centre of the temple there was an altar for the presentation of gifts to the presiding deity; his shrine, however, had not lately been enriched, or it had more recently been visited by his ministering priests, for there were no gifts upon it. There was, however, in a deep hole in the centre of the stone which constituted the altar, a hollow with a pint or two of water in it, which, although long since putrid, we baled out with our hands, and sucked down with great avidity. When the pile of faggots had reached the top of the doorway, or nearly so, they set them on fire, expecting to suffocate us; but a strong breeze kindly sent the great body of the smoke away from the interior of the temple. Fearing that the suffocating sultry atmosphere would be soon insupportable, I proposed to the men to sell their lives as dearly as possible; but we stood until the wood had sunk down into a pile of embers, and we began to hope that we might brave out their torture till night (apparently the only friend left us) would let us get out for food and attempted escape. But their next expedient compelled an evacuation; for they brought bags of gunpowder, and threw them upon the red-hot ashes. Delay would have been certain suffocation—so out we rushed. The burning wood terribly marred our bare feet, but it was no time to think of trifles. Jumping the parapet we were in the thick of the rabble in an instant; we fired a volley and ran a-muck with the bayonet."

One by one, making for the river, most of the poor fellows were shot down, some before reaching it, some while swimming for their lives. Most thankful was Mowbray Thomson now that a year or two before he had spent a guinea on learning to swim at the Holborn Baths. Only he, Lieutenant Delafosse, and two Irish privates escaped both the yelling crowd that thronged the bank, and not more cruel alligators that lurked here in the blood-stained water. Stripping themselves as they went, they swam on for two or three hours, the current helping to carry them away till the last of their pursuers dropped off; then they could venture to rest, up to their necks in water, plunging into the stream again at every sound. At length, utterly exhausted by fatigue and want of food, they saw nothing for it but to let themselves be dragged out by a band of natives, whose professions of friendliness they hardly credited, yet found them friends indeed. These four sole survivors of our force at Cawnpore were sheltered by a humane rajah till they could be safe in Havelock's ranks.

"When you got once more among your countrymen, and the whole terrible thing was over, what did you do first?" Thomson came to be asked, years afterwards; and his answer was, "Why, I went and reported myself as present and ready for duty."