It has been impossible to note all the minor operations in this confused war, and the isolated risings of which here and there we have caught glimpses through the clouds of smoke overhanging the main field of action—a mere corner of India, yet a region as large as England. Thrills of sympathetic disaffection ran out towards Assam on the one side, and to Goojerat on the other; up northwards into the Punjaub, as we have seen, then through the Central Provinces, down into Bombay, and to the great native state of Hyderabad, where the Nizam and his shrewd minister Salar Jung managed to keep their people quiet, yet reverses on our part might at any time have inflamed them beyond restraint.
Among the protected or semi-independent Courts of Rajpootana and Central India there were serious troubles. Scindia and Holkar, the chief Mahratta princes, stood loyal to us; but their soldiery took the other side. The most remarkable case of hostility here was that of the Ranee or Queen of Jhansi, a dispossessed widow, who had much the same grievance against the British Government as Nana Sahib, and avenged it by similar treacherous cruelty. She managed to blind the small English community to their danger till the Sepoys broke out early in June with the usual excesses; then our people, taking refuge in a fort, were persuaded to surrender, and basely massacred. After this version of the Cawnpore tragedy on a smaller scale, the Ranee had seized the throne of her husband's ancestors, to defend it with more spirit than was shown by the would-be Peshwa.
The whole heart of the Continent remained in a state of intermittent disorder, and little could be done to put this down till the beginning of 1858, when columns of troops from Madras and Bombay respectively marched northward to clear the central districts, and rid Sir Colin Campbell of the marauding swarms that thence troubled his rear. The Bombay column, under Sir Hugh Rose, had the harder work of it. Fighting his way through a difficult country, he first relieved the English who for more than seven months had been holding out at Saugor; then moved upon Jhansi, a strongly fortified city, with a rock-built citadel towering over its walls.
The Ranee was found determined to hold out, and on March 22nd a siege of this formidable fortress had to be undertaken by two brigades of European soldiers and Sepoys. At the end of a week, they in turn became threatened by over twenty thousand rebels, under Tantia Topee, advancing to raise the siege. Fifteen hundred men, only a third of them Europeans, were all Sir Hugh Rose could spare from before the walls, but with so few he faced this fresh army, that seemed able to envelop his little band in far-stretching masses. Again, however, bold tactics were successful against a foe that seldom bore to be assailed at an unexpected point. Attacked on each flank by cavalry and artillery, the long line of Sepoys wavered, and gave way at the first onset of a handful of infantry in front. They fell back on their second line, which had no heart to renew the battle. Setting fire to the jungle in front of him, Tantia Topee fled with the loss of all his guns, hotly pursued through the blazing timber by our cavalry and artillery.
Next day but one, April 3rd, while this brilliant victory was still fresh, our soldiers carried Jhansi by assault. Severe fighting took place in the streets round the palace; then the citadel was evacuated, and the Ranee fled to Calpee, not far south of Cawnpore. Sir Hugh Rose followed, as soon as he could get supplies, defeating Tantia Topee once more on the road. Our most terrible enemy was the sun, which struck down men by hundreds; the commander himself had several sunstrokes, and more than half of one regiment fell out in a single day. Half the whole force were in the doctor's hands; hardly a man among them but was ailing. The rebels knew this weak point well, and sought to make their harassing attacks in the mid-day heat. The want of water also was most distressing at times; men and beasts went almost mad with thirst, when tears could be seen running from the eyes of the huge elephants sweltering on a shadeless plain, and the backs of howling dogs were burned raw by the cruel sun.
But the work seemed almost done, and in confidence of full success Sir Hugh Rose did not wait for the Madras column, which should now have joined him, but could not come up in time. At Calpee, the arsenal of the rebels, were the Ranee and Rao Sahib, a nephew of the Nana. This place also was a picturesque and imposing fortress that might well have delayed the little army. But the infatuated enemy, driven to madness by drugs and fanatical excitement, swarmed out into the labyrinth of sun-baked ravines before it, to attack our fainting soldiers; then they met with such a reception as to send them flying, not only from the field, but from the town, and their arsenal, with all its contents, fell an easy prey to the victors. This march of a thousand miles, though so briefly related, was distinguished by some of the finest feats of arms in the whole war.
The Madras column, under General Whitlock, had meanwhile had a less glorious career. After overthrowing the Nawab of Banda, it marched against the boy-Prince of Kirwi, a ward of the British Government, who was only nine years old and could hardly be accused of hostility, though his people shared the feelings of their neighbours. His palace fell without a blow. Yet its treasures were pronounced a prize of the soldiery, and the poor boy himself became dethroned for a rebellious disposition he could neither inspire nor prevent. This seems one of the most discreditable of our doings in the high-handed suppression of the Mutiny.
Leaving Whitlock's men with their easily-won booty, we return to Sir Hugh Rose, who now hoped to take well-earned repose. At the end of May he had already begun to break up his sickly force, when startling news came that the resources of the rebels were not yet exhausted. Tantia, Rao Sahib, and the Ranee had hit on the idea of seizing Gwalior, and turning it into a nucleus of renewed hostility. Scindia marched out to meet them on June 1, but a few shots decided the battle. Most of his army went over to the enemy, who seized his capital with its treasures and munitions of war, and proclaimed Nana Sahib as Peshwa. The alarming danger was that under a title once so illustrious, a revolt might still spread far southwards into the Deccan through the whole Mahratta country.
Without waiting for orders, broken in health as he was, Sir Hugh Rose lost no time in starting out to extinguish this new conflagration. By forced marches, made as far as possible at night, he reached Gwalior in a fortnight, not without encounters by the way, in one of which fell obscurely that undaunted Amazon, the young Ranee, dressed in man's clothes, whom her conqueror judged more of a man than any among the rebel leaders; the Indian Joan of Arc she has been called, and certainly makes the most heroic figure on that side of the contest. On June 19, her allies made a last useless stand before Gwalior. The pursuers followed them into the city, and next day its mighty fortress, famed as the Gibraltar of India, was audaciously broken into by a couple of subalterns, a blacksmith, and a few Sepoys. The character of the war may be seen, in which such an exploit passes with so slight notice; and these rapid successes against mighty strongholds are a remarkable contrast to the vain efforts of the mutineers to wrest from us our poor places of refuge.