The Story of the Indian Mutiny

by A. R. Hope Moncrieff

Tantia Topee was followed up beyond Gwalior, and once more defeated with the loss of his guns, a matter of one charge, over in a few minutes. But that by no means made an end of this pertinacious rebel, who for the best part of a year yet was to lead our officers a weary chase all up and down the west of Central India. Through jungles and deserts, over mountains and rivers, by half-friendly, half-frightened towns, running and lurking, doubling and twisting, along a trail of some three thousand miles, he found himself everywhere hunted and headed, but could nowhere be brought effectually to bay. Here and there he might make a short stand, which always had the same result; and the nature of these encounters may be judged from one in which, with eight thousand men and thirty guns, he was routed without a single casualty on our side.

The great object was to prevent him getting south into the Deccan and stirring up the Mahrattas there to swell his shrivelled ranks, and this was successfully attained. As for catching him, that seemed more difficult. But at length he grew worn out. Such followers as were left him slunk away to their homes, or split up into wandering bands of robbers; the toils of the hunters closed round their slippery chief, fairly driven into hiding. Betrayed by a rebel who thus sought to make his peace with our Government, he was at length laid hands on in the spring of 1859, to be speedily tried and hanged, the last hydra-head of the insurrection.

For murderers like those of Cawnpore there was no pardon. But English blood ran calmer now, and wise men might talk of mercy to the misguided masses. The Governor-General had already earned the honourable nickname of "Clemency Canning," given in bitterness by those not noble enough to use victory with moderation. At the end of 1858, the Queen's proclamation offered an amnesty to all rebels who had taken no part in the murder of Europeans. This came none too soon, for the ruthless severity with which we followed our first successes had been a main cause in driving the beaten enemy to desperation, and thus prolonging a hopeless struggle.

It must be confessed with shame, that not only in the heat of combat, but in deliberate savagery excited by the licence of revenge, and with formal mockeries of justice, too many Englishmen gave themselves up to a heathen lust for bloodshed. Hasty punishment fell often on the innocent as well as the guilty, meted with the same rough measure to mutinous soldiers and to those whose crime, as in Oudh, was that of defending their country against an arrogant and powerful oppressor. The mass of the natives could hardly help themselves between one side and the other; and if they did sympathize with their own countrymen, was it for the descendants of Cromwell, of Wallace, of Alfred, to blame them so wrathfully?

Heavy could not but be the punishment that visited this unhappy land. Not a few of the mutineers were spared in battle to die by inches in some unwholesome jungle, or slunk home, when they durst, only to meet the curses of the friends upon whom they had brought so much misery, and to be at a loss how to earn their bread, pay and pension having been scattered to the winds of rebellion. The sufferings of the civil population, even where they had not risen in arms, were also pitiable; and if hundreds of homes in England had been bereaved, there would be thousands of dusky heathen to mourn their dear ones. The country was laid waste in many parts; towns and palaces were ruined; landowners were dispossessed, nobles driven into beggary among the multitude of humbler victims, whose very religion was insulted to bring home to them their defeat. A favourite mode of execution was blowing prisoners away from the mouth of guns, through which they believed themselves doomed in the shadowy life beyond death; and where they came to be hanged, the last rude offices were done by the eternally profaning touch of the sweeper caste. The temples on the river-side at Cawnpore had been blown up, as a sacrifice to the memory of our massacred country-people. The mosques and shrines of Delhi were thrown open to the infidel. Immediately after its capture, there had even been a talk of razing this great city to the ground, that its magnificence might be forgotten in its guilt.

The old king had paid dearly for that short-lived attempt to revive the glories of his ancestors. Tried by court-martial, he was transported to Rangoon, where he soon died in captivity. Certain other potentates were punished, and some rewarded at their expense, for varying conduct during a crisis when most of them had the same desire to be on the winning side, but some played their game more skilfully or more luckily than others. Nana Sahib, the most hateful of our enemies, escaped the speedy death that awaited him if ever he fell into British hands. He fled to the Himalayas with a high price on his head, and his fate was never known for certain; but the probability is that long ago he has perished more miserably than if he had been brought to the gallows.

The Power which had set up and pulled down so many princes became itself dispossessed and abolished through the upheavings of the Mutiny. In England, it was felt on all hands that such an empire as had grown out of our Eastern possessions, should no longer be left under the control of even a so dignified body as the East India Company. The realm won by private or corporate enterprise was annexed to the dominions of the British Crown; and on Nov. 1, 1858, the same proclamation which offered amnesty to the submissive rebels, declared that henceforth the Queen of England ruled as sovereign over India.

In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress at Delhi, amid an imposing assemblage both of actual rulers and of gorgeous native potentates bearing time-honoured titles, who thus fully acknowledged themselves vassals of the Power that in little more than a century had taken the place of the Great Mogul.

Our rule in India has now become marked by a feature almost new in the history of conquerors. We begin to recognize more and more clearly that we owe this subjugated land a debt in the elevation of her long-oppressed millions. With this duty comes a new source of danger. By the very means we take here to raise up a sense of common welfare, and through the destruction of those petty tyrannies that hitherto held apart the elements of national life, we are teaching the agglomeration of races to whom we have given a common name to look on themselves as one people, still too much differing from us in interests and sympathies; and it is to be feared that their growth in healthy progress does not keep pace with the hot-headed and loud-tongued patriotism of some who, in the schools of their rulers, have learned rather to talk about than to be fit for freedom. Though such noisy discontent is chiefly noted among the classes least formidable in arms, while the more warlike seem not unwilling to accept our supremacy, if ever another rebellion took place, we should have to deal with a less unorganized sentiment of national existence, and perhaps with the deeper and wider counsels, for want of which mainly, we have seen how the Mutiny miscarried, that else might have swept our scanty force out of India. On the other hand, in such a future emergency, we should have the advantage both of the improved scientific arms, so decisive in modern warfare, the use of which we now take more care to keep in our own hands, and of those better means of communication with the East, gained within the lifetime of our generation. In less than a month, we could throw into India as many English soldiers as, in 1857, arrived only in time to stamp out the embers of an almost ruinous conflagration.

In any case, the conscience of England has set up a new standard to judge its achievements—by the good we can do to this great people, and not by the gain we can wring from them, the honour of our mastery must stand or fall.