Cassell's History of England, Vol. 6 (of 8) / From the Death of Sir Robert Peel to the Illness of the Prince of Wales

by Anonymous

At Jallandhar itself very vigorous measures had been taken. We have seen how Philour was saved. Mr. Ricketts, at Loodiana, was also warned to look sharply after the bridge of boats which carries the traffic of the Great Road over the Sutlej. The troops at Jallandhar were, the 6th Cavalry, the 36th Native Infantry, and the 61st Native Infantry, the 8th Queen's, and one troop of Horse Artillery. Brigadier Hartley would have disarmed the natives, but he feared for the out-stations; so he contented himself with taking ample precautions, by an able disposition of his guns and his European infantry. The civil chief of the station appealed for aid to the Rajah of Kuppoorthulla, a Sikh chief, whose territories lie between the Beas and the Sutlej, and the Rajah responded with promptitude, bringing up at once a body of troops and guns. This was the first evidence of the goodwill of the Sikh chieftains in this district. They were destined to render the most valuable services in the trying days at hand. Thus was mutiny for a time parried at Jallandhar.

Far different had been the incidents of the crisis at Ferozepore. This town stands on the left bank of the Sutlej, nearly due south of Lahore, and below Loodiana; it contained the largest arsenal in Upper India and its importance was immense. The brigade at the station consisted of the 10th Cavalry, the 45th and 57th Native Infantry, the 61st Queen's, and three batteries; the whole under Brigadier Innes, who had just arrived from Mooltan. Strong symptoms of disaffection had appeared among the 57th but not in the 45th, or the 10th Cavalry. When on the 13th decisive news arrived, the brigadier held a council of war; but here, as in all other stations, his avowed suspicions of the native troops were sharply combated by their own officers. He adopted a half measure: he resolved to divide the two native regiments, placing them so that the Europeans and the guns would be between them, and he intended to disarm them the next day. On the evening of the 13th he held a parade, at the same time threw a hundred men of the 61st into the magazine, and selected the best positions for his artillery. From the parade he directed the 57th to march in one direction, and the 45th in another. The former obeyed, and encamped quietly in their new quarters; but the 45th took a route that brought them in sight of the magazine, which they made an unsuccessful attempt to rush. In the meantime the 61st had to guard the barracks, where the women and children had sought shelter, as well as the magazine, and thus were compelled to look on while the mutineers and the mob burnt the cantonments. The 57th took no part in the mischief, and the next day gave up their arms and colours. The 45th were still bent on wrong doing, and as a precaution, the brigadier blew up the regimental magazines. Then the 45th, except a few, broke into open mutiny, and set out for Delhi, pursued by the Europeans and the 10th. Very few escaped, for the 10th caught some, and the villagers brought in others. Brigadier Innes had now leisure to secure all the powder and stores. Of the native force, the 10th alone retained their arms and received General Anson's thanks for their loyalty. In a few weeks they too were mutineers.

There were three other points of moment: one of supreme importance in the Punjab-Peshawur. The others were Kangra and Mooltan. Kangra was to the Rajpoots of the hills what Umritsir was to the Sikhs of the plains—a place invested with a moral prestige. Major Lake, getting one of Mr. Montgomery's notes from Lahore, marched a body of Punjab police into Kangra and it was secured. We have already seen the men of the 8th enter Philour at dawn. Mooltan, standing on the left bank of the Chenab, a few miles above its junction with the Indus, was the key of the whole country around the point where the five rivers become one. It commanded the navigation; it was the connecting link between the Punjab and Scinde and the Punjab and South Afghanistan. There were only sixty Europeans there, and 3,500 natives. Of these the most dreaded were the 62nd and 69th Native Infantry; their officers alone were full of trust in them. Major Crawford Chamberlain could rely only on his sixty Europeans and some 250 Punjabees; he had hopes of a regiment of irregular cavalry, his own regiment, known all over India as Skinner's Horse. His policy was to temporise and prepare; and most ably he did both. It was pluck and skill which saved Mooltan.

Peshawur was, after all, the critical point in the Punjab. Five infantry regiments of the Bengal army were there, the 21st, 24th, 27th, 51st, and 64th; three cavalry regiments, the 5th Regulars, and the 17th and 18th Irregulars. In three adjacent forts were detachments of a Hindoo regiment, called the Khelat-i-Gilzies. The British force consisted of the 70th and 87th, and four batteries; in all about 2,000 men. At Noushera, the station at the east end of the Peshawur Valley, and more than twenty miles off, were the 27th Queen's, the 55th Native Infantry, the 10th Irregulars, and a battery. At Hotee Murdan, a mountain station, sixteen miles north of Noushera, were the Guides, natives, but true as steel, because raised, officered, and disciplined on sound principles. These were the forces, native and British, north of the Indus. The Europeans were outnumbered by three to one.

The telegram from Lahore was received here and kept secret. The men who had to deal with probable mutiny were Brigadier Sydney Cotton, Colonels Edwardes, Nicholson, and Neville Chamberlain, for General Reid, the Commander-in-Chief, was not one of the prime moving spirits. On the morning of the 12th a council was held, and swift were its decisions. The bold spirit of John Nicholson suggested at once that the British should take the initiative and form a movable column, so that aid might be rendered where it was required, and visible tangible power shown to all. To form this column, the 55th Native Infantry were ordered to occupy Hotee Murdan; so that the Guides might join the 27th Queen's at Noushera, and that these two should form the kernel of the column. At the same time the 64th Native Infantry were split up into three parts, and sent to the forts near Peshawur. The next morning, the 13th, the council heard the news of the disarming at Lahore, and proceeded with the work. Sir John Lawrence, though at Rawul Pindee, talked with his coadjutors by telegraph, and at his suggestion General Reid joined him, and thus the heads of the two public services were united. The measures taken extended over a wider field. The Punjabee infantry and the Sikh regiments, the remains of the old Khalsa army, were called in from all quarters to join the movable column. Not only was the station made safe, and the passage of the Indus at Attock secured, but Edwardes and Nicholson took advantage of their popularity on the frontier to call for aid from the very tribes whom it had been their business to rule, and to rule with no unsteady hand. For the moment these men, by boldness, promptitude, and sagacity, held down the raging element of mutiny on both banks of the Indus, and finally drew its teeth with little loss.

But for the present we must leave them with these armed traitors all around, to show what General Anson was doing in the first week after the outbreak at Meerut.

We have already caught a glimpse of General Anson, whose distinction among men it was to be the greatest whist-player in either hemisphere. We have seen him at Umballa, misunderstanding the mutiny, and snubbing Sepoys and Sepoy officers for telling tales. He was on the road to Simla, and to Simla he went. Below him were spread out the Cis-Sutlej States, governed chiefly by native Sikh chiefs who owned allegiance to the Company. It was among these that we had sought and found our earliest allies. We have seen how the Rajah of Kuppoorthulla cast his lot at once with ours. There were others ready to follow his example. The whole country below had been for three days in the ferment of mutiny; the troops at Lahore had been disarmed; the movable column had been formed, an outbreak of the 5th and 60th Native Infantry at Umballa on the 10th of May had been frustrated by a mere accident; and blood had been shed at Ferozepore, before General Anson heard that there was any serious mutiny in the army. When the famous message from Delhi reached Umballa, General Barnard sent off Captain Barnard, his aide-de-camp, to inform the Commander-in-Chief. As he passed through Kussowlie, he warned the 75th Foot to be ready to march at a moment's notice. On the 12th he astonished the Commander-in-Chief by presenting the Delhi telegram! It was fortunate for General Anson that he had with him at that moment men like Colonel Chester and Major Norman. Whatever indecision there may have been in the mind of the chief, there was none in that of his subordinates, and when he could not decide, they decided for him. Orders were sent that very night for the march of the 75th and for the 2nd Fusiliers to be ready for marching, and the 1st Bengal Fusiliers at once to Umballa; But General Anson did not stir. Fresh news came in on the 13th, as precise as it was horrible. The 2nd Fusiliers were ordered to march. On the 14th the general and his staff quitted Simla, and the next day they were at Umballa. The 1st Fusiliers arrived the same day; having marched in two nights sixty miles. The 75th had come in, and these, with the 9th Lancers, under Colonel Hope Grant, and two troops of horse artillery, formed a weak but respectable brigade. On the 17th they were joined by the 2nd Fusiliers.

Pending the arrival of General Anson the civil authorities had not been idle. Acting under the inspiration and on the orders of Sir John Lawrence, whose comprehensive mind embraced the whole state of affairs north of Delhi, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Forsyth had called upon the Maharajah of Putteeala, and the Rajahs of Jheend and Nabha, for the aid of troops, provisions, carriage, and it was instantly granted. Detachments of their forces were sent to guard fords and places of importance in the country, to Loodiana, and on the road to Kurnaul. The military commissaries could not meet the immense demand for transport; it was met by the civilians. These were days of vast activity. For the first time European soldiers mounted sentry, and European officers rode and walked in the burning sun. With the aid of the native princes the civilians took firm hold on the country between the Jumna and the Sutlej, and thus secured the road from Delhi to the Punjab, whence troops and ammunition and spirited counsels alone could come.

One of the first acts of General Anson, or rather of his able staff officers, was to organise a siege train at Philour. The order, however, did not reach that fort until the 17th, and four days elapsed before it could be prepared. In the meantime, a Ghoorka battalion near Simla, which nobody doubted was badly managed, broke into mutiny, creating a disgraceful panic at Simla. The siege train had to be entrusted to the escort of the 3rd Native Infantry, encamped at Philour. Part of this regiment, and of the 4th Cavalry, had already been sent to guard a small supply of ammunition for the Europeans. It was said the 3rd had sworn the siege-train should never reach Delhi, and it is not an improbable story; nevertheless, when, hearing that the Ghoorkas were in revolt, they volunteered to act as escort, the offer was accepted. The train crossed the Sutlej, and two hours afterwards the bridge was carried away. Perplexed and harassed by the responsibility thrown upon him, General Anson reached Kurnaul on the 25th; on the 26th he was attacked by cholera, and on the 27th of May he died. It may be said he died of a consciousness of his own incapacity to contend with the gigantic difficulties around him. It was not his fault that he was neither a Lawrence nor a Montgomery, neither a Havelock nor a Campbell; but it was the fault of the British Government that they selected a man of such moderate abilities and no force of character to command the Indian army. On the 26th the Delhi Field Force under Sir Henry Barnard reached Kurnaul, and Sir Henry assumed command. It was now nearly the end of May, twenty days since the mutiny began; and here were the troops from Umballa and the brigade from Meerut converging on a point, to effect a junction and lay siege to Delhi.

By this time the Punjab had been the theatre of more decision and vigour. Sir John Lawrence, Mr. Montgomery, and their able coadjutors had shown how mutiny should be dealt with. No half measures were adopted. They went upon the time-honoured principle that he who is not for us is against us. "Treason and sedition," writes one of the Punjab men, "were dogged into the very privacy of the harem, and up to the sacred sanctuaries of the mosques and shrines." Mr. Montgomery banished red tape. All letters were intercepted; all important ferries, fords, and roads were watched. Rewards were offered for fugitive mutineers, dead or alive. It was soon found that the population were on our side, and the villagers ready to stop mutineers, or to report their movements. The Hindostanee soldiers had boasted throughout the Punjab that they had conquered it, and now it was the turn of the Sikh and the Punjabee. The Sikhs were burning to march on Delhi. More than a century and a half before, Aurungzebe, the Great Mogul, had beheaded a prophet of the Sikhs in his palace at Delhi, and there was a prophecy current that the Sikhs, in conjunction with the British, should sack Delhi, and avenge the death of their martyr Gooroo. This made the work of the British leaders less difficult; but it was, in the middle of May, still a problem whether we should stand or fall.