All this time the thermometer ranged from 128° to 138°. Tortured by this dreadful heat, grimed with dirt, devoured by myriads of flies, suffering agonies from thirst, enduring the severest pangs of hunger, exposed to death in every shape, our beleaguered countrymen and countrywomen still bore up against fate, with grim and steadfast determination. The Sepoys took every advantage; not a little child could stray out from the scanty shelter of shattered walls or holes in the trenches without drawing upon itself the fire of a hundred muskets. If any one went to the well, he was a mark for big guns and bullets; and at night the sound of the creaking wheels revealing the fact that men were drawing the water, called forth a hail of shot. Yet men went out and endured this fate by day and night, to draw water for the women and the wounded. "My friend, John M'Killop, of the Civil Service," writes Captain Thomson, "greatly distinguished himself here; he became, self-constituted, Captain of the Well. He jocosely said that he was no fighting man, but would make himself useful where he could, and accordingly he took this post; drawing for the supply of the women and the children as often as he could. It was less than a week after he had undertaken this self-denying service, when his numerous escapes were followed by a grape-shot wound in the groin, and speedy death. Disinterested even in death, his last words were an earnest entreaty that somebody would go and draw water for a lady to whom he had promised it."
Besides this well there was another near one of the unfinished barracks. "We drew no water there; it was our cemetery." Stealthily at night, the bodies of the dead were carried out, and thrown into this well; and in three weeks it was choked up with the remains of 250 persons! On the 13th of June a great misfortune befell the garrison. One of the buildings in the entrenchments was used as a hospital. It had a thatched roof. On the evening of the 13th a shell or "carcase" set this on fire, and the whole building was soon in a blaze. By the light of the flames the Sepoys poured in a heavy fire on the women and children running out, and on the men bearing off the wounded, some of whom perished there, while all the medicines and surgical instruments were destroyed! This moment of trial the enemy selected for an attack, hoping to find the garrison unprepared. They were deceived. Every man was on the alert. The mutineers were allowed to come close up, and then the guns opened with grape, and the infantry firing muskets, ready loaded, as fast as they could pick them up, drove off the yelling assailants, with great slaughter. At another time they approached, rolling before them bales of cotton, but these were speedily set on fire with shells, after which grape-shot soon thinned the ranks of the flying crew. These attacks were repeated in different ways, but always with the same result.
But a few details abridged from Captain Thomson's narrative of what he called the superficial horrors of the siege, will better enable the reader to conceive the agonies of those three weeks, than pages of general description. A group of soldiers' wives were sitting in the trenches. A shell fell among them, and killed and wounded seven. "Mrs. White, a private's wife, was walking with her husband, under cover, as they thought, of the wall, her twin children one in each arm, when a single bullet passed through her husband, killing him. It passed also through both her arms, breaking them, and close beside the breathless husband and father fell the widow and her babes; one of the latter being also severely wounded. I saw her afterwards in the main-guard, lying upon her back, with the two children, twins, laid one at each breast, while the mother's bosom refused not what her arms had no power to administer." An ayah, nursing a baby, lost both legs from a cannon shot, while the infant was uninjured. Mrs. Evans was killed by falling bricks brought down by a round shot. Mr. Hillersden, the collector, was talking to his wife, when he was cut in two by a round shot. Two days afterwards a mass of falling bricks killed his wife. Here are two other terrible pictures. In the unburnt, but not unbroken barrack, "Lieutenant G. R. Wheeler, son and aide-de-camp of the general, was sitting upon a sofa, fainting from a wound he had received in the trenches; his sister was fanning him, when a round shot entered the doorway, and left him a headless trunk. One sister at his feet, and father, mother, and another sister, in different parts of the same room, were witnesses of the appalling spectacle. Mr. Herberden, of the railway service, was handing one of the ladies some water, when a charge of grape entered the barrack, and a shot passed through both his hips, leaving an awful wound. He lay for a whole week upon his face, and was carried upon a mattress down to the boats, where he died. The fortitude he had shown in active service did not forsake him during his extraordinary sufferings, for not a murmur escaped his lips."
Enough of these horrors. It is a relief to turn from them to the recorded acts of daring, of which let this one suffice. As Sir Hugh Wheeler was too old to take an active share in a defence, which he, nevertheless, helped to sustain by his unconquerable spirit, Captain Moore, of the 32nd, was the real leader of the garrison. A genuine soldier, he conceived the idea of making a sortie by night, and spiking the Sepoy cannon. He was at the time suffering from a wound; yet, one night, he led out fifty men, spiked three guns near the church, killed several gunners, and spiked two 24-pounders at the mess-house, with the loss of one killed and four wounded. This illustrates the active valour of this garrison. It availed little, for fresh pieces were brought up the next day.
Aware that aid was approaching, though slowly, Nana Sahib now had recourse to a devilish expedient in order to get the garrison in his hands. He had in his power a Mrs. Greenway, one of a family who had paid to the Nana £30,000 as a ransom, yet who were all slain. This poor woman, half naked, and carrying an infant, he sent with a message to the entrenchment. It was addressed "To the subjects of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria," and it ran as follows:—"All those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and are willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad." At first Sir Hugh Wheeler was utterly opposed to any dealing with Nana Sahib, but he finally agreed to treat. Accordingly a negotiation was begun, and rapidly concluded, Nana Sahib signing a treaty of capitulation to the effect that the garrison should march out under arms, with sixty rounds of ammunition per man, and should be sent, with the women and children, in boats to Allahabad. No precautions were neglected by Sir Hugh or Captain Moore. Their sole error was in placing any trust in Nana Sahib.
On the 27th the woe-begone and tattered procession set out for the ghaut, or landing-place. The women and children went on elephants and in palanquins, the men, except the sick and wounded, walked. When they found the boats—but they were all aground on sandbanks—every one, men, women, and children, had to wade knee-deep to embark. Suddenly, at the signal to start, the native boatmen, firing the thatched roofs of the boats, leaped into the water, and rushed to the shore. Then, first a dropping fire of carbines, succeeded by volleys of musketry, and round shot from four 9-pounders, opened on the fugitives. The banks were lined, the neighbouring houses were filled with assassins. Soon the boats were in flames, the water was full of women and children on whom the shot was poured. Only two boats got off and one was instantly sunk by a round shot. The other, crowded with survivors, some of whom had swum to her side, began to float down the stream, when guns opened on her from the Oude side. Her rudder was shot away, the oars were gone, but the current bore her on, now stranding her on a shoal, now drifting her off, aided by the use of a spar or two of wood. All day long this boat was chased and one by one her occupants became fewer. Some fell overboard, some sank wounded to the bottom of the boat. At night she stranded and the Sepoys fired lighted arrows at her to set her on fire. The next morning they were beset again; a boat full of armed Sepoys came down and grounded near, when the British at once charged through the water and slew their pursuers. A hurricane of rain and wind followed, and once more the boat with its starving and bleeding freight was afloat; but it soon stuck again in shoal water. Here Captain Thomson, Lieutenant Delafosse, Sergeant Grady, and eleven privates landed by order to drive away the Sepoys while the boat was eased off. The boat and its occupants they never saw again. They quickly drove back the enemy, but could not find the boat on their return, and so they were forced to retreat along the banks; pursued, they took refuge in a small temple and held it against a host, until the enemy lighted brands at the door and began to throw bags of gunpowder on them. The little band charged at once and made for the river; seven out of fourteen reached it alive and plunged in; the number was soon reduced to four. These swam on and on, six miles down stream, and, exhausting pursuit, went ashore. Here they found a protector in one whose name should be preserved—Diribijah Singh, of Moorar Mhow, in Oude. He saved their lives. At this time Thomson's clothing consisted of a flannel shirt; Delafosse wore a cloth round his waist; Murphy and Sullivan were naked. Every one except Delafosse was wounded. These were the sole survivors of the massacre at the ghaut. About 130 of the women and children were taken out of the water and carried prisoners into Cawnpore. We shall hear of them again.
During this period mutiny had been making great progress elsewhere. Bombay had been saved by the energy of Lord Elphinstone and the prompt appearance of the 37th from Mauritius, just as Madras had been quieted by the landing of a regiment from Ceylon. But in Central India not a station remained. The Europeans had been driven away from Indore, the residence of Holkar. At Mhow, near by, some officers were killed, but the others, with the women and children, took shelter in the fort. The Maharajah remained true and they were saved. At Gwalior the contingent had mutinied, killing some officers, but the women and children got away to Agra; and Scindia, acting on the advice of his minister, Dinkur Rao, the ablest native in India, so managed the contingent that they did not move until months afterwards. Mr. Colvin, at Agra, in the North-West, after paltering with mutiny, had been forced to disarm two regiments there on the 31st of May, and to prepare and occupy the fort; for the Khotah contingent mutinied, and there were no regular soldiers on whom dependence could be placed but the 3rd Europeans, a battery of artillery, thirty or forty volunteer horse, and the armed civilians. Such was the state of the country from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda, from the sand deserts of Bikaneer to the frontiers of Behar. Here and there, as at Saugor, Agra, Lucknow, there were little knots of beleaguered Britons, and all around them a raging sea of anarchy.
By permission of the Leicester Corporation Art Gallery.
THE FLIGHT FROM LUCKNOW (1857).