By the 2nd of May his words were found true in Lucknow, where a regiment of irregular cavalry--part of the late Nawâb's marauding army--mutinied openly over the greased cartridge question--which had now so openly become a pretence--and was disarmed by Sir Henry Lawrence's prompt action. But India had not an indefinite supply of heroes and hard-headed old campaigners ready and able to cope with danger, and the 10th May at Meerut found hopeless, helpless weakness.
In order to abate the growing grievance of the cartridge, orders had been issued that they were no longer to be bitten as of old, but torn, thus obviating, it was thought, all possible danger of caste-defilement. It was a mistaken order, since it gave credence to the lie of their being greased at all. Consequently, the 3rd regiment of Light Cavalry (Oude-recruited almost to a man) refused even to handle them. On the 9th of May, eighty-five men, condemned to ten years' penal servitude for mutiny, were, by General Hewitt's senseless severity, degraded publicly before the whole garrison, and marched off to prison; he the while watching the proceedings complacently from his buggy, for he had already been removed from the Peshâwar command on account of physical unfitness for duty.
Ere twenty-four hours had passed, he proved himself also mentally unfit to grapple with a great emergency. Meerut was in flames, women and children lying murdered, yet His Majesty's 60th Rifles, the 6th Dragoon Guards, the European Artillery, and no small loyal contingent from the native regiments, were cooped up, inactive; not even one man sent to warn Delhi, but 30 miles away!
How the heart aches as one reads of brave men on their knees begging for a squadron! Only a troop! For a gun! for anything! wherewith to dash down the broad, white road, and guard the way to Delhi--begging, and being refused!
All one can say is that, inadvertently, General Hewitt did good service to his country, in that his folly precipitated, and made premature, an outbreak which, had it gone on to full growth, would surely have lost us India for a time.
"To Delhi! To Delhi!" That was the one cry of the half-dazed mutineers, feeling freedom full in their faces; unexpected, unhoped-for freedom. Yet, even so, the old habit was strong on them. They must have a master; if the new one hid like a coward, they must find another. And at Delhi was the representative of the House of Timur, of Akbar, whose memory still lingered in the hearts alike of Hindu and Mahomedan. He, the man without a State-religion, the man who had held the balance true, to whom all religions equal, was master indeed! Whether old Bahâdur-Shâh, his degenerate descendant, who since Akbar II.'s death had dozed and dreamed away a drugged life full of causeful and causeless complaints, was in the plot beforehand, or whether it took him by surprise to find himself acclaimed King instead of Puppet, is a moot point. All that is to be known of this is, that a nine months' trial--a trial, be it remembered, by a victorious, autocratic accuser which thus, in a country like India, where strength ever goes to the strong, could have its pick of witnesses--failed to find evidence of complicity.
Not that it mattered, save to one poor, dottled old man saved thus from the hangman's noose, whether he knew or did not know. Events marched with terrible rapidity, murderous certainty, whether the palace gave orders for them or whether it watched, stupefied, expectant. The Ridge was swept clear of Englishmen, women, children, save for the few who sought refuge in the Flagstaff Tower, thus deferring for a time their inevitable fate. Dawn had brought the first troopers to shoot down the captain of the palace guards and savagely to cut to pieces Simon Fraser, the Commissioner, who attempted to harangue them, and all day long massacre had gone on unabashed; but even the blood-drunken assassins paused and held their breaths when at sunset, with a great roar, a shaking of solid earth which by force made the bodies of the mutineers shiver, the "Glorious Nine" in the Arsenal sent their message of defiance to the skies. Truly, that blowing-up of the magazine by the "Nine"-by Willoughby, Forrest, Scully, Buckley, and five others--may be likened to the roar of the British Lion, as yet half-asleep.
It was the only note of defiance that was heard at Delhi for five long weeks.
Women and children were murdered; the Palace, roused from its dreamings, took the goods the Gods gave--and small blame to it, seeing how coincident had been the dwining of the Moghuls' power with the widening of English influence; the mutineers looked in each others faces, almost appalled at their own success; yet still the master made no sign. Truly had it been said that their rule was but to be one hundred years, and was not this the centenary of Plassey, when Sâbat-Jung, the "Daring in War," had first laid finger on Hindustan?
If the "Daring in War" had been here now! That was a thought which surely must have been in the minds of many of these hereditary soldiers whose fathers may have fought against Clive. But there were no such sahibs nowadays; Surâj-ud-daula--on whom be peace!--had said sooth when he held the English but a small nation--scarce ten thousand warriors all told!