Passing westward, to the line of route along the Hoogly to the Ganges, and the country near it, we find traces of a little more turbulency, owing to the presence of a greater number of native troops. About the middle of July, the Barrackpore authorities asked for permission to disarm the villages near at hand, in order to render more effectual the previous disarming of native troops at Barrackpore itself—treated in a former chapter. Early in August the behaviour of the troops at Berhampore became suspicious; they had heard of the mutiny of the 8th N. I. at places further west, and were with difficulty kept from imitating the pernicious example. In the middle of the month, the commissioner of Bhagulpore deemed it necessary to detain two detachments of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, on their way up the Ganges, at Bhagulpore and Monghir; for the 32d native infantry, and the 5th irregular cavalry, exhibited symptoms not to be neglected. After the occurrences at Dinapoor, the region around Berhampore and Moorshedabad could no longer be kept in peace while the native troops retained their arms; it was determined therefore, by Mr Spencer the commissioner, and Colonel Macgregor the commandant, to adopt decisive measures while there was yet time. On the 1st of August, having the aid of H.M. 90th foot, they disarmed the 63d native infantry and the 11th irregular cavalry at Berhampore; and on the following day they similarly disarmed all the inhabitants of that place and of Moorshedabad. Colonel Campbell, of the 90th, who had brought that regiment from England in splendid condition in the Himalaya steamer, and who was on his way up the Ganges to the disturbed districts, was the officer who practically effected this disarming at Berhampore; he spoke of the 11th irregular cavalry as one of the most superb regiments he had ever seen, in men, horses, and equipments; they were rendered almost savage by the skill with which the colonel managed his delicate task; and they reproached the sepoys of the 63d for having submitted so quietly to the disarming. A little further up the country, at Bhagulpore, about 200 troopers of the 5th irregular cavalry mutinied on the 14th of August, taking the road towards Bowsee, but harming none of their officers; on the 15th they passed through Bowsee to Rownee; and on the 18th left Rownee for Gayah—bound for the disturbed regions in the west. At Monghir, still higher up the Ganges, a terrible commotion was produced by this occurrence; the civil commissioner shut himself up in a fort, with a few of H.M. 5th Fusiliers, and left the city to its fate; but fortunately Sir James Outram was at the time passing up the Ganges in a steamer; he rebuked this pusillanimity, and recommended the officials to shew a bolder front.
Arriving now at the Patna and Dinapoor district, we must trace the progress of affairs more in detail, to shew how the authorities were placed before, and how after, the mutiny which it is the chief object of this chapter to narrate. Patna is a large and important city, the centre of an industrious region; while Dinapoor, in the immediate vicinity, is the largest military station between Barrackpore and Allahabad. Mr Tayler, civil commissioner, was the chief authority at the one place; Major-general Lloyd was military commandant at the other; and it was essentially necessary, for the preservation of peace in all that region, that these two officials should act in harmony. We have already seen (pp. [151]-[154]) that, about the middle of June, the Patna district became much agitated by the news of disturbances in other quarters; that the police force was thereupon strengthened, and the ghats or landing-places watched; that some of the Company’s treasure was removed to other stations; that places of rendezvous were agreed upon in case of emergency; that conspiracies among the Moslem inhabitants were more than once discovered, in concert with other conspirators at Lucknow and Cawnpore; and that on the 3d of July some of the fanatics murdered Dr Lyell, principal assistant to the opium agent. We have also seen, in the same chapter, that Dinapoor reposed upon a sort of moral volcano throughout June; that although the native troops made loud professions of loyalty, the Europeans were nevertheless in a very anxious position—all living near together, all on the alert, and most of them believing that the fidelity of the sepoys was not worth many days’ purchase. Being thus on their guard, a mutiny ought not to have occurred at their station; but it did occur, and brought disgrace to the general who was responsible for military affairs in that division.
An intelligent clue to this whole series of transactions will be obtained by tracing—first, the Dinapoor mutiny itself; then the mingled disasters and successes, blunders and heroism, at Arrah; then the effect of the mutiny on the districts of Behar north of the Ganges; and, lastly, the effects on the wide-spreading region south of that river.
The distance between the two cities is about ten miles. The barracks of the European troops at Dinapoor were situated in a large square westward of the native town; beyond this were the native lines; and most western of all, by a very injudicious arrangement, was the magazine in which the percussion-caps were stored—a matter apparently small in itself, but serious in its consequences, as we shall presently see. Major-general Lloyd, commander of the station, and of a vast military region called the Dinapoor Division, had for some weeks been an object of almost as much anxiety to the Europeans at the station as the sepoys themselves. He was advanced in years, infirm, and irresolute. Unable to mount his horse without assistance, and dreading to give orders that would have the effect of sending any European troops away from Dinapoor, he was singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties of those times. It points to some great defect in military routine, when one who had been a gallant officer in his better days was thus left in possession of a command he was no longer fitted to wield. Towards the close of July there were three regiments of Bengal native infantry at that station, the 7th, 8th, and 40th. There was also the greater portion of H.M. 10th foot, together with two companies of the 37th, and two troops of artillery. Not a British officer, except the major-general, doubted that these Europeans could have disarmed and controlled the sepoys, had the attempt been made at the proper time. The Calcutta inhabitants had petitioned the governor-general to disarm the native regiments at Dinapoor, and the officers of the Queen’s regiments at that station had all along advocated a similar measure; but General Lloyd, like many other Company’s officers, was proud of the sepoys, and trusted them to the last; and Viscount Canning placed reliance on his experience, to determine whether and when to effect this disarming. This reliance ended in unfortunate results.
On the 25th of July, the appearance of affairs led the major-general to exhibit less than his former confidence in the native troops; he shrank, it is true, from disarming them; but he sought to render their arms less dangerous by quietly removing the percussion-caps from the magazine. Now these caps had to be brought in front of the whole length of the sepoy lines on the way from the magazine to the English barracks. Early in the morning he sent the 10th and the artillery to the grand square, ready to be moved towards the sepoy lines if disturbance should occur. Two hackeries went down to the magazine under charge of an officer; the caps were placed in them; and the vehicles were drawn some distance towards the English lines. There then arose a shout among the sepoys: ‘Kill the sahibs; don’t let the caps be taken away!’ The caps were taken, however, and safely conveyed to the officers’ mess-room. The 10th were kept idle in the square or in barracks all the forenoon; while the native officers were ordered to go to the native lines, and ask the sepoys to give up the caps already issued to them. Some of the sepoys obeyed this strange demand—strange, because backed by no display of power; while some fired their muskets and threatened to shoot the officers. At the sound of these shots the 10th were ordered hastily to advance; they did so, but only to see the rebel sepoys run off as fast as their legs could carry them. Inexpressible was the mortification of the officers at this sight; three entire regiments escaped across fields, with their arms and accoutrements, to swell the ranks of the mutineers elsewhere; and so stupid had been the orders given, that there was no force at hand to stop them. The 10th, two companies of the 37th, and the artillery, all were burning to castigate these men; yet was the escape so quickly and completely effected that very few of the sepoys fell. The English destroyed the sepoy lines, but did not pursue the mutineers, for their perplexed commander would not permit them to leave him in danger. A surgeon of the 10th, on seeing the officers threatened by the sepoys, brought his hospital-guards to confront them; and even some of his patients got upon the flat roof of the hospital, and fired at the rebels. He then galloped off, and brought all the ladies and children to the barracks for safety. Every man of the 10th regiment was vexed and irritated by this day’s work; complaints against the general were loud, deep, and many; and all the officers’ letters told plainly of the general feeling among them. The regiment numbered little more than four hundred bayonets; for many men were sick in hospital, and a detachment was at Benares; but the four hundred, highly disciplined men, would not have hesitated an instant to disarm, to fight, to pursue, the three thousand rebels, had they been properly instructed and permitted so to do. During eight or ten weeks the officers of that regiment had urged the disarming of the sepoys; but their recommendations had not been listened to, and now it was too late. The general himself, on the forenoon of the 25th, went on board a steamer in the Ganges: ‘I had no horse in cantonment,’ he said. ‘My stable was two miles distant; and being unable at the time to walk far or much, I thought I should be most useful on board the steamer with guns and riflemen.’ It is deeply to be regretted that an old soldier should have been so placed as to find such an explanation necessary. As a consequence of this retreat to a place of shelter, the officers remained without commands and without a commander. Some of the mutineers embarked in boats, with the intention of going down the Ganges to Patna, or of crossing the river; but the detachment of the 37th, on shore and in the steamer, killed most of them by rifle-shots. The steamer did its work, unquestionably; but it was not the place for a military commander at such a time.
The question at once presented itself to the minds of all—whither had the rebels gone? Evidence was soon afforded that the direction taken was that of Arrah, a town twenty-four miles from Dinapoor, and separated from it by the river Sone. Arrah, as a town, was not of great importance; but it was the chief place in the district of Shahabad, and was surrounded by a country whence much revenue was obtained by the East India Company. During the troubles arising out of the mutiny, the chief authority at Arrah was the magistrate, Mr Wake—a man who, by his energy and public spirit, proved to be eminently fitted to hold power in perilous times. During the whole of June and July he had watched the progress of events with an anxious eye. Very soon after the mutiny commenced, he wrote to the authorities at Calcutta, describing the contents of certain native newspapers published about that time, and suggesting the propriety of curbing the licence of those productions. On the 10th of June he announced—with something like contempt in his manner—that most of the Europeans employed on the railway-works near Arrah had hurried away frightened by reports of mutinous symptoms at Ghazeepore and Buxar; and he dwelt on the pernicious effects of the example afforded by this timidity. About a week afterwards he induced them all to return. From time to time he applied to Dinapoor, Patna, and Calcutta, for a small detachment of troops to protect Arrah; but none could be afforded. He suspected some of the chieftains and zemindars near at hand, and more than suspected numerous disbanded sepoys who were seen in the district; to detect plots, he detained and opened letters at the post-office; but this course met with disapproval, as commencing a system liable to great abuse. There were two influential men in the neighbourhood—Baboo Koer Singh, and the Rajah of Doomraon—whose conduct Mr Wake scrutinised very closely; they professed friendship and loyalty to the government, but he doubted them. On the 11th of July, Arrah had become surrounded by so many disbanded sepoys, and natives ready for any mischief, that he applied to Patna for a party of Captain Rattray’s Sikh police, which was furnished to him.
Thus matters proceeded until the 25th of July, when rumours of something disastrous at Dinapoor arrived. Arrah was now about to become suddenly famous. The ‘Defence of Arrah’ was to be narrated in dispatches and letters, in pamphlets and books, and was to cheer up many who had been humiliated by blunders committed elsewhere. True, it was only a house defended, not a town; it was less than a score of Europeans saved, not a whole community; yet did it bring well-deserved praise to those concerned in it, and encouragement to a spirited line of conduct on the part of the Company’s civil servants elsewhere.
Mr Boyle’s house at Arrah, defended for seven days against 3000 rebels.
On the evening of the day just named, Mr Wake received express news that the native troops at Dinapoor had actually mutinied, or shewed symptoms of so doing within a few hours. On the morning of the 26th, he heard that some of the mutineers were crossing the river Sone, at a point sixteen miles from Dinapoor, and advancing upon Arrah. His Hindustani local police speedily ran away; but he and a trusty band of civilians resolved to remain at their posts. They selected the bungalow of one of their number, Mr Boyle, an engineer of the main trunk railway, and made that their fortress. Or, more correctly, it was a building which Mr Boyle had selected for some such purpose as this many days or even weeks before, when the state of affairs began to look gloomy; it was a detached two-storied house, about fifty feet square, standing within the same compound as the bungalow inhabited by Mr Boyle; he fortified it with stones and timber, and always kept some provisions in it. When the other civilians learned this, some of them smiled; but the smile became one of gratitude on the 26th of July. The Europeans who now took up their abode in this fortified house were Messrs Wake, Boyle, Littledale, Combe, Colvin, Halls, Field, Anderson, Godfrey, Cock, Tait, Hoyle, Delpeiron, De Songa, and Dacosta; and a Mohammedan deputy-collector, Syud Azimoodeen—all employed in various civil duties in or near Arrah: not a military man among them. With them were 50 Sikhs of Captain Rattray’s police battalion. The ladies and children had been sent away to a place of safety. All that the defenders could bring into the house was meat and grain for a few days’ short allowance for the Europeans, with a very scanty supply of food for the Sikhs. As to weapons, most of the Europeans, besides revolvers and hog-spears, had two double-barrelled guns each, or a gun and a rifle; they had abundance of ammunition, and wherewithal to make cartridges by thousands. Early in the morning of the 27th, nearly the whole of the Dinapoor mutineers marched into Arrah, released the prisoners in the jail, about four hundred in number, rushed to the collectorate, and looted the treasury of eighty thousand rupees. They then advanced to Boyle’s house, and kept up a galling fire against it during the whole day, finding shelter behind trees and adjacent buildings. And now did Baboo Koer Singh shew himself in his true colours; he threw off the mask of friendliness, and boldly headed the mutineers. It was afterwards ascertained that this man, supposed to be in league with Nena Sahib, had openly become a rebel instantly on hearing of the mutiny at Dinapoor: it was he who had procured the boats in which they crossed the Sone; and he formed a plan for joining the Oude insurgents after plundering the treasury of Arrah. When in front of Mr Boyle’s house, Koer Singh and his myrmidons endeavoured to bribe the Sikhs to desert; but these stanch fellows remained true to their salt. On the 28th the insurgents having brought two small cannon, the hastily defended house had then to bear a torrent of cannon-balls as well as of musket-bullets. Thus the siege continued day after day. The rebels even dragged one of the cannon up to the roof of Mr Boyle’s bungalow, about sixty yards off, whence they could fire into the defended house. ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Wake in his dispatch, ‘but the cowardice, ignorance, and want of unanimity of our enemies, prevented our fortification from being brought down about our ears.’ As fast as the strength of the attack was increased, so fast did the garrison increase their defences; to oppose a new battery, a new barricade was raised; to defeat a mine, a countermine was run out. The Sikhs worked untiringly, and seemed to glory in the gallant defence they were making. When provisions began to run low, they made a sally one night, and brought in four sheep—a precious treasure to them at such a time. Seven whole days and nights did this continue—three thousand men besieging seventy. On the last two days the cowards offered ‘terms,’ which were contemptuously rejected. On the 2d of August the mutineers marched off to the west of Arrah to fight Major Vincent Eyre; how they fared, we shall see presently; but the battle brought about the liberation of Mr Wake and his companions. Wonderful to relate, only one member of the garrison, a Sikh policeman, received a dangerous wound; all the rest escaped with mere bruises and scratches. The Sikhs were justly proud of their share in the work. During the siege, when water ran short, they dug a well underneath the house, and continued their labour till they came to a spring; when all was happily ended, they requested that the well might be built into a permanent one, as a memento of their services; and that the house itself should receive the inscription of ‘Futtehgurh’ or ‘stronghold of victory’—requests with which Mr Boyle was not at all unwilling to comply.