CHAPTER XXIII.
A SECOND YEAR OF REBELLION.

When, at the opening of 1858, the stirring events of the preceding year came to be passed in review, most men admitted that the progress of the Indian Revolt had outrun their expectations and falsified their hopes. Some had believed that the fall of Delhi would occur after a few days of besieging, bringing with it a pacification of the whole country. Some, allowing that this capture might very probably be retarded several weeks, did not the less look to a general pacification as a natural result. Others, relying on the heroic Havelock and the energetic Neill, prepared to date the termination of the rebellion from the expected capture of Lucknow. Others, recognising Sir Colin Campbell as ‘the right man in the right place,’ strengthened themselves in the belief that he would march at once from Calcutta to Cawnpore, and put down all the rebels before the summer was well over. Some believed that the sepoys, lamenting the ill success of their treachery to the British government, would return to their allegiance without inoculating other portions of the Indian community with the virus of lawlessness. Others had fondly hoped that, under the pressure of public opinion in England, such large numbers of fine troops would have been sent over in the summer and autumn, as would suffice to quell the mutiny even though the sepoys remained obstinate.

All these hopes were dashed. The gloomy prophets, on this occasion, were in the ascendant. The mutiny had spread to almost every native regiment in the Bengal army. It had been accompanied by an unexpected display of military organisation among the revolted sepoys. It had incited many ambitious chieftains to try their chance for an increase of power. It had been encouraged and extended by the long delay in the conquest of Delhi. It had further received a certain glow of triumph from the extraordinary events at Lucknow, which left the rebels perfect masters of the city at the end of the year. It had been permitted to grow to unwonted magnitude by the extreme slowness with which British troops arrived at Indian ports. Lastly, it had become surrounded by very un-English attributes, in the savage feeling of vengeance engendered in the minds of English officers and soldiers by the sepoy atrocities.

It is true that Englishmen had much to be proud of, in the achievements of their countrymen during the past year. They could point to the sagacity of Sir Henry Lawrence, in quietly fortifying and provisioning the Residency at Lucknow at a time when less acute observers saw no storm in the distance. They could admire, and wonder while they admired, the heroism with which Sir Hugh Wheeler and his companions had so long maintained a wretchedly weak position against a large army of mutineers headed by an arch-traitor. They could follow with delight the footsteps of Sir Henry Havelock, winning victory after victory over forces five or ten times as strong as his own. They could shew how, in a hot climate, Neill had advanced from the east and Nicholson from the west, fighting energetically against all obstacles, and dying like true soldiers at the head of their columns. They could ask the world whether a garrison was ever more nobly defended, under circumstances of trying difficulty, than the Residency under Inglis; and whether a garrison was ever brought away from the middle of a hostile city under more extraordinary conditions, and with more complete success, than was achieved in the ‘Exodus from Lucknow’ under Campbell, Outram, and Havelock. They could point to Sir John Lawrence for an example of what a civilian could do, maintaining a large and recently conquered country at peace by the energy of his own individual character, raising regiment after regiment of trustworthy native troops, and sending an army to reconquer Delhi before a single additional soldier could arrive from England. They could point to the exertions of numerous individuals, any one of whom would have been a hero if his heroism had not been eclipsed by that of men better known to fame.

These recollections afforded some consolation under the disappointment occasioned by the long continuance of the war waged by the mutineers. Yet were they far from being an adequate reward for the blood and treasure expended; the prevailing natural feeling was one of disappointment. Nor were theorists less at fault in their estimate of causes, than practical men in their expectation of results. Still was the question put, ‘What was the cause of the mutiny?’ And still were the answers as diverse as ever. From May to December the theories multiplied faster than the means of solving them. On the religious side, men banded themselves chiefly into two parties. One said that the native troops in India had revolted because we, as a nation, had tampered with their religion. We had nearly put down infanticide and suttee; we paid less respect than formerly to their idols and holy places; we had allowed pious officers to preach to the sepoys in their regiments, and missionaries to inveigh against brahmins and temples; and we so clumsily managed a new contrivance in the fabrication and use of cartridges, as to induce a suspicion in the native mind that a personal insult to their religious prejudices was intended. On the other hand, religious Christians contended that the revolt was a mark of God’s anger against the English nation. They urged that a people possessing the Bible ought long ago, by government as well as by individual efforts, to have distributed it throughout the length and breadth of India; that we ought to have encouraged churches and chapels, ministers and missionaries, Bible-classes and Scripture-readers; that we ought to have disregarded caste prejudices, and boldly proclaimed that Hindooism and Moslemism were worse than mockeries, and that no expectations of happiness in this life or the next were sound but such as rested on Biblical grounds—in short, that England had had a magnificent opportunity, and a deep obligation, to teach with all her power the way of salvation to two hundred million benighted beings; and that, failing this, the Revolt had been a consequent and deserved calamity. Another class of reasoners attributed the outbreak to the want of sympathy between the Europeans and the natives in the general relations of life. A young man was sent out to India by the Company, either as a writer in the civil service or as a cadet in the army; he learned the immediate duties of his office, studied just so much of the vernacular languages and customs as were absolutely needed, rose in the middle years of his life to higher offices and emoluments, and returned to end his days in England. He held the natives in contempt; he neither knew nor cared what passed in their inmost hearts; he treated India as a conquered country, held especially for the benefit of the Company’s servants. Hence, according to the view now under notice, the natives, having nothing for which to love and respect the British, were glad to avail themselves of any pretext to expel the foreign element from their land. Military men, acquainted with the Bombay and Madras armies, insisted that the mutiny had arisen from the organisation of that of Bengal; in which the Brahmin sepoys and Rajpoot sowars had been so pampered and petted, that they began to deem themselves masters instead of subjects, and to aim at a sort of military despotism on their own account. Other speculators, pointing to the fact that Mohammedans have in all ages been intensely fanatical, regarded the mutiny as only one among many indications of an attempt to revive the past glories of the Moguls, when the followers of Mahomet were the rulers in India. Others again, keeping clear of the larger questions of creed and race, attributed the troubles to the policy of annexation, which had been pursued to so extraordinary a degree in recent years. These reasoners urged that, whatever may have been the faults and follies of the King of Oude, five million natives unquestionably looked up to him as their sovereign, and felt their prejudices shocked and their alarm excited, when, in 1856, he was rudely hurled from his throne, and made a pensioner dependent on a company of merchants. Another class of theorists, impressed with a horror of taxation, pitied the poor Hindoos who had to pay so much to the Company for permission to live on the soil, so much for the salt monopoly, so much for other dues; and sought to find a reason for the mutiny in the desire to throw off these imposts. Commercial men, estimating nations and countries by a standard familiar to themselves, had long complained that the Company did not encourage independent commerce in India; and now they said: ‘If you had acted with English good sense, the revolt would never have occurred. Afford facilities for the construction of railways, canals, and docks; build ships and steamers; develop your mineral wealth in coal and iron; sell or let plots of land to men who will bring English experience and English machinery to bear on its cultivation; grow tea and coffee, sugar and cocoa, timber and fruits, cotton and flax, corn and pulse, on the soils favourable to the respective produce—do all this, or afford facilities for others to do it, and the natives of India will then have something more profitable to think of than mutiny and bloodshed.’

We point to these various theories for the purpose of remarking, that the controversies relating to them were as warmly conducted at the end of the year as when the news of the cartridge troubles first reached England. The higher the position, the more extensive the experience, of public men, the more chary were they in committing themselves to any special modes of explanation; it was by those who knew little, that the boldest assertions were hazarded. An opinion was gradually growing up among cautious reasoners, that the revolt must have been the composite resultant of many co-ordinate or coexistent causes, each of which contributed towards it in a particular way; but such reasoners would necessarily perceive that a true solution could only be arrived at when all the separate items were known, and properly estimated. Hence the authorities, both in England and in India, recommended and followed a plan that may thus be enunciated—first suppress the mutiny; then collect gradually evidence of its various predisposing causes; and, finally, make use of that evidence in remodelling the institutions of British India on a firmer basis. The Notes at the end of the last chapter shewed that the Company took the common-sense view, of inquiring into the probable causes of the mutiny before planning the reorganisation of Indian affairs. The candid acknowledgment by the Directors, that the voluminous documents hitherto produced had ‘entirely failed to satisfy their minds in regard to the immediate causes of the mutiny,’ was full of significance, and, it may be added, of caution to others.

So far as concerns the present Chronicle, the treatment will necessarily be affected by the character of the struggle. At the beginning of 1858, scarcely any symptoms of further mutiny were presented. The Bengal army was gone, scattered in anarchy; the armies of Bombay, Madras, and the Punjaub, were almost wholly sound; and the daily events consisted mainly of military operations against the revolted sepoy regiments of the Bengal army, and against such chieftains as had brought their retainers into the field for selfish purposes. Hence the narrative may march on more rapidly than before.

All the interest of the military operations in India, at the opening of the new year, grouped itself around the commander-in-chief. Slow as had been the arrival of British troops in India, during the months when Wheeler, Havelock, Neill, Outram, Inglis, Barnard, Wilson, and Nicholson were struggling against difficulties, the disembarkations were very numerous in November and December. When the old year gave place to the new, it was estimated that 23,000 British troops had landed at Calcutta since the troubles began, besides others put on shore at Bombay, Madras, and Kurachee.[[131]] They had advanced into the upper provinces, by those routes and modes which have so often been adverted to, and were placed under the brigadiers whom Sir Colin Campbell had appointed to conduct the various operations planned by him. We have first, therefore, to notice such of the proceedings of the commander-in-chief as took place during the month of January; turning attention afterwards to military proceedings in other quarters.

Sir Colin Campbell, as the last chapter shewed, rescued Cawnpore and General Windham from trouble at the close of November and the beginning of the following month. He did not move from the vicinity of that city till towards the end of December. Writing to Viscount Canning on this subject, on the 6th of January, he said: ‘I am informed by the civil authorities that my protracted stay at Cawnpore was of much benefit; and I am convinced that, apart from any immediate military object, it is necessary, for the re-establishment of authority, that the march of the troops should be deliberate. Time is thus afforded to the magistrates and special commissioners to visit rebellious towns and villages, and again display to the people in unmistakable manner the resolution of your lordship’s government to visit punishment on all those who during the last few months have set aside their allegiance.’ He at the same time glanced rapidly at the chief military operations which had marked the month of December in the Gangetic and Jumna regions—such as Outram’s defence at the Alum Bagh; Adrian Hope’s clean sweep of Nena Sahib’s property at Bithoor;[[132]] Walpole’s expedition to Etawah and Minpooree; Seaton’s energetic movements with a column from Delhi; and Windham’s expedition to Futtiah.