Throughout the extent of the Upper Doab, the British officers found much difficulty in maintaining a fair stand against the rebels. Not that there were large bodies of trained sepoys in the field, as in the regions just described, and in Central India; but there were numerous chieftains, each at the head of a small band of followers, ready to harass any spot not protected by English troops. Brigadier Penny, in command of a field-force organised at Delhi, was watching the district between that city and the Ganges—ready to put down insurgents wherever he could encounter them, and hoping to assist the commander-in-chief in Rohilcund. Another column, under Brigadier Seaton, controlled the region around Futteghur before Sir Colin reached that place; and he, like Penny, Jones, Walpole, Hope Grant, Lugard, and all the other commanders of sections of the army, found an active watchfulness of the enemy necessary. One among Seaton’s engagements in the month of April may be briefly noticed. On the 6th, when evening had darkened into night, he marched from Futteghur to attack a body of rebels concerning whom he had received information. He took with him about 1400 men—comprising 600 of H.M. 82d under Colonel Hall, 400 Sikhs under Captain Stafford, 150 cavalry under Lieutenant St John, and 200 of the Futteghur mounted-police battalion under Lieutenant de Kantzow—together with five guns under Major Smith. After marching all night, Seaton came up with the enemy at seven in the morning, at a place called Kankur. The enemy’s force was very large, though not well organised, and included nearly a thousand troopers well mounted and armed. After an artillery-fire on both sides, and a sharp fire from Enfield rifles, the 82d rushed forward, entered the village, and worked terrible execution. The rebels fled, abandoning their camp, ammunition, and stores; together with papers and correspondence which threw light on some of the hitherto obscure proceedings of the mutineers. The rebel Rajah of Minpooree was the chief leader of the insurgents, and with him were Ismael Khan and Mohson Ali Khan.
The Minpooree district was much troubled by this rebellious rajah; but as Futteghur on the one side, and Agra on the other, were now in English hands, the rebels were more readily kept in subjection. Agra itself was safe, and so was the main line of road thence through Muttra to Delhi.
One of the few pleasant scenes of the month, at Delhi, was the awarding of honour and profit to a native who had befriended Europeans in the hour of greatest need. Ten months before, when mutiny was still new and terrible, the native troops at Bhurtpore rose in revolt, and compelled the Europeans in the neighbourhood to flee for their lives. The poor fugitives, thirty-two in number—chiefly women and children—roamed from place to place, uncertain where they might sleep in peace. On one day they arrived at the village of Mahonah. Here they met with one Hidayut Ali, a ressaldar (troop-captain), of a regiment of irregular cavalry which had mutinied at Mozuffernugger; he was on furlough or leave of absence at his native village, and did not join his mutinous companions. He received the fugitives with kindness and courtesy, fed them liberally, gave them a comfortable house, renewed their toil-worn garments, posted village sentries to give notice of the approach of any mutineers, disregarded a rebuke sent to him by the insurgents at Delhi, formed the villagers into an escort, and finally placed the thirty-two fugitives in a position which enabled them safely to reach Agra. This noble conduct was not forgotten. In April the commissioner held a grand durbar at Delhi, made a complimentary speech to Hidayut Ali, presented him with a sword valued at a thousand rupees, and announced that the government intended to bestow upon him the jaghire or revenues of his native village.
Good-fortune continued to mark the wide and important region of the Punjaub, in the absence of any of those great assemblages of rebels which so distracted the provinces further to the southeast. Nevertheless Sir John Lawrence found a demand on him for unceasing watchfulness. The longer the struggle continued in Hindostan and Central India, the more danger was there that the Punjaubees, imbibing an idea that the British were weak, would encourage a hope of regaining national independence. There was also a grave question involved in the constitution of the native army. When the troubles began in the month of May, and when Canning was beset with so many difficulties in his attempt to send up troops from Calcutta, John Lawrence came to the rescue in a manner deserving the lasting gratitude of all concerned in the maintenance of British rule in India. He felt a trusty reliance that the inhabitants of the Punjaub, governed as he (aided by Montgomery, Cotton, Edwardes, and other energetic men) had governed them, would remain faithful, and would be willing to accept active service as soldiers in British pay. His trust was well founded. He sent to Delhi those troops, without which the conquest of the city could not have been effected; and he continued to raise regiment after regiment of Sikhs and Punjaubees—equipping, drilling, and paying a number so large as to constitute in itself a powerful army. But there would necessarily be a limit to this process. The Sikhs were faithful so far; but what if they should begin to feel their power, and turn to a national object the arms which had been given to them to fight in the British cause? Not many years had elapsed since they had fought fiercely at Moultan and Lahore, Sobraon and Chillianwalla, Moodkee and Ferozshah, against those very English whom they were now defending; and it was at least possible, if not probable, that dreams of reconquest might occupy their thoughts. Sir John Lawrence brought to an end his further raising of regiments; and there can be little doubt that the governor-general and the commander-in-chief appreciated the motives by which he had been influenced. In political affairs the Punjaub was very active; for not only did Lawrence become chief authority over a larger region than before, but many of his assistants were taken away from him. When Sir James Outram went to Calcutta as a member of the supreme council, Mr Montgomery was appointed chief-commissioner of Oude, and took with him many of the most experienced civilians from Lahore to Lucknow. This necessitated great changes in the personnel of the Punjaub civil service, the commissionerships and sub-commissionerships of districts, &c.
Peshawur, the most remote portion of Northwest India, was throughout the period of the Revolt more troubled by marauding mountaineers than by revolted sepoys. Very few Hindoos inhabited that region; the population was mostly Mussulman, especially among the hills; and these followers of Islam had but little sympathy with those in Hindostan Proper. The disturbances, such as they were, were of local character. In April, it became necessary to visit with some severity certain tribes which throughout the winter had been engaged in rebellion and rapine. General Cotton and Colonel Edwardes, two of the most trusted officers in the Indian army, collected a column at Nowsherah for service against the hill-men; and at the close of the month there were nearly four thousand men in rendezvous, ready for service. It comprised detachments of H.M. 81st and 98th foot; of the 8th, 9th, and 18th Punjaub infantry; of other native infantry; of the 7th and 18th irregular cavalry; of the Guide cavalry; and of various artillery and engineer corps. On the 28th of the month, Cotton was at a place among the hills called Mungultana, a stronghold of some of the frontier fanatics. The place was easily taken, and the insurgents dispersed; as they were at Jelemkhana, Sitana, and other places, soon afterwards; but it was hard work for the troops, over very bad roadless tracks in hot weather.
Fort of Peshawur.
It was a strange but hopeful sign that, amid all the sanguinary proceedings in India—the ruthless barbarities of some among the sepoys and rebels, and the military retributions wrought by the British—amid all this, the peaceful, civilising agency of railways was steadily though slowly advancing. A recent chapter shewed that the grand trunk-railway was extended into the Doab, the very hot-bed of insurrection, during the month of March: the engineers, mechanics, and labourers having been accustomed to resume their operations as soon as the insurgents were driven away from any spot where the works were in progress. In the Madras and Bombay presidencies, little affected by rebellion, various railways were gradually advancing; and now, in the month of April, the province of Sinde was to have its heyday of railway rejoicing. In an earlier portion of the volume,[[169]] a brief account was given of the schemes, present and prospective, for supplying India with railways. Among those was one for a line, 120 miles in length, from Kurachee to Hydrabad in Sinde: expected, if no difficulties intervened, to be finished towards the close of 1859. This was to be one link in a vast and extensive chain, if the hopes of its projectors were ever realised. Kurachee is not at the mouth of the Indus; but it has an excellent harbour, in which large merchantmen can cast anchor; and engineers were enabled to shew that a little over one hundred miles of railway would connect this port with the Indus at a point above the delta of that river, and just where Hydrabad, the chief city of Sinde, is situated. Such a railway would, in fact, bear a remarkably close analogy to that in Egypt, from Alexandria to Cairo—each connecting a seaport with a capital, and avoiding delta navigation much impeded by shallows and shifting sands. From Hydrabad there are 570 miles of Indus available for river-steaming up to Moultan, in the Punjaub. From that city a railway would be planned through Lahore to Umritsir, where a junction would be formed with the grand trunk-line, and thus Kurachee connected with Calcutta by rapid means of travel—a great scheme, worthy of the age and the country. It could, however, only have small beginnings. On the 29th of April, the first sod of the ‘Sinde Railway’ was turned at Kurachee. It would be well if all rejoicings were based on such rational grounds as those which marked that day in the young Alexandria of Western India. Mr Frere, commissioner of Sinde, presided over the ceremonies. All was gaiety. The 51st regiment lent its aid in military pomp; and all the notabilities of the place—political, military, naval, clerical, commercial, and engineering—were gathered together. And not only so; but the lookers-on comprised many of those who well marvelled what a railway could be, and how a carriage could move without visible means of draught or propulsion—Parsees, Hindoos, Beloochees, Sindians, Afghans, Punjaubees—all were there, with their picturesque garments, and their little less picturesque native vehicles. How the officiating dignitary turned the sod and wheeled the barrow; how the band played and the people cheered; how the chief personages celebrated the event by a dinner; how, at that dinner, a triumphant specimen of confectionary was displayed, comprising sweetmeat Kurachees, Calcuttas, rivers, mosques, ghats, temples, wheelbarrows, pick-axes, rails, locomotives, bridges, tunnels—need not be told: they belong to one remarkable aspect of modern European and American society, which becomes doubly interesting when exhibited among the less active, more sensuous orientals.
We now turn to that stormy, unsettled region southwest of the Jumna, comprising Bundelcund, Central India, and Rajpootana.
Probably no commander had a series of more uninterrupted successes during the wars of the mutiny than Sir Hugh Rose. Looking neither to Calcutta nor to the Punjaub, for aid, but relying on the resources of the Bombay presidency, he gradually accumulated a force for service in Central India which defeated the rebels wherever they were met with. We have seen that, in January, Sir Hugh was busily engaged in defeating and dispersing rebels at Ratgurh, and in various parts of the district between Bhopal and Saugor. We find him in February relieving the British garrison which had for so many months been shut up within the fort of the last-named city, and then clearing a vast range of country in the direction of Jhansi. Lastly, we have seen how, after subduing a district in which rebellious Mahrattas were very numerous, he approached nearer and nearer to Jhansi during the early weeks of March; that he arrived within a short distance of that city on the 21st of that month, with the second brigade of the Central India field-force; that the rebels fortified the walls of the town, and shut themselves up within the town and fort; that the mutinied sepoys and rebel Bundelas in the place were computed at eleven or twelve thousand; that the Ranee of Jhansi had left her palace to seek greater safety in the fort; that Rose’s first brigade joined him on the 25th; and that he then commenced the siege in a determined manner. From this point, the narrative of Sir Hugh’s operations may be carried into the following month.