Another regiment, the 34th B. N. I., adopted nearly the same course as the 70th. The larger portion of this regiment, it will be remembered, was at Barrackpore at the time of the cartridge troubles; but the rest was at Chittagong. The sepoys in this last-named detachment came forward with a very pointed declaration of their loyalty. Captain Dewaal, in command of that detachment, assembled his men one day towards the end of April, and told them how shamefully their companions had acted at Barrackpore, and how much disgrace had thereby been brought upon the regiment. Two days afterwards, an address or petition was presented to him, signed by the subadars and havildars in the names of all; in which regret was expressed for the conduct of the mutineers at Barrackpore. ‘By a careful performance,’ the petitioners said, ‘of our duties, we have gained a reputation for fidelity to government. These men have deprived us of it. We well know that the government will not interfere with our religion. We hope that the government will consider us as faithful as ever; and we pray that this petition may be sent to the governor-general, in order that his lordship may know the state of our feelings.’ Three or four weeks later, when this remnant of the regiment had been removed to Barrackpore, the men made another profession of their loyalty. In a petition to their commander, they said: ‘Some evil-disposed men of the regiment have deprived us of the reputation for loyalty which we have ever held. They have received the fruits of their misconduct by being disbanded. We that remain are willing to serve against the mutineers at Delhi, and are anxious to recover our lost name. We pray that the government will ever regard us as faithful soldiers.’
Two further examples of a similar kind were presented, one by the 43d and another by the 63d regiments B. N. I. About the end of May, the commandant of the first of these two regiments at Barrackpore, received a petition signed by the native commissioned officers, praying that the regiment might be allowed to proceed against the mutineers at Delhi—a wish that had been previously expressed to him on parade. Nearly at the same time Captain Pester, commanding the 63d at Berhampore, received a petition signed by the whole of the native officers on parade, intended to be forwarded to the governor-general; and, this petition being afterwards read in the native language to the whole regiment, the sepoys unanimously expressed their concurrence in the sentiments it conveyed. The petitioners said: ‘We have this day heard on parade the order issued by your lordship consequent on the petition forwarded by the native officers and sepoys of the 70th regiment of native infantry. On hearing the same, we were greatly rejoiced; for, in truth, all the men of that regiment have behaved as becomes loyal and faithful soldiers, and your lordship has in every way been pleased with them. Now do we also all petition that we may be numbered among the good and trustworthy soldiers of the state, as we have always been; and we are prepared and ready, with heart and hand, to go wherever, and against whomsoever you may please to send us, should it even be against our own kinsmen.’
The governor-general could do no other than receive these demonstrations. Whether he acceded to the request for permission to ‘march against the mutineers,’ depended necessarily on the military arrangements of the time; whether he fully believed the protestations, may perhaps be doubted, although no disbelief was expressed.
Happily for Bengal, it was affected by few of the disturbances that agitated the more western provinces. Consulting a map, we shall see that the banks of the Hoogly and the Lower Ganges are thickly studded with towns; and it may here at once be stated, that the peaceful industry of these towns was very little interrupted during the month of May. Tracing upwards from Calcutta, we meet with Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Serampore, the first two of which experienced a lull after the storm. Serampore was once the Alsatia of Calcutta, a place of refuge for schemers, insolvent debtors, and reckless adventurers; but the Company bought it from the Danish government, to which it had belonged, and the Baptist missionaries helped to civilise it; it is now a clean cheerful town, with a large paper-manufactory. Higher up is the once flourishing but now decayed town of Chandernagore, one of the few places in India still belonging to the French. Near this is Chinsura, held by the Dutch until 1825, but now a flourishing settlement belonging to the Company, provided with an extensive military depôt for Europeans, with a magnificent hospital and barracks. Then we come to Hoogly, a town bearing the same name as the river on whose banks it stands: a busy place, with many civil and educational establishments. Further north is Plassy, the place near which Clive fought the great battle that virtually gave India to the British. Beyond this is Berhampore, which, very refractory in March and April, had become tractable and obedient in May. Next we meet with Moorshedabad and its suburb Cossimbazar. Once the capital of Bengal when a Mohammedan dominion, Moorshedabad contained a splendid palace belonging to the nawab; but though no longer possessed of this kind of greatness, the city is commercially very important, as standing on the great highway, or rather water-way, from Calcutta to the northwest. All the places above named are situated either on the Hoogly or on the Bhagruttee, those two rivers combining to form the most convenient outlet from the Ganges to the sea.
The Ganges itself, too—the majestic, far-famed, sacred Ganges—was little disturbed by commotions in May throughout the lower part of its course. Rajmahal, Bhagulpore, Curruckpore, Monghir, Behar, Futwah, Patna, Hajeepoor, Dinapoor, Chupra, Arrah, Bishunpore, Buxar, Ghazeepore—all lie on or near the Ganges between the Hoogly and Benares. Some of these places are centres of commerce for the opium-trade; some are busy with the trading in rice grown in neighbouring districts; others are shipping-places for corn and other agricultural produce; while all regard the Ganges as an invaluable channel, affording intercourse with the rich districts of the west, and with the great focus of authority and trade at Calcutta. Such of these towns as were involved in trouble in later months of the year, will be noticed in the proper chapters; of the others, this narrative is not called upon to treat. One fact, however, may be mentioned in connection with Dinapoor. So early in the year as the middle of February, the Calcutta authorities wrote to the commander at that town, apprising him that a messenger was known to have been sent to the native regiment at Dinapoor, from some men of the 2d Bengal grenadiers, inciting them to mutiny. Major-general Lloyd promised to look out sharply for the messenger, but candidly expressed a doubt whether the astute native would suffer himself to be caught.
Benares may conveniently be described at once; for, whether disturbed or not by mutineers, it is so remarkably situated as to lie in the line of route of all commerce, all aggression, all military movement, between Calcutta and the upper provinces, whether by road, by rail, or by water. Regarded in this light, its possession and security are, and were in an especial degree during the mutiny, objects of the highest importance. This renowned city stands on the left bank of the Ganges, about four hundred and twenty miles by road from Calcutta, and seventy-four from Allahabad. The magnificent river, half a mile wide in the rainy season, forms a kind of semicircular bay in front of the city, which has thus three miles of river-frontage. Among the chief characteristics of Benares are the ghats or flights of fine broad freestone steps, giving access to the river: mostly very solid in construction, and in some cases highly decorated. So numerous are they, that they extend almost in a continuous line along the river’s banks, interrupted here and there by temples. ‘Upon these ghats,’ says a lively traveller, ‘are passed the busiest and happiest hours of every Hindoo’s day: bathing, dressing, praying, preaching, lounging, gossiping, or sleeping, there will be found. Escaping from the dirty, unwholesome, and confined streets, it is a luxury for him to sit upon the open steps and taste the fresh air of the river; so that on the ghats are concentrated the pastimes of the idler, the duties of the devout, and much of the necessary intercourse of business.’ Artists in India have delighted to portray the beauty and animation of this scene; but they cannot, if they would, reveal the hideous accompaniments—the fakeers and ascetics of revolting appearance, ‘offering every conceivable deformity which chalk, cow-dung, disease, matted locks, distorted limbs, and repulsive attitudes of penance, can shew.’
Benares, beyond any other place in India, perhaps, is studded with religious structures. Thirty years ago the Moslem mosques were more than three hundred in number, while the Hindoo temples exceeded a thousand. The pinnacles of the Hindoo pagodas combine to give a very picturesque appearance to the city, viewed from a distance. Large as the number is, the Benares temples, as has been sarcastically observed, are not too many, for religion is ‘the staple article of commerce, through which the holy city flourishes and is enriched.’ The Mohammedan mosques, mostly situated in the northeast quarter of the city, are generally elegant little edifices crowned by small slender minarets, each standing in a garden planted with tamarinds. Most of them have been constructed on the sites, and with the materials, of demolished Hindoo temples. By far the grandest is the great mosque of Aurungzebe, built by that emperor on the site of a temple of Vishnu, which he destroyed to signalise the triumph of Islamism over Brahminism. It rises from the platform above the Madhoray Ghat. The minars or minarets, admired for their simplicity and boldness, taper from eight feet in diameter at the bottom to seven at the top; and though so slender, they are carried up to a height of a hundred and fifty feet, and have each an interior staircase from bottom to top. The streets of Benares have the usual oriental character of narrowness, crookedness, and dirtiness; they are mere alleys, indeed, that will admit no wheel-carriages; nor can beasts of burden pass without sorely disturbing pedestrians. The houses are more lofty than in most Indian cities, generally from three to six stories high; and as the upper stories usually project beyond the lower, the narrow street is almost closed in above: nay, in some cases, the inmates of one house can walk over to the opposite tenement through the upper windows. The houses are, in the better streets, built of stone, small-windowed and gaily painted. During the hot season the citizens are much accustomed to sleep in screened enclosures on the roof, open to the sky above, and to the night-breezes around. There are somewhat under two hundred thousand inhabitants, who live in about thirty thousand houses.
Ghat on the Ganges.
Benares is a religious, not a military city. The district around was at a very remote period the seat of an independent Hindoo state, founded, according to native tradition, twelve hundred years before the Christian era. It subsequently formed part of the dominions of the Rajpoot sovereigns. Then began the Mussulman rule, and Benares became a dependent province under the Moguls. The nawab-viziers of Oude, when the Mogul power was declining, seized Benares; and during some of the political jugglery of the year 1775, the territory was transferred to the East India Company, by whom it has ever since been held. But under whatever dynasty it has been placed, Benares has from remote ages been known as the sacred city of the Hindoos, where all that is remarkable, all that is abominable, in Brahminism, flourishes. It has been described as the Jerusalem of Hindostan—swarming with religious teachers, devotees, mendicants, and sacred bulls. To wash in the Ganges in front of Benares, to die in that city, are precious privileges to the Hindoo. Some writers have given the inhabitants a bad character in what concerns loyalty to their present British rulers. ‘Benares is one of the most unsafe and rebellious cities in Hindostan. It once successfully opposed a house-tax imposed on the people by the British government. There was also recently a strong commotion when the magistrate attempted to equalise the weights and measures. To shew the hostility of the Hindoos of Benares to the English, it may be mentioned that when we lay before Bhurtpore in 1826, no less than thirty thousand sabres were sharpened at the cutlers’ in expectation of our repulse.’ If this statement be well founded, it does indeed denote a perilous state of feeling at the time in question.