Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

At dawn on the morning of the sixth of June, Sir Hugh Wheeler received a letter, in which the Nana announced his intention of at once commencing the attack. Our officers were summoned within the intrenchment, where, for a fortnight past, the women and children had already been in sanctuary. The order was obeyed with soldier-like promptitude, intensified by the consciousness of imminent peril. It fared ill with those who had indulged in a fond anticipation that their next change of lodging would be to Allahabad and Calcutta. With no notice of quarter, or month, or week; with no valuation for fixtures, or inventory of furniture, they were called upon to shift to a residence held on short and uncertain tenure, and at a fearful rent. There was no time for packing, or even for selection. There was not leisure to snatch a parting cup of coffee, or a handful of cigars, or an armful of favourite books, or a pith-helmet that had been tested by many a long day's tiger-shooting under the blazing Indian sun. All possessions, however hardly earned and highly prized,—all dear memorials of home and love,—were to be alike abandoned to the coming foe. He who, in that close and burning night of the mid summer, had on his house-top courted a little air and sleep, might not stay to take anything out of his house. He who had been on some early service in the field might not return back to take his clothes. Few and happy were they who had secured a single change of raiment; and those who, in the hurry of the moment, had stayed to dress themselves from head to foot, were by comparison not unfortunate. Half-clad, unbreakfasted, confused, and breathless, our countrymen huddled like shipwrecked sea-farers into the precincts of the fatal earthwork, which they entered only to suffer, and left only to die.

For that fortification had been erected under evil auspices. As of Hiel the Bethelite, so it may be said of poor Sir Hugh, that he marked out the ground in his first-born, and set up the épaulement in the youngest of his household. A chief, whose military eye had not been dulled by age, would have discerned the rare capabilities for defence afforded by the magazine, which consisted of an immense walled inclosure, containing numerous buildings and an inexhaustible store of guns and ammunition. The position was watered, and at the same time protected in the rear, by the Ganges. The public offices and the treasury were in the immediate vicinity, so that the records and the money might have been placed in safety at the cost of a few hours' labour. The doors of the jail would have been commanded by our cannon, and at least one tributary to the flood of disorder pent within its bounds. The native government officials, who for the most part resided at Nawabgunge, might have remained in communication with the civil authorities within the fortress; and the garrison could have been readily supplied with provisions from the loyal villages in the neighbourhood, and, indeed, from the city itself; which, says our old friend Nanukchund, "was like a certain wife who used to act up to the wishes of her husband, because she feared him, and then could also protect herself; but, when her husband died, she found herself under other people's control, and lived in licence." He further observes that "the Sahibs did the reverse of wisdom. They made the intrenchment far out in the plain and outside the city, without reflecting that, in case of mutiny breaking out, it would be surrounded by the rebels on all four sides, who would be assisted by the artillery of the Magazine, and the Government treasure so temptingly thrown in their way. Thus, to illustrate the proverb, the Sahibs put a sword into the enemy's hand, and thrust their own heads forward."

Such was indeed the case. If the choice of the site for our place of refuge had been confided to Azimoolah and Teeka Sing, they could not have selected one more favourable for the attack. The Dragoon hospital stood in the centre of a vast open space, flat with the flatness of Bengal, on the south bank of the canal which separated the military quarter from the Native city, the bridge of boats, the civil station, and the magazine. The establishment consisted of two single-storied barracks surrounded by spacious verandahs; each intended to afford accommodation for a company of a hundred men. The building that was somewhat the larger of the two was thatched with straw, which circumstance alone rendered the position untenable. The other was roofed with concrete, a condition usually expressed by the word "pucka;" that ubiquitous adjective which is the essential ingredient of Anglo-Indian conversation. Both houses were constructed of thin brickwork, hardly proof against the rays of an Eastern sun, and far too frail to resist a twenty-four pound shot. The hospital was provided with a due modicum of cooking sheds and servants' huts; and in front of the thatched barrack was a well, protected by a slight parapet. By order of Sir Hugh these premises had been enclosed in a mud-wall of the shape of a rectangular parallelogram; four feet in height; three feet in thickness at the base; and twenty-four inches at the crest, which was therefore pervious to a bullet from an Enfield rifle. The batteries were constructed by the very simple expedient of leaving an aperture of a size proportioned to the number of the guns: so that our artillerymen served their pieces, as in the field, with their persons entirely exposed to the fire of the enemy.

Behind those slender bulwarks was gathered a mixed and feeble company, to the full sum of a thousand souls. Of these, four hundred and sixty-five were men, of every age and profession. Their wives and grown daughters were about two hundred and eighty in number, and their little ones at least as many. All who were able to bear arms, twenty score by count, were at once called together, and told off in batches under their respective officers. The north side of the intrenchment, facing the river, was strengthened by a poor little triangular outwork, which our garrison entitled "the Redan;" as if to cheer themselves, during their cruel and inglorious struggle, with a reminiscence of chivalrous European warfare. This important post was entrusted to Major Vibart, of the Second Cavalry, assisted by Captain Jenkins. At the north-eastern corner, Lieutenants Ashe and Sotheby superintended a battery of one twenty-four pounder howitzer and two nine-pounders. Captain Kempland had charge of the east curtain, while at the south-eastern angle stood three nine-pounder guns under the charge of Lieutenants Eckford, Burney, and Delafosse; of whom one was destined to show upon happier fields of battle how the soldiers of Cawnpore fought and bled. Next in order came the main-guard, held by Lieutenant Turnbull, and flanked by a tiny rifled piece carrying a three-pound ball, which was manned by a detachment under the orders of Major Prout. Towards the north, Lieutenants Dempster and Martin directed the working of three nine-pounders; and their next neighbour was Captain Whiting, who felt the Redan with his right, and thus closed the circuit of the defence. The general supervision of the artillery devolved upon Major Larkins; but that officer was incapacitated by illness from taking a very active part in the operations.

There was no time to be lost. While the commanders of the various posts were choosing their parties, and placing their sentries, and dispensing their share of the arms and ammunition, already the roar of great guns, and the clouds of black smoke rising fast and frequent in the north-west quarter, told them that the warning of the Nana was no empty menace. As when, during some great hurricane, such as of late passed o'er pale Calcutta, the tidal wave comes surging up the river, unlooked for and irresistible, leaving in its track desolation and ruin, the wrecks of ships and the corpses of men—so on that morning, over doomed Cawnpore, swept the returning flood of mutiny and misrule. At break of day the whole rebel array poured down the Delhi road in a compact body, with the Maharaja at their head, who had good reason to be proud of his following. It was a force which would have done credit to any Mahratta chief in the palmiest days of that redoubted race. There was an entire regiment of excellent cavalry, well mounted and equipped. There was a detachment of gunners and drivers from the Oude Artillery, who had been despatched as a loan from Lucknow to Cawnpore, just in time to enable them to take part in the revolt. There were the Nana's own myrmidons, who made up by attachment to his cause what they wanted in military skill. Lastly, there were three fine battalions of Bengal sepoys, led by experienced sepoy officers, armed with English muskets, and trained by English discipline. When the mutineers arrived at the outskirts of the station, Teeka Sing, the General, postponing his private gain and malice to the public good, repaired at once to the magazine, and spent the morning in securing a fleet of thirty boats which lay beneath the walls, laden with shot, shell, and heavy cannon. The guns in serviceable order he sent off towards the intrenchment on carriages drawn by Government bullocks; and those which were not in condition for immediate use, he compelled the artificers of the establishment to brush up on the Government lathes. But the main body of the insurgents displayed no such foresight or self-control. They kept close order no longer, but spread themselves out to the right and left, and, robbing, burning, and murdering as they went, bore southwards over the civil quarter and the native city. Sir George Parker and a party of his friends, who, inobservant of the coming storm, were lingering over their last breakfast in his pleasant villa, had barely time to fly for their lives. Four office-clerks, who lived together in a shop on the banks of the canal, after a valiant resistance, were smoked out of their lodging, and slain as they fled. The troopers of the Second Cavalry galloped up and down the lanes of the black town, hunting for Englishmen; and the low-caste Mahomedans of the bazaar—the sword-polishers, the cotton-spinners, and the dealers in silver ornaments—joined eagerly in the chase. One European was run down and worried to death in a garden. Another, a gentleman advanced in age, had concealed himself in a hut near the posting-house, in company with his wife, his little daughter, and his son, a boy of sixteen years. The wretched family were tracked to their hiding-place, arrested, and dragged before the Nana, who ordered them for instant execution; and they were happy at least in this, that they died together, and without delay. Proclamation was made that every building in which shelter had been given to Europeans, Eurasians, or Christians of any extraction, should first be plundered, and then razed to the ground. This announcement provided the rebels with a pretext for breaking open and ransacking the dwellings of many respectable natives. Buddree Nath, the commissariat contractor, who was accused of secreting Lady Wheeler and her daughters, lost the savings of a lifetime in the course of a single hour. The scum of the city made the most of their period of licence, and, when any portable property came in their way, took good care not to inquire very closely into the creed of the owner. Among others, the King of Oude is supposed to have suffered a heavy loss. Forty thousand rupees belonging to a Hindoo merchant were taken from a cart which stood in the premises of the post-office, and removed into the most blackguard districts of the neighbourhood. A gang of cavalry soldiers went down the Street of Silver, the main thoroughfare of the town, beating in the doors of the cloth-merchants and money-changers, insulting the trembling tradesmen, and carrying off all the valuables on which they could lay their hands. Meanwhile, those mutineers whose religious spite overcame their desire for lucre, were deriving intense enjoyment from the occupation of cannonading the church. Another large company of Brahmin sepoys, whose orthodox indignation took a more practical turn, and could not content itself with the somewhat tame pastime of persecuting senseless brick and plaster, marched off to the Mahomedan quarter; bombarded the residence of the Nunhey Nawab, the most influential Mussulman noble of the vicinity; blew open the gates; smashed the glass-ware and the porcelain; appropriated the contents of the wardrobe and the plate-chest; and told the master of the house to consider himself a prisoner. They then proceeded to take into custody other leading gentlemen of the same persuasion, and returned to the Nana loaded with spoil, and followed by a line of sedan-chairs containing the persons of their captives.

As the morning advanced, the reports of the musketry and the tumult of voices grew more and more distinct to the ears of our countrymen. Nearer and ever nearer rolled the flames of the blazing houses, and the white puffs which betokened the presence of artillery. At length, stung by a generous impatience, Lieutenant Ashe took out his guns to reconnoitre, accompanied by some five and twenty volunteers. The party had barely gone forward a quarter of a mile, when they caught sight of the rebel van, which had already passed the canal, and occupied in force the neighbourhood of the bridge. Our people returned faster than they went, and not all; for one, at least, Lieutenant Ashburner, was never again seen or heard of; and poor Mr. Murphy, of the East Indian Railway, brought back with him a wound, to which he succumbed before the day was out. He enjoyed the melancholy honour of being buried in a solitary coffin which had been found in a corner of the hospital; and shared with one other, a lady who died of fever, enviable in that she was the first, the privilege of being decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. There soon came to be scanty leisure for funeral rites. At ten o'clock the mutineers fired their first shot, from a nine-pounder gun, which they had brought down to the vacant lines of the First Infantry. The ball struck the crest of the mud wall, and glided over into the smaller barrack, where it broke the leg of an unhappy native footman, who breathed his last in the course of the afternoon. This terrible and unwonted visitor, the precursor of many, scared indoors a large assembly of ladies and children who were sitting and playing in and about the verandahs; and sent to their posts the fighting men, most of whom had now their earliest experience of the sensation produced by the whizzing rush of a round shot; an ominous sound, which, ere long, became familiar to them as the click of the billiard-ball to a marker, or the buzz of the tennis-ball to an habitué of Princes' Club.

And so the siege had begun. The first stroke had been played in that momentous contest, of which the stake was a thousand English lives; since nothing remained for our countrymen to protect save their bare existences and the empty shadow of the British rule. The first game had gone against us. The Nana had won the regiments; and the regiments had won their colours, their weapons, and their pay. Why needed they to grudge the losers their breath? Why, for a possession of no value, except to the owner, should they deliberately commence a hazardous and protracted match of double or quits? Power and authority, treasures and munitions, the sinews and the muscles of war, had alike passed over to the sepoys. What temptation was there to run the manifold public chances of battle, and incur the personal risk which none can avoid who bring angry Englishmen to bay, in order to destroy a handful of disheartened invalids and civilians; scarcely numerous enough to escort their women and children in safety to Allahabad through the perils of eddies, and quicksands, and bands of highwaymen recruited and emboldened in those months of general anarchy?

But it came to pass that their heart was hardened, and they would not let our people go. The ringleaders of the mutiny knew well that their position was one of utmost hazard. They had been too criminal to be forgiven, and too successful to be forgotten. Henceforward their aim was to implicate their comrades beyond the hope of pardon; to place between them and their former condition of life a gulf filled with English blood. And when the Nana exhorted his followers to slay and spare not, he spoke to willing ears; for between them and our countrymen there existed a degree of mutual distrust which could only end in mutual extermination. The minds of men were so agitated and disordered by anger and uneasiness, that the sole chance of life for either party lay in the utter destruction of the other. Already quarter was no longer given, and, indeed, could hardly be said to be worth the asking. A European knew that, if one set of Pandies entertained any qualms of compassion or gratitude, the next squad who came across him would infallibly cut his throat; and a sepoy knew that, if his captors took the trouble to drag him about in their train for a few days, the magistrate at the first station on the road would have him hung before the officer in command of the party had emerged from the bath-room. This was no generous rivalry of national vigour and skill and prowess. Little of military science was here, and less of military courtesy. With clenched teeth and bated breath, the Brahmin and the Saxon closed for the death-grapple; well aware that, when once their fingers were on each other's throats, one only of the combatants would ever rise from the trampled sand.

As soon as the Rubicon of insurrection had been passed; as soon as the gauntlet of sedition had been thrown; the first care of the mutineers was to get rid of all who had been the witnesses of their guilt, and who might hereafter be the judges. No sepoy felt secure of his neck and plunder as long as one solitary Englishman remained on Indian soil; for our revolted mercenaries shared to the full that strange mixture of veneration, bewilderment, aversion, and terror, with which our Eastern subjects still regard that extraordinary people who, in the course of a single decade, expanded from a handful of clerks and factors to a galaxy of warriors and proconsuls. It is hardly possible for a man brought up amidst European scenes and associations to realize the idea conceived of him and his countrymen by a thoroughbred Hindoo. On the one hand, the natives must acknowledge our vast superiority in the arts of war and rule. Our railways, and steamships, and Armstrong guns, are tangible facts which cannot be slighted. They must be perfectly alive to the knowledge that we have conquered them, and are governing them in a more systematic and downright manner than they have ever been governed before. But, on the other hand, many of our usages must appear in their eyes most debased and revolting. It is difficult to imagine the horror with which a punctilious and devout Brahmin cannot but regard a people who eat the flesh of cow and pig, and drink various sorts of strong liquors from morning till night. It is at least as hard for such a man to look up to us as his betters, morally and socially, as it would be for us to place among the most civilized nations of the world a population which was in the habit of dining on human flesh, and intoxicating itself daily with laudanum and salvolatile. The peculiar qualities which mark the Englishman are peculiarly distasteful to the Oriental, and are sure to be widely distorted when seen from his point of view. Our energy and earnestness appear oppressive and importunate to the languid, voluptuous aristocracy of the East. Our very honesty seems ostentatious and contemptible to the wily and tortuous Hindoo mind. That magnificent disregard of les convenances, which among Continental nations is held to be a distinguishing mark of our countrymen, is inexplicable and hateful to a race who consider external pomp and reticent solemnity to be the necessary accompaniments of rank, worth, and power. Add the mysterious awe by which we are shrouded in the eyes of the native population, which very generally attributes to magic our uniform success in everything we take in hand, and you will have some notion of the picture presented to the Brahmin imagination by an indefatigable, public-spirited, plain-spoken, beer-drinking, cigar-smoking, tiger-shooting, public servant. We should not be far wrong if we were content to allow that we are regarded by the natives of Hindostan as a species of quaint and somewhat objectionable demons, with a rare aptitude for fighting and administration; foul and degraded in our habits, though with reference to those habits not to be judged by the same standard as ordinary men; not altogether malevolent, but entirely wayward and unaccountable; a race of demi-devils, neither quite human, nor quite supernatural; not wholly bad, yet far from perfectly beneficent; who have been settled down in the country by the will of fate, and seem very much inclined to stay there by our own. With this impression on his mind the Bengal sepoy desired with a nervous and morbid anxiety to get quit of the Sahibs by fair means or foul. He did not care to expose us to unnecessary misery and humiliation; to torture our men, or to outrage our women. His sole object was to see the last of us: to get done with us for good and for ever. Ignorant beyond conception of European geography and statistics, he had convinced himself that, if once the Anglo-Indians of every sex and age were killed off, from the Governor General to the serjeant-major's baby, there did not exist the wherewithal to replace them. And therefore he said in his heart: "Come, and let us destroy them together. Let us cut them off from being a nation, that their name may be no more in remembrance." He conceived that Great Britain had been drained dry of men to recruit the garrison of our Asiatic empire; that our home population consisted of nurses and children, of invalids who had left the East for a while in quest of health, and veterans who had retired to live at ease on their share of the treasures of Hindostan. He fancied that the tidings of a general massacre of our people would render our island a home of helpless mourners: he found that those tidings changed it into a nest of reckless and pitiless avengers. He believed our power to be a chimera, and he discovered it to be a hydra. He learned too late that he had digged a pit for himself, and had fallen into the ditch which he had made; that his mischief and his violent dealings had come down upon his own head: that Englishmen were many, and that, when the occasion served, their feet too were not slow to shed blood: that our soldiers could kill within the year more heathen than our missionaries had converted in the course of a century: that our social science talk about the sacredness of human life, and our May Meeting talk concerning our duty towards those benighted souls for whom Christ died, meant that we were to forgive most of those who had never injured us, plunder none but such as were worth robbing, and seldom hang an innocent Hindoo if we could catch a guilty one: that the great principles of mercy and justice and charity must cease to be eternally true until the injured pride of a mighty nation had been satisfied, its wrath glutted, and its sway restored.