The earliest care of the Nana had been to set on foot a respectable municipal organization. With this object in view, he appointed to the chief magistracy in the city one Hoolass Sing, who may have been a traitor, but was, apparently, only a time-server. This person was chosen by the advice of a deputation composed of the leading townsmen; a tent-maker, a jeweller, and a dealer in opiates. Hoolass Sing had no sinecure. It was only by the exercise of judicious firmness, alternating with seasonable pliability, that he contrived to protect Cawnpore from the rapacity of the soldiery, and the wrath of those rural nobles whose paternal acres had been sold by the English Government to recover arrears of land-tax, and purchased by moneyed cits, who wished to cut a figure in country society. The duty of victualling the troops was committed to a blind gentleman of the name of Moolla, who, doubtless, saw quite well enough to water the rice and omit to sift the meal. A burlesque judicial court was formed of Azimoolah, Jwala, Pershad, and other creatures of the Maharaja; and presided over by Baba Bliut, who delivered his decisions seated on a billiard-table in Mr. Duncan's hotel. This tribunal passed a variety of sentences without establishing any very valuable precedent. Once, in an unaccountable fit of morality, it sentenced a luckless rogue to lose his hand for theft; but, for obvious and selfish reasons, the judges appear to have refrained from again taking cognizance of this crime. A Mahomedan butcher was condemned to mutilation for having killed a cow; and certain individuals were paraded through the town on donkeys, "for disreputable livelihood:" a punishment which, when the charge was made known, must have excited very general sympathy and indignation. Gradually this body, like the Committee of Public Safety in the French Revolution, assumed to itself a supervision over every department of the administration. When the powder ran short, the principal dealer in saltpetre was thrown into prison, until he produced the requisite quantity of that article. A native merchant was required to provide cloaks for half a battalion, at the rate of two and threepence a-piece; a scale of payment which must have inspired him with an unaffected regret for the liberal contracts of the old Company. With a keener relish, Baba Bhut undertook to account for the Englishmen who still lurked about, watching for an opportunity of slipping away to Allahabad or Agra. On the eleventh of June, Mr. Williams, a writer in one of the public offices, was traced out and slaughtered. Two days subsequently, the head of young Mr. Duncan was brought into his own father's house. The murderer was rewarded with the present of a pound, and the porter got a couple of rupees.
At the expiration of a fortnight, an event occurred which, for a while, afforded to the beseiged people a more suggestive and agreeable matter of conversation than the rise of the mercury in the tube, and the sinking of the flour in the barrels. A native water-carrier skulked over from the opposite lines, and gave out that, on account of his love and respect for the Sahibs, he had set his heart upon being the first to bring them the good news; that there were two companies of white soldiers on the other side of the Ganges, who were supposed to have marched down from Lucknow; that they had guns with them, and were making as if they would cross the river on the morrow; that the rebel camp was in a panic, and that everybody was saying how much he had all along intended to do for the Sahibs, had he only dared. Next day he turned up again with the intelligence that the Europeans had been detained on the opposite bank by an unexpected flood, but that they were busily engaged in knocking together rafts, and might be looked for within the forty-eight hours. Those hours passed, and twice and thrice those hours, and there came not the aspect of help, nor the renewal of confidence, nor the welcome sight of light faces, nor the welcome sound of approaching artillery. The soi-disant water-carrier made no third appearance. His two first visits had taught him all that Azimoolah desired to know of our impoverished and defenceless plight.
Our spies were less lucky; or it may be that the sturdy and straightforward British nature cannot promptly adapt itself to those frauds which are proverbially fair in war. There was in the garrison a soldier named Blenman, an Eurasian by birth, astute, and singularly courageous, but in temper uncertain, and impatient of control. There, and at that time, such a man was worth his weight in meal or powder, and his superiors did well to humour him. Cool, observant, and bold to temerity, the most delicate and hazardous of services had for him an innate attraction. After trying his wings in some partial flights, he prepared for a great and final enterprise, and volunteered to penetrate as far as Allahabad with a report of our calamities, and an appeal for instant succour. He disguised himself as a native cook, an easy task, for his complexion showed that he had far more than the due share of maternal blood; and sallied forth with a pistol and fifteen rupees stuffed into his cotton drawers. He passed unnoticed or unsuspected no less than seven horse pickets. The eighth stopped, and searched him, in spite of his asseverations that he was a poor leather-dresser, taking a walk through the night air, after working all day in a close alley over the saddles and holsters of the gentlemen troopers of the Second Cavalry. Too plausible to be killed off-hand, and too questionable to be neglected, he was stripped and sent back whence he came, with no other information than that the investment of our position was even more strict and complete than had been apprehended.
A half-caste government official offered to make an attempt to obtain intelligence, and to bribe over some of the influential citizens of Cawnpore, on condition that Sir Hugh would permit his family to leave the intrenchment. His terms were accepted. He set forth, but was at once detected, and taken before the Maharaja, who sentenced him to three years' imprisonment with hard labour; a unique example of leniency, curious, as proving how firmly that usurper was persuaded that his rule would now be permanent. Ghouse Mahomed, a faithful sepoy of the Fifty-sixth, succeeded in getting farther than his predecessors. He crept along the ground in the darkness, until he met two or three men with four yoke of oxen taking supplies to the Savada house. He told them that he was going to the city to buy some grave clothes for his brother, a brave who had died that day for the good cause in one of the advanced batteries. He was allowed to proceed upon his pious errand; but, when he reached the native town, it was as much as he could do to conceal himself from the inquisition of the rebel police. Many emissaries were despatched from our fortification, but Blenman alone returned. The others, through the months subsequent to our re-occupation of the district, came straggling in, as they could effect their escape from the camp of the fugitive Nana, with noses slit, and hands or ears chopped off by an ignorant and inhuman operator.
The remaining contents of the Cawnpore budget derive their principal interest from a consideration of the circumstances under which they were produced. Not even at such a season would Englishmen put their deeper feelings within an envelope; and the gossip of the station in that June was hardly calculated to enliven a correspondence. On the night of Sunday, the twenty-first, Major Vibart transmitted these lines to Lucknow:—
"We have been cannonaded for six hours a day by twelve guns. This evening, in three hours, upwards of thirty shells [mortars] were thrown into the intrenchment. This has occurred daily for the last eight days. An idea may be formed of our casualties, and how little protection the barracks afford to the women. Any aid, to be effective, must be immediate. In event of rain falling, our position would be untenable.
"According to telegraphic despatches received previous to the outbreak, a thousand Europeans were to have been here on the fourteenth instant. This force may be on its way up. Any assistance you can send might co-operate with it. Nine-pounder ammunition, chiefly cartridges, is required. Should the above force arrive, we can, in return, insure the safety of Lucknow. Being simply a military man, General Wheeler has no power to offer bribes in land and money to the insurgents, nor any means whatever of communicating with them. You can ascertain the best means of crossing the river. Nujuffgurh Ghaut is suggested. It is earnestly requested that whatever is done may be effected without a moment's delay. We have lost about a third of our original number. The enemy are strongest in artillery. They appear not to have more than four hundred or five hundred infantry. They move their guns with difficulty, by means of unbroken bullocks. The infantry are great cowards, and easily repulsed.
"By order,
"G. V. Vibart, Major."
In the following letter there is one sad touch: the widower writing over his elbow "on the floor," "in the midst of the greatest dirt, noise, and confusion."
"I was agreeably surprised to receive your most welcome letter of the twenty-first, the messenger of which managed cleverly to find his way here; but that surprise was exceeded by the astonishment felt by us all, at the total want of knowledge you seem to be in regarding our position and prospects; while we have been, since the sixth of the month, equally in the dark respecting the doings of the world around us. Your loss at Lucknow is frightful, in common with that of us all; for, since the date referred to, every one here has been reduced to ruin. On that date they commenced their attack, and fearfully have they continued now for eighteen days and nights; while the condition of misery experienced by all is utterly beyond description in this place. Death and mutilation, in all their forms of horror, have been daily before us. The numerical amount of casualties has been frightful, caused both by sickness and the implements of war, the latter having been fully employed against our devoted garrison by the villainous insurgents, who have, unluckily, been enabled to furnish themselves therewith from the repository which contained them. We await the arrival of succour with the most anxious expectation, after all our endurance and sufferings; for that, Sir Henry Lawrence has been applied to by Sir Hugh, and we hope earnestly it will be afforded, and that immediately, to avert further evil. If he will answer that appeal with 'deux cents soldats Britanniques,' we shall be doubtless at once enabled to improve our position in a vital manner: and we deserve that the appeal should be so answered forthwith. You will be grieved to learn that among our casualties from sickness my poor dear wife and infant have been numbered. The former sank on the twelfth, and the latter on the nineteenth. I am writing this on the floor, and in the midst of the greatest dirt, noise, and confusion. Pray urge our reinforcement to the Chief Commissioner.