Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

Thomson and Delafosse had enough on their hands already, and could do little or nothing towards a rescue. On gaining the shore they drove the foe in style over a considerable space; but were imperceptibly surrounded in flank and rear by fresh swarms of rebels. Then they faced about, and cut their way back to the place whence they started, bleeding, but undiminished in number. They recognised the spot, but the boat was gone, and so the little troop, reduced henceforward to travel afoot, followed the course of the stream; partly on the slender chance of catching up their lost companions; partly from an instinctive feeling which drew them in the direction of Allahabad, as the wounded rabbit makes for its burrow, or the winged partridge scurries to the nearest hedge. With an interval of twenty paces between man and man, to lessen the hazard of the hostile musketry, they retreated step by step, loading and firing as best they might upon the horde of pursuers, who pressed nearer and ever nearer. Shoeless on rugged ground, bareheaded beneath the burning sun, they fought over three weary miles of alternate rock and sand, until all but one got safe into a little temple, or "Sammy-house," as it is called in the jargon spoken by the British private in India; a jargon which he himself denominates "Moors." This rustic shrine, situated about a hundred yards from the river-brink, was just large enough to contain the thirteen as they stood erect. The mob of natives charged helter-skelter at the doorway, which was raised three feet above the surrounding earth; but there was no room for any of them inside, and they presently retired to a distance, except the eight or ten who had managed to squeeze themselves to the front. Clio cannot repress a smile as she records that among those who learned by experience that the rust of the rainy season had not yet blunted the British bayonets was a brother of Baboo Ram Bux; the inhospitable chieftain who knew no reverence for suppliants who had sought sanctuary in the precincts of his local gods, and who now sent an express to the Nana to the effect that the Nazarenes were still invincible.

Our countrymen after this enjoyed a short respite, during which they shared a pint or two of putrid water which had collected at the bottom of a hole in the stone altar. Unfortunately the piety of the neighbourhood had of late failed to contribute any oblations of fruit or cakes, which would certainly not have been respected by the famished Christians. But the insurgents soon returned to the attack; made an unsuccessful attempt to dig up the foundations; and finally, with the view of smoking the besieged out of their citadel, constructed and set alight a large pile of faggots. It was not till the enemy showed signs of an intention to mend the fire with some bags of gunpowder that the garrison began to be seriously alarmed. Then they rushed out, scattering the embers with their bare feet, and leaped the parapet which enclosed the plot of dedicated ground. Six, who could not swim, ran full into the middle of the crowd, carrying their lives for sale to the best market. Seven reached the bank, and flung in their firelocks, and then themselves. The lead in their pouches dragged them so far down that the first flight of bullets splashed harmless on the troubled surface. By the time the sepoys had reloaded their pieces, a score of rapid strokes had rendered our countrymen by no means easy targets for an excited Hindoo marksman. Two were shot through the head. Another, overcome with exhaustion, turned over on his back, and yielded to the stream, which impelled him towards a shoal where his murderers were awaiting him with uplifted bludgeons. The others resisted the blandishments of the wily foe, who endeavoured to coax them within push of lance by offers of food and life, and, ducking like coots at the flash of musketry, swam, and floated, and swam again; while Ganges, as if resenting the desecration of his holy waves by such an Iliad of bloodshed, bare bravely up the chin of these fugitives who had confided themselves to his protection. One by one the hunters desisted from the chase. A trooper on horseback kept the game in view for some miles; but in the end he too fell behind, and was no more seen.

The four Englishmen were sitting up to their necks in water, two good leagues below the point where they first plunged, when the sound of approaching voices again sent them diving after the manner of otters surprised by the throng of hounds and spearmen. As they rose to the upper air, they were greeted with a shout of, "Sahib! Sahib! Why keep away? We are friends." The new-comers, however, were so formidable in aspect and equipment that Thomson refused to come to land until, after a short parley, they volunteered to throw their weapons into the river as a proof of their sincerity. Their assurances of amity afforded our countrymen a passable excuse for giving in, without inspiring any great amount of confidence. At the very worst, a blow on the head or a thrust in the chest killed more expeditiously than drowning or inanition. It was better to die and have done with it, than to endure all the torment of death without the repose, as of late had seemed to be their apportioned lot. And so they turned, and swam in, and were helped ashore naked as Ulysses when he was washed up on the Phæacian coast after his wrestle with the Adriatic surf. Like him, their knees and wrists gave away beneath them: for their vigour was subdued by long toil among the billows: and their bodies were livid and swollen; and much water oozed from mouth and nostril; and they lay without breath, and speech, and well nigh without life, stricken by an exceeding weariness. They had between them a flannel shirt, a strip of linen cloth, and five severe wounds. Exposure to the heat had puffed the skin of their shoulders with huge blisters, as if their clothes had been burned off their backs by fire. But they found an Alcinöus in the person of Dirigbijah Singh, a loyal gentleman of Oude; the landlord of that district, and the chieftain to whom their captors owed feudal allegiance. Good-natured as they proved to be, these fellows could not resist the temptation of plundering the Englishmen who had been so unaccountably delivered into their hands. They abstracted a cap-pouchful of rupees which poor Murphy had tied under his right knee, the nominal price, it may be, of some buckets drawn at a risk which could not be valued in money. After lying for a while wrapped in blankets, the refugees recovered strength sufficient to allow of their being supported to the nearest village, over a distance which appeared to them more miles than it was furlongs in reality. They were taken to the hut of the headman, who received them kindly, and set before them lentil porridge, wheat cakes, and preserves, of which they eat like men who had fed little and badly during a month past, and for seventy hours had not fed at all.

After a long meal and a short nap the Englishmen set out for the fort where Dirigbijah Singh resided; Thomson clad with the solitary shirt, and Delafosse in a borrowed rug. Private Murphy and Gunner Sullivan were suffering too much from recent wounds to care about appearances. The officers resigned to them an elephant which had been despatched for their conveyance, and bestrode a pony, like a pair of needy and valiant knights belonging to a primitive order. As they passed through the villages, peasants came forth with milk and sweatmeats, and discovered that the Sahibs had changed their opinion as to the acceptability of "dollies;" those presents of Oriental dainties which collectors and commissioners contemptuously make over to their servants, reserving a handful of pistachio nuts for the children, and a box of Cabul grapes to improve the dessert of their next dinner-party. Darkness set in ere the cavalcade rode up to the fort of Moorar Mhow. The rajah, an old man of venerable presence, was seated in the open air encircled by his sons, his body-guard, his tenants, and his torch-bearers, to the number of some hundred and fifty persons. He requested our countrymen to alight; inquired minutely into the story of the siege; evinced warm approbation of their courage, and wonder at their escape; and after promising his countenance and hospitality, sent them indoors to an abundant repast washed down with native wine. Tired of everything save eating, they supped right well, and then, stretched on horse-litter and covered with a bit of carpet, the wanderers rested at last. Soundly they slumbered that night; and soundly, too, slumbered their six comrades, on whom the moon looked down through her watery veil as they lay around the little temple amidst the trampled brushwood, on their brow the frown of battle, and in their breast the wound that doth not shame.

Here the four Englishmen remained for three weeks unmolested and tolerably happy. They had spent at least one equal period of time in far less comfortable quarters. They wore coats and trousers cut by a native tailor. Their hurts were poulticed by a native doctor. They sat down thrice a day with British appetites to a meal of native food; and, whenever there was nothing else to be done, they slept. Heedless of the flies, which clustered about their bandaged limbs; careless of the future, and willingly oblivious of the past,—they dreamed, and woke, and yawned, and shifted their straw, and settled themselves down for another fit of drowsiness. Azimoolah might have his eye upon them: the Nana might have spoken the word of doom: up to Delhi and down to Patna every pass might be blockaded by a rebel post: but for the present they could doze, morning, noon, and eve. Their principal diversion consisted in viewing the performance by the Rajah and his priests of some quaint and pretty domestic rites. The master of the house paid them a daily and very pleasant visit; and his good lady sent constantly to ask after the welfare of the strangers, whose fearless deportment under their abject and precarious circumstances she had noted with womanly interest, as she gazed, herself invisible, from behind the fretted stone-work which fenced her verandah.

Thomson and his companions were forbidden by their host to set foot outside the circuit of the walls: as the vicinity was infested with rebels, who already regarded the country as their own, and appeared to imagine themselves welcome anywhere. There were generally some of them inside the fort, vapouring about, sword on thigh and matchlock in hand, and pestering the domestics to get them a sight of the Sahibs. The soldiers of the Cawnpore brigade were indulged in frequent interviews with their former officers, always in the presence of a detachment from the Rajah's body-guard. These mutineers were full of the great things that were going to be done in the course of the next year by the armies of the religious. A trooper had been despatched to Moscow on a camel, and was to return with a host of Russian Mussulmans. Such Englishmen as had not yet been knocked on the head were to be secured and shipped off at Calcutta; and afterwards the Nana would embark for Europe, conquer our island, and make it over to Hindoo shareholders constituted into a joint-stock Kumpani. That magic word would conjure up a fresh train of ideas, and they would descant upon the flagrant iniquity of Lord Dalhousie, and maintain that, had it not been for the annexation of Oude, the empire of John Kumpani might have endured for all time: but that it was not so ordained; inasmuch as the ancient oracles, which could not lie, had allotted to that empire a duration of a hundred years, and no more. This prediction came true, but not in the sense anticipated by the leaders of the insurrection. The honour of justifying this prophecy was reserved for Sir Charles Wood and Lord Stanley; not for Azimoolah and the Maharaja of Bithoor. That potentate repeatedly summoned Dirigbijah Singh to deliver up the refugees to his regal arbitrement: but the stout old fellow answered that he held of His Majesty the King of Oude, and knew nothing of Seereek Dhoondoo Punth and his pretensions to royalty. Havelock and Neill soon provided the Nana with more pressing business than the pursuit of his vengeance, or the assertion of his supremacy.

The Rajah came to the conclusion that a change of domicile was essential to the security of our countrymen, about the time that they were growing sated of laughing at sepoy bluster, and watching the Brahmins of the household ring bells and sprinkle flowers with holy water. They accordingly retired to the seclusion of a hamlet bordering on the river, where they amused themselves as best they could with a volume bearing the inscription "53rd Regiment Native Infantry Book Club;" which had been picked out of the stream by one among their attendants, as it floated by amidst a quantity of torn papers and smashed furniture: so many indications of the minute and searching character of the mischief that was being wrought above. After the lapse of a week, the Rajah sent them across to a landholder of his acquaintance, who lived on the south bank, and who undertook to hand them on to the nearest European encampment. They took leave of their chivalrous preserver with many expressions of unaffected regret, and a silent resolution never to rest until he had received some tangible mark of their gratitude and regard. On reaching the other shore their new patron packed them off towards Allahabad by a cross-road, in a bullock-cart without springs, preceded by an escort of four armed retainers. After bumping along for an hour the driver stopped, and informed them, in low and agitated tones, that there were guns ahead, planted athwart their path. And so they alighted, those way-worn fugitives, solicitous to learn whether they should again have to run, and swim, and lurk, and starve; and they crept stealthily along the edge of the road, and, turning the corner, found themselves within a few yards of the white and freckled face of an English sentry.

Five years subsequently Murphy left his old regiment, and volunteered for India in another corps. Presently it began to be rumoured at mess that there was a man in the ranks who had gone through the siege and the slaughter of Cawnpore. The Colonel made all necessary inquiries, and reported the matter to the Commander-in-chief: who at once appointed Murphy custodian of the Memorial Gardens. Here he may be seen, in the balmy forenoons of the cold weather, sauntering about in a pith helmet and linen jacket; a decent little Irishman, very ready to give a feeling and intelligent account of what took place under his immediate observation, and insisting much on the fact that he and the gunner, unable to speak a syllable of "Moors," would have been helpless but for the knowledge of Hindoostanee possessed by the sepoy officers. He retains a lively impression of the eagerness with which the English privates whom they encountered on the Allahabad highway contributed their allowances of liquor to treat the men who had not tasted beer for eight summer weeks. He points out the stone beneath which reposes poor Sullivan, who died of fatigue and debility, taking the form of cholera, within a fortnight of his restoration to safety. Delafosse lived once more to play the man, fighting under Chamberlain in the passes of the Hindoo Koosh: and Thomson to compose the story of what he had seen and undergone, so told that it may be read by a Christian without horror, and by an educated person without disgust. He was of opinion that a soldier who had performed his duty should not stoop to the vocabulary of a hangman. This man, scarred from head to heel with sepoy bullets,—who had carried his life in his hand for months together,—who had lost friends, possessions, and health in the frightful mêlée,—could still write like a modest and tolerant gentleman: while officers, to whom the rebellion had brought nothing except promotion and chance of distinction, were declaiming and printing about battues, and fine bags, and tucking up niggers, and polishing off twenty brace of Pandies. He made it his care that the worthy Rajah of Moorar Mhow should be rewarded with a handsome pension; that the faithful sepoys of his own battalion should obtain credit for their loyalty; that a fitting monument should be erected to the memory of his dead comrades; and that the services of his living companions in arms should not pass unrecorded. He left it for others to exult when shopkeepers and bankers, whose property had been confiscated by the Nana, and plundered by our own mutinous troops, were condemned and executed for having acknowledged a de facto monarch; when pedlars and bazaar-porters were strung up by scores to a gallows planted across the mouth of the funereal well: truly a graceful tribute to the manes of gentle English women.[4]

At five in the evening on the twenty-eighth of June, the Nana held a state review in honour of his victory of the preceding day. His force looked well on paper, and made a very respectable show in the field. There turned out six entire regiments of foot, and two of horse; besides strong detachments from battalions which had been disbanded at a distance from Cawnpore. The ranks of the artillery were perceptibly thinned by three weeks of desperate fighting. To them was especially due the success of the cause: and they now bore the brunt of the rejoicing. Few but zealous, they worked their pieces with a will, and fired away their ammunition as if henceforward there was no occasion for keeping any against the day of battle; as if the clubs of villagers and the daggers of banditti might safely be trusted to gather up the leavings of the sepoys. Bala Rao was welcomed on to the ground with seventeen discharges. The Maharaja himself at length enjoyed the compliment of the royal reception which had been so ardently coveted and so strenuously denied. He was greeted on his appearance by the full sum of twenty-one explosions, each bought with a day of carnage. His ears tingling at the unaccustomed sensation, he congratulated the mutineers on their common triumph, and promised to distribute a hundred thousand rupees as an instalment of the debt which he owed to the army: an announcement that produced a repetition of the salute. Then he took his departure: but the enthusiasm which he left behind could evaporate only in a wholesale expenditure of Government powder. The nephew of the Nana, and his brother Baba Bhut, were each honoured with seventeen reports. Bala, who was deservedly a favourite with that gang of disciplined assassins, came in for a second bout of eleven guns: while Jwala Pershad and Tantia Topee got the same number a-piece. This closed the proceedings: during which Tantia, whose mind had decidedly a practical cast, was better employed than in listening to an idle cannonade. He was closeted with a man of business named Dabeedeen, liquidating accounts with the owners of the flotilla which had been sunk or burned. Between four and five thousand rupees were paid over as compensation for the boats; and fifty pounds were put aside to remunerate the bargemen for their share in the operations. It was afterwards asserted that Dabeedeen took undue precautions to avoid cheating himself in the transaction.