Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

On the morrow, some boys loitering about on the Oude side of the river came upon an English officer skulking in a ravine. He was of tall stature, and about forty years old, with a bit of sacking twisted round his waist, but otherwise naked. The children imparted their discovery to the peasants of an adjoining hamlet, who took the fugitive to their headman. The unhappy gentleman did not speak any native language, and could only point towards the East with an imploring gesture, and pronounce the word "Lucknow." They gave him sugar, which he eat up greedily with both hands, and so afforded a bystander an opportunity for observing that he bore the mark of a ring fresh on his finger. Touched by the contrast of his fallen state, these good people showed a disposition to do what they could for his preservation; but just then some landholders of the neighbourhood arrived at the head of a numerous array, and prevailed over these benevolent intentions by threats of present violence and future punishment. A short while afterwards, an ex-clerk of the commissariat department met fifty or sixty fellows "with drawn sabres and lighted matches, bringing along a Sahib bound." They halted under a grove which stood near the chapel of ease, and sent one of their party to fetch the Nana. In his stead came Baba Bhut, and, in the name of his brother, bade them kill their prisoner. To this they answered: "Put weapons into his hand, and let him strike us, and then we will strike in return: but we will not slay him thus." Some troopers of the Second Cavalry, who happened to be in attendance, had a less nice theory of honour. Three-quarters of an hour subsequently, while the clerk was performing his ablutions, the corpse was thrown into the Ganges, gashed all over with sword-cuts.

All the night of the twenty-ninth our people who had been captured at Nuzzufgur by Baboo Ram Bux were slowly remounting the stream. As it grew light they began to recognise objects and places which they had trusted never again to behold: and, two hours before noon, the doomed boatload lay to at the landing-place whence they had set forth, to return thus after three such days as had not repaid them for the trouble of making their escape. What ensued an Englishman would willingly tell in phrases not his own. The following account was taken from the lips of a native spy, and is supported by a mass of evidence. The mention of General Wheeler is, of course, inaccurate.

"There were brought back," says the man, "sixty Sahibs, twenty-five Mem Sahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the Sahibs to be separated from the Mem Sahibs, and shot by the First Bengal Native Infantry. But they said, 'We will not shoot Wheeler Sahib, who has made our regiment's name great, and whose son is our Quarter-master. Neither will we kill the Sahib people. Put them in prison.' Then said the Nadiree regiment: 'What word is this? Put them in prison? We will kill the males.' So the Sahibs were seated on the ground: and two companies of the Nadiree regiment stood with their muskets, ready to fire. Then said one of the Mem Sahibs, the doctor's wife: (What doctor? How should I know?) 'I will not leave my husband. If we must die, I will die with him.' So she ran, and sat down behind her husband, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said this, the other Mem Sahibs said: 'We also will die with our husbands.' And they all sat down, each by her husband. Then their husbands said: 'Go back;' but they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers; and they, going in, pulled them away forcibly. But they could not pull away the doctor's wife, who there remained. Then the Padre called out to the Nana, and requested leave to read prayers before they died." (This Padre was Captain Seppings, with his broken arm. The doctor's wife, good soul, is known to have been Mrs. Boyes.) "The Nana granted it, and the Padre's hands were loosened so far as to enable him to take a small book from his pocket, with which he read. But all this time one of the Sahibs, who was shot in the arm, kept crying out to the sepoys: 'If you mean to kill us, why don't you set about it quickly and have the work done?'" Poor impatient Sahib! Making the responses in his passionate way! "After the Padre had read a few prayers, he shut the book, and the Sahibs shook hands all round. Then the sepoys fired. One Sahib rolled one way, one another, as they sat. But they were not dead: only wounded. So they went in and finished them off with swords."

Here is a thing which was actually done on the last Tuesday of June, eight years back from the present date. Three months before, these Sahibs and Mem Sahibs were passing an existence no more eventful, and apparently no less secure than the career of a county-court judge, or a military man quartered at Sheffield or Colchester. They laid their plans for the Meerut race-meeting and the biennial trip to an Himalayan station in a confidence of fruition equal to that with which a home-staying public servant anticipates the cup-day at Ascot, and the pass which he is going to discover in September. In April, Cawnpore society was lamenting the departure of one period of cold weather, and looking forward to the arrival of another; but, ere the rains had well set in, it had come to this, that the last batch of English officers were lying stiff and stark on the parade-ground, in front of the building where their widows and orphans were enduring a brief imprisonment for life.

The number of captives had yet to receive a final addition. At the station of Futtehgur, which was situated about seventy miles up the river from Cawnpore, some hundred and eighty English people of every age and profession were alive when the month of June commenced. The cantonments were occupied by the Tenth Native Infantry, under the command of Colonel Smith, a man distinguished by courage so closely allied with rashness, and firmness so nearly akin to obstinacy, that the European residents could not have fared worse had they been under the charge of a waverer or a coward. He was a zealous adherent of that sect among the Bengal officers which worshipped the sepoy. A willing martyr to the creed that he professed, his devotion would have excused his fanaticism, had he been the only victim: but no personal calamity can atone for pedantry which staked and lost nine score English souls on the truth of the axiom that a mutineer was still docile and affectionate until he could be proved a murderer.

During the latter half of May successive tidings of massacre, insurrection, and, finally, of an approaching rebel force, excited the fears of our countrymen, and the impious hopes of the soldiery: as turbulent a set of scamps as any in Northern India. At length Mr. Probyn, the magistrate of the district, whose acute discernment, if left to itself, would have saved a large asset of life from the wreck of our fortunes, took measures for evacuating Futtehgur before the extreme crisis. He put himself into communication with Hurdeo Bux, a loyal noble whose estates lay on the left bank, and obtained an escort of fifty picked men and the offer of an asylum. At midnight, between the third and fourth of June, more than a hundred of the English inhabitants started down the river in a fleet of twelve or thirteen boats, laden with baggage, merchandise, furniture, and an ample store of provisions. Colonel Smith was not a little disgusted that so many people should combine to put a slight upon his pet battalion; but consoled himself with the reflection that time and the issue would judge between the sepoys and their defamers. The fugitives comprised the merchants of the place, and the planters of the vicinity; the civilians, missionaries, clerks, craftsmen, and pensioners; together with at least forty women, several nurseries of children, and a multitude of native domestics. They anchored for refreshment after accomplishing a stage of four leagues, and, before breakfast was finished, were joined by certain officers of the Tenth, who announced that the regiment had mutinied on parade, and that all was over at Futtehgur. The expedition proceeded on its way, under a desultory fire of musketry from the country people, who were for the most part hostile to our cause. Next morning arrived the bailiff of Hurdeo Bux, who brought Probyn an invitation from his master to take refuge in his fort of Dhurrumpore. It was resolved to split the party. The magistrate, with forty others, accepted the proffered hospitality: while three of the most roomy vessels, containing nineteen men, twenty-three women, and twenty-six children, pushed forwards in the direction of Cawnpore.

And they reached their destination. On the evening of the ninth of June the little squadron was brought to on a sandbank a few furlongs above Nawabgunge, the north-west suburb of Cawnpore. Here they abode forty-eight hours, listening to the ceaseless cannonade which pealed along the stream from the south. Then they sent a messenger bearing a request for permission to pass on their way: the answer to which was brought by a horde of mutineers, who had no sooner appeared in view than the boatmen set the thatch alight, and fell with bludgeons and sabres upon the passengers, who were taking their afternoon tea, and who now threw themselves over the bulwarks, and sought concealment in a patch of high grass. But their cover was fired by the rebel guns; two ladies and a child were scorched or suffocated to death; and the rest of the company fell into the hands of the troopers of the Second Cavalry, to whose esprit-de-corps this one-sided work was more suited than the dubious contest which was raging around our intrenchment. The captives were made fast to a long rope, and marched as far as ladies with bare and bleeding feet could carry the babies and drag along the children: for by this time all their servants had fled, with the exception of two Ayahs and a few menials of the very lowest order. Here, as elsewhere, fortitude and fidelity were in inverse proportion to dignity of caste. Our people spent the night supperless, on the spot where they had halted; and at daybreak, after breakfasting on a mouthful of water a-piece, were distributed among sixteen bullock carts, and conveyed into the presence of the Nana: to whom they pointed out the folly of which he would be guilty if he indulged himself in wanton and indiscriminate murder. It was no easy task, they bade him reflect, to empty Europe of Europeans. He is said to have been inclined to mercy: but Bala Rao, who, if there was a choice between the brothers, seems to have been the blackest villain of the three, made such an outcry that the Nana stifled his nascent humanity in order to prevent the scandal of a family quarrel. The ladies and the little ones received orders to seat themselves on the ground; and the gentlemen, with their hands tied behind them, were drawn up as a rear rank. The Second Cavalry had soon another victory to inscribe upon their standards. "I witnessed all this with my own eyes," says a Hindoo nurse, who, while they were both above the soil, would not lose sight of her dear young charge: "for I was sitting about thirty paces on one side. Two pits were dug, and all the bodies thrown in. The Nana was not present. May God take vengeance on him, and on these wicked men!" Nanukchund notes in his diary that "reports of guns were heard from the direction of Nawabgunge. A little after twelve A.M. two dead bodies of Europeans were seen floating down the Ganges; and sepoys were seen in a boat coming down behind these corpses and firing off their muskets as they came." Next day he found occasion to seek a retreat in a village which lay at some distance up the river. "I perceived," he writes, "bodies of ladies and gentlemen lying along the banks of the Ganges. I cannot describe the grief I felt at this sight. The corpses could not float down from the shallowness of the river. I saw three boats and a barge which had been burnt by the rebels. I questioned the people of the place, and learned that wine and other articles of merchandise were in the boats, but the boatmen had plundered the liquors, and, when drunk, cut down the gentlemen."

Soon after, "a body of troopers from the Nana came to seize me, and surrounded the house where I was. But I was saved from the hands of these ruffians, and kept in concealment in a garden. At nightfall the gardener sent four men with me, and thus I managed to reach the shore. It was not, however, my fate to find a boat, and I resolved to drown myself in the river, as I thought it better to die than to fall into the hands of so cruel a foe. After midnight I left the garden. The first ford I came to had water up to the waist only, and it was moonlight: so I waded across, and reached the next channel. There I saw the corpses of the Europeans whom the boatmen had slain when drunk: I cannot tell the exact number of bodies, but they extended here and there about a mile. I saw three dead young ladies. They all were dressed, but the low-caste people had commenced to take off their clothes; and some had been torn by animals. Portions of property, books, and papers, belonging to the plundered boats, were also strewn about the shores. These drunken boatmen were armed, some with clubs, some with weapons; and they were running about the woods like wild men. I cannot describe the terror that seized me at this moment. How I sighed for the British rule! I was trembling with fear, and knew not where I was going. On reaching the opposite bank I was senseless for four hours."

Meanwhile at Futtehgur was being played an unique tragi-comedy. On the fourth of June, during morning parade, twenty thousand pounds' worth of Government silver was in course of removal from the treasury to the fort. This mark of distrust, coming close upon the departure of the flotilla, proved too much for the sensibility of these military Brahmins; a number of whom stepped out from the ranks, surrounded the carts, and insisted that the money should be taken to their own quarters. Colonel Smith and the adjutant came forward and expostulated with the insurgents; but they were pushed up against the wall, and kept within a semicircle of levelled bayonets until the cash was safely deposited in the middle of the sepoy lines. These proceedings caused a slight unpleasantness, which did not wholly disappear until the troops had been gratified with an advance of two months' pay, a promise of six months' extra allowances, and an assurance that the treasure should henceforward be kept on the parade-ground under their exclusive custody: inasmuch as the Company's property could be nowhere so secure as in the guardianship of the Company's soldiers. That evening Smith harangued as many of the battalion as chose to attend; told them that their conduct had been disgraceful, but threw the blame on the shoulders of the recruits; and entreated them to believe that he could forgive and forget. He then pronounced the regiment faithful and staunch. And so the first little difficulty between the colonel and his men had been patched up, and both parties were living together on terms of contemptuous acquiescence on the one side, and doting credulity on the other.

Such was the state of things which Probyn found when, after an interval of four days, he rode into the cantonment accompanied by a lieutenant and an ensign of the Tenth. Immediately upon their arrival the colonel informed the magistrate that his services were no longer required, as the district was entirely under martial law, and put the two subalterns in arrest for having deserted their posts. The poor lads represented that they had been driven from Futtehgur by the fire of their own companies: but this man, whom sepoy steel pointed at his chest would not convince of sepoy disaffection, refused to accept the word of his officers when it clashed with a darling theory. Probyn, who foresaw the result, wrote to the Europeans then residing under the roof of Hurdeo Bux, stating that in his opinion the battalion could not possibly be kept together; and recommending that their host should put his fort into a defensible condition, and engage five hundred matchlock-men on the credit of the English Government. Feeling that he was useless while in the same locality with the colonel, he shook from his feet the dust of the devoted station, and made his way back to Dhurrumpore.