"Meantime, while they were occupied in carrying out their plan, the ambassadors of the Sultan of Roum" (Turkey) "in London sent word to his sovereign that thirty-five thousand Europeans had been despatched to Hindostan to make all the natives Christians. The Sultan (may Allah perpetuate his kingdom!) issued a firman to the Pacha of Egypt, the contents of which are as follows: 'You are conspiring with Queen Victoria. If you are guilty of neglect in this matter, what kind of face will you be able to show to God?'"
"When this firman of the Sultan of Roum reached the Pacha of Egypt, the Lord of Egypt assembled his army in the city of Alexandra, which is on the road to India, before the Europeans arrived. As soon as the European troops arrived the troops of the Pacha of Egypt began to fire into them with guns on all sides, and sunk all their ships, so that not even a single European escaped. The English in Calcutta, after issuing orders for biting the cartridges, and when these disturbances had reached their height, were looking for the assistance of the army from London. But the Almighty by the exercise of his power made an end of them at the very outset. When intelligence of the destruction of the army from London arrived, the Governor-General was much grieved and distressed, and beat his head.
"At eventide he intended murder and plunder.
At noon neither had his body a head, nor his head a cover.
In one revolution of the blue heavens
Neither Nadir remained, nor a follower of Nadir."
"Done by order of his Grace the Peishwa. 1273 of the Heigra."
But the onward march of the English was not to be checked by quotations from Oordoo poets. It behoved that some weapons besides the eloquence of Azimoolah and the sign-manual of Dhoondoo Punth should be found, and found quickly. The rebel chiefs were enjoined to muster their retainers, and Teeka Singh to beat up the bazaars for sepoys. Reluctant and dispirited the truants turned out to fight for a sovereign whom they were scheming to dethrone, and for plunder which had already by some magical process melted away to half the original value. Baba Bhut undertook to provide carriage for the stores and ammunition: and accordingly impounded the conveyances of the town, particularly all vehicles formerly the property of European gentry: a measure which caused no small vexation to the mutineers who had been cutting a dash in the buggies that had belonged to our subalterns. The merchants received extensive indents for tents and water-proof great-coats: a most essential article of equipment during the first weeks of the rainy season. The Ordnance Office reported itself to be short of percussion caps; and the whole staff of the department was at once set to work at converting detonating muskets into matchlocks. These preparations were completed by the ninth of July, on which day Brigadier Jwala Pershad left the station in the direction of Allahabad at the head of detachments from three regiments of cavalry and seven of infantry, together with a strong body of feudal militia: in all some thirty-five hundred sabres, bayonets, and lances. The column was accompanied by twelve guns of various pattern and calibre, which the result of the earliest action enabled General Havelock to describe with minute accuracy.
They did well to hurry: for the avenger was abroad. Late in May there landed at Calcutta a wing of the First Madras Fusileers, under the command of Major Renaud and Lieutenant-Colonel Neill: who, after securing an order which enabled them to draw upon the Patna Treasury, proceeded straight to the Terminus situated on the bank of the Hooghly facing the capital, with the intention of performing the first stretch of their journey by rail. A train was on the point of starting; and the stationmaster, jealous, it may be, to obtain his new line a reputation for punctuality, refused to delay until the rear-guard could be embarked in the cars. Hereupon Neill, an Indian veteran, who during a long absence from home had lost what little reverence he ever possessed for the authority of Bradshaw, clapped the official under arrest in his own waiting-room, and gave the guards and stokers to understand that he had constituted himself traffic-manager for the time being. Travelling in this high-handed style he reached Benares when least expected either by the English residents, who were waiting to have their throats cut, or by the native force, which was looking out for an excuse to mutiny, and which now found a pretext in the arrival of Neill. After a rough and tumble fight he bundled the insurgents out of the place; quieted the fears of the European population; and at once began his arrangements for penetrating to Allahabad, where a feeble garrison, closely invested by an enormous rebel host, was defending a mile and a half of wall with scanty prospect of deliverance.
On the evening of the ninth June he sent on in bullock-carts a hundred and seventeen of his people; despatched thirty-six others in a small steamer; and packed himself, with two officers and forty-four men, into such stage-carriages as had shafts and axles. Posting in the East is never a very expeditious method of locomotion; and at this conjuncture every stable along the Grand Trunk Road had been plundered more or less thoroughly. But the agents of the Dawk Company knew their man: and it may safely be asserted that the grooms were less sleepy than usual, and the drivers less sulky; that the horses jibbed not quite so pertinaciously, and the wheels came off at somewhat wider intervals. No promise of treble gratuities from an embryo member of Parliament, hurrying up country in search of statistics, ever so surely cut short a stoppage or an altercation, as did the rattle of the panels of the foremost van, which betokened that Neill Sahib was awake, and in another moment would be thrusting out his head to ask what the matter was. When the animals broke down, strings of peasants were harnessed to the traces: and by the afternoon of the second day the relieving army, numbering a short four dozen of exhausted men, had found their way into the beleagured place. On the following morning the struggle began in earnest, and continued for a full week. Successive instalments of Fusileers swarmed in by road and river: while the enemy had soon consumed most of their courage and all their ball-cartridge, and were reduced to load with morsels of telegraph wire: a device whereby, over and above the effect of their fire, they got rid of an article the possession of which came under the chapter of capital offences in the Criminal Code as revised by Colonel Neill. That officer by the nineteenth June had re-conquered the city of Allahabad, and cleared the district of insurgents. He now found leisure to make some inquiries into the past, which resulted in a series of executions: not more than the crisis warranted, (for, though an austere man, he was no savage,) but quite numerous enough, in the expressive dialect of the day, to "establish a great funk."
Meanwhile the heat was such as no words can adequately describe. The Europeans died of sunstroke at an average rate of two a day. Our troops had outstripped their Commissariat, and could get neither bread, nor coffee, nor drugs, nor fans, nor screens of moistened grass: appliances which, known to an English housekeeper as "luxuries" and "comforts," in the estimation of those who have spent an Indian June in the tented field, merit quite another denomination. Unfortunately, though the larder and the medicine-chest were empty, the cellars of Allahabad were only too well furnished. They were pillaged by some Sikhs, who, without applying for a license, at once opened a lively trade: selling beer, brandy, madeira, and champagne at a uniform charge of sixpence the bottle. Cholera soon broke out among our poor fellows, living as they did on wine and spirits without even a halfpenny-worth of bread in a temperature of a hundred and thirty-five degrees. In the course of seventy-two hours forty deaths occurred in the ranks of the Madras regiment. The Colonel bought up and destroyed the whole stock of liquor; ransacked the neighbourhood in quest of wholesome provisions; removed his patients to the most healthy quarters which he could command; and was repaid by seeing the mysterious disease vanish as suddenly as it had appeared, after carrying off one out of every nine among his soldiers.
As when a slender rill, ominous to an experienced eye, trickles through the crack in an embankment behind which is gathered, not long there to stay, an immense weight of water: so came along the valley of Ganges this little band, the forerunner of a mighty multitude of warriors. Every morning brought into Allahabad a fresh batch of Englishmen, jaded, indeed, and suffering cruelly from the climate, but eager to be led forward to rescue or revenge. Continental authors who descant glibly on the stolidity and insensibility of the British private might have learned a useful lesson could they have overheard the talk of those pale and sickly lads. By the last day of June Neill judged himself strong enough to detach towards Cawnpore two guns and eight hundred men, half of whom were Europeans. The column was placed under the orders of Major Renaud, who pushed up the road; fighting as occasion offered; tranquillizing the country by the very simple expedient of hanging everybody who showed signs of insubordination; and using all endeavours to procure information concerning the fate of the Cawnpore garrison. On the fourth July he was met by a report of the capitulation and the massacre. Corroborated, and contradicted, and qualified, and again confidently affirmed, rumour insensibly matured into undoubted fact: but to this day no man ventures to name the precise hour when he himself became assured that the worst was true.