Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

In spite of his excellent pay, the native soldier was almost invariably deep in debt. A strong sense of family ties, an extreme generosity towards poor connexions, is a marked trait in the Hindoo character, amiable indeed, but not encouraging to the student of Social Science. Whenever an Indian official steps into an income, relations of every degree flock from all parts of the continent to prey upon his facile affection: and the prospect of sharing the corner of a sepoy's hut and the parings of his pay proved sufficiently attractive to bring into cantonments herds of country cousins from Rohilcund and Shahabad. Neither would seven rupees a month adequately defray the occasional extravagances enjoined by "dustoor" or custom: dustoor, the breath of a Hindoo's nostrils, the motive of his actions, the staple of his conversation, the tyrant of his life. It has frequently happened that a private soldier has celebrated a marriage feast at a cost of three hundred rupees, to obtain which he must sell himself body and soul to one of those griping ruthless usurers who are the bugbears of Oriental society.

At the commencement of 1857, the condition of the native army was unsatisfactory in the highest degree. An impartial observer could not fail at every turn to note symptoms which proved beyond the possibility of a doubt that a bad spirit was abroad. But, unfortunately, those who had the best opportunity for observing these symptoms were not impartial. The officers of the old Bengal army regarded their soldiers with a fond credulity that was above suspicion and deaf to evidence: and no wonder: for on the fidelity of that army was staked all that they held most dear—professional reputation, social standing, the means of life, and, finally, life itself. It was in deference to their pardonable but most fatal prejudices that on this ominous subject silence was enforced during the years which preceded the outbreak. It was to please their pride of class that the tongues of more discerning men were tied, and their pens blunted. It was in vain that General Jacob, the stout Lord Warden of the Scinde Marches, wrote and expostulated with all his native energy and fire. Threatened and frowned on by his employers, sneered at by his fellow officers as an agitator and a busybody, he was at length brought to acknowledge that the tone of the Bengal army was a matter on which a wise man did well to hold his peace. That great commander, whose excellent military judgment, matured in European camps, revolted at a state of things so fraught with peril and scandal, learned too late that not even the audacity of a Napier, not even the glory of Meeanee, could protect him from the consequences of having presumed to call in question the faith of the sepoy. As the only apparent effect of his admonitions the turbulent and warlike province of Oude was annexed to our territory, and the ranks of our army were swelled by the addition of thousands of disaffected native mercenaries.

That discipline was lax, that insubordination was afoot, had long been known by many who dared not speak out the truth. As far back as the year 1845 there occurred a case in which a regiment broke into open mutiny, and pelted its officers through cantonments with the material employed in road-mending, a customary missile in Bengalee riots. A party of native infantry on a night march presented an appearance, absurd indeed, but to a thoughtful spectator not without serious significance. The men straggled along, carrying in their hands some beloved pipe, their most treasured possession, while their muskets were carelessly flung into the bullock-carts, in which not a few sepoys were snoring comfortably amidst the baggage. Even those on foot dozed as they walked, with that unaccountable capacity, common to all Hindoos, of going to sleep under the most adverse circumstances; the collar of their great-coat turned up and kept in its place by a strip of calico; their ears protected by folds of cloth passed underneath the chin and fastened over the top of the head, with a regimental forage-cap perched on the summit of this unsightly and unmartial head-gear. In some corps men had so little respect for military rule and custom as to strip off their uniforms even when on guard. There were those who in great part attributed these irregularities to the abolition of corporal punishment effected by Lord William Bentinck, that wise and true friend of the native population of India. It is to be hoped, for the cause of humanity and enlightenment, that men who so think are mistaken in their opinion. It cannot, however, be denied that, whatever be the reason, there was truth in the words spoken to a civilian by an old pensioned native officer:—"Ah Sahib!" said the veteran, "The army has ceased to fear."

At the siege of Mooltan, where native troops from all parts of India were collected into one army, the vile temper of the Bengal sepoys and the extraordinary indulgence displayed towards them by their officers became painfully apparent. These insolent high-caste mercenaries positively refused to labour in the trenches, and endeavoured to induce or force the modest and trusty Bombay soldiers to follow their example. On one occasion a mob of these rascals, being unable to persuade a fatigue-party of Bombay men to strike work, proceeded to revile and at length to stone their worthier comrades. A captain in a rifle regiment marked the ringleaders, but the Bengal officers flatly declined to take any steps in the matter, and the story was hushed up in order that their feelings might be spared. When the Sixty-sixth Native infantry mutinied, their chiefs endeavoured to palliate the guilt of the regiment; but Sir Charles Napier refused to see with any eyes save his own, and promptly disbanded the corps, which was replaced by an excellent levy of the valiant Highlanders of Nepaul. Sir Charles expressed great displeasure at the report sent in by the commanding officer of the regiment, and especially at a sentence which characterised what was in fact a shout of defiance as "a murmur of discontent." To the very last, at a time when mutiny and murder were rife from Peshawur to Dacca, each particular colonel was firmly impressed with the idea that his battalion would be the Abdiel of the army, faithful only to its oath and salt, to the recollections of bounty-money and the hopes of pension. "Pity," writes an officer of the Sixty-fifth regiment, "that Europeans abusing a corps cannot be strung up." On the twenty-second of May a letter appeared in the Englishman newspaper from Colonel Simpson, who commanded the Sixth Bengal Infantry at the all-important station of Allahabad. He was very indignant at the suspicions which had been expressed concerning the intentions of the men under his charge, who, according to him, "evince the utmost loyalty. So far from being mistrusted, they are our main protection." Not many days after he was glad to escape into the fort with a ball through his arm, while his officers were being butchered by the men on whom he had placed so unbounded a reliance. The "staunchness" of the sepoys was at that time so common a topic with their chiefs that the expression became a byword among Calcutta people; for at whatever station the colonel most loudly, pertinaciously, and angrily declared his regiment to be "staunch," it was to that quarter that men looked for the next tidings of massacre and outrage. It was not till he saw his own house in flames, and the rupees from the Government treasury scattered broad-cast over the parade-ground:—it was not till he looked down the barrels of sepoy muskets, and heard sepoy bullets whizzing round his ears, that an old Bengal officer could begin to believe that his men were not as staunch as they should be; and yet, as will be seen in the course of this narrative, there might exist a degree of confidence and attachment which was proof even against that ordeal.

Respect for the obligations of blood-relationship is so strong in the Hindoo mind, that jobbery and nepotism flourish in Oriental society to an extent which would seem inconceivably audacious to the colder imagination of a western public servant. The system of family patronage runs through all ranks and classes. The Indian judge loves to surround himself with kindred clerks of the court and consanguineous ushers. The Indian superintendant of police prefers to have about him inspectors and sergeants bound to his interest by nearer ties than those of official dependence. The head bearer fills his master's house with young barbarians from his native village; and, in like manner, the veteran sepoys took measures to keep the regiment supplied with recruits from the neighbourhood in which they themselves had been born and bred. No strapping young Tewarry, or Pandy, who had a mind to shoulder a Company's musket and touch the Company's rupees, had long to wait for a place in the section of which the sergeant was his uncle and the corporal his brother-in-law. On the other hand, a stranger was soon driven from the regiment by that untiring and organized social oppression, in which, if we are to believe the daily press, military men of all nations and grades are such admirable adepts. And so it came to pass in the course of time that the company partook of the nature of a family, and the battalion of the nature of a clan. The consequence was that there existed a sympathy and freemasonry throughout the ranks of quite another tendency from that tone of regimental patriotism and martial brotherhood, known in European armies by the title of "esprit-de-corps." Such a state of things afforded peculiar facilities for conspiring. A disaffected body of sepoys possessed the power of a host, and the discretion of a clique. The most extensive and perilous designs could be matured in perfect secrecy, and carried into effect by the weight of a vast and unanimous multitude.

The real motive of the mutiny was the ambition of the soldiery. Spoilt, flattered, and idle, in the insolence of its presumed strength that pampered army thought nothing too good for itself, and nothing too formidable. High-caste Brahmins all, proud as Lucifer, they deemed that to them of right belonged the treasures and the empire of India. Hampered with debt, they looked for the day of a general spoliation. Chafing under restraint, they panted to indulge themselves in unbridled rapine and licence. They were bent upon the foundation of a gigantic military despotism. They looked forward to the time when Soubahdars and Jemmadars should be Maharajas and Nawabs; when the taxes should be collected by sepoy receivers-general, and paid into sepoy treasuries; when every private should have his zenana full of the loveliest daughters of Lahore and Rohilcund; when great landholders from Bundelcund and Orissa should come with cases of diamonds to beg a favourable decision from Mungul Pandy; when great merchants from Liverpool and Marseilles should come with bags of sovereigns to ask leave of Peer Bux to establish a factory at Mutlah or Chandernagore. They evinced an equal contempt for all the other classes of the inhabitants of India. They despised the excellent armies of Bombay and Madras, and their insolence was requited with bitter aversion. They looked down on the Ghoorkas as savages, and presumed to regard the heroes of Chillianwallah and Ferozeshah as a conquered race; as if, forsooth, it was sepoy prowess which, after more than one series of fierce and dubious battles, had at length prevailed over the brave and haughty warriors of the Punjaub. And at length, in the plenitude of their pride and folly, they began to call in question the efficacy of the English name.

We had, indeed, been negligent. We had been improvident even unto madness. Some twenty thousand European troops were scattered over the continent of India; for the security of which seventy thousand are now held to be barely sufficient. In the May of 1857, from Meerut in the North-west, to Dinapore in the South-east, two weak British regiments only were to be found. In these days, a battalion of English infantry may be placed at any important city in our dominions within the twenty-four hours. Then, all the field-batteries throughout the entire region of Oude, with a single exception, were manned by native gunners and drivers. Now, in every station on the plains, the artillerymen, the trained workmen of warfare, without whom in modern times an armed force is helpless, are one and all our own countrymen. Then, our only communication was along roads which the first rains turned into strips of bog, and up rivers treacherous with crossing currents and shifting sandbanks. Now, through the heart of every province, there run, or soon will run, those lines of rail and lines of wire, which defy alike season and distance.

The natives of India possess a sharp insight into matters that come within the limits of their own sphere, but are strangely ignorant of all that passes beyond those limits. The sepoy ringleaders knew to a man the strength, or rather the weakness, of European force in the North of India. But, incredible as it may appear, they were firmly impressed with the idea that they saw with their eyes the whole extent of our resources. Public opinion in Hindostan placed the population of the British Isles at something over a hundred thousand souls. This error was so universal that a native who did not share in the hallucination was sure to be a man of superior discernment and rare strength of mind. Hyder Ali and Runjeet Singh, the Hannibal and the Mithridates of India, had often in their mouths the same phrase concerning the power of the Company. They feared, they would say, not what they saw, but what they did not see. Jung Bahadur, the far-famed Mayor of the Palace of Nepaul, when the first dull rumour of the coming crisis began to be bruited, paid a visit to England on purpose to learn for himself what the state of the case really was; and returned firmly resolved not to take part against a power which could raise at a pinch hundreds of millions of money, and hundreds of thousands of men. On one occasion during the troubles, a party of sepoys attacked some guns worked by Sikh artillerymen, only to be beaten off with heavy loss. The officer in charge of the battery was much amused at hearing one of the men say to his comrades: "If those fools of pandies had ever been at Battses Hotel, Vere Street, Oxford Street, they would not have come on so boldly." On inquiry, it appeared that this judicious Punjaubee had gone to London in the service of some Anglo-Indian; where, as he stood at the mouth of Vere Street, he might see passing to and from Hyde Park in a single day as many Sahibs as would stock two such towns as Loodianah or Umritsur.

The conviction that all our available male population was already in India began to be shaken as, regiment after regiment, brigade upon brigade, angry fighting men of Saxon race came pouring up from Calcutta in a continuous stream, by road, by rail, and by river. And yet that conviction lingered long. When the magnificent array collected for the final siege of Lucknow passed through Cawnpore, our Sikh allies would have it that Sir Colin, like the stage manager at Astley's theatre, marched his men in at one end of the town and out at the other, and then brought them back outside the walls to repeat the same manœuvre. When the mutineers first caught sight of the Highland costume, they cried with joy that the men of England had been exhausted, and that the Company had been reduced to call out the women. They soon had reason to repent their mistake, and thenceforward adopted a theory more consistent with the fact, for they held that the petticoats were designed to remind their wearers that they had been sent to India to exact vengeance for the murder of the English ladies.

The insolence and greed of the soldiers, their impatience of discipline, and their lust of power, were the effective causes of the outbreak. But the proximate cause was the fancied insult which had been offered to their national religion. Upon this most vexed question, a distinguished civil servant, who held high office in Calcutta during those eventful months, is wont to say that he could never trust the judgment of a man who maintains that the greased cartridges had little to do with the mutiny. There are a class of our countrymen who delight in stigmatizing the natives of India as hypocrites and infidels. These men affect to disbelieve in the sincerity of the religious professions of any Mussulman who cannot resist the temptation of iced champagne, or of any Hindoo who indulges himself in a quiet slice of the joint which has appeared at his master's table. As if the men who are foremost to avenge the wrongs of their creed and to thrust it down the throats of their neighbours were always the most scrupulous in their obedience to its precepts! As if History was not full of covetous Fathers of the Church and polygamous Defenders of the Faith! Jehu was zealous to destroy the priests of the House of Baal, and to burn his images with fire: howbeit he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. Archbishop Laud was emphatically a good Churchman: and yet he too often forgot the blessing pronounced upon the merciful by the Divine founder of his Church, and the curse uttered against those who lade men with burdens grievous to be borne.