Cawnpore

by George Otto Trevelyan

CHAPTER II.
THE OUTBREAK.

During the spring of 1857 the native society of Hindostan presented those remarkable phenomena which, in an Asiatic community, are the infallible symptoms of an approaching convulsion. The atmosphere was alive with rumours, of the nature peculiar to India;—strange and inconsequent fragments of warning or prediction, which, with reverent credulity, are passed from mouth to mouth throughout a million homesteads. No one can tell whence the dim whisper first arose, or what it may portend; it is received as a voice from heaven, and sent forward on its course without comment or delay; for the Hindoo people, like the Greeks of ancient time, hold Rumour to be divine. Some of these unwritten oracles undoubtedly grew spontaneously from the talk of men, and were to be regarded merely as indications of the agitated and uneasy condition of the public mind; but, beyond all question, some secret influence was at work to advertise, so to speak, the mutiny. The ringleaders of that gigantic conspiracy advisedly undertook to impress upon the world at large the idea that something was coming, the like of which had not been known before. Manifold and variously expressed as were the prevailing reports, all had one and the same tendency. With a thousand tongues, and in a thousand forms, they spoke of a great trial that awaited the national religions; a trial from which they were eventually to emerge unscathed and victorious. A prophecy had long been current, that the hundredth year from the battle of Plassy would witness the downfall of the English rule; and the hundredth year had arrived. A mandate had of late gone forth from the palace of Delhi, enjoining the Mahommedans at all their solemn gatherings to recite a song of lamentation, indited by the royal musician himself, which described in touching strains the humiliation of their race, and the degradation of their ancient faith, once triumphant from the Northern snows to the Southern strait, but now trodden under the foot of the infidel and the alien. In January, the peasants of Bengal were repeating to each other a sentence apparently devoid of meaning, "Sub lal hoga," "everything is to become red." Some referred this dubious announcement to the probable extension of our empire over the whole continent, when the scarlet coats of our soldiers would be seen at Hyderabad and Khatmandoo, in Cashmere and Travancore; while others hinted that there was something thicker than water, and of a deeper crimson than a British uniform. Side by side with like ambiguous sayings, were more plain-spoken assertions concerning cartridges smeared with lard, and flour mixed with the ground bones of cow and pig, and other treacherous devices by which the demon who swayed the sceptre of Hindostan, the impalpable but omnipotent Kumpani, aimed at the destruction of sect and caste, and the universal establishment of Christianity. And, finally, during the early days of March, every hamlet in the Gangetic provinces received from its neighbour the innocent present of two chupatties, or bannocks of salt and dough, which form the staple food of the population. This far-famed token, the fiery cross of India, had no definite signification. It notified generally that men would do well to keep themselves prepared, for that something was in the air. In after days, one who had learned their effect by bitter experience, likened the chupatties to the cake of barley-bread which foreshadowed the destruction of the host of Midian. And so, from hand to hand, and from house to house, and from village to village, the mysterious symbol flew, and spread through the length and breadth of the land confusion and questioning, a wild terror, and a wilder hope. Truly, it may be said that, as in Judæa of old, there was distress of nations, and perplexity; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that were coming on the earth.

Meanwhile, at Cawnpore, people ate, and drank, and married, and gave in marriage, and led the ordinary life of an up-country station. The magistrate grumbled because the judge acquitted too large a per centage of his committals; and the collector pronounced himself ill-used because the revenue board would not allow him an additional lac of rupees for his pet embankment; and the subalterns complained that the police-magistrate did not permit them to impress men to act as beaters at less than the market rate of wages; and the captains, by the aid of the mess-room army-list, made those intricate calculations which are the delight of military men and the despair of civilians; and the ladies, those, at least, on whom during the past cold season Fortune and Hymen had smiled, began to allow that the weather had grown too warm for dancing, though still eminently favourable for morning calls; and one talked of sending her children home; and another of going herself to the hills; and, towards the end of April, a party of disbanded Brahmins of the Nineteenth regiment came from the west, and spread through the Sepoy lines strange tales of greased cartridges, and gibbets, and midnight tumults, and officers cut down in the midst of the parade-ground.

Before the month of May was half over, the English residents at Cawnpore were beginning to be made uneasy by the disagreeable character of the intelligence from Agra. Something had happened at Meerut, and it was feared that something had happened at Delhi. Guns had been heard all the night of the tenth. European travellers from the north-west, whose arrival had been confidently expected, did not make their appearance. A party of the police had gone out to look for them, but met nobody except a young Sepoy trotting down the road on a cavalry troop-horse, who refused to answer any questions. But in the meanwhile, by those secret channels through which in eastern regions bad news travels with more than proverbial celerity, it was well known in the bazaar that the Third Light Cavalry had turned upon their officers; that murder and arson had been the order of the day; that the vast native garrison of Delhi had risen to a man, and had butchered every Englishman on whom they could lay their hands; that mutiny had gotten to itself a nucleus and a stronghold in the capital of the Mogul. These tidings caused great excitement throughout the cantonments, and, especially, in the lines of the Second Cavalry, to whose regiment the corps which had set the example of sedition stood next on the rolls of the Bengal army.

The officer in command of the Cawnpore division was Major-General Sir Hugh Wheeler, K.C.B. At the outbreak of the troubles, many of our most important stations were entrusted to the charge of men who had won their spurs at Seringapatam, and might well have been content to have closed their career at Mooltan. It was to our shame as a military nation that, during such a crisis, the fortunes of England too often depended on the anility of invalids who should have been comfortably telling their stories of the Mahratta war in the pump-rooms of Cheltenham and Buxton. History blushes to chide these veterans for shortcomings incidental to their age. It is hardly just to blame them for prating of Lord Lake, and whimpering about the unsoldierlike appearance which the troops presented without their stocks and with their sun-helmets, at a time when younger warriors would have been disarming, and blowing from guns, and securing treasure, and throwing up earthworks, and sending the women and children down the river to Calcutta. In this his second half-century of Indian service, Sir Hugh was among the oldest members of the old school of Bengal officers. He worshipped his sepoys; spoke their language like one of themselves; and, indeed, had testified to his predilection for the natives of Hindostan by the strongest proof which it is in the power of a man to give. Short and spare, he still rode and walked like a soldier: and appears to have been capable of as much exertion as could reasonably be expected from an Englishman who had spent beneath an Indian sun more than two-thirds of his seventy-five years. On the eighteenth of May, he despatched the following message to the seat of Government:

"All well at Cawnpore. Quiet, but excitement continues among the people. The final advance on Delhi will soon be made. The insurgents can only be about 3,000 in number, and are said to cling to the walls of Delhi, where they have put up a puppet-king. I grudge the escape of one of them. Calm and expert policy will soon reassure the public mind. The plague is, in truth, stayed."

The reader need not be alarmed at the length of the telegraphic news from Cawnpore. There is but little more to come.

For in truth the plague was very far from stayed. The soldiery knew their own strength, and were well inclined to turn the knowledge to profit. There were schoolmasters who might have taught them a lesson of quite another description: but it was a far cry to Barrackpore, and there was no Hearsay at hand. It happens that a native lawyer, Nanukchund by name, took the precaution to keep a full and faithful journal, from the fifteenth of May onwards. This man was bound to our interest by the indissoluble tie of a common fear. A personal enemy of the Nana, he was actually engaged in conducting the suit instituted by the nephew of Bajee Rao to establish his claim to the half of his uncle's estate. With genuine Hindoo sagacity, he foresaw the approaching struggle, and the ultimate triumph of the English power; and conjectured that a record of events compiled with accuracy, slightly tinged by a somewhat ostentatious loyalty, would certainly procure him credit, and, possibly, a comfortable official income. Two days before Sir Hugh made his cheerful report to the Governor-General, Nanukchund looked in on a friend employed at the Treasury, and there heard the native officers of the guard uttering traitorous language, while their men amused themselves by quarrelling with the townsfolk who went to the Treasury on business. They detained people who came out with money or stamp-papers, and would not release them till ordered to do so by the Soubahdar. "It began to be evident," says this shrewd observer, "that nobody had any authority but the Soubahdars and the sepoys."

At length the symptoms of the growing malady became too patent to be disregarded even by the most sanguine physician. It came to the ears of the General that the son of a trooper in the Second Cavalry had been boasting to his schoolfellows that he was in the secret of what his father's regiment intended to do for the good cause. And, about the same time, one Khan Mahomed, a sepoy of the Fifty-sixth, took upon himself to assert that on the fifth of the next month the native troops were to be deprived of their arms, assembled under the pretence of getting their pay, and then and there blown up from a mine constructed by the European officers in the intervals of billiards. This singularly unpleasant prophet seems to have been without honour in his own battalion. His comrades brought information to the adjutant, who gave himself no trouble about the matter, beyond telling them that the story was all a lie. Thereupon Khan Mahomed went to the cavalry lines, where he found an audience more ready to accept his tale. On this occasion he imported some squadrons of English troopers, who were to be equipped with the swords and horses of his hearers. The regiment was soon in a panic of rage and fear. It became necessary to take immediate measures. The incendiary was put in irons, and an urgent application for aid telegraphed to Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence was roused from his bed at midnight, and by break of day all the available post-carriages in the station were rolling along towards Cawnpore, crammed inside and out with English soldiers.

But, in an hour of evil omen, Sir Hugh bethought himself of invoking the assistance of a more dubious ally. The Nana had lately paid a visit to the capital of Oude, under pretence of seeing the lions of the place. The arrogance of his manner, and the discourtesy of his sudden and unannounced departure, had attracted the attention of Mr. Gubbins, the Financial Commissioner, who communicated to General Wheeler his suspicions, backed by the opinion of Sir Henry Lawrence. It may be that the fatal step was first suggested by the warning of wiser men. It may be that the idea had long been familiar to the mind of the infatuated veteran. At all events, the sole answer to the remonstrance from Lucknow was a message, dated the twenty-second of May, stating that "two guns, and three hundred men, cavalry and infantry, furnished by the Maharaja of Bithoor, came in this morning."