The battles of the British Army

by Robert Melvin Blackwood

While at Shahjehanpore the 28th Bengal Infantry mutinied while their officers were at church. The Rev. Mr. M‘Callum was shot as he ascended the pulpit, Lieutenant Spens was sabred while he knelt at prayer, Dr. Bowling was shot as he was driving his wife and child to the church, while Mr. Ricketts, the magistrate of the station, was killed in cold blood. The women and children were promised every protection, and were actually allowed to leave the station. They were compelled to walk, and, on alighting, the fiends disregarded all their promises by bayonetting the helpless women and dashing out the brains of the children upon the ground, besides killing all the officers who had accompanied their women under the promise of protection. At Seetapore, Neemuch, Hansi, Benares and Sultanpore the same things occurred, the officers being slain without being given an opportunity to defend themselves, while the women and children and private citizens were ruthlessly massacred.

But of all the gross crimes committed during this trying time, when the flame of mutiny was spreading like wildfire through the country, there were none of such a treacherous character as that of the mutiny of the 6th Regiment of the Bengal army at Allahabad. That regiment had fought gallantly in many a field, as its colours signified, for they bore the names “Mysore,” “Bhurtpore,” and “Cabul.” Allahabad is a fortified city at the junction of the Ganges with the Jumna, and the fort is constructed in a strong position on a tongue of land at the confluence of the two streams.

The 6th were lying at this fort or at the cantonments as might be required, and when they heard of the mutinies at Meerut and Delhi, at once volunteered to march against the latter city. They were thanked for their offer, and the officers commanding the regiment never imagined that their men would become disaffected. A rumour became general throughout the town, however, that the regiment was about to mutiny, and what did the treacherous sepoys do but approach the officers, and, says a writer of the day, “with tears in their eyes entreated them to have implicit trust in their fidelity.” The scene that ensued would not have disgraced the early days of the first French Revolution.

The officers and men fraternised in the most loving manner. Perfect confidence appeared to be established on both sides; but, before nightfall stragglers from other stations arrived, who worked up the credulous fools to frenzy. They were told that the Christian Queen’s troops were marching all over the country, destroying all who refused to become Christians. The soldiers had been wavering, and very little required to turn them into perfect demons, inflamed with the one desire, namely massacre and safety in flight. That same evening, about half-past nine, while the officers were in the mess bungalow, calm in a sense of security, they were suddenly startled to hear the bugles sounding the alarm.

With blanching faces they turned out of the bungalow, but the foremost fell with a bullet in his brain, and the work of mutiny had commenced. The mutineers rushed about like veritable demons, slaying and killing whoever dared to impede them. The officers made a gallant attempt to reach the shelter of the fort at the riverside, and a few actually managed to elude the maddened mutineers, but fourteen officers, including nine young ensigns of the 6th, were brutally massacred, and their bodies subjected to terrible maltreatment.

A detachment of the 6th, with two guns, was posted at the pontoon bridge to stop the progress of the mutineers from Benares, who were expected to come to Allahabad. A garden midway between that point and the fort was occupied by about 150 men of the Oude Irregular Cavalry, under Lieutenant Alexander, who was posted there for the same purpose. When the men of the 6th at the bridge heard the sound of the bugles, they at once divined the cause, and turned the two guns in the direction of the city, also firing upon the artillery officer, who bravely dashed off amidst the shower of bullets to warn Alexander of his danger.

Meanwhile the officers of the detachment managed to effect their escape in the dark, although they were repeatedly shot at. Lieutenant Alexander, getting together as many men as could saddle, came dashing up, sword in hand, but was shot through the heart by one of the rebels. The artillery officer, being unsupported, saw that his life was in jeopardy, turned his horse, and galloped to the fort. The garrison of the fort consisted of about 70 European invalids, the Sikh Ferozepore regiment to the number of about 400, about 80 sepoys of the mutinous 6th regiment, along with a number of European volunteers from the city. It was out of the question to trust the men of the 6th, so the officers at once disarmed them, and found that, contrary to orders, they had loaded their rifles, which no doubt they intended to use upon the officers. They were turned out in an unarmed state, and joined their infuriated comrades in the streets of the town.

The mutineers, after looting and wrecking the cantonments, proceeded in a body to the great prison, where they easily overpowered the guards and forced an entrance. Indian prisons at the time were generally crammed full of thieves and vagabonds who could well and fitly be classed “the greatest scum on earth,” and the great prison of Allahabad was no exception to the rule. The mutineers released them speedily, and the prisoners were nothing loth to join the sepoys in the work of havoc and death. There were about 3000 prisoners released, and, along with the soldiers, they marched through the streets, and carried death and destruction on their march. Captain Birch, the adjutant of the fort, and Lieutenant Innes of the Engineers, chanced to be outside when the mutiny happened, and they were caught by the rebels and shot.

A worse fate befel an officer of the 6th, who chanced to fall alive into the hands of the savages—for such undoubtedly the soldiers had become. He was pinned to the earth by bayonets and a fire kindled round his body, and thus he was slowly roasted to death as his own men danced around him and mocked his agony. The European residents who chanced to fall into the hands of the mutineers were horribly outraged before death mercifully released them from their tortures. At least fifty white men and women perished in their houses or on the streets. Some were cut to pieces by slow degrees, the nose, ears, lips, and fingers being first cut off, and then the limbs hacked off by the tulwars of the rebels. An entire family was burned alive, and little children were destroyed before the eyes of agonised parents. Houses were wrecked, and choice articles either carried off or destroyed in the maddest spirit of destruction and hate.

Five officers had reached the shelter of the fort by swimming the Ganges, and three of them were in a state of nudity. The little garrison lay under arms in the fort for five days and nights, watching the infuriated sepoys rushing hither and thither, maddened and desperate, many of them being under the influence of the native spirit called “Chang,” which seems to steal away any little sense the ordinary sepoy may have.