The general conditions of the Mutiny campaign formed, indeed, a striking contrast to those of the Crimean war. In the latter case, the allied armies—English, French, Sardinian, and Turkish—amounting to nearly 200,000 men, had been virtually shut up in a corner, and compelled to fight a series of battles on the same ground, in order to gain possession of the Russian stronghold. In the present instance the circumstances were all the other way. A vast continent was in a great measure over-run, and its munitions and military stores were temporarily in the hands of a great mutinous army, more or less in sympathy with the inhabitants; whilst the English troops in small scattered detachments, often hundreds of miles apart, were fighting a succession of battles, with their communications precarious, and for the moment without the power of concentration.
To a stranger landing in India for the first time, knowing nothing of the language or the customs of the people, more especially in the middle of a revolution, there were many minor personal perplexities, especially about servants. Their very titles were embarrassing. Bearers, kitmagars, dhobies, durzees, bheesties, chuprassies, punkah-wallahs, hookahbadars, syces, and others. What were their duties? That was the point. Because in India, as we soon found, one man will only do his own mite of work, and scorns the idea of making himself generally useful. Any attempt to enlarge the sphere of their duties would lead, so we were told, to loss of caste. There were, of course, exceptional cases, such as that of the native servant who, on being asked by a new-comer as to his caste, replied, 'Same caste as master, drink brandy sahib.' Owing to the great influx of officers from home, all in a hurry to be off, servants were especially difficult to find. I was fortunate enough to get an old fellow whose name was Buktum Hassan to take care of me. He could not speak a word of English, and slept away his time on a mat outside my door. I believe he was a bearer, and a Hindoo, but he would not come near me at dinner time. Subsequently I procured another servant, who condescended to wait on me at dinner, but I was cautioned not on any account to eat ham in his presence. Curry and rice he did not object to. Two Sepoys, also, were appropriated for my service as orderlies. They were tall, dark, spare men, and all day waited patiently in the corridor in uniform, strictly buttoned up, with belts and boots. The first evening they said something, which being interpreted was that they wished to go home: they then proceeded to take off all their clothes, except a loin cloth, made them up into a bundle, and leaving them in a corner of my room, marched happily away.
The greater portion of the batteries from England having arrived, General Dupuis and his staff followed the Commander-in-Chief up country on November 12. The journey to Benares occupied five days, and from Raneegunge we were conveyed in dawk gharries about eighty miles a day, passing on the road every few hours detachments of troops of all arms, hurrying forward, some in bullock carts, some on the march. Portions of the road, especially near the river Soane, were unsafe from the vicinity of straggling parties of mutineers, and we had to be protected occasionally by an escort.
Remaining a few hours in a bungalow outside Benares, we found time to pay a hurried visit to this celebrated city. As an instance of the precarious nature of our long line of communications, it may be mentioned that although its inhabitants were in a restless, disaffected condition, the garrison only consisted of a weak company of infantry and two field guns. On the morning after our arrival I was informed that 'the elephant was at the door,' in readiness to take us into the city. It had no howdah, so we climbed up and sat on a large stuffed mattress. The environs consisted of tombs, temples, ruins, mosques, and gardens. The streets were crammed with people, and with little Brahminy bulls wandering about; in some parts the elephant was too wide for the narrow, tortuous passages, so that we had to dismount and walk. In one Hindoo temple which we visited, a fanatic, or possibly a lunatic, was seated in a niche. He was quite naked and covered with dust, but, oddly enough, had a fuschia flower lying on the top of his shaven head. He sat perfectly mute and still, and took no apparent notice of anybody, so that it was impossible to ascertain what object he expected to accomplish by so sedentary and monotonous an existence.
We were rather a large party at the hotel bungalow, some being officers newly arrived and others who had served for years in the country, and who were very good natured in giving us information. Colonel David Wood, of the Horse Artillery, was one of the newcomers, and had a habit occasionally of assuming ignorance on minor points which perhaps was not always genuine. During dinner he turned gravely to one of the old Indian officers and said, 'Can you tell me, what is a dhobie?' They all laughed, and it was explained that a dhobie was a man who washed your clothes. Wood, still quite grave, said: 'Oh, that accounts for the difficulty. I told mine to clean my horse, and he refused. I will discharge him tomorrow.' The old Indian officer, however, assured him that a dhobie was absolutely necessary. Wood replied that he never required washing on active service. 'You must surely have your shirts washed,' was the rejoinder. 'Not at all,' said Wood. 'I always wear a flannel shirt in the field, and as soon as it gets dirty or worn out I throw it away and put on another.'
[CHAPTER XIII]
On November 19 we reached Allahabad, an interesting old fortress at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna; but important events were taking place, and we hurried on and reached Cawnpore on the 21st. On our arrival we found that Sir Colin Campbell, with nearly all the troops available, had left a few days previously for Lucknow, and that serious fighting had taken place there on the 16th and 17th; but the communications were subsequently interrupted by the mutineers in Oude, and for some days no further information could be obtained as to the progress of affairs. It was a critical period of the campaign. As already explained, the garrison of Lucknow, with many women and children, fifty miles distant, had been entirely shut up and surrounded by multitudes of mutineers for weeks past, and was running short of provisions, so that its relief had become a very urgent necessity. On the other hand, the great bulk of our troops, anxious as they were to reach the scene, owing to want of means of rapid conveyance, were still moving up in driblets along the 600 miles of road from Calcutta to Cawnpore. So that when the Commander-in-Chief had crossed the Ganges on his adventurous march to Lucknow, he was only able to take with him about 6,000 infantry and a moderate force of cavalry and artillery.
But that was not all. Cawnpore, his only base, was in a precarious, defenceless condition, and when Sir Colin had left and placed Windham in command of it, there were only 450 infantry remaining for its protection. The defences of Cawnpore were insignificant. A small incomplete earthwork had been made on the bank of the river with a view to protect the bridge of boats, and lying all round it were the ruins of burnt bungalows and a general scene of confusion and desolation; and beyond again, at a few hundred yards, stood the large city, composed, as usual, of a wilderness of narrow tortuous streets, and devoid of any external defences. So that it was not a favourable position to hold, even had a considerable force been available. The difficulties and dangers of the situation were indeed obvious. No sooner had the Commander-in-Chief crossed the Ganges and marched in one direction, than the Gwalior contingent—a well trained force which, joined by other mutineers, amounted to about 25,000 men—with a powerful artillery of 40 guns, field and heavy, was reported as advancing in several columns from Calpee forty-six miles distant on the other side.