Neill reached the city on June 3, and found himself on the very edge of a tragedy. The Sepoys had arranged for an outbreak on the night of June 4. The native troops numbered over 2000; the British troops, as we have seen, consisted of 150 men of the 10th, and thirty artillerymen with three guns. To these Neill added sixty of his “Lambs” whom he had brought with him. Neill put the impress of his vehement will on the brigadier, Ponsonby, in charge of the station, and at half-an-hour’s notice it was resolved to disarm the Sepoys.
The business was ill-managed. The Sepoys commenced to shoot, the Sikhs turned on their officers. Ponsonby, an old man, found “the sun” and the strain of the scene too much for him, and visibly broke down. He dismounted, and Neill, who had been grimly watching the scene, said abruptly, “General, I assume command.” Ponsonby assented in silence, and Neill instantly opened on the mutineers with grape and musketry fire, and, after a few minutes’ furious shooting, Sikh and Sepoy fled. The 250, that is, destroyed, in a military sense, the 2000!
Having stamped out the Mutiny—or, rather, scattered the mutineers—Neill devoted the next two or three days to punishing it. The Governor-General telegraphed orders to push on to Allahabad, but Neill believed in making thorough work, and he wired back, “Can’t move; wanted here.” And for the next three days he kept the gallows busy, and hanged without pause or pity. The Sepoys had shot down their officers, and murdered women and children, and Neill was bent on showing that this was a performance which brought in its track swift and terrible punishment. “Colonel Neill’s hangings” were, no doubt, of heroic scale, and, looked at through the cold perspective of forty years, wear a very black aspect. But Neill, rightly or wrongly, held that to strike, and to strike hard, and to strike swiftly, was the one policy in such a crisis.
Benares being secure, Neill pushed on across the seventy miles of dusty, heat-scorched road to Allahabad. He started with only forty-four of his “Lambs,” and covered the seventy miles in two night marches. When they reached the Ganges, almost every fourth man was down with sunstroke, Neill himself being amongst the number, and his men only kept him up by dashing buckets of water over his head and chest. The boat pushed from the bank; it was found to leak at a dozen points, and began to sink. The “blue-caps” relanded, and their officer, Spurgin, called for volunteers to beat the banks of the river in search of another boat.
Almost every man able to walk volunteered, and, in the heavy sand of the river-bank, with the furnace-like heat of an Indian sun setting on fire the very air they breathed, the Fusileers began their search for a boat to carry them across to Allahabad. More than one brave fellow fell and died from heat and exhaustion. But a boat was found, the gallant forty crossed, and marched—as many of them as could still keep their feet—a tiny but dauntless band, through the gates of the fort.
Other detachments followed quickly, and Neill flung himself with all the fire of his Scottish blood into the task of restoring the British raj in the great city. At daybreak he opened with his guns, from the fort, on the suburb held by the revolted Sepoys, and then sallied out with his scanty force, and burnt it over their rebel heads. “I myself,” he wrote to his wife, “was almost dying from complete exhaustion;” but his fierce spirit overbore the fainting body that carried it. He armed a river steamer with a howitzer and a party of volunteer riflemen, and employed it as a river patrol. He launched the fierce Sikhs—by this time heartily loyal—on the villages.
They were wild soldiers, gaunt, sinewy, and eager—the “Singh log” (“the lion people”), as they called themselves. Maude has left a graphic picture of the Sikhs who, at Allahabad, followed Brasyer as, with his flowing white beard, he led them in pursuit of the broken Sepoys, or hung with soldierly obedience on Neill’s stern orders. “When no fighting was on hand,” he says, “squads of the tall, upright, Hebraic-visaged Sikhs used to march into their commanding officer’s tent, where they stood at attention, in silence, with one hand raised at the orthodox salute. ‘What do you want, my men?’ was the question in Hindustani. ‘May it please the protector of the poor, we want two days’ leave.’ ‘What for?’ ‘To get drunk, Sahib!’ And their request, being considered reasonable, was usually granted!”
Neill, by the way, had to use these by no means ascetic Sikhs to keep his own “blue-caps” sober. The stocks of all the merchants in the city were practically without owners, and the finest champagnes and brandies were selling at 6d. per bottle. For a day or two it seemed probable that Neill’s little force would be swept out of existence in a mere ignoble torrent of drunkenness. Neill threatened the whip and the bullet in vain; and finally marched up the Sikhs and took peremptory possession of all intoxicating drinks.
On June 18 the fighting was over, the British were masters both of fort and city, where, fourteen days before, they had been little better than prisoners or fugitives. Then was repeated, in yet sterner fashion, the retribution which had struck terror through Benares. The gallows in Allahabad groaned under its heavy and quick-following burdens. In his diary Neill wrote: “God grant that I may have acted with justice. I know I have with severity, but, under all the circumstances, I trust for forgiveness. I have done all for the good of my country, to re-establish its prestige and power, and to put down this most barbarous and inhuman insurrection.” Then he recites cases of outrage and mutilation on English ladies and on little children, with details that still chill the natural blood with horror to read.
The Sepoys, it is to be noted, when the fighting was over, took their penalty with a sort of composed fatalism, to the Western imagination very amazing. Sir George Campbell tells the story of the execution of an old native officer, a subhadar, which he witnessed. “He was very cool and quiet, and submitted to be executed without remonstrance. But the rope broke, and he came down to the ground. He picked himself up, and it was rather a painful scene for the spectators. But he seemed to feel for their embarrassment, and thought it well to break the awkwardness of the situation by conversation, remarking that it was a very bad rope, and talking of little matters of that kind till another rope was procured, which made an end of him!”