CAWNPORE June 1857.
General Wheeler’s Entrenchment June 4th.-27th. 1857.
Walker & Cockerell sc.
But Wheeler’s most fatal mistake was in the choice he made of the place where the British garrison was to make its last stand. The Cawnpore magazine itself was a vast walled enclosure, covering three acres, with strong buildings and exhaustless store of guns and ammunition, with the river guarding one front, and a nullah acting as a ditch on another. Here would have been shelter for the women and the sick, a magnificent fighting position for the men, abundant water, and a great store of cannon.
Wheeler, for reasons which nobody has ever yet guessed, neglected this strong post. He allowed its stores of cannon to be turned against himself. He chose, instead of this formidable and sheltered post, a patch of open plain six miles distant, with practically no water supply. He threw up a slender wall of earth, which a musket-ball could pierce, and over which an active cow could jump, and he crowded into this the whole British colony at Cawnpore.
“What do you call that place you are making out on the plain?” asked the Nana’s Prime Minister, Azimoolah, of a British officer. “You ought to call it the ‘Fort of Despair.’” “No, no,” answered the Englishman, with the pluck of his race, “we’ll call it the ‘Fort of Victory!’” Nevertheless, when Wheeler made that evil choice of a place of defence, he was constructing a veritable Fort of Despair.
Wheeler, it seems, did not occupy the magazine, as it was held by a Sepoy guard, and it would have “shown mistrust,” and might have precipitated a conflict, if he had attempted to move into it. But what more expressive and public sign of “mistrust” could be imagined than the construction of the entrenchment in the open plain? And what could more fatally damage British prestige than the spectacle of the entire British community, military and civilian, crowding into these worthless defences!
If Wheeler did not occupy the magazine, he might have blown it up, and with that act have turned to smoke all the resources of the rebels. This was left to be done by Sepoy hands six weeks later. Meanwhile, Wheeler left almost unlimited resources of guns and munitions of war in the hands of the mutineers—to be employed against himself!
In the grim pause, while waiting for the outbreak, the British garrison showed a cool and gallant patience. The women, children, and civilians took up their quarters every night within the earthworks, where some ten light guns were mounted. But to “show their confidence” in their men, and, if possible, still to hold them back from mutiny, the British officers slept with their regiments. To lead a forlorn hope up the broken slope of a breach, or to stand in an infantry square while, with thunder of galloping hoofs, a dozen squadrons of cavalry charge fiercely down, needs courage. But it was a finer strain of courage still which made a British officer leave his wife and children to sleep behind the guns, standing loaded with grape, to protect them from a rush of mutineers, while he himself walked calmly down to sleep—or, at least, to feign sleep—within the very lines of the mutineers themselves!