The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

Lawrence, without a change of countenance, ordered the horses, waiting ready saddled, to be brought round, and, followed by his staff, went out on to the Residency steps to wait for them. As they stood there red flames were breaking out at a score of points in the black mass of houses on which they looked. The air was full of tumult. An English bungalow only a hundred and fifty yards distant broke into flame, showing how near the mutineers were.

At that moment, with the tramp of disciplined feet, a body of Sepoys came running up at the double out of the darkness, and swung into line facing the Residency steps. It was the native officer bringing up the Residency guard; and, saluting Captain Wilson, Lawrence’s aide-de-camp, he asked “if the men should load.” These men were known to be disloyal; before the morning dawned, as a matter of fact, they were in open mutiny. Ought they to be treated as loyal, and permitted to load with the entire British staff of the city at the muzzles of their muskets? Wilson reported the native officer’s question to Lawrence. “Yes,” said he quietly, “let them load,” and the group on the Residency steps quietly watched while ramrods rang sharply in the musket barrels, and the gun-nipples were capped. The sound of ramrods falling on the leaden bullets was perfectly audible in the hush; and, says Colonel Wilson, “I believe Sir Henry was the only man of all that group whose heart did not beat the quicker for it.”

Then there came a thrilling pause. These men had the entire British staff at Lucknow before them at point-blank distance! A single gesture, a shout, and that line of muskets would have poured its deadly fire upon the group on the Residency steps, and with the sound of that one volley Lucknow must have fallen, and perhaps the course of history been changed.

These brave men standing there under the very shadow of death knew this, and not a figure stirred! Had there been the least sign of agitation or fear, perhaps the Sepoys would have fired. But the cool, steadfast bearing of that group of Englishmen put a strange spell on the Sepoys. Another moment of intensest strain, and the native officer gave a sharp word of command. The magic of discipline prevailed: the men swung round and marched off into the darkness. But the fate of Lucknow and a thousand British lives hung on those few critical moments. It was the haughty, ice-cold courage of that heroic group on the Residency steps which, for the moment, averted a great disaster.

Sir Henry Lawrence is the hero of the earlier stages of the siege of Lucknow, and it is difficult to imagine a loftier or more gallant character. He came of that sturdy, strong-brained North of Ireland stock, which has given to the British Empire so many gallant soldiers and famous administrators, so many great engineers and captains of labour. Lawrence’s face, with its long features, thin-flowing beard, deep-set, meditative, not to say dreamy eyes, and high cheek bones, was an odd compound of, say, Don Quixote and Abraham Lincoln. His valour was “a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper”; but he had better qualities than even valour of that fine edge. He was an administrator of the first order. His intellect had in it a curious penetrating quality, and perhaps his brain alone forecast, in its true scale, the great Mutiny which shook almost to its fall the British rule in India. His courtesy, his unselfishness, his passionate scorn of injustice, his generous pity for the oppressed, gave a strange charm to Lawrence’s character, while his meditative piety added gravity and depth to it. The whole interval between the tragedy of Cawnpore and the glory of Lucknow is to be measured by the single personality of Henry Lawrence. That he was of a different type from Wheeler, explains how Lucknow escaped while Cawnpore perished.

The two cities are about forty-five miles distant from each other. Wheeler and Lawrence had each to face, practically, the same situation, and with resources not very unequal. Wheeler’s credulous faith in his Sepoys flung away the last chance of the ill-fated British in Cawnpore. It was this which made him gather them within those thin lines of earth, shelterless from shot or sunstroke, and without supplies, where no fate except death or surrender was possible. Lawrence, with surer insight, measured the problem before him. He chose wisely the spot where the British must make their stand for existence. He gathered within the lines he selected all the treasure and warlike resources of the city, with supplies that a siege of five months did not exhaust. And his splendid foresight and energy saved Lucknow.

There is no space to tell here in detail the tale of the noble courage and energy with which Lawrence kept the seething and turbulent city from revolt through May and June. The mere garrison figures of Lucknow show Lawrence’s position. He had 700 Europeans on whom he could rely. There were 7000 Sepoys, all potential, and highly probable mutineers. Beyond this was a great turbulent and fanatical city, with a population of, say, 700,000, a magazine waiting to explode at the touch of a match.

The peril was certain in its character, but was uncertain in scale, and time, and form. Lawrence had to arm himself against that vague, formless, yet terrific peril, without letting those who watched him closely and keenly discover that he was conscious of its existence. He had to hide an anxious brain behind a cheerful face; to prepare minutely for swift-coming and desperate war, while wearing the dress, and talking the language of peace; to turn a hospitable Residency into a fortress; and yet keep open doors and an open table. And he did it all! When, the morning after Chinhut, the Residency was closely and furiously besieged, it was found to be provisioned, organised, and armed for a stern and obstinate and, in the end, successful defence!

Lawrence read the whole position of affairs so truly that his forecast of events has in it a gleam of something like prophecy, or of magic. “He told me,” says Colonel Wilson, “that nearly the whole army would go, but not, he thought, the Sikhs; that in every native regiment there was a residuum of loyal Sepoys, and he meant, if possible, to retain these—as he actually did. If Cawnpore held out, Lucknow would be unassailed; but if Cawnpore fell, Lucknow would be hard pressed, and no succour could reach the city before the middle of August; that the outbreak would remain a revolt of the Sepoys, and not a rising of the people.”