Amongst the Sepoys within the Residency, again, as the few weeks grew into months and no relief came, there spread a conviction that the fate of the sahibs was sealed, and there were many desertions. Sixteen went off in a body one night, headed by a Eurasian with the very British name of “Jones.” They left the post they held open to the enemy, and scribbled on the walls in several places the explanation, “Because we have no opium.” Jones and his fellow-deserters, it is not unsatisfactory to know, were shot by the Sepoys.
One of the ugly features of the siege was that several European renegades—amongst them at least one Englishman—were fighting on the side of the mutineers. Rees says that at the battle of Chinhut a European—“a handsome-looking man, well built, fair, about twenty-five years of age, with light moustache, and wearing the undress uniform of a European cavalry officer”—headed a cavalry charge on the men of the 32nd. He might have been a Russian, but was vehemently suspected of being an Englishman, who had forsaken both his faith and his race. His name was even whispered, and Rees adds that he was of good family. Two of his cousins were fighting valiantly in the Residency against the rebels, a third was wounded at Agra, a fourth held a high military appointment. Yet this apostate was recognised laying a gun against the Residency! His shrift would have been particularly short had he fallen into British hands. The British privates in the Residency, too, were kindled to a yet higher temperature of wrath by hearing the bands of the Sepoy regiments playing—as if in irony—“God save the Queen” under the shelter of the ruined buildings that came almost up to the line of the British entrenchments.
But on the whole the average Briton is apt to be grimly cheerful when a good fight is in progress, and even this dreadful siege was not without its humours. Thus Rees tells how, on the night of July 26, the men of his post were spreading themselves out in the chorus of “Cheer, Boys, cheer,” with the utmost strength of their voices, when an alarm was given at the front. They dashed out, and, with the unfinished syllables of that chorus yet on their lips, found themselves in the tumult and fury of a desperate assault. After the fight was over they returned and finished their interrupted song!
Innes, again, relates how, when a long mine of the enemy had been seized, and two officers were exploring its darkness, they heard the earth fall in behind them. One of the two, famous for his resonant laugh, shouted with a burst of merriment, “What fun! They are cutting us off,” and turned round gaily to charge on his foes!
Danger, in a word, had become an inspiring jest to these brave spirits. “Sam” Lawrence, who commanded the Redan, was famous for the cheerful view he always took of affairs. It was known that the Sepoys had several mines converging on the projecting horn of the Redan, and Lawrence, as unconquerably jolly as Mark Tapley himself, expressed his view of the situation to his brigadier by saying, with a laugh, that “he and his men expected very shortly to be up amongst the little birds!”
On June 14, Fayrer records, “If we can believe our enemies, we are the last Englishmen in the country.” This might or might not be the case; but the garrison determined grimly that, if they were the last of their race, they would not disgrace it. In the vernacular of the camp, they had agreed to “blow the whole ⸺ thing into the air” rather than surrender. “I was quite determined,” says Fayrer, “that they should not take me alive, and I would kill as many of them as I could before they took me.... Some men asked me to give them poison for their wives, if the enemy should get in. But this I absolutely refused to do.”
Courage, when high-strung, sometimes evolves an almost uncanny cheerfulness. The Sepoys brought a mortar into action that dropped shell after shell on one particular house. “We got the ladies up out of the Tyekhana,” records Fayrer, and they amused themselves by trying to be cheerful and singing part-songs in the portico, to the rushing of shells and the whistling of musket-balls. When before were such songs attempted to such an accompaniment? But the women of the Residency showed throughout a courage quite as high as that of the men. During the great assault on July 20, when, on the explosion of a mine, the Sepoys attempted to storm the Residency at half-a-dozen points, “every one,” says Fayrer, “was at his post, and poured shot, shell, grape, and musketry into them as hard as possible. The noise was frightful, the enemy shouting and urging each other on. It certainly seemed to me as if our time had come. But all the poor ladies were patiently awaiting the result in the Tyekhana.”
“During the whole siege,” says Gubbins, “I never heard of a man among the Europeans who played the coward. Some croaked, no doubt, many were despondent, yet others grew grimly desperate during those terrible days.” Gubbins relates how he was one evening taken aside by an officer, who explained that he had arranged with his wife that, if the Sepoys forced their way in, he would shoot her. “She had declared herself content to die by a pistol-ball from his hand.” He offered to do the same friendly service for Gubbins’s wife, if necessary, and wanted Gubbins to undertake a like desperate office for his wife, if required. To such desperate straits were civilised and Christian men driven!
The courage shown by the women was uniform and wonderful. Dr. Fayrer relates how a shell broke in the bedroom where his wife was lying. It shattered the room and set fire to the bedclothes with its explosion. Fayrer ran in; and, he says, “My wife immediately spoke to me out of the smoke, and said she was not hurt. She was perfectly composed and tranquil, though a 9-pound bombshell had just burst by the side of her bed.”
There were three great all-round attacks, on July 20, August 10, and September 5. The most desperate, perhaps, was that on the Cawnpore battery, the most nearly successful that on the Sikh square. The attack on the Sikh square was preceded by the explosion of a mine which made a breach thirty feet wide in the British defences, and buried seven of its defenders under the ruins. There was good cover for the enemy close up to the breach, and no reason why they should not have swarmed in, except the argument of the smoke-blackened, grim-looking sahibs who suddenly appeared, musket in hand, to guard the great gap.