The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

Sir Richard Temple, whose task it was to examine the ex-king of Delhi’s papers after the capture of the city, found amongst them an immense number of letters and reports from leading Mohammedans—priests and others. These letters glowed with fanatical fire. Temple declared they convinced him that “Mohammedan fanaticism is a volcanic agency, which will probably burst forth in eruptions from time to time.” But were Christian missions any source of political peril to British rule in India? On this point John Lawrence’s opinion ought to be final. He drafted a special despatch on the subject, and Sir Richard Temple, who was then his secretary, declares he “conned over and over again every paragraph as it was drafted.” It represented his final judgment on the subject. He held that “Christian things done in a Christian way could never be politically dangerous in India.” While scrupulously abstaining from interference in the religions of the people, the Government, he held, “should be more explicit than before”—not less explicit—“in avowing its Christian character.”

The explanation offered by the aged king of Delhi, is terse, and has probably as much of truth as more lengthy and philosophical theories. Colonel Vibart relates how, after the capture of Delhi, he went to see the king, and found him sitting cross-legged on a native bedstead, rocking himself to and fro. He was “a small and attenuated old man, apparently between eighty and ninety years of age, with a long white beard, and almost totally blind.” Some one asked the old king what was the real cause of the outbreak at Delhi. “I don’t know,” was the reply; “I suppose my people gave themselves up to the devil!”

The distribution of the British forces in Bengal, in 1857, it may be noted, made mutiny easy and safe. We have learned the lesson of the Mutiny to-day, and there are now 74,000 British troops, with 88 batteries of British artillery, in India, while the Sepoy regiments number only 150,000, with 13 batteries of artillery. But in 1857, the British garrison had sunk to 38,000, while the Sepoys numbered 200,000. Most of the artillery was in native hands. In Bengal itself, it might almost be said, there were no British troops, the bulk of them being garrisoned on the Afghan or Pegu frontiers. A map showing the distribution of troops on May 1, 1857—Sepoys in black dots, and British in red—is a thing to meditate over. Such a map is pustuled with black dots, an inky way stretching from Cabul to Calcutta; while the red points gleam faintly, and at far-stretched intervals.

All the principal cities were without European troops. There were none at Delhi, none at Benares, none at Allahabad. In the whole province of Oude there was only one British battery of artillery. The treasuries, the arsenals, the roads of the North-West Provinces, might almost be said to be wholly in the hands of Sepoys. Betwixt Meerut and Dinapore, a stretch of 1200 miles, there were to be found only two weak British regiments. Never was a prize so rich held with a hand so slack and careless! It was the evil fate of England, too, that when the storm broke, some of the most important posts were in the hands of men paralysed by mere routine, or in whom soldierly fire had been quenched by the chills of old age.

Of the deeper sources of the Mutiny, John Lawrence held, that the great numerical preponderance of the Sepoys in the military forces holding India, was the chief. “Was it to be expected,” he asked, “that the native soldiery, who had charge of our fortresses, arsenals, magazines, and treasuries, without adequate European control, should fail to gather extravagant ideas of their own importance?” It was the sense of power that induced them to rebel. The balance of numbers, and of visible strength, seemed to be overwhelmingly with them.

Taken geographically, the story of the Mutiny has three centres, and may be covered by the tragedy of Cawnpore, the assault on Delhi, and the heroic defence and relief of Lucknow. Taken in order of time, it has three stages. The first stretches from the outbreak at Meerut in May to the end of September. This is the heroic stage of the Mutiny. No reinforcements had arrived from England during these months. It was the period of the massacres, and of the tragedy of Cawnpore. Yet during those months Delhi was stormed, Cawnpore avenged, and Havelock made his amazing march, punctuated with daily battles, for the relief of Lucknow. The second stage extends from October 1857, to March 1858, when British troops were poured upon the scene of action, and Colin Campbell recaptured Lucknow, and broke the strength of the revolt. The third stage extends to the close of 1858, and marks the final suppression of the Mutiny.

The story, with its swift changes, its tragical sufferings, its alternation of disaster and triumph, is a warlike epic, and might rather be sung in dithyrambic strains, than told in cold and halting prose. If some genius could do for the Indian Mutiny what Napier has done for the Peninsular War, it would be the most kindling bit of literature in the English language. What a demonstration the whole story is, of the Imperial genius of the British race! “A nation,” to quote Hodson—himself one of the most brilliant actors in the great drama—“which could conquer a country like the Punjaub, with a Hindoostanee army, then turn the energies of the conquered Sikhs to subdue the very army by which they were tamed; which could fight out a position like Peshawur for years, in the very teeth of the Afghan tribes; and then, when suddenly deprived of the regiments which effected this, could unhesitatingly employ those very tribes to disarm and quell those regiments when in mutiny—a nation which could do this, is destined indeed to rule the world!”

These sketches do not pretend to be a reasoned and adequate “history” of the Mutiny. They are, as their title puts it, the “Tale” of the Mutiny—a simple chain of picturesque incidents, and, for the sake of dramatic completeness, the sketches are grouped round the three heroic names of the Mutiny—Cawnpore, Lucknow, and Delhi. Only the chief episodes in the great drama can be dealt with in a space so brief, and they will be told in simple fashion as tales, which illustrate the soldierly daring of the men, and the heroic fortitude of the women, of our race.

On the evening of May 10, 1857, the church bells were sounding their call to prayer across the parade-ground, and over the roofs of the cantonment at Meerut. It had been a day of fierce heat; the air had scorched like a white flame; all day long fiery winds had blown, hot as from the throat of a seven times heated furnace. The tiny English colony at Meerut—languid women, white-faced children, and officers in loosest undress—panted that long Sunday in their houses, behind the close blinds, and under the lazily swinging punkahs. But the cool night had come, the church bells were ringing, and in the dusk of evening, officers and their wives were strolling or driving towards the church. They little dreamed that the call of the church bells, as it rose and sank over the roofs of the native barracks, was, for many of them, the signal of doom. It summoned the native troops of Meerut to revolt; it marked the beginning of the Great Mutiny.

Yet the very last place, at which an explosion might have been expected, was Meerut. It was the one post in the north-west where the British forces were strongest. The Rifles were there, 1000 strong; the 6th Dragoons (Carabineers), 600 strong; together with a fine troop of horse artillery, and details of various other regiments. Not less, in a word, than 2200 British troops, in fair, if not in first-class, fighting condition, were at the station, while the native regiments at Meerut, horse and foot, did not reach 3000. It did not need a Lawrence or a Havelock at Meerut to make revolt impossible, or to stamp it instantly and fiercely out if it were attempted. A stroke of very ordinary soldiership might have accomplished this; and in that event, the Great Mutiny itself might have been averted.