The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny

On the afternoon of November 11, Sir Colin Campbell reviewed his little army. It was drawn up in parade order, on a plain a few miles south of the Dilkusha. Three thousand four hundred men faced him, and the smallness of the number is eloquent of the magnitude of their task. Indeed, that is one of the salient features of each main episode of the Mutiny. Nicholson at Delhi, Havelock at Cawnpore and on the way to Lucknow, Colin Campbell in the pending action, and Sir Hugh Rose in many a hard fought battle in Central India, one and all were called on to attack and defeat ten times the number of sepoys.

But what fine troops they were who met the commander-in-chief’s gaze as they stood marshaled there, on that dusty Indian maidan. Peel’s sailors, with eight heavy guns, artillerymen standing by the cannon that had sounded the knell of Delhi from below the Ridge, the 9th Lancers, who held the right flank when the capture of Hindu Rao’s house would have meant the collapse of the assault, the 8th and 75th Foot, the 2d and 4th Punjabis – all these had followed the Lion of the Punjab when he stormed the Cashmere Bastion. Sikh Cavalry, too, and Hodson’s wild horsemen, and many another gallant soldier, fresh from the immortal siege, returned the General’s quiet scrutiny, as he rode past, and doubtless wondered how he would compare as a leader with the man whom they had left in the little cemetery at the foot of the Ridge.

It is on record that from the end of the line came a yell of welcome and recognition. The 93d Highlanders remembered what Campbell had done in the Crimea, and their joyful slogan brought a flush to the bronzed face of the old war dog when he learnt the significance of their greeting.

Next morning began a three day’s battle. Perhaps there was never an action so spectacular, so thrilling, so amazingly in earnest, as the continuous fight which brought about the Second Relief of Lucknow. At the Alumbagh, at the Dilkusha and La Martinière school, at the Secunder Bagh and the Shah Nujeef, were fought fiercely-contested combats that in other campaigns would have figured as independent battles, each highly important in the history of the time.

The taking of the Shah Nujeef alone was worthy of Homeric praise. It was a mosque that stood in a garden, bounded by a high and stout wall and protected by jungle and mud hovels. Its peculiar position, joined to the number of guns mounted on its walls and the thousands of sepoys who held it, made it impossible for a devoted artillery to create an effective breach. Yet, if the relieving force failed here, they failed altogether. So Sir Colin asked his men for a supreme effort. Riding forward himself, accompanied by his staff and Sir Adrian Hope, Colonel of the 93d, he cheered on his loved Highlanders. Cannot one hear the skirl of the pipes amid that din of cannon and musketry? Cannot one see the shot-torn colors fluttering in the breeze, the plaids of the gallant Highland gentlemen who led the 93d, vanishing in the smoke and dust? Middleton’s battery of the Royal Artillery came dashing up, “the drivers waving their whips, the gunners their caps,” unlimbered within forty yards of the wall, and opened fire with grape. Men and horses fell in scores, but somehow, anyhow, an entrance was gained and the Shah Nujeef was taken. Feeble must be the pulse that does not beat faster, dim the eye that does not kindle, as one hears how those Britons fought and died, but did not die in vain.

Next day Captain Garnet Wolseley led a storming party against the Motee Mahal, and the self-sacrificing heroism of the Shah Nujeef was displayed again here and with the same result.

And so the wild fight went on, till Outram and Havelock, Napier, Eyre, Havelock’s son and four other officers ran from the Residency through a tempest of lead showered on them from the Kaiser Bagh, and Hope Grant, dashing forward from the van of Colin Campbell’s force, shook hands with the hero of the First Relief.

Half an hour later Malcolm entered the Residency. At first sight it was an abode of sorrow. Death and ruin seemed to have combined there to wreak their spite on mankind and his belongings. Even the men and women whom he met were tear-laden, and it was not till he heard their happy voices that he knew they were weeping because of the overwhelming joy in their souls.

He hurried on, scanning each excited group for one face that he thought he would recognize were it fifty years instead of five months since their last meeting. He, of course, was even a finer-looking and better set-up soldier now than when he galloped along the flame-lit roads of Meerut on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday night in May, and it is not to be wondered at if he failed to allow for the effect on Winifred of the ordeal she had gone through.

Perhaps his keen eyes were covered with a mist, perhaps the growing fear in his heart forbade his tongue to ask a question, because he dreaded the answer. Perhaps sheer agitation may have rendered him incapable of distinguishing one among so many. Howsoever that may be, he knew nothing, saw no one, until a wan, slim-figured woman, a woman clothed in tattered rags, down whose pallid cheeks streamed the divine tears of happiness, touched his arm and sobbed:

“Are you looking for me – dear?”

The Mutiny was by no means ended with the fall of Delhi and the Second Relief of Lucknow. North and south and east and west the rebels were hunted with untiring zeal. Sometimes in scattered bands, less often in formidable armies, they were pursued, encountered and annihilated. Quickly degenerating into mere robber hordes, they became a pest to the unhappy villagers in the remoter parts of the different provinces, and it was long ere the last embers of the fire that had raged so fiercely were stamped out. Nana Sahib perished miserably under the claws of a tiger in the Nepaul jungle, the Moulvie of Fyzabad and the Ranei of Jhansi fell in action, while Tantia Topi was hanged. But the end came, and on November 1, 1858, amid salvoes of artillery and to the accompaniment of festivities innumerable, Queen Victoria proclaimed the abolition of the East India Company, and assumed the sovereignty of the country. Her Majesty took no territory, confirmed all treaties, promised religious toleration and civil equality to all her Indian subjects, and gave full and complete pardon to every rebel who was not a murderer.

The Queen’s gracious and peace-bringing words supplied a fitting close to India’s Red Year. Europeans and natives alike tried to forget both the crime and its punishment. And that was a good thing in itself.

The great land of Hindustan has doubled its teeming population and increased its prosperity out of all comparable reckoning during the fifty years that have passed since the Mutiny. Many of the descendants of men who fought against the British Raj are now its trusted servants, and there is not in India to-day a native gentleman of any importance who would not assist the Government with his life and fortune to save his country from the lawless horrors of any similar outbreak.

But these are matters for the politician and the statesman. It is more fitting that this story of the lives and fortunes of a few of the actors in a great human drama should conclude with such particulars of their subsequent history as have filtered through time’s close-woven meshes of half a century.

One day in February, not so long ago, a young officer of the Guides, who had come to Lucknow for “Cup” week, was standing in the porch of the Mohamed Bagh Club when he heard a young lady bewailing fate in the shape of a tikka-gharry which had brought her there. Her “people” were at the Chutter Munzil Club, miles away, for Lucknow is a big place, and she was already late for tea.

Being a nice young man, the said officer of the Guides could not bear to see a nice young woman in distress.

“My dog-cart is just coming up,” he said, “and I am going to the Chutter Munzil. Won’t you let me drive you there?”

She blushed and hesitated and of course agreed.

On the way, to maintain a polite conversation, he pointed out several historic buildings.

“You are stationed here, I suppose?” she said.

“No, indeed. My regiment is at Quetta, but I was reared on the records of Lucknow. My grandmother went through the whole of the siege, and my grandfather was with the Second Relief. It must have agreed with their health, for they were both out here two years since, and I went over the Mutiny ground with them.”

“How interesting! Was that how they met?”

“No. They were engaged just before the Residency was invested. It is an awfully interesting yarn, and I should like some day to have a chance of telling it to you. There is a native princess in it, and a pearl necklace, which is worth quite a lot of money, and is believed to have been stolen by a sepoy before my grandfather obtained it, quite by accident. And the old chap – he was quite a young chap then, you know – had a remarkable native servant who did so well at the Mutiny that he became a nawab or something of the sort. Really, the whole thing is more like a book than a chapter of real life.”

“I had a grandmother in the Mutiny,” said the girl, “but she had such a sad experience that she seldom mentioned it. Her maiden name was Keene, and her father was killed at Fattehpore – ”

“Keene! Did she ever speak of a man named Malcolm, who saved her and her sister?”

“Oh, yes! You don’t mean to say – ”

“Yes, really, I’m his grandson. Now, isn’t that the queerest thing? Just imagine the odds against my meeting you here under such conditions? Please tell me your name, and you’ll let me call, won’t you?”

The girl was somewhat breathless. Young Malcolm was looking at her as though he felt that a special dispensation of Providence had brought them together.

“I am sure my mother will be glad to meet you and hear all about those old days at Lucknow,” she said shyly.

So it may be that the gray ruins of the Residency, over which the flag flies ever that was kept there so resolutely by the men and women in ’57, saw the beginning of another love idyll, destined to end as happily as that which had its being amidst the terrors and fury of the Mutiny.

THE END

1

The Anglo-Indian phrase for summoning a servant, meaning: “Is there any one there?”

2

It should be explained that a sepoy (properly “sipahi”) is an infantry soldier, and a sowar a mounted one. The English equivalents are “private” and “trooper.”

3

This statement is made on the authority of Holmes’s “History of the Indian Mutiny,” Cave-Browne’s “The Punjab & Delhi,” and “The Punjab Mutiny Report,” though it is claimed that William Brendish, who is still living, was on duty at the Delhi Telegraph Office throughout the night of May 10th.

4

In India the word “station” denotes any European settlement outside the three Presidency towns. In 1857 there were few railways in the country.

5

A personal servant, often valet and waiter combined.

6

A generic term for Europeans.

7

Junior Officers.

8

A native boat.

9

In this instance, steps leading down to the river: also, a mountain range.

10

“Bravo! Well done, your honor!”

11

Bunniah, grain dealer; zemindar, land-owner.

12

Non-military readers may need to be reminded that the “last post” is a bugle-call which signifies the close of the day. It is usually succeeded by “Lights out.”

13

At that time, $100,000.

14

“Religious war.”

15

An estate.

16

A contemptuous use of the word “dog.”

17

Short for mem-sahibs; ladies.

18

Master.

19

A hill station near Lucknow.

20

Literally: “Never no general!”

21

“Stop.”

22

The Government.

23

The familiar native title for a European young lady.

24

A game of the draughts order, much played by native ladies.