The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8

87

The wood-cut at p. 93 represents a part of the Residency in this limited sense of the term; the view at p. 82 will convey some notion of the appearance of the city of Lucknow as seen from the terrace-roof of this building. The plan on next page will give an idea of the Residency before siege; and in the next Part will be given a plan of the Residency under siege, shewing the relation which the enemies’ guns bore to those of the besieged.

88

Mr Rees relates a strange anecdote in connection with this retreat from the Muchee Bhowan to the Residency: ‘We saved all but one man, who, having been intoxicated, and concealed in some corner, could not be found when the muster-roll was called. The French say, Il y a un Dieu pour les ivrognes; and the truth of the proverb was never better exemplified than in this man’s case. He had been thrown into the air, had returned unhurt to mother-earth, continued his drunken sleep again, had awaked next morning, found the fort to his surprise a mass of deserted ruins, and quietly walked back to the Residency without being molested by a soul; and even bringing with him a pair of bullocks attached to a cart of ammunition. It is very probable that the débris of these extensive buildings must have seriously injured the adjacent houses and many of the rebel army – thus giving the fortunate man the means of escaping.

89

The authoress of the Lady’s Diary gives an affecting account of the hour that succeeded the wounding of Sir Henry Lawrence. She, with her husband, was at that time in the house of Dr Fayrer, a surgeon who had more than once urged upon Sir Henry the paramount duty of cherishing his own life as one valuable to others even if slighted by himself. ‘He was brought over to this house immediately. – prayed with him, and administered the Holy Communion to him. He was quite sensible, though his agony was extreme. He spoke for nearly an hour, quite calmly, expressing his last wishes with regard to his children. He sent affectionate messages to them and to each of his brothers and sisters. He particularly mentioned the Lawrence Asylum, and entreated that government might be urged to give it support. He bade farewell to all the gentlemen who were standing round his bed, and said a few words of advice and kindness to each… There was not a dry eye there; every one was so deeply affected and grieved at the loss of such a man.’

It may here be stated that the Queen afterwards bestowed a baronetcy on Sir Henry’s eldest son, Alexander Lawrence; to whom also the East India Company voted a pension of £1000 per annum.

90

The Jersey Times of December 10, 1857, contained what professed to be an extract of a letter from M. de Bannerol, a French physician in the service of Mussur Rajah, dated October 8, and published in Le Pays (Paris paper), giving an account of the feelings of the Christian women shut up within Lucknow just before their relief. It went on to state how Jessie Brown, a corporal’s wife, cheered the party in the depth of their terrors and despair, by starting up and declaring that, amidst the roar of the artillery, she caught the faint sound of the slogan of the approaching Highlanders, particularly that of the Macgregor, ‘the grandest of them a’!’ The soldiers intermitted firing to listen, but could hear nothing of the kind, and despair once more settled down upon the party. After a little interval, Jessie broke out once more with words of hope, referring to the sound of the Highland bagpipes, which the party at length acknowledged they heard; and then by one impulse, all fell on their knees, ‘and nothing was heard but the bursting sob and the voice of prayer.’ The tale has made so great an impression on the public mind, that we feel much reluctance in expressing our belief that it is either wholly a fiction, or only based slightly in fact. What excited our distrust from the first was the allusion to the slogans or war-cries of the respective clans – things which have had no practical existence for centuries, and which would manifestly be inappropriate in regiments composed of a miscellany of clansmen, not to speak of the large admixture of Lowlanders. We are assured that the story is looked upon in the best-informed quarters as purely a tale of the imagination.

91

See chap. xv., p. 263.

92

Sir Henry Lawrence; Major Banks; Lieutenant-colonel Case, Captains Steevens, Mansfield, Radcliffe, and M’Cabe, 32d foot; Captain Francis, 13th N. I.; Lieutenants Shepherd and Archer, 7th native cavalry; Captain Hughes, 57th N. I.; Major Anderson and Captain Fulton, engineers; Captain Simons, artillery.

93

Colonel Master and Captain Boileau, 7th N.C.; Major Apthorp and Captain Sanders, 41st N.I.; Captain Germon and Lieutenants Aitken and Loughnan, 13th N.I.; Captain Anderson, 25th N.I.; Lieutenant Graydon, 44th N.I.; Lieutenant Longmore, 71st N.I.; Mr Schilling, principal of the Martinière College.

94

‘I told off my men rapidly, and formed them into parties, so as completely to surround and cover every outlet and corner. The main party, consisting mostly of my own particular sharpshooters and body-guard, watched the front; another moved towards the town, there to arrest an educated Bengalee, agent to the conspirators; another to the rear, to cut off escape towards the town; while my friend the Political crept quietly past some outhouses with his police, and under the palace walls awaited my signal for opening the ball.

‘Before long the ominous barking of a disturbed cur in the direction of the party sent after the prime-minister proclaimed that no time was to be lost. Off I went towards the guard-shed in front of the palace, my personal sharpshooters following at the double. The noise, of course, awoke the sleeping guard, and as they started up from their slumbers I caught one firmly by the throat; the little Goorkha next me felled with a but-end blow another of them while they were getting to arms, I having strictly forbidden my men to fire until obliged; the remainder, as we rushed in, took to flight, and my eager party wished to fire on them, which I prevented, not considering such valiant game worth powder and shot. In the darkness and confusion, no means of entrance could at once be found. My police guide, however, having been often in the palace, knew every room in it, and, thrusting himself in at a door, acted ferret to perfection, and by dint of activity, soon brought me into the presence of the rajah, who, though young in years, is old in sin: he refused to surrender or admit any one – a resolution which cooled instanter on my calling my men to set fire to the palace; he then with a bad grace delivered up to me his state-sword. A shout from the opposite doors proclaimed an entry there. The queen-mother and the rest of the female royalty and attendants were seized while trying to descend on that side. Then came a chorus of shouting and struggling, and bawling for lights and assistance; at last, a lamp being procured, we proceeded to examine the palace: we wandered in dark passages and cells, while I mounted a guard at every door. The air being confined and heated within the royal residence, I sat outside until after daybreak, and then proceeded to rummage for papers and letters; several boxes of these we appropriated, and counted out his treasure, all in gold vessels and ingots; we found a quantity of arms, spiked some guns, one of them of French make; all day we were hard at work, searching and translating papers. The prime-minister was found at his house, fast asleep. In the heat of the afternoon, we went to his residence in the town, and by dint of keeping fans going over us, carried out a thorough search. We did not get as many of his papers as we wanted, he having been told by his correspondents to destroy all letters after reading them.

‘At sunset I carried off my prisoners over the same bad ground by which we had so stealthily arrived. We were followed by about 2000 infuriated Mussulmans, crying, praying, and prostrating themselves to the object of their lingering hope of rebellion (the rajah), but we drove them off.’

95

‘The ejected civilians from Dorunda had come on ahead and offered our small party breakfast, which we gladly accepted. While waiting until it was ready, the chief-commissioner got an electric-telegraph dispatch from the governor-general, ordering the whole of the 53d party under Major English back again to the main trunk-road. You never saw anything like the long faces they all had at this announcement; for the commissioner had just had intelligence on which he thought he could rely, that the mutineers were still kept at bay by the party at the pass, through which they must get through to effect their escape from us; and they did not think that 250 Madras sepoys with two guns would be sufficient to attack 850 desperate men caught in a trap. Moreover, the retirement of the Europeans would run like wildfire through the district; and I heard them all say they would not answer for what might happen.’ The column did advance to Dorunda, and dispersed the miscreants; but it had to hasten to other regions, and then – ‘All the residents are very much disgusted at our going back, as the moral effect of our arrival must be great, the natives here having as much idea of a European soldier as they have of a whale, never having seen either; and the fact of their being put as prisoners under a European guard frightens them more than a thousand deaths.’

96

Shut the mouth of slanderers, bite and

Eat up backbiters, trample down the sinners,

You, Sutrsingharka.

Kill the British, exterminate them,

Mat Chundee.

Let not the enemy escape, nor the offspring of such,

Oh, Singharka.

Shew favour to Shunker!

Support your slave!

Listen to the cry of religion,

Mathalka.

Eat up the unclean!

Make no delay!

Now devour them,

And that quickly,

Ghormatkalka.

The words in italics are various names of the goddess Devee or Deva, ‘the destroyer.’

97

See p. 111.

98

Chap. vii., pp. 109-111. Chap. x., pp. 173, 174. Chap. xvii., pp. 282-286.

99

‘It is the melancholy duty of the Right Honourable the Governor-general in Council to announce the death of the Honourable John Russell Colvin, the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces.

‘Worn by the unceasing anxieties and labours of his charge, which placed him in the very front of the dangers by which of late India has been threatened, health and strength gave way; and the Governor-general in Council has to deplore with sincere grief the loss of one of the most distinguished among the servants of the East India Company.

‘The death of Mr Colvin has occurred at a time when his ripe experience, his high ability, and his untiring energy would have been more than usually valuable to the state.

‘But his career did not close before he had won for himself a high reputation in each of the various branches of administration to which he was at different times attached, nor until he had been worthily selected to fill the highest position in Northern India; and he leaves a name which not friends alone, but all who have been associated with him in the duties of government, and all who may follow in his path, will delight to honour.

‘The Right Honourable the Governor-general in Council directs that the flag shall be lowered half-mast high, and that 17 minute-guns shall be fired at the seats of government in India upon the receipt of the present notification.’

100

H.M. 8th foot.

H.M. 75th foot.

2d Punjaub infantry.

4th Punjaub infantry.

H.M. 9th Lancers.

1st Punjaub cavalry.

2d Punjaub cavalry.

5th Punjaub cavalry.

Two troops horse-artillery.

Light field-battery.

Pearson’s 9-pounder battery.

101

‘The political agent was himself the first to discover their approach; and, as he had only returned to Kotah three days previously from an absence of four months, he believed the number of people he saw advancing merely to be some of the chief subordinates coming to pay him the usual visit of ceremony and respect. In a second he was cruelly undeceived. The mutineers rushed into the house; the servants, both private and public, abandoned him with only one exception (a camel-driver); and the agent, his boys, and this one solitary servant fled to the top of the house for safety, snatching up such few arms as were within their reach. The fiends pursued; but the cowardly ruffians were driven back for the time by the youngest boy shooting one in the thigh. When there, they naturally hoped the agency-servants or their own would have returned with assistance from the chief; but no – all fled, and no help came. In the meantime, the mutineers proceeded to loot the house, and they (the major and his sons) saw from their position all their property carried away. A little while and two guns were brought to play upon the bungalow, the upper part of which caught fire from the lighted sticks which the miscreants from time to time threw up. Balls fell around them, the little room at the top fell in, and they were yet unhurt – and this for five long and weary hours. Major Burton wished to parley with the mutineers, in the hope they would be contented if he gave himself up, and allow his boys to escape; but his children would not allow of such a sacrifice for their sakes; and like brave men and good Christians, they all knelt down and uttered their last prayers to that God who will surely avenge their cause. All now seemed comparatively quiet, and they began to hope the danger over, and let down the one servant who was still with them on a mission to the Sikh soldiers and others, who were placed by the chief for the personal protection of the agent round his bungalow, and of whom at the time there were not less than 140, to beg of them to loosen the boat, that an escape might be attempted across the river. They said: “We have had no orders.” At this moment a shot from a pistol was fired. Scaling-ladders had been obtained, the murderers ascended the walls, and the father and his sons were at one fell stroke destroyed… The maharajah was enabled to recover the bodies of the agent and both his sons in the evening, and they were carefully buried by his order. Dr Salder’s house was attacked at the same time with the agency-house. He was cut down outside, in sight of the agent, as was also Mr Saviell, the doctor of the dispensary in the city, and one or two others whose names are not certain.’

102

Chap. xviii., pp. 295-315.

103

‘There is a report, which has been mischievously set about, and may have mischievous consequences – namely, that the king has the whole of his retinue, and has returned to his own apartments in the palace.

‘This is perfectly untrue. I went with Mr Saunders, the civil commissioner, and his wife, to see the unfortunate and guilty wretch. We mounted a flight of stone steps, at the bottom and top of which was a European sentry. A small low door opened into a room, half of which was partitioned off with a grass-matting called chitac, behind which was a woman cooking some atrocious compound, if I might judge from the smell. In the other half was a native bedstead – that is, a frame of bamboo on four legs, with grass-rope strung across it; on this was lying and smoking a hookah an old man with a long white beard; no other article of furniture whatever was in the room, and I am almost ashamed to say that a feeling of pity mingled with my disgust at seeing a man recently lord of an imperial city, almost unparalleled for riches and magnificence, confined in a low, close, dirty room, which the lowest slave of his household would scarcely have occupied, in the very palace where he had reigned supreme, with power of life and death, untrammelled by any law, within the precincts of a royal residence as large as a considerable-sized town; streets, galleries, towers, mosques, forts, and gardens, a private and a public hall of justice, and innumerable courts, passages, and staircases. Its magnificence can only be equalled by the atrocities which have been committed there. But to go back to the degraded king. The boy, Jumma Bukht, repeated my name after Mr Saunders. The old man raised his head and looked at me, then muttered something I could not hear, and at the moment the boy, who had been called from the opposite door, came and told me that his mother, the begum, wished to see me. Mrs Saunders then took possession of me, and we went on into a smaller, darker, dirtier room than the first, in which were some eight or ten women crowding round a common “charpoy” or couch, on which was a dark, fat, shrewd, but sensual-looking woman, to whom my attention was particularly drawn. She took hold of my hand – I shuddered a little – and told me that my husband was a great warrior; but that if the king’s life and her son’s had not been promised them by the government, the king was preparing a great army which would have annihilated us. The other women stood round in silence till her speech was finished, and then crowded round, asking how many children I had, and if they were all boys; examined my dress, and seemed particularly amused by my bonnet and parasol. They were, with one exception, coarse, low-caste women, as devoid of ornament as of beauty. Zeenat Mahal asked me – a great honour, I found, which I did not appreciate – to sit down on her bed; but I declined, as it looked so dirty. Mr Saunders was much amused at my refusal, and told me it would have been more than my life was worth six months before to have done so; and I have no doubt of it.’

104

‘Story of the Lucknow Residency,’ chap. xix. pp. 316-337.

105

The thalookdaree system of Oude requires a little explanation, in relation to the participants in the Revolt. Most of the annexations effected by the East India Company were followed by changes either in the ownership of the soil, or in the assessment of land-tax – such land-tax being the chief item in the Company’s revenue. When the several annexations occurred, it was found throughout a great part of India that superior holders – whether proprietors, hereditary farmers of revenue, or hereditary middlemen – held large tracts of land, in a middle position between the native governments and the cultivating communities, and were responsible for the revenue to the state. In Bengal, these influential men were generally recognised by the Company as proprietors, and the rights of the sub-holders almost wholly ignored. In the Northwest Provinces, acquired by the Company at a much later date, the thalookdars, zemindars, or whatever these landowners may have been called, were generally set aside; but the asserted rights of some of them became subjects of endless litigation in the courts of law; the landowners frequently obtained decrees against the Company, and many received a percentage in compromise of their rights or claims. In Oude, annexed in 1856, the thalookdaree system was particularly strong. Almost the whole country had by degrees become parcelled out among great thalookdars or zemindars. Though under a Mohammedan government, these men were almost universally Hindoos – native chiefs who had obtained great prescription, exercised great power and authority, and were in fact feudatories of the government. They were much more than mere middlemen or farmers of revenue. They had their own forts, troops, and guns; they obeyed their nawab or king so far as they chose or were compelled; they seized with the strong hand estates which had unquestionably belonged to village communities in earlier times; and they fought with each other as English barons or Scottish clan-chieftains were wont to do in past ages. Sir William Sleeman estimated the number of armed retainers, whose services these thalookdars could command, at scarcely less than one hundred thousand; while they had nearly five hundred pieces of cannon in their several forts or strongholds. Under this system the village proprietary rights, even if not actually thrown aside and disregarded, became more weak and undefined than when the villagers held directly from the government. Hence arose a very embarrassing question when the Company took possession of Oude. With whom was the settlement to be made? The thalookdars were strong and in possession; the village communities were dormant, broken, and ill defined. It would have taken some time to suppress the one and revive the other. The opinions of revenue officers in the Northwest Provinces ran strongly in favour of village proprietaries; still stronger in the Punjaub; and Oude was treated somewhat in the same way. The result in many cases was to eject the thalookdars, and make direct settlements with the village communities. When the Revolt began, the thalookdars at first behaved well to the British personally; with the butchery by a rabble they had no sympathy; and many were the Europeans whose lives they saved. But, the Company’s government being for a time upset; and the period since the annexation having been too short to destroy the strength of the thalookdars, or to enable the village proprietors to acquire a steady possession of their rights – the thalookdars almost universally resumed what they considered to be their own. There is evidence, too, that in this course of proceeding they met with a considerable amount of popular support. It was in this way they became committed against the British government. Till Havelock’s retreat from his unsuccessful attempt to relieve Lucknow in August, the thalookdars adopted a temporising policy; but when they saw him and Outram retreat across the Ganges to Cawnpore, they thought their time had arrived. They began to act in concert – not because they had much sympathy with mutinous sepoys, with the decrepit king of Delhi, or with the deposed king of Oude – but in the hope that, amid the general anarchy, they might regain their old influence.

106

See Note, at the end of this chapter.

107

One of the two hard-worked and sorely tried chaplains, in a letter to a relation when the dangers were past, employed a few simple words that really described the position of the Residency enclosure better than any long technical details. English friends had talked and written concerning the ‘impregnable fort’ in which the garrison were confined; to which he replied: ‘We were in no fort at all; we occupied a few houses in a large garden, with a low wall on one side, and only an earthen parapet on the other, in the middle of a large city, the buildings of which completely commanded us, and swarming with thousands of our deadly foes, thirsting for our blood. God gave us protection and pluck, the former in a wonderful degree, or not one of us would be here to tell about it… The engineers calculated that all those months never one second elapsed without a shot being thrown in at us, and at times upwards of seventy per second, besides round shot and shell.’ This probably means that the average was a shot per second for nearly five months —twelve or fourteen million deadly missiles thrown into this narrow and crowded space.

108

H.M. 8th, 53d, 75th, and 93d foot.

2d and 4th Punjaub infantry.

H.M. 9th Lancers.

Detachments 1st, 2d, and 5th Punjaub cavalry.

Detachment Hodson’s Horse.

Detachments Bengal and Punjaub Sappers and Miners.

Naval brigade, 8 guns; Bengal H.A., 10 guns.

Bengal horse field-battery, 6 guns; Heavy field-battery.

– About 700 cavalry and 2700 Infantry, besides artillery.

109

Detachments H.M. 23d and 82d foot.

Detachments Madras horse-artillery, royal artillery, royal engineers, and military train.

110

The officers killed were Lieutenant-colonel Biddulph; Captains Hardy, Wheatcroft, Dalzell, and Lumsden; Lieutenants Mayne, Frankland, and Dobbs; Ensign Thompson; and Midshipman Daniel. The wounded were Sir Colin Campbell; Brigadier Russell; Lieutenant-colonels Ewart and Hale; Majors Alison and Barnston; Captains Alison, Anson, Grant, Hammond, Travers, Walton, and Burroughs; Lieutenants Salmond, Milman, Ford, Halkett, Munro, French, Wynne, Cooper, Welch, Goldsmith, Wood, Paul, M’Queen, Oldfield, and Henderson; Ensigns Watson, Powell, and M’Namara; Midshipman Lord A. P. Clinton; and Assistant-surgeon Veale.