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

The last acts of the Cawnpore tragedy now await our attention.

What horrors the poor women suffered during their eighteen days of captivity under this detestable miscreant, none will ever fully know; partial glimpses only of the truth will ever come to light. According to the ayah’s narrative, already noticed, the women and children who were conveyed from the boats into captivity were a hundred and fifteen in number. The poor creatures (the women and elder girls) were sought to be tempted by an emissary of the Nena to enter quietly into his harem; but they one and all expressed a determination to die where they were, and with each other, rather than yield to dishonour. They were then destined to be given up to the sensual licence of the sepoys and sowars who had aided in their capture; but the heroic conduct of Sir Hugh Wheeler’s daughter is said to have deterred the ruffians. What this ‘Judith of Cawnpore’ really did, is differently reported. Her heroism was manifested, in one version of the story, by an undaunted and indignant reproach against the native troops for their treachery to the English who had fed and clothed them, and for their cowardice in molesting defenceless women; in another version, she shot down five sepoys in succession with a revolver, and then threw herself into a well to escape outrage; in a third, given by Mr Shepherd, this English lady, being taken away by a trooper of the 2d native cavalry to his own hut, rose in the night, secured the trooper’s sword, killed him and three other men, and then threw herself into a well; while a fourth version, on the authority of the ayah, represents the general’s daughter as cutting off the heads of no less than five men in the trooper’s hut. These accounts, incompatible one with another, nevertheless reveal to us a true soldier’s daughter, an English gentlewoman, resolved to proceed to any extremity in defence of her own purity.

The victims were detained three days at Nena’s camp, with only a little parched grain to eat, dirty water to drink, and the hard ground to lie upon, without matting or beds of any kind. The ayah states that the Nena, after the events of the 27th of June, sent to ask the temporarily successful King of Delhi what he should do with the women and children; to which a reply was received, that they were not to be killed. Whether this statement be right or wrong, the captives were taken from the camp to Cawnpore, and there incarcerated in a house near the Assembly Rooms, consisting of outbuildings of the medical depôt, shortly before occupied by Sir George Parker. Here they were joined by more than thirty other European women and children, the unhappy relics of the boat-expedition that had been recaptured near Futtehpoor in the vain attempt to escape. Without venturing to decide whether the ayah, Nujoor Jewarree, Mr Shepherd, or Lieutenant Delafosse was most nearly correct in regard of numbers; or whether Sir Hugh Wheeler was at that time alive or dead – it appears tolerably certain that many unhappy prisoners were brought back into Cawnpore on the 1st of July. All the men were butchered in cold blood on the evening of the same day. One officer’s wife, with her child, clung to her husband with such desperate tenacity that they could not be separated; and all three were killed at once. The other women were spared for the time. This new influx, together with five members of the Greenway family, swelled the roll of prisoners in the small building to a number that has been variously estimated from a hundred and fifty to two hundred, nearly all women and children. Their diet was miserably insufficient; and their sufferings were such that many died through want of the necessaries of life. ‘It is not easy to describe,’ says Mr Shepherd, ‘but it may be imagined, the misery of so many helpless persons: some wounded, others sick, and all labouring under the greatest agony of heart for the loss of those, so dear to them, who had so recently been killed (perhaps before their own eyes); cooped up night and day in a small low pukha-roofed house, in the hottest season of the year, without beds or punkahs, for a whole fortnight – and constantly reviled and insulted by a set of brutish ruffians keeping watch over them.’

Added to all these suffering women and children, were those belonging to the second boat-expedition from Futteghur. It will be remembered, from the details given in a former page, that one party from this fort reached Bithoor about the middle of June, and were at once murdered by orders of Nena Sahib; while another body, after a manly struggle against the rebels for two or three weeks, did not prosecute their voyage downwards until July. It will throw light on the perils and terrors of these several boat-adventures to transcribe a few sentences from an official account by Mr G. J. Jones, a civil servant of the Company, who left Futteghur with the rest on the 4th of July, but happily kept clear of the particular boat-load which went down to Cawnpore: ‘We had not proceeded far, when it was found that Colonel Goldie’s boat was much too large and heavy for us to manage; it was accordingly determined to be abandoned; so all the ladies and children were taken into Colonel Smith’s boat. A little delay was thus caused, which the sepoys took advantage of to bring a gun to bear on the boats; the distance, however, was too great; every ball fell short. As soon as the ladies and children were all safely on board, we started, and got down as far as Singheerampore without accident, although fired upon by the villagers. Here we stopped a few minutes to repair the rudder of Colonel Smith’s boat; and one out of the two boatmen we had was killed by a matchlock ball. The rudder repaired, we started again, Colonel Smith’s boat taking the lead; we had not gone beyond a few yards, when our boat grounded on a soft muddy sand-bank; the other boat passed on; all hands got into the water to push her; but, notwithstanding all our efforts, we could not manage to move her. We had not been in this unhappy position half an hour, when two boats, apparently empty, were seen coming down the stream. They came within twenty yards of us, when we discovered they carried sepoys, who opened a heavy fire, killing and wounding several. Mr Churcher, senior, was shot through the chest; Mr Fisher, who was just behind me, was wounded in the thigh. Hearing him call out, I had scarcely time to turn round, when I felt a smart blow on my right shoulder; a bullet had grazed the skin and taken off a little of the flesh. Major Robertson was wounded in the face. The boats were now alongside of us. Some of the sepoys had already got into our boat. Major Robertson, seeing no hope, begged the ladies to come into the water rather than fall into their hands. While the ladies were throwing themselves into the water, I jumped into the boat, took up a loaded musket, and, going astern, shot a sepoy… Mr and Mrs Fisher were about twenty yards from the boat; he had his child in his arms, apparently lifeless. Mrs Fisher could not stand against the current; her dress, which acted like a sail, knocked her down, when she was helped up by Mr Fisher… Early the next morning a voice hailed us from the shore, which we recognised as Mr Fisher’s. He came on board, and informed us that his poor wife and child had been drowned in his arms.’

The occupants of the boat that prosecuted the voyage down to Cawnpore, or rather Bithoor, suffered greatly: the hands of the gentlemen who were on board, and who pulled the boat, were terribly blistered; the women and children suffered sad hardships; and all were worn down by fatigue and anxiety. At Bithoor, so far as the accounts are intelligible, Nena Sahib’s son seized the boat, and sent all the unfortunate Europeans in her into confinement at Cawnpore. As in other parts of this mournful tragedy, it will be vain to attempt accuracy in the statement of the numbers of those that suffered; but there is a subsidiary source of information, possessing a good deal of interest in connection with the July occurrences. When, at a later date, the reconquerors of Cawnpore were in a position to attempt a solution of the terrible mystery; when the buildings of Cawnpore were searched, and the inhabitants examined, for any documents relating to the suffering Europeans – a paper was found, written in the Mahratta language, in the house of a native doctor who had been in charge of the prisoners, or some of them. It was, or professed to be, a list of those who were placed under his care on Tuesday the 7th of July; but whether invalids only, does not clearly appear. All the names were given, with some inaccuracy in spelling; which, however, cannot be considered as rendering the document untrustworthy. In it were to be found large families of Greenways, Reids, Jacobis, Fitzgeralds, Dempsters, and others known to have been in Cawnpore about that time. They were a hundred and sixty-three in number. To this hapless group was added another list, containing the names of forty-seven fugitives belonging to the second boat-party from Futteghur, who are reported as having arrived on the 11th of July, and who included many members of the families of the Goldies, Smiths, Tuckers, Heathcotes, &c., already named in connection with the Futteghur calamities. The Mahratta document gave altogether the names of two hundred and ten persons; but it was silent on the question how many other Europeans were on those days in the clutches of the ruthless chieftain of Bithoor. A further list contained the names of about twenty-six persons, apparently all women and children, who died under this native doctor’s hands between the 7th and the 15th, diminishing to that extent the number of those left for massacre. To most of the names ‘cholera,’ or ‘diarrhœa,’ or ‘dysentery’ was appended, as the cause of death; to two names, ‘wounds;’ while one of the patients was ‘a baby two days old.’ In what a place, and under what circumstances, for an infant to be born, and to bear its two wretched days of life!

Let us follow Mr Shepherd’s two narratives – one public, for government information; one in a letter, relating more especially to his own personal troubles and sufferings – concerning the crowning iniquity of Nena Sahib at Cawnpore.

After his capture, on attempting to hasten from the intrenchment to the city, the commissary was subjected to a sort of mock-trial, and condemned to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour; on what plea or evidence, is not stated. He implies that if he had been known as an Englishman, he would certainly have been put to death. On the third day after his capture he heard a rumour of certain movements among his unfortunate compatriots in the intrenchment. ‘Oh! how I felt,’ he exclaims, ‘when, in confinement, I heard that the English were going in safety! I could not keep my secret, but told the subadar of the prison-guard that I was a Christian; I nearly lost my life by this exposure.’ Mr Shepherd was confined for twenty-four days in a miserable prison, with heavy fetters on his legs, and only so much parched grain for food as would prevent actual starvation. As days wore on, he obtained dismal evidence that the departure from the intrenchment had not been safely effected; that coward treachery had been displayed by the Nena; that innocent lives had been taken; and that the survivors were held in horrible thraldom by that cruel man. The commissary was a prisoner within the city during all the later days of the tragedy; whether he was within earshot of the sufferers, is not stated; but the following contains portions of his narrative relating to that period: ‘Certain spies, whether real or imaginary is not known, were brought to the Nena as being the bearers of letters supposed to have been written to the British [at Allahabad] by the helpless females in their captivity; and with these letters some of the inhabitants of the city were believed to be implicated. It was therefore decreed by Nena Sahib that the spies, together with all the women and children, as also the few gentlemen whose lives had been spared, should be put to death.’ Mr Shepherd connected these gentlemen with the Futteghur fugitives, concerning whom, however, he possessed very little information. It was a further portion of Nena’s decree, that all the baboos (Bengalees employed as clerks) of the city, and every individual who could read or write English, should have their right hands and noses cut off. At length, on the 15th, just before quitting Cawnpore in the vain hope of checking the advance of a British column, this savage put his decrees into execution. ‘The native spies were first put to the sword; after them the gentlemen, who were brought from the outbuildings in which they had been confined, and shot with bullets. Then the poor females were ordered to come out; but neither threats nor persuasions could induce them to do so. They laid hold of each other by dozens, and clung so closely that it was impossible to separate or drag them out of the building. The troopers therefore brought muskets, and after firing a great many shots through the doors, windows, &c., rushed in with swords and bayonets. Some of the helpless creatures in their agony fell down at the feet of their murderers, and begged them in the most pitiful manner to spare their lives; but to no purpose. The fearful deed was done deliberately and determinedly, in the midst of the most dreadful shrieks and cries of the victims. From a little before sunset till dark was occupied in completing the dreadful deed. The doors of the buildings were then locked for the night, and the murderers went to their homes. Next morning it was found, on opening the doors, that some ten or fifteen females, with a few of the children, had managed to escape from death by hiding under the murdered bodies of their fellow-prisoners. A fresh command was thereupon sent to murder these also; but the survivors not being able to bear the idea of being cut down, rushed out into the compound, and seeing a well there, threw themselves into it. The dead bodies of those murdered on the previous evening were then ordered to be thrown into the same well; and julluds were appointed to drag them away like dogs.’

Mr Shepherd himself did not witness this slaughter; no looker-on, so far as is known, has placed upon record his or her account of the scene. Nor does there appear any trustworthy evidence to shew what the poor women endured in the period, varying from four to eighteen days, during which they were in the Nena’s power; but the probability is fearfully great that they passed through an ordeal which the mind almost shrinks from contemplating. Mr Shepherd was evidently of this opinion. While telling his tale of misery relating to those poor ill-used creatures, he hinted at ‘sufferings and distresses such as have never before been experienced or heard of on the face of the earth.’ It was in his agony of grief that he wrote this; when, on the 17th of July, a victorious English column entered Cawnpore; and when, immediately on his liberation, he hastened like others to the house of slaughter. Only when the manacles had been struck from his limbs, and he had become once more a free man, did he learn the full bitterness of his lot. ‘God Almighty has been graciously pleased to spare my poor life,’ was the beginning of a letter written by him on that day to a brother stationed at Agra. ‘I am the only individual saved among all the European and Christian community that inhabited this station.’ [Nearly but not exactly true.] ‘My poor dear wife, my darling sweet child Polly, poor dear Rebecca and her children, and poor innocent children Emmeline and Martha, as also Mrs Frost and poor Mrs Osborne’ [these being the members of his family whom he had left in the intrenchment on the 24th of June, when he set out disguised on his fruitless mission], ‘were all most inhumanly butchered by the cruel insurgents on the day before yesterday;’ and his letter then conveyed the outpourings of a heart almost riven by such irreparable losses.

While reserving for a future chapter all notice of the brilliant military movements by which a small band of heroes forced a way inch by inch from Allahabad to Cawnpore; and of the struggle made by the Nena, passionately but ineffectually, to maintain his ill-gotten honours as a self-elected Mahratta sovereign – it may nevertheless be well in this place to follow the story of the massacre to its close – to know how much was left, and of what kind, calculated to render still more vividly evident the fate of the victims.

Never, while life endures, will the English officers and soldiers forget the sight which met their gaze when they entered Cawnpore on the 17th of July. It was frequently observed that all were alike deeply moved by the atrocities that came to light in many parts of Northern India. Calcutta, weeks and even months afterwards, contained ladies who had escaped from various towns and stations, and who entered the Anglo-Indian capital in most deplorable condition: ears, noses, lips, tongues, hands, cut off; while others had suffered such monstrous and incredibly degrading barbarities, that they resolutely refused all identification, preferring to remain in nameless obscurity, rather than their humiliation should be known to their friends in England. Their children, in many instances, had their eyes gouged out, and their feet cut off. Many were taken to Calcutta in such hurry and confusion, that it remained long in doubt from what places they had escaped; and an instance is recorded of a little child, who belonged no one knew to whom, and whose only account of herself was that she was ‘Mamma’s pet:’ mournfully touching words, telling of a gentle rearing and a once happy home. An officer in command of one of the English regiments, speaking of the effect produced on his men by the sights and rumours of fiend-like cruelty, observed: ‘Very little is said among the men or officers, the subject being too maddening; but there is a curious expression discernible in every face when it is mentioned – a stern compression of the lips, and a fierce glance of the eye, which shew that when the time comes, no mercy will be shewn to those who have shewn none.’ He told of fearful deeds; of two little children tortured to death, and portions of their quivering flesh forced down the throats of their parents, who were tied up naked, and had been compelled to witness the slaughter of their innocent ones. The feelings of those who were not actually present at the scenes of horror are well expressed in a letter written by a Scottish officer, who was hemmed in at Agra during many weeks, when he longed to be engaged in active service chastising the rebels. He had, some months before, been an officer in one of the native regiments that mutinied at Cawnpore; and, in relation to the events at that place, he said: ‘I am truly thankful that most of the officers of my late corps died of fever in the intrenchment, previous to the awful massacre. Would that it had been the will of Heaven that all had met the same fate, fearful as that was. For weeks exposed to a scorching sun, without shelter of any kind, and surrounded by the dying and the dead, their ears ringing with the groans of the wounded, the shouts of sun-struck madmen, the plaintive cries of children, the bitter sobs and sighs of bereaved mothers, widows, and orphans. Even such a death was far better than what fell to the lot of many. Not even allowed to die without being made witnesses of the bloody deaths of all they loved on earth, they were insulted, abused, and finally, after weeks of such treatment, cruelly and foully murdered. One sickens, and shudders at the bare mention of it… Oh! how thankful I am that I have no wife, no sisters out here.’ It was a terrible crisis that could lead officers, eight or ten thousand miles away from those near and dear to them, to say this.

It is necessary, as a matter of historical truth, to describe briefly the condition of the house of slaughter on the 17th of July; and this cannot be better done than in the words employed by the officers and soldiers in various letters written by them, afterwards made public. The first that we shall select runs thus: ‘I have seen the fearful slaughter-house; and I also saw one of the 1st native infantry men, according to order, wash up part of the blood which stains the floor, before being hanged.’ [This order will presently be noticed in the words of Brigadier Neill.] ‘There were quantities of dresses, clogged thickly with blood; children’s frocks, frills, and ladies’ underclothing of all kinds; boys’ trousers; leaves of Bibles, and of one book in particular, which seems to be strewed over the whole place, called Preparation for Death; broken daguerreotypes; hair, some nearly a yard long; bonnets, all bloody; and one or two shoes. I picked up a bit of paper with the words on it, “Ned’s hair, with love;” and opened and found a little bit tied up with ribbon. The first [troops] that went in, I believe, saw the bodies with their arms and legs sticking out through the ground. They had all been thrown in a heap in the well.’ A second letter: ‘The house was alongside the Cawnpore hotel, where the Nena lived. I never was more horrified. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the soles of my boots were more than covered with the blood of these poor wretched creatures. Portions of their dresses, collars, children’s socks, and ladies’ round hats, lay about, saturated with their blood; and in the sword-cuts on the wooden pillars of the room, long dark hair was sticking, carried by the edge of the weapon, and there hung their tresses – a most painful sight. I picked up a mutilated Prayer-book; it appeared to have been open at page 36 of the Litany, where I have little doubt those poor creatures sought and found consolation in that beautiful supplication; it is there sprinkled with blood.’ A third: ‘We found that the Nena had murdered all the women and children that he had taken prisoners, and thrown them naked down a well. The women and children had been kept in a sort of zenana, and no attention whatever paid to cleanliness. In that place they had been butchered, as the ground was covered with clotted blood. One poor woman had evidently been working, as a small work-box was open, and the things scattered about. There were several children’s small round hats, evidently shewing that that was their prison. The well close by was one of the most awful sights imaginable.’ A fourth: ‘It is an actual and literal fact, that the floor of the inner room was several inches deep in blood all over; it came over men’s shoes as they stepped. Tresses of women’s hair, children’s shoes, and articles of female wear, broad hats and bonnets, books, and such like things, lay scattered all about the rooms. There were the marks of bullets and sword-cuts on the walls – not high up, as if men had fought – but low down, and about the corners where the poor crouching creatures had been cut to pieces. The bodies of the victims had been thrown indiscriminately into a well – a mangled heap, with arms and legs protruding.’ Some of the officers, by carefully examining the walls, found scraps of writing in pencil, or scratched in the plaster, such as, ‘Think of us’ – ‘Avenge us’ – ‘Your wives and families are here in misery and at the disposal of savages’ – ‘Oh, oh! my child, my child.’ One letter told of a row of women’s shoes, with bleeding amputated feet in them, ranged in cruel mockery on one side of a room; while the other side exhibited a row of children’s shoes, filled in a similarly terrible way; but it is not certain whether the place referred to was Cawnpore. Another writer mentioned an incident which, unless supported by collateral testimony, seems wanting in probability. It was to the effect that when the 78th Highlanders entered Cawnpore, they found the remains of Sir Hugh Wheeler’s daughter. They removed the hair carefully from the head; sent some of it to the relations of the unfortunate lady; divided the rest amongst themselves; counted every single hair in each parcel; and swore to take a terrible revenge by putting to death as many mutineers as there were hairs. The storm of indignant feeling that might suggest such a vow can be understood easily enough; but the alleged mode of manifestation savours somewhat of the melodramatic and improbable.

A slight allusion has been made above to Brigadier Neill’s proceedings at Cawnpore, after the fatal 17th of July. In what relation he stood to the reconquering force will be noticed in its due place; but it may be well here to quote a passage from a private letter, written independently of his public dispatches: ‘I am collecting all the property of the deceased, and trying to trace if any have survived; but as yet have not succeeded in finding one.’ [Captain Bruce’s research, presently to be mentioned, had not then been made.] ‘Man, woman, and child, seem all to have been murdered. As soon as that monster Nena Sahib heard of the success of our troops, and of their having forced the bridge about twenty miles from Cawnpore, he ordered the wholesale butchery of the poor women and children. I find the officers’ servants behaved shamefully, and were in the plot, all but the lowest-caste ones. They deserted their masters and plundered them. Whenever a rebel is caught, he is immediately tried, and unless he can prove a defence, he is sentenced to be hanged at once; but the chief rebels or ringleaders I make first clean up a certain portion of the pool of blood, still two inches deep, in the shed where the fearful murder and mutilation of women and children took place. To touch blood is most abhorrent to the high-caste natives; they think by doing so they doom their souls to perdition. Let them think so. My object is to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, barbarous deed, and to strike terror into these rebels… The well of mutilated bodies – alas! containing upwards of two hundred women and children – I have had decently covered in and built up as one grave.’