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

Of the flight, little need be said; it was such a flight as almost every province in Northern India exhibited in those sad days. Some of the ladies and children had been sent off a few hours earlier, hurried away with no preparations for their comfort or even their sustenance; while others waited to accompany their husbands or fathers. Very few had either horses or vehicles; they laboured on footsore to Baree, to Chota Sadree, to Burra Sadree, to Doogla – straggling parties meeting and separating according as their strength remained or failed, and all dependent on the villagers for food. At Doogla, where they arrived on the third night, the officers strengthened a sort of mud-fort about forty yards square, within which forty persons were huddled. After being much straitened, they were relieved by Brigadier Showers on the 9th. The fugitive party now broke up; some returned to Neemuch, which the mutineers had abandoned; but the greater number went to Odeypore, the rana of which place gave them a hospitable reception; some of them afterwards went further west to Mount Aboo or Aboo Gurh – a celebrated place of Hindoo pilgrimage to a sacred temple, and a sanatarium for the Europeans stationed at the cantonment of Deesa, about forty miles distant. Those of the party who returned to Neemuch, found everything devastated, the bungalows and offices burnt, and the villagers stripped of their stores by the mutineers, who had afterwards started off for Agra. The officers and their families were literally beggars; they had lost their all. No Europeans were killed save the wife and three children of a sergeant, who could not leave Neemuch in time.

Thus were lost to the British about fourteen hundred men and six guns at Nuseerabad, and sixteen hundred men and six guns at Neemuch, all of which went to swell the insurgent forces inside Delhi or outside Agra.

The stations of Indore and Mhow must now engage a little of our attention – situated nearly south of Neemuch, and about four hundred miles from Agra. Indore, as has already been stated, is the capital of Holkar’s Mahratta dominions. It is an ill-built place, standing on the small river Kutki, and is less than a century old: the original Indore, or Jemnah, being on the opposite side of the river. Holkar’s palace is a building possessing few attractions; and the like may be said of the other native structures. The relation existing at that time between Indore and Mhow was this – that Indore was the residence of the British political agent at the court of Holkar; whereas Mhow, thirteen miles distant, was the military station or cantonment. The house of the British agent, and those of the other Europeans, were on the eastern side of the town. The agent, at the time of the mutiny, had an escort of cavalry and infantry at his disposal; but it was simply an escort, not a regular military force. The agent, in addition to his duties connected with Holkar’s court, was the immediate representative of the British government in relation to various petty states under its protection, but in other points differing greatly in their circumstances.

The Indore agent in May and June was Colonel Durand. All was peaceful at that place, although much agitation was visible, until the 1st of July; on which day mutiny occurred. Holkar’s troops rose against the English, without, as it afterwards appeared, the privity or the wish of the Maharajah himself. Two companies, set apart for the protection of the Residency in the bazaar square, brought two guns to bear upon the building; and the Europeans were horror-stricken at finding themselves suddenly exposed to cannon and musketry. Fortunately a few men of the Bhopal Contingent under Colonel Travers, were on duty at the Residency; and a few of these remained faithful long enough to allow the colonel and the other European officers, with their families, to escape. Not so the civilians, however; many of the civil servants, and of the clerks in the telegraph department, with their wives and children, were butchered in cold blood. As soon as Holkar heard of the outbreak, he ordered some of his own Mahratta troops to hasten to the Residency and aid Colonel Durand; but they told him it was a matter of deen (religion), and that they could not act against their brethren. During the next three days Holkar was almost a prisoner in his own palace; his troops rose in revolt, and were speedily joined by those from Mhow, presently to be mentioned; they plundered the treasury, the Residency, and many parts of the town; but as he would not countenance their proceedings, they at length marched off towards Gwalior. This affair at Indore led to the flight of many European families, amid great misery. They collected hastily a few ammunition-wagons, two or three bullock-carts, an elephant, and some horses, and started off towards Sehore and Hosungabad; escorted by a portion of the Bhopal Contingent from several small stations in that part of India.

An important question arose – how was Mhow affected by the mutinous proceedings? As the news of the Nuseerabad mutiny had thrown the troops at Neemuch into agitation, so did the subsequent events at Neemuch immediately affect the sowars and sepoys at Mhow.27 Mhow contained a squadron of the same cavalry regiment, the 1st B. N. C., two troops of which had mutinied at Neemuch; and in addition to these was the 23d regiment native infantry, and a company of European artillery. Mhow presented much the appearance of an English town; having a steepled church on an eminence, a spacious lecture-room, a well-furnished library, and a theatre; the cantonment was large and well appointed; and a force was maintained there in virtue of one of the treaties made with Holkar. This relates to the station or British part of the town; the small native town of Mhow is a mile and a half distant. The excitement caused at this station by the news from Neemuch was visible in the conduct of the troops throughout the whole of the month of June. Colonel Platt and the other officers, however, kept a vigilant watch on them, and by combined firmness and kindness hoped to surmount the difficulty. Captain Hungerford afterwards stated that such had been the excessive confidence of some of the officers in their respective regiments, that he could not induce them to strengthen the fort or fortified square, by occupying it with their artillery, until almost the last hour before the Revolt. The fortified square had for some time, however, been a rendezvous for all the ladies and children, who slept within it; the officers remaining in the lines. Thus matters passed until the 1st of July, when Colonel Platt received a pencil-note from Colonel Durand, announcing that the Residency at Indore had been attacked by Holkar’s soldiers, and that aid was urgently needed. A troop of cavalry and a few guns were immediately despatched from Mhow; but when they had reached within four miles of Indore, news arrived that the Europeans yet living at that station were about to effect a retreat; upon which the small force returned to Mhow. This duty the troops performed, but it was the last they rendered. The colonel, fearing the arrival of mutinous sepoys from Indore, but not suspecting his own men, made such arrangements as seemed to him befitting, bringing a European battery of artillery into the fort. Soon did the crisis arrive. At eleven o’clock on that same night the plans and hopes were cruelly disappointed; that terrible yell was heard which so often struck dismay into the hearts of the Europeans at the various military stations: the yell of native troops rising in mutiny. Lieutenant Martin, adjutant of the cavalry, while quietly conversing with one of the troopers, became the victim of that dastardly fellow; the war-cry arose, and the trooper turned round and shot the unfortunate officer without a moment’s warning. The other officers, hearing the report, but not suspecting the real truth, thought that Holkar’s Mahrattas had arrived; they rushed forward to head their respective companies and troops, but sepoys and sowars alike opened fire on them. The officers, now rendered painfully aware of their critical position, ran swiftly across the parade towards the fort, having no time to mount their horses; and it is a marvel that only one of the number, Major Harris, commandant of the cavalry, was shot by the heavy fire poured on them during this run. Colonel Platt, who was in the fort, was almost incredulous when the breathless officers rushed in; he could with difficulty believe the truth now presented to his notice – so fully had he relied on the fidelity of the men. Colonel Platt and Captain Fagan rode down to the lines of the 23d, to which regiment they both belonged, to ascertain the real facts and to exhort the men; but they were never seen alive again by their brethren in arms; they fell, riddled with bullets and gashed with sword-cuts. Captain Hungerford, of the artillery, brought two guns to bear on the mutineers, which gradually drove them from the lines, but not before they had fired the regimental mess-house and several bungalows; and during the darkness of night, plunderers carried off everything that was valuable. Hungerford would have followed the mutineers with his guns; but the roads were too dark for the pursuit, and the Europeans too unprotected to be left. The remaining English officers, having now no troops to command, acted as a cavalry guard in support of the European battery in the fortified square, under Captain Hungerford. As all the civilians, women, and children were in this place; as the square itself was quite unfitted for a long defence; and as only five native soldiers out of the whole number remained with the officers – the prospect was precarious enough: nevertheless all did their best; Hungerford collected in a few days a large store of provisions, and routed many of the insurgents in neighbouring villages. The impulses that guided the actions of the sepoys were strangely inconsistent; for two of the men saved the life of Lieutenant Simpson, who had been on outpost-duty on the fatal night, and brought him safely into the fort; and yet, though offered promotion for their fidelity, they absconded on the following morning to join their mutinous companions. The Europeans, about eighty in number, maintained their position at Mhow, until a force from Bombay arrived to reoccupy all that region. The ladies, there as everywhere, strove to lessen rather than increase the anxieties of their male companions. One of the officers thus shut up in the extemporised stronghold said in a letter: ‘Throughout all this I cannot express the admiration I feel at the way the ladies have behaved – cheerful, and assisting in every way in their power. Poor things, without servants or quarters, huddled together; they have had to do everything for themselves, and employ all their time in sewing bags for powder for the guns, well knowing the awful fate that awaits them if the place is taken. There has not been a sign of fear; they bring us tea or any little thing they can, and would even like to keep watch on the bastions if we would let them… You should see the state we are in – men making up canister, ladies sewing powder-bags, people bringing plunder recovered, artillery mounting guns; all of us dirty and tired with night-watching; we mount sentry-duty to take the weight of it off the artillerymen, and snatch sleep and food as we can.’

Many other stations in that part of India were disturbed in June and July by the mutinies of wings and detachments of regiments too small in amount to need notice here. At one place, Asseerghur, Colonel Le Mesurier warded off mutiny by a prompt and dexterous manœuvre, for which he received the marked thanks of the government.

Gwalior now comes under notice, in relation to a mutiny of troops at that place, and to the conduct of Scindia, the most important of the Mahratta chieftains. Considered as a city or town (about sixty-five miles south of Agra), Gwalior is not very important or interesting, being irregularly built and deplorably dirty, and possessing few public buildings of any note. It is for its hill-fortress that Gwalior is so famed. The rock on which the fortress stands is an elongated mass, a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile in width, and reaching in some places to a height of about three hundred and fifty feet. It is entirely isolated from other hills; and – partly from the natural stratification of the sandstone, partly from artificial construction – is in many parts quite perpendicular. A rampart runs round the upper edge, conforming to the outline of the summit. The entrance to the enclosure within the rampart is near the north end of the east side; in the lower part by a steep road, and in the upper part by steps cut in the rock, wide enough to permit elephants to make the ascent. A high and massive stone-wall protects the outer side of this huge staircase; seven gateways are placed at intervals along its ascent; and guns at the top command the whole of it. Within the enclosure of the rampart is a citadel of striking appearance, an antique palace surmounted by kiosks, six lofty round towers or bastions, curtains or walls of great thickness to connect those towers, and several spacious tanks. It is considered that fifteen thousand men would be required to garrison this fortress completely. So striking is this rock, so tempting to a chieftain who desires a stronghold, that Gwalior is believed to have been a fortress during more than a thousand years. It has been captured and recaptured nearly a dozen times, by contending Hindoos and Mohammedans, in the course of centuries. The last celebrated contest there was in 1779, when the Company’s forces captured it through a clever and unexpected use of ladders and ropes during a dark night. In the next sixty-five years it was possessed successively by the British, the Jâts, the Mahrattas, the British again, the Mahrattas again, and finally by the British, according to the intricacies of treaties and exchanges. Since 1844, Gwalior has been the head-quarters of a corps called the Gwalior Contingent, commanded by British officers; and thus the hill-fortress has virtually been placed within the power of the British government. Besides this famous stronghold, there is at Gwalior a place called the Lashkar. This, in former times, was the stationary camp of the Maharajah Scindia – a dirty collection of rude buildings, extending to a great distance from the southwest foot of the rock; but the great reduction in the number of troops allowed to be held independently by Scindia has materially lessened the importance of the Lashkar.

The loyalty of Scindia became a question of very anxious importance at the time of the mutinies. Holkar was possessor of a much smaller territory than Scindia; and yet, when a rumour spread that the rising at Indore on the 1st of July had the sanction of the first-named sovereign, numerous petty chieftains in that part of India rose against the British, and prepared to cut off all retreat for Europeans. It was not until Holkar had given undoubted evidence of his hostility to the mutineers, that these movements were checked. Much more was this rendered manifest in Scindia’s dominions. If Scindia had failed us, the mutineers from Neemuch, Nuseerabad, and Jhansi, by concentrating at Gwalior, might have rendered that hill-fortress a second Delhi to the British. Scindia and Holkar both remained steady; it was the Contingents that failed. These contingents were bodies of native troops, paid by the native princes of the states or countries whose name they bore, but organised and officered by the British, in the same way as the ordinary battalions of the sepoy army. If the native princes, for whose defence ostensibly, and at whose expense really, these contingents were maintained, wished and were permitted to have any independent military force of their own, that could only be done additionally to the contingent which they were bound to furnish. As a consequence of this curious system, a distinction must be drawn between the contingent troops and the prince’s troops. At Indore, Holkar’s little army as well as Holkar’s contingent proved hostile to the British. Scindia was in like manner paymaster for a double force; and the British often anxiously pondered whether one or both of these might prove faithless at Gwalior, with or without the consent of Scindia himself. The Gwalior Contingent, though connected with a Mahratta state, consisted chiefly of Hindustanis, like the sepoys of the Bengal army; the Mahrattas formed quite a minority of the number. The contingent consisted of all three arms of the service – infantry, cavalry, and artillery – and formed a compact army.

The disasters at Gwalior began on Sunday the 14th of June – as usual, on Sunday. It will be remembered (p. 112) that Scindia, three or four weeks earlier, had offered the aid of his own body-guard, which had been accepted by Mr Colvin at Agra; that a portion of the Gwalior Contingent (cavalry) was also sent; that this contingent, under Lieutenant Cockburn, was actively engaged against the insurgents in the region between Agra and Allygurh; and that about one-half of the troopers composing it revolted on the 28th of May, placing that gallant officer in a very embarrassing position. They were portions of the same contingent that mutinied at Neemuch and one or two other places; and on this account the European inhabitants at Gwalior were subject to much anxiety – knowing that that station was the head-quarters; and that, although the contingent was paid for by the Maharajah, the troops had been raised mostly in Oude, and, being disciplined and officered by the British, were likely to share the same sentiments as the Oudians and other Hindustanis of the Bengal army elsewhere. The Maharajah had little or no influence over them; for neither were they his countrymen, nor had he any control over their discipline or movements. During fourteen years, as boy, youth, and man, he had been in great measure a pupil under the British resident at Gwalior; and if he remained an obedient pupil, this was nearly all that could be expected from him – shorn, as the Mahratta court was, of so much of its former influence. Dr Winlow Kirk, superintending surgeon of the contingent, placed upon record, ten days before the bloody deed which deprived him of life, a few facts relating to the position of the Europeans at Gwalior in the latter part of May and the beginning of June. The resident received information which led him to believe that the contingent – seven regiments of infantry, two of cavalry, and four batteries of artillery – was thoroughly disaffected, both the main body at Gwalior and the detachments elsewhere. The brigadier commandant shared this opinion with the resident; and, as a precautionary measure, all the ladies were sent from the station to the Residency, a distance of six miles, on the 28th of May. Dr Kirk, and most of the military officers, dissented from this opinion; they thought the troops were behaving in a respectful manner, and they offered to sleep among the men’s lines to shew their confidence in them. On the 29th and 30th, the ladies returned to cantonment, much to the apparent delight of the sepoys at the generous reliance thus placed in them. Bitter was the disappointment and grief in store for those who had trusted these miscreants.

It was on the 14th of June, we have said, that the uprising at Gwalior began. The Europeans had long wished for the presence of a few English troops; but as none were to be had, they watched each day’s proceedings rather anxiously. At nine o’clock in the evening of the disastrous Sunday, the alarm was given at the cantonment; all rushed out of their respective bungalows, and each family found others in a similar state of alarm. Shots were heard; officers were galloping or running past; horses were wildly rushing with empty saddles; and no one could give a precise account of the details of the outbreak. Then occurred the sudden and mournful disruption of family ties; husbands became separated from their wives; ladies and children sought to hide in gardens and grass, on house-tops and in huts. Then arose flames from the burning bungalows; and then came bands of reckless sepoys, hunting out the poor homeless English who were in hiding. On the morning of that day, Dr Kirk, although he had not shared the resident’s alarm seventeen days before, nevertheless thought with some anxiety of the ladies and children, and asked what arrangements had been made for their safety in the event of an outbreak; but the officers of the regiments, most of whom relied fully on their men, would not admit that there was any serious need for precautionary measures. Two of these unfortunate officers, Major Blake and Major Hawkins, were especially trustful; and these were two among the number who fell by the hands of their own men that very night. Captain Stewart, with his wife and child, were killed, as also Major Sheriff. Brigadier Ramsey, and several others, whose bungalows were on the banks of a small river, escaped by fording. Dr Kirk was one of those who, less fortunate, were furthest from the river. With Mrs Kirk and his child, he hid in the garden all night; in the morning they were discovered; Mrs Kirk was robbed without being otherwise ill treated; but her husband was shot dead before her eyes. Thus fell an amiable and skilful man, who for nearly twenty years had been a medical officer of the Company – first with the Bundelcund legion in Sinde; then as a medical adviser to Sir Charles Napier on matters connected with the health of troops in that sandy region; then with the Bengal troops at Bareilly; then with the European artillery at Ferozpore; and lastly, as superintending surgeon to the troops of the Gwalior Contingent, who shewed their gratitude for his medical aid by putting him to death. After this miserable sight, Mrs Kirk begged the murderers to put an end to her also; but they replied: ‘No, we have killed you already’ – pointing to the dead body of her husband.

The rest of this story need not be told in detail. Agra was the place of refuge sought by those who had now to flee; and it is some small alleviation of the crimes of the mutineers that they allowed the ladies and children to depart – with their lives, but with little else. How the poor things suffered during five days of weary journeying, they could themselves hardly have told; hunger, thirst, heat, illness, fatigue, and anxiety of mind accumulated on them. Many arrived at Agra without shoes or stockings; and all were beggared of their worldly possessions when they reached that city. When, shortly afterwards, Lieutenant Cockburn wrote to private friends of this event, he had to tell, not only of his own mortification as the officer of a disloyal corps, but of the wreck suffered by the British station at Gwalior. ‘I fear there is no chance of my ever recovering any of your portraits; for the ruffians invariably destroy all they cannot convert into silver or gold. All our beautiful garden at Gwalior, on which I spent a good deal of money and care, has been dug up; our houses have been turned into cattle-sheds; there is not a pane of glass in the station; our beautiful church has been gutted, the monuments destroyed, the organ broken up, the stained-glass windows smashed, and the lovely floor of encaustic tiles torn up. The desecration of the tombs is still more horrible; in many places the remains of our countrymen have been torn from the earth, and consigned to the flames!’

The position of Scindia was sufficiently embarrassing at that time. As soon as the troops of the contingent had murdered or driven away their officers, they went to him, placed their services at his disposal, and demanded that he would lead them against the British at Agra. There were eight or ten thousand men in the contingent altogether, and his own Mahratta army was little less numerous; it was therefore a matter of critical importance to the English that he remained steady and faithful. He not only refused to sanction the proceedings of the mutineers, but endeavoured to prevent them from marching towards Agra. In this he succeeded until an advanced period of the autumn; for the troops that troubled Agra at the end of June and the beginning of July were those from Mhow and Neemuch, not the larger body from Gwalior. These mutineers proceeded towards Agra by way of Futtehpore or Futhepore Sikri – a town famed for the vast expanse of ruined buildings, erected by Akbar and destroyed by the Mahrattas; for the great mosque, with its noble gateway and flight of steps; and for the sumptuous white marble tomb, constructed by Akbar in memory of a renowned Mussulman ascetic, Sheik Selim Cheestee.28 The battle that ensued, and the considerations that induced Mr Colvin to shut up himself and all the British in the fort at Agra, will be better treated in a later page.