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

These exertions were materially aided by the existence of a remarkable police system in the Punjaub – one of the benefits which the Lawrences and their associates introduced. The Punjaub police was of three kinds. First was the military police, consisting of two corps of irregular infantry, seven battalions of foot, one regiment cavalry, and twenty-seven troops of horse – amounting altogether to about thirteen thousand men. These men were thoroughly disciplined, and were ready at all times to encounter the marauding tribes from the mountains. Then came the civil police, comprising about nine thousand men, and distributed over nearly three hundred thannahs or subordinate jurisdictions, to protect thirty thousand villages and small places: the men were armed with swords and carbines. Lastly were the constabulary, thirteen hundred men in the cities, and thirty thousand in the rural districts; these were a sort of watchmen, dressed in a plain drab uniform, and carrying only a staff and a spear. This large police army of more than fifty thousand men was not only efficient, when well officered, in maintaining tranquillity, but furnished excellent recruits for regiments of Sikh and Punjaubee soldiers.

Sir John Lawrence issued a vigorous proclamation, encouraging the native troops to remain faithful, and threatening them with dire consequences if they revolted; but from the first he relied very little on such appeals to the Bengal troops. Leaving this subject, however, and directing attention to those events only which bore with any weight on the progress of the mutiny, we shall now rapidly glance at Punjaub affairs in the summer months. Many struggles took place, too slight to require much notice. One was the disarming of a native regiment at Noorpore. Another, on June 13th, was the execution of twelve men at Ferozpore, belonging to the 45th N. I., for mutiny after being disarmed.

It was early in June that the station at Jullundur became a prey to insurgent violence. On the 3d of the month, a fire broke out in the lines of the 61st native infantry – a bad symptom wherever it occurred in those days. On the following night a hospital was burned. On the 6th, the 4th regiment Sikh infantry marched into the station, as well as a native troop of horse-artillery; but, owing to some uneasiness displayed by the Bengal troops, the Sikh regiment was removed to another station – as if the brigadier in command were desirous not to offend or irritate the petted regiments from the east. At eleven o’clock at night on the 7th, the close of a quiet Sunday – again Sunday! – a sudden alarm of fire was given, and a lurid glare was seen over the lines of the 36th native infantry. The officers rushed to their respective places; and then it was found that the 6th native cavalry, wavering for a time, had at last given way to the mutinous impulse that guided the 36th and 61st infantry, and that all three regiments were threatening the officers. The old sad story might again be told; the story of some of the officers being shot as they spoke and appealed to the fidelity of their men; of others being shot at or sabred as they ran or rode across the parade-ground; of ladies and children being affrighted at the artillery barracks, where they had been wont to sleep for greater security. The mutineers had evidently expected the native artillery to join them; but fortunately these latter were so dove-tailed with the European artillery, and were so well looked after by a company of the 8th foot, that they could not mutiny if they would. All the Europeans who fled to the artillery barracks and lines were safe; the guns protected them. The mutineers, after an hour or two of the usual mischief, made off. About one half the cavalry regiment mutinied, but as all confidence was lost in them, the rest were deprived of horses and arms, and the regiment virtually ceased to exist. The officers were overwhelmed with astonishment and mortification; some of them had gone to rest on that evening in perfect reliance on their men. One of the cavalry officers afterwards said: ‘Some of our best men have proved the most active in this miserable business. A rough rider in my troop, who had been riding my charger in the morning, and had played with my little child, was one of the men who charged the guns.’ This officer, like many others, had no other theory to offer than that his troopers mutinied in a ‘panic,’ arising from the sinister rumours that ran like wildfire through the lines and bazaars of the native troops, shaking the fidelity of those who had not previously taken part in any conspiracy. It was the only theory which their bitterness of heart allowed them to contemplate with any calmness; for few military men could admit without deep mortification that they had been ignorant of, and deceived by, their own soldiers down to the very last moment.

While a portion of the 6th cavalry remained, disarmed and unhorsed but not actually disbanded, at Jullundur, the two regiments and a half of mutineers marched off towards Phillour, as if bound for Delhi. At the instant the mutiny began, a telegraphic message had been sent from Jullundur to Phillour, to break the bridge of boats over the Sutlej, and thereby prevent the rebels from crossing from the Punjaub into Sirhind.

Unfortunately, the telegraphic message failed to reach the officer to whom it was sent. The 3d regiment Bengal native cavalry, at Phillour, might, as the commanding officer at that time thought, have been maintained in discipline if the Jullundur mutineers had not disturbed them; but when the 36th and 61st native infantry, and the 6th cavalry were approaching, all control was found to be lost. The telegraphic wires being cut, no news could reach Phillour, and thus the insurgents from Jullundur made their appearance wholly unexpected – by the Europeans, if not by the troopers. The ladies and families were at once hastened off from the cantonment to the fort, which had just before been garrisoned by a hundred men of H.M. 8th foot. The officers then went on parade, where they found themselves unable to bring the 3d regiment to a sense of their duty; the men promised to keep their hands clear of murder, but they would not fight against the approaching rebels from Jullundur. The officers then returned to the fort powerless; for the handful of Europeans there, though sufficient to defend the fort, were unable to encounter four mutinous regiments in the cantonment. In a day or two, all the ladies and children were sent off safely to the hills; and the cavalry officers were left without immediate duties. The tactics of the brigadier at Jullundur were at that crisis somewhat severely criticised. It was considered that he ought to have made such arrangements as would have prevented the mutineers from crossing the Sutlej. He followed them, with such a force as he could spare or collect; but while he was planning to cut off the bridge of boats that spanned the Sutlej between Phillour and Loodianah, they avoided that spot altogether; they crossed the river six miles further up, and proceeded on their march towards Delhi – attacked at certain places by Europeans and by Sikhs, but not in sufficient force to frustrate their purpose.

Although belonging to a region east of the Punjaub, it may be well here to notice another of the June mutinies nearer the focus of disaffection. One of the regiments that took its officers by surprise in mutinying was the 60th B. N. I.; of which the head-quarters had been at Umballa, but which was at Bhotuck, only three marches from Delhi, when the fidelity of the men gave way. One of the English officers, expressing his utter astonishment at this result, said: ‘All gone! The men that we so trusted; my own men, with whom I have shot, played cricket, jumped, entered into all their sports, and treated so kindly!’ He thought it almost cruel to subject that regiment to such temptation as would be afforded by close neighbourhood with the mutineers at Delhi. But, right or wrong, the temptation was afforded, and proved too strong to be resisted. It afterwards became known that the 60th received numerous letters and messages from within Delhi, entreating them to join the national cause against the Kaffir Feringhees. On the 11th of June, the sepoys suddenly rose, and fired a volley at a tent within which many of the officers were at mess, but fortunately without fatal results. Many of the officers at once galloped off to the camp outside Delhi, feeling they might be more useful there than with a mutinous regiment; while others stayed a while, in the vain hope of bringing the men back to a sense of their duty. After plundering the mess of the silver-plate and the wine, and securing the treasure-chest, the mutineers made off for Delhi. Here, however, a warm reception was in store for them; their officers had given the alarm; and H.M. 9th Lancers cut the mutineers up terribly on the road leading to the Lahore Gate. Of those who entered the city, most fell in a sortie shortly afterwards. At the place where this regiment had been stationed, Umballa, another death-fiend – cholera – was at work. ‘We have had that terrible scourge the cholera. It has been raging here with frightful violence for two months (May to July); but, thank God, has now left us without harming the Sahibs. It seemed a judgment on the natives. They were reeling about and falling dead in the streets, and no one to remove them. It is the only time we have looked on it as an ally; though it has carried off many soldiers, two native officers, and six policemen, who were guarding prisoners; all fell dead at the same place; as one dropped, another stepped forward and took his place; and so on the whole lot.’ It was one of the grievous results of the Indian mutiny that English officers, in very bitterness of heart, often expressed satisfaction at the calamities which fell on the natives, even townsmen unconnected with the soldiery.

Jelum, which was the scene of a brief but very fierce contest in July, is a considerable town on the right bank of the river of the same name; it is situated on the great line of road from Lahore to Peshawur; and plans have for some time been under consideration for the establishment of river-steamers thence down through Moultan to Kurachee. Like many other places on the great high road, it was a station for troops; and like many other stations, it was thrown into uneasiness by doubts of the fidelity of the sepoys. The 14th regiment Bengal native infantry, about three-fourths of which were stationed at Jelum, having excited suspicions towards the end of June, it was resolved to disarm them; but as no force was at hand to effect this, three companies of H.M. 24th foot, under Colonel Ellice, with a few horse-artillery, were ordered down from Rawul Pindee. On the 7th of July the English troops arrived, and found the native regiment drawn up on parade. Whether exasperated at the frustration of a proposed plan of mutiny, or encouraged by their strength being thrice that of the English, is not well known; but the 14th attacked the English with musketry directly they approached. This of course brought on an immediate battle. The sepoys had fortified their huts, loopholed their walls, and secured a defensive position in a neighbouring village. The English officers of the native regiment, deserted and fired at by their men, hastened to join the 24th; and a very severe exchange of musketry soon took place. The sepoys fought so boldly, and disputed every inch so resolutely, that it was found necessary to bring the three guns into requisition to drive them out of their covered positions. At last they were expelled, and escaped into the country; where the British, having no cavalry, were unable to follow them. It was an affair altogether out of the usual order in India at that time: instead of being a massacre or a chasing of treacherously betrayed individuals, it was a fight in which the native troops met the British with more than their usual resolution. The loss in this brief conflict was severe. Colonel Ellice was terribly wounded in the chest and the thigh; Captain Spring was killed; Lieutenants Streathfield and Chichester were wounded, one in both legs, and the other in the arm; two sergeants and twenty-three men were killed; four corporals and forty-three men wounded. Thus, out of this small force, seventy-six were either killed or wounded. The government authorities at Jelum immediately offered a reward of thirty rupees a head for every fugitive sepoy captured. This led to the capture of about seventy in the next two days, and to a fearful scene of shooting and blowing away from guns.

On the same day, July 7th, when three companies of H.M. 24th were thus engaged at Jelum, the other companies of the same regiment were engaged at Rawul Pindee in disarming the 58th native infantry and two companies of the 14th. The sepoys hesitated for a time, but seeing a small force of horse-artillery confronted to them, yielded; some fled, but the rest gave up their arms. Two hundred of their muskets were found to be loaded, a significant indication of some murderous intent.

The mutiny at Sealkote, less fatal than that at Jelum in reference to the conflict of troops in fair fight, was more adventurous, more marked by ‘hair-breadth ‘scapes’ among the officers and their families. Sealkote is a town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, in the Doab between the Chenab and the Ravee, on the left bank of the first-named river, and about sixty miles distant from Lahore. At the time of the mutiny there was a rifle-practice depôt at this place. The sepoys stationed at Sealkote had often been in conversation with their European officers concerning the cartridge-question, and had expressed themselves satisfied with the explanations offered. During the active operations for forming movable columns in the Punjaub, either to protect the various stations or to form a Delhi siege-army, all the European troops at Sealkote were taken away, as well as some of the native regiments; leaving at that place only the 46th Bengal native infantry, and a wing of the 9th native cavalry, in cantonment, while within the fort were about a hundred and fifty men of the new Sikh levies. The brigadier commandant was rendered very uneasy by this removal of his best troops; some of his officers had already recommended the disarming of the sepoys before the last of the Queen’s troops were gone; but he was scrupulous of shewing any distrust of the native army; he felt and acted in this matter more like a Bengal officer than a Punjaub officer – relying on the honour and fidelity of the ‘Poorbeah’ troops. His anxieties greatly increased when he heard that the 14th native infantry, after revolting at Jelum, were approaching Sealkote. Many of them, it is true, had been cut up by a few companies of the Queen’s 24th; but still the remainder might very easily tempt his own sepoys and troopers. Nevertheless, to the last day, almost to the last hour, many of the regimental officers fully trusted the men; and even their ladies slept near the lines, for safety.

The troops appear to have laid a plan on the evening of the 8th of July, for a mutiny on the following morning. At four o’clock on the 9th, sounds of musketry and cries of distress were heard, rousing all the Europeans from their slumbers. An officer on night-picket duty near the cavalry lines observed a few troopers going towards the infantry lines. It was afterwards discovered that these troopers went to the sepoys, told them ‘the letters’ had come, and urged them to revolt at once – implying complicity with mutineers elsewhere; but the officer could not know this at the time: he simply thought the movement suspicious, and endeavoured to keep his own sepoy guards from contact with the troopers. In this, however, he failed; the sepoys soon left him, and went over to the troopers. He hurried to his bungalow, told his wife to hasten in a buggy to the fort, and then went himself towards the lines of his regiment. This was a type of what occurred generally. The officers sought to send their wives and families from their various bungalows into the fort, and then hastened to their duties. These duties brought them into the presence of murderous troops at the regimental lines; troops who fired on the very officers that to the last had trusted them. Especially was the mortification great among the Europeans connected with the 46th; for when they begged their sepoys to fire upon the mutinous troopers, the sepoys fired at them instead. A captain, two surgeons, a clergyman, and his wife and child, were killed almost at the very beginning of the outbreak; while Brigadier Brind and other officers were wounded.

There were no wanderings over burning roads and through thick jungles to record in this case; but a few isolated adventures may be briefly noticed. Two or three roads from the lines and bungalows to the fort became speedily marked by fleeing Europeans – officers, ladies, and children – in vehicles, on horseback, and on foot – all trying to reach the fort, and all attacked or pursued by the treacherous villains. Dr Graham, the superintending surgeon, on the alarm being raised, drove quickly with his daughter towards the fort; a trooper rode up and shot him dead; his bereaved daughter seized the reins, and, with the corpse of her parent on her lap, drove into the nearest compound, screaming for help. A young lieutenant of the 9th cavalry, when it came to his turn to flee, had to dash past several troopers, who fired many shots, one only of which hit him. He galloped thirty miles to Wuzeerabad, wounded as he was; and, all his property being left behind him only to be ruthlessly destroyed, he had, to use his own words, to look forward to begin the world again, ‘with a sword, and a jacket cut up the back.’ Three officers galloped forty miles to Gujeranwalla, swimming or wading the rivers that crossed their path. One of the captains of the 46th, who was personally much liked by the sepoys of his own company, was startled by receiving from them an offer of a thousand rupees per month if he would become a rebel like them, and still remain their captain! What answer he gave to this strange offer may easily be conceived; but his company remained kind to him, for they saw him safely escorted to the fort. In one of the bungalows fourteen persons, of whom only three were men, sought refuge from the murderous sepoys and troopers. The women and children all congregated in a small lumber-room; the three gentlemen remained in the drawing-room, pistols in hand. Then ensued a brisk scene of firing and counter-firing; during which, however, only one life appears to have been lost: the love of plunder in this case overpowered the love of murder; for the insurgents, compelling the gentlemen to retreat to their poor companions in the lumber-room, and there besieging them for a time, turned their attention to loot or plunder. After ten hours sojourn of fourteen persons in a small room in a sultry July day, the Europeans, finding that the mutineers were wandering in other directions, contrived to make a safe and hasty run to the fort, a distance of upwards of a mile. Some of the Europeans at the station, as we have said, were killed; some escaped by a brisk gallop; while the rest were shut up for a fortnight in the fort, in great discomfort, until the mutineers went away. There being no European soldiers at Sealkote, the sepoys and sowars acted as they pleased; they pillaged the bungalows, exploded the magazine, let loose the prisoners in the jail, and then started off, like other mutineers, in the direction of Delhi.

One of the most touching incidents at Sealkote bore relation to a nunnery, a convent of nuns belonging to the order of Jesus Marie of Lyon, a Roman Catholic establishment analogous to that at Sirdhana near Meerut, already brought under notice (p. 57). The superior at Lyon, many weeks afterwards, received a letter from one of the sisters,31 giving an affecting account of the way in which the quiet religieuses were hunted about by the mutineers.

When the Sealkote mutineers had taken their departure towards Delhi, a force was organised at Jelum as quickly as possible to pursue them. This force, under Colonel Brown, comprised three companies of H.M. 24th foot, two hundred Sikhs, a hundred irregular horse, and three horse-artillery guns. The energetic Brigadier Nicholson, in command of a flying column destined for Delhi, comprising the 52d light infantry, the 6th Punjaub cavalry, and other troops, made arrangements at the same time for intercepting the mutineers. It thus happened that on the 12th of July, the insurgent 46th and 9th regiments when they reached the Ravee from Sealkote, found themselves hemmed in; and after an exciting contest on an island in the river, they were almost entirely cut up.

About the close of July, the disarmed 26th native infantry mutinied at Lahore, killed Major Spencer and two native officers, and fled up the left bank of the Ravee; but the police, the new levies, and the villagers pursued them so closely and harassed them so continuously, that hardly a man remained alive. In August, something of the same kind occurred at other places in the Punjaub; native Bengal regiments still were there, disarmed but not disbanded; and it could not be otherwise than that the men felt chafed and discontented with such a state of things. If faithful, they felt the degradation of being disarmed; if hollow in their professed fidelity, they felt the irksomeness of being closely watched in cantonment. At Ferozpore, on the 19th of August, a portion of the 10th native cavalry, that had before been disarmed, mutinied, and endeavoured to capture the guns of Captain Woodcock’s battery; they rushed at the guns while the artillerymen were at dinner, and killed the veterinary surgeon and one or two other persons; but a corps of Bombay Fusiliers, in the station at that time, repulsed and dispersed them. At Peshawur, where it was found frequently necessary to search the huts and tents of the disarmed sepoys, for concealed weapons, the 51st native infantry resisted this search on the 28th of the month; they beat their officers with cudgels, and endeavoured to seize the arms of a Sikh corps while those men were at dinner. They were foiled, and fled towards the hills; but a disastrous flight was it for them; more than a hundred were shot before they could get out of the lines, a hundred and fifty more were cut down during an immediate pursuit, nearly four hundred were brought in prisoners, to be quickly tried and shot, and some of the rest were made slaves by the mountaineers of the Khyber Pass, who would by no means ‘fraternise’ with them. Thus the regiment was in effect annihilated. There were then three disarmed native regiments left in Peshawur, which were kept so encamped that loaded guns in trusty hands might always point towards them.

The course of events in the Punjaub need not be traced further in any connected form. From first to last the plan adopted was pretty uniform in character. When the troubles began, there were about twenty regiments of the Bengal native army in the Punjaub; and these regiments were at once and everywhere distrusted by Sir John Lawrence and his chief officers. If hope and confidence were felt, it was rather by the regimental officers, to whom disloyalty in their respective corps was naturally mortifying and humiliating. All the sepoys were disarmed and the sowars dismounted, as soon as suspicious symptoms appeared; some regiments remained at the stations, disarmed, throughout the whole of the summer and autumn; some mutinied, before or after disarming; but very few indeed lived to reach the scene of rebel supremacy at Delhi; for they were cut up by the Europeans, Sikhs, Punjaubees, or hill-men which the Punjaub afforded. Gladly as every one, whether civilian or military, acknowledged the eminent services of Sir John Lawrence; there were, it must be admitted, certain advantages available to him which were utterly denied to Mr Colvin, the responsible chief of the Northwest Provinces, in which the mutiny raged more fiercely than anywhere else. When the troubles began, the Punjaub was better furnished with regiments of the Queen’s army than any other part of India; while the native Sikhs, Punjaubee Mohammedans, and hill-men, were either indifferent or hostile to the sepoys of Hindostan proper. The consequences of this state of things were two: the native troops were more easily disarmed; and those who mutinied were more in danger of annihilation before they could get east of the Sutlej. In the Northwest Provinces the circumstances were far more disastrous; the British troops were relatively fewer; and the people were more nearly in accord with the sepoys, in so far as concerned national and religious sympathies. In the Meerut military division, when the mutiny had fairly commenced, besides those at Meerut station, there was only one European regiment (at Agra), against ten native regiments, irrespective of those which mutinied at Meerut and Delhi. In the Cawnpore military division, comprising the great stations of Lucknow, Allahabad, Cawnpore, and the whole of Oude, there was scarcely more than one complete European regiment, against thirty native Bengal and Oude regiments, regular and irregular. In the Dinapoor military division, comprising Benares, Patna, Ghazeepore, and other large cities, together with much government wealth in the form of treasure and opium, there was in like manner only one British regiment, against sixteen native corps. There was at the same time this additional difficulty; that no such materials were at hand as in the Punjaub, for raising regiments of horse and foot among tribes who would sympathise but little with the mutineers.