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

On the morning of the 14th, the mutineers poured out in great numbers, and attacked the batteries at Hindoo Rao’s house, and the picket in the Subzee Mundee. The troops stationed at those places remained on the defensive till three o’clock in the afternoon, struggling against a force consisting of many regiments of insurgent infantry, a large body of cavalry, and several field-pieces. It was indeed a most determined attack, supported, moreover, by a fire of heavy artillery from the walls. Why it was that so many hours elapsed before succour was sent forth, is not very clear; but the troops who had to bear the brunt of this onslaught comprised only detachments of the 60th and 75th foot, with the Goorkhas of the Sirmoor battalion and the infantry of the Guides. A column was formed, however, at the house above named, under Brigadier Showers, consisting of the 1st Punjaub infantry, the 1st Europeans, and six horse-artillery guns. Then commenced a double contest; Showers attacking the enemy at the picket-house, and Major Reid at Hindoo Rao’s house. After a fierce struggle the enemy were driven back into the city, and narrowly escaped losing some of their guns. It was a day’s work that could not be accomplished without a serious loss. None of the officers, it is true, were killed in the field; but the list of wounded was very large, comprising Brigadier Chamberlain (at that time adjutant-general of the army), and Lieutenants Roberts, Thompson, Walker, Geneste, Carnegie, Rivers, Faithful, Daniell, Ross, Tulloch, Chester, Shebbeare, Hawes, Debrett, and Pollock. Tho wounding of so many subalterns shews how actively different companies of troops must have been engaged. Altogether, the operations of this day brought down 15 men killed and 193 officers and men wounded.

The heat was by this time somewhat alleviated by rains, which, however, brought sickness and other discomforts with them. Men fell ill after remaining many hours in damp clothes; and it was found that the fierce heat was, after all, not so detrimental to health. Many young officers, it is true, lately arrived from England, and not yet acclimatised, were smitten down by sun-stroke, and a few died of apoplexy; but it is nevertheless true that the army was surprisingly healthy during the hot weather. One of the Carabiniers, writing in the rainy season, said: ‘The last three days have been exceedingly wet; notwithstanding which we are constantly in the saddle; no sooner has one alarm subsided than we are turned out to meet the mutineers in another quarter.’ An officer of Sappers, employed in blowing up a bridge, said: ‘We started about two P.M., and returned about twelve at night drenched through and thoroughly miserable, it having rained the whole time.’

The state of affairs in the middle of July was peculiar. It seemed to the nation at home that the army of Delhi ought to be strong enough to retake the city, especially when a goodly proportion of the number were Europeans. Yet that this was not the case, was the opinion both of Reed and of Wilson; although many daring spirits in the army longed to breach the walls and take the place by storm. Twelve hundred wounded and sick men had to be tended; all the others were kept fully employed in repelling the sallies of the enemy. Major-general Reed, who ought never to have assumed the command at all – so broken-down was he in health – gave in altogether on the 17th, after the wounding of Chamberlain; he named Brigadier Wilson, who had brought forward the Meerut brigade, as his successor. The new commander immediately wrote to Sir John Lawrence a letter (in French, as if distrusting spies), in which he candidly announced that it would be dangerous and disastrous to attempt a storm of the city; that the enemy were in great force, well armed, strong in position, and constantly reinforced by accessions of insurgent regiments; that they daily attacked the British, who could do little more than repel the attacks; that his army was gradually diminishing by these daily losses; that it would be impossible to take Delhi without at least one more European regiment and two more Sikh regiments from the Punjaub; and that if those additions did not speedily reach him, he would be obliged to raise the siege, retreat to Kurnaul, and leave the country all around Delhi to be ravaged by the mutineers. This letter shewed the gravity with which Brigadier Wilson regarded the state of matters at that critical time. Lawrence fully recognised the importance of the issue, for he redoubled his exertions to send 900 European Fusiliers and 1600 Punjaubees to the camp.

General Reed’s resignation was twofold. He resigned the provisional command-in-chief of the Bengal army as soon as he was officially informed of the assumption of that office by Sir Patrick Grant; and he resigned the command of the Delhi field-force to Brigadier Wilson, because his health was too far broken to permit him to take part in active duties. It was the virtual ending of his part in the wars of the mutiny; he went to the hills, in search of that health which he could never have recovered in the plains.

Among the many contests in the second half of the month was one near Ludlow Castle, a name given to the residence of Mr Fraser, the commissioner of Delhi, one of those foully murdered on the 11th of May. This house was within half a mile of the Cashmere Gate, near the river; the enemy were found to be occupying it; but their works were attacked and destroyed by a force under Brigadier Showers; while Sir T. Metcalfe’s house, further northward, was taken and strengthened as a defensive post by the British.

Mr Colvin, writing from Agra to Havelock on the 22d of July, giving an account of such proceedings at Delhi as had come to his knowledge, made the following observations on the character which the struggle had assumed: ‘The spirit by which both Hindoos and Mohammedans act together at Delhi is very remarkable. You would well understand a gathering of Mohammedan fanatical feeling at that place; but what is locally, I find, known by the name of “Pandyism,” is just as strong. Pandies are, among the Hindoos, all Brahmins. What absurd, distorted suspicions of our intentions (which have been so perfectly innocent towards them) may have been first worked upon, it is scarcely possible to say; but the thing has now got beyond this, and it is a struggle for mastery, not a question of mistrust or discontent. Mohammedans seem to be actively misleading Hindoos for their own purposes. Sir Patrick Grant will not know the Bengal army again. The Goorkhas, Sikhs, and Punjaubee Mohammedans have remained quite faithful, and done their duty nobly at Delhi; the bad spirit is wholly with the Poorbeahs.’ Mr Greathed, Colvin’s commissioner with the siege-army, made every attempt to ascertain, by means of spies and deserters, what were the alleged and what the real motives for the stubborn resistance of the mutineers to British rule. He wrote on this subject: ‘The result of all questionings of sepoys who have fallen into our hands, regarding the cause of the mutiny, is the same. They invariably cite the “cartouche” (cartridge) as the origin; no other cause of complaint has been alluded to. His majesty of Delhi has composed a couplet, to the effect that the English, who boast of having vanquished rods of iron, have been overthrown in Hindostan by a single cartridge. A consciousness of power had grown up in the army, which could only be exercised by mutiny. The cry of the cartridges brought the latent spirit of revolt into action.’ Mr Muir of Agra, commenting on these remarks, said: ‘I fully believe this to be the case with the main body of the sepoys. There were ringleaders, no doubt, who had selfish views, and possibly held correspondence with the Delhi family, &c.; but they made use of the cartridge as their argument to gain over the mass of the army to the belief that their caste was threatened.’

It will be unnecessary to trace day by day the struggles outside Delhi. They continued as before; but the frequency was somewhat lessened, and the danger also, for the defence-works on the ridge had been much strengthened. Every bridge over the canal was blown up, except that on the main road to Kurnaul and Umballa; and thus the enemy could not easily attack the camp in the rear. It was not yet really a siege, for the British poured very few shot or shell into the city or against the walls. It was not an investment; for the British could not send a single regiment to the southwest, south, or east of the city. It was little more than a process of waiting till further reinforcements could arrive.

At the close of July, Brigadier Wilson forwarded to the government a very exact account of the state of his army, shewing what were his resources for maintaining the siege on the one hand, and repelling attacks by the enemy on the other. We present the chief particulars in a foot-note, in an altered and more condensed form.44 It appears that out of this army of something more than 8000 men, above 1100 were rendered non-effective by sickness or wounds; that of the whole number of effectives, just about one-half were Europeans, belonging either to the Queen’s or to the Company’s army; and that no European corps, except perhaps the Lancers, comprised more than a fractional percentage of a full regiment. A return sent in about the middle of the month had comprised 300 men of the 4th and 17th Bengal irregular cavalry; but the omission of this element at the end of the month shewed that those dangerous companions had been got rid of. The corps of Guides and Goorkhas had in a fortnight diminished from an aggregate number of 923 to 571 – so rapidly had those gallant men been brought down by balls, bullets, and cholera. Ranked among the artillery and engineers were many hundred syces and bildars, natives who merely aided in certain labouring operations; and among the Sappers and Miners the Punjaubees were only just learning their trade.

The casualty list of officers was a very serious one. From the time when Brigadier Wilson encountered the enemy at Ghazeeoodeen Nuggur at the end of May, till he made up his report at the end of July, the officers who were killed or wounded were 101 in number. Anson, Barnard, Reed, Chamberlain, Halifax, Graves – nearly all the general officers except Wilson and Showers, were either dead or in some way disabled; and these frequent changes in command doubtless affected the organisation and movements of the army.

Brigadier Wilson made every attempt, while doing the best he could with his own forces, to ascertain the number and components of those possessed by the enemy. Military commanders always aim at the acquisition of such knowledge, effected by a species of espionage which, however opposed to general feeling at other times, is deemed quite fair in war. From the 11th of May, when the troubles began in Delhi, to the end of July, there arrived in the city mutinous regiments from Meerut, Hansi, Muttra, Lucknow, Nuseerabad, Jullundur, Ferozpore, Bareilly, Jhansi, Gwalior, Neemuch, Allygurh, Agra, Rohtuk, Jhuggur, and Allahabad. The list given in a note45 is taken from the official dispatch, which was itself a record of information obtained from various native sources; but after making allowance for the fact that portions only of many of the regiments had entered Delhi, and that the numbers had been considerably lessened by the thirty or more encounters which had taken place outside the walls, the military authorities brought down the supposed number to a much lower limit than had before been named – namely, 4000 disciplined cavalry, and 12,000 infantry, besides 3000 undisciplined levies. The rebels retained the formidable defensive artillery which they found in Delhi, and brought thirty field-guns also with them; but these guns were lessened in number one-half by successive seizures made by the British.

The condition and proceedings of the rebels within the city could, of course, be known only imperfectly. The old king was looked up to by all as the centre of authority, but it is probable that his real power was small. Where regiments had arrived from so many different quarters, we may suppose that the apportionment of military command was no easy matter; and indeed there was, throughout, little evidence that the rebel force had one head, one leader whose plans were obeyed by all. The Lahore Chronicle some time afterwards printed a narrative by a native, of a residence in Delhi from the 13th to the 30th of July. Such narratives can seldom be relied on; but so far as it went, this revelation spoke of great discord among the leaders; great discontent among the troops because their pay was in arrear; great perplexity on the part of the old king because he had not funds enough to pay so large an army; and great plundering of the citizens by the rude soldiery, who deemed themselves masters of the situation. ‘When the sepoys,’ said this native, ‘find out a rich house in the city, they accuse the owner after the following manner, in order to plunder his property. They take a loaf of bread and a bottle of grog with them, and make a noise at the door and break it in pieces, get into the house, take possession of the cash and valuables, and beat the poor householder, saying: “Where is the Englishman you have been keeping in your house?” When he denies having done so, they just shew him the bread and the bottle, and say: “How is it that we happened to find these in your house? We are quite sure there was an Englishman accommodated here, whom you quietly sent elsewhere before our arrival.” Soon after, the talk is over, and the poor man is disgracefully put into custody, where there is no inquiry made to prove whether he is innocent or guilty; he cannot get his release unless he bribes the general.’ The known attributes of oriental cunning give a strong probability to this curious story.

Here, for the present, we take leave of the siege of Delhi, and of the stage at which it had arrived by the end of July. Much has to be narrated, in reference to other places, other generals, other operations, before the final capture of the imperial city will call for description.

CHAPTER XV.

HAVELOCK’S CAMPAIGN: ALLAHABAD TO LUCKNOW

If there be one name that stands out in brighter colours than any other connected with the mutiny in India, perhaps it is that of Henry Havelock. There are peculiar reasons for this. He came like a brilliant meteor at a time when all else was gloomy and overshadowed. Anson had died on the way to Delhi; Barnard had died in the camp before that city; Reed had retired, broken down by age and sickness; Wilson had not yet shewn whether he could work out victory at the great Mogul capital; Wheeler was falling, or had fallen, a miserable victim to the treachery of Nena Sahib; Henry Lawrence was no more; Hewett and Lloyd were under a cloud, for mismanagement as military commanders – all this had rendered the British nation grieved and irritated; and men fiercely demanded ‘Who’s to blame?’ – as if it were necessary to seek relief by wreaking vengeance on some persons or other. It was a crisis that pressed heavily on Viscount Canning; but it was at the same time a crisis that insured fervid gratitude to any general who could achieve victories with small means. Such a general was Havelock. The English public knew little of him, although he was well known in India. Commencing his career as a soldier in 1816, Henry Havelock had borne his full share in all a soldier’s varied fortune. He went to India in 1823; engaged in the Burmese war in 1824; took part in a mission to the court of Siam in 1826; was promoted from lieutenant to captain in 1838; took an active share in the stirring scenes of the Afghan campaign, which brought him a brevet majority, and the order of C. B.; acted as Persian interpreter to generals Elphinstone, Pollock, and Gough; fought at Gwalior in 1843; became brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1844; fought with the bravest in 1845 at Moodkee, Ferozshah, and Sobraon; and in 1846 received the appointment of deputy adjutant-general of the Queen’s troops at Bombay. An Indian climate during so many years having told – in its customary sad way – on his constitution, Henry Havelock returned for a sojourn in England. Returning to Bombay in 1851, he became brevet colonel; and in after years he was appointed quarter-master-general, and then adjutant-general, of the whole of the Queen’s troops in India. When the war with Persia broke out, he took command of one of the divisions in 1857; and when that war was ended, he returned to Bombay. All this was known to official persons in India, but very few of the particulars were familiar to the general public in the home-country; hence, when Havelock’s victories were announced, the public were surprised as if by the sudden appearance of a great genius. That he bore so heavy a responsibility, or suffered such intense mental anxiety, as Wheeler at Cawnpore, Inglis at Lucknow, or Colvin at Agra, is not probable; for he had not hundreds of helpless women and children under his charge; but the astonishing victories he achieved with a mere handful of men, and the moral influence he thereby acquired for the British name throughout the whole of the Doab, well entitled him to the outburst of grateful feeling which the nation was not slow to exhibit. The only danger was, lest this hero-worship should render the nation blind for a time to the merits of other generals.

Neill and Havelock, who worked so energetically together in planning the relief of Lucknow, were brought from other regions of India to take part in the operations on the Ganges. Neill, as colonel of the 1st Madras European Fusiliers, accompanied that regiment to Calcutta, and thence proceeded up the country to Benares, where his contest with the rebels first began. Havelock, landing at Bombay from Persia, set off by steam to go to Calcutta; he was wrecked on the way near Ceylon, and experienced much perilous adventure before he could proceed on his journey. At Calcutta – where he arrived, in the same steamer which brought Sir Patrick Grant, on the 17th of June – he received the appointment of brigadier-general,46 to command such a force as could be hastily collected for the relief, first of the Europeans at Cawnpore, and then of those at Lucknow; and it was towards the close of June that he made his appearance at Allahabad.

Sufficient has been stated in former chapters to shew what was the state of affairs at that time. Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, and Delhi were either in the hands of the rebels, or were so beset by them that no British commander was able to assist his brother-officers. Oude, the Doab, and Rohilcund were in deplorable anarchy; and it depended either upon Viscount Canning at Calcutta, or Sir John Lawrence at Lahore, to send aid to the disturbed districts. Lawrence, as we have seen, and as we shall see again in a future chapter, with admirable energy and perseverance, sent such assistance as enabled Wilson to conquer Delhi; while Canning, under enormous difficulty, sent up troops to Allahabad by scores and fifties at a time, as rapidly as he could collect them at Calcutta.

Brigadier Neill preceded Havelock in the operations connected with the repression of the mutiny in the Doab and adjacent regions. His own regiment, the 1st Madras European Fusiliers, had been ordered to proceed to Persia in the spring, but had received counter-orders in consequence of the sudden termination of the war in that country. While at Bombay, uncertain whether commands might be received to proceed to China, the regiment heard the news of a revolt among the Bengal troops; and very speedily, both Persia and China were forgotten in matters of much greater exigency and importance. After making the voyage back from Bombay to Madras, the regiment proceeded to Calcutta, and the men were then sent up the country as rapidly as possible to Benares, some by road and the rest by steamers. Neill himself reached that city on the 3d of June, and was immediately engaged, as we have already seen (p. 154), in disarming a mutinous regiment, and in maintaining order in the vicinity. After six days of incessant work at Benares, the brigadier, hearing of the mutiny at Allahabad, started off on the 9th to render service in that region. With what a powerful hand he put down the rebels; with what stern and prompt firmness he retained possession of that important city, the ‘key to Upper India’ – has already been briefly shewn.47 The various corps of the Madras Fusiliers reached Benares and Allahabad by degrees; and fragments of other European regiments were sent up as fast as possible, as the nucleus of a little army forming at Allahabad.

The 1st of July may be taken as the day that marked the commencement of General Havelock’s career in relation to the Indian Revolt. He and his staff arrived at Allahabad on that day, after a rapid journey from Calcutta. A few hours before his arrival, the first relieving column had been sent off by Neill towards Cawnpore: consisting of 200 Madras Fusiliers, 200 of the 84th foot, 300 Sikhs, and 120 irregular cavalry, under Major Renaud; and a second, of larger proportions, was to follow in a week or ten days’ time. The immediate object held in view, in the march of both columns, was to liberate Sir Hugh Wheeler and his hapless companions at Cawnpore; and, if this were accomplished, the second work to be done was to advance and relieve Sir Henry Lawrence and the British at Lucknow. It was not at that time known that, before the second column could start from Allahabad, both Wheeler and Lawrence had been numbered with the dead. Neill superseded the officer previously in command at Allahabad; Havelock superseded Neill in command of the relieving force; we shall have to speak of Outram superseding Havelock; and we have already spoken of Patrick Grant superseding Reed, and of Colin Campbell superseding Grant. All these supersessions were in virtue of military routine, depending either on seniority, or on the exercise of a right to make appointments. If these various officers had been unsuccessful, the system of supersession would have been attacked by adverse judges as the cause of the failure; but there was so much nobility of mind displayed by four or five of the gallant men here named, that the vexation often caused by supersession was much alleviated; while the nation at large had ample reason to admire and be thankful for the deeds of arms that accompanied generosity of feeling.

On the 3d, an auxiliary force under Captain Spurgin, left Allahabad for Cawnpore, irrespective of the two columns. It consisted only of 100 Madras Europeans armed with rifles, 12 artillerymen, and two 6-pounder guns; it went by steamer up the Ganges, partly in order to control the mutineers on the banks, but in part also on account of the paucity of means for land-conveyance. No steamer had had much success in that part of the Ganges; and hence great interest was felt in the voyage of the Brahmaputra. As a first difficulty, the engineers, having no coals, were obliged to forage for wood every day on shore. On the second day of the trip, this foraging had to be protected by half the force, against a body of 500 insurgents on the Oude bank, provided with a large piece of ordnance; the wood was not obtained without a regular battle, in which 50 English ‘thrashed’ – to use a very favourite term among the soldiers – just ten times their number of rebels, and captured their gun. On they went, struggling against the rapid stream of the Ganges, and never making more than two miles an hour. The enemy hovered on the banks, and sent several round shot into the little iron steamer – a sort of irritation that kept the crew and soldiers well on the alert. Day after day passed in this way, Captain Spurgin timing his movements so as to accord with the march of the land-columns. The steamer reached Cawnpore on the 17th, just a fortnight after the departure from Allahabad – a degree of slowness not altogether dependent on the difficulty of the navigation, but partly due to the necessity of not advancing more rapidly than the columns could fight their way on shore.

The dismal news gradually reached Allahabad that some dreadful calamity had occurred at Cawnpore. This information led Havelock to modify his plans and quicken his movements; and, full of heart, he transmitted to Calcutta the telegram already quoted, to the effect that ‘1000 Europeans, 1000 Goorkhas, and 1000 Sikhs, with 8 or 10 guns, will thrash everything.’ Among the troops he collected was a handful of volunteer cavalry, consisting chiefly of officers who had been left without command by the mutiny of their respective native regiments, or had narrowly escaped massacre; the number amounted only to a score; but it comprised just the sort of men who would be ready for any enterprise at such a time.