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

General Walpole pursued his march, and had a successful encounter on the 22d with a large body of the enemy at Sirsa. His cavalry and artillery attacked them so vigorously as to capture their guns and camp, and to drive them over the Ramgunga in such haste as to leave them no time for destroying the bridge of boats at that place. This achievement was fortunate, for it enabled Walpole on the 23d to transport his heavy guns quickly and safely over the Ramgunga at Allygunje. A few days after this, he was joined by the commander-in-chief, whose movements we must next notice.

It was immediately after Sir Colin Campbell’s return from his interview with the governor-general at Allahabad, that he withdrew from Lucknow all the remaining troops, except those destined for the defence of that important city, and for the re-establishment of British influence in Oude. He formed an expeditionary army, which he headed himself – or rather, the army set forth from Lucknow to Cawnpore, and the commander-in-chief joined it at the last-named place on the 17th of April. The result of the conference at Allahabad had been, a determination to march up the Doab to Furruckabad, and to attack the Rohilcund rebels on a side where neither Jones nor Walpole could well reach them. The heat was great, the rivers were rising, and the rains were coming in a few weeks; and it became now a question whether the movements from Lucknow as a centre had or had not been too long delayed. Sir Colin with his column – for, being a mere remnant, it was too small a force to designate an army – took their departure from Cawnpore on the 18th, leaving that city in the hands of a small but (at present) sufficient body of troops. On the 19th he advanced to Kilianpore, on the 20th to Poorah, and on the 21st to Urrowl – marching during early morn, and encamping in the hotter hours of the day. The day’s work commenced, indeed, so early as one o’clock in the morning; when the elephants and camels began to be loaded with their burdens, the equipage and tents packed up, and the marching arrangements completed. Between two or three o’clock, all being in readiness, away went infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers, commissariat, and a countless host of natives, horses, camels, elephants, bullocks, and vehicles – covering an area of which the real soldiers occupied but a very small part. They marched or rode till about six o’clock; when all prepared for breakfast, and for a hot day during which little active exertion was possible without imminent danger of coup de soleil. Sir Colin’s train of munition and supplies was enormous; for, in addition to the usual baggage of an army, he had to take large commissariat supplies with him. The villagers held aloof in a manner not usual in the earlier stages of the mutiny, and in other parts of India; they did not come forward to engage in a traffic which would certainly have been profitable to them, in selling provisions to the army. Whether this arose from inability or disinclination, was a matter for controversy; but the fact itself occasioned embarrassment and uneasiness to a commander who had to drag with his army a huge train of animals and vehicles filled with food. The enormous number of natives, too, that accompanied the force, with their wives and families, exerted its usual cumbrous effect on the movements of the troops; so that the fighting-men themselves bore but a minute fractional ratio to the living and dead accompaniments of the column. It is useless to complain of this. An army of five thousand, or any other number, of British troops must have a large train of native attendants, to contend against the peculiarities of Indian climate and Indian customs. Mr Russell, marching with this portion of the late ‘Army of Oude,’ said: ‘If the people we see around us, who are ten or twelve to one as compared with us in this camp, were – not to arm and cut our throats, or poison us, or anything of that kind – but simply bid us a silent good-bye this night, and leave us, India would be lost to us in a day. It requires only that, and all the power of England could not hold the eastern empire. We could not even strike our tents without these men to-morrow. We are dependent on them – even the common soldier is – for the water we drink and the meals we eat, for our transport, for all but the air we breathe; and the latter, it must be admitted, is not improved by them sometimes. The moment that such a thing becomes possible as a popular desertion, through patriotic or any other motives, from the service of the state, it becomes impossible to hold India except upon sufferance. It is the rupee, self-interest, and the necessities of a population trained to follow camps, which afford guarantees against such a secession – unlikely enough indeed in any nation, and scarcely possible in any war… We are, in fact, waging war against Hindoos and Mussulmans by the aid and with the consent of other Hindoos and Mussulmans, just as Alexander was able to beat Porus by the aid of his Indian allies; and no European or other state can ever rule in India without the co-operation and assistance of a large proportion of the races which inhabit the vast peninsula.’

Sir Colin marched on the 22d to Meerun-ke-serai, near the ruins of the ancient city of Canouje; on the 23d to Gosaigunje; and on the 24th to Kamalgunje – approaching each day nearer to Furruckabad. Every day’s camping-ground was selected near the Ganges, both for the sake of salubrity, and to check if possible the passage of rebel bands over the river from Oude into the Doab. On the 25th the column reached Furruckabad, or rather the adjacent English station of Futteghur. General Penny came from a neighbouring district to confer with the commander-in-chief on matters connected with the Rohilcund campaign, and then returned to the column or brigade which he commanded. Futteghur had regained a part of its former importance, as the place where most of the artillery-carriages and sepoy-clothing were made, and where vast quantities of timber and cloth had fallen as spoil to the enemy.

The sojourn at Futteghur was very brief. The electric telegraph had been busy transmitting information to and from Allahabad; and as Sir Colin’s plans were already made, he lost no time in putting them in execution. The main plan comprised four movements – Campbell from Futteghur, Walpole from Lucknow, Jones from Roorkee, and Penny from Puttealee; all intended to hem the rebels into the middle of Rohilcund, and there crush them. The marches of Walpole and Jones have already been noticed; Penny was to march his column towards Meerunpore Muttra, between Shahjehanpoor and Bareilly, after crossing the Ganges near Nudowlee; while the commander-in-chief was to enter Rohilcund directly from Futteghur. In the middle of the night between the 26th and 27th his column, elephants and guns and all, crossed the Ganges by the bridge of boats, and entered the province which was to be a scene of hostilities. After a few hours the column reached the river Ramgunga, which it crossed by the bridge of boats fortunately secured by Walpole as the fruit of his victory at Allygunje; and soon afterwards the commander-in-chief effected a junction with Walpole, at Tingree near the Ramgunga. No very long time for repose was allowed; stern work was to be done, and the sooner commenced, the less would it be checked by heat and prohibited by rains. A march of a few hours brought the now united columns to Jelalabad – one of many places of that name in India. It was a fort which had lately been occupied by a small body of matchlockmen, who had precipitately abandoned it when news of Sir Colin’s approach reached them. A small village lay near, and was governed by the fort. The Moulvie of Fyzabad was believed to have intended to make a stand at this place, but to have abandoned it for a larger stronghold at Shahjehanpoor. On the 29th, a further approach was made to Kanth. Each day was pretty well like that which preceded it – the same early marching, camping, and resting, and the same struggle with the camp-followers, who, however closely watched, pertinaciously plundered the villages through or near which they passed – thereby terrifying and exasperating all villagers alike, whether friendly or unfriendly to the British. This system of plunder by the camp-followers was one of the greatest troubles to which the generals of the several columns were exposed; severe punishments were threatened, but all in vain.

It was on the last day of the month that Sir Colin Campbell and General Walpole arrived at Shahjehanpoor; and then it was to learn that the wily and active Moulvie had again outmanœuvred them. The plan had been to draw a cordon more and more closely round the rebels at Shahjehanpoor and Bareilly, and thus to catch them as in a trap. But the Moulvie would not enter the trap. He held Shahjehanpoor, with a considerable force of men and guns, as long as he deemed it safe, and then escaped just at the right moment. It was well to regain Shahjehanpoor, after that place had been eleven months in the hands of rebels; but it was vexing to learn that the Moulvie had retreated towards Oude – the very province where his presence was least desired by the British. Nena Sahib, it was also ascertained, had quitted Shahjehanpoor a few days earlier, and just before leaving, had ordered the government buildings to be destroyed, in order that the British troops might find no shelter when they arrived. This cowardly, ruthless, but active and inventive chieftain succeeded in his aim in this matter; there were few roofed buildings left, and the encampment had to be effected under a tope of trees, with earthen intrenchments thrown up around.

It is evident, from this summary of Rohilcund affairs, that the operations against the rebels in that province did not advance far during the month of April, as concerns any effective crushing of the rebellion. The insurgents were beaten wherever met with; but their ubiquity and vitality greatly puzzled Sir Colin and his brigadier; and it remained to be seen how far the month of May would witness the re-establishment of British authority in Rohilcund and Oude. Some of the columns and field-forces had penetrated from the east and south as far as Shahjehanpoor, others from the west and northwest as far as Mooradabad; but Bareilly, the chief city in Rohilcund, had not been reached by any of them at the end of April.

Few events caused more regret in the army at this period than the death of Captain Sir William Peel, the gallant seaman who had earned so high a reputation as commander of the Naval Brigade. After his wound, received at Lucknow, he was carried in a doolie or litter to Cawnpore; and when at that station he gradually became able to walk about slowly by the aid of a stick. He soon, however, exhibited symptoms of small-pox, which, acting on a system at once ardent and debilitated, proved fatal. He died at Cawnpore after Sir Colin Campbell’s force had departed from that place towards Futteghur; and thus the Queen and the country lost the services of an eminent son of an eminent statesman. Every one felt the justice of the special compliment paid to this gallant naval officer by the governor-general, in the official order issued immediately on the receipt of the news of Peel’s death.157 Throughout the Crimean, Persian, and Indian wars, the British navy had been engaged in less fighting than many of its ardent members wished; and it was therefore all the more incumbent on the authorities to notice the exertions of naval brigades when on shore.

Throughout the extent of the Upper Doab, the British officers found much difficulty in maintaining a fair stand against the rebels. Not that there were large bodies of trained sepoys in the field, as in the regions just described, and in Central India; but there were numerous chieftains, each at the head of a small band of followers, ready to harass any spot not protected by English troops. Brigadier Penny, in command of a field-force organised at Delhi, was watching the district between that city and the Ganges – ready to put down insurgents wherever he could encounter them, and hoping to assist the commander-in-chief in Rohilcund. Another column, under Brigadier Seaton, controlled the region around Futteghur before Sir Colin reached that place; and he, like Penny, Jones, Walpole, Hope Grant, Lugard, and all the other commanders of sections of the army, found an active watchfulness of the enemy necessary. One among Seaton’s engagements in the month of April may be briefly noticed. On the 6th, when evening had darkened into night, he marched from Futteghur to attack a body of rebels concerning whom he had received information. He took with him about 1400 men – comprising 600 of H.M. 82d under Colonel Hall, 400 Sikhs under Captain Stafford, 150 cavalry under Lieutenant St John, and 200 of the Futteghur mounted-police battalion under Lieutenant de Kantzow – together with five guns under Major Smith. After marching all night, Seaton came up with the enemy at seven in the morning, at a place called Kankur. The enemy’s force was very large, though not well organised, and included nearly a thousand troopers well mounted and armed. After an artillery-fire on both sides, and a sharp fire from Enfield rifles, the 82d rushed forward, entered the village, and worked terrible execution. The rebels fled, abandoning their camp, ammunition, and stores; together with papers and correspondence which threw light on some of the hitherto obscure proceedings of the mutineers. The rebel Rajah of Minpooree was the chief leader of the insurgents, and with him were Ismael Khan and Mohson Ali Khan.

The Minpooree district was much troubled by this rebellious rajah; but as Futteghur on the one side, and Agra on the other, were now in English hands, the rebels were more readily kept in subjection. Agra itself was safe, and so was the main line of road thence through Muttra to Delhi.

One of the few pleasant scenes of the month, at Delhi, was the awarding of honour and profit to a native who had befriended Europeans in the hour of greatest need. Ten months before, when mutiny was still new and terrible, the native troops at Bhurtpore rose in revolt, and compelled the Europeans in the neighbourhood to flee for their lives. The poor fugitives, thirty-two in number – chiefly women and children – roamed from place to place, uncertain where they might sleep in peace. On one day they arrived at the village of Mahonah. Here they met with one Hidayut Ali, a ressaldar (troop-captain), of a regiment of irregular cavalry which had mutinied at Mozuffernugger; he was on furlough or leave of absence at his native village, and did not join his mutinous companions. He received the fugitives with kindness and courtesy, fed them liberally, gave them a comfortable house, renewed their toil-worn garments, posted village sentries to give notice of the approach of any mutineers, disregarded a rebuke sent to him by the insurgents at Delhi, formed the villagers into an escort, and finally placed the thirty-two fugitives in a position which enabled them safely to reach Agra. This noble conduct was not forgotten. In April the commissioner held a grand durbar at Delhi, made a complimentary speech to Hidayut Ali, presented him with a sword valued at a thousand rupees, and announced that the government intended to bestow upon him the jaghire or revenues of his native village.

Good-fortune continued to mark the wide and important region of the Punjaub, in the absence of any of those great assemblages of rebels which so distracted the provinces further to the southeast. Nevertheless Sir John Lawrence found a demand on him for unceasing watchfulness. The longer the struggle continued in Hindostan and Central India, the more danger was there that the Punjaubees, imbibing an idea that the British were weak, would encourage a hope of regaining national independence. There was also a grave question involved in the constitution of the native army. When the troubles began in the month of May, and when Canning was beset with so many difficulties in his attempt to send up troops from Calcutta, John Lawrence came to the rescue in a manner deserving the lasting gratitude of all concerned in the maintenance of British rule in India. He felt a trusty reliance that the inhabitants of the Punjaub, governed as he (aided by Montgomery, Cotton, Edwardes, and other energetic men) had governed them, would remain faithful, and would be willing to accept active service as soldiers in British pay. His trust was well founded. He sent to Delhi those troops, without which the conquest of the city could not have been effected; and he continued to raise regiment after regiment of Sikhs and Punjaubees – equipping, drilling, and paying a number so large as to constitute in itself a powerful army. But there would necessarily be a limit to this process. The Sikhs were faithful so far; but what if they should begin to feel their power, and turn to a national object the arms which had been given to them to fight in the British cause? Not many years had elapsed since they had fought fiercely at Moultan and Lahore, Sobraon and Chillianwalla, Moodkee and Ferozshah, against those very English whom they were now defending; and it was at least possible, if not probable, that dreams of reconquest might occupy their thoughts. Sir John Lawrence brought to an end his further raising of regiments; and there can be little doubt that the governor-general and the commander-in-chief appreciated the motives by which he had been influenced. In political affairs the Punjaub was very active; for not only did Lawrence become chief authority over a larger region than before, but many of his assistants were taken away from him. When Sir James Outram went to Calcutta as a member of the supreme council, Mr Montgomery was appointed chief-commissioner of Oude, and took with him many of the most experienced civilians from Lahore to Lucknow. This necessitated great changes in the personnel of the Punjaub civil service, the commissionerships and sub-commissionerships of districts, &c.

Peshawur, the most remote portion of Northwest India, was throughout the period of the Revolt more troubled by marauding mountaineers than by revolted sepoys. Very few Hindoos inhabited that region; the population was mostly Mussulman, especially among the hills; and these followers of Islam had but little sympathy with those in Hindostan Proper. The disturbances, such as they were, were of local character. In April, it became necessary to visit with some severity certain tribes which throughout the winter had been engaged in rebellion and rapine. General Cotton and Colonel Edwardes, two of the most trusted officers in the Indian army, collected a column at Nowsherah for service against the hill-men; and at the close of the month there were nearly four thousand men in rendezvous, ready for service. It comprised detachments of H.M. 81st and 98th foot; of the 8th, 9th, and 18th Punjaub infantry; of other native infantry; of the 7th and 18th irregular cavalry; of the Guide cavalry; and of various artillery and engineer corps. On the 28th of the month, Cotton was at a place among the hills called Mungultana, a stronghold of some of the frontier fanatics. The place was easily taken, and the insurgents dispersed; as they were at Jelemkhana, Sitana, and other places, soon afterwards; but it was hard work for the troops, over very bad roadless tracks in hot weather.

It was a strange but hopeful sign that, amid all the sanguinary proceedings in India – the ruthless barbarities of some among the sepoys and rebels, and the military retributions wrought by the British – amid all this, the peaceful, civilising agency of railways was steadily though slowly advancing. A recent chapter shewed that the grand trunk-railway was extended into the Doab, the very hot-bed of insurrection, during the month of March: the engineers, mechanics, and labourers having been accustomed to resume their operations as soon as the insurgents were driven away from any spot where the works were in progress. In the Madras and Bombay presidencies, little affected by rebellion, various railways were gradually advancing; and now, in the month of April, the province of Sinde was to have its heyday of railway rejoicing. In an earlier portion of the volume,158 a brief account was given of the schemes, present and prospective, for supplying India with railways. Among those was one for a line, 120 miles in length, from Kurachee to Hydrabad in Sinde: expected, if no difficulties intervened, to be finished towards the close of 1859. This was to be one link in a vast and extensive chain, if the hopes of its projectors were ever realised. Kurachee is not at the mouth of the Indus; but it has an excellent harbour, in which large merchantmen can cast anchor; and engineers were enabled to shew that a little over one hundred miles of railway would connect this port with the Indus at a point above the delta of that river, and just where Hydrabad, the chief city of Sinde, is situated. Such a railway would, in fact, bear a remarkably close analogy to that in Egypt, from Alexandria to Cairo – each connecting a seaport with a capital, and avoiding delta navigation much impeded by shallows and shifting sands. From Hydrabad there are 570 miles of Indus available for river-steaming up to Moultan, in the Punjaub. From that city a railway would be planned through Lahore to Umritsir, where a junction would be formed with the grand trunk-line, and thus Kurachee connected with Calcutta by rapid means of travel – a great scheme, worthy of the age and the country. It could, however, only have small beginnings. On the 29th of April, the first sod of the ‘Sinde Railway’ was turned at Kurachee. It would be well if all rejoicings were based on such rational grounds as those which marked that day in the young Alexandria of Western India. Mr Frere, commissioner of Sinde, presided over the ceremonies. All was gaiety. The 51st regiment lent its aid in military pomp; and all the notabilities of the place – political, military, naval, clerical, commercial, and engineering – were gathered together. And not only so; but the lookers-on comprised many of those who well marvelled what a railway could be, and how a carriage could move without visible means of draught or propulsion – Parsees, Hindoos, Beloochees, Sindians, Afghans, Punjaubees – all were there, with their picturesque garments, and their little less picturesque native vehicles. How the officiating dignitary turned the sod and wheeled the barrow; how the band played and the people cheered; how the chief personages celebrated the event by a dinner; how, at that dinner, a triumphant specimen of confectionary was displayed, comprising sweetmeat Kurachees, Calcuttas, rivers, mosques, ghats, temples, wheelbarrows, pick-axes, rails, locomotives, bridges, tunnels – need not be told: they belong to one remarkable aspect of modern European and American society, which becomes doubly interesting when exhibited among the less active, more sensuous orientals.

We now turn to that stormy, unsettled region southwest of the Jumna, comprising Bundelcund, Central India, and Rajpootana.

Probably no commander had a series of more uninterrupted successes during the wars of the mutiny than Sir Hugh Rose. Looking neither to Calcutta nor to the Punjaub, for aid, but relying on the resources of the Bombay presidency, he gradually accumulated a force for service in Central India which defeated the rebels wherever they were met with. We have seen that, in January, Sir Hugh was busily engaged in defeating and dispersing rebels at Ratgurh, and in various parts of the district between Bhopal and Saugor. We find him in February relieving the British garrison which had for so many months been shut up within the fort of the last-named city, and then clearing a vast range of country in the direction of Jhansi. Lastly, we have seen how, after subduing a district in which rebellious Mahrattas were very numerous, he approached nearer and nearer to Jhansi during the early weeks of March; that he arrived within a short distance of that city on the 21st of that month, with the second brigade of the Central India field-force; that the rebels fortified the walls of the town, and shut themselves up within the town and fort; that the mutinied sepoys and rebel Bundelas in the place were computed at eleven or twelve thousand; that the Ranee of Jhansi had left her palace to seek greater safety in the fort; that Rose’s first brigade joined him on the 25th; and that he then commenced the siege in a determined manner. From this point, the narrative of Sir Hugh’s operations may be carried into the following month.