Dodd George
The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8
The fighting, during this exciting day at Benares, was practically over as soon as the rebels began to retreat; but then the perils of the civilians commenced. More correctly, however, it might be said that the wild confusion began earlier; for while the brief but fierce military struggle was still in progress on the parade-ground, the native guards of the 37th at the treasury, the hospital, the mess-house, the bazaar, and other buildings, broke from their duty, and proceeded to molest the Europeans, with evident hopes of plunder. A Sikh, one Soorut Singh, has been credited with an act which saved many lives and much treasure. He was among the Sikhs of the treasury-guard; and when the rising began, talked to his comrades, and prevented them from rising in mutiny; many civilians, with their families, who had taken refuge in the collector’s cutcherry, were saved through this friendly agency; while the treasure was held intact till the following morning, when European troops convoyed it to a place of safety. The Rev. Mr Kennedy, a resident in Benares at that time, states that the faithfulness of these Sikhs, about seventy in number, was deemed so remarkable under the circumstances, that £1000 was given to them as a reward for their safe guardianship of the £60,000 in the treasury. After the discomfiture on the parade-ground, the rebels, maddened by defeat and thirsting for blood, streamed through many of the compounds in the cantonment as they retreated, and fired as they passed, but happily so much at random that little danger was done. Several of the Europeans took refuge in stables and outhouses. Others climbed to the roofs of their houses, and hid behind the parapets. At the house of the commissioner, Mr Tucker, many ladies and children found concealment under straw on the flat roof; while the gentlemen stood by to defend them if danger should approach. Three or four families took boat, and rowed out into the middle of the Ganges, there to remain until news of returning tranquillity should reach them; much booming of cannon and rattling of musketry, much appearance of fire and smoke hovering over city and cantonment, kept the occupants of the boats in constant anxiety; but when victory had declared for the British, and these boat-parties had returned to land, escorts arrived to convey the non-combatants and some of the officers to the mint, in accordance with the arrangement already made. They arrived at that building about midnight. Mr Kennedy described in a letter the scene presented at the mint when he and his family reached it: ‘What a scene of confusion and tumult was there. All in front, bands of English soldiers, ready to act at a moment’s notice; men, women, and children, high and low, huddled together, wondering at meeting at such a time and in such a place, not knowing where they were to throw themselves down for the night, and altogether looking quite bewildered.’ A young officer, throwing into his narrative that light-heartedness which so often bore up men of his class during the troubles of the period, gave a little more detail of the first night and day at the place of refuge: ‘I found everybody at the mint, which several had only reached after many adventures. We bivouacked in the large rooms, and slept on the roof – ladies, children, ayahs, and punkah-coolies; officers lying down dressed, and their wives sitting up fanning them. In the compound or enclosure below, there was a little handful of Europeans, perhaps a hundred and fifty in all; others were at the barracks half a mile off. There was a picknicking, gipsifying look about the whole affair, which prevented one from realising that the small congregation were there making a stand for a huge empire, and that their lives were upon the toss-up of the next events.’
During a considerable portion of the month of June, the Europeans made the mint their chief place of residence, the men going out in the daytime to their respective duties, and the ladies and children remaining in their place of refuge. On the 5th, few ventured out of the building, unless heavily armed or strongly escorted. The mint had a most warlike appearance, bristling with arms, and soon became almost insupportably hot to the numerous persons congregated within it. The hot winds of Benares at that time, nearly midsummer, were terrible for Europeans to bear.
On the 7th, which was Sunday, Mr Kennedy performed divine service at the mint, and a church-missionary at the barracks. Gradually, on subsequent days, whole families would venture out for a few hours at a time, to take a hasty glance at homes which they had so suddenly been called upon to quit; but the mint continued for two or three weeks to be the refuge to which they all looked. As European troops, however, were arriving at Benares every day, on the way to the upper provinces, it soon became practicable, under the energetic Neill, to insure tranquillity in and near that city with a very small number of these so much-valued Queen’s troops. The capture and execution of insurgents, under the combined orders of Neill, Tucker, and Gubbins, respectively the commandant, commissioner, and judge, were conducted with such stern promptness as struck terror into the hearts of evildoers. It may be instructive to see in what light Mr Kennedy, as a clergyman, regarded these terrible executions, which are admitted to have been very numerous: ‘The gibbet is, I must acknowledge, a standing institution among us at present. There it stands, immediately in front of the flagstaff, with three ropes always attached to it, so that three may be executed at one time. Scarcely a day passes without some poor wretches being hurled into eternity. It is horrible, very horrible! To think of it is enough to make one’s blood run cold; but such is the state of things here, that even fine delicate ladies may be heard expressing their joy at the rigour with which the miscreants are treated. The swiftness with which crime is followed by the severest punishment strikes the people with astonishment; it is so utterly foreign to all our modes of procedure, as known to them. Hitherto the process has been very slow, encumbered with forms, and such cases have always been carried to the Supreme Court for final decision; but now, the commissioner of Benares may give commissions to any he chooses (the city being under martial law), to try, decide, and execute on the spot, without any delay and without any reference.’
Jounpoor or Juanpoor, a town about thirty miles northwest of Benares, was one of those which shared with that city the troubles of the month of June. A detachment of the Loodianah Sikh regiment, under Lieutenant Mara, stationed at that place, mutinied most suddenly and unexpectedly on the 5th, within less than an hour after they had shaken hands with some of the European residents as a token of friendly feeling. The men revolted through some impulse that the English in vain endeavoured to understand at the time; but it was afterwards ascertained that some of the mutinous 37th from Benares had been tampering with them. In the first whirl of the tumult, the lieutenant and a civilian were shot down, and the rest of the Europeans sought safety by flight. Information reached Benares, after some days, that the fugitives were in hiding; and a small detachment was at once despatched for their relief. It was now found, as in many other instances, that amid all the brutality and recklessness of the mutineers and budmashes, there were not wanting humane natives in the country villages, ready to succour the distressed; one such, named Hingun Lall, had sheltered and fed the whole of the fugitives from Jounpoor for five days.
There were many stations at which the number of insurgent troops was greater; there were many occasions on which the Europeans suffered more general and prolonged miseries; there were many struggles of more exciting character between the dark-skinned soldiers and the light – but there was not perhaps, throughout the whole history of the Indian mutinies, an outbreak which excited more astonishment than that at Allahabad in the early part of June. It was totally unexpected by the authorities, who had been blinded by protestations of loyalty on the part of the troops. This place (see p. 107) occupies a very important position in relation to Upper India generally; being at the point where the Jumna and Ganges join, where the Benares region ends and the Oude region begins, where the Doab and Bundelcund commence, where the river-traffic and the road-traffic branch out in various directions, and where the great railway will one day have a central station. As stated in a former page, the 6th Bengal Native Infantry, stationed at Allahabad, voluntarily came forward and offered their services to march against the Delhi mutineers. For this demonstration they were thanked by their officers, who felt gratified that, amid so much desertion, fidelity should make itself apparent in this quarter. Rather from a vague undefined uneasiness, than from any suspicion of this particular regiment, the Europeans at Allahabad had for some time been in uneasiness; there had been panics in the city; there had been much patrolling and watching; and the ladies had been looking anxiously to the fort as a place of refuge, whither most of them had taken up their abode at night, returning to their homes in the cantonment or the city in the daytime. From Benares, Lucknow, or other places, they apprehended danger – but not from within.
It was on the 5th of June that Colonel Simpson, of the 6th regiment, received Viscount Canning’s instructions to thank his men for their loyal offer to march and fight against the rebels at Delhi; and it was on the same day that news reached Allahabad, probably by telegraph, of the occurrences at Benares on the previous day, and of the possible arrival of some of the insurgents from that place. The officers still continued to trust the 6th regiment, not only in virtue of the recent protestation of fidelity by the men, but on account of their general good conduct; indeed, this was one of the most trusted regiments in the whole native army. Nevertheless, instructions were given to arm the civilians as well as the military, and to prepare for making a good stand at the fort. Many civilians, formed into a militia, under the commandant of the garrison, slept in the fort that night, or relieved each other as sentinels at the ramparts. There were at that time in the fort, besides the women and children, about thirty invalid artillerymen, under Captain Hazelwood; a few commissariat and magazine sergeants; about a hundred volunteer civilians; four hundred Sikhs, of the Ferozpore regiment, under Lieutenant Brasyer; and eighty men of the 6th regiment, guarding the main gate. Several Europeans with their families, thinking no danger nigh, slept outside the fort that night. Two companies of the native regiment under three English officers, and two guns under Captain Harward, were sent to guard the bridge of boats across the Ganges in the direction of Benares. Captain Alexander, with two squadrons of the 3d regiment Oude irregular cavalry, was posted in the Alopee Bagh, a camping-ground commanding the roads to the station. The main body of the 6th remained in their lines, three miles from the fort. All proceeded quietly until about nine o’clock on the evening of the 6th of June; when, to the inexpressible astonishment and dismay of the officers, the native regiment rose in revolt. The two guns were seized by them at the bridge-head, and Harward had to run for his life. In the cantonment the officers were at mess, full of confidence in their trusted troops, when the sepoys sounded the alarm bugle, as if to bring them on parade; those who rushed out were at once aimed at, and nearly all shot dead; while no fewer than nine young ensigns, mere boys who had just entered on the career of soldiering, were bayoneted in the mess-room itself. It was a cruel and bloody deed, for the poor youths had but recently arrived, and were in hostility with none. Captain Alexander, when he heard of the rising, hastened off to the lines with a few of his troopers; but he was caught in an ambush by a body of the sepoys, and at once shot down. The sepoys, joined by released prisoners and habitual plunderers, then commenced a scene of murder and devastation in all directions; Europeans were shot wherever they could be seen; the few English women who had not been so fortunate as to seek refuge in the fort, were grossly outraged before being put to death; the telegraph wires were cut; the boats on the river were seized; the treasury was plundered; the houses of native bankers, as well as those of European residents, were pillaged; and wild licence reigned everywhere. Terrible were the deeds recorded – a whole family roasted alive; persons killed by the slow process of cutting off in succession ears, nose, fingers, feet, &c.; others chopped to pieces; children tossed on bayonets before their mother’s eyes.
An affecting incident is related of one of the unfortunate young officers so ruthlessly attacked at the mess-house. An ensign, only sixteen years of age, who was left for dead among the rest, escaped in the darkness to a neighbouring ravine. Here he found a stream, the waters of which sustained his life for four days and nights. Although desperately wounded, he contrived to raise himself into a tree at night-time, for protection from wild beasts. On the fifth day he was discovered, and dragged by the brutal insurgents before one of their leaders. There he found another prisoner, a Christian catechist, formerly a Mohammedan, whom the sepoys were endeavouring to terrify and torment into a renunciation of Christianity. The firmness of the native was giving way as he knelt before his persecutors; but the boy-officer, after anxiously watching him for a short time said: ‘Oh, my friend, come what may, do not deny the Lord Jesus!’ Just at this moment the arrival of Colonel Neill and the Madras Fusiliers (presently to be noticed) at Allahabad was announced; the ruffians made off; the poor catechist’s life was saved; but the gentle-spirited young ensign sank under the wounds and privations he had endured. When this incident became known through the medium of the public journals, the father of the young officer, town-clerk of Evesham, told how brief had been the career thus cut short. Arthur Marcus Hill Cheek had left England so recently as the 20th of March preceding, to commence the life of a soldier; he arrived at Calcutta in May, was appointed to the 6th native regiment, reached Allahabad on the 19th of the same month, and was shot down by his own men eighteen days afterwards.
The inmates of the fort naturally suffered an agony of suspense on the night of the 6th. When they heard the bugle, and the subsequent firing, they believed the mutineers had arrived from Benares; and as the intensity of the sound varied from time to time, so did they picture in imagination the varying fortunes of the two hypothetical opposing forces – the supposed insurgents from the east, and the supposed loyal 6th regiment. Soon were they startled by a revelation of the real truth – that the firing came from their own trusted sepoys. The Europeans in the fort, recovering from their wonder and dismay, were fortunately enabled to disarm the eighty sepoys at the gate through the energy of Lieutenant Brasyer; and it was then found that these fellows had loaded and capped their muskets, ready to turn out. Five officers succeeded in entering during the night, three of them naked, having had to swim the Ganges. For twelve days did the Europeans remain within the fort, not daring to emerge for many hours at a time, lest the four hundred Sikhs should prove faithless in the hour of greatest need. The chief streets of the city are about half a mile from the fort; and during several days and nights troops of rioters were to be seen rushing from place to place, plundering and burning. Day and night the civilians manned the ramparts, succeeding each other in regular watches – now nearly struck down by the hot blazing sun; now pouring forth shot and shell upon such of the insurgents as were within reach. The civilians or volunteers formed themselves into three corps; one of which, called the Flagstaff Division, was joined by about twenty railway men – sturdy fellows who had suffered like the rest, and were not slow to avenge themselves on the mutineers whenever opportunity offered. After a time, the volunteers sallied forth into the city with the Sikhs, and had several skirmishes in the streets with the insurgents – delighted at the privilege of quitting for a few hours the hot crowded fort, even to fight. It was by degrees ascertained that conspiracy had been going on in the city before the actual outbreak occurred. The standard of insurrection was unfurled by a native unknown to the Europeans: some supposed him to be a moulvie, or Mohammedan religious teacher; but whatever may have been his former position, he now announced himself as viceroy of the King of Delhi. He quickly collected about him three or four thousand rebels, sepoys and others, and displayed the green flag that constitutes the Moslem symbol. The head-quarters of this self-appointed chieftain were in the higher part of the city, at the old Mohammedan gardens of Sultan Khoosroo; there the prisoners taken by the mutineers were confined – among whom were the native Christian teachers belonging to the Rev. Mr Hay’s mission.
The movements of Colonel Neill must now be traced. No sooner did this gallant and energetic officer hear of the occurrences at Allahabad, than he proceeded to effect at that place what he had already done at Benares – re-establish English authority by a prompt, firm, and stern course of action. The distance between the two cities being about seventy-five miles, he quickly made the necessary travelling arrangements. He left Benares on the evening of the 9th, accompanied by one officer and forty-three men of the Madras Fusiliers. The horses being nearly all taken off the road, he found much difficulty in bringing in the dâk-carriages containing the men; but this and all other obstacles he surmounted. He found the country between Mirzapore and Allahabad infested with bands of plunderers, the villages deserted, and none of the authorities remaining. Major Stephenson, with a hundred more men, set out from Benares on the same evening as Neill; but his bullock-vans were still more slow in progress; and his men suffered much from exposure to heat during the journey. Neill reached Allahabad on the afternoon of the 11th. He found the fort almost completely invested; the bridge of boats over the Ganges in the hands of a mob, and partly broken; and the neighbouring villages swarming with insurgents. By cautious manœuvring at the end of the Benares road, he succeeded in obtaining boats which conveyed him and his handful of men over to the fort. He at once assumed command, and arranged that on the following morning the enemy should be driven out of the villages, and the bridge of boats recaptured. Accordingly, on the morning of the 12th he opened fire with several round-shot, and then attacked the rebels in the village of Deeragunge with a detachment of Fusiliers and Sikhs: this was effectively accomplished, and a safe road opened for the approach of Major Stephenson’s detachment on the evening of that day. On the 13th the insurgents were driven out of the village of Kydgunge. Neill had now a strange enemy to combat within the fort itself – drunkenness and relaxed discipline. The Sikhs, during their sallies into the city before his arrival, had gained entrance into some of the deserted warehouses of wine-merchants and others in the town, had brought away large quantities of beverage, and had sold these to the European soldiers within the fort – at four annas (sixpence) per bottle for wine, spirits, or beer indiscriminately; drunkenness and disorganisation followed, requiring determined measures on the part of the commandant. He bought all the remaining liquors obtainable, for commissariat use; and kept a watchful eye on the stores still remaining in the warehouses in the town. Neill saw reason for distrusting the Sikhs; they had remained faithful up to that time, but nevertheless exhibited symptoms which required attention. As soon as possible, he got them out of the fort altogether, and placed them at various posts in the city where they might still render service if they chose to remain faithful. His opinion of the native troops was sufficiently expressed in this passage in one of his dispatches: ‘I felt that Allahabad was really safe when every native soldier and sentry was out of the fort; and as long as I command I shall not allow one to be on duty in it.’ Nothing can be more striking than the difference of views held by Indian officers on this point; some distrusted the natives from the first, while others maintained faith in them to a very disastrous extent.
From the time when Neill obtained the upper-hand in Allahabad, he was incessantly engaged in chastising the insurgents in the neighbourhood. He sent a steamer up the Jumna on the 15th, with a howitzer under Captain Harward, and twenty fusiliers under Lieutenant Arnold; and these worked much execution among the rebels on the banks. A combined body of fusiliers, Sikhs, and irregular cavalry made an attack on the villages of Kydgunge and Mootingunge, on the banks of the Jumna, driving out the insurgents harboured there, and mowing them down in considerable numbers. On subsequent days, wherever Neill heard of the presence of insurgents in any of the surrounding villages, he at once attacked them; and great terror seized the hearts of the malcontents in the city at the celerity with which guns and gibbets were set to work. On the 18th he sent eighty fusiliers and a hundred Sikhs up the river in a steamer, to destroy the Patan village of Durriabad, and the Meewattie villages of Sydabad and Russelpore. It was not merely in the villages that these active operations were necessary; a large number of the mutinous sepoys went off towards Delhi on the day after the outbreak, leaving the self-elected chief to manage his rabble-army as he liked; and it was against this rabble that many of the expeditions were planned. The city suffered terribly from this double infliction; for after the spoliation and burning effected by the marauders, the English employed cannon-balls and musketry to drive those marauders out of the streets and houses; and Allahabad thus became little other than a mass of blackened ruins. Colonel Neill organised a body of irregular cavalry by joining Captain Palliser’s detachment of the 13th irregulars with the few men of Captain Alexander’s corps still remaining true to their salt. A force of about a hundred and sixty Madras Fusiliers started from Benares on the 13th, under Captain Fraser; he was joined on the road by Captain Palliser’s detachment of troopers, just adverted to, of about eighty men, and the two officers then proceeded towards Allahabad. They found the road almost wholly in the hands of rebels and plunderers; but by fighting, hanging, and burning, they cleared a path for themselves, struck terror into the evildoers, and recovered much of the Company’s treasure that had fallen into hostile hands. It is sad to read of six villages being reduced to ashes during this one march; but stringent measures were absolutely necessary to a restoration of order and obedience. Fraser and Palliser reached Allahabad on the 18th, and their arrival enabled Neill to prosecute two objects which he had at heart – the securing of Allahabad, and the gradual collection of a force that might march to the relief of poor Sir Hugh Wheeler and the other beleaguered Europeans at Cawnpore. During these varied operations, the officers and men were often exposed during the daytime to a heat so tremendous that nothing but an intense interest in their work could have kept them up. ‘If I can keep from fever,’ wrote one of them, ‘I shan’t care; for excitement enables one to stand the sun and fatigue wonderfully. At any other time the sun would have knocked us down like dogs; but all this month we have been out in the middle of the day, toiling like coolies, yet I have never been better in my life – such an appetite!’ To meet temporary exigencies, the church, the government offices, the barracks, the bungalows – all were placed at the disposal of the English troops, as fast as they arrived up from Calcutta. These reinforcements, during the second half of the month, consisted chiefly of detachments of her Majesty’s 64th, 78th, and 84th foot. The peaceful inhabitants began to return to the half-ruined city, shattered houses were hastily rebuilt or repaired, trade gradually revived, bullocks and carriages arrived in considerable number, supplies were laid in, the weather became cooler, the cholera abated, and Colonel Neill found himself enabled to look forward with much confidence to the future. The fort, during almost the whole of the month, had been very much crowded, insomuch that the inmates suffered greatly from heat and cholera. Two steam-boat loads of women and children were therefore sent down the river towards Calcutta; and all the non-combatants left the fort, to reoccupy such of their residences as had escaped demolition. Some of the European soldiers were tented on the glacis; others took up quarters in a tope of trees near the dâk-bungalow; lastly, a hospital was fitted up for the cholera patients.
With the end of June came tranquillity both to Benares and to Allahabad, chiefly through the determined measures adopted by Colonel Neill; and then he planned an expedition, the best in his power, for Cawnpore – the fortunes of which will come under our notice in due time.
Notes
The Oude Royal Family.– When the news reached England that the deposed King of Oude had been arrested at Calcutta, in the way described in the present chapter, on suspicion of complicity with the mutineers, his relations, who had proceeded to London to appeal against the annexation of Oude by the Company, prepared a petition filled with protestations of innocence, on his part and on their own. The petition was presented to the House of Lords by Lord Campbell, though not formally received owing to some defect in phraseology. A memorial to Queen Victoria was couched in similar form. The petition and memorial ran as follows:
‘The petition of the undersigned Jenabi Auliah Tajara Begum, the Queen-mother of Oude; Mirza Mohummud Hamid Allie, eldest son and heir-apparent of his Majesty the King of Oude; and Mirra Mohummud Jowaad Allie Sekunder Hushmut Bahadoor, next brother of his Majesty the King of Oude, sheweth:
‘That your petitioners have heard with sincere regret the tidings which have reached the British kingdom of disaffection prevailing among the native troops in India; and that they desire, at the earliest opportunity, to give public expression to that solemn assurance which they some time since conveyed to her Majesty’s government, that the fidelity and attachment to Great Britain which has ever characterised the royal family of Oude continues unchanged and unaffected by these deplorable events, and that they remain, as Lord Dalhousie, the late governor-general of India, emphatically declared them, “a royal race, ever faithful and true to their friendship with the British nation.”
‘That in the midst of this great public calamity, your petitioners have sustained their own peculiar cause of pain and sorrow in the intelligence which has reached them, through the public papers, that his Majesty the King of Oude has been subjected to restraint at Calcutta, and deprived of the means of communicating even with your petitioners, his mother, son, and brother.
‘That your petitioners desire unequivocally and solemnly to assure her Majesty and your lordships, that if his Majesty the King of Oude has been suspected of any complicity in the recent disastrous occurrences, such suspicion is not only wholly and absolutely unfounded, but is directed against one, the whole tenor of whose life, character, and conduct directly negatives all such imputations. Your petitioners recall to the recollection of your lordships the facts relating to the dethronement of the King of Oude, as set forth in the petition presented to the House of Commons by Sir Fitzroy Kelly on the 25th of May last, that when resistance might have been made, and was even anticipated by the British general, the King of Oude directed his guards and troops to lay aside their arms, and that when it was announced to him that the territories of Oude were to be vested for ever in the Honourable East India Company, the king, instead of offering resistance to the British government, after giving vent to his feelings in a burst of grief, descended from his throne, declaring his determination to seek for justice at her Majesty’s throne, and from the parliament of England.
‘That since their resort to this country, in obedience to his Majesty’s commands, your petitioners have received communications from his Majesty which set forth the hopes and aspirations of his heart; that those communications not only negative all supposition of his Majesty’s personal complicity in any intrigues, but fill the minds of your petitioners with the profound conviction that his Majesty would feel, with your petitioners, the greatest grief and pain at the events which have occurred. And your petitioners desire to declare to your lordships, and to assure the British nation, that although suffering, in common with his heart-broken family, from the wrongs inflicted on them, from the humiliations of a state of exile, and their loss of home, authority, and country, the King of Oude relies only on the justice of his cause, appeals only to her Majesty’s throne and to the parliament of Great Britain, and disdains to use the arm of the rebel and the traitor to maintain the right he seeks to vindicate.