Dodd George
The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8
‘6. It would be desirable that, in every case, the disarming of a district, either by the seizure of arms or by their surrender, should precede the application to it of any amnesty; but there may be circumstances which would render expedient a different course of proceeding. Upon these exceptional cases, you and the officers acting under your orders must decide.
‘7. The disarming of a district having been effected, with exceptions, under your licence, in favour of native gentlemen, whose feelings of honour would be affected by being deprived of the privilege of wearing arms, and of any other persons in whom you may confide, we think the possession of arms should be punished in every case by a severe penalty; but unless the possession of arms should be combined with other acts, leading to the conclusion that they were retained for the perpetration of crimes, that penalty should not be death. Of course the possession of arms by Englishmen must always remain lawful.
‘8. Death has of late been but too common a punishment. It loses whatever terror it might otherwise have when so indiscriminately applied; but, in fact, in India there is not commonly a fear of death, although there ever must be a fear of pain.
‘9. In every amnestied district, the ordinary administration of the law should as soon as possible be restored.
‘10. In carrying these views into execution, you may meet with obstruction from those who, maddened by the scenes they have witnessed, may desire to substitute their own policy for that of the government; but persevere firmly in doing what you may think right; make those who would counteract you feel that you are resolved to rule, and that you will be served by none who will not obey.
‘11. Acting in this spirit, you may rely upon our unqualified support.’
H
Three or four weeks afterwards, was written the ‘secret dispatch’ which gave rise to so vehement a debate in parliament:
‘April 19, 1858.
‘Our letter of the 24th of March 1858 will have put you in possession of our general views with respect to the treatment of the people in the event of the evacuation of Lucknow by the enemy.
‘2. On the 12th inst., we received from you a copy of the letter, dated the 3d of March, addressed by your secretary to the secretary to the chief-commissioner in Oude, which letter enclosed a copy of the proclamation to be issued by the chief-commissioner as soon as the British troops should have command of the city of Lucknow, and conveyed instructions as to the manner in which he was to act with respect to different classes of persons, in execution of the views of the governor-general.
‘3. The people of Oude will see only the proclamation.
‘4. That authoritative expression of the will of the government informs the people that six persons, who are named as having been steadfast in their allegiance, are henceforward the sole hereditary proprietors of the lands they held when Oude came under British rule, subject only to such moderate assessment as may be imposed upon them; that others in whose favour like claims may be established will have conferred upon them a proportionate measure of reward and honour; and that, with these exceptions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British government.
‘5. We cannot but express to you our apprehension that this decree, pronouncing the disinherison of a people, will throw difficulties almost insurmountable in the way of the re-establishment of peace.
‘6. We are under the impression that the war in Oude has derived much of its popular character from the rigorous manner in which, without regard to what the chief landholders had become accustomed to consider as their rights, the summary settlement had, in a large portion of the province, been carried out by your officers.
‘7. The landholders of India are as much attached to the soil occupied by their ancestors, and are as sensitive with respect to the rights in the soil they deem themselves to possess, as the occupiers of land in any country of which we have a knowledge.
‘8. Whatever may be your ultimate and undisclosed intentions, your proclamation will appear to deprive the great body of the people of all hope upon the subject most dear to them as individuals, while the substitution of our rule for that of their native sovereign has naturally excited against us whatever they may have of national feeling.
‘9. We cannot but in justice consider that those who resist our authority in Oude are under very different circumstances from those who have acted against us in provinces which have been long under our government.
‘10. We dethroned the King of Oude, and took possession of his kingdom, by virtue of a treaty which had been subsequently modified by another treaty, under which, had it been held to be in force, the course we adopted could not have been lawfully pursued; but we held that it was not in force, although the fact of its not having been ratified in England, as regarded the provision on which we rely for our justification, had not been previously made known to the King of Oude.
‘11. That sovereign and his ancestors had been uniformly faithful to their treaty engagements with us, however ill they may have governed their subjects.
‘12. They had more than once assisted us in our difficulties, and not a suspicion had ever been entertained of any hostile disposition on their part towards our government.
‘13. Suddenly the people saw their king taken from amongst them, and our administration substituted for his, which, however bad, was at least native; and this sudden change of government was immediately followed by a summary settlement of the revenue, which, in a very considerable portion of the province, deprived the most influential landholders of what they deemed to be their property – of what certainly had long given wealth, and distinction, and power to their families.
‘14. We must admit that, under these circumstances, the hostilities which have been carried on in Oude have rather the character of legitimate war than that of rebellion, and that the people of Oude should rather be regarded with indulgent consideration, than made the objects of a penalty exceeding in extent and in severity almost any which has been recorded in history as inflicted upon a subdued nation.
‘15. Other conquerors, when they have succeeded in overcoming resistance, have excepted a few persons as still deserving of punishment, but have, with a generous policy, extended their clemency to the great body of the people.
‘16. You have acted upon a different principle. You have reserved a few as deserving of special favour, and you have struck with what they will feel as the severest of punishment the mass of the inhabitants of the country.
‘17. We cannot but think that the precedents from whom you have departed will appear to have been conceived in a spirit of wisdom superior to that which appears in the precedent you have made.
‘18. We desire that you will mitigate in practice the stringent severity of the decree of confiscation you have issued against the landholders of Oude.
‘19. We desire to see British authority in India rest upon the willing obedience of a contented people; there cannot be contentment where there is general confiscation.
‘20. Government cannot long be maintained by any force in a country where the whole people is rendered hostile by a sense of wrong; and if it were possible so to maintain it, it would not be a consummation to be desired.’
I
The Court of Directors, before the secret dispatch became known to them, adopted courteous language in the following letter of instructions sent to Viscount Canning, referring to an earlier communication:
‘May 5, 1858.
‘1. You will have received, by the mail of the 25th of March, a letter from the secret committee, which has since been laid before us, respecting the policy which it becomes you to pursue towards those natives of India who have recently been in arms against the authority of the British government.
‘2. That letter emphatically confirms the principles which you have already adopted, as set forth in your circular of the 31st of July 1857, by impressing upon you the propriety of pursuing, after the conquest of the revolted provinces, a course of policy distinguished by a wise and discriminating generosity. You are exhorted to temper justice with mercy, and, except in cases of extreme criminality, to grant an amnesty to the vanquished. In the sentiments expressed by the secret committee we entirely concur. While there are some crimes which humanity calls upon you to punish with the utmost severity, there are others of a less aggravated character, which it would be equally unjust and impolitic not to pardon and to forget.
‘3. The offences with which you will be called upon to deal are of three different kinds. Firstly, high crimes, instigated by malice prepense, and aggravated by treachery and cruelty. Secondly, offences the results rather of weakness than of malice, into which it is believed that many have been drawn by the contamination of example, by the fear of opposing themselves to their more powerful countrymen, or by the belief that they have been compromised by the acts of their associates, rather than by any active desire to embarrass the existing government. And, thirdly, offences of a less positive character, amounting to little more than passive connivance at evil, or at most to the act of giving such assistance to the rebels as, if not given, would have been forcibly extorted, and which in many cases it would have been death to refuse to bodies of licentious and exasperated mutineers.
‘4. It is the first only of these offences, the perpetrators of which, and their accomplices, it will be your duty to visit with the severest penalty which you can inflict; and it is, happily, in such cases of exceptional atrocity, that you will have the least difficulty in proving both the commission of the offence and the identity of the offender. In the other cases you might often be left in doubt, not only of the extent of the offence committed, but of its actual commission by the accused persons; and although we are aware that the retribution which might be righteously inflicted upon the guilty may be in some measure restricted by too much nicety of specification, and that, in dealing with so large a mass of crime, it is difficult to avoid the commission of some acts of individual injustice, we may still express our desire that the utmost exertion may be made to confine, within the smallest possible compass, these cases of uncertain proof and dubious identity, even though your retributary measures should thus fall short of what in strict justice might be inflicted.
‘5. As soon as you have suppressed the active hostility of the enemy, your first care will be the restoration of public confidence. It will be your privilege when the disorganised provinces shall no longer be convulsed by intestine disorder, to set an example of toleration and forbearance towards the subject people, and to endeavour by every means consistent with the security of the British empire in the east, to allay the irritation and suspicion, which, if suffered to retain possession of the minds of the native and European inhabitants of the country, will eventually lead to nothing less calamitous than a war of races.
‘6. In dealing with the people of Oude, you will doubtless be moved by special considerations of justice and of policy. Throughout the recent contest, we have ever regarded such of the inhabitants of that country as – not being sepoys or pensioners of our own army – have been in arms against us as an exceptional class. They cannot be considered as traitors or even rebels, for they had not pledged their fidelity to us, and they had scarcely become our subjects. Many, by the introduction of a new system of government, had necessarily been deprived of the maintenance they had latterly enjoyed; and others feared that the speedy loss of their means of subsistence must follow from the same course. It was natural that such persons should avail themselves of the opportunity presented by the distracted state of the country, to strike a blow for the restoration of the native rule, under which the permitted disorganisation of the country had so long been to them a source of unlawful profit. Neither the disbanded soldiers of the late native government, nor the great thalookdars and their retainers, were under any obligation of fidelity to our government for benefits conferred upon them. You would be justified, therefore, in dealing with them as you would with a foreign enemy, and in ceasing to consider them objects of punishment after they have once laid down their arms.
‘7. Of these arms they must for ever be deprived. You will doubtless, in prosecution of this object, address yourself in the first instance to the case of the great thalookdars, who so successfully defied the late government, and many of whom, with large bodies of armed men, appear to have aided the efforts of the mutinous soldiery of the Bengal army. The destruction of the fortified strongholds of these powerful landholders, the forfeiture of their remaining guns, the disarming and disbanding of their followers, will be amongst your first works. But, whilst you are depriving this influential and once dangerous class of people of their power of openly resisting your authority, you will, we have no doubt, exert yourself by every possible means to reconcile them to British rule, and encourage them, by liberal arrangements made in accordance with ancient usages, to become industrious agriculturists, and to employ in the cultivation of the soil the men who, as armed retainers, have so long wasted the substance of their masters and desolated the land. We believe that these landholders may be taught that their holdings will be more profitable to them under a strong government, capable of maintaining the peace of the country, and severely punishing agrarian outrages, than under one which perpetually invites, by its weakness, the ruinous arbitration of the sword.
‘8. Having thus endeavoured, on the re-establishment of the authority of the British government in Oude, to reassure the great landholders, you will proceed to consider, in the same spirit of toleration and forbearance, the condition of the great body of the people. You will bear in mind that it is necessary, in a transition state from one government to another, to deal tenderly with existing usages, and sometimes even with existing abuses. All precipitate reforms are dangerous. It is often wiser even to tolerate evil for a time, than to alarm and to irritate the minds of the people by the sudden introduction of changes which time can alone teach them to appreciate, or even, perhaps, to understand. You will be especially careful, in the readjustment of the fiscal system of the province, to avoid the imposition of unaccustomed taxes, whether of a general or of a local character, pressing heavily upon the industrial resources and affecting the daily comforts of the people. We do not estimate the successful administration of a newly acquired province according to the financial results of the first few years. At such a time we should endeavour to conciliate the people by wise concessions, and to do nothing to encourage the belief that the British government is more covetous of revenue than the native ruler whom it has supplanted.’
K
The last document here given is a letter of instructions from the Court of Directors, kind and courteous towards the governor-general, but evidently conveying an opinion that the proposed proclamation, unless modified and acted on with caution, would be too severe for the purpose in view:
‘Political Department, 18th of May (No. 20) 1858.
‘1. The secret committee has communicated to us the governor-general’s secret letter, dated 5th March (No. 9) 1858, with its enclosures, consisting of a letter addressed to the chief-commissioner of Oude, dated 3d of March, and of the proclamation referred to therein, which was to be issued by Sir James Outram to the chiefs and inhabitants of Oude as soon as the British troops should have possession or command of the city of Lucknow.
‘2. We have also received communication of the letter addressed to your government by the secret committee, under date the 19th of April last, on the subject of the draft of proclamation.
‘3. Our political letter of the 5th of May has apprised you of our strong sense of the distinction which ought to be maintained between the revolted sepoys and the chiefs and people of Oude, and the comparative indulgence with which, equally from justice and policy, the insurgents of that country (other than sepoys) ought to be regarded. In accordance with these views, we entirely approve the guarantee of life and honour given by the proposed proclamation to all thalookdars, chiefs, and landholders, with their followers, who should make immediate submission, surrender their arms, and obey the orders of the British government, provided they have not participated in the murder “of Englishmen or Englishwomen.”
‘4. We are prepared to learn that in publicly declaring that, with the exception of the lands of six persons who had been steadfast in their allegiance, the proprietary right in the soil of the province was confiscated to the British government, the governor-general intended no more than to reserve to himself entire liberty of action, and to give the character of mercy to the confirmation of all rights not prejudicial to the public welfare, the owners of which might not, by their conduct, have excluded themselves from indulgent consideration.
‘5. His lordship must have been well aware that the words of the proclamation, without the comment on it which we trust was speedily afforded by your actions, must have produced the expectation of much more general and indiscriminate dispossession than could have been consistent with justice or with policy. We shall doubtless be informed, in due course, of the reasons which induced the governor-general to employ those terms, and of the means which, we presume, have been taken of making known in Oude the merciful character which we assume must still belong to your views. In the meantime, it is due to the governor-general that we should express our entire reliance that on this, as on former occasions, it has been his firm resolution to shew to all whose crimes are not too great for any indulgence, the utmost degree of leniency consistent with the early restoration and firm maintenance of lawful authority.
‘We accordingly have to inform you, that on receiving communication of the papers now acknowledged, the Court of Directors passed the following resolution:
‘“Resolved – That in reference to the dispatch from the secret committee to the governor-general of India, dated the 19th ult., with the documents therein alluded to, and this day laid before the Court of Directors, this court desires to express its continued confidence in the governor-general, Lord Canning, and its conviction that his measure for the pacification of Oude, and the other disturbed districts in India, will be characterised by a generous policy, and by the utmost clemency that is found to be consistent with the satisfactory accomplishment of that important object.” – We are, &c.
(Signed)
‘F. Currie,
W. J. Eastwick,
&c. &c.
‘London, May 18, 1858.’
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MILITARY OPERATIONS IN APRIL
The British officers and soldiers in India looked forward, not without anxiety, to a hot-weather campaign in the summer of 1858. Much disappointment was felt, too, in England, when necessity for such a campaign became manifest. Persons in all ranks had fondly hoped that, when Sir Colin Campbell had spent two or three months in preparing for the siege of Lucknow, he would be enabled so to invest that city as to render the escape of the mutineers impossible; and that in conquering it, the heart of the rebellion would be crushed out. The result did not answer to this expectation. Lucknow was conquered; but the prisoners taken could be reckoned simply by dozens; nearly all the rebels who were not killed escaped into the provinces. It is true that they were now a dispersed body instead of a concentrated army; but it is also true that, in abandoning Lucknow, they would retire to many towns and forts where guns could be found, and where a formidable stand might be made against British troops. Let the summer approach, and the ratio of advantages on the two sides would be changed in character. Hot weather may affect the sepoy, but it affects him relatively less than the Englishman. It is heart-breaking work to a gallant soldier to feel his bodily strength failing through heat, at a time when his spirit is as heroic as ever. The rebels were astute enough to know this. The lithe Hindoo, with supple limbs and no superfluous flesh, can make great marches – especially when he retreats. His goods and chattels are few in number; his household arrangements simple; and it costs him little time or thought to shift his quarters at a short notice, in a period of peace. During war or rebellion, when he becomes a soldier, his worldly position is even more simple than before. A man who can live upon rice, parched corn, and water, and to whom it is a matter of much indifference whether he is clothed or not, has a remarkable freedom of movement, requiring little intricacy of commissariat arrangements. The English, during the war of the mutiny, had ample means of observing this mobility of the native rebel troops, and ample reasons for lamenting its consequences. If this were so during the winter, it would be still more decidedly the case during a hot-weather campaign, when exhaustion and coups de soleil work so terribly on the European constitution. It was this consideration, as we have said, that gave rise to much disappointment, both in India and in England, when the real sequel of the siege of Lucknow became apparent. The disappointment resolved itself in some quarters into adverse criticism on Sir Colin Campbell’s tactics; but even those who deemed it wise and just to postpone such criticism, could not postpone their anxiety when they found that the rebels, fleeing from Lucknow, assumed such an attitude elsewhere as would render a summer campaign necessary.
The long sojourn of the commander-in-chief in and near the Oudian capital, and the frequent communications between him and the governor-general, told of serious and weighty discussions concerning the policy to be pursued. Rumours circulated of an antagonism of plans; of one project for leaving the rebels unmolested until after the hot season should have passed, and of another for crushing them in detail before they could succeed in recombining. But whatever might have been the rumours, the policy adopted followed the latter of these two courses. The army of Lucknow, broken up into divisions or columns, was set again to work, to pursue and defeat those insurgents who kept the field with a pertinacity little expected when the mutiny began. So much of those operations as took place during the month of April, it is the purpose of this chapter to narrate; but a few words may previously be said concerning the state of affairs in Bengal, more dependent on Calcutta than on the army of Oude or the commander-in-chief.
The fact has already been adverted to that the supreme government, amid all the anxiety of the rebellion in the northwest, began in the spring of the year to take measures for the better protection of Lower Bengal. That province, the most important in the whole of India, had been very little affected by the mutiny, chiefly because there were few Mohammedan leaders inclined to become rebels; but the authorities could not close their eyes to the facts that the province was very insufficiently defended, and that any successful revolt there would be more disastrous than in other regions. So long as the delta of the Ganges remained in British hands, there would always be a base of operations for reconquering Upper India, if necessary; but that delta once lost, the services of a Clive, backed by a large army from England, would be again needed to recover it. A plan was therefore formed for locating five or six thousand European troops in Bengal, quartered at Calcutta, Dumdum, Chinsura, Barrackpore, Dinapoor, Benares, and one or two other places. It became very seriously contested whether any native army whatever would be needed in the province. The Bengalees are peaceful, and have few ambitious chieftains among them; hence, it was argued, a few thousand British troops, and a few hundred seamen of the Naval Brigade, would suffice to protect the province. There were ‘divisional battalions’ of native troops still at certain stations, as a sort of military police; but the regular Bengal native army had been extinguished, or had extinguished itself. So useful had a few hundred seamen become, that their employment led to many such suggestions as the following – ‘Wherever these seamen are, there is a feeling of absolute security at once from external attack and internal treachery. Bengal has now been nearly twelve months without a native army, and within that twelve months they have never once been missed. Why not retain this security? Why not strike off Bengal from the provinces to be occupied by a native force, and render our improvised force a permanent institution? A company of European sailors would be a nucleus for the armed police in each division. Why not keep them up as such, give them permanent allowances, recruit them primarily from the same useful class? There can be no want of men when once such a permanent opening is known. They would not only protect the great cities, and double the physical force on which all authority must ultimately rest, but act as a permanent check on the divisional battalions. We want such a check. These men may be as faithful as the sepoys have been false, as attached to Europeans as the sepoys have proved themselves hostile; but there can never be any proof of the fact. Let us not again trust armed natives without the precautions we take in our ships against our own sailors – a check by a different body.’ All such considerations necessarily resolved themselves into a much larger inquiry, to be conducted deliberately and cautiously – how ought the army of India to be re-constituted?
Semi-barbarous tribes in many instances took advantage of the disturbed state of British influence in India, to make inroads into districts not properly belonging to them; and it sometimes happened that the correction of these evildoers was a very difficult matter. Such an instance occurred in the month now under notice. On the borders of Assam, at the extreme northeast corner of India, were a wild mountain tribe called Abors, who had for some time been engaged in a system of marauding on the Assam side of the frontier. Captain Bivar, at Debrooghur, set forth to punish them, taking with him a mixed force of sailors and Goorkhas. The Abors retreated to their fastnesses, and Bivar attempted to follow them; but this was an unsuccessful manœuvre. The Abors brought down many of his men by poisoned arrows, and maimed others by rolling down stones upon them from the rocks; a portion of their numbers, meanwhile, making a circuit, fell upon the baggage-boats, and captured the whole of the baggage. Captain Bivar and his companions suffered many privations before they safely got back to Debrooghur. These, however, were minor difficulties, involving no very serious consequences. Throughout the northeast region of India there were few ‘Pandies,’ few sepoys of Hindustani race; and thus the materials for rebellion were deprived of one very mischievous ingredient.
The Calcutta authorities found it necessary to make stringent rules concerning ladies and children; and hence some of the magistrates and collectors, the representatives of the Company in a civil capacity in the country districts, were occasionally placed in troublesome circumstances by family considerations during times of tumult. From the first, the Calcutta government had endeavoured, by every available means, to prevent women and children from going to the scenes of danger: knowing how seriously the movements of the officers, military and civil, would be interfered with by the presence of helpless relatives during scenes of fighting and tumult. One of the magistrates, in Western Bengal, was brought into difficulty by disobedience to this order. His wife entreated that she might come to him at his station. She did so. Shortly afterwards a rumour spread that a large force of the enemy was approaching. The lady grew frightened, and the husband anxious. He took her to another place, and was thereby absent from his post at a critical time. The government suspended him from office for disobeying orders in having his wife at the station, and for quitting his district without leave at a time when his presence was imperatively needed.
One other matter may be mentioned here, in connection with the local government, before proceeding to the affairs of Oude and the northwest. The Calcutta authorities shared with the Court of Directors, the English government, and the House of Commons, the power of rewarding or honouring their troops for good services; the modes adopted were many; but amid the controversies which occasionally arose concerning military honours, medals, promotions, and encomiums, it was made very manifest during the wars of the mutiny that the Victoria Cross, the recognition of individual valour, was one of the most highly valued by the soldiery, both officers and privates. The paltriness of the bits of metal and ribbon, or the tastelessness of the design, might be abundantly criticised; but when it became publicly known that the Cross would be given only to those who had shewn themselves to be brave among the brave, the value of the symbol was great, such as a soldier or sailor could alone appreciate. From time to time notices appeared in the London Gazette, emanating from the War-office, giving the utmost publicity to the instances in which the Victoria Cross was bestowed. The name of the officer or soldier, the regiment or corps to which he belonged, the commanding officer who had made the recommendation, the dispatch in which the deed of bravery was recorded, the date and place of that deed, the nature of the deed itself – all were briefly set forth; and there can be little doubt that the recipients of the Cross would cherish that memorial, and the Gazette notice, to the end of their lives. Incidental notices of this honorary testimonial have been frequently made in former chapters; and it is mentioned again here because of its importance in including officers and privates in the same category. Thus, on the 27th of April, to give one instance, the London Gazette announced the bestowal of the Victoria Cross on Lieutenant-colonel Henry Tombs, of the Bengal artillery; Lieutenant James Hills, of the same corps; Lieutenant William Alexander Kerr, of the 24th Bombay native infantry; Sergeant John Smith, of the Bengal Sappers and Miners; Bugler Robert Hawthorne, of the 52d foot; Lance-corporal Henry Smith, of the same regiment; Sergeant Bernard Diamond, of the Bengal horse-artillery; and Gunner Richard Fitzgerald, of the same corps. Sergeant Smith and Bugler Hawthorne, it will be remembered, assisted poor Home, Salkeld, and Burgess in blowing up the Cashmere Gate at Delhi; unlike their heroic but less fortunate companions, they lived to receive the Victoria Cross.154