Part 568

"Few careers have ever been more instructive to those who can see than that of the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, who died in Paris on Sunday [October 22, 1893] of apoplexy. He finished life a despised exile, but no man of modern days ever had such chances, or had seen them snatched, partly by fate, partly by fault, so completely from his lips. But for an accident, if there is such a thing as accident, he would have been the Hindoo Emperor of India. {1739} His father, Runjeet Singh, that strange combination of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, had formed and knew how to control an army which would have struck down all the native powers of India much more easily than did any of the Tartar conquerors. Without its master at its head, that army defeated the British, and but for a magnificent bribe paid to its General (vide Cunningham's 'History of the Sikhs') would have driven the English from India, and placed the child, Dhuleep Singh, upon the throne of the Peninsula, to be supported there by Sikh and Rajpoot, Mahratta, and Beharee. Apart from the English, there was nothing to resist them; and they were guided by a woman, the Ranee Chunda Kour; who of all modern women was most like Mary of Scots as her enemies have painted her, and of whom, after her fall, Lord Dalhousie said that her capture would be worth the sacrifice of a brigade. How Dhuleep Singh would have reigned had Runjeet Singh's destiny completed itself is another matter—probably like a Hindoo Humayoon—for even if not the son of Runjeet Singh, who, be it remembered, acknowledged him, he inherited ability from his mother; he was a bold man, and he was, as his career showed, capable of wild and daring adventure. He fell, however, from his throne under the shock of the second Sikh War, and began a new and, to all appearance, most promising career. Lord Dalhousie had a pity for the boy, and the English Court—we never quite understood why—an unusually kindly feeling. A fortune of £40,000 a year was settled on him, he was sent to England, and he was granted rank hardly less than that of a Prince of the Blood. He turned Christian—apparently from conviction, though subsequent events throw doubt on that—a tutor, who was quite competent, devoted himself to his education, and from the time he became of age he was regarded as in all respects a great English noble. He knew, too, how to sustain that character,—made no social blunders, became a great sportsman, and succeeded in maintaining for years the sustained stateliness of life which in England is held to confer social dignity. Confidence was first shaken by his marriage, which, though it did not turn out unsuccessfully, and though the lady was in after-life greatly liked and respected, was a whim, his bride being a half Coptic, half English girl whom he saw in an Egyptian school-room, and who, by all English as well as Indian ideas of rank, was an unfitting bride. Then he began over-spending, without the slightest necessity, for his great income was unburdened by a vast estate; and at last reduced his finances to such a condition that the India Office, which had made him advance after advance, closed its treasury and left him, as he thought, face to face with ruin. Then the fierce Asiatic blood in him came out. He declared himself wronged, perhaps believed himself oppressed, dropped the whole varnish of civilisation from him, and resolved to make an effort for the vengeance over which he had probably brooded for years. He publicly repudiated Christianity, and went through a ceremony intended to readmit him within the pale of the Sikh variety of the Hindoo faith. Whether it did readmit him, greater doctors than we must decide. That an ordinary Hindoo who has eaten beef cannot be readmitted to his own caste, even if the eating is involuntary, is certain, as witness the tradition of the Tagore family; but the rights of the Royal are, even in Hindooism, extraordinarily wide, and we fancy that, had Dhuleep Singh succeeded in his enterprise, Sikh doctors of theology would have declared his re-admission legal. He did not, however, succeed. He set out for the Punjab intending, it can hardly be doubted, if the Sikhs acknowledged him, to make a stroke for the throne, if not of India, at least of Runjeet Singh; but he was arrested at Aden, and after months of fierce dispute, let go, on condition that he should not return to India. He sought protection in Russia, which he did not obtain, and at last gave up the struggle, made his peace with the India Office, took his pension again, and lived, chiefly in Paris, the life of a disappointed but wealthy idler. There was some spirit in his adventure, though it was unwisely carried out. The English generally thought it a bit of foolhardiness, or a dodge to extract a loan from the India Office; but those who were responsible held a different opinion, and would have gone nearly any length to prevent his reaching the Punjab. They were probably wise. The heir of Runjeet might have been ridiculed by the Sikhs as a Christian, but he might also have been accepted as a reconverted man; and one successful skirmish in a district might have called to arms all the 'children of the sugar and the sword,' and set all India on fire. The Sikhs are our very good friends, and stood by us against any revival of the Empire of Delhi, their sworn hereditary foe; but they have not forgotten Runjeet Singh, and a chance of the Empire for themselves might have turned many of their heads."

_The Spectator, October 28, 1893._

INDIA: A. D. 1852. The second Burmese War. Annexation of Pegu.

"While Lord Dalhousie was laying out the Punjab like a Scotch estate, on the most approved principles of planting, road-making, culture, and general management, the chance of another conquest at the opposite extremity of his vice-kingdom summoned him to Calcutta. The master of a trading barque from Chittagong, who was charged unjustly with cruelty to a pilot, had been fined £100 by the authorities of Rangoon, and the captain of a brig had in like manner been amerced for alleged ill-treatment of his crew. To support a claim for restitution, two English ships of war had been sent to the mouth of the Irrawadi. … Misunderstandings arose on some inexplicable point of etiquette;" the British commodore seized a royal yacht which lay in the river; the angry Burmese opened fire on his ships from their forts; and, "with an unprecedented economy of time and trouble in the discovery or making of plausible pretexts, a second war with Burmah was thus begun. A long catalogue of affronts, wrongs, and injuries, now for the first time poured in. … The subjects of the 'Golden Foot' … must make an official apology for their misbehaviour, pay ten lacs compensation, and receive a permanent Resident at Rangoon. If these demands were not met within five weeks, further reparation would be exacted otherwise, and as there was no fear that they would, preparations were made for an expedition. … The Governor-General threw himself with enthusiasm into an undertaking which promised him another chance of gratifying, as his biographer says, his 'passion for imperial symmetry.' {1740} He resolved 'to take in kingdoms wherever they made a gap in the red line running round his dominions or broke its internal continuity.' There was a gap in the ring-fence between Arracan and Moulmein, which Pegu would fill. The logical inference was clear, the duty of appropriation obvious. Let us have Pegu. Ten millions of silver happening just then to lie in the coffers of Fort William, how could they be better invested than in a jungle on the sea coast, inhabited by quadrupeds and bipeds after their various kinds, alike unworthy of being consulted as to their future destiny? … In April, Martaban and Rangoon were taken with trifling loss. Operations being suspended during the rainy season, the city of Prome was not attacked till October, and after a few hours' struggle it fell, with the loss of a single sepoy on the side of the victors. There was in fact no serious danger to encounter, save from the climate; but that unfailing ally fought with terrible effect upon the side of Ava. … On the 20th December, 1852, a proclamation was issued, which, after reciting undisguisedly the ineffably inadequate pretext for the war, informed the inhabitants that the Governor in Council had resolved that the maritime province of Pegu should henceforth form a portion of the British territories in the East, and warning the King of Ava, 'should he fail to renew his former relations of friendship with the British Government, and seek to dispute its quiet possession of the province, the Governor-General would again put forth the power he held, which would lead to the total subversion of the Burman State, and to the ruin and exile of the King and his race.' But no depth of humiliation could bring the Sovereign or his Ministers to acknowledge the hopelessness of defeat or the permanency of dismemberment. … Twenty years have passed, and no treaty recognising the alienation of Pegu has yet [in 1872] been signed."

_W. M. Torrens, Empire in Asia: How we came by it, chapter 24._

ALSO IN: _E. Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, chapters 15-16 (volume 2)._

INDIA: A. D. 1856. The annexation of Oudh.

See OUDH.

INDIA: A. D. 1857. Causes of the Sepoy Mutiny.

"The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that Native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories, and to rush into action in a paroxysm of terror. Panic acts on an Oriental population like drink upon a European mob. The annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie, although dictated by the most enlightened considerations, was distasteful to the Native mind. The spread of education, the appearance at the same moment of the steam-engine and the telegraph wire, seemed to reveal a deep plan for substituting an English for an Indian civilisation. The Bengal sepoys especially thought that they could see further than the rest of their countrymen. Most of them were Hindus of high caste; many of them were recruited from Oudh. They regarded our reforms on Western lines as attacks on their own nationality, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and that all India was held. The numerous dethroned princes, or their heirs and widows, were the first to learn and to take advantage of this spirit of disaffection and panic. They had heard of the Crimean war, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Our munificent pensions had supplied the funds with which they could buy the aid of skilful intriguers. They had much to gain, and little to lose, by a revolution. In this critical state of affairs, of which the Government had no official knowledge, a rumour ran through the cantonments that the cartridges of the Bengal army had been greased with the fat of pigs,—animals unclean alike to Hindu and Muhammadan. No assurances could quiet the minds of the sepoys. Fires occurred nightly in the Native lines; officers were insulted by their men; confidence was gone, and only the form of discipline remained. In addition, the outbreak of the storm found the Native regiments denuded of many of their best officers. The administration of the great empire to which Dalhousie put the corner-stone, required a larger staff than the civil service could supply. The practice of selecting able military men for civil posts, which had long existed, received a sudden and vast development. Oudh, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, British Burma, were administered to a large extent by picked officers from the Company's regiments. Good and skilful commanders remained; but the Native army had nevertheless been drained of many of its brightest intellects and firmest wills at the very crisis of its fate."

_W. W. Hunter, Brief History of the Indian People, chapter 15._

"The annexation of Oudh had nothing to do with the Mutiny in the first place, though that measure certainly did add to the number of our enemies after the Mutiny commenced. The old government of Oudh was extremely obnoxious to the mass of our native soldiers of the regular army, who came from Oudh and the adjacent province of Behar, and with whom the Mutiny originated. These men were the sons and kinsmen of the Hindu yeomen of the country, all of whom benefited more or less by annexation; while Oudh was ruled by a Muhammadan family which had never identified itself with the people, and whose government was extremely oppressive to all classes except its immediate creatures and followers. But when the introduction of the greased cartridges had excited the Native Army to revolt, when the mutineers saw nothing before them short of escape on the one hand or destruction on the other, they, and all who sympathised with them, were driven to the most desperate measures. All who could be influenced by love or fear rallied round them. All who had little or nothing to lose joined their ranks. All that dangerous class of religious fanatics and devotees who abound in India, all the political intriguers, who in peaceful times can do no mischief, swelled the numbers of the enemy, and gave spirit and direction to their measures. India is full of races of men, who, from time immemorial, have lived by service or by plunder, and who are ready to join in any disturbance which may promise them employment. Oudh was full of disbanded soldiers who had not had time to settle down. Our gaols furnished thousands of desperate men let loose on society. The cry throughout the country, as cantonment after cantonment became the scene of triumphant mutiny was, 'The English rule is at an end. Let us plunder and enjoy ourselves.' The industrious classes throughout India were on our side, but for a long time feared to act. {1741} On the one side they saw the few English in the country shot down or flying for their lives, or at the best standing on the defensive, sorely pressed; on the other side they saw summary punishment, in the shape of the plunder and destruction of their houses, dealt out to those who aided us. But when we evinced signs of vigour, when we began to assume the offensive and vindicate our authority, many of these people came forward and identified themselves with our cause."

_Lord Lawrence, Speech at Glasgow, 1860 (quoted by Sir O. T. Burne, in "Clyde and Strathnairn," chapter 1)._

ALSO IN: _J. W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, book 2 (volume 1)._

_G. B. Malleson, The Indian Mutiny of 1857, chapters 1-5._

INDIA: A. D. 1857 (May). The outbreak at Meerut. Seizure of Delhi by the Mutineers. Massacre of Europeans. Explosion of the magazine.

"The station of Meerut, some 40 miles north-east of Delhi, was one of the very few in India where adequate means existed for quelling an outbreak of native troops. There was a regiment of English Dragoons, a battalion of the 60th Rifles, and a strong force of Horse and Foot Artillery, far more than sufficient to deal with the three native regiments who were also quartered in the cantonment. The court-martial on … eighty-five men of the 3rd N. C., who had refused to take their cartridges, had by this time completed its inquiry. The men were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The sentence was carried out with impressive solemnity. On a morning [May 9] presently to become historical—the heavens sombre with rolling clouds—the brigade assembled to hear their comrades' doom—to see them stripped of their uniform and secured with felons' manacles. The scene produced intense emotion. Resistance was impossible. There were entreaties, tears, imprecations, as the prisoners were marched away to jail. Discipline had been vindicated by a terrible example. The next day was Sunday. In the evening, as the European Riflemen were gathering for Church, a sudden movement took place in the native quarters. The Cavalry dashed off to the jail to rescue their imprisoned companions. The two Infantry regiments, after a moment's wavering, threw in their lot with the mutineers. Then ensued a scene such as, unhappily, became too familiar in Upper India within the next few weeks. Officers were shot, houses fired, Europeans—men, women, and children, wherever found, were put to the sword. A crowd of miscreants from the jail, suddenly set free, made a long night of pillage. Meanwhile, paralysed by the sudden catastrophe, the English General of the Division and the Brigadier of the Station forbore to act, refused to let their subordinates act, and the Sepoys who had fled, a disorganised mob, in different directions, soon found themselves gathering on the march for Delhi. In the early morning at Delhi, where courts and offices had already begun the day's work, a line of horsemen were descried galloping on the Meerut road. They found their way into the city, into the presence of the King; cut down the European officials, and, as they were gradually reinforced by the arrival of fresh companions, commenced a general massacre of the Christian population. A brave telegraph clerk, as the mutineers burst in upon him, had just time to flash the dreadful tidings to Lahore. Before evening, the native regiments fired upon their officers and joined the mutineers. After weary hours of hope for the help from Meerut which never came, the British officers in command were compelled to recognise that the only chance of safety lay in flight. Ere the day closed, every European who had risen that morning in Delhi, was dead, or awaiting death, or wandering about the country in the desperate endeavor to reach a place of safety. A day dark with disaster was, however, illumined by the first of those heroic acts which will make the siege of Delhi immortal. The insurgents had their first taste of the quality of the race whose ascendancy they had elected to assail. Lieutenant Willoughby, the officer in charge of the Magazine, and eight gallant companions, resolved, early in the day, that, if they could not defend their invaluable supply of ammunition, they would destroy it, though its destruction would almost certainly involve their own. For hours they defended their stronghold against an overpowering crowd of assailants. The train was laid: the sergeant who was to fire it stood ready: Willoughby took a last look out upon the Meerut road: the assailants were swarming on the walls. The word was spoken: a vast column of flame and smoke shot upward. Two thousand of the assailants were blown into the air [and five of the defenders perished, while Willoughby and three of his companions escaped]. The thunder of that explosion announced to the mutineers that one great object in the seizure of Delhi had escaped their grasp."

_H. S. Cunningham, Earl Canning, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _J. W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, book 4, chapters 1-3 (volume 2)._

INDIA: A. D. 1857 (May-August). The situation at Delhi. Siege of the English at Cawnpur. Their surrender and massacre. The siege of Lucknow.