CHAPTER IV

THE CONFLAGRATION

On the second day after the rising at Meerut, Calcutta had been electrified by a telegram from Agra. The central government seemed at first hardly to realize the gravity of the crisis. But when further bad news came in, Lord Canning recognized that our Indian Empire was at stake, and began to act with an energy, in which his character and his inexperience of Indian affairs had made him hitherto wanting; and if to some he seemed still deficient in grasp of such perilous affairs, it may be said of him that he never lost his head, as did others whose counsels were more vehement. He looked around for every European soldier within reach; he called for aid on Madras and Ceylon; he ordered the troops returning from the war happily ended in Persia, to be sent at once to Calcutta; he took upon himself the responsibility of arresting an expedition on its way from England to make war in China, but now more urgently needed for the rescue of India. Weeks must pass, however, before he could assemble a force fit to cope with the mutiny, while every English bayonet was demanded at a dozen points nearer the capital, and the Government knew not how far to trust its embarrassing native army.

All was confusion, suspicion, and doubt, when the first measures of precaution suggested by the danger might prove the very means of inflaming it. The practical question, anxiously debated in so many cases, was whether or no to disarm the Sepoys, at the risk of hurrying other detachments into mutiny, and imperilling the lives of English people, helpless in their hands. Most officers of Sepoy regiments, indeed, refused to believe that their own men could be untrue, and indignantly protested against their being disarmed--a blind confidence often repaid by death at the hands of these very men, when their turn came to break loose from the bonds of discipline. But one treacherous tragedy after another decided the doubt, sometimes too late; and where it was still thought well to accept the Sepoys' professions of loyalty, they were vigilantly guarded by English soldiers, who thus could not be spared to march against the open mutineers.

Paralyzed by want of trustworthy troops, Lord Canning could do little at present but give his lieutenants in the North-West leave to act as they thought best--leave which they were fain in any case to take, the rebellion soon cutting them off from communication with the seat of Government. But there, most fortunately, were found men fit to deal with the emergency, and to create resources in what to some might have seemed a hopeless situation. At the season when the Mutiny broke out, English officials who can leave their posts willingly take refuge at the cool hill-stations of the Himalayas. General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief, had betaken himself to Simla, the principal of these sanatoriums, lying north of Delhi and of the military station at Umballa. Here the alarming news came to cut short his holiday. Naturally reluctant to believe the worst, he yet could not but order a concentration of troops at Umballa, where he arrived in the course of three or four days.

A more masterful spirit was already at work upon the scene of action, if not by his personal presence, through the zealous colleagues inspired by his teaching and example as a ruler of men. Sir John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub, had also been recalled on his way to the hills, to find himself practically independent governor of that side of India. At once rising to the emergency, as soon as he had taken the first measures, already anticipated indeed by his deputies, for the safety of his own province, he saw that the one thing to be aimed at was the recovery of Delhi, the very name of which would be a tower of strength to the mutineers. The Commander-in-Chief's eyes were mainly open to the difficulties of such an enterprise; and the staff, fettered by red-tape, cried out upon the impossibility of advancing in the unprepared state of his army. Lawrence never ceased to urge that, with or without guns and stores, everything must be risked to strike an immediate blow at Delhi, which might check the spread of rebellion by restoring our lost prestige. His tireless subordinates did the impossible in collecting supplies and means of transport. Anson, urged to the same effect by the Governor-General as by Lawrence, doubtfully agreed to lose no time in carrying out their policy of a march on Delhi. This is not the only instance throughout the Indian Mutiny where the hesitations and weakness of military men were happily overruled by the resolute counsels of civilians. The ordinary precautions of warfare had often to be disregarded in the struggle now at hand.

The difficulties, indeed, might well have seemed appalling. At Umballa itself, an abortive attempt at mutiny had taken place on the fatal 10th. General Anson, who, like some other Queen's officers, had hitherto been apt to despise the Sepoys, now went to the other extreme in flattering them, and let their officers hamper him by a promise that they should not be disarmed. At his back, the fashionable station of Simla was thrown into panic by a disturbance among the Goorkhas posted there. Hundreds of English people fled to the woods and mountains in terror, till it was found that the Goorkhas could easily be brought to reason. They luckily showed no fellow-feeling with the Bengal Sepoys; and soldiers from this warlike mountain race served us well throughout the Mutiny. The native princes of the neighbourhood also gave timely help of their troops and by furnishing supplies.

Within a fortnight were gathered at Umballa three English infantry regiments, the 9th Lancers, and twelve field-guns, with one regiment and one squadron of natives whom it was not safe to leave behind. Carts had been collected by the hundred, camels and elephants by the thousand, and a numerous train of camp-followers, without whom an Indian army can hardly move. Ammunition was brought up from the arsenal at Philour, one of the Punjaub strongholds, secured just in time to prevent it falling into treacherous hands. A siege-train, hastily prepared here, had to be escorted by Sepoys, who might at any moment break into revolt. The Sutlej, swollen with melting snows, threatened to break down the bridge by which communication was kept up with this important point; and, not two hours after the train had passed, the bridge in fact gave way. Then there were delays through unmanageable bullocks ploughing over heavy sands and roads deluged by rain. The first day's labour of twenty hours brought the train only seven miles on its long route.

Without waiting for it, on May 25, Anson advanced to Kurnaul, the rallying-point of the Delhi fugitives. But cholera, a feller foe than the Sepoy, had already attacked his soldiers. One of the first victims was the Commander-in-Chief, who died on the 27th, broken by ill-health and the burden of a task too heavy for him. Another kind of General, it was said by impatient critics, would have been in Delhi a week before. But this was easier to say than to do, and certainly the destruction of his small and ill-provided army, hurled forward without due precaution, might have proved the loss of India.

Anson was succeeded in command by Sir Henry Barnard, an officer of Crimean distinction, who had been only a few weeks in India. His first acts showed no want of energy. Leaving the siege-train to follow at its slow pace, he moved upon Delhi at the end of the month, his men marching eagerly under the fierce June sun, in burning desire to avenge the slaughter of their country-people. And now began those cruel reprisals by which our victory was so darkly stained. Angry suspicion was all the evidence needed to condemn the natives, guilty and innocent alike, who, after a hasty show of trial, were often mocked and tortured before execution at the hands of Christians turned into savages. The Sepoy regiment which marched with the column from Umballa had to be sent away, to protect them against the suspicious resentment of their English comrades, as much as in anticipation of the treachery which soon displayed itself among them.

A few days' march brought together the main body and Brigadier Wilson's force from Meerut, which had lain there shamefully inactive for three weeks, but now did much to retrieve its character by two encounters under such a burning sun that the exhausted soldiers could not follow up their victory. The whole army numbered little over three thousand Englishmen, with whom Barnard pushed forward to where, five miles north of Delhi, a horde of mutineers lay waiting to dispute his advance, strongly posted at Budlee-ka-Serai.

Here on June 8th was fought the first important battle of the war. Nothing could resist this handful of British soldiers, terrible in their vengeful passion. Blinded by the glare, now choked by dust, now wading knee-deep in water, through all obstacles, the infantry dashed up to the rebel guns; the Lancers, having made a stealthy circuit, charged upon the enemy's rear; the field artillery took them in the flank; and they fled in confusion, pressed hard by the eager though jaded victors. On the Ridge without the city the Sepoys made another stand, but were again swept back from this strong position. After sixteen hours' marching and fighting, under a sun whose rays were almost as fatal as bullets, the English soldiers encamped among the burned quarters of the Cantonment, and from the Ridge beheld the domes and minarets of that famous city, which already they looked upon as regained.

But not next day, as they had fondly hoped, nor next week, nor for weary months, were they to pass the high red wall and heavy bastions that defiantly confronted them. Even had those walls lain flat as Jericho's, it were madness to have thrown some couple of thousand bayonets into the narrow crooked streets of a city swarming with fanatical foemen, besides a Sepoy garrison many times the number of the assailants. Open still on all sides but one, Delhi was the rendezvous of bands of mutineers flocking into it from various quarters; from first to last it is said to have held forty thousand of them--a strange reversal of the rules of war, which require that a besieging force shall at least outnumber the besieged! Still, in the first few days, Barnard did entertain the notion of carrying the place by a _coup de main_, but allowed himself to be dissuaded, to the disgust of certain ardent and youthful spirits.

There was then nothing for it but to remain camped behind the Ridge, awaiting reinforcements and the coming up of the siege-train. In this position, the rear defended by a canal, and with a wall of rocky heights in front, our army was practically besieged rather than besieging. Their field artillery could make little impression on the walls, nearly a mile off, while the enemy's heavier guns sent shot among them night and day. So great was the want of ammunition that two annas apiece were offered for cannon balls, which natives risked their lives in picking up to be fired back into the city--balls which sometimes could hardly be handled by Europeans in the burning heat. Sunstroke struck them down as by lightning; half the officers of one regiment were thus disabled in a single day. The over-tasked force had often to fight all day and to watch all night. The enemy used his superiority of numbers by continual harassing attacks, in front, in flank, and at last in the rear. The day was a remarkable one which passed without fighting. In six weeks, twenty combats were counted. On the 23rd of June, the Centenary of Plassey, a particularly formidable assault was made, and repulsed after a long day's fighting, to the discouragement of the Sepoys, whom false prophecies had led to believe that this date was to be fatal to us. Now, as always, the skulking foe could never stand to face British bayonets in the open; but their stealthy onsets were favoured by the wilderness of tangled ravines, gardens, walls, ruins, tombs, thickets, and deserted houses, which gave them cover right up to our entrenchments.

Through the losses of these continual encounters, as well as through disease and exposure, our scanty force would soon have melted away, if reinforcements had not begun to come in towards the end of June. But now also came the rainy season, multiplying the ravages of fever and cholera. Poor General Barnard was so worn out by the strain of his almost hopeless task that he could neither eat nor sleep. Early in July he died, like his predecessor, of cholera. General Reed took up the command, but at the end of a week, finding the burden too heavy for his feeble health, gave it over to Brigadier Wilson, who at one time had almost retired in despair, and would probably have done so if not cheered and strengthened by one who, at a distance, was all along the moving spirit of this marvellous siege.

Sir John Lawrence it is, with his lieutenants, Montgomery, Herbert Edwardes, Neville Chamberlain, John Nicholson, who are on all hands hailed as foremost among the saviours of our Indian empire. The Punjaub, where Lawrence bore rule at this crisis, home of the warlike Sikhs, might have been judged our weakest point, yet he turned it into a source of strength. Our latest and hardest conquest as it was, conquerors and conquered had learned to respect one another as worthy foemen, while its manly population bore a contemptuous ill-will towards the rebel Sepoys, and, themselves divided between Sikh and Moslem, did not readily find common cause to make against the English. From this mingled population, Lawrence quickly began to enlist excellent soldiers, weeding out also the Punjaub Sepoys from the ranks of their East-country comrades, to form the nucleus of new corps. Punjaubees, Afghans, Pathans, all the most martial and restless spirits of the frontier, eagerly came forward for our service; and thus the very men from whom we had most to fear became serviceable allies in the time of need.

The old Sepoy regiments were for the most part disarmed one by one, some of them disbanded, as opportunity or suspicion counselled, yet not till more than one had made attempts at mutiny that ended ill for themselves. Lawrence, earnest in urging mercy when the time came for it, was resolute in trampling out the early sparks of disaffection. Forty mutinous Sepoys at once were blown away from the mouths of guns. The dangerous districts were scoured by a movable column under Nicholson, a man worshipped almost as a god by his Sikh followers. The Afghan frontier had also to be watched, lest old enemies there should take this chance of falling upon us from behind when our hands were so full of fighting in front. And at the same time it was necessary to keep a careful eye upon our new levies, lest they in turn should grow too formidable.

Fortunate it was that the neighbouring native princes proved friendly, lending the aid of their troops to keep the peace, or giving more substantial assistance to the representative of that power which they had learned to look upon as paramount. Lawrence, governing a population of twenty millions, cut off from communication with his superiors, was made by force of circumstances dictator of Northern India. Not for nearly three months did a message from Calcutta reach him by the circuitous way of Bombay. The generals in the field, though owing him no formal obedience, gave in to the energy of his character and the weight of his experience. The well-provided arsenals and magazines of the Punjaub, saved from the hands of the mutineers by his vigorous action, became now the base of supplies against Delhi. Thither he kept forwarding a continual stream of stores, transport, men and money, which he had to raise by somewhat forced loans among the rich natives. Thus, in spite of a painful ailment, in spite of his longing for home and rest, he throughout masterfully maintained the British prestige within his own boundaries, while ever pressing on the capture of Delhi, as the blow which would paralyze rebellion all over India. When the great enterprise seemed on the point of failure, as a last resource he sent Nicholson's column to the front, leaving himself with only four thousand European soldiers scattered among the millions of the Punjaub, for whom that one man's strong hand was equal to a host of fighters.

Still the siege of Delhi dragged on its costly length. We must leave it for the meanwhile to see what thrilling and momentous scenes were being enacted in other parts of India, and to follow the preparations made for attacking the mutiny from the further side.

Calcutta was in a state of bewildered dismay, not to be calmed by official hopes for a speedy end to the insurrection, and soon increasing daily with worse and worse news from up-country. From Allighur, from Muttra, from Bareilly, from Moradabad, from Jhansi, from other points, one after another, came sickening tales of revolt and massacre, which would not lose in the telling. The only news of other places was an ominous silence. The great stations of Agra, Cawnpore, and Lucknow were presently cut off by a raging sea of rebellion. Rohilcund, old nursery of warriors, was overflowed, and the Doab, that fertile region between the Jumna and the Ganges, down whose thickly peopled valleys poured the irresistible flood of disorder. The tide rose to the sacred cities of Allahabad and Benares. Beyond, there were risings in Rajpootana. At Gwalior, the Maharajah's Sepoy contingent, after a time, broke away to play a considerable part in coming battles. Everywhere regiments, believed faithful, were going off like the guns of a burning ship.

The leaven of agitation naturally spread into the two other Presidencies, where the English officials could have no quiet rest till the danger in Bengal should be over. But the organization of the Madras and Bombay armies was not so dangerous for their rulers. Here men of various creeds and castes were more thoroughly mixed together in the ranks, which in Bengal had been allowed to consist too much of fellow-believers, and of cliques of the same family, caste or locality, turning every company into a clan animated by a common feeling apart from that of soldierly duty; nor, outside of Bengal, were the regiments permitted to be accompanied by squalid fakirs, to keep alive their superstitious zeal.

When Patna and Dinapore gave signs of commotion, not four hundred miles from Calcutta, the people of the capital might well look to see peril at their doors. They loudly accused Lord Canning as wanting to the exigency. He certainly seemed to go too far in trying to allay alarm by putting a calm face upon his inward anxiety. He forbore, as long as possible, to show distrust of the Sepoys in Eastern Bengal; he hesitated about accepting a contingent of Goorkhas offered him from Nepaul; he delayed in letting the inhabitants arm for their own defence. Not for a month did he allow them to form volunteer corps, and at the same time was forced to disarm the Sepoys at the neighbouring stations of Dum-Dum and Barrackpore. But rumours of what the Sepoys there had intended were already at work, producing a panic through Calcutta, where one Sunday in the middle of June a great part of the Europeans and Eurasians hastened to barricade themselves in their houses, or fled to the fort and the shipping for refuge from an imaginary foe, while the poor natives lay hid, trembling on their own account, expecting quite as groundlessly to be massacred by the white soldiers. The ludicrous terror of this "Panic Sunday" will long be remembered as a joke against the Calcutta people, who only towards evening began to see they had nothing to fear. Next day their restored confidence was strengthened by the arrest of the King of Oudh, who held a quasi-state in his palace near the city, and whose retainers were believed to have been plotting, with the now harmless Sepoys at the neighbouring stations, for a great Christian massacre.

A day or two later, Sir Patrick Grant, Commander of the Madras army, arrived to assume command in Bengal. He did not feel himself equal to taking the field in person, but made the fortunate choice of Brigadier-General Havelock to advance against the rebels, as soon as there should be an army ready to lead. The officer, who during the last months of his life was to burst forth as a popular hero, had passed obscurely a long life of eastern military service. In India, indeed, he was well known for the earnest piety which had leavened the ranks of his comrades. "Havelock's Saints," a name given in mockery, became a title of honour, when it was found that the little band among whom he preached and prayed so zealously were the best and most trustworthy soldiers of the regiment. By his superiors he had been recognized as a brave and intelligent officer; and he had served creditably in Burma, in Afghanistan, in the Punjaub, and in Persia, without attracting much public notice or rising to high command. Now, at length, this saintly veteran, all his life a careful student of the art of war, had the chance to show what he was as a general; but not till June 25 could he leave Calcutta, picking up as he went the scattered fragments of his force, which had been pushed on to meet immediate needs of succour.

A month earlier, Neill with the 1st Madras Fusiliers had gone on as forerunner of the help that would by and by be pouring in to the rescue of our imperilled countrymen. As far as Allahabad he could travel by railway, yet he did not arrive there for nearly three weeks, delayed through turning aside to repress mutiny at Benares, and by making grim examples to teach the cowering natives that the British _raj_ was still to be feared. At Allahabad he found his presence sorely needed by a handful of Europeans shut up in the fort along with a band of hardly controllable Sikhs. The mutiny here had been marked by painful as well as curious features. The Sepoys at first showed themselves enthusiastically loyal, giving every sign of affection to their officers, then rose against them in a sudden fit of cruel fury, immediately after volunteering, with apparent heartiness, to march against their comrades at Delhi. Seven or eight boy-ensigns were murdered by the regiment they had just joined. The rebels bombarded the locomotives on the new railway, which they took for mysterious engines of warfare. There were the usual sickening massacres of women and children. A general destruction had reigned without check, in which helpless Hindoo pilgrims came off almost as ill as the Christians at the hands of a Mohamedan mob. This short triumph of disorder was with terrible and too little discriminating justice chastised by Neill, stern Scotchman that he was. What between the mutineers and the British soldiery, the inhabitants of the district had cause to rue these troubles; and again our civilization was disgraced by a blind fury of vengeance. Neill was more successful in restoring order among the populace than in restraining his own soldiers, who gave way to excesses of drink that fatally nursed the seeds of cholera, when not a man could be spared from the trying task before them.[2]

By the end of June, Havelock reached Allahabad, to take the head of an army that hardly numbered two thousand fighters. Nineteen officers and men made all his cavalry. But such news here met him, he could not lose a day in flinging this small force among myriads of bitter foes, at whose mercy lay the lives of many Christian women and children. Yet it was no horde of undisciplined savages from whom he must wrest those hapless captives. Throughout the war, our troops had to face, at enormous odds of number, ranks trained and armed by ourselves, supplied from our own captured stores, and in a large degree led by the establishment of native officers whom we had taught how battles should be won. Never perhaps has it been so well proved, as by the result of this apparently unequal conflict, what advantage lies in pride and strength of race!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: One of the severest punishments inflicted on mutineers was forcing them under the lash, before being hanged, to sweep up the blood of their supposed victims, so as, in their ideas, to pollute them to all eternity. A generation later, this General Neill's son was murdered, it is said, by the vengeful son of a native officer thus punished.]