CHAPTER VI

THE FALL OF DELHI

Three months the British army lay upon the Ridge running obliquely from the north-west angle of Delhi--that abrupt height two miles long, whose steep and broken front formed a natural fortification, strengthened by batteries and breast-works, among which the prominent points were at a house known as Hindoo Rao's, on the right of the position, and the Flagstaff Tower on the left, commanding the road to the Cashmere Gate of the city. The rear was protected by a canal that had to be vigilantly guarded, all the bridges broken down but one. The right flank was defended by strong works crowning that end of the ridge; the left rested on the straggling sandy bed of the Jumna, over-flooded by summer rains. The whole army, after the arrival of reinforcements in June, numbered not six thousand fighting men, a force barely sufficient to maintain such an extended line, even if a fifth of them had not been in hospital at once. Yet they not only held their own, but pushed their outposts far across the debatable plain between them and the city, seizing on the right an important point in the "Sammy House," the soldiers' slang name for a temple, and on their left recovering the grounds of Metcalf House, a splendid mansion that for weeks had been given up to the destructive hands of the rebels, who here spoiled one of the finest libraries in India.

As already pointed out, this was a complete reversal of the ordinary conditions of warfare. An army far inferior in numbers to its enemy attacked one corner of a city, six miles in circumference, open on all other sides to supplies of every kind, while the besiegers had much ado to keep up their own communications through a disturbed country, besides defending themselves against almost daily sallies of the nominally besieged. They were sorely tried by sickness, by deadly heat, then by wet weather that turned the river into an unwholesome swamp, and by a plague of flies swarming about the camp, with its abundant feast of filth and carrion. They were ill-provided with the means to carry on their urgent enterprise. Their lines were filled with spies among the native soldiers and camp-followers, who, at the best, only half wished them well. Everything they did, even what was designed in secret, seemed to be known presently at Delhi, so that the garrison were found prepared for all our movements; and thus the fresh plan of an assault in July had to be given up.

Even the irregular cavalry, judged for the most part more trusty than the foot Sepoys, came under strong suspicion when, by its connivance, as was believed, a band of the enemy's horse one day broke suddenly into the camp, causing a good deal of confusion, but were driven out before they could do much mischief. Other faithless servants were caught tampering with the artillery. But, in spite of all difficulties and discouragements, Lawrence's energetic support kept General Wilson sticking like a leech to his post, cautiously standing on the defensive, restoring the somewhat impaired discipline of his harassed ranks, and waiting till he should be strong enough to strike a decisive blow. The last thing to be thought of was retreat, for that signal of our discomfiture would have run like the Fiery Cross throughout Hindoostan.

We, too, had our spies, through whom we knew that those within the city were not without their troubles. There were quarrels between the devotees of the two hostile creeds, and between ambitious rivals for command. The old king, a puppet in the hands of his turbulent soldiery, might well sigh for peace. He wrote plaintive poetry describing his gilded woes; he talked of abdicating, of becoming a humble pilgrim, of giving himself up to the English; it is said that he even offered to admit our men at one of the gates, but this chance may have seemed too good to be trusted. The princes of his family began to think of making terms for themselves with the inevitable conquerors. The inhabitants were spoiled and oppressed by the Sepoys, vainly clamouring for the high pay they had been promised. Different regiments taunted one another's cowardice; but after one or two trials found themselves indisposed again to face our batteries without the walls.

When by the end of July, the fugitives from Cawnpore and elsewhere came dropping into Delhi with alarming accounts of Havelock's victories--of strange, terribly-plumed and kilted warriors, never seen before;[4] of mysterious Enfield rifle-balls that would kill at an unheard-of distance--the mutineers lost heart more and more, and in turn went on deserting from their new service; though there would still be a stream of reinforcements from those broken bodies which no longer cared to keep the open country.

To make up for want of real success, their leaders strove to inflame them by lying proclamations of victory and incitements to their superstitious zeal. The beginning of August brought in one of the great Mohamedan festivals, and this opportunity was taken to work up their enthusiasm for a fierce onslaught against our positions, from which, however, Sepoy and sowar once more rolled back disheartened, though one party had succeeded in pushing up almost to our left works, yelling out their religious watchwords, "Deen! Deen! Allah! Allah Achbar!" that could not silence the resolute British cheers. Another grand attack was attempted at the rear, but heaven seemed on our side rather than that of the Moslem fanatics, for an opportune deluge of rain swelled the canal to a torrent and swept away their attempts at bridging it. Every effort on their part was foiled, while to the right we made progress in mastering the Kissengunge suburb, and on the left pushed forward half-a-mile from Metcalf House to seize the enemy's guns at a building called Ludlow Castle, formerly the Commissioner's residence, which lay almost under the city walls.

On August 7 a powder-magazine blew up on the further side of Delhi, killing hundreds of men. This disaster was the more appalling to the rebels when they learned that a heavy siege-train was advancing to remount our feeble batteries. Six thousand men sallied forth, making a circuit far to our rear in hope to cut off the train. But their movements had been watched. They were followed and defeated with heavy loss, the first exploit of Nicholson, who arrived with his Punjaub column about the middle of August to put new vigour into the attack. This officer, still young for command, had years before won a reputation far beyond his age; and now, as soon as he appeared on the scene of action, seems to have made himself felt as its moving spirit, so much so, that in the story of it, his eager vehemence stands out as too much throwing into the shade the caution supplied by General Wilson, unduly disparaged by Nicholson' admirers. We had need at once here of prudence and of valour in the highest degree.

At length the slow siege-train, drawn by a hundred elephants, after so long, literally, sticking in the mud, came up on September 3rd. On the Ridge all was ready for it. Works sprang up like mushrooms, and in a few days forty heavy guns began playing upon the northern face of the city. Batteries were pushed forward to almost within musket-shot; then, day by day, the massive walls and bastions were seen crashing into ruins at several points. Formidable as they were in older warfare, they did not resist modern artillery so well as less pretentious earthworks might have done.

By the 13th two breaches seemed practicable. That night four young engineer officers, with a few riflemen, stole up through the jungle to the Cashmere Bastion, passing behind the enemy's skirmishers. They dropped into the ditch unseen, and had almost mounted the broken wall when discovered by its sentries, whose random shots whizzed about them as they ran back to report that a way was open for the stormers.

The assault was at once ordered for three o'clock of that morning, September 14. Under cover of darkness, the troops eagerly advanced in four columns, the first, led by Nicholson, against the breach near the Cashmere Bastion; the second directed upon another breach at the Water Bastion; the third to storm the Cashmere Gate, after it had been blown up; while the fourth, far to the right, should attack the Lahore Gate, through the Kissengunge suburb.

A reserve followed the first three columns, ready to follow up their success; and the 60th Rifles, scattered through wooded ground in front, were to keep down the fire of the enemy from the walls. The cavalry and horse artillery, under Sir Hope Grant, held themselves ready for repulsing any sortie to which our ill-guarded camp would now lie exposed.

The whole army numbered under nine thousand men, rather more than a third of them English soldiers. There was a contingent of native allies from Cashmere, who did not give much assistance when it came to fighting. Our Punjaubee auxiliaries, however, proved more serviceable, burning for the humiliation and spoil of this Moslem Sanctuary, against which the Sikhs bore an old religious grudge.

Unfortunately there came about some delay, and daylight had broken before the three left columns were ready to advance from Ludlow Castle, under a tremendous artillery fire from both sides. The advantage of a surprise was thus lost. Suddenly our guns fell silent, a bugle rang out, and forth dashed the stormers upon the walls manned to receive them with fire and steel. Nicholson's column found that something had been done to repair the breach; and so thick was the hail of bullets to which they stood exposed in the open, that for several minutes they could not even gain the ditch, man after man being struck down in placing the ladders. But, once across that difficulty, they scrambled up the breach, where the raging and cursing rebels hurled its fragments down upon them, but, for all their shouts of defiance, did not await a struggle hand to hand. They fled before the onset, and our men poured in through the undefended gap.

The same success, and the same losses, attended the second column, making good its entry at the Water Bastion. A way for the third had been opened by a resounding deed of heroism, which struck popular imagination as the chief feature of this daring assault. The Cashmere Gate, that from first to last plays such a part in the story of Delhi, must be blown up to give the assailants passage into the bastion from which it faces sideways. Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, of the Engineers, with three sergeants and a bugler, formed the forlorn hope that dashed up to the gate, each loaded with 25 lbs. of powder in a bag. The enemy were so amazed at this audacity that for a moment they offered no opposition as the gallant fellows sped across the shattered drawbridge, and began to lay their bags against the heavy wood-work of the inner gate. But then from the wicket and from the top of the gateway they found themselves fired at point-blank, resolutely completing their task. Home, after his bag was placed, had the luck to jump into the ditch unhurt. Salkeld was shot in two places, but handed the portfire to a sergeant, who fell dead. The next man lighted the fuse at the cost of a mortal wound; and the third sergeant did not save himself till he saw the train well alight. A bugle-note calling forward the stormers was drowned in the roar of a terrific explosion, as the 52nd, held in leash for this signal, eagerly sprang on to pour through the smoking ruins. Thus all three columns, about the same time, had lodged themselves within the defences.

While the third column pushed forward into the heart of the city, and the supporting parties moved up to occupy the points taken, the rest of the assailants turned to their right by a road which ran at the back of the ramparts, clearing them as they went, and mastering the Mori and Cabul Gates from behind; then tried to make their way towards the Lahore Gate where they hoped to join hands with the fourth column. But this, repulsed by a slaughterous fire and its leader wounded, had alone failed in the errand assigned to it. Here, too, the routed Sepoys rallied within their walls, and brought guns to bear down a narrow lane in which the progress of Nicholson's column was fatally arrested. The young General himself, the foremost hero of that day, fell shot through the body while cheering on his men, and with his life-blood ebbed for a time the tide of victory that had swept him on hitherto without a check. He was carried away to die in the camp, yet not till he knew Delhi to be fully won. His force had to fall back to the Cabul Gate, and for the meanwhile stand upon the defensive.

The third column, under Colonel Campbell, had met less opposition in penetrating straight into the city, guided by Sir Thomas Metcalf, who, though a civilian, had all along made himself most useful by his thorough knowledge of the localities. Charging through lanes, bazaars, and open spaces, they crossed the palace gardens, forced a passage over the Chandnee Chouk, "Silver Street," the main commercial thoroughfare of Delhi, and threaded their way by narrow winding streets right up to the Jumma Musjid, or Great Mosque, whose gigantic steps, colonnades and cupolas tower so majestically over the centre of the Mogul's capital. But here they were brought to a stand before solid walls and gates, having neither guns nor powder-bags to break their way further, while from the buildings around the enemy poured destruction into the chafing ranks. They had to withdraw to an enclosure, which was held for an hour and a half under hot fire; and when Colonel Campbell learned how the other column could not get beyond the Cabul Gate to support him, he saw nothing for it but to retire upon the ruined English Church near the Cashmere Gate, as did a party he had detached to occupy the police office.

The result of the first day's fighting, then, was that, with a dear loss of nearly twelve hundred killed and wounded, our soldiers had ensconced themselves along the north side of the walls, where, throwing up hasty defences, they prepared to be in turn attacked by a host of still resolute warriors.

England's glory was now mingled with England's shame. The crafty foe, knowing our men's besetting sin, would appear to have purposely strewn the emptied streets with bottles of wine, beer, and spirits, the most effectual weapons they could have used, for on them the parched Saxons fell with such greedy thirst that by next morning a large part of the army was, in plain English, helplessly drunk, and it seemed hopeless to attempt any progress that day. Our Sikh and Goorkha auxiliaries, for their part, thought less of fighting than of securing the long-expected loot of a city so famed for riches. Had the enemy been more active, he could have taken such an opportunity of turning victory into ruin by a resolute diversion in the assailants' rear, two or three miles as they now were from their slightly guarded camp and base of supplies. General Wilson, trembling to think that even yet he might have to make a disastrous retreat, ordered all liquor found to be destroyed, and took steps to restrain the licence of plundering, which is always a temptation to disorder for a storming army as well as a cruel terror for the inhabitants.

Thanks to his measures, Wednesday the 16th found the force more fit to follow up its success, and that day ended with a considerable advance in regaining the city, point after point, against a resistance growing daily feebler. The arsenal was captured with a great number of guns. Next day again, still further progress was made; then up to the end of the week the assailants went on winning their way, street by street, to the Royal Palace and the Great Mosque. These spacious edifices, as well as the long-contested Lahore Gate, were easily carried on Sunday, the 20th, the mass of the rebels having fled by night through the gates beyond, leaving desolate streets, where the remnant of panic-stricken inhabitants durst hardly show their faces.

Everywhere now prevailed ruin and silence over the captured city. For our soldiers, that Sunday afternoon might at length be a time of rest, their hard and bloody week's work done when the British flag flew once more over the palace of the Grand Mogul, and the Queen's health was triumphantly drunk upon his deserted throne. A wild riot of pillage and destruction ran through the famous halls, on which is inscribed what must have now read such a mockery: "If on earth there be a Paradise, it is here!" To this monument of Oriental splendour, the last monarch of his race was soon brought a humble captive.

The old king, who cuts such a pitiful figure throughout those tragic scenes, refusing to follow the flying troops, with his wife and family had taken sanctuary in one of the vast lordly tombs that rise over the buried ruins of old Delhi, stretching for leagues beyond the present limits of the city. Time-serving informers hastened to betray his refuge to one who had neither fear of peril nor respect for misfortune. Hodson of Hodson's Horse, a name often prominent in this history, an old Rugby boy of the Tom Brown days, was a man as to whose true character the strangest differences of opinion existed even among those who knew him best; but no one ever doubted his readiness when any stroke of daring was to be done. The city scarcely mastered, he offered to go out and seize the king, to which General Wilson consented on the unwelcome condition that his life should be spared.

With fifty of his irregular troopers, Hodson galloped off to the tomb, an enormous mausoleum of red stone, inlaid with marble and surmounted by a marble dome, its square court-yard enclosed in lofty battlemented walls with towers and gateways, forming a veritable fortress, which had indeed, in former days, served as a citadel of refuge. That Sunday afternoon the sacred enclosure swarmed with an excited multitude, among whom Hodson and his men stood for two hours, awaiting an answer to their summons for the king's surrender. Cowering in a dimly-lit cell within, the unhappy old man was long in making up his mind; but finally, yielding to the terrified or traitorous councils of those around him, he came forth with his favourite wife and youngest son, and gave up his arms, asking from the Englishman's own lips a renewal of the promise that their lives should be spared. In palanquins they were slowly carried back to his gorgeous palace, where the descendant of the Moguls found himself now a prisoner, treated with contempt, and indebted for his life to the promise of an English officer--a promise openly regretted by some in the then temper of the conquerors.

A more doubtful deed of prowess was to make Hodson doubly notorious. Learning that two of the king's sons and a grandson were still lurking in that tomb of their ancestors, he went out again next day with a hundred troopers, and demanded their unconditional surrender. Again the crowd stood cowed before his haughty courage. Again the fugitives spent time in useless parley, while, surrounded by thousands of sullen natives, Hodson bore himself as if he had an army at his back. At length the princes, overcome by the determination of this masterful Briton, came forth from their retreat, and gave themselves up to his mercy. They were placed in a cart, and taken towards the city under a small guard, Hodson remaining behind for an hour or two to see the crowd give up its arms, as they actually did at his command; then he galloped after the captives, and overtook them not far from the walls of Delhi.

Thus far all had gone well; but now came the dark feature of the story that has given rise to so much debate. Hodson's account is that the mob, which he had hitherto treated with such cool contempt, became threatening when he had almost reached the Lahore Gate, causing a fear that the prisoners might even yet be rescued. His accusers assert that he let himself be overcome by the lust for vengeful slaughter which then possessed too many a British heart. Riding up to the cart, he ordered the princes to dismount and strip. Then, in a loud voice proclaiming them the murderers of English women and children, with his own hand he shot all three dead. The naked bodies, thus slain without trial or deliberation, were exposed to public view in the Chandnee Chouk, as stern warning of what it was to rouse the old Adam in English nature.

Wilson's army might now draw a deep breath of relief after successfully performing such a critical operation, the results of which should be quickly and widely felt. Like a surgeon's lancet, it had at last been able to prick the festering sore that was the chief head of far-spread inflammation. The fall of the Mogul's capital was a signal for rebellion to hide its head elsewhere. Doubtful friends, wavering allies, were confirmed, as our open enemies were dismayed, by the tidings which let India's dusky millions know how British might had prevailed against the proudest defiance.

At the seat of war, indeed, this good effect was not at once so apparent as might have been expected; the result being rather to let loose thousands of desperate Sepoys for roving mischief, while even hitherto inactive mutineers now rushed into the field as if urged by resentful fury. But immediate and most welcome was the relief in the Punjaub, where our power seemed strained to breaking-point by the tension of delay in an enterprise for which almost all its trustworthy troops had been drawn away, leaving the country at the mercy of any sudden rising, such as did take place at two or three points among the agitated population. But the fear of that danger was lost in the good news from Delhi, as soon as it could be trusted.

Not the least trouble of our people in those days was the want of certain news, to let them know how it stood with their cause amid the blinding waves of rebellion. The mails were stopped or passed irregularly. Native messengers could not be depended upon, magnifying the danger through terror, or dissembling it through ill-will; truth is always a rare commodity in India. Many a tiny letter went and came rolled in an inch of quill sewed away in the bearer's dress, or carried in his mouth to be swallowed in an instant, for, if detected, he was like to be severely punished. Officers were fain to correspond with each other by microscopic missives written in Greek characters, a remnant of scholarship thus turned to account against the case of their falling into hostile hands. The natives, for their part, though often ill-served by their own ignorance and proneness to exaggeration, were marvellously quick to catch the rumours of our misfortunes, which spread from mouth to mouth as by some invisible telegraph. They did not prove always so ready to appreciate the signs of a coming restoration of our supremacy, once the tide had turned. All over India the eyes of white men and black had been fixed eagerly on Delhi; then while English hearts had become more than once vainly exalted by false rumours of its fall, when this did take place at length, the population, even of the surrounding country, showed themselves slow to believe in the catastrophe.

General Wilson at once followed up his success by sending out a column under Colonel Greathed to pursue the Sepoys who were making for Oudh. All went smoothly with this expedition, till Greathed had letters urgently begging him to turn aside for the relief of Agra, believed to be threatened by the advance of another army of mutineers from Central India. By forced marches the column made for Agra, where it arrived on the morning of October 10, and was received with great jubilation by the crowd pent up within the walls. But to the end it seemed as if the drama enacted on that gorgeous scene was destined to have tragi-comic features. The Agra people, under the mistaken idea that their enemies had fallen back, gave themselves to welcoming their friends, when mutual congratulations were rudely interrupted by the arrival, after all, of the Sepoys, who had almost got into the place without being observed. Sir George Campbell, so well-known both as an Indian official and as a member of Parliament, describes the scene of amazement and confusion that followed. He was at breakfast with a friend who had ventured to re-occupy his house beyond the walls, when a sound of firing was heard, at first taken for a salute, but soon suggesting something more serious. Sir George got out his horse, borrowed a revolver, and galloped down to the parade, on which he found round shot hopping about like cricket-balls.

"It turned out that the enemy had completely surprised us. Instead of retreating, they had that morning marched straight down the metalled high-road--not merely a surprise party, but the whole force, bag and baggage, with all their material and many guns, including some exceedingly large ones; but no one took the least notice of them. There was a highly-organized Intelligence Department at Agra, who got unlimited news, true and false, but on this occasion no one brought any news at all. The only circumstance to favour the advance was that the high millet crops were on the ground, some of them ten or twelve feet high, and so the force marching down the road was not so visible as it would have been at another time. They reached the point where the road crossed the parade-ground quite unobserved. They probably had some scouts, and discovering our troops there, arranged themselves and got their guns in position before they announced themselves to us. The first attack was made by a few fanatics, who rushed in and cut down two or three of our men, but were not numerous enough to do material harm. If the enemy's real forces had made a rush in the same way, when no one expected them, there is no saying what might have happened; but, fortunately, as natives generally do, they believed in and stuck to their great guns, and instead of charging in, they opened that heavy fire which had disturbed us at breakfast."

The Sepoys, in fact, had also been surprised, not knowing that a European force had reached Agra before them. Our soldiers at once got under arms; then a battery of artillery, the 9th Lancers, and a regiment of Sikhs were first to arrive on the ground. The rest came up before long, at first in some doubt as to who was friend or foe. A charge of the enemy's cavalry had almost been taken for our own people running away. Then these troopers, broken by a charge of the Lancers, "were galloping about the parade and our men firing at them as if it were a kind of big battue." Some of the routed sowars got near enough to the lines to cause a general panic there; and the way to the scene of action was blocked by men wildly galloping back for the fort, some of them, it is said, on artillery horses which they had stolen. "Everybody was riding over everybody else."

Once the confusion got straightened out, however, the hardened Delhi troops were not long in repelling this unexpected attack. A tumbrel blew up among the Sepoys, and that seemed to be a sign of disheartenment for them. They began to give way, making a stand here and there, but soon fled in complete rout, leaving their baggage and guns to the victors, who chased them for several miles.

Sir George Campbell, though a civilian, has to boast of more than one amusing exploit on this battle-field. In the heat of pursuit, his horse ran away with him, and, much against his will, carried him right towards a band of Sepoys hurrying off a train of guns. All he could do was to wave his sword and shout, partly to bring up assistance, and partly in the hope of frightening the enemy. It is said that the battle of Alma was perhaps decided by the accident of Lord Raglan rashly straying right within the Russian position, when the enemy, seeing an English general officer and his staff among them, took it for granted that all must be lost. So it was with these Sepoys, who forthwith ran away, leaving three guns, which Sir George could claim to have captured by his single arm, but did not know what to do with them. It occurred to him to shoot the leading bullock of each gun-team, to prevent the rest getting away, while he went to seek for assistance; then he found that his borrowed pistol would not go off. In the end, the three guns were brought back to Agra in triumph, and probably form part of the show of obsolete artillery and ammunition exhibited to travellers within the walls of its vast fortress.

"One more adventure I had which somewhat detracted from my triumph with the guns. I overtook an armed rebel, not a Sepoy, but a native matchlock-man; he threw away his gun, but I saw that he had still a large powder-horn and an old-fashioned pistol in his belt; my blood was up, and I dealt him a mighty stroke with my sword, expecting to cut him almost in two, but my swordsmanship was not perfect; he did not fall dead as I expected; on the contrary, he took off his turban, and presenting his bare head to me, pointed to a small scratch and said, 'There, Sahib, evidently God did not intend you to kill me, so you may as well let me off now.' I felt very small; evidently he had the best of the argument. But he was of a forgiving disposition, and relieved my embarrassment by cheerful conversation, while he professed, as natives do, that he would serve me for the rest of his life. I made him throw away any arms he still had, safe-conducted him to the nearest field, and we parted excellent friends; but I did not feel that I had come very gloriously out of it. I have never since attempted to use a sword as an offensive weapon, nor, I think I may say, attempted to take the life of any fellow-creature."

Such amusing episodes come welcome in this grimly tragic story. But, indeed, it is remarkable to note how our countrymen, at the worst, never quite lost their sense of humour. Some singular proofs of Mark Tapleyish spirit, under depressing circumstances, are supplied by Mr. J.W. Sherer's narrative, incorporated in Colonel Maude's recent _Memoirs of the Mutiny_. Mr. Sherer, like Edwards, had to run from his post, and came near to sharing the same woes, but while the latter's book might be signed _Il Penseroso_, the other is all _L'Allegro_. Looking over Indian papers of that day, among the most dismaying news and the most painful rumours, one finds squibs in bad verse and rough jokes, not always in the best taste, directed against officers who seemed wanting in courage, or stations where the community had given way to ludicrous panic without sufficient cause. Some unintended absurdities appear, also, due no doubt to native compositors or to extraordinary haste, as when one newspaper declares that a certain regiment has "covered itself with _immoral_ glory!"

On the whole, however, editors were more disposed to be bloodthirsty than facetious. After forty years have put us in a position to look more calmly on that welter of hate and dread, one reads with a smile how fiercely the men of pen and ink called out for prompt action, for rapid movements, for ruthless severities--why was not Delhi taken at once?--why were reinforcements not hurried up to this point or that?--what was such and such an officer about that he did not overcome all resistance as easily as it could be done on paper? The time was now at hand, when these remonstrances could be made with less unreason. The rebellion had been fairly got under with the fall of Delhi; and the rest would mainly be a matter of patience and vigilance, though at one point the flames still glowed in perilous conflagration.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: When the Highlanders first appeared in India, a report is said to have spread among the natives that English men running short, we had sent our women into the field; but the prowess of the new warriors soon corrected that misapprehension.]