CHAPTER IX

THE EXTINCTION

It has been impossible to note all the minor operations in this confused war, and the isolated risings of which here and there we have caught glimpses through the clouds of smoke overhanging the main field of action--a mere corner of India, yet a region as large as England. Thrills of sympathetic disaffection ran out towards Assam on the one side, and to Goojerat on the other; up northwards into the Punjaub, as we have seen, then through the Central Provinces, down into Bombay, and to the great native state of Hyderabad, where the Nizam and his shrewd minister Salar Jung managed to keep their people quiet, yet reverses on our part might at any time have inflamed them beyond restraint.

Among the protected or semi-independent Courts of Rajpootana and Central India there were serious troubles. Scindia and Holkar, the chief Mahratta princes, stood loyal to us; but their soldiery took the other side. The most remarkable case of hostility here was that of the Ranee or Queen of Jhansi, a dispossessed widow, who had much the same grievance against the British Government as Nana Sahib, and avenged it by similar treacherous cruelty. She managed to blind the small English community to their danger till the Sepoys broke out early in June with the usual excesses; then our people, taking refuge in a fort, were persuaded to surrender, and basely massacred. After this version of the Cawnpore tragedy on a smaller scale, the Ranee had seized the throne of her husband's ancestors, to defend it with more spirit than was shown by the would-be Peshwa.

The whole heart of the Continent remained in a state of intermittent disorder, and little could be done to put this down till the beginning of 1858, when columns of troops from Madras and Bombay respectively marched northward to clear the central districts, and rid Sir Colin Campbell of the marauding swarms that thence troubled his rear. The Bombay column, under Sir Hugh Rose, had the harder work of it. Fighting his way through a difficult country, he first relieved the English who for more than seven months had been holding out at Saugor; then moved upon Jhansi, a strongly fortified city, with a rock-built citadel towering over its walls.

The Ranee was found determined to hold out, and on March 22nd a siege of this formidable fortress had to be undertaken by two brigades of European soldiers and Sepoys. At the end of a week, they in turn became threatened by over twenty thousand rebels, under Tantia Topee, advancing to raise the siege. Fifteen hundred men, only a third of them Europeans, were all Sir Hugh Rose could spare from before the walls, but with so few he faced this fresh army, that seemed able to envelop his little band in far-stretching masses. Again, however, bold tactics were successful against a foe that seldom bore to be assailed at an unexpected point. Attacked on each flank by cavalry and artillery, the long line of Sepoys wavered, and gave way at the first onset of a handful of infantry in front. They fell back on their second line, which had no heart to renew the battle. Setting fire to the jungle in front of him, Tantia Topee fled with the loss of all his guns, hotly pursued through the blazing timber by our cavalry and artillery.

Next day but one, April 3rd, while this brilliant victory was still fresh, our soldiers carried Jhansi by assault. Severe fighting took place in the streets round the palace; then the citadel was evacuated, and the Ranee fled to Calpee, not far south of Cawnpore. Sir Hugh Rose followed, as soon as he could get supplies, defeating Tantia Topee once more on the road. Our most terrible enemy was the sun, which struck down men by hundreds; the commander himself had several sunstrokes, and more than half of one regiment fell out in a single day. Half the whole force were in the doctor's hands; hardly a man among them but was ailing. The rebels knew this weak point well, and sought to make their harassing attacks in the mid-day heat. The want of water also was most distressing at times; men and beasts went almost mad with thirst, when tears could be seen running from the eyes of the huge elephants sweltering on a shadeless plain, and the backs of howling dogs were burned raw by the cruel sun.

But the work seemed almost done, and in confidence of full success Sir Hugh Rose did not wait for the Madras column, which should now have joined him, but could not come up in time. At Calpee, the arsenal of the rebels, were the Ranee and Rao Sahib, a nephew of the Nana. This place also was a picturesque and imposing fortress that might well have delayed the little army. But the infatuated enemy, driven to madness by drugs and fanatical excitement, swarmed out into the labyrinth of sun-baked ravines before it, to attack our fainting soldiers; then they met with such a reception as to send them flying, not only from the field, but from the town, and their arsenal, with all its contents, fell an easy prey to the victors. This march of a thousand miles, though so briefly related, was distinguished by some of the finest feats of arms in the whole war.

The Madras column, under General Whitlock, had meanwhile had a less glorious career. After overthrowing the Nawab of Banda, it marched against the boy-Prince of Kirwi, a ward of the British Government, who was only nine years old and could hardly be accused of hostility, though his people shared the feelings of their neighbours. His palace fell without a blow. Yet its treasures were pronounced a prize of the soldiery, and the poor boy himself became dethroned for a rebellious disposition he could neither inspire nor prevent. This seems one of the most discreditable of our doings in the high-handed suppression of the Mutiny.

Leaving Whitlock's men with their easily-won booty, we return to Sir Hugh Rose, who now hoped to take well-earned repose. At the end of May he had already begun to break up his sickly force, when startling news came that the resources of the rebels were not yet exhausted. Tantia, Rao Sahib, and the Ranee had hit on the idea of seizing Gwalior, and turning it into a nucleus of renewed hostility. Scindia marched out to meet them on June 1, but a few shots decided the battle. Most of his army went over to the enemy, who seized his capital with its treasures and munitions of war, and proclaimed Nana Sahib as Peshwa. The alarming danger was that under a title once so illustrious, a revolt might still spread far southwards into the Deccan through the whole Mahratta country.

Without waiting for orders, broken in health as he was, Sir Hugh Rose lost no time in starting out to extinguish this new conflagration. By forced marches, made as far as possible at night, he reached Gwalior in a fortnight, not without encounters by the way, in one of which fell obscurely that undaunted Amazon, the young Ranee, dressed in man's clothes, whom her conqueror judged more of a man than any among the rebel leaders; the Indian Joan of Arc she has been called, and certainly makes the most heroic figure on that side of the contest. On June 19, her allies made a last useless stand before Gwalior. The pursuers followed them into the city, and next day its mighty fortress, famed as the Gibraltar of India, was audaciously broken into by a couple of subalterns, a blacksmith, and a few Sepoys. The character of the war may be seen, in which such an exploit passes with so slight notice; and these rapid successes against mighty strongholds are a remarkable contrast to the vain efforts of the mutineers to wrest from us our poor places of refuge.

Tantia Topee was followed up beyond Gwalior, and once more defeated with the loss of his guns, a matter of one charge, over in a few minutes. But that by no means made an end of this pertinacious rebel, who for the best part of a year yet was to lead our officers a weary chase all up and down the west of Central India. Through jungles and deserts, over mountains and rivers, by half-friendly, half-frightened towns, running and lurking, doubling and twisting, along a trail of some three thousand miles, he found himself everywhere hunted and headed, but could nowhere be brought effectually to bay. Here and there he might make a short stand, which always had the same result; and the nature of these encounters may be judged from one in which, with eight thousand men and thirty guns, he was routed without a single casualty on our side.

The great object was to prevent him getting south into the Deccan and stirring up the Mahrattas there to swell his shrivelled ranks, and this was successfully attained. As for catching him, that seemed more difficult. But at length he grew worn out. Such followers as were left him slunk away to their homes, or split up into wandering bands of robbers; the toils of the hunters closed round their slippery chief, fairly driven into hiding. Betrayed by a rebel who thus sought to make his peace with our Government, he was at length laid hands on in the spring of 1859, to be speedily tried and hanged, the last hydra-head of the insurrection.

For murderers like those of Cawnpore there was no pardon. But English blood ran calmer now, and wise men might talk of mercy to the misguided masses. The Governor-General had already earned the honourable nickname of "Clemency Canning," given in bitterness by those not noble enough to use victory with moderation. At the end of 1858, the Queen's proclamation offered an amnesty to all rebels who had taken no part in the murder of Europeans. This came none too soon, for the ruthless severity with which we followed our first successes had been a main cause in driving the beaten enemy to desperation, and thus prolonging a hopeless struggle.

It must be confessed with shame, that not only in the heat of combat, but in deliberate savagery excited by the licence of revenge, and with formal mockeries of justice, too many Englishmen gave themselves up to a heathen lust for bloodshed. Hasty punishment fell often on the innocent as well as the guilty, meted with the same rough measure to mutinous soldiers and to those whose crime, as in Oudh, was that of defending their country against an arrogant and powerful oppressor. The mass of the natives could hardly help themselves between one side and the other; and if they did sympathize with their own countrymen, was it for the descendants of Cromwell, of Wallace, of Alfred, to blame them so wrathfully?

Heavy could not but be the punishment that visited this unhappy land. Not a few of the mutineers were spared in battle to die by inches in some unwholesome jungle, or slunk home, when they durst, only to meet the curses of the friends upon whom they had brought so much misery, and to be at a loss how to earn their bread, pay and pension having been scattered to the winds of rebellion. The sufferings of the civil population, even where they had not risen in arms, were also pitiable; and if hundreds of homes in England had been bereaved, there would be thousands of dusky heathen to mourn their dear ones. The country was laid waste in many parts; towns and palaces were ruined; landowners were dispossessed, nobles driven into beggary among the multitude of humbler victims, whose very religion was insulted to bring home to them their defeat. A favourite mode of execution was blowing prisoners away from the mouth of guns, through which they believed themselves doomed in the shadowy life beyond death; and where they came to be hanged, the last rude offices were done by the eternally profaning touch of the sweeper caste. The temples on the river-side at Cawnpore had been blown up, as a sacrifice to the memory of our massacred country-people. The mosques and shrines of Delhi were thrown open to the infidel. Immediately after its capture, there had even been a talk of razing this great city to the ground, that its magnificence might be forgotten in its guilt.

The old king had paid dearly for that short-lived attempt to revive the glories of his ancestors. Tried by court-martial, he was transported to Rangoon, where he soon died in captivity. Certain other potentates were punished, and some rewarded at their expense, for varying conduct during a crisis when most of them had the same desire to be on the winning side, but some played their game more skilfully or more luckily than others. Nana Sahib, the most hateful of our enemies, escaped the speedy death that awaited him if ever he fell into British hands. He fled to the Himalayas with a high price on his head, and his fate was never known for certain; but the probability is that long ago he has perished more miserably than if he had been brought to the gallows.

The Power which had set up and pulled down so many princes became itself dispossessed and abolished through the upheavings of the Mutiny. In England, it was felt on all hands that such an empire as had grown out of our Eastern possessions, should no longer be left under the control of even a so dignified body as the East India Company. The realm won by private or corporate enterprise was annexed to the dominions of the British Crown; and on Nov. 1, 1858, the same proclamation which offered amnesty to the submissive rebels, declared that henceforth the Queen of England ruled as sovereign over India.

In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress at Delhi, amid an imposing assemblage both of actual rulers and of gorgeous native potentates bearing time-honoured titles, who thus fully acknowledged themselves vassals of the Power that in little more than a century had taken the place of the Great Mogul.

Our rule in India has now become marked by a feature almost new in the history of conquerors. We begin to recognize more and more clearly that we owe this subjugated land a debt in the elevation of her long-oppressed millions. With this duty comes a new source of danger. By the very means we take here to raise up a sense of common welfare, and through the destruction of those petty tyrannies that hitherto held apart the elements of national life, we are teaching the agglomeration of races to whom we have given a common name to look on themselves as one people, still too much differing from us in interests and sympathies; and it is to be feared that their growth in healthy progress does not keep pace with the hot-headed and loud-tongued patriotism of some who, in the schools of their rulers, have learned rather to talk about than to be fit for freedom. Though such noisy discontent is chiefly noted among the classes least formidable in arms, while the more warlike seem not unwilling to accept our supremacy, if ever another rebellion took place, we should have to deal with a less unorganized sentiment of national existence, and perhaps with the deeper and wider counsels, for want of which mainly, we have seen how the Mutiny miscarried, that else might have swept our scanty force out of India. On the other hand, in such a future emergency, we should have the advantage both of the improved scientific arms, so decisive in modern warfare, the use of which we now take more care to keep in our own hands, and of those better means of communication with the East, gained within the lifetime of our generation. In less than a month, we could throw into India as many English soldiers as, in 1857, arrived only in time to stamp out the embers of an almost ruinous conflagration.

In any case, the conscience of England has set up a new standard to judge its achievements--by the good we can do to this great people, and not by the gain we can wring from them, the honour of our mastery must stand or fall.

The work of education may well be longer and harder than that of conquest. The conduct of our countrymen here causes yet too much shame and doubt in thoughtful minds. But when we see the spirit in which many of India's rulers undertake their difficult task--the patient labours of officials, following the pattern of men like Outram, Lawrence, Havelock, the devotion to duty that often meets no reward but an early grave--we take hope that their work may after all weld into strength a free, prosperous, and united nation. And though we wisely forbear to force our faith upon these benighted souls, it rests with ourselves in time, through the power of example, to win a nobler victory than any in the blood-stained annals of Hindostan. Missionary teachings can little avail, if Christians, set among the heathen in such authority and pre-eminence, are not true to their own lessons of righteousness. Standing beside that proudly-mournful monument which now crowns the ridge of Delhi, and raises our holiest symbol over the once-rebellious city, every Englishman should be inspired to a braver struggle than with armed foes, that, mastering himself, he may rightly do his part towards planting the Cross--not in show alone, but in power--above the cruel Crescent and the hideous idols of an outworn creed!

APPENDIX

CHIEF DATES OF INDIAN HISTORY

Alexander the Great's Invasion of India B.C. 327

Slave Kings of Delhi A.D. 1206-90

Tamerlane's Invasion 1398

Vasco de Gama's Voyage 1498

Baber founds the Mogul Empire 1526

Akbar's Reign 1556-1605

East India Company Incorporated 1600

Sivajee becomes King of the Mahrattas 1674

Death of Aurungzebe 1707

Nadir Shah plunders Delhi 1739

Clive's Defence of Arcot 1751

Battle of Plassey 1757

War with Hyder Ali 1780

Trial of Warren Hastings 1788-95

Storming of Seringapatam 1799

Battle of Assaye 1803

Overthrow of the Mahrattas 1818

First Burmese War 1824

Capture of Bhurtpore 1827

Lord William Bentinck's Governorship 1829

Disasters in Afghanistan 1841

Conquest of Scinde 1843

First Sikh War 1845

Second Sikh War 1848

Conquest of Pegu 1852

Annexation of Oudh 1856

The Sepoy Mutiny 1857

Outbreak at Meerut May 10

The Mutineers seize Delhi May 11

General Anson marches against Delhi May 25

Mutiny at Lucknow May 30

" " Cawnpore June 4

" " Jhansi June 5

" " Allahabad June 6

Battle of Budlee-Ka-Serai June 8

Panic Sunday at Calcutta June 14

Mutiny at Futtehgurh June 18

Massacre at Cawnpore June 27

Sir H. Lawrence defeated at Chinhut June 30

English Retreat into Agra Fort July 5

Havelock advances from Allahabad July 7

Nana Sahib routed before Cawnpore July 16

Mutiny at Dinapore July 25

Storming of Delhi Sept. 14

Surrender of the King Sept. 21

Havelock's Relief of Lucknow Sept. 25

Sir Colin Campbell marches to Lucknow Nov. 9

Residency of Lucknow evacuated Nov. 22

Tantia Topee defeated at Cawnpore Dec. 6

1858

Lucknow finally taken March 21

Taking of Jhansi April 3

Battle of Bareilly May 5

Battle before Calpee May 22

Scindia defeated by the Rebels June 1

Gwalior taken June 19

The Queen's Proclamation Nov. 1

1859

Tantia Topee taken April 15

The Queen proclaimed Empress of India 1877

THE END

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay.