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Chapter 4

January, 1857

The new year dawned upon India with a fair promise of continued tranquillity. But it was only a few weeks old when the storm began to arise. It is in the cold weather that the British officer sees most of the Sipahi, and best understands his temper.

The storm rising

Company drills, and regimental parades, and brigade exercises, are continually bringing him face to face with his men, and he roams about Cantonments as he cannot roam in the midst of the summer heats and autumnal deluges. But this winter of 1856–57 had nearly passed away, and he had seen no indications of anything to disturb his settled faith in the fidelity of the native soldier. There was outward serenity everywhere, and apparent cheerfulness and content, when suddenly a cloud arose in an unexpected quarter; and a tremendous danger, dimly seen at first, began to expand into gigantic proportions.

For years the enemies of the English, all who had been alarmed by our encroachments, all who had suffered by our usurpations, all who had been shorn by our intervention of privileges and perquisites which they had once enjoyed, and who saw before them a still deeper degradation and a more absolute ruin, had been seeking just such an opportunity as now rose up suddenly before them. They bad looked for it in one direction; they had looked for it in another; and more than once they thought that they had found it. They thought that they had found something, of which advantage might be taken to persuade the Native soldiery that their Christian masters purposed to defile their caste and to destroy their religion. But the false steps, which we had hitherto taken, had not been false enough to serve the purposes of those who had sought to destroy the British Government by means of a general revolt of the Native Army. For half a century there

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had been nothing of a sufficiently palpable and comprehensive character to alarm the whole Sipahi Army, Muhammadan and Hindu. But now, suddenly, a story of most terrific import found its way into circulation. It was stated that Government had manufactured cartridges, greased with animal fat, for the use of the Native Army; and the statement was not a lie.

Brown Bess

The old infantry musket, the venerable Brown Bess of the British soldier, had been condemned as a relic of barbarism, and it was wisely determined, in the Indian as in the English Army, to supersede it by the issue of an improved description of fire-arm, with grooved bores, after the fashion of a rifle. As a ball from these new rifled muskets reached the enemy at a much greater distance than the ammunition of the old weapon, the Sipahi rejoiced in the advantage which would thus be conferred upon him in battle, and lauded the Government for what he regarded as a sign both of the wisdom of his rulers and of their solicitude for his welfare. And when it was learnt that depots had been established at three great military stations for the instruction of the Sipahi in the use of the new weapon, there was great talk in the Lines about the wonderful European musket that was to keep all comers at a distance. But, unhappily, these rifled barrels could not be loaded without the lubrication of the cartridge. And the voice of joy and praise was suddenly changed into a wild cry of grief and despair when it was bruited abroad that the cartridge, the end of which was to be bitten off by the Sipahi, was greased with the fat of the detested swine of the Muhammadan, or the venerated cow of the Hindu.

Story of the greased cartridges

How the truth first transpired has been often told. Eight miles from Calcutta lies the military station of Damdamah. For many years it had been the head-quarters of the Bengal Artillery. There all the many distinguished officers of that distinguished corps had learnt the rudiments of their profession, and many had spent there the happiest years of their lives. But it was suddenly discovered that it was not suited to the purpose for which it was designed. The head-quarters of the Artillery were removed to Mirath. The red coat displaced the blue. The barracks and the mess-house, and the officer’s bungalows, were given up to other occupants; and buildings, which from their very birth had held nothing but the appliances of ordnance, were degraded into manufactories and storehouses of small-arm

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ammunition. Thus, by a mutation of fortune, when the Enfield Rifle began to supersede Brown Bess, Damdamah became one of three Cantonments at which the Government established Schools of Musketry for instruction in the use of the improved rifled weapon. Now, it happened that, one day in January, a low-caste Lascar, or magazine-man, meeting a high-caste Sipahi in the Cantonment, asked him for a drink of water from his lotah. The Brahman at once replied with an objection on the score of caste, and was tauntingly told that caste was nothing, that high-caste and low-caste would soon be all the same, as cartridges smeared with beef-fat and hog’s-lard were being made for the Sipahis at the depots, and would soon be in general use throughout the army199.

The Brahman carried this story to his comrades, and it was soon known to every Sipahi at the depot. A shudder ran through the Lines. Each man to whom the story was told caught the great fear from his neighbour, and trembled at the thought of the pollution that lay before him. The contamination was to be brought to his very lips; it was not merely to be touched, it was to be eaten and absorbed into his very being. It was so terrible a thing, that, if the most malignant enemies of the British Government had sat in conclave for years, and brought an excess of devilish ingenuity to bear upon the invention of a scheme framed with the design of alarming the Sipahi mind from one end of India to the other, they could not have devised a lie better suited to the purpose. But now the English themselves had placed in the hands of their enemies, not a fiction, but a fact of tremendous significance, to be turned against them as a deadly instrument of destruction. It was the very thing that had been so long sought, and up to this time sought in vain. It required no explanation. It needed no ingenious gloss to make the full force of the thing itself patent to the multitude. It was not a suggestion, an inference, a probability; but a demonstrative fact, so complete in its naked truth, that no exaggeration could have helped it. Like the case of the leathern head-dresses, which had convulsed Southern India half a century before, it appealed to the strongest feelings both of the Muhammadan and the Hindu;

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but though similar in kind, it was incomparably more offensive in degree; more insulting, more appalling, more disgusting.

We know so little of Native Indian society beyond its merest externals, the colour of the people’s skins, the form of their garments, the outer aspects of their houses, that History, whilst it states broad results, can often only surmise causes. But there are some surmises which have little less than the force of gospel. We feel what we cannot see, and have faith in what we cannot prove. It is a fact, that there is a certain description of news, which travels in India, from one station to another, with a rapidity almost electric. Before the days of the “lightning post,” there was sometimes intelligence in the Bazaars of the Native dealers and the Lines of the Native soldiers, especially if the news imported something disastrous to the British, days before it reached, in any official shape, the high functionaries of Government200. We cannot trace the progress of these evil-tidings. The Natives of India have an expressive saying, that “it is in the air.” It often happened that an uneasy feeling--an impression that something had happened, though they “could not discern the shape thereof” – pervaded men’s minds, in obscure anticipation of the news that was travelling towards them in all its tangible proportions. Al] along the line of road, from town to town, from village to village, were thousands to whom the feet of those who brought the glad tidings were beautiful and welcome. The British Magistrate, returning from his evening ride, was perhaps met on the road near the Bazaar by a venerable Native on an ambling pony – a Native respectable of aspect, with white beard and whiter garments, who salaamed to the English gentleman as he passed, and went on his way freighted with intelligence refreshing to the souls of those to whom it was to be communicated, to be used with judgment and sent on with despatch. This was but one of many costumes worn by the messenger of evil. In whatsoever shape he passed, there was nothing outwardly to distinguish him. Next morning there was a sensation in the

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Bazaar, and a vague excitement in the Sipahis’ Lines. But when rumours of disaster reached the houses of the chief English officers, they were commonly discredited. Their own letters were silent on the subject. It was not likely to be true, they said, as they had heard nothing about it. But it was true; and the news had travelled another hundred miles whilst the white gentlemen, with bland scepticism, were shaking their heads over the lies of the Bazaar.

It is difficult, in most cases, to surmise the agency to whose interested efforts is to be attributed this rapid circulation of evil tidings. But when the fact of the greased cartridges became known, there were two great motive powers, close at hand, to give an immediate impulse to the promulgation of the story. The political and the religious animosities, excited by the recent measures of the English, were lying in wait for an opportunity to vent themselves in action. It happened at this time, that the enmities which we had most recently provoked had their head-quarters in Calcutta. It happened, also that these enmities had their root partly in Hinduism, partly in Muhammadanism. There was the great Brahmanical Institution, the Dharma Sobha of Calcutta, whose special function it was to preserve Hinduism pure and simple in all its ancestral integrity, and, therefore, to resist the invasions and encroachments of the English, by which it was continually threatened. There were bygone injuries to revenge, and there were coming dangers to repel. On the other side, there was the deposed kingship of Oudh, with all its perilous surroundings. Sunk in slothfulness and self-indulgence, with little real care for anything beyond the enjoyment of the moment, Wajid Ali himself may have neither done nor suggested anything, in this crisis, to turn to hostile account the fact of the greased cartridges. But there were those about him with keener eyes, and stronger wills, and more resolute activities, who were not likely to suffer such an opportunity to escape. It needed no such special agencies to propagate a story, which would have travelled, in ordinary course of accidental tale-bearing, to the different stations in the neighbourhood of the capital. But it was expedient in the eyes of (fur enemies that it should at once be invested with all its terrors, and the desired effect wrought upon the Sipahi’s mind, before any one could be induced, by timely official explanation, to believe that the outrage was an accident, an oversight, a mistake. So, from the beginning, the

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story went forth that the English, in prosecution of a long-cherished design, and under instructions from the Queen in Council, had greased the Sipahis’ cartridges with the fat of pigs and cows, for the express purpose of defiling both Muhammadans and Hindus.

On the banks of the Hugli River, sixteen miles from Calcutta by land, is the great military station of Barrackpur. It was the head-quarters of the Presidency division of the Army. There was assembled the largest body of Native troops cantoned in that part of India. There, on the green slopes of the river, stood, in a well-wooded park, the country-seat of the Governor-General. Both in its social and its military aspects it was the foremost Cantonment of Bengal. As the sun declined on the opposite bank, burnishing the stream with gold, and throwing into dark relief the heavy masses of the native boats, the park roads were alive with the equipages of the English residents. There visitors from Calcutta, escaping for a while from the white glare and dust-laden atmosphere of the metropolis, consorted with the families of the military officers; and the neighbouring villas of Titagarh sent forth their retired inmates to join the throng of “eaters of the evening air.” There the young bride, for it is a rare place for honeymoons, emerging from her seclusion, often looked out upon the world for the first time in her new state. There many a young ensign, scarcely less hopeful and less exultant, wore for the first time the bridal garments of his profession, and backed the capering Arab that had consumed a large part of his worldly wealth. It was a pleasant, a gay, a hospitable station; and there was not in all India a Cantonment so largely known and frequented by the English. There was scarcely an officer of the Bengal Army to whom the name of Barrackpur did not suggest some familiar associations, whilst to numbers of the non-military classes, whose occupations tied them to the capital, it was for long years, perhaps throughout the whole of their money-getting career, the extreme point to which their travels extended.

At Barrackpur, in the early part of 1857, were stationed four Native Infantry regiments. There were the 2nd Grenadiers201 and the 43rd, two of the “beautiful regiments” which had helped General Nott to hold Kandahar against all

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comers, and had afterwards gained new laurels in desperate conflict with the Marathas and Sikhs. There was the 34th, an ill-omened number, for a few years before it had been struck out of the Army List for mutiny202, and a new regiment had been raised to fill the dishonourable gap. There also was the 70th, which had rendered good service in the second Sikh war. Three of these regiments had been recently stationed in the Panjab, or on its frontier, and the 34th had just come down from Lakhnao. This last regiment was commanded by Colonel S. G. Wheler, who had but recently been posted to it from another corps; the 43rd was under Colonel J. D. Kennedy, whose tenure of command had also been brief; whilst the 70th and the wing of the 2nd were commanded by officers who had graduated in those regiments, and were therefore well known to the men. The station was commanded by Brigadier Charles Grant; and the General of Division was that brave soldier and distinguished officer, John Hearsey, of whose services I have already spoken in a previous chapter of this work203.

On the 28th of January, Hearsey reported officially to the Adjutant-General’s office that an ill-feeling was “said to subsist in the minds of the Sipahis of the regiments at Barrackpur.” “A report,” he said, “has been spread by some designing persons, most likely Brahmans, or agents of the religious Hindu party in Calcutta (I believe it is called the ‘Dharma Sobha’), that the Sipahis are to be forced to embrace the Christian faith.” “Perhaps,” he added, “those Hindus who are opposed to the marriage of widows in Calcutta204 are using underhand means to thwart Government in abolishing the restraints lately removed by law for the marriage of widows, and conceive if they can make a party of the ignorant classes in the ranks of the army believe their religion or religious prejudices are eventually to be abolished by force, and by force they are all to be made Christians, and thus, by shaking their faith in Government, lose the confidence of their officers by inducing Sipahis to commit offences (such as incendiarism), so difficult to put a stop to or prove, they will gain their object.” The story of the greased cartridges was by this time in every

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mouth. There was not a Sipahi in the Lines of Barrackpur who was not familiar with it. There were few who did not believe that it was a deliberate plot, on the part of the English, designed to break down the caste of the Native soldier. And many were persuaded that there was an ultimate design to bring all men, along a common road of pollution, to the unclean faith of the beef-devouring, swine-eating Faringhi, who had conquered their country and now yearned to extirpate the creeds of their countrymen.

There was a time, perhaps, when the Sipahi would have carried the story to his commanding officer, and sought an explanation of it. Such confidences had ceased to be a part of the relations between them. But it was not the less manifest that the Native soldiery at Barrackpur were boiling over with bitter discontent. They had accepted not only the fact as it came to them from Damdamah, but the accompanying lies which had been launched from Calcutta; and they soon began, after the fashion of their kind, to make a public display of their wrath. It is their wont in such cases to symbolise the inner fires that are consuming them by acts of material incendiarism. No sooner is the Sipahi troubled in his mind, and bent on resistance, than he begins covertly in the night to set fire to some of the public buildings of the place. Whether this is an ebullition of childish anger – an outburst of irrepressible feeling in men not yet ripe for more reasonable action; or whether it be intended as a signal, whether the fires are beacon-fires lit up to warn others to be stirring, they are seldom or never wanting in such conjunctures as this. A few days after the story of the greased cartridges first transpired at Damdamah, the telegraph station at Barrackpur was burnt down. Then, night after night, followed other fires. Burning arrows were shot into the thatched roofs of officers’ bungalows. It was a trick learnt from the Santals, among whom the 2nd Grenadiers had served; and the fact that similar fires, brought about by the same means, were breaking out at Raniganj, more than a hundred miles away, stamped their complicity in the crime, for one wing of the regiment was stationed there. These incendiary fires were soon followed by nocturnal meetings. Men met each other with muffled faces, and discussed, in excited language, the intolerable outrage which the British Government had deliberately committed upon them. It is probable that they were not all Sipahis who attended these

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nightly musters. It is probable that they were not all Sipahis who signed the letters that went forth from the post-offices of Calcutta and Barrackpur, calling upon the soldiery at all the principal stations of the Bengal Army to resist the sacrilegious encroachments of the English. All that is clearly known is, that the meetings were held, that the letters were sent; and Cantonment after Cantonment fermented with the story of the greased cartridges.

The mutiny at Barhampur

A hundred miles from Barrackpur, to the northward, on the banks of the river, lies the military station of Barhampur. It was one well suited, by its position,. for the development of the desired results. For only a few miles beyond it lay the city of Murshidabad, the home of the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, the representative of the line of Subahdars, who, under the Imperial Government, had once ruled that great province. It was known that the Nawab, who, though stripped of his ancestral power, lived in a palace with great wealth and titular dignity and the surroundings of a Court, was rankling under a sense of indignities put upon him by the British Government, and that there were thousands in the city who would have risen at the signal of one who, weak himself, was yet strong in the prestige of a great name. At Barhampur, there were no European troops; there were none anywhere near to it. A regiment of Native Infantry, the 19th, was stationed there, with a corps of Irregular Cavalry, and a battery of post guns manned by native gunners. It was not difficult to see that if these troops were to rise against their English officers, and the people of Murshidabad were to fraternise with them, in the name of the Nawab, all Bengal would soon be in a blaze. No thoughts of this kind disturbed the minds of our people, but the truth was very patent to the understandings of their enemies.

It happened, too, unfortunately at this time, that the routine-action of the British Government favoured the growth of the evil; for when the excitement was great at Barrackpur, detachments went forth on duty from the most disaffected regiments of all to spread by personal intercourse the great contagion of alarm. Firstly, a guard from the 34th went upwards in charge of stud-horses; and then, a week later, another detachment from this regiment marched in the same direction with a party of European convalescents. At Barhampur they were to be relieved by men from the regiment there,

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and then to return to their own head-quarters; so that they had an opportunity of communicating all that was going on at Barrackpur to their comrades of the 19th, of learning their sentiments and designs, and carrying back to their own station, far more clearly and unmistakably than could any correspondence by letter, tidings of the state of feeling among the troops at Barhampur, and the extent to which they were prepared to resist the outrage of the greased cartridges.

When the men of the 34th reached Barhampur, their comrades of the 19th received them open-armed and open-mouthed. They were old associates, for not long before they had been stationed together at Lakhnao; and now the 19th asked eagerly what strange story was this that they had heard from Barrackpur about the greasing of the cartridges. It was not then a new story in the Lines of Barhampur, but was already two weeks old205. It had been carried as quickly as the post or special messenger could carry it from the one station to the other, and it was soon afterwards in every man’s mouth. But it had wrought no immediate effect upon the outer bearing of the Sipahis of the 19th. The story was carried to the commanding officer, who gave an assuring reply, saying that, if there were any doubts in their minds, the men might see for themselves the grease applied to their cartridges; and so for a while the excitement was allayed. But when the men of the 34th went up from Barrackpur and spoke of the feeling there – spoke of the general belief among the Sipahis at the Presidency that the Government deliberately designed to defile them, and of the intended resistance to this foul and fraudulent outrage – the 19th listened to them as to men speaking with high authority, for they came from the very seat of Government, and were not likely to err. So they took in the story as it was told to them with a comprehensive faith, and were soon in that state of excitement and alarm which is so often the prelude of dangerous revolt.

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February 27

On the day after the arrival of the detachment from Barrackpur, a parade of the 19th was ordered for the following morning. It was an ordinary parade, “accidental,” meaning nothing. But it was a parade “with blank ammunition,” and a meaning was found. There were in the morning no apparent signs of disaffection, but, before the evening had passed away, Adjutant McAndrew carried to the quarters of Colonel Mitchell a disquieting report, to the effect that there was great excitement in the Lines; that when their percussion-caps had been served out to them for the morning’s parade, the men had refused to take them, and that they had given as the ground of their refusal the strong suspicion they entertained that the cartridges had been defiled. It was the custom not to distribute the cartridges among the men before the morning of the parade; but the general supply for the regiment had been served out from the magazine, and, before being stored away for the night, had been seen by some of the Sipahis of the corps. Now, it happened that the paper of which the cartridges were made was, to the outward eye, of two different kinds, and, as the men had heard that fresh supplies of ammunition had been received from Calcutta in the course of the month, they leapt at once to the conviction that new cartridges of the dreaded kind had been purposely mixed up with the old, and the panic that had been growing upon them culminated in this belief206.

Upon receipt of this intelligence, Mitchell at once started for the Lines, and summoned his native officers to meet him in the front of the Quarter-Guard. In such a conjuncture, a calm but resolute demeanour, a few words of kindly explanation and of solemn warning, as from one not speaking for himself but for a benignant and a powerful Government, might have done much to convince those Native officers, and through them the Sipahis of the regiment, that they had laid hold of a dangerous delusion. But Mitchell spoke as one under the excitement of anger, and he threatened rather than he warned. He said that the cartridges had been made up, a year before, by the regiment that had preceded them in cantonments, that there was no reason for their alarm, and that if, after this explanation, they should refuse to take their ammunition, the regiment

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would be sent to Burmah or to China, where the men would die207, and that the severest punishment would overtake every man known to have actively resisted the orders of his Government. So the Native officers went their way, with no new confidence derived from the words that had fallen from their Colonel, but, on the other hand, strengthened in all their old convictions of imminent danger to their caste and their religion. He would not have spoken so angrily, they argued, if mischief had not been intended. They looked upon the irritation he displayed as a proof that his sinister designs had been inopportunely discovered208.

Such was the logic of their fears. Colonel Mitchell went to his home; but as he drove thither through the darkness of the night, with the Adjutant beside him, he felt that there was danger in the air, and that something must be done to meet it. But what could be done? There were no white troops at Barhampur, and the 19th Regiment composed the bulk of the black soldiery. But there were a regiment of Irregular Cavalry and a detachment of Native Artillery, with guns, posted at the station, and, as these dwelt apart from the Infantry, they might not be tainted by the same disease. Weaker in numbers, as compared with the Infantry, they had a countervailing strength in their guns and horses. A few rounds of grape, and a charge of Cavalry with drawn sabres, might destroy a regiment of Foot beyond all further hope of resistance. Mitchell might not have thought that things would come to this pass; it

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was his object to overawe, and, by overawing, to prevent the crisis. But, whatsoever his thoughts at that time, he issued his orders that the Cavalry and Artillery should be prepared to attend the morning parade.

In India, men retire early to their rest, for they seldom outsleep the dawn. It was little past the hour of ten, therefore, when Mitchell, just having betaken himself to his couch, heavy with thought of the morrow’s work, was startled by the sound of a strange commotion from the direction of the Lines. There was a beating of drums, and there were shoutings from many voices, and a confused uproar, the meaning of which it was impossible to misinterpret. Plainly the Regiment had risen. Ever since the Colonel’s interview with the Native officers the excitement had increased. It had transpired that the Cavalry and Artillery had been ordered out. Suspicion of foul play then grew into assured convictions, and the Regiment felt, to a man, that the greased cartridges were to be forced upon them at the muzzle of our guns. A great panic had taken hold of them, and it required but little to rouse them, in an impulse of self-preservation, to resist the premeditated outrage. How the signal was first given is not clear; it seldom is clear in such cases. A very little would have done it. There was a common feeling of some great danger, approaching through the darkness of the night. Some raised a cry of “Fire!”; some, again, said that the Cavalry were galloping down upon them; others thought that they heard in the distance the clatter of the Artillery gun-wheels. Then someone sounded the alarm, and there was a general rush to the bells-of-arms. Men seized their muskets, took forcible possession of the dreaded ammunition stored for the morning parade, and loaded their pieces in a bewilderment of uncertainty and fear.

Mitchell knew that the Regiment had risen, but he did not know that it was Terror, rather than Revolt, that stirred them; and so, hastily dressing himself, he hurried off to bring down upon his men the very danger the premature fear of which had generated all this excitement in the Lines. Before any report of the tumult had reached him from European or from Native officers, he had made his way to the quarters of the Cavalry Commandant, and ordered him at once to have his troops in the saddle. Then like orders were given for the Artillery guns, with all serviceable ammunition, to be brought down to the Infantry Lines. There was a considerable space to be traversed,

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and the extreme darkness of the night rendered the service difficult. But, after a while, the 19th heard the din of the approaching danger, and this time with the fleshly ear; saw the light of gleaming torches which was guiding it on to their destruction. But they stood there not ripe for action, irresolute, panic-struck, as men waiting their doom. There were many loaded muskets in their hands, but not one was fired.

It was past midnight when Mitchell, having gathered his European officers from their beds, came down with the guns to the parade-ground, where Alexander and his troopers had already arrived. The Infantry, in undress, but armed and belted, were drawn up in line, vaguely expectant of something to come, but in no mood to provoke instant collision. A very little, at such a time, would have precipitated it, for the excitement of fear, in such circumstances, is more to be dreaded than the bitterest resentments, and, even if the European officers had then moved forward in a body, the movement would have been exaggerated by the darkness into a hostile advance, and the 19th, under an impulse of self-preservation, would have fired upon them. What Mitchell did, therefore, in the unfortunate conjuncture that had arisen, was the best thing that could be done. He loaded the guns, closed the Cavalry upon them, and sent the Adjutant forward with instructions to have the call sounded for an assembly of the Native officers. The summons was obeyed. Again the Native officers stood before their Colonel, and again there fell from his lips words that sounded in their ears as words of anger. What those words were, it is now impossible to record with any certainty of their truth. The Native officers believed that he said he would blow every mutineer from a gun, although he should die for it himself. They besought him not to be angry and violent, and urged that the men were ignorant and suspicious; that they were impelled only by their fears; that, believing the Cavalry and Artillery had been brought down to destroy them, they were wild with excitement and incapable of reasoning, but that, if the Colonel would send back the troopers and the guns, the men of the Regiment would soon lay down their arms and return to their duty.

Then a great difficulty arose, which, in the darkness and confusion of that February night, might have perplexed a calmer brain than Mitchell’s. That the 19th were rather panic-struck than mutinous, was certain. It was plain, too,

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that a mistake had been committed in bringing down the Cavalry and guns to overawe the Regiment. It would have been wiser, in the first instance, to have used them only for protective purposes, holding them in readiness the while to act on the offensive in case of necessity. But, as they had been brought down to the Infantry Lines, it was difficult to withdraw them, until the 19th had given in their submission. The men, however, required, as a condition of their submission, that which Mitchell naturally desired should be regarded only as a consequence of it. Clinging fast to the belief that violence was intended, they would not have obeyed the order to lay down their arms; and Mitchell could not be certain that the Native troopers and gunners would fall upon their comrades at the word of command. There was a dilemma, indeed, from which it was difficult, if not impossible, to escape with safety and with honour. As men are wont to do in such extremities, he caught at a compromise. He would withdraw the guns and the Cavalry, he said, but he would hold a general parade in the morning; he commanded the station, and could order out all branches of the service. But the Native officers besought him not to do this, for the Sipahis, in such a case, would believe only that the violence intended to be done upon them was deferred for a few hours. So he consented at last to what they asked; the Cavalry and the guns were withdrawn, and the general parade for the morning was countermanded. Whether the Sipahis of the 19th had shown signs of penitence before this concession was made, and had or had not begun to lay down their arms, is a point of history enveloped in doubt. But it would seem that the Native officers told Colonel Mitchell that the men were lodging their arms, and that he trusted to their honour. The real signal for their submission was the retrocession of the torches. When the Sipahis saw the lights disappearing from the parade-ground, they knew that they were safe.

On the following morning the Regiment fell in, for parade, without a symptom of insubordination. The excitement of the hour had expended itself; and they looked back upon their conduct with regret, and looked forward to its consequences with alarm. Though moved by nothing worse than idle fear, they had rebelled against their officers and the State. Assured of their contrition, and believing in their fidelity, the former might perhaps have forgiven them; but it was not probable

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that the State would forgive. A Court of Inquiry was assembled, and during many days the evidence of European and Native officers was taken respecting the circumstances and causes of the outbreak; but the men, though clearly demonstrating their apprehensions by sleeping round the bells-of-arms, continued to discharge their duties without any new ebullitions; and there was no appearance of any hostile combinations, by which the mutiny of a regiment might have been converted into the rebellion of a province. Under the guidance of Colonel George Macgregor, the Nawab Nazim of Bengal threw the weight of his influence into the scales on the side of order and peace; and whatsoever might have been stirring in the hearts of the Musulman population of Murshidabad, in the absence of any signal from their chief, they remained outwardly quiescent.

Footnotes

199. No greased cartridges had been issued at Damdamah. The Sipahis in the musketry school there were only in the rudiments of their rifle-education, and had not come yet to need the application of the grease.

200. The news of the first outbreak and massacre at Kabul, in 1841, and also of the subsequent destruction of the British Army in the Pass, reached Calcutta through the Bazaars of Mirath and Karnal some days before they found their way to Government House from any official quarter; and the mutiny at Barrackpur was known by the Sipahis of the British force proceeding to Burmah before it reached the military and political chiefs by special express.

201. A wing of this regiment was at Raniganj.

202. Ante, p. 196.

203. See Book II. – Account of the Mutiny in the Panjab.

204. The General, doubtless, meant to say, “those Hindus in Calcutta who are opposed to the marriage of widows.”

205. The first detachment of the 34th reached Barhampur on the 18th of February, the second on the 25th. Colonel Mitchell. writing on February 16, says, that about a fortnight before a Brahman Pay-Havildar had asked him, “What is this story that everybody is talking about, that Government intend to make the Native Army use cow’s fat and pig’s fat with the ammunition for their new rifles?” It must have reached Barhampur, therefore, either by the post or by Kasid (messenger) at the very beginning of the month of February.

206. The fact, however, was, that there were no cartridges among the stores recently received from Calcutta, which consisted mainly of powder in barrels.

207. After reading all the evidence that I can find throwing light upon this scene at the Quarter-Guard, 1 am forced upon the conviction that Colonel Mitchell did use some such words as these. Lord Canning was, however, under an erroneous impression when he wrote in his minute of May 13, “The inconsiderate threat, that if the men did not receive their cartridges he would take them to Burmah or to China, where they would die, which is not denied by Lieutenant-Colonel Mitchell,” &c., &c.; for Mitchell had denied it on the 18th of March, saying, “I certainly did not make use of the expression above quoted.” – Lieutenant-Colonel Mitchell to Assistant-Adjutant-General. Published Papers. [I was in Calcutta at the time, and in constant communication with officers of the 19th, and 1 am confident that Colonel Mitchell only told the truth when he said that he did not use the words quoted. Mitchell simply told the men that those who did not obey his orders would be brought to a court-martial. He was a good officer, and was treated as a scapegoat. – G.B.M.]

208. “He gave this order so angrily, that we were convinced that the cartridges were greased, otherwise he would not have spoken so.” – Petition of the Native Officers of the 19th Regiment. Published Papers.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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