It is time now to return to Calcutta. The measures taken and the views entertained by the Government on receiving intelligence of the Mirath outbreak have been already recorded. It is evident that up to the end of the month of May they had not fully apprehended the gravity of the situation.
“Everything,” wrote the Secretary in the Home Department, Mr. Cecil Bowdon, on the 25th of May, to the French Consul and the other French residents at Calcutta, who, with rare self-sacrifice, had placid their services at the disposal of the Government, “everything is quiet within six hundred miles of the capital. The mischief caused by a passing and groundless panic, has already been arrested; and there is every reason to hope that in the course of a few days tranquillity and confidence will be restored throughout the Presidency.” Certainly the disinclination of the Government to accept, to the extent to which they were proffered, the loyal and disinterested offers of the members of the Trades’ Association, of the Masonic Fraternity, of the Armenians, and of the French residents, seemed to argue on their part a conviction that the resources at their disposal were equal to any emergency, and a belief that the measures already taken would suffice to put down the revolt. But, however that may have been,
nothing could justify or even palliate the tone of the reply of the Home Secretary to the French residents. It seemed at the time difficult to affirm to whom Mr. Beadon, the mouth-piece of the Government, intended to impute “a passing and groundless panic.” It could not apply to the citizens of Calcutta, for not only had they evinced no fear, but they had not caused the mischief. That mischief had been caused by the Sipahis; but it was scarcely the result of panic. Nor, had it been so, was the panic, it would seem, altogether groundless, and certainly it was not passing.
It is clear, at any rate, that, on the 25th of May, the Government reckoned upon order being maintained throughout the country between Calcutta and Allahabad, and upon the prompt repression of the rebellion.
They had, on the 20th of May, commenced, and they subsequently continued, the despatch by detachments of the 84th Regiment to the North-West Provinces. They had been cheered, on the 23rd of May, by the arrival from Madras of the 1st Madras Fusiliers, and with commendable promptitude they had, at once, sent off that regiment in the same direction. They were expecting regiments and batteries from Persia, from Ceylon, and from Rangun.
The Government, then, felt tolerably secure regarding Bengal proper and the country south of Allahabad. The news, however, from the districts north of the last-named city was calculated to alarm.
Between the 25th and 30th of May, the native troops at Firuzpur, at Aligarh, at Mainpuri, at Itawah, and at Balandshahr, had mutinied. Great fears were entertained regarding Lakhnao, Kanhpur, Agra, and the surrounding districts. On the other hand they were confident that the fall of Dehli was imminent, and that the troops engaged in the capture of that place would be almost immediately available to secure the threatened districts north of Allahabad. It is only fair to them to admit that this view was shared by the public, and, very generally, by soldiers. It was justified, moreover, by the records of the past. Neither to the invaders from the north, to the Marathas, nor to the English under Lord Lake had the capital of the Mughuls ever offered more than an ephemeral resistance. It was hardly, then, to be supposed that, garrisoned by native soldiers without a chief, it could successfully resist the trained and disciplined warriors of England.
Secure, then, of his base, of the ground lying six hundred miles in advance of it, confident that the troops in the North-West would very soon be available for the repression of rebellion in the central districts, and fearful only regarding the rising there of the native army before the Commander-in-Chief should detach a force to keep it under, the Governor-General, on the 31st of May, despatched the following telegram to General Anson:–
“I have heard to-day that you do not expect to be before Dehli until the 9th. In the meantime Kanhpur and Lakhnao are severely pressed, and the country between Dehli and Kanhpur is passing into the hands of the rebels. It is of the utmost importance to prevent this, and to relieve Kanhpur, but nothing but rapid action will do it. Your force of artillery will enable you to dispose of Dehli with certainty; I, therefore, beg that you will detach one European Infantry Regiment, and a small force of European Cavalry, to the south of Dehli, without keeping them for operations there, so that Aligarh may be recovered, and Kanhpur relieved immediately. It is impossible to overrate the importance of showing European troops between Dehli and Kanhpur. Lakhnao and Allahabad depend upon it.”
The instincts which dictated this telegram were undoubtedly sound. The country between Dehli and Allahabad was the weakest and the most threatened part of the. British position. The only error committed by the Governor-General was the error of believing that the force of artillery on the spot could dispose of the Mughul capital with certainty. But Lord Canning shared that belief with almost every other European, civilian and soldier, in British India.
On the 1st of June, then, all looked hopeful to the Government of India. Its members were so sanguine, that, having only two European regiments to guard Calcutta and the country between that city and Danapur, they dispensed with the aid which would have been afforded them by fifteen hundred armed European citizens; they allowed the three and a half native regiments at Barrackpur and the regiments at Danapur, Banaras, and the intermediate stations, to remain armed; knowing that the districts lying between Dehli and Allahabad were in imminent peril, they yet hoped – even confidently hoped – that the disaster there might be delayed until either General Anson should despatch a regiment from the
north-west, or until they should be strong enough to send up troops from Calcutta.
If the Government of India had had no other resources at their disposal, the course they actually pursued would have been amply justified. But writing, not, so to speak, after the event, but in the spirit of those who were present in Calcutta at the time, I am bound to affirm that they had other resources, and that they neglected them. When the lives of thousands, when the prestige of one’s country, when the very safety of the national position are in danger, it is a crime to depend solely upon possibilities. If the Government of India did not know, every other man in India knew, that the mutiny of the 19th Native Infantry had been no isolated act. Conscious of this, as I must suppose they were, the Government of India most certainly knew that in the long direct line between Danapur and Mirath there was but one European regiment. Yet, even in the first half of the first week of May, when fully aware that the condition of the native army was, to say the least, excited, and that the European soldiers were to the natives in the proportion of one to twenty-four, the Government of Lord Canning had, even then, actually ordered the return of the 84th Regiment to Rangun, and had only been deterred from this step by the opportune outbreak of mutiny at Lakhnao on the 3rd of that month.
The 84th Regiment remained then at Barrackpur to watch over, on the 6th of May, the disbandment of a mutinous portion of the 34th Native Infantry. That act accomplished, nothing further remained for it to do. Yet the first detachment of the 84th started for the north-west only fourteen days later (20th May). This delay not only remains unexplained, but it is inexplicable. So far as Bengal was concerned, the Government of India had been content to dispense with the 84th Regiment on the 3rd of May, and to send it out of India. Yet, though the occurrences at Lakhnao on that day disclosed the latent weakness in the centre of our line, the 84th was detained motionless near Calcutta! It is true it was used on the 6th, but subsequently to that date it wasted fourteen precious days – days which, if profitably employed, might almost certainly have secured Kanhpur
I cannot but think that a mistake, but little less important, was committed when the first offer of the Calcutta citizens, made on the 20th of May, was refused. The acceptance of that offer
would have disengaged for immediate action the wing of a regiment.
As events happened, the first batch of the 84th Regiment, leaving Calcutta the 20th of May, succeeded in reaching Kanhpur early in June. Now it cannot be questioned but that the entire 84th Regiment, if despatched on the 6th of May, might have reached Kanhpur during that month. Its presence would probably have prevented the outbreak which occurred there; and, in that case, it might certainly have been strengthened by a wing of the 53rd, leaving Calcutta the 21st, and by the Madras Fusiliers, which actually left on the 23rd.
The reason why the Government did not act in the manner in which it might have acted is explained by Mr. Secretary Beadon in his letter, already quoted, to the French residents at Calcutta:– “Everything is quiet within six hundred miles of the capital. The mischief caused by a passing and groundless panic has fortunately been arrested, and there is every reason to hope that, in the course of a few days, tranquillity and confidence will be restored throughout the Presidency.” This “reason to hope” had, I have shown, no solid foundation. The hope which existed was, in fact, without reason. It had sufficient vitality, however, to induce the Government to risk the weakest and most threatened point of their line in order that they might appear strong to the world.
The week that followed the 1st of June disclosed to the Government their error, to the world the short-sightedness of the Government.
During that week intelligence reached Calcutta of the mutiny at Lakhnao, of the defection of all the regiments occupying Oudh, of revolts at Azamgarh, at Banaras, and at Allahabad, of the massacre of the Europeans at Jhansi. This news increased the anxiety of the Government regarding the safety of their weak centre line; for Oudh was separated from Kanhpur but by the river, and even before the defection of that province, the position of Kanhpur, garrisoned by native troops and in close proximity to the stronghold of the discontented heir of a prince whom we had dispossessed, had inspired alarm. As counterbalancing, in a measure, the effect of this evil news the Government saw with satisfaction the arrival, during that week, in Calcutta, of the 64th Foot and 78th Highlanders from Persia, of a wing of the 35th Foot from Moulmein, of a wing of the 37th Regiment, and of a company of
Royal Artillery from Ceylon. Awake now to the danger before them they pushed on these regiments to the north with praiseworthy activity. The uncompleted state of the railway rendered the progress of the detachments slow. In default of this means of transit, single-horsed post-carriages – the quickest mode of travelling then available – bullock carriages, and steamers, were employed to the fullest possible extent. The Government, in fact, did then all that was possible to save the threatened line.
I have said that the Government were awake to the danger before them in the north. It is strange, however, that their eyes were not yet opened to the full magnitude of the crisis; that they neglected the danger at their very door. At the time that they were despatching every available European soldier to protect a station in their centre line from the possible mutiny of the armed Sipahis who garrisoned it, they allowed the Sipahis close to Calcutta to remain armed; the native garrison of Danapur to remain armed. What is more, in spite of so many examples of disaffection, they believed, or professed to believe, in the loyalty of these men. Their policy at this period was to trust, or to seem to trust, every native regiment until it should revolt. Such a policy naturally greatly hampered the movements of the European troops, for it was often necessary to keep these inactive at a station to guard against a possible outbreak.
Thus, with the news of the revolt of many regiments stationed within the limits of the six hundred miles indicated by Mr. Beadon in his famous letter of the 25th May ringing in their ears, the Government reported to the Court of Directors their belief that a public profession of loyalty made by the 70th Regiment of Native Infantry, then stationed at Barrackpur, would “have the happiest influence on the minds of all well-disposed men in the Native Army.” They, therefore, allowed three and a half native regiments at that station to retain their arms. To the 6th Native Infantry at Allahabad, on the eve of a revolt accompanied by marked barbarity, the Government sent, at the same time, their acknowledgment of a similar profession. They would not believe the fact which was patent to all around them, – the fact that the entire native army was animated by but one feeling, and that the mutiny of a regiment was merely a question of time and of opportunity.
Their views regarding the possibility of an advance from
Dehli in the direction of their weak central line were encouraged by the receipt, at this period, of information of a victory gained by the Mirath garrison over the rebels issuing from Dehli at the rivulet Hindan, near the town of Ghazi-ud-din Nagar. This victory, in which the rebels lost five guns, was gained on the 31st of May. It encouraged the hope that almost any post might bring the intelligence of the fall of the great fortress.
Another most important item of intelligence conveyed to the Government during this absorbing week was that of the death by cholera of the Commander-in-Chief, General Anson, at Karnal, on the 27th of May. This much to be lamented event did not occur until General Anson had prepared and set in action the measures which were to the end persistently carried out for the capture of Dehli. His death was a great – time proved it to be a most sensible loss.
A man of very remarkable natural talents, General Anson had, during a residence in India of more than five years, used those talents to master completely the necessities of Indian warfare. He was a perfect judge of character. No man ever more quickly detected the veneer of superficiality. He could not conceal his contempt for a man whom he discovered to be playing a part. Hence, probably, there swarmed up after his death enemies and detractors. They have not succeeded, however, in sullying his fair fame. For to him, as truly now as when death snatched him from the triumph which he had prepared, may be applied the immortal epitaph which the great historian of the Peninsular War composed for one of the most illustrious of English Generals:– “The honest loved, the dishonest feared him. For, while he lived he did not shun, but scorned and spurned the base, and, with characteristic propriety, they spurned at him when he was dead.”
It has already been shown, in the volume immediately preceding this, how, consequent upon the death of General Anson, the command of the force destined to besiege Dehli devolved upon Major-General Sir Henry Barnard, commanding the Sirhind Division.
I have now given a picture – a severe but accurate picture – of the information possessed by the Government of India up to the end of the first week of June, of the deductions they drew from that information, of their hopes, their fears, and beliefs. It will have been
observed that whilst, in the main, their view of the position was correct, they had not sounded the full depths of the disaster; and that as in May, so still, early in June, they preferred the assertion of a belief in the loyalty of the Sipahis who had not revolted, to the taking of measures which, whilst rendering them harmless for mischief, should place at their disposal, for active employment, the British soldiers who were watching them; and the upholding of their infallibility as a Government to acting in generous concert with the only classes they could absolutely trust, – the Europeans and Eurasians living and settled in India.
The fortnight which followed was full of startling incidents, but incidents marked by the same general correctness of view regarding strategy, the same weakness of political vision, and the same distrust of their own countrymen.
We have seen how, on the night of the 6th of June, the native regiment at Allahabad which, the previous day, had been thanked by the Government for its professions of unswerving loyalty, mutinied and murdered nearly all its officers, including some young boys just arrived from England: how the fortress of Allahabad, occupying a most commanding position on the Jamnah, and considered the gateway to the North-West, escaped by a miracle. Simultaneously the telegraphic lines were out or destroyed, and communication with the army before Dehli became impossible except by way of Lahor or Bombay. The troops in Rajputana and in Central India were likewise reported to have risen. There had been a mutiny at Banaras, but thanks to the wise and statesmanlike conduct of Mr. Frederic Gubbins of the Civil Service, and the bold measures adopted by Colonel Neill and his Madras Fusiliers, the mutiny had been suppressed, and the disaffected of the great Hindu city had been overawed.
From the 7th of June, indeed, it may be truly affirmed that the outlook to the Government of India had become darkness intensified. Mr. Beadon’s intact line of six hundred miles had been attempted in many places. Beyond it all was impenetrable.
In this extremity the Government still clung to the army before Dehli. On the 10th of June, Lord Canning drafted to the Major-General commanding that army a letter in which he urged him to send southwards, with the least possible delay, an European
force as large as he could spare1. He kept the letter by him for eleven days, and only despatched it when the chances of relieving the central line from Calcutta seemed almost desperate.
Two days after that letter had been penned Lord Canning, yielding to the solicitations of the ablest of his councillors, Mr. J. P. Grant, resolved to avail himself of the aid which had been proffered him, three weeks advice. earlier, by the citizens of Calcutta. But in order to induce the Governor-General to agree to this tardy concession, it was necessary for Mr. Grant to lay aside all gloss, to sacrifice the false confidence on which Mr. Beadon had laid so much stress three weeks previously, and to describe facts as they really were.
“In reality,” wrote Mr. Grant early in June, “in reality as well as in appearance we are very weak here, where we ought to be – and if we can’t be should at least appear to be – as strong as possible. We have as enemies three Native Infantry regiments and a half, of which one and a half are the very worst type we know; one, two, three (for no one knows) thousand armed men at Garden Reach, or available there at a moment; some hundred armed men of the Sindh Amirs at Damdamah; half the Muhammadan population; and all the blackguards of all sorts of a town of six hundred thousand people. Against these we have one and a half weak regiments, most of whom dare not leave the Fort. There is no reason to expect real help in real danger from the Native Police. The
insurrection is regularly spreading down to us. Is this an emergency or not? My conviction is that even a street row at the capital would give us an awful shake – not only in Bengal, but in Bombay and Madras – at this moment.”
This remonstrance, vivid, true, and out-spoken, expressed in nervous, even in passionate language, the thoughts of the much maligned citizens of Calcutta. The daily newspapers had for a fortnight been pressing the same arguments on the Governor-General. These had failed to shake the reluctance of Lord Canning, to take his own countrymen into his confidence, to admit that he had some small occasion for their aid. But now one of his colleagues, and incomparably the ablest of his colleagues, pressed upon him, in language more clear and more forcible than any used by the Press, the dangers of persistence in the same policy of distrust. That even the weighty utterances of Mr. Grant would, in any case, have met the fate of the expressed opinions of the European community is scarcely probable. But he did not stand quite alone in his view. It happened that an examination of the records of the Home Office showed that the question of raising volunteers in India had been thoroughly discussed in the time of Lord Dalhousie; that a decision in favour of the measure had been recorded; and that that decision had received the endorsement of the Court of Directors. This discovery added force to Mr. Grant’s argument. He clenched it further by recording his opinion that it was probable that, if a Volunteer Corps were not raised in the crisis then before them, the Home Government would ask the reason why.
These arguments proved successful. Lord Canning, still retaining his opinion as to the practical uselessness of the measure, sanctioned, on the 12th of June, the enrolment of the citizens of Calcutta as volunteers.
The Calcutta citizens nobly responded to the call of the Government. In a very few days the three arms – Horse, Foot, and Artillery – sprang into vigorous life. Men of all classes and of all positions pressed forward to enrol themselves, and in less than three weeks a brigade was formed sufficiently strong to guard Calcutta, and to enable the Government, had they deemed it necessary, to send all the regular troops into the field.
The day following that on which the Government had thus announced their intention to solicit the aid which three weeks
previously they had rejected, they introduced and passed through the Legislative Council a measure calculated, above all others, to rouse the indignation of the community and to deaden the loyalty to which they had but just at the moment appealed.
It can well be imagined that the events occurring all over the country had not been unnoticed by the public press. In India the fourth estate was represented by two distinct bodies of men. There was the English press advocating English interests, generally owned and entirely contributed to by Englishmen. Running parallel with this was the native press, the organ of native interests, and owned and contributed to by natives. The two divisions were subject to the same laws and amenable to the same jurisdiction. So blended had become the interests of the native and the European, that, as a rule, the two sections referred to advocated identical measures. It did happen indeed occasionally, though rarely, that they espoused opposite sides. Such had been the case when the legislature brought in a measure to introduce a native magistracy with power to try Europeans. Against this measure the European press had protested, whilst it was eagerly supported by the organs of native public opinion. But such occasions were not common. As traders, the interests of the European and of the native merchants were identical. The land question, which was to assume so great a prominence in later years, had then been but incidentally referred to. The two sections acted alike as critics of the conduct of the Government, and, as a rule, they performed this delicate duty with judgment, with temper, and with moderation.
It is true that, when dealing with individual officials, the press of India, native as well as European, was often extremely uncompromising It certainly called a spade a spade. And as the Indian officials had experienced none of the rough training to which the statesmen of Europe are subjected, and were often men who owed their high positions to favour rather than to merit, this habit of plain speaking had been apt to engender, and often did engender, feelings of rancorous dislike in the breasts of the criticised.
When the early incidents of the mutiny occurred – that is, when the 10th Regiment of Native Infantry misbehaved at Barhampur – the English press had spoken out very plainly. It had urged the Government to adopt at once decided measures. More than one writer had pointed out that the Barhampur
incident was a spark which, if not immediately crushed, world be speedily fanned into a flame. The native press was more deliberate and more reticent, but it offered no great opposition to vigorous action. The warnings of the press were disregarded. The Government did not act with promptitude, nor, when it acted, did it act with vigour. When, a little later, the spark had been fanned into a flame – when, that is to say, the outbreak at Mirath had disclosed to all who were not wilfully blind the gigantic extent of the insurrection, again did the European press clamour vehemently for prompt action, and urge upon the Government the necessity of taking into their confidence the European community. But on this occasion the tone of the native press, as if by command, almost immediately changed. Possibly the supineness which its conductors witnessed made them believe that the fatal day for the English had arrived, just as their fathers had seen that day overtake the Mughuls, the Marathas, and the Sikhs. Possibly the Bengali portion of the native press, representing a highly educated people, unversed in arms, but alone capable of administering the country should it fall under native domination, believed that their prospects would be greatly improved by the overthrow of the British power. Certainly many of them not only doubted our ultimate success, but openly expressed their doubts. But, whatever may have been the reason, it is undeniable that from the time of the arrival in Calcutta of the news of the Mirath outbreak the tone of the native press changed. It began to speak out against the Government, and to show very plainly that it sympathised with the movement which the revolters had originated.
This alteration in the tone of the native press was brought to the notice of Lord Canning early in June, and he was urged then to interfere, by legislative action, with its freedom. Unlike his colleagues, however, Lord Canning had been brought up in a free country. He had been accustomed all his life to the freedom of the press. He had seen in England that the law of the land was sufficient to put down license. He knew that an honest Government had no better friend than a free and out-speaking public critic. To the solicitations of his councillors then he replied that “the remedy was worse than the disease.”
But a few days later the opinions of Lord Canning in this respect underwent a change. On the 13th of June he, for the first and only time during his tenure of office, went down
to the Legislative Council, and, declaring there that the incendiary tone of the native press had driven him to the conclusion at which he had reluctantly arrived, brought forward and carried a measure to place the native press under restrictions so galling that, compared to them, the restrictions on the press of France during the darkest days of the reign of Napoleon III. were light and easy.
Had Lord Canning stopped there, he would have carried with him the voice of the public. The times were critical, the native press had encouraged sedition and rebellion, and it was necessary that authority should assert itself. But when Lord Canning proceeded to include in the same measure of stern repression the European press, in spite of “the loyalty and intelligence which marked their labours,” on the ground, mainly, that he could not draw a line of demarcation between European and native publications2, he evoked an outburst of opposition such as has been seldom witnessed in Calcutta. It was not only that the English community of that place resented the restriction of their liberties.
Had such a restriction been proposed by a Government in which they had confidence they would have borne it patiently. But on this occasion they distrusted alike the sincerity and the capacity of the Government. They had seen them slow to be convinced, slow to move, slow to avail themselves of the advantages forced upon them, confident where they should have been distrustful, and distrustful where they should have been confident. They had seen them arrogant whilst blundering, supercilious whilst courting disaster. They knew now that a great disaster had occurred, that Mr. Beadon’s
line of six hundred miles had been broken, and that the central line beyond it was terribly endangered. And, yet, no sooner had they become aware of this than the Government forcibly shut their mouths. There was but one conclusion for them to draw. They believed then, and many believe still, that the action of the Government was prompted by a determination to prevent, if possible, the transmission to England of any printed record of their mistakes.
That the Government was actuated by any such motive I am now far from thinking. But their action in muzzling the European press was undoubtedly a mistake. It severed the confidence which ought to exist in a great crisis between the rulers and the ruled, and increased the distrust which the tardiness of their repressive measures had till then inspired.
This distrust was greatly augmented by an incident which occurred the day following. True to the opinion expressed by Mr. Secretary Beadon to the members of the Trades’ Association, on the 21st of May, to the effect that it was most unfair to the Native Army of Bengal to assume that all its regiments were disaffected:– notwithstanding that Mr. J. P. Grant, a member of the Supreme Council, had, early in June, recorded his opinion that at Barrackpur, fifteen miles from Calcutta, the Government had “as enemies three Native Infantry regiments and a half, of which one and a half are the very worst type we know” – in spite of the examples supplied by some stations in the upper provinces of the danger of allowing native regiments to retain their arms, and of the beneficial results which in others had followed their being disarmed:– Lord Canning had been resolute in allowing the regiments at Barrackpur, so graphically painted by Mr. Grant, to continue, armed, in the exercise of their duties. Before the Government had, on the 12th of June, accepted the offers of the volunteers, Lord Canning was aware of the mutiny of the native troops at Banaras, at Allahabad, at Lakhnao, in Rohilkhand, at the stations north of Kanhpur; he knew that disarming at Lahor, at other stations in the Panjab, and at Agra, had been attended with beneficial results, – and yet he continued to permit the regiments quartered within fifteen miles of Calcutta to retain their arms!
What was the state of Calcutta at the time when the Governor-General persisted in this resolution? It cannot better be described than in the words, already quoted, of the ablest
of Lord Canning’s councillors, Mr. J. P. Grant.
After recording in the language noted in the preceding paragraph his opinion of the native regiments quartered at Barrackpur, Mr. Grant added that the Government had, in addition to those “enemies,” “one, two, or three (for no one knows) thousand of armed men at Garden Reach” (a suburb of Calcutta), “or available there at a moment; some hundred armed men of the Sindh Amir’s at Damdamah” (four and a half miles from Calcutta), “half the Muhammadan population; and all the blackguards of all sorts of a town of six hundred thousand people.” To encounter these enemies the Government had at their disposal, in Calcutta itself, a weak wing of an English regiment 1 A wing of another regiment, the 35th, was at Barrackpur, and a complete regiment, the 78th Highlanders, some miles beyond, at Chinsurah. Those regiments were, in fact, detained near the seat of Government to guard the armed Sipahis. For disarmed Sipahis one-fourth of their number would have sufficed.
The fruits of this policy very soon showed themselves. Intended as a policy of conciliation, to display confidence in quarters in which no confidence was felt, it had the result of imparting boldness to those who had long been mutineers in heart, and who were watching only their opportunity.
Lord Canning had accepted the offers to volunteer of the citizens of Calcutta on the 12th of June; he had passed the Act, known thenceforth as the Gagging Act, on the 13th. The 14th was a bright, clear day, as bright as days are in India after the first rainy season has set in, and when no rain falls. It was a Sunday. That morning the church-goers attended service at the various churches at the ordinary hour of 11 A.M. In most of the churches nothing remarkable occurred.
But those present at the garrison church in Fort William had their attention disturbed by the rolling sound of heavy materiel moving out of the fort. One individual, who occupied a house in Chauringhi, the Park Lane of Calcutta, somewhat impressed by this unusual occurrence, thought he would endeavour to ascertain if anything had taken place to justify the movement. Accordingly, after the service was over, he, in accordance with the Sunday custom in Calcutta, went to make some calls. He called upon one of the Secretaries to Government. But nothing appeared out of
its usual course, and he returned to his house with his curiosity unsatisfied. About two hours later, however, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, he received a note from a gentleman who was living in the same house with the Secretary on whom he had called. In this note he was informed that the native regiments at Barrackpur had mutinied, and were in full march on Calcutta; that the lives of the European inhabitants were in the greatest danger; that he (the writer) begged him and his wife to proceed at once to his (the writer’s) house, where they “had a stone staircase and five good rifles;” further, that no time was to be lost.
The gentleman addressed declined to leave his own house. He even went outside to endeavour to ascertain the correctness of the information he had received. What he saw on that eventful afternoon he recorded on the spot. The impression the sight made upon him has never left him. The roof of his house commanded a view of the plain between Chauringhi and the fort. Of the details which accompanied and which followed the scamper across the plain he had accurate knowledge; and, when he published his account of what occurred, he was prepared, as he is now prepared, to name, had he been called upon, the individuals to whom he referred. To the statement as he wrote it there is not a comma to add, nor from it is there a comma to be withdrawn. As an accurate picture of the events of that afternoon it is irrefutable.
The gentleman referred to thus painted the scene3:– “It has been said by a great writer that ‘there is scarcely a less dignified entity than a patrician in a panic.” The veriest sceptic as to the truth of this aphorism could have doubted no longer had he witnessed the living panorama of Calcutta on the 14th of June. All was panic, disorder, and dismay. The wildest reports were in circulation. It was all but universally credited that the Barrackpur brigade was in full march on Calcutta, that the people in the suburbs had already risen, that the King of Oudh, with his followers, was plundering Garden Reach. Those highest in office were the first to give the alarm. There were Secretaries to Government running over to Members of Council, loading their pistols, barricading the doors, sleeping on sofas; Members of Council abandoning their houses with their families, and taking refuge on board
ship; crowds of lesser celebrities, impelled by these examples, having hastily collected their valuables, were rushing to the fort, only too happy to be permitted to sleep under the fort guns. Horses, carriages, palanquins, vehicles of every sort and kind, were put into requisition to convey panic-stricken fugitives out of the reach of imaginary cut-throats. In the suburbs almost every house belonging to the Christian population was abandoned. Half-a-dozen determined fanatics could have burned down three parts of the town. A score of London thieves would have made their fortunes by plundering the houses in the neighbourhood of Chauringhi which had been abandoned by their inmates4.”
There was some reason for the alarm. There is not a shadow of doubt that the native regiments quartered at Barrackpur had long been watching their opportunity, and that, noting the successive arrival of European regiments from Persia, from Pegu, and from Ceylon, they had, on the night of the 13th of June, resolved to mutiny the following day. Fortunately, some of the well-disposed among them betrayed the secret that night. An express was at once despatched by the Major-General commanding the division to order down the 78th Highlanders from Chinsurah, whilst permission to disarm the mutinous regiments without delay was urgently requested from Calcutta.
The Highlanders set off that night from Chinsurah. Misled – whether purposely or otherwise may possibly be doubtful – by their guide, they wandered four miles out of their direct road, but a strong detachment of them, recovering the track, arrived by daybreak in the station, weary and footsore, yet ready for any emergency. This prompt action entirely disconcerted the Sipahis. They determined to defer the outbreak to a more convenient season. But the chance was not allowed them. The remainder of the 78th arrived during the day; and, the necessary permission having been received from the Government, the native regiments were at 4 P.M. paraded and disarmed in the presence of the wing of Her Majesty’s 35th and of the 78th Regiment with loaded muskets, each on either flank, and of six 12-pounders in their front loaded with grape. They offered no resistance, but piled their arms in silence.
In Calcutta the night passed off tranquilly. But the following morning there was a new excitement. The list given by Mr. J. P. Grant in his famous minute of the enemies to public order in Calcutta will not have been forgotten. If prominently in this list figured the three and a half native regiments at Barrackpur, next in importance were enumerated the “one, two, three (for no one knows) thousand armed men at Garden Reach, or available there at any moment.” Garden Reach was one of the suburbs of Calcutta, and the men alluded to were the followers of the deposed King of Oudh.
Having, on the 14th, acted, so to speak, on Mr. Grant’s first hint regarding the Sipahis, the Government followed up that vigorous action by taking up his second recommendation on the 15th. And it is due to them to state that they performed a distasteful, though necessary, task with great prudence and delicacy. They rightly deemed that the best mode of rendering powerless the followers of the King of Oudh would be to deprive those followers of their natural leader. On the morning of the 15th of June, therefore, the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Edmonstone, accompanied by a detachment of English soldiers, waited upon the King of Oudh and informed him that political necessities, and the fact that emissaries had made a mischievous use of his name, required that he should remove from Garden Reach and take up his residence in the Governor-General’s house within Fort William. The King of Oudh behaved on the occasion with dignity and propriety. Having in the most solemn manner protested that,
neither by word nor deed had he encouraged the mutineers, he declared himself ready to go wherever the Governor-General might think fit. He was then conducted to the Government House within the fort. His late Prime Minister, Ali Naki Khan, and a few other nobles, were selected to bear him company. This action on the part of the Government excited no disturbance, and in its results it fully justified the ideas which prompted it. The unknown number of armed men at Garden Reach were by it rendered powerless for mischief.
Two days later the officer selected by Lord Canning to assume temporarily the command of the Bengal Army, vacated by the death of General Anson, arrived in Calcutta. This was Lieutenant-General Sir Patrick, Grant, K.C.B., Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army.
Sir Patrick Grant was an officer of the Company’s service who had made his way through the regimental grades to the command of a regiment, and from the command of a regiment to the General Army Staff, rising eventually to be Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army. He had served on the staff during the first and second Sikh campaigns. Circumstances, to which it is unnecessary to refer, had made him unpopular with the majority of the officers of the Bengal Army, but his many and varied services seemed to justify Lord Canning in regarding him as the man for the situation, and certainly to few soldiers was a greater opportunity ever offered of vindicating the judgment of the Governor-General. The weak centre line I have so often referred to was known to be in imminent danger. It was believed that there was yet time to avert that danger. According to the latest reports received by the Government the Madras Fusiliers had reached Allahabad; the 84th Regiment and a portion of the 64th had passed Banaras; a considerable number of the 78th had already left Calcutta, and the remainder, and a wing of the 37th, were to start on the 20th. These united would constitute a force sufficient, with the artillery available, to strengthen the weak central line. Could that line be strengthened before it were actually rent, it seemed possible that direct communication with Dehli might be re-opened. And the Government had no information that the line had been rent.
To endeavour to execute this project, to reach Kanhpur before our troops there had been overwhelmed, was a task sufficient to
stimulate the energies and to satisfy the ambition of any man. And this task was open to Sir Patrick Grant to select.
Sir Patrick Grant did not select it. The reasons which he gave for his decision proved that, up to the date on which it was made, the 22nd of June, neither he, nor the Members of the Government who approved it, had comprehended the full extent of the calamity which had fallen on the country; that they still regarded the outbreak as partial in its effects and temporary in its nature. Those reasons were that “the Commander-in-Chief can most efficiently, and assuredly most expeditiously, control and direct all military movements now, and the reorganization and regeneration of the Army hereafter5, if he has the advantage of being in personal communication with the head of the Government, if he learns the views of Government with respect to the innumerable questions which must constantly arise, and, which is highly important, if he is made acquainted with the mass of intelligence which may be expected to reach the Government from every quarter of the empire.”
It will be seen that, in the presence of actual and pressing danger, danger to be overcome at once if the empire was to be saved, the mind of Sir Patrick Grant was dreaming of “reorganization and regeneration.” Surely the shortest way of accomplishing that dream was to act vigorously against the rebels who had rendered necessary the revision of the old system. The fact that the Commander-in-Chief himself was in the field would have increased the moral power of the army operating against the rebels, whilst in such a position the head of the Army would have exercised an authority such as could not be delegated even to the most trusted of his lieutenants.
As for the control and command of the army there was the fact that of the two armies, the Native and the European, the one had mutinied, the other was in the field. The presence of the Commander-in-Chief was naturally required with the latter. The routine work of ordering forward troops from Calcutta, of furnishing supplies and ambulances for the field force, could well be entrusted to the Deputy Adjutant-General of the Army and his subordinates, who were on the spot. There, too, remained the Indian War Office, represented by the Military Secretary to Government and his assistants.
The reason given by the Commander-in-Chief for not placing himself at the head of the army in the field was, then, based upon premisses which were incorrect, and upon a general view of the situation which was erroneous. But another reason which Sir Patrick Grant recorded in the same State memorandum goes far to show that he did well in coming to the conclusion which he adopted.
“I may also observe,” wrote Sir Patrick, “that it is quite impossible to conduct the multifarious duties of this large army without a numerous staff and extensive office establishment, requiring, when moving about the country, a complete regiment as an escort, and a large amount of carriage for their transport, neither one nor the other of which can be supplied under present circumstances.”
This reason is decisive. Sir Patrick Grant was in command of the army employed to crush the mutiny. If he thought that he could not leave details to the tried officers on the general staff at Calcutta, whilst he should be marching against the rebels; if he considered that he must attend personally to petty matters of promotion and appointments at the same time that he should be directing all his energies against the enemy, and that, at so grave a crisis, when every European soldier was an object of importance, he would need a complete regiment to escort his papers, he was certainly quite right to stay where he was, and to detach another officer to command the army in the field.
The officer whom he selected for the post was Major-General Havelock.
The achievements of this officer belong to another section of this history. I purpose to continue here the account of the state of Calcutta up to the date of his departure from Allahabad to reconquer the weak central line.
On the 17th of June, – the day of the arrival in Calcutta of Sir Patrick Grant, – the Government received intelligence that General Barnard had, on the 8th, beaten the rebels at Dehli. For a short time there was a hope that Dehli itself had fallen – a hope so vivid that it induced Lord Canning, four days later, to despatch to Dehli the requisition he had penned to the general on the 10th, to send down southward as large an European force as he
could spare with the least possible delay. But it transpired in a few days that not the fortified city of Dehli, but the cantonments on the ridge only, had fallen into British hands. The siege was to follow; and to conduct that siege with any prospect of success, General Barnard, far from being in a position to spare troops, urgently needed reinforcements.
From other parts of India the news was on the whole unfavourable. At the end of the third week of June the Government were without information from Kanhpur and Lakhnao beyond the 4th. At Naogang, at Nimach, at Jhansi, and at Jaunpur, they knew that mutinies had occurred; but they were without details. Danapur was safe; Banaras and Allahabad had been made so in the manner already described. From Agra they had good news up to the 10th. At Azamgarh there had been an outbreak; and there were bad rumours from Rohilkhand.
The fourth week of the month, and the week succeeding, up to the 4th of July, added considerably to their knowledge. On the 3rd of July, Government received information that the native troops at Kanhpur had mutinied on the 4th of June; that they had been joined by Nana Dundu Pant, the adopted son of the last of the Peshwas, with all his armed following; that Sir Henry Lawrence, and the Europeans at Lakhnao, had been gradually hemmed in by the rebels until they retained only the Residency, the Machhi Bhawan fort, and the cantonments, but that all was well there up to the 30th of June; that the troops of the Gwaliar Contingent had mutinied on the 15th of June; that an uneasy feeling prevailed at Haidarabad; that up to the 15th Agra was safe, but that Bandah and other small stations had been occupied by the rebels.
Such was the state of the intelligence up to the 3rd. The following day brought a letter from Sir Henry Lawrence, dated 10 P.M., the 28th of June. In that letter Sir Henry stated that “he had every reason to believe that the Kanhpur force had been entirely destroyed by treachery.” Details, which in the end turned out in the main to be true, were added. But it was further stated that the intelligence was not believed either at Allahabad or Banaras.
Such was the information possessed in Calcutta when General Havelock set out from Allahabad to re-cement the broken central line. I must add a few words as to the circumstances which attended his appointment.
Major-General Havelock was Adjutant-General of the Queen’s Troops in India. He had commanded a division during the Persian war, but on its conclusion, ignorant of the death of General Anson and of his replacement as Commander-in-Chief by General Somerset, he had come round by steamer to Calcutta, and had been a fellow-passenger from Madras with Sir Patrick Grant. General Havelock had seen a great deal of service in India. In Burmah, in Afghanistan, in Gwaliar, on the Satlaj, he had established the character of being a thorough soldier. Quiet and retiring in his manners, he was not calculated to make an impression on those who judge only by outward show, but he had read and thought much, and his acquirements were solid and profound. Thin and spare of frame, he was yet gifted with a vitality which was proof against fatigue. He was not a talker, and many, perhaps, before the campaign then about to ensue, might have doubted his ability to command. But in this respect he bore a strong resemblance to the most capable of the Marshals of the first Empire, the illustrious Massena, of whom Napoleon thus wrote:– “His conversation gave few indications of genius: but at the first cannon-shot his mental energy redoubled, and when surrounded by dangers his thoughts were clear and forcible.”
Such was the officer to whom Sir Patrick Grant delegated the duty of commanding in the field the forces which the Government had been able to collect. To take command of those forces General Havelock left Calcutta on the 24th of June. What he accomplished with his army, and how he accomplished it, has been already related. It remains for me here only to say that his position at Kanhpur, even after his victories, was, in the presence of the rebels in Oudh on his right, and the revolted Gwaliar Contingent on his left rear, in a military sense tin-sound and dangerous. It was not the smallest proof of his skill and daring that, notwithstanding this, deeming it in a political sense essential, he maintained it; and this, too, at a time when Mr. Beadon’s line of six hundred miles – the line which maintained his communications with Calcutta – had been rudely snapped in twain.
1. The letter, in a more complete form, runs as follows:– “Banaras has been made safe. So has Allahabad, I hope, but only just in time. Henceforward, the reinforcements will be pushed up still further – to Kanhpur; but the disorganised state of the country between Allahabad and Kanhpur may interpose delay; and both telegraph and dawk from any place north of Allahabad is now cut off from Calcutta. I cannot, therefore, speak so confidently of the time when help will reach Sir Hugh Wheeler. It may not be for four or five days, or even more. This makes it all the more urgently necessary that you should push down an European force immediately. When it reaches the Kanhpur division, it will, according to the instructions which have been sent to you, pass under Sir Hugh Wheeler’s command. And with him will rest the responsibility of relieving Lakhnao, and pacifying the country from Kanhpur downwards. It will be for you to judge what your own movements should be. All that I require is, that an European force, as large an one as you can spare, should be sent southwards with the least, possible delay, and that it should not be detained an hour for the purpose of finishing off affairs at Dehli after once the great blow has been struck.”
2. The following are the exact words used by Lord Canning with respect to the European press:– “The remarks I have taken occasion to make with reference to the Native Press, I do not direct to the European Press. But I see no solid standing ground upon which a line can be drawn marking off one from the other, when the question is to prevent matter calculated to work mischief at a crisis like this. For whilst I am glad to give credit to the conductors of the European Press for the loyalty and intelligence which mark their labours, I am bound by sincerity to say that I have seen passages in some of the papers under their management which, though perfectly innocuous as far as European r, Eiders are concerned, may, in times like the present, be turned to the most mischievous purposes in the hands of persons capable of dressing them up for the Native ear. I am glad to admit that the bill is not specially levelled at the European Press, but I do not see any reason, nor do I consider it possible in justice, to draw any line of demarcation between European and Native publications.”
3. Red Pamphlet, page 105.
4. Sir John Kaye quotes the following description, given by Dr. Mouat, residing at the time at Calcutta, of the events here referred to. He says that the flight was “what might have been seen if a modern Herculaneum had been evacuated in broad daylight on the approach of a visible eruption from a neighbouring volcano.” Dr. Mouat adds, “The whole line of the ghauts was crowded with fugitives, and those who could find no shelter on the ships, took refuge within the Fort, of which the squares, the corridors, all the available space everywhere, indeed, were thronged by many, who passed the night in their carriages.” Since writing the text I have seen Dr. Mouat. He tells me that his remarks apply to the Christian population of the suburbs, who were mostly Eurasians. In this I am in perfect agreement with Dr. Mount. Nothing could exceed the courage and steadfastness of the members of the mercantile and trading community. In his journal, written at the tic , and quoted by Sir John Kaye, Colonel Cavenagh, then the highest official in the Fort, recorded as follows:– “On my return home, I found my house besieged by all sorts of people wishing to obtain shelter in the Fort, and all full of rumours of the worst description from Damdamah and Barrackpur.” Colonel Cavenagh, however, did not observe any unusual number of vehicles inside the Fort. They were probably refused admittance, for the author saw them “dashing across the plain towards the Fort with reckless speed.”
5. The italics are my own.
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage