Whilst the events recorded in the preceding chapter had been enacted in Calcutta itself, the state of affairs in Bengal and in Bihar had scarcely been of a nature to justify the jaunty confidence expressed by Mr. Beadon on the 25th of May. The first information that the line of six hundred miles was actually in danger of being broken was conveyed to Government on the 12th of June from Bohni, a station in the Santhal district, about three hundred miles from Calcutta.
This station was the head-quarters of the 5th Irregular Cavalry, commanded by Major Macdonald, one of the best officers of the Bengal Army. This officer was taking tea in front of his bungalow on the evening of the 12th of June, in company with his Adjutant, Sir Norman Leslie, and the Assistant Surgeon of the regiment, Dr. Grant. During a pause in their conversation, Dr. Grant rose with the intention of entering the bungalow. In the act of rising, he noticed the stealthy approach of three men, apparently strangers. As he turned to point them out to his companions, the intruders rushed upon them with drawn swords. Unarmed and taken by surprise, the Englishmen could defend themselves only with their chairs. But before Sir Norman Leslie could do even this he was cut down. Major Macdonald was scalped and received two other wounds on the head. Dr. Grant also was wounded. It would have gone hard with both had the assassins persevered; but suddenly and most unaccountably they turned and fled.
As no symptom of mutinous disposition had appeared in the 5th Cavalry, and as Major Macdonald believed in the loyalty of his men, it was at first conjectured that the assassins were discharged Sipahis. A few days later, however, a sawar confessed that they belonged to the regiment. They were at once seized, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. This sentence. Major
Macdonald, with a courage which was great, though not rare, carried out in the presence of the entire regiment. A moment’s weakness on his part would have been the signal for a general rising. Subsequent events proved that there was at the time an organised conspiracy in the regiment; that many had been aware of the plot to assassinate the three officers, that they “waited its success to rise.” They were deterred at this critical time solely by the courage and determination of Major Macdonald6.
A comparatively trifling incident at Barhampur – caused by the action of a sawar of the 11th Irregular Cavalry, Mutinous who not only released some deserters from the 43rd incident at Native Infantry, apprehended by the police, but Barhampur. likewise incited the men of his regiment and of the 63rd Native Infantry to mutiny – influenced the Government to retain some European Infantry at that station. This measure would, I need scarcely point out, have been wholly unnecessary had the Government taken the precaution to disarm the native regiments.
But it was at the great station of Patna, the capital of the country east of Banaras, that the strain was most severely felt. This city, containing 158,000 inhabitants, of whom 38,000 were Muhammadans, is situated on the right bank of the river Ganges, three hundred and seventy-seven miles north-west from Calcutta, and ten miles east from the military station of Danapur.
Patna owed its importance partly to its traditions; partly to the fact that it was the capital of one of the richest provinces in the country; partly likewise to its being the head-quarters of the Wahabis – the extreme Muhammadan party in India. It was ruled by a Commissioner, corresponding directly with the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Subordinate to it and to its Commissioner were the districts of Gaya, to the south, with a chief town of the same name, sixty miles distant; of Shahabad, comprising the country between the Ganges, the Karamnasa, and the Son, and having as its capital Arah, about thirty-five miles to the west of Patna; of Saran, with Chap a, forty miles to the north, as its capital; of Champaran, with Motihari, as its chief station; and Tirhut, between Nipal and the Ganges, represented by the civil station of Muzaffarpur. In these stations the magistrate represented the executive power.
The station of Danapur was garrisoned by three Native Infantry Regiments, the 7th, 8th, and 40th, by one company of European and one of Native Artillery, and by Her Majesty’s 10th Foot. Danapur was the head-quarters of a division, and its divisional commander was Major-General Lloyd, an officer who had rendered excellent service in his day, and who, but four years before, had been selected by Lord Dalhousie to Suppress the Santal insurrection – a task which he had accomplished with judgment and discretion. His command at Danapur was extensive in its range. To the north it included all the country to the foot of the Nipal hills; to the east it reached Barhampur; to the south Hazaribagh and Rampur. The troops protecting this vast extent of country were, with one exception, massed at Danapur. That exception was the 12th Regiment of Irregular Cavalry, commanded by a most distinguished officer, Major Holmes. This corps was stationed at Sigauli, fifteen miles to the northwest of Motihari, on the Nipal road, and about a hundred to the north of Danapur.
The province of which Patna was the capital, was, I have said, one of the richest in the possession of the English. It owed its importance partly to the fact that for several years it had been the chosen ground for the development of native industry by English landholders working with English capital; partly, and to a far greater extent, to the circumstance that the native landowners were, as a rule, men of ancient lineage and of large estates.
Before the arrival of reinforcements from Persia, Ceylon, and Burmah, the European regiment at Danapur was the only English regiment in the long line between Calcutta and Lakhnao. Having in view the extent of country it had to guard – the area of Western Bihar alone comprehending 2101 square miles, with a population of upwards of a million and a half, its proximity to the influential city of Patna, to the fact that many of the native landowners of Bihar were men commanding a large following, it still seems strange that the expedient so successfully adopted at Lahor and other places – the expedient of disarming the native troops – was not at once resorted to here. The postponement of such a measure necessarily chained the European troops to the station of Danapur, leaving all the other districts in the Patna division to shift for themselves.
It was from no lack of knowledge of the danger of leaving arms in the hands of the Sipahis, that the Government of India hesitated to give the order to disarm them. The Commissioner of Patna, Mr. William Tayler, had been unremitting alike in impressing his courageous spirit on the disaffected, and in keeping the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal well informed of the general aspect of affairs. As this gentleman’s name will figure somewhat conspicuously in the following pages, it is fit that I should introduce him here.
Mr. William Tayler was a member of the Bengal Civil Service. He was a gentleman and a scholar, possessing great natural abilities which he had lost no opportunity of cultivating, an elegant mind, and a large fund of common sense. To these should be added the greater gifts, during a crisis such as that of which I am writing, of a nerve not to be shaken, a clear view, and a power to decide rapidly and correctly in difficult circumstances. In the prime of life, courteous in manner, loyal to his Government, ready to hear the opinions of all, yet resolved to act on those which best commended themselves to his understanding, he was just the man whom a Wellesley or a Napier would have detached as his lieutenant to command a difficult position.
The mutinous spirit displayed early in the year by the Sipahis at Barhampur, and later by those at Barrackpur, had not been unnoticed by Mr. Tayler. As the pro-consul of a province which had as its capital the city of Patna, the head-quarters of the chiefs of the Wahabis, it
had devolved upon him to watch every vibration in the political system, so strangely agitated since the beginning of the year. Mr. Tayler, with a forecast surer than that of Mr. Secretary Beadon, had detected in the action of the 19th Regiment of Native Infantry and in the scarce-concealed sympathy with that action of the regiments stationed at Barrackpur, the germs of a very contagious political disease, and he had deemed it not at all improbable that, if not wholly eradicated by the measures of Government, the disease might gradually spread upwards. Never for a moment did he believe in the “passing and groundless panic” theory of Mr. Beadon. But not even Mr. Tayler, astute and far-seeing as he was, had imagined that the contagion would be communicated, as if by magic, to the upper provinces, passing over the intermediate divisions, to attack the body politic, suddenly, in its very heart.
When, therefore, the catastrophe of the 10th of May occurred at Mirath, it took not less by surprise the Commissioner of Patna than every other official in India. But Mr. Tayler was equal to the occasion. He summoned the European inhabitants of the place to deliberate on the means to be adopted to avert the crisis from Patna. Rejecting the timid counsel offered him shortly before by the judge, – who then, or a little later, took refuge in the opium godown, – to despatch the Government treasure to Danapur and to be prepared on the first alarm to follow it thither, Mr. Tayler briefly stated to those present his information, his apprehensions, and his hopes, and then added that if they had confidence in him, he was prepared to assume the entire responsibility, and to act as he might consider necessary.
In reply the Europeans present voted by acclamation confidence in their Commissioner. Thus armed, Mr. Tayler prepared for the inevitable emergency.
On the 7th June the crisis seemed to arrive. Intimation was received that evening from Danapur to the effect that the native regiments were in a state of excitement, and that a rise was apprehended that very night.
Mr. Tayler determined at once to make of his own house a fortress for the whole station. He drove to the nearest residents, and sent messengers to those further off, begging them to accept his hospitality during the crisis. In less than an hour his house was crowded
by men, women, and children, from all parts of Patna. The house, however, was garrisoned by the Station Guards, who were all natives. Could they be trusted? Suddenly the discovery of a letter passing between them and the Sipahis at Danapur showed Mr. Tayler that his guards were in league with the disaffected regiments.
Fortunately, a body of Sikhs newly raised by Captain Rattray, were then within forty miles of Patna. Mr. Tayler had sent expresses a day or two before to summon these men. They arrived at the early dawn. For the moment, then, Patna was safe. The several residents returned to their homes.
The immediate superior of Mr. Tayler was the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. The gentleman who filled that office in 1857 was Mr. Frederick Halliday, a member of the Bengal Civil Service. Mr. Halliday had spent the greater part of his career in the Secretarial offices of Calcutta, and had, as a practical man, suffered from a training which, whilst it makes a man an excellent clerk, affords him no opportunity for that capacity to deal with men which can only be acquired in independent executive command. Of the clerkly ability which makes a man a good Secretary in unruffled times Mr. Halliday had abundance. He was, however, utterly and hopelessly unfitted to deal with a great crisis. Other reasons combined with his want of practical knowledge to unfit him for the post which he unfortunately occupied. The “service” did not trust him. He was believed to favour unduly those who were bound to him by personal ties of blood and friendship. On one memorable occasion, the Private Secretary of Lord Dalhousie, Mr. Courtney, had not only charged him with falsehood, but had published the correspondence containing the charge in the leading newspaper of Calcutta, the Englishman, without eliciting any denial or explanation. His immediate subordinates, the Commissioners of Divisions, felt themselves terribly handicapped by serving a chief, who, having had no personal experience of the duties of their position, could not sympathise with their difficulties: whom they felt they could not trust: who would not judge them by their actions, but by the manner in which those actions would reflect personally upon himself, and whose fussy interference, nurtured hundreds of miles from the scenes of action in complete ignorance of the circumstances of the moment, was
calculated to disarrange plans, matured with the most profound knowledge and after careful consideration, on the spot.
It can easily be conceived, then, that a full report of the threatened outbreak at Patna, made to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, had not the effect of inducing the Government of India to order the disarming of the men from whom the outbreak had been apprehended.
Major-General Lloyd, then commanding at Danapur, had passed all his service in a Sipahi regiment. He had witnessed the fidelity of the native soldier under trying and difficult circumstances, and, fortified by the opinion of the several commandants of regiments, he clung to his belief in their loyalty. He shut his eyes too closely to the fact that of the three native regiments under his command two had already shown a mutinous disposition. Like so many officers, good honest men, who had spent their lives amid the Sipahis, he could not bring himself absolutely to mistrust them, – to recommend their disarming, equivalent, in his opinion, to their dishonour.
His confidence in his own judgment was increased by the fact that on the 7th of June – about the period when so many other regiments had risen; when he had been positively informed that his regiments would certainly rise; and when an opportunity had been offered them of seizing some £200,000 of money belonging to the Government, as they believed, but slightly guarded – those regiments had remained passive. On the 2nd of June he had reported to the Government his belief that the regiments would remain quiet, “unless some great temptation or excitement should assail them,” and five days later he reiterated the same opinion.
The Government, then, had before them the report of the Commissioner of the danger incurred at Patna on the 7th of June, and the opinion of the Major-General commanding the division that the native troops would remain quiet, “unless some great temptation or excitement should assail them.” Having in view the composition of the native society at Patna, the isolation of the stations dependent upon it, the vast wealth of the province, the Government must, I think, be held guilty of fatuity in trusting, at such a crisis, to the chance that no great temptation or excitement would assail the Sipahis. Neither at that time nor later would there have been any difficulty in disarming the Sipahis at Danapur. The 10th Regiment was on the spot, and
detachments of European troops were constantly conveyed past the station in steamers.
The only defence of the inaction of the Government with which I am acquainted, relating to this particular Defence of the period, the first week in June, is to the effect that action of the Lord Canning had “not merely to consider what Government. was locally or individually best, but what was most generally conducive to the interests of those under his charge.” It has been urged that the result of disarming might have been “dangerous in the extreme to our people in other parts of the country where Sipahis abounded, and not a detachment of Europeans was to be seen”: that the Governor-General “was looking anxiously for the arrival of fresh reinforcements when the game would be more in his own hands; but in the then destitute state of the Lower Provinces, it seemed to him and to the members of his Council to be sounder policy to temporise7.”
But these and similar arguments will not bear examination. Nothing that might have been done in the wax of disarming could have produced results so disastrous as those which actually followed the inactive policy of the Government of India, and which I am now about to record. It may likewise be added that when Lord Canning had fresh reinforcements at his disposal, he still refused, in the manner hereafter to be described, to order the disarming of the Sipahis.
To return to Patna. The report brought by Captain Rattray of the reception accorded to his Sikh soldiers by the inhabitants of the city and the districts in its vicinity, was not of a nature to allay the apprehensions which his profound acquaintance with the province had excited in the mind of Mr. Tayler. Those soldiers, he was informed, bad been constantly reviled on their march towards Patna, taunted with the part they were taking, accused of being renegades from their faith, and asked whether they intended to fight for the infidel or for their religion. When they entered Patna the high priest of the Sikh temple in the city refused to admit them to the sacred shrine, and wherever they were seen they met the most palpable evidences of the hatred and contempt of the population.
Private inquiries which Mr. Tayler instituted at this time soon brought to his mind the conviction that secret mischief
was brewing. He learnt, too, that conferences of disaffected men were held at night, though in a manner so secret and so well guarded, that proof of meeting was rendered difficult, the capture of the plotters impossible.
The alarm meanwhile was increasing. The judge of Patna, the opium agent, and some others, left their houses with their families and took refuge in the opium godown. It spread likewise to the districts. Mr. Wake, the magistrate of Arah, afterwards so distinguished for his gallantry in the defence of that place, wrote to Mr. Tayler on the 11th, informing him that many of the railway employés and other Europeans had run away from his district in a panic, and had taken refuge in Danapur.
Under these trying circumstances Mr. Tayler acted with vigour, with judgment, and with decision. He stood out prominently amongst his compeers. He hid nothing from his superiors. The details of the crisis through which his division was passing, were, therefore, well known in Calcutta. And when post after post brought to the capital accounts of the risings at Banaras, at Azamgarh, in Central India and in the North-Western Provinces, the question rose naturally and involuntarily to the lips:– “How is it that Patna is quiescent?” Patna, was quiescent simply because one man, Mr. William Tayler, the Commissioner of the Division, was a brave and determined man, ready to strike when necessary, and incapable, even under the darkest circumstances, of showing hesitation or fear.
The metal of which his character was formed was soon to be further tested. The disaffection among the Danapur troops, and in the districts, being daily on the increase, Mr. Tayler directed the removal of the moneys in the treasuries of Chapra and Arah into Patna, thus bringing the coin under his own eye. He controlled with a firm hand the movements in his six districts of the officials, some of whom had actually left their stations under the conviction of an impending attack. Every day the post and messengers brought him intelligence of disaffection on the one side, of apprehension on the other: of plots to murder, of plots to burn, of plots to rise in revolt. He was informed, moreover, that Kunwar Singh, a powerful landowner, whose estates in the vicinity of Arah were peopled by a martial tenantry devoted to their chief, was making secret preparations to seize the first opportunity to revolt.
Mr. Tayler did not, at the moment, credit the reports about Kunwar Singh individually. He was well aware that to all the disaffected nobles and landowners of the districts only two opportunities, or one of two opportunities, would prove sufficiently tempting. These were, the mutiny of the native regiments at Danapur, and the rising of the population of Patna. It was clear that a successful mutiny at Danapur would be instantaneously followed by the rising of Patna; equally clear that a successful rising at Patna would precipitate the mutiny of the native troops. Mr. Tayler was, however, confident that if allowed by the Government unfettered action, he could maintain order in Patna so long as the native troops at Danapur should remain quiescent. Thus, in his view, all, for the moment, depended on the quiet attitude of the Sipahis.
So many symptoms, amongst others intercepted correspondence, seeming to show that the native troops were only watching their opportunity, it appeared to Mr. Tayler imperatively necessary that they should be disarmed with as little delay as possible. He endeavoured to impress his views in this respect on Major-General Lloyd. But in this he was unsuccessful. Major-General Lloyd held to the views I have already quoted, and declared repeatedly to Mr. Tayler that he was in direct communication with Lord Canning on the subject, and that he would carry the province through the crisis without resorting to the supreme measure of disarming.
Mr. Tayler’s position was rendered a thousand times more difficult by the fact that in addition to a disaffected city under his very eyes, to disaffected districts within ranges varying from thirty to upwards of a hundred miles, to disaffected landowners controlling large portions of those districts, he had within a few miles of his own door three native regiments, pledged, as their correspondence showed, to mutiny, and only watching their opportunity. It is difficult to realise the enormous responsibility thus thrown upon the shoulders of one man. Other positions in India were dangerous, but this was unique in the opportunities of danger which threatened it, in the number of the lives, in the amount of treasure, in the extent of country, devolving upon one man, almost unaided, to guard. Without a single European soldier, and with only a few Sikhs, at his disposal, Mr. Tayler was responsible for the lives of some hundreds of Europeans
scattered over the province, for a treasury in his own city containing more than £300,000, and in the districts of still more, for opium of the value of millions, for his own good name, for the credit and honour of his country. And now all around was surging. Any moment might bring revolt and mutiny to his door.
I have said in my description of Mr. Tayler that he possessed great natural talents which he had cultivated. In the course of his reading he had not been slow to observe that in great crises, when two armies, or two political parties are sitting armed opposite to each other, each watching its opportunity, success almost invariably inclines to the leader who shall strike the first blow.
The time had now arrived for him to consider whether he was not himself placed in a position in which he would be justified in dealing at the disaffected chiefs a blow which would paralyse their movements – a blow not accompanied by bloodshed, but one strictly of self-defence. The measure he contemplated may, in one sense, be termed a measure of disarming. He was not strong enough, indeed, to disarm at the moment the inhabitants of Patna by depriving them of their weapons, but he could disarm their counsels of wisdom by apprehending and confining their trusted leaders. It was a bold and daring idea, requiring strength of nerve and resolution to carry through; but the necessities were pressing, the dangers were threatening, a general rising in Patna, might be fatal. Mr. Tayler resolved to anticipate those dangers, to render impossible or fruitless that rising, by acting in the manner I have indicated.
Accordingly he struck. Private information had satisfied Mr. Tayler that the chiefs of the disaffected natives were the Wahabi Maulavis. These men were the leaders of the most bigoted Muhammadan party in the world, and as such commanded implicit obedience from the mass of Patna Muhammadans, holding in their hands the strings of the contemplated movement. Prominent amongst these Maulavis were three men, Shah Muhammad Husen, Ahmad Ulah, and Waiz-ill-Hakk. To seize these men openly would have provoked the outbreak which Mr. Tayler was careful to avoid. But it was necessary for the public peace that they should be secured. Mr. Tayler, therefore, requested their presence, and the presence of others, to consult on the state of affairs. When the conference was over he allowed the others
to depart, but detained the three men I have named, informing them that in the then existing state of affairs it was necessary that they should remain under supervision.
They politely acquiesced, and were conducted to a comfortable house near the Sikh encampment where suitable accommodation had been provided for them.
This act occurred on the 19th of June. It was followed up by the arrest of Maulavi Mehdi, the patroling magistrate of the city, strongly suspected of connivance with the disaffected. The next day, the 20th, the rank and file having been overawed by the seizure of their chiefs, Mr. Tayler issued a proclamation calling upon all citizens to deliver up their arms, within twenty-four hours, on pain of being proceeded against; and another, forbidding all citizens, those excepted who might be specially exempted, from leaving their homes after 9 o’clock at night.
These several measures were to a great extent successful. The disaffected were deprived of their most trusted leaders; several thousand stands of arms were peaceably delivered up; nightly meetings of the conspirators ceased. As a first practical result, the judge, Mr. Farquharson, the opium agent, Mr. Garrett, and others, left their refuge at the opium godown, and returned to their houses. The second was the sudden diminution of the symptoms of disaffection throughout the districts under Mr. Tayler’s orders.
But the crisis was not over. Three days later a corporal of the native police, Waris Ali by name, was arrested at his own station, in Tirhut, under most suspicious circumstances. Upon his person was found a bundle of letters implicating in the rebellious movement one Ali Karim, an influential Muhammadan gentleman, residing nine miles from Patna.
Mr. Tayler at once despatched the magistrate of Patna, Mr. Lowis, to arrest this gentleman, placing at his disposal a party of Sikh cavalry. But Mr. Lowis, listening to the voice of the native official who was to accompany him, resolved to act without the cavalry. The same friendly voice which had proffered this advice warned Ali Karim of the magistrate’s approach. When Mr. Lowis came in sight of his intended victim, the latter was mounted on an elephant. Mr. Lowis had at his disposal a small pony gig –
and his legs. As Ali Karim turned at once into the fields, he was enabled easily to baffle his pursuer, and to escape.
The order which Mr. Tayler’s bold measures had thus restored was maintained without interruption till the 3rd of July. The disaffected had been thoroughly cowed. In the interval, however, reports of the massacre at Shahjahanpur, of the fall of Kanhpur, of Fathpur, and of Farrukhabad, came to re-animate their hopes. The attitude of the Sipahi regiments continued doubtful.
But on the evening of the 3rd of July the long threatened Patna rising occurred. Thanks, however, to the energetic measures already taken by Mr. Tayler, it occurred in a form so diluted that a continuation of the same daring and resolute policy sufficed to repress it. It happened in this wise. At the period on the 3rd already indicated, some two hundred Muhammadan fanatics, led by one Pir Ili, a bookseller, noted for his enthusiasm for his religion and his hatred of the English, unfurled the green flag, and summoning by beat of drum others to join them rushed, calling upon Allah, towards the Roman Catholic Church, situate in the very heart of the city. On the news of this movement reaching Mr. Tayler, that gentleman directed Captain Rattray, attended by the magistrate, to march down with 150 Sikhs, whilst for the protection of the residents he put into operation the same precautions which had been adopted on the 7th of June, he himself going in person to the houses nearest to his own.
Meanwhile, and before the Sikhs had reached the spot, Dr. Lyall, the assistant to the opium agent, hearing the uproar, and thinking that his presence might overawe the rioters, had galloped to the scene of action. As he approached the crowd several shots were fired at him. By one of these he was killed8.
The sight of a fallen European stimulated the fanaticism of the crowd, and produced on them the effect which the taste of blood arouses in a hungry tiger. They pushed onwards with renewed enthusiasm, their numbers being augmented at every step. In a very few minutes, however, they found themselves face to face with Rattray’s 150 Sikhs. Between the opposing parties, far from sympathy, there was the hatred of race, the
hatred of religion; on the one side the newly aroused fanaticism, on the other the longed for opportunity to repay many a covert insult. It can well be imagined what followed. There was not a moment of parley.
The rival parties instantaneously clashed, and in a few seconds, the discipline and bayonets of the Sikhs suppressed the long threatened Patna rising.
The next day, and the day following, the city was searched for the ringleaders of the outbreak. Thirty-one were apprehended. Amongst these were Pir Ali, the actual leader, and Shekh Ghasita, the confidential servant of Lutf Ali Khan, the richest banker in the city.
Of the thirty-one men who were apprehended, fourteen were tried and executed without delay. With them likewise was hanged the Waris Ali referred to in a previous page9. Two – the two above named – were remanded for further examination.
Facts seemed to speak strongly against them. It was clearly proved that Pir Ali was a main agent for promoting a crusade against the English; that for months he and the Shekh Ghasita, above mentioned, had engaged and kept in pay numerous men who should be ready, when called upon, to fight for their religion and the Emperor of Dehli. But these operations had required a large outlay. Pir Ali was poor. His associate, Ghasita, was the hand of the great banker. But though it might have been fairly presumed that the great banker was implicated, no proceedings were, for the moment, taken against him.
The two men, Fir Ali and Ghasita, were tried and hanged. Lutf Ali, arraigned subsequently on the charge of harbouring a mutinous Sipahi, and acquitted by the judge on the ground of insufficient evidence, was promptly released, and shortly afterwards was welcomed and honoured as a martyr by the successor of Mr. Tayler!
But the outbreak was suppressed. It had been premature. As Pir Ali admitted, Mr. Tayler’s strong measures had forced his hand and compelled him to strike before he was ready. But for those strong measures the conspiracy would have been
silently hatched until the outbreak at Danapur should have given it the signal for explosion.
Whilst Mr. Tayler, thus, in spite of the all but superhuman difficulties in his path, maintained order in the most disaffected city still under British rule in India, and in the districts immediately contiguous, Major Holmes, commanding the 12th Irregular Cavalry, acting in concert with him and pursuing the same system, prevented an outbreak in the frontier district of Sigauli. It is true, indeed, that Major Holmes still believed in his native soldiers, and equally true that up to the moment of their actual outbreak – almost simultaneous with that at Danapur – they had shown no symptom of disaffection. But this belief on the part of Major Holmes was so generally shared by the officers of the Bengal army, that it should attract no surprise. It was natural that the officers should believe in men with whom they had been associated twenty, thirty, and forty years; who had followed them unhesitatingly through the snows of Kabul; whose forefathers had served with goodwill in the expeditions against Egypt, and the isles of France and Bourbon; and who had protested against the indignity of being suspected. That was natural enough. But it was not natural that the Government, raised above the passions and prejudices of regimental officers, should more than share their sympathies. With the far wider scope open to their view the Government possessed means, not available to the officers, of testing the truth of the lip-service so freely proffered by the men. It is impossible to say how much loss of life, how much misery, how much evil would have been avoided had the Government of India not refused to take from the native troops of the Danapur division the arms, which their own Sipahi-trained Major-General had assured them, would be loyally used only if no great temptation or excitement should assail them!
Still, order was maintained. The means employed to assure that order, whilst they gained for Mr. Tayler the confidence of the English planters and traders throughout the province, were not at all to the taste of the Government of Bengal. Of Mr. Halliday I have already spoken. It is scarcely to be doubted that if that gentleman and Mr. Tayler could have changed places; if the latter had been Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and the former Commissioner of the Patna division, whilst the affairs of Bengal would not certainly have suffered, the nature of the rule at
Patna would have been widely different. There is abundant evidence to prove that whilst the policy of Mr. Tayler, condemned, as we shall see, by Mr. Halliday, saved Patna; the policy of concealing from the public view facts which it was of vital importance that the public should know, – of coquetting, so to speak, with armed rebels, – advocated by that gentleman, and employed so uselessly in Calcutta and its vicinity, would, if followed in a city such as Patna and in a province such as Bihar, have played the game of, and given victory to, the disaffected. The Patna rising, so easily suppressed by Mr. Tayler, would most certainly have been a black day in the calendar of Mr. Halliday.
I repeat, under Mr. Tayler, order was maintained, under most difficult circumstances, in Patna. About Patna, then, so long as he should remain there, no apprehension was felt. But the case was not so with respect to Danapur. There, the Sipahis remained armed and trusted. In spite of intercepted letters, of men occasionally caught in mutinous acts, the Government continued to trust to the chance that “no great temptation or excitement” would induce them to rise.
Far different was the feeling of the European community of Calcutta. These had important interests in Bihar, large districts of which were watered and fertilised by their capital. These interests seemed to depend entirely on the good behaviour of the Sipahis. To many of them it was a question of wealth or poverty, to those on the spot of death or of existence. In Mr. Tayler they had absolute confidence. His measures had warded off one danger. But the other still remained, clear, vivid, threatening; ready to burst forth at any moment; safe to encounter no opposition capable of restraining it for an hour.
That the possibility of such an outbreak had escaped the attention of the Government of India there is evidence to disprove. It may have been, as his latest apologist has asserted, that Lord Canning refrained at an earlier date from issuing a disarming order because he was waiting for “fresh reinforcements, when the game would be more in his own hands.” But in the early part of July those fresh reinforcements arrived. Not only so, but those very reinforcements, consisting of a wing of the 37th Foot and of the 5th Fusiliers, had received orders to proceed towards the north-west in steamers, touching at Danapur on the way.
Here then was the opportunity – the opportunity which would take from the Government the last excuse not to disarm the native regiments, unless they were prepared to avow that they would trust rather to the chance of the Sipahis remaining quiescent.
The Government considered the question carefully and with attention. They arrived at a decision fatal alike to their prescience as statesmen, and to the true conception of the responsibilities of men placed, fortuitously perhaps, but very really, in a position of absolute power. They cast from their shoulders the entire responsibility. They would not order that the regiments should retain their arms; neither would they direct that they should be disarmed.
They left the decision to Major-General Lloyd, commanding the Danapur division – the officer who had already reported his belief that the Sipahis “would remain quiet, unless some great temptation or excitement should assail them, in which case, I fear, they could not be relied upon.” The Government thus constituted Major-General Lloyd the sole judge as to whether such temptation or such excitement was likely to arise10.
This decision of the Government was not published, but the purport of it was privately conveyed to the mercantile community of Calcutta. It failed to satisfy the members of that community. They saw that the responsibility had been only
moved. It had been shifted from the shoulders of the Government to the shoulders of Major-General Lloyd. That officer was known to be opposed to disarming; to entertain a belief that he could carry those under his command through the crisis without having resort to so extreme a measure. In the opinion of the mercantile community, then, the decision arrived at by the Government seemed equivalent to a refusal to order disarming.
Impressed with the conviction of the certain evil which must follow a conclusion so adverse to their interests to the interests of the province, of the Empire, and to public order, the merchants of Calcutta determined, as a last resource, to make, in the most temperate language, a personal appeal to Lord Canning. On the 17th of July, then, two days after they had been informed of the resolution at which the Government had arrived, the merchants solicited the Governor-General to receive from their body a deputation, charged with their ideas on the state of affairs in Tirhut and Bihar.
Lord Canning agreed to receive, and did on the 20th receive, the deputation. Its spokesman, Mr. Daniel Mackinlay, a gentleman who carried with him the confidence of all Calcutta, began by pointing out how the mercantile interests were involved in the maintenance of peace and order; how both were threatened by the attitude of the native regiments at Danapur; how the disarming of those regiments would quiet the public mind and restore confidence; how that a most favourable opportunity for carrying out that measure then presented itself, inasmuch as the 5th Fusiliers, who had left Calcutta by steamer on the 12th, would reach Danapur on or about the 22nd; that they, disembarking, could very easily, in conjunction with the 10th Regiment on the spot, disarm the native regiments, and then, re-embarking, proceed on their upward journey.
Such were the points submitted in respectful language by the spokesman of the deputation. Lord Canning, in a curt and ceremonious speech, refused to accede to the request preferred.
The events that followed can only be regarded as the consequence of the decisions of the Government of India. These decisions may be thus briefly stated:– 1st, a refusal to order the disarming of the Danapur brigade at the period when the troops south of Danapur were being disarmed, when those north of it were mutinying, and
when the greatest disaffection in the city and in the districts close to Danapur were daily being brought to light; 2ndly, the rejection of the request of the merchants of Calcutta to order the disarming when the strength in Europeans had been greatly increased; 3rdly, the transfer of responsibility to an officer who was known to be opposed to the disarming of the native troops under his command.
I now proceed to relate the consequences of these decisions.
Major-General Lloyd was armed, we have seen, with the power, should he think fit, to detain the 5th Fusiliers at Danapur, and, acting with them and the 10th Regiment, to disarm the three native regiments of his command. Major-General Lloyd winced under this responsibility. He did not like it at all. He could not resolve to make use of the powers with which he was entrusted.
When, therefore, on the 22nd of July, the main body of the 5th Fusiliers arrived off Danapur, he did not order them to disembark, he did not even detain them. They proceeded without delay on their way.
But no sooner had they left than Major-General Lloyd began to doubt whether he had acted rightly. He could not call them back. But it happened two days later, whilst the Major-General was half regretting, half doubting, that two companies of the 37th Regiment arrived off the station. Major-General Lloyd at once directed the disembarkation of these men.
But he had not even then brought himself to the point of ordering disarming. Nor could he, even with these new troops at his disposal, persuade himself to direct the necessary measure. The responsibility thrust upon him by the Government pressed him down. Like all weak men, weighted with a burden to which their intellect and their nerve are alike unequal, Major-General Lloyd hesitated.
In the midst of his hesitation he bethought him of a half-measure – a measure which, he believed, would render the Sipahis powerless and yet save their honour. He decided to leave them their percussion-muskets, but to deprive them of their percussion-caps!
That the reader may clearly understand the danger with which such a measure was fraught, it is necessary that I should give a short description of the station of Danapur, and of its military plan.
Danapur lies ten miles from the city of Patna, six from the civil station of Bankipur, in which reside the European officials. The native town occupies the easternmost point of the station, that nearest to Patna. Close to the town is a large square, tenanted mainly by European troops. Adjoining this on its western side is a smaller square in which are the better quarters of the European officers. Beyond this a few detached houses, and beyond these again, the lines or huts occupied by the Sipahis. Further on still, at the westernmost point of the station, was the magazine, in which were stored, amongst other items, the percussion-caps for the use of the regiments. To remove these caps from this magazine into the square occupied by the Europeans, the whole length of the native lines would thus have to be traversed. It would not be possible to conceal from the Sipahis the nature of the measure which should thus be carried out. They would most certainly divine its reason. Surely, then, in deciding to deprive the Sipahis of their percussion-caps, Major-General Lloyd was placing in their way that very temptation, and arousing in their minds that very excitement, which, he had reported to Government, would almost certainly incite them to mutiny!
Having received only the permission, not the order, to disarm, and not being able to nerve himself to a measure of a character so pointed, Major-General Lloyd directed the carrying out of a scheme far less decisive and infinitely more dangerous. A parade of the European troops was ordered for the morning of the 25th; and it was directed that whilst the troops should remain in the great square, already referred to, two carts should be sent to bring into that square the percussion-cap cases from the magazine.
The order was obeyed. The 10th Foot, two companies of the 37th Regiment, and the company of European Artillery were drawn up on the morning of the 25th in the great square, and the two carts were despatched to the magazine under the charge of an officer and a small guard. The carts reached the magazine, were loaded with the cap-cases, and set out on their return. As they passed the lines of the 7th Native Infantry, the Sipahis showed the greatest excitement. Those who were being paraded for guard summoned their comrades to join them in preventing the carrying off of the caps. Their officers, however, succeeded it pacifying them. The men of the 8th Native
Infantry were less demonstrative. Those of the 40th even showed a disposition to oppose the angry demonstrations of the men of the 7th.
For the moment the difficulty was tided over; the cap-cases were brought safely into the square, and the parade was dismissed The General, perfectly satisfied with the manner in which he had solved the difficult question and believing, as he says himself, that the Sipahis would feel it “quite madness to attempt resistance with only fifteen caps per man,” determined then to carry out another measure, still more delicate, still more likely to cause opposition.
He issued orders accordingly to the commandants to hold a second parade of their regiments without arms, that afternoon, and to take from the men the caps in the regimental magazines and those in their actual possession.
A more difficult operation than that entrusted to the regimental officers of the native regiments can scarcely be conceived. Nor, in the presence of the manifestation of the 7th Native Infantry in the morning, is it possible to imagine how the Major-General could have believed that the Sipahis would calmly surrender the one thing still in their own hands which made their muskets valuable. However, the order of the Major-General had to be carried out, and the regiments were paraded at 1 o’clock.
At that parade the General was not present. Neither had he taken the precaution to order the attendance of the European troops of the garrison. In point of fact, at the hour ordered by the General himself for the parade, the European troops were in their barracks, eating their dinners. The General himself, after giving some vague instructions as to how to act in case of a difficulty which he regarded as impossible, proceeded on board a river steamer which had arrived that morning. He stepped on board just after the mutiny, now about to be recorded, had broken out.
On the men falling in without arms the several commanding officers directed the native officers to collect the caps in pouch from each Sipahi, explaining to them as they did so that the measure was one of precaution designed to save the well-disposed from being led away by the machinations of those bent on mischief. The native officers, who probably sympathised in a great measure with their men, might as well have spoken to the winds. The demand for the
caps, was, in the 7th and 8th Regiments, the signal for mutiny. The men rushed tumultuously to the bells of arms, seized their muskets, and began to fire on their officers. The 40th showed some hesitation, but, after a short period of doubt, they too were carried away by the example of their comrades.
Whilst this was happening, Major-General Lloyd was stepping on board the steamer, and the European soldiers were at their dinners. The Major-General had previously arranged, however, that in the event of any disturbance two musket-shots should be fired in quick succession by the European guard at the hospital – a large building between the smaller square and the native lines, and commanding a good view of the latter. At half-past 1 o’clock the report of those shots informed. Major-General Lloyd and the Europeans that the native regiments had mutinied.
No sooner was the signal given than the “assembly” sounded in the large square. The 10th Regiment turned out under Lieutenant-Colonel Fenwick, two companies of the 37th under the senior captain present; the artillery under Lieutenant-Colonel Huyshe. But there was no one to take the command. Major-General Lloyd states that he had previously given instructions how to act on an emergency to Colonel Huyshe, and that he considered that these orders would ensure the attack and pursuit of the mutineers by the European infantry and artillery. Uneasy at the quiescent attitude of the troops, he, at a later period of the afternoon, despatched one staff officer to order the guns to advance, and another to direct the officer commanding the detachment of the 37th Foot to place himself under the orders of Colonel Fenwick.
Whether the orders of the Major-General, given, it must be remembered, before the event, were sufficiently clear and precise, may be doubted. This at least is certain, that his absence from the parade-ground caused considerable delay in the advance of the troops. When at last they did move from their ground it was too late. No one knew where the Major-General was; neither the Commander of the 10th Regiment, nor the Commander of the battery of artillery, considered himself invested with power to act in the absence of the Major-General. And it was only when, after a prolonged delay, the two staff officers referred to hurried up from the steamer that the order to advance was issued.
Meanwhile, the mutineers, astonished at their easy triumph, and seeing that they were being disturbed only by some shots fired by the guard at the hospital, hastened to divest themselves of their red coats, to pouch all the caps in the regimental store, and to start off as fast as they could towards the river Son, in the direction of Arah. A few of them attempted to cross the Ganges; but the steamer, on board of which was the Major-General, effectually prevented this movement.
When, then, the European troops reached the native lines, they found that the Sipahis had already disappeared. They set fire to their huts, and then halted for orders. No orders came. The Major-General was still on board the steamer, and no one cared to usurp his powers.
Such was the rising of Danapur, – a rising long foreseen, and yet managed as though it had been regarded as impossible. Who was to blame? First and principally, certainly, the Government of India, which, though warned in a manner compared to which the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast after it had been interpreted was an insoluble mystery, not only persistently declined to take upon itself the responsibility of ordering the disarming of the Sipahis, but thrust that responsibility upon an officer unfit, mentally and physically, to bear it. Secondly, and only to a less degree than the Government, Major-General Lloyd himself, who, under the weight of the responsibility thrust upon him, preferred to a decided, though simple and easy plan, a scheme elaborate and delicate, certain to wound whilst likely to fail; and who, further, deprived that scheme of all possibility of success by absenting himself from the parade-ground at the critical moment, and by leaving the European troops without orders. Had Major-General Lloyd mounted his horse and led on the European troops when the signal of mutiny reached him, the mutiny would have been crushed in the bud, and the terrible consequences which followed would have been averted11.
Precisely on the day on which these events were taking place at Danapur, a bloodier tragedy was enacted at Sigauli, the frontier station of the division. Here was quartered the 12th Irregular Cavalry, commanded by Major Holmes. I have said that Major Holmes trusted his men, and he showed the absolute trust that he felt in them. In dealing with a great crisis he went all the lengths of the great Lord Strafford. He was urgent for a “thorough” policy, for a prompt and sharp punishment for overt acts of treason and disaffection. Impressed with these views, he took the law into his own hands. He proclaimed, on his own authority, martial law in the five civil districts contiguous to his own station. Trusting absolutely, as I have said, his men, he sent them out in detached parties of from twenty to fifty all over these districts to overawe the disaffected and to maintain order. Every Sipahi or mutineer caught in the act of rebellion he caused to be seized, tried by a court-martial, and, if found guilty, hanged. In all this he acted with the cordial approval of the Commissioner of Patna, for whom he had the highest admiration. It is probable that if the strain on his men had been eased a little earlier Major Holmes would have carried his district through the crisis. But the inaction of the Government with respect to the Danapur regiments, and probably the knowledge that a concerted movement between them and the native landowners would soon come to maturity, were too much for his men. They determined to cast off the mask.
On the evening of the 25th of July, then, four troopers suddenly attacked Major Holmes and his wife, a daughter of the heroic Sale, and killed them. The other Europeans in the station shared the same fate. The mutinous soldiers then plundered the treasury, and let themselves loose on the country, now at their mercy.
The fears of the mercantile community, expressed on the 20th of July to Lord Canning, were thus promptly realised. Lord Canning had on that date refused to order disarming. The troops, not disarmed, had mutinied, and on the 25th the richest province in India was at their mercy.
I now return to Patna. The event so long dreaded, so long foreseen, to guard against the effects of which so many precautions had been taken by the Commissioner, had now occurred. The native troops had revolted; Bihar was without force to resist them. Early in the day of the 25th, Mr. Tayler had received from Danapur intelligence which left on his mind no doubt that the crisis there was imminent. He at once summoned the residents to the protection afforded by his house. The residents had scarcely arrived when the sound of the firing of the two guns announced that the outbreak had occurred. Later in this day of suspense intelligence arrived that the mutineers had left the station, and that the European troops had not followed them. The direction taken by the native troops was unknown, but Mr. Tayler, guided by a true military instinct, determined at once to do all in his power to intercept them. He organized, therefore, a party of volunteers, and combining with them fifty Sikhs, fifty native police, and a small levy of horse, detached the party that night to Phalwari, about eight miles from Patna, there to bivouac for the night. He sent intimation of this movement to Major-General Lloyd, with a request that he would detach a small body of the 10th Foot to co-operate with this party, should he have reason to believe that the Sipahis had taken that route.
The dawn of the following day, however, disclosed to Mr. Taylor the evil which, at the moment, appeared the more formidable of the two – the mutiny of the 12th Irregulars, and the murder of their commandant and others. This event gave to affairs a most serious aspect. A whole regiment of cavalry was thus let loose on the country, and it was difficult to say in what quarter they would strike their blow. An absolute necessity was thus created that all the available means of defence should be concentrated. The detachment, then, was at once withdrawn from Phalwari. The fate of Patna and of Bihar seemed now to depend upon the conduct of Major-General Lloyd. Should he have directed a rapid pursuit in force of the mutineers all might yet be well.
But at Danapur affairs had taken a very different turn. The native troops had, we have already seen, been allowed time to march clean away with their muskets and their ammunition. The European troops after burning the native huts, had, in consequence of
the absence of the Major-General, returned to their barracks. No one knew certainly the ultimate direction which the Sipahis might take. It was believed, however, that their passage across the Ganges having been prevented, they would march on Arah.
Here was an opportunity such as a real soldier would have clutched at – an opportunity of repairing every mistake, of atoning for all shortcomings. Dividing the district of Shahabad, of which Arah was the capital, from that of Patna, and some fourteen miles south-west of Danapur, is the river Son, swollen at that season by continuous rain, and traversable only by boats, not then collected. Had Major-General Lloyd, on landing from the steamer that evening, at once detached a strong force of infantry and artillery in pursuit of the mutineers, he must have caught them in flagrante delicto, with an unfordable river in their rear.
But such an action was far above the calibre of the mind of Major-General Lloyd. He has placed on record that probably a direct pursuit would not have been of much avail12.
A dim idea of the use which might be made of the Son river to stop the enemy prompted him however, the following morning, to send some riflemen in a steamer up that river, but there was not sufficient draught of water, and the steamer and riflemen returned, having accomplished nothing. But before they arrived the Major-General had received information which diverted his thoughts entirely, for the moment, from an offensive movement, and directed them to the securing of the safety of his garrison by intrenching Danapur13.
The information referred to was to the effect that Kunwar
Singh, the great landowner mentioned in a previous page, whose estates lay in the vicinity of Arah, and along the banks of the Son, had raised his tenantry and was about to join the mutinous Sipahis.
Kunwar Singh, a Rajput chieftain of ancient lineage, had been made an enemy of the English rule by the action of our revenue system. The action of this system, which he imperfectly understood, had reduced his means so considerably that some short time before the outbreak of the mutiny his estates had been placed in liquidation. Still, there was one case pending which, if decided in his favour, would go a great way towards recouping his losses. After the mutiny had broken out, and when Kunwar Singh was eagerly watching the turn of events, doubtful as to the course which he should pursue, the law courts decided this case against him. About the same time the supporting hand of Government was withdrawn from the management of his case14. Thenceforward his mind was made up. Old as he was, and he had seen eighty summers, he resolved to seize the first opportunity of striking a blow for his freedom. When he learned, therefore, that the Sipahis at Danapur had successfully risen and were marching towards Arab, he resolved to co-operate with them with all his power.
This was the information which influenced Major-General Lloyd to stop, for the moment, any further movement, and to intrench himself at Danapur. But the Commissioner of Patna, to whom he had imparted his resolve, deprecated it with all the fervour of his daring and energetic nature. He implored the General to pursue the rebels immediately. He pointed out that there might be yet time to catch them before they could cross
the Son; that vigour and energy would yet retrieve the disaster.
Had Mr. Tayler been Major-General Commanding the Danapur division, the disaster would have been retrieved promptly and effectually. But, in that case, there would have been no disaster to retrieve. As it was he could only advise.
Further information, to which I am about to refer, added force to Mr. Tayler’s recommendations, and at last determined the Major-General to detach a force in pursuit of the Sipahis.
Intelligence that the Sipahis had crossed the Son and were besieging Arah caused the Major-General to detach, on the evening of the 27th, a body of 193 men belonging to the 37th Regiment, in a steamer. The commander of this steamer was directed to steam up the Son, and to land the troops at the point where the road to Arah joins the river. The instructions given to the troops were that they should, on being landed, proceed to Arah, and bring away the civilians there besieged.
It happened, however, that the steamer, running on after the moon had gone down, stuck fast on a sand-bank. Major-General Lloyd then resolved to recall his troops and attempt nothing more.
But Mr. Tayler succeeded in inducing him to change his mind. The Major-General, then, in consultation with the captain of a river-steamer but just arrived, directed that a party of 250 men from the 10th foot, with 70 Sikhs and some volunteers, should leave Danapur in the morning of the 29th, in the steamer, which, picking up on its way the flat attached to the steamer which had stranded, should convey the troops, commanded by Colonel Fenwick, up the Son, to the point previously indicated.
Some difficulties raised by the commander of the steamer caused the reduction of the European force by 100 men. The remainder constituting too small a command for an officer of high rank, Colonel Fenwick remained behind, and Captain Dunbar of the same regiment took the whole body under his orders.
The steamer, with her 150 Europeans and 70 Sikhs, taking also two gentlemen volunteers, left Danapur amid the enthusiasm of the European population, picked up the detachment of the 37th Regiment,
reached the appointed spot in safety, and began to disembark the troops at 2 P.M. Before recounting their further movements I must return to the revolted Sipahis.
Those Sipahis, leaving Danapur with their arms and accoutrements, had arrived at the Son on the morning of 26th. For want of means to cross the river they did not reach the opposite bank till the evening. In the interval the servants of Kunwar Singh had been busy in collecting boats for the mass, whilst as many as could be conveyed crossed by the ferry. Before night had set in every man was on the opposite bank. Short was the consultation that followed. Kunwar Singh himself was on the spot, and, under the influence of the advice of this honoured Rajput landowner, it was decided to march on Arah, slaughter the residents, and plunder the treasury. The subsequent movements of the little army would necessarily depend on circumstances, but it was an object with Kunwar Singh to keep the Sipahis, if possible, within the limits of Bihar.
A great portion of the expectations of the Sipahis were realised almost at once. Having reached Arah, they released the prisoners from the gaol (27th of July), plundered the treasury, and then set forth to slaughter the European residents. But in the attempt to prosecute this part of their scheme they met with an opposition on which they had not counted.
The residents of Arah, in fact, had not awaited in idleness the visit which they had deemed always possible, and which, since the 25th, had been certain.
One of their number, Mr. Vicars Boyle, a civil engineer connected with the railway, had, from a very early period, regarded it as quite a possible contingency that the station might be attacked by the mutineers. He, therefore, despite the jeers of some, and the covert ridicule of others, had fortified the smaller of the two houses in his compound in a manner which would enable it, if defended, to resist any sudden assault. This house was a small detached building, about fifty feet square, having one storey above the basement, and surmounted by a flat roof. As soon as a message from Danapur brought the information of the successful rise and departure of the Sipahis, the residents resolved to take advantage of Mr. Boyle’s prescience, and to defend themselves in his house against the enemy. Supplies of all kinds, – meal, wine, beer,
water, biscuit, and sheep – had been gradually stored up by Mr. Boyle during the month.
Additional means of defence were now provided. Ammunition was collected; loopholes were drilled in the walls, and sand-bags were placed on the roof. At the same time, the front portion of the other and larger house in the same compound, about fifty yards distant from the improvised fortress, was entirely demolished, so as to prevent it from affording shelter to any possible assailants.
The European and Eurasian residents in Arah amounted in number to fifteen; but there was besides a Muhammadan gentleman, whose fate was joined to theirs15. With so small a garrison, a successful defence of Mr. Boyle’s house would have been impossible.
But with the prescience which, in those trying days, marked every act of the prescient Commissioner of Patna, Mr. Tayler had, in anticipation of the crisis, despatched to Arah fifty of Rattray’s Sikhs. These men were on the spot, and they too cast in their lot with the English. The united garrison thus numbered nearly seventy souls, and these, when information reached them of the crossing of the Son by the Sipahis, threw themselves, armed with their muskets, their guns, and their rifles, into the house of refuge, resolved to defend it to the very last.
Great, then, was the surprise of the Sipahis when, having released the prisoners and plundered the treasury, they set forth to slaughter the Europeans, they found that their progress was stayed by the occupants of one small house. Still confident in their numbers, and elated by the success which had attended all their movements, they advanced unhesitatingly, and in unbroken order, towards the last refuge of their enemy. The garrison reserved their fire till the Sipahis came within range, but they then let fly
with so sure an aim that the rebels fell back surprised and disconcerted.
These, changing their tactics, then dispersed into groups, and, taking possession of the larger house, commenced from it and from behind the trees near it, a continuous fire on the garrison. The commanding position and the artificial defences of the smaller house enabled the latter to return the fire with terrible effect. Not a Sipahi dare expose his person. If he chanced to do so, a bullet from a musket behind the sand-bags on the roof was certain to find out his weak point.
Meanwhile the Sipahis bad discovered that a portion of the garrison were Sikhs. They had some men of that nation in their own ranks. These were commissioned to use every possible argument to win over their countrymen. When the offer to share with them the plunder of the treasuries, of those sacked and of those still to be sacked, proved unavailing, threats of the doom which hung over them were freely used. The most earnest appeals to their nationality and their religion were alike rejected. Rattray’s Sikhs remained loyal to the Government which gave them their salt.
During the next day the rebels brought two guns to bear on July 28 the besieged edifice. From these they fired every possible kind of projectile on which they could lay hands. They riddled the walls of the house, but they did not lessen the courage of the garrison. A musketry fire, carefully husbanded, yet used unsparingly whenever a chance presented itself, told them, in unmistakeable language, that they were still defied. This did not, however, prevent the rebels from offering terms. Possibly the Sipahis were acquainted with the story of Kanhpur. But it is certain that every evening a Sipahi standing behind the pillar of the larger house, summoned the garrison, in the name of their General, a Subahdar of the 8th Regiment Native Infantry, to surrender on conditions.
The following day, the 29th, the same tactics were continued, the enemy’s guns being shifted from point to point so as to bear on the weakest point of the besieged house, but with the effect only of increasing the damage effected in the outer wall.
At last the enemy succeeded in placing the largest of the two field-pieces on the top of the vacated house, and began to direct a fire on the smaller house as fast as they could collect or
The house at Arah
improvise cannon-balls. But nothing intimidated the gallant men who formed the garrison. When the enemy raised a barricade on the roof of the adjoining house, the besieged raised one still higher on their own. When provisions began to fail, a sally procured more. In fact all the means that courage, labour, daring, and energy could suggest were used to the fullest extent to baffle the enemy.
At midnight on that day, the 29th, the garrison were aroused by the sound of repeated volleys of musketry about a mile distant, in the direction of the Son river. For a moment hope suggested the idea that the garrison of Danapur was about to relieve them. But the hope flickered and died almost as soon as it had received life. The sound of the firing became more and more distant – at last it ceased altogether. It was clear that the relieving party had been driven back.
We left that party, consisting of 343 Europeans, 70 Sikhs, and two gentlemen volunteers, 415 in all, having just succeeded in effecting their disembarkation, at two o’clock on the afternoon of the 29th, on the point nearest to the station of Arah. The order was at once issued for the men to dine, when suddenly firing was heard from the advance-guard. It was ascertained that this firing had been caused by the presence of a body of Sipahis on the banks of a wide and deep rivulet, about two miles distant, and upon whom the advanced guard had opened fire. On receiving the fire the Sipahis retreated. Then, though pressed to stop and bivouac for the night, Captain Dunbar determined to push on at once. It is true that his men were fasting; but it was a fine moonlight night, and both officers and men were cheered by the news brought by the villagers that the garrison was still holding out, whilst the sound of the booming of the guns in the direction of Arah showed that our countrymen were hardly pressed. Fifteen miles lay before the men, through a well-wooded country, traversed by an unmacadamised road, heavy from recent rain. The dinners, then, were left uncooked, the rivulet was crossed, and when, about 7 P.M., all had disembarked on the other side, the column started, led by a native guide. The force marched on for about eleven miles without seeing any traces of the enemy. A few minutes later, however, a body of horsemen appeared in front of the advancing column, but before they could be fired at they had galloped off. It was now 11 o’clock, and the moon went down. Dunbar was now urged to
halt for the night, and wait for the dawn. But the possibility that he might arrive too late probably induced him to reject this suggestion. Still hopeful and confident, he pressed on till within a mile of Arah, no enemy in sight. Here Dunbar called in the skirmishers, and moved on in column of march.
He suspected nothing, when suddenly, as the column was marching along, giving its flank to a dense mango-grove on the right of the road, the grove was lighted up by a tremendous volley poured into the long flank of the column, whilst almost simultaneously a smaller volley from a group of trees in front struck down the leading files. Captain Dunbar and several officers were shot dead at the first discharge. The enemy was invisible. The firing was taken up from the other flank, and renewed from the quarters whence it had first proceeded. The Europeans, in their white summer clothing, were splendid marks for the enemy. The confusion consequent upon the surprise was terrible; the men were bewildered, and there was no one to give the command The natural consequences ensued. On recovering from their surprise the men formed into groups and began to fire wildly in all directions, often, possibly, on each other.
It is hard to say how many minutes this fatal disorder lasted, but at last the only possible mode of restoring order was resorted to. An officer managed to find a bugler, and, taking him to an enclosed field at a short distance from the grove, sounded the “assembly.” The men promptly rallied round him. They were fortunate enough to discover in this field a disused and half-empty tank, the hollows of which would suffice to protect them to a certain extent from the enemy’s fire. From this place of refuge our men opened a fire which, however, the enemy returned with interest. The white clothing of the English troops still operated greatly to their disadvantage, whilst the Sipahis, in a state of semi-nudity, fired from behind trees and walls.
Under these difficult circumstances the surviving officers held a council of war. They felt that with their dispirited and diminished numbers it would be impossible to reach Arah; that they would be fortunate if they could fall back upon the Son. They resolved, then, to commence a retrograde movement as soon as the not then distant dawn should permit them to find the road.
As soon as that dawn was visible the men formed up in
order, and marched out on the Aral road. But the enemy had been as vigilant as they.
They had occupied in force every point in their route – the ditches, the jungles, the houses. But the British troops marched straight onwards, returning, in a desultory manner, the fire which was poured upon them, but intent only on reaching the Son. The power of driving back the enemy was denied to them by the fact that no enemy was in sight. They were sheltered behind the trees, the copses, the bushes, the ditches, and the jungle. Occasionally, indeed, maddened by the sight of their comrades falling around them, the men constituting by accident the rearguard formed up, faced about, and tried to charge. But there was no enemy to receive the charge. Five or six thousand men, the revolted Sipahis and levies of Kunwar Singh, kept themselves under the shelter offered by the natural obstacles of the country.
At last, after losing many of their comrades, the main body of the British force reached the banks of the rivulet, to cross which the previous night they had found boats ready to their hand. The boats were indeed still there, but during the night, the water had run down, and only two of them were floating. These were promptly seized by the men in advance and pushed off. Then ensued a scene which it is impossible to paint in living words. It was a scene to which the imagination alone could do justice. There lay the remaining boats stranded on the bank of the river; the defeated soldiers rushing at them to push them further into the stream amid the musketry fire from the victorious Sipahis, the cries of the wounded and dying, the disorder and confusion inseparable from a military disaster. It was a scene to call forth all that was manly and heroic, all that was mean and selfish But whilst the first-named qualities were markedly visible, the latter were conspicuous only by their absence.
The difficulties already enumerated were soon added to by fire breaking out on board of some of the boats. Order had now become impossible. To push a boat into the stream, to climb into it, to help others in, was the aim of every man’s exertions. But when boats would not be moved the chance of drowning was preferred to the tender mercies of the Sipahis. Many stripped and rushed in, until at last the majority of the survivors found themselves in safety on the opposite bank. The losses sustained by the British on the banks of this rivulet
exceeded those they had suffered on the occasion of the surprise and during the retreat16.
When the remains of the party mustered there, it was found that out of four hundred and fifteen men, only fifty had not been hit, and out of fifteen officers only three were unwounded.
Those survivors made their way sadly and disconsolately to the steamer. They were then conveyed back to Danapur.
There the European population were awaiting their return in triumphant expectation. The possibility of disaster had not crossed a single mind. But when, as the steamer approached, no signs of life on board were visible, when the very captain and his subordinates seemed cheerless, and the silence was the silence of the grave, it began to be felt that, at the least, our losses had been heavy. It was not, however, until the steamer had moored off the hospital that the full truth was realised, that the conviction rushed to the mind of every Englishman in Danapur, not only that our troops had suffered an overwhelming catastrophe, but that the little garrison of Arah was irremediably lost17.
The Englishmen garrisoning Mr. Boyle’s little house at that place had, then, rightly interpreted the reason for the gradual lessening of the sound of volley-firing which had reached their ears at midnight on the 29th. Even if they had had any doubts these would have been removed by the arrival under their walls of a wounded Sikh, a member of the relieving force, who had managed to crawl to the house to tell the story of the disaster. The intelligence
was black indeed, but its only effect on the hearts of the gallant members of the garrison was to steel them to resist to the bitter end. They at least believed in their countrymen. The story of the “leaguer of Arah” had spread, they were well aware, as far as the means of communication would admit. Many detachments of Europeans were passing up country. By whom these detachments were commanded they knew not. But they did know that the several commanders were Englishmen, and they felt confident that amongst Englishmen in authority to whom the story of their plight might be conveyed, there would be at least one who, bound though he might be by the red tape of regulations, would yet laugh at responsibility when he should learn that his countrymen were in danger; who would possess the brain to conceive and the nerve to carry out a plan for their relief. They judged rightly; and yet they were fortunate, for it is not every day that Nature matures the substance which is required to mould a Vincent Eyre.
Meanwhile the Sipahis returned to Arah, red with the slaughter of our countrymen. If their victory had not increased the courage which now, as before, recoiled from an assault in masses on the besieged mansion, it had yet had the effect of stimulating their inventive powers. At one time they attempted to smoke out the garrison. With this object they collected and heaped up during the night, beneath the walls of the house, a large quantity of combustibles, and surmounting these with chilies – the raw material of the famous red pepper of India – ignited the mass. The effect would have been most serious had the wind only favoured the enemy; but the element was against them, and before it had injured the garrison, the pungent smoke was blown towards the hostile encampment. The same wind saved the garrison likewise from the putrid smell emanating from the rotting carcases of the horses, belonging to the garrison, which had been shot at the commencement of the siege, and which the rebels piled up in close proximity to the bungalow. Mining was then attempted, but Mr. Wake met this device by a countermine. The gun raised to the roof of the larger house occasionally caused injury to a weak place in the beleaguered castle; but Mr. Wake and Mr. Boyle were there, and in a short time the place was made twice as strong as before.
After all these measures had failed, it seemed as though the
garrison would be more likely to suffer from a deficiency of supplies than from the enemy’s attacks.
And, in truth, on the third day, the supply of water began to run short. With unremitting vigour, however, the garrison within twelve hours had dug a well of eighteen feet by four. Four sheep rewarded one of their attempts at sallying out for supplies. The earth excavated from the well was used to strengthen the works on the roof. Cartridges were made from the powder which Mr. Boyle had been careful to store, and bullets were cast from the lead which he had laid in. Every means that energy could do, that skill could devise, and that valour could attempt, were successfully resorted to by that daring garrison, ably directed by Mr. Herwald Wake, Mr. Vicars Boyle, and Mr. Colvin.
But resources limited in extent must, sooner or later, come to an end. But for succour of an effective character the garrison would have been eventually forced – not to surrender – the possibility of such a catastrophe never formed part of their calculations – but to endeavour to force their way to some ford on the river Son. Happily the necessity to have recourse to so desperate a chance was spared them.
On the morning of the 2nd of August, just one week after they had been shut up in their improvised fortress, a great commotion amongst the enemy gave warning that something very unusual was taking place. The hostile fire slackened early, and almost ceased during the day. But few of the Sipahis showed themselves.
Suddenly, towards the afternoon the sound of a distant cannonade reached the ear. Minute succeeded minute, and yet the sound seemed neither to advance nor to recede. All at once it ceased altogether. Some hours later and the absolute discontinuance of the fire of the besiegers gave to the garrison a sure forecast of the actual state of affairs. A sally made by some of them after darkness had set in discovered the positions of the enemy abandoned; their guns unguarded; a canvassed tube filled with gunpowder lying unused close to the mine which had reached the foundations of their fortress. It was clear then to the tried and gallant men who had so successfully defended themselves against enormous odds, that a deliverer had driven away their enemies, and that before many hours they would be able to render honour to the name of him who had so nobly dared to rescue them.
Who was that deliverer? Amongst the many detachments which left Calcutta during the month of July was one commanded by Major Vincent Eyre, of the Bengal Artillery. The detachment consisted of a company of European gunners, and a horse-battery of six guns. Major Eyre was an officer possessing natural ability improved by study, great determination, a clear head, and a lofty sense of duty. He had had great experience of men, had mastered all the details of his profession, was fit for any employment, but, like Dumouriez, he had reached the prime of life before the opportunity arrived which was to show the stuff that was in him.
He had served during the first Afghanistan war, and had been one of those who had been selected by the British General as hostages18 to be made over to Muhammad Akbar Khan. Subsequently he had been appointed by Lord Ellenborough to raise and to command a company of artillery for the newly formed Gwaliar Contingent. In 1855, Eyre had visited Europe. On his return to India, early in 1857, he had been sent to command a horse field-battery in British Burmah. Recalled thence with his battery, when the eyes of the Government
of India were being opened to the gravity of the situation, Eyre arrived in Calcutta on the 14th of June. There he was kept for several days in a state of uncertainty, terminated only by his being ordered to leave with his battery in a steamer and flat, on the 10th of July, for Allahabad.
Steaming from Calcutta, on that date, Eyre arrived off Danapur on the afternoon of the 25th of July. Learning from a gentleman who had ventured in a small boat from the shore the catastrophe of that day, Eyre landed at 6 P.M., to offer his services to Major-General Lloyd. At his desire he disembarked three guns for the service of the Major-General until those sent after the mutineers should return, – an event which happened the same evening.
Re-embarking his guns the following morning Eyre proceeded up the Ganges towards Baksar. On reaching that place at noon, on the 28th, Eyre was informed that the three revolted Danapur regiments were advancing by way of Arah, with the apparent intention of crossing the Ganges above Baksar, and that they had actually sent forward a party to secure the necessary number of boats. This information decided Eyre to detain the steamer and flat at Baksar to afford time to one of the detachments, which he believed to be steaming up behind him, to come up.
It must be borne in mind that Baksar was the head-quarters of a valuable Government stud, and that thirty miles above it lies Ghazipur, where was a branch of the same stud. There were no troops at Baksar, but Ghazipur was garrisoned by a strong native regiment held in check by only one weak company of the 78th Highlanders.
Noting the importance of preventing the passage of the river by the mutinous Sipahis, and observing no signs of the advance of the detachments he believed to be on their way, Eyre, on the morning of the 29th hastened with his battery to Ghazipur, landed two of his guns and his only subaltern for the protection of the place, and taking on board in their stead twenty-five men of the 78th Highlanders, returned that night to Baksar.
On reaching Baksar, Eyre discovered to his intense satisfaction that one of the detachments he had expected, consisting of 154 men of the 5th Fusiliers, commanded by Captain L’Estrange, had arrived off that place. As the information he had received pointed to the conviction that our countrymen were still holding out at Arah,
Eyre despatched at once a note to L’Estrange, proposing to join forces for an immediate attempt to relieve that station. L’Estrange promptly replied in the affirmative, stipulating only that Major Eyre should send him a written order to that effect, and should take upon himself the entire responsibility.
Eyre did not hesitate a moment. He despatched at once an official letter to L’Estrange, directing him to place himself and his men at his disposal. He took upon himself the further responsibility of requiring the captains of the steamers to place themselves unreservedly under his orders.
Early on the morning of the 30th, the guns and troops were disembarked, and arrangements were made for a march to Arah, about forty-eight miles to the eastward. At the same time one of the steamers was despatched to Major-General Lloyd with a letter informing him of the intended. movement, and inviting his co-operation – for at that time Eyre was ignorant, not only of the defeat of Dunbar’s force, but of the fact that any force had been sent to Arah19.
The field force thus extemporised consisted of forty artillery men and three guns, one hundred. and fifty-four men of the 5th Fusiliers, six officers, including Major Eyre, two assistant surgeons, and eighteen volunteers, mostly mounted, of whom three were officers, one a veterinary surgeon, and one the joint magistrate of Ghazipur20. The twenty-five Highlanders, whose
presence might at any time be necessary at Ghazipur, were left behind at Baksar, with orders to take the first opportunity of returning to their station. Eyre appointed as his staff officer Captain Hastings, an officer whose acquaintance he had made only two days before, but by whose energy and enthusiastic support he had been greatly impressed. Much required to be done. There were no horses for the guns, and bullocks from the plough had to be impressed. Carts for the reserve ammunition and commissariat supplies had to be secured. In this work Major Eyre found an able and willing coadjutor in Mr. Bax, the district magistrate. This gentleman likewise used successfully his influence to borrow from the Dumrao Rajah four elephants for the conveyance of tents and bedding.
At 5 o’clock in the afternoon all preparations had been completed, and the column set out. But the roads were very heavy from recent rain, and the bullocks, unused to drag guns and heavily laden carts, not only moved slowly, but required frequent halts to enable them to move at all. Owing to the delays thus enforced the day broke before the first encamping ground was reached.
Brief was the halt made here. The column pushed on after a short and hurried meal. When about twelve miles from Baksar a mounted scout was descried. Pursued, wounded, and taken prisoner, he proved to be a free lance in the service of Kunwar Singh. As the presence of this man proved that the enemy was on the alert, Eyre pushed on as rapidly as he could, and did not halt for repose till he had reached Shahpur, twenty-eight miles from Baksar.
Whilst encamped at this place tidings were brought to Eyre of the defeat and slaughter of Captain Dunbar’s party. Here, too, he had further proof of the vigilance of the enemy, many of whose scouts were discovered. Eyre halted the early part of the day to refresh the cattle, but eager to rescue the garrison and to restore the prestige of our arms, he set out at 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the 1st, having now but twenty-two miles to traverse.
After marching four miles, the column was checked by finding the bridge over the nala21 at Balaoti had been cut through and was impassable for guns and carts. In an hour, however, the mischief was
sufficiently repaired, and the force pressed on to the village of Gajrajganj, on the further side of which it bivouacked for the night, a strong guard being posted to protect the bridge over the nala near it, and which Eyre had been delighted to find uninjured.
At daybreak the following morning (2nd of August) the force resumed its march. It had not, however, cleared a mile beyond its camping-ground before bugle-notes were heard sounding the “assembly” in a wood which bounded the view about a mile ahead, and through which lay the direct road to Arah. The road between the position occupied at the moment by our men and the wood was bounded on either side by inundated rice fields22. Eyre at once halted to reconnoitre. The enemy now began to show themselves in great force, and, not content with occupying the wood in front, to send out large bodies on both banks, with the evident object of surrounding the Europeans. This movement on their part decided Eyre.
Judging, and rightly judging, that this double flank movement must weaken the enemy’s centre, he boldly pushed forward his men in skirmishing order, his three guns opening fire to the front and on the flanks. Under the pressure of this fire, the enemy abandoned his flank movement, and fell back on the position in front. It was the object of Eyre to force this. He, therefore, then massed his three guns, and poured a concentrated fire on the enemy’s centre. This had the effect of driving them from the direct path. Eyre then rapidly pushed on his guns, covering their advance by a continuous fire from the Enfield rifles of his infantry, and succeeded in making his way through the wood before the enemy could again close his divided wings. Emerging from the wood, the road became an elevated causeway, bounded on both sides by inundated rice fields, across which the baffled enemy could only open a distant fire. Their intentions thus frustrated, the Sipahis hurried round to oppose the advancing force at Bibiganj, a village about two miles ahead, and situated on the opposite side of a river spanned by a bridge, which they had destroyed, and the approaches to which they had covered by breastworks.
After driving the enemy from the wood, Eyre pushed on. When, however, within a quarter of a mile of the village of
Bibiganj he halted to refresh the men and cattle whilst he should reconnoitre the position.
Finding that the bridge had been destroyed, that the direct approaches to the river had been covered by extensive earthworks, and that the Sipahis were occupying in force the houses in the village, Eyre, unable through his scouts to find a ford, determined to make a flank movement to the nearest point of the railway embankment, distant about a mile, and along which there was a direct road to Arah. He endeavoured to mask this movement by directing the fire of his guns on the village, whilst the infantry and carts should push forward in the new direction. The enemy, however, soon discovered this manoeuvre, and hastened in great numbers to intercept the force at the angle of a thick wood which abutted on the embankment, and which it was necessary that Eyre should pass.
It was clear that the enemy would reach the wood first. They evidently recognised this certainty, and, to increase the difficulties in the way of Eyre, they detached a portion of their force, the irregular levies of Kunwar Singh, to harass his rear. They did this with such effect that when the British reached the wood they found it strongly occupied by the enemy, who opened at once from behind the trees a most galling fire. Eyre’s position was now becoming critical. He must carry the wood or be lost. He halted his troops, formed them into skirmishing order, and opened fire from his infantry and artillery. But the numbers of the enemy, and the cover afforded by the trees gave them a great advantage.
During the hour which this combat lasted, the enemy twice charged our guns, exposed by the necessity of keeping the infantry in skirmishing order, but each time they were driven back by discharges of grape. At the end of the hour, Captain Hastings brought word to Eyre, who, having no subaltern, was compelled to remain with the guns, that the Fusiliers were losing ground, and that the position was becoming critical.
Eyre upon this resolved to solve the question with the bayonet, and despatched Hastings with an order to L’Estrange to that effect. This order was promptly executed. The men hastily closed, and, gallantly led on the one flank by Hastings, on the other by L’Estrange, rushed forward with a cheer, cleared the deep stream – here confined within narrow limits – at a bound, and charged impetuously an enemy twenty times as numerous as
they were. The enemy, taken completely aback, did not await the onslaught. They gave way in the utmost disorder; the guns opened on the retreating masses, and in a few minutes not a man of them remained to oppose the passage of the force.
An open road, skirting the railway to within four miles of Arah, was now available. Eyre marched along it. A little before nightfall, however, he came upon an impassable torrent. This forced him to halt. But he spent the night in endeavouring to bridge the torrent by casting into the stream large piles of bricks collected there by the railway engineers. In this way the stream was narrowed sufficiently to allow the construction across it of a rude sort of bridge formed from the materials of his country carts.
Over this, in the early morning, the infantry, the guns, and the baggage crossed, and in little more than an hour afterwards the relief of the garrison of Arah was an accomplished fact.
The Sipahis, after their crushing defeat, had hastily abandoned their position in Mr. Boyle’s larger house, and, packing up their spoils, had fled precipitately to the jungle stronghold of their leader, Kunwar Singh, at Jagdispur. Then it was that the gallant band, led with such skill and such daring - courage, by the civilians Herwald Wake and Colvin, and by the engineer, Vicars Boyle – three names ever to be revered by Englishmen – discovered what manner of man he was who, serving a Government which up to that time had judged the conduct of its servants mainly by results, had assumed the responsibility of turning from his ordered course, of turning others from their ordered course, to endeavour, with a force inferior in infantry by more than one-half to that which had already been ingloriously beaten back, to rescue his countrymen from destruction, to save Bihar and India from an impending great calamity23.
To return to Patna. If the effect of the revolt of the Danapur Sipahis, the mutiny of the 12th Irregular Cavalry, and the defeat of Dunbar’s force, had been
to neutralise all the prudent measures taken up to that time by the Commissioner of the Patna Division, the effect of Eyre’s victory was to restore the confidence which the three events alluded to had so severely shaken. In taking, then, a comprehensive glance at the province of Bihar at this particular moment, we see, standing out from the mass, two prominent figures in whose presence all the others, the garrison of Arah alone excepted, are completely effaced. These two figures are William Tayler and Vincent Eyre. In spite of unparalleled difficulties Mr. Tayler had, up to the 25th of July, saved Bihar. The Government of India and Major-General Lloyd then suddenly stepping in, neutralised to a great extent his stupendous exertions, and allowed the province to drift to the very verge of destruction. Major Eyre, dropping, as it were, from the clouds, warded off that impending, destruction. Those who had caused the danger were thus blotted out from the public view. The wisdom and daring of Mr. Tayler, the energy and determination of Major Eyre, had atoned for the feebleness and timidity of the leaders who did not guide.
But there was an intervening period which, for the right understanding of the subsequent action of the Governments of India and of Bengal, it is necessary that I should notice. I mean the period which elapsed between the mutiny of the native troops at Danapur and Sigauli and the relief of Arah by Major Eyre.
The mutiny of the native troops had been an event to try to the utmost Mr. Tayler’s hold on the province of which he was pro-consul. He had heard the Major-General commanding the division talking seriously of intrenching himself at Danapur. There was no assistance, then, to be looked for from that quarter. In the other direction, his right-hand man, Major Holmes, had been murdered by his own soldiers, and to those soldiers, about five hundred in number, the lives of the Europeans and the treasuries all over the province, might at any moment fall a prey. We have seen how Mr. Tayler behaved under
these almost desperate circumstances; how he had posted to Major-General Lloyd to implore that officer to send out at once a force to attack the rebels. It certainly was not Mr. Tayler’s fault that the force despatched at his earnest instigation should have been badly commanded and disgracefully beaten.
But the fact that that force was disgracefully beaten added enormously to the difficulties of Mr. Tayler’s position. The chances that Arah would almost immediately fall seemed reduced to a certainty. What could fifteen Europeans and fifty Sikhs effect against six thousand trained Sipahis and a large body of irregular troops?24 Granted even – in itself, if Eyre had been beaten, an impossible assumption, for the rebels would then have captured the guns necessary for their purpose – that the position at Arah was impregnable, the supplies of food and of powder were very limited. But for Major Eyre, the fears of every one in the province regarding the Arah garrison must have been speedily realised; and it was not given to Mr. Tayler more than to any one else to feel assured that amid the detachments steaming up the Ganges one would certainly be commanded by the very man for the occasion, by the Dumouriez, who, in the silence and solitude of Gwaliar, had trained himself to be prepared for any emergency. The defeat of Captain Dunbar’s force, then, seemed to leave the lives and the treasuries of Bihar more than ever at the absolute mercy of the revolted soldiery.
Now, for those lives and for those treasuries, Mr. Tayler was responsible to the Government of which he was in Bihar the representative. The danger was great, the emergency was unparalleled. The rebel army led, as was known, by a powerful and influential landowner, flushed with victory, and provided to a certain extent with guns which had been exhumed from that landowner’s estate, was awaiting only the fall of Arah to overrun the province. The recent defeat had reduced the Danapur garrison to absolute inaction25.
Rumours from the district were rife to the effect that the Damraon Rajah, whose estates extended along the line of road from Arah to Baksar, had joined or was about to join the rebels in Patna; the local police were distrusted; the Sikhs were for the most part employed on guard duties; very few even of them were available for any purpose outside the station.
In four out of the five districts the means of defence were even less. These districts, as already stated, were known under the names of Shahabad, Gaya, Saran, Tirhut, and Champaran. Arah, the capital of the district of Shahabad, was virtually in the possession of the rebels; at Gaya, the chief station of its district, there were indeed one hundred Sikhs and forty-five European soldiers; Muzaffarpur, the chief station of Tirhut, was undefended, whilst Chapra and Motihari, the capitals respectively of the districts of Saran and Champaran, had been abandoned by the European officials in consequence of the pressure of the mutineers.
It was at Gaya and Muzaffarpur, then, that the greatest danger was to be apprehended. The position of these stations rendered them peculiarly liable to attack. They were exposed to the first brunt of the fury of the mutineers, and they had no sufficient means to resist them.
It must always be remembered that, at the period of which I am writing, the fall of Arah was considered certain. Equally certain, that a catastrophe of that nature would be promptly followed by a rising of all the disaffected through Bihar.
The question which the commissioner of Patna had to solve, then, was this: whether he should trust to the seemingly impossible chance of Arah being relieved, and, in that case, risk the lives of the officers under his orders, and the treasure under their charge; or, whether he should prepare himself to meet the coming danger, by drawing in his too widely extended line, and massing his forces in a central position.
Had Mr. Tayler been a timid or a vain-glorious man, he would have shrunk from the responsibility of withdrawing his officers from the positions assigned to them by the Government.
But being cool and resolute, ready to assume responsibility when the public weal was endangered, and endowed with a remarkably clear vision, Mr. Tayler adopted the sensible course of directing the officials at Gaya and Muzaffarpur to retire upon the central position of Patna.
Mr. Tayler well knew that, serving a Government which judged only by results, and which had already displayed a desire to judge him harshly, the responsibility which he was thus taking upon himself was enormous. But with the knowledge which he possessed, that Gaya was filled with men waiting only their opportunity to rise; that the gaol there alone contained eight hundred prisoners ready to commit any enormity; that the fall of Arah would certainly prove the signal for an attack on Gaya, he felt that but one course was possible, and that course he adopted.
The order to the officials at Gaya, and Muzaffarpur authorised them to withdraw their establishments to Patna, bringing with them the coin in the treasury, unless by doing so their personal safety should be endangered26.
This order was transmitted on the 31st of July, after Mr. Tayler had become cognisant of the disaster which had befallen Captain Dunbar’s expedition.
Mr. Taylor’s order was acted upon with the best results at Muzaffarpur. The residents there, utterly unprotected, and endangered further by the presence of a detachment of the 12th Irregular Cavalry, had been very apprehensive of a rising, and had some days before vainly implored Major-General Lloyd to detach a few European soldiers for their protection. They, therefore, hailed Mr. Tayler’s order as an order which saved them from death, and, perhaps, from something worse than death. Having no troops to form an escort, they were unable to take the public money with them. They left it, therefore, in the treasury, and moved upon Patna. During their absence the detachment of the 12th revolted, and attacked the public buildings. The rebels were, however, driven away by the native officials and the police, who encouraged by the wealthy and influential Hindu traders and bankers of the place, the safety of whose property depended on the maintenance
of British authority, remained loyal to the hand that fed them. When, a few days later, the European officials returned to the station, they found that order had been maintained in all the public buildings, and that the mutineers, baffled in their attempts upon the treasury, had vented their fury upon one or two private houses.
The case was far different at Gaya. The magistrate of that district was Mr. Alonzo Money. This gentleman had, three days before, recorded his opinion that, whilst nothing was to be feared from the townspeople, two causes of apprehension yet existed, viz., the inroad of any large number of the Danapur mutineers, and the approach of the 5th Irregular Cavalry. In any case he declared his intention to defend the station and the treasure to the utmost.
Two days subsequently to the despatch of this letter Captain Dunbar’s detachment was surprised and beaten by the mutineers. Mr. Money received a letter informing him of this catastrophe the following day; but the messenger who brought that letter conveyed to him likewise an order from his Commissioner, Mr. Tayler, to fall back with the European residents and troops upon Patna, bringing with him the treasure, unless by so doing the personal safety of the European residents should be endangered27.
On receiving these instructions Mr. Money summoned the European civil officers of the station to advise him as to the course he should follow. Unfortunately timid counsels prevailed, and there was no Tayler present to override them. In vain did some of the residents entreat Mr. Money to remain at the station till carts could be procured to convey the treasure. He would not. But, acting as he considered the emergency required, he decided to obey that portion of Mr. Tayler’s order which directed a retirement on Patna, – but to abandon the treasure.
No sufficient explanation has ever yet been afforded as to this extraordinary abandonment. The station was not then threatened. Mr. Money had previously recorded his conviction that the forty-five Europeans,. the hundred Sikhs, and the new police at his disposal were more than sufficient to ward off danger on the
part of the townspeople28. A company of the 64th Regiment was within a few miles of the place. Mr. Tayler’s order had been written, Mr. Money could not fail to see, solely with reference to danger to be apprehended from without – to the inevitable consequences of the fall of Arah. The instructions not to abandon the treasure unless the personal safety of the Europeans should be endangered, would justify its abandonment only in case an attack should be made upon that treasure by irresistible force. It certainly conveyed no authority to abandon the treasure when it was yet unthreatened, when no danger was to be apprehended from the townspeople, before any attempt had been made to remove it, and when a sufficient body of troops to escort it was at hand.
However, Mr. Money, in consultation with the members of the station he had summoned, arrived, after due deliberation, at this decision. He and they and their escort started at 6 o’clock that very evening, leaving behind them a gaol filled with prisoners, and eighty thousand pounds of Government money.
Some idea of the un-English character of this step would seem at a very early period of the retreat to have struck one of the members of the party. This was Mr. Hollings, of the opium department. As this gentleman rode further and further from Gaya, the conviction continued to gain strength in his mind that he and his fellow-countrymen were committing a very disgraceful act. At last he could bear it no longer. He rode up to Mr. Money and imparted to him his doubts and his misgivings.
Mr. Money was the officer directly serving under the Commissioner of Patna, and the responsibility of the retreat from Gaya, however much he may have acted upon the opinions of others, really lay with him. He had moved off the troops and the other residents, leaving behind him the Government money. But, now, the arguments of Mr. Hollings seemed to convince him that in so acting he had acted wrongly.
Instead, however, of ordering back the troops – an act which lay entirely within his competence – Mr. Money determined to return to Gaya with Mr. Hollings, leaving the troops and the others to pursue their way.
No greater condemnation of the part he had taken in leaving the station could be pronounced than this thus passed by Mr. Money upon himself. His return, too, would appear, at first glance, a very Quixotic proceeding. If the money could not be saved, and the station could not be maintained, when Mr. Money had under his orders a force of one hundred and fifty Europeans and Sikhs, what could he expect to accomplish when aided solely by Mr. Hollings?
But Mr. Money after all risked but little.
He was well aware that within easy call of Gaya there was a detachment of the 64th Regiment, and almost his first act after his return was to summon that detachment to join him. The question might perhaps be asked, why he had not summoned it before he abandoned the station?
Mr. Money found the station still quiet, but he was by no means at his ease. He distrusted the men who surrounded him. The distrust, however, did not inspire him with prudence. The following morning he showed his hand to every native official by openly burning the Government stamped paper, thus proving to the natives of Gaya, that he had returned solely to baulk them of their anticipated plunder.
Fortunately for Mr. Money, before any open manifestation of the public discontent had taken place, the company of the 64th returned (2nd of August). Mr. Money, then feeling himself strong, collected carts upon which to load the treasure.
On the 4th the treasure was loaded, and sent off under the guard of the 64th detachment. Mr. Money intended to accompany the party, but returning to his own house to save a few things of value he was suddenly startled by hearing the yells of the prisoners whom the native station guards had just then released from the gaol. Mr. Money had but just time to mount his horse, fortunately kept saddled, and to join the detachment.
The question had arisen as to the direction which the convoy should take. Had Mr. Money decided to march upon Patna, he would yet, though in a clumsy and vacillating manner, have obeyed the instructions he had received from his official superior. But he would appear to have been misled by false reports as to the danger of traversing the short distance which lay between Gaya, and that station. He decided, therefore, to move the Europeans, so urgently required in the north-west, from the field of action, and to
undertake the far longer journey to Calcutta29. The detachment, after repulsing outside Gaya the hap-hazard onslaught of the released prisoners, reached Calcutta unmolested.
It is clear from the above plain story that whilst the conduct of Mr. Tayler in directing a general concentration of his subordinates on Patna, in the face of the blow delivered at British prestige on the banks of the Son, was marked by a statesman-like prudence and a thorough comprehension of the vital interests at stake, the action of Mr. Alonzo Money was dictated by a vacillating spirit, and by an unstable and impulsive nature. It is clear that, if Mr. Alonzo Money had carried out literally the orders of his official superior, though he might have gained no sensational triumph, he would have brought the treasure from Gaya safely into Patna. Indeed it may be confidently asserted that, in saving the treasure even as he did save it, he carried out, though in a style peculiarly his own, Mr. Tayler’s orders. To himself, as a free agent, History will accord no merit whatever. He imperilled the success of his superior’s scheme by abandoning the treasure when he quitted the station, in the face of the orders he had received to bring it with him if he could do so without endangering the lives of his coadjutors; he imperilled the success of his superior’s schemes by returning with one companion to the station, after having advisedly denuded it of the European and Sikh troops; and, finally, he disobeyed his superior’s orders and risked the whole policy of the Government by taking down the treasure to Calcutta, instead of moving it to the adjoining station of Patna.
Fortune greatly befriended him; for Fortune changed a gross dereliction of duty, a disobedience to orders which would have subjected a soldier to a court-martial – into a sensational triumph almost unparalleled. For a very brief space, and in the
eyes of a very small, though a very influential body of men, Mr. Alonzo Money became the hero of Bihar30.
Let us see now how it was that he became so.
The Government of India and the Government of Bengal had been terribly frightened by the story of the successful revolt of the Danapur Sipahis, and of the defeat of Captain Dunbar’s detachment. The Government of India, mistaking severity for vigour, showed the extent of their terror by at once directing that their agent – the man upon whom they had cast the responsibility properly belonging to themselves – that Major-General Lloyd should be tried by a court-martial. That Government had their scape-goat handy. Mr. Halliday, representing the Government of Bengal, was in a different position. He had, indeed, a score to settle with Mr. Tayler, because Mr. Tayler had maintained a bold and resolute front, and had preserved order in his province by measures not altogether approved of by the Lieutenant-Governor.
But Mr. Tayler had been too successful to be touched. He had saved Patna. To remove him now, when Bihar apparently was at the mercy of the victorious mutineers, was not to be thought of – even by Mr. Halliday.
Suddenly, however, the scene changed. A God-like mortal shone through the mist, dispersed the black cloud, annihilated the revolted Sipahis, removed all apprehension at once and for ever regarding the safety of Bihar, and left it free to Mr. Halliday to exercise to the fullest extent his undoubted right of patronage – and of revenge.
Major Eyre virtually reconquered lost Bihar. He restored the province to the position in which Mr. Tayler, unaided, had maintained it, until the Government of India and Major-General Lloyd had contrived to plunge it into danger. But in the short interval the Gaya episode had occurred. Whilst Arah was yet trembling on the verge of destruction, Mr. Tayler had issued the withdrawal order. Eyre saved Arah. But before the results of Eyre’s great feat of arms had become known, Mr. Alonzo Money, first disobeying, then half obeying, the directions of his Commissioner, was, by his vacillating and impulsive action, converting a plain act of duty into a sensational drama, of which he, for a few brief moments, was the star-bespangled hero.
For to Calcutta, immediately after the news of Eyre’s great triumph, came, in a distorted and inaccurate shape, the intelligence of Tayler’s withdrawal order. The danger was now over; the tears in the council-chamber of Belvedere31 were dried up; a feverish exaltation followed. It was necessary that some proof should be given that energy had not died out in Bengal. Mr. Tayler’s withdrawal order furnished the opportunity.
Forgetting, or choosing not to remember, his transcendent services; the fact that he had never despaired of the safety of his division; that he had baffled the counsels of the mutineers; and had suppressed, unaided, the rising of Patna; that he had been the rock on which every hope in Bihar had rested; that he had cheered the despairing, stimulated the wavering, roused to action even the faint heart of the soldier; forgetting, or choosing not to remember, these great achievements, the Government of Bengal, acting in concert with the Government of India, seized upon his withdrawal order to dismiss Mr. Tayler from his post, to consign the saviour of Bihar, in the very morning dawn of the triumph which he had prepared, to signal and unmerited disgrace.
The Government of Bengal added insult to injury. Not content with suppressing the fact that Mr. Tayler had coupled with the order for the withdrawal of the officials from Gaya a direction that they should bring with them the treasure under their charge, unless by so doing their personal safety should be endangered, Mr. Halliday did not scruple to charge with being actuated by panic32 the man whose manly bearing had been,
throughout, an example to the whole of India. It would be difficult to produce, in the annals of official persecution, rife as they are with perversions of truth, a statement more gratuitous33.
But the fiat had gone forth. Mr. William Tayler was dismissed from his post. His career in the Indian Civil Service was ruined by one stroke of the pen.
And yet this man had accomplished as much as any individual man to save India in her great danger. He had done more than Mr. Halliday, who recalled him; more than the Government which supported Mr. Halliday. With a courage as true and a resolution as undaunted as that which he showed when dealing with the Patna mutineers, Mr. Tayler has struggled since, he is struggling still, for the reversal of the unjust censure which blighted his career. Subsequent events have singularly justified the action which, at the time, was so unpalatable to Mr. Halliday. Mr. Tayler’s denunciation to the Wahabi leaders, treated as a fable by his superiors, has been upheld to the full by the discoveries of recent years34. It has been abundantly shown that, to his energetic action alone was it due that Patna escaped a terrible disaster. The suppressed
words of the withdrawal order have been published to the world, and the charge of panic has been recognised everywhere as untrue.
It is a curious and a very remarkable fact that of the members of the Council of the Governor-General who supported at the time Mr. Halliday’s action, two have, in later years, expressed their regret that they acted hastily and on incorrect information. “Time,” wrote, in 1868, one of the most prominent amongst them, Mr. Dorin, “time has shown that he (Mr. Halliday) was wrong and that you were right35.” Another, the then Military Member of Council, General Sir John Low, G.C.B., thus, in 1867, recorded his opinion: “I well remember my having, as a Member of Lord Canning’s Council, concurred with his Lordship in the censure which he passed upon your conduct ... but it has since been proved – incontestably proved – that the data on which that decision was based were quite incorrect! ... I sincerely believe that your skilful and vigorous management of the disaffected population of Patna was of immense value to the Government of India, and that in the last few months of your Commissionership, commencing with the arrest of the three Wahabi conspirators, and the disarming of the greater portion of the inhabitants of Patna, city, your services were of more vital importance to the public interests than those of many officers, both civil and military, during the whole period of their Indian career, in less critical times, who have been rewarded – and justly rewarded – by honours from the Queen; while your services, by an extraordinary combination of unlucky circumstances, have hitherto been overlooked.” It is not less remarkable that three ex-Governors and two ex-Lieutenant Governors of the Presidencies and Provinces of India have recorded similar opinions, whilst one gentleman, decorated for his distinguished conduct in the province of which Mr. Tayler was the pro-consul, had not hesitated to inform him that until Mr. Tayler should be rewarded for the conduct which saved
the province, it would be too painful for him “to wear in your presence the decoration which I have so gratefully received from Her Majesty.”
His comrades in India, then, and the public generally, have rendered to Mr. William Tayler the justice which is still denied him by the Government which he served so truly and with such signal success. The ban of official displeasure still blights his declining years. Whilst his rival, decorated by the Crown, has been awarded a seat in the Council of India, he “who was right when that rival was wrong” still remains in the cold shade of official neglect. Although with a pertinacity which is the result of conscious rectitude Mr. Tayler has pressed upon each succeeding Secretary of State his claims for redress, that redress has still been, up to the latest date, denied him.
It seems to be considered that the lapse of years sanctions a wrong, should that wrong in the interval remain unatoned for. We English not only boast of our justice, but, in the haughtiness of our insular natures, we are apt to reproach the French for the manner in which they treated the great men of their nation who strove unsuccessfully to build up a French empire in India. We taunt them with having sent Lally to the block, and allowed Dupleix to die in misery and in want. But, looking at our treatment of Mr. William Tayler, can we say that, even with the advantages which a century of civilisation has given us, our hands are more clean? This man saved a province. In saving that province it is possible that he saved with it districts outside his own. Yet is he not, I ask, looking at the treatment he received, is he not entitled to use, if not the very words, yet the sense of the very words employed by Dupleix in 1764: “I have sacrificed,” wrote three months before he died that greatest of Indo-French administrators, “I have sacrificed my youth, my fortune, my life, to enrich my nation in Asia ... My services are treated as fables; my demand is denounced as ridiculous. I am treated as the vilest of mankind.” To this day the treatment of Dupleix is a lasting stain on French administration. I most fervently hope, for the credit of my country, that our children and our children’s children may not be forced to blush for a similar stain resting on the annals of England; that the French may never have it in their power to return the reproach which our historians have not been slow to cast on
them. In the history of the mutiny there is no story which appeals more to the admiration than the story of this man guiding, almost unaided, a province through the storm, training his crew and keeping down the foe, whilst yet both hands were at the wheel, and in the end steering his tossed vessel into the harbour of safety. Character, courage, tact, clearness of vision, firmness of brain, were in him alike conspicuous. May it never descend to posterity that in the councils of England services so distinguished were powerless in the presence of intrigue!
6. Major Macdonald thus related the circumstances at the time: “To tell the truth, I never for a moment expected to leave the hanging scene alive; but I determined to do my duty, and well knew the effect that pluck and decision had on Datives. The regiment was drawn out. Wounded cruelly as I was, I had to see everything done myself, even to the adjusting of the ropes, and saw them looped to run easy. Two of the culprits were paralysed with fear and astonishment, never dreaming that I should dare to hang them without an order from the Government. The third said he would not be hanged, and called on the Prophet, and on his comrades to rescue him. This was an awful moment: an instant’s hesitation on my part, and probably I should have had a dozen balls through me; so I seized a pistol, clapped it to the man’s ear, and said, with a look there was no mistake about, ‘Another word out of your mouth, and your brains shall be scattered on the ground.’ He trembled, and held his tongue. The elephant came up, he was put on his back, the rope adjusted, the elephant moved, and he was left dangling. I then had the others up and off in the same way. And after some time, when I dismissed the men of the regiment to their lines, and still found my head upon my shoulders, I really could scarcely believe it.”
7. Sir John Kaye.
8. His face was at once so mutilated that it could not afterwards be recognised
9. When taken to the gallows, this man called out in a loud voice, “If there is any one here who professes to be a friend of the King of Dehli, let him come and help me.”
10. The order of the acting Commander-in-Chief, Sir Patrick Grant, speaking the voice of the Government, runs thus: “The first detachment of H.M.’s 5th Fusiliers left Chinsurah this morning, on flats towed by steamers, in progress towards Banaras, and the remaining portion of the regiment will follow by the same means of transit to-morrow and Friday. If, when the regiment reaches Danapur, you see reason to distrust the native troops, and you entertain an opinion that it is desirable to disarm them, you are at liberty to disembark the 5th Fusiliers to assist you in this object; but, it is imperatively necessary that the detention of the regiment should be limited to the shortest possible period. If you decide on disarming, it should extend to all three regiments, and it should be carefully explained that it is merely a measure of precaution to save the well-disposed to be led to commit themselves by the machinations of designing scoundrels, some few of whom are always to be found, even in the best regiments. If resistance to authority is exhibited, the most prompt and decided measures for its instant repression should be adopted.” The reader will observe that this letter contains no order, but simply throws the responsibility of ordering the disarming on the Major-General.
11. General Lloyd states in a letter to Sir John Kaye that he “had no horse in cantonments. My stable was two miles distant, and being unable at that time to walk far or much, I thought I should be most useful on board the steamer with guns and riflemen, &c.” But surely, at such a crisis, whilst a very delicate measure ordered by him was in operation, Major-General Lloyd ought at least to have taken care not only to have his horse in cantonments, but that it should remain saddled and accoutred at his very door. The duty of a general is to command.
12. His words are: “It is perhaps to be regretted that some (European troops) were not sent that night or next morning, but only a small party, in comparison to the strength of the mutineers, could have been detached; no guns could have gone, and as the mutineers avoided the road and kept to the fields, where they could scarcely have been effectively followed by a small party of Europeans, they probably would not bare been of much use.” It is difficult to see the force of this argument. The high road to Arah was traversable by artillery. Though the Sipahis might have spread over the fields they yet followed the line of that road.
13. “That afternoon the General wrote to tell me he proposed intrenching Danapur as it was ascertained that the mutineers had gone off in a body towards Arah, and it was apprehended by him that they might be joined by Kunwar Singh, and return to attack Danapur.” – W. Tayler’s “Patna Crisis.”
14. It would appear that Kunwar Singh had engaged, when his estates were placed in liquidation, to raise a sum of £200,000 for the payment of his debts. Naturally some delay occurred in raising so large a sum; the money, however, was gradually coming in when the Board of Revenue informed him, through the Commissioner of Patna, that unless he should raise the whole sum within one month, they would recommend the Government “to withdraw all interference with his affairs, and to abandon the management of his estates.” This decision of the Board of Revenue was regarded by Kunwar Singh, and very naturally, as tantamount to the sequestration of his property. The course of the Board of Revenue was strongly objected to by Mr. Tayler, – who even went so far as to protest against it in a private letter to Mr. Halliday – but in vain.
15. The garrison consisted of Mr. Littledale, the judge; Mr. Combe, the collector; Mr. Herwald Wake, magistrate; Mr. Colvin, assistant; Dr. Halls, surgeon; Mr. Field and Mr. Anderson of the opium department; Mr. Vicars Boyle; Saiad Azim-ud-din Khan, deputy collector; Mr. Dacosta; Mr. Godfrey; Mr. Cork; Mr. Tait; Mr. Delpeison; Mr. Hoyle; and Mr. de Souza. The Sikh force consisted of a native lieutenant and two native sergeants, two corporals, forty-five privates, a water-carrier, and a cook. The charge of the defences was entrusted to Mr. Vicars Boyle, whilst Mr. Herwald Wake took the command in chief of the garrison.
16. Many acts of daring were performed during the retreat and crossing. Mr. Ross Mangles, of the Civil Service, one of the volunteers, supported and helped along for five miles of the retreat a wounded soldier of the 37th, who, but for that support, would have been left to die. For this act Mr. Ross Mangles received the Victoria Cross. Another of the volunteers, Mr. McDonell, also of the Civil Service, received the same distinction for cutting the lashings of one of the boats, full of men, amid a storm of bullets, to which he was exposed from the opposite bank. Private Dempsey and another man of the 10th carried one of their officers, Ensign Erskine, who had been mortally wounded, for five miles to the boats. Lieutenant Ingelby, who had volunteered to command the Sikhs, was the last man to leave the shore. He plunged into the water, and was shot in the act of crossing. These are a few amongst the many instances which occurred of combined courage and humanity.
17. Mr. Taylor’s Patna Crisis.
18. A little episode in Eyre’s history at this period deserves to be recorded. On a previous occasion, the Afghan chiefs had required four married officers with their wives and children as hostages. Certain officers, of whom Eyre was one, were invited by the General, by an official circular, to undertake this risk. The following were the replies as given by Lady Sale in her journal:– “Lieutenant Eyre said, if it was to be productive of great good he would stay with his wife and child. The others all refused to risk the safety of their families. One said he would rather put a pistol to his wife’s head, and shoot her; and another, that his wife should only be taken at the point of the bayonet; for himself he was ready to perform any duty imposed on him.” On this incident the “Naval and Military Gazette” of the day thus commented:– “Channing, in his eloquent and philosophic analysis of the character of Napoleon, has felicitously defined three orders of greatness, in the last of which he assigns a place to the great conqueror of Europe. Following the spirit of that great thinker, we cannot but recognise in Lieutenant Eyre’s noble reply a higher tone of feeling than can be traced in the answers of either of his gallant comrades. Therefore, while we may award to the latter niches in the same order with Napoleon, our acquiescence in the sentiments of Dr. Channing leads us to hail in Lieutenant Eyre’s conduct on this occasion the lineaments of that first order – moral greatness – through which the soul defies all peril, reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour, and is ever ready to be offered on the altar of his country, or of mankind.” The reader will not be slow to, recognise the same lineaments of that first order in the conduct of Major Eyre on the occasion I am now recording.
19. Major Eyre’s letter was dated the 30th. It reached Danapur that night. It elicited from Major-General Lloyd the opinion, dated midnight on the 30th, that “the advance from Baksar towards Arah would have been useful had the attack on the rebels succeeded; as it is, the Baksar force is too weak to venture far from Baksar, and it should occupy that place till further communication is sent from Danapur.” Two letters from the Assistant Adjutant-General of the division, both dated the 31st, and despatched by the same steamer, informed Eyre of the disaster at Arah; threw upon his own judgment and discretion the course he should adopt; warned him against expecting any co-operation from the Danapur side; and advised the utmost caution. A letter dated the day following reiterated the same arguments. Major Eyre did not receive these letters till after he had left Baksar.
20. The names of the officers were; of the Artillery, Major Eyre and Assistant Surgeon Eteson; of the 5th Fusiliers, Captains L’Estrange and Scott, Ensigns Lewis, Oldfield, and Mason, Assistant Surgeon Thornton; of the volunteers, Lieutenant Wild, 40th Regiment, Native Infantry; Captain the Hon. G. P. Hastings, Lieutenant Jackson, and Veterinary Surgeon Liddell; the Civil Magistrate was Mr. Bax, later known as Mr. Bax-Ironside.
21. Sometimes incorrectly spelt “nullah.”
22. Called in India “padi fields.” “Padi” is rice in the husk.
23. Mr. Edward Eastwick, who visited India in 1880, thus describes the house so gallantly defended, as he saw it in that year. “The house stands in the judge’s compound, about fifty yards south of his house. It is nearly a square, and has two stories, with a verandah on three sides, supported by arches, which the besieged filled with sandbags. The lower story is a little over ten feet high, and was held by 50 Sikh soldiers. Behind one of the rooms, the outer wall of which had no such nor opening, the garrison dug a well, and that was all the water they had. From the flat roof Boyle and the judge killed many of the assailants, who mounted a small cannon on the house which is now occupied by the present judge, Mr. Worgan. He has a ball which was fired by the gun mounted by the rebels, and which was found imbedded in the wall of Wake’s (Boyle’s) house. How the latter could have been defended against 2000 Sipahis and others seems past comprehension, and shows what determination can do against the most overwhelming odds.” – Murray’s Handbook of Bengal, p. 198.
24. Amongst the Sipahis slain in the battle, Major Eyre found men of nine different regiments, a sufficient proof that the three revolted Danapur regiments had been largely reinforced from other quarters.
25. On the 31st of July, the Assistant Adjutant-General of the Danapur division, in a letter to Major Eyre, wanted that officer that he “must not depend upon the co-operation of a force from Danapur, of which the present amount of troops here does not admit.”
26. The purport of Mr. Tayler’s order could not be mistaken. It was clear that, in the presence of danger of an attack from an overwhelming body, with which their small force should be unable to cope, Mr. Tayler took upon himself the responsibility of saving the lives of his subordinates, even at the risk of abandoning the money, if the attack should take place, or if, in the opinion of his subordinates, it should be so imminent as not to admit of their taking the usual measures for removing the treasure. In a word, he relieved his subordinates of the responsibility of uselessly sacrificing their lives in attempting to defend money-bags which they could not save.
27. “Everything,” wrote Mr. Tayler, “must now be sacrificed to holding the country, and the occupation of a central position.”
28. Mr. Money’s words, dated 28th of July, were: “There is nothing, however, to be apprehended from the townspeople. They are surrounded by a new and strong police, and have a wholesome dread of the forty-five English and one hundred Sikhs.”
29. Mr. Money reported to Government: “The next day (August 3), brought a letter to Captain Thompson” (commanding the company of the 64th), “written by an officer at Danapur of his own corps. It contained these words in pencil, ‘For God’s sake look out. The 8th N. I. mutineers have marched upon Gaya, they say, with one gun.’ The news of martial law proclaimed in all the Bihar districts reached us the same morning. I called another council, and told Captain Thompson he was now the principal authority in the district. I gave him my opinion that, encumbered with treasure, we were too weak to run the risk of meeting so large a body of mutineers, and recommended falling back on the Grand Trunk Road.” In such a case, the opinion of the chief civil officer was naturally decisive.
30. For his conduct on this occasion, Mr. Money was made a Companion of the Bath!
31. The official residence, near Calcutta, of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.
32. Mr. Halliday wrote on the 5th of August: “It appears from a letter just received from Mr. Tayler, that, whilst apparently under the influence of a panic, he has ordered the officials at all the stations in his division to abandon their posts and fall back on Danapur. Under these circumstances I have determined at once to remove Mr. Tayler from his appointment of Commissioner of Patna.” It was on Mr. Halliday’s report that Mr. Tayler was subsequently described by the Governor-General as “showing a great want of calmness and firmness”; as “issuing an order quite beyond his competency”; as “interfering with the military authorities.” Mr. Halliday subsequently “explained” officially, that “panic was apparent on the face of Mr. Tayler’s order, and specially from his urgent and reiterated advice, if not order, to Major Eyre, not to advance to the relief which saved Arah.” With respect to this last charge it may be as well to state, once for all, that Mr. Tayler never addressed Major Eyre on the subject of the advance on Arah. What he did do was simply this. On the evening of the day on which Mr. Tayler learned the defeat of Captain Dunbar and his detachment of upwards of 400 men, he received a letter from Mr. Bax, the magistrate with Major Eyre, informing him that Eyre at the head of 150 men was about to attempt the task in which Dunbar had failed, and asking his opinion. Mr. Tayler thereupon wrote to Mr. Bax, telling him of Dunbar’s defeat, and expressing his opinion that it would be prudent if Major Eyre were to drop down in his steamer to Danapur, take up reinforcements there, and advance thence on Arah. Mr. Tayler did not even send this letter to Mr. Bax. He sent it open to Major-General Lloyd, that the General might forward it with such instructions as he might think fit to give. Who will deny that in thus expressing his opinion Mr. Tayler performed only a clear and imperative duty?
33. Sir John Kaye has thus ably summarised the arguments on this point:– “On the whole, it appears to me, on mature consideration, that the orders issued by Mr. Tayler were not of such a character as to merit the condemnation which Government passed upon them. It is not to be questioned that, up to the time of the mutiny of the Danapur regiments, the whole bearing of the Patna Commissioner was manly to a point of manliness not often excelled in those troubled times. He had exhorted all his countrymen to cling steadfastly to their posts. He had rebuked those who had betrayed their fears by deserting their stations. His measures had been bold: his conduct had been courageous: his policy had been severely repressive. If he had erred, assuredly his errors had not leaned to the side of weakness. He was one of the last men in the service to strike his colours, save under the compulsion of a great necessity. But when the Danapur regiments broke into rebellion – when the European troops, on whom he had relied, proved themselves to be incapable of repressing mutiny on the spot, or overtaking it with swift retribution – when it was known that thousands of insurgent Sipahis were overrunning the country, and that the country, in the language of the day, was “up” – that some of the chief members of the territorial aristocracy had risen against the domination of the English, and that the predatory classes, including swarms of released convicts from the gaols, were waging deadly war against property and life--when he saw that all these things were against us, and there seemed to be no hope left that the scattered handfuls of Englishmen at the out-stations could escape utter destruction, he deemed it his duty to revoke the orders which he had issued in more auspicious times, and to call into Patna, such of our English establishments as had not already been swept away by the rebellion or escaped without official recall In doing this he generously took upon himself the responsibility of withdrawal, and absolved all the officers under him from any blame which might descend upon them for deserting their stations without the sanction of superior authority. It was not doubted that if there had been any reasonable ground of hope that these little assemblies of Englishmen could hold their own, that they could save their lives and the property of Government by defending their posts, it would have been better that the effort should be made. But their destruction would have been a greater calamity to the State than their surrender. It was impossible to overvalue the worth of European life at that time, and the deaths of so many Englishmen would have been a greater triumph and a greater encouragement to the enemy than their flight. It was the hour of our greatest darkness and our sorest need. We know now how Wake and Boyle and Colvin and their comrades in the little house’ hold the enemy in check, and how Vincent Eyre taught both the Sipahi mutineers and the Shahabad insurgents that there was still terrible vitality in our English troops. Of this William Tayler knew nothing. But he had palpably before him the fact of Dunbar’s disaster, and he believed that nothing could save the little garrison at torah. The probabilities at the time were that the Danapur regiments, with Kunwar Singh and his followers, having done their work in that direction, would move, flushed with conquest and gorged with plunder, upon Gaya and other stations, carrying destruction with them wheresoever they might go. What the Commissioner then did was what had been done and what was being done by other authorities, civil and military, in other parts of the country; it was held to be sound policy to draw in our scattered outposts to some central points of safety where the enemy might be defied. In this I can perceive no appearance of a panic. If Tayler had not acted thus, and evil had befallen the Christian people under his charge, he would have been condemned with a far severer condemnation for so fatal an omission.”
34. In his admirable work, Our Indian Musalmans, Sir William Hunter, K.C.S.I., LL D., proved that even five years before the period of which I am treating there existed at Patna “a great treasonable organisation for supplying men and money to the fanatical camp on the frontier; “that this organisation was the organisation of the Wahabis; and that of the Wahabis one of the men arrested by Mr. Tayler was the determined and resolute leader. He was subsequently tried by Sir Herbert Edwardes, convicted of treason, and transported to the Andamans.
35. “I can, of course, have no sort of objection to repeat,” wrote, in 1868, the gentleman who was Lord Canning’s private secretary in 1857, “what is a very sincere conviction, that if Lord Canning had seen the papers which you have now to produce, and been made acquainted with the subsequent progress of events, he would most likely have changed his opinion as to the treatment you have experienced; and, if he had changed his opinion, a man of his noble character would have been forward to say so, and to do you justice.”
This collection transcribed by Chris Gage