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INDIA OR HINDOSTAN
Printed in Colours by Shefick & Macfarlane Edinburgh
W. & R. CHAMBERS, LONDON & EDINBURGH

THE
HISTORY
OF THE
INDIAN REVOLT
AND OF THE EXPEDITIONS TO
PERSIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN
1856-7-8
WITH
Maps, Plans, and Wood Engravings

LONDON

W. AND R. CHAMBERS 47 PATERNOSTER ROW

AND HIGH STREET EDINBURGH

1859

PREFACE

In the present volume is given a narrative of the chief events connected with one of the most formidable military Revolts on record. These events—from the first display of insubordination in the beginning of 1857, to the issue of the Royal Proclamation in the later weeks of 1858—form a series full of the romance as well as the wretchedness of war: irrespective of the causes that may have led to them, or the reforms which they suggested. The sudden rising of trained native soldiers in mutiny; the slaughter of officers who to the last moment had trusted them; the sufferings of gently-nurtured women and children, while hurrying wildly over burning sands and through thick jungles; and the heroism displayed amid unspeakable miseries—all tended to give an extraordinary character to this outbreak. Nor is it less interesting to trace the operations by which the difficulties were met. The task was nothing less than that of suppressing insurgency among a native population of nearly two hundred million souls by a small number of British soldiers and civilians, most of whom were at vast distances from the chief region of disaffection, and were grievously deficient in means of transport.

A chronicle of these events reveals also the striking differences between various parts of India. While Behar, Oude, Rohilcund, the Doab, Bundelcund, Malwah, and Rajpootana were rent with anarchy and plunged in misery, the rest of India was comparatively untouched. Most important, too, is it to trace the influence of nation, caste, and creed. Why the Hindoos of the Brahmin and Rajpoot castes rebelled, while those of the lower castes remained faithful; why the Sikhs and Mussulmans of the Punjaub shewed so little sympathy with the insurgents; why the Hindoos of Bengal were so timidly quiet, and those of Hindostan so boldly violent; why the native armies of Madras and Bombay were so tranquil, when that of Bengal was so turbulent?—were questions which it behoved the government to solve, as clues to the character of the governed, and to the changes of discipline needed. It was a time that brought into strong relief the peculiarities of the five chief classes of Europeans in India—Queen’s soldiers, Company’s soldiers, Company’s ‘covenanted’ servants, ‘uncovenanted’ servants, and residents independent of the Company; and it shewed how nobly these classes forgot their differences when the honour of the British name and the safety of India were imperiled.

The history of home affairs during, and in relation to, that period of struggle, has its own points of interest—shewing in what manner, amid the stormy conflicts of party, the nation responded to the call for military aid to India, for pecuniary aid to individual sufferers, and for a great change in the government of that country.

Although the minor results of the Revolt may be visible to a much later date, it is considered that the month of November 1858 would furnish a convenient limit to the present narrative. The government of India had by that time been changed; the change had been publicly proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of that empire; the British army in the east had been so largely augmented as to render the prospects of the insurgents hopeless; the rebel leaders were gradually tendering their submission, under the terms of the Royal Proclamation; the skilled mutinous sepoys had in great proportion been stricken down by battle and privation; the military operations had become little more than a chasing of lawless marauders; and the armed men still at large were mostly dupes of designing leaders, or ruffians whose watchwords were pay and plunder rather than nationality or patriotism.

The remarkable Expeditions to Persia, China, and Japan are briefly noticed towards the close of the volume—on account of the links which connected them with the affairs of India, and of the aspect which they gave to the influence of England in the east.

Every endeavour has been made, by a careful examination of available authorities, to render the narrative a truthful one. It is hoped that the errors are few in number, and that hasty expressions of opinion on disputed points have in general been avoided. The Work is quite distinct from the History of the Russian War, issued by the same Publishers; yet may the two be regarded as companion volumes, relating to the affairs of England in the east—seeing that a few short months only elapsed between the close of the events of 1854-5-6 in Turkey, Russia, and Asia Minor, and the commencement of those of 1856-7-8 in India, Persia, and China.

G. D.

December 1858.

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Various Tail-pieces, Vignettes, &c.

INTRODUCTION.
INDIA IN 1856: A RETROSPECT.

Scarcely had England recovered from the excitement attendant on the war with Russia; scarcely had she counted the cost, provided for the expenditure, reprobated the blunderings, mourned over the sufferings; scarcely had she struck a balance between the mortifying incapacity of some of her children, and the Christian heroism of others—when she was called upon anew to unsheath the sword, and to wage war, not against an autocrat on this side of the Caspian, but against some of the most ancient nations in the world. Within a few months, almost within a few weeks, China, Persia, and India appeared in battle-array against her—they being the injurers or the injured, according to the bias of men’s judgments on the matter. It may almost be said that five hundred millions of human beings became her enemies at once: there are at the very least this number of inhabitants in the three great Asiatic empires; and against all, proclamations were issued and armaments fitted out. Whether the people, the millions, sided more with her or with their own rulers, is a question that must be settled in relation to each of those empires separately; but true it is that the small army of England was called upon suddenly to render services in Asia, so many and varied, in regions so widely separated, and so far distant from home, that a power of mobility scarcely less than ubiquity, aided by a strength of endurance almost more than mortal—could have brought that small force up to a level with the duties required of it. Considering how small a space a month is in the life of a nation, we may indeed say that this great Oriental outbreak was nearly simultaneous in the three regions of Asia. It was in October 1856 that the long-continued bickerings between the British and the Chinese at Canton broke out into a flame, and led to the despatch of military and naval forces from England. It was while the British admiral was actually engaged in bombarding Canton that the governor-general of India, acting as viceroy of the Queen of England, declared war against the Shah of Persia for an infringement of treaty relating to the city of Herat. And lastly, it was while two British armaments were engaged in those two regions of warfare, that disobedience and disbanding began in India, the initial steps to the most formidable military Revolt, perhaps, the world has ever seen.

The theologian sees, or thinks he sees, the finger of God, the avenging rod of an All-ruling Providence, in these scenes of blood-shedding: a punishment on England for not having Christianised the natives of the East to the full extent of her power. The soldier insists that, as we gained our influence in the East mainly by the sword, by the sword we must keep it: permitting no disobedience to our military rule, but at the same time offending as little as possible against the prejudices of faith and caste among the natives. The politician smitten with Russo-phobia, deeply imbued with the notion, whether well or ill founded, that the Muscovite aims at universal dominion in Europe and Asia, seeks for evidences of the czar’s intrigues at Pekin, Teheran, and Delhi. The partisan, thinking more of the ins and outs of official life, than of Asia, points triumphantly to the dogma that if his party had been in power, no one of these three Oriental wars would have come upon England. The merchant, believing that individual interest lies at the bottom of all national welfare, tells us that railways and cotton plantations would be better for India than military stations; and that diplomatic piques at Canton and at Teheran ought not to be allowed to drive us into hostility with nations who might be advantageous customers for our wares. But while the theologian, the soldier, the politician, the partisan, and the merchant are thus rushing to a demonstration, each of his favourite theory, without waiting for the evidence which can only by degrees be collected, England, as a nation, has had to bear up against the storm as best she could. Not even one short twelvemonth of peace was vouchsafed to her. The same year, 1856, that marked the closing scenes of one war, witnessed the commencement of two others; while the materials for a fourth war were at the same time fermenting, unknown to those whose duty it was to watch symptoms.

Few things in the history of our empire are more astonishing than the social explosion in India, taken in connection with the positive declarations of official men. Historical parallels have often been pointed out, striking and instructive; but here we have a historical contradiction. At the time when the plenipotentiaries of seven European empires and kingdoms were discussing at Paris the bases for a European peace, the Marquis of Dalhousie was penning an account of India, in the state to which Britain had brought it. A statesman of high ability, and of unquestioned earnestness of purpose, he evidently felt a pride in the work he had achieved as governor-general of India; he thought he had laid the foundation for a great future; and he claimed credit for England, not only in respect to what she had done, but also for the motives that had dictated her Indian policy. It was in the early part of 1848 that this nobleman went out to the East; it was in 1856 that he yielded the reins of power to Viscount Canning; and shortly before his departure from Calcutta he wrote a minute or narrative, formally addressed to the East India Company, but intended for his fellow-countrymen at large, giving an account of his stewardship. Remembering that that minute was written in March 1856, and that the Revolt commenced in January 1857, it becomes very important to know, from the lips or the pen of the marquis himself, what he believed to be the actual condition of the Anglo-Indian Empire when he left it. The document in question is worth more, for our present purpose, than any formal history or description of India; for it shews not only the sum-total of power and prosperity in 1848, but the additions made to that sum year after year till 1856. A parliamentary paper of fifty folio pages need not and cannot be reproduced here; but its substance may be rendered intelligible in a few paragraphs. This we will attempt at once, as a peculiarly fitting introduction to the main object of the present work; for it shews how little the Revolt was expected by him who was regarded as the centre of knowledge and influence in India. The marquis said: ‘The time has nearly come when my administration of the government of India, prolonged through more than eight years, will reach its final close. It would seem that some few hours may be profitably devoted to a short review of those eventful years; not for the purpose of justifying disputed measures, or of setting forth a retrospective defence of the policy which may, on every several occasion, have been adopted; but for the purpose of recalling the political events that have occurred, the measures that have been taken, and the progress that has been made, during the career of the administration which is about to close. I enter on that review with the single hope that the Honourable Court of Directors may derive from the retrospect some degree of satisfaction with the past, and a still larger measure of encouragement for the future.’ The words we have italicised are very remarkable, read by the light so soon and so calamitously to be afforded.

The minute first passes in review the proceedings of the Indian government with the independent native states, both east and west of the Ganges. How little our public men are able to foretell the course of political events in the East, is shewn by the very first paragraph of the governor-general’s narrative: ‘When I sailed from England in the winter of 1847, to assume the government of India, there prevailed a universal conviction among public men at home that permanent peace had at length been secured in the East. Before the summer came, we were already involved in the second Sikh war.’ Be it observed that public men at home are here adverted to: of what were the opinions of public men in India, the English nation was not kept sufficiently informed. There had been British officers murdered at Moultan; there was a rebellion of the Dewan Moolraj against the recognised sovereign of Lahore; but the renewal of war is attributed mainly to the ‘spirit of the whole Sikh people, which was inflamed by the bitterest animosity against us; when chief after chief deserted our cause, until nearly their whole army, led by sirdars who had signed the treaties, and by members of the Council of Regency itself, was openly arrayed against us;’ and when the Sikhs even joined with the Afghans against us. It was not a mere hostile prince, it was a hostile nation that confronted us; and the Indian government, whether wisely or not, declared war, put forth its power, maintained a long campaign, defeated and subdued the Sikhs, drove back the insurgent Afghans, and ended by annexing the Punjaub to the British territories. Scarcely had the Anglo-Indian armies been relieved from these onerous duties, when war called them to the regions beyond the Ganges. Certain British traders in the port of Rangoon had been subjected to gross outrage by the officers of the King of Ava, in violation of a pre-existing treaty; and the Marquis of Dalhousie, acting on a high-sounding dictum of Lord Wellesley, that ‘an insult offered to the British flag at the mouth of the Ganges should be resented as promptly and as fully as an insult offered at the mouth of the Thames,’ resolved to punish the king for those insults. That monarch was ‘arrogant and over-bearing’—qualities much disapproved, where not shewn by the Company’s servants themselves; he violated treaties, insulted our traders, worried our envoys, and drove away our commercial agent at Rangoon; and as the government of India ‘could never, consistently with its own safety, permit itself to stand for a single day in an attitude of inferiority towards a native power, and least of all towards the court of Ava, war was declared. After some sharp fighting, the kingdom of Pegu was taken and annexed, ‘in order that the government of India might hold from the Burman state both adequate compensation for past injury, and the best security against future danger.... A sense of inferiority has penetrated at last to the convictions of the nation; the Burman court and the Burman people alike have shewn that they now dread our power; and in that dread is the only real security we can ever have, or ever could have had, for stable peace with the Burman state.’ These words are at once boastful and saddening; but the notions conveyed, of ‘sense of inferiority’ and ‘dread of power,’ are thoroughly Asiatic, and as such we must accept them. Another independent state, Nepaul, on the northern frontier of India, remained faithful during the eight years of the Dalhousie administration; it carried on a war of its own against Tibet, but it was friendly to England, and sent a bejewelled ambassador, Jung Bahadoor, to visit the island Queen. The mountain region of Cashmere, stolen as it were from the Himalaya, was under an independent chieftain, Maharajah Gholab Sing, who, when he visited the Marquis of Dalhousie at Wuzeerabad, caught the vice-regal robe in his hand and said; ‘Thus I grasp the skirts of the British government, and I will never let go my hold.’ The governor-general expresses a belief that Gholab Sing ‘will never depart from his submissive policy as long as he lives;’ while Gholab’s son and anticipated successor, Meean Rumbeer Sing, is spoken of as one who will never give ‘any cause of offence to a powerful neighbour, which he well knows can crush him at will.’ The Khan of Khelat, near the western frontier, was brought into close relationship, insomuch that he became ‘the friend of our friends, and the enemy of our enemies,’ and engaged to give us temporary possession of such military stations within his territory as we might at any time require for purposes of defence. At the extreme northwest of our Indian Empire, the Afghans, with whom we had fought such terrible battles during the Auckland and Ellenborough administrations of Indian affairs, had again been brought into friendly relations; the chief prince among them, Dost Mohammed Khan of Cabool, had been made to see that England was likely to be his best friend, and ‘had already shewn that he regards English friendship as a tower of strength.’

Thus the governor-general, in adverting to independent states, announced that he had conquered and annexed the Punjaub and Pegu; while he had strengthened the bonds of amity with Nepaul, Cashmere, Khelat, and Cabool—amity almost degraded to abject servility, if the protestations of some of the chieftains were to be believed.

Having disposed of the independent states, the marquis directed attention to the relations existing between the British government and the protected or semi-independent states, of which there are many more than those really independent. The kingdom of Nagpoor became British territory by simple lapse, ‘in the absence of all legal heirs.’ In bygone years the British put down one rajah and set up another; and when this latter died, without a son real or adopted, or any male descendant of the original royal stock, ‘the British government refused to bestow the territory in free gift upon a stranger, and wisely incorporated it with its own dominions’—a mode of acquiring territory very prevalent in our Eastern Empire. The King of Oude, another protected sovereign, having broken his engagements with the Company in certain instances, his state was treated like Nagpoor, and added to British India. Satara lost its rajah in 1849, and as no male heir was then living, that small state shared the fate of the larger Oude: it was made British. Jhansi, a still smaller territory, changed owners in an exactly similar way. The Nizam of Hyderabad, owing to the Company a sum of money which he was unable or unwilling to pay, and being in other ways under the Company’s wrath, agreed in 1853 to give up Berar and other provinces to the exclusive sovereignty of the British. Early in 1848 the Rajah of Ungool, a petty chieftain in the Jungle Neehals, resisted the authority of the government; his raj was taken from him, and he died in exile. The Rajah of Sikim, a hill-chieftain on the borders of Nepaul, ‘had the audacity’ to seize a Company’s official at Darjeling; as a punishment, all the territories he possessed within the plains were confiscated and annexed. In Sinde, Meer Ali Morad of Khyrpore, having involved himself in an act of forgery concerning the ownership of territory, ‘the lands were taken from him, and his power and influence were reduced to insignificance.’ The Nawab Nazim of Bengal having committed a murder by bastinado, ‘his highness’s peculiar jurisdiction and legal exemption were taken away from him; and he was subjected to the disgrace of losing a large portion of the salute of honour which he had previously received.’ The Nawab of the Carnatic died suddenly in 1855; and as he left no male heir, and his relations lived very disreputably, the title of nawab ‘was placed in abeyance:’ that is, the Carnatic was made British territory, and the several members of the nawab’s family were pensioned off. About the same time, the Rajah of Tanjore died, in like manner without male issue bearing his name; and the same process was adopted there as in the Carnatic—sovereign power was assumed by the Company, and the ex-royal family was pensioned off.

Counting up his treasures, the governor-general was certainly enabled to announce a most extraordinary accession of territory during the years 1848 to 1855. The Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Oude, Satara, Jhansi, Berar, Ungool, Darjeling, Khyrpore, the Carnatic, and Tanjore, all became British for the first time, or else had the links which bound them to England brought closer. While, on the one hand, it must be admitted that the grounds or excuses for annexation would be deemed very slight in any country but India; so, on the other, there can be no doubt that the Marquis of Dalhousie, and the directors with whom he was acting, believed that these annexing processes were essential to the maintenance of British power in the East. He takes credit to his government for having settled certain family quarrels among the petty royalties of Gujerat, Buhawalpore, Jummoo, and Mumdote, without paying itself for its services: as if it were a virtue to abstain from annexation at such times. The mention made of Delhi must be given in the governor-general’s own words, to shew how much the descendant of the once mighty Mogul was regarded as a mere puppet—yet maintaining a certain hold on the reverence of the people, as was destined to be shewn in a series of events little anticipated by the writer of the minute. ‘Seven years ago the heir-apparent to the King of Delhi died. He was the last of the race who had been born in the purple. The Court of Directors was accordingly advised to decline to recognise any other heir-apparent, and to permit the kingly title to fall into abeyance upon the death of the present king, who even then was a very aged man. The Honourable Court accordingly conveyed to the government of India authority to terminate the dynasty of Timour, whenever the reigning king should die. But as it was found that, although the Honourable Court had consented to the measure, it had given its consent with great reluctance, I abstained from making use of the authority which had been given to me. The grandson of the king was recognised as heir-apparent; but only on condition that he should quit the palace in Delhi in order to reside in the palace at the Kootub; and that he should, as king, receive the governor-general of India at all times on terms of perfect equality.’ How strange do these words sound! A board of London merchants sitting in a room in Leadenhall Street, giving ‘authority to terminate the dynasty of Timour;’ and then, as a gracious condescension, permitting the representative of that dynasty to be on terms of ‘perfect equality’ with whomsoever may be the chief representative of the Company in India.

The Marquis of Dalhousie pointed to the revenues derivable from the newly annexed territories as among the many justifications for his line of policy. He shewed that four millions sterling were added to the annual income of the Anglo-Indian Empire by the acquisition of the Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Oude, Satara, Jhansi, and Berar—increasing the total revenue from about twenty-six millions in 1848 to above thirty millions in 1855.

The extreme importance of this official document lying in the evidence it affords how little dread was felt in 1856 of any approaching outbreak, we proceed with the governor-general’s narrative of the augmentation and stability of British power in the East, power of which he was evidently proud—presenting, of course, as a mere outline, that which his lordship fills up in more detail.

Credit is claimed in the minute for the improved administrative organisation both of the old and of the newly acquired territories. Able men were selected to administer government in the Punjaub; and so well did they fulfil their duties that internal peace was secured, violent crime repressed, the penal law duly enforced, prison-discipline maintained, civil justice administered, taxation fixed, collection of revenue rendered just, commerce set free, agriculture fostered, national resources developed, and future improvements planned. Not only did the marquis assert this; but there is a general concurrence of opinion that the Punjaub fell into fortunate hands when its administration came to be provided for. In Pegu the administration, less brilliant than in the Punjaub, is nevertheless represented as being sound in principle; tranquillity was restored; effective police had secured the safety of all; trade was increased and increasing; a fair revenue was derived from light taxation; ‘the people, lightly taxed and prosperous, are highly contented with our rule;’ and, when population has increased, ‘Pegu will equal Bengal in fertility of production, and surpass it in every other respect.’ At Nagpoor the assumption of supreme authority by Britain was ‘hailed with lively satisfaction by the whole population of the province;’ no additional soldier had been introduced thither; the civil administration was introduced everywhere; the native army was partly embodied and disciplined in British pay, and partly discharged either with pensions or gratuities. In short, ‘perfect contentment and quiet prevail; beyond the palace walls not a murmur has been heard; and in no single instance throughout the districts has the public peace been disturbed.’ In Berar, we are told, the same phenomena were observed; as soon as the cession was made, our numerous disputes with the nizam ended; the civil administration was brought into working order; crime, especially the violent crime of dacoitee (gang-robbery without murder) was diminished; the ‘admirable little army,’ formerly called the Nizam’s Contingent, was made available as part of the British force; the revenue rapidly increased; and the public tranquillity had ‘not been disturbed by a single popular tumult.’ The kingdom of Oude had only been annexed a few weeks before the Marquis of Dalhousie wrote his minute; but he states that a complete civil administration, and a resident military force, had been fully organised before the annexation took place; that the troops of the deposed native king were contentedly taking service in British pay; that no zemindar or chief had refused submission to our authority; that the best men who could be found available were selected from the civil and military services for the new offices in Oude; and that no popular resistance or disturbance had occurred.

Nothing could be more clear and positive than these assertions. Not only did the governor-general announce that the Punjaub, Pegu, Nagpoor, Berar, and Oude had been completely annexed, bringing a large accession to the British revenues; but that in every case a scheme of administration had been framed and established, conducive to the lasting benefit of the natives, the honour of the British name, and the development of the natural resources of the several districts. Not a whisper of discontent, of spirits chafed by change of rulers, did the marquis recognise: if they occurred, they reached not him; or if they did reach him, he passed them by as trifles.

Nor was it alone in the newly acquired territories that credit for these advantageous changes was claimed. Improvements in the government of India were pointed out in every direction. The governor-general had been relieved from an overwhelming press of duties by the appointment of a lieutenant-governor for Bengal. A Legislative Council had been organised, distinct from the Supreme Council: the public having access to its deliberations, and its debates and papers being printed and issued to the world. The Indian civil service, by an act passed in 1853, had been thrown open to all who, being natural-born subjects of the British sovereign, should offer themselves as candidates for examination and admission. Young cadets, who previously had been allowed nearly two years to ‘idle and loiter’ at the presidencies while studying for examination as civilians, were by a new regulation required to complete their studies in a much shorter period, thereby lessening their idleness and rendering them sooner useful. Periodical examinations of the civil servants had been established, to insure efficiency before promotion was given. A board of examiners had been founded, to conduct examinations and superintend studies. All officers of the Indian government had been formally prohibited from engaging in banking or trading companies; and any bankruptcy among them entailed suspension from office. In many of the civil offices, promotion, before dependent on seniority alone, had been made dependent on merit alone. A pension or superannuation list had been established in many departments, to insure steady and faithful service. Three boards of administration for salt, opium, and customs had been replaced by one board of revenue, simpler in its constitution. The annual financial reports, transmitted to the home government, had gradually been made more clear, full, and instructive. All the salaries throughout India had been placed under the consideration of a special commissioner, for equitable revision; and the authorities had determined that, in future, no salaries, with a few special exceptions, shall exceed fifty thousand rupees (about five thousand pounds) per annum.

Nor had legislative reform been wholly forgotten. During the eight years under review, laws had been passed or rules laid down for the punishment of officials guilty of corruption, or accountants guilty of default; for allowing counsel to prisoners on their trial; for abolishing the semi-savage custom of branding convicts; for rendering public officers more amenable to public justice; for vesting a right of pardon in the supreme government; for improving the procedure in all the civil and criminal courts; for rendering the reception of evidence more fair and impartial; and, among many less important things, for ‘securing liberty of conscience, and for the protection of converts, and especially of Christian converts, against injury in respect of property or inheritance by reason of a change in their religious belief.’ For the amelioration of prison-discipline, inspectors of prisons had been appointed in all the three presidencies, as well as in Oude, the Punjaub, and the northwest provinces.

Equally in moral as in administrative matters did the Marquis of Dalhousie insist on the manifold improvement of India during the eight years preceding 1856. Schools for the education of natives had been established; the Hindoo College at Calcutta had been revived and improved; a Presidency College had been founded in the same city, to give a higher scale of education to the youth of Bengal; similar colleges had been sanctioned at Madras and Bombay; grants-in-aid to all educational establishments had been authorised, subject to government inspection of the schools aided; a committee had been appointed to consider the plans for establishing regular universities at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras; a distinct educational department had been formed at the seat of government, with director-generals of public instruction in all the presidencies and governments; and the East India Company had, by a dispatch framed in 1854, sanctioned a most extensive educational scheme for the whole of India, to be rendered available to all the natives who might be willing and able to claim its advantages. The delicate subject of female education had not been forgotten. Instructions had been given to the officers of the educational department to afford all possible encouragement to the establishment of female schools, whenever any disposition was shewn by the natives in that direction. There is a peculiar difficulty in all that concerns female education in India, arising from the reluctance which has always been shewn by the higher classes of natives to permit the attendance of their daughters at schools. Mr Bethune commenced, and the Marquis of Dalhousie continued, a delicate and cautious attempt to overcome this unwillingness by establishing a Hindoo ladies’ school at Calcutta; and the minute gives expression to an earnest hope and belief that the female character in India will gradually be brought under the elevating influence of moral and intellectual education. As the native mind was thus sought to be ameliorated and strengthened by education; so had the prevention or cure of bodily maladies been made an object of attention. Additional advantages had been granted to natives who applied themselves to the study of the medical sciences; the number of dispensaries had been greatly increased, to the immense benefit of the poorer classes of Hindoos and Mohammedans; plans had been commenced for introducing a check to the dreadful ravages of the small-pox; admission to the medical service of the Company had been thrown open to natives; and, as a first-fruit of this change, one Dr Chuckerbutty, a Hindoo educated in England, had won for himself a commission as assistant-surgeon in the Company’s service.

In so far as concerns superstition and religion, the minute narrates a course of proceeding of which the following is the substance. Among the extraordinary social customs—atrocities they are unquestionably considered in Europe—of India, those of Suttee, Thuggee, Infanticide, and the Meriah Sacrifice, are mentioned as having undergone much amelioration during the eight years to which the minute relates. The suttee, or burning of widows, had been almost suppressed by previous governor-generals, and the marquis had carried out the plans of his predecessors: remonstrating where any suttees occurred in independent states; and punishing where they occurred in the British and protected territories. Thuggee, or systematic murder of travellers for the sake of booty, had been quite suppressed east of the Sutlej; but having unexpectedly made its appearance in the Punjaub in 1851, it was thoroughly put down there as elsewhere; those who turned approvers or king’s evidence against their brother Thugs now form—or rather did form in 1856—a peaceful industrious colony at Jubbulpoor, where they spun and wove muslins of exquisite fineness, instead of cutting the throats of unsuspecting travellers. Female infanticide, the result of pride of birth and pride of purse—parents murdering their infant daughters either because they cannot afford the marriage expenditure which must one day be incurred on their account, or because they see difficulties in marrying them suitably—had been greatly checked and discouraged. In the Punjaub a most signal and singular conquest had been achieved; for the British representative, calling together the chiefs of tribes in 1854, unfolded to them a plan, ‘the observance of which would effectually secure that no man should feel any real difficulty in providing for his daughter in marriage;’ whereupon the chiefs, as well as those of the Cashmere tribes, promised that, as the motive for infanticide would thus in great measure be removed, they would cheerfully aid in suppressing the practice. Lastly, the Meriah sacrifice—a horrible rite, in which young human victims are sacrificed for the propitiation of the special divinity which presides over the fertility of the earth—had been nearly rooted out from the only district where it was practised, among the hill and jungle tribes of Orissa. In religious matters, the ecclesiastical strength of the established church had been largely increased; clergymen had been occasionally sanctioned, besides those acting as chaplains to the Company; places of worship had been provided for the servants and soldiers of the Company; Protestant churches had been built in places where the worshippers were willing to contribute something towards the expenditure; Roman Catholics serving the Company had been provided with places of worship; salaries had been granted to three Roman Catholic bishops, one in each presidency; the salaries of the priests had been revised and augmented; and a wish was manifested to observe justice towards the Catholic as well as the Protestant who served his country well in the East.

Thus—in the acquisition of territory, in the augmentation of revenue consequent on that acquisition, in the administrative organisation, in the spread of education, in the provision for religious services, and in the plans for improving the moral conduct of the natives—the Marquis of Dalhousie claimed to have done much that would redound to the honour of the British name and to the advancement of the millions under British rule in India. The problem still remains unsolved—Why should India, or the native military of that country, have revolted from British service? Let us see, therefore, whether the governor-general says aught that throws light upon the matter in connection with trade and commerce; and in order to understand this subject clearly, let us treat separately of Productive Industry and Means of Communication.

Cotton is destined, according to the ideas of some thinkers, to mark a great future for India; but meanwhile we are told in the minute that, by the acquisition of Nagpoor and Berar, many fertile cotton districts were brought under British rule; and that since the acquisition of Pegu, an examination of the cotton-growing capabilities of the northern part of that kingdom had been commenced. The tea-culture in Assam had prospered greatly during the eight years from 1848 to 1856; the plant had been largely introduced into the upper districts of the northwest provinces; plantations had been established at Deyrah Dhoon, Kumaon, and Gurhwal; Mr Fortune had brought large supplies of Chinese seeds and Chinese workmen to India; many of the native zemindars had begun the cultivation on their own account in districts at the foot of the Himalaya; and every year witnessed a large increase in the production of Indian tea, which was excellent in quality, and sold readily at a high price. In agriculture generally, improvements of all kinds had been made; an Agricultural and Horticultural Society had been established in the Punjaub; carefully selected seeds had been procured from Europe; the growth of flax had been encouraged; the growth of the mulberry and the rearing of silkworms had been fostered by the government; and a grant had been made in aid of periodical agricultural shows in the Madras presidency. In relation to live-stock, plans had been formed for improving the breed of horses; merino and Australian rams had been introduced to improve the breed of sheep; and sheep had been introduced into Pegu, to the great delight of the natives and the advantage of all; ‘for the absence of sheep leads to a privation in respect of food, which is severely felt, not only by European soldiers in the province, but also by all of every class who are employed therein.’ The forests had been brought under due regulation by the appointment of conservators of forests at Pegu, Tenasserim, and Martaban; by the careful examination of the whole of the forests in the Punjaub; by the planting of new districts, hitherto bare; and by the laying down of rules for the future preservation and thrifty management of these important sources of timber and fuel. The inestimable value of coal being duly appreciated, careful researches had been made, by order of the government, in the Punjaub, Pegu, Tenasserim, Bengal, Silhet, and the Nerbudda Valley, to lay the groundwork for careful mining whenever and wherever good coal may be found. Practical chemists and geological surveyors had been set to work in the Simla Hills, Kumaon, Gurhwal, the Nerbudda Valley, Beerboom, and Jubbulpoor, either to discover beds of ironstone, or to organise ironworks where such beds had already been discovered; and an experimental mining and smelting establishment had been founded by the government among the Kumaon Hills, to apply tests likely to be valuable in future.

Next, in connection with means of communication, the channels by and through which commerce permeates the empire, the governor-general had a very formidable list of works to notice. Surveys, irrigation and canals, rivers and harbours, roads, railways, electric telegraphs, and postal communications—had all been made the subjects of great engineering activity during the eight years of the Dalhousie administration. A few words must be said here on each of these topics; for it becomes absolutely necessary, in order to a due appreciation of the narrative of Revolt about to follow, that we should, as a preliminary, know whether India really had or had not been neglected in these elements of prosperity in the years immediately preceding the outbreak.

Measures, we learn from the minute, had been taken for executing exact surveys of all the newly annexed territory in the Punjaub, Pegu, Sinde, Nagpoor, and Berar in the same careful manner as the survey of the older territories had been before carried out; and in Central India ‘the consent of all the native states has been obtained to the making of a topographical survey, and to a demarcation of all the boundaries between the several native states, and between the British territories and those of native states:’ a proceeding expected to lessen the frequency of feuds concerning disputed boundaries.

The activity in irrigation-works and canal-cutting had unquestionably been very great. In 1854 the Ganges Canal was opened in its main line, for the double purpose of irrigation and navigation. A mighty work this, which no mutiny, no angry feelings, should induce the English public to forget. It is 525 miles in length, and in some parts 170 feet in width; and considered as a canal for irrigation, ‘it stands unequalled in its class and character among the efforts of civilised nations. Its length is fivefold greater than that of all the main lines of Lombardy united, and more than twice the length of the aggregate irrigation lines of Lombardy and Egypt together—the only countries in the world whose works of irrigation rise above insignificance.’ Nor is this all. ‘As a single work of navigation for purposes of commerce, the Ganges Canal has no competitor throughout the world. No single canal in Europe has attained to half the magnitude of this Indian work. It nearly equals the aggregate length of the four greatest canals in France. It greatly exceeds all the first-class canals of Holland put together; and it is greater, by nearly one-third, than the greatest navigation canal in the United States of America.’ Pausing for one moment just to observe that the writer of the words here quoted seems to have temporarily forgotten the great canal of China, we proceed to state, on the authority of the minute, that when all the branches are finished, this noble Ganges Canal will be 900 miles in length. It will then, by its periodical overflowings, irrigate a million and a half of acres, thus lessening the terrible apprehensions of famine or dearth among millions of human beings. We may doubt or not on other subjects, but it is impossible to doubt the sincerity of the Marquis of Dalhousie when he says: ‘I trust I shall not be thought vain-glorious if I say that the successful execution and completion of such a work as the Ganges Canal would, even if it stood alone, suffice to signalise an Indian administration.’ But this work did not absorb all the energies of the canal engineers; much of a similar though smaller kind had been effected elsewhere. An irrigation canal had been begun in the Punjaub, which, when finished, would be 465 miles in length, fed from the river Ravee. All the old canals formed in the Moultan district of the Punjaub, 600 miles in length, had been cleansed, enlarged, and improved, and the distribution of the waters for the purpose of irrigation placed under judicious regulation. Irrigation canals had been made or improved in the Derajat, in the provinces east of the Sutlej, in Behar, and in Sinde. A magnificent work had been executed for carrying an irrigation canal over the river Godavery; and canals of much importance had been commenced in the Madras and Bombay presidencies.

Rivers and harbours had shared in the attention bestowed on irrigation and canal navigation. The Ganges had been opened to river steamers before 1848, and it only remained to advance in the same line of improvement. The Indus, by the conquest of the Punjaub, had been made a British river almost from the Himalaya down to the ocean; steamers had been placed upon it; and it had become a direct route for troops and travellers to many parts of Northern India, before attainable only by the Calcutta route. All the rivers in the upper part of the Punjaub had been surveyed, with a view to the determination of their capabilities for steam-navigation. No sooner was Pegu acquired, than steamers were placed upon the Irrawaddy, the great river of that country; and short canals of junction between various rivers had been so planned as to give promise of a complete line of river-steaming from Bassein to Moulmein. Arrangements had been made for placing steamers upon the river Burhampooter or Brahmaputra, to connect Assam with the Bay of Bengal. Extensive works had been commenced to improve the navigation of the Godavery. The channels that lead from Calcutta through the Sundurbunds to the sea had been enlarged; and a great bridge over the Hoogly near the city had been planned. The port of Bombay had been greatly improved, and large works for water-supply commenced. At Kurachee, at Madras, at Singapore, at Rangoon, and at other places, engineering improvements had been made to increase the accommodation for shipping.

We follow the Marquis of Dalhousie from the river to the land, and trace with him the astonishing length of new road constructed or planned during his administration. A great trunk-road from Calcutta to Delhi had been extended nearly to the Sutlej; and when the Punjaub became a British possession, plans were immediately marked out for prolonging the same road to Loodianah, Umritsir, Lahore, Jelum, Attock, and Peshawur—thus forming, if all be completed, a magnificent road 1500 miles in length from Calcutta to the Afghan frontier, available both for commercial and military operations. The difficulties of crossing so many broad rivers in Northern India is immense, and the cost great; but the road, as the minute tells us, ‘will repay a thousandfold the labour and the treasure it has cost.’ Then, fine roads had been formed from Patna to Gya, from Cuttack to Ungool and Sumbhulpore, from Dacca to Akyab, and thence towards Aracan and Pegu; while vast systems of roads had been brought under consideration for Pegu, the Punjaub, Sinde, and other newly acquired regions. Engineers had been employed to plan a road from Simla up to the very Himalaya itself, to connect India with Tibet; as it would greatly improve the social position of all the native tribes near it. When Pegu was attacked, and when a military force was sent thither overland from Calcutta, hundreds of elephants were employed to force a way through the forests and roadless tracts between Aracan and Pegu; but by the spring of 1855 a road had been formed, along which a battalion could march briskly on foot.

The Marquis of Dalhousie was not in a position to say so much concerning railways in India as ordinary roads. Although railways were brought under the consideration of the Company in 1843, nothing was done regarding them till 1849, when a contract was entered into with a separate company to construct a certain length of railway which, if continued, would connect Calcutta with the north and northwest of India. In the spring of 1853 the marquis recommended a bold line of policy in these matters: the sanction and support, in every available way, of great lines of railway to connect Calcutta with Lahore, Bombay with Agra, Bombay with Madras, and Madras with the Malabar coast. A qualified approval of these schemes had been accorded by the East India Company, and engagements to the extent of ten millions sterling had been made for a railway from Delhi to Burdwan: a line from Burdwan to Calcutta having been opened in 1855. The governor-general, not dreaming of mutinies and rebellions, named the year 1859 as the probable time of finishing the iron route from Calcutta to Delhi. Besides these engagements with the East India Railway Company in the Bengal presidency, contracts had been made with the Great India Peninsula Company for a railway from Bombay to the Ghaut Mountains; and another with the Bombay and Central India Company for a railway from Bombay to Khandeish and Nagpoor, and for another from Surat to Ahmedabad. On the eastern coast, the government had arranged with the Madras Railway Company for lines from Madras to the Malabar coast, viâ Coimbatore, and from Variembaddy to Bangalore. The English nation has long blamed the East India Company for a dilatory policy in regard to railways; but all we have to do in this place is, on the authority of the governor-general, to specify in few words what had been done in the years immediately preceding the outbreak.

The electric telegraph—perhaps the grandest invention of our age—found in India a congenial place for its reception. Where the officials had no more rapid means of sending a message to a distance of a thousand miles than the fleetness of a corps of foot-runners, it is no marvel that the achievements of the lightning-messenger were regarded with an eager eye. An experimental line of electric telegraph was determined on, to be carried out by Dr (now Sir William) O’Shaughnessy; and when that energetic man made his report on the result in 1852, it was at once determined to commence arrangements for lines of immense length, to connect the widely separated cities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Peshawur, and the great towns between them. It was a grand idea, and was worthily realised; for by the month of March 1854 an electric wire of 800 miles was established between Calcutta and Agra; by the month of February 1855, the towns of Calcutta, Agra, Attock, Bombay, and Madras were placed in telegraphic communication by 3000 miles of wire, serving nearly forty towns on the way; and by the beginning of 1856 another length of 1000 miles was added, from Attock to Peshawur, from Bangalore to Ootacamund, and from Rangoon to the Burmese frontier. Many works of great magnitude were required; there were few good roads for the workmen to avail themselves of; there were few bridges; there were deadly jungles to be passed; there was every variety of foundation, from loose black soil to hard rocky wastes; there were seventy large rivers to be crossed, either by cables in the water, or by wires extended on the tops of masts; there was a cable of two miles required to cross the Toongabudra, and one of three miles to cross the Sone—and yet the entire work was comprised within a cost of 500 rupees or £50 per mile: perhaps the wisest expenditure ever incurred in India. Repeatedly has a message, relating to news from England, been transmitted 1000 miles, from Bombay to Calcutta, in less than three-quarters of an hour; and it has become a regular routine that the government at Calcutta shall be in possession of a considerable body of telegraphic news from England within twelve hours after the anchoring of the mail-steamer at Bombay. Who can conceive the bewilderment of the Hindoo mind at such achievements! It is certainly permissible to the governor-general to refer with pride to two or three among many instances of the remarkable service rendered by these telegraphs. ‘When her Majesty’s 10th Hussars were ordered with all speed from Poonah to the Crimea, a message requesting instructions regarding their despatch was one day received by me at Calcutta from the government of Bombay, about nine o’clock in the morning. Instructions were forthwith sent off by the telegraph in reply; and an answer to that reply was again received at Calcutta from Bombay in the evening of the same day. A year before, the same communications for the despatch of speedy reinforcements to the seat of war, which occupied by the telegraph no more than twelve hours, could not have been made in less than thirty days.’ Again: ‘When it was resolved to send her Majesty’s 12th Lancers from Bangalore to the Crimea, instead of her Majesty’s 14th Dragoons from Meerut, orders were forthwith despatched by telegraph direct to the regiment at Bangalore. The corps was immediately got ready for service; it marched two hundred miles, and was there before the transports were ready to receive it.’ Again: ‘On the 7th of February 1856, as soon as the administration of Oude was assuredly under British government, a branch-electric telegraph from Cawnpore to Lucknow was forthwith commenced; in eighteen working-days it was completed, including the laying of a cable, six thousand feet in length, across the river Ganges. On the morning on which I resigned the government in India, General Outram was asked by telegraph: “Is all well in Oude?” The answer: “All is well in Oude,” was received soon after noon, and greeted Lord Canning on his first arrival.’ Little did the new governor-general then foresee in how few months he would receive painful proof that all was not well in Oude. However, the Marquis of Dalhousie was justified in adverting with satisfaction to the establishment of telegraphic communication during his reign of power; and he insists on full credit being due to the East India Company for what was done in that direction. ‘I make bold to say, that whether regard be had to promptitude of executive action, to speed and solidity of construction, to rapidity of organisation, to liberality of charge, or to the early realisation and vast magnitude of increased political influence in the East, the achievement of the Honourable Company in the establishment of the electric telegraph in India may challenge comparison with any public enterprise which has been carried into execution in recent times, among the nations of Europe, or in America itself.’

The postal system had not been allowed to stagnate during the eight years under consideration. A commission had been appointed in 1850, to inquire into the best means of increasing the efficiency of the system; and under the recommendations of this commission, great improvements had been made. A director-general of the post-office for the whole of India had been appointed; a uniformity of rate irrespective of distance had been established (three farthings for a letter, and three half-pence for a newspaper); prepayment by postage-stamps had been substituted for cash payment; the privileges of official franking had been almost abolished; and a uniform sixpenny rate was fixed for letters between India and England. Here again the governor-general insists, not only that the Indian government had worked zealously, but that England herself had been outstripped in liberal policy. ‘In England, a single letter is conveyed to any part of the British isles for one penny; in India, a single letter is conveyed over distances immeasurably greater—from Peshawur, on the borders of Afghanistan, to the southernmost village of Cape Comorin, or from Dehooghur, in Upper Assam, to Kurachee at the mouth of the Indus—for no more than three farthings. The postage chargeable on the same letter three years ago in India would not have been less than one shilling, or sixteen times the present charge. Again, since uniform rates of postage between England and India have been established, the Scotch recruit who joins his regiment on our furthest frontier at Peshawur, may write to his mother at John o’ Groat’s House, and may send his letter to her free for sixpence: three years ago, the same sum would not have carried his letter beyond Lahore.’

So great had been the activity of the Company and the governor-general, in the course of eight years, in developing the productive resources of our Oriental empire, that a department of Public Works had become essentially necessary. The Company expended from two to three millions sterling annually in this direction, and a new organisation had been made to conduct the various works on which this amount of expenditure was to be bestowed. When the great roads and canals were being planned and executed, numerous civil engineers were of course needed; and the minute tells us that ‘it was the far-seeing sagacity of Mr Thomason which first anticipated the necessity of training engineers in the country itself in which they were to be employed, and which first suggested an effectual method of doing so. On his recommendation, the civil engineering college at Roorkee, which now rightly bears his honoured name, was founded with the consent of the Honourable Court. It has already been enlarged and extended greatly beyond its original limits. Instruction in it is given to soldiers preparing for subordinate employment in the Public Works department, to young gentlemen not in the service of government, and to natives upon certain conditions. A higher class for commissioned officers of the army was created some years ago, at the suggestion of the late Sir Charles Napier; and the government has been most ready to consent to officers obtaining leave to study there, as in the senior department at Sandhurst. Excellent fruit has already been borne by this institution; many good servants have already been sent forth into [from?] the department; and applications for the services of students of the Thomason College were, before long, received from other local governments.’ But this was not all: civil engineering colleges and classes were formed at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Poonah.

So greatly had the various public works on rivers and harbours, roads and canals, telegraphic and postal communications, increased the trade of India, that the shipping entries increased regularly year by year. There were about six hundred vessels, exclusive of trading craft, that ascended the Hoogly to Calcutta in 1847; by 1856, the number had augmented to twelve hundred; and the tonnage had risen in a still greater ratio.

What is the English nation to think of all this, and how reconcile it with the tragedies destined so soon to afflict that magnificent country? Here we find the highest representative of the British crown narrating and describing, in words too clear to be misunderstood, political and commercial advancements of a really stupendous kind, effected within the short period of eight years. We read of vast territories conquered, tributary states annexed, amicable relations with other states strengthened, territorial revenues increased, improved administration organised, the civil service purified, legislative reforms effected, prison-discipline improved, native colleges and schools established, medical aid disseminated, thuggee and dacoitee put down, suttee and infanticide discouraged, churches and chapels built, ministers of religion salaried. We are told of the cultivation of raw produce being fostered, the improvement of live-stock insured, the availability of mineral treasures tested, exact territorial surveys completed, stupendous irrigation and navigation canals constructed, flotillas of river-steamers established, ports and harbours enlarged and deepened, magnificent roads formed, long lines of railway commenced, thousands of miles of electric telegraph set to work, vast postal improvements insured. We read all this, and we cannot marvel if the ruler of India felt some pride in his share of the work. But still the problem remains unsolved—was the great Revolt foreshadowed in any of these achievements? As the mutiny began among the military, it may be well to see what information is afforded by the minute concerning military reforms between the years 1848 and 1856.

It is truly remarkable, knowing what the English nation now so painfully knows, that the Marquis of Dalhousie, in narrating the various improvements introduced by him in the military system, passes at once to the British soldiers: distinctly asserting that ‘the position of the native soldier in India has long been such as to leave hardly any circumstance of his condition in need of improvement.’ The British troops, we are told, had been benefited in many ways. The terms of service in India had been limited to twelve years as a maximum; the rations had been greatly improved; malt liquor had been substituted for destructive ardent spirits; the barracks had been mostly rebuilt, with modifications depending on the climate of each station; separate barracks had been set apart for the married men of each regiment; lavatories and reading-rooms had become recognised portions of every barrack; punkhas or cooling fans had been adopted for barracks in hot stations, and additional bed-coverings in cold; swimming-baths had been formed at most of the stations; soldiers’ gardens had been formed at many of the cantonments; workshops and tools for handicraftsmen had been attached to the barracks; sanitaria had been built among the hills for sick soldiers; and arrangements had been framed for acclimatising all recruits from England before sending them into hot districts on service. Then, as to the officers. Encouragement had been offered for the officers to make themselves proficient in the native languages. A principle had been declared and established, that promotion by seniority should no longer govern the service; but that the test should be ‘the selection of no man, whatever his standing, unless he was confessedly capable and efficient.’ With the consent of the Queen, the Company’s officers had had granted to them the recognition, until then rather humiliatingly withheld, of their military rank, not only in India but throughout the world. A military orphan school had been established in the hill districts. All the military departments had been revised and amended, the commissariat placed on a wholly new basis, and the military clothing supplied on a more efficient system than before.

Again is the search baffled. We find in the minute proofs only that India had become great and grand; if the seeds of rebellion existed, they were buried under the language which described material and social advancement. Is it that England, in 1856, had yet to learn to understand the native character? Such may be; for thuggee came to the knowledge of our government with astounding suddenness; and there may be some other kind of thuggee, religious or social, still to be learned by us. Let us bear in mind what this thuggee or thugism was, and who were the Thugs. Many years ago, uneasy whispers passed among the British residents in India. Rumours went abroad of the fate of unsuspecting travellers ensnared while walking or riding upon the road, lassoed or strangled by means of a silken cord, and robbed of their personal property; the rumours were believed to be true; but it was long ere the Indian government succeeded in bringing to light the stupendous conspiracy or system on which these atrocities were based. It was then found that there exists a kind of religious body in India, called Thugs, among whom murder and robbery are portions of a religious rite, established more than a thousand years ago. They worship Kali, one of the deities of the Hindoo faith. In gangs varying from ten to two hundred, they distribute themselves—or rather did distribute themselves, before the energetic measures of the government had nearly suppressed their system—about various parts of India, sacrificing to their tutelary goddess every victim they can seize, and sharing the plunder among themselves. They shed no blood, except under special circumstances; murder being their religion, the performance of its duties requires secrecy, better observed by a noose or a cord than by a knife or firearm. Every gang has its leader, teacher, entrappers, stranglers, and gravediggers; each with his prescribed duties. When a traveller, supposed or known to have treasure about him, has been inveigled to a selected spot by the Sothas or entrappers, he is speedily put to death quietly by the Bhuttotes or stranglers, and then so dexterously placed underground by the Lughahees or gravediggers that no vestige of disturbed earth is visible.[^[1]] This done, they offer a sacrifice to their goddess Kali, and finally share the booty taken from the murdered man. Although the ceremonial is wholly Hindoo, the Thugs themselves comprise Mohammedans as well as Hindoos; and it is supposed by some inquirers that the Mohammedans have ingrafted a system of robbery on that which was originally a religious murder—murder as part of a sacrifice to a deity.

We repeat: there may be some moral or social thuggee yet to be discovered in India; but all we have now to assert is, that the condition of India in 1856 did not suggest to the retiring governor-general the slightest suspicion that the British in that country were on the edge of a volcano. He said, in closing his remarkable minute: ‘My parting hope and prayer for India is, that, in all time to come, these reports from the presidencies and provinces under our rule may form, in each successive year, a happy record of peace, prosperity, and progress.’ No forebodings here, it is evident. Nevertheless, there are isolated passages which, read as England can now read them, are worthy of notice. One runs thus: ‘No prudent man, who has any knowledge of Eastern affairs, would ever venture to predict the maintenance of continued peace within our Eastern possessions. Experience, frequent hard and recent experience, has taught us that war from without, or rebellion from within, may at any time be raised against us, in quarters where they were the least to be expected, and by the most feeble and unlikely instruments. No man, therefore, can ever prudently hold forth assurance of continued peace in India.’ Again: ‘In territories and among a population so vast, occasional disturbance must needs prevail. Raids and forays are, and will still be, reported from the western frontier. From time to time marauding expeditions will descend into the plains; and again expeditions to punish the marauders will penetrate the hills. Nor can it be expected but that, among tribes so various and multitudes so innumerable, local outbreaks will from time to time occur.’ But in another place he seeks to lessen the force and value of any such disturbances as these. ‘With respect to the frontier raids, they are and must for the present be viewed as events inseparable from the state of society which for centuries past has existed among the mountain tribes. They are no more to be regarded as interruptions of the general peace in India, than the street-brawls which appear among the everyday proceedings of a police-court in London are regarded as indications of the existence of civil war in England. I trust, therefore, that I am guilty of no presumption in saying, that I shall leave the Indian Empire in peace, without and within.’

Such, then, is a governor-general’s picture of the condition of the British Empire in India in the spring of 1856: a picture in which there are scarcely any dark colours, or such as the painter believed to be dark. We may learn many things from it: among others, a consciousness how little we even now know of the millions of Hindostan—their motives, their secrets, their animosities, their aspirations. The bright picture of 1856, the revolting tragedies of 1857—how little relation does there appear between them! That there is a relation all must admit, who are accustomed to study the links of the chain that connect one event with another; but at what point the relation occurs, is precisely the question on which men’s opinions will differ until long and dispassionate attention has been bestowed on the whole subject.

Notes.

[This may be a convenient place in which to introduce a few observations on three subjects likely to come with much frequency under the notice of the reader in the following chapters; namely, the distances between the chief towns in India and the three great presidential cities—the discrepancies in the current modes of spelling the names of Indian persons and places—and the meanings of some of the native words frequently used in connection with Indian affairs.]

Distances.—For convenience of occasional reference, a table of some of the distances in India is here given. It has been compiled from the larger tables of Taylor, Garden, Hamilton, and Parbury. Many of the distances are estimated in some publications at smaller amount, owing, it may be, to the opening of new and shorter routes:

Orthography.—It is perfectly hopeless to attempt here any settlement of the vexed question of Oriental orthography, the spelling of the names of Indian persons and places. If we rely on one governor-general, the next contradicts him; the commander-in-chief very likely differs from both; authors and travellers have each a theory of his own; while newspaper correspondents dash recklessly at any form of word that first comes to hand. Readers must therefore hold themselves ready for these complexities, and for detecting the same name under two or three different forms. The following will suffice to shew our meaning:—Rajah, raja—nabob, nawab, nawaub—Punjab, Punjaub, Penjab, Panjab—Vizierabad, Wuzeerabad—Ghengis Khan, Gengis Khan, Jengis Khan—Cabul, Caboul, Cabool, Kabul—Deccan, Dekkan, Dukhun—Peshawur, Peshawar—Mahomet, Mehemet, Mohammed, Mahommed, Muhummud—Sutlej, Sutledge—Sinde, Scinde, Sindh—Himalaya, Himmaléh—Cawnpore, Cawnpoor—Sikhs, Seiks—Gujerat, Guzerat—Ali, Alee, Ally—Ghauts, Gauts—Sepoys, Sipahis—Faquir, Fakeer—Oude, Oudh—Bengali, Bengalee—Burhampooter, Brahmaputra—Asam, Assam—Nepal, Nepaul—Sikkim, Sikim—Thibet, Tibet—Goorkas, Ghoorkas—Cashmere, Cashmeer, Kashmir—Doab, Dooab—Sudra, Soodra—Vishnu, Vishnoo—Buddist, Buddhist, &c. Mr Thornton, in his excellent Gazetteer of India, gives a curious instance of this complexity, in eleven modes of spelling the name of one town, each resting on some good authority—Bikaner, Bhicaner, Bikaneer, Bickaneer, Bickanere, Bikkaneer, Bhikanere, Beekaneer, Beekaner, Beykaneer, Bicanere. One more instance will suffice. Viscount Canning, writing to the directors of the East India Company concerning the conduct of a sepoy, spelled the man’s name Shiek Paltoo. A fortnight afterwards, the same governor-general, writing to the same directors about the same sepoy, presented the name under the form Shaik Phultoo. We have endeavoured as far as possible to make the spelling in the narrative and the map harmonise.

Vocabulary.—We here present a vocabulary of about fifty words much used in India, both in conversation and in writing, connected with the military and social life of the natives; with the initials or syllables P., Port., H., M., A., T., Tam., S., to denote whether the words have been derived from the Persian, Portuguese, Hindustani, Mahratta, Arabic, Tatar, Tamil, or Sanscrit languages. Tamil or Tamul is spoken in some of the districts of Southern India. In most instances, two forms of spelling are given, to prepare the reader for the discrepancies above adverted to:

Ab, aub (P.), water; used in composition thus: Punjaub, five waters, or watered by five rivers; Doab, a district between two rivers, equivalent in meaning to the Greek Mesopotamia.

Abad (P.), inhabited; a town or city; such as Allahabad, city of God; Hyderabad, city of Hyder.

Ayah (Port.), a nurse; a female attendant on a lady.

Baba (T.), a term of endearment in the domestic circle, nearly equivalent to the English dear, and applied both to a father and his child.

Baboo, a Hindoo title, equivalent to our Esquire.

Bag, bágh, a garden; Kudsiya bágh is a celebrated garden outside Delhi.

Bahadoor (P.), brave; a title of respect added to the names of military officers and others.

Bang (P.), an intoxicating potion made from hemp.

Bazar, bazaar, an exchange or market-place.

Begum (T.), a princess, a lady of high rank.

Bheestee, bihishtí, a water-carrier.

Bobachee, báwarchí (T.), an Indian officer’s cook.

Budgerow, bajrá (S.), a Ganges boat of large size.

Bungalow, banglá (H.), a house or dwelling.

Cherry, cheri (Tam.), village or town; termination to the name of many places in Southern India; such as Pondicherry.

Chit, chittí (H.), a note or letter.

Chupatty, chápátí (P.), a thin cake of unleavened Indian-corn bread.

Coolie, kuli (T.), a porter or carrier.

Cutcherry, kacharí (H.), an official room; a court of justice.

Dacoit, dákáit (H.), a gang-robber.

Dâk, dahk, dawk (H.), the Indian post, and the arrangements connected with it.

Dewan, a native minister or agent.

Dost (P.), a friend.

Feringhee, a Frank or European.

Fakeer, fakír (A.), a mendicant devotee.

Ghazee, ghazi (A.), a true believer who fights against infidels: hence Ghazeepoor, city of the faithful.

Golundauze, golandáz (P.), a native artilleryman.

Havildar (P.), a native sergeant.

Jehad (A.), a holy war.

Jemadar (P.), a native lieutenant.

Jhageerdar, jaghiredar, jágírdár (P.), the holder of land granted for services.

Mohurrum (A.), a fast held sacred by Mohammedans on the tenth day of the first month in their year, equivalent to the 25th of July.

Musjid (A.), a mosque; thence jumma musjid or jum’aah masjid, a cathedral or chief mosque.

Naik, naig (S.), a native corporal.

Náná, nena (M.), grandfather, a term of respect or precedence among the Mahrattas; Náná Sahib, so far from being a family or personal name, is simply a combination of two terms of respect (see Sahib) for a person whose real name was Dhundu Punt.

Nawab, nabob, núwáb (A.), derived from náib, a viceroy or vicegerent.

Nuddee, nadi (S.), a river.

Nullah, nálá (H.), a brook, water-course, the channel of a torrent.

Patam, pattanam (S.), a town; the termination of the names of many places in Southern India; such as Seringapatam, the city of Shrí Ranga, a Hindoo divinity.

Peon (P.), a messenger or foot-attendant.

Pore, poor, a town; the final syllable in many significant names, such as Bhurtpore or Bharatpoor, the town of Bharata.

Rajpoot, a Hindoo of the military caste or order; there is one particular province in Upper India named from them Rajpootana.

Ryot, a peasant cultivator.

Sahib, saheb, sáaib (A.), lord; a gentleman.

Sepoy, sípahí, in the Bengal presidency, a native soldier in the Company’s service; in that of Bombay, it often has the meaning of a peon or foot-messenger.

Shahzadah (P.), prince; king’s son.

Sowar (P.), a native horseman or trooper.

Subadar, soubahdar (A.), a native captain.

Tuppal, tappál (H.), a packet of letters; the post.

Zemindar, zamindár (P.), a landowner.

[1]. The visitor to the British Museum, in one of the saloons of the Ethnological department, will find a very remarkable series of figures, modelled by a native Hindoo, of the individuals forming a gang of Thugs; all in their proper costumes, and all as they are (or were) usually engaged in the successive processes of entrapping, strangling, and burying a traveller, and then dividing the booty.

[2]. There are two Hyderabads—one in the Nizam’s dominions in the Deccan, and the other in Sinde (spelt Hydrabad): it is the former here intended.

CHAPTER I.
THE ANGLO-INDIAN ARMY AT THE TIME OF THE OUTBREAK.

The magnificent India which began to revolt from England in the early months of 1857; which continued that Revolt until it spread to many thousands of square miles; which conducted the Revolt in a manner that appalled all the civilised world by its unutterable horrors—this India was, after all, not really unsound at its core. It was not so much the people who rebelled, as the soldiers. Whatever grievances the hundred and seventy millions of human beings in that wonderful country may have had to bear; whatever complaints may have been justifiable on their parts against their native princes or the British government; and whatever may have been the feelings of those native princes towards the British—all of which matters will have to be considered in later chapters of this work—still it remains incontestable that the outbreak was a military revolt rather than a national rebellion. The Hindoo foot-soldier, fed and paid by the British, ran off with his arms and his uniform, and fought against those who had supported him; the Mohammedan trooper, with his glittering equipments and his fine horse, escaped with both in like manner, and became suddenly an enemy instead of a friend and servant. What effect this treachery may have had on the populace of the towns, is another question: we have at present only to do with the military origin of the struggle.

Here, therefore, it becomes at once necessary that the reader should be supplied with an intelligible clue to the series of events, a groundwork on which his appreciation of them may rest. As this work aims at something more than a mere record of disasters and victories, all the parts will be made to bear some definite relation one to another; and the first of these relations is—between the mutinous movements themselves, and the soldiers who made those movements. Before we can well understand what the sepoys did, we must know who the sepoys are; before we can picture to ourselves an Indian regiment in revolt, we must know of what elements it consists, and what are its usages when in cantonments or when on the march; and before we can appreciate the importance of two presidential armies remaining faithful while that of Bengal revolted, we must know what is meant by a presidency, and in what way the Anglo-Indian army bears relation to the territorial divisions of India. We shall not need for these purposes to give here a formal history of Hindostan, nor a history of the rise and constitution of the East India Company, nor an account of the manners and customs of the Hindoos, nor a narrative of the British wars in India in past ages, nor a topographical description of India—many of these subjects will demand attention in later pages; but at present only so much will be touched upon as is necessary for the bare understanding of the facts of the Revolt, leaving the causes for the present in abeyance.

What are the authoritative or official divisions of the country in reference to the governors who control and the soldiers who fight (or ought to fight) for it? What are the modes in which a vast region, extending more than a thousand miles in many different directions, is or may be traversed by rebel soldiers who fight against their employers, and by true soldiers who punish the rebels? What and who are the soldiers thus adverted to; how many, of what races, how levied, how paid and supported, where cantoned, how officered? These are the three subjects that will occupy a brief chapter; after which the narrative of the Revolt may with profit be at once entered upon.

And first, for India as an immense country governed by a people living eight or ten thousand miles distant. Talk as we may, there are few among us who can realise the true magnitude of this idea—the true bearing of the relation borne by two small islands in a remote corner of Europe to a region which has been famed since the time of Alexander the Great. The British Empire in India—what does it denote? Even before the acquisition of Oude, Pegu, and Nagpoor, the British possessions in India covered nearly 800,000 square miles; but as the influence of England is gradually extending over the protected and the hitherto independent states, we shall best conceive the whole (without Pegu, which is altogether eastward of what is considered India) as a compact territory of 1,400,000 square miles—twelve times as large as the United Kingdom, sixteen times as large as Great Britain, twenty-five times as large as England and Wales: double the size, in fact, of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Prussia, and Switzerland, all combined. Nor is this, like the Russian Empire, a vast but thinly populated region. It contains at least a hundred and eighty millions of human beings, more than a hundred and thirty millions of whom are the direct subjects of Queen Victoria—that is, if anything can be direct, connected with the anomalous relations between the Crown and the East India Company.

It comes within the knowledge of most intelligent English readers at the present day, that this Indian Empire, governed by a curiously complicated bargain between a sovereign and a company, has been growing for a hundred years, and still continues growing. In fits of national anger or international generosity, we inveigh against the Czar of Russia for processes of aggression and plans of annexation in regions around and between the Caspian and Black Seas, and we compassionate and assist his weak neighbours under the pressure of his ambition; but it is only in times of excitement or peril that we consider the extraordinary way in which our own Indian Empire has been built up—by conquest, by purchase, by forfeiture—and in some cases by means which, called robbery by our enemies, do at any rate demand a little compunction from us as a Christian people. Exactly a century ago, England scarcely occupied a foot of ground in India; her power was almost crushed out by the native nawab who rendered himself infamous by the episode of the Black Hole at Calcutta; and it was in the year after that atrocity—namely, in 1757, that Clive began those wonderful victories which established a permanent basis for a British Empire in Hindostan. And what a continuous growth by increment has since been displayed! The Pergunnahs, Masulipatam, Burdwan, Midnapore, Chittagong, Bengal, Bahar, the Northern Circars, Benares, all passed into British hands by the year 1775; the next twenty-five years brought to us the ownership of Salsette, Nagore, Pulo Penang, Malabar, Dindigul, Salem, Barramahal, Coimbatore, Canara, Tanjore, and portions of the Deccan and Mysore; in the first quarter of the present century the list was increased by the Carnatic, Gorukhpore, the Doab, Bareilly, portions of Bundelcund, Cuttack, Balasore, Delhi, Gujerat, Kumaon, Saugor, Khandeish, Ajmeer, Poonah, the Concan, portions of Mahratta country, districts in Bejapore and Ahmednuggur, Singapore, and Malacca; in the next period of equal length the acquisitions included Assam, Aracan, Tenasserim, the Nerbudda districts, Patna, Sumbhulpore, Koorg, Loodianah, Kurnaul, Sinde, and the Jullundur Doab; while during the eight years of the Marquis of Dalhousie’s administration, as we learn on his own authority, there were added Pegu, the Punjaub, Nagpoor, Oude, Satara, Jhansi, and Berar—all these in exactly a century.

The whole of British India is placed under a governor-general, whose official residence is at Calcutta, and who is assisted by a kind of cabinet or council of ministers. Formerly there were three presidencies, under whom the whole territory was placed; two being under the governors of Bombay and Madras, and the remainder, called the Bengal presidency, being under the governor-general himself, who was to this extent vested with a special as well as a general government. But in process of time it was found impossible for this official to fulfil all the duties imposed upon him; and the great Bengal presidency became subdivided. There are now five local governors of great districts—the governor-general himself, who directly rules many of the newly acquired regions; the lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, who rules some of the country formerly included in the presidency of Bengal; the lieutenant-governor of the Lower Provinces, who rules the rest of that country; and the governors of Madras and Bombay, whose range of territory has not undergone much increase in recent years. Let us learn a little concerning each of these five.

Madras, as a presidency or government, includes the whole of the south of India, where its narrowed, peninsular form is most apparent, up to about latitude 16° north, together with a strip still further north on the east or Coromandel coast. Its greatest inland extent is about 950 miles in one direction, and 450 in another; while its shores are washed by the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal along a coast-line of no less than 1700 miles—unfortunately, however, very ill provided with ports and anchorages. There are about thirty districts and states under the governor’s rule—some as ‘regulation districts,’ others as ‘non-regulation districts,’ and others as ‘native states.’ The difference between these three kinds may be thus briefly indicated: the ‘regulation’ districts are thoroughly British, and are governed directly by the chief of the presidency; the ‘non-regulation’ districts are now equally British, though of more recent acquisition, but are governed by agents or commissioners; while the ‘native states’ have still their native princes, ‘protected,’ or rather controlled by the British. Without any formal enumeration, it may be well to remember that the following names of some of these districts, all more or less familiar to English readers as the names of towns or provinces, are included among those belonging to the presidency or government of Madras—Masulipatam, Nellore, Chingleput, Madras, Arcot, Cuddalore, Cuddapah, Salem, Coimbatore, Trichinopoly, Tanjore, Madura, Tinnevelly, Malabar, Canara, Vizagapatam, Kurnaul, Koorg,[^[3]] Cochin, Mysore, Travancore. Some of these are not absolutely British; but their independence is little more than a name. There are various important towns, or places worth knowing in connection with Indian affairs, which are included in some or other of these districts, but not giving their names to them—such as Seringapatam, Golcandah, Rajamandry, Juggernaut, Vellore, Pulicat, Pondicherry (French), Tranquebar, Negapatam, Bangalore, Ootacamund, Mangalore, Calicut.

Bombay, as a presidency, is a curiously shaped strip. Exclusive of the subordinate territories of native princes (over which, however, the Company exercises paramount political sway) and of Sinde, which, though recently placed under the government of Bombay, may properly be regarded as a distinct territory—exclusive of these, the presidency occupies a narrow strip, of irregular outline, stretching for a considerable distance north and south. It occupies the western coast of the peninsula, from Gujerat on the north, to the small Portuguese settlement of Goa on the south; and has a length of 650 miles, with a maximum breadth of 240. The Bombay provinces included in the strip just noticed, the neighbouring territories administered by or on behalf of native princes, and Sinde, form three sections about equal in size, the whole collectively being thrice as large as England and Wales. To assist the memory, as in the last paragraph, we give the names of the chief districts likely to be known to English readers—all of which either belong absolutely to the presidency of Bombay, or are more or less under the control of the governor—Surat, Baroche, Ahmedabad, Khandeish, Poonah, Ahmednuggur, Bombay, Concan, Satara, Baroda, Kattywar, Kolapore, Cutch, the Mahratta districts, Kurachee, Hyderabad, Shikarpore, Khyrpore. The last four are districts of Sinde, conquered by the late Sir Charles James Napier, and placed under the Bombay presidency as being nearer at hand than any of the others. Besides the towns similarly named to most of these districts, the following may be usefully mentioned—Goa (Portuguese), Bejapore, Bassein, Aurungabad, Assaye, Nuseerabad, Cambay.

Lower Bengal, or the Lower Provinces of Bengal, considered as a sub-presidency or lieutenant-government, comprises all the eastern portion of British India, bounded on the east by the Burmese and Chinese Empires, and on the north by Nepaul, Sikim, and Bhotan; southward, it is washed by the Bay of Bengal; while inland or westward, it reaches to a point on the Ganges a little beyond Patna, but not so far as Benares. Fancy might compare it in shape to a dumb-bell, surmounting the upper part of the Bay of Bengal, which washes its shores throughout a distance of 900 miles. Without reckoning native states under the control of the Company, this lieutenant-governorship is considerably more than three times as large as England and Wales; and nearly the whole of it is in the basins of, or drained by, the two magnificent rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra. On the principle before adopted, we give the names of districts most likely to become familiarised to the reader—Jessore, Burdwan, Bancorah, Bhaugulpore, Monghir, Cuttack, Balasore, Midnapore, Moorshedabad, Rungpoor, Dacca, Silhet, Patna, Bahar, Chittagong, the Sunderbunds, Assam, Aracan. Most of these are also the names of towns, each the chief in its district; but there are other important towns and places not here named—including Calcutta, Cossimbazar, Barrackpore, Chandernagore, Serampore, Culpee, Purneah, Boglipore, Rajmahal, Nagore, Raneegunge, Jellasore, Dinapore, Bahar, Ramghur, Burhampore.

Northwest Bengal, or the Northwestern Provinces of the Bengal presidency, regarded as a sub-presidency or lieutenant-governorship, comprises some of the most important and densely populated districts of Northern India. It covers seven degrees of latitude and nine of longitude; or, if the portion of the ‘non-regulation’ districts under the control of this lieutenant-governor be included, the range extends to ten degrees of latitude and twelve of longitude. Its boundary is roughly marked by the neighbouring provinces or states of Sirhind, Kumaon, Nepaul, Oude, Lower Bengal, Rewah, Bundelcund, and Scindiah’s Mahratta territory; but many of these are included among its ‘non-regulation’ territories. In its limited, strictly British territory, it is a little larger than England and Wales; but including the ‘non-regulation’ provinces, such as Kumaon, Ajmeer, Saugor, &c., it is vastly larger. As the chief city is Agra, the lieutenant-governorship is often called by that name: more convenient, perhaps, than the one officially adopted—indeed it was at one time determined, though the plan has been postponed sine die, to form an entirely new and distinct presidency, called the Presidency of Agra. The Ganges and the Jumna are the great rivers that permeate it. As before, we give the names of the most familiarly known divisions or districts—Delhi, Meerut, Allygurh, Rohilcund, Bareilly, Shahjehanpoor, Bijnour, Agra, Furruckabad, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Futtehpore, Benares, Gorukhpore, Azimghur, Jounpore, Mirzapore, Ghazeepore; and if to these we add the names of towns not indicated by the names of their districts—such as Simla, Sirhind, Umballa, Loodianah, Shahabad, Buxar—it will be seen how many places noted more or less in Indian affairs lie within this province or lieutenant-governorship.

For the sake of brevity, it may here be remarked, we shall frequently, in future chapters, use the names ‘Northwest Bengal’ and ‘Lower Bengal,’ instead of the tedious designations ‘Northwestern Provinces’ and ‘Lieutenant Government of Bengal.’

As to the fifth or remaining sphere of government—that which is under the governor-general himself—it is with difficulty described; so many are the detached scraps and patches. The overworked representative of the crown, whether his name be Auckland or Ellenborough, Dalhousie or Canning, finding the governorship of Bengal too onerous when added to the governor-generalship of the whole of India, gives up his special care of Bengal, divides it into two sub-provinces, and hands it over to the two lieutenant-governors. But the increase of territory in British India has been so vast within the last few years, and the difficulty so great of deciding to which presidency they ought to belong, that they have been made into a fifth dominion or government, under the governor-general himself. The great and important country of the Punjaub, acquired a few years ago, is one of the list; it is under the governor-general, and is administered for him by a board of commissioners. The kingdom of Oude is another, annexed in 1856, and similarly represented by residents or commissioners acting for and under the orders of the governor-general. The province of Nagpoor is a third: a large country in the very centre of India, annexed in 1853, and nearly touching all the four governorships already described. Pegu is a fourth, wrested from the sultan of Burmah, in 1852, and placed under the governor-general’s administration. A fifth is Tenasserim, a strip of country stretching five hundred miles along the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal. There are other fragments; but the above will suffice to shew that the governor-general has no inconsiderable amount of territory under his immediate control, represented by his commissioners. If we look at the names of places included within these limits, we shall be struck with their number and importance in connection with stirring events in India. In the Punjaub we find Peshawur, Attock, Rawul Pindee, Jelum, Ramnugur, Chillianwalla, Wuzeerabad, Umritsir, Lahore, Jullundur, Ghoorka, Ferozpore, Ferozshah, Moodkee; in the once independent but now British province or kingdom of Oude will be found the names of Lucknow, Oude, Fyzabad, Sultanpore, Khyrabad; in the territory of Nagpoor is the town of the same name, but other towns of any note are scarce. In Pegu and Tenasserim, both ultra-Gangetic or eastward of the Ganges, we find Rangoon, Bassein, Prome, Moulmein, and Martaban.

The reader has here before him about a hundred and forty names of places in this rapid sketch of the great divisional governments of India, mostly the names of important towns; and—without any present details concerning modes of government, or numbers governed, natural wealth or social condition—we believe he will find his comprehension of the events of the great Revolt much aided by a little attention to this account of the five governments into which British India is at present divided. As for the original names of kingdoms and provinces, nawabships and rajahships, it scarcely repays the trouble to learn them: when the native chiefs were made pensioned puppets, the former names of their possessions became of lessened value, and many of them are gradually disappearing from the maps. We have ‘political residents,’ ‘government agents,’ or ‘commissioners,’ at the capital city of almost every prince in India; to denote that, though the prince may hold the trappings of royalty, there is a watchful master scrutinising his proceedings, and claiming something to do with his military forces. Such is the case at Hyderabad in the Nizam’s territory, at Khatmandoo in Nepaul, at Gwalior in Scindiah’s dominions, at Indore in Holkar’s dominions, at Bhopal, in the country of the same name, at Bhurtpore and elsewhere in the Rajpoot princes’ dominions, at Darjeeling in Sikim, at Baroda in the Guicowar’s dominions, &c.

The semi-independent princes of India—mostly rajahs if Hindoos, nawabs if Mohammedans—are certainly placed in a most anomalous position. There are nearly two hundred of these vassal-kings, if we may so term them—some owning territories as large as European kingdoms, while others claim dominion over bits of country not larger than petty German principalities. The whole of them have treaties and engagements with the British government, involving the reciprocal obligations of protection and allegiance. Some of them pay tribute, others do not; but almost all have formally relinquished the right of self-defence, and also that of maintaining diplomatic relations with each other. The princes are regarded as children, expected to look up for protection only to their great mother, the Company. The Company undertakes not only to guarantee external safety but also internal tranquillity in these states, and is the umpire in all quarrels between native rulers. Though not called upon, and indeed not allowed, to defend themselves from an external attack, the princes mostly have armies, more for show than use under ordinary circumstances; but then they must obtain permission to do this, and they must limit the numbers; and in some cases there is a stipulation that if the British be at war in India, the prince must lend his troops. It is in this sense that the independent princes of India are said to possess, collectively, an armed force of little less than four hundred thousand men: many of them available, according to treaty, for British service.

Next, we may usefully pay a little attention to this question—How, in so immense a country, do the soldiers and subjects of these several states, British and native, travel from place to place: how do they cross mountains where passes are few, or marshes and sandy plains where roads are few and bad, or broad rivers where bridges are scarce? The distances traversed by the armies are sometimes enormous. Let us open a map of India, and see, for example, the relative positions of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Delhi, Peshawur, and Kurachee at the western mouth of the Indus. Delhi is nearly nine hundred miles from Bombay, more than nine hundred from Calcutta by land, fifteen or sixteen hundred miles from the same city by water-route up the Ganges and Jumna, and nearly fourteen hundred from Madras. Kurachee, the most westerly spot in India, and destined one day, perhaps, to be an important depôt for steamers from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, is more than sixteen hundred miles from Calcutta, nearly across the broadest part of India from east to west; while Peshawur, at the extreme northwest or Afghan frontier, acquired by England when the Punjaub was annexed, is no less than two thousand miles from Madras. All opinions and judgments, concerning the slowness of operations in India, must be tempered by a consideration of these vast distances.

The rivers were the great highways of that country before roads existed, as in other regions; and they have never ceased to be the most frequented routes. At least such is the case in relation to the larger rivers—such as the Ganges, Indus, Nerbudda, Kishna, Jumna, Sutlej, and Jelum. Hindoos and Mohammedans, too poor to hire horses or palkees for land-travel, may yet be able to avail themselves of their river-boats.

The native boats which work on the Ganges are numerous and curious in kind. The patella or baggage-boat is of saul-wood, clinker-built, and flat-bottomed, with rather slanting outsides, and not so manageable as a punt or a London barge; its great breadth gives it a very light draught of water, and renders it fittest for the cotton and other up-country products, which require little more than a dry and secure raft to float them down the stream. The oolak or common baggage-boat of the Hoogly and Central Bengal, has a sharp bow and smooth rounded sides; it is fitted for tracking and sailing before the wind, and is tolerably manageable with the oar in smooth water. The Dacca pulwar is more weatherly, although, like the rest, without keel, and the fastest and most handy boat in use for general traffic. The budgerow, the bauleah, and the ketch-rigged pinnace, are employed by Europeans for their personal conveyance. Besides these, there are numerous others—such as the wood-boats of the Sunderbunds, of various forms and dimensions—from one hundred to six thousand maunds burden (a maund being about equal to 100 pounds troy); the salt-boats of Tumlook; the light boats which carry betel-leaf; the Calcutta bhur, or cargo-boat of the port; the Chittagong boats; the light mug-boats, with floors of a single hollowed piece of timber, and raised sides, neatly attached by sewing, with strips of bamboo over the seams; the dinghee; and the panswee—all found within the limits of the Bengal presidency. ‘A native traveller, according to his degree and substance, engages a dinghee or a panswee, a pulwar or an oolak; the man of wealth puts his baggage and attendants in these, and provides a budgerow or a pinnace for his personal accommodation. Officers of high standing in the civil or military service, travelling with a large retinue of servants and a quantity of baggage, seldom have less than five or six boats (one of them a cooking-boat, and another fitted with an oven for baking bread): sometimes as many as fifteen when they carry their horses and equipages, and the materials of housekeeping for their comfortable establishment on arrival.’

Before Indian steamers were introduced, or Indian railways thought of, the Ganges was the great highway from Calcutta to Benares, Allahabad, and the northwestern provinces generally, in all cases where speed was not required. The Indian government used to allow their military servants two months and a half for proceeding to Benares, three to Allahabad, five to Meerut, and nine to Loodianah—periods that seem to us, in the old country, outrageous in their length. The boats were chiefly of two of the kinds mentioned in the preceding paragraph—namely, the pinnace, very European in its appearance, and the lofty sterned budgerow, peculiarly Indian. Even after steamers were placed upon the Ganges, the slow-going budgerow continued to be much used by the Company’s officers, and by other persons going northwest—chiefly in cases where a family and a large quantity of luggage or personal effects had to be conveyed; for every other mode than the budgerow then becomes very costly—and will probably so continue until the great trunk-railway is completed. Budgerow boating is, it must be confessed, enough to stagnate the blood of an active man who wishes to speed onward to a scene of usefulness. As the tide ends at a few miles above Calcutta, there is a constant downward current throughout all the rest of the Ganges; and this current has to be struggled against during the up-passage. If the wind be favourable, sails are hoisted; but if otherwise, progress is made by gooning or tracking, an operation performed by the greater part of the crew proceeding on shore, and with ropes attached to the mast-head, dragging the vessel bodily along: wading for hours, it may be, through nullahs or creeks more than breast high. The travellers spend much of their time on shore in the cooler hours of the morning and evening, walking, fishing, or shooting, or otherwise whiling away their time; for they can easily keep up with a boat that only makes ten miles per average day. The Company have been accustomed to make a certain allowance to each officer for boat-accommodation up the country; and it is not unusual for two or three to join in the hire of one budgerow, to their mutual comfort, and with a small saving out of their allowance. They engage an attendant dinghee as a cook-boat, to keep the culinary operations at a respectful distance; and they fit up their budgerow with camp-tables, camp-stools, charpoys or light bedsteads, copper chillumchees or wash-basins, rugs, hanging lamps, canteens, bullock or camel trunks, and a few other articles of furniture; with wine, spirits, ale, preserves, cheeses, pickles, salt meats, hams, tongues, and other provisions, which are cheaper at Calcutta than if purchased on the way; and with their wardrobes, articles for the toilet, books, chess and backgammon boards, guns, musical instruments, and other aids to lessen the tedium of a long voyage.

Hitherto, commerce has had so much more to do with this Ganges traffic than passenger travel, that the slowness of the progress was not felt: as in the instance of the canals of England, which, made for goods and not for passengers, are not blameable on the score of tardiness. The Ganges is now, as it has been for ages, the main channel for the commerce of Northern India. The produce of Europe, of Southern India, of the Eastern Archipelago, of China, brought to Calcutta by ocean-going steamers or sailing-ships, is distributed upwards to Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi, and other great towns, almost exclusively by the Ganges route; and the same boats which convey these cargoes, bring down the raw cotton, indigo, opium, rice, sugar, grain, rich stuffs, piece-goods, and other grown or manufactured commodities from the interior, either for consumption at Calcutta and other towns on the route, or for shipment to England and elsewhere. It is probable that the cargo-boats and the budgerows will continue to convey a largo proportion of the traffic of India, let steamers and railways make what progress they may; for there is much local trading that can be better managed by this slow, stopping, free-and-easy Ganges route of boating.

Boats on the Ganges.

The Ganges steamers are peculiar. Each consists of two vessels, a tug and a flat, neither of which is of much use without the other. The tug contains the engine; the flat contains the passengers and cargo; and this double arrangement seems to have been adopted as a means of insuring light draught. Each flat contains fifteen or twenty cabins, divided into three classes according to the accommodation, and obtainable at a fare of twenty to thirty pounds for each cabin for a voyage from Calcutta up to Allahabad—less in the reverse direction, because the aid of the stream shortens the voyage. Besides this, the passenger pays for all his provisions, and most of the furniture of his cabin. Every passenger is allowed to take one servant free of passage fare. The steamer proceeds only during the day, anchoring every night; and it stops every three or four days, to take coals into the tug, and to deliver and receive passengers. The chief of these stopping-places are at the towns of Berhampore, Monghir, Patna, Dinapoor, Chupra, Buxar, Ghazeepore, Benares, Chunar, and Mirzapore, all situated on the banks of the Ganges between Calcutta and Allahabad; and it is only during the two or three hours of these stoppages that the passengers have an opportunity of rambling on the shore by daylight. The tug is of iron, and drags the flat by means of hawsers and a long beam, which latter serves both as a gangway and to prevent collision between the two vessels. The East India Company first established these steamers, but others have followed their example, and help to keep up a healthy competition. The river distance to Allahabad being eight hundred miles (three hundred in excess of the land route), and the time of transit being about twenty days, this gives forty miles per day as the average rate of progress of the tug and its attendant flat or accommodation-boat. Of proposed plans for improving this Ganges steaming, we do not speak in this place.

The Indus is less traversed by boats and steamers; but, being nearer to England than the Ganges, it is becoming more and more important every year, especially since the annexation of the Punjaub by the British. The boats on the Indus take up the produce of the Persian and Arabian gulfs, Cutch, the western districts of India, and so much of the produce of Europe as is available for Sinde, the Punjaub, and the northwest of India generally: taking back the produce of Afghanistan, Cashmere, the Punjaub, Sinde, and the neighbouring countries. The boats on this river, having fewer European travellers, do not possess so many accommodations as those on the Ganges; the scantiness of the population, too, and the semi-barbarous condition of the natives, tend towards the same result. The Sutlej boats, mostly employed, are long and clumsy; when going downwards, the stream gives them a velocity of about two miles an hour, while the oars and sail give them barely another extra mile. They correspond, indeed, rather with our idea of a Thames coal-barge, than with that of a boat. The steersman and two oarsmen are at the stern, working with a broad paddle and two oars. The passengers occupy the rest of the vessel, in a rude bamboo cabin twelve or fourteen feet long. When the wind and the stream are unfavourable, the sail is hauled down, and tracking is resorted to. As the up-river return-voyage is exceedingly slow, a passenger travelling down towards the sea is obliged to pay for the return-voyage as well. As there are hardly any important towns on the banks below the Punjaub, except Hyderabad, a traveller is obliged to take almost the whole of his provisions and necessaries with him. The journey up the stream is so insupportably tedious by these boats, that small steamers are generally preferred; but these require very light draught and careful handling, to prevent them from grounding on the shoals and sandbanks, which are more numerous in the Indus than in the Ganges.

River-travelling, it hence appears, is a very slow affair, ruinously inadequate to the wants of any but a population in a low scale of commercial advancement. Let us inquire, therefore, whether land-travelling is in a condition to remedy these evils.

There are so few good roads in India, that wheel-carriages can scarcely be trusted for any long distances. The prevailing modes of travel are on horseback or in a palanquin. Technically, the one mode is called marching; the other, dâk, dakh, or dawk. The former is sometimes adopted for economy; sometimes from necessity while accompanying troops; and sometimes, on short trips, through inclination; but as it is almost impossible to travel on horseback during the heat of the day, the more expensive but more regular dâk is in greater request. The horseman, when he adopts the equestrian system, accomplishes from twelve to twenty miles a day: sending on his servants one march or day in advance, with tent, bedding, tent-furniture, canteen, &c., in order that they may have a meal ready for the traveller by the time he arrives. They daily buy fodder, fowls, eggs, milk, rice, fruit, or vegetables at the villages as they pass through; the traveller, if a sportsman, aids the supply of his larder with snipe, wild-fowl, quail, partridges, hares, jungle-cocks, or bustard; but a week’s provision at a time must be made of all such supplies as tea, coffee, dried or preserved meats, sauces, spices, beer, or wine, at the principal towns—as these commodities are either unattainable or very costly at the smaller stations and villages. Thus the traveller proceeds, accomplishing eighty to a hundred and fifty miles per week, according to his supply of horse-relays. We may get rid of the European notions of inns and hotels on the road: the India officer must carry his hotel with him.

We come next to the dâk system, much more prevalent than travelling by horseback. The dâk is a sort of government post, available for private individuals as for officials. A traveller having planned his journey, he applies to the postmaster of the district, who requires from one to three days’ notice, according to the extent of accommodation needed. The usual complement for one traveller consists of eight palkee-burdars or palanquin-bearers, two mussanjees or torch-bearers, and two bangey-burdars or luggage-porters: if less than this number be needed, the fact must be notified. The time and place of starting, and the duration and localities of the halts, must also be stated; for everything is to be paid beforehand, on the basis of a regular tariff. The charge is about one shilling per mile for the entire set of twelve men—shewing at how humble a rate personal services are purchasable in India. There is also an extra charge for demurrage or delays on the road, attributable to the traveller himself. For these charges, the postmaster undertakes that there shall be relays of dâk servants throughout the whole distance, even if it be the nine hundred miles from Calcutta to Delhi; and to insure this, he writes to the different villages and post stations, ordering relays to be ready at the appointed hours. The stages average about ten miles each, accomplished in three hours; at the end of which time the twelve men retrace their steps, and are succeeded by another twelve; for each set of men belong to a particular station, in the same way as each team of horses for an English stage-coach belongs to a particular town. The rivers and streams on the route are mostly crossed by ferry-boats, for bridges are scarce in India; and this ferrying is included in the fare charged by the postmaster; although the traveller is generally expected to give a small fee, the counterpart to the ‘drink-money’ of Europe, to ferrymen as well as bearers. The palanquin, palankeen, or palkee, is a kind of wooden box opening at the sides by sliding shutters; it is about six feet in length by four in height, and is suspended by two poles, borne on the shoulders of four men. The eight bearers relieve one another in two gangs of four each. The postmaster has nought to do with the palanquin; this is provided by the traveller; and on its judicious selection depends much of his comfort during the journey, for a break-down entails a multitude of petty miseries. The average value of a palanquin may be about ten pounds; and the traveller can generally dispose of it again at the end of his journey. On account of the weight, nothing is carried that can be easily dispensed with; but the traveller manages to fit up his palanquin with a few books, his shaving and washing apparatus, his writing materials, and a few articles in frequent use. The regular fittings of the palanquin are a cushion or bed, a bolster, and a few light coverings. The traveller’s luggage is mostly carried in petarrahs, tin boxes or wicker-baskets about half a yard square: a porter can carry two of these; and one or two porters will suffice for the demands of any ordinary traveller, running before or by the side of the palanquin. The petarrahs are hung, each from one end of a bangey or bamboo pole, the middle of which rests on the bearer’s shoulder. The torch-bearers run by the side of the palanquin to give light during night-travelling; the torch is simply a short stick bound round at one end with a piece of rag or a tuft of hemp, on which oil is occasionally dropped from a flask or a hollow bamboo; the odour of the oil-smoke is disagreeable, and most travellers are glad to dispense with the services of a second torch-bearer.

Palanquin.

Bishop Heber’s journey from Delhi to Benares was a good example of dâk-travelling in his day; and the system has altered very little since. He had twelve bearers, on account of his route lying partly through a broken country. His clothes and writing-desk were placed in the two petarrahs, carried by the two bangey-burdars. ‘The men set out across the meadows at a good round trot of about four miles an hour, grunting all the way like paviers in England: a custom which, like paviers, they imagine eases them under their burden.’ Only four men can usually put their shoulders to a palanquin at the same time; but the bishop observed that whenever they approached a deep nullah or steep bank, the bearers who were not at that time bearing the palanquin, but were having their interval of rest, thrust stout bamboos under the bottom of the palanquin, and took hold of the ends on each side; so that the strength of several additional men was brought into requisition. In crossing a stream, ‘the boat (the spot being a regular ferry), a broad and substantial one, had a platform of wood covered with clay across its middle. The palanquin, with me in it, was placed on this with its length athwart the middle; the mangee steered, and some of the dâk-bearers took up oars, so that we were across in a very short time.’

Private dâks are occasionally employed, a speculator undertaking to supply the bearers. Having no large establishments to keep up, these men can afford to undersell the government—that is, establish a lower tariff; and they provide a little additional accommodation in other ways. Some travellers, however, think these speculators or chowdries not sufficiently to be trusted, and prefer the government dâk at higher rates. Experienced men will sometimes dispense with the preliminary of ‘laying a dâk,’ or arranging for the whole journey: depending on their own sagacity for hunting up bearers at the successive stations. There have also been introduced horse-dâks, wheeled palanquins drawn by horses; but these are only available on the great trunk-roads recently executed by the government.

It was observed, in relation to ‘marching’ or horse-travelling, that there are no hotels or inns on the road; there is a partial substitute, however, that may here be noticed. The Company have established dâk-bungalows at certain stations, varying from fifteen to fifty miles apart, according as the road is much or little frequented. These places are under the control of government officers: a khitmutgar or servant, and a porter, attend at each; the traveller pays a fixed sum for the use of the room, and makes a separate bargain for any few articles of provisions that may be obtainable. The building is little more than a thatched house of one story, divided into two small rooms, to each of which a bathing-room is attached. The servant cooks and serves a meal, while the porter assists in subsidiary offices. If a traveller does not choose to avail himself of these bungalows, he can travel continuously in his palanquin, sleeping and waking by turns. This, however, is a great trial for most persons; because the bearers make an unpleasant grunting noise as an accompaniment to their movements; and moreover, unless well drilled, they do not balance the palanquin well, but subject its inmate to distressing joltings.

Indian Domestics.
1. Dirgee—tailor. 2. Khitmutgar writing the accounts of the previous day. 3. Sepoy after parade. 4. Maitre, or house-cleaner. 5. Dobee—washerman. 6. Chuprassee going out with gun before a shooting-party. 7. Chuprassee—letter-carrier. 8. Bengalee Pundit, or scholar.

It has been placed upon record, as an instructive commentary on the immense distances to be traversed in India, the imperfection of most of the roads, and the primitive detail of travelling arrangements—that when Viscount Hardinge was engaged in the Punjaub campaign in 1846, one hundred European officers were sent off from Calcutta to aid him. Although the distance was nearly fifteen hundred miles, nothing more rapid than palanquin travelling was available; and, as a consequence, the journey became so tediously prolonged that only thirty out of the hundred officers arrived at the Sutlej before the campaign was over. Palanquin-bearers were posted at different stations to carry three persons daily; and it was calculated that, assuming twelve bearers to be posted at every station, and the stations eight miles apart on an average, the duty must have required the services of seven thousand of these men—all to carry one hundred officers: a waste of muscular energy singular to contemplate by the light of an Englishman’s home experience.

The Indian post is still more simple than the dâk. It is conducted by runners, each of whom slings his mail-bag on the end of a stick over his shoulder. He runs five miles in an hour, and then gives his bag to another man, who runs five miles in an hour; and so on. Strictly speaking, dâk is an appellation properly belonging to this letter-carrying system. It is equivalent to the English post; and as the English have adopted the custom of applying the term post to quick travelling as well as to letter-carrying, in like manner have the Anglo-Indians adopted a double application of the word dâk. It is only the express or quick dâk which maintains a speed of five miles an hour; the ordinary speed, when the letter-bag is heavy, is four miles. In order that the runners may not be required to go far from their homes, each man carries his bag one stage, exchanges bags with another runner who has come in the opposite direction, and then returns. A letter may thus be conveyed a hundred miles in a day—a distance which, considering the nature of the system, is quite as great as can reasonably be expected. Horse and camel dâks are occasionally employed; but they are not easily available, except on good roads. Besides the letter-dâk, there is a parcel-dâk or bangey, the runner carrying a packet or box, in which small parcels or newspapers are placed.

It will become a duty, in a later portion of this work, to notice somewhat fully the railway schemes of India, in relation to the plans for developing the industrial resources of that great region; but at present this would be out of place, since the Revolt has been dependent on the actual, not the prospective. This actuality, so far as concerns means and modes of travelling, is summed up in a few words. An Indian officer, we have seen, must travel to his station by horse or by palanquin if on land, by drag-boat or by steam-boat if on the rivers. In any case his rate of progress is slow; his movements are encumbered by a train of servants, by a whole bazarful of furniture and culinary apparatus, and by an anxiously selected provision for his larder. To move quickly is well-nigh impossible: all the conditions for it are wanting. Improvements, it is true, are in progress: steamers of light draught and rapid movement are being planned for the rivers; the great trunk-road from Calcutta to the Afghan frontier is beginning to offer facilities for wheel-carriage transport; and the railways are beginning to shew their iron tracks in various regions; nevertheless, these are rather indications of the future than appliances for the present; and the Indian officers are not yet in a position to say much about them from personal experience. The humbler soldiers, whether Europeans or sepoys, are of course less favourably served than the officers. There is no Weedon in India, connected by rail with a Chatham, a Portsmouth, a Liverpool, a Leeds, along which a whole regiment can be conveyed in a few hours; and as saddle-horses and palanquins are out of the question for infantry privates, it becomes necessary to trudge on foot along such roads as may be available, or to linger on the tardy river route. Once now and then, it is true, a daring man, a Napier or an Edwardes, will swiftly send a small body of troops over a sandy desert or a marshy plain on camels, horses, elephants, or some exceptional modes of conveyance; but the prevalent characteristics of travel are such as have here been described, and such will doubtless be the case for many years to come.

Such, then, being the territorial arrangements by which Anglo-Indian troops are considered to belong to different presidencies and states; and such the modes in which military as well as civilians must move from place to place in those territories; we shall be prepared next to understand something about the soldiers themselves—the Anglo-Indian army.

In no country in Europe is there an army so anomalous in its construction as that which, until lately, belonged to the East India Company. Different kinds of troops, and troops from different provinces, we can well understand. For instance, the French avail themselves of a few Algerine Arabs, and a small foreign legion, as components in the regular army. The English have a few colonial corps in addition to the Queen’s army. The Prussians have a landwehr or militia equal in magnitude to the regular army itself. The Russians have military colonists as well as military tributaries, in addition to the great corps d’armée. The Austrians have their peculiar Military Frontier regiments, besides the regular troops furnished by the dozen or score of distinct provinces and kingdoms which form their empire. The German States provide their several contingents to form (if the States can ever bring themselves to a unity of opinion) an Army of the Confederation. The Neapolitans employ Swiss mercenaries as a portion of their army. The Romans, the subjects of the pope as a temporal prince, have the ‘protection’ of French and Austrian bayonets, in addition to a small native force. The Turks have their regular army, aided (or sometimes obstructed) by the contingents of vassal-pachas and the irregulars from mountain districts. But none of these resemble the East India Company’s army. Under an ordinary state of affairs, and without reference to the mutiny of 1857, the Indian army is in theory a strange conglomerate. The Queen lends some of her English troops, for which the Company pay; the Company enlist other English troops on their own account; they maintain three complete armies among the natives of India who are their subjects; they raise irregular corps or regiments in the states not so fully belonging to them; they claim the services of the troops belonging to certain tributary princes, whenever exigency arises; and the whole of these troops are placed under the generalship of a commander-in-chief, who is appointed—not by the Company, who have to pay for all—but by the Queen or the British government.

The Company’s army rose by degrees, as the territorial possessions increased. At first the troops were little better than adventurers who sold their swords to the highest bidders, and fought for pay and rations without regard to the justice of the cause in which they were engaged; many were liberated convicts, many were deserters from various European armies, some were Africans, while a few were Topasses, a mixed race of Indo-Portuguese. The first regular English troops seen in Bengal were an ensign and thirty privates, sent from Madras to quell a petty disturbance at the Company’s factory in the Hoogly. Gradually, as the numbers increased and the organisation improved, the weapons underwent changes. The troops originally were armed with muskets, swords, and pikes twelve or fourteen feet long: the pikemen in the centre of the battalion or company, and the musketeers on the flank. In the beginning of the last century the pikes were abandoned, and the soldiers armed with bayonets in addition to the muskets and swords. When the custom was adopted, from European example, of forming the companies into a regular battalion, the swords were abolished, and the common soldiers left only with muskets and bayonets. Various changes were made during the century, assimilating the troops more and more to those of the English crown, in weapons and accoutrements.

The regiments became, by successive ameliorations, composed almost wholly of native Hindoos and Mohammedans, officered to some extent by Europeans. An English sergeant was given to each company, and a drill-sergeant and sergeant-major to each battalion. Afterwards, when the battalions were formed into regiments, natives were appointed as sergeants of companies; and then the only European non-commissioned officers were a sergeant-major and a quartermaster-sergeant. By the time of Lord Clive’s achievements, just about a century ago, three armies were owned by the Company—one in Bengal or the Calcutta presidency, one in the Coromandel or Madras presidency, and one on the Malabar coast, south of the present station of Bombay. These three armies were totally separate and distinct, each under its own commander, and each presenting some peculiarities of organisation; but they occasionally joined as one army for large military operations. There were many native corps, and a few European corps; but all alike were officered by Europeans. The cadet, the young man sent out from England to ‘make his fortune’ in India, was appointed to a native corps or a European corps at the choice of the commander. The pay being good and regular, and the customs and prejudices respected, the sepoys, sipahis, or native soldiers became in most cases faithful servants to the Company, obeying their native officers, who, in their turn, were accountable to the European officers. The European and the native corps were alike formed by enlistment: the Company compelling no one to serve but those who deemed the pay and other arrangements sufficient. An endeavour was made at that time (afterwards abandoned) to equalise the Hindoos and Mohammedans in numbers as nearly as possible.

From an early period in the Company’s history, a certain number of regiments from the British royal army were lent for Indian service; the number being specified by charter or statute; and the whole expense, of every kind, being defrayed by the Company—including, by a more modern arrangement, retiring pay and pensions. There were thus, in effect, at all times two English armies in India; the one enlisted by the Company, the other lent by the Crown; and it was a matter of some difficulty to obviate jealousies and piques between the two corps. For, on the one hand, the officers of the Company’s troops had better pay and more profitable stations assigned to them; while, on the other hand, the royal officers had precedence and greater honour. A Company’s captain, however so many years he might have served, was subordinate even to the youngest royal captain, who assumed command over him by right. At length, in 1796, the commissions received by the Company’s officers were recognised by the crown; and the two corps became placed on a level in pay and privileges.

The year just named witnessed a new organisation also of the native army. A regiment was ordered to be of two thousand men, in two corps or battalions of one thousand each; and each battalion was divided into ten companies, with two native officers to each company. Thus there were forty native officers in each of these large regiments. Besides these, there were half as many European officers as were allowed to a European regiment of the same magnitude. There had before been a native commandant to each battalion; but he was now superseded by a European field-officer, somewhat to the dissatisfaction of the men. The service occasionally suffered from this change; for a regiment was transferred at once from a native who had risen to command by experience and good conduct, to a person sent out from England who had to learn his duties as a leader of native troops after he went out. The youngest English ensign, perhaps a beardless boy, received promotion before any native, however old and tried in the service. And hence arose the custom, observed down to recent times, of paying no attention to the merits of the natives as a spur to promotion, allowing seniority to determine the rise from one grade to another.

While on the one hand the natives volunteered as soldiers in the Company’s service, and were eligible to rise to a certain rank as regimental officers; the English officers, on the other, had their own particular routine and hopes of preferment. The cadets or youths went out partially educated by the Company in England, especially those intended for the artillery and engineer departments; and when settled with their regiments in India as officers, all rose by seniority; the engineers and artillery in their own corps, the cavalry and infantry in their own regiments. It often happened, however, that when few deaths occurred by war, officers reached middle life without much advancement, and retired after twenty years or more of service with the pay of the rank they then held. In 1836, however, a law was made to insure that the retiring allowance should not be below a certain minimum: if an officer served twenty-three years, he retired with captain’s pay; if twenty-seven years, with major’s pay; if thirty-one years, with lieutenant-colonel’s pay; if thirty-five years, with colonel’s pay—whatever might have been his actual rank at the date of his retirement. There was also permission for them to sell their commissions, although those commissions were not bought by them in the first instance.

Unquestionably the sepoy was well paid, considering the small value of labour and personal services in his country; and thus it arose that the Company had seldom any difficulty in obtaining troops. The sepoys were volunteers in the full sense of the word. Their pay, though small in our estimation, was high in proportion to the station they formerly held. The Bengal Infantry sepoy received seven rupees (fourteen shillings) per month, with an additional rupee after sixteen years’ service, and two after twenty years. A havildar or sergeant received fourteen rupees; a jemadar or lieutenant twenty-four rupees; and a subadar or captain sixty-seven rupees. This pay was relatively so good, that each man was usually able to send two-thirds of it to his relations. And he was not a stranger to them at the end of his term, like a Russian soldier; for it was a part of the system to allow him periodical furlough or leave of absence, to visit his friends. If unfit for military service after fifteen months’ duty, he retired on a life-pension sufficient to support him in his own simple way of life. Whether he ought, in moral fairness, to be grateful towards the rulers who fed and clothed him, is just one of those questions on which Indian officers have differed and still differ. Viewed by the aid of the experience furnished by recent events, many of the former encomiums on the sepoys, as men grateful for blessings conferred, read strangely. The Marquis of Dalhousie’s statement, that ‘The position of the native soldier in India has long been such as to leave hardly any circumstance of his condition in need of improvement,’ has already been adverted to. To this we may add the words of Captain Rafter: ‘We assert, on personal knowledge and reliable testimony, that the attachment of the sepoy to his English officer, and through him to the English government, is of an enduring as well as an endearing nature, that will long bid defiance to the machinations of every enemy to British supremacy, either foreign or domestic.’[^[4]] In another authority we find that the sepoy, when his term of military service has expired, ‘goes back to live in ease and dignity, to teach his children to love and venerate that mighty abstraction the Company, and to extend the influence of England still further throughout the ramifications of native society. Under such a system, although temporary insubordination may and sometimes does occur in particular regiments, it is invariably caused by temporary grievances. General disaffection cannot exist—desertion is unknown.’ But the validity or groundlessness of such opinions we do not touch upon here: they must be reserved to a later chapter, when the causes of the mutiny will come under review. We pass on at once, therefore, from this brief notice of the origin of the Company’s army, to its actual condition at and shortly before the period of the outbreak.

Should it be asked what, during recent years, has been the number of troops in India, the answer must depend upon the scope given to the question. If we mention Queen’s troops only, the number has been usually about 24,000; if Queen’s troops and the Company’s European troops, about 42,000; if the Company’s native regulars be added to these, the number rises to 220,000; if the Company’s irregular corps of horse be included, there are 280,000; if it include the contingents supplied by native princes, the number amounts to 320,000; and lastly, if to these be added the armies of the independent and semi-independent princes, more or less available by treaty to the Company, the total swells to 700,000 men.

As exhibiting in detail the component elements of the Company’s Anglo-Indian army at a definite period, the following enumeration by Captain Rafter may be adopted, as applicable to the early part of 1855. Certain minor changes were made in the two years from that date to the commencement of the outbreak; but these will be noticed in later pages when necessary, and do not affect the general accuracy of the list. The three presidencies are kept separate, and the three kinds of troops—regiments of the royal army, the Company’s native regular regiments, and native irregular regiments—are also kept separate.

First we take the Bengal presidency in all its completeness, stretching almost entirely across Northern India from the Burmese frontier on the east, to the Afghan frontier on the west:

BENGAL PRESIDENCY.

Queen’s Troops.

• Two regiments of light cavalry.
• Fifteen regiments of infantry.
• One battalion of 60th Rifles.

Company’s Regular Troops.

• Three brigades of horse-artillery, European and native.
• Six battalions of European foot-artillery.
• Three battalions of native foot-artillery.
• Corps of Royal Engineers.
• Ten regiments of native light cavalry.
• Two regiments of European fusiliers.
• Seventy-four regiments of native infantry.
• One regiment of Sappers and Miners.

Irregular and Contingent Troops.

• Twenty-three regiments of irregular native cavalry.
• Twelve regiments of irregular native infantry.
• One corps of Guides.
• One regiment of camel corps.
• Sixteen regiments of local militia.
• Shekhawuttie brigade.
• Contingents of Gwalior, Jhodpore, Malwah, Bhopal, and Kotah.

The European troops here mentioned, in the Company’s regular army, are those who have been enlisted in England or elsewhere by the Company’s agents, quite irrespective of the royal or Queen’s army. The above forces, altogether, amounted to somewhat over 150,000 men. Let us now glance at another presidency:

MADRAS PRESIDENCY.

Queen’s Troops.

• One regiment of light cavalry.
• Five regiments of infantry.

Company’s Regular Troops.

• One brigade of horse-artillery, European and native.
• Four battalions of European foot-artillery.
• One battalion of native foot-artillery.
• Corps of Royal Engineers.
• Eight regiments of native light cavalry.
• Two regiments of European infantry.
• Fifty-two regiments of native infantry.

No irregular or contingent troops appear in this entry.

BOMBAY PRESIDENCY.

Queen’s Troops.

• One regiment of light cavalry.
• Five regiments of infantry.

Company’s Regular Troops.

• One brigade of horse-artillery, European and native.
• Two battalions of European foot-artillery.
• Two battalions of native foot-artillery.
• Corps of Royal Engineers.
• Three regiments of native light cavalry.
• Two regiments of European infantry.
• Twenty-nine regiments of native infantry.

Irregular and Contingent Troops.

• Fifteen regiments of irregular native troops.

The European and the native troops of the Company are not here separated, although in effect they form distinct regiments. So costly are all the operations connected with the Anglo-Indian army, that it has been calculated that every English soldier employed in the East, whether belonging to the Queen’s or to the Company’s forces, costs, on an average, one hundred pounds before he becomes available for service, including his outfit, his voyage, his marching and barracking in India. This of course relates to the privates; an officer’s cost is based upon wholly distinct grounds, and can with difficulty be estimated. The greatly increased expenditure of the Company on military matters has partly depended on the fact that the European element in the armies has been regularly augmenting: in 1837 there were 28,000 European troops in India; in 1850 the number was 44,000, comprising 28,000 Queen’s troops, and 16,000 belonging to the Company; while the new charter of 1854 allowed the Company to raise 24,000, of whom 4000 were to be in training in England, and the rest on service in India. What was the number in 1857, becomes part of the history of the mutiny. In the whole Indian army, a year or two before this catastrophe, there were about 5000 European officers, governing the native as well as the European regiments; but of this number, so many were absent on furlough or leave, so many more on staff appointments, and so many of the remainder in local corps and on civil duties, that there was an insufficiency of regimental control—leading, as some authorities think, in great part to the scenes of insubordination; for the native officers, as we shall presently see, were regarded in a very subordinate light. There was a commander-in-chief for each of the three presidencies, controlling the three armies respectively; while one of the three, the commander-in-chief of the Bengal army, held at the same time the office of commander-in-chief of the whole of the armies of India, in order that there might be a unity of plan and purpose in any large combined operations. Thus, when Sir Colin Campbell went out to India in the summer of 1857, his power was to be exerted over the armies of the whole of India generally, as well as over that of Bengal in particular.

Continuing to speak of the Indian army as it was before the year 1857, and thereby keeping clear of the changes effected or commenced in that year, we proceed to mention a few more circumstances connected with the Company’s European element in that army. The formation of an Indian officer commenced in England. As a youth, from fourteen to eighteen years of age, he was admitted to the Company’s school at Addiscombe, after an ordeal of recommendations and testimonials, and after an examination of his proficiency in an ordinary English education, in which a modicum of Latin was also expected. A probation of six months was gone through, to shew whether he possessed the requisite abilities and inclination; and if this probation were satisfactory, his studies were continued for two years. His friends paid the larger portion of the cost of his maintenance and education at the school. If his abilities and progress were of a high class, he was set apart for an appointment in the engineers; if next in degree, in the artillery; and if the lowest in degree, for the infantry. At the end of his term the pupil must have attained to a certain amount of knowledge, of which, however, very little was professional. Supposing all to be satisfactory, he became a military cadet in the service of the Company, to be available for Indian service as occasion arose. Having joined one of the regiments as the lowest commissioned officer, his subsequent advancement depended in part on his qualifications and in part on seniority. He could not, by the more recent regulations of the Company, become a captain until he had acquired, besides his professional efficiency, a knowledge of the spoken and written Hindustani language, and of the Persian written character, much used in India. When placed on the general staff, his services might be required in any one of a number of ways quite unknown in the Queen’s service in England: he might have a civil duty, or be placed at the head of the police in a tract of country recently evacuated by the military, or be made an adjutant, auditor, quartermaster, surveyor, paymaster, judge-advocate, commissary-general, brigade-major, aid-de-camp, barrack-master, or clothing agent. Many of these offices being lucrative, the military liked them; but such a bestowal created some jealousy among the civil servants of the Company, whose prizes in the Indian lottery were thereby diminished; and, what was worse, it shook the connection between an officer and his regiment, rendering him neither able nor willing to throw his sympathies into his work. No officer could hold any of these staff appointments, as they were called, until he had been two years in the army.

The officers noticed in the last paragraph were appointed to the command both of European and of native regiments. As to privates and non-commissioned officers in the European regiments, they were much the same class of men, and enlisted much in the same way, as those in the Queen’s army. The privates or sepoys of the native regiments were of course different, not only from Europeans, but different among themselves. Four-fifths of the Bengal native infantry were Hindoos, mainly of the Brahmin and Rajpoot castes; and the remainder Mohammedans. On the other hand, three-fourths of the Bengal native cavalry were Mohammedans, the Hindoos being generally not equal to them as troopers. In the Madras native army, the Mohammedans predominated in the cavalry, while the infantry comprised the two religions in nearly equal proportions. In Bombay, nearer the nations of Western Asia, the troops comprised volunteers of many countries and many religions—more easily managed, our officers found, on that account.

Without at present going into the question how far the religious feelings and caste prejudices of the natives induced a revolt, it may be useful to shew how a regiment was constituted, of what materials, and in what gradations. An infantry regiment in the Bengal presidency will serve as a type.

The organisation of a Bengal native regiment, before the mutiny, was nearly as follows: An infantry regiment consisted of about 1000 privates, 120 non-commissioned officers, and 20 native commissioned officers. It was divided into ten companies, each containing one-tenth of the above numbers. When stationary, the regiment seldom had barracks, but was quartered in ten lines of thatched huts, one row for each company. In front of each row was a small circular building for containing the arms and accoutrements of that particular company, under the charge of a havildar or native sergeant. All these natives rose by a strict rule of seniority: the sepoy or private soldier becoming a naik or corporal, the naik being promoted to be havildar or sergeant, the havildar in time assuming the rank of jemadar or lieutenant, and the jemadar becoming a subadar or captain. All these promotions were necessarily slow; for the English colonel of the regiment had very little power to promote a worthy native officer or non-commissioned officer to a higher rank. The jemadar often became a gray-headed man of sixty before he rose to the rank of subadar, the highest attainable by a native. As a rule, there were four or five Hindoos to one Mohammedan in a Bengal infantry regiment; and of these eight hundred Hindoos, it was not unfrequent to find four hundred Brahmins or hereditary priests, and two hundred Rajpoots, a military caste only a little lower in rank than the former; while the remaining two hundred were low-caste Hindoos. The European officers, as will be explained more fully further on, lived in bungalows or detached houses near the lines of their regiment; but as the weather is too hot to admit of much open-air duty in the daytime, these officers saw less of their men than is customary in European armies, or than is necessary for the due preservation of discipline. The head of a regiment was the commander, generally a lieutenant-colonel; below him was an adjutant, who attended to the drill and the daily reports; below him was a quartermaster and interpreter, whose double duties were to look after the clothes and huts of the men, and to interpret or translate orders. Besides these three, there were ten subordinate officers for the ten companies, each expected to make a morning scrutiny into the condition and conduct of his men. The Europeans in a native regiment were thus fourteen or fifteen. It is true that the theory of a regiment involved a complement of about five-and-twenty European officers; but the causes of absenteeism, lately adverted to, generally brought down the effective number to about twelve or fifteen. The arrangements of the infantry in the other presidencies, and of the native cavalry all over India, each had their peculiarities.

Leaving for future chapters a further elucidation of the relations between the European officers and the native troops—so important in connection with the Revolt—and a description of the sepoys in their dresses, usages, and personal characteristics—we shall now proceed to view the native army under two different aspects—first, when barracked and cantoned in time of peace; and, secondly, when on the march towards a scene of war.

And first, for the army when stationary. At Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, there are solidly built barracks for the whole of the soldiery, men as well as officers; but in almost all other parts of India the arrangements are of a slighter and less permanent character. At the cantonments, it is true, the officers have houses; but the sepoys are lodged in huts of their own construction. Around the cantonments at the stations, and generally skirting the parade-grounds, are the houses or bungalows of the officers. Within the lines of the cantonment, too, the officers’ mess-rooms are situated; and at the larger stations may be seen ball-rooms, theatres, and racket-courts; while outside is a race-stand for witnessing the sports which Englishmen love in India as well as at home.

Group of Sepoys.
1. Subadar—major. 2. Jemadar—Lieutenant. 3. Subadar—Captain. 4. Naik—Corporal. 5. Havildar—Sergeant. 6. Sepoy—Private.

The Indian bungalows, the houses inhabited by European officers at the different towns and stations in India, have a certain general resemblance, although differing of course much in details. A bungalow of good size has usually a central room called the hall, a smaller room opening on the front verandah, a similar one opening on the back verandah, three narrower rooms on each side of these three, and bathing-rooms at the four corners. A verandah runs entirely round the exterior. The central hall has only the borrowed light derived from eight or a dozen doors leading out of the surrounding apartments: these doors are always open; but the doorways are covered, when privacy is desired, with the chick, a sort of gauze-work of green-painted strips of fine bamboo, admitting air and light, but keeping out flies and mosquitoes. The floors are usually of chunam, finely tempered clay, covered with matting, and then with a sort of blue-striped carpet or with printed calico. The exterior is usually barn-like and ugly, with its huge roof, tiled or thatched, sloping down to the pillars of the verandah. Air and shade are the two desiderata in every bungalow, and adornment is wisely sacrificed to these. The finest part of the whole is the surrounding space or garden, called the compound, from a Portuguese word. The larger the space allowed for this compound, the more pleasant is the residence in its centre, and the more agreeable to the eye is a cantonment of such bungalows. The trees and fruits in these enclosures are delicious to the sight, and most welcome to the heat-wearied occupants of the dwellings. Officers in the Company’s service, whether military or civil, live much under canvas during the hot seasons, at some of the stations; and the tents they use are much larger and more like regular habitations than those known in Europe. The tents are double, having a space of half a yard or so between the two canvas walls, to temper the heat of the sun. The double-poled tents are large enough to contain several apartments, and are furnished with glass-doors to fit into the openings. A wall of canvas separates the outer offices and bathing-rooms. Gay chintz for wall-linings, and printed cotton carpets, give a degree of smartness to the interior. Movable stoves, or else fire-dishes for wood-fuel called chillumchees, are provided as a resource against the chill that often pervades the air in the evening of a hot day. The tents for the common soldiers hold ten men each with great ease, and have a double canvas wall like the others.

Bungalow.

An important part of every cantonment is the bazaar, situated in convenient proximity to the huts or tents of the troops. It comprises an enormous number of sutlers, who sell to the soldiers those commodities which cannot well be dispensed with, but which cannot conveniently be provided and carried about by them. Curry stuffs, tobacco, rice, arrack (in addition to the Company’s allowance), cotton cloth, and a multiplicity of other articles, are sold at these bazaars; and the market-people who supply these things, with their families, the coolies or porters, and their hackeries or carts—add enormously to the mass that constitutes an Indian cantonment. The sepoy has little to spend with his sixpence a day; but then his wants are few; and his copper pice, somewhat larger than the English farthing, will buy an amount of necessaries little dreamed of in England. The Hindoos have such peculiar notions connected with food and cooking, that the government leave them as much to themselves as possible in those matters; and the bazaar and sutlers’ arrangements assume a particular importance from this circumstance.

An Anglo-Indian army we have seen at rest, in cantonments. Now let us trace it when on a march to a scene of war; but while describing this in the present tense, we must make allowance for the changes which the Revolt has inevitably produced.

The non-fighting men who accompany the troops greatly exceed in number the troops themselves. Captain Munro says: ‘It would be absurd for a captain to think of taking the field without being attended by the following enormous retinue—namely, a dubash (agent or commissionaire), a cook, and a maty boy (servant-of-all-work); if he cannot get bullocks, he must assemble fifteen or twenty coolies to carry his baggage, together with a horse-keeper and grass-cutter, and sometimes a dulcinea and her train, having occasionally the assistance of a barber, a washer, and an ironer, in common with the other officers of his regiment. His tent is furnished with a good large bed, mattress, pillows, &c., a few camp stools or chairs, a folding table, a pair of glass shades for his candles, six or seven trunks, with table equipage, his stock of linens (at least twenty-four suits), some dozens of wine, porter, brandy, and gin; with tea, sugar, and biscuit, a hamper of live poultry, and his milch-goat. A private’s tent for holding his servants and the overplus of his baggage is also requisite; but this is not at the Company’s expense.’ Of course it must be inferred that all this luxury belongs to the best of times only, and is not available in the exigency of sudden military movements. The sepoys or common soldiers, too, have their satellites. Each man is accompanied by his whole family, who live upon his pay and allowances of rice from the Company. Every trooper or horse-soldier, too, has his grass-cutter; for it is a day’s work for one person to dig, cut, and prepare a day’s grass for one horse.

When on the march, the tents are generally struck soon after midnight. At the first tap of the drum, the servants knock up the tent-pins, and down fall the tents; horses begin to neigh and the camels to cry, the elephants and camels receive their loads of camp-equipage, the bullocks are laden with the officers’ tents and boxes, the coolies take up their burdens, and all prepare for the road. During the noise and bustle of these preliminaries, the officers and men make their few personal arrangements, aided by their servants or families; while the officers’ cooks and agents are sent on in advance, to prepare breakfast at the next halting-place. Between one and two o’clock the regiments start off, in columns of sections: the camp-followers, baggage, bullocks, elephants, and camels, bringing up the rear. The European soldiers do not carry their own knapsacks on the march; they have the luxury of cook-boys or attendants, who render this service for them. The natives, it is found, are able to carry heavier loads than the Europeans; or—what is perhaps more nearly the case—they bear the burdens more patiently, as the Europeans love soldiering better than portering. The tedium of the journey is sometimes relieved by a hunt after antelopes, hares, partridges, wild ducks, or wild boars, which the officers may happen to espy, according to the nature of the country through which they are passing. Arrived at the halting-place, everything is quickly prepared for a rest and a breakfast; the quarter-masters push forward to occupy the ground; the elephants and camels are disburdened of the tents; the natives and the cattle plunge into some neighbouring pool or tank to refresh themselves; the cooks have been already some time at work; and the officers sit down to a breakfast of tea, coffee, curry, rice, pillau, ham, and other obtainable dishes. The fakeers often recognise their friends or admirers among the natives of the cavalcade, and give loud blessings, and tom-tom drummings, in exchange for donations of the smallest Indian coins. The quarter-masters’ arrangements are so quickly and so neatly made, that in a short time the general’s durbar appears in the centre of a street of tents for staff-officers, dining-tents on the one side and sleeping-tents on the other; while the bazaar-dealers open their temporary shops in the rear. The horses are picketed in long lines; while the elephants and camels browse or rest at leisure. Under ordinary circumstances, the day’s marching is over by nine o’clock in the morning, at which hour the sun’s heat becomes too fierce to be willingly borne. Repose, amusements, and light camp-duties fill up the remainder of the day, to be followed by a like routine on the morrow.

Troops on the March.

While one of these extraordinary marches is in progress, ‘when the moving masses are touched here and there by the reddening light of the dawn, it seems to be a true migration, with flocks and herds, cattle loaded with baggage, men, women, and children, all in a chaos of disorder but the troops whose wants and wishes have attracted this assemblage. At length the country appears to awake from its sleep, and with the yell of the jackal, or the distant baying of the village dogs, are heard to mingle the voices of human beings. Ruddier grows the dawn, warmer the breeze, and the light-hearted sepoy, no longer shivering with cold, gives vent to the joyous feelings of morning in songs and laughter. The scenes become more striking, and the long array of tall camels, led by natives in picturesque costume, with here and there a taller elephant mingling with droves of loaded bullocks, give it a new and extraordinary character to a European imagination. The line of swarthy sepoys of Upper India, with their moustached lips and tall handsome figures, contrasts favourably with the shorter and plainer soldiers of Britain; the grave mechanical movements of the regular cavalry in their light-blue uniforms are relieved by the erratic evolutions and gay and glittering dresses of the irregulars, who with loud cries and quivering spears, and their long black locks streaming behind them, spur backwards and forwards like the wind from mere exuberance of spirits.... The camp-followers in the meantime present every possible variety of costume; and among them, and not the least interesting figures in the various groups, may frequently be seen the pet lambs of which the sepoys are so fond, dressed in necklaces of ribbons and white shells, and the tip of their tails, ears, and feet dyed orange colour. The womenkind of the troops of the Peninsula (Southern India) usually follow the drum; but the Bengalees have left their families at home; and the Europeans bidden adieu to their temporary wives with the air the band strikes up on quitting the station, “The girl I left behind me.’”[^[5]]

Such, before the great Revolt, were the usual characteristics of an Anglo-Indian army when on the march; and, considering the impedimenta, it is not surprising that the daily progress seldom exceeded ten or twelve miles. The system was very costly, even at the cheap rate of Indian service; for the camp-followers, one with another, were ten times as numerous as the troops; and all, in one way or other, lived upon or by the Company.

Note.

A parliamentary paper, issued in 1857 on the motion of Colonel Sykes, affords valuable information on some of the matters treated in this chapter. It is ‘A Return of the Area and Population of each Division of each Presidency of India, from the Latest Inquiries; comprising, also, the Area and Estimated Population of Native States.’ It separates the British states from the native; and it further separates the former into five groups, according to the government under which each is placed. These five, as indicated in the present chapter, are under the administration of ‘the governor-general of India in council’—the ‘lieutenant-governor of Bengal’—the ‘lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces’—the ‘government of Madras’—and the ‘government of Bombay.’ In each case the ‘regulation districts’ are treated distinct from the non-regulation provinces,’ the former having been longer under British power, and brought into a more regular system than the latter. Without going again over the long list of names of places, it will suffice to quote those belonging to the group placed immediately under the governor-general’s control. This group comprises the Punjaub, in the six divisions of Lahore, Jelum, Moultan, Leia, Peshawur, and Jullundur; the Cis-Sutlej states, four in number; the lately annexed kingdom of Oude; the central district of Nagpoor or Berar; the recently acquired region of Pegu; the strip of country on the east of the Bay of Bengal, known as the Tenasserim Provinces; and the ‘Eastern Straits Settlements’ of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The whole of British India is divided into nearly a hundred and eighty districts, each, on an average, about the size of Inverness-shire, the largest county, except Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. The population, however, is eight times us dense, per average square mile, as in this Scottish shire. Keeping clear of details concerning divisions and districts, the following are the areas and population in the five great governments:

In some of the five governments, the population is classified more minutely than in others. Thus, in the Punjaub member of the governor-general’s group, Hindoos are separated from non-Hindoos; then, each of these classes is divided into agricultural and non-agricultural; and, lastly, each of these is further separated into male and female. The most instructive feature here is the scarcity of females compared with males, contrary to the experience of Europe; in the Punjaub and Sirhind, among thirteen million souls, there are a million and a half more males than females—shewing, among other things, one of the effects of female infanticide in past years. The ratio appears to be about the same in the Northwest Provinces, around Delhi, Meerut, Rohilcund, Agra, Benares, and Allahabad. Not one place is named, throughout India, in which the females equal the males in number. In the Bombay presidency, besides the difference of sex, the population is tabulated into nine groups—Hindoos, Wild Tribes, Low Castes, Shrawniks or Jains, Lingayets, Mussulmans, Parsees, Jews, Christians. Of the last named there are less than fifty thousand, including military, in a population of twelve millions.

The area and population of the native states are given in connection with the presidencies to which those states are geographically and politically related, and present the following numbers:

The enumeration of these native states is minute and intricate; and it may suffice to shew the complexity arising out of the existence of so many baby-princedoms, that one of the native states of Bundelcund, Kampta by name, figures in the table as occupying an area of one square mile, and as having three hundred inhabitants!

Including the British states, the native states, the few settlements held by the French and Portuguese, and the recent acquisitions on the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal, the grand totals come out in the following numbers:

or 124 dwellers per square mile. Of these inhabitants, it is believed—though the returns are not complete in this particular—that there are fifteen Hindoos to one Mohammedan: if so, then India must contain more than a hundred and sixty million worshippers of Hindoo deities—even after allowance is made for Buddhists, Parsees, and a few savage tribes almost without religion.

[3]. A young native princess was sent to England from this district to be educated as a Christian lady; and Queen Victoria became a sponsor for her at a baptismal ceremony.

[4]. Our Anglo-Indian Army.

[5]. Leitch Ritchie. British World in the East.

CHAPTER II.
SYMPTOMS:—CHUPATTIES AND CARTRIDGES.

Little did the British authorities in India suspect, in the early weeks of 1857, that a mighty CENTENARY was about to be observed—a movement intended to mark the completion of one hundred years of British rule in the East; and to mark it, not by festivities and congratulations, but by rebellion and slaughter.

The officers in India remembered and noted the date well; but they did not know how well the Mohammedans and Hindoos, the former especially, had stored it up in their traditions. The name of Robert Clive, the ‘Daring in War,’ was so intimately associated with the date 1757, that the year 1857 naturally brought it into thought, as a time when Christian rule began to overawe Moslem rule in that vast country. True, the East India Company had been connected with India during a period exceeding two hundred years; but it was only at the commencement of the second half of the last century that this connection became politically important. It was remembered that—1756 having been marked by the atrocities of the Black Hole at Calcutta, and by the utter extinction for a time of the East India Company’s power in Bengal—the year 1757 became a year of retribution. It was remembered, as a matter of history among the British, and of tradition among the natives, how wonderful a part the young officer Clive performed in that exciting drama. It was remembered that he arrived at Calcutta, at that time wholly denuded of Englishmen, on the 2d of January in the last-named year, bringing with him a small body of troops from Madras; that on the 4th of February, with two thousand men, he defeated an army ten times as large, belonging to Suraj-u-Dowlah, Nawab of Bengal—the same who had caused the atrocities at the Black Hole, when a hundred and thirty persons died from suffocation in a room only fitted to contain a fourth of the number. It was further remembered how that, on the 9th of February, Clive obtained great concessions from the nawab by treaty; that Suraj broke the treaty, and commenced a course of treachery, in which Clive was not slow to imitate him; that on the 13th of June, Clive, having matured a plan equally bold and crafty, declared renewed hostilities against the nawab; that on the 23d he gained the brilliant battle of Plassey, conquering sixty thousand men with a force of only three thousand; that within a week, Suraj-u-Dowlah, a miserable fugitive, ended his existence; and that from that day British power had ever been supreme in Bengal. This was a series of achievements not likely to be forgotten by Englishmen. Ere yet the news of mutiny and murder reached Europe, steps had been taken to render homage to Clive on the hundredth anniversary of the battle of Plassey; the East India Company had subscribed largely towards a statue of the hero; and a meeting in London had decided that the chief town in Clive’s native county of Shropshire should be selected as the spot wherein the statue should be set up.

Judging from the experience afforded by recent events, it is now clear that the Mohammedans in India had thought much of these things, and that the year 1857 had been marked out by them as a centenary to be observed in a special way—by no less an achievement, indeed, than the expulsion of the British, and the revival of Moslem power. In the spring of the year it was ascertained that a paper was in circulation among the natives, purporting to be a prophecy made by a Punjaub fakeer seven hundred years ago—to the effect that, after various dynasties of Mohammedans had ruled for some centuries, the Nazarenes or Christians should hold power in India for one hundred years; that the Christians would then be expelled; and that various events foretold in the Koran would then come to pass, connected with the triumph of Islamism. That this mysterious prediction was widely credited, is probable—notwithstanding that the paper itself, if really circulated, must manifestly have been an imposture of recent date; for the English nation was not known even by name to the natives of India seven hundred years ago. Setting aside, at present, all inquiries concerning the first authors of the plot, the degree to which the Company’s annexations had provoked it, the existence of any grievances justifiably to be resisted, the reasons which induced Hindoos to join the Mohammedans against the British, or the extent to which the general population shared the views of the native military—laying aside these inquiries for the present, there is evidence that a great movement was planned for the middle of the year 1857. Of this plan the British government knew nothing, and suspected little.

But although no vast plot was suspected, several trifling symptoms had given cause for uneasiness and the English public learned, when too late, that many Indian officers had long predicted the imminency of some outbreak. Insubordination and mutiny, it was found, are not faults of recent growth among the native troops of India. Now that the startling events of 1857 are vividly presented to the public mind, men begin to read again the old story of the outbreak at Vellore, and seek to draw instruction therefrom. A little more than half a century ago—namely, on the 10th of July 1806—the European barracks at Vellore were thrown into a state of great excitement. This town is in the Carnatic, a few miles west of Madras, and in the presidency of the same name. At two o’clock in the morning, the barracks, containing four companies of the 69th regiment, were surrounded by two battalions of sepoys in the Company’s service, who poured in a heavy fire of musketry, at every door and window, upon the soldiers. At the same time the European sentries, the soldiers at the mainguard, and the sick in the hospital, were put to death. The officers’ houses were ransacked, and everybody found in them murdered. Upon the arrival of the 19th Light Dragoons, under Colonel Gillespie, the sepoys were immediately attacked; six hundred were cut down upon the spot, and two hundred taken from their hiding-places to be shot. There perished of the four European companies, a hundred and sixty-four, besides officers; and many British officers of the native troops were also murdered. Nothing ever came to light concerning the probable cause of the outrage, but this—that an attempt had been made by the military men at Madras to change the shape of the sepoy turban into something resembling the helmet of the light infantry of Europe, which would prevent the native troops from wearing on their foreheads the marks characteristic of their several castes. The sons of Tippoo Saib, the deposed ruler of Mysore, together with many distinguished Mohammedans deprived of office, were at that time in Vellore; and the supposition is, that these men contributed very materially to excite or inflame the suspicions of the Hindoos, concerning an endeavour to tamper with their religious usages. There was another mutiny some time afterwards at Nundeydroog, in the same presidency; and it was found indispensable to disarm four hundred and fifty Mohammedan sepoys, who had planned a massacre. At Bangalore and other places a similar spirit was exhibited. The governor of Madras deemed it necessary, in very earnest terms, to disclaim any intention of tampering with the native religion. In a proclamation issued on the 3d of December, he said: ‘The right honourable the governor in council having observed that, in some late instances, an extraordinary degree of agitation has prevailed among several corps of the native army of this coast, it has been his lordship’s particular endeavour to ascertain the motives which may have led to conduct so different from that which formerly distinguished the native army. From this inquiry, it has appeared that many persons of evil intention have endeavoured, for malicious purposes, to impress upon the native troops a belief that it is the wish of the British government to convert them by forcible means to Christianity; and his lordship in council has observed with concern that such malicious reports have been believed by many of the native troops. The right honourable the governor in council, therefore, deems it proper, in this public manner, to repeat to the native troops his assurance, that the same respect which has been invariably shewn by the British government for their religion and their customs, will be always continued; and that no interruption will be given to any native, whether Hindoo or Mussulman, in the practice of his religious ceremonies.’ Notwithstanding the distinctness of this assurance, and notwithstanding the extensive promulgation of the proclamation in the Tamul, Telinga, and Hindustani languages—the ferment continued a considerable time. Even in March 1807, when some months had elapsed, so universal was the dread of a general revolt among the native troops, that the British officers attached to the Madras army constantly slept with loaded pistols under their pillows.

In the interval between 1806 and 1857, nothing so murderous occurred; but, among the Bengal troops, many proofs of insubordination were afforded; for it repeatedly occurred that grievances, real or pretended, led to combinations among the men of different regiments. In 1835, Lord William Bentinck, acting on a principle which had often been advocated in England, abolished flogging in the Indian army; this appears to have raised the self-pride rather than conciliated the good-will of the troops: insubordination ensued, and several regiments had to be disbanded. Again, in 1844, when several Bengal regiments were ordered to march to Sinde, the 34th native infantry refused; whereupon Lord Ellenborough, at that time governor-general, ignominiously disbanded the regiment in presence of the rest of the army. Again, in 1849, Sir Colin Campbell, serving under Sir Charles Napier, reported that the 22d Bengal regiment had mutinied on a question of pay, in which they were clearly in the wrong; but as the Punjaub was at that time in a critical state, Sir Charles did that which was very opposite to his general character—he yielded to an unjust demand, as a measure of prudence. It may have been that the sepoys counted on this probability when they mutinied. No less than forty-two regiments were ascertained to be in secret correspondence on this matter, under Brahminical influence—one of whom went so far as to threaten the commanding officer that they could stop enlistment if they chose. In 1850, Napier was compelled to disband the 66th regiment, for mutiny at Peshawur. In 1852, the 38th regiment was ordered to proceed to Burmah; the men objected to the sea-voyage, and refused to depart; and the authorities in this case gave way.

Like as, in the ordinary affairs of life, men compare notes after a disaster, to ascertain whether any misgiving had silently occupied their minds concerning causes and symptoms; so did many military officers, observing that the troubles were all or mostly in Bengal, or where Bengal troops operated, come forward to state that they had long been cognizant of a marked difference between the Bengal army on the one hand, and the Bombay and Madras armies on the other. Lord Melville, who, as General Dundas, had held a command during the Punjaub campaign, expressed himself very strongly in the House of Lords shortly after news of the mutiny arrived. He stated that, in the Bengal army, the native officers were in nearly all cases selected by seniority, and not from merit; that they could not rise from the ranks till old age was creeping on them; and that a sort of hopelessness of advancement cankered in the minds of many sepoys in the middle time of life. In the Bombay and Madras armies, on the contrary, the havildars or sergeants were selected for their intelligence and activity, and were recommended for promotion by the commanding officers of the regiments. It might possibly be a theory unsusceptible of proof, that this difference made the one army mutinous and the other two loyal; but Lord Melville proceeded to assert that the Bengal troops were notoriously less fully organised and disciplined, more prone to insubordination, than the troops of the other two presidencies. He stated as an instance, that when he commanded the Bombay army in the Punjaub frontier in 1849, the Bengal regiments were mutinous; while the Bombay troops remained in soldierly subordination. Indeed these latter, which he commanded in person, were credited by his lordship with having exhibited the highest qualities of brave and faithful troops. He detailed an incident which had occurred at the siege of Moultan. A covering-party having been ordered into the trenches, some disturbance soon afterwards arose; and an English officer found that many soldiers of the Bengal army had been endeavouring to prevent the men belonging to one of the Bombay regiments from digging in the trenches in discharge of their duty, on the ground that the sepoys’ duty was to fight and not to work. Again: after the assault of Moultan, an officer in command of one of the pickets was requested to post a sergeant and twelve men at one of the gates of the town; this was done; but not long afterwards, three native officers of the Bengal engineers were detected in an endeavour to pass the gate with stores which they were about to plunder or appropriate. Although the views of Lord Melville were combated by a few other officers, there was a pretty general concurrence of opinion that the Bengal native army, through some circumstances known or unknown, had long been less obedient and orderly than those of the other two presidencies.

As it is the purpose of the present chapter to treat rather of the facts that preceded the horrors of Meerut and Cawnpore, than of the numerous theories for explaining them, we shall not dwell long in this place on the affairs of Oude, in connection with the Revolt; but so general is the opinion that the annexation of that kingdom was one of the predisposing causes of the late calamities, that it may be right to glance slightly at the subject.

Oude—once a nawabship under the great Mogul, then a kingdom, and the last remaining independent Mohammedan state in Northern India—was annexed in the early part of 1856; and although the governor-general sought to give a favourable account, both in its reasons and its results, of that momentous measure, there are not wanting grounds for believing that it made a deep impression on the minds of the natives, unfavourable to the English—among the military, if not among the people at large. The deposed king, with his family and his prime-minister, came to live at Calcutta in April 1856; and in the following month his mother, his brother, and one of his sons, proceeded in great state to England, to protest before Queen Victoria against the conduct of the governor-general and of the East India Company, in having deprived them of their regal position: prepared to prove, as they everywhere announced, that no justifiable grounds had existed for so harsh a step. Whether they sincerely believed this, or whether it was a blind to hide ulterior objects, could not at that time be determined. It is one among many opinions on the subject, that the courtiers around the deposed king gradually organised a plot against the British power; that the Queen of Oude’s visit to England was merely intended to mask the proceedings arising out of this plot; that the conspirators brought over to their views the Mogul of Delhi, the shadowy representative of a once mighty despot; that they then sought to win over the Hindoos to side with them; and that, in this proceeding, they adduced any and all facts that had come to their knowledge, in which the British had unwittingly insulted the religious prejudices of the worshippers of Brahma—craftily insinuating that the insult was premeditated. The wisdom or justice of the annexation policy we do not discuss in this place; there is a multiplicity of interpretations concerning it—from that of absolute necessity to that of glaring spoliation; but the point to be borne in mind is, that a new grievance was thereby added to others, real or pretended, already existing. It is especially worthy of note, that any distrust of England, arising out of annexation policy, was likely to be more intense in Oude than anywhere else; for three-fourths of the infantry in the Bengal army had been recruited from the inhabitants of that state; they were energetic men, strongly attached to their native country; and when the change of masters took place, they lost certain of the privileges they had before enjoyed. The Bengalees proper, the natives of the thickly populated region around the lower course of the Ganges, have little to do with the Bengal army; they are feeble, indolent, and cowardly, glad by any excuses to escape from fighting.

Let us now—having said a few words concerning the centenary of British rule, and the state of feeling in Oude—attend to the strange episode of the chupatties, as a premonitory symptom of something wrong in the state of public feeling in India.

The chupatties—small cakes of unleavened bread, about two inches in diameter, made of Indian corn-meal, and forming part of the sepoys’ regular diet—were regarded in England, as soon as the circumstances of the Revolt became known, as signs or symptoms which the various officers of the Company in India ought sedulously to have searched into. Ever since the middle of 1856—ever since, indeed, the final arrangements for the annexation of Oude—these chupatties were known to have been passing from hand to hand. A messenger would come to a village, seek out the headman or village elder, give him six chupatties, and say: ‘These six cakes are sent to you; you will make six others, and send them on to the next village.’ The headman accepted the six cakes, and punctually sent forward other six as he had been directed. It was a mystery of which the early stages were beyond our ken; for no one could say, or no one would say, which was the first village whence the cakes were sent. During many months this process continued: village after village being brought into the chain as successive links, and relays of chupatties being forwarded from place to place. Mr Disraeli, attacking on one occasion in the House of Commons the policy of the Indian government, adverted sarcastically to this chupatty mystery: ‘Suppose the Emperor of Russia, whose territory, in extent and character, has more resemblance to our Eastern possessions than the territory of any other power—suppose the Emperor of Russia were told—“Sire, there is a very remarkable circumstance going on in your territory; from village to village, men are passing who leave the tail of an ermine or a pot of caviare, with a message to some one to perform the same ceremony. Strange to say, this has been going on in some ten thousand villages, and we cannot make head or tail of it.” I think the Emperor of Russia would say: “I do not know whether you can make head or tail of it, but I am quite certain there is something wrong, and that we must take some precautions; because, where the people are not usually indiscreet and troublesome, they do not make a secret communication unless it is opposed to the government. This is a secret communication, and therefore a communication dangerous to the government.”’ The opposition leader did not assert that the government could have penetrated the mystery, but that the mystery ought to have been regarded as significant of something dangerous, worthy of close scrutiny and grave consideration.

The chupatties first appeared in the Northwest Provinces, around Delhi; and subsequent events offered a temptation for rebuking the governor-general and the commander-in-chief, in having failed to strengthen the posts with English troops after the indications of some secret conspiracy had thus been made. In some places it was ascertained that the cakes were to be kept till called for by the messengers, other cakes being sent on instead of them; but what was the meaning of this arrangement, the English officials could not, or at least did not find out. In Scotland, in the clannish days, war-signals were sent from hut to hut and from clan to clan with extraordinary rapidity; and, however little an unleavened cake might appear like a war-signal, military men and politicians ought certainly to have been alive to such strange manifestations as this chupatty movement. From the Sutlej to Patna, throughout a vast range of thickly populated country, was the secret correspondence carried on. One thing at any rate may safely be asserted, that the military stations required close watching at such a time; something was fermenting in the minds of the natives which the English could not understand; but that very fact would have justified—nay, rendered almost imperative—the guarding of the chief posts from sudden surprise. Little or nothing of this precautionary action seems to have been attempted. Throughout nearly the whole of the great trunk-road from Calcutta to the Punjaub, the military stations were left as before, almost wholly in the hands of the sepoys. At Benares there was only a single company of European foot-artillery; the rest of the troops consisting of two regiments of native infantry, and one of the Cis-Sutlej Sikh regiments. At Allahabad, the great supply magazine of the province was left almost wholly to the guard of the sepoys. Lucknow had only one European regiment and one company of artillery; notwithstanding that, as the capital of Oude, it was in the midst of a warlike and excited population; while the native army of the province, capable of soon assembling at the city, comprised no less than fourteen regiments of infantry, six of cavalry, and six companies of artillery. Cawnpore, a very important station with a large medical depôt, contained three regiments of native infantry, one of native cavalry, and two companies of native artillery with twelve guns; while the English force was only a company of infantry, and about sixty artillerymen with six guns. The large magazine of Delhi, the great storehouse of ammunition for the military stations all around it, was left to be guarded entirely by sepoys. The late General Anson, at that time commander-in-chief, was among the hills at Simla, relaxing from his duties; and neither at Simla nor at Calcutta did it seem to be felt that, with existing symptoms, more European troops were necessary in the Bengal and Northwest Provinces.

The chupatty was not the only symbol of some mystery: the lotus was another. It was a common occurrence for a man to come to a cantonment with a lotus-flower, and give it to the chief native officer of a regiment; the flower was circulated from hand to hand in the regiment; each man took it, looked at it, and passed it on, saying nothing. When the lotus came to the last man in the regiment, he disappeared for a time, and took it to the next military station. This strange process occurred throughout nearly all the military stations where regiments of the Bengal native army were cantoned.

Chupatties and lotus-flowers, together with the incendiarism and the cartridge grievances presently to be noticed, unquestionably indicated some widely spread discontent among the natives—military if not general. ‘It is clear,’ in the words of an observant officer, writing from one of the Cis-Sutlej stations, ‘that a certain ferment had been allowed gradually to arise throughout the mass of the Bengal army. In some it was panic, in some excitement, in some a mere general apprehension or expectation, and in some it was no doubt disaffection, or even conspiracy. Governing an alien people and a vast army, we had divested ourselves of all the instruments of foreign domination so familiar to Austria and all other continental powers. We had no political police, no European strongholds, no system of intelligence or espionage, comparatively little real military discipline; and even our own post-office was the channel of free, constant, and unchecked intercourse between all the different regiments. Not a letter even was opened; that would have been too abhorrent to English principles. The sepoy mind had probably become prepared to distrust us, as we had begun to distrust them. There were strange new legislative acts, and new post-office rules, and new foreign service enlistments, and new employment of armed races in our army, and other things disagreeable and alarming to the true old sepoy caste. And then it came about that from a small and trifling beginning, one of those ferments to which the native mind is somewhat prone, took possession of the sepoy army.’

One of the strange facts connected with the chupatty movement was, that the cakes were transmitted to the heads of villages who have not been concerned in the mutiny, while many sepoys who broke out in revolt had received no cakes. They appear to have been distributed mostly to the villagers; whereas the lotus passed from hand to hand among the military.

The chupatties and the lotus-flowers, however indicative they may have been of the existence of intrigue and conspiracy, were quiet indications; but there were not wanting other proofs of a mutinous spirit, in acts of violence and insubordination—apart from the incendiarisms and the cartridge difficulties. On one evening, early in the year, information was given by a sepoy of the intention of the men to rise against their officers and seize on Fort William, at Calcutta. On another occasion, a fanatic moulvie, a high Mohammedan priest at Oude, was detected preaching war against the infidels; and on his person was found a proclamation exciting the people to rebellion. On a third day, two sepoys were detected in an attempt to sap the fidelity of the guard at the Calcutta mint. An English surgeon in an hospital at Lucknow, by the bedside of a sepoy, put his lips to a bottle of medicine before giving it to his patient; this being regarded as a pollution, a pundit was sent for to break the bottle and exorcise the evil: on that night the doctor’s bungalow was burned down by incendiaries who could not be discovered. A refusal to accept a furlough or leave of absence might not usually be regarded as a symptom of a mutinous spirit; yet in India it conveyed a meaning that could not safely be disregarded. On the 6th of March, the commander-in-chief, with the sanction of the governor-general, notified that the native army would receive, as usual, the annual indulgence of furlough from the 1st of April to a certain subsequent date. When this order was read or issued, about fourteen men of the 63d native infantry, stationed at Soorie, and under orders to proceed to Berhampore, evinced a disinclination to avail themselves of the indulgence, on the plea that none of the regiments at Barrackpore intended to take theirs. It certainly appears to have been a circumstance worthy of a searching inquiry by the military authorities, why the troops should have declined to take their furlough at that particular time.

We must now pass on to that series of events which, so far as outward manifestations are concerned, was more especially the immediate forerunner of the Revolt—namely, the disturbances connected with the greased cartridges. Let not the reader for a moment regard this as a trivial matter, merely because it would be trivial in England: the sepoys may have been duped, and indeed were unquestionably duped, by designing men; but the subject of suspicion was a serious one to them. The fat of cows and of pigs is regarded in a peculiar light in the East. The pig is as much held in abhorrence by the Mohammedans as the cow is venerated by the Hindoos; to touch the former with the lips, is a defilement to the one religion; to touch the latter, is a sacrilege to the other. The religious feelings are different, but the results in this case are the same. So sacred, indeed, are cattle regarded by the Hindoos, that the Company’s officers have been accustomed to observe much caution in relation to any supply of beef for their own tables; the slaughter of a cow in a Hindoo village would in itself have been a sufficient cause for revolt; in large towns where Europeans are stationed, a high-walled paddock or compound is set apart for the reception of bullocks intended for food; and scrupulous care is taken that the natives shall know as little as possible of the proceedings connected with the slaughtering. The use of cow’s fat in ammunition would therefore be repulsive to the Hindoo sepoy. Many experienced men trace the mutiny to a false report concerning the cartridges, acting on the minds of natives who had already become distrustful by the machinations of agitators and emissaries. ‘It is a marvel and a mystery that so many years should have passed away without an explosion. At last a firebrand was applied to what a single spark might have ignited; and in the course of a few weeks there was a general conflagration; but a conflagration which still bears more marks of accident than of deliberate conspiracy and incendiarism. In a most unhappy hour—in an hour laden with a concurrence of adverse circumstances—the incident of the greased cartridges occurred. It found the Bengal army in a season of profound peace, and in a state of relaxed discipline. It found the sepoys pondering over the predictions and the fables which had been so assiduously circulated in their lines and their bazaars; it found them with imaginations inflamed and fears excited by strange stories of the designs of their English masters; it found them, as they fancied, with their purity of caste threatened, and their religious distinctions invaded, by the proselytising and annexing Englishmen. Still, there was no palpable evidence of this. Everything was vague, intangible, obscure. Credulous and simple-minded as they were, many might have retained a lingering confidence in the good faith and the good intentions of the British government: had it not been suddenly announced to them, just as they were halting between two opinions, that, in prosecution of his long-cherished design to break down the religion both of Mohammedan and Hindoo, the Feringhee had determined to render their military service the means of their degradation, by compelling them to apply their lips to a cartridge saturated with animal grease—the fat of the swine being used for the pollution of the one, and the fat of the cow for the degradation of the other. If the most astute emissaries of evil who could be employed for the corruption of the Bengal sepoy had addressed themselves to the task of inventing a lie for the confirmation and support of all his fears and superstitions, they could have found nothing more cunningly devised for their purpose.’[^[6]]

It was on the 7th of February 1857 that the governor-general communicated to the home government the first account of anything mysterious or unpleasant in relation to the greased cartridges. He had to announce that a dissatisfaction had exhibited itself among the native troops attached to the musketry-depôt at Dumdum. There are two Dumdums, two Dumdumas, one Dumdumma, and one Dumdumineah in India; but the place indicated is in Bengal, a few miles out of Calcutta, and about half-way between that city and Barrackpore. It was formerly the head-quarters of artillery for the presidency of Bengal; and near it is an excellent cannon-foundry, with casting-rooms, boring-rooms, and all the appliances for making brass guns. It is a sort of Woolwich on a humble scale, connected with ordnance and firearms.

The sepoys at Dumdum had heard rumours which induced them to believe that the grease used for preparing the cartridges for the recently introduced Enfield rifles was composed of the fat of pigs and cows—substances which their religion teaches them to regard in a light altogether strange to Europeans. It was not the first time by three or four years that the cartridge-question had excited attention in India, although in England the public knew absolutely nothing concerning it. From documents brought to light during the earlier months of the mutiny, it appears that in 1853 the commander-in-chief of the forces in India directed the adjutant-general of the Bengal army to call the attention of the governor-general to the subject of cartridges as connected with the prejudices of the natives. For what reason grease of any kind is employed on or with cartridges, may be soon explained. A cartridge, as most persons are aware, is a contrivance for quickly loading firearms. Instead of inserting the powder and bullet separately into the musket, rifle, or pistol, as was the earlier wont, the soldier is provided with a supply of small cartridge-paper tubes, each containing a bullet and the proper proportion of powder; and by the employment of these cartridges much time and attention are saved under circumstances where both are especially valuable. The missiles are called ball or blank cartridges, according as they do or do not each contain a bullet. Now the Enfield rifle, an English improvement on the celebrated Minié rifle invented and used by the French, was largely manufactured by machinery in a government establishment at Enfield, for use in the British and Indian armies; and in firing from this or other rifles it was necessary that the ball-end of the cartridge should have an external application of some greasy substance, to facilitate its movement through the barrel. In the year above named, the East India Company informed the Calcutta government, that a supply of new-greased cartridges had been sent, which the Board of Ordnance wished should be subjected to the test of climate. It was concerning these cartridges that the commander-in-chief recommended caution; on the ground that ‘unless it be known that the grease employed in these cartridges is not of a nature to offend or interfere with the prejudices of caste, it will be expedient not to issue them for test to native corps, but to Europeans only, to be carried in pouch.’ It was not until June 1854 that the cartridges were received in India; and during the next twelve months they were subjected to various tests, at Calcutta, at Cawnpore, and at Rangoon. The cartridges had been greased in four ways—with common grease, with laboratory grease, with Belgian grease, and with Hoffman’s grease, in each case with an admixture of creosote and tobacco; one set was tested by being placed in the ordnance magazines, a second by being kept in wagons, and a third by being tied up in pouch-bundles. The result of these tests was communicated to the directors in the autumn of 1855; and as a consequence, a modification was effected in the cartridges afterwards sent from England for service with the Enfield rifles in India.

To return now to the affair at Dumdum. When the complaints and suspicions of the sepoys were made known, inquiries were sent to England for exact particulars relating to the obnoxious missiles. It was ascertained that the new cartridges were made at the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich; and that Captain Boxer, the superintendent of that department, was accustomed to use for lubrication a composition formed of five parts tallow, five parts stearine, and one part wax—containing, therefore, ox or cow’s fat, but none from pigs. He had no prejudices in the matter to contend against in England, and used therefore just such a composition as appeared to him most suitable for the purpose. The cartridges were not sent out to India ready greased for use; as, in a hot country, the grease would soon be absorbed by the paper: there was, therefore, a part of the process left to be accomplished when the cartridges reached their destination.

It appears to have been in the latter part of January that the first open manifestation was made at Dumdum of a disinclination to use the cartridges; and immediately a correspondence among the authorities commenced concerning it. When the complaint had been made, the men were seemingly appeased on being assured that the matter would be duly represented; and as a means of conciliation, cartridges without grease were issued, the men being allowed to apply any lubricating substance they chose. It was further determined that no more ready-made cartridges should be obtained from England, but that bullets and paper should be sent separately, to be put together in India; that experiments should be made at Woolwich, to produce some lubricating substance free from any of the obnoxious ingredients; and that other experiments should meanwhile be made by the 60th Rifles—at that time stationed at Meerut—having the same object in view.

During the inquiry into the manifestation and alleged motives of this insubordination, one fact was elicited, which, if correct, seems to point to a date when the conspirators—whoever they may have been—began to act upon the dupes. On the 22d of January, a low-caste Hindoo asked a sepoy of the 2d Bengal Grenadiers to give him a little water from his lota or bottle; the other, being a Brahmin, refused, on the ground that the applicant would defile the vessel by his touch—a magnificence of class-superiority to which only the Hindoo theory could afford place. This refusal was met by a retort, that the Brahmin need not pride himself on his caste, for he would soon lose it, as he would ere long be required to bite off the ends of cartridges covered with the fat of pigs and cows. The Brahmin, alarmed, spread the report; and the native troops, as is alleged, were afraid that when they went home their friends would refuse to eat with them. When this became known to the English officers, the native troops were drawn up on parade, and encouraged to state the grounds of their dissatisfaction. All the native sergeants and corporals, and two-thirds of all the privates, at once stepped forward, expressed their abhorrence of having to touch anything containing the fat of cows or pigs, and suggested the employment of wax or oil for lubricating the cartridges. It was then that the conciliatory measures, noticed above, were adopted.

Still were there troubles and suspicious circumstances; but the scene is now transferred from Dumdum to Barrackpore. This town, sixteen miles from Calcutta, is worthy of note chiefly for its connection with the supreme government of India. The governor-general has a sort of suburban residence there, handsome, commodious, and situated in the midst of a very beautiful park. There are numerous bungalows or villas inhabited by European families, drawn to the spot by the salubrity of the air, by the beauty of the Hoogly branch of the Ganges, at this place three-quarters of a mile in width, and by the garden and promenade attached to the governor-general’s villa. In military matters, before the Revolt, there was a ‘presidency division of the army,’ of which some of the troops were in Calcutta, some at Barrackpore, and a small force of artillery at Dumdum, nearly midway between the two places; the whole commanded by a general officer at Barrackpore, under whom was a brigadier to command that station only. The station is convenient for military operations in the eastern part of Bengal, and for any sudden emergencies at Calcutta. Six regiments of native infantry were usually cantoned at Barrackpore, with a full complement of officers: the men hutted in commodious lines, and the officers accommodated in bungalows or lodges.

It was at this place that the discontent next shewed itself, much to the vexation of the government, who had hoped that the Dumdum affair had been satisfactorily settled, and who had explained to the native regiments at Barrackpore what had been done to remove the alleged cause of complaint. The sepoys at this place, however, made an objection to bite off the ends of the cartridges—a necessary preliminary to the loading of a rifle—on account of the animal fat contained, or supposed to be contained, in the grease with which the paper was lubricated: such fat not being permitted to touch the lips or tongues of the men, under peril of defilement. Some of the authorities strongly suspected that this renewed discontent was the work of secret agitators rather than a spontaneous expression of the men’s real feeling. There was at the time a religious Hindoo society or party at Calcutta, called the Dhurma Sobha, suspected of having spread rumours that the British government intended to compel the Hindoos to become Christians. Contemporaneously, too, with this movement, three incendiary fires took place at Barrackpore within four days; and a native sergeant’s bungalow was burnt down at Raneegunge, another military station in Lower Bengal. It was natural, therefore, that General Hearsey, the responsible officer at Barrackpore, should wish to ascertain what connection, if any, existed between these incendiarisms, intrigues, complainings, and greased cartridges. This was the more imperative, on account of the relative paucity of English troops in that part of India. There were four native regiments quartered at that time at Barrackpore—namely, the 2d Grenadiers, the 34th and 70th Native Infantry, and the 43d Native Light Infantry; whereas, in the four hundred miles between Calcutta and Dinapoor there was only one European regiment, the Queen’s 53d foot, of which one half was at Calcutta and the other half at Dumdum. The general held a special court of inquiry at Barrackpore on the 6th of February, and selected a portion of the 2d native Grenadier regiment to come forward and explain the cause of their continued objection to the paper of which the new rifle-cartridges were composed. One of the sepoys, Byjonath Pandy, stated that he felt a suspicion that the paper might affect his caste. On being asked his reason for this suspicion, he answered that the paper was a new kind which he had not seen before; and there was a ‘bazaar report’ that the paper contained animal fat. On being requested to examine the paper carefully in the light, and to explain to the court what he saw objectionable in it, he replied that his suspicion proceeded from the paper being stiff and cloth-like, and from its tearing differently from the paper formerly in use. Another sepoy, Chaud Khan, was then examined. He objected to the paper because it was tough, and burned as if it contained grease. He stated that much dismay had been occasioned in the regiment by the fact that ‘on the 4th of February a piece of the cartridge-paper was dipped in water, and then burned; when burning, it made a fizzing noise, and smelt as if there were grease in it.’ Thereupon a piece of the paper was burned in open court; Chaud Khan confessed that he could not smell or see grease in it; but he repeated his objection to the use of the paper, on the plea that ‘everybody is dissatisfied with it on account of its being glazed, shining like waxed cloth.’ Another witness, Khadu Buksh, filling the rank of subadar or native captain, on being examined, frankly stated that he had no objection to the cartridge itself, but that there was a general report in the cantonment that the paper was made up with fat. A jemadar or lieutenant, named Golal Khan, said very positively: ‘There is grease in it, I feel assured; as it differs from the paper which has heretofore been always used for cartridges.’ As shewing the well-known power of what in England would be called ‘public opinion,’ the answer of one of the sepoys is worthy of notice; he candidly confessed that he himself had no objection to use the cartridges, but he could not do so, as his companions would object to it. While these occurrences were under scrutiny, a jemadar of the 34th regiment came forward to narrate what he knew on the matter, as affording proof of conspiracy. On the 5th, when the fear of detection had begun to work among them, two or three of the sepoys came to him, and asked him to accompany them to the parade-ground. He did so, and there found a great crowd assembled, composed of men of the different regiments at the station; they had their heads tied up in handkerchiefs or cloths, so that only a small part of the face was exposed. They told him they were determined to die for their religion; and that if they could concert a plan that evening, they would on the next night plunder the station and kill all the Europeans, and then depart whither they pleased. The number he stated to be about three hundred. It was not at the time known to the authorities, but was rendered probable by circumstances afterwards brought to light, that letters and emissaries were being despatched, at the beginning of February, from the native troops at Barrackpore to those at other stations, inviting them to rise in revolt against the British.

Under any other circumstances, a discussion concerning such petty matters as bits of cartridge-paper and items of grease would be simply ridiculous; but at that time and place the ruling authorities, although ignorant of the real extent of the danger, saw clearly that they could not afford to regard such matters as otherwise than serious. There was either a sincere prejudice to be conciliated, or a wide-spread conspiracy to be met; and it was at once determined to test again the sincerity of the sepoys, by yielding to their (apparently) religious feelings on a matter which did not affect the efficiency of the service. A trial was made, therefore, of a mode of loading the rifle without biting the cartridge, by tearing off the end with the left hand. The commander-in-chief, finding on inquiry that this method was sufficiently efficacious, and willing to get rid of mere formalism in the matter, consented that the plan should be adopted both for percussion-muskets and for rifles. This done, the governor-general, by virtue of his supreme command, ordered the adoption of the same system throughout India.

The scene now again changes: we have to attend to certain proceedings at Berhampore, following on those at Barrackpore. Of Berhampore as a town, little need be said here; and that little is called for principally to determine which Berhampore is meant. Under the forms Berhampore, Berhampoor, or Burhampore, there are no less than four towns in India—one in the native state of Nepaul, sixty miles from Khatmandoo; another in the Nagpoor territory, sixty miles from the city of the same name; another in the Madras presidency, near Orissa; and a fourth in the district of Moorshedabad, Lower Bengal. It is this last-named Berhampore to which attention is here directed. The town is on the left bank of the river Bhagruttee, a great offset of the Ganges, and on the high road from Calcutta to Moorshedabad—distant about a hundred and twenty miles from the first-named city by land, and a hundred and sixty by water. It is in a moist, unhealthy spot, very fatal to Europeans, and in consequence disliked by them as a station in past times; but sanitary measures, draining, and planting have greatly improved it within the last few years. As a town, it is cheerful and attractive in appearance, adorned by stately houses in the neighbourhood, to accommodate permanent British residents. The military cantonments are large and striking; the grand square, the excellent parade-ground, the quarters of the European officers—all are handsome. Before the Revolt, Berhampore was included within the presidency division in military matters, and was usually occupied by a body of infantry and another of artillery. There is painful evidence of the former insalubrity of the station met with in a large open space filled with tombstones, contrasting mournfully with the majestic cantonments of the military. Berhampore has, or had a few years ago, a manufactory of the silk bandana handkerchiefs once so popular in England.

The troubles in this town were first made manifest in the following way. On or about the 24th of February, a portion of the 34th regiment of Bengal infantry changed its station from Barrackpore to Berhampore, where it was greeted and feasted by the men of the 19th native infantry, stationed there at that time. During their feasting, the new-comers narrated all the news from Dumdum and Barrackpore concerning the greased cartridges; and the effects of this gossip were very soon made visible. To understand what occurred, the mode of piling or storing arms in India must be attended to; in the Bombay army, and in the Queen’s regiments, the men were wont to keep their arms with them in their huts; but in the Bengal army, it was a custom to deposit them in circular brick buildings called bells, which were kept locked under native guard, each in front of a particular company’s lines. The men of the 19th regiment, then, excited by the rumours and stories, the fears and suspicions of their companions in arms elsewhere, but not knowing or not believing—or perhaps not caring for—the promises of change made by the military authorities, broke out into insubordination. On the 26th of February, being ordered to parade for exercise with blank cartridges, they refused to receive the percussion-caps, as a means of rendering their firing impossible—alleging that the cartridge-paper supplied for the charge was of two kinds; that they doubted the qualities of one or both; and that they believed in the presence of the fat of cows or pigs in the grease employed. That the men were either dupes or intriguers is evident; for it so happened that the cartridges offered to them were the very same in kind as they had used during many years, and had been made up before a single Enfield rifle had reached India. This resistance was a serious affair; it was something more than a complaint or petition, and needed to be encountered with a strong hand. It is a matter of opinion, judged differently even by military men accustomed to India and its natives, whether the proper course was on that occasion taken. The commanding officer, Lieutenant-colonel Mitchell, ordered a detachment of native cavalry and a battery of native artillery—the only troops at Barrackpore besides those already named—to be on parade on the following morning. Between ten and eleven o’clock at night, however, the men of the 19th regiment broke open the armouries or bells, took possession of their muskets and ammunition, and carried them to their lines. The next day, the guns were got ready, and the officers proceeded to the parade-ground, where they found the men in undress, but armed, formed in line, and shouting. The officers were threatened if they came on. Mitchell then expostulated with them; he pointed out the absurdity of their suspicions, and the unworthiness of their present conduct, and commanded them to give up their arms and return peaceably to their lines; whereupon the native officers said the men would refuse so to do unless the cavalry and artillery were withdrawn. The lieutenant-colonel withdrew them, and then the infantry yielded. It was a difficult position for an officer to be placed in; if he had struggled, it would have been with natives against natives; and, doubtful of the result of such a contest, he assented to the men’s conditional surrender.

The affair could not be allowed to end here. The Calcutta authorities, receiving news on the 4th of March of this serious disaffection, but deeming it unsafe to punish while so few European troops were at hand, sent quietly to Rangoon in Pegu, with orders that Her Majesty’s 84th foot should steam up to Calcutta as quickly as possible. On the 20th, this regiment arrived; and then the governor-general, acting in harmony with Major-general Hearsey, resolved on the disbandment of the native regiment which had disregarded the orders of its superiors. Accordingly, on the 31st of March, the 19th regiment was marched from Berhampore to Barrackpore, the head-quarters of the military division; the men were disarmed, paid off, marched out of the cantonments as far as Palta Ghaut, and conveyed across the river in steamers placed for the purpose. In short, the regiment, in a military sense, was destroyed, without personal punishment to any of the men composing it. But though not punished, in the ordinary sense, the infliction was a great one; for the men at once became penniless, unoccupied, objectless. The governor-general, in describing these proceedings for the information of the home government, added: ‘We trust that the severe measures which we have been forced to adopt will have the effect of convincing the native troops that they will only bring ruin on themselves by failing in their duty to the state and in obedience to their officers.’

Viscount Canning.

On the occasion just adverted to, General Hearsey addressed the men very energetically, while an official paper from the governor-general, read to the troops, asserted in distinct terms that the rumour was wholly groundless which imputed to the government an intention to interfere with the religion of the people. It was a charge soon afterwards brought in England against the governor-general, that, having subscribed to certain missionary societies in India, he did not like to abjure all attempts at the conversion of the natives; and that, being thus balanced between his public duty and his private religious feeling, he had issued the general order to the whole army, but had not shewn any solicitude to convey that positive declaration to all the natives in all the cantonments or military stations. This, however, was said when Viscount Canning was not present to defend himself; reasonable men soon saw that the truth was not to be obtained by such charges, unless supported by good evidence. It is, however, certain, that much delay and routine formality occurred throughout all these proceedings. As early as the 11th of February, General Hearsey wrote from Barrackpore the expressive words: ‘We are on a mine ready to explode’—in allusion to the uneasy state of feeling or opinion among the sepoys that their religious usages were about to be tampered with; and yet it was not until the 27th of March that the Supreme Council at Calcutta agreed to the issue of a general order declaring it to be the invariable rule of the government to treat the religious tendencies of all its servants with respect; nor until the 31st that this general order was read to the troops at Barrackpore. Considering the mournful effects of dilatoriness and rigid formalism during the Crimean war, the English public had indulged a hope that a healthy reform would be introduced into the epistolary mechanism of the government departments; and this was certainly to some extent realised in England; but unfortunately the reform had not yet reached India. During these early months of the mutiny, an absurd waste of time occurred in the writing and despatching of an enormous number of letters, where a personal interview, or a verbal message by a trusty servant, might have sufficed. Eight letters were written, and four days consumed, before the Calcutta authorities knew what was passing at Dumdum, eight miles distant. A certain order given by the colonel of a regiment at Calcutta being considered injudicious by the general, an inquiry was made as to the grounds for the order; eight days and nine letters were required for this inquiry and the response to it, and yet the two officers were within an hour’s distance of each other during the whole time. Although the affair at Barrackpore on the 6th of February was assuredly of serious import, it was not known to the government at Calcutta until the evening of the 10th, notwithstanding that a horseman might easily have ridden the sixteen miles in two hours. General Hearsey’s reply to a question as to the cause of the delay is truly instructive, as exemplifying the slowness of official progress in India: ‘I have no means of communicating anything to the government; I have no mounted orderly, no express camels; I must always write by the post; and that leaves Barrackpore at the most inconvenient hour of three o’clock in the afternoon.’ These facts, trivial in themselves, are worthy of being borne in mind, as indicative of defects in the mechanism of government likely to be disastrous in times of excitement and insubordination.

Barrackpore was destined to be a further source of vexation and embarrassment to the government. It will be remembered that a part of the 34th native infantry went from that town to Berhampore in the last week in February; but the bulk of the regiment remained at Barrackpore. Inquiries, afterwards instituted, brought to light the fact that the European commander of that regiment had been accustomed to distribute religious tracts among his men; and it was surmised that the scruples and prejudices of the natives, especially the Brahmins, had been unfavourably affected by this proceeding. But whether the cause had or had not been rightly guessed, it is certain that the 34th displayed more mutinous symptoms at that time than any other regiment. When the news of the disturbance at Berhampore reached them, they became greatly excited: they attended to their duties, but with sullen doggedness; and they held nightly meetings, at which speeches were made sympathetic with the Berhampore mutineers. The authorities, not wholly ignorant of these meetings, nevertheless remained quiet until a European regiment could arrive to aid them. When the Queen’s 84th arrived at Calcutta, the 34th were more excited than ever, believing that something hostile was intended against them; their whispers became murmurs, and they openly expressed their sympathy. When, in accordance with the plan noticed in the last paragraph, the 19th were marched off from Berhampore to be disbanded at Barrackpore, the 34th displayed still greater audacity. The 19th having rested for a time at Barraset, eight miles from Barrackpore, a deputation from the 34th met them, and made a proposal that they should that very night kill all their officers, march to Barrackpore, join the 2d and 34th, fire the bungalows, surprise and overwhelm the Europeans, seize the guns, and then march to threaten Calcutta. Had the 19th been as wild and daring, as irritated and vengeful, as the 34th, there is no knowing what calamities might have followed; but they exhibited rather a repentant and regretful tone, and submitted obediently to all the details of their disbandment at Barrackpore.

It will therefore be seen that the seeds of further disaffection had been already sown. As the 34th native infantry had been instrumental in inciting the 19th to mutiny, ending in disbandment, so did it now bring a similar punishment on itself. On the 29th of March, one Mungal Pandy, a sepoy in the 34th, roused to a state of excitement by the use of intoxicating drugs, armed himself with a sword and a loaded musket, traversed the lines, called upon his comrades to rise, and declared he would shoot the first European he met. Lieutenant Baugh, adjutant of the corps, hearing of this man’s conduct, and of the excited state of the regiment generally, rode hastily to the lines. Mungal Pandy fired, missed the officer, but struck his horse. The lieutenant, in self-defence, fired his pistol, but missed aim; whereupon the sepoy attacked him with his sword, wounded him in the hand, brought him to the ground, and tried to entice the other soldiers to join in the attack. The sergeant-major of the corps, who went to the lieutenant’s assistance, was also wounded by Mungal Pandy. The dark feature in this transaction was that many hundred men in the regiment looked on quietly without offering to protect the lieutenant from his assailant; one of them, a jemadar, refused to take Mungal into custody, and forbade his men to render any assistance to the lieutenant, who narrowly escaped with his life. Major-general Hearsey, on being informed of the occurrence, proceeded to the parade-ground, where, to his astonishment, he saw the man walking to and fro, with a blood-smeared sword in one hand, and a loaded musket in the other. He advanced with some officers and men to secure the sepoy, which was accomplished with much difficulty; and it was only by the most resolute bearing of the major-general that the rest of the men could be induced to return quietly to their lines. A court-martial was held on Mungal Pandy, and on the rebellious jemadar, both of whom were forthwith found guilty, and executed on the 8th of April. No assignable cause appeared for the conduct of this man: it may have been a mere drunken frenzy; yet there is more probability that a mutinous spirit, concealed within his breast during sober moments, made its appearance unchecked when under the influence of drugs. There was another sepoy, however, who acted faithfully on the occasion; this man, Shiek Paltoo, was accompanying Lieutenant Baugh as orderly officer at the time of the attack; and by his prompt assistance the lieutenant was saved from further injury than a slight wound. Shiek Paltoo was raised to the rank of supernumerary havildar for his brave and loyal conduct.

Calcutta.

The outrage, however, could not be allowed to terminate without further punishment. For a time, the government at Calcutta believed that the execution of the two principal offenders would suffice, and that the sepoys would quietly return to their obedience; but certain ominous occurrences at Lucknow and elsewhere, about the end of April, shewed the necessity for a stern line of conduct, especially as the 34th still displayed a kind of sullen doggedness, as if determined on further insubordination. After mature consideration the whole of the disposable troops in and around Calcutta were, on the 5th of May, marched off to Barrackpore, to effect the disarming and disbanding of such sepoys among the 34th as were present in the lines when Lieutenant Baugh was wounded. The force comprised the Queen’s 64th regiment, a wing of the 53d, the 2d, 43d, and 70th native infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, and a light field-battery with six guns. When these troops had been drawn up in two sides of a square, on the morning of the 6th, about four hundred sepoys of the 34th were halted in front of the guns. The order for disbandment was read out by the interpreter, Lieutenant Chamier; and after a few energetic remarks upon the enormity of their offence, General Hearsey commanded them to pile their arms, and strip off the uniform which they had disgraced. When this was done, the work of paying up their arrears was commenced. They were then dismissed with their families and baggage, to Chinsura, a town a few miles higher up the Hoogly. The grenadiers of the 84th, and a portion of the cavalry, accompanied them to see that they went to and settled at Chinsura, and did not cross the river to Chittagong, where three other companies of the same regiment were stationed. Four of the disbanded sepoys were officers; one of whom, a subadar, sobbed bitterly at his loss and degradation, although it was strongly suspected that he had been one of the leaders in the insubordination. In the general order which the governor-general ordered to be read to every regiment in the service, concerning this disbandment, words occur which shew that the old delusion was still working in the breasts of the natives. ‘The sepoy who was the chief actor in the disgraceful scene of the 29th of March called upon his comrades to come to his support, for the reason that their religion was in danger, and that they were about to be compelled to employ cartridges, the use of which would do injury to their caste; and from the words in which he addressed the sepoys, it is to be inferred that many of them shared this opinion with him. The governor-general in council has recently had occasion to remind the army of Bengal that the government of India has never interfered to constrain its soldiers in matters affecting their religious faith. He has declared that the government of India never will do so; and he has a right to expect that this declaration shall give confidence to all who have been deceived and led astray. But, whatever may be the deceptions or evil counsels to which others have been exposed, the native officers and men of the 34th regiment native infantry have no excuse for misapprehension on this subject. Not many weeks previously to the 29th of March, it had been explained to that regiment—first by their own commanding officer, and subsequently by the major-general commanding the division—that their fears for religion were groundless. It was carefully and clearly shewn to them that the cartridges which they would be called upon to use contained nothing which could do violence to their religious scruples. If, after receiving these assurances, the sepoys of the 34th regiment, or of any other regiment, still refuse to place trust in their officers and in the government, and still allow suspicions to take root in their minds, and to grow into disaffection, insubordination, and mutiny, the fault is their own, and their punishment will be upon their own heads.’

Five weeks elapsed between the offence of the 19th native infantry and its punishment by disbandment; five weeks similarly elapsed between the offence and the disbandment of the 34th; and many observant officers were of opinion that these delays worked mischief, by instilling into the minds of the sepoys a belief that the authorities were afraid to punish them. Whether the punishment of disbanding was, after all, sufficiently severe, is a question on which military men are by no means agreed.

At a later date than the events narrated in this chapter, but closely connected with them in subject, was the circulation of a report manifestly intended to rouse the religious prejudices of the Hindoos by a false assertion concerning the designs of the ruling powers. In some of the towns of Southern India, far away from Bengal, unknown emissaries circulated a paper, or at least a story, of which the following was the substance: That the padres, probably Christian missionaries, had sent a petition to the Queen of England, complaining of the slowness with which Hindoos were made to become Christians; they adduced the conduct of some of the Mohammedan potentates of India in past times, such as Tippoo Saib, who had compelled the Hindoos to embrace Islamism; and they suggested a similar authoritative policy. The story made the padres give this advice: to mix up bullocks’ fat and pigs’ fat with the grease employed on the cartridges; in order that, by touching these substances with their teeth or lips, the sepoys might lose caste, and thus induce them to embrace Christianity as their only resource. The climax of the story was reached by making the Queen express her joy at the plan, and her resolve that it should be put in operation. The success of such a lying rumour must, of course, have mainly depended on the ignorance and credulity of the natives.

A far-distant region now calls for notice. At a time when the Upper and Lower Bengal provinces were, as the authorities hoped and believed, recovering from the wild excitement of the cartridge question, the commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej territory had ample means for knowing that the minds of the natives in that region were mischievously agitated by some cause or other. It is necessary here to understand what is meant by this geographical designation. If we consult a map in which an attempt is made, by distinct colouring, to define British territory from semi-independent states, we shall find the region between Delhi and Lahore cut up in a most extraordinary way. The red British patches are seen to meander among the scraps of native territory with great intricacy: so much so, indeed, that a map on a very large scale could alone mark the multitudinous lines of boundary; and even such a map would soon become obsolete, for the red, like a devouring element, has been year by year absorbing bits of territory formerly painted green or yellow. The peculiar tribe of the Sikhs, besides occupying the Punjaub, inhabit a wide region on the east or left bank of the river Sutlej, generally included under the name of Sirhind. For fifty years the British in India have had to deal, or have made a pretext for dealing, with the petty Sikh chieftains of this Sirhind region: at one time ‘protecting’ those on the east of the Sutlej from the aggression of the great Sikh leader, Runjeet Singh, on the west of that river; then ‘annexing’ the small territories of some of these chieftains on failure of male heirs; then seizing others as a punishment for non-neutrality or non-assistance during war-time. Thus it arose that—before the annexation of the Punjaub itself in 1849—much of the Sikh country in Sirhind had become British, and was divided into four districts marked by the towns of Ferozpore, Umballa or Umballah, Loodianah, and Kythul; leaving Putialah, Jeend, and Furreedkote as the three principal protected or semi-independent Sikh states of that country. Meanwhile a region somewhat to the east or northeast of Sirhind was subject to just the same process. Being hilly, it is called the Hill Country; and being ruled by a number of petty chieftains, the separate bits of territory are called the Hill States. During about forty years the process of absorption has been going on—arising primarily out of the fact that the British aided the Hill chieftains against the Nepaulese, and then paid themselves in their wonted manner. Part of Gurhwal was annexed; then Sundock, Malowa, and a number of other places not easily found in the maps; and afterwards Ramgurh was given back in exchange for Simla, to form a healthy holiday-place among the hills, a sort of Balmoral for sick governors and commanders. As a final result, much of the Hill Country became British, and the rest was left in the hands of about twenty petty chieftains.

Now, when the Cis-Sutlej territory is mentioned, it must be interpreted as including all the region taken by the British from the minor Sikh chieftains in Sirhind; together with such of the Hill States of Gurhwal and its vicinity as have become British. The whole together have been made a sub-government, under a commissioner responsible to the governor-general; or, more strictly, the commissioner rules the Sirhind region, while the Hills are included among the non-regulation districts of the Agra government. The four towns and districts of Ferozpore, Loodianah, Umballa, and Kythul, east of the Sutlej, will suffice for our purpose to indicate the Cis-Sutlej territory—so named in a Calcutta point of view, as being on the cis or hither side of the Sutlej, in reference to that city.

It was at Umballa, one of the towns in the Cis-Sutlej territory, that the commissioner, Mr Barnes, reported acts of incendiarism that much perplexed him. On the 26th of March, Hurbunsee Singh, a subadar or native captain in the 36th regiment native infantry, attached to the musketry depôt at that place, became an object of attack to the other men of the regiment; they endeavoured to burn his hut and his property. It was just at the time when reports reached Umballa relative to the cartridges, the using of which was said by the sepoys to be an innovation derogatory to their caste and religion. Hurbunsee Singh had at once come forward, and publicly stated his willingness to fire with such cartridges, as being, in his opinion, free from objection. The incendiarism took place on the day named; and the commissioner directly inferred that there must be something wrong in the thoughts of men who would thus seek to injure one of their own native officers on such grounds. Nothing further occurred, however, until the 13th of April, when another fire broke out. This was followed by a third on the 15th, in some outhouses belonging to the 60th native infantry; by two fires on the 16th, when government property was burned to the value of thirty thousand rupees; by the burning on the 17th of an empty bungalow in the 5th regiment native infantry lines, of a stable belonging to an English officer of the 60th, and of another building. On the 20th, attempts were made on the houses of the jemadar and havildar of the 5th regiment, two native officers favourable to the new cartridges; and under the bed of the jemadar were found gunpowder and brimstone, as if to destroy the man as well as his property. Some of the buildings are believed to have been set on fire by dropping burning brimstone through holes in the roof; and on one occasion, when the attempt at incendiarism had failed, a paper containing powder and brimstone was found. On the 21st and two following days, similar fires occurred. On the 25th, the house of the band-master of Her Majesty’s 9th Lancers was fired and burned; and two or three similar attempts were shortly afterwards made, but frustrated. At all these fires, the engines of the cantonment were set to work; but it was observed that many of the sepoys worked listlessly and indifferently, as if their thoughts were bent rather upon fire-raising than fire-quenching.

That such occurrences produced uneasiness among the English authorities at Umballa may well be supposed. Captain Howard, magistrate of the cantonment, wrote thus to the Calcutta government: ‘The emanating cause of the arson at this cantonment, I conceive, originated with regard to the newly introduced cartridges, to which the native sepoy shews his decided objection: it being obnoxious to him from a false idea—which, now that it has entered the mind of the sepoy, is difficult to eradicate—that the innovation of this cartridge is derogatory both to his caste and his religion.... That this has led to the fires at this cantonment, in my own private mind I am perfectly convinced. Were it the act of only one or two, or even a few persons, the well-disposed sepoys would at once have come forward and forthwith informed; but that there is an organised leagued conspiracy existing, I feel confident. Though all and every individual composing a regiment may not form part of the combination, still I am of opinion that such a league in each corps is known to exist; and such being upheld by the majority, or rather connived at, therefore it is that no single man dared to come forward and expose it.’ Although proof could not be obtained of the culpability of any one sepoy, the incendiarism was at once attributed to them rather than to the peasantry. The existence of some oath or bond of secrecy was further supposed from the fact that a reward of one thousand rupees failed to bring forward a single witness or accuser. After about twenty attempts at burning buildings, more or less successful, the system was checked—by the establishment of mounted and foot patrols and pickets; by the expulsion of all fakeers and idle persons not belonging to the cantonment; by the refusal of a passage through it to sepoys on furlough or discharged; and by the arrest of such sepoys in the Umballa regiments as, having furloughs, still remained in the cantonment—influenced, apparently, by some mischievous designs.

Every one coincided in opinion with Captain Howard that there had been an organised plan among the sepoys; but some of the officers in the Company’s service, civil as well as military, differed from him in attributing it solely to the cartridge affair—they thought this a blind or pretence to hide some deeper scheme. The commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej states, however, agreed with the magistrate, and expressed an opinion that nothing would restore quiet but a concession to the natives in the matter of greased cartridges; and he recommended to the government at Calcutta the adoption of that line of policy. Writing on the 7th of May, he said: ‘Fires, for the present, have ceased; but I do not think that this is any indication that the uneasy feeling among the sepoys is on the wane.’ Considering the position of Umballa, it is no wonder that those in authority at that spot should feel anxiety concerning the safety of their position. Umballa is more than a thousand miles from Calcutta, separated from it by the whole of the important states in which the cities of Delhi, Meerut, Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, and Benares are situated, and deprived of assistance from thence in the event of the intermediate regions being disturbed. Umballa is a somewhat important town, too, in itself, with more than twenty thousand inhabitants; it is large, and surrounded with a wall, well supplied with water, bounded by a highly fertile district, and capable of furnishing abundant supplies to rebels, if held by them.

The authorities, awakened by these events in so many parts of India, sought to inquire whether the native newspaper press of India had fermented the anarchy. It seemed at first ridiculous to suppose that those miserable little sheets, badly written and worse printed, and having a small circulation, could have contributed much to the creation of the evil. Yet many facts tended to the support of this view. It was a frequent custom in those papers to disguise the writer’s real sentiments under the flimsy mask of a dialogue, in which one side was uniformly made victor. When the government was not actually abused and vilified, it was treated with ridicule, and its motives distorted. There were not many copies of these papers printed and sold; but a kind of ubiquity was afforded to them by the practice of news-mongers or tale-bearers, who went from hut to hut, retailing the various items of news or of comment that had been picked up.

Indeed, the tendency of the people to listen to attacks against the government is now known to have been very marked among the Hindoos. Predictions of the downfall of rulers were a favourite subject with them. Of course, such predictions would not be openly hazarded in newspapers; but they not less surely reached the ears of the natives. Thirty years ago, Sir John Malcolm spoke on this subject in the following way: ‘My attention has been, during the last twenty-five years, particularly directed to this dangerous species of secret war against our authority, which is always carrying on by numerous though unseen hands. The spirit is kept up by letters, by exaggerated reports, and by pretended prophecies. When the time appears favourable, from the occurrence of misfortune to our arms, from rebellion in our provinces, or from mutiny in our troops, circular-letters and proclamations are dispersed over the country with a celerity almost incredible. Such documents are read with avidity. The contents in most cases are the same. The English are depicted as usurpers of low caste, and as tyrants who have sought India with no other view but that of degrading the inhabitants and of robbing them of their wealth, while they seek to subvert their usages and their religion. The native soldiery are always appealed to, and the advice to them is, in all instances I have met with, the same—“Your European tyrants are few in number: kill them!”’ This testimony of Malcolm is especially valuable, as illustrating, and illustrated by, recent events.

The native press of India will come again under notice in a future chapter, connected with the precautionary measures adopted by the governor-general to lessen the power of those news-writers, whether English or native, who shewed a disposition to encourage rebellion by their writings. News and rumours always work most actively among credulous people—an important fact, knowing what we now know of India and its Hindoo inhabitants.

When General Anson, commander-in-chief of the forces in India, found that the small events at Dumdum, Berhampore, and Barrackpore had grown into great importance, and that the cartridge grievance still appeared to press on the consciences or influence the conduct of the sepoys, he deemed it right to make an effort that should pacify the whole of the native troops. Being at Umballa on the 19th of May, to which place he had hastened from his sojourn at Simla, he issued a general order to the native army, informing the troops that it had never been the intention of the government to force them to use any cartridges which could be objected to, and that they never would be required to do so. He announced his object in publishing the order to be to allay the excitement which had been raised in their minds, at the same time expressing his conviction that there was no cause for this excitement. He had been informed, he said, that some of the sepoys who entertained the strongest attachment and loyalty to the government, and who were ready at any moment to obey its orders, were nevertheless under an impression that their families would believe them to be in some way contaminated by the use of the cartridges used with the Enfield rifles recently introduced in India. He expressed regret that the positive assertions of the government officers, as to the non-existence of the objectionable substances in the grease of the cartridges, had not been credited by the sepoys. He solemnly assured the army, that no interference with their caste-principles or their religion was ever contemplated; and as solemnly pledged his word and honour that no such interference should ever be attempted. He announced, therefore, that whatever might be the opinions of the government concerning the cartridges, new or old, he had determined that the new rifle-cartridge, and every other of new form, should be discontinued: balled ammunition being made up by each regiment for its own use, by a proper establishment maintained for the purpose. Finally, he declared his full confidence, ‘that all in the native army will now perform their duty, free from anxiety or care, and be prepared to stand and shed the last drop of their blood, as they had formerly done, by the side of the British troops, and in defence of their country.’ The central government at Calcutta, on receipt of the news of this order having been promulgated, hastily sent to state that, in implying that new cartridges had been issued, the commander-in-chief had overstepped the actual facts of the case; nothing new in that way had been introduced throughout the year, except to the troops at the Depôt of Musketry Instruction at Dumdum. From this fact it appears certain that the credulity of the sepoys at the more distant stations had been imposed upon, either by their fellow-Hindoos engaged in a conspiracy, or by Mohammedans.

Council-house at Calcutta.

In this chapter have been discussed several subjects which, though strange, exhibit nothing terrible or cruel. The suspicions connected with the Oude princes, the mystery of the chupatties, the prophecies of British downfall, the objections to the greased cartridges, the insubordination arising out of those objections, the incendiarism, the inflammatory tendency of the native newspaper press—all were important rather as symptoms, than for their immediate effects. But the month of May, and the towns of Meerut and Delhi, will now introduce us to fearful proceedings—the beginning of a series of tragedies.

[6]. Edinburgh Review, No. 216.

King’s Palace, Delhi.

CHAPTER III.
MEERUT, AND THE REBEL-FLIGHT TO DELHI.

The first week in May marked a crisis in the affairs of British India. It will ever remain an insoluble problem, whether the hideous atrocities that followed might have been prevented by any different policy at that date. The complainings and the disobedience had already presented themselves: the murders and mutilations had not yet commenced; and there are those who believe that if a Lawrence instead of a Hewett had been at Meerut, the last spark that ignited the inflammable materials might have been arrested. But this is a kind of cheap wisdom, a prophecy after the event, an easy mode of judgment, on which little reliance can be placed. Taking the British officers in India as a body, it is certain that they had not yet learned to distrust the sepoys, whom they regarded with much professional admiration for their external qualifications. The Brahmins of the Northwest Provinces—a most important constituent, as we have seen, of the Bengal army—are among the finest men in the world; their average height is at least two inches greater than that of the English soldiers of the line regiments; and in symmetry they also take the lead. They are unaddicted to drunkenness; they are courteous in demeanour, in a degree quite beyond the English soldier; and it is now known that the commanding officers, proud of the appearance of these men on parade, too often ignored those moral qualities without which a good soldier is an impossible production. Whether, when the disturbances became known, the interpretation was favourable to the sepoys, depended much on the peculiar bias in the judgment of each officer. Some believed that the native soldier was docile, obedient, and loyal as long as his religious prejudices were respected; that he was driven to absolute frenzy by the slightest suspicion, whether well or ill grounded, of any interference with his creed or his observances; that he had been gradually rendered distrustful by the government policy of forbidding suttee and infanticide, by the withholding of government contributions to Hindoo temples and idol-ceremonies, by the authorities at Calcutta subscribing to missionary societies, and lastly by the affair of the greased cartridges; and that the sensibilities of Brahminism, thus vitally outraged, prepared the native mind for the belief that we designed to proceed by some stratagem or other to the utter and final abolition of caste. This interpretation is wholly on the Hindoo side, and is respectful rather than otherwise to the earnestness and honesty of the Brahmins. Other officers, however, directed their attention at once to the Mohammedan element in the army, and authoritatively pronounced that the Hindoo sepoys were simply dupes and tools in the hands of the Moslem. These interpreters said—We have superseded the Mohammedan power in India; we have dethroned the descendants of the great Aurungzebe and the greater Akbar; we have subjected the mogul’s lieutenants or nawabs to our authority; we have lately extinguished the last remaining monarchy in Northern India held by a son of the Faithful; we have reduced a conquering and dominant race to a position of inferiority and subserviency; and hence their undying resentment, their implacable hatred, their resolute determination to try one more struggle for supremacy, and their crafty employment of simple bigoted Hindoos as worthy instruments when sufficiently excited by dark hints and bold lies.

PART OF
INDIA
Chief Scene of
THE MUTINIES OF 1857
W. & R. CHAMBERS LONDON & EDINBURGH

But there was one fact which all these officers admitted, when it was too late to apply a remedy. Whether the Hindoo or the Mohammedan element was most disturbed, all agreed that the British forces were ill placed to cope with any difficulties arising out of a revolt. Doubt might be entertained how far the disloyalty among the native troops would extend; but there could be no doubt that European troops were scanty, just at the places where most likely to be needed. There were somewhat over twenty thousand Queen’s troops at the time in India, with a few others on the way thither. Of these, as has been shewn in a former page, the larger proportion was with the Bengal troops; but instead of being distributed in the various Bengal and Oude provinces, they were rather largely posted at two extreme points, certainly not less than two thousand miles apart—on the Afghan frontier of the Punjaub, and on the Burmese frontier of Pegu. Four regiments of the Queen’s army were guarding the newly annexed country of the Punjaub, while three others were similarly holding the recent conquests in Pegu. What was the consequence, in relation to the twelve hundred miles between Calcutta and the Sutlej? An almost complete denudation of European troops: a surrendering of most of the strongholds to the mercy of the sepoys. Only one European regiment at Lucknow, and none other in the whole of Oude; two at Meerut, one at Agra, one at Dinapoor, and one at Calcutta—none at Cawnpore or Allahabad. The two great native capitals of India—Delhi, of the Mohammedans: Benares, of the Hindoos—had not one European regiment in them. Indeed, earlier in the year, Calcutta itself had none; but the authorities, as narrated in the last chapter, became so uneasy at the thought of being without European supporters at the seat of government, that they sent to Rangoon in Pegu for one of the Queen’s regiments, and did not venture upon the Barrackpore disbandments until this regiment had arrived. The lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, comprising Delhi and the surrounding regions, had in his whole government only three European regiments, and a sepoy army, soon found to be faithless. Oude had a considerable native force; but Bengal proper had very few troops of any kind. In short, the Company’s forces were almost as unfavourably distributed as they could possibly be, to stem the Revolt at its beginning; and there may not be much hazard in assuming that the natives were as well acquainted with this fact as the British.

The reader will find it useful to bear in mind, that the unfavourable symptoms during the first four months of the year did not present themselves in those districts which were afterwards associated with such terrible deeds. Meerut and Delhi, Dinapoor and Ghazeepore, Benares and Allahabad, Cawnpore and Lucknow, Mirzapore and Agra—these were not in open disaffection during the period under notice, however much the elements for a storm may have been gathering. It was at Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore, on the Hoogly branch of the Lower Ganges—and at Umballa near the Sutlej, separated from them by more than a thousand miles—that the insubordination was chiefly shewn. Now, however, the scene shifts to the Jumna and the Upper Ganges—with which it will be well to become familiar by means of maps. Especially must the positions of Meerut and Delhi be attended to, in relation to the events detailed in this and the next following chapters.

Meerut, as a district, is a part of the Doab or delta enclosed between the rivers Ganges and Jumna; but it is Meerut the town with which this narrative is concerned. It came into the possession of the British in 1836, and is now included in the territories of Northwest Bengal. The town, standing on the small river Kalee Nuddee, is about equidistant from the Ganges and the Jumna, twenty-five or thirty miles from each, and nearly nine hundred miles from Calcutta. Meerut is interesting to the Indian antiquary in possessing some good architectural remains of mosques and pagodas; and to the European residents, in possessing one of the largest and finest Christian churches in India, capable of accommodating three thousand persons, and provided with a good organ; but the houses of the natives are wretchedly built, and the streets narrow and dirty, as in most oriental towns. It is as a military station, however, that Meerut is most important. The cantonment is two miles north of the town, and is divided into two portions by a small branch of the river, over which two bridges have been thrown. The northern half of the cantonment contains lines for the accommodation of a brigade of horse-artillery, a European cavalry corps, and a regiment of European infantry—separated respectively by intervals of several hundred yards. In front of these is a fine parade-ground, a mile in width and four miles in length, having ample space for field-battery practice and the manœuvres of horse-artillery; with a heavy battery on the extreme right. Overlooking the parade are the barracks, with stables, hospitals, riding-schools, canteens, and other military offices. The barracks consist of a series of separate brick-built low-roofed structures, each comprising one large and lofty room, surrounded by a spacious enclosed verandah, divided into apartments for the non-commissioned officers and the families of married men. Behind the barracks, in a continued line three deep, are the bungalows or lodges of the officers, each surrounded by a garden about a hundred yards square. The opposite or southern half of the cantonment is mainly occupied by the huts (not barracks) for native troops, and by the detached bungalows for the officers who command them. This description, applicable in some degree to many parts of India, may assist in conveying an idea of the manner in which the European officers have usually been lodged at the cantonments—in detached bungalows at no great distance from the huts of the native troops: it may render a little more intelligible some of the details of the fearful tragedies about to be narrated. Before the Revolt, it was customary to keep at Meerut a regiment of European cavalry, a regiment of European infantry, one of native cavalry, and three of native infantry, besides horse and foot artillery. The station is a particularly healthy one; and, both politically and geographically, is an important place to the British rulers of India.

Meerut, in some respects, was one of the last towns in which the mutiny might have been expected to commence; for there was no other place in the Northwest Provinces containing at the time so many English troops. There were the 60th (Rifle) regiment, 1000 strong; the 6th Dragoon Guards or Carabineers, 600 strong (but not fully mounted); a troop of horse-artillery; and 500 artillery recruits—altogether about 2200 men, with a full complement of officers. The native troops were but little more numerous: comprising the 3d Bengal cavalry, and the 11th and 20th Bengal infantry. In such a relative state of the European and native forces, no one for an instant would have admitted the probability of a revolt being successful at such a time and place.

Although it was not until the second week in May that those events took place which carried grief and mourning into so many families, Meerut began its troubles in the latter part of the preceding month. The troops at this station had not been inattentive to the events transpiring in Lower Bengal; they knew all the rumours concerning the greased cartridges; they had been duped into a belief in the truth of those rumours; and, moreover, emissaries had been at work among them, instilling into their minds another preposterous notion—that the government had plotted to take away their caste and insult their religion, by causing the pulverised bones of bullocks to be mixed up with the flour sold in the public markets or bazaars. Major-general Hewett, commanding the military division of which Meerut was the chief station, sought by every means to eradicate from the minds of the men these absurd and pernicious ideas; he pointed out how little the government had to gain by such a course, how contrary it would be to the policy adopted during a hundred years, and how improbable was the whole rumour. He failed, however, in his appeal to the good sense of the men; and equally did the European officers of the native regiments fail: the sepoys or infantry, the sowars or cavalry, alike continued in a distrustful and suspicious state. Many British officers accustomed to Indian troops aver that these men had been rendered more insubordinate than ever by the leniency of the proceedings at Barrackpore and Berhampore; that disbandment was not a sufficiently severe punishment for the offences committed at those places; that the delay in the disbanding was injurious, as denoting irresolution on the part of the authorities at Calcutta; and that the native troops in other places had begun to imbibe an opinion that the government were afraid of them. But whatever be the amount of truth in this mode of interpretation, certain it is that the troops at Meerut evinced a mutinous spirit that caused great uneasiness to their commanders. Bungalows and houses were set on fire, no one knew by whom; officers were not saluted as had been their wont; and whispers went about that the men intended to adopt a bold course in reference to the greased cartridges.

The military authorities on the spot resolved to put this matter to the test. On the 23d of April, Colonel Smyth, the English commander of the 3d regiment of native Bengal cavalry, ordered a parade of the skirmishers of his regiment with carabines on the following morning, to shew them the newly introduced mode of adjusting their cartridges without biting, hoping and believing that they would be gratified by this indication of the willingness of the government to consult their feelings in the matter. He caused the havildar-major and the havildar-major’s orderly to come to his house, to shew them how it was to be done; and the orderly fired off a carabine under the new system. At night, however, uneasiness was occasioned by the burning down of the orderly’s tent, and of a horse-hospital close to the magazine. Although this act of incendiarism looked ominous, the colonel nevertheless determined to carry out his object on the morrow. Accordingly, on the morning of the 24th, the troops assembled on parade; and the havildar-major fired off one cartridge to shew them how it was to be done. The men demurred, however, to the reception of the cartridges, though the same in kind as had been used by them during a long period, and not the new cartridges. An investigation ensued, which was conducted on the 25th by Major Harrison, deputy-judge advocate. On being examined, the men admitted that they could discern nothing impure in the composition or glazing of the paper; but added that they had heard it was unclean, and believed it to be so. The inquiry, after a few conciliatory observations on the part of the judge, ended in the men expressing contrition for their obstinacy, and promising a ready obedience in the use of the cartridges whenever called upon.

A hope was now entertained that the difficulties had been smoothed away; but this hope proved to be fallacious. Major-general Hewett, wishing to put an end to the stupid prejudice, and to settle at once all doubts as to the obedience of the men, ordered a parade of the 3d cavalry for the morning of the 6th of May. On the evening of the 5th, preparatory to the parade, cartridges were given out to the men, the same in quality as those which had been freely in use during many years. Eighty-five of the sowars or troopers—either still incredulous on the grease-question, or resolved to mutiny whether with just cause or not—positively refused to receive the cartridges. This conduct, of course, could not be overlooked; the men were taken into custody, and tried by a court-martial; they were found guilty of a grave military offence, and were committed to imprisonment with hard labour, for periods varying from six to ten years. The governor-general, seeing the necessity of promptitude at this crisis, had just sent orders to the military stations that the judgments of all court-martials should be put in force instantly, as a means of impressing the troops with the seriousness of their position; and Major-general Hewett, acting on these instructions, proceeded on the 9th to enforce the sentence of the court-martial. A European guard of 60th Rifles and Carabiniers was placed over the convicted men; and at daybreak the whole military force at the station was assembled on the rifle parade-ground. All were there—the European 60th, Carabiniers, and artillery—the native 3d, 11th, and 20th. The European cannon, carbines, and rifles were loaded, to prepare for any emergency. The eighty-five mutineers of the 3d native cavalry were marched upon the ground; they were stripped of their uniforms and accoutrements; they were shackled with irons riveted on by the armourers. While this was being done, very meaning looks were exchanged between the culprits and the other sowars of the same regiment—the former looking reproachfully at the latter, while the latter appeared gloomy and crestfallen: it was evident that the unconvicted men had promised to resist and prevent the infliction of the degrading punishment on their convicted associates; but it was equally evident that the presence of so many armed European troops would have rendered any attempt at rescue worse than useless. The manacles having been adjusted, the men were marched off to jail. And herein a grave mistake appears to have been committed. Instead of keeping a watchful eye over these men at such a perilous time, and retaining them under a guard of European troops until the excitement had blown over, they were sent to the common jail of Meerut, two miles distant from the cantonment, and there handed over to the police or ordinary civil power of the town. How disastrous was the result of this course of proceeding, we shall presently see. The native troops, when the culprits had been removed from the parade-ground, returned to their lines furious with indignation—at least the 3d cavalry were so, and they gradually brought over the infantry to share in their indignant feelings. It was a degrading punishment, unquestionably: whether the remainder of the native troops at the station would be terrified or exasperated by it, was just the problem which remained to be solved. All the afternoon and evening of that day were the men brooding and whispering, plotting and planning. Unfortunately, the European officers of native regiments were accustomed to mix so seldom with their men, that they knew little of what occurred except on parade-ground: this plotting was only known by its fruits. Judged by subsequent events, it appears probable that the native troops sent emissaries to Delhi, forty miles distant, to announce what had occurred, and to plan an open revolt. The prime plotters were the 3d; the 20th were nearly as eager; but the 11th, newly arrived at Meerut, held back for some time, although they did not betray the rest.

Little did the European inhabitants, their wives and their children, at Meerut, dream what was in store for them on Sunday the 10th of May—a day of peace in the eyes of Christians. It was on the 9th that the sentence of the court-martial on the eighty-five mutineers was enforced: it was on the 10th that the Revolt, in its larger sense, began. Whether these two events stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect, is a question not easily to be answered; but it may safely be asserted that the Revolt would not have resulted from the punishment unless the men had been generally in a state of disaffection. The Sunday opened as most Sundays open in India, quiet and uneventful, and remained so till evening. Ladies and families were then going to evening-service at the church. Some of them passed the mess-room of the 3d cavalry, and there saw servants looking towards the road leading to the native infantry lines. Something was evidently wrong. On inquiry it appeared that a mutiny had broken out, and that fighting was going on in the bazaar. Crowds of armed men soon hurried that way; and families who had been on the route to church, drove or walked back in haste to escape danger. So it was on all sides: whoever on that evening ventured forth, found that blood-shedding instead of church-service would fill their thoughts. The Rev. Mr Smyth, chaplain of Meerut, while driving to church for the seven o’clock service, met two of the 60th Rifles covered with blood; and on reaching the church, he saw buggies and carriages driving away in great confusion, and a body of people pointing to a column of fire and smoke in the direction of the city: frequent shots were heard, amid the cries of a large mob. In another direction the wife of an officer in the 3d cavalry, going like other Europeans to church, and startled like them by sounds of violence, saw a private of the Carabiniers unarmed, and running for very life from several men armed with latthies or long sticks: she stopped her carriage and took in the English soldier; but the men continued to strike at him until the vehicle rolled away. This lady, on reaching her bungalow in haste and dismay, was the first to give notice to her husband that something was wrong among the native troops: he instantly started off on foot to the lines, without waiting for his horse. In another part of the scene, an English officer of the 11th native infantry, at about six o’clock on that evening, while in his bungalow preparing for a ride with Colonel Finnis of the same regiment, had his attention attracted to his servants, and those in the bungalows of other officers, going down towards the front of the several compounds or gardens, and looking steadily into the lines or cantonment of the regiment. He heard a buzzing, murmuring noise, which at first he deemed of no consequence; but as it continued and increased, he hastily finished dressing and went out. Scarcely had he reached his gate, when he heard the sound of firearms, which his practised ear at once told him were loaded with ball-cartridge. An European non-commissioned officer came running towards him, with others, and exclaimed: ‘For God’s sake, sir, leave! Return to your bungalow, change that dress, and fly!’ Shortly afterwards shots came into his own compound; and the havildar-major of the 11th, rushing terrified and breathless into the bungalow, exclaimed: ‘Fly, sahib—fly at once! the regiments are in open mutiny, and firing on their officers; and Colonel Finnis has just been shot in my arms!’ The officer mounted and started off—at first leisurely—because ‘a Briton does not like actually running away under any circumstances;’ but when the havildar-major (native sergeant-major) advised him to gallop off to the European cavalry lines, he saw that the suggestion was good; and he immediately started—over a rugged and barren plain, cut up by nullahs and ravines—towards the lines of the Queen’s Carabiniers.

When these, and a dozen similar mysteries, came to receive their solution, it was found that a mutiny had indeed broken out. Shortly before five o’clock on that Sunday afternoon, the men of the 3d native cavalry, and of the 20th native infantry, rushed out of their lines on a given signal, and proceeded to the lines of the 11th native infantry, all fully armed. After a little hesitation, their comrades joined them; and then all three regiments proceeded to open acts of violence. Colonel Finnis of the 11th, the moment he heard of this startling proceeding, rode to the parade-ground, harangued the men, and endeavoured to induce them to return to their duty. Instead of listening to him, the men of the 20th fired a volley, and he fell, riddled with bullets—the first victim of the Indian Revolt. The other officers present, feeling that their remaining longer on the ground would effect no good, escaped. Whether a daring man might have stemmed the torrent, cannot now be told: no one attempted it after Finnis’s death; his brother-officers were allowed to escape to the lines of the artillery and the Carabiniers, on the other side of the encampment. So far as the accounts are intelligible, the first shots appear to have been fired by the 20th, the 11th joining afterwards in the violence.

While the infantry were thus engaged, the ominous but natural step was taken by the 3d cavalry of releasing their eighty-five imprisoned companions—ominous, because those men, enraged at their incarceration, would join in the disorder with heated blood and excited passions. The troopers proceeded to the jail, set their companions free, armed them, and invited them to share in the mutiny. All this was evidently preconcerted; for native smiths were at hand to strike off the manacles. Yelling and threatening, the whole returned to the lines; and then commenced the direful mischief. Within a very short time, all three regiments became busily engaged in burning and murdering. But this was not all; when the eighty-five troopers were liberated, the other prisoners in the jail, twelve hundred in number, were set at liberty at the same time; and then the scum of Indian society entered into the scenes of violence with demoniac relish, adding tenfold to the horrors perpetrated by the sepoys and sowars. The mutineers and the ruffians set fire to nearly all the bungalows of the native lines, and to the government establishments near at hand, murdering, as they went, the Europeans who fell in their way. The bungalows being mostly thatched with straw, the destruction was very rapid; the cowardly assailants, setting fire to the thatch, waited till the flames had driven out the inmates of the bungalow, and then fell upon them as assassins. The conflagrations were accompanied by the yells of the rioters and the shrieks of the sufferers, rendered more terrible by the approach of darkness. The rabble of the bazaar, and the lowest portion of the population generally, as if intoxicated by release from the dread of Europeans, now joined the mutineers and the released felons, and the horrors thickened. On all sides shot up columns of flame and smoke; on all sides were heard the shouts and curses of some, the cries and lamentations of others. One redeeming feature—there may have been others—marked these proceedings; the sepoys of the 11th, in most instances, connived at the escape of their officers—nay, strove earnestly to save them: it was not by men of his own regiment that poor Colonel Finnis had been shot down.