Theories differed as to the lawfulness of a privatestore in time of siege: but the defenders of Cawnpore were right in their practice. For in the last extremity of war his own life is not more important to an individual than the life of his neighbour. A community of warriors striving by a fair and equitable division to extract from their hoard of victual all the collective material of strength and valour which it may contain, presents surely an aspect more philosophical, as well as more elevated, than an association of selfish and suspicious men, comrades only in name, resembling nothing so much as jurymen vying to starve each other out by help of concentrated meat lozenges. During the first few days the private soldiers fared sparingly, but, for them, poor fellows, delicately enough. "Here might be seen one," says Captain Thomson, "trudging away from the main-guard laden with a bottle of champagne, a tin of preserved herrings, and a pot of jam for his mess allowance. There would be another with salmon, rum, and sweetmeats for his inheritance." But very soon the dainties came to an end, and the allowance was scantier than ever. It was a favourite saying among the generation of military men, who in Europe kept unwilling holiday between the day of Waterloo and the day of Alma, that an Englishman fights best when he is full, and an Irishman when he is drunk. And yet nowhere in the chronicles of our army does there exist the record of doughtier deeds than were done in the June of '57 by Englishmen whose daily sustenance was a short gill of flour, and a short handful of split peas; by Irishmen who hadno stimulant save their own bravery and a rare sip of putrid water.
Numerous attempts were made by friends without to mend the fare of the garrison, which were for the most part defeated by the vigilance of the sepoys. A baker of the town, who had been footman in an Anglo-Indian family, was detected smuggling a basket of bread into the intrenchment. The culprit perhaps fondly imagined that Azimoolah would have had mercy upon him in consideration of their common antecedents; but, if he entertained such an expectation, he was doomed to disappointment. Much credit is due to Zuhooree, an official in the Department of Abkaree, a mysterious branch of the Revenue, the periodical occurrence of which in the Indian budget has vexed the souls of a succession of English financiers. This person put himself into communication with Major Larkins of the Artillery, and sent into the fortification, as opportunity served, most acceptable parcels of bread and eggs, with occasional bottles of milk and liquid butter. At length, on the night of the fourteenth of June, fifteen of his emissaries, among whom were two women, were caught as they endeavoured to glide through the cordon of sentries under cover of the flurry and consternation of our sortie. They were all blown from guns, but not before the captors had elicited from them the name of their employer. It was high time for Zuhooree to look to his safety. Already his family had been imprisoned and maltreated on an unfounded charge of Christianity, and the rebel camp was a dangerous stage on which toplay the part of good Obadiah. He accordingly left by stealth for Allahabad, bearing with him a letter of commendation from Major Larkins, attested by a gold ring set with five diamonds, which belonged to the wife of that officer.
Our people did what they could to help themselves. A fat bull, sacred to Brahma, finding nothing to eat in the streets, inasmuch as the corn-dealers had closed their booths for fear of the sepoys, came grazing along the plain until he arrived within range of our profane rifles. To shoot down this pampered monster, the fakeer of the animal world,[2]was no considerable feat for marksmen who could hit a black buck running at a distance of a hundred and fifty paces. The difficulty consisted in the retrieving of the game, which lay full three hundred yards from our rampart, on a plain swept by the fire of the insurgents. Inside our place, however, courage was more plentiful than beef; and eight or ten volunteers professed themselves ready to follow Captain Moore, who was first at any feast which partook of the nature of a fray. The party provided themselves with a stout rope, which they fastened round the legs and horns of the beast, and dragged home their prize amidst a storm of cheers and bullets, alive but not unscathed.
In the banquet which ensued the defenders of the outposts had no part. On the other hand, they sometimes enjoyed luxuries of their own. A pariah dog, seduced by blandishments never before lavished upon one of his despised race, was tempted within the walls and thence into the camp-kettle of Barrack Number Two. Towards that building, as towards the lion's den in the fable, pointed the footsteps of every kind of quadruped, and from it none. An aged horse, whose younger days had been spent in the ranks of the Irregular Cavalry, was killed, roasted, and eaten up in two meals by the combined pickets. The head was converted into soup, and sent into the intrenchment for the use of some favoured ladies; no explanations being offered or demanded concerning the nature of the stock. Captain Halliday, of the Fifty-ninth Native Infantry, who had come across on a morning visit, begged a portion for his poor wife, who was lying in the hospital, sick unto death of the small-pox. On his way back, walking, it may be, too slowly for security through dread of spilling one precious drop, he fell never to rise again. In the midst of every action and every movement, during the hours of labour and the minutes of refreshment, unlooked for and unavoidable the mortal stroke descended.
For by day and night the fire never ceased. The round shot crashed and spun through the windows, raked the earthwork, and skipped about the open ground in every corner of our position. The bullets cut the air, and pattered on the wall like hail. The great shells rolled hissing along the floors and down the trenches, and, bursting, spread around them a circle of wrack, and mutilation, and promiscuous destruction. In their blind and merciless career those iron messengers spared neither old nor young, nor combatants nor sufferers, but flew ever onwards, inflicting superfluous wounds and unavailing destruction. A single bomb killed or maimed seven married women, who were seated in the ditch; killed Jacobi, a watchmaker, namesake of the intrepid coachwright; killed too the cashiered officer whose drunken freak had done something to accelerate the outbreak. There were those who endured in one day a double or a treble bereavement; while in some families none remained to mourn. Colonel Williams died of apoplexy, and his wife, disfigured and tortured by a frightful hurt in the face, would fain have rejoined her husband. On the fifteenth of June Miss Mary Williams was stunned by a fall of the ceiling, and expired in the arms of a wounded sister, unconscious of her loving care. Two daughters survived—for a while. Mistress White was walking with a twin child at either shoulder, and her good man, a private of the Thirty-second, by her side. The same ball slew the father, broke both elbows of the mother, and severely injured one of the orphans. Captain Reynolds lostan arm and his life by a cannon-shot; and Mrs. Reynolds, whose wrist had been pierced by a musket ball, sank under fever and sorrow. A half-caste tradesman and his daughter, crouching behind an empty barrel, too late and together discovered that their shelter was inadequate. A son of Sir Hugh was reclining on a sofa, faint with recent loss of blood;—one sister at his feet, and another, with both his parents, busied about his wants in different parts of the room;—when an uninvited and a fatal guest entered the doorway, and left the lad a headless corpse. No less than three subalterns attached to the same regiment as young Wheeler lost their heads within the redan. Lieutenant Jervis of the Engineers was walking to his battery through a shower of lead, with a gait of calm grandeur, as if he were pacing the Eden Garden beneath the eye-glasses of Calcutta beauty. In vain his comrades raised their wonted shout of "Run, Jervis! Run!" He never returned to head-quarters. He never reached his post. A grape-shot passed through the body of Mr. Heberden, as he was handing some water to a lady. This gentleman, the most undaunted and unaffected of the brave and simple men of science employed upon the East Indian railroad, lay on his face for a whole week without a murmur or a sigh, but not, we may well believe, without a tacit prayer for the relief which came at last. Mr. Hillersdon, the magistrate of the station, was dashed in pieces by a twenty-four pound ball, while talking in the verandah to his wife, weak from an unseasonable confinement. A few days elapsed, and a shot, lesscruel than some, displaced an avalanche of bricks which put an end to her short widowhood. But poverty of language does not permit to continue the list of horrors. In such a catalogue the synonyms of death are soon exhausted, and give place to a grim tautology.
"The frequency of our casualties," writes Captain Thomson, "may be understood by the history of one hour. Lieutenant Prole had come to the main-guard to see Armstrong, the adjutant of the Fifty-third Native Infantry, who was unwell. While engaged in conversation with the invalid, Prole was struck by a musket-ball in the thigh, and fell to the ground. I put his arm upon my shoulder, and holding him round the waist, endeavoured to hobble across the open to the barrack, in order that he might obtain the attention of the surgeons there. While thus employed a ball hit me under the right shoulder-blade, and we fell to the ground together, and were picked up by some privates, who dragged us both back to the main-guard. While I was lying on the ground, wofully sick from the wound, Gilbert Bax, of the Forty-eighth Native Infantry, came to condole with me, when a bullet pierced his shoulder-blade, causing a wound from which he died before the termination of the siege."
The youngest were the least to be pitied. In such a plight, ignorance of happier days was indeed bliss:—ignorance that there was a fair world without, where people laughed merrily, and slept soundly, and lived in the anticipations of enjoyment, not in the terrors of death. To the small children the presentwas very weary; but, reasoning in their way, they concluded that that present could not last much longer. It must come to an end like the tiresome journey up the great river, when the barge stuck fast in the mud, and mamma cried, and papa called the boatman by that Hindoostanee name which they themselves were always whipped for using. The restraint of our protracted incarceration was to them intolerably irksome. There was neither milk, nor pudding, nor jam, nor mangoes, nor any one to cuddle them, or sing to them, or listen to their romances, and their wishes, and their grievances. The gentleman who once was most kind to them would now come home from shooting all black, and grimy, and with a rough beard, and would stand at the table and eat quickly, and then run out again without taking any notice of them: and some day or other he would be carried in on a shutter, looking so pale and weak: and some day, perhaps, he never came back at all. When they asked a lady to scold the servants for getting them such a nasty breakfast, she only kissed them, and sobbed, and called them poor darlings. They sorely missed the fond and patient bearer, that willing playmate and much-enduring slave, whom Mrs. Sherwood's charming tale has rendered a household word in English schoolrooms. Left to their own tiny discretions, the dear creatures, unconscious of danger, would toddle out of the crowded barrack, and betake themselves to some primitive game which demanded no very elaborate provision of toys. What was it to them that every half minute a big black ball came hopping along amidst puffs ofdust, or that little things which they could not see flew about humming louder than cock-chafers or bumble bees? With unexampled barbarity the sepoy sharpshooters forbore to respect these innocent groups. The peril, which some incurred through inexperience, was sought by others under the pressure of despondency. One unhappy woman, unable to support the burden of her existence, ran out from the shelter of the walls leading in each hand a child, and was dragged back, despite of herself, by a private soldier, who freely risked his life to preserve that which she was bent on losing. Not a few native domestics refused to desert their employers. Over-worked and under-thanked, with short-commons, and, if captured by the mutineers, a shorter shrift, they stayed on, not for the sake of their pittance of wages, but actuated solely by the ties of duty, gratitude, and attachment. Most of them were soon dismissed from service, for no fault, and with no warning. Three were killed by the explosion of a shell. Another was shot through the head as he was hurrying to the outposts intent upon serving his master's dinner before it had time to cool. An ayah, while dandling an infant, lost both her legs by the blow of a cannon-ball. That was in truth a dismal nursery.
Want of water was a constant and growing evil. At the best, a single well would have furnished a pitiably insufficient supply for a thousand mouths during an Indian June: and that well was from the first the favourite target of the hostile artillerymen. Guns were trained on to the exact spot; so that theappearance of a man with a pitcher by day, and by night the creaking of the tackle, was the signal for a shower of grape. The framework of beam and brick which protected the drawers was soon shot away. The machinery went next, and the buckets were thenceforward hauled up hand over hand from a depth of more than sixty feet. The Hindoo water-carriers were slain early in the siege, and their place was supplied by English soldiers, who nominally were paid at the rate of five rupees for every pail: though the brave fellows knew that, when a few days had gone by, it would matter little in whose hands the silver might happen to lie. That water was purchased with blood and not with money. John Mackillop, of the Civil Service, veiling devotion under a jocose pretence of self-depreciation, told his friends that, though no fighting man, he was willing to make himself useful where he could, and accordingly claimed to be appointed Captain of the Well. His tenure of the office was prolonged beyond his own expectation. It was not till a week had passed that he was laid dying on a bed in the hospital with a grape-shot in the groin. His last words expressed a desire that the lady to whom he had promised a drink should not be disappointed. For some days a few gallons were procured at a frightful hazard from a tank situated on the south-east of the intrenchment. Those who were conscious how dear a price was paid for every draught, thirsted in silence; but the babies kept up a perpetual moan more terrible to some stout souls than a ten minutes' hobble across the plain, a heavy skinful of waterround the loins, and an ounce of lead in the ankle. Captain Thomson saw the children of his brother officers "sucking the pieces of old water-bags, putting scraps of canvass and leather straps into the mouth to try and get a single drop of moisture upon their parched lips." The distress of our countrymen was enhanced by the plague of dust to which Cawnpore is subject on account of the character of the soil. A traveller who visited the station ten or twelve years before the mutiny, complains that he got no gratification out of a grand review from which he had promised himself much pleasure, because the show was throughout enveloped in clouds which totally concealed it from his eyes.
There was yet another well, which yielded nothing then: which will yield nothing till the sea, too, gives up her dead. It lay two hundred yards from the rampart, beneath the walls of the unfinished barracks. Thither at an hour varied nightly, for fear lest the rebel shot should swell the funeral, with stealthy step and scant attendance the slain of the previous day were borne. When morning broke the battle raged around that sepulchre. Overhead the cannon roared, and men charged to and fro. But those below rested none the less peacefully; their last cartridge bitten; their last achievement performed: their last pang of hunger and affliction undergone and already forgotten. There were deposited, within the space of three weeks, two hundred and fifty English people, a fourth by tale of the whole garrison. As in a season of trouble and lawlessness men bury away their jewels and their goldagainst the return of tranquillity and order: so the survivors committed to the faithful mould their dear treasures, trusting that time and the fortune of war would enable our country to honour her lost ones with a more solemn rite, and a worthier tomb. Brief was the service whispered on the brink of that sad well in the sultry summer night. It was much, when they came to the grave, while the corpse was being made ready to be laid into the earth, if the priest then said: "In the midst of life we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?"
"Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death."
And again, while the earth was being cast upon the body by some standing by, the priest might with the assent of all declare that it was of His great mercy that it had pleased Almighty God to take unto Himself the soul of the dear brother there departed.
Throughout the siege public worship, at stated hours, and of prescribed length and form, neither did nor could take place: but the spirit and the essential power of religion were not wanting. The station chaplain, Mr. Moncrieff, made it his concern that no one should die or suffer without the consolations of Christianity. And whenever he could be spared from the hospital, this shepherd of a pest-stricken flock, he would go the round of the batteries, and read a few Prayers and Psalms to the fighting folk. With heads bent, and hands foldedover the muzzles of their rifles; soothed, some by genuine piety, some by the associations of gladsome Christmas mornings and drowsy Sunday afternoons spent in the aisle of their village church; they listened calmly to the familiar words, those melancholy and resolute men. Each congregation was more thin than the last. There were always present some two or three to whom never again would grace be given to join with accord in the common supplication. The people of Cawnpore might say in the language used in a like strait by a brave and God-fearing soldier, the Greatheart of English History:—"Indeed we are at this time a very crazy company; yet we live in His sight, and shall work the time that is appointed us, and shall rest after that in peace."
The condition of the besieged presented a complete contrast to the state of things on the other side of the wall. The numbers and the hopes of the insurgents mounted daily. Every morning some new Rajah or Nawab paraded through the suburbs in his palanquin bright with silver poles and silken hangings, preceded by drums, and standards, and led chargers, and followed by a stream of lancers and matchlocks. Every evening a fresh eruption of scoundrelism surged up from the narrow crooked alleys and foul bazaars of the black city. Nor were the Hindoos and Mahomedans of the revolted battalions left without the satisfaction and encouragement of learning what great deeds had been wrought elsewhere by the champions of the united faiths. In the month of June the following document found its way from Delhi to Cawnpore:—
"To all Hindoos and Mussulmans, Citizens and Servants of Hindostan, the Officers of the Army now at Delhi and Meerut send Greeting.
"It is well known that in these days all the English have entertained these evil designs—first to destroy the religion of the whole Hindostani army, and then to make the people Christians by compulsion. Therefore we, solely on account of our religion, have combined with the people, and have not spared alive one infidel, and have re-established the Delhi dynasty on these terms, and thus act in obedience to orders and receive double pay. Hundreds of guns and a large amount of treasure have fallen into our hands; therefore it is fitting that whoever of the soldiers and the people dislike turning Christians should unite with one heart and act courageously, not leaving the seed of these infidels remaining. For any quantity of supplies delivered to the army the owners are to take the receipts of the officers; and they will receive double payment from the Imperial Government. Whoever shall in these times exhibit cowardice, or credulously believe the promises of those impostors, the English, shall very shortly be put to shame for such a deed; and, rubbing the hands of sorrow, shall receive for their fidelity the reward the ruler of Lucknow got. It is further necessary that all Hindoos and Mussulmans unite in this struggle, and, following the instructions of some respectable people, keep themselves secure, so thatgood order may be maintained, the poorer classes kept contented, and they themselves be exalted to rank and dignity; also, that all, so far as it is possible, copy this proclamation, and despatch it everywhere, so that all true Hindoos and Mussulmans may be alive and watchful, and fix it in some conspicuous place (but prudently, to avoid detection), and strike a blow with a sword before giving circulation to it. The first pay of the soldiers of Delhi will be thirty rupees per month for a trooper, and ten rupees for a footman. Nearly one hundred thousand men are ready; and there are thirteen flags of the English regiments, and about fourteen standards from different parts, now raised aloft for our religion, for God, and the conqueror; and it is the intention of Cawnpore to root out the seed of the Devil. This is what we of the army here wish."
This message was succeeded by a proclamation issued from the peacock throne, in which the Mogul promised a monthly wage of twelve rupees and a respectable estate to every sepoy who would rally to the banner of the ancient dynasty. He likewise ordained that no cows should thenceforward be killed throughout the land, and finished by pronouncing a malediction upon the head of any one who should intercept the imperial courier. The wretch was doomed to eat pork and beef: and, as the messenger was eventually hanged by an English officer of the Seventieth Infantry, it may be presumed that the curse has by this time been fulfilled to the letter.
The rebel cause was soon strengthened by a more valuable reinforcement than either the posse comitatusof the province, or the sympathy of the Delhi mutineers. At the village of Chowbeypore, on the Great North Road, had been stationed a detachment from the garrison of Lucknow, comprising a squadron of native cavalry, and two companies of sepoys, commanded by Captain Staples, four subalterns, and a European serjeant-major. At about two o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, the ninth of June, these gentlemen were roused from their luncheon by the sound of a bugle playing the "Assembly." Rushing forth, they demanded why so strange a liberty had been taken, and were told that it was by the orders of the Nana. At the mention of this ill-omened name our officers flung themselves on horseback, and rode for dear life, with all the disadvantages resulting from ignorance of the country and a bad start. That was a run in which the game was allowed no law. The Captain was shot down from his saddle, and cut in pieces where he lay. Two Englishmen took to the water like hunted stags, and there miserably perished. Two others were headed by a mob of villagers, and driven back among the sabres and pistols of their pursuers. Lieutenant Bolton alone, by dint of hard riding, escaped to Cawnpore with a bullet-hole in his cheek;—if escape it may be called, which was only the postponement of death. After a chase of sixteen miles he reached the neighbourhood of the town at nightfall; passed unobserved through the lines of the mutineers; and camped out on the plain, waiting until dawn should disclose to him the outline of the intrenchment. Our sentries, astonished by the apparition of a cavalier riding at the earthworkthrough the twilight like a mounted Remus, fired, and struck his horse. No one, however, was surprised to find that even a crippled steed could clear those defences at a leap. The fugitive was heartily greeted by his countrymen, and entertained with such hospitality as their situation would admit. Wounded and exhausted as he was, he proved well worth his keep.
The troops who had revolted at Chowbeypore marched into Cawnpore, bringing with them three English heads in a basket, and taking up on their way a toll-keeper named Joseph Carter, and his wife; a young person, who was daily expecting her first baby. This offering, combined agreeably to his taste of the dead and the living, was mightily acceptable to the Nana. With fraternal kindness he made a present of the grisly trophies to Bala Rao, who exposed them in his saloon, and gave a sort of conversazione at which they formed the leading attraction. Mr. Carter was shot, as a matter of course; and his little widow would have shared his fate, had not the relicts of the late Peishwa, the step-mothers by adoption of the Maharaja, felt a womanly commiseration for one so tender and so afflicted. The good ladies begged hard for this single example of clemency, and begged in vain. At length their pride of sex was roused against such determined brutality towards a woman who had so lately been a wife, and was so soon to be a mother, and they threatened to commit suicide unless their petition was granted. The Nana then gave way, and permitted his relatives to carry off their protégée to the apartmentsappropriated to the females in the palace at Bithoor, where they placed her under the charge of an experienced Mahomedan nurse. He insisted, however, that she should be considered as under custody, and appointed a squad of troopers to see that she was forthcoming whenever it might suit his will and pleasure. He never lost sight of a victim. He boasted the worst half of, at any rate, one kingly quality,—an unerring memory.
On the next Friday the remnant of the native force which had mutinied at Benares made their appearance on the opposite side of the river. The exit of these gentlemen from the Holy City had not been of a nature to gratify their conceit, and their entry into Cawnpore was the reverse of triumphant. They straggled up, jaded and dispirited, without any semblance of martial order, some on horseback, and others perched up in the uncomfortable country-carts of Hindostan, which seem to have been devised with the express object of conveying the least possible amount of freight with the greatest expenditure of traction power. Their condition excited the contempt and cupidity of the officials appointed to superintend the river traffic in the interest of the Nana; who accordingly refused to ferry across these shabby auxiliaries for less than a rupee per head. Considering that the majority of the passengers were of pure Sikh blood, their spirit must indeed have been broken before they could have endured such insolence and extortion.
On the fifteenth of June, a welcome message was brought to the Maharaja from the Meer Nawab, aMussulman of rank, who sent word that he was coming up from the eastward with a couple of thousand regular infantry, and a full complement of artillery. Azimoolah resolved that his subordinates should not have an opportunity of repeating their conduct of the previous week. Every mark of respect was to be displayed towards so august and puissant a chieftain. The bridge contractors were commissioned to collect barges for the transit of the expected allies, and the confectioners of the town received instructions to prepare for their refreshment a ménu, containing all those dishes of sweetened animal food so nauseous to a European palate. On the morrow the Nawab arrived at the head of two fine regiments, which had been raised on the occasion of Lord Dalhousie's annexation, amidst the deep but suppressed uneasiness of all who gave the native mind credit for the human qualities of ambition, shame, and patriotism;—of all who believed the Hindoo capable of any loftier sentiment than the desire to curry favour with an English magistrate, touch a hundred rupees per mensem from an English treasury, talk broken Addison, and read the "Deserted Village" in the original. On the rolls of our army these battalions were styled the Fourth and Fifth Oude Locals: but sepoys have invariably some pet title for their own corps, (in most cases a corruption of the name of its first colonel,) more suited to the Indian tongue than our complicated military nomenclature. Thus the First, the Fifty-third, and the Fifty-sixth Bengal Native Infantry, were spoken of familiarly as "Gillises," "Lamboorn's,"and "Garsteen's." The Oude soldiers under the Meer Nawab were known to themselves and their compatriots as the men of the Nadiree and the Akhtaree Regiments.
When the new-comers caught sight of the fortress which had hitherto baffled the ingenuity and courage of their associates, they expressed no small contempt for the generalship of the Nana, but bade him be at his ease, for that they would engage to put him in possession of the intrenchment after they had enjoyed a day's rest and surfeit. And so, on the eighteenth of June, at the hour when, exactly two and forty years before, the French tirailleurs were swarming through the woods of Hougoumont up to the loopholes of the wall which they never passed, the Oude mutineers charged in a mass across the plain, and over our rampart; bore down the defenders; overturned a gun; and seemed for a moment in a fair way of justifying their vaunt. A moment only: for, without waiting for orders, angry Sahibs came running from all sides to the rescue. Our people slewed round a nine-pounder; gave them first some stockingfuls of grape, and then an English rush; and sent them back to their master fewer and wiser than they came.
The rebel position presented an aspect animated and picturesque in a high degree. To the north of our fortification, between the Racket-court and the Chapel of Ease, was planted a battery well armed with mortars and twenty-four pounder cannon. In this region the command was taken by the Nunhey Nawab, the Mahomedan grandee, who, with BakurAli, and others, had been plundered and imprisoned by the Brahmins during their first outbreak of religious spite. The high-spirited Moslem soldiery at once refused to brook this outrage, and began to talk of setting up the Nawab's claim to royalty against that of the Maharaja: upon which the latter released his prisoners, and thenceforward behaved towards them rather as an equal than as a master. The Nana's rival showed both judgment and vigour. He beat up all the pensioned veterans of the neighbourhood who had formerly served in the artillery, and employed work-people of both sexes in keeping him supplied with red-hot shot. On one occasion an apprentice to the trade took it into his head to try the experiment of heating a loaded shell, and succeeded in blowing up a woman and five men, including, we may presume, himself. The Nawab passed most of his time in the gallery of the Racket-court, where, in the late afternoon of more quiet days, had lolled a cluster of chatty Englishmen; opening bottles of soda-water; chaffing the players with the threadbare raillery that suffices for the simple taste of a limited community; descending in parties of four, cheroot in mouth, when the cry of "game-ball all" warned them that their turn was come. Occasionally he would issue forth to see how his gunners were getting on, and to watch the effect of their practice through a telescope. A half-caste Christian, who had disguised himself as a Mahomedan with admirable skill, gives an interesting account of what passed in this quarter. He says, "I saw Nunhey Nawab coming to thebatteries accompanied by a number of troopers, and sepoys, and his own attendants also; and I was told by the people that the Nawab had received a post of great dignity, and was in command of a battery. About one o'clock I came close to Major-General Wheeler's bungalow, and, finding a piece of mat in the compound, lay down on it, and saw several troopers going about, forcing people to carry water to the batteries. Hearing an uproar I rose from the place where I was, when a trooper, seeing me, told me that it was a great shame for a young Mussulman like me to be thus idling away my time, and that I should assist at the batteries. He also told me that a young man, the son of Kurrum Ali, the one-eyed, a pensioned soubahdar, was sent for by the Nawab, and had laid a gun so precisely that the shot carried away a portion of one of the barracks within the intrenchment, for which he received a reward of ninety rupees, and a shawl. I replied to this that I possessed no arms, and had never been a soldier." It was no wonder that a battery where the service was conducted on so open-handed a system soon became the popular resort. The lovely Azeezun made this spot her head-quarters. She appears to have exercised a strange fascination over our good friend Nanukchund, so frequently does she appear in the course of his narrative. Whether he cherished towards her a sneaking kindness; or a grudge for some past incivility; or, as is most probable, both the one and the other, he certainly never leaves her alone for many pages together. In his quaint wayhe writes:—"It shows great daring in Azeezun, that she is always armed and present in the batteries, owing to her attachment to the cavalry; and she takes her favourites among them aside, and entertains them with milk, &c. on the public road."
The Meer Nawab planted the cannon, which he had brought with him across the river, on the south-east of our position, near the Artillery Mess House. This manœuvre forthwith debarred the garrison from obtaining occasional and perilous access to the tank; a privation the more severely felt, because the Oude men, bent on avenging their repulse, worked their pieces with a will, and kept up at point-blank range so hot a fire upon the mouth of our well that the drawing of water was a deed of heroism by night, and in daylight an act of insanity. In the west, Bakur Ali, who had shared with the Nunhey Nawab his disgrace and his restoration to favour, bombarded our outposts from among the stables of the Second Cavalry; while in and about the lines of the First Native Infantry stood a number of heavy guns, known by the collective appellation of "the Sepoy Battery," under cover of which a Jemmadar, who fancied himself gifted with a turn for engineering, was sinking a mine by the aid of some invalid sappers and miners, whom he had persuaded to place themselves at his disposal. In the south-west direction was a stately mansion, which formerly held rank as a charitable institution, under the title of the "Salvador," a name which the effeminate articulation of the native had long before this convertedinto the "Savada." As the Mahomedan faction mustered strong in the vicinity of the Racket-court, so the Savada soon became the centre of Hindoo influence. It was the special haunt of the Nana. Here were his ministers, his diviners, his courtiers, and the prisoners from whom he purposed to extort something besides their breath. Here was the battery which went by his name. Here was the tent of his most able and ardent partizan, Teeka Sing, the generalissimo. Here too, in an agreeable corner of the grounds, under the shade of a conspicuous grove, conveniently remote alike from the camp of the Moslem and the muzzles of the English artillery, was pitched his own pavilion; for he seems to have inherited the Mahratta preference for canvas over brick and mortar. The chiefs of that hardy and unquiet race seldom had a tight roof over their heads until they were laid beneath some mausoleum of fair white marble, sparkling with cornelian and jasper and lapsis lazuli, constructed out of the spoils and the tribute of nations.
The mutineers showed every intention of enjoying their spell of liberty and domination. These revolted regiments were rapidly turning into mobs. The work of the batteries was left to the retainers of ambitious Rajahs; to pensioned gunners; and to such amateurs as had a stomach for fighting, and a taste for the shawls and cash lavished by the Nunhey Nawab. The sepoys, meanwhile, lounged in the shops which fringed the canal, eating sweetstuff with schoolboy avidity, and drinking sherbet to their hearts' content; or swaggered along the streets with a nonchalancecopied from their reminiscences of the fashionable frequenters of the band-stand, criticizing the driving of those among their comrades who had been fortunate enough to lay their hands upon a buggy belonging to a British officer. No decent people were to be seen in the public places. No business was done in the main thoroughfares. The tradesmen, in piteous trepidation, eyed the passing scamps from behind their shutters, consoling their enforced idleness by recollecting in what angle of the garden their money was interred, and framing excuses against the probable visit of the Nana's tax-collector, or the possible return of the English authorities. The opium-sellers and the innkeepers, who in these days anterior to Mr. Wilson's budget had not attained to the dignity of licensed victuallers, alone drove a thriving trade. The warriors of the Religions smoked, and chewed, and snored supine, clad in cotton drawers and a pair of clumsy shoes; their necks encircled by the Brahminical thread, token of their privileged and sacred extraction. To this costume they superadded a red coat, at such times as the stings of conscience, or the reproaches of priest and paramour, drove them out to get a lazy shot at the infidels and an appetite for their curry.
The earliest care of the Nana had been to set on foot a respectable municipal organization. With this object in view, he appointed to the chief magistracy in the city one Hoolass Sing, who may have been a traitor, but was, apparently, only a time-server. This person was chosen by the advice of a deputation composed of the leading townsmen; atent-maker, a jeweller, and a dealer in opiates. Hoolass Sing had no sinecure. It was only by the exercise of judicious firmness, alternating with seasonable pliability, that he contrived to protect Cawnpore from the rapacity of the soldiery, and the wrath of those rural nobles whose paternal acres had been sold by the English Government to recover arrears of land-tax, and purchased by moneyed cits, who wished to cut a figure in country society. The duty of victualling the troops was committed to a blind gentleman of the name of Moolla, who, doubtless, saw quite well enough to water the rice and omit to sift the meal. A burlesque judicial court was formed of Azimoolah, Jwala, Pershad, and other creatures of the Maharaja; and presided over by Baba Bliut, who delivered his decisions seated on a billiard-table in Mr. Duncan's hotel. This tribunal passed a variety of sentences without establishing any very valuable precedent. Once, in an unaccountable fit of morality, it sentenced a luckless rogue to lose his hand for theft; but, for obvious and selfish reasons, the judges appear to have refrained from again taking cognizance of this crime. A Mahomedan butcher was condemned to mutilation for having killed a cow; and certain individuals were paraded through the town on donkeys, "for disreputable livelihood:" a punishment which, when the charge was made known, must have excited very general sympathy and indignation. Gradually this body, like the Committee of Public Safety in the French Revolution, assumed to itself a supervision over every department of the administration. Whenthe powder ran short, the principal dealer in saltpetre was thrown into prison, until he produced the requisite quantity of that article. A native merchant was required to provide cloaks for half a battalion, at the rate of two and threepence a-piece; a scale of payment which must have inspired him with an unaffected regret for the liberal contracts of the old Company. With a keener relish, Baba Bhut undertook to account for the Englishmen who still lurked about, watching for an opportunity of slipping away to Allahabad or Agra. On the eleventh of June, Mr. Williams, a writer in one of the public offices, was traced out and slaughtered. Two days subsequently, the head of young Mr. Duncan was brought into his own father's house. The murderer was rewarded with the present of a pound, and the porter got a couple of rupees.
At the expiration of a fortnight, an event occurred which, for a while, afforded to the beseiged people a more suggestive and agreeable matter of conversation than the rise of the mercury in the tube, and the sinking of the flour in the barrels. A native water-carrier skulked over from the opposite lines, and gave out that, on account of his love and respect for the Sahibs, he had set his heart upon being the first to bring them the good news; that there were two companies of white soldiers on the other side of the Ganges, who were supposed to have marched down from Lucknow; that they had guns with them, and were making as if they would cross the river on the morrow; that the rebel camp was in a panic, and that everybody was saying how much hehad all along intended to do for the Sahibs, had he only dared. Next day he turned up again with the intelligence that the Europeans had been detained on the opposite bank by an unexpected flood, but that they were busily engaged in knocking together rafts, and might be looked for within the forty-eight hours. Those hours passed, and twice and thrice those hours, and there came not the aspect of help, nor the renewal of confidence, nor the welcome sight of light faces, nor the welcome sound of approaching artillery. The soi-disant water-carrier made no third appearance. His two first visits had taught him all that Azimoolah desired to know of our impoverished and defenceless plight.
Our spies were less lucky; or it may be that the sturdy and straightforward British nature cannot promptly adapt itself to those frauds which are proverbially fair in war. There was in the garrison a soldier named Blenman, an Eurasian by birth, astute, and singularly courageous, but in temper uncertain, and impatient of control. There, and at that time, such a man was worth his weight in meal or powder, and his superiors did well to humour him. Cool, observant, and bold to temerity, the most delicate and hazardous of services had for him an innate attraction. After trying his wings in some partial flights, he prepared for a great and final enterprise, and volunteered to penetrate as far as Allahabad with a report of our calamities, and an appeal for instant succour. He disguised himself as a native cook, an easy task, for his complexion showed that he had far more than the due share ofmaternal blood; and sallied forth with a pistol and fifteen rupees stuffed into his cotton drawers. He passed unnoticed or unsuspected no less than seven horse pickets. The eighth stopped, and searched him, in spite of his asseverations that he was a poor leather-dresser, taking a walk through the night air, after working all day in a close alley over the saddles and holsters of the gentlemen troopers of the Second Cavalry. Too plausible to be killed off-hand, and too questionable to be neglected, he was stripped and sent back whence he came, with no other information than that the investment of our position was even more strict and complete than had been apprehended.
A half-caste government official offered to make an attempt to obtain intelligence, and to bribe over some of the influential citizens of Cawnpore, on condition that Sir Hugh would permit his family to leave the intrenchment. His terms were accepted. He set forth, but was at once detected, and taken before the Maharaja, who sentenced him to three years' imprisonment with hard labour; a unique example of leniency, curious, as proving how firmly that usurper was persuaded that his rule would now be permanent. Ghouse Mahomed, a faithful sepoy of the Fifty-sixth, succeeded in getting farther than his predecessors. He crept along the ground in the darkness, until he met two or three men with four yoke of oxen taking supplies to the Savada house. He told them that he was going to the city to buy some grave clothes for his brother, a brave who had died that day for the good cause in one of theadvanced batteries. He was allowed to proceed upon his pious errand; but, when he reached the native town, it was as much as he could do to conceal himself from the inquisition of the rebel police. Many emissaries were despatched from our fortification, but Blenman alone returned. The others, through the months subsequent to our re-occupation of the district, came straggling in, as they could effect their escape from the camp of the fugitive Nana, with noses slit, and hands or ears chopped off by an ignorant and inhuman operator.
The remaining contents of the Cawnpore budget derive their principal interest from a consideration of the circumstances under which they were produced. Not even at such a season would Englishmen put their deeper feelings within an envelope; and the gossip of the station in that June was hardly calculated to enliven a correspondence. On the night of Sunday, the twenty-first, Major Vibart transmitted these lines to Lucknow:—
"We have been cannonaded for six hours a day by twelve guns. This evening, in three hours, upwards of thirty shells [mortars] were thrown into the intrenchment. This has occurred daily for the last eight days. An idea may be formed of our casualties, and how little protection the barracks afford to the women. Any aid, to be effective, must be immediate. In event of rain falling, our position would be untenable.
"According to telegraphic despatches received previous to the outbreak, a thousand Europeans were to have been here on the fourteenth instant.This force may be on its way up. Any assistance you can send might co-operate with it. Nine-pounder ammunition, chiefly cartridges, is required. Should the above force arrive, we can, in return, insure the safety of Lucknow. Being simply a military man, General Wheeler has no power to offer bribes in land and money to the insurgents, nor any means whatever of communicating with them. You can ascertain the best means of crossing the river. Nujuffgurh Ghaut is suggested. It is earnestly requested that whatever is done may be effected without a moment's delay. We have lost about a third of our original number. The enemy are strongest in artillery. They appear not to have more than four hundred or five hundred infantry. They move their guns with difficulty, by means of unbroken bullocks. The infantry are great cowards, and easily repulsed.