After a long meal and a short nap the Englishmen set out for the fort where Dirigbijah Singh resided; Thomson clad with the solitary shirt, and Delafosse in a borrowed rug. Private Murphy and Gunner Sullivan were suffering too much from recent wounds to care about appearances. The officers resigned to them an elephant which had been despatched for their conveyance, and bestrode a pony, like a pair of needy and valiant knights belonging to a primitive order. As they passed through the villages, peasants came forth with milk and sweatmeats, and discovered that the Sahibs had changed their opinion as to the acceptability of "dollies;" those presents of Oriental dainties whichcollectors and commissioners contemptuously make over to their servants, reserving a handful of pistachio nuts for the children, and a box of Cabul grapes to improve the dessert of their next dinner-party. Darkness set in ere the cavalcade rode up to the fort of Moorar Mhow. The rajah, an old man of venerable presence, was seated in the open air encircled by his sons, his body-guard, his tenants, and his torch-bearers, to the number of some hundred and fifty persons. He requested our countrymen to alight; inquired minutely into the story of the siege; evinced warm approbation of their courage, and wonder at their escape; and after promising his countenance and hospitality, sent them indoors to an abundant repast washed down with native wine. Tired of everything save eating, they supped right well, and then, stretched on horse-litter and covered with a bit of carpet, the wanderers rested at last. Soundly they slumbered that night; and soundly, too, slumbered their six comrades, on whom the moon looked down through her watery veil as they lay around the little temple amidst the trampled brushwood, on their brow the frown of battle, and in their breast the wound that doth not shame.
Here the four Englishmen remained for three weeks unmolested and tolerably happy. They had spent at least one equal period of time in far less comfortable quarters. They wore coats and trousers cut by a native tailor. Their hurts were poulticed by a native doctor. They sat down thrice a day with British appetites to a meal of native food; and,whenever there was nothing else to be done, they slept. Heedless of the flies, which clustered about their bandaged limbs; careless of the future, and willingly oblivious of the past,—they dreamed, and woke, and yawned, and shifted their straw, and settled themselves down for another fit of drowsiness. Azimoolah might have his eye upon them: the Nana might have spoken the word of doom: up to Delhi and down to Patna every pass might be blockaded by a rebel post: but for the present they could doze, morning, noon, and eve. Their principal diversion consisted in viewing the performance by the Rajah and his priests of some quaint and pretty domestic rites. The master of the house paid them a daily and very pleasant visit; and his good lady sent constantly to ask after the welfare of the strangers, whose fearless deportment under their abject and precarious circumstances she had noted with womanly interest, as she gazed, herself invisible, from behind the fretted stone-work which fenced her verandah.
Thomson and his companions were forbidden by their host to set foot outside the circuit of the walls: as the vicinity was infested with rebels, who already regarded the country as their own, and appeared to imagine themselves welcome anywhere. There were generally some of them inside the fort, vapouring about, sword on thigh and matchlock in hand, and pestering the domestics to get them a sight of the Sahibs. The soldiers of the Cawnpore brigade were indulged in frequent interviews with their former officers, always in the presence of a detachment from the Rajah's body-guard. These mutineers were fullof the great things that were going to be done in the course of the next year by the armies of the religious. A trooper had been despatched to Moscow on a camel, and was to return with a host of Russian Mussulmans. Such Englishmen as had not yet been knocked on the head were to be secured and shipped off at Calcutta; and afterwards the Nana would embark for Europe, conquer our island, and make it over to Hindoo shareholders constituted into a joint-stock Kumpani. That magic word would conjure up a fresh train of ideas, and they would descant upon the flagrant iniquity of Lord Dalhousie, and maintain that, had it not been for the annexation of Oude, the empire of John Kumpani might have endured for all time: but that it was not so ordained; inasmuch as the ancient oracles, which could not lie, had allotted to that empire a duration of a hundred years, and no more. This prediction came true, but not in the sense anticipated by the leaders of the insurrection. The honour of justifying this prophecy was reserved for Sir Charles Wood and Lord Stanley; not for Azimoolah and the Maharaja of Bithoor. That potentate repeatedly summoned Dirigbijah Singh to deliver up the refugees to his regal arbitrement: but the stout old fellow answered that he held of His Majesty the King of Oude, and knew nothing of Seereek Dhoondoo Punth and his pretensions to royalty. Havelock and Neill soon provided the Nana with more pressing business than the pursuit of his vengeance, or the assertion of his supremacy.
The Rajah came to the conclusion that a changeof domicile was essential to the security of our countrymen, about the time that they were growing sated of laughing at sepoy bluster, and watching the Brahmins of the household ring bells and sprinkle flowers with holy water. They accordingly retired to the seclusion of a hamlet bordering on the river, where they amused themselves as best they could with a volume bearing the inscription "53rd Regiment Native Infantry Book Club;" which had been picked out of the stream by one among their attendants, as it floated by amidst a quantity of torn papers and smashed furniture: so many indications of the minute and searching character of the mischief that was being wrought above. After the lapse of a week, the Rajah sent them across to a landholder of his acquaintance, who lived on the south bank, and who undertook to hand them on to the nearest European encampment. They took leave of their chivalrous preserver with many expressions of unaffected regret, and a silent resolution never to rest until he had received some tangible mark of their gratitude and regard. On reaching the other shore their new patron packed them off towards Allahabad by a cross-road, in a bullock-cart without springs, preceded by an escort of four armed retainers. After bumping along for an hour the driver stopped, and informed them, in low and agitated tones, that there were guns ahead, planted athwart their path. And so they alighted, those way-worn fugitives, solicitous to learn whether they should again have to run, and swim, and lurk, and starve; and they crept stealthily along the edge of the road, and, turning the corner,found themselves within a few yards of the white and freckled face of an English sentry.
Five years subsequently Murphy left his old regiment, and volunteered for India in another corps. Presently it began to be rumoured at mess that there was a man in the ranks who had gone through the siege and the slaughter of Cawnpore. The Colonel made all necessary inquiries, and reported the matter to the Commander-in-chief: who at once appointed Murphy custodian of the Memorial Gardens. Here he may be seen, in the balmy forenoons of the cold weather, sauntering about in a pith helmet and linen jacket; a decent little Irishman, very ready to give a feeling and intelligent account of what took place under his immediate observation, and insisting much on the fact that he and the gunner, unable to speak a syllable of "Moors," would have been helpless but for the knowledge of Hindoostanee possessed by the sepoy officers. He retains a lively impression of the eagerness with which the English privates whom they encountered on the Allahabad highway contributed their allowances of liquor to treat the men who had not tasted beer for eight summer weeks. He points out the stone beneath which reposes poor Sullivan, who died of fatigue and debility, taking the form of cholera, within a fortnight of his restoration to safety. Delafosse lived once more to play the man, fighting under Chamberlain in the passes of the Hindoo Koosh: and Thomson to compose the story of what he had seen and undergone, so told that it may be read by a Christian without horror, and by an educatedperson without disgust. He was of opinion that a soldier who had performed his duty should not stoop to the vocabulary of a hangman. This man, scarred from head to heel with sepoy bullets,—who had carried his life in his hand for months together,—who had lost friends, possessions, and health in the frightful mêlée,—could still write like a modest and tolerant gentleman: while officers, to whom the rebellion had brought nothing except promotion and chance of distinction, were declaiming and printing about battues, and fine bags, and tucking up niggers, and polishing off twenty brace of Pandies. He made it his care that the worthy Rajah of Moorar Mhow should be rewarded with a handsome pension; that the faithful sepoys of his own battalion should obtain credit for their loyalty; that a fitting monument should be erected to the memory of his dead comrades; and that the services of his living companions in arms should not pass unrecorded. He left it for others to exult when shopkeepers and bankers, whose property had been confiscated by the Nana, and plundered by our own mutinous troops, were condemned and executed for having acknowledged ade factomonarch; when pedlars and bazaar-porters were strung up by scores to a gallows planted across the mouth of the funereal well: truly a graceful tribute to the manes of gentle English women.[4]
At five in the evening on the twenty-eighth of June, the Nana held a state review in honour of his victory of the preceding day. His force looked well on paper, and made a very respectable show in the field. There turned out six entire regiments of foot, and two of horse; besides strong detachments from battalions which had been disbanded at a distance from Cawnpore. The ranks of the artillery were perceptibly thinned by three weeks of desperate fighting. To them was especially due the success of the cause: and they now bore the brunt of the rejoicing. Few but zealous, they worked their pieces with a will, and fired away their ammunition as if henceforward there was no occasion for keeping any against the day of battle; as if the clubs of villagers and the daggers of banditti might safely be trusted to gather up the leavings of the sepoys. Bala Rao was welcomed on to the ground with seventeen discharges. The Maharaja himselfat length enjoyed the compliment of the royal reception which had been so ardently coveted and so strenuously denied. He was greeted on his appearance by the full sum of twenty-one explosions, each bought with a day of carnage. His ears tingling at the unaccustomed sensation, he congratulated the mutineers on their common triumph, and promised to distribute a hundred thousand rupees as an instalment of the debt which he owed to the army: an announcement that produced a repetition of the salute. Then he took his departure: but the enthusiasm which he left behind could evaporate only in a wholesale expenditure of Government powder. The nephew of the Nana, and his brother Baba Bhut, were each honoured with seventeen reports. Bala, who was deservedly a favourite with that gang of disciplined assassins, came in for a second bout of eleven guns: while Jwala Pershad and Tantia Topee got the same number a-piece. This closed the proceedings: during which Tantia, whose mind had decidedly a practical cast, was better employed than in listening to an idle cannonade. He was closeted with a man of business named Dabeedeen, liquidating accounts with the owners of the flotilla which had been sunk or burned. Between four and five thousand rupees were paid over as compensation for the boats; and fifty pounds were put aside to remunerate the bargemen for their share in the operations. It was afterwards asserted that Dabeedeen took undue precautions to avoid cheating himself in the transaction.
On the morrow, some boys loitering about on theOude side of the river came upon an English officer skulking in a ravine. He was of tall stature, and about forty years old, with a bit of sacking twisted round his waist, but otherwise naked. The children imparted their discovery to the peasants of an adjoining hamlet, who took the fugitive to their headman. The unhappy gentleman did not speak any native language, and could only point towards the East with an imploring gesture, and pronounce the word "Lucknow." They gave him sugar, which he eat up greedily with both hands, and so afforded a bystander an opportunity for observing that he bore the mark of a ring fresh on his finger. Touched by the contrast of his fallen state, these good people showed a disposition to do what they could for his preservation; but just then some landholders of the neighbourhood arrived at the head of a numerous array, and prevailed over these benevolent intentions by threats of present violence and future punishment. A short while afterwards, an ex-clerk of the commissariat department met fifty or sixty fellows "with drawn sabres and lighted matches, bringing along a Sahib bound." They halted under a grove which stood near the chapel of ease, and sent one of their party to fetch the Nana. In his stead came Baba Bhut, and, in the name of his brother, bade them kill their prisoner. To this they answered: "Put weapons into his hand, and let him strike us, and then we will strike in return: but we will not slay him thus." Some troopers of the Second Cavalry, who happened to be in attendance, had a less nice theory of honour. Three-quarters of anhour subsequently, while the clerk was performing his ablutions, the corpse was thrown into the Ganges, gashed all over with sword-cuts.
All the night of the twenty-ninth our people who had been captured at Nuzzufgur by Baboo Ram Bux were slowly remounting the stream. As it grew light they began to recognise objects and places which they had trusted never again to behold: and, two hours before noon, the doomed boatload lay to at the landing-place whence they had set forth, to return thus after three such days as had not repaid them for the trouble of making their escape. What ensued an Englishman would willingly tell in phrases not his own. The following account was taken from the lips of a native spy, and is supported by a mass of evidence. The mention of General Wheeler is, of course, inaccurate.
"There were brought back," says the man, "sixty Sahibs, twenty-five Mem Sahibs, and four children. The Nana ordered the Sahibs to be separated from the Mem Sahibs, and shot by the First Bengal Native Infantry. But they said, 'We will not shoot Wheeler Sahib, who has made our regiment's name great, and whose son is our Quarter-master. Neither will we kill the Sahib people. Put them in prison.' Then said the Nadiree regiment: 'What word is this? Put them in prison? We will kill the males.' So the Sahibs were seated on the ground: and two companies of the Nadiree regiment stood with their muskets, ready to fire. Then said one of the Mem Sahibs, the doctor's wife: (What doctor? How should I know?) 'Iwill not leave my husband. If we must die, I will die with him.' So she ran, and sat down behind her husband, clasping him round the waist. Directly she said this, the other Mem Sahibs said: 'We also will die with our husbands.' And they all sat down, each by her husband. Then their husbands said: 'Go back;' but they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers; and they, going in, pulled them away forcibly. But they could not pull away the doctor's wife, who there remained. Then the Padre called out to the Nana, and requested leave to read prayers before they died." (This Padre was Captain Seppings, with his broken arm. The doctor's wife, good soul, is known to have been Mrs. Boyes.) "The Nana granted it, and the Padre's hands were loosened so far as to enable him to take a small book from his pocket, with which he read. But all this time one of the Sahibs, who was shot in the arm, kept crying out to the sepoys: 'If you mean to kill us, why don't you set about it quickly and have the work done?'" Poor impatient Sahib! Making the responses in his passionate way! "After the Padre had read a few prayers, he shut the book, and the Sahibs shook hands all round. Then the sepoys fired. One Sahib rolled one way, one another, as they sat. But they were not dead: only wounded. So they went in and finished them off with swords."
Here is a thing which was actually done on the last Tuesday of June, eight years back from the present date. Three months before, these Sahibsand Mem Sahibs were passing an existence no more eventful, and apparently no less secure than the career of a county-court judge, or a military man quartered at Sheffield or Colchester. They laid their plans for the Meerut race-meeting and the biennial trip to an Himalayan station in a confidence of fruition equal to that with which a home-staying public servant anticipates the cup-day at Ascot, and the pass which he is going to discover in September. In April, Cawnpore society was lamenting the departure of one period of cold weather, and looking forward to the arrival of another; but, ere the rains had well set in, it had come to this, that the last batch of English officers were lying stiff and stark on the parade-ground, in front of the building where their widows and orphans were enduring a brief imprisonment for life.
The number of captives had yet to receive a final addition. At the station of Futtehgur, which was situated about seventy miles up the river from Cawnpore, some hundred and eighty English people of every age and profession were alive when the month of June commenced. The cantonments were occupied by the Tenth Native Infantry, under the command of Colonel Smith, a man distinguished by courage so closely allied with rashness, and firmness so nearly akin to obstinacy, that the European residents could not have fared worse had they been under the charge of a waverer or a coward. He was a zealous adherent of that sect among the Bengal officers which worshipped the sepoy. A willing martyr to the creed that he professed, his devotionwould have excused his fanaticism, had he been the only victim: but no personal calamity can atone for pedantry which staked and lost nine score English souls on the truth of the axiom that a mutineer was still docile and affectionate until he could be proved a murderer.
During the latter half of May successive tidings of massacre, insurrection, and, finally, of an approaching rebel force, excited the fears of our countrymen, and the impious hopes of the soldiery: as turbulent a set of scamps as any in Northern India. At length Mr. Probyn, the magistrate of the district, whose acute discernment, if left to itself, would have saved a large asset of life from the wreck of our fortunes, took measures for evacuating Futtehgur before the extreme crisis. He put himself into communication with Hurdeo Bux, a loyal noble whose estates lay on the left bank, and obtained an escort of fifty picked men and the offer of an asylum. At midnight, between the third and fourth of June, more than a hundred of the English inhabitants started down the river in a fleet of twelve or thirteen boats, laden with baggage, merchandise, furniture, and an ample store of provisions. Colonel Smith was not a little disgusted that so many people should combine to put a slight upon his pet battalion; but consoled himself with the reflection that time and the issue would judge between the sepoys and their defamers. The fugitives comprised the merchants of the place, and the planters of the vicinity; the civilians, missionaries, clerks, craftsmen, and pensioners; together with at least forty women, several nurseries ofchildren, and a multitude of native domestics. They anchored for refreshment after accomplishing a stage of four leagues, and, before breakfast was finished, were joined by certain officers of the Tenth, who announced that the regiment had mutinied on parade, and that all was over at Futtehgur. The expedition proceeded on its way, under a desultory fire of musketry from the country people, who were for the most part hostile to our cause. Next morning arrived the bailiff of Hurdeo Bux, who brought Probyn an invitation from his master to take refuge in his fort of Dhurrumpore. It was resolved to split the party. The magistrate, with forty others, accepted the proffered hospitality: while three of the most roomy vessels, containing nineteen men, twenty-three women, and twenty-six children, pushed forwards in the direction of Cawnpore.
And they reached their destination. On the evening of the ninth of June the little squadron was brought to on a sandbank a few furlongs above Nawabgunge, the north-west suburb of Cawnpore. Here they abode forty-eight hours, listening to the ceaseless cannonade which pealed along the stream from the south. Then they sent a messenger bearing a request for permission to pass on their way: the answer to which was brought by a horde of mutineers, who had no sooner appeared in view than the boatmen set the thatch alight, and fell with bludgeons and sabres upon the passengers, who were taking their afternoon tea, and who now threw themselves over the bulwarks, and sought concealment in a patch of high grass. But their cover was fired bythe rebel guns; two ladies and a child were scorched or suffocated to death; and the rest of the company fell into the hands of the troopers of the Second Cavalry, to whoseesprit-de-corpsthis one-sided work was more suited than the dubious contest which was raging around our intrenchment. The captives were made fast to a long rope, and marched as far as ladies with bare and bleeding feet could carry the babies and drag along the children: for by this time all their servants had fled, with the exception of two Ayahs and a few menials of the very lowest order. Here, as elsewhere, fortitude and fidelity were in inverse proportion to dignity of caste. Our people spent the night supperless, on the spot where they had halted; and at daybreak, after breakfasting on a mouthful of water a-piece, were distributed among sixteen bullock carts, and conveyed into the presence of the Nana: to whom they pointed out the folly of which he would be guilty if he indulged himself in wanton and indiscriminate murder. It was no easy task, they bade him reflect, to empty Europe of Europeans. He is said to have been inclined to mercy: but Bala Rao, who, if there was a choice between the brothers, seems to have been the blackest villain of the three, made such an outcry that the Nana stifled his nascent humanity in order to prevent the scandal of a family quarrel. The ladies and the little ones received orders to seat themselves on the ground; and the gentlemen, with their hands tied behind them, were drawn up as a rear rank. The Second Cavalry had soon another victory to inscribe upontheir standards. "I witnessed all this with my own eyes," says a Hindoo nurse, who, while they were both above the soil, would not lose sight of her dear young charge: "for I was sitting about thirty paces on one side. Two pits were dug, and all the bodies thrown in. The Nana was not present. May God take vengeance on him, and on these wicked men!" Nanukchund notes in his diary that "reports of guns were heard from the direction of Nawabgunge. A little after twelveA.M.two dead bodies of Europeans were seen floating down the Ganges; and sepoys were seen in a boat coming down behind these corpses and firing off their muskets as they came." Next day he found occasion to seek a retreat in a village which lay at some distance up the river. "I perceived," he writes, "bodies of ladies and gentlemen lying along the banks of the Ganges. I cannot describe the grief I felt at this sight. The corpses could not float down from the shallowness of the river. I saw three boats and a barge which had been burnt by the rebels. I questioned the people of the place, and learned that wine and other articles of merchandise were in the boats, but the boatmen had plundered the liquors, and, when drunk, cut down the gentlemen."
Soon after, "a body of troopers from the Nana came to seize me, and surrounded the house where I was. But I was saved from the hands of these ruffians, and kept in concealment in a garden. At nightfall the gardener sent four men with me, and thus I managed to reach the shore. It was not, however, my fate to find a boat, and I resolved todrown myself in the river, as I thought it better to die than to fall into the hands of so cruel a foe. After midnight I left the garden. The first ford I came to had water up to the waist only, and it was moonlight: so I waded across, and reached the next channel. There I saw the corpses of the Europeans whom the boatmen had slain when drunk: I cannot tell the exact number of bodies, but they extended here and there about a mile. I saw three dead young ladies. They all were dressed, but the low-caste people had commenced to take off their clothes; and some had been torn by animals. Portions of property, books, and papers, belonging to the plundered boats, were also strewn about the shores. These drunken boatmen were armed, some with clubs, some with weapons; and they were running about the woods like wild men. I cannot describe the terror that seized me at this moment. How I sighed for the British rule! I was trembling with fear, and knew not where I was going. On reaching the opposite bank I was senseless for four hours."
Meanwhile at Futtehgur was being played an unique tragi-comedy. On the fourth of June, during morning parade, twenty thousand pounds' worth of Government silver was in course of removal from the treasury to the fort. This mark of distrust, coming close upon the departure of the flotilla, proved too much for the sensibility of these military Brahmins; a number of whom stepped out from the ranks, surrounded the carts, and insisted that the money should be taken to their ownquarters. Colonel Smith and the adjutant came forward and expostulated with the insurgents; but they were pushed up against the wall, and kept within a semicircle of levelled bayonets until the cash was safely deposited in the middle of the sepoy lines. These proceedings caused a slight unpleasantness, which did not wholly disappear until the troops had been gratified with an advance of two months' pay, a promise of six months' extra allowances, and an assurance that the treasure should henceforward be kept on the parade-ground under their exclusive custody: inasmuch as the Company's property could be nowhere so secure as in the guardianship of the Company's soldiers. That evening Smith harangued as many of the battalion as chose to attend; told them that their conduct had been disgraceful, but threw the blame on the shoulders of the recruits; and entreated them to believe that he could forgive and forget. He then pronounced the regiment faithful and staunch. And so the first little difficulty between the colonel and his men had been patched up, and both parties were living together on terms of contemptuous acquiescence on the one side, and doting credulity on the other.
Such was the state of things which Probyn found when, after an interval of four days, he rode into the cantonment accompanied by a lieutenant and an ensign of the Tenth. Immediately upon their arrival the colonel informed the magistrate that his services were no longer required, as the district was entirely under martial law, and put the twosubalterns in arrest for having deserted their posts. The poor lads represented that they had been driven from Futtehgur by the fire of their own companies: but this man, whom sepoy steel pointed at his chest would not convince of sepoy disaffection, refused to accept the word of his officers when it clashed with a darling theory. Probyn, who foresaw the result, wrote to the Europeans then residing under the roof of Hurdeo Bux, stating that in his opinion the battalion could not possibly be kept together; and recommending that their host should put his fort into a defensible condition, and engage five hundred matchlock-men on the credit of the English Government. Feeling that he was useless while in the same locality with the colonel, he shook from his feet the dust of the devoted station, and made his way back to Dhurrumpore.
He was followed by a letter from Smith earnestly inviting the refugees to leave their new ally, and throw themselves into the arms of their natural protectors, the native soldiers of the Tenth regiment. He affirmed that there were at least a hundred and fifty men upon whom he absolutely relied; and that, if the worst should come to the worst, he could with their aid fight his way down to Allahabad. The poor creatures, who were very uncomfortably lodged, and who regretted the punkahs and musquito-curtains, the soda-water and bottled beer of their abandoned homes, jumped at the proposition in spite of all the logic and eloquence which Probyn could bring to bear upon their infatuation. He persuaded no one except his own family, and a solitary civilian,who had escaped from a slaughter and tumult in Rohilcund too narrowly and recently for him to care to move again. The rest of the party returned to Futtehgur, and re-instated themselves in the good graces of the deluded veteran. Before very long, they were treated with a specimen of sepoy loyalty. On the sixteenth of June the colonel took measures to carry out a capital sentence of the civil courts. The soldiery, however, considered that at such a time there might be something awkward in the precedent of an execution, and intimated that the criminal had better be released. Their intimation met with prompt obedience.
The Seetapore mutineers, laden with English booty, and reeking with English blood, were now close at hand. Their ringleaders despatched a letter to the men of the Tenth, calling upon them to murder their officers: to which the reply was: "Come. We will not oppose you. We have sworn not to do so: but our vows do not bind you." So little reciprocity of affection existed in that indecorous dalliance between authority and sedition. On the eighteenth of June the troops, eager to fling aside even the pretence of submission and the semblance of discipline, broke forth into open rebellion; sacked the public chest; and set up a pretender, whom the event showed to be better than a mere puppet. The Europeans shut themselves up in the fort, in company with Kalay Khan, the sole representative of the colonel's hundred and fifty faithful sepoys. That evening the Seetapore mutineers marched into the station, hungry for pillage; and, on discovering an empty treasury,vented their rage by killing every man of the Tenth on whom they could lay hands. In the course of a week, however, stimulated by the prospect of a liberal bounty, and the co-operation of some powerful Rohilla chieftains, the regiments made up their differences, and united to exterminate the common enemy. For ten days and nights five and thirty of our countrymen maintained against as many hundred assailants a rambling tumble-down old earthwork extending over a space of twenty acres. They fired bags of screws and scrap-iron for grape, and the heads of sledge-hammers for round-shot. They repulsed three general assaults. They lived amidst an atmosphere alive with bullets and flying splinters, and din with the smoke of blazing houses and exploding mines. At length, when the besiegers were gradually but surely blowing their way through the rampart, the defenders took to their boats, and dropped down the current, encumbered by thrice their own number of women, children, and invalids.
The rest is soon told. The river was low: the pursuit hot and persistent. The barges grounded; and were got off; and grounded for the last time. The crews waded ashore to drive away the hostile sharpshooters: and some were borne back dying; and some never stirred from the spot where they fell. Vessels hove in view, unwarlike in their external aspect; but which, as they ran alongside, proved to be crammed with swordsmen and musketeers. And then ensued mad confusion, and promiscuous butchery, and suicide that did not merit the name. On the tenth evening of July, after losinga life for every mile of the voyage, the expedition got as far as Nawabgunge, but no farther. The ladies helped to swell the throng of prisoners, and their husbands were sent whither the men of the Cawnpore garrison had gone before. Three only were spared, upon their engaging to bring about that the citadel of Allahabad should be made over to the rebellion. The Nana had reason for his self-denial. It was worth his while to forego any gratification to purchase security in the southern quarter. That was the direction in which was brewing the storm of retribution and reconquest.
FOOTNOTES:[3]On the unimportant point of the identity of the messenger a strange discrepancy exists between the best informed authorities. Captain Thomson "recognized her as Mrs. Greenway." On the other hand, the confidential servant of Mr. Greenway affirms that the choice of the Nana fell upon Mrs. Jacobi, and his statement is supported by the great majority of the depositions.[4]A single specimen will suffice of the style which, during those days, a British officer, a Colonel and Companion of the Bath, allowed himself to adopt in a published work. The page is headed "Major Ouvry's Battue.""Major Ouvry had made his dispositions for 'a bag.' Unlike a true member of the chase, who loves to see his fox take well to the open, he had headed his game; spreading his cavalry right and left of the road, to beat back the high crops into which the enemy had skulked. Forming his line precisely as he would have beaten a field of turnips for game, a scene commenced which baffles all description."Unhappily it does not baffle the description of Colonel George Bouchier, C.B. who proceeds as follows:—"Peafowl, partridges, and Pandies rose together. The latter gave the best sport. Here might be seen a Lancer running a-tilt at a wretch who had unfortunately taken to the open; there a Punjaub trooper cutting right and left as his victims rose before him; while the enemy, who were Goojahs, and armed with swords and hatchets, started up as the line approached, and dashed at their nearest opponent."Two troopers and a horse were our only casualties, while about one hundred brace of Goojahs bit the dust."
[3]On the unimportant point of the identity of the messenger a strange discrepancy exists between the best informed authorities. Captain Thomson "recognized her as Mrs. Greenway." On the other hand, the confidential servant of Mr. Greenway affirms that the choice of the Nana fell upon Mrs. Jacobi, and his statement is supported by the great majority of the depositions.
[3]On the unimportant point of the identity of the messenger a strange discrepancy exists between the best informed authorities. Captain Thomson "recognized her as Mrs. Greenway." On the other hand, the confidential servant of Mr. Greenway affirms that the choice of the Nana fell upon Mrs. Jacobi, and his statement is supported by the great majority of the depositions.
[4]A single specimen will suffice of the style which, during those days, a British officer, a Colonel and Companion of the Bath, allowed himself to adopt in a published work. The page is headed "Major Ouvry's Battue.""Major Ouvry had made his dispositions for 'a bag.' Unlike a true member of the chase, who loves to see his fox take well to the open, he had headed his game; spreading his cavalry right and left of the road, to beat back the high crops into which the enemy had skulked. Forming his line precisely as he would have beaten a field of turnips for game, a scene commenced which baffles all description."Unhappily it does not baffle the description of Colonel George Bouchier, C.B. who proceeds as follows:—"Peafowl, partridges, and Pandies rose together. The latter gave the best sport. Here might be seen a Lancer running a-tilt at a wretch who had unfortunately taken to the open; there a Punjaub trooper cutting right and left as his victims rose before him; while the enemy, who were Goojahs, and armed with swords and hatchets, started up as the line approached, and dashed at their nearest opponent."Two troopers and a horse were our only casualties, while about one hundred brace of Goojahs bit the dust."
[4]A single specimen will suffice of the style which, during those days, a British officer, a Colonel and Companion of the Bath, allowed himself to adopt in a published work. The page is headed "Major Ouvry's Battue."
"Major Ouvry had made his dispositions for 'a bag.' Unlike a true member of the chase, who loves to see his fox take well to the open, he had headed his game; spreading his cavalry right and left of the road, to beat back the high crops into which the enemy had skulked. Forming his line precisely as he would have beaten a field of turnips for game, a scene commenced which baffles all description."
Unhappily it does not baffle the description of Colonel George Bouchier, C.B. who proceeds as follows:—
"Peafowl, partridges, and Pandies rose together. The latter gave the best sport. Here might be seen a Lancer running a-tilt at a wretch who had unfortunately taken to the open; there a Punjaub trooper cutting right and left as his victims rose before him; while the enemy, who were Goojahs, and armed with swords and hatchets, started up as the line approached, and dashed at their nearest opponent.
"Two troopers and a horse were our only casualties, while about one hundred brace of Goojahs bit the dust."
And now Seereek Dhoondoo Punth purposed in the face of all India to invest himself with the ensigns and the titles of royalty. The contest had been fought out. The prize lay ready to his grasp. But it was no light matter to fix upon the auspicious hour when the Mahratta might take possession of the kingdom that he had carved out with his blade from the very heart of the dominions held by the alien race which had despoiled his sire. The soothsayers were consulted on this momentous point: but they were forestalled in their office by Dabeedeen, the individual who acted as agent for Tantia Topee in his dealings with the boatmen; and who now, stimulated by his success in that transaction, aspired to try his hand at divination. With the audacity of an amateur he at once named five in the evening of the thirtieth June as the season when, in accordance with the will of heaven, the Maharaja should proceed to Bithoor for the purpose of assuming his kingly functions. There must have been considerable discontent among the members of the SacredCollege when they learned that this volunteer augur had been rewarded with a fee of five hundred rupees, and a horse on which to attend the ceremony. The Nana set forth, accompanied by Bala Rao, and in the course of the next day took his seat as Peishwa on the paternal throne. The consecrated mark was affixed to his forehead amidst the roar of guns, and the acclamations of a crowd composed chiefly of townsmen who had repaired thither to surrender in the shape of an honorary gift such of their valuables as had not already passed by a more direct channel into the coffers of the usurper.
Some there were, however, who on this august occasion might rejoice with unfeigned rapture. The sepoys were gladdened by an announcement that a large quantity of gold had been sent to the Magazine, and would there be fashioned into decorations for the ankles of those warriors who had borne the burden and heat of the great struggle. The Ganges Canal was bestowed as a perquisite upon Azimoolah. It is difficult to conceive what would have been the indignation of the Directors who sat in Leadenhall Street during the years of the Crimean war, had they been told that the very equivocal native prince who was for ever hanging about the India House, would one day become sole proprietor of the gigantic concern which grew dearer to their hearts the more it cost and the less it yielded.
That night the city of Cawnpore was illuminated, and the following proclamations were posted in all places of general resort:
"As by the kindness of God and the good fortuneof the Emperor all the Christians who were at Delhi, Poonah, Sattara, and other places, and even those five thousand European soldiers who went in disguise into the former city and were discovered, are destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops, who are firm to their religion; and as they have been all conquered by the present Government, and as no trace of them is left in these places, it is the duty of all the subjects and servants of the Government to rejoice at the delightful intelligence, and carry on their respective work with comfort and ease."
"As by the bounty of the glorious Almighty and the enemy-destroying fortune of the Emperor the yellow-faced and narrow-minded people have been sent to hell, and Cawnpore has been conquered, it is necessary that all the subjects and landowners should be as obedient to the present Government as they have been to the former one; that all the Government servants should promptly and cheerfully engage their whole mind in executing the orders of the Government; that it is the incumbent duty of all the peasants and landed proprietors of every district to rejoice at the thought that the Christians have been sent to hell, and both the Hindoo and Mahomedan religions have been confirmed; and that they should as usual be obedient to the authorities of the Government, and never suffer any complaint against themselves to reach to the ears of the higher authority."
There is something quaint in the notion of a paternal Government setting the national mind atease as to the damnation of the enemy, and ordaining a public rejoicing over, "the delightful intelligence." Our authorities never went so far as to imitate the example: but Calcutta journalism did its best to supply the deficiency. "Fas est et ab hoste doceri" was the motto of that remarkable department of ephemeral literature. Among other gems which in 1857 adorned the poetry corner of the "Englishman," one stands conspicuous both for sentiment and expression:
"Barring Humanity pretendersTo hell of none are we the willing senders:But, if to sepoys mercy must be given,Locate them, Lord, in the back slums of heaven."
Be it observed that Lord Canning, Sir John Peter Grant, Mr. Charles Buxton, and Sir Henry Rich are here esteemed unworthy even of the partial and secondary felicity dealt out to Teeka Singh and Mungul Pandy. A critic who takes into account the creeds held by the respective writers will of the two productions regard with less aversion the performance of the Nana. That year of sin and horror afforded what was in truth an ill commentary upon the injunction to practise the mercy which rejoiceth against judgment, and on the oft-repeated assurance that in forgiveness and forbearance, if in nothing else, the disciple may emulate his master. And we wonder, forsooth, that our missionaries labour in vain to exalt the effective power of our faith in the eyes of those very heathen who are conscious how in the day of temptation talked and acted men calling themselves after the name of Himwhose last miracle was the healing of His captor, and whose last prayer was for the pardon of His murderers!
On the first of July the prisoners were removed from the Savada Hall to a small building north of the canal, situated between the black city and the Ganges. It was their final change of lodgings. To this day they occupy those premises on a lease which no man may dispute. This humble dwelling, the residence of some poor quill-driver, Hindoo or half-caste, as the case may be, had long stood amidst a group of sightly villas and edifices of social resort, unnoticed except by a casual sanitary commissioner, and distinguished only by a numeral in the map of the Ordnance Survey. It has since been known in India as the Beebeegur, or House of the Ladies; in England as the House of the Massacre. It comprised two principal rooms, each twenty feet by ten; certain windowless closets intended for the use of native domestics; and an open court some fifteen yards square. Here, during a fortnight of the Eastern summer, were penned two hundred and six persons of European extraction: for the most part women and children of gentle birth. The grown men were but five in number: the three gentlemen of Futtehgur, who are supposed to have been Mr. Thornhill, the judge, and Colonels Smith and Goldie: together with Mr. Edward Greenway, and his son Thomas.
If the various degrees of wretchedness are to be estimated by the faculty for suffering contained in the victim, then were these ladies of all women themost miserable. Few or none amongst them had been aware that in some corner of the mansion beneath whose roof their happier days were passed, there existed such foul holes as those in which they now lay panting by the score. It was much if they had cared to hazard a supposition that "the servants slept somewhere about the compound." They had neither furniture, nor bedding, nor straw; nothing but coarse and hard bamboo matting, unless they preferred a smoother couch upon the bare floor. They fed sparely on cakes of unleavened dough, and lentil-porridge dished up in earthen pans without spoon or plate. There was some talk of meat on Sundays, but it never came to anything. Once the children got a little milk. The same day the head-bearer of Colonel Williams came to pay his respects to the daughter who was the sole survivor of that officer's household. "I could not," he says, "get near the ladies on account of the sentries, but saw that food was being distributed to them. It consisted of native bread and milk. I remonstrated with a soldier who had formerly served under my master, and begged of him to supply with better food people who had lived in a very different way. He gave me eight annas" (twelvepence) "to go to the bazaar and buy some sweetmeats. I did so; and on my return Miss Georgiana and a married lady came into the verandah to meet me. Miss Georgiana repeated to me her mother's injunctions about my going to her brother. I gave them the sweetmeats, and had little time to speak to them, for, seeing me, the other ladies came outinto the verandah: on which the sentries turned me out."
The matron of these female prisoners, whom it took so little to keep in order, was a woman described as tall; of a fair complexion; twenty-eight or thirty years in age, but with a few grey hairs. She went by the nickname of "the Begum," and her character was no better than could be looked for in a waiting-maid of the courtezan who then ruled the circle of the Nana. She superintended a staff of sweepers, who furnished the captives with their food. The attendance of such debased menials was in itself the most ignominious affront which Oriental malice could invent: and even these were provided exclusively for the humiliation of our countrywomen, and might do nothing for their comfort. A young Brahmin, who chanced to look over the fence of the enclosure, saw some ladies washing their own dirty linen. With the irrepressible loquacity of an Hindoo he began asking some strangers who were standing by whether there was no washerman who could undertake to do for the Mem Sahibs: an ill-timed curiosity which procured him a slap on the face and a night in the guard-room.
Seventy-five paces from the abode where our people were confined stood an hotel owned by a Mahomedan proprietor: an erection of considerable size, daubed with bright yellow paint. Allured, probably, by the gaudiness of colour, an attraction which no genuine native can resist, the Nana had selected this building as his head-quarters. A couple of guns were planted at the entrance of the compound, and astrong detachment of his retainers kept guard under the portico. Two spacious centre rooms were reserved for the Maharaja's public receptions. One of the wings was set apart for the duties of the kitchen and the altar: and, side by side with religion, cooking went merrily on through every hour of the twenty-four. In the other Dhoondoo Punth lived from day to day in a perpetual round of sensuality, amidst a choice coterie of priests, pandars, ministers, and minions. The reigning beauty of the fortnight was one Oula or Adala. She was the Thais on whose breast sunk the vanquished victor, oppressed with brandy and such love as animates a middle-aged Eastern debauchee. She is said to have counted by hundreds of thousands the rupees which were lavished on her by the affection and vanity of her Alexander: and could well afford to spare one of her suite to look after the prisoners for the fraction of time during which they were likely to need her services. Every night there was an entertainment of music, dancing, and pantomime. The hit of the evening was made by a buffoon who took off amidst shouts of laughter the stiff carriage of an English officer.
The noise of this unhallowed revelry was plainly audible to the captives in the adjoining house; and, as they crowded round the windows to catch the breeze which sprang up at sunset, the glare of torches and the strains of barbarous melody might remind them of the period when he who was now arbiter of their existence thought himself privileged if he could induce them to honour with a half-disdainfulacceptance the hospitality of Bithoor. They sometimes got a nearer view of the festivities. The Begum daily took across two ladies to the Nana's stables, where they were set down to grind corn at a hand-mill for the space of several hours. They generally contrived to bring back a pocketful of flour for the children.
Hardship, heat, wounds, and want of space and proper nourishment released many from their bondage before the season marked out by Azimoolah for a jail delivery such as the world had seldom witnessed. A native doctor, himself a prisoner, has left a list of deaths which occurred between the seventh and the fifteenth of the month. Within these eight days, of which one was incomplete, as will be seen by those who read on, there succumbed to cholera and dysentery eighteen women, seven children, and an Hindoo nurse. There is a touching little entry which deserves notice. In the column headed "Names" appear the words "eck baba" (one baby): under that marked "disease" is written "ap se" (of itself).
Dying by threes and fours of frightful maladies, the designations of which they hardly knew; trying to eat nauseous and unwonted food, and to sleep upon a bed of boards; tormented by flies, and musquitoes, and dirt, and prickly heat, and all the lesser evils that aggravate and keep for ever fresh the consciousness of a great misfortune: doing for the murderer of their dearest ones that labour which in Asia has always been the distinctive sign and badge of slavery: to such reality of woe had beenreduced these beings whose idea of peril had once been derived from romances, and who had been acquainted with destitution only through tracts and the reports of charitable institutions. Alas for the delicate Mem Sahibs, and the pretty Missy Babas, for whom nothing had formerly been too dainty and well-appointed! Alas for the handy and patient soldiers' wives, who had followed their good men into the discomfort of barrack life to be rewarded thus! Alas for sturdy Bridget Widdowson, and tender Mrs. Moore, who bore on her bosom a child destined never to lisp the name of his brave father! Her perchance one of the victors, whose son or brother had fallen beneath her husband's sword, (for he was no sluggard in the onset), might see weeping like Andromache over her toil at the weary mill, and might say: "This was the wife of him who of all the English fought the best, whenever the battle waxed hot around their wall." And, so speaking, he would renew her grief at thought of the man who was no longer there to shield her from the day of bondage. But he, floating on his face past some distant city, or stranded on a bank of sand trodden by none save the vulture and the crocodile, saw not how she was misused, nor heard when she cried for succour.
The number of captives diminished so fast that the Nana began to fear lest he should soon have no hostages wherewith to provide against the consequences of a possible reverse. They were accordingly driven twice a day into the verandah, and forced to sit there until they had inhaled as muchfresh air as, in the judgment of the Begum, would support an English constitution for the space of twelve hours. This substitute for the morning gallop and the evening promenade was very distasteful to our ladies, on account of the idlers who came to stare, and remark how odd a Lady Sahib looked when neither on horseback nor in her carriage. The poor creatures were overheard whispering among themselves that the British never used their prisoners thus.
It is probable that from this circumstance originated the rumour concerning European females who had been publicly maltreated in the bazaar. Two or three sentences must here be written upon those fables which it is our misfortune that we once believed, and our shame if we ever stoop to repeat. Delhi, Cawnpore, and Futtehgur were the three stations in which any considerable multitude of our countrywomen were placed under the disposal of the mutineers. With regard to the two latter places, if we except one single case of abduction, it is absolutely certain that our ladies died without mention, and we may confidently hope without apprehension, of dishonour. Those revolting stories which accompanied to Southampton the first tidings of the tumult at Delhi may all be traced to some gossip regarding the fate of Miss Jennings, the daughter of the chaplain, and her friend, Miss Clifford. It is now ascertained beyond all question that these girls were sitting in an upper room of the palace gateway, when they heard on the stairs a rush of footsteps and a clattering of scabbards, and were cut downdead as they rose from their chairs to learn the cause of this strange intrusion.
Some, who love to attribute every event to the special interposition of Providence, have insisted that nothing short of fabricated indignities, and tales of mutilation equally untrue and more easily disproved, could have kindled the explosion of wrath and pity which sent forth by myriads the youth of England again to subdue Hindostan beneath a Christian yoke. Piety, unwilling to pronounce authoritatively on such a matter, will be loth to imagine that God provoked men to utter and to credit lies for the furtherance of any purpose which could conduce to His glory. As must ever be in the order of things by Him determined, the evil seed produced evil fruit. Grapes came not of those thorns, nor figs of those thistles. The murder of a hundred families, the ruin of a thousand homesteads, were incentives capable of exalting our national enthusiasm to the requisite pitch without the aid of exaggeration or invention. Those hateful falsehoods serve but to evoke from the depths of our nature the sombre and ferocious instincts which religion and civilization can never wholly eradicate. To their account unhappy India may charge most of the innocent blood that was spilt and the bad blood that remains.
It was not long before the usurper began to experience the proverbial uneasiness of a crowned head. At no time a favourite with the Cawnpore population, he now was cordially detested by all the respectable inhabitants; who, after his downfall, testified their hatred by refusing to pronounce hisname without the addition of some disparaging epithet. The majestic appellations of Maharaja and Peishwa were at once cut down to "Nana soor," "that pig of a Nana:" and this was the mildest and the most decent of all his agnomina, with the exception, perhaps, of "budmash," which answers as nearly as possible to the French "coquin." "That great budmash, the Nana," occurs in the peroration of one of Nanukchund's outbursts of Hindoo eloquence. For the present, however, the townspeople evinced their ill-will by a tacit but very effective opposition to the newrégime. His requisitions of money and supplies met with no response; and he could procure nothing except by open force, which he was not slow to employ. The city had, indeed, little motive to love him or the state of things which he represented. A Mahomedan author describes the aspect of a locality where the rebellion had obtained the ascendancy in these graphic words:—"Since the day of my arrival I never found the bazaar open, unless it were a few poor shops. The shopkeepers and the citizens are extremely sorry for losing their safety, and curse the mutineers from morning to evening. The people and the workmen starve, and widows cry in their huts."
The class who had most cause to pray for the return of order were the natives of Bengal Proper, then settled in the Upper Provinces for purposes of commerce. Impoverished, suspected, menaced, and outraged, they were conscious that neither life, limb, nor liberty were worth a fortnight's purchase.Many a rich Bengalee within the borders of the insurrection sat all day behind closed blinds, with a pistol in his girdle, a bag of jewels in his turban, and a horse ready saddled at the back door of his garden. And it was not without reason that these men suffered so cruelly: for they were only less loyal than the English themselves. The wealthy, industrious, and effeminate denizens of Lower Bengal had no desire to see the many-headed and irrational despotism of a Prætorian guard substituted for the mild and regular sway of old John Company. The conduct of the soldiery rendered them exceedingly uncomfortable and not a little indignant: and they lost no opportunity of wreaking their spite upon the turbulent mercenaries who would not allow honest folks to go about their business in peace. The sepoys who mutinied at Chittagong and Dacca, both of which stations lie within the limits of Bengal, met with such hostility from the country-people that they gave up all thoughts of moving on Calcutta, and endeavoured to make their way into Assam. Few ever reached the frontier. They literally rotted away in the jungle. Some died of starvation: some of fever and ague. The foragers were knocked on the head by the peasantry, skilled, like all Hindoo villagers, in the play of the quarter-staff. The stragglers were carried off by wild animals which swarm amidst the swamps and forests that fringe the great rivers of eastern India. At length, driven into a corner, they one morning cut the throats of the women who had hitherto accompanied their march, and dispersed into the wilderness, to re-appearnot even on the gallows. They could not have fared worse amidst the moors of Yorkshire or Northumberland.
It is painful to remember how we requited the attachment and fidelity of Bengal. At a time when all good citizens, without distinction of birth and creed, should have united in one firm front against the common foe, it was the delight of many among the English residents in the capital to heap insult and accusation on their dark-skinned neighbours. Then, in the presence of that portentous danger, every condition of soul, from the height of magnanimity to incredible baseness, might be observed in striking and instructive contrast. While at one end of Northern India stout Sir John was fighting his province in the interests of the general weal; denuding himself of British soldiers, and committing his existence and reputation to the faith of Sikh allies; doing steadfastly in the hour the work of the hour; remedying the evil which was sufficient unto the day, and, like a good Christian as he was, leaving to God the things of the morrow: at the other end a clique of Englishmen, driven insane by terror and virulence, were plotting how to form themselves into a Committee of Public Safety, depose the viceroy, seize the reins of the state, and have their will upon the native population. While at Arrah a handful of heroes were defending a billiard-room against drought, and hunger, and cannon, and the militia of a warlike region, backed by three regiments of regular infantry: in Calcutta heaven and earth were being moved to eject fromthe Photographic Society a Bengalee member, who had given vent to some remarks reflecting upon the habits and tone of low European loafers.
July had not well set in before the insurgents of Cawnpore showed symptoms that marked the wilfulness and inconstancy of soldiers who have once forgotten their duty. Idleness bred discontent, and discontent speedily ripened into sedition. The honeymoon had not yet drawn to a close, and already this unnatural connexion between the Nana and the army was distasteful to the stronger of the contracting parties. Regiments which had refused to obey such men as Ewart and Delafosse were not likely to entertain any very profound reverence for an effete Hindoo rake. The Peishwa evinced an inclination to enjoy for a while the contemplation of his recent dignity in the retirement of Bithoor: but the troops had no notion of letting their paymaster out of sight, and brought him back into their midst by violence which they hardly cared to disguise beneath the semblance of respect. On the third of the month a donation was distributed among their ranks, and accepted with anything but gratitude. Few got as much as, in their own opinion, they deserved: and all less than they desired. What they had was not in a portable form. Government silver proved to be an inconvenient burden for the loins; and, if things went ill, it might procure a still more unpleasant girdle round the neck. There were disagreeable anecdotes current regarding certain gentlemen, late of the Company's service, who had been executedat Allahabad on the discovery about their persons of some new copper coins, which had never issued from the Treasury by a regular payment, and which they were suspected of having intended to put into premature circulation. There accordingly was a brisk demand for gold. Azimoolah ordered it to be proclaimed in the bazaar by beat of drum that bankers should supply the mutineers with mohurs at a minimum price of twenty-one rupees. The Cawnpore exchange, however, had so little confidence in the star of the maharaja, that these coins could not be bought for less than twenty-eight rupees, which was an advance of seventy-five per cent. on their ordinary price. The sepoys, who were not more acquainted than European privates with the laws which regulate the money-market, and knew only that they had ended by pocketing little more than half the cash that they expected, were soon talking about a fresh change of masters. The Mussulman faction gained ground rapidly and surely. Men began to recollect how cleverly the Nunhey Nawab had managed his battery without any prior experience in gunnery, and drew the conclusion that he might be equally successful if he could be bribed by an offer of sovereignty to turn his attention towards the rate of discount.
But military greediness, and Moslem ambition, and the jealousy of the nobles, and the enmity of the bourgeoisie ceased ere long to occupy the thoughts of the tyrant. These sources of uneasiness were absorbed in one great and pressing terror, when, at the first doubtful and intermittent, butmore frequent ever and clearer, came surging up from the south-west the fame of the advancing vengeance. Couriers mounted on swift camels were sent down the road, and returned with the intelligence that the British were certainly approaching by forced marches, laying a telegraph as they proceeded, and hanging the inhabitants of the villages within which were found pieces of the old wire. This information naturally produced a strong effect upon men whose crimes were not such as to meet with impunity under the new scale of penalties that seemed to have been adopted by the Sahibs. The consternation was so deep and universal that the Nana had recourse to his customary palliative. On the fifth of July he issued the following proclamation:—
"It has come to our notice that some of the city people, having heard the rumours of the arrival of the European troops at Allahabad, are deserting their houses and going out into the districts. Be it therefore proclaimed in each lane and street of the city that regiments of cavalry, and infantry, and batteries have been despatched to check the Europeans either at Allahabad or Futtehpore; that the people should therefore remain in their houses without any apprehension, and engage their minds in carrying on their work."
This manifesto was probably considered too tame and brief for such a crisis. Next day there appeared a truly notable state-paper, which, to judge from internal evidence, may be attributed to the pen of the prime-minister. It is regarded as the masterpieceof that author, and may serve for a model to all Governments that undertake to enlighten the public mind by means of an official organ.
"A traveller just arrived at Cawnpore from Allahabad states that before the cartridges were distributed a Council was held for the purpose of taking away the religion and rites of the people of Hindostan. The Members of Council came to the conclusion that, as the matter was one affecting religion, seven or eight thousand Europeans would be required, and it would cost the lives of fifty thousand Hindoos, but that at this price the natives of Hindostan would become Christians. The matter was therefore represented in a despatch to Queen Victoria, who gave her consent. A second council was then held, at which the English merchants were present. It was then resolved to ask for the assistance of a body of European troops equal in number to the native army, so as to insure success when the excitement should be at the highest. When the despatch containing this application was read in England, thirty-five thousand Europeans were very rapidly embarked on ships, and started for Hindostan, and intelligence of their despatch reached Calcutta. Then the English in Calcutta issued the order for the distribution of the cartridges, the object of which was to make Hindostan Christian; as it was thought that the people would come over with the army. The cartridges were smeared with hog and cow's fat. One man who let out the secret was hung, and one imprisoned."
"Meantime, while they were occupied in carrying out their plan, the ambassadors of the Sultan of Roum" (Turkey) "in London sent word to his sovereign that thirty-five thousand Europeans had been despatched to Hindostan to make all the natives Christians. The Sultan (may Allah perpetuate his kingdom!) issued a firman to the Pacha of Egypt, the contents of which are as follows: 'You are conspiring with Queen Victoria. If you are guilty of neglect in this matter, what kind of face will you be able to show to God?'"
"When this firman of the Sultan of Roum reached the Pacha of Egypt, the Lord of Egypt assembled his army in the city of Alexandra, which is on the road to India, before the Europeans arrived. As soon as the European troops arrived the troops of the Pacha of Egypt began to fire into them with guns on all sides, and sunk all their ships, so that not even a single European escaped. The English in Calcutta, after issuing orders for biting the cartridges, and when these disturbances had reached their height, were looking for the assistance of the army from London. But the Almighty by the exercise of his power made an end of them at the very outset. When intelligence of the destruction of the army from London arrived, the Governor-General was much grieved and distressed, and beat his head.