At dawn on the morning of the sixth of June, Sir Hugh Wheeler received a letter, in which the Nana announced his intention of at once commencing the attack. Our officers were summoned within the intrenchment, where, for a fortnight past, the women and children had already been in sanctuary. The order was obeyed with soldier-like promptitude, intensified by the consciousness of imminent peril. It fared ill with those who had indulged in a fond anticipation that their next change of lodging would be to Allahabad and Calcutta. With no notice of quarter, or month, or week; with no valuation for fixtures, or inventory of furniture, they were called upon to shift to a residence held on short and uncertain tenure, and at a fearful rent. There was no time for packing, or even for selection. There was not leisure to snatch a parting cup of coffee, or a handfulof cigars, or an armful of favourite books, or a pith-helmet that had been tested by many a long day's tiger-shooting under the blazing Indian sun. All possessions, however hardly earned and highly prized,—all dear memorials of home and love,—were to be alike abandoned to the coming foe. He who, in that close and burning night of the mid summer, had on his house-top courted a little air and sleep, might not stay to take anything out of his house. He who had been on some early service in the field might not return back to take his clothes. Few and happy were they who had secured a single change of raiment; and those who, in the hurry of the moment, had stayed to dress themselves from head to foot, were by comparison not unfortunate. Half-clad, unbreakfasted, confused, and breathless, our countrymen huddled like shipwrecked sea-farers into the precincts of the fatal earthwork, which they entered only to suffer, and left only to die.
For that fortification had been erected under evil auspices. As of Hiel the Bethelite, so it may be said of poor Sir Hugh, that he marked out the ground in his first-born, and set up the épaulement in the youngest of his household. A chief, whose military eye had not been dulled by age, would have discerned the rare capabilities for defence afforded by the magazine, which consisted of an immense walled inclosure, containing numerous buildings and an inexhaustible store of guns and ammunition. The position was watered, and at the same time protected in the rear, by the Ganges. The public offices and the treasury were in theimmediate vicinity, so that the records and the money might have been placed in safety at the cost of a few hours' labour. The doors of the jail would have been commanded by our cannon, and at least one tributary to the flood of disorder pent within its bounds. The native government officials, who for the most part resided at Nawabgunge, might have remained in communication with the civil authorities within the fortress; and the garrison could have been readily supplied with provisions from the loyal villages in the neighbourhood, and, indeed, from the city itself; which, says our old friend Nanukchund, "was like a certain wife who used to act up to the wishes of her husband, because she feared him, and then could also protect herself; but, when her husband died, she found herself under other people's control, and lived in licence." He further observes that "the Sahibs did the reverse of wisdom. They made the intrenchment far out in the plain and outside the city, without reflecting that, in case of mutiny breaking out, it would be surrounded by the rebels on all four sides, who would be assisted by the artillery of the Magazine, and the Government treasure so temptingly thrown in their way. Thus, to illustrate the proverb, the Sahibs put a sword into the enemy's hand, and thrust their own heads forward."
Such was indeed the case. If the choice of the site for our place of refuge had been confided to Azimoolah and Teeka Sing, they could not have selected one more favourable for the attack. TheDragoon hospital stood in the centre of a vast open space, flat with the flatness of Bengal, on the south bank of the canal which separated the military quarter from the Native city, the bridge of boats, the civil station, and the magazine. The establishment consisted of two single-storied barracks surrounded by spacious verandahs; each intended to afford accommodation for a company of a hundred men. The building that was somewhat the larger of the two was thatched with straw, which circumstance alone rendered the position untenable. The other was roofed with concrete, a condition usually expressed by the word "pucka;" that ubiquitous adjective which is the essential ingredient of Anglo-Indian conversation. Both houses were constructed of thin brickwork, hardly proof against the rays of an Eastern sun, and far too frail to resist a twenty-four pound shot. The hospital was provided with a due modicum of cooking sheds and servants' huts; and in front of the thatched barrack was a well, protected by a slight parapet. By order of Sir Hugh these premises had been enclosed in a mud-wall of the shape of a rectangular parallelogram; four feet in height; three feet in thickness at the base; and twenty-four inches at the crest, which was therefore pervious to a bullet from an Enfield rifle. The batteries were constructed by the very simple expedient of leaving an aperture of a size proportioned to the number of the guns: so that our artillerymen served their pieces, as in the field, with their persons entirely exposed to the fire of the enemy.
Behind those slender bulwarks was gathered a mixed and feeble company, to the full sum of a thousand souls. Of these, four hundred and sixty-five were men, of every age and profession. Their wives and grown daughters were about two hundred and eighty in number, and their little ones at least as many. All who were able to bear arms, twenty score by count, were at once called together, and told off in batches under their respective officers. The north side of the intrenchment, facing the river, was strengthened by a poor little triangular outwork, which our garrison entitled "the Redan;" as if to cheer themselves, during their cruel and inglorious struggle, with a reminiscence of chivalrous European warfare. This important post was entrusted to Major Vibart, of the Second Cavalry, assisted by Captain Jenkins. At the north-eastern corner, Lieutenants Ashe and Sotheby superintended a battery of one twenty-four pounder howitzer and two nine-pounders. Captain Kempland had charge of the east curtain, while at the south-eastern angle stood three nine-pounder guns under the charge of Lieutenants Eckford, Burney, and Delafosse; of whom one was destined to show upon happier fields of battle how the soldiers of Cawnpore fought and bled. Next in order came the main-guard, held by Lieutenant Turnbull, and flanked by a tiny rifled piece carrying a three-pound ball, which was manned by a detachment under the orders of Major Prout. Towards the north, Lieutenants Dempster and Martin directed the working of three nine-pounders; and their next neighbour was Captain Whiting, who felt the Redanwith his right, and thus closed the circuit of the defence. The general supervision of the artillery devolved upon Major Larkins; but that officer was incapacitated by illness from taking a very active part in the operations.
There was no time to be lost. While the commanders of the various posts were choosing their parties, and placing their sentries, and dispensing their share of the arms and ammunition, already the roar of great guns, and the clouds of black smoke rising fast and frequent in the north-west quarter, told them that the warning of the Nana was no empty menace. As when, during some great hurricane, such as of late passed o'er pale Calcutta, the tidal wave comes surging up the river, unlooked for and irresistible, leaving in its track desolation and ruin, the wrecks of ships and the corpses of men—so on that morning, over doomed Cawnpore, swept the returning flood of mutiny and misrule. At break of day the whole rebel array poured down the Delhi road in a compact body, with the Maharaja at their head, who had good reason to be proud of his following. It was a force which would have done credit to any Mahratta chief in the palmiest days of that redoubted race. There was an entire regiment of excellent cavalry, well mounted and equipped. There was a detachment of gunners and drivers from the Oude Artillery, who had been despatched as a loan from Lucknow to Cawnpore, just in time to enable them to take part in the revolt. There were the Nana's own myrmidons, who made up by attachment to his cause what they wanted in militaryskill. Lastly, there were three fine battalions of Bengal sepoys, led by experienced sepoy officers, armed with English muskets, and trained by English discipline. When the mutineers arrived at the outskirts of the station, Teeka Sing, the General, postponing his private gain and malice to the public good, repaired at once to the magazine, and spent the morning in securing a fleet of thirty boats which lay beneath the walls, laden with shot, shell, and heavy cannon. The guns in serviceable order he sent off towards the intrenchment on carriages drawn by Government bullocks; and those which were not in condition for immediate use, he compelled the artificers of the establishment to brush up on the Government lathes. But the main body of the insurgents displayed no such foresight or self-control. They kept close order no longer, but spread themselves out to the right and left, and, robbing, burning, and murdering as they went, bore southwards over the civil quarter and the native city. Sir George Parker and a party of his friends, who, inobservant of the coming storm, were lingering over their last breakfast in his pleasant villa, had barely time to fly for their lives. Four office-clerks, who lived together in a shop on the banks of the canal, after a valiant resistance, were smoked out of their lodging, and slain as they fled. The troopers of the Second Cavalry galloped up and down the lanes of the black town, hunting for Englishmen; and the low-caste Mahomedans of the bazaar—the sword-polishers, the cotton-spinners, and the dealers in silver ornaments—joined eagerly in the chase. One European wasrun down and worried to death in a garden. Another, a gentleman advanced in age, had concealed himself in a hut near the posting-house, in company with his wife, his little daughter, and his son, a boy of sixteen years. The wretched family were tracked to their hiding-place, arrested, and dragged before the Nana, who ordered them for instant execution; and they were happy at least in this, that they died together, and without delay. Proclamation was made that every building in which shelter had been given to Europeans, Eurasians, or Christians of any extraction, should first be plundered, and then razed to the ground. This announcement provided the rebels with a pretext for breaking open and ransacking the dwellings of many respectable natives. Buddree Nath, the commissariat contractor, who was accused of secreting Lady Wheeler and her daughters, lost the savings of a lifetime in the course of a single hour. The scum of the city made the most of their period of licence, and, when any portable property came in their way, took good care not to inquire very closely into the creed of the owner. Among others, the King of Oude is supposed to have suffered a heavy loss. Forty thousand rupees belonging to a Hindoo merchant were taken from a cart which stood in the premises of the post-office, and removed into the most blackguard districts of the neighbourhood. A gang of cavalry soldiers went down the Street of Silver, the main thoroughfare of the town, beating in the doors of the cloth-merchants and money-changers, insulting the trembling tradesmen, and carrying off all the valuables on which theycould lay their hands. Meanwhile, those mutineers whose religious spite overcame their desire for lucre, were deriving intense enjoyment from the occupation of cannonading the church. Another large company of Brahmin sepoys, whose orthodox indignation took a more practical turn, and could not content itself with the somewhat tame pastime of persecuting senseless brick and plaster, marched off to the Mahomedan quarter; bombarded the residence of the Nunhey Nawab, the most influential Mussulman noble of the vicinity; blew open the gates; smashed the glass-ware and the porcelain; appropriated the contents of the wardrobe and the plate-chest; and told the master of the house to consider himself a prisoner. They then proceeded to take into custody other leading gentlemen of the same persuasion, and returned to the Nana loaded with spoil, and followed by a line of sedan-chairs containing the persons of their captives.
As the morning advanced, the reports of the musketry and the tumult of voices grew more and more distinct to the ears of our countrymen. Nearer and ever nearer rolled the flames of the blazing houses, and the white puffs which betokened the presence of artillery. At length, stung by a generous impatience, Lieutenant Ashe took out his guns to reconnoitre, accompanied by some five and twenty volunteers. The party had barely gone forward a quarter of a mile, when they caught sight of the rebel van, which had already passed the canal, and occupied in force the neighbourhood of the bridge. Our people returned faster than they went, andnot all; for one, at least, Lieutenant Ashburner, was never again seen or heard of; and poor Mr. Murphy, of the East Indian Railway, brought back with him a wound, to which he succumbed before the day was out. He enjoyed the melancholy honour of being buried in a solitary coffin which had been found in a corner of the hospital; and shared with one other, a lady who died of fever, enviable in that she was the first, the privilege of being decently interred within the precincts of the intrenchment. There soon came to be scanty leisure for funeral rites. At ten o'clock the mutineers fired their first shot, from a nine-pounder gun, which they had brought down to the vacant lines of the First Infantry. The ball struck the crest of the mud wall, and glided over into the smaller barrack, where it broke the leg of an unhappy native footman, who breathed his last in the course of the afternoon. This terrible and unwonted visitor, the precursor of many, scared indoors a large assembly of ladies and children who were sitting and playing in and about the verandahs; and sent to their posts the fighting men, most of whom had now their earliest experience of the sensation produced by the whizzing rush of a round shot; an ominous sound, which, ere long, became familiar to them as the click of the billiard-ball to a marker, or the buzz of the tennis-ball to anhabituéof Princes' Club.
And so the siege had begun. The first stroke had been played in that momentous contest, of which the stake was a thousand English lives; since nothing remained for our countrymen to protect savetheir bare existences and the empty shadow of the British rule. The first game had gone against us. The Nana had won the regiments; and the regiments had won their colours, their weapons, and their pay. Why needed they to grudge the losers their breath? Why, for a possession of no value, except to the owner, should they deliberately commence a hazardous and protracted match of double or quits? Power and authority, treasures and munitions, the sinews and the muscles of war, had alike passed over to the sepoys. What temptation was there to run the manifold public chances of battle, and incur the personal risk which none can avoid who bring angry Englishmen to bay, in order to destroy a handful of disheartened invalids and civilians; scarcely numerous enough to escort their women and children in safety to Allahabad through the perils of eddies, and quicksands, and bands of highwaymen recruited and emboldened in those months of general anarchy?
But it came to pass that their heart was hardened, and they would not let our people go. The ringleaders of the mutiny knew well that their position was one of utmost hazard. They had been too criminal to be forgiven, and too successful to be forgotten. Henceforward their aim was to implicate their comrades beyond the hope of pardon; to place between them and their former condition of life a gulf filled with English blood. And when the Nana exhorted his followers to slay and spare not, he spoke to willing ears; for between them and our countrymen there existed a degree of mutual distrust which could only end in mutual extermination.The minds of men were so agitated and disordered by anger and uneasiness, that the sole chance of life for either party lay in the utter destruction of the other. Already quarter was no longer given, and, indeed, could hardly be said to be worth the asking. A European knew that, if one set of Pandies entertained any qualms of compassion or gratitude, the next squad who came across him would infallibly cut his throat; and a sepoy knew that, if his captors took the trouble to drag him about in their train for a few days, the magistrate at the first station on the road would have him hung before the officer in command of the party had emerged from the bath-room. This was no generous rivalry of national vigour and skill and prowess. Little of military science was here, and less of military courtesy. With clenched teeth and bated breath, the Brahmin and the Saxon closed for the death-grapple; well aware that, when once their fingers were on each other's throats, one only of the combatants would ever rise from the trampled sand.
As soon as the Rubicon of insurrection had been passed; as soon as the gauntlet of sedition had been thrown; the first care of the mutineers was to get rid of all who had been the witnesses of their guilt, and who might hereafter be the judges. No sepoy felt secure of his neck and plunder as long as one solitary Englishman remained on Indian soil; for our revolted mercenaries shared to the full that strange mixture of veneration, bewilderment, aversion, and terror, with which our Eastern subjects still regard that extraordinary people who, in the course of asingle decade, expanded from a handful of clerks and factors to a galaxy of warriors and proconsuls. It is hardly possible for a man brought up amidst European scenes and associations to realize the idea conceived of him and his countrymen by a thoroughbred Hindoo. On the one hand, the natives must acknowledge our vast superiority in the arts of war and rule. Our railways, and steamships, and Armstrong guns, are tangible facts which cannot be slighted. They must be perfectly alive to the knowledge that we have conquered them, and are governing them in a more systematic and downright manner than they have ever been governed before. But, on the other hand, many of our usages must appear in their eyes most debased and revolting. It is difficult to imagine the horror with which a punctilious and devout Brahmin cannot but regard a people who eat the flesh of cow and pig, and drink various sorts of strong liquors from morning till night. It is at least as hard for such a man to look up to us as his betters, morally and socially, as it would be for us to place among the most civilized nations of the world a population which was in the habit of dining on human flesh, and intoxicating itself daily with laudanum and salvolatile. The peculiar qualities which mark the Englishman are peculiarly distasteful to the Oriental, and are sure to be widely distorted when seen from his point of view. Our energy and earnestness appear oppressive and importunate to the languid, voluptuous aristocracy of the East. Our very honesty seems ostentatious and contemptible to the wily and tortuous Hindoo mind. Thatmagnificent disregard ofles convenances, which among Continental nations is held to be a distinguishing mark of our countrymen, is inexplicable and hateful to a race who consider external pomp and reticent solemnity to be the necessary accompaniments of rank, worth, and power. Add the mysterious awe by which we are shrouded in the eyes of the native population, which very generally attributes to magic our uniform success in everything we take in hand, and you will have some notion of the picture presented to the Brahmin imagination by an indefatigable, public-spirited, plain-spoken, beer-drinking, cigar-smoking, tiger-shooting, public servant. We should not be far wrong if we were content to allow that we are regarded by the natives of Hindostan as a species of quaint and somewhat objectionable demons, with a rare aptitude for fighting and administration; foul and degraded in our habits, though with reference to those habits not to be judged by the same standard as ordinary men; not altogether malevolent, but entirely wayward and unaccountable; a race of demi-devils, neither quite human, nor quite supernatural; not wholly bad, yet far from perfectly beneficent; who have been settled down in the country by the will of fate, and seem very much inclined to stay there by our own. With this impression on his mind the Bengal sepoy desired with a nervous and morbid anxiety to get quit of the Sahibs by fair means or foul. He did not care to expose us to unnecessary misery and humiliation; to torture our men, or to outrage our women. His soleobject was to see the last of us: to get done with us for good and for ever. Ignorant beyond conception of European geography and statistics, he had convinced himself that, if once the Anglo-Indians of every sex and age were killed off, from the Governor General to the serjeant-major's baby, there did not exist the wherewithal to replace them. And therefore he said in his heart: "Come, and let us destroy them together. Let us cut them off from being a nation, that their name may be no more in remembrance." He conceived that Great Britain had been drained dry of men to recruit the garrison of our Asiatic empire; that our home population consisted of nurses and children, of invalids who had left the East for a while in quest of health, and veterans who had retired to live at ease on their share of the treasures of Hindostan. He fancied that the tidings of a general massacre of our people would render our island a home of helpless mourners: he found that those tidings changed it into a nest of reckless and pitiless avengers. He believed our power to be a chimera, and he discovered it to be a hydra. He learned too late that he had digged a pit for himself, and had fallen into the ditch which he had made; that his mischief and his violent dealings had come down upon his own head: that Englishmen were many, and that, when the occasion served, their feet too were not slow to shed blood: that our soldiers could kill within the year more heathen than our missionaries had converted in the course of a century: that our social science talk about the sacredness of human life, and our MayMeeting talk concerning our duty towards those benighted souls for whom Christ died, meant that we were to forgive most of those who had never injured us, plunder none but such as were worth robbing, and seldom hang an innocent Hindoo if we could catch a guilty one: that the great principles of mercy and justice and charity must cease to be eternally true until the injured pride of a mighty nation had been satisfied, its wrath glutted, and its sway restored.
But though apprehension and dislike had inspired the rebels with a determination to destroy every English man off the face of the land, had they no feeling of ruth for the sufferings and the fate of our women? Never in European warfare has the sword been deliberately pointed at a female breast; save during those rare seasons, indelible from memory and inexpiable by national remorse, when, after the mad carnage of a successful escalade, drunkenness and licence have ruled the hour. If the Nana knew the valour and strength of our officers too well to allow him to be merciful, how came it that he did not respect the weakness of our ladies? No one can rightly read the history of the mutinies unless he constantly takes into account the wide and radical difference between the views held by Europeans and Asiatics with reference to the treatment and position of the weaker sex. We, who still live among the records and associations of chivalry, horrify Utilitarians and Positivists by persisting in regarding women as goddesses. The Hindoos, who allow their sisters and daughters few or no personal rights,—the Mahomedans, who do not even allowthem souls,—cannot bring themselves to look upon them as better than playthings. The pride of a Mussulman servant is painfully wounded by a scolding from the mistress of the house, and he takes every opportunity of showing his contempt for her by various childish impertinences. Among the numberless symptoms of our national eccentricity, that which seems most extraordinary to a native is our submitting to be governed by a woman. And as a Hindoo fails to appreciate the social standing of an English lady, so it is to be feared that he gives her little credit for her domestic virtues. Her free and unrestrained life excites in his mind the most singular and unjust ideas. To see women walking in public, driving about in open carriages, dining, and talking, and dancing with men connected with them neither by blood nor marriage, never fails to produce upon him a false and unfortunate impression.[1]And therefore it happened that a sepoy corporal, whose estimate of an European lady was curiously compounded of contempt, disapprobation, and misconception, was little adapted to entertain those sentiments ofknightly tenderness and devotion which Petrarch and Cowley have handed down to us from the days of Bayard and Henry of Navarre. In the eyes of such a man every Englishwoman was but the mother of an English child, and every English child was a sucking tyrant. The wolves, with their mates and whelps, had been hounded into their den, and now or never was the time to smoke them out, and knock on the head the whole of that formidable brood. And so, on the first Saturday of that June—these, bent on a wholesale butchery; those, prepared to play the man for their dear life, and for lives dearer still,—with widely different hope, but with equal resolution, on either side of the meagre rampart besiegers and besieged mustered for the battle.
FOOTNOTE:[1]In "The Mirror of Indigo," a vernacular drama which has gained for itself a niche in Indian history, and contributed a rather remarkable page to the Law Reports of the Calcutta tribunals, the following passage occurs in a conversation between two native women:—Reboti.Moreover, the wife of the Indigo-planter, in order to make her husband's case strong, has sent a letter to the Magistrate, since it is said that the Magistrate hears her words most attentively.Aduri.I saw the lady. She has no shame at all. When the Magistrate of the district (whose name occasions great terror) goes riding about through the village, the lady also rides on horseback with him. Riding about on a horse! Because the aunt of Kezi once laughed before the elder brother of her husband all people ridiculed her: while this was the Magistrate of the district.
[1]In "The Mirror of Indigo," a vernacular drama which has gained for itself a niche in Indian history, and contributed a rather remarkable page to the Law Reports of the Calcutta tribunals, the following passage occurs in a conversation between two native women:—Reboti.Moreover, the wife of the Indigo-planter, in order to make her husband's case strong, has sent a letter to the Magistrate, since it is said that the Magistrate hears her words most attentively.Aduri.I saw the lady. She has no shame at all. When the Magistrate of the district (whose name occasions great terror) goes riding about through the village, the lady also rides on horseback with him. Riding about on a horse! Because the aunt of Kezi once laughed before the elder brother of her husband all people ridiculed her: while this was the Magistrate of the district.
[1]In "The Mirror of Indigo," a vernacular drama which has gained for itself a niche in Indian history, and contributed a rather remarkable page to the Law Reports of the Calcutta tribunals, the following passage occurs in a conversation between two native women:—
Reboti.Moreover, the wife of the Indigo-planter, in order to make her husband's case strong, has sent a letter to the Magistrate, since it is said that the Magistrate hears her words most attentively.
Aduri.I saw the lady. She has no shame at all. When the Magistrate of the district (whose name occasions great terror) goes riding about through the village, the lady also rides on horseback with him. Riding about on a horse! Because the aunt of Kezi once laughed before the elder brother of her husband all people ridiculed her: while this was the Magistrate of the district.
The intelligence of the revolt speedily travelled over all surrounding districts, and attracted to the spot the entire available blackguardism of the neighbourhood. The disloyal and insolvent landholders for thirty miles about called out their tenantry and retainers, and made the best of their way to Cawnpore. As when the redoubted Hebrew captain founded an asylum in the cave of Adullam, so now unto the leaders of the mutiny gathered themselves every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented. Thus immutable is the constitution of Oriental society:—unchanged by thirty centuries; unchangeable, perchance, by thirty more. Some chieftains brought two hundred armed followers; others four hundred. One Rajah came with a tail of forty score: while Bhowany Sing, whom Nanukchund designates as "that old and notorious scoundrel," marched into the rebel camp at the head of twelve hundred matchlock-men. No one seems to have entertained any doubt as to the final extinction of our sway. The old order of thingshad disappeared for ever, and it behoved any feudal leader who had ambition or necessities to be present and ready to assert himself ere the new order was definitely established. The Nana was first to seize the occasion by the forelock. A trusty adherent was sent to Bithoor with an escort of twenty horse to announce the commencement of the Mahratta rule. It was a terrible hour for the personal enemies of him who had assumed the prime authority. As soon as it became known that their master was in power, the idle ruffians who swarmed in his palace at once proceeded to gratify his spite and their own wanton cruelty. They forced the doors of Goordeen, who acted as agent to the widows of Bajee Rao, the late Peishwa; knocked down his house about his ears; slew his people; and ended by blowing him from the mouth of a cannon. They seized the attendants of Chimna Apa, who pulled the strings of the law-suit brought against the Maharaja by his cousin; loaded them with chains; and informed them that they were to be put to death as soon as the captors could find leisure to cut off their hands and noses. Nanukchund, who had been the leading counsel in the case, was warned in time of the impending danger. He sent word to his juniors to provide for their own safety, and himself sought concealment in an unfurnished house belonging to one of his friends, whence he observed the progress of the insurrection with a penetration that was occasionally distorted by present terror and the anticipation of future advancement.
On the morning of Sunday, the seventh of June,a proclamation in two languages was issued at Cawnpore from the press of a schoolmaster, and distributed by his pupils, adjuring all true Hindoos and Mussulmans to unite in defence of their religions, and rally round the person of the Nana. Neither Mussulmans nor Hindoos were slow to obey the call. The residents of the Butcher's Ward forthwith set up the green standard, and were joined by the dregs of the population. Respectable Mahomedans at first held aloof; but next day the banner was removed to an open square, south of the canal, whither a large and influential body of the faithful repaired to do homage to the symbol of their religion. Azeezun, the Demoiselle Théroigne of the revolt, appeared on horseback amidst a group of her admirers, dressed in the uniform of her favoured regiment, armed with pistols, and decorated with medals. A priest of high consideration seated himself beneath the flag, rosary in hand, and endeavoured by prayer and meditation to ascertain whether the day was propitious for an attack upon the stronghold of the infidel. His piety, however, was cut short by a round-shot from Lieutenant Dempster's battery, which sent the assemblage of believers scuttling to the nearest cover: upon which the holy man bundled together his beads, tucked up his robes, and made off with a precipitation not altogether consistent with the doctrine of fatalism.
Meanwhile throughout and around the town were being gathered in the gleanings of that harvest of murder. A miserable family of the name of Mackintosh was discovered lurking under a bridge disguisedin native clothes, their faces stained with pitiful want of skill in imitation of the Hindoo complexion. A road overseer was caught with his wife and children to the north of the station; and another person employed in the same department, who had found a temporary refuge beneath the roof of an individual whom he had formerly obliged with a contract, was now turned adrift, and taken by the bloodhounds who were scouring the city. To each and all of these capture was death, instant inexorable. The Maharaja had despatched a party of sepoys to the residence of Mr Edward Greenway, a man of considerable property, who had given shelter to an officer recently cashiered by court-martial. This gentleman now proved that, in whatever military qualities he might have been deficient, courage, at least, was not amongst them; for he defended the threshold of his host until the last cartridge had been expended, and then walked in among the assailants, and bade them cut his throat: an invitation to which they eagerly responded. Then they secured Mr. Greenway, his wife, his sister, and his little ones, and brought them as prisoners to the Nana; who ordered them into confinement with the expectation of obtaining a ransom, and the intention of killing them whether or not the money was forthcoming. He, for one, had no notion of permitting his avarice to clash with his barbarity.
As the excitement of tracking down and unearthing Englishmen began to languish on account of the growing scarcity of victims, the mutineers gradually betook themselves to the more serious business of the siege. During the whole of Saturday TeekaSing had been hard at work in the Arsenal, mounting the great guns, and despatching them successively to the scene of action. As fast as each piece arrived, it was placed in position, and manned by a party of volunteers. By noon on Sunday the cordon of batteries was complete, and our intrenchment was raked by twenty-four pound shot from every quarter of the compass. Now became patent to the most inexperienced eye the fatal and irremediable defects of the site which our general had selected for the fortification. The Dragoon Hospital was entirely surrounded by large and solid buildings, at distances varying from three to eight hundred yards: buildings from which the assailants derived protection at least as effectual as that afforded to the garrison by their improvised defences. From roof and window poured a shower of bullets during the hours of daylight, while after dusk troops of sepoys hovered about within pistol-shot, and made the night hideous with incessant volleys of musketry. Henceforward, there was but little sleep for our countrymen.
The annals of warfare contain no episode so painful as the story of this melancholy conflict. It is a story which needs not comment or embellishment. Whether related in the inornate language of official correspondence, or in the childish phraseology of Hindoo evidence, it moves to tears as surely as the pages in which the greatest of all historians tells, as only he can tell, the last agony of the Athenian host in Sicily. The sun never before looked on such a sight as a crowd of women and children cooped within a small space, and exposed during twentydays and nights to the concentrated fire of thousands of muskets and a score of heavy cannon. At first every projectile which struck the barracks was the signal for heartrending shrieks, and low wailing more heartrending yet: but, ere long, time and habit taught them to suffer and to fear in silence. Before the third evening every window and door had been beaten in. Next went the screens, the piled-up furniture, and the internal partitions: and soon shell and ball ranged at will through and through the naked rooms. Some ladies were slain outright by grape or round-shot. Others were struck down by bullets. Many were crushed beneath falling brickwork, or mutilated by the splinters which flew from shattered sash and panel. Happy were they whose age and sex called them to the front of the battle, and dispensed them from the spectacle of this passive carnage. Better to hear more distinctly the crackle of the sepoy musketry, and the groans of wounded wife and sister more faintly. If die they both must, such was the thought of more than one husband, it was well that duty bade them die apart.
Never did men fight with more signal determination against more fearful odds. Not at Fontenoy, not at Arcot, not at Albuera was British endurance so stubborn, or British valour so conspicuous. For, while the besiegers worked their guns under cover, the artillerymen of the besieged stood erect upon the bare plain. While the besiegers possessed unbounded store of huge mortars and battering-guns, the besieged had a few cannon too small for efficacious service in the field. While disease and the accidentsof combat hourly diminished the numbers of those within, the ranks without were daily swollen by regiments of recent mutineers and fresh clans of rebels. But circumstances such as these are best adapted to exhibit the strange humour of the English warrior. With all that was most dear at their backs, and in front all that was most hateful, and, in their view, most contemptible, undaunted and not uncheerful our countrymen bore up the fray. From the very earliest days of the attack it became apparent that old Sir Hugh was unequal to the exposure and fatigue involved in the conduct of the struggle, and in the inspection and re-distribution of the posts, a labour rendered only too severe by the deadly fire of the enemy. In such a strait men act as acted those ten thousand Greeks, whose memory will never fade, when by the banks of far Euphrates their chief had been slain and their allies scattered to the winds. "Then," says Xenophon, "Clearchus took the command, and the rest obeyed; not as having chosen him by formal election, but because they saw that he, and he alone, had the temper of a general." The Clearchus of Cawnpore was Captain Moore, an officer in charge of the invalids of the thirty-second foot. He was a tall, fair, blue-eyed man, glowing with animation and easy Irish intrepidity. Wheresoever there was most pressing risk, and wheresoever there was direst wretchedness, his presence was seldom long wanting. Under the rampart; at the batteries; in some out-picket, where men were dropping like pheasants under a fearful cross-fire; in some corner of the hospital, to a brave heart morefearful still, where lay the mangled forms of those young and delicate beings whom war should always spare:—ever and everywhere was heard his sprightly voice speaking words of encouragement, of exhortation, of sympathy, and even of courteous gallantry. Wherever Moore had passed he left men something more courageous, and women something less unhappy. It is well when such leaders are at hand. It is ill when they are discovered and promoted too late to undo the evil that has been already done.
Across the south-western angle of the intrenchment ran a line of barracks which were still in course of erection. They each measured some two hundred feet in length, and were constructed of red brick, which had not as yet received that coat of white plaster that reduces all Anglo-Indian house decoration to a uniformity of colour diversified only by the various degrees of age and shabbiness. Of these, the buildings marked in the plan by the numbers 2, 3, and 4 were in close proximity to the corner of our fortification, the entire extent of which they commanded, inasmuch as their walls had been already completed to an elevation of forty feet. None of the others had been raised to a height of more than two or three yards from the level of the ground. The floors had not been laid, nor the bamboo poles removed, which, rudely spliced together, form the cheap but frail scaffolding of Hindoo architecture: and the ground both within and without, along the whole row, was thickly covered with piles of the materials used in the progress of the works. From the very first the sepoys possessed the northern halfof the range: but they never succeeded in obtaining a hold on Barrack Number Four, which was defended by a party of civil engineers, who had been employed upon the East Indian railroad. These gentlemen, over and above that indigenous aptitude for conflict common to all Englishmen of the upper classes, had acquired, during years spent in surveying, a trained sharpness of vision and a correct judgment of distance which rendered them peculiarly dangerous when placed behind the sights of an Enfield rifle. For three days these amateurs baffled every attempt of the enemy: but at the end of that period the assaults became so fierce and frequent that they were not sorry to accept the services of a fighting man by profession. And so there came across to them from the redan Captain Jenkins, a valiant soldier, foredoomed to a death of anguish extraordinary even at such a time.
Whether the mutineers were aware of this introduction of the military element, or whether they already had learned to respect civilian skill and bravery, from this time forth they desisted from their efforts in that quarter, and turned their attention to the southernmost of the unfinished erections, which they proceeded to occupy in great force. Hereupon Lieutenant Glanville was posted with a small detachment in the adjoining barrack, which thenceforward was recognised by both parties as the key of our position. What the farm of Hougoumont was at Waterloo,—what the sand-bag battery was at Inkerman,—that was Barrack Number Two in the death-wrestle of Cawnpore. How furious was thestrife,—how desperate the case of the little garrison, may be gathered from the fact that, though only sixteen in number, they had a surgeon to themselves, who never lacked ample employment. Glanville came under his hands, desperately wounded: and the vacancy thus caused was soon after supplied by Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson of the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry. This officer did his best to lose a life which destiny seemed determined to preserve in order that England might know how, in their exceeding distress, her sons had not been unmindful of her ancient honour. "My sixteen men," he writes, "consisted in the first instance of Ensign Henderson of the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry, five or six of the Madras fusileers, two plate-layers from the railway works, and some men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment. The first instalment was soon disabled. The Madras fusileers were armed with the Enfield rifle, and consequently they had to bear the brunt of the attack. They were all shot at their posts. Several of the Eighty-fourth also fell: but, in consequence of the importance of the position, as soon as a loss in my little corps was reported, Captain Moore sent us over a reinforcement from the intrenchment. Sometimes a civilian, sometimes a soldier came. The orders given us were, not to surrender with our lives, and we did our best to obey them."
Nothing contributed so much to check the spread of the rebellion of 1857 as the individual courage and pugnacity of our countrymen resident in the East. Civil and military alike, they were all skilledin the use of weapons, and cool in the presence of personal danger. Such a habit of body and mind they acquired both for policy and for pleasure. Every Anglo-Indian is well aware that he is one of an imperial race, holding its own in the midst of a subject population by dint of foresight and martial prowess. There were villages of evil reputation which on the day of assessment the collector preferred to visit on the back of the steadiest Arab in his stables, with a favourite hog spear carelessly balanced beside his right stirrup. There were notorious bits of road where the traveller felt more comfortable if he heard from time to time the lock of his revolver clanking against the soda-water bottles in the pocket of his palanquin. Never was there a better training-school for warfare than the Indian hunting-field. A man who has heard unmoved above his head the scream of a crippled elephant;—who behind his trusty Westley Richards has awaited, calm and collected, the last rush of a wounded tiger;—need not doubt what his behaviour may be in any possible emergency. He who, like more than one true sportsman, has hardly crawled away, bloody knife in hand, from the embrace of a dying bear:—who has kept at bay a forty-inch boar with the butt of his shivered lance;—will not be at a loss how to meet the charge of a mutinous trooper. The rebels found to their cost that the Sahibs, like old stalkers of large game, were seldom foolhardy and never remiss:—that they were neither fluttered by peril nor over-excited by success:—that they rarely failed to make the most of what coverthey could get, and still more rarely wasted a cartridge. Lieutenant Thomson contrived a sort of perch half-way up the wall of his barrack, in which he stationed a young officer, named Stirling, of high repute as a marksman, who soon proved that a rebel running home to his dinner was at least as easy to hit as an ibex bounding down the crags in a Himalayan valley, or a blue cow dodging in and out amidst the trunks of an Oude forest.
The whole of this range of buildings not included within our posts was literally alive with sepoys. They could distinctly be heard scampering along in troops, like rats behind an antique wainscot, chattering, yelling, or screaming under the emotion of the moment. From door, and window, and drain, and loophole they fired away at our stronghold, accompanying each shot with a taunt, conveying, in Oriental fashion, a random but painful statement concerning a remote ancestress of the person addressed. Ever and anon a fanatic, inspired by some vile drug, would issue forth into the open, brandishing his sword, in order to indulge himself in a dance of defiance; on all which occasions Lieutenant Stirling took good care that the performance should not meet with an encore. When the enemy became more than usually troublesome, the picket which was most hardly pressed would invite their neighbours to come over and assist them: and then the combined force of some thirty bayonets sallied forth to sweep the line of barracks, chasing the foe before them; killing the boldest and slowest of foot; knocking on the head such as were drunk or asleep; shooting down thosewho, in their anxiety to get a good aim, had ensconced themselves too high up to be able to climb down on so short a notice; and driving the rest out, and across the plain: at which point the gunners of the intrenchment took up the work, and plied the flying multitude with grape and canister. During one of the earliest of these sorties eleven mutineers were captured, and brought into the intrenchment. As no sentry could just then be spared from the front, they were placed under the charge of Bridget Widdowson, a stalwart dame, wife of a private of the Thirty-second Regiment. Secured by the very insufficient contrivance of a single rope, passed from wrist to wrist, they sat quietly on the ground like good school-children, while the matron walked up and down in front of the row, drawn sword in hand. After she had been relieved by a warder of the other sex, they all managed to slip off: and from that time forward it was generally understood that prisoners were to be left on the spot where they had been caught, with the jackal and the vulture as their jailers. A captive, as long as he remained in custody, was a consumer of precious food; and at once became the most dangerous of spies, if he succeeded in making his escape to the rebel lines with a report of our destitute condition.
On Friday, the twelfth, the insurgents made their first general assault upon our position. The cavalry, who on that day had been the first in the career of sedition, were now with some difficulty prevailed upon to dismount and lead the way to glory; but after the loss of two of their numberthey concluded that enough had been done to sustain the credit of their branch of the service, and retired to console themselves for their repulse in the opium shops of the suburbs. The sepoy infantry next advanced to try their fortune, followed by all the rabble of the bazaars. They came on like men, but they went where there were men likewise. It was not thus that our rampart might be won. Every English soldier had ready to his hand from three to ten muskets loaded with ball and slug: for there was a plentiful stock of small-arms within the fortification. The civilian held his thumb pressed tight upon the hammer of a pet smoothbore, with a charge of Number Four shot for close quarters snugly packed in the left-hand barrel. The officer in command of the battery was feeling for the leaden tip in each chamber of his revolver, as he gave his final order to take time and aim below the cross-belts. Our people were composed and confident. Sending quiet shots from behind a wall into the middle of a crowd was child's play compared with the daylong hazard of the crashing cannonade. After a short but bitter engagement the assailants withdrew, leaving on the field many of their comrades. Profiting by this harsh lesson they returned henceforward to their old tactics, and applied themselves to pound out the life of our garrison by an unremitting storm of ball, and bomb, and bullet.
Few, and ever fewer, in number; overmatched in weight of metal; ill-provided with ammunition, and protected by not an inch of cover, our artillerymen still sustained the hot debate. Lieutenant Ashewent through his work with a display of professional interest that would not have disgraced Sir William Armstrong during a trial match at Shoeburyness. After each round the besiegers saw with astonishment the zealous young Sahib leap on the heel of the discharged gun, spy-glass in hand, heedless of the missiles which were chirping round his ears. Unfortunately eight out of our ten pieces were nine-pounders, and the supply of nine-pound balls was soon expended. Reduced to load with shot a size too small, our officers could not secure accuracy in their practice. The gunners in our south-eastern battery had suffered much from a small piece which the sepoys had contrived to hoist into position amidst thedébrisof one among the half-built barracks. Lieutenant Delafosse, after despatching a number of six-pound balls in the direction of the embrasure without any perceptible result, at length resolved to bring the matter to a conclusion in one way or another. He rammed down three cannon-balls, filled up the chinks with grape, bade his men stand back, and fired off this portentous charge. To his surprise and delight his own gun did not burst, and nothing more was ever heard of the tiresome little antagonist. The same officer, somewhat later in the siege, was in the north-eastern battery when the carriage of a cannon was ignited by an unlucky accident. The situation was most critical, for the woodwork, which had stood beneath the June sun until it was dry as tinder, blazed furiously, and there was imminent risk of a general explosion of all the powder in the battery. The rebels discernedthe opportunity, and concentrated their fire upon the spot where Delafosse, stretched at length on his back beneath the gun, was pulling down the burning splinters and scattering earth upon the flames. By the aid of two private soldiers he extinguished the conflagration, though eighteen pound and twenty-four pound shot were flying past at the rate of six a minute. With such examples before them, people of no class or calling were behindhand in acts of daring when the common safety was at stake. One Jacobi, a coachmaker by trade, and, to judge from his appellation, a person of mixed parentage, descried on the roof of the magazine a fire-ball, which he mistook for a live shell. Under this impression he clambered up, secured the object of his apprehension, and heaved it over the breastwork with a sigh of relief. There was many a Cross of Victoria earned in that camp, where victory was not, nor any reasonable chance of victory.
But the contest was too unequal to last long. By the end of the first week our fifty-nine artillerymen had all been killed or wounded at their posts. Of the officers to whom the charge of the guns had originally been entrusted, few had escaped unhurt from the hail of lead and iron, or the hardly less deadly rays of the Indian noon. Sunstroke had killed Major Prout. Captain Kempland was stretched on the floor of the barrack, dazed and powerless. His next in command, Lieutenant Eckford, a soldier of high promise and an accomplished gentleman, while snatching half an hour's repose under the roof of the verandah, was struck full on the heart by acannon-ball. In the west quarter Dempster had been shot dead, and from the same battery Martin had been carried into the hospital with a bullet in his lungs. For a while volunteers endeavoured to supply the place of the trained gunners; and all was done that could be expected from bandsmen, and opium agents, and telegraph clerks firing six-pound balls out of damaged nine-pounders, while exposed without protection to a murderous discharge from siege guns and heavy mortars. There could be only one termination to such a business. Our only howitzer was knocked clean off its carriage. One cannon lost the entire muzzle. Some had their sides beaten in, some their vents blown out. At length our park of artillery was reduced to a couple of pieces, which were withdrawn under cover, loaded with grape, and reserved for the purpose of repelling an assault. And even of these the bore had been injured to such an extent that the canister could not be driven home. Our poor ladies, accordingly, in rivalry of those somewhat apocryphal Carthaginian dames who twisted their hair into bowstrings, gave up their stockings to supply the case for a novel but not unserviceable cartridge. Since the days when the shopmen of Londonderry loaded their quaint old ordnance with brick-bats wrapped in strips of gutter-piping, necessity has, perhaps, never been brought to bed with a more singular offspring.
As our reply waned more faint and ever fainter, the fire of the enemy continued to augment in volume, in rapidity, and in precision. The list of individual casualties mounted up in increasing ratio,and before long our misfortunes culminated in a wholesale disaster. Grave fears had been entertained for the security of the thatched barrack by every man who had the common sense to see that fire would burn straw. There were found some who, with admirable self-devotion, had scrambled on to that lead-bespattered slope, and essayed to cover with tiles and rubbish the inflammable material of the roof. On the eighth evening of the bombardment a lighted carcase settled among the rafters, and the whole building was speedily in a blaze. It happened most unfortunately that this barrack, as affording the better shelter and the less confined space, had been selected for the accommodation of our wounded and our sick. No effort was spared, no hazard shunned to rescue those who could not help themselves: but in spite of everything which could be tried two brave men perished a little sooner than their fellows, and by a rather more distressing fate. That was indeed a night of horror. The roar of the flames, lost every ten seconds in the peal of the rebel artillery; the whistle of the great shot; the shrieks of the sufferers, who forgot their pain in the helpless anticipation of a sudden and agonizing death; the groups of crying women and children huddled together in the ditch; the stream of men running to and fro between the houses, laden with sacks of provisions, and kegs of ammunition, and private property of value, and living burdens more precious still; the guards crouching silent and watchful, finger on trigger, each at his station along the external wall; the forms of countless foes,revealed now and again by the fitful glare, prowling around through the outer gloom;—these sights and sounds combined to form a scene and a chorus which will be ever memorable to the trio of actors who lived through the catastrophe of that awful drama.
Captain Moore thought it well to give the enemy an early and convincing proof that the spirit of our people was not broken by this great calamity. At the dead of the ensuing night he stole out from the intrenchment with fifty picked men at his heels in the direction of the chapel and the racket-court. Beginning from this point, the party hurried down the rebel lines under favour of the darkness, doing whatever rapid mischief was practicable. They surprised in untimely slumber some native gunners, who never waked again; spiked and rolled over several twenty-four pounders; gratified their feelings by blowing up a piece which had given them especial annoyance; and got back, carrying in their arms four of their number, and leaving another behind:—a service brilliant indeed, but barren of results: for the sepoys had only to resolve on the calibre that they preferred, and the number of canon which they could conveniently work, and then take at will from the arsenal so inconsiderately placed at their disposal. This chivalrous act, one among many such, at that time passed without reward or public approval. When in a water-logged vessel men are toiling for their lives, who observes whether his neighbour does more or less at the pumps than he, provided all do their utmost? And when theyhave betaken themselves to the boats, and are rowing against time and famine, who cares which of the crew feathers most neatly, and which reaches forward with the straightest back? This was no set duel of civilized nations: no stately tournament, wherein the champions fight beneath the eyes of a friendly people, ready with their praise and sympathy; where wounds are bandaged with a ribbon, and self-sacrifice entitles the hero to a corner in our modern Walhalla, the columns of the daily press. Rare were those who here had leisure or heart to take note, and they who survived to make report were rarer still. As during the ages before Atrides came on earth countless chieftains, unwept, unknown, sank into eternal oblivion because they lacked a sacred bard: so at Cawnpore many a soldier brave as Hodson of Hodson's Horse, nobly prodigal of himself as William Peel of the Shannon, dared, and fell, and was forgotten for want of a special correspondent. Correspondence there was, containing much earnest entreaty for a rescue and some unconscious eloquence; but too important matter had to be compressed into too small a compass to admit of panegyric or recommendation for honours and advancement. Several urgent missives found their way to Lucknow, rolled tightly into quills, sealed up, and hidden with mysterious art in and about the person of Hindoo messengers;—so curiously stowed away that in some cases it took almost as long to produce as to convey the note: though, if the rebels chanced to intercept the despatch, they generally abridged the operation by cutting in piecesthe ill-starred courier. On the middle day of June the Lucknow surgeons extracted the following lines from the nose or ear of a native who had been fortunate and adroit enough to elude the manifold perils which beset those forty miles of road:—
"From Sir H. M. Wheeler, K.C.B. to Martin Gubbins, Esq."My dear Gubbins,"We have been besieged since the sixth by the Nana Sahib, joined by the whole of the native troops, who broke out on the morning of the fourth. The enemy have two 24-pounders, and several other guns. We have only eight 9-pounders. The whole Christian population is with us in a temporary intrenchment, and our defence has been noble and wonderful, our loss heavy and cruel. We want aid, aid, aid! Regards to Lawrence."Yours, &c.H. M. Wheeler."14th June.Quarter-past 8,P.M."P.S.—If we had 200 men we could punish the scoundrels and aid you."
"From Sir H. M. Wheeler, K.C.B. to Martin Gubbins, Esq.
"My dear Gubbins,
"We have been besieged since the sixth by the Nana Sahib, joined by the whole of the native troops, who broke out on the morning of the fourth. The enemy have two 24-pounders, and several other guns. We have only eight 9-pounders. The whole Christian population is with us in a temporary intrenchment, and our defence has been noble and wonderful, our loss heavy and cruel. We want aid, aid, aid! Regards to Lawrence.
"Yours, &c.H. M. Wheeler."14th June.Quarter-past 8,P.M.
"P.S.—If we had 200 men we could punish the scoundrels and aid you."
The nature of the reply may be gathered from an acknowledgment which it elicited from Captain Moore. The anniversary seems to have inspired his pen. Brief and manly, cheerful and yet thoughtful, it is such a letter as an English officer should write on the eighteenth of June.
"From Captain Moore, H.M. 32d Foot.18th June, 10,P.M."Sir,"By desire of Sir Hugh Wheeler, I have the honour to acknowledge your letter of the 16th."Sir Hugh regrets you cannot send him the 200 men, as he believes with their assistance we could drive the insurgents from Cawnpore, and capture their guns."Our troops, officers, and volunteers have acted most nobly, and on several occasions a handful of men have driven hundreds before them. Our loss has been chiefly from the sun, and their heavy guns. Our rations will last a fortnight, and we are still well supplied with ammunition. Our guns are serviceable. Report says that troops are advancing from Allahabad, and any assistance might save our garrison. We, of course, are prepared to hold out to the last. It is needless to mention the names of those who have been killed, or died. We trust in God, and if our exertions here assist your safety, it will be a consolation to know that our friends appreciate our devotion. Any news of relief will cheer us."Yours, &c."J. Moore, Captain,"32d Regiment."By order."
"From Captain Moore, H.M. 32d Foot.18th June, 10,P.M.
"Sir,
"By desire of Sir Hugh Wheeler, I have the honour to acknowledge your letter of the 16th.
"Sir Hugh regrets you cannot send him the 200 men, as he believes with their assistance we could drive the insurgents from Cawnpore, and capture their guns.
"Our troops, officers, and volunteers have acted most nobly, and on several occasions a handful of men have driven hundreds before them. Our loss has been chiefly from the sun, and their heavy guns. Our rations will last a fortnight, and we are still well supplied with ammunition. Our guns are serviceable. Report says that troops are advancing from Allahabad, and any assistance might save our garrison. We, of course, are prepared to hold out to the last. It is needless to mention the names of those who have been killed, or died. We trust in God, and if our exertions here assist your safety, it will be a consolation to know that our friends appreciate our devotion. Any news of relief will cheer us.
"Yours, &c."J. Moore, Captain,"32d Regiment."By order."
And now commenced to our brethren and sisters a period of unspeakable woe; the ante-chamber of ruin; the penultimate syllable of their dismal story. After the destruction of the thatched barrack, dearthof house-room forced two hundred of our women and children to spend twelve days of twice twelve hours without ceiling over head or flooring under foot. At night they lay on the bare ground, exposed to every noxious influence and exhalation that was abroad in the air; and in the morning they rose, those among them who rose at all, to endure, bareheaded often, and always roofless, the blazing fury of the tropical beams. The men off guard attempted to contrive for them a partial protection, by stretching canvas screens across a framework of muskets and poles; but these canopies were soon fired by the rebel shells, and the poor creatures were reduced to cower beneath the shelter of our earthwork, feebly chasing the shadow thrown by the sun as he rose and set. It is impossible for a home-staying Englishman to realize the true character of the great troubles in 1857, unless he constantly bears in mind that all which he reads was devised, and done, and endured beneath the vertical rays of an Eastern summer, and in a temperature varying from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty-eight degrees in the shade. If there are any whose experience of heat is limited to a field-day at Wimbledon in the month of August, or to a tramp over Norfolk stubbles when the dogs are too thirsty to work, and the boy has carried off the beer to the wrong spinney, they will obtain a more just notion from a sad tale simply told than from pages of unscientific rhetoric.
This is what befell Mrs. M——, the wife of the surgeon at a certain station on the southern confines of the insurrection. "I heard," she says, "a numberof shots fired, and, looking out, I saw my husband driving furiously from the mess-house, waving his wip. I ran to him, and, seeing a bearer with my child in his arms, I caught her up, and got into the buggy. At the mess-house we found all the officers assembled, together with sixty sepoys, who had remained faithful. We went off in one large party, amidst a general conflagration of our late homes. We reached the caravanserai at Chattapore the next morning, and thence started for Callinger. At this point our sepoy escort deserted us. We were fired upon by matchlock-men, and one officer was shot dead. We heard, likewise, that the people had risen at Callinger, so we returned, and walked back ten miles that day. M—— and I carried the child alternately. Presently Mrs. Smalley died of sunstroke. We had no food amongst us. An officer kindly lent us a horse. We were very faint. The major died, and was buried; also the serjeant-major, and some women. The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were fired at again by matchlock-men, and changed direction for Allahabad. Our party consisted of nine gentlemen, two children, the serjeant, and his wife. On the morning of the twentieth, Captain Scott took Lottie on to his horse. I was riding behind my husband, and she was so crushed between us. She was two years old on the first of the month. We were both weak through want of food and the effect of the sun. Lottie and I had no head-covering. M—— had a sepoy's cap I found on the ground. Soon aftersunrise we were followed by villagers armed with clubs and spears. One of them struck Captain Scott's horse on the leg. He galloped off with Lottie, and my poor husband never saw his child again. We rode on several miles, keeping away from villages, and then crossed the river. Our thirst was extreme. M—— had dreadful cramps, so that I had to hold him on the horse. I was very uneasy about him. The day before I saw the drummer's wife eating chupatties, and asked her to give a piece to the child, which she did. I now saw water in a ravine. The descent was steep and our only drinking-vessel was M——'s cap. Our horse got water, and I bathed my neck. I had no stockings, and my feet were torn and blistered. Two peasant's came in sight, and we were frightened, and rode off. The serjeant held our horse, and M—— put me up and mounted. I think he must have got suddenly faint, for I fell, and he over me, on the road, when the horse started off. Some time before he said, and Barber, too, that he could not live many hours. I felt he was dying before we came to the ravine. He told me his wishes about his children and myself, and took leave. My brain seemed burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the serjeant let go the horse, and it went off; so, that escape was cut off. We sat down on the ground waiting for death. Poor fellow! he was very weak; his thirst was frightful, and I went to get him water. Some villagers came, and took my rupees and watch. I took off my wedding-ring, and twisted it in myhair, and replaced the guard. I tore off the skirt of my dress to bring water in, but it was no use, for when I returned, my beloved's eyes were fixed, and, though I called, and tried to restore him, and poured water into his mouth, it only rattled in his throat. He never spoke to me again. I held him in my arms till he sank gradually down. I felt frantic, but could not cry. I was alone. I bound his head and face in my dress, for there was no earth to bury him. The pain in my hands and feet was dreadful. I went down to the ravine, and sat in the water on a stone, hoping to get off at night, and look for Lottie. When I came back from the water, I saw that they had not taken her little watch, chain, and seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an hour, about thirty villagers came. They dragged me out of the ravine, and took off my jacket, and found the little chain. They then dragged me to a village, mocking me all the way, and wondering whom I was to belong to. The whole population came to look at me. I asked for a bedstead, and lay down outside the door of a hut. They had dozens of cows, and yet refused me milk. When night came, and the village was quiet, some old woman brought me a leaf-full of rice. I was too parched to eat, and they gave me water. The morning after, a neighbouring Rajah sent a palanquin and a horseman to fetch me, who told me that a little child and three sahibs had come to his master's house." And so the mother found her lost one, "greatly blistered," poor little darling. It is not for Europeansin India to pray that their flight be not in the winter.
These women had spent their girlhood in the pleasant watering-places and country homes of our island, surrounded by all of English comfort and refinement that Eastern wealth could buy. Their later years had slipped away amidst the secure plenty and languid ease of an European household in India. In spacious saloons, alive with swinging punkahs; where closed and darkened windows excluded the heated atmosphere, and produced a counterfeit night, while through a mat of wetted grass poured a stream of artificial air; with piles of ice, and troops of servants, and the magazines of the preceding month, and the sensation novels of the preceding season, monotonous, but not ungrateful, the even days flew by. Early married life has in Bengal peculiar charms. Settled down in some out-station, with no society save that of a casual road-surveyor or a distant planter, the world forgetting, and by the world remembered only at such times as there is talk concerning the chances of official promotion, the young pair have full leisure and a fair plea for indulging in that delicious habit of mutual selfishness which changes existence into a perpetual honeymoon, until that sorrowful epoch, when the children are too old to be kept any longer in the enervating climate of Hindostan; when the period arrives for writing to mothers-in-law, and sisters, and London bankers, and Brighton schoolmasters; when even the pale pet of four years old, who still answers to the name of baby, must go home at the beginningof next cold season, and ought to have gone before the end of last. Then begin the troubles of an Anglo-Indian family.
But though such ladies are often destined to endure the wearing anxiety of an unnatural separation, they never know what it is to experience a moment of physical privation. The services of menials, who make up by their number and obsequiousness what they lack in energy,—the unwearied attention of an affectionate partner and friend shield them from distress and excuse them from exertion. To have slept four in a cabin on board an outward-bound steamer,—to have passed a night in a palanquin, or a day at a posting-house where there was no tea, and only milk enough for the little ones;—had hitherto appeared to the Cawnpore ladies the last conceivable extremity of destitution and discomfort. Now, the Red Sea in July would have been to them an Elysium, and a luncheon on Peninsular and Oriental ale and cheese a priceless banquet. By a sudden turn of fortune they had been placed beneath the heel of those beings whom they had ever regarded with that unconscious aversion and contempt of race which is never so intense as in a female breast. Those who were to them most dear and trusted were absent from their side, save when a not unkindly bullet released the husband from his post, and restored him to the wife, if but to die. Accustomed to those frequent ablutions which, in England at least a duty, are in India a necessity, they had not a single spongeful of water for washing from the commencement to the close of the siege.They who, from childhood upwards, in the comprehensive and pretty phrase which ladies love, "had had everything nice about them," were now herded together in fetid misery, where delicacy and modesty were hourly shocked, though never for a moment impaired. Unshod, unkempt, ragged and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with drought and faint with hunger, they sat waiting to hear that they were widows. Each morning deepened the hollow in the youngest cheek, and added a new furrow to the fairest brow. Want, exposure, and depression, speedily decimated that hapless company. In those regions, a hideous train of diseases stand always within call: fever, and apoplexy, and the fell scourge of cholera, and dysentery, plague more ghastly still. It was of fever that Miss Brightman died, worn out with nursing a boy who had been shot through his first red coat. Sir George Parker, the cantonment magistrate, complained of sickness and headache, accompanied by a sensation of drowsiness and oppression, which gradually deepened into insensibility, and thence into death. Such, too, was the fate of Colonel Williams of the Fifty-sixth Native Infantry, and of the Rev. Joseph Rooney, the Catholic priest, in spite of the devoted care of the Irish soldiery. The horrors which all shared and witnessed overset the balance of more than one highly-wrought organization. A missionary of the Propagation Society, as each day drew in, would bring his aged mother into the verandah for a breath of the evening. At length a musket-ball, shot, we may hope, at a venture, struck down the poor oldlady with a painful wound. Her sufferings affected the reason of her son, and he died a raving maniac. Woe was it in those days unto them that were with child. There were infants born during the terrible three weeks;—infants who had no future. There were women who underwent more than all the anguish of maternity, with less than none of the hope and joy. The medical stores had all been destroyed in the conflagration. There remained no drugs, and cordials, and opiates; no surgical instruments and appliances to cure, to alleviate, or to deaden. Perhaps it was as well that the absence of saws and tourniquets rendered impracticable the more critical operations: for here, as at Lucknow, it was found that, during the months of an Indian summer, within the circuit of a beleagured fortification the consequences of amputation were invariably fatal. Science could not regret that she was powerless, when her most successful effort would hardly have prolonged an agony.
But, besides the Nana, another foe, ruthless and pertinacious as he, had broken ground in front of our bulwarks. If our people had eaten as freely as they had fought, their provisions would have been consumed within the ten days: and human abstinence and endurance could not eke out the slender stock beyond the limit of some three weeks. Already the tins of preserved meats were empty, and the meal had fallen low in the casks; and many barrels had been tapped by the enemy's shot, and the rest were ominously light. The store of luxuries contributed from the regimental mess-rooms hadbeen shared by all ranks alike. A noble equality and fraternity reigned through the little republic.
During that year our countrymen in India often debated, in a spirit by no means of idle speculation, whether a member of a blockaded force had a right to reserve food and drink for the exclusive support of himself, his family, and his intimate associates. That period was fruitful in questions of novel and momentous sophistry: questions to be found in no closet compilation of Ethics and Dialectics. Would a man be justified in shooting his wife if it was evident that she would otherwise fall alive into the power of the mutineers? Would a European flying for his life be guilty of murder if he blew out the brains of an innocent villager who had unwittingly viewed him as he broke cover, and who might therefore give information to the pursuers of blood? Morally guilty, that is to say: for it is difficult to conceive the circumstances under which a European would have been found legally guilty of the murder of a native during the year 1857. Might a colonel call out his men, and then mow them down with grape if it was certain that the regiment was on the eve of a revolt? Might he if it was almost certain? If it was most likely? If it was barely possible? These points were raised and determined off hand by stern casuists, who, with a thrust or a shot, broke off the horns of a dilemma which would have sorely tried the subtlety of a Whately.