CHAPTER II.
THE CONSPIRATORS.
On the 29th of February 1856 Charles John, Viscount Canning, succeeded Lord Dalhousie as Governor-General of India. Lord Canning possessed many qualities which fitted him for the onerous office. The second son of an illustrious statesman, he had himself received the education which trains a man to enter upon a Parliamentary career. He had sat in both Houses, had filled with credit some high offices, and had been a member of the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston which had decided to annex Oudh. To that annexation Lord Canning, as a member of the Cabinet, had given his assent. He was a large-minded man, possessing noble and generous instincts, a taking presence, was a thorough worker, conscientious, scrupulous, and resolute. The only objection which the most captious critic could have made to the appointment was an objection which would have equally applied to the great Marquess Wellesley, and to all the intermediate rulers of India—he possessed no practical knowledge of India and its people.
A statesman, however gifted, despatched from England to rule a country with a population of two hundred and fifty millions, must be for some time after his arrival dependent on the councillors bequeathed to him by his predecessor. Now, the predecessor of Lord Canning had been a very masterful man: a born ruler of men; a man who required, not councillors with whom to consult, but servants to carry out his orders. In one sense it was a misfortune for Lord Canning that immediately after his arrival he had to depend upon those servants for advice.
Amongst them, doubtless, were some very able men. The ablest of all, Mr John Peter Grant, was a member of his Council. Mr Grant was, in every sense of the term, a statesman. His views were large and liberal. He saw at a glance the point of a question. He decided quickly; unravelled, with remarkable clearness, the most knotty questions, and spoke out with the fearlessness which becomes a real man. If Mr Grant had had a larger personal experience of the people, he would have been one of the greatest of the civil servants of India. But his service had been mainly spent in close connection with Calcutta, and he had no personal knowledge of the country to the north-west of Patná, or of its people.
The military member of Council, General Low, was likewise a man of ability; but he had passed the greater part of his service as Political Agent or as Resident of native Courts. His experience of the native army was, therefore, somewhat rusty.
The legal member of Council, Mr Barnes Peacock, was remarkable for his sound legal acquirements, but he had no experience outside Calcutta.
Of the others, and of all the principal secretaries, it must suffice to state that they were excellent clerks; but not having been accustomed to act on their own initiative, having been accustomed to take their orders from the imperious lips of Lord Dalhousie, they were little fitted to act as councillors to a newly arrived master at a moment when the country was about to pass through a crisis — a crisis the more terrible in that there was not one of them who would allow himself to regard it as possible; not one of them, with the exception of Mr Grant, who believed in its immensity even when it was upon them.
But, at the moment of Lord Canning's arrival, it seemed as though clerks would be as useful to him as councillors. The surface was calm and unbroken. There was not visible on the horizon even the little cloud no bigger than a man's hand. On his journey homewards Lord Dalhousie had written a minute, in which he had painted in roseate hues the condition of India, the contentment of the sipáhís, and the improbability of disturbance from any cause whatever. He had quitted India amid the applause, largely mingled with regret at his departure, of multitudes of sorrowing disciples. By these he was reverenced as the greatest of men. If some captious subaltern dared to insinuate that the discipline of the army had deteriorated, that the minds of the sipáhís were inflamed against their masters, he was silenced by the contemptuous remark that it was improbable that his knowledge could be more deep-reaching than was that of Lord Dalhousie.
On the 29th of February, then, and for the rest of the year 1856, all was calm and smiling on the surface, and Lord Canning was well content with his clerks.
Nor, during the remaining months of 1856, did there occur any overt act on the part of the many discontented throughout India to weaken the impression that the picture painted by Lord Dalhousie in his elaborate minute was absolutely correct. As far as appearances went, the prevailing impression made on the minds of those residing in the great centres of the several provinces was that it was a year of more than ordinary humdrum. It was argued that the strong impression made by Lord Dalhousie on the country and its diverse races remained active even after his departure. Lord Canning simply administered the country on the principles and by means of the men bequeathed to him by his predecessor. He had experienced, indeed, some difficulty with Oudh. Not, indeed, that the question, which was recurring with increasing intensity every day to the minds of the sipáhís,[1] as to the injurious effects which the annexation had produced on their prospects, ever presented itself to Lord Canning or his councillors. The difficulty was caused by the squabbles, amounting to a public scandal, between the two senior members of the Commission whose administration had supplanted that of the deposed king, Mr Coverley Jackson and Mr Martin Gubbins. The scandal lasted throughout the year, and was only terminated by the removal of Mr Jackson, in January of the year following, and the appointment in his place of one of the most illustrious of the men who have contributed to the securing on a firm foundation of the British rule in India — the wise and virtuous Sir Henry Lawrence. The task bequeathed to Sir Henry was no light one; for the principle which had sown discontent throughout the North-west Provinces, the principle of grafting western ideas on an eastern people — a principle which he had combated all his life — had made every landowner in Oudh a rebel at heart.
There was another event, outside India indeed, but connected with India, which occupied the attention of Lord Canning during the first year of his incumbency of office, and which temporarily somewhat diminished his power of grappling with any military difficulty which might arise. I refer to the war with Persia.
Up to the year 1856, certainly, it had been a cardinal principle of British policy that Persia was never to possess Herát. Herát and Kandahár were the two points in Western Afghánistán which commanded the lines always followed, from the time of Alexander to that of Ahmad Sháh, by the invaders of India, and which, therefore, it was necessary should be held by the friends of British India, if not by British India herself. During the first war waged by Great Britain with Afghánistán, Persia had posed as a pawn pushed forwards by Russia to gain a dominant position on the Indian frontier. But, in 1838, Russia was disinclined to support her pawn. She was more prepared for action when the Crimean war broke out. But when the Sháh of Persia realised the fact that the powerful nation which had filched from him some of his most fertile provinces was in deadly grip with England and France, he suspended his insidious action regarding Herát until he should be able to form a definite opinion as to the result of the struggle. He resumed that insidious action as soon as he recognised that the peace of Paris had given Russia a free hand to subdue the barrier of the Caucasus. Regarding Russia as fully occupied, and England as exhausted, he despatched an army to besiege Herát. The ruler of the province of which Herát was the capital, who occupied a position of semi-independence, at once hoisted British colours, and implored the assistance of the Amír Dost Muhammad. Various circumstances, into which it is not necessary to enter, gave indications that the Persians would be resisted to the last. However, it was not so, and before any steps could be taken Herát had fallen.
The clear mind of the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, the resolute Lord Palmerston, had already recognised the importance of the situation, and he resolved to compel Persia to retire. The means he adopted were those best calculated to obtain the result aimed at with the smallest expenditure of blood and money. He directed the formation of a mixed force of English and Indian troops, to be commanded by Sir James Outram, to attack Persia on the side of the Persian Gulf, and he authorised the Governor-General of India to come to a cordial understanding with the Amír of Afghánistán.
Before the army could land on the Persian coast, Herát, I have said, had fallen. But very soon afterwards the Commissioner of the Panjáb, Mr John Lawrence, held at Pesháwar (January 1857) that interview with Dost Muhammad which resulted in a cordial understanding between that sagacious prince and the stern and resolute representative of the might of Great Britain. Later still, Outram, landing at Bushir, gained two victories, which had the effect of forcing the Sháh to sue for peace. The consequence was that, in May 1857, he resigned all claim to Herát, which he surrendered, and signed, by his agents, at Paris, a treaty of peace. The troops composing Outram's force were thus available in May for any service which Lord Canning might require at their hands.
During the year the circumstances attendant upon the refusal of the 38th Regiment N. I. to proceed by sea to Burma had caused Lord Canning to look up an Act, already drafted, having for its object the so altering of the terms of the enlistment of the sipáhí as to make, in the future, every regiment available for service across the seas. The Act did not touch the interests of sipáhís already enlisted. It referred simply to those who might enter the service thereafter. In July 1856 that Act became law. In itself the Act was a just and righteous Act. Issued at any other time, it would have caused no feeling whatever. The men of the six regiments already enlisting for general service were of as high a caste as were the men who engaged only to serve locally. But the minds of the sipáhís were excited. The annexation of Oudh had caused them to lose faith in their foreign masters. And it is quite possible that the alteration, which did not escape the watchful eyes of the men who were fomenting disorder, acted as an additional argument to prove that gradual steps were to be taken to deprive them of their caste.
I have already referred to the action of the Maulaví of Faizábád as being instrumental in creating and increasing the undercurrent of hostility to British rule through Bengal and the North-west Provinces. It is impossible, however, to leave this subject without mentioning the action of the son of the ex-Peshwá, Bájí Ráo, and his agent, Azím-ullah Khán. It is the more necessary that such mention should be made, because, whatever may be the opinion of Europeans saturated with the western ideas, and with the conceit those ideas often engender, there can be no doubt but that, during the Mutiny, on the morrow of the Mutiny, and at the present day, the cultivated natives of India attributed and attribute a great deal of the bitterness attendant on the uprising to the treatment meted out to Náná Sáhib by the Government of India. I know that it has been contended, and recently most ably contended,[2] that that treatment was absolutely just. It was just according to western ideas. But the oriental mind does not admit of the validity of an agreement which deprives a man of his kingdom and makes no provision for his family after his death. Such was the grievance of Náná Sáhib. He had no title in law. But the natives of India believed then, they believe still, that he had a moral claim superior to all law.
The case may thus be stated. The Peshwá had been, by virtue of his title, the lord of all the Maráthá princes. Of all the Peshwás, Bájí Ráo had been the most false to his own countrymen, and the worst. But for many years he had been loyal to the British. Tempted, however, in 1817, by the rising of Holkar and the war with the Pindárís, and hoping to recover the lost influence of his House, he had risen, had been beaten, and, in 1818, had thrown himself on the mercy of the British. He was deprived of his dominions, and granted a pension for life of eight lakhs of rupees. He took up his residence at Bithor, near the military station of Kánhpur, adopted a son, and lived a quiet life till his death in 1851.
The Government of India permitted his adopted son, whose name was Dhundu Pant, but who was generally known as Náná Sáhib, to inherit the savings of Bájí Ráo, and they presented to him the fee-simple of the property at Bithor. But Náná Sáhib had to provide for a very large body of followers, bequeathed to his care by Bájí Ráo; and the two British Commissioners who, in succession, superintended the administration of the estate supported the proposal made from Bithor that a portion of the late ex-Peshwá's allowance should be reserved for the support of the family. They had some reason for their suggestion, for when, some little time before his death, Bájí Ráo had petitioned the Home Government that his adopted son might succeed to the title and pension of Peshwá, whilst the grant of the title was refused absolutely, the question of the pension was reserved for future consideration, that is, until the seat of the ex-Peshwá should be vacant.
It seems to me that high policy should have shown some consideration for the heir of one who had been the lord of Western India, and whose territories we had taken. A slight relaxation of the hard and fast policy characteristic of Lord Dalhousie's rule might have saved the British from many future troubles. When, in 1844, the House of Sindhiá, defeated in battle, was at the feet of Lord Ellenborough, that nobleman imposed upon it no penalty. His generosity bore splendid fruit in 1857-8. Far different was the result of the policy pursued towards Náná Sáhib. Lord Dalhousie declared the recommendation made by the two Commissioners in his favour to be 'uncalled for and unreasonable.' He directed that 'the determination of the Government of India may be explicitly declared to the family without delay.' The determination was consequently so declared. Ought we to wonder that, in 1857, the crab-tree did produce the crab-apple?
Náná Sáhib appealed to the Court of Directors against the decision of the Governor-General of India. His appeal was couched in logical, temperate, and convincing language. He asked why the heir to the Peshwá should be treated differently from other native princes who had fallen before the Company. He instanced the case of Dehlí and of Maisur; and with reference to the assumption made in argument against him that the savings of his father were sufficient to support him, he asked whether it was just that the economical foresight of the father should militate against the moral claims of the son. The argument, which would have been accepted in any native Court in India, which was convincing to the two hundred and fifty millions who inhabited that country, had no effect whatever on the minds of the western rulers who governed the country from Leadenhall Street. Their reply emulated in its curtness and its rudeness the answer given by Lord Dalhousie. They directed the Governor-General to inform the memorialist 'that the pension of his adoptive father was not hereditary, that he has no claim whatever to it, and that his application is wholly inadmissible.' The date of the reply was May 1853. It bore its fruit at Kánhpur in June 1857.
Náná Sáhib accepted it with apparent composure, but it rankled in his bosom. To prosecute his claims he had, early in the year, despatched to England a young Muhammadan in his service, Azím-ullah Khán by name, of a pleasant presence and a taking address. Before Azím-ullah could reach England judgment had already been recorded. Being in the receipt of a sufficient allowance from his master, the young man stayed in England, and entered freely into the pleasures of English life. But he always had an eye to the interests of Náná Sáhib. Whilst he was yet in England the Crimean war broke out. Shortly afterwards there came from the seat of war those stories of suffering which, from his place in the House of Commons, the late Lord John Russell described as 'horrible and heart-rending.' The imaginative mind of the young oriental came to the conclusion that some terrible disaster was about to befall the British army. Were such to occur, there might be some hope for Náná Sáhib. He proceeded, then, to the seat of war, entered into communication with foreigners of diverse nations, and from his conversations with them, and from his own personal inspection, came to the conclusion that England, the England which had asserted herself with so much haughtiness in India, was on the brink of destruction, that it would require but a united effort on the part of the princes and people of her great dependency to 'push her from her stool.' With these convictions fresh and strongly rooted in his mind he returned, in 1856, to the Náná at Bithor. Shortly after his return the Náná paid a somewhat mysterious visit to Lakhnao, accompanied by Azím-ullah and a considerable following. I have called his visit 'mysterious,' for it so impressed the English authorities in that city that Sir Henry Lawrence, who was then Chief-Commissioner, wrote to Sir Hugh Wheeler, commanding at Kánhpur, to caution him not to depend upon the loyalty of Náná Sáhib. It is not to be doubted that Náná Sáhib took advantage of his visit to enter into negotiations with the discontented nobles of the province, and to concert with them the outlines, at least, of a general plan of action.
Whilst the province of Oudh and the district of Bithor were thus fast becoming hotbeds of conspiracy, a similar process was taking place through the length and breadth of the North-west Provinces. That the system known as 'the village system/ under which the heads of villages represented, before the law, the communities of which they were the hereditary chiefs, may not have been a system which recommended itself theoretically to a ruler nurtured in western ideas may be conceded. But that system was rooted in the soil. The great Akbar, when engaged in the task of consolidating and systematising the territories he had conquered, had attempted to introduce reforms which would have tended to greater centralisation. But, after a few months of experiment, he shrunk from a task which, he recognised, would rouse against him the feelings of his subjects. Where Akbar had feared to tread, the English, guided by the rash hand of Mr Thomason, had rushed in. The result was that throughout the districts over which he had ruled, in Juánpur and Azamgarh, in Agra, Kánhpur, and the adjoining districts, throughout Bundelkhand, there reigned a discontent which lent itself very readily to the schemes of the major conspirators. The advocates of Mr Thomason's reforms have endeavoured, under the shield of anonymous criticism, to controvert this assertion. But facts are stubborn things. I have had it from the mouths of many influential native gentlemen, and from English officials concerned, that the grievance which caused disaffection was the harsh introduction, and the still harsher enforcement, of the Thomasonian system. And there remains the fact, which cannot be controverted, that in India the disaffection was greatest, and the hatred against Europeans most pronounced, in the districts to which that system had been applied.
Not very far distant from Agra there was a powerful chieftain who, from causes similar to those which had influenced Náná Sáhib, regarded herself as having been grievously wronged, and who therefore hated the English with all the bitterness of a woman who had been contemned. This chieftain was the Rání of Jhánsí. She was largely gifted, possessed great energy, had borne, up to the period upon which I am entering, 'a high character,' being 'much respected by everyone at Jhánsí.[3] But the hand of the despoiler had lashed her into a fury which was not to be governed. Under Hindu law she possessed the right to adopt an heir to her husband when he died childless in 1854. Lord Dalhousie refused to her the exercise of that right, and declared that Jhánsí had lapsed to the paramount power. In vain did the Rání dwell upon the services which in olden days the rulers of Jhánsí had rendered to the British Government, and quote the warm acknowledgments made by that Government Lord Dalhousie was not to be moved. He had faith in his legions. With a stroke of his pen he deprived this high-spirited woman of the rights which she believed, and which all the natives of India believed, to be hereditary. That stroke of the pen converted the lady, of so high a character and so much respected, into a veritable tigress so far as the English were concerned. For them, thereafter, she would have no mercy. There is reason to believe that she, too, had entered into negotiations with the Maulaví and Náná Sáhib before the explosion of 1857 took place.
Such, then, were the conspirators. The inhabitants of Oudh, directed mainly by the Maulaví and a lady of the royal House known as the Begum, the inhabitants of the North-west Provinces, goaded into bitter hostility by the action of the Thomasonian system, and the Rání of Jhánsi. The executive council of this conspiracy had arranged, in the beginning of 1857, to act upon the sipáhís by means of the greased cartridge, upon the inhabitants of the rural districts by the dissemination of chapátís. This dissemination was intended as a warning that the rising was imminent. It was further decided that the rising of the sipáhís should be simultaneous, and more than once the actual day was fixed. Providentially something always happened to prevent the explosion on that day. The splutterings which occurred on such occasions served to give timely warning to the Government. The delays which followed the warning were partially utilised. It was not, however, till the rising actually took place at Mírath that the Government realised the real nature, though not the full extent, of the danger. That they never realised it thoroughly until after the massacre of Kanhpúr we have the evidence of their own words and their own actions to prove. Indeed I may go so far as to declare that many of the actors in the drama failed to realise to their dying day that the outbreak was not merely a mutiny which they had to combat, but a vast conspiracy, the threads of which were widely spread, and which owed its origin to the conviction that a Government which had, as the conspirators believed, betrayed its trust was no longer entitled to respect or allegiance.