CHAPTER V.
BARRACKPUR, CALCUTTA, AND THE NORTH-WEST TO THE 9TH OF MAY.
Meanwhile, the excitement at Barrackpur was not diminishing. Isolated actions on the part of the sipáhís, indicating a very mutinous spirit, were reported to the Governor-General. The incident referred to in the last chapter, which had led to the trial and sentence to fourteen years' penal servitude of several sipáhís, had produced considerable perplexity in the minds of the authorities. But they still refused to believe that there was anything like a general plot. They preferred to think that the disaffection was confined to some men of one regiment only, or to a few men belonging to two regiments. The suspicions of the disaffected men were not, it was hoped, so deeply rooted as to be proof against argument. The Government was conscious of its own innocence. It harboured no evil designs against the sipáhís. It had no desire to move to the right or to the left out of the path it had undeviatingly followed for exactly a century. If this could be made clear to the men, all would assuredly go well. It was essentially a European argument, an argument which proved the most profound ignorance of the modes of thoughts of a race which was Asiatic, and for the most part Hindu. But it was the argument which naturally presented itself to the European mind. Lord Canning had authorised General Hearsey to try the experiment once, and General Hearsey believed, as was quite natural he should believe, that his arguments had produced some effect. He was anxious to try once again the powers of his oratory. He therefore persuaded Lord Canning to authorise him to address the men of the four regiments in language and in terms which he had talked over with the Governor-General.
The parade took place on the Barrackpur plain, on the 17th of March, three days before the actual arrival of the 84th from Rangoon. General Hearsey spoke eloquently and well. He pointed out to the men the childishness of their fears; he entered into full details regarding the necessity to use lubricated cartridges with the new muskets; he told them that the Government were resolved to maintain discipline, and that they would mete out stern justice to the 19th by disbanding that regiment. He concluded by assuring the sipáhís of the brigade that they had nothing to fear, that their caste and religious convictions were safe, and that their officers would listen patiently to any complaint they might make. In the abstract, nothing could be more to the point or more satisfactory than the General's speech.
But it failed to touch the inner minds of the sipáhís. These were inspired by men who had a great object in view — a political object of vast importance — the detaching of the sipáhí army from the foreign Government. But for these men the question of the greased cartridge would never have arisen. The waxed patches had been used without complaint for years, why should the very rumour regarding greased cartridges, which, be it always remembered, had not been issued, so excite the sipáhí? There could be but one reason. The emissaries of the Maulaví and his comrades had done their work thoroughly. The midnight conferences in the huts of the sipáhís, not at Barrackpur only but in all the principal stations of the North-western Provinces of India, had gone to but one point — the implanting of a conviction in the mind of the native soldiers that the foreign masters who had annexed Oudh would hesitate at nothing to complete their work of forcing them to become Christians. They had discounted beforehand the arguments of General Hearsey, for they had pointed out that a Government which, in defiance of treaties, had entered Oudh like 'a thief in the night,' and deposed the native sovereign at the point of the bayonet, would shrink from no means, however fraudulent, to complete the scheme of which the annexation had been the first move. It was not a logical argument, and the European mind would have found it full of flaws; but the emissaries knew the men they were addressing. Sentiment goes much further than logic with Asiatics, and they appealed to the sentiments which touched the sipáhís to the quick. It is not surprising, then, that the logical arguments of General Hearsey produced no effect whatever.
Evidence of this was very speedily given. On the 29th of March, a Sunday afternoon, it was reported to Lieutenant Baugh, Adjutant of the 34th N. I., that several men of his regiment were in a very excited condition; that one of them, Manghal Pándi by name, was striding up and down in front of the lines of his regiment, armed with a loaded musket, calling upon the men to rise, and threatening to shoot the first European he should see. Baugh at once buckled on his sword, and putting loaded pistols in his holsters, mounted his horse, and galloped down to the lines. Manghal Pándi heard the sound of the galloping horse, and taking post behind the station gun, which was in front of the quarter-guard of the 34th, took a deliberate aim at Baugh, and fired. He missed Baugh, but the bullet struck his horse in the flank, and horse and rider were brought to the ground. Baugh quickly disentangled himself, and, seizing one of his pistols, advanced towards the mutinous sipáhí and fired. He missed. Before he could draw his sword Manghal Pándi, armed with a talwár with which he had provided himself, closed with his adjutant, and, being the stronger man, brought him to the ground. He would probably have despatched him but for the timely intervention of a Muhammadan sipáhí, Shaikh Paltu by name.
The scene I have described had taken place in front of the quarter-guard of the 34th N. I., and but thirty paces from it. The sipáhís composing that guard had not made the smallest attempt to interfere between the combatants, although one of them was their own adjutant and the other a mutinous soldier. The sound of the firing had brought other men from the lines, but these, too, remained passive spectators of the scene. At the conjuncture I have described, just, that is, as Shaikh Paltu had warded from Baugh the fatal stroke of the talwár, and as Manghal Pándi, to make assurance doubly sure, was attempting to reload his musket, there arrived on the ground, breathless from running, the English serjeant-major, one of the two English non-commissioned officers attached in those days to each native regiment. The new arrival rushed at the mutineer, but he was, as I have said, breathless, whilst the sipáhí was fresh and on the alert. In the conflict between the two men Manghal Pándi had no difficulty in gaining the mastery, and in throwing his adversary. Still the sipáhís of the regiment looked on. Shaikh Paltu, faithful among the faithless, continued to defend the two officers, calling upon the other sipáhís to come to his aid. Then these, on the order of the Jámadár of guard, advanced. Instead, however, of endeavouring to seize Manghal Pándi, they struck at the two prostrate officers with the butt-ends of their muskets. They even threatened Shaikh Paltu, and ordered him to let go his hold on Manghal Pándi. That faithful sipáhí, however, continued to cling to him until Baugh and the sergeant- major had had time to rise.
Meanwhile rumour, as quick as lightning on such occasions, had brought to General Hearsey an account of the proceedings at the lines. That gallant officer, writing hurried notes to the officers commanding at Dam-Dam and Chinsurah, where were a wing of the 53d Foot and the newly arrived 84th, to be despatched should occasion demand it, galloped to the ground, accompanied by his two sons. The scene that met his gaze was unprecedented even in his long experience. He saw Manghal Pándi, musket in hand, striding up and down in front of the quarter-guard, calling upon his comrades to follow his example. He saw the sipáhís crowding about the guard, waiting apparently for a leader to respond to their comrade's call. He saw the wounded Baugh, and the bruised sergeant-major, the commanding officer of the 34th, who had arrived just before him, and other English officers who had hastened or were hastening to the spot. The moment was a critical one. It depended upon his action whether the Barrackpur sipáhí brigade would then and there break out in open mutiny. But Hearsey was equal to the critical conjuncture. Riding straight to the guard, he drew his pistol, and ordered them to do their duty by seizing Manghal Pándi, theatening to shoot the first man who should display the smallest symptom of disobedience. For a second only was there hesitation. But a glance at Hearsey's stern face, and at his two sons by his side, dissipated it. The men of the guard fell in, and followed Hearsey in the direction where Manghal Pándi was still upbraiding them for their cowardice in leaving him unsupported. Then the mutinous sipáhí recognised that with him the game was up. Turning then the muzzle of the musket to his breast, he discharged it by the pressure of his foot, and fell burned and bleeding to the ground.
Hearsey then addressed the men, and reproached them with their passive demeanour. The excuses they made, that Manghal Pándi was mad, that he was intoxicated, that he had a loaded musket, ought to have convinced Hearsey that the hearts or the men were no longer with their British officers. He felt, indeed, that the situation was becoming greatly strained. The 19th N. I. were actually marching from Barhámpur to be disbanded at Barrackpur, and now the sipáhís of the four regiments of the Barrackpur brigade had displayed an indiscipline at least equal to that for which the 19th were to be punished in their presence. Rumours of all kinds filled the air — the rumour that the outbreak of Manghal Pándi had been preconcerted, but had broken out too soon; another that the arrival of the 19th would be the signal for a general rising; a third, a day or two later, that a conference between emissaries from the 34th and the 19th had taken place, on the 30th, at Barsat, one march from Barrackpur. It is probable that these rumours were true. But the mutinous army had no leader at Barrackpur, and for want of a leader, and in the presence of divided counsels, action collapsed.
On the 30th of March the Government concentrated in Barrackpur the newly arrived 84th Foot, a wing of the 53d, two batteries of European artillery, and the Governor-General's Bodyguard, which, though composed of natives, was then believed to be loyal. The next morning the 19th N. I. marched into Barrackpur. There, in presence of the English regiments and the English-manned guns, and of the native brigade, the order of the Governor-General, stating their crime, and declaring absurd their fears for their religion, was read out to them. They were then ordered to pile their arms, and to hang their belts upon the piled bayonets. They obeyed without a murmur. They were then marched to a distance from their arms, and the pay due to them was distributed. They were allowed, mistakenly as it turned out, to retain their uniforms, and the complaisance of the Government went so far as to provide them with carriage to convey them to their homes. The Government, despite all that had occurred, was still in a fog. They could not see an inch beyond their own hands.
One or two circumstances showed the temper of the Government at this conjuncture. The gallant conduct of Shaikh Paltu, on the morning of the 29th of March, had presented so great a contrast to that of his comrades that Hearsey, with a true soldier's instinct, had then and there promoted him to be a Háwaldár, or native sergeant. For this act, which, though 'ultra vires,' was justified by the special circumstances of the case, he was reprimanded by the Government. The general impression prevailed that the disbandment of the 19th would produce so salutary an effect throughout India that it was announced to the whole army in terms which, to say the least, displayed an absolute ignorance of the real feelings of the sipáhís. The Government thought that that disbandment had closed the chapter of the Mutiny, when in reality it was only the first page of the preface.
The wound of the mutinous sipáhí Manghal Pándi had not proved mortal. He recovered, was brought to trial, and hanged. The Jámadár who had incited the sipáhís of the quarter-guard to refrain from assisting their officer met the same fate a little later (April 22). Meanwhile, the Government had made a searching inquiry into the conduct of the men of the 34th N. I. generally, and after much hesitation, moved also by events at Lakhnao, to be presently referred to, Lord Canning came to the determination to disband that regiment also (May 4). Two days later the seven companies of that regiment which were at Barrackpur[1] were paraded in the presence of the 84th Foot, a wing of the 53d, and two batteries of European artillery, and were disbanded. They were not allowed to keep their uniforms, but were marched out of the station with every show of disgrace. Thus five hundred conspirators, embittered against the Government, were turned loose on the country at a very critical period.
The Government had, towards the end of April, been so satisfied that the disturbances were purely local, and that the disaffection displayed in Bengal had not penetrated to the North-west, that they had resolved, as soon as the 34th N. I. should have been dealt with, to send back the 84th Foot to Rangoon, and they had actually engaged transports for that purpose. Nor did the advices they received from Oudh and the upper provinces, just before the disbandment of the 34th, induce them to reconsider the position and to change their plans. It required the outbreak of the 10th of May at Mírath to impress upon them the reality of the danger.
The disbandment of the 19th N. I., on the 31st of March, had sent back to Oudh nearly a thousand men to preach disaffection and treason. The seeds of distrust had already been sown there by the chief conspirators. It wanted, then, but practical proof of the determination of the Government to carry out their designs at all costs to apply the spark to the material collected. The presence of the disbanded men of the 19th supplied that spark. No overt action had taken place in Oudh before their arrival in that province. After their advent, Oudh became the chief focus of the rebellion.
At Lakhnao, the capital of Oudh, ruled the chivalrous and capable Sir Henry Lawrence. No man more than he had lamented the tendencies of the time to introduce a western system of local government among an oriental people. No man had been more desirous to stand on the ancient ways, the ways familiarised to the natives of India by centuries of use: to employ the utmost care and discretion in introducing changes, however meritorious those changes might appear to men of western race and western training. Hence Sir Henry Lawrence was popular with all classes of natives. He possessed a greater influence over them than any man then living; and, could the rill, then breaking into a torrent, have been stemmed, he was the one man to stem it. But Sir Henry Lawrence had come to Oudh after the evil seeds sown by his immediate predecessor had begun to bear fruit — when the native landowners had been alienated, the supporters of the native rule had begun to conspire, and when the effects of the annexation were being realised by the numerous families which had sent a son or a brother into the sipáhí army, in order that he might procure for them the support of the English Resident in their local Courts. When Sir Henry arrived, then, the mischief had been done, and he had had no power to repair it.
The events at Barhámpur and Barrackpur had been watched by Sir Henry Lawrence with the deepest interest. Naturally, he had taken particular pains to satisfy himself whether the causes which had produced the outbreaks I have recorded at those stations had affected the three regular native regiments, the 13th, the 48th, and the 71st N. I., which garrisoned Lakhnao. But it was not till the end of April, just about the time when the disbanded men of the 19th N. I. were stealing into the province, that he detected or thought he detected, suspicious symptoms in the 48th N. I. He reported the circumstance to Lord Canning, and at once received permission to write to the Commander-in-Chief to have the regiment removed to Mírath. But to Sir Henry's mind the proposed remedy was no remedy at all. He wrote in that sense, on May 1st, to the Governor-General.
Two days later he discovered that treasonable communications were passing between the men of a local regiment and the 48th, that the men of the 7th Irregular Cavalry, stationed seven miles from Lakhnao, had proceeded to overt acts against their officers, and that the greased cartridges were in both cases the alleged cause of the ill-feeling. The act of the 7th Irregulars, in the opinion of Sir Henry, required prompt repression. Accordingly, he marched that night, with the three native regiments I have enumerated, the 32d Foot, and a battery of eight guns, against the peccant regiment. The men of that regiment, terrified by this demonstration, submitted without a blow. They laid down their arms at the given order, and allowed their ringleaders to be arrested, with every sign of penitence and submission.
On the 4th of May the electric wire flashed to Lord Canning an account of this mutiny and its repression. It was the receipt of this news which decided his vacillating council to disband the 34th, a measure which, we have seen, was carried out on the 6th. The effect which the simple disbanding of a mutinous regiment produced on the other native regiments of the same brigade was illustrated a few days later. A Jámadár of the 70th N. I. was arrested at Barrackpur in the act of urging his men to rise in revolt. Brought to trial before a court composed of native officers of his own caste, he was sentenced
Sir Henry Lawrence.
Unfortunately for Lord Canning, himself one of the noblest of men, there was no one about him to tell him that the punishment of disbandment in such times as he was entering upon was no punishment at all. There was not a native regiment in the Bengal Presidency which was not at this period not only ready to disband itself, but to turn with all the fury of men excited by fancied wrongs against the masters they had served. But the truth is there was not a man about him who had penetrated below the surface, who had the wit to see that this disaffection was no ephemeral feeling, to disappear at the bidding of a few hard words. In the language of the Home Secretary, employed when the discontent had become infinitely more pronounced than it was at the beginning of May, it was, in the eyes of his councillors, 'a passing and groundless panic' which required no exceptional action on the part of the Government. When, then, Lord Canning punished a mutinous regiment by disbanding it, when the Commander-in-Chief announced to the army that he considered simple dismissal as a fitting punishment for a native officer caught red-handed in preaching mutiny to his own men, and when, finally, the Governor-General, notifying to the army the doom of the 34th N. I., declared to the sipáhís that similar conduct on their part would subject them to punishment 'sharp and certain,' the plotters in high places must have smiled contemptuously at the conception of sharp and certain punishment entertained by their rulers.
Notwithstanding the belief of the Government that the discontent was local, almost every post brought information that it was not confined to Bengal, that it had shown itself in other places than Lakhnao, that regiments, widely separated from one another, were equally infected. In the important station of Mírath, situated nearly midway between the Ganges and the Jamnah, thirty-six miles from the imperial city of Dehlí, the sipáhís had become impregnated with the idea that the flour sold in the bazaars had been purposely mixed with the bones of bullocks, ground to a fine powder. The conspirators who had fabricated this story were the men who had invented the tale of the greased cartridges, and they had fabricated it with a like object. Nothing tended more to prove the proneness of the minds of the sipáhís to accept any story against the masters they had served for a century than the readiness with which they accepted this impossible rumour. They were not to be persuaded that it was untrue. They displayed more than ordinary care in the purchase of the meal for their daily consumption, and, still unsatisfied, vented their discontent by the burning of houses and by the omission of the ordinary salute to their officers. They soon took a very much more decided step in the path of mutiny. A parade of the 3d Native Light Cavalry had been ordered for the morning of the 6th of May. When, on the preceding evening, the ordinary cartridges were issued to the men, eighty-five troopers of that regiment declined to receive them. In vain did their commanding officer expostulate; in vain did the Brigadier attempt to persuade them. Such a breach of discipline could not be passed over. The men were confined, were then brought with all speed to a court-martial, composed entirely of native officers, and were sentenced by the members of that court to periods of imprisonment, with hard labour, varying from six to ten years. Under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, to whom the question had been specially referred, the General commanding the Mírath division, General Hewitt, prepared to put into execution the finding of the court-martial on the mutineers of the 3d N. L. C. He ordered a general parade for the morning of the 9th. There were present at that parade at daybreak, a regiment of Carabineers, the 60th Rifles, the 3d Light Cavalry (native), the 11th and 20th regiments N. I., a troop of horse-artillery, and a light field-battery. The condemned mutineers were marched to the ground, were stripped of their accoutrements, then every man was shackled and ironed, and they were all marched to the gaol, a building about two miles distant from the cantonment, and guarded solely by natives. There were sullen looks among the armed troopers of the 3d, and an acute observer might have detected sympathetic glances from the sipáhís. But there was no open demonstration. Like Lord Canning and his advisers after the disarming of the 34th N. I., only three days earlier. General Hewitt and the officers at Mírath congratulated one another on the promptitude and success with which a sharp punishment had been dealt out to men who had defied the authority they had sworn to obey.
But the acts of the 19th N. I. at Barhámpur, of the 34th at Barrackpur, of the men whom Major Cavenagh was carefully watching in Fort William, of the deluded sipáhís near Lakhnao, and of the 7th N. L. C. at Mírath, were but the precursors to a more terrible tragedy. The great movement, of which those acts were only the premonitory symptoms, was, on that 9th day of May, on the eve of its outbreak.
- ↑ The remaining three companies were on duty in Eastern Bengal.