III. LUCKNOW TO DELHI.
We left Mr Russell with the army before Luck-now.
They have passed Jellalabad, the extreme point held by Outram's
garrison, a solitary fort by the side of a large lake; they front the
grotesque Martiniere, raised by the French private, afterwards general,
Claude Martin. From the royal country house of the Dilkoosha, "a good
specimen of a French chateau of the beginning of the last century,
improved by an Italian artist," he has "a vision of palaces, minars,
domes, azure and golden cupolas, colonnades, long facades of fair
perspective in pillar and column, terraced roofs—all rising up amid a
calm, still ocean of the brightest verdure. Look for miles and miles
away, and still the ocean spreads, and the towers of the fairy city
glitter in its midst. Spires of gold glitter in the sun. Turrets and
gilded spires shine like constellations. There is nothing mean or
squalid to be seen. There is a city more vast than Paris, and more
brilliant, lying before us. Is this a city in Oude? Is this the capital
of a semi-barbarous race, erected by a corrupt, effete, and degraded
dynasty? I confess I felt inclined to rub my eyes again and again." "Not
Rome," he says further on, ''not Athens, not Constantinople, not any
city I have ever seen, appears to me so striking and beautiful as this;
and the more I gaze, the more its beauties grow upon me." And again, on
the very morning of the attack, '' How lovely Luck-now looks to-day! the
sun playing on all the gilt domes and spires, the exceeding richness of
the vegetation, and forests, and gardens, which remind one somewhat of
the view of the Bois de Boulogne from the hill over St Cloud." Such was
the city upon which England was about to avenge the frightful crime of a
people rising in arms against its foreign masters.
Our blood was up. At mess, the talk is of "potting
pandies," and "polishing off niggers." No quarter is given. "It is
horrible, but it is true, that our men have got a habit of putting
natives ' out of pain' as if they were animals. They do it sometimes in
charity."Some—officers apparently—deny that natives have a soul," or, as
one of them put it, 'If niggers have souls, they 're not the same as
ours.'" Worse is it still with our savage auxiliaries, Goorkhas from
Nepaul, or men of the Punjab. The former are led by a man, (Jung
Bahadoor,) of whom one of our officers said, he believed him to be
"the------dest villain hung or unhung." Of the latter, let the following
dread tale suffice for the present. It belongs not to the end of the
attack on the city, but to the very first day of it, March 9:—
"I saw one who had come over from Outram's camp, and
he told us of the great success of the day, and of the fine advance made
by the right corps, a wing of our army. Alas, that he should have to
tell, too, of the disgusting termination to the attack on the
Chuckerwallah Kothie, the yellow house on the race-course, in which some
few sepoys made a resistance which a national Tyrtaeus or Dibdin would
have chanted in noble song; their enemies called it foolish and fanatic.
What could they do more than fight to the last, and kill or wound every
man who approached them ? As they had killed a British officer of a Sikh
regiment, several men, and wounded more, the troops were withdrawn from
the house, and a heavy fire of artillery was opened on it. After the
walls had been perforated in all directions with shot and shell, so that
it seemed impossible for the little garrison to have escaped, a
detachment of Sikhs rushed into the house. Some of the sepoys were still
alive, and they were mercifully killed; but for some reason or other
which could not be explained, one of their number was dragged out to the
sandy plain outside the house, he was pulled by the legs to a convenient
place, where he was held down, pricked in the face and body by the
bayonets of some of the soldiery, whilst others collected fuel for a
small pyre, and when all was ready, the man was roasted alive. There
were Englishmen looking on; more than one officer saw it. No one offered
to interfere. The horror of this infernal cruelty was aggravated by an
attempt of the miserable wretch to escape when half-burned to death. By
a sudden effort, he leaped away, and, with the flesh hanging from his
bones, ran for a few yards ere he was caught, brought back, put on the
fire again, and held there by bayonets till his remains were consumed. '
And his cries, and the dreadful scene,' said my friend, ' will haunt me
to my dying hour.' ' Why didn't you interfere?' ' I dared not; the Sikhs
were furious. They had lost Anderson; our own men encouraged them, and I
could do nothing.' "
The writer adds in a note, "I saw the charred bones
some days after on the plain."
Two days later, the Begum Kothie, or Queen's Palace,
is stormed. Mr Russell visits it the next day. The deep ditch which
defends it "was filled with the bodies of sepoys, which the coolies were
dragging from the inside and throwing topsyturvy, by command of the
soldiers, stiffened by death, with outstretched legs and arms. Those
rent and shattered figures seemed as if they were about to begin a dance
of death. We crossed literally a ramp of dead bodies loosely covered
with earth." Within—where "from court to court, and building to
building," the sepoys had been driven, "leaving in each hundreds of men
bayoneted and shot," by "the strength of the 93d and the fury of the
Sikhs,"—"the scene was horrible. The rooms in which the sepoys lay
burning slowly in their cotton clothing, with their skin crackling and
their flesh roasting literally in its own fat, whilst a light-bluish
vapoury smoke, of disgusting odour, formed a veil through which the
dreadful sight could be dimly seen, were indeed chambers of horrors
ineffable. It was before breakfast, and I could not stand the smell."
On the 14th, (to pass over minor scenes of
devastation and death,) the King's Palace or Kaiserbagh is stormed.
"Discipline may hold soldiers together till the fight is won, but it
assuredly does not exist for a moment after an assault has been
delivered, or a storm has taken place. Imagine courts as large as the
Temple Gardens, surrounded with ranges of palaces, or at least of
buildings well stuccoed and gilded, with fresco-paintings here and there
on the blind windows, and with green jalousies and Venetian blinds
closing the apertures which pierce the walls in double rows. In the body
of the court are statues, lines of lampposts, fountains, orange -
groves, aqueducts, and kiosks with burnished domes of metal.....At every
door there is an eager crowd, smashing the panels with the stocks of
their firelocks, or breaking the fastenings by discharges of their
weapons. .... Here and there the invaders have forced their way into the
long corridors, and you hear the musketry rattling inside, the crash of
glass, the shouts and yells of the combatants, and little jets of smoke
curl out of the closed lattices. Lying amid the orange-groves are dead
and dying sepoys, and the white statues are reddened with blood. . . . .
. Here and there officers are running to and fro after their men,
persuading or threatening in vain. From the broken portals issue
soldiers laden with booty or plunder—shawls, rich tapestry, gold and
silver brocade, caskets of jewels, arms, splendid dresses. The men are
wild with fury and. lust of blood—literally drunk with plunder. Some
come out with china vases or mirrors, dash them to pieces on the ground,
and return to seek more valuable booty. Others are busy gouging out the
precious stones from the stems of pipes, from saddle-cloths, or the
hilts of swords, or butts of pistols and fire-arms. Some swathe their
bodies in stuffs crusted with precious metals and gems; others carry off
useless lumber, brass pots, pictures, or vases of jade and
china.....Never had I felt such exhaustion. It was horrid enough to have
to stumble through endless courts, which were like vapour-baths, amid
dead bodies, through sights worthy of the "Inferno," by blazing walls,
which might be pregnant with mines, over breaches, in and out of
smouldering embrasures, across frail ladders, suffocated by deadly
smells of rotting corpses, of rotten ghee, (melted butter,) or vile
native scents; but the seething crowd of camp-followers into which we
emerged in Huzrutgunj was something worse. As ravenous, and almost as
foul as vultures, they were packed in a dense mass in the street,
afraid, or unable to go into the palaces, and, like the birds they
resembled, waiting till the right was done to prey on their plunder." .
. . .
One more scene has to be told, as an episode
of the day.
"When our advance from the Imambarra to the
Kaiserbagh was established, a portion of our troops swept round to the
right, and two parties of Her Majesty's 20th came upon the house, which
contained two courts, and rooms full of old machinery. They came upon a
body of 300 or 400 sepoys, who had fled there for refuge. Holding
possession of the only means of exit, one portion of the 20th made a
furious onslaught on the rebels, shot them down in files, and ceased not
till no living enemy was left to kill."
Yet Sir Colin Campbell was bitterly found fault with
for having let so many escape.
Four days more (15th to 18th March) elapsed ere the
city was finally cleared out. Mr Russell describes the streets, in which
"lay the bloated corpses of natives, in all kinds of attitudes; most of
them (there were old men and women among them) hit by fragments of
shell, which always produce very horrible wounds." Attacking the
Imambarra mosque, "as Brasyer was leading on his men, he was badly
wounded by a shot from a house. A dooly (litter) was sent for; and, as
he was getting into it, his infuriated Sikhs entered the building, and
taking out some men and boys whom they found there, placed them with
their backs against the wall, and shot them on the spot. Their cries for
mercy were piteous. In a few seconds they were lying below the
blood-stained wall, a heap of palpitating, quivering bodies." "On every
side," writes our traveller, "were sights which I would fain have shut
my eyes on, sounds which I would not readily listen to again."
Worse than all, however, was the act of an English
officer of the Fusiliers. "After the Fusiliers had got to the gateway, a
Cashmere boy came towards the post, leading a blind and aged man, and
throwing himself at the feet of an officer, asked for protection. That
officer, as I was informed by his comrades, drew his revolver, and
snapped it at the wretched suppliant's head. The men cried 'shame' on
him. Again he pulled the trigger—again the cap missed; again he pulled,
and once more the weapon refused its task. The fourth time—thrice had he
time to relent—the gallant officer succeeded, and the boy's life-blood
flowed at his feet, amid the indignation and the outcries of his men."
Why have I dwelt upon these tales of destruction and
slaughter? Not to provoke unmeaning outcry against war's dread surgery,
needful and even holy as it must sometimes be. Not to hold up our
soldiers in India—unless it may be that nameless commissioned scoundrel
of the Fusiliers— as brutal and bloodthirsty beyond what you or I might
have been in their places. To one another, thank God, our soldiers are
most kind-hearted. During the taking of Lucknow, Mr Russell mentions
having seen two wounded men, of whom "the one, who was hit in the arm,
helped up his comrade, who was wounded in the leg. Nothing could be
kinder or more gentle than the conduct of one to the other." Not to
carry the guilt even of their brutal and bloodthirsty acts to the
generals who led them; for sure I feel that no generals more unwilling
than Lord Clyde, Sir James Outram, Sir William Mansfield, to shed
needless blood, ever commanded a British army; indeed, the severity is
almost always on the side of the civilians. General Outram ''is for a
large, and generous, and general amnesty, except in the case of actual
murderers;" Mr Montgomery, "for the most vigorous prosecution and
punishment." Lord Canning issues a confiscation proclamation, which Sir
Colin Campbell disapproves, and Sir James Outram refuses to carry out.
Civilians are open-mouthed against Sir Colin for not having killed
20,000 men. One of them, in the very camp, hangs a man who has
surrendered on the pledge of a British officer that his life should be
spared. And yet, strange to say, these very civilians, Sir Colin
complains, "are continually deceiving us, or allowing themselves to be
deceived by the natives: they will have it that the people are not
against us." No; these tales need telling for no invidious purpose. They
are wanted for this: to make us feel, above all things, upon what
fearful memories we have now to rebuild our rule in India—in what pools
of yet fresh blood the foot of governors-general, or their subordinates,
may easily slip.
For this Lucknow—the last great native capital but
one that remained in India a few years back— was the abode of a race of
kings, of whom Lord Dalhousie, even in the proclamation which spoiled
them of their ancestral throne, declared that they had "ever been
faithful and true to their friendship to the English nation." And the
sole plea for that annexation was misgovernment; since "fifty years of
sad experience" had "conclusively shewn that no effectual security"
could be had from the "grievous oppression" the people had long endured,
unless "the exclusive administration of the territories of Oude" should
be "permanently transferred to the British Government." And behold—O
mystery of mysteries!—when the king has been removed to Calcutta, it is
from his people that we have to conquer his country; it is in the name
of his child that their resistance is carried on; and three times in
succession has a British army to cut its way to the capital, and, for
more "effectual security," apparently, from that "grievous oppression"
that Oude had "long endured," to make that magnificent capital a scene
of devastation and massacre, at the hands of maddened English soldiers,
and their ferocious native auxiliaries ! Already do we not feel that
there is bitter truth in Mr Russell's words:—
"The Christianity of a Roman emperor could not save
his empire; and as 'Sarmatia fell unwept, without a crime,' so might we
fall unwept, with many crimes, of which our people know nothing, in
spite of our being Christian, with a Protestant constitution, and an
empire of all religions in the world. I believe that we permit things to
be done in India, which we would not permit to be done in Europe, or
could not hope to effect without public reprobation; and that our
Christian character in Europe, our Christian zeal in Exeter Hall, will
not atone for usurpation and annexation in Hindostan, or for violence
and fraud in the upper provinces of India."
It is sometimes said, indeed, "Well, after all, our
perilous position in India renders it necessary that we should be
fearful enemies. But, at least, we are fast friends." Fast friends !
Nay, the annexation of Oude, of the land of our "ever faithful and true"
allies, is alone a sufficient answer to that on the larger political
scale. Would you see an answer also on the narrow social one ? You
suppose, perhaps, that, having had such pains to reconquer Oude, those
natives who adhered to us were, at least, sure of all consideration and
honour? Mark the following tale, which Mr Russell assigns to the 1st
April, within a fortnight from the taking of Lucknow. The scene lies in
Sir James Outram's tent:—
"We were sitting at a table smoking and reading the
papers, when a chuprassie came in and announced that Munoora-ood-Dowlah,
formerly a man of great rank in Oude, an ex-minister, and related to the
royal family, craved an audience of the Chief Commissioner. He was
ordered to walk in. A very old and venerable-looking gentleman entered,
followed by two or three attendants, and salaamed all round to us,
whilst he and his chief secretary paid us many compliments expressive of
delight at seeing us.
"First Aide—'I say, you speak the old chap's
lingo better than I do. Tell him the General is busy, and that he must
wait.'
"Second Aide—'No, you tell him yourself. Confound
me if I do your business!'
''All this time Munoora is standing. After a little
further controversy, the second aide tells him to sit down, and he and
his attendants shuffle into broken chairs, and balance themselves with
evident uneasiness.
"First aide whistles, with his legs on the table;
second aide draws, assiduously, a fine bold sketch on a sheet of
blotting-paper. Munoora-ood-Dowlah, after a long pause, begs to know
whether the Burra Sahib Bahadoor knows he is waiting, and is likely to
see him.
"First Aide—'I say now, it's your turn to go in
to Sir James. I don't want to be bored by this old humbug.'
"Second Aide—'Well, hadn't we better say Sir
James won't see him?'
"First Aide—'No, hang it; he's been a faithful
old swell, and all that; and Sir James might be angry, as they were
chums long ago.'
"Second Aide, exit.— 'You are one of the laziest'
....
''After a time, in came Sir James; but, in the
interval, Munoora was the very type of misery, for, to an Oriental of
his rank, all this delay and hesitation about an audience were very
unfavourable symptoms. He had really been our friend, and had undergone
the greatest misery, privation, loss, and insults at the hands of the
rebels. In former days, he was noted for his hospitality to the English,
for his magnificent sporting parties, and for his excellence as a shot
at both large and small game. He had upwards of a hundred rifles, of the
very best English makers, in his battery, and his greatest pleasure was
to lend a chickar to his friends. Sir James gave him rather a kindly
reception, and sent the old man away in better spirits. (But he never
recovered the ignominy to which he had been subjected by the rebels, and
he died soon afterwards.)"
Was it only of the ignominy to which he had been
subjected by the rebels, that this aged native gentleman of
princely rank, our firm friend, and who had suffered for being so, is
likely to have died?
Where there is this English insolence towards the
native gentry, what is likely to be our English brutality towards the
lower classes of natives?
"We returned this morning," (April 26,) writes Mr
Russell at Futtehghur, "from the Maharajah's bath, to breakfast in a
small pagoda or mosque inside a large serai," (inn or lodging-place,)
"which is used by our officers as a kind of club. (How the natives must
be disgusted at our use of the holy places!) I was very much shocked to
see in this courtyard two native servants, covered with plasters and
bandages, and bloody, who were lying on their charpoys, moaning. On
inquiring, my friend was informed by one of the guests they were
So-and-so's servants, who had just been 'licked' by him. It is a savage,
beastly, and degrading custom. I have heard it defended; but no man of
feeling, education, or goodness of heart can vindicate or practise it.
The sobs of the poor woman, the wife of one of the men who sat by the
charpoys, were most affecting; but not a soul went to comfort or say a
kind word to her. The master, who had administered his 'spiriting' so
gently to his delinquent domestics, sat sulky and sullen, and, I hope,
ashamed of his violence, at the table; but he had no fear of any pains
or penalties of the law."
Even without the vulgar abuse of physical force, is
there much less brutal contempt for native feeling in the following
sample (prior in date to the taking of Lucknow) of how we do
reward our native friends?—
"After dinner, one Canoujeelall, a very handsome,
intelligent Hindoo, came to Outram for final instructions as to a very
perilous enterprise. He is to try the depth of the river near the iron
bridge, in order that we may know whether it be fordable or not; but the
man is used to services of danger. It was he who accompanied Kavanagh
out of the Residency to seek Sir Colin Campbell, and he has since been
actively engaged as a spy in our employment. He is working for a high
reward, but I do not think the mode we propose of dealing with him
evinces much judgment. We know him to be a double-dealer, for he
deceives and betrays his own countrymen; but we have promised him a
judicial and legal appointment in the public service. How
will he exercise his trust?"
A man, no doubt, to be well paid. But imagine a
French invader promising a judgeship at Westminster to an English
traitor for help in making the former master of London, and you will
have an idea of the outrage on humanity which such a reward implies as
was promised to our spy.
And yet—let it be insisted on at the risk of
repetition,—to use Mr Russell's words—though
"assuredly never was the strength and courage of any race tried more
severely in any one year, since the world began, than was the mettle of
the British in India in 1857, .... yet it must be admitted that, with
all their courage, they would have been quite exterminated if the
natives had been all and altogether hostile to them.....
Our siege of Delhi would have been quite impossible
if the Rajahs of Puttiala and Jheend had not been our friends, and if
the Sikhs had not recruited our battalions, and remained quiet in the
Punjab. The Sikhs at Lucknow did good service; and in all cases our
garrisons were helped, fed, and served by natives, as our armies were
attended and strengthened by them in the field. Look at us all here in
camp at this moment! Our outposts are native troops, natives are cutting
grass for and grooming our horses, feeding the elephants, managing the
transport, supplying the Commissariat which feeds us, cooking our
soldiers' food, cleaning their camp, pitching and carrying our tents,
waiting on our officers, and even lending us money. The soldier who acts
as my amanuensis, declares his regiment could not live a week but for
the regimental servants, dooly-bearers, hospital-men, and other
dependents. He admits to-day he is quite fatigued, coming across in the
sun to my quarters. We never hear any public acknowledgment of their
services." Add to this list of our obligations to the natives in
rebellion time, the following note of an earlier date, which, indeed,
reflects little credit on our own soldiers:—"The Commissariat officers
also prefer native guards for their treasure-chests and tumbrils. Very
recently, when in charge of European regiments, two of these tumbrils,
on two separate occasions, were afflicted with an extraordinary leakage
of rupees."
Mr Russell's mention of an amanuensis will have been
observed. Without wishing to enter into the detail of his diary, it is
necessary to state that, severely injured already through a kick from a
horse, he had, while accompanying the army from Oude into Rohilcund,
found himself involved in a charge from the rear of Mussulman
cavalry—fanatics, as we term them, called Ghazees—"fine fellows,
grizzly-bearded, elderly men for the most part, with green turbans and
cummur-bands," (waist-scarfs,) every one with "a silver signet-ring,"
and "a long text from the Koran engraved on it," who "came on with their
heads down below their shields, and their tulwars flashing as they
whirled them over their heads, shouting, 'Deen! deen!' " (The faith! the
faith!) "and dancing like madmen," and got cut to pieces all but one or
two. Our " Special Correspondent" was barely saved by the promptitude of
his groom, was cut down whilst flying on horseback for his life in his
shirt, and was only saved from dying by sunstroke through his having
been "so weakened by previous bleeding and dosing." "Unable to remain
with the army, he proceeded, by way of Futtehghur and Delhi, to the
hills.
At Futtehghur, he sat "in the very room where some of
our ill-fated countrywomen were massacred by the sepoys." (Why was one
stone of the building left on the other?) Two women, he was told, "were
blown from guns;" some children ''placed against the targets on the
practice-ground as marks, by the men of the 10th and 41st B.N.I."
Fearful acts on the part of those whom British discipline and contact
with British officers should, one would think, have raised above such!
''But were our acts," asks Mr Russell, "those of civilised Christians,
when, in this very place, we hung a relative of the Nawab of Furruckabad,
under circumstances of most disgusting indignity, whilst a chaplain
stood by among the spectators ? It is actually true that the miserable
man entertained one or two British officers of a British regiment in his
palace the day before his death, and that he believed his statements
with respect to his innocence were received; but, in a few hours after
he had acted as host to a colonel in our army, he was pounced upon by
the civil power, and hanged in a way which excited the displeasure of
every one who saw it, and particularly of Sir William Peel. All these
kinds of vindictive, unchristian Indian torture, such as sewing
Mohammedans in pig-skins, smearing them with pork fat before execution,
and burning their bodies, and forcing Hindoos to defile themselves, are
disgraceful, and ultimately recoil on ourselves. They are spiritual and
mental tortures to which we have no right to resort, and which we dare
not perpetrate' in the face of Europe."
As he proceeds, he says, ''The aspect of the country
around me for ever forced on my imagination the horrors of last year in
India. Bungalows, police-stations, were all burned down, blackened, and
in ruins. Even the milestones were defaced. The Grand Trunk Road
remained nearly the sole trace of our rule." At a ruined station, he
finds three young gentlemen ''representing British rule, law, and order,
over an immense district lately swarming with rebels," with "a hundred
Sikhs to aid them, and a local levy, but not another white face" within
many miles. On crossing a wide stream by a rude bridge of boats towards
the keep of Selimghur, one of the defences of Delhi, the Sikh sentries,
who ''examine all natives, and force them to produce their passes," on
seeing his white face, present arms. "My skin is the passport; it is a
guarantee of my rank. In India I am at once one of the governing
class—an aristocrat in virtue of birth—a peer of the realm—a being
specially privileged and exempted from the ordinary laws of the state."
At Delhi, I shall leave Mr Russell for the present.
J. M. L.