The Revolt in Hindustan 1857 - 59

With Eight Illustrations and Five Maps

Evelyn Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429594939
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi regionali

First published in 1908,Wood creates a recount in this work covers specific events and figures involved in the revolt against the British forces and rule in India, during 1857 – 1859.

THE REVOLT IN HINDUSTAN 1857-59

CHAPTER I

THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLT, AND OF THE OUTBREAK OF THE SIPAHI MUTINY

WHEN, in February 1856, the retiring Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, discussed Indian affairs in Calcutta with his successor, Lord Canning, the new Governor-General could not have foreseen, and Lord Dalhousie, who lacked imagination, had no apprehension, that within fifteen months our supremacy over 150 millions of Natives would be endangered. In his mind the only apparent possible source of future trouble was in remote Persia; for the advice of Sir John Low, a companion-in-arms of Sir John Malcolm, and the one old soldier among the Calcutta councillors who was conversant with Sipahi and Native life, had been for years generally, though courteously, disregarded. This being so, no account had been taken of the existing political disaffection in Bundelkhand, Oudh, Rohilkhand, and the Narbada provinces, or of the skill of astute Hindus in fomenting insubordination in the army.

Lord Dalhousie was a strong and determined ruler. In 1848 the Rajah of Satarah died without leaving an heir, and in 1849 “The Right of Lapse” having been enunciated by the Governor-General with less consideration than earlier Muhammadan conquerors in Hindustan had shown in similar cases, that Principality became a British possession. Lord Dalhousie conscientiously thought his decision just; but, as no Hindu can hope for a future world unless his heir, begotten or adopted, performs for him certain funeral ceremonies, it is obvious that Hindus must have resented it. Bhonsla, the Rajah of Nagpur, died in 1853 without issue and without having adopted a successor; and Lord Dalhousie, ignoring the Hindu custom of recognising the widow’s rights of choice in such cases, annexed that territory with its 700,000 inhabitants. Moreover, in the same year, Jhansi, originally a dependency of the Peshwa’s, was annexed on the death of the ruler. The widow, indeed, received a pension of £6000, but out of it she was directed to pay her late husband’s debts. She never forgave us; in the Mutiny murdered many Christians she had sworn to spare, and fighting bravely against General Sir Hugh Rose, was killed in action in 1858. The Court of Directors of the East India Company had disapproved of Lord Dalhousie’s proposal to annex Karauli, one of the smallest but oldest States of Rajputana. Unfortunately, the suggestion became known, and its subsequent discussion alarmed all Hindus.

Baji Rao, the ruler of what is now the Bombay Presidency, on being defeated in 1818, abdicated his position as Peshwa in exchange for the titular rank, a pension of £80,000 and a residence at Bithur, 12 miles from Cawnpur. He adopted Nana Sahib, and later petitioned the Governor-General that his adopted son might succeed to the title, and pension. To this petition he received only!, vague reply. When Baji Rao died in 1851, Nana Sahib applied for a portion of the pension for the support of the late Peshwa’s dependants; but this was refused, and Azim Ullah Khan, his representative, who went to England, failed to get the Calcutta decision reversed in London.

The absorption of Oudh into our possessions was, however, the last and most momentous act of Lord Dalhousie’s administration. The King of Oudh was utterly unfit for his position, and the territorial aristocracy, though fighting amongst themselves, tyrannised over the people, whose misery was deplorable. The system of government has been aptly described as a combination of anarchy and robbery. On the other hand, the extinction of one of the few remaining Muhammadan States, whose ruler moreover had provided us with money and innumerable soldiers, created a very bad impression amongst all our Native subjects. The annexation deeply affected the Bengal army, which drew 60 per centum of its recruits from Oudh; for the privilege they possessed, and greatly prized, of the right of appeal whilst on furlough to our Resident for speedy justice under the Native rule, was now lost.

The aristocracies of the North-West Provinces and of the Southern Maratha country were deeply affected by the working of the Settlement Act. The Survey on which the Act was based was begun in 1833, when Lord William Bentinck was Governor-General; but its drastic effects only became apparent many years later, and then varied according to the views of the individual officers in the Revenue Department. Before the Survey there was practically no system of land taxation. In Hindustan, land was generally held by village communities, and the Government rents were paid by Talukdars, hereditary Revenue farmers, who retained for their own use the difference between the Government assessments, and the actual rent received from the cultivators, or Zamindars. The Talukdars had in many cases a proprietary right as Zamindars, and they had for centuries been the most influential class in the north-west of India. Both classes naturally resented being obliged either to prove titles, which rested, in some instances, on weak foundations, or to cede what they held to be their freehold property. Several of the young Revenue officers, having daily proofs of the incapacity of these Revenue farmers, and of the cruel oppression of their agents, tried to make the village communities direct tenants to the Government, to the immense relief of the cultivators of the soil. Some of the older officers, trained according to the views of Sir John Malcolm, and holding, with Sir Henry Lawrence, that equal justice should be rendered to the aristocracy, and to the peasantry, were unwilling to admit that imbecility or misuse of power justified the transference of proprietary rights, though it might often be essential to make over their exercise to trustees. Nevertheless, the men of the new school were generally supported; and in a typical case, that of Mainpur, the nearly imbecile Rajah, in spite of years of former loyal good service, lost 138 of his 189 villages, as he could prove a good title only to 51 of those which his family had possessed for over a century.

There was much to disgust the Brahmans. Formerly they had ruled all the social life of the Hindus. They got fees for marriages, births, and deaths; education, law, and religion, and every kind of business had been in their hands. Now telegraphs, railways, European education, and, worst of all, a Court of Appeal, were breaking down their privileges and power. They skilfully played on one supposed grievance, by spreading about reports that the Government intended to abolish Caste. These reports became amongst the mass of Hindus the principal incitement to revolt, for any violation of the arbitrary rules of Caste appeared to all to be a step towards forcible conversion to Christianity. Ten years earlier an attempted reform in rationing prisoners in jail had given rise to a widely accepted belief that such a measure was intended. Previously, every prisoner received a monetary allowance, and cooked for himself. This being conducive to idleness and detrimental to regularity, cooks were appointed to prepare food for their respective Castes, and the Brahmans asserted that, later, low-Caste men would be employed for the purpose, and would thus pollute all for whom they cooked.

VISCOUNT CANNING

In the schools, boys heard much about the Christian religion, of which the parents disapproved though they did not withdraw their sons, either from a wish to stand well with the local British authorities, or from a desire to secure for the scholars employment under Government.

Lord Canning promulgated in 1856 the law passed the previous year legalising the remarriage of Hindu widows, and this, an act of the purest benevolence from a British point of view, was regarded, and justifiably, as a blow against polygamy. The publication of this law was coincident with increased missionary activity. Zealous young Protestant clergymen incapable of the conciliatory tolerance of St. Paul, who could proselytise amongst the Athenians without giving offence, and who lived peacefully for years at Ephesus without insulting the worshippers of Artemis, not content with extolling their own religion, inveighed strongly against Hindu and Muhammadan beliefs, thus adding to the irritation induced by their advocacy of one form of religion for all in India.

Very few Natives understood that the Missions were private enterprises, and the vernacular newspapers made the most of all intolerant expressions of the clergy of the Ruling Race. There were some few indiscreet commanding officers, who thought it right to proselytise as long as their efforts were made outside the regimental lines. The feeling of the army is shown by the following extract from a petition presented by a commanding officer of a Bengal infantry regiment. The petitioners, after reciting the grievances of the new cartridge, of the pollution of salt and sugar, state : “The representation of the whole Station is this, that we will not give up our religion.” That the Hindus really feared forcible conversion to Christianity is apparent in an appeal made to Jang Bahadur in February 1859 by mutinous soldiers of the Bengal army who had taken refuge in Nepal—“We fought for the Hindu religion. The Maharajah, being a Hindu, should help us.” This petition is given in the Appendix to The Sepoy War, by Sir Hope Grant and Colonel H. Knollys. Reports among the upper Muhammadan classes that the Government contemplated their forcible conversion to Christianity became so prevalent, that in 1856 the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal issued a conciliatory proclamation on the subject. All these rumours added fuel to the smouldering fire of discontent; and the Hindu prophecy, dating from 1757, that there would be a change of government in a hundred years, encouraged the malcontents. In February 1857 cakes of unleavened bread were distributed amongst the villages under British rule in the North-West Provinces; and, although the intention of the originators has been interpreted differently, everyone saw in the distribution an act hostile to the Government. A similar distribution of cakes in the Madras Presidency fifty years before had been followed by the mutiny at Vellur.

The disaster to our troops at Kabul, culminating in the calamitous retreat in the winter of 1841–42, had shaken the belief of Asiatics in the might of the British soldier. Reforms had been instituted in the Native army which tended to raise its self-esteem, while the urgent representations of Lord Dalhousie that the vast extensions of territory, acquired by conquest and annexation during his rule as Governor - General, necessitated an augmentation of the white garrison of India, were disregarded by the Home Government. On the other hand, 40,000 men and 40 guns had, since 1844, been added to the Sipahi force. Dalhousie’s successor, Lord Canning, had only 38,000 Europeans to face the mutiny of the Bengal army, the discipline of which had been weakened by injudicious concessions to Caste pretensions; while the Native troops in India numbered 200,000 men, conscious of their immense superiority of numbers.

While the Native soldiers dreaded the European troops less than they had done formerly, they had ceased to respect many of their own British officers, from whom all power of rewarding by promotion had been taken; and this because the Headquarter Staff of the Army realised that the commanding officers being old and worn out, were no longer good judges of efficiency : thus absolute seniority became the rule. The average length of service of the Briton who commanded the ten Bengal Regular Cavalry regiments was over thirty-eight years, and that of the captains averaged twenty-eight and a half years. They, like the Native officers, rose by seniority, the system being untempered by compulsory retirements.

In the Bengal army over 1000 of the best officers were absent from regimental duty in 1857; some selected for service with Irregular Corps; others employed in administering the Civil Services of Scinde, Nagpur, the Cis, and Trans Satlaj, the Panjab, and recently Oudh; so the Native soldiers served in many cases under the unenterprising, lazy, listless officers.

In January 1857 the detachments assembled at the Musketry Depôt at Damdamah, 8 miles north of Calcutta, to learn the manipulation of the Enfield rifle, which was to take the place of “Brown Bess” after its use for 105 years, suspected, and with sound reason, that the lubricating substance, smeared on the bullet to facilitate its being rammed home, was composed of beef fat and hog’s lard. Although no such cartridges had been, or in fact were ever, issued to regiments—the Government, on being warned, having sanctioned the soldiers’ making up the lubricant themselves—yet fear of loss of Caste, of forcible conversion to Christianity, and of drastic punishment for any refusal to use the cartridges, spread far and wide. There was also much excitement amongst the four Native battalions stationed at Barrackpur, 16 miles west of Calcutta, where an anonymous letter was picked up and read, inveighing against the sale of polluted flour, and the use of greased cartridges; while letters were sent broadcast calling on all Sipahis to resist the insidious attacks on their Caste and Religion. A battalion at Barhampur, near Murshidabad, 100 miles north of Barrackpur, was the first unit to rise; but it was checked by a regiment of Native cavalry and some Native artillery, and eventually marched quietly to Barrackpur, where it was disbanded on March 31.

Meanwhile at that Station the first blood had been shed. Mangal Pandi, a Sipahi, 34th Bengal Infantry, drugged with bhang, and blustering in front of the quarter guard, shot at the European regimental sergeant-major, and the adjutant. He was still fighting furiously with both of them when he was seized and held by Shekh Paltu, a Muhammadan Sipahi, the champion wrestler of the regiment, until the white men escaped, in spite of the opposition of the guard, who threatened they would shoot Paltu unless he released the assassin. When General Hearsey, commanding the division, with his son and others of his Staff, arrived on the scene, he saw a crowd of Sipahis mostly unarmed, and undressed, and some European officers. Mangal Pandi was calling to his comrades, “Die for your Religion and Caste!” The general, with a pistol at the head of the jemadar in command, coerced him into ordering the guard to follow, and rode straight at the menacing fanatic. To his son, who shouted, “Take care of his musket!” Hearsey replied, “Damn his musket! If I fall, John, rush on him and kill him.” As the general closed on him, the mutineer, reversing his musket, shot himself through the breast. Both he and the jemadar were hanged afterwards by sentence of court-martial, the latter voluntarily admitting the justice of his punishment, and exhorting his comrades to take warning from his fate. Nineteen years afterwards, Mr. Commissioner G. H. Ricketts came across Shekh Paltu, and obtained for him the proprietorship of a confiscated village.

The regiment was disbanded, but the Bengal army was already on the verge of mutiny. Incendiary fires became common in April, while Nana Sahib, who was regarded as Peshwa by all Hindus, visited Kalpi, Lucknow, and Dehli. He had seldom previously quitted Bithur, where he entertained many officers of the Cawnpur garrison, lending them elephants, horses, and carriages, and was generally regarded as a kind, inoffensive, but dull Native. Nevertheless, he was very astute, and had never forgiven what he regarded as the confiscation of his estates; and although the Government could not discern the signs of impending trouble, he and other Maratha nobles had been plotting for years against their overlords. The conspirators received but little encouragement from reigning princes, or from the Bengal army, until the annexation of Oudh caused general alarm at all Native courts, and grave dissatisfaction among the Sipahis.

The first concerted outbreak occurred in the cantonment 2 miles north of Meerut, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, 40 miles north-east of Dehli. On April 24, go men of the 3rd Native Cavalry were paraded to practise tearing instead of biting off the end of the cartridge, a change intended to allay suspicion; but all except 5 refused to receive the ammunition. They were sentenced by general court-martial to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour. They were placed in fetters on parade on May 9, an operation lasting several hours, and then lodged in jail under Native guard. The degrading ceremony, carried out amid the appeals of the prisoners to their comrades to rescue them, and the taunts of Native courtesans from the Bazaars, so inflamed the Native mind that it precipitated the Mutiny, which by an understanding known only to three or four men in each corps throughout the Bengal army had been arranged for Sunday, May 31. The cantonment of Meerut stretched over a wide extent of ground. The frontage of the European lines alone was nearly two miles from east to west, and three-quarters of a mile from north to south. The artillery lines were at the east end, then came infantry barracks, the church standing between the latter and the cavalry lines. A broad road, the centre of which was called the Mall, extending 2 miles nearly east and west, separated the European from the Native quarters and the Bazaars, which were built on the south side of the Mall. To the south of the Carabiniers’ lines was the Dragoon Bazaar, and to the south of it were the Native infantry lines. The 3rd Native Cavalry were quartered a mile to the south of the Native infantry, in the southwest corner of the station. The jail in which the insubordinate troopers were imprisoned was outside the town, in the south-east corner of the station, nearly 3 miles from the Native cavalry lines.

On Sunday morning, May 10, there were no suspicions of the impending Mutiny. The European artillerymen and the greater part of the 60th King’s Royal Rifles had attended the morning divine service, carrying sidearms only, as was then the custom. As all guards, even that over the Quartermaster’s Stores of the 60th King’s Royal Rifles, were furnished by Native infantry, it happened that no European carried a rifle at the moment of the outbreak.

In the evening the Carabiniers, and a detachment of the 60th, crowded out of the church in the morning, for it accommodated only half of the Christian garrison at one time, were preparing for divine service. Captain Muter and other officers of the 60th were early on the parade ground, and just as the first of the soldiers appeared, they hurriedly ran back on the shout being raised, “The Sipahis are killing their officers!” While the riflemen were arming, Captain Muter, having consulted the officers who were on parade, sent Lieutenant Austin, who had volunteered for the duty, to hasten with the first detachment which was ready, to secure the Commissioner’s office, which held the Public Records and the Treasury. It stood to the south of the artillery lines and a mile and a quarter from the 60th King’s Royal Rifles barracks; but Lieutenant Austin, by “doubling” nearly all the way, disarmed the guard without a struggle and secured the buildings shortly before the mob came out of the town to sack the Treasury. Meanwhile the greater part of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment galloped to the jail and released their 85 comrades. The 11th and 20th Bengal Native Infantry assembled on their adjoining parades. The 20th killed 4 of their officers, and Colonel Finnis, 11th Regiment, who had ridden over and was exhorting the battalion to remain loyal. Then with the cavalry they fired the cantonment, and having murdered every European, male and female, whom they met, they marched for Dehli. The 11th Bengal Infantry hurt none of their officers, although the men drove them off the parade, and the majority of the battalion remained in villages near Meerut for forty-eight hours befor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Other
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Chapter I The Causes of the Revolt, and the Sipahi Mutiny
• Chapter II The Characteristics of the Hindustani Soldier
• Chapter III The Panjab and North-West Provinces
• Chapter IV Cawnpur, Description of
• Chapter V The Patna District
• Chapter VI Dehli, the British Position outside; Description of the City and surrounding Country
• Chapter VII The Siege of Dehli
• Chapter VIII The Mutiny and Revolt at Lucknow
• Chapter IX Havelock at Cawnpur
• Chapter X The First Relief of Lucknow
• Chapter XI A Column is despatched from Dehli southwards
• Chapter XII Central India
• Chapter XIII Colin Campbell arrives in India
• Chapter XIV The Instructions given by Campbell to Windham
• Chapter XV The Duab
• Chapter XVI General Outram in Position outside Lucknow
• Chapter XVII Siege and Capture of Lucknow
• Chapter XVIII Bombay and Central India
• Chapter XIX Sir Hugh Rose
• Chapter XX Gwaliar—Desperate Resolve of the Rebels
• Chapter XXI Operations in Eastern Bengal
• Appendix
• Index