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Book 2 – The Sipahi Army – 1756–1856

Chapter 1

Whilst the hearts of the Aristocracy and of the Priesthood of the country were thus turned against the government of the English, there was a third great class, esteemed to be more powerful than all, whom it was believed that our policy had propitiated. There was security in the thought that the Soldiery were with us. It was the creed of English statesmen that India had been won by the Sword, and must be retained by the Sword. And so long as we held the sword firmly in our hands, there was but little apprehension of any internal danger. The British power in the East was fenced in and fortified by an army of three hundred thousand men.

A small part only of this Army was composed of our own countrymen. Neither the manhood of England nor the revenues of India could supply the means of defending the country only with British troops. A large majority of our fighting-men were, therefore, natives of India, trained, disciplined, and equipped after the English fashion. We had first learnt from the French the readiness with which the “Moors” and the “Gentus” could be made to adapt themselves to the habits and forms of European warfare, and, for a hundred years, we had been improving on the lesson. Little by little, the handful of Blacks which had helped Robert Clive to win the battle of Plassey had swollen into the dimensions of a gigantic army. It had not grown with the growth of the territory which it was intended to defend; but still, nerved and strengthened by such European regiments as the exigencies of the parent state could spare for the service of the outlying

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dependency, it was deemed to be of sufficient extent to support the Government which maintained it against all foreign enmity and all intestine revolt.

It was, doubtless, a strange and hazardous experiment upon the forbearance of these disciplined native fighting-men, held only by the bondage of the Salt in allegiance to a trading Company which had usurped the authority of their Princes and reduced their countrymen to subjection. But it was an experiment which, at the date of the commencement of this history, had stood the test of more than a century of probation. The fidelity of the Native Army of India was an established article of our faith. Tried in many severe conjunctures, it had seldom been found wanting. The British Sipahi had faced death without a fear, and encountered every kind of suffering and privation without a murmur. Commanded by officers whom he trusted and loved, though of another colour and another creed, there was nothing, it was said, which he would not do, there was nothing which he would not endure. In an extremity of hunger, he had spontaneously offered his scanty food to sustain the robuster energies of his English comrade. He had planted the colours of his regiment on a spot which European valour and perseverance had failed to reach. He had subscribed from his slender earnings to the support of our European wars. He had cheerfully consented, when he knew that his Government was in need, to forego that regular receipt of pay which is the very life-blood of foreign service. History for a hundred years had sparkled with examples of his noble fidelity; and there were few who did not believe, in spite of some transitory aberrations, that he would be true to the last line of the chapter.

1856

If there were anything, therefore, to disturb the mind of Lord Dalhousie when he laid down the reins of government on that memorable spring morning, the trouble which oppressed him was not the growth of any mistrust of the fidelity of the Sipahi. “Hardly any circumstance of his condition,” he said, in his Farewell Minute, “is in need of improvement.” And there were few who, reading this passage, the very slenderness of which indicated a more settled faith in the Sipahi than the most turgid sentences could have expressed, did not feel the same assurance that in that direction there was promise only of continued repose. It was true that Asiatic armies were ever prone to revolt – that we had seen Maratha

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armies and Sikh armies, Arab armies and Gurkha armies, all the military races of India indeed, at some time or other rising in mutiny against their Government, and perhaps overthrowing it. But fifty years had passed away since the minds of our British rulers had been seriously disturbed by a fear of military revolt, and that half century, it was believed, had brought full conviction home to the understanding of the Sipahi that the Company was a good and generous master, whose colours it was a privilege to bear. Outwardly, there was only a great calm; and it was not thought that beneath that smooth surface there were any latent dangers peculiar to the times. The Sipahi was esteemed to be “faithful to a proverb “; and his fidelity was the right arm of our strength.

First Sipahi levies in Bombay and Madras

Our first Sipahi levies were raised in the Southern Peninsula, when the English and French powers were contending for the dominant influence in that part of the country. They were few in number, and at the outset commonly held in reserve to support our European fighting-men. But, little by little, they proved that they were worthy to be entrusted with higher duties, and, once trusted, they went boldly to the front. Under native commandants, for the most part Muhammadan or high-caste Rajput Hindus, but disciplined and directed by the English captain, their pride was flattered and their energies stimulated by the victories they gained. How they fought in the attack of Madura, how they fought in the defence of Arkat, how they crossed bayonets, foot to foot, with the best French troops at Gudalur, historians have delighted to tell. All the power and all the responsibility, all the honours and rewards, were not then monopolised by the English captains. Large bodies of troops were sometimes despatched, on hazardous enterprises, under the independent command of a native leader, and it was not thought an offence to a European soldier to send him to fight under a black commandant. That black commandant was then a great man, in spite of his colour. He rode on horseback at the head of his men, and a mounted staff-officer, a native adjutant, carried his commands to the Subahdars of the respective companies. And a brave man or a skilful leader was honoured for his bravery or his skill as much under the folds of a turban as under a round hat.

The Bengal Army

When the great outrage of the Black Hole called Clive’s retributory army to Bengal, the English had no

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Sipahi troops on the banks of the Hugli. But there were fourteen native battalions in Madras, numbering in all ten thousand men, and Clive took two of these with him, across the black water, to Calcutta. Arrived there, and the first blow struck, he began to raise native levies in the neighbourhood, and a battalion of Bengal Sipahis fought at Plassey side by side with their comrades from Madras. Eight years after this victory, which placed the great province of Bengal at our feet, the one battalion had swollen into nineteen, each of a thousand strong. To each battalion three English officers were appointed – picked men from the English regiments75. The native element was not so strong as in the Southern Army; but a good deal of substantive authority still remained with the black officers.

And that the Bengal Sipahi was an excellent soldier, was freely declared by men who had seen the best troops of the European powers. Drilled and disciplined in all essential points after the English model, the native soldier was not called upon to divest himself of all the distinctive attributes of his race. Nothing that his creed abhorred or his caste rejected was forced upon him by his Christian masters. He lived apart, cooked apart, ate apart, after the fashion of his tribe. No one grudged him his necklace, his earrings, the caste-marks on his forehead, or the beard which lay upon his breast. He had no fear of being forcibly converted to the religion of the white men, for he could not see that the white men had any religion to which they could convert him. There was no interference from the Adjutant-General’s office, no paper government, no perpetual reference to order-books bristling with innovations; and so he was happy and contented, obedient to the officers who commanded him, and faithful to the Government he served.

His predominant sentiment, indeed, was fidelity to his Salt, or, in other words, to the hand that fed him. But if he thought that the hand was unrighteously closed to withhold from him what he believed his due, he showed himself to be most tenacious of his rights, and he resolutely asserted them. This temper very soon manifested itself. The Bengal Army was but seven years old, when it first began to evince some symptoms

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of a mutinous spirit. But in this instance the contagion came from the Europeans.

The First Mutiny in Bengal

The white troops had mutinied because the promise of a donation to the Army from Mir J’afar had halted on the way to performance; and when the money came, the Sipahis followed their example, because they thought that they were denied their rightful share of the prize. They had just ground of complaint in this instance, and they were soothed by a reasonable concession76. But the fire had not burnt itself out; and before the close of the year some regiments were again in rebellion. One battalion seized and imprisoned its English officers, and vowed that it would serve no more. It was one of those childish ebullitions, of which we have since seen so many in the Bengal Army. But it was plain that the evil was a growing one, and to be arrested with a strong hand. So twenty-four Sipahis were tried, at Chapra, by a drum-head Court-Martial, for mutiny and desertion, found guilty, and ordered to be blown away from the guns.

A century has passed since the order was carried into execution, and many strange and terrible scenes have been witnessed by the Sipahi Army; but none stranger or more terrible than this. The troops were drawn up, European and Native, the guns were loaded, and the prisoners led forth to suffer. Major Hector Munro, the chief of the Bengal Army, superintended that dreadful punishment parade, and gave the word of command for the first four of the criminals to be tied up to the guns. The order was being obeyed; the men were being bound; when four tall, stately Grenadiers stepped forward from among the condemned, and represented that as they had always held the post of honour in life, it was due to them that they should take precedence in death. The request was granted; a brief reprieve was given to the men first led to execution; the Grenadiers were tied to the guns, and blown to pieces at the word of command.

Then all through the Sipahi battalions on that ghastly parade there ran a murmur and a movement, and it seemed that the black troops, who greatly outnumbered the white, were about to strike for the rescue of their comrades. There were

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signs and sounds not to be misunderstood; so the officers of the native regiments went to the front and told Munro that their men were not to be trusted; that the Sipahis had resolved not to suffer the execution to proceed. On the issue of that reference depended the fate of the Bengal Army. The English troops on that parade were few. There was scarcely a man among them not moved to tears by what he had seen; but Munro knew that they could be trusted, and that they could defend the guns, which once turned upon the natives would have rendered victory certain. So he closed the Europeans on to the battery; the Grenadiers upon one side, the Marines on the other, loaded the pieces with grape, and sent the Sipahi officers back to their battalions. This done, he gave the word of command to the native regiments to ground arms. In the presence of those loaded guns, and of the two lines of white troops ready to fire upon them, to have disobeyed would have been madness. They moved to the word of command, laid down their arms, and when another word of command was given, which sent the Sipahis to a distance from their grounded muskets, and the Europeans with the guns took ground on the intervening space, the danger had passed away. The native troops were now completely at Munro’s mercy, and the execution went on in their presence to its dreadful close. Twenty men were blown away from the guns at that parade. Four were reserved for execution at another station, as a warning to other regiments, which appeared to be mutinously disposed, and six more, tried and sentenced at Bankipur, were blown away at that place. Terrible as was this example, it was the act of a merciful and humane man, and Mercy and Humanity smiled sorrowfully, but approvingly, upon it. It taught the Sipahi Army that no British soldier, black or white, can rebel against the State without bringing down upon himself fearful retribution, and by the sacrifice of a few guilty forfeited lives checked the progress of a disease which, if weakly suffered to run its course, might have resulted in the slaughter of thousands.

The lesson was not thrown away. The Sipahi learnt to respect the stern authority of the law, and felt that the Nemesis of this new Government of the British was certain in its operations, and not to be escaped. And the time soon came when his constancy was tested, and found to have the ring of the true metal.

Mutiny of the Bengal Officers

The European officers broke into rebellion; but the natives did not falter in their allegiance. Conceiving themselves

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aggrieved by the withdrawal of the extraordinary allowances which they had enjoyed in the field, the former determined to remonstrate against the reduction, and to clamour for what they called their rights. In each brigade meetings were called, consultations were held, and secret committees were formed, under the disguise of Freemasons’ Lodges. Headstrong and obstinate, the officers swore to recover the double batta which had been taken from them, or to resign the service in a body. Large sums of money were subscribed, and the Company’s civilians contributed to the fund, which was to enable their military brethren to resist the authority of their common masters. It was a formidable conjuncture, and one to try the courage even of a Clive. The orders of the Company were peremptory; and he was not a man to lower the authority of Government by yielding to a threat. But he could not disguise from himself that there were contingencies which might compel him to make a temporary concession to the insubordinates; one was an incursion of the Marathas77, the other the defection of the Sipahis. Had the native soldiers sympathised with and supported the English officers, the impetus thus given to the movement would have overborne all power of resistance, and Government must have succumbed to the crisis. In this emergency, Clive saw clearly the importance of securing “the fidelity and attachment of the Subahdars, or commanding officers of the black troops,” and he wrote urgently to his lieutenants, Smith and Fletcher, instructing them to attain this end. But the Sipahis had never wavered. True to their colours, they were ready at the word of command to fire on the white mutineers. Assured of this, Clive felt that the danger was over – felt that he could hold out against the mutiny of the English officers, even though the European troops should break into revolt78.

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The founders of the Native Army had conceived the idea of a force recruited from among the people of the country, and commanded for the most part by men of their own race, but of higher social position – men, in a word, of the master-class, accustomed to exact obedience from their inferiors. But it was the inevitable tendency of our increasing power in India to oust the native functionary from his seat, or to lift him from his saddle, that the white man might fix himself there, with all the remarkable tenacity of his race. An Englishman believes that he can do all things better than his neighbours, and, therefore, it was doubtless with the sincere conviction of the good we were doing that we gradually took into our own hands the reins of office, civil and military, and left only the drudgery and the dirty work to be done by the people of the soil. Whether, if we had fairly debated the question, it would have appeared to us a safer and a wiser course to leave real military power in the hands of men who might turn it against us, than to cast upon the country a dangerous class of malcontents identifying the rise of the British power with their own degradation, it may now be difficult to determine. But any other result than that before us would have been utterly at variance with the genius of the English nation, and, theorise as we might, was not to be expected. So it happened, in due course, that the native officers, who had exercised real authority in their battalions, who had enjoyed opportunities of personal distinction, who had felt an honourable pride in their position, were pushed aside by an incursion of English gentlemen, who took all the substantive power into their hands, and left scarcely more than the shadow of rank to the men whom they had supplanted.

Increase of English Officers

An English subaltern was appointed to every company, and the native officer then began to collapse into something little better than a name.

As the degradation of the native officer was thus accomplished, the whole character of the Sipahi army was changed. It ceased to be a profession in which men of high position,

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accustomed to command, might satisfy the aspirations and expend the energies of their lives. All distinctions were effaced. The native service of the Company came down to a dead level of common soldiering, and rising from the ranks by a painfully slow progress to merely nominal command. There was employment for the many; there was no longer a career for the few. Thenceforth, therefore, we dug out the materials of our army from the lower strata of society, and the gentry of the land, seeking military service, carried their ambitions beyond the red line of the British frontier, and offered their swords to the Princes of the Native States.

But in those lower strata there were elementary diversities of which in England we know nothing. The lower orders amongst us are simply the lower orders – all standing together on a common level of social equality; we recognise no distinctions among them except in respect of the callings which they follow. Thus one common soldier differs only from another common soldier in the height of his stature, or the breadth of his shoulders, or the steadiness of his drill.

Caste

But in India the great institution of Caste – at once the most exclusive and the most levelling system in the world – may clothe the filthiest, feeblest mendicant with all the dignities and powers of the proudest lord. So, in our Native Army, a Sipahi was not merely a Sipahi. He might be a Brahman, or he might be a Pariah; and though they might stand beside each other shoulder to shoulder, foot to foot, on the parade-ground, there was as wide a gulf between them in the Lines as in our own country yawns between a dustman and a duke.

In the Bengal Army the Sipahis were chiefly of high Caste. Deriving its name from the country in which it was first raised, not from the people composing it, it was recruited in the first instance from among the floating population which the Muhammadan conquest had brought from the northern provinces – from Rohilkhand, from Oudh, from the country between the two rivers; men of migratory habits, and martial instincts, and sturdy frames, differing in all respects, mind and body, from the timid, feeble denizens of Bengal. The Jat, the Rajput, and the priestly Brahman, took service, with the Patan, under the great white chief, who had humbled the pride of Siraju’d daulah. And as time advanced, and the little local militia swelled into the bulk of a magnificent army, the aristocratic element was still dominant in the Bengal Army. But the

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native troops of Madras and Bombay were made up from more mixed and less dainty materials. There were men in the ranks of those armies of all nations and of all castes, and the more exclusive soon ceased from their exclusiveness, doing things which their brethren in the Bengal Army shrunk from doing, and solacing their pride with the reflection that it was the “custom of the country.” Each system had its advocates. The Bengal Sipahi, to the outward eye, was the finest soldier; tallest, best-formed, and of the noblest presence. But he was less docile and serviceable than the Sipahi of the Southern and the Western Armies. In the right mood there was no better soldier in the world, but he was not always in the right mood; and the humours which he displayed were ever a source of trouble to his commanders, and sometimes of danger to the State.

The Sipahi Officer

In an army so constituted, the transfer of all substantive authority to a handful of alien officers might have been followed by a fatal collapse of the whole system, but for one fortunate circumstance, which sustained its vitality. The officers appointed to command the Sipahi battalions were picked men; men chosen from the European regiments, not merely as good soldiers, skilled in their professional duties, but as gentlemen of sound judgment and good temper, acquainted with the languages and the habits of the people of the country, and prone to respect the prejudices of the soldiery. The command of a native battalion was one of the highest objects of ambition. It conferred large powers and often great wealth upon the Sipahi officer; and though the system was one pregnant with abuses, which we see clearly in these days, it contained that great principle of cohesion which attached the English officer and the native soldier to each other – cohesion, which the refinements of a later civilisation were doomed rapidly to dissolve.

It lasted out the century, but scarcely survived it79. The

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English Sipahi officer having become a great substantive fact, not a mere excrescence upon the general body of the English Army, it became necessary to define his position. He had many great advantages, but he had not rank; and the Company’s officer found himself continually superseded by younger men in the King’s army. Very reasonably, if not always very temperately, he began then to assert his rights; and the result was an entire reorganisation of the Company’s army, which greatly improved the status of its old officers and opened a door for the employment of a large numbers of others. By the regulations thus framed, two battalions of Sipahis were formed into one regiment, to which the same number of officers were posted as to a regiment in the King’s army, and all took rank according to the date of their commissions. It was believed that the increased number of European officers would add to the efficiency of the Native Army. But it was admitted, even by those who had been most active in working out the new scheme, that it did not develop all the good results with which it was believed to be laden. The little authority, the little dignity, which still clung to the position of the native officers was then altogether effaced by this new incursion of English gentlemen80; and the discontent, which had been growing up in the minds of the soldiery, began then to bear bitter fruit.

But this was not all. The new regulations, which so greatly improved the position of the Company’s officers, and in no respect more than in that of the pensions which they were then permitted to enjoy, held out great inducements to the older officers of the Company’s army to retire from active service, and to spend the remainder of their days at home. Many of the old commandants then prepared to leave the battalions over which they had so long exercised paternal authority, and to give up their places to strangers. Not only was there a change of men, but a change also of system. The English officer rose

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by seniority to command. The principle of selection was abandoned. And men, who could scarcely call for a glass of water in the language of the country, or define the difference between a Hindu and a Muhammadan, found themselves invested with responsibilities which ought to have devolved only on men of large local experience and approved good judgment and temper.

The Maisur and Maratha Wars

But the evil results of the change were not immediately apparent. The last years of the eighteenth, and the first years of the nineteenth century were years of active Indian warfare. In the Maisur and in the Maratha countries the Sipahi had constant work, under great generals whom he honoured and trusted; he had strong faith in the destiny of the Company; and his pride was flattered by a succession of brilliant victories. But it is after such wars as those of Harris, Lake, and Wellesley, when a season of stagnation succeeds a protracted period of excitement, that the discipline of an army, whether in the East or in the West, is subjected to its severest trials. All the physical and moral properties which have so long sustained it in high health and perfect efficiency then seem to collapse; and the soldier, nerveless and languid, readily succumbs to the deteriorating influences by which he is surrounded. And so it was with the Sipahi after those exhausting wars. He was in the state which, of all others, is most susceptible of deleterious impressions. And, unhappily, there was one especial source of annoyance and alarm to irritate and disquiet him in the hour of peace. Amidst the stern realities of active warfare, the European officer abjures the pedantries of the drill-sergeant and the fopperies of the regimental tailor. He has no time for small things; no heart for trifles. It is enough for him that his men are in a condition to fight battles and to win them. But in Peace he sometimes shrivels into an Arbiter of Drill and Dress, and worries in time the best of soldiers into malcontents and mutineers.

And so it was that, after the fierce excitement of the Maisur and Maratha wars, there arose among our English officers an ardour for military improvement; and the Sipahi, who had endured for years, without a murmur, all kinds of hardships and privations, under canvas and on the line of march, felt that life was less endurable in cantonments than it had been in the field, and was continually disturbing himself, in his matted

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hut, about the new things that were being forced upon him. All sorts of novelties were bristling up in his path. He was to be drilled after a new English fashion. He was to be dressed after a new English fashion. He was to be shaved after a new English fashion. He was not smart enough for the Martinets who had taken him in hand to polish him up into an English soldier. They were stripping him, indeed, of his distinctive oriental character: and it was long before he began to see in these efforts to Anglicise him something more than the vexatious innovations and crude experiments of European military reform.

Mutiny of the Coast Army

To these annoyances and vexations the Madras Army were especially subjected. Composed as were its battalions of men of different castes, and not in any way governed by caste principle, they were held to be peculiarly accessible to innovation; and, little by little, all the old outward characteristics of the native soldier were effaced, and new things, upon the most approved European pattern, substituted in their place. At last the Sipahi, forbidden to wear the distinguishing marks of Caste on his forehead, stripped of his earrings, to which, by ties alike of vanity and superstition, he was fondly attached81, and ordered to shave himself according to a regulation cut82, was put into a stiff round hat, like a Pariah drummer’s, with a flat top, a leather cockade, and a standing feather. It was no longer called a “turband”; it was a hat or cap; in the language of the natives, a topi; and a topi-wallah, or hat wearer, was in their phraseology a synonym for a Faringhi or Christian.

The Sipahi is not logical, but he is credulous and suspicious. It was not difficult to persuade him that there were hidden meanings and occult designs in all this assimilation of the native soldier’s dress to that of the European fighting-man. The new hat was not merely an emblem of Christianity, and

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therefore possessed of a grave moral significance, but materially, also, it was discovered to be an abomination. It was made in part of leather from the skin of the unclean hog , or the sacred cow, and was therefore, and offence and desecration to Muhammadan and Hindu. The former had no distinguishing marks of caste to be rubbed off on parade with a dirty stick, but he venerated his beard and his earrings, and, under the force of contact and example, he had developed many strong generic resemblances to the caste-observing Hindu. The Muhammadan of India differs greatly in his habits and his feelings from the Muhammadan of Central Asia or Arabia; he accommodates himself, in some sort, to the usages of the country, and being thus readily acclimatised, he strikes strong root in the soil. Christianity does not differ more than Muhammadanism, doctrinally or ethically, from the religion of the Hindus; but in the one case there may be social fusion, in the other it is impossible. Even in the former instance, the fusion is imperfect, and there is in this partial assimilation of races one of the chief elements of our security in India. But the security derived from this source is also imperfect; and circumstances may at any time, by an unfortunate coincidence, appeal to the ethnical resemblances and the common instincts of different nationalities, in such a manner as to excite in both the same fears and to raise the same aspirations, and so to cause all diversities to be for a time forgotten. And such a coincidence appears now to have arisen. Different races, moved by the sense of a common danger, and roused by a common hope, forgot their differences, and combined against a common foe.

And so it happened that in the spring of 1806, the Hindu and Muhammadan Sipahis in the Southern Peninsula of India were talking together, like caste-brothers, about their grievances, and weaving plots for their deliverance. It is partly by accident, partly by design, that such plots ripen in the spring. By accident, because removed from cold-weather exercises, parades, field-days, and inspections, the soldier has more leisure to ruminate his wrongs, and more time to discuss them. By design, because the coming heats and rains paralyse the activities of the white man, and are great gain to the native mutineer. In April and May the English officer sees little of his men; his visits to the Lines are few; few are his appearances on parade. He is languid and prostrate. The morning and evening ride are as much as his energies can compass. The Sipahi then, disencumbered

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of dress and dismissed from drill, can afford to snatch some hours from sleep to listen to any strange stories, told by wandering mendicants, with the odour of sanctified filth about them, and to discuss the most incredible fables with all the gravity of settled belief. There is always more or less of this vain talk. It amuses the Sipahi, and for a while excites him with a visionary prospect of higher rank and better pay, under some new dispensation. But he is commonly content to regard this promised time as a far-off Hegaira, and, as he turns himself round on his charpai for another nap, he philosophically resolves in the meanwhile to eat the Company’s salt in peace, and to wait God’s pleasure in quietude and patience.

But there was at this time something more to excite the imagination of the Sipahi in Southern India than the ordinary vain talk of the Bazaars and the Lines. The travelling fakirs were more busy with their inventions; the rumours which they carried from place to place were more ominous; the prophecies which they recited were more significant of speedy fulfilment. There was more point in the grotesque performances of the puppet-shows – more meaning in the rude ballads which were sung and the scraps of verse which were cited. Strange writings were dropped by unseen hands, and strange placards posted on the walls. At all the large military stations in the Karnatik and the Dakhin there was an uneasy feeling as of something coming. There were manifold signs which seemed to indicate that the time to strike had arrived, and so the Sipahi began to take stock of his grievances and to set before him all the benefits of change.

The complaints of the Sipahi were many. If he were to pass his whole life in the Company’s service, and do what he might, he could not rise higher than the rank of Subahdar; there had been times when distinguished native soldiers had been appointed to high and lucrative commands, and had faithfully done their duty; but those times had passed, and, instead of being exalted, native officers were habitually degraded. A Sipahi on duty always presented or carried arms to an English officer, but an English soldier suffered a native officer to pass by without a salute. Even an English Sergeant commanded native officers of the highest rank. On parade, the English officers made mistakes, used the wrong words of command, then threw the blame upon the Sipahis and reviled them. Even native officers, who had grown grey in the service, were publicly

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abused by European striplings. On the line of march the native officers were compelled to live in the same tents with the common Sipahis, and had not, as in the armies of native potentates, elephants or palanquins assigned to them for their conveyance, how great soever the distance which they were obliged to traverse. And if they rode horses or ponies, purchased from their savings, the English officer frowned at them as upstarts. “The Sipahis of the Nizam and the Maratha chiefs,” they said, “are better off than our Subahdars and Jamadars.” Then it was urged that the Company’s officers took the Sipahis vast distances from their homes, where they died in strange places, and that their wives and children were left to beg their bread; that native Princes, when they conquered new countries, gave grants of lands to distinguished soldiers, but that the Company only gave them sweet words; that the concubines of the English gentlemen were better paid than the native officers, and their grooms and grass-cutters better than the native soldiers; that the English officers could import into their Zenanas the most beautiful women in the country, whilst the natives hardly dared to look at the slave-girls; and, to crown all, it was declared that General Arthur Wellesley had ordered his wounded Sipahis to be mercilessly shot to death.

Preposterous as were some of the fables with which this bill of indictment was crusted over, there was doubtless beneath it a large substratum of truth. But the alleged grievances were, for the most part, chronic ailments which the Sipahi had been long enduring, and might have endured still longer, patiently and silently, had they not culminated in the great outrage of the round hat, with its auxiliary vexations of the shorn beard., the effaced caste-marks, and the despoiled earrings. Then, it was not difficult to teach him that this aggregation of wrongs had become intolerable, and that. the time had come for him to strike a blow in defence of his rights. And the teacher was not far distant. The great Muhammadan usurpation of Maisur had been overthrown, but the representatives of the usurper were still in the country. The family of the slain Sultan were living in the fort of Vellur, as the clients rather than the captives of the English, with abundant wealth at their command, and a numerous body of Musulman attendants. But generous as was the treatment they had received, and utterly at variance with their own manner of dealing with fallen enemies, they had not ceased to bewail the loss of the sovereign power which had

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passed from their House, or to hate the conquerors who had unkinged them. In the luxurious idleness of Vellur they dreamed of the recovery of their lost empire. There was but one way to the attainment of that cherished object, and that way was through the corruption of the Sipahi. The time was propitious, and the work commenced.

It ought not to have been easy work, but so it was. If there had been relations of confidence between the English officer and the native soldier, the corruption of the latter would have been a task of sore difficulty and danger; but those relations were not what they had been a few years before. It was not that the officers themselves had deteriorated, but that a new system had been introduced, which, greatly improving their state and prospects, and, it may be said, permanently increasing their efficiency as it body, still caused some temporary relaxation of the ties which bound them to the soldiery of the country. The new regulations of 1796, it has been said, opened out to the elder generation of officers a door by which they might retire on advantageous terms from the service. Some took their pensions at once; but a period of active warfare supervened, and many veteran officers waited for the restoration of peace to take advantage of the boon that was offered. They went and a new race of men, young and inexperienced, took their places. And so, for a time, the Sipahi did not know his officer, nor the officer his men; they met almost as strangers on parade, and there was little or no communion between them. It was a transition period of most untoward occurrence, when so many other adverse influences were destroying the discipline of the army; and, therefore, again I say the hour was propitious, and the work of corruption commenced.

May 7. Progress of the Mutiny

At the end of the first week of May, as Adjutant-General Agnew was rising from’ his work, in the white heat of Fort St. George, there came tidings to his office of general disaffection among the native troops at Vellur. One battalion, at least, already had broken into open mutiny. The chief of the Madras army, Sir John Cradock, had retired for the evening to his garden house in the pleasant suburbs of Madras, so Agnew drove out to see him with the important missive in his hand. A few days afterwards, Cradock was posting to Vellur. Arrived there, he found that there had been DO exaggeration in the reports which had been furnished to him, but that more judicious treatment at the outset might

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have allayed the excitement among the troops, and restored the confidence of the Sipahi. So said a Court of Inquiry; so said the Commander-in-Chief. A gentle sudorific, almost insensibly expelling the pent-up humours, may suffice at the beginning, though only much blood-letting can cure at the end. But ailments of this kind, in the military body, seldom reveal themselves in their full significance until the time for gentle treatment is past. When Cradock went to Vellur no mere explanations could repair the mischief that had been done. The mutinous troops were sent down to the Presidency, and others substituted for them. Military discipline was vindicated for the time by a court-martial, and two of the ringleaders were sentenced to be – flogged. But the infection still clung to Vellur. The whole native garrison was tainted and corrupted.

Nor was it a mere local epidemic. At other military stations in the Karnatik there was similar excitement. Midnight meetings were being held in the Lines; oaths of secrecy were being administered to the Sipahis; threats of the most terrible vengeance were fulminated against any one daring to betray them. The native officers took the lead, the men followed, some roused to feelings of resentment, others huddling together like sheep, under the influence of a vague fear. In the bungalows of the English captains there was but small knowledge of what was passing in the Sipahis’ Lines, and if there had been more, discretion would probably have whispered that in such a case “silence is gold.” For when in the high places of Government There is a general disinclination to believe in the existence of danger, it is scarcely safe for men of lowlier station to say or to do anything indicating suspicion and alarm.

At Vellur, after the first immature demonstration, there was a lull; and the quietude had just the effect that it was intended to have; it disarmed the suspicion and suspended the vigilance of the English. The most obvious precautions were neglected. Even the significant fact that the first open manifestation of disaffection had appeared under the shadow of the asylum of the Maisur Princes, had not suggested any special associations, or indicated the direction in which the watchful eye of the British Government should be turned. Nothing was done to strengthen the European garrison of Vellur83. No pains were

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taken to cut off the perilous intercourse which existed between the native soldiery and the occupants of the Palace. So the latter went about the Fort jeering the Sipahis, and telling them that they would soon be made Christians to a man. The different parts of their uniform were curiously examined, amidst shrugs and other expressive gestures, and significant “Wahwahs!” and vague hints that everything about them in some way portended Christianity. They looked at the Sipahi’s stock, and said, “What is this? It is leather! Well!” Then they would look at his belt, and tell him that it made a cross on his breast, and at the little implements of his calling, the turn-screw and worm, suspended from it, and say that they also were designed to fix the Christian’s cross upon his person. But it was the round hat that most of all was the object of the taunts and warnings of the people from the Palace. “It only needed this,” they said, “to make you altogether a Faringhi. Take care, or we shall soon all be made Christians – Bazaar-people, Ryots, everyone will be compelled to wear the hat; and then the whole country will be ruined.” Within the Fort, and outside the Fort, men of all kinds were talking about the forcible conversion to Christianity which threatened them; and everywhere the round hat was spoken of as an instrument by which the Caste of the Hindu was to be destroyed, and the faith of the Musulman desecrated and demolished.

But all this was little known to the officers of the Vellur garrison, or, if known, was little heeded. So unwilling, indeed, were they to believe that any danger was brewing, that a Sipahi who told his English officer that the regiments were on the eve of revolt was put in irons as a madman. The native officers declared that he deserved condign punishment for blackening the faces of his corps, and they were readily believed. But the time soon came when the prophecy of evil was verified, and the prophet was exalted and rewarded. Deeply implicated as he was said to be in the plot – a traitor first to the English, and then to his own people – his name became an offence and an abomination to the Army, and the favour shown to him a source

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of the bitterest resentment. “The disposition of the gentlemen of the Company’s service,” they said, “and the nature of their government, make a thief happy, and an honest man afflicted84.”

Vellur, July 10, 1806

On the 10th of July the mine suddenly exploded. It was remembered afterwards that on the preceding afternoon an unusual number of people had passed into the Fort, some mounted and some on foot, seemingly on no especial business; all with an insolent, braggart air, laughing and rollicking, making mimic battle among themselves, and otherwise expressing a general expectancy of something coming. It was remembered, too, that on that evening there had been more than the common tendency of the times to speak abusively of the English. The Adjutant of a Sipahi regiment had been called, to his face, by the vilest term of reproach contained in the language of the country85. But it has been doubted whether the day and hour of the outburst were those fixed for the development of the plot. The conspirators, it is said, were not ripe for action. Two or three days later, the first blow was to have been struck, but that a Jamadar, inflamed with strong drink, could not control the passionate haste within him, and he precipitated the collision which it was the policy of his party to defer86. Numbers

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thus suddenly roused to action were unprepared to play their parts; and letters which had been written to disaffected polygars and others in Maisur had not yet been despatched. It was confidently believed that in a few days ten thousand faithful adherents of the House of Haidar would rally round the standard of the Musulman Princes. All that was required of the Sipahis was, that they should hold Vellur for a week. At the end of that time it was believed that the whole country would be in the hands of the insurgents.

His Majesty’s 69th

The European garrison of Vellur, at this time, consisted only of four companies of a Line regiment. To fall suddenly, in the dead of the night, on all who might happen to be on guard, to overpower them by numbers, and then to murder the rest in their beds, was apparently an easy task. Two hours after midnight the work commenced. The sentries were shot down. The soldiers on main guard were killed as they lay on their cots, and the white men in the hospital were ruthlessly butchered. There was then a scene of unexampled confusion. Roused from their beds by the unaccustomed sound of firing in the Fort, the English officers went out to learn the cause of the commotion, and many of them were shot down by the mutineers in the first bewilderment of surprise. The two senior officers of the garrison were among the first who fell. On the threshold of his house, Fancourt, who commanded the garrison, was warned, for dear life’s sake, not to come out, but answering with the Englishman’s favourite formula of “Never mind,” he made for the Main Guard, and was shot with the “Fall in!” on his lips. Of the survivors two or three made their way to the barracks, and took command of such of the Europeans as had escaped the first murderous onslaught of the Sipahis. But it was little that the most desperate resolution could do in this extremity to stem the continually increasing tide of furious hostility which threatened to overwhelm them. It was no mere military revolt. The inmates of the Palace were fraternising with the Sipahis. From the apartments of the Princes went forth food to refresh the weary bodies of the insurgents, and vast promises to stimulate and sustain the energies of their minds.

Prince Moisu’d din

One of the Princes, the third son of Tipu, personally encouraged the leaders of the revolt. With his own hands he gave them the significant bhital-nut. With his own lips he proclaimed the rewards to be lavished upon the

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restorers of the Muhammadan dynasty. And from his apartments a confidential servant was seen to bring the tiger-striped standard of Maisur, which, amidst vociferous cries of “Din! Din!” was hoisted above the walls of the Palace. But the family of the Sultan were soon forgotten. There was no combination to aid their escape. The Sipahis at first gave themselves up to the work of massacre. The people from the Palace, following in their wake, gorged themselves with the plunder of the white men, and aided the mutineers without sharing their danger. After a time the Sipahis betook themselves also to plunder; and the common object was forgotten under the excitement of personal greed. The white women in the Fort were spared. The tender mercies of the wicked, with a refined cruelty, preserved them for a worse fate than death. The people from the Palace told the Sipahis not to kill them, as all the English would be destroyed, and the Moormen might then take them for wives87.

But whilst these terrible scenes were being enacted, and the sons of Tipu were swelling with the proud certainty of seeing the rule of the Sultan again established in Maisur, retribution swift and certain was overtaking the enterprise.

Major Coats

An officer of the English regiment, who happened to be on duty outside the Fort, heard the firing, thoroughly apprehended the crisis, and, through the darkness of the early morning made his way to Arkat, to carry thither the tidings of insurrection, and to summon succours to the aid of the imperilled garrison. There was a regiment of British Dragoons at Arkat, under the command of Colonel Gillespie. By seven o’clock Coats had told his story.

The 19th Dragoons

Fifteen minutes afterwards, Gillespie, with a squadron of his regiment, was on his way to Vellur. The rest were saddling and mounting; the galloper-guns were being horsed and limbered; and a squadron of Native Cavalry was responding to the trumpet-call with as much alacrity as the British Dragoons. The saving virtues of promptitude and preparation were never more conspicuously manifested. A little vacillation, a little blundering, a little delay, the result of nothing being ready when wanted, and all might have been

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lost. Never had the sage precept of Haidar Ali, that the English should keep their white soldiers like hunting-leopards in cages, and slip them suddenly and fiercely at the enemy, been wrought into practice with more terrible effect, than now against the followers and supporters of his descendants.

Once under the walls of Vellur, Gillespie was eager to make his way into the Fort, that he might rally the remnant of the European garrison and secure the safe admission of his men. The outer gates were open, but the last was closed, and in possession of the enemy. There was no hope of forcing it without the aid of the guns. But these were now rapidly approaching. There were good officers with the relieving force, to whom the conduct of external operations might be safely entrusted; and Gillespie longed to find himself with the people whom he had come to save. So, whilst preparations were being made for the attack, he determined to ascend alone the walls of the Fort. In default of ladders, the men of the 69th let down a rope, and, amidst the shouts of the delighted Europeans, he was drawn up, unhurt, to the crest of the ramparts, and took command of the survivors of the unhappy force. Quickly forming at the word of command, they came down eagerly to the charge, and, cheered by the welcome sound of the guns, which were now clamouring for admission, and not to be denied, they kept the mutineers at a distance till the gates were forced; and then the cavalry streamed in, and victory was easy. The retribution was terrible, and just. Hundreds fell beneath the sabres of the Dragoons and of the native horsemen, who emulated the ardour of their European comrades. Hundreds escaped over the walls of the Fort, or threw down their arms and cried for mercy. But the excited troopers, who had seen Tipu’s tiger-standard floating over the citadel of Vellur, could not, after that hot morning-ride, believe that they had done their work until they had destroyed the “cubs.” They were eager to be led into the Palace, and there to inflict condign punishment on those whom they believed to be the real instigators of the butchery of their countrymen. For a moment there was a doubt in Gillespie’s mind; but an appeal from Colonel Marriott, in whose charge was the Maisur family, removed it; and he put forth a restraining hand. He would not soil his victory with any cruel reprisals. The members of Tipu’s family were now at his mercy, and the mercy which he showed them was that which

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the Christian soldier delights to rain down upon the fallen and the helpless88.

But the storm had not expended itself in this fierce convulsion. Taught by so stern a lesson, the Government resolved that “all orders which might be liable to the objection of affecting the usages of the troops” should be abandoned. But the obnoxious hats might have been burnt before the eyes of the troops, and the caste-marks and earrings restored on parade, in the presence of the Governor, the Commander-in-Chief, and all the magnates of the land; and still a return to quietude and contentment might have been far distant. Individual causes of anger and bitterness might be removed, but still there would remain, together with the mistrust they had engendered, all the vague anxieties on the one side, and the indefinite expectations on the other, which designing men had excited in the minds of the soldiery89. Rebellion had been crushed for a time at its Head-Quarters. The British flag floated again over Vellur; but there were other strong posts, which it had been intended to

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seize, and efforts might yet be made to establish revolt in other parts of the Southern Peninsula.

Haidarabad

Nor was it only in Maisur and the Karnatik that the spirit of disaffection was rife. In the Dakhin, also, it was manifesting itself in a manner which, for a while, created serious alarm. At Haidarabad, the capital of the Nizam’s dominions, there was a high tide of excitement. It was apprehended that the native troops of the Subsidiary Force, encouraged and aided by some of the chief people of this Muhammadan State, if not by the Nizam himself, would break out into revolt. They were wrought upon by nearly the same influences as had destroyed the loyalty of the troops in Maisur, with some peculiar aggravations of their own.

Colonel Montresor

A new commanding officer had recently been placed over them – a smart disciplinarian of the most approved European pattern. They had been worried and alarmed before his arrival. Montresor’s appearance soon made matters worse. Knowing little or nothing of the habits and feelings of the country, he enforced the new orders with more than common strictness, and supplemented them with some obnoxious regulations of his own. An order had been issued just before his arrival forbidding the Sipahi to leave his Guard and to divest himself of his uniform during his period of duty; and now the new English commandant prohibited the beating of tam-tams in the bazaars. It was not seen that these prohibitions were, in effect, orders that the Hindu Sipahi should take no sustenance on duty, and that there should be no marriage and no funeral processions. When the discovery was made, the new local regulations were rescinded; but it was not possible to rescind the mischief that was done. There was a profound conviction among the Sipahis that it was the intention of the English to destroy their caste, to break clown their religion, and forcibly to convert them to Christianity. And all through the long straggling lines of Haidarabad there was a continual buzz of alarm, and the Sipahis were asking each other if they had heard how the English General, Wemyss Sahib, at Colombo, had marched his native soldiers to church90.

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That the feeling of mingled fear and resentment, which had taken possession of the minds of the soldiery, was much fomented by emissaries from the city of Haidarabad, is not to be doubted. Many leading men, discontented and desperate, at all times prone to intrigue and ripe for rebellion, looked eagerly for a crisis out of which might have come some profit to themselves. It is probable that they were in communication with dependents of the House of Tipu. It is certain that they fostered the resentments and stimulated the ambition of the native officers, and that a programme of action had been agreed upon, of which murder and massacre were the prelude91. But happily the Nizam and his minister, Mir A’lam – the one in word, the other in spirit – were true to the English alliance. Wisely, in that conjuncture, did Sydenham confide all his troubles to them. It is a sad necessity to be compelled to communicate to a native Prince the belief of the English Government that their troops are not to be trusted. But concealment in such a case is impossible, and any attempt to disguise the truth helps others to exaggerate and to distort it. The Nizam knew all that had been going on, perhaps before the British Resident had even a suspicion of it. Eager for his support, and willing to raise the standard of revolt in his name, the conspirators had conveyed to him a written paper signifying their wishes. He did not answer it. He did not give it to the Resident. He simply waited and did nothing. It was not in the nature of the man to do more.

He knew the power of the English; but he secretly hated them, and naturally shrank from opposing or betraying a cause which appealed to him in the name of his religion. Perhaps it is hardly fair to expect from a native Prince, under such conflicting circumstances, more than this negative support.

The feeling among the native troops was so strong, the danger appeared to be so imminent, that Montresor was besought by some old Sipahi officers not to enforce the obnoxious regulations. But he replied that he had been

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selected for that especial command as a fitting agent for their enforcement, and how could he turn his back upon his duty? But when tidings of the massacre at Vellur reached Haidarabad, he saw at once that concession must be made to the prejudices of the Sipahi, and the orders were revoked in anticipation of instructions from the Madras Government.

July 22, 1806

Still the troops were not satisfied. Having gained one victory they determined to attempt another. So they fell back upon the old grievance of the leather stuck, and the men of some of the battalions. encouraged by their native officers, were seen disencumbering themselves of this article of their uniform on parade, and casting it contemptuously on the ground. A display of vigour at the right time crushed the mutiny ere it was matured. On the 14th of August, the troops at Haidarabad were ordered under arms.

H.M.’s 33rd Regiment

The English regiment was posted near the park of artillery, and the cavalry were drawn up en potence on both flanks. Then four Subahdars of Native Infantry, who were believed to be the ringleaders in the mutinous movement, were called to the front and marched off under a guard of thirty Europeans and a company of Sipahis. Under this escort they were sent to Machlipatan. This movement had the best possible effect both in the cantonment and in the city. Mutiny was awe-struck; sedition was paralysed; conciliatory explanations and addresses, which had before failed, were now crowned with success, and early in the following month Sydenham wrote from Haidarabad that everything was “perfectly tranquil, both in the city and the cantonments.” “The Sipahis,” it added, “appear cheerful and contented, and the Government goes on with considerable vigour and regularity.”

But ere long the anxieties of the Government again turned towards the old quarter. It was clear that, in the former domains of the Sultan, the fire, though suppressed fur a time, had not been extinguished. At Nandidrug, in the heart of the Maisur territory, there had been symptoms of uneasiness from the commencement of the year.

Nandidrug

The native troops were few; but the fortress, built upon a high scarped rock, was one of uncommon strength, and, well defended, might have defied attack. In itself, therefore, a coveted possession for the rebel force, it was rendered doubly important by its position. For it was within a night’s march of the great station of Bangalur, and the mutineers from that post would have flocked

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to it as a rallying-point and a stronghold, admirably suited for the Head-Quarters of Rebellion92. The influences, therefore, of which I have spoken – the fakirs, the conjurors, the puppet-showmen, the propagators of strange prophecies – were more than commonly operative in that direction, and had success attended the first outbreak at Vellur, the Nandidrug garrison would then have turned upon their officers, hoisted the rebel flag on the walls of the Fort, and displayed signals which might have been seen at Bangalur. But a season of suspended activity naturally followed this failure; and it was not until the month of October that they ventured to resolve on any open demonstration. Then the Muhammadan and Hindu Sipahis feasted together, bound themselves by solemn engagements to act as brethren in a common cause, and swore that they would rise against and massacre their English officers.

October 18, 1806

The day and the hour of the butchery were fixed. The native soldiery had quietly sent their families out of the Fort, and otherwise prepared for the struggle93. Two hours before midnight on the 18th of October the Sipahis were to have rushed upon their English officers, and not left a white man living in the place.

Capt. Baynes

But about eight o’clock on that evening an English officer galloped up to the house of the Commandant Cuppage, and told him that no time was to be lost; that the Sipahis were on the point of rising, and that means of safety must at once be sought. Scarce had the story been told, when an old and distinguished native officer came breathless with the same intelligence. There was no room for doubt; no time for delay. An express, calling for reinforcements, was despatched to Bangalur; and the officers, selecting one of their houses in the Pagoda-square, which seemed best adapted to purposes of defence, took post together and waited the issue. The night

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passed without an attack and on the morrow afternoon safety came in the shape of a squadron of Dragoons from Bangalur. Colonel Davis had received the tidings soon after daybreak, and by three o’clock his troopers were clattering into Nandidrug.

Paliamkotta

November came, and with it came new troubles. Far down the coast, not many leagues removed from the southernmost part of the Peninsula, lies the station of Paliamkotta. There Major Welsh, with six European officers under him, commanded a Sipahi battalion, in which many relatives of the mutineers cut up at Vellur were brooding over their loss of kindred. Towards the end of the third week of the month, it was believed that the Muhammadan Sipahis were about to rise and massacre all the Europeans in the place. The story ran that, rejecting with contempt the idea of banding themselves with the Hindus, they had met at a mosque and concerted their murderous plans. Some buildings were to be fired in the cantonment to draw the English officers from their homes. In the confusion, the whole were to be slain, the Fort was to be seized, and the rebel flag hoisted on the ramparts. Scenting the plot, a Malabar-man went to the mosque in disguise, and carried tidings of it to the English Commandant. The danger appeared to be imminent, and Welsh at once took his measures to avert it. Whatever may have been the judgment and discretion of the man, his courage and determination were conspicuous; and his comrades were of the same temper. Assuming the bold, intrepid front, which has so often been known to overawe multitudes, this little handful of undaunted Englishmen seized and confined thirteen native officers, and turned five hundred Musulman Sipahis out of the Fort. That they were able to accomplish this, even with the support of the Hindus, was declared to be a proof that no desperate measures had really been designed. But the premature explosion of a plot of this kind always creates a panic. In a state of fear and surprise, men are not capable of reasoning. There is a vague impression that boldness presages power; that there is something behind the imposing front. A single man has ere now routed a whole garrison. I am not sure, therefore, that there was no danger, because it was so easily trodden out.

Two days afterwards Colonel Dyce, who commanded the district of Tinniveli, threw himself into Paliamkotta; assembled

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the Hindu troops; told them that he had come there to maintain the authority of the Company, or to die in the defence of the colours which he had sworn to protect. He then called upon those who were of the same mind to approach the British flag for the same purpose, but if not to depart in peace. They went up and took the oath to a man, presented arms to the colours, crave three unbidden cheers in earnest of their unshaken loyalty, and fell in as on a muster-parade.

On the first appearance of danger, Welsh had despatched a letter by a country-boat to Ceylon, calling for European troops, and the call was responded to with an alacrity beyond all praise. But so effectual were the measures which had been already adopted, or so little of real danger had there been, that when the succour which had been sent for arrived from Trichinapali, the alarm had passed, and the work was done.

Told as I have told this story – a simple recital of facts, as written down in contemporary correspondence – it would appear to afford an instructive example of promptitude and vigour. But this is not the only lesson to be learnt from it. It is more instructive still to note that Major Welsh was severely condemned as an alarmist, the tendency of whose precipitate action was to destroy confidence and to create irritation. Another officer94, who, apprehending danger, had disarmed his regiment as a precaution, was denounced with still greater vehemence95. Apprehensions of this kind were described as “disgraceful and groundless panics “; and political officers chuckled to think that it was proposed at Madras to remove from their commands and to bring to Courts-Martial the officers who had considered it their duty not to wait to be attacked96. With these lessons

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before us, we cannot wonder that men, in such conjunctures, should hesitate to strike the blow which any one may declare uncalled-for, and the wisdom of which no one can prove – should pause to consider whether they are more likely to develop the evil by an assertion of strength, or to encourage its growth by the feebleness of inaction97.

Walajahabad

But it was plain that, whatsoever might be the wisest course in such a conjuncture, the Government of Lord William Bentinck was all in favour of the milder and more sedative mode of treatment. In remarkable contrast to the manner in which the symptoms of coming mutiny were grappled with at Paliamkotta stands the story of Walajahabad. borne of the earliest signs of disaffection, on the score of the turban, had manifested themselves at that place; and Gillespie, with his dragoons, had been despatched thither at the end of July, not without a murmur of discontent at the thought of his “poor hard-worked fellows” being sent to counteract what appeared to him a doubtful danger. It was believed, however, that the uneasiness had passed away, and for some months there had been apparent tranquillity. But in November the alarm began to revive; and a detailed statement of various indications of a coming outbreak, drawn up by Major Hazlewood, was sent to the authorities. On the morning of the 2nd of December the members of the Madras Government met in

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Council. Hazlewood’s statement was laid before them and gravely discussed; but with no definite result. The Council broke up without a decision, but only to meet again, refreshed by the sea-breeze and the evening ride. Then it was resolved that a discreet officer, in the confidence of Government, should be sent to Walajahabad to inquire into and report on the state of affairs; and on the same evening Colonel Munro, the Quartermaster-General, received his instructions, and prepared to depart. The event appeared to justify this cautious line of action; but one shudders to think what might have happened at Walajahabad whilst Government were deliberating over written statements of danger, and drafting instructions for a Staff Officer in the Council-Chamber of Madras.

Dec, 1806

Six months had now passed since the Madras Government had been made acquainted with the state of feeling in the Native Army, and understood that a vague apprehension of the destruction of caste and of “forcible conversion to Christianity” had been one of the chief causes of the prevailing disquietude. The obnoxious regulations had been abandoned, but this was a concession obviously extorted from fear; and nothing had yet been done to reassure the minds of the soldiery by a kindly paternal address to them from the fountain-head of the local Government. But at last Bentinck and his colleagues awoke to a sense of the plain and palpable duty which lay before them; and at this Council of the 2nd of December a Proclamation was agreed upon, and on the following day issued, which, translated into the Hindustani, the Tamil, and Telugu dialects, was sent to every native battalion in the Army, with orders to commanding officers to make its contents known to every native officer and Sipahi under their command. After adverting to the extraordinary agitation that had for some time prevailed in the Coast Army, and the reports spread for malicious purposes, by persons of evil intention, that it was the design of the British Government to convert the troops by forcible means to Christianity, the Proclamation proceeded to declare that the constant kindness and liberality at all times shown to the Sipahi should convince him of the happiness of his situation, “greater than what the troops of any other part of the world enjoy,” and induce him to return to the good conduct for which he had been distinguished in the days of Lawrence and Coote, and “other renowned heroes.” If they would not, they would learn that the British

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Government “is not less prepared to punish the guilty than to protect and distinguish those who are deserving of its favour.” But this was something more than the truth. The British Government did not show itself, in this conjuncture, to be “prepared to punish the guilty” in a manner proportionate to the measure of their offences. Lord William Bentinck and his Councillors were all for clemency. Sir John Cradock counselled the adoption of more vigorous punitory measures, and the Supreme Government were disposed to support the military chief. Something of a compromise then ensued, the result of which was a very moderate instalment of the retribution which was justly due. A few only of the most guilty of the murderers were executed; whilst others, clearly convicted of taking part in the sanguinary revolt, were merely dismissed the service. And if it had not been for the overruling authority of the Government at Calcutta – that is, of Sir George Barlow, with Mr. Edmonstone at his elbow98 – the numbers of the assassin-battalions would not have been erased from the Army List. But penal measures did not end here. The higher tribunals of the Home Government condemned the chief authorities of Madras, and, justly or unjustly, the Governor, the Commander-in-Chief, and the Adjutant-General were summarily removed from office.

1807. Alleged causes of the Revolt

The mutiny died out with the old year; the active danger was passed; but it left behind it a flood of bitter controversy which did not readily subside. What was the cause of the revolt? Whose fault was it? Was it a mere military mutiny, the growth of internal irritation, or was it a political movement fomented by agitators from without? The controversialists on both sides were partly wrong and partly right – wrong in their denials, right in their assertions. It is difficult in such a case to put together in proper sequence all the links of a great chain of

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events terminating even in an incident of yesterday, so little do we know of what is stirring in the occult heart of native society. After a lapse of half a century it is impossible. There is often in the Simultaneous, the Coincidental, an apparent uniformity of tendency, which simulates design, but which, so far as human agency is concerned, is wholly fortuitous. We see this in the commonest concerns of life. We see it in events affecting mightily the destinies of empires. Under a pressure of concurrent annoyances and vexatious, men often cry out that there is a conspiracy against them, and the historical inquirer often sees a conspiracy when in reality there is only a coincidence. A great disaster, like the massacre at Vellur, acts like iodine upon hidden writings in rice-water. Suddenly is proclaimed to us in all its significance what has long been written down on the page of the Past, but which, for want of the revealing agent, has hitherto lain illegibly before us. Doubtless, many hidden things were disclosed to us at this time; but whether they were peculiar to the crisis or of a normal character, at any period discernible had we taken proper steps to develop them, was matter of grave dispute. The political officers, headed by Mark Wilks, the historian of Southern India, who was then representing British interests iii Maisur, laughed to scorn the discoveries of the military officers, and said that the things which they spoke of as so portentous were in reality only phenomena of every-clay appearance, familiar to men acquainted with the feelings and habits of the people. He derided all that had been said about seditious conversations in the Bazaars and the Lines, the wild prophecies and mysterious hints of wandering Fakirs, and the suggestive devices of the puppet-shows99. There was nothing in all this, he contended, of an exceptional character, to be regarded as the harbingers of mutiny and massacre. And his arguments culminated in the chuckling assertion that the military authorities hail discovered a cabalistic document of a most treasonable character, which appeared to their excited imaginations to be a plan for partitioning the territory to be wrested from the English, but which, in reality, was nothing

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more portentous than the scribblement of the Dervesh Bazi, or “royal game of goose.”

With equal confidence on the other hand, the military authorities protested that the new regulations had nothing to do with the mutiny – that it was altogether a political movement. The new cap, they said, had been accepted and worn by the Sipahis. Three representative men, types of the principal nationalities composing the Coast Army, had signified their satisfaction with the new head-dress, and one or two regiments en masse had been paraded in it without a murmur. The fact, they alleged, was that the movement had emanated solely from the deposed family of Tipu Sultan; that its object was to restore, in the first instance, the Muhammadan dynasty in Southern India, and eventually to recover the imperial throne for the Mughul. If proper precautions had been taken by Government – if Tipu’s family, eager for a taste of blood, had not been left to disport themselves at will in Vellur – if they had not been gorged with money, and attended by countless Musulman followers eager to recover the posts and the privileges which they had lost, there would, said the military leaders, have been no massacre and no mutiny and, some said, not oven a murmur of discontent. But the military critic was as wrong as the political, and for the same reason. Each was blinded by professional interests and professional prejudices. Each argued in self-defence. The truth, as it commonly does in such cases, lay midway between the two extremes. But for the intrigues of Tipu’s family there would have been no outbreak at that time, and but for the new military regulations they might have intrigued in vain. It so happened that the political and military influences were adverse to us at the same moment, and that from the conjuncture arose the event known in history as the Massacre of Vellur, but which was in reality a much more extensive military combination, prevented only by repeated local failures from swelling into the dimensions of a general revolt of the Coast Army.

Nor is it to be forgotten that there was a third party, which attributed the calamity less to political and to military causes than to the general uneasiness which had taken possession of the native mind in consequence of the supposed activity of Christian missionaries and of certain “missionary chaplains.” The dread of a general destruction of Caste and forcible con version to Christianity was not confined to the Sipahis. The

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most preposterous stories were current in the Bazaars. Among other wild fables, which took firm hold of the popular mind, was one to the effect that the Company’s officers had collected all the newly-manufactured salt, had divided it into two great heaps, and over one had sprinkled the blood of hogs, and over the other the blood of cows; that they had then sent it to be sold throughout the country for the pollution and the desecration of Muhammadans and Hindus, that all might be brought to one caste and to one religion like the English. When this absurd story was circulated, some ceased altogether to eat salt, and some purchased, at high prices, and carefully stored away, supplies of the necessary article, guaranteed to have been in the Bazaars before the atrocious act of the Faringhis had been committed. Another story was that the Collector of Trinkomali had, under the orders of Government, laid the foundation of a Christian Church in his district close to the great Pagoda of the Hindus; that he had collected all the stone-cutters and builders in the neighbourhood; that he was taxing every household for the payment of the cost of the building; that he had forbidden all ingress to the Pagoda, and all worshipping of idols; and that to all complaints on the subject he had replied that there was nothing extraordinary in what he was doing, as Government had ordered a similar building to be erected in every town and every village in the country. In India, stories of this kind are readily believed. The grosser the lie, the more eagerly it is devoured100. They are circulated by designing persons with a certainty that they will not be lost. That the excitement of religious alarm was the principal means by which the enemies of the British Government hoped to accomplish

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their objects is certain; but, if there had not been a foregone determination to excite this alarm, nothing in the actual progress of Christianity at that time would have done it. A comparison, indeed, between the religious status of the English in India and the wild stories of forcible conversion which were then circulated, seemed openly to give the lie to the malignant inventions of the enemy. There were no indications on the part of Government of any especial concern for the interests of Christianity, and among the officers of the Army there were so few external signs of religion, that the Sipahis scarcely knew whether they owned any faith at all101. But in a state of panic men do not pause to reason; and, if at any time the doubt had been suggested, it would. have been astutely answered that the English gentlemen cared only to destroy the religions of the country, and to make the people all of one or of no caste, in order that they might make their soldiers and servants do everything they wished.

Views of the Home Government

The authoritative judgment of a. Special Commission appointed to investigate the causes of the out- break confirmed the views of the more moderate section of the community, which recognised, not one, but many disturbing agencies; and the }Tome Government accepted the interpretation in a candid and impartial spirit. That “the late innovations as to the dress and appearance of the Sipahis were the leading cause of the mutiny, and the other was the residence of the family of the late Tipu Sultan at Vellur,” was, doubtless, true as far as it went. But the merchant-rulers of Leadenhall-street were disposed to sound the lower depths of the difficulty. Those were not days when the numerous urgent claims of the Present imperatively forbade the elaborate investigation of the Past. So the Directors began seriously to consider what had been the more remote predisposing causes of the almost general disaffection of the Coast Army. And the “Chairs,” in a masterly letter to Mr. Dundas, freighted with the solid intelligence of Charles Grant, declared their conviction that the general decline of the fidelity

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of the Army and of the attachment of the People to British rule, was to be traced to the fact that a new class of men, with little knowledge of India, little interest in its inhabitants, and little toleration for their prejudices, had begun to monopolise the chief seats in the Government and the chief posts in the Army; that the annexations of Lord Wellesley had beggared the old Muhammadan families, and had shaken the belief of the people in British moderation and good faith; and that the whole tendency of the existing system was to promote the intrusion of a rampant Englishism, and thus to widen the gulf between the Rulers and the Ruled102.

Footnotes

75. In 1765, the number was increased to five. There were then a native .commandant and ten Subahdars to each battalion. – Broome.

76. Whilst a private of the European Army was to receive forty rupees, it was proposed to give a Sipahi six. The share of the latter was afterwards fixed at twenty rupees.

77. “In case the Marathas should still appear to intend an invasion, or in case you apprehend a mutiny among the troops, but in no other case, you have authority to make terms with the officers of your brigade.” – Lord Clive to Col. Smith, May 11, 1766. [See also following note.]

78. “The black Sipahi officers, as well as men, have given great proofs of fidelity and steadiness upon this occasion, and so long as they remain so, nothing is to be apprehended from the European soldiery, even if they should he mutinously inclined.” – Clive to Smith, May 15, 1760, MS. Records. – They had just afforded a striking proof that they were prepared, if necessary, to fire upon the Europeans. See Broome’s “History of the Bengal Army,” vol. i. 589: “The European battalion had got under arms, and were preparing to leave the fort and follow their officers, and the artillery were about to do the same, but the unexpected appearance of this firm line of Sipahis, with their bayonets fixed and arms loaded, threw them into some confusion, of which Captain Smith took advantage, and warned them, that if they did not retire peaceably into their barracks, he would fire upon them at once.”

79. That the national basis, which had originally distinguished the foundation of the Madras Army, did not very long survive the establishment of the reformed system of Bengal, and that the native officers soon lost the power and the dignity in which they had once rejoiced, may be gathered from an early incident in the Life of Sir John Malcolm. It was in 1784, when an exchange of prisoners with Tipu had been negotiated, that a detachment of two companies of Sipahis was sent out from our side of the Maisur frontier to meet the escort under Major Dallas conveying the English prisoners from Seringapatam. “In command of this party,” says the biographer, “went Ensign John Malcolm. This was his first service; and it was long remembered by others than the youthful hero himself. When the detachment met the prisoners’ escort, a bright-faced healthy English boy was seen by the latter riding up to them on a rough pony. Dallas asked him after his commanding officer. ‘I am the commanding officer,’ said young Malcolm.” As Malcolm was born in 1769, he must at this time have been a boy of fifteen; yet he commanded a detachment of two companies of Sipahis, and all the old native officers attached to them.

80. It was alleged to be an advantage of the new system that the increased number of English officers would obviate the necessity of ever sending out a detachment under native command.

81. By the Muhammadan Sipahi the earring was often worn as a charm. It was given to him at his birth, and dedicated to some patron saint.

82. See the following. Para 10, Sec 14. Standing orders of Madras Army: “It is ordered by the Regulations that a native soldier shall not mark his face to denote his caste, or wear earrings when dressed in his uniform: and it is further directed, that at all parades, and on all duties, every soldier of the battalion shall be clean-shaved on the chin. It is directed, also, that uniformity shall, as far as practicable, be preserved in regard to the quantity and shape of the hair on the upper lip.”

83. That neither the Government nor the Commander-in-Chief entertained any serious apprehensions from the agitation having first occurred at Venal, is obvious. The battalion that most opposed the innovation was, indeed, ordered to Madras, but nothing was directed indicative of any jealousy of the Princes. No precautions seem to have been taken within the Fort, and notwithstanding the discontent manifested by the native troops, the garrison was still left with only four companies of Europeans.” – Barry Close to John Malcolm. Poonah, Aug. 12, 1806. MS. Correspondence.

84. From a paper in Hindustani, transmitted to Adjutant-General Agnew from the Haidarabad Subsidiary Force “In the affair at Vellur,” said the Sipahis, “when the mutiny first commenced, it was on account of ‘Mustafa Beg; and the gentlemen of the Company’s Government have bestowed upon him a reward of two thousand pagodas from the public treasury, with the rank of Subahdar. The same Mustafa, Beg, Sipahi, was the man who gave the signal for revolt to the people at Vellur, and this is the man whom the Company have distinguished by their favour.”

85. Unhappily it is one of the first words which the Englishman in India learns to speak, and by which many young officers, when displeased, habitually call their native servants. (Very few, I think. – G. B. M.)

86. In the private correspondence of the time, it is stated that the day fixed for the outbreak was the 14th. It appeared, however, in the evidence of the first Committee of Inquiry assembled at Vellur, that it was agreed that the first blow should be struck fifteen days after the Maisur standard, prepared in the Palace, was ready to be hoisted, and that thirteen days had then passed. The story of the drunken Jamadar appears in Madras Secret Letter, Sept. 30, 1806. It happened, too, that the European officer commanding the native guard fell sick, that the Subahdar was also indisposed, and that Jamadar Kasim Khan, one of the most active of the mutineers, was eager to go the grand rounds; and it is possible that this accident helped to precipitate the crisis. On the other hand, it is to be observed that Major Armstrong, who had been absent from Vellur, and who returned on the night of the 10th, was warned by people outside the Fort not to enter, as something was about to happen.

87. The massacre included fourteen officers and ninety-nine soldiers killed. There were, moreover, several officers and men wounded, some of the latter mortally.

88. For all the facts given in the text, I have the authority of a mass of official, semi-official, and private contemporary correspondence, which I have very carefully collated. In doing so, I have been compelled to reject some personal incidents which have hitherto generally formed part of the narrative of the “Massacre of Vellur,” but which, however serviceable they may be for purposes of effective historical writing, are, I am sorry to say, at best apocryphal. It has been said that the officer who carried the tidings to Arkat escaped through a sally-port, and swam the ditch of the Fort so famous for the number and size of its alligators. Sober official correspondence states that Major Coats, who was bearer of the news, was outside the Fort at the time of the outbreak. It is very generally stated, too, that when Gillespie wished to enter the Fort in advance of the men, as there were no ladders and no ropes, the survivors of the 69th fastened their belts together, and thus drew him up the walls. But I have before me two letters, signed “R. Gillespie,” which state that he was drawn up by a rope. Among the fictitious incidents of the mutiny may be mentioned the whole of the stories which tell of the foul murder of English women, and the braining of little children before their mothers’ eyes.

89. “The subversion of the British Empire in India by foreign invasion and domestic revolt, seem to have been the common theme of discourse all over the country, and opinions have generally prevailed that such a revolution was neither an enterprise of great difficulty, nor that the accomplishment of it was far distant A most extraordinary and unaccountable impression has been made upon the Sipahis, which has been fomented by prophecies and predictions inducing a belief that wonderful changes are about to take place, and that the Europeans are to be expelled from India.” – General Hay Macdowall. Nandidrug, Oct. 31. MS. Correspondence.

90. “It is astonishing how strong and how general the impression was of a systematic design to enforce the conversion of the Sipahis to Christianity. The men here heard, and talked of the late arrival of some clergymen from England, and of the story of General Wemyss marching the Sipahis to church at Colombo.” – Captain Thomas Sydenham (Resident at Haidarabad) to Mr. Edmonstone, July 27, 1806. MS. Correspondence.

91. Captain Sydenham wrote that, from the best information he could obtain at Haidarabad, it appeared that “the native troops had been invited to desert their colours, to break out in open mutiny, and to murder their officers. it was intended that a commotion should have taken place in the city at the moment of the insurrection in cantonments; that Mir A’lam, and all those in the interests of the English, were to be destroyed; that the Subahdar (Nizam) was to be confined, and Faridum Jah either made Diwan or placed on the masnad, as circumstances might suggest.” – MS. Correspondence.

92. Mark Wilks wrote to Barry Close, with reference to this movement at Nandidrug: “I do not know what to make of all this; men who had any great combination in view could scarcely have any design to act on so small a scale.” But Barry Close, taking a more comprehensive view, replied: “The great object of the Insurgents at Vellur seems to have been to secure to themselves a strong post on which to assemble in force. Cuppage’s garrison, though small, may have had it in view to seize on Nandidrug. Possessed of this strong post, the conspirators would have probably assembled upon it in force, and proceeded to act against us openly.” – MS. Correspondence.

93. Colonel Cuppage to Barry Close. – MS. Correspondence.

94. Lieutenant-Colonel Grant.

95. I find this fact recorded in the correspondence of the day with three notes of exclamation “With regard to Colonel Grant,” wrote Major Wilks from Maisur, “it appears that he disarmed his troops simply as a measure of precaution!!! Whether we are in danger from our own misconduct, or from worse causes, the danger is great. ... I conclude that Chalmers will be sent to supersede Grant, and Vesey to Paliamkotta, and my best hope is that there will be found sufficient grounds for turning Welsh and Grant out of the service, but this will not restore the confidence of the Sipahis.” – MS. Correspondence. Grant’s conduct was at once repudiated in a general order, and he and Welsh ordered for Court-Martial. Both were honourably acquitted.

96. Many years after the occurrence of these events, Major, then Colonel Welsh, published two volumes of Military Reminiscences. Turning to these for some account of the affair at Paliamkotta, I was disappointed to find only the following scanty notice of it: “Towards the end of the year an event took place, which, although injurious to my own prospects and fortune, under the signal blessing of Providence terminated fortunately. Time has now spread his oblivious wings over the whole occurrence, and I will not attempt to remove the veil.”

97. The difficulties of the English officer at that time were thus described by a contemporary writer, in a passage which I have chanced upon since the above was written: “The massacre at Vellur had naturally created a great degree of mistrust between the European officers and the Sipahis throughout the Army; and the indecision of measures at Head-Quarters seemed further to strengthen this mistrust. If an officer took no precautionary measures on receiving information of an intended plot, he was liable to the severest censure, as well as responsible for his own and the lives of his European officers. On the contrary, if he took precautionary measures he was accused of creating unnecessary Mistrust; and equally censured for being premature and not allowing the mutiny to go on till satisfactorily proved, when it would have been too late to prevent.” – Strictures on the present Government of India, &c. In a Letter from an Officer resident on the spot. Trichinapali, 1807; Loudon, 1808.

98. Many years afterwards, Sir George Barlow gracefully acknowledged the valuable assistance which, in this conjuncture, Mr. Edmonstone had rendered to him, saying that his “unshaken firmness and resolution in times of internal difficulty and danger were “signally displayed on the discovery of the conspiracy formed at Vellur.” “His wise and steady counsel,” added Barlow, “afforded me important aid and support in carrying into effect the measures necessary for counteracting the impressions made by that alarming event, which threatened the most serious consequences to the security of our power.” – MS. Documents.

99. There were two subjects which the Kutputli-Walas extremely delighted to illustrate – the degradation of the Mughul, and the victories of the French over the English, the one intended to excite hatred, the other contempt, in the minds of the spectators.

100. Not immediately illustrating this point of inquiry, but even more preposterous in itself than the rumours cited in the text, was a story which was circulated at Haidarabad. It was stated that an oracle in the neighbouring Pagoda had declared that there was considerable treasure at the bottom of a well in the European barracks, which was destined not to be discovered until a certain number of human heads had been offered up to the tutelar deity of the place; and that accordingly the European soldiers were sacrificing the necessary number of victims with all possible dispatch. It happened that the dead body of a native without a head was found near the Residency, and that a drunken European artilleryman, about the same time, attacked a native sentry at his post. These facts gave new wings to the report, and such was the alarm that the natives would not leave their homes or work after dark, and it was reported both to the Nizam and his minister that a hundred bodies without heads were lying on the banks of the Massi River. – Captain Sydenham to the Government of India. MS. Records.

101. Sir John Cradock said, after the occurrence of these events, that “from the total absence of religious establishments in the interior of the country, from the habits of life prevalent among military men, it is a melancholy truth, that so unfrequent are the religious observances of officers doing duty with battalions, that the Sipahis have not, until very lately, discovered the nature of the religion professed by the English.”

102. The Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the East India Company (Mr. Parry and Mr. Grant) to the President of the Board of Control (Mr, Dundas). – May 18, 1807. MS. Records.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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