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Chapter 2 – The Outbreak at Mirath

Whilst the vague feeling of excitement above described was gathering strength and consistency at Dehli, and the “something coming” appeared to be approaching nearer and nearer, events were developing themselves in the great military station of Mirath, thirty miles distant, which were destined to precipitate a more momentous crisis in the imperial city than had been anticipated by the inmates of the Palace. The Native troops at that great Head-quarters station were smouldering into rebellion, and the Sipahi War was about to commence. The brief telegraphic story already recorded34, when it expanded into detailed proportions, took this disastrous shape.

Colonel Smyth and the 3rd Cavalry

April–May 1857

The 3rd Regiment of Native Cavalry was commanded by Colonel Carmichael Smyth. He had graduated in the regiment, and had seen some service with it, but he had never earned the entire confidence of officers or men. He was not wanting in intelligence or in zeal, but he lacked temper and discretion, and the unquestionable honesty of his nature was of that querulous, irritable cast which makes a man often uncharitable and always unpopular. He had a quick eye for blots of every kind; and, being much addicted to newspaper writing, seldom failed to make them known to the public. Nobody knew better than Colonel Smyth that the Bengal Army was hovering on the brink of mutiny. He had, in the earlier part of the year, visited the great fair at Hardwar, where the disaffection of the 19th Regiment had been freely discussed. He had afterwards gone to Masuri, where he learnt from day to day what was passing at Ambalah, and he was so impressed by what he heard respecting the general state of the Sipahi regiments and their readiness for revolt, that he had

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written to the Commander-in-Chief to inform him of the dangerous state of the Army. But when the general order went forth that the men were no longer to bite the cartridges, Colonel Smyth thought that the opportunity was one of which he should avail himself to allay the excitement in his own regiment, and he therefore held the parade of the 24th of April, with results which have been already described35.

General Hewitt

Not so thought the officer commanding the Mirath division of the Army. General Hewitt was an old Company’s officer, who had risen to high rank by the slow process of regimental and army promotion, and who in quiet times might have drowsed through the years of his employment on the Staff without manifesting any remarkable incapacity for command. The burden of nearly seventy years was aggravated by the obesity of his frame and the inertness of his habits. But he was a kind-hearted, hospitable man, liked by all, and by some respected. It was his desire to keep things quiet, and, if possible, to make them pleasant. He lamented, therefore, that Colonel Smyth had made that crucial experiment upon the fidelity of his regiment which had resulted in open mutiny. “Oh! why did you have a parade?” he said to the Colonel. “My division has kept quiet, and if you had only waited another month or so, all would have blown over.”

The Court of Inquiry

It was necessary, however, after what had occurred, in an official point of view to do something. So he ordered a Native Court of Inquiry to be assembled. The Court was composed of six members, four of whom were Native officers of the Infantry, and two Native officers of the Cavalry. The witnesses examined, including those who had manufactured and served out the cartridges, said that there was nothing objectionable in them – nothing that could offend the religious scruples of Hindu or Muhammadan – nothing that in any way differed from the composition of the cartridges’ which the Sipahis had been using for years. The oldest troopers in the regiment, Hindu and Muhammadan, were examined; but they could give no satisfactory account of the causes of alarm and disaffection in the regiment. They could only say that a general impression of impurity existed. One

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Musalman trooper, with much insolence of manner, blustered out, “I have doubts about the cartridges. They may look exactly like the old ones, but how do I know that pig’s fat has not been smeared over them?” But the next witness who was examined – a Hindu – took one of the cartridges into his hand and handled it freely, to show that in his eyes there was nothing offensive in the new ammunition. Altogether, the Court of Inquiry elicited nothing. It dealt with material facts, which were well known before. But it was not the palpable, but the impalpable – a vague and voiceless idea – that had driven the regiment to mutiny. That which the troopers dreaded was not pollution, but opinion. They were troubled, not by any fear of desecration to their faith or of injury to their caste, but by the thought of what their comrades would say of them. In a military sense, in an official sense, all this was unreasonable in the extreme; but every man felt in his inmost heart more than he could explain in intelligible words, and the shadow of a great fear was upon him, more terrible for its indistinctness.

The proceedings of the Court of Inquiry were sent to Head-Quarters; and whilst the orders of the Commander-in-Chief were awaited, the Eighty-five were dismissed from duty, and ordered to abide in their Lines. There was, then, for a little space, a fever of expectancy. What meetings, and conspiracies, and oath-takings there may have been in the Sipahis’ quarter during that long week of waiting, can be only dimly conjectured; but one form of expression, in which their feelings declared themselves, was patent to all. It was written in characters of fire, and blazed out of the darkness of the night. From the verandahs of their houses the European officers saw these significant illuminations, and knew what they portended. The burnings had commenced on the evening preceding the fatal parade of the 24th of April, when an empty hospital had been fired36. Then followed a more expressive conflagration. The house of a Sipahi named Brijmohan Singh, who had been the first to practise the new mode of using the cartridges, was burnt down. This man (the son of a pig-keeper), who had been dismissed from an Infantry regiment and imprisoned for theft, had enlisted under a new name in the 3rd Cavalry, and had managed so to ingratiate himself with the Commanding Officer, that he

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was seldom absent from the Colonel’s bungalow. To the whole regiment, and especially to its high-caste men, this was an offence and an abomination, and nothing could more clearly indicate the feeling in the Lines of the 3rd than the fact that this man’s house was burnt down by the troopers of his own regiment.

In the bungalows also of the European residents, during this first week of May, there was much excitement and discussion. There was plainly a very disagreeable entanglement of events out of which it was not easy to see the way, and people said freely that it ought never to have arisen. But speculation with respect to the Future was even more busy than censure with respect to the Past. What, it was asked, would be the issue of the reference to Head-Quarters? The more general belief was, that orders would come for the dismissal of the recusant troopers; but even this, it was thought, would be a harsh measure, that might drive others, by force of sympathy, to rebellion. It was an interval which might have been turned by our English officers to good account in soothing the feelings of their men, and explaining everything that was of a doubtful or suspicions character. Some, indeed, did strive, with a wise foreknowledge of the coming danger, to accomplish this good object; but others believed that all was right, that there was no likelihood of their regiments being driven either by their fears or their resentments to revolt against the Law; and they drowsed on placidly in the conviction that it was but an accidental ebullition, provoked by the mismanagement of an indiscreet Commanding Officer, and that the general temper of the Native troops at Mirath was all that could be desired.

The Court-Martial

In the first week of May the instructions so eagerly looked for were received from the Head-Quarters of the Army. The fiat of General Anson had gone forth from Simlah. A Native General Court-Martial was to be assembled at Mirath for the trial of the Eighty-five. The prisoners were then confined in an empty hospital, and a guard of their own regiment was placed over them. The tribunal before which they were to be brought up for trial was composed of fifteen Native officers, of whom six were Muhammadans and nine were Hindus. Ten of these members were furnished by the regiments at Mirath – Artillery, Cavalry, and Infantry; five came from the Infantry regiments at Dehli. On

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the 6th of May the Court commenced its sittings37, and continued its proceedings on the two following days. The examination of Colonel Smyth and the other witnesses for the prosecution elicited no new facts, and, indeed, the whole case of military disobedience was so clear, that the trial, though it was protracted during three days, was little more than a grim formality. Every man felt that his condemnation was certain, and sullenly abided the issue. The prisoners could put forth no defence which either Law or Discipline could accept. But when the Havildar Mattadin Singh pleaded, on behalf of himself and comrades, that they suspected some foul design because their Commandant took so much pains to convince them that it was all right, and to induce them to fire the cartridges, there was something not altogether irrational or illogical in the argument. If there was nothing in the ammunition different from that which they had always used, why, it was asked, should the proceedings of the Colonel have been so different38? But in effect the defence of the prisoners was little more than a confession, and the Court, by a vote of fourteen members against one, found the Eighty-five guilty, and sentenced them to imprisonment and hard labour for ten years. But with this there went forth a recommendation to “favourable consideration on account of the good character which the prisoners had hitherto borne, as testified to by their Commanding Officer, and on account of their having been misled by vague reports regarding the cartridges.”

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The sentence confirmed

The proceedings went up, in due course, to the General commanding the Division, and Hewitt approved and confirmed the sentence. “I would willingly attend,” he remarked, “to the recommendation of the Court, if I could find anything in the conduct of the prisoners that would warrant me in so doing. Their former good character has been blasted by present misbehaviour, and their having allowed themselves to be influenced by vague reports instead of attending to the advice and obeying the orders of their European superiors, is the gist of the offence for which they have been condemned. It appears from these proceedings that these misguided men, after consultation together on the night of the 23rd of April, 1857, came to the resolution of refusing their cartridges. Having so far forgotten their duty as soldiers, their next step was to send word to their troop captains that they would not take their cartridges unless the whole of the troops in the station would do so likewise. Some of them even had the insolence to desire that firing parades might be deferred till the agitation about cartridges among the Native troops had come to a close. In this state of insubordination they appeared on parade on the morning of the 24th, and there consummated the crime for which they are now about to suffer, by repeatedly refusing cartridges that had been made as usual in their regimental magazine, when assured, too, by Colonel Smyth that the cartridges had no grease on them – that they were old ones, and exactly similar to what had been in use in the regiment for thirty or forty years. Even now they attempt to justify so gross an outrage upon discipline by alleging that they had doubts of the cartridges. There has been no acknowledgment of error – no expression of regret – no pleading for mercy.” “To the majority of the prisoners,” therefore, it was added, “no portion of the sentence will be remitted. I observe, however, that some of them are very young, and I am willing to make allowance for their having been misled by their more experienced comrades, and under these circumstances I remit one-half of the sentence passed upon the following men, who have not been more than five years in the service.” And then followed the names of eleven young troopers, whose term of imprisonment was commuted to five years. The sentence was to be carried into effect at daybreak on the 9th of May.

The morning dawned, lowering and gusty, and the troops of

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May 9

Execution of the sentence

the Mirath Brigade were drawn up on the ground of the 60th Rifles to see the prisoners formally dismissed to their doom. The 3rd Cavalry had received their orders to attend unmounted. The European troops and the Artillery, with their field-guns, were so disposed as to threaten instant death to the Sipahis on the first symptom of resistance. Under a guard of Rifles and Carabineers, the Eighty-five were then brought forward, clad in their regimental uniforms – soldiers still; and then the sentence was read aloud, which was to convert soldiers into felons. Their accoutrements were taken from them, and their uniforms were stripped from their backs. Then the armourers and the smiths came forward with their shackles and their tools, and soon, in the presence of that great concourse of their old comrades, the Eighty-five stood, with the outward symbols of their dire disgrace fastened upon them. It was a piteous spectacle, and many there were moved with a great compassion, when they saw the despairing gestures of those wretched men, among whom were some of the very flower of the regiment – soldiers who had served the British Government in trying circumstances and in strange places, and who had never before wavered in their allegiance. Lifting up their hands and lifting up their voices, the prisoners implored the General to have mercy upon them, and not to consign them to so ignominious a doom. Then, seeing that there was no other hope, they turned to their comrades and reproached them for quietly suffering this disgrace to descend upon them. There was not a Sipahi present who did not feel the rising indignation in his throat. But in the presence of those loaded field-guns and those grooved rifles, and the glittering sabres of the Dragoons, there could not be a thought of striking. The prisoners were marched off to their cells, to be placed under the custody of a guard of their own countrymen; the parade was dismissed; and the Sipahis, Cavalry and Infantry, went, silent and stern, to their work, to talk over the incidents of that mournful morning parade39.

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It was Saturday. So far as English eyes could see or English brains could understand, the day passed quietly over. The troop-captains of the 3rd Cavalry visited the prisoners in the gaol, which was situated at a distance of about two miles from the cantonment, to be for the last time the channel of communication between them and the outer world. It was their duty to adjust the balances of the Sipahis’ pay, and they were anxious, in the kindness of their hearts, to arrange the settlements of the prisoners’ debts, and to carry any messages which the men might desire to send to the families from whom they had been sundered. And whilst this was going on in the gaol wild reports were flying about the Bazaars, and there was a great fear in the Lines, for it was said that the Europeans were about to take possession of the magazines, and that the two thousand fetters, of which Rumour had spoken before, were now ready, and that the work of the morning was only an experiment and a beginning. But the shades of evening fell upon Mirath, and the English residents, after their accustomed ride, met each other at dinner, and talked cheerfully and confidently of the Past and the Future. At one dinner-table, where the Commissioner and his wife and the Colonel of the 11th Sipahis were present, a rumour was mentioned to the effect that the walls had been placarded with a Muhammadan proclamation calling upon the people to rise against the English. But the general feeling was one of indignant disbelief, and each man went to his home and laid his head upon his pillow as tranquilly as though from one end of Mirath to another there had been no bitter resentments to be gratified, in the breasts of any but the manacled, harmless, helpless prisoners in the great gaol.

The Mirath Cantonment

I must pause here, a little space, for the better explanation of what follows, to speak of the great Cantonment of Mirath. This military station was one of the most extensive in India. It covered an area of some five miles in circumference, the space being divided by a great mall or esplanade, along which ran a deep nala, or ditch, cutting the station into two separate parallelograms, the one containing the European and the other the Native force.

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The European Lines were on the northern quarter of Mirath, the Artillery Barracks being to the right, the Dragoons to the left, and the Rifles in the centre. Between the barracks of the two last stood the station church; a great plain or parade-ground stretching out still further to the northward. The Sipahi Lines lay to the south of the cantonment, and between what may be called the European and Native quarters there was an intervening space covered with shops and houses, surrounded by gardens and trees. Still further to the southward lay the city. The officers of the European regiments and Artillery officers occupied bungalows along the northern line, whilst the Sipahi officers dwelt chiefly near their own men. The Brigadier’s house was on the right, not far from the Artillery Barracks and Mess-House. The General’s residence was nearer to the Native Lines. The most noticeable features of the whole, and those which it is most important to bear in mind in the perusal of what follows, are the division of the great cantonment into two parts, the distance of the European barracks from the Native Lines, and the probability therefore of much that was passing in the latter being wholly unknown to the occupants of the former.

Sunday, May 10

The fierce May sun rose on the Sabbath morning, and the English residents prepared themselves to attend, the ministrations of their religion in the station church. There was, indeed, a lull; but the signs of it, afterwards noted, clearly presaged that there was something in the air. In the European barracks it appeared that there was a general desertion of the Native servants, whose business it was to administer to the wants of the white soldiery, and in the bungalows of the officers there was a disposition on the part of their domestics, especially of those who had been hired at Mirath, to absent themselves from their masters’ houses. But these things were observable at the time only as accidental circumstances of little significance, and the morning service was performed and the mid-day heats were lounged through, as in times of ordinary security. Severed from the great mass of the people, the English could see nothing of an unwonted character on that Sunday afternoon; but in the Lines of the Native soldiery, in the populous Bazaars, and even in the surrounding villages there were signs of a great commotion. The very children could see that something was about to happen. Men of all kinds were arming themselves. The

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dangerous classes were in a state of unwonted excitement and activity. Many people of bad character had come in from the adjacent hamlets, and even from more remote places, as though they discerned the prospect of a great harvest. Among the mixed population of the Lines and the Bazaars were men agitated by emotions of the most varied character. Hatred of the English, desire for revenge, religious enthusiasm, thirst for plunder, were all at work within them; but paramount over all was a nameless fear; for, ever as the day advanced, the report gained strength that the English soldiery, armed to the teeth, would soon be let loose amongst them; that every Sipahi before nightfall would have fetters on his wrists; that the People would be given up to massacre, and the Bazaars to plunder.

The sun went down and the time came for evening service, and the English Chaplains prepared themselves for their ministrations. One has narrated how, when he was about to start with his wife for the station church, the Native nurse warned them that there was danger, and besought her mistress to remain at home. The woman said that there would be a fight with the Sipahis, but the Chaplain listened incredulously to the statement, and taking his wife and children with him, entered his carriage, and was driven to church40. In the church-compound he met his colleague and other Christian people with a look of anxious inquiry on their pale, scared faces. It was plain that the warning by which it was endeavoured to stay his progress was something more than an utterance of vague suspicion or senseless fear. Sounds and sights had greeted the church-goers on their way which could not be misinterpreted. The unwonted rattling of musketry on that Sabbath evening, the assembly-call of the buglers, the hurrying to and fro of armed men on the road, the panic-struck looks of the unarmed, the columns of smoke that were rising against the fast-darkening sky, all told the same story. The Native troops at Mirath had revolted.

Outbreak of the Sipahis

It will never be known with certainty whence arose the first promptings to that open and outrageous rebellion of which these sounds and sights were the signs. What meetings and conspiracies there may have been in the Lines – whether there was any organised scheme

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for the release of the prisoners, the burning of cantonments, and the murder of all the Christian officers, can be only dimly conjectured. The probabilities are at variance with the assumption that the Native troops at Mirath deliberately launched themselves into an enterprise of so apparently desperate a character. With a large body of English troops – Horse, Foot, and Artillery – to confront them in the hour of mutiny, what reasonable hopes could there be of escape from swift and crushing retribution? They knew the temper and the power of English soldiers too well to trust to a contingency of inaction of which the Past afforded no example. There was not a station in India at which an outbreak of Native troops could appear to be so hopeless an experiment as in that great military cantonment which had become the Head-Quarters of the finest Artillery Regiment in the world. But this very feeling of our overpowering strength at Mirath may have driven the Sipahis into the great panic of despair, out of which came the spasm of madness which produced such unexpected results on that Sabbath night. There had been for some days an ominous report, of which I have already spoken, to the effect that the Europeans were about to fall suddenly on the Sipahi regiments, to disarm them, and to put every man of them in chains. In fear and trembling they were looking for a confirmation of this rumour in every movement of the English troops. When, therefore, the 60th Rifles were assembling for church parade, the Sipahis believed that the dreaded hour had arrived. The 3rd Cavalry were naturally the most excited of all. Eighty-five of their fellow-soldiers were groaning in prison. Sorrow, shame, and indignation were strong within them for their comrades’ sake, and terror for their own. They had been taunted by the courtesans of the Bazaar, who asked if they were men to suffer their comrades to wear such anklets of iron41; and they believed that what they had seen on the day before was but a foreshadowing of a greater cruelty to come. So,

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whilst the European soldiers were preparing themselves for church parade, the Native troopers were mounting their horses and pricking forward towards the great gaol.

Rescue of the prisoners

Then it became miserably apparent that a fatal error had been committed. There were no European soldiers posted to protect the prison-house in which were the condemned malefactors of the Sipahi Army. The prisoners had been given over to the “civil power,” and an additional guard, drawn from the 20th Sipahi Regiment, had been placed over the gaol. The troopers knew what was the temper of that regiment. They had no fear for the result, so they pushed on, some in uniform, man and horse fully accoutred, some in their stable dresses with only watering rein and horse-cloth on their charges, but all armed with sabre and with pistol. Soon under the walls of the gaol – soon busy at their work – they met with, as they expected, no opposition. The rescue began at once. Loosening the masonry around the gratings of the cells in which their comrades were confined, they wrenched out the iron bars and helped the prisoners through the apertures. A Native smith struck off their chains, and once again free men, the Eighty-five mounted behind their deliverers, and rode back to the Lines. The troopers of the 3rd Cavalry at that time had no other work in hand but the rescue of their comrades. The other prisoners in the gaol were not released, the buildings were not fired, and the European gaoler and his family were left unmolested42.

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Revolt of the Infantry

Meanwhile, the Infantry regiments had broken into open revolt. The Sipahis of the 11th and the 20th were in a state of wild excitement. Maddened by their fears – expecting every moment that the Europeans would be upon them – believing that there was one great design in our hearts to manacle the whole of them, and, perhaps, to send them as convicts across the black water, they thought that the time had come for them to strike for their liberties, for their lives, for their religions. So it happened that when the excitement in the Lines was made known to some of our English officers, and they went down, as duty bade them, to endeavour to allay it, they found that the men whom they had once regarded as docile children had been suddenly turned into furious assailants. Among those who, on that Sunday evening, rode down to the Sipahis’ Lines was Colonel Finnis, who commanded the 11th. A good soldier, beloved by officers and by men, he had the old traditionary faith in the Sipahis which it became those, who had served with them and knew their good qualities, to cherish. Strong in the belief of the loyalty of his regiment, Finnis, with other officers of his corps, went into the midst of them to remonstrate and to dissuade.

Death of Colonel Finnis

He was speaking to his men, when a soldier of the 20th discharged his musket and wounded the Colonel’s horse. Presently another musket was discharged into his body. The ball entered at his back; he fell from his horse, and a volley was fired into him. He died, “riddled with bullets.” Thus the Sipahis of the 20th had slain the Colonel of the 11th Regiment, and the bullets of the former had been scattered in the ranks of the latter. For a little space the two regiments looked at each other; but there was no doubt of the issue. The 11th broke into open revolt, and fraternised with their comrades of the 20th.

Progress of the Revolt

The whole of the Native Regiments at Mirath had now revolted. The Sipahis of the Infantry and the troopers of the Cavalry had made common cause the. against us. Hindus and Muhammadans were stirred by one impulse to slaughter the Faringhis, man, woman, and child. So as the sun went down the massacre went on, and our people, who were returning from the unaccomplished evening service, or, ignorant of the excitement and the danger, were starting for the wonted evening ride or drive, were

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fiercely assailed by the infuriated soldiery, and shot down or sabred as they sate their horses or leaned back in their carriages to enjoy the coolness of the air. Wheresoever a stray English soldier was to be found, he was murdered without remorse. The Bazaars and the neighbouring villages were pouring forth their gangs of plunderers and incendiaries. From every street and alley, and from the noisome suburbs, they streamed forth like wild beasts from their lairs, scenting the prey43. The prisoners in the gaols were let loose, and the police became their comrades in crime. But so little concert and arrangement was there, that some detachments on guard-duty, posted in the European quarter of the great straggling cantonment, appear to have remained faithful to their English masters after their fellow-soldiers had broken out into open revolt. Indeed, whilst in one part of the cantonment the Sipahis were butchering their officers, in another they were saluting them as they passed, as though nothing had happened44. Even at the Treasury, with all its manifest temptations, the guard stood staunchly to its duty, and at a later hour made over the charge in all its integrity to the Europeans sent to defend it. Not a rupee had been touched by the Sipahis. And when the rabble from the city swarmed upon it, they found it covered by a guard of Riflemen.

But, in the midst of all this great tribulation, there was, in the hearts of our Christian people, a strength of confidence

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which calmed and comforted them; for they said to each other, or they said to themselves, “The Europeans will soon be upon them.” There were two regiments of Sipahi Infantry at Mirath, and a regiment of Sipahi Cavalry. But the English mustered a battalion of Riflemen, a regiment of Dragoons armed with carbines, and a large force of European Artillery, with all the accessories of Head-Quarters45. There was not an Englishwoman in the cantonment – the model cantonment of India – who, remembering the presence of this splendid body of White soldiers, had any other thought, at the first semblance of open mutiny, than that there must be a sad massacre of the Native troops. With a regiment of British Dragoons and a few Galloper guns, Gillespie, half a century before, had crushed the mutiny of Vellur, and saved the Southern Peninsula from universal revolt and rebellion46. He struck decisively because he struck at once. And no one now doubted that a blow struck with promptitude and vigour on this Sabbath evening would save Mirath, and check the nascent activities of revolt in the adjacent country. But by God’s providence, for whatsoever purpose designed, this first great revolt of the Sipahis was suffered, unchecked, unpunished, to make headway in a clear field, and to carry everything before it. The great confidence of the Christian people was miserably misplaced. They looked for a deliverance that never came. In some parts of the great cantonment they were abandoned to fire and slaughter as hopelessly as though there had not been a single English soldier in that great Head-Quarters of the Mirath

Inaction of the Europeans

The story of this great failure is not easily told, and the attempt to tell it cannot be made without sadness. Many narratives of the events of that night have been written; and each writer has told, with graphic distinctness of detail, what he himself saw and heard; but the confusion of those few critical hours is fully represented

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by the confusedness of the entire story; and it is difficult to impart unity and consistency to a scene, made up of scattered effects, bewildering and distracting. What was wanted in that conjuncture was the one man to impart to our British manhood the promptitude and unity of action which would have crushed the mutiny and saved the place – perhaps the country; and that one man did not rise in the hour of our tribulation.

Conduct of Colonel Smyth

There were three officers at Mirath whose bearing in that critical hour the historian is specially bound to investigate. They were, the officer commanding the 3rd Cavalry, the Brigadier commanding the Station, and the General commanding the Division. All three were resident in Mirath. It is not to be questioned that when a regiment breaks into mutiny, the place of the commanding officer, for life or for death, is in the midst of it. Not until all hope bas gone can there be any excuse for his departure. As the captain of a blazing vessel at sea is ever the last to leave the quarter-deck and to let himself down the side of his ship, so the commandant of a regiment in the fire of revolt should cling to it as long as the semblance of a regiment remains, and the safety of others can be aided by his presence. When, therefore, intelligence reached Colonel Smyth that the troopers of his regiment had broken into mutiny, it was his duty to proceed at once to the Cavalry Lines. But he did not go near the Lines47. He went to the Commissioner’s house; he went to the General’s; and he went to the Brigadier’s. He went everywhere but to his Regiment. From the moment that the troopers broke out into revolt they saw no more of their Colonel. He spent the night with the Head-Quarters of the Division, where the rifles and the carbines and the field-guns were collected, and never had the least conception all the time of

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what had become of his men48.

Captain Craigie

But they were not all past hope that something might have been done to save at least a portion of the regiment we know. Captain Craigie, at the first sound of the tumult, mustered his troop, ordered them to accoutre themselves as for a parade, and when they had mounted galloped down to the gaol, accompanied by his subaltern, Melville Clarke. They were too late to prevent the rescue of the prisoners; but not to set a grand example. Craigie and Clarke kept their men together, and brought them back, with unbroken discipline, to the parade-ground of the regiment. And during that night many acts of heroic fidelity were written down to the honour of Craigie’s troop. They had faith in their Captain. And it has been truly recorded of Craigie and Clarke, that “these gallant Englishmen handled the troop as if mutiny were a crime unknown to their men49.”

Brigadier Wilson

The station was commanded by Colonel Archdale Wilson, Brigadier of Artillery. He was a man of a spare and wiry frame, of active athletic habits, who had ever borne a good character in the splendid regiment to the command of which he had then risen. For some years, when the Head-Quarters of the Artillery had been at Damdamah, in the vicinity of Calcutta, he had been Adjutant-General of the regiment, and was thoroughly acquainted with all its details. But he had not seen much active service since his youth, and had never had any grave responsibilities cast upon him. His training had been too purely of a professional character to generate any great capacity for taking in a situation of such magnitude as that which he was now

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suddenly called upon to confront. But he was not a man, in such a crisis as had then arisen, to look idly on, or to shrink from a forward movement. What he did at the outset was what it became him to do. It was about half-past six when Brigade-Major Whish drove into the Brigadier’s compound, and told him that the Native troops had broken into mutiny. Instantly Wilson ordered his horse to be saddled and brought round, and having sent orders to the Artillery and Carabineers to join him there, he galloped to the parade-ground of the Rifles, and finding them on the point of marching for church, directed their Colonel to dismiss the parade, and to reassemble them as quickly as possible with their arms. This was promptly effected; but there was some delay in supplying the regiment with balled cartridge. The Dragoons had not yet come up. It has been stated that the Colonel had suffered the regiment to be mustered as for an ordinary parade50; and the slow process of roll-call had been going on whilst the last hour of daylight was passing away, and the enemy were slaughtering our people with impunity.

Movement of the Europeans

Meanwhile, General Hewitt had appeared on parade, and the Artillery had been brought up to the ground. When Colonel Jones reported that the Rifles were ready for action, Wilson, with the General’s sanction, detached one company to the Collector’s cutcherry to protect the treasure, and another for the protection of the barracks. Taking the other companies, with the Artillery, he marched down upon the Native Infantry Lines, where he expected to find the main body of the mutineers assembled.

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On or near the parade-ground he was joined by the Carabineers, who had lost their way51. There was now a force ready for action which might have destroyed all the Sipahis in Mirath, if they could have been brought into action with the white soldiers – if, indeed, our people could only have seen the enemy for a little space of time. But the shades of night had now fallen upon the scene. And when, near the Native Infantry huts, the English troops were deployed into line and swept the whole space where it was expected that the mutineers would have been found, not a man was to be seen, either in the Infantry Lines or on the parade-ground; and none knew whither they were gone. But near the Cavalry Lines a few troopers were seen, and the Rifles opened fire upon them. The mutineers fled into a wood or copse at the rear of their huts, and the guns were then unlimbered, and a few harmless rounds of grape fired into the obscurity of the night.

It was plain now that the mutineers were dispersed. The question was, What were they doing? To Wilson it seemed that the mutineers had moved round to the European quarter of the Cantonment; and he therefore recommended the General to move back the brigade for its protection. To this Hewitt, glad to be advised, assented; and the troops set their faces homewards. By this time the moon had risen, and the blazing bungalows of the English officers lit up the scene with a lurid glare. But our troops met only a few unarmed plunderers. The mutineers were not to be seen. What, then, was to done? It has been often stated that one officer at least answered the question as it ought to have been answered. Captain Rosser, of the Carabineers (so the story runs), offered to lead a squadron of his regiment and some Horse Artillery guns in pursuit of the enemy along the Dehli road. But the statement has been authoritatively contradicted52. It is only certain that the

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enemy escaped; and that, with the exception of some pickets which were planted on the bridges across the nala which ran between the European Cantonment and the Native Lines and Saar Bazaar, the whole of Hewitt’s force bivouacked for the night on the European parade-ground.

May 10–11

Terrors of the night

And the night was a night of horror such as History has rarely recorded. The brief twilight of the Indian summer had soon passed; and the darkness which fell upon the scene brought out, with terrible distinctness, the blazing work of the incendiary. Everywhere, from the European quarters, from the bungalows of the English officers, from the mess-houses and other public buildings, from the residences of the unofficial Christian community, the flames were seen to rise, many-shaped and many-coloured, lighting up the heavy columns of smoke which were suspended in the still sultry air. And ever, as the conflagration spread, and the sight became more portentous, the sounds of the great fiery destruction, the crackling and the crashing of the burning and falling timbers, the roar of the flames, and the shrieks of the horses scorched to death in their stables, mingled with the shouts and yells of the mutineers and the rattling of the musketry which proclaimed the great Christian carnage. The scared inhabitants of the burning buildings – the women and children and non-combatants – sought safety in the gardens and out-houses, whither they were often tracked by the insurgents, and shot down or cut to pieces. Some fled in the darkness, and found asylums in such places as had escaped the fury of the incendiaries. Some were rescued by Native servants or soldiers, faithful among the faithless, who, in memory of past kindnesses, strove to save the lives of their white masters at the peril of their own.

Escape of the Commissioner

Among those who were thus saved were Hervey Greathed, the Commissioner, and his wife. Warned of the approaching danger, first by an officer of the 3rd Cavalry, and then by a pensioned Afghan chief, he had taken his wife, and some other Englishwomen who had sought safety with him, to the terraced roof of his house; but the insurgents, after driving off his guard, applied the firebrand to the lower part of the building, plundered the rooms, and then surrounded the place. With the flames raging beneath him, and the enemy raging around

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him, his position was one of deadly peril. And Greathed and his companions must have perished miserably but for the fidelity of one of those Native servants upon whom so much depended in the crisis which was then threatening our people. With rare presence of mind and fertility of resource he simulated intense sympathy with the rebels. He told them that it was bootless to search the house, as his master had escaped from it, but that, if they would follow him to a little distance, they would find the Faringhis hiding themselves behind a haystack. Fully confiding in the truth of his story, they suffered themselves to be led away from the house; and its inmates descended safely into an empty garden just as the upper rooms were about to “fall in with a tremendous crash53.”

Incidents of the night

There were others far less happy on that disastrous Sunday evening. Wives, left without protection whilst their husbands were striving to do their duty in the Lines, were savagely cut to pieces in their burning homes; and little children were massacred beneath the eyes of their mother. Then delicate English ladies, girt about with fiery danger, death on every side, turned, with a large-hearted sympathy, their thoughts towards their suffering fellow-countrywomen, and tried to rescue them from the threatened doom. In adjacent bungalows were two ladies, wives of officers of the Brigade.

Mrs. Craigie

One was under special protection, for her husband had endeared himself to the men of his troop by his unfailing kindness and consideration for them. The other, wife of the Adjutant of the 11th Regiment, had but recently come from England, and Mrs. Chambers was strange to all the environments of her situation. The more experienced Englishwoman, seeing the danger of her position, and hearing the shrieks which issued from her house, was moved with a great compassion, and sent her servants to rescue the affrighted creature from the fury of her assailants. But when, after some delay, they entered her house, they found her covered with wounds, lying dead upon the floor. Then the insurgents, having done their bloody work, raged furiously against the adjacent bungalow, and were only driven from their purpose by the fidelity of some of Craigie’s

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troopers, who were ready to save the wife of their Captain at the risk of their own lives. In the course of the night, after doing good service, Craigie returned, in fear and trembling, to his household gods, thinking to find them shattered and desecrated; but, by the exceeding mercy of God, safe himself, he found them safe, and soon had matured measures for their escape. Wrapping up the ladies in dark-coloured horse-cloths to conceal their white garments in the glare of the burning station, he led them from the house, and hiding under trees, or in a ruined temple, they passed the night in sleepless horror. Often the voices of bands of mutineers or plunderers in the compound smote upon their ears; but there were help and protection in the presence of a few of Craigie’s troopers, who hovered about the place, and in some of his own body-servants, who were equally true to their master. In the early morning the enemy had cleared off, and there was a prospect of escape. So they returned sadly to their dearly-loved home, collected a few cherished articles and some necessary clothing, and went forth from their Paradise with the flaming sword behind them, never again to return. And the leave-takings of that sorrow-laden night were the first of many cruel divulsions, which tore happy families from their homes and sent them forth into the wide world, houseless wanderers and fugitives, with a savage and remorseless enemy yelling behind them in their track.

Many other episodes of pathetic interest might here be related illustrative of the horrors of that night, if historical necessity did not forbid such amplitude of detailed recital. The sweepings of the gaols and the scum of the Bazaars – all the rogues and ruffians of Mirath, convicted and unconvicted, and the robber tribes of the neighbouring villages – were loose in the cantonment, plundering and destroying wherever an English bungalow was to be gutted and burnt. The Sipahis had left the work, which they had commenced, to men who found it truly a congenial task. Day dawned; and those who survived the night saw how thoroughly the work had been done. As they crept from their hiding-places and sought safety in the public buildings protected by the Europeans, they saw, in the mangled corpses which lay by the wayside, in the blackened ruins of the houses which skirted the roads, and in the masses of immovable property, thrown out of the dwelling-places of the English, and smashed into fragments apparently by blows from heavy clubs, ghastly evidences of the fury of their

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enemies54. But with the morning light a great quietude had fallen upon the scene. The Sipahis had departed. The ruffians of the gaols and the Bazaars and the Gujar villages had slunk back into their homes. There was little more to be done – nothing more that could be done in the face of the broad day – by these despicable marauders. So our people gathered new heart; and as the sun rose they thought that our time had come.

The day after

But the Mirath Brigade did nothing more in the clear morning light than it had done in the shadow of the darkness. The English troops, with the English leaders, rose from the bivouac; and it dawned upon them that more than two thousand mutineers had made their way to Dehli. Even then, if the Carabineers and the Horse Artillery had been let loose, they might, before noon, have reached the imperial city and held mutiny in check. But contemporary annals record only that the European troops, Horse, Foot, and Artillery, went out for a reconnaissance “on the right of the Dehli road.” Not a man was despatched to the place which was the great centre of political intrigue and political danger – which was the great palatial home of the last representative of the house of Taimur, and which held a large body of Native troops, and the great magazine of Upper India, unprotected by even a detachment of Europeans. Nor less surprising was it, that, with all these shameful proofs of the great crimes which had been committed, the rising indignation in the breasts of our English leaders did not impel them to inflict terrible retribution upon other criminals. The Bazaars on that Monday morning must have been full of the plundered property of our people, and of many dreadful proofs and signs of complicity in the great crime of the preceding night. Retribution might have fallen on many of the murderers red-handed; but not a regiment was let loose upon the guilty quarter. The murdered bodies were collected and laid out in the Theatre, where a mimic tragedy was to have been performed that evening; and the slayers of women and

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children, and the desecrators of our homesteads, were suffered to enjoy unmolested the fruits of their work55; whilst the Mirath Brigade, Horse, Foot, and Artillery, marched about Cantonments, and looked at the Dehli road along which the mutineers had made good their escape56.

What might have been done by our people to overtake the guilty actors in the tragedy of that Sunday night, and to strike awe into the hearts of all who were minded to follow in the same track, may be gathered from an individual example, the record of which lies before me. It has been narrated how Mrs. Chambers, wife of the Adjutant of the 11th, was foully murdered in her bungalow. One of her husband’s friends, Lieutenant Moller of the same regiment, obtained soon afterwards what appeared to be good evidence that a certain butcher of the Great Bazaar was the assassin. On this he started in his buggy for the Bazaar, tracked out the guilty man, seized him, and carried him back to Cantonments with a loaded pistol at his head. A drum-head court-martial was assembled, and whilst Chambers lay in convulsions in an adjoining room, the wretch was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. And in a little while his lifeless body was swinging from the branch of a mango-tree57. There may, at this time, have been other examples of individual courage and resolution of the same stern character, as there were afterwards in all parts of the disturbed country; but the arm of authority was not uplifted to strike, and the multitude of criminals escaped.

Indeed, wheresoever a number of Englishmen are gathered together there will surely be deeds of gallantry, many and great, though they may be obliterated by the hand of death or lost in the confusion of the hour. And Mirath saw many acts of personal bravery done by our people which will never

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perhaps find sufficient record58. Nor should it be forgotten that many noble instances of gratitude and generosity, or it might perhaps have been only of common humanity, were apparent in the conduct of the Natives, who, whilst their brethren were striking, put forth their hands to save, and risked their own lives to protect those of the people whose only crime it was that they had white faces59.

Footnotes

34. Ante, vol. i.

35. Ante, vol. i. p. 437.

36. Colonel Smyth says it was a hone-hospital.

37. The charge was, “For having at Mirath, on the 24th of April, 1857, severally and individually disobeyed the lawful command of their superior officer, Brevet-Colonel G.M.C. Smyth, commanding the 3rd Regiment of Light Cavalry, by not having taken the cartridges tendered to each of them individually for use that day on parade, when ordered by Colonel Smyth to take the said cartridges.”

38. The same difficulty suggested itself to the Court. Colonel Smyth was asked, “Why did you tell the men that they would have to fire, instead of merely ordering them to do so?” Colonel Smyth’s answer was: “The parade was in orders the day before, and entered in the order-book as usual, and each man was ordered to receive three cartridges. I wished to show them the new way of loading without putting the cartridges to the mouth, and attended the parade for that purpose. When I came on parade, the Adjutant informed me that the men had not taken their cartridges, and it was on that account I ordered the Havildar-Major to take a cartridge and load and fire before them; and it was then, also, that I said, that when the whole Army heard of this way of loading they would be much pleased, and exclaim, ‘Wah! wah!’ ”

39. Lord Canning’s commentary on these proceedings may be given here: “The riveting of the men’s fetters on parade, occupying, as it did, several hours, in the presence of many who were already ill-disposed, and many who believed in the cartridge fable, must have stung the brigade to the quick. The consigning the eighty-five prisoners, after such a ceremony, to the gaol, with no other than a Native guard over them, was, considering the nature of their offence, and the known temper of a part of the Army, a folly that is inconceivable.” – Letter to Mr. Vernon Smith, June 5, 1857. MS. Correspondence.

40. See the Chaplain’s (Mr. Rotton’s) Narrative. He left his wife and children in a place of safety on the way to church.

41. This is stated very distinctly by Mr. J. C. Wilson (an excellent authority) in his interesting Muradabad Report. “And now,” he writes, “the frail ones’ taunts were heard far and wide, and the rest of the regiment was assailed with words like these: Your brethren have been ornamented with these anklets and incarcerated; and for what? Because they would not swerve from their creed; and you, cowards as you are, sit still indifferent to your fate. If you have an atom of manhood in you, go and release them.”

42. There are conflicting statements on the subject of the release of the prisoners in the new gaol. Dr. O’Callaghan (“Scattered Chapters on the Indian Mutiny”) asserts that not only the eighty-five, but all the other prisoners had been released by the infantry guard before the cavalry arrived. When the troopers arrived, he says, “After their rapid and furious gallop at the gaol, they found their comrades already released and emerging from incarceration, and the general crowd of felons also rushing rapidly forth to join in the fire, pillage, and slaughter.” But Mr. Commissioner Williams, in his very circumstantial official report, says that the troopers “dug out of the wall the gratings of some of the windows of the ward in which the eighty-five mutineers were confined, and took their comrades away, the guard of the 20th accompanying, and the armed guard of the gaol soon followed. None of the other convicts, in number about eight hundred, were released by the cavalry troopers, nor was any injury done by them to the buildings.” But he adds, “About three hundred or four hundred Sipahis released the convicts from the old gaol, which is between the city and the Native lines, and which contained about seven hundred and twenty prisoners altogether.”

43. “Cities, like forests, have their dens, in which everything that is most wicked and formidable conceals itself. The only difference is that what hides itself thus in cities is ferocious, unclean, and little – that is to say, ugly; what conceals itself in the forests is ferocious, savage, and grand – that is to say, beautiful. Den for den, those of the beasts are preferable to those of men, and caverns are better than hiding-places.” – Victor Hugo. Mr. Commissioner Williams, in his official report above quoted, says that the towns-people had armed themselves and were ready for the onslaught before the Sipahis had commenced the carnage. “Before a shot had been fired, the inhabitants of Sadr Bazaar went out armed with swords, spears, and clubs, any weapon they could lay hands on, collected in crowds in every lane and alley, and at every outlet of the Bazaars; and the residents of the wretched hamlets, which had been allowed to spring up all round it and between it and the city, were to be seen similarly armed, pouring out to share in what they evidently knew was going to happen.”

44. I do not mean to signify that the Sipahis in the European quarter of the cantonment were uniformly quiescent at this time; for I am informed that the Guard at Brigadier Wilson’s house fired at some officers who were passing before they broke away. But there was obviously no general concert.

45. History, however, must not exaggerate the actual strength of this European force. There were some deteriorating circumstances, of which account must be taken. A considerable number of the Carabineers could not ride, and there were no horses for them if they could. Not more than half of the regiment (five hundred strong) were mounted. Many of the European gunners, too, were young recruits, imperfectly acquainted with Artillery drill. There were only two field-batteries fully equipped.

46. See ante, vol. i. pp. 167–9.

47. “Most of the officers of the 3rd Light Cavalry at once proceeded to the lines of their regiment, arming hastily, and ordering their horses to follow; but I have never been able to discover that the officer commanding the corps repaired to his post, or was seen in the lines amongst the men, during the whole of that eventful evening and night; and it would appear that Colonel Smyth was so fortunate as to make an early escape into the protection of the European military quarter.” – O’Callaghan. Scattered Chapters on the Indian Mutiny. It should be stated, however, that Colonel Smyth was Field-Officer of the week – a fact upon which he himself has laid considerable stress, as though, in his estimation, it exempted him from all special regard for his own particular regiment.

48. Colonel Smyth has published his own account of his proceedings on the evening of the 10th of May: “I went,” he says, “first to Mr. Greathead’s, gave information to the servants, as Mr. G. was out. ... I then went on to the General’s, and heard that he had just left the house in his carriage; so I galloped on to the Brigadier’s. ... I went on to the Artillery parade, and found the Brigadier already on the ground; and I accompanied him with the troops to the other end of the cantonments, and remained with him all night, and accompanied him again the next morning with Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery through the cantonments, and went with the Artillery and Cavalry on the right of the Dehli road,” &c., &c.

49. Official Report of Mr. Commissioner Williams. The writer states that “Lieutenant Clarke rode out from the head of the troop, and ran his sword through a trooper of the regiment who was insulting an European lady, and Captain Craigie gave the wretch his finishing stroke.”

50. [This charge was made in error. Some correspondence ensued between Sir John Kaye and Colonel Custance, and the former admitted to a note which was added as an appendix to his later editions, that the charge was incorrect, and that he withdrew it. The fact is that the Carabineers turned out with extreme rapidity; but, as Colonel Le Champion wrote, “Colonel Custance and his regiment had to await orders, and, if any delay took place, it was, I imagine, owing to the very late arrival on the scene of General Hewitt from his house, distant a long way off. ... The Carabineers were in broad daylight ordered, not to the mutineers’ parade-ground close by, but to the prison some miles off, and the services of Colonel Custance and his fine regiment ... were lost pro tem. I myself saw the regiment drawn up and ready for orders, and I do not believe that the slightest delay occurred when those orders were received by Colonel Custance.” I have thought it due to the regiment that this unimpeachable testimony should be unearthed from the Appendix, and recorded in a place where it would confront the original statement. – G.B.M.]

51. Brigadier Wilson did not see the Carabineers until the whole body of troops were returning to the European Lines.

52. As regards Captain Rosser’s offer to take a detachment of Cavalry and some Horse Artillery guns to Dehli, on the night of the 10th of May, I should state that I have received a letter from Mrs. Rosser, enclosing one from her husband, written shortly after the outbreak, most distinctly asserting that he made the offer, which has been denied by the authorities; and I must admit that all I have heard, since the first edition of this work was published, strengthens the conviction that the offer was made, though not, perhaps, in accordance with those strict military rules which, though recognised in quiet times, must be departed from in a great crisis.

53. Mrs. Greathed’s Narrative. See also note in Appendix for some account of the gallant and devoted conduct of Saiud Mir Khan, an Afghan pensioner resident at Mirath.

54. “The inveterate animosity with which the work of destruction was carried out may be judged of by the fact that houses built entirely of masonry, with nothing inflammable except the doors and the beams, which for a considerable height from the ground supported the roofs, formed of cement, resting on kiln-burnt bricks, were as effectually destroyed as the thatched bungalows. Property which the miscreants could not carry off was thrown out and smashed into fragments, evidently pounded with heavy clubs.”—Report of Commissioner Williams.

55. “It is a marvellous thing that with the dreadful proof of the night’s work in every direction, though groups of savages were actually seen gloating over the mangled and mutilated remains of the victims, the column did not take immediate vengeance on the Sadr Bazaar and its environs, crowded as the whole place was with wretches hardly concealing their fiendish satisfaction, and when there were probably few houses from which plundered property might not have been recovered. But the men were restrained; the bodies were collected and placed in the theatre, in which a dramatic tragedy would have been enacted, but for the real and awful one which occurred the night before.” – Report of Commissioner Williams.

56. See statement of Colonel Smyth, quoted ante, page 48, note.

57. This was on the 14th of May.

58. “The firm bearing of the Deputy-Assistant Commissary-General, who stood by his office till his house was in flames, and a young officer rushed in with his lower jaw shattered by a musket-ball, and it was evident that the mutinous guard would abstain no longer; the gallant resistance of the Executive Engineer, Grand Trunk Road; the courage with which at least one woman attacked and wounded her assailants – these and many other instances of the fortitude with which our countrymen and countrywomen met the unexpected onslaught, deserve notice, but cannot be detailed in such a narrative.” – Report of Mr. Commissioner ‘Williams. Unpublished Correspondence.

59. “Two Sipahis of the 11th Native Infantry most carefully escorted two ladies, with children, to the Dragoon Barracks. A Muhammadan in the city sheltered two Christian families, when the act was not only a singular deviation from the general conduct of his sect, but one full of danger to himself. A female servant and washerman succeeded in saving the young children of a lady, whom also they were attempting to save veiled in Native clothes, when a ruffian drew open the veil, saw the pale face, and cut the poor mother to pieces.” – Ibid.

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