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Book 17

Chapter 1 – The Causes of the Mutiny

What caused the mutiny?

Even before the last embers of the mutiny had been trampled out, the question which had from the first puzzled every man, from the Governor-General in Council to the subaltern in his modest bungalow, the question as to the original cause of the mutiny became the burning question of the day. It was a question which required a complete and accurate reply, because prompt reorganisation was necessary, and to carry out a complete scheme of *reorganisation a knowledge of the circumstances which had caused the collapse of the system to be reorganised was indispensable.

Anxiety to know the opinion of Sir John Lawrence

On this question the opinion of no man was looked forward to with so much eagerness, so much anxiety, and, I may add, with so much curiosity, as the opinion of the great Indian official whose daring and unselfish policy had made possible the storming of Dehli. It was very natural that this should be so.

Reasons why his opinion should be

Few men had associated more with the natives than Sir John Lawrence; few men had more thoroughly pierced to the core the national character, and few men possessed a more complete power of mental analysis.

and why it might not be

People, for the most part, did not stop to remember that, with all his gifts. Sir John Lawrence had ever been the partisan of a school – a school opposed to the tenure of land by great families; that he had favoured Lord Dalhousie’s policy of annexation; and that, although he was thoroughly acquainted with the feelings of the agricultural

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class, he contemned those of the large proprietors, and that he knew little of the Sipahis.

sound

Furthermore, and especially, that he possessed no personal knowledge of Oudh and of its people.

He attributes the mutiny to the greased cartridges only

It will readily be believed, then, that when the opinion of Sir John Lawrence was published it gave satisfaction only to the needle-s many, none at all to the thinking few. After an exhaustive argument, Sir John Lawrence arrived at the conclusion that the mutiny was due to the greased cartridges, and to the greased cartridges only. The public applauded a result so beautiful in its simplicity, so easy of comprehension. It chimed so entirely with the ideas of men who never take the trouble to think for themselves, that by the masses, which are mainly composed of such men, it was promptly and thankfully accepted.

Reasons why the conclusion cannot be accepted

With them it remains still the unanswerable reason for the mutiny of the Indian army. They did not stop to consider that to declare that the greased cartridges caused the mutiny was in all respects similar to the declaration of a man who, if asked what causes a gun to discharge, should reply – the powder. True it is that the powder, when exploded, forces out the bullet: but who ignites the powder? That the greased cartridges were the lever used in many instances to excite the Sipahis is incontestable; they were explosive substances. But, though explosive, they had been perfectly harmless had the minds of the Sipahis not been prepared to act upon them in the same manner that the percussion-cap acts upon gunpowder.

The greased cartridges not the only instrument employed to create discontent

It should never be forgotten that the greased cartridges were not the only instrument employed to create discontent in 1856-7. Before a greased cartridge had been issued the chapatis had been circulated in thousands in many rural districts. The chapati was, it is true, a weapon far less perfect than the greased cartilage. It was, nevertheless, sufficiently adapted to the comprehensions of the class to whom it was addressed – the class given to agriculture. To minds, simple, impressionable, suspicious, prompt to receive ideas, the chapati acted as a warning of an impending calamity. A Hindu can conceive nothing more dreadful than a violation of his caste and his religion. The conclusion was a foregone one. The receipt of the

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chapatis foreshadowed a great attempt to be made to upset the national religion.

The cartridges and the chapatis alike a means to an end

Though we might even grant, then, for the sake of argument, that the greased cartridges were not in themselves harmless, yet the chapatis certainly were so. But it was these harmless chapatis which stirred up the rural populations, especially those in Oudh and in Bundelkhand, to participate in the rebellion. What becomes, then, of Sir John Lawrence’s conclusion? It simply vanishes. The greased cartridges became dangerous only when used by others as a means to an end. Before the plans of the leaders of the revolt were ripe the cartridges and the chapatis were nothing more than gunpowder stored in a magazine. When the opportune moment arrived, when the minds of the Sipahis and the agricultural classes had been instructed to receive any ideas, however absurd, then the cartridges and the chapatis were rammed into them, and were exploded.

The real cause of the mutiny

But what was it that made the minds of the Sipahis, what was it that made the minds of the agricultural classes prone to conceive suspicions alike the greased cartridges and the chapatis? The answers to these two questions will bring us to the real cause of the mutiny. Sir John Lawrence’s conclusions were not pushed to their legitimate issue. He named only one of the means. I must go back to the cause.

Native opinion as to the cause of the mutiny

Before I express my own opinions on the matter I think it only proper that state the views of some thoughtful and well-educated natives, with whom I have had the opportunity of discussing the subject. I may premise that it is not an easy matter to obtain the real opinions of native gentlemen on matters regarding which they know, not only that those opinions would be distasteful to the listener, but that, his ignorance of aught, but the superficial life of a native of position, his absolute want of knowledge regarding the religions obligations which affect every thought of his life, act as a bar to comprehension. There are few Englishmen, for instance, even amongst those who have served long in India and who have obtained credit there for understanding the native character, who will not be amazed at the revelation regarding the origin of the mutiny, or rather of the causes which led up to it, which I am about to place on record

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as the real opinion of thoughtful and educated natives of India. That it is their real opinion I, who enjoyed special opportunities of conversing with them without restraint, and who possessed their confidence as far as an Englishman can possess it, know most certainly. And, what is more, there are living men, Englishmen, whose opportunities have been even greater, and who have communicated to me impressions absolutely confirming my views on the subject. From one of these gentlemen, a perfect linguist, and whose opportunities have been unrivalled, I have received the following reply to my query as to the cause to which the educated Hindus with whom he was in the habit of associating attributed the mutiny. “In the opinion of the educated natives of India,” was his answer, “the gross wrongs inflicted on Nana Sahib; the injustice done to Kunwar Singh; the injuries inflicted on the Rani of Jhansi; the seizure of the kingdom of Oudh; the fraudulent embezzlement perpetrated with regard to the Rao of Kirwi, and the scores of lesser wrongs done in reckless insolence to the landowners under the administration of the north-west provinces. Were Indians ever to write their account of the causes of the mutiny, it would astonish many in this country.”

These views may be disputed. Indeed, I am confident that not one ex-Indian official among a hundred will read them with aught but a contemptuous smile. It requires that a man shall have lived with the educated natives as intimate friends associate together in Europe that he should be able to understand it. There is too little of such intercourse in India. In fact, it is only those officers who have enjoyed the opportunity of a long residence at a native court to whom the chance of such intercourse is available.

Bad faith, and the attempt to force western ideas on an eastern people

In the first edition of this volume I expressed as my own an opinion in entire conformity with the general views I have just quoted as the views of the natives of India as to the origin of the great outbreak. I wrote – and I may say that time, and a subsequent visit to India, have confirmed my view – “The real cause of the mutiny may be expressed in a condensed form in two words – bad faith. It was bad faith to our Sipahis which made their minds prone to suspicion; it was our policy of annexation, of refusing to Hindu chiefs the permission to adopt, with them, a necessary religious rite; of suddenly bringing a whole people under the operation of complex

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rules to which they were unaccustomed, as in Oudh, in the Sagar and Narbada territory, and in Bundelkhand, and our breaches of customs more sacred to the natives than laws, which roused the large landowners and the rural population against the British rule.” This was my opinion then, and it is, if possible, more strongly my opinion now. I shall proceed to support it by examples.

Bad faith towards the Sipahis

The bad faith towards the Sipahis goes back so far as the period immediately succeeding the first Afghan war. In that war the Sipahis had behaved splendidly; they had fought well, they had suffered privations without a murmur, they had borne with cheerfulness absence from their country and their families, in a cause which was only theirs because it was the cause of their foreign masters. I recollect well meeting in 1844 at Allahabad a political officer whose conduct during his mission at Herat can never be mentioned without admiration – the late D’Arcy Todd.

their devotion when properly managed

Speaking to me of the difficulties of his position at Herat, D’Arcy Todd stated that but for the zeal, the energy, and the fidelity of the few Sipahis who were with him he could not have stayed at Herat; he added, “When properly treated the Bengal Sipahi will go anywhere and do anything.” Well, these men returned from Afghanistan. Immediately afterwards we annexed Sindh.

Breach of faith towards them in the double batta question

The Bengal Sipahis were sent to garrison a country then notoriously unhealthy. How were they treated? The time-honoured rule which provided that they should receive a fixed extra food allowance on proceeding to certain localities was rescinded, in one instance after the men had reached one of the indicated localities, in another instance when the regiment was in full march to it. Is it to be wondered at that the men grumbled and then actually refused to march? They committed no violence. They simply said, “You are guilty of bad faith; we contracted to enter your service and to perform all the duties entrusted to its on certain conditions, of which the payment to us of food allowance under certain circumstances was one. We have fulfilled our share of the contract, and now you refuse to fulfil your share. We decline to work until you fulfil it.” In equity the Sipahis were right; but the Government, instead of soothing them,

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acted in a high-handed manner, disbanded one regiment and severely punished the men of another.

Bad effect produced on the Indian army.

This conduct produced a very bad effect throughout the Indian army. It was felt in every regiment that the word of the Government could no longer be depended upon. Nevertheless, no open indignation was manifested. The Satlaj campaign ensued, and again the Sipahis fought well. The annexation of the Punjab followed. Then succeeded a long period of quiescence – a period during which seeds, sown some time before, took root, sprang up, and blossomed into regulations fraught with danger to the discipline of the Indian army.

Gradual progress of the weakening the power of commanding officers

The natives of India serve a master well when once he has shown himself capable of wielding authority. But should that authority slacken, or, worse still, should they find out that the Government they serve has placed at their disposal the means not only of shaking but even of upsetting it, then the nominal master wielding it ceases to be their real master; the substance of his power vanishes; the shadow only remains. The occurrences in the Indian army during the several years immediately preceding 1857 completely illustrate this assertion. In former days, in the time of Lake, in the time of Hastings, and even later, the commanding officer of a native regiment was supreme in all matters of discipline. Responsible immediately to his divisional commander, he could promote, he could reduce, he could punish. But, as time passed on, men were appointed to the general staff of the Indian army whose visions became clouded and whose brains became turned by the air of the new regions to which they hall been transferred. Forgetting their own regimental experience, not caring to know that the routine system which suits a British regiment formed of men taught to obey the law, no matter by whom administered, is not applicable to a regiment composed of Asiatics bred to obey the man in whose hands they see authority centred and him only, those men begun, step by step, to introduce the British system into the native army. It would take too long to tell how gradually the real power of the commanding officer was undermined; how the Sipahi was, by degrees, taught to look upon him, not as a superior who must be obeyed, but as a very fallible mortal, peculiarly liable to err, and against whose lightest exercise of authority he had the right to appeal to the one central power, the Commander-in-Chief.

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Disastrous result of this policy

Suffice it to say that this process of sapping the powers of the commanding officer was carried to so great an extent that immediately prior to the mutiny the Sipahis had lost all respect for the authority he only nominally wielded. Nor had the Sipahi imbibed for the Commander-in-Chief the feeling which he had ceased to entertain towards his commanding officer.

It undermines the discipline of the army

To him the Commander-in-Chief was but a name; he was a lay figure, living in the clouds of the Himalayas, rarely, often never, seen, but whose interposition enabled him to defy his own colonel and to set discipline at. nought! The extent to which this interposition was exercised before the mutiny was dangerous in the extreme. It succeeded before 1857 in weakening the influence of all the regimental officers, and in undermining the discipline of the army.

The progress of demoralisation between 1843 and 1852

I have said that the refusal of the Government of India in 1843 to act up to their contract with regard to the Sipahis sent to occupy Sindh had been felt throughout the Indian army. Immediately subsequent to that event, the process of undermining the powers of commanding officers had made swift progress. When, then, in 1852, the Government most unadvisedly again attempted another breach of contract, the Sipahis, demoralised by the process I have alluded to, were even more inclined to resent it.

A proportion of the regiments of the Bengal army alone enlisted for service across the sea

The breach of contract referred to occurred in this manner. With the exception of six or seven regiments the Sipahis of the Bengal army were enlisted for service in India only; they were never to be required to cross the sea. But With the view of supplying the necessities of the state in Arakan and the Tenasserim provinces, six or seven regiments had been specially raised for general service, and these regiments were invariably despatched thither by sea whenever their services were there required. Lord Dalhousie, however, who had ridden roughshod over so many native customs, considered that he might set aside this one also. Accordingly, when, during the Burmese war, he wanted to send an additional regiment to Burmah, instead of despatching a general service regiment or of inviting a regiment to volunteer, he ordered a regiment stationed at Barrackpur to proceed

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thither.

Lord Dalhousie attempts to break contract with the Sipahis

The men of the regiment refused to go. “You ask us,” they said, “to embark upon a service for which we have not enlisted, and which many of us regard as imperilling our caste. We will not do it.” Lord Dalhousie was forced to submit. He was very angry, but there was no help for it.

The result most disastrous to discipline

But the result on the minds of the Sipahis was most disastrous. For the first time in the history of India the orders of the Governor-General had been successfully resisted. It was little to the purpose to argue that the Governor-General had exceeded his powers: the blow to the discipline of the native army was not the less deadly.

The annexation of Oudh

The minds of the Sipahis were under the influence of this blow, and by the insane action of the head-quarter staff they were becoming more and more released from the bands of discipline towards their own officers, when the annexation of Oudh took place. How this affected them I shall state as briefly as possible.

Reason why service in the Company’s army was popular with the men of Oudh, when Oudh had her own king

A very large proportion of the army of the Bengal Presidency, and a smaller proportion of the army of the Bombay Presidency , were recruited from the kingdom of Oudh. It is scarcely too much to affirm that there was not a single agricultural family in that country which was not represented by at least one of its members in the Indian army. Service in that army, in fact, offered no inconsiderable advantages to the subjects of the king of Omni. It made them clients, and favoured clients, of the paramount power. Every Sipahi was, so to speak, represented at the court of Lakhnao by the British Resident. His commanding officer was authorised to frank any petition he might present addressed to the Resident, and the fact that the Resident had received such petition ensured substantial justice to the claims of the petitioner at the hands of the court of Lakhnao. Every one familiar with the workings of a native court will at once recognise the value at which service in the Indian army was rated by the natives of Oudh. By accepting such service they obtained an all-powerful advocate to plead their cause whenever their property might be threatened, or their civil rights endangered.

The Nawabs and Kings of Oudh had from the time of Warren Hastings shown a loyalty to the British Government not to be

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Persistent loyalty to the paramount power of the Nawabs and Kings of Oudh

surpassed. During the Afghan disasters, the Gwaliar campaign, the battles on the Satlaj and in the Panjab, Oudh had been the milch-cow of the paramount power. She had lent that power money, she had given her her best sons as soldiers, she had done all that she could do to maintain unimpaired the relations between the prince independent only in his own country and the paramount overlord.

The plea of misgovernment one not to be sustained

“But,” exclaimed the advocates for annexation, “she has misgoverned.” Misgovernment is a relative term201. There can be no question but that in the English sense of the term there had been no good government in Oudh. But a kind of administrative system had, nevertheless, prevailed which induced the Sipahis, after the term of their service under the British flag had expired, to settle in their native country.

as a justification for annexation.

More than that, after the natives of Oudh had had one year’s experience of British government as administered by Mr. Coverley Jackson and Mr. Martin Gubbins, they, one and all, evinced a strong preference for the native government which had been superseded.

Disastrous effect produced on the minds of the Sipahis by that annexation

It is necessary to take all these circumstances into consideration when one analyses the effect which the annexation of Oudh produced upon the Sipahis of the Bengal army. In my belief that annexation gave them the greatest shock they had felt since occurrences, already adverted to, of 1843-4. It was the last and the most fatal blow to their belief in British honesty. That belief had been greatly shaken by the proceedings of Lord Dalhousie with respect to Karauli, the dominions of the Bhonsla, and Jhansi. The annexation of Oudh pressed them still more closely. It made them ready to become the tools of any adventurer.

It was not only that they beheld in that annexation a lowering of their own position as men represented at their sovereign’s court by a British Resident, though that was a blow under

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They regarded it as another breach of faith

which the Indian army yet reels, for it accounts for the difficulty of procuring recruits, which subsequently embarrassed the Government. They beheld in that act, and in the manner in which it was carried out, a deliberate infringement of promises they had ever looked upon as sacred – a repayment for the good services of nearly a century, such as even the most abandoned amongst their own princes would have hesitated to enforce.

Fury of the Sipahis stationed at Kanhpur when Outram crosses into Oudh to annex it

These are not statements made at random. I was myself an eye-witness to the effect produced upon the Sipahis by the order to annex Oudh. It devolved upon me as Commissariat Officer of the Kanhpur division, to supply carriage and provisions for the force which, under Outram, crossed the Ganges into Oudh at the end of 1855. Over my house and office, which were in the same compound, was a Sipahi guard – a hawaldar’s party. Contrary to custom and to departmental instructions, no written orders were given to me for the requisitions. The expedition was to be a secret, I was told, and I must obey verbal orders. But, in spite of this mystery, the destination of the force became known before it set out to every Sipahi in the cantonment – to every native in the town. The effect was alarming. The natives had no doubt whatever as to the real meaning of the demonstration. For the first time in the memory of man an English regiment was about to march on Lakhnao, and an English regiment would march on Lakhnao with but one object. The agitation of the Sipahis of my guard was most marked. It was with the greatest difficulty that I was able to control them.

The authorities are warned

Had they had any warning of the intended movement they would, I am confident, have broken out then and there. The subordinates of the Commissariat Department, themselves greatly moved, assured me that a similar feeling was manifesting itself in every regiment in the place.

but in vain

I made no secret of these manifestations. I reported them in the proper quarter. I communicated them even to one of the officials, a man of remarkable gifts, who had accepted a high post in Oudh, but my warnings found no more credence than did the warnings of Cassandra. They were remembered afterwards.

The annexation of Oudh, keeping in view the way in which it was carried out, was, in very deed, the act which

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The annexation of Oudh removes the last remnant of confidence in the British

broke the trust of the Sipahis in their English masters. The perpetration of that deed prepared their minds to receive and to believe any matter, however absurd in itself, which might betoken English perfidy. How their minds were played upon I shall show presently. Meanwhile, it is necessary that I should indicate how it was that the landowners and agricultural classes of India became impressed with the “bad faith” of their rulers.

The internal annexation policy inaugurated by Lord Dalhousie was, in many instances, based upon his refusal to recognise a right which the Hindus hold as an essential part of their religion – the right to adopt an heir on the failure of children lawfully begotten. In the early part of this volume I have spoken of the disaffection, the terror, the hatred of the English which this policy produced in the southern Maratha country.

The mode in which the princes, chiefs and landowners of India lost faith in the British

Carrying out this principle, Lord Dalhousie had annexed the territory of the Bhonslas; he had annexed the state of Jhansi, he had endeavoured to annex the state of Karauli, and had only been prevented by the interference of the Home Government on a threatened motion in the House of Commons. Still he continued to hold the principle in terrorem over the heads of the princes and chiefs of India, and the fact that the policy of “grab all” was the policy, the paramount power, and might, on the occurrence of death without natural heirs, be applied to any coveted territory, produced, it is not too much to say, “a terror “ in the minds of the Hindu princes throughout India.

The principle of granting a life annuity in exchange for a kingdom

But in another and a far more guiltless manner the Government had sown the seeds of hatred in the minds of the representatives of great families whose ancestors they had deprived of their dominions. Two instances of the action of this policy will occur at once to the reader – Nana Sahib and the Rao of Kirwi. Nana Sahib was indubitably the lawful representative, according to Hindu law, of the last of the Peshwas. When, in June, 1818, Baji Rao surrendered to Sir John Malcolm, the Court of Directors considered that an annuity of eighty thousand pounds was more than an adequate compensation for the loss of an empire. Baji Rao lived in the enjoyment of this pension nearly thirty-five years. When he died, in January 1853, Lord

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Dalhousie refused either to recognise his adopted son or to continue the pension.

Totally repugnant to Hindu ideas

According to European ideas this ruling was perfectly just. It strictly carried out the agreement as understood by Sir John Malcolm in 1818. But neither Baji Rao nor his retainers had so understood it. Such a settlement would have been so repugnant to the ideas and customs of the races of Hindustan, that they could not be expected to understand it. As the son of Baji Rao would have succeeded that prince as Peshwa had he remained Peshwa, so would he succeed naturally to all the rights for which Baji Rao had exchanged the dignity of Peshwa. With them it was a point of honour to recognise in the son, whether begotten or adopted, the successor to the titles and estates of his father.

That principle made Nana Sahib a conspirator.

Whether the English recognised him or not, Nana Sahib was still Peshwa in the eyes of every true Maratha202. The refusal to recognise him and the stoppage of the pension forced the heir of the Peshwa to conspire. It can easily be conceived how readily such a man, occupying a fortified palace close to the Oudh frontier, would hail and encourage the discontent which the nefarious annexation of Oudh, as the natives considered it, could not fail to produce.

The story of the Rao of Kirwi203, whilst reflecting still more disadvantageously on the conduct of the British Government, is similar in character and in application.

We see, then, how many of the princes and the chiefs of

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The western principle pushed to its logical extreme alienates an eastern race

India in possession, and all the chiefs not in possession, were predisposed to view with at least indifference any troubles which might assail their British overlord. Incidents like that of the Rajah of Dilheri204, of Kunwar Singh of Jagdispur, driven into revolt by the action of a revenue system which he did not understand, came at uncertain intervals to add to the general mistrust. Such incidents affected alike chieftain and retainer, noble and peasant, for, in almost every part of the country, the retainers considered their interests as bound up with those of the former.

The annexation of Oudh made doubly odious

It was when the minds of all were thus distrustful that the annexation of Oudh – of Oudh which had ever been faithful, always true and loyal – came to startle them still more. It is just within the bounds of possibility that, if the system introduced by the English into Oudh had been administered in a conciliatory manner, the result might have been similar to that which was produced in a few years in the central provinces.

by the principle of forcing Western notions on an Eastern people

But the Englishmen to whom the administration of the newly-annexed province was intrusted were men with fixed ideas, which they rode to death; the slaves of a system which had sown disaffection all over the North-Western provinces and in Bundelkhand, and which they carried out without regard to the feelings and previous habits of those with whose lands and property they were dealing. In less than twelve months the result was disaffection and dismay; the new settlement made every man in Oudh an enemy to British rule.

At the close of 1856 all classes are ready for the machinations of conspirators

With Oudh thus disaffected, the chiefs and the territorial interest doubting and trembling, with the Sipahis alienated and mistrustful, there needed but one other element to produce insurrection. The country, the army, the newly-annexed province were alike ready for the machinations of conspirators.

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The authors of the mutiny

The conspirators, too, were ready. Who all those conspirators were may never certainly he known. Most of them died and made no sign. It is, however, a fact beyond question that the Maulavi of Faizabad – the man who was killed at Powain – was one of them.

The Maulavi of Oudh

I have already given a sketch of the previous career of this remarkable man205. I have shown how, after the annexation of Oudh, he travelled over the north-western provinces on a mission which was a mystery to the Europeans, how he was suspected even then of conspiring. Abundant proofs were subsequently obtained that a conspiracy had been formed by some influential people in Oudh in the interval between the annexation and the outbreak of the mutiny. Of this conspiracy the Maulavi was undoubtedly a leader. It had its ramifications all over India – certainly at Agra, where the Maulavi stayed some, time – and almost certainly at Dehli, at Mirath, at Patna, and at Calcutta where the ex-King of Oudh and a large following were residing.

The one thing wanting to the success of the conspiracy

For some time there was one thing wanting to the conspirators – the means, the instrument – with which to kindle to action the great body of their countrymen. Especially were they at a loss how to devise a scheme by which the minds of the Sipahis serving throughout the Bengal Presidency should be simultaneously affected.

is found in the greased cartridge

They were in this perplexity when they heard of the new cartridge – a cartridge smeared with animal fat and which they were told was to be bitten.

When the cartridge is found

It was easy for them to make this discovery. Their spies were everywhere. The cartridges were openly manufactured at Damdamah. Eagerly looking out for a novelty to be introduced from Europe into the native army, they were the most likely men of all to detect the instrument they required in the greased cartridge.

the chapatis are circulated

They had no sooner found it than they realised that it corresponded exactly to their hopes. It was the weapon they wanted. Instantly the chapatis were distributed by thousands to the rural population, whilst means were employed to disseminate in every military station in Bengal suspicion regarding the cartridge.

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Natural effect on the minds of Hindu and Muhammadan Sipahis

To tell a body of Hindus, already suspicious of their foreign master, that they would be required to bite a cartridge smeared with the fat of their sacred animal, and to tell Muhammadans that they would be required to bite a cartridge smeared with the fat of an animal whose flesh was forbidden to them, was tantamount to tell them that their foreign master intended to make them break with their religion. Certainly that result was produced. When the new cartridges were issued, suspicion and calumny had done their work. The Sipahis even believed that cartridges made of paper had been feloniously tampered with; and, when they were issued to them, they broke into revolt.

The cartridge only the instrument

In this lesser sense, then, and in this only, did the cartridges produce the mutiny. They were the instruments used by conspirators; and those conspirators were successful in their use of the instruments only because, in the manner I have endeavoured to point out, the minds of the Sipahis and of certain sections of the population had been prepared to believe every act testifying to bad faith on the part of their foreign masters.

The exceptions proved the rule

I have said that the mistrust of the British faith had, towards the year 1857, become as great in the minds of the princes and chiefs and landowners of India as in the minds of the Sipahis. There were, however, a few exceptions, and, when the country rose, those exceptions saved us. I will briefly refer to the most prominent amongst them.

The provinces which rose against us

In four great provinces of our empire – in Oudh, in Rohilkhand, in Bundelkhand, and in the Sagar and Narbada territory – the great bulk of the people rose against British rule. In western Bihar, using that geographical expression as inclusive of the districts subordinate to the Commissioner of Patna; in many districts of the Allahabad division, of the Agra division, and in many parts of the Mirath division, the risings of the people and the Sipahis were almost simultaneous in point of time. Had the revolt been universal, had the chiefs, the people, and the Sipahis risen at one and the same moment, India could not have been held.

The loyalty of Sindhia

Fortunately for British interests, the great prince who occupied the most central position in India, and whose action, had he risen,

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would have been felt to the extremities of western India, was, throughout the crisis, loyal to his suzerain. Throughout the period between the 12th of May and the 1st of September, 1857, Sindhia held the fate of India in his hands.

His loyalty was not based upon affection for the British as a people

In another volume206 I have described very briefly how it was that, in an unexampled crisis in the fortunes’ of the people with whom his ancestors had contended for empire, Sindhia did remain loyal. I have shown that the loyalty did not proceed from affection towards the English. His minister and confidant, Dinkar Rao, had no love for our nation. Sindhia’s people were, almost to a man, against us. Yet Dinkar Rao used all his great influence in favour of a loyal policy, and his representations, backed by the solid arguments of the able representative of the British power at the court of Sindhia, Major Charters Macpherson, prevailed over national sentiment, the solicitations of other courtiers, and the boisterous demonstrations of the people. The importance of the result to English interests cannot he over-estimated.

Yet it saved us

Sindhia’s loyalty alone made possible Havelock’s march on, and the retention of, Kanhpur. It acted at the same time on the rebels like a wedge which pierces the centre of an army, dividing the wings, and preventing concentrated action. Nor, when, after the back of the rebellion had been broken, Sindhia’s army revolted against himself, was the effect much lessened. Sindhia’s great influence was still used for the English.

The loyalty really based on the fact that we had dealt faithfully and generously with him

In considering Sindhia’s loyalty in connection with the risings of others – of all, or almost all, the rajahs and talukdars, of Oudh, of the chiefs in Bundelkhand, in the Sagar and Narbada territory, in the southern Maratha country, and in western Bihar – it is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that there had been a marked difference in the behaviour of the British Government towards Sindhia on the one side, and towards the rajahs and landowners of the countries mentioned on the other. Under circumstances of a peculiarly tempting character, Lord Ellenborough had behaved with the greatest generosity and forbearance towards Sindhia in 1844. The Government had kept faith with him ever since. The

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reader of this volume will see that towards the rajahs and landowners of the other provinces mentioned the British Government had shown neither generosity nor forbearance. In some instances they had not even kept faith. It is scarcely necessary to point the moral.

The remarkable instances in which the behaviour of the people of India corresponded with the faith we had kept with them

It is, indeed, a very remarkable fact, and one which the rulers of India at the present moment would do well to bear in mind, that in the several provinces and districts traversed by our troops in 1857-8-9, the behaviour of the people corresponded to the character of our rule. Thus, in the central provinces, to which the regulation system had never penetrated, the people were loyal and contented, and refused all aid to Tantia Topi. In the Sagar and Narbada territories, in Oudh and in the districts bordering on that province, in the Agra division – in all of which the British hand had been heavy, and the British acts opposed to the national sentiment – the people showed a spirit of opposition, a resolution to fight to the last, and in many cases a detestation of their masters, such as no one would before have credited. Cases similar to that of the Rajah of Dilheri, referred to in the earlier part207 of this volume, had sown far and wide the seed of disaffection and revolt.

The mutiny a result of an attempt

If these facts are, as I believe them to be, correct, we have not to go far to seek the conclusion. The mutiny of the army and the insurrection in the provinces I have named were the natural consequences of an attempt to govern a great Eastern empire according to purely Western ideas.

to govern an Eastern people according to pure Western ideas

The civilisation, over-refined though it might be, of thousands of years was ridiculed by the rougher race which, scorning sentiment, regarded utilitarianism as its foundation-stone. The governing members of that race failed to recognise the great truth upon which their forefathers had built their Indian empire, that the Western race can gain the confidence of the Eastern only when it scrupulously respects the long-cherished customs of the latter, and impresses upon it the conviction that its word is better than its bond. This is just the conviction which, during the thirty years immediately antecedent to 1856, the

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majority of the Hindus and Muhammadans of India had been gradually losing, and which in 1857 they had lost.

Lord Canning

If Lord Canning had had any idea in the early part of 1857 that the isolated outbreaks which then disturbed the general serenity were part of an organised plot, he would, I believe, have at once taken measures to meet the difficulty. Not that, at any time in 1857, he could have prevented a mutiny, but he could easily have made better arrangements to meet one. I am far, however, from imputing any blame to Lord Canning in this respect.

new to India

He had but recently arrived in India. His predecessor, when making over to him charge of the empire, had expressed his conviction that never had the country been in so satisfactory a condition. All the time the ground was undermined, the train was being laid, the miners were at work. But how was Lord Canning to know this?

inherits Lord councillors

He inherited Lord Dalhousie’s councillors. They were as satisfied, and as ignorant of the real state of the country, as was Lord Dalhousie. Lord Dalhousie had quitted India in a blaze of glory; and the new Governor-General, unused to the currents of Indian thought, could for some months only steer the vessel by the advice of the officers who had helped to bring to Lord Dalhousie a renown far-reaching and seemingly well deserved.

The councillors of Lord Canning

But, in fact, upon no men did the news of the mutiny descend with so startling a surprise as upon the councillors Lord Canning. They could not comprehend it. Weeks and weeks elapsed before they could bring themselves to believe that it was anything more than a fortuitous explosion at various points, each having no concert and no connection with the other. The Home Secretary’s assurances that the apprehensions expressed regarding its nature were “a passing and groundless panic,” that “there is every hope that in a few days tranquillity will be restored throughout the presidency,” testify to the ideas that filled the minds of these men.

Their utter ignorance of the India outside Calcutta

The admission at least is due to them that they were honest – they believed what they said. But those sayings betrayed a complete ignorance of the country and of the situation. This ignorance, this blindness to the fact that it was more even than a mutiny of the Bengal army, and not merely a series of isolated revolts, with which they had to cope, was

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illustrated in a thousand ways, but in none more strongly than in the refusal to disarm regiments which were known to be mutinous. The consequences of this refusal were most serious. In the case of the regiments at Danapur, the reader will have seen that it brought revolt into western Bihar, added enormously to the dangers of Havelock, and even imperilled Calcutta.

Lord Canning’s real greatness evident when he stood unshackled at Allahabad

How great Lord Canning really was, how small were his councillors, was shown when, having completely shaken off their influence, he stood alone and unshackled at Allahabad in the early part of 1858. A different man was he then from the Lord Canning of April and May 1857. His nature then displayed its real nobility. His grasp of affairs, at Calcutta apparently so small, excited at Allahabad the admiration of all who came in contact with him. He showed a truer insight into the military position than the Commander-in-Chief himself. It was entirely owing to Lord Canning’s insistence that the campaign in Rohilkhand followed close upon the capture of Lakhnao. Sir Colin Campbell would have postponed it. But Lord Canning was too convinced of the danger of allowing a province to continue to flaunt rebellion, unchecked, in the face of the Government, to permit the delay.

His military acumen

He insisted with all the determination of a man whose resolution, based on the logic of facts, was not to be shaken. It was Lord Canning at Allahabad who sent Lord Mark Kerr to Azamgarh; who gave his fullest support to Sir Hugh Rose, and to the generals engaged against Tantia Topi; and if, in one respect, to which I have adverted, his judgment was faulty, his companion in error was the Commander-in-Chief, and the error was a solitary one.

His legislation in regard to Oudh

Nor is lesser praise due to him for the measures inaugurated at Allahabad to heal the wounds caused – he must then have seen – in a great measure by the mistakes of his predecessor. His Oudh proclamation, despite of the apparently harsh terms which it promulgated, was intended as a message of mercy, and, in its application, was a message of mercy. It gave every landowner in Oudh a title better, safer, more valid, than the title he had lost. It insured mercy to all except to those who by their crimes had forfeited all right to it. Interpreted, as Lord Canning meant it to be interpreted, by one of the ablest administrators in

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India, it became the charter upon which the position now occupied by the people of Oudh has been built up and secured.

His reception of Lord Ellenborough’s strictures.

Never was the real greatness of Lord Canning’s character more completely displayed than when the galling strictures of Lord Ellenborough’s despatch were published to the world. At the moment the insult, the breach of etiquette, were lost sight of in the fear lest the condemnation of his policy proceeding from so high a quarter should afford encouragement to the rebels or weaken the attachment of the native tributaries. As soon as he ascertained that the despatch had not produced that result he was calm. He could not help seeing that it was designedly impertinent, that it was intended to provoke him to resign. Conscious of the rectitude of his motives and of the soundness of his views, he laughed at the pettiness of the display. In his calm and statesmanlike answer he sought neither revenge nor triumph. But both soon came to him. The news that Lord Ellenborough had been hoisted with his own petard, the receipt of Lord Derby’s almost imploring letter not to resign, followed the insulting missive with a rapidity almost startling.

His conduct towards his colleagues and subordinates

Towards the men who served under him, Lord Canning displayed generosity, kindness, and forbearance. He knew that in many departments he had been badly served, yet he would rather bear the burden himself than dismiss the incapable minister. But so low did he rate the abilities of the men about him, that when he had resolved to appoint Mr. Edmonstone, till then his Foreign Secretary, to be Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, he cast his eyes far from the men surrounding him to select a successor to that official. He had actually resolved to offer the post to Herbert Edwardes when the publication by that officer of a letter, violently polemical, caused him to reconsider his resolve. For the moment he was cast back upon the clique about him, but finally he made an admirable choice in Colonel Durand.

The lofty-minded English gentleman, the trained statesman

Judging Lord Canning’s conduct after his arrival at Allahabad, it is difficult to find a fault in it. He was then the lofty-minded English gentleman, the trained and skilful statesman. Every day made it more clear that the mistakes of the Calcutta period, mistakes which have been fully recorded in these

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volumes, were due to the inexperience of a generous nature guided by men whom he had been told to look upon as masters of the situation, but who were in fact hopelessly ignorant and incapable. That Lord Canning came to know this himself was evidenced by the generosity he displayed, after the mutiny had been quelled, to those who had ventured to express very boldly their disagreement with his policy of 1857.

Lord Elphinstone

But, if Lord Canning was to be admired from the time of his arrival at Allahabad, Lord Elphinstone deserves the fullest meed of praise that can be accorded to him from the very first. Lord Elphinstone possessed this advantage over Lord Canning – his previous experience in India had given him a thorough knowledge of the country and the people.

comprehended the full extent of the mutiny from the very outset

When the mutiny broke out at Mirath he saw it as it really was; he saw that it was no isolated outbreak, no local discontent, but part and parcel of an organised rebellion which had its main roots, indeed, in the North West Provinces, but the development of which, especially in the direction of Bombay, was certain, unless it could be promptly stopped. The Bombay Presidency, in fact, with an army partly recruited from Oudh, and composed mainly of a conglomeration of Maratha states, was in a peculiar degree susceptible. Lord Elphinstone understood the situation at once. He dealt with it in a manner possible only to a statesman of high and lofty courage, of clear intellect, and of far-seeing views. The idea of waiting for the mutiny within his own borders, if, indeed, it ever occurred to him, came only to be promptly rejected. To mass the greatest number of men on the decisive point of the scene of action – that Napoleonic motto became at once his guiding principle.

His policy of offensive defence

For that purpose he denuded his own Presidency, highly sensitive as it was, of European troops, and despatched them, as fast as he could force them to move, to the threatened points outside of it. He, too, like Lord Canning, had colleagues in his government, but here again his previous experience saved him from the mistakes which marred Lord Canning’s administration during the first seven months of the mutiny. Knowing his counsellors thoroughly, he listened to them with courtesy – but he acted on his own convictions. To the men who were the instruments of his policy he gave the most complete and generous confidence.

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The generous confidence he placed in his subordinates.

How large was his trust when he once gave it Mr. Forjett is a living evidence. Mr. Frere in Sindh, Mr. Seton-Karr and afterwards Colonel Le G. Jacob in the southern Maratha country, Mr. John Rose in Satarah, and Colonel Malcolm, are instances of a similar import. When, in spite of all his measures to keep the mutiny from Bombay by a policy of offensive defence, the poison crept in and infected the regiments of the regular army in the southern Maratha country, how vigorous, how decided is his policy!

His quick decision

We see here none of the hesitation, of the half-heartedness, the halting between two extremes, which enabled the mutinous regiments of Danapur to disturb all the plans of the Government and to imperil the safety of the empire. Promptly, without an hour’s delay, Lord Elphinstone sent for the fittest man at his disposal and told him to go to Kolhapur and at all costs quell the mutiny. Le Grand Jacob went and disarmed the rebellious Sipahis. How Lord Elphinstone was occasionally thwarted by men not immediately under his orders has been shown in the case of Woodburn. But his firmness was proof even against opposition of this description, and, after some vexatious delay, he carried out his policy.

His correspondence evidences his foresight

Only those who have enjoyed the privilege of reading his voluminous correspondence during 1857-58 can form an idea of the remarkable perspicacity which characterised Lord Elphinstone’s views on every point connected with the stirring events of those years. The strong and the weak points of a case, the true policy to be pursued, the proper time for putting it in action, when to withhold the blow, when to strike, the reasons for withholding or for striking, are laid down in clear and vigorous language in his letters. Reading them after the event, it seems marvellous how a man standing alone should have judged so clearly, so truly. Many of the military movements which tended to the pacification of the country had their first inspiration from Lord Elphinstone, and the smallest of the tardy tributes that can be paid him is this – that no man in India contributed so much us he contributed to check the mutiny at its outset; no man contributed more to dominate it after it had risen to its greatest height.

In the glory of the victory, amid the bestowal of well-merited rewards for military services, the great deserts of Lord Elphinstone received but small notice from the public. But it is a

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Lord Elphinstone is appointed by three successive Secretaries of State to succeed Lord Canning

remarkable fact that after the death of Sir Henry Lawrence he was nominated by three successive Secretaries of State – by Mr. Vernon Smith, by Lord Ellenborough, and by Lord Stanley – to be successor to Lord Canning in the event of a vacancy occurring in the office of Governor-General. It now becomes the duty of the historian to place him on the lofty pedestal to which his great services and his pure and noble character entitle him.

Lord Harris

The southern Presidency was never invaded by the mutinous spirit. But not the less is a large share of credit due to its governor, Lord Harris. The responsibility which weighed upon this nobleman was very great indeed. The immunity of Madras depended upon the loyalty of the Nizam, and, at the outset, the Nizam had much to apprehend from his own people. It was in the height of the crisis that Lord Harris denuded his own Presidency to send troops to Haidarabad, and it cannot be doubted but that their opportune arrival tended greatly to the pacification of the Nizam’s dominions.

displays foresight, energy and devotion

The formation of the Kamthi column, of Whitlock’s force, of the brigade which fought under Carthew at Kanhpur, the despatch to Bengal of the regiments which kept open the grand trunk road in western Bihar and which afterwards co-operated against Kunwar Singh, of the troops who rendered good service in Chutia Nagpur, testify to the energy, the foresight, the devotion of the Governor of Madras. He used all the resources of his Presidency to crush outside the rebellion which never penetrated within his own borders.

The deserts of Englishmen in the crisis of 1857-8-9

Of other actors in the rise, progress, and suppression of the rebellion I have written in the body of this history, not always, perhaps, in as full detail as their splendid services demanded, but, I would fain hope, in full proportion to the scope and requirements of the work intrusted to me. It may be that some incidents have escaped me. I shall regret it much should such prove to be so, for my chief anxiety has been to render full justice to every man. This, at least, I may say, that, however ineffectively the History of the suppression of the Indian Mutiny may have been told, the character of our countrymen must be seen to emerge from the terrible ordeal of 1857–58 in a form that would gratify the most exacting people. We are, fortunately, as a nation,

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accustomed to success in the field, but on no occasion in our history has the nerve and fibre of our troops, the fortitude and manliness of our countrymen of all ranks, been more conspicuous – often in the face of death itself, and under circumstances which would have seemed to justify despair. But with life they never despaired. They endured all that had to be endured, with a patience and cheerfulness never to be surpassed, and sought victory when it was possible with a determination before which the strongest opposition had to yield. And in all this they were sustained and animated by our countrywomen, who, in positions and under trials to which few gently-nurtured women have been subjected, showed all the noblest and most lovable aspects of woman’s character. The History of the Indian Mutiny is, in fact, a record of the display of all the qualities for which Englishmen have been famous – of the qualities which have enabled the inhabitants of a small island in the Atlantic to accumulate the noblest and largest empire in the world, and which, so long as they remain unimpaired in their descendants, will enable them still to maintain it.

Footnotes

201. We ask the attention of the reader to the recent exposure of bribery and corruption by officials appointed by Government made in the year 1888-9 by the Crawford Commission. If this had occurred under a native administration, it would have been called “misgovernment.” By what euphonious term Lord Reay characterises it I have not yet heard.

202. I recollect well, when I was at Banaras in 1851-52, the Governor-General’s agent, Major Stewart, a man of great culture and information, told me that there was living then, in extreme poverty, in the Mirzapur jungles, near Banaras, a man recognised by the natives as the lineal descendant of Cheit Singh, Rajah of Banaras, expelled by Warren Hastings in 1781, and that to that day the natives salaamed to him and treated him with the respect due to the ruler of Banaras.

203. Vide page 138-42. and Appendix A. I may be permitted to note here another instance in which the British Government has applied the same unjust principle. When in 1848-49 a war broke out with the Sikhs, the King of Lahor was a minor, under the guardianship of the British Government, and in no respects responsible for the occurrences which led to the war. Yet, although his irresponsibility was officially admitted, he, the ward of the British Government, a guiltless child, was treated as though he was in all respects the guilty party. The British annexed his kingdom and gave him in exchange some kind of provision, which up to this day has never been clearly defined. The matter has only to be seriously examined for the injustice to become apparent. Most of the nobles of the Panjab, who secretly fomented the wars of 1845 and 1848, were secured in the possession of their estates, and their position, under English rule, has become trebly secure. But Maharajah Dhulip Singh, who was, I repeat, a mere child, innocent of intrigue, and the ward of the British Government, was granted in exchange for his kingdom and its princely revenues, and for his large private estates, a life annuity only. Can we wonder that treatment of this sort, when fully realised by him, should upset the equilibrium of his mind to the extent recently witnessed by the world?

204. Page 63-4.

205. Vol. IV page 379.

206. Vol. III. pp. 100-1.

207. Page 63.

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