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Chapter 23

Fort of Mithauli and its infamous Chief – Heroic death of Captain P. Orr – Ordered to Nawabganj-Burabunkee – The enemy frightened – A fortunate General terrifies Beni Madhu from his Fort – Beni Madhu puzzled – Major Gall’s attempt to escape with a despatch – Beni Madhu’s defeat and invisible flight – No more fighting – Wonderful escape of Prince Firuzshah – Lord Clyde and the end of the War – Adieu!

While Sir George Barker and Brigadier Hale were pacifying the south-west districts, Brigadier Troup was slowly progressing in the north-west with one of the best brigades in the field, containing the 60th Rifles, come down from Delhi covered with honour; and the 93rd Highlanders, hardened by its gallant services from Lucknow to Bareli. After frightening away a large force of rebels sent out to destroy them, the brigade leisurely advanced on the Fort of Mithauli, took a distant look at it, bombarded the place from afar, and occupied the defences as soon as the Raja had gone off with his followers.,

The name of Lone Singh is doubtless familiar to the public as the chief who reluctantly sheltered in the hot wilds of his estate the English fugitives from the massacres of Sitapur and Muhamdi, starved and degraded the sufferers, and then surrendered them to the rebel government, at Lucknow, to be murdered.

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The captives were dragged to the presence of the fanatic Ahmad-ullah from comfortable rooms in the Palace. Captain Patrick Orr, (an amiable and intelligent officer well known in Oudh,) was among the prisoners, and the Maulavi promised him his life if he would disclose the name of the person who made their captivity so pleasant. “I cannot tell!” was the prompt reply. “But you shall!” angrily exclaimed the monster, as he broke the foot of the Englishman by a pistol-shot. A look of defiance was shot back, and immediately the captives were savagely despatched without a murmur, for they were prepared for a fate every day threatened since their surrender by the Raja of Mithauli: who has, himself, recently pined away and died in captivity.

Lord Clyde stayed at Allahabad till the issue of the Queen’s proclamation, when he made a long ride with his staff across to the force destined to subdue the south-eastern districts. A powerful body of rebels and mutineers were assembled under the chief of Amethi, who stayed behind the walls of his very formidable fort; and by the notorious Beni Madhu, who called his followers around him with the avowed intention of resisting to the utmost, and of dying in the cause of the King to whom he had sworn allegiance, if unsuccessful. The Commander-in-Chief would not hurry, in order that the proclamation might have time to reach and be understood by the rebels, to whom it offered a free pardon, excepting murderers and the vilest leaders. The Raja of Amethi, after saving his honour by shooting at the advance guard, concealed his best guns, let all his armed followers escape through the jungle, and then surrendered on the most favourable terms of the proclamation. The honest frankness of the British

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Chief subserved the artifice of the native Baron, who, however, was somewhat repentant of his success when the wrathful voice of Lord Clyde thundered in his ears. Sir Hope Grant could not overtake the fugitives from the fort, and the troops afterwards advanced, in separate columns, to engage Beni Madhu in the fort of Shankarpur.

On my return to Lucknow from Ruiya I was installed in the office of Civil Judge, to be near my wife during her illness. The war had stifled all disputes pending at the first outbreak of the mutiny, and every vestige of them, in the form of voluminous records, were destroyed when we took shelter in the Residency. The commercial business of the city was commencing to recover from the effects of the two sieges, and the litigious spirit of the people from the terrible pressure of the times, when this court was re-established on a system entirely different from the dilatory and expensive one in use before the mutiny.

On the 8th of November I entered upon my new duties, but five days later the exigencies of the service rendered a change of civil officers at Lucknow necessary, and I was ordered to join Brigadier Purnell’s brigade at Nawabganj on the road to Faizabad. The enemy had been driven from this town in June, and a force stationed there, and twenty-five miles further on at Daryabad, to preserve the communication of Sir Hope Grant when he moved on to Faizabad. Both columns were to act on the defensive, and only attack the enemy when they ventured too close. The 1st Bengal Fusiliers, under Brigadier Sir John Seaton, and the levy of the Raja of Kupoortulla, on two occasions distinguished themselves by making long marches under a scorching sun, and

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driving the enemy, with great slaughter, into the river Gogra. But the brigade at Nawabganj did nothing of that sort, and the rebels, therefore, encamped within seven miles in an immense wilderness of low brushwood, and destroyed a police station imprudently pushed out too far. The troops were in excellent health, but dispirited at their inactivity, which had caused them to be spoken of as the dullest force in Oudh; and they were anxiously looking for their share of the grand winter campaign begun across the Gumti, from which the report of guns was occasionally wafted to increase their ardour. My arrival in the camp was supposed to portend active proceedings. I was assailed with numerous questions, and my inability to satisfy the curious was attributed to political reticence. I believe there was some hope among the civilians in Lucknow that my impetuosity would commit Brigadier Purnell to a fight for the wilderness; but he was too cautious an officer to be led beyond his instructions, and it was to no purpose that I galloped about, like Puss in great boots, armed with a long sabre.

The day after my arrival a strong detachment, under the command of the Hon. Major Burke, of the 88th Foot, went out to Buttai, a large village which the enemy occupied at night and quitted in the morning; and, on our advancing, to the high ground beyond it, drums and bugles sounded in the jungle, and retreating cavalry vanished behind the foliage of the trees. Major Burke consented to take his troops further on, and, as we halted on the plain, rebels and mutineers – foot and horse – advanced to the edge of the forest, and screamed defiance at us. About two hundred British infantry, and a hundred and fifty cavalry, stood a quarter of a

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mile off, quietly gazing at some twelve thousand opponents! The jungle swarmed with armed men, and two little guns opened on us with no effect, and two. thousand irregular cavalry kicked up a great dust as they galloped to the front only to add to the picturesque effect of the groups flinging the jungle. While the troops halted and joked at the commotion they had created, I ventured to ride within musket range towards the native cavalry, hoping to draw some of them after nee. I shook my fist at the fellows, and tried to provoke them out; but only the infantry left their cover, and a few discharges from Major Burke’s two nine-pounder guns soon drove them back.

The 2nd Dragoon Guards would have been glad of an opportunity of crossing swords with the horsemen in the jungle, had they shown a disposition to engage them a second time. When the enemy first began to occupy the jungle, cavalry patrols went out daily, and, on one of those occasions, Captain Powell pursued some matchlock-men into a village; and, being unable to dislodge them, set fire to the houses. Under cover of the jungle the 12th regiment of irregular cavalry surprised the Bays, who retreated at full speed till a favourable distance from the jungle was reached, when the gallant Powell turned his squadron sharply round, dashed into the midst of them, and inflicted such havoc, that the survivors lost no time in getting away. With this mishap fresh in their memories it was not surprising that the 12th and 15th Irregular Horse did not respond to my advances. I rejoined our bold little detachment as they marched back to their encampment after frightening the poor wretches in the wilderness, who were doubtless glad to see them depart. Their guns fired long after we were out of sight.

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Lord Clyde was a very fortunate General, for he despatched all his foes without fighting them. His renown was enough to overthrow the redoubtable Beni Madhu, and, when his Lordship reached the fort of Shankarpur, it was empty. It was no bad thing to have terrified two great chiefs out of the strongest forts in Oudh, albeit that His Excellency’s ravenous army thought it a shame that the rebels were let do such sensible things. Beni Madhu was puzzled where to go, owing to the admirable arrangements of the Commissioner-in-chief leaving him few chances of escaping. The road from Lucknow to Kanhpur was well guarded on the west; on the east Sir Hope Grant, Brigadier Horsford, and other Commanders pressed him; on the north he would have to break through the troops at Nawabganj and Daryabad; and to the south he might be drowned in the river Ganges: and thither he went, impelled by necessity and not by any liking for the waters of the sacred river, which the rains had swollen to a great depth. Beni Madhu moved, however, so quickly, and our information came so lowly, that he very much bothered the Generals, who spread their splendid Brigades over the country in the hope of catching him somewhere. Many of his followers dispersed, and either went to their homes, or hid themselves in the great jungles running along the river Gumti and there waited for an opportunity of escaping across the Faizabad road to the army of the Begum beyond the river Gogra.

The tidings brought through our spies from that direction, and pressing messages from Lucknow, put our column at Nawabganj on the alert; and a portion was taken out at night, by Brigadier Purnell, to intercept Beni Madhu. In the morning a cavalry escort went

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out with Lieutenant Palmer and myself, and returned from the Gumti in the evening, with intelligence that the rebels in the jungle were being pressed by Brigadier Horsford, and were likely to cross us during the night. A party of native regular cavalry, with an elephant, said to be carrying the family of Beni Madhu, did pass towards morning, and, in attempting to pursue them, we separated from our artillery, and lost our way in the dark. We remained out two days under shelter of the trees, and then marched disappointed back to Nawabganj, the soldiers letting out their chagrin in extempore ditties something like this:–

Where have you been to all the day

Beni Madhu, Beni Madhu?

Trying to keep, sir, out of the way,

Very bad O! very bad O!

Why so shy of British pluck

Beni Madhu, Beni Madhu?

Because to beat you isn’t my luck,

That’s very sad O! very sad O!

The most contradictory accounts reached us of the doings of the Commander-in-Chief, and we went out of Nawabganj, almost every day, only to return in time to let the rebels go by. The rascals in the Buttai jungle once brought the Brigadier back by threatening to fall on our standing camp, which a spirited foe could easily have reached and burnt down in an hour.

Lord Clyde pressed on from Shankarpur to the town of Roy Bareilly, where Major Gall was killed at the commencement of the mutiny in attempting to escape to Allahabad, in disguise, with a despatch for the Governor-General of India from Sir Henry Lawrence. He imprudently halted with his small cavalry escort at an inn, and while refreshing himself, he was discovered, and, deserted by his native comrades; he is said to have

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shot himself to escape from the savage wretches who attacked him. Brigadier Evelegh watched Beni Madhu while Lord Clyde pushed on by forced marches towards Dhoondia Bhera, where the distressed chief stopped, with the Ganges rolling fiercely behind him, and a disheartened force that had dwindled down from twenty-five to twelve thousand men. The British army advanced to engage him in good spirits, and the high crops and woods were soon enveloped in smoke, as Lord Clyde led his troops forward to the centre, and Evelegh to the right flank of the rebels. The terrified creatures gave way and followed the course of the river with our cavalry and artillery, trying to overtake them. Some were killed and a few drowned, but Beni Madhu got away with his treasure to the north of the Gogra, leaving almost the whole of the country south, or more than half of the province to be peaceably settled by the Civil officers.

Lord Clyde next concentrated his troops at Lucknow, and Sir Hope Grant made his arrangements at Faizabad for crossing over the Gogra to the Begum. I was suddenly called into Lucknow to go with Brigadier Evelegh to reduce the Chief of Mohan, who still remained in a fort nineteen miles north of Lucknow. But this arrangement was altered, and I was directed to proceed with Mr. William Forbes, Commissioner, seventy miles from Lucknow to Sitapur, from which the enemy had just been expelled by Brigadier Troup. I was now to return the sword to its scabbard; to discharge my revolver; and to draw forth from the desk the quill that had lain dry for nearly eighteen months. I did not like the change while the din of war was yet in my ears, and the gay scarlet-coated troops not gone

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from my sight; and I pined for a chance of escaping the drudgery of an office till peace and quietness returned to the province. My superiors, however, thought I had had enough of the danger and excitement of war, and they took the first opportunity of placing me where my civil experience would be useful.

The road to Sitapur was not open, and we therefore proceeded to the camp of Brigadier Evelegh, which was on the road to Sitapur. The chief of Mohan wounded seventeen of the 5th Fusiliers, and escaped through the jungle to a ferry on the Gogra, and Engineers were busy destroying his wretched little fort when we reached the camp and threw ourselves on the hospitality of the officers of the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, who needed no pressing to be kind to way-worn travellers. Two days after, Mr. Forbes, Captain Thompson, and myself, rode alone, about twelve miles across country, to ascertain whether the road to Sitapur was safe, and, fortunately for us, we turned back within a few miles of the town of Baree, through which Prince Firuzshah was then passing in full flight towards central India. The movements of Brigadiers Troup and Barker had driven this Delhi prince to the Gogra, and while they were rejoicing at their success, Firuzshah suddenly broke through them with fifteen hundred cavalry, and executed the boldest feat of the war. In the face of three British columns he marched over a hundred miles through Oudh, crossed two rivers, and was only overtaken at the Jumna, eighty miles further on, by the most extraordinary exertions, and there he only lost his women and baggage.

Lord Clyde crossed the Gogra at Faizabad, and skilfully drove the enemy into the inhospitable forests

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at the foot of the Himalaya mountains, where they vainly resisted for a time. Ultimately, many threw away their arms and retired to their homes, some surrendered, and the remainder retreated to the hills with the odious Nana of Bithur, Beni Madhu, and other leaders; where they were let stay till cold and starvation diminished their ardour, when Jang Bahadur easily vanquished the hopeless wretches.

And thus ended the most remarkable storm that England has ever encountered within her foreign possessions. Although utterly unprepared and completely surprised, her gallant sons have issued victorious from a most unequal contest. Whether engaged singly or together they maintained the glory of England; and they have fortunately preserved a magnificent Empire to a nation best able and most willing to recover it from the degradation of former misrule. It may be a happy event for the future welfare of India. If its Governors will shut their ears to the earnest warnings of the “oldest inhabitant,” and will lay strong hold of the present opportunity, good fruit will spring from the soil moistened by the blood of the victims of the war.

I left India in May, 1859, and, by the time this little book is in the hands of the reader, I shall probably be on my way back, reluctantly to resume my duty under a Government that thinks me undeserving of honour, and to labour hard in a climate from which I cannot hope to escape again to Europe. For the civilities received in England and Ireland, I return most hearty thanks. To those persons who have honoured me with their friendship, I can only say that the remembrance of their sympathy is all I have to take back to solace me in the sunny land of the East.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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