THE INDIAN MUTINY

In the early part of 1857 I was stationed at Cork Harbour in command of a few men on Spike Island, a period of tranquillity after all the anxieties of the great Crimean war. The tranquillity, however, was not destined to last very long. One day towards the end of May I crossed the harbour to call on a gentleman in the neighbourhood who had just returned from Cork, and on my asking if there was any news, he said that a remarkable telegram had been received from India that a native regiment at Meerut had killed its English officers and was marching on Delhi. That was the first news of the great Mutiny. It also stated that the natives in parts of India were passing chew-patties from village to village. What was a chew-patty? Nobody could tell us. It turned out to be a sort of pancake; but why the natives should specially pass round pancakes, and presumably eat them, as a signal of rebellion no one could explain. Week after week the news became more serious, and troops of all arms were sent off in large numbers round the Cape. Towards the end of July, being in London, I received information that the Duke of Cambridge had appointed me Assistant Adjutant-General of the batteries of Royal Artillery, then on their voyage; and about the middle of August I left vi Egypt. There was, of course, no Suez canal in those days, and the railway from Alexandria only went as far as Cairo.

Generals Dupuis and Windham, and many other officers, were of the party; and from Cairo we had to cross the desert (about ninety miles) in uncomfortable carriages like bathing machines. There was no steamer at Suez, and we were detained a week at that dismal village of the desert, receiving occasional news that matters were becoming worse and worse in India. The only hotel was crowded with English officers, with little to eat and not a drop of water except what was brought in skins on camels from the Nile, nearly 100 miles away. At last, however, the 'Bentinck' arrived, carried us slowly down the Red Sea, with the thermometer at 96 degrees; in a week we were at Aden, thermometer still rising, and ten days afterwards at Galle. At Madras we heard of the fall of Delhi, and on October 5 our long voyage in the 'Bentinck' came to an end, and we steamed up the Hoogly to Calcutta. Several years afterwards, when inspecting the defences of the river with Sir William Mansfield, the Commander-in-Chief, we came across the wreck of the 'Bentinck' lying in a field at some distance from shore, and found that a short time previously she had been caught by a tidal wave called 'a great bore,' and was thrown up high and dry in the field. In the course of my career I have occasionally met a great bore, but never to be so completely stranded as was the case with the old steamer.

Matters were in a somewhat critical condition on our arrival at Calcutta, for although the fall of Delhi had given a severe blow to the mutineers, still we had no force of much strength to take the field; and the garrison of Lucknow under Outram and Havelock, with many women and children, were entirely surrounded, mere scraps of intelligence only arriving from them occasionally. I had several interviews with Sir Colin Campbell, who was very anxious to collect a sufficient force for the relief of Lucknow. During October troops of all arms arrived in quick succession after a three months' voyage round the Cape, but the great difficulty was transport. The railway extended to Raneegunge, 120 miles up country, but beyond that point our means only enabled us to push forward about 100 men a day, either in bullock carts or by march. Another difficulty was the provision of horses for the artillery. In fact, the whole of Central India from Delhi to Lucknow was practically in the possession of the mutineers, who fortunately had no generals to lead them, and were content for the most part to hover about and pillage as they could. Slowly, however, as our forces in a long thin line marched upwards towards Allahabad and Cawnpore, the tide began to turn, and on October 27 the Commander-in-Chief left Calcutta for the North.

The general conditions of the Mutiny campaign formed, indeed, a striking contrast to those of the Crimean war. In the latter case, the allied armies—English, French, Sardinian, and Turkish—amounting to nearly 200,000 men, had been virtually shut up in a corner, and compelled to fight a series of battles on the same ground, in order to gain possession of the Russian stronghold. In the present instance the circumstances were all the other way. A vast continent was in a great measure over-run, and its munitions and military stores were temporarily in the hands of a great mutinous army, more or less in sympathy with the inhabitants; whilst the English troops in small scattered detachments, often hundreds of miles apart, were fighting a succession of battles, with their communications precarious, and for the moment without the power of concentration.

To a stranger landing in India for the first time, knowing nothing of the language or the customs of the people, more especially in the middle of a revolution, there were many minor personal perplexities, especially about servants. Their very titles were embarrassing. Bearers, kitmagars, dhobies, durzees, bheesties, chuprassies, punkah-wallahs, hookahbadars, syces, and others. What were their duties? That was the point. Because in India, as we soon found, one man will only do his own mite of work, and scorns the idea of making himself generally useful. Any attempt to enlarge the sphere of their duties would lead, so we were told, to loss of caste. There were, of course, exceptional cases, such as that of the native servant who, on being asked by a new-comer as to his caste, replied, 'Same caste as master, drink brandy sahib.' Owing to the great influx of officers from home, all in a hurry to be off, servants were especially difficult to find. I was fortunate enough to get an old fellow whose name was Buktum Hassan to take care of me. He could not speak a word of English, and slept away his time on a mat outside my door. I believe he was a bearer, and a Hindoo, but he would not come near me at dinner time. Subsequently I procured another servant, who condescended to wait on me at dinner, but I was cautioned not on any account to eat ham in his presence. Curry and rice he did not object to. Two Sepoys, also, were appropriated for my service as orderlies. They were tall, dark, spare men, and all day waited patiently in the corridor in uniform, strictly buttoned up, with belts and boots. The first evening they said something, which being interpreted was that they wished to go home: they then proceeded to take off all their clothes, except a loin cloth, made them up into a bundle, and leaving them in a corner of my room, marched happily away.

The greater portion of the batteries from England having arrived, General Dupuis and his staff followed the Commander-in-Chief up country on November 12. The journey to Benares occupied five days, and from Raneegunge we were conveyed in dawk gharries about eighty miles a day, passing on the road every few hours detachments of troops of all arms, hurrying forward, some in bullock carts, some on the march. Portions of the road, especially near the river Soane, were unsafe from the vicinity of straggling parties of mutineers, and we had to be protected occasionally by an escort.

Remaining a few hours in a bungalow outside Benares, we found time to pay a hurried visit to this celebrated city. As an instance of the precarious nature of our long line of communications, it may be mentioned that although its inhabitants were in a restless, disaffected condition, the garrison only consisted of a weak company of infantry and two field guns. On the morning after our arrival I was informed that 'the elephant was at the door,' in readiness to take us into the city. It had no howdah, so we climbed up and sat on a large stuffed mattress. The environs consisted of tombs, temples, ruins, mosques, and gardens. The streets were crammed with people, and with little Brahminy bulls wandering about; in some parts the elephant was too wide for the narrow, tortuous passages, so that we had to dismount and walk. In one Hindoo temple which we visited, a fanatic, or possibly a lunatic, was seated in a niche. He was quite naked and covered with dust, but, oddly enough, had a fuschia flower lying on the top of his shaven head. He sat perfectly mute and still, and took no apparent notice of anybody, so that it was impossible to ascertain what object he expected to accomplish by so sedentary and monotonous an existence.

We were rather a large party at the hotel bungalow, some being officers newly arrived and others who had served for years in the country, and who were very good natured in giving us information. Colonel David Wood, of the Horse Artillery, was one of the newcomers, and had a habit occasionally of assuming ignorance on minor points which perhaps was not always genuine. During dinner he turned gravely to one of the old Indian officers and said, 'Can you tell me, what is a dhobie?' They all laughed, and it was explained that a dhobie was a man who washed your clothes. Wood, still quite grave, said: 'Oh, that accounts for the difficulty. I told mine to clean my horse, and he refused. I will discharge him tomorrow.' The old Indian officer, however, assured him that a dhobie was absolutely necessary. Wood replied that he never required washing on active service. 'You must surely have your shirts washed,' was the rejoinder. 'Not at all,' said Wood. 'I always wear a flannel shirt in the field, and as soon as it gets dirty or worn out I throw it away and put on another.'