The Cannons of Lucknow, page 24
“She makes a fine show,” the Moulvi observed with grudging admiration. He came to stand at the general’s side, an odd little smile playing about his bearded lips as he watched the Begum turn at the head of the steps to wave farewell to the surging crowd in the street below.
“A braver show, I fancy, Pir Moorshid, than your late patron the so-called Peishwa of the Mahrattas,” Mirza Guffur suggested, with thinly concealed malice. “The much-vaunted Nana Sahib, who has suffered so many defeats at General Havelock’s hands that he seems scarcely to merit the reward of 25,000 rupees which the British governor-general has placed on his head!”
“The Nana is a more trustworthy ally than the noble Man Singh,” the Moulvi retorted. “He would betray us to the British if he thought it would be to his advantage.”
Gomundi Singh, the long-serving subedar of native infantry whom the Hindu sepoys had elected as their commander, ventured a halfhearted protest at these insults to his fellow Brahmins, but the two Mohammedans affected not to have heard him, and he relapsed into his customary watchful silence. All his life he had been a simple soldier, content to serve the company with unquestioning loyalty, until he became entitled to a pension. Secure in the respect and affection with which his British officers regarded him, he had not wanted to join the mutiny but had been unable to resist the pressure the sepoys of his regiment had brought to bear on him, which in the end had overcome his scruples and compelled him to embrace their cause.
Now, admitted to the council of war by virtue of a rank he had never, in his wildest dreams, expected to attain, he frequently found himself ignored by the other members of the council, his opinion—even if it were sought—seldom if ever acted upon. He felt out of his depth in the company he had to keep, conscious that he was neither an aristocrat like Mirza Guffur nor an intellectual like the Moulvi. Since the death of Rissaldar Yakub Khan of Fisher’s Horse—who had been elected to command of the cavalry and who had unhappily fallen victim to a lal-kote marksman a week or so ago—Gomundi Singh had become acutely aware of his own isolation. He and the more forceful Yakub Khan had been cast in the same mould. They were both professional soldiers, with more experience of war than any of the other council members, and although of different religions, on questions of military strategy they had been of like mind. He had made a point of supporting any proposal that the cavalry general put forward; in return, Yakub had always consulted him, and their alliance had precluded amateur interference in purely military matters.
Following Yakub Khan’s unfortunate death, however, the Moulvi had begun to assert himself. Not content with his appointment as adviser to the Begum, he had assumed command of the cavalry on her authority alone, without a vote being taken. If his earlier threats were to be taken seriously, he might well be making a bid for command of the entire Oudh army. The Begum trusted him implicitly. He had her ear, and if the Moulvi could contrive to place the blame for yesterday’s reverse on Mirza Guffur and himself, then Hazrat Mahal might give him the appointment he so clearly desired.
He wished that he could form a working alliance with Mirza Guffur, but the old artillery commander, whilst he disliked and mistrusted the Moulvi, was a good deal in awe of him. If there were to be a showdown, the old man would support his co-religionist. Of that there was little doubt, especially if a Hindu voice should be raised against him. It would therefore be wise to remain silent for as long as he could, Gomundi Singh knew … at all events until any damaging accusations were made. The situation would be vastly improved if only Man Singh would agree to join the council, but the wily Hindu leader had refused to do so and had told him privately only the previous evening that unless assured that the British cause was irretrievably lost he intended to hold aloof—and possibly even retire with his troops to his own stronghold at Shahgunge. Indeed, he had sheltered a number of British fugitives there and given them safe conduct to Lucknow.
The Moulvi turned away from the window. He said unpleasantly, as if he had read Gomundi Singh’s thoughts, “I am told, General Singh, that you paid a visit to Man Singh yesterday evening, but failed to persuade him to attend our council meeting?”
“I … yes, that is so, Moulvi Sahib.”
“But you did not see fit to inform me of what transpired between you!” the Moulvi accused. “Had you done so, it would have spared me the unnecessary humiliation of receiving his refusal when I called upon him this morning.”
Gomundi Singh was visibly disconcerted. “You called on the Lord Man Singh, Moulvi Sahib? I was not aware of your intention. Indeed, I—”
“Naturally I called on him. We require his aid. He has an army camped in our midst and must declare either for us or against us. Why did you not tell me what he said to you?”
Gomundi Singh flushed guiltily. Much of what Man Singh had said to him—had been confidential and he knew that he must guard his tongue, lest the Moulvi accuse him of treachery. “There was little opportunity,” he defended plaintively. “Yesterday, you will recall, I was with my troops doing battle with Havelock Sahib. But I had, I assure you, intended to convey his views to the council, as he requested of me. The Lord Man Singh fears that—”
“And what does the Lord Man Singh fear, General Sahib?” The interruption came from the curtained archway at the entrance to the council chamber and Gomundi Singh turned, startled, to see that the Begum had entered, with her escort, and was regarding him with searching eyes. But her tone was neither angry nor accusing, and taking heart from this, he answered boldly, explaining Man Singh’s uncertainty and the reasons underlying it.
Hazrat Mahal let him speak for a moment or two and then held up a small hand for silence, the gesture directed also at the Moulvi, who had hurried to her side to greet her with an obsequious salaam. “I have news for all of you,” she announced and Gomundi Singh saw that she was smiling.
“News, Begum-ji?” old Mirza Guffur echoed. “Good news, I trust?”
“Very good news, General Bahadur,” the Begum assured him triumphantly. She waited, savouring her triumph, and then, satisfied that she had their full attention, continued in ringing tones, “I myself called on Man Singh before coming here. He has given me his word that he will join us.”
“Here, Begum Sahiba?” Gomundi Singh demanded, surprised out of his normal caution. “At the council meeting?”
“At the council meeting and with all his troops in the field!” Hazrat Mahal returned. She and Mammu Khan exchanged glances and the Moulvi-always the first to recover from any momentary surprise—asked suspiciously, “But at what price did you buy his allegiance, Begum Sahiba? There is a price to be paid, is there not?”
“Naturally there is a price,” Mammu Khan put in harshly.
“And what is it?” the Moulvi persisted. His dark eyes were blazing in his pale thin face, the beetling brows drawn together in a wrathful scowl, as if he already knew the answer to his question and the knowledge displeased him mightily.
The Begum said, her voice now gentle and persuasive, “We are to put right yesterday’s errors, Moulvi Sahib. Only a paltry handful of General Havelock’s lal-kote soldiers have succeeded in entering the Residency—we are to make sure that no more do so, neither men nor guns. An attack must be launched on the Mod Munzil Palace and none must be permitted to escape.”
“It was in any case our intention to attack the Moti Munzil,” Mirza Guffur told her. “General Singh’s troops have surrounded the palace and my guns opened fire at first light. The British have more wounded than fighting men to protect them and the dhoolie bearers are afraid. They will take flight the instant they come under our fire.”
“Havelock Sahib will have to send a force from the Residency to their aid, Begum Sahiba,” Gomundi Singh added eagerly. “We are waiting only for word that they will do this and then we shall commence our attack. I do not believe that the Lord Man Singh’s demand is unreasonable. We can meet it.”
Contemptuously, the Moulvi cut him short. “That is not the full price, is it, Hazrat Mahal?” His tone was bitter. “Man Singh demands more … he seeks command of our whole army, does he not? Sepoys as well as Irregulars?”
Hazrat Mahal did not try to prevaricate. “He asks for such a command, Pir Moorshid.” She laid a slim, jewel-bedecked hand on his arm, entreating his understanding. “But only until the British are driven from Lucknow. Then he will relinquish it. He asks also that we send a cossid, in our joint names, to the Nana and to Tantia Topi—who, as you know, now commands the Gwalior troops on the Nana’s behalf—urging them to launch an immediate attack on Cawnpore. A very weak force has been left there to defend the city. It will fall, since General Havelock will be unable to send aid now. With both Lucknow and Cawnpore in our hands, victory in Oudh will be assured.” She smiled into his resentful eyes. “Have patience, Ahmad Ullah … you are my choice as commander. But it behooves us to go carefully. First we must defeat General Havelock and the formidable warrior who has accompanied him to the Residency … General Outram. These are brave, experienced soldiers, whom we must match and defeat decisively before we claim victory.”
“True, Highness,” the Moulvi conceded. “But we—” He was interrupted by the arrival of a jemadar of the 7th Cavalry who burst in to announce excitedly that a force was being assembled in the Residency, preparatory to a sally.
“They will assuredly try to save their wounded and the guns left behind in the Moti Munzil,” he finished, breathing hard. “I observed that they have gun-cattle with them but no guns, and they are led by a Sahib with one arm, who is well known to me from Ajodhabad. Sheridan Sahib, of the Light Cavalry.”
“Sheridan Sahib!” the Moulvi exclaimed in shocked dismay. Hazrat Mahal waved him to silence.
“The time has come,” she stated, with emphasis. “We will adjourn this council meeting.” Turning to the two old generals, she added urgently, “Do not delay. Go at once to your commands. Wipe out the feringhis to the last man! Victory will be ours if you do your work well.”
Both men saluted and started towards the curtained archway, but the Moulvi, moving swiftly, was before them.
“I will give you victory, Hazrat Mahal!” he promised. “If you will give me the chief command until tomorrow’s dawn. Do not fear that I shall fail. I have a score to settle with an old adversary.”
“With Sheridan Sahib?” Hazrat Mahal suggested. “Well …” she hesitated for a moment and then inclined her head. “So be it, Ahmad Ullah. May Allah be with you and give you strength!”
HISTORICAL NOTES
Events covered in The Sepoy Mutiny and
Massacre at Cawnpore
THE SO-CALLED Indian Mutiny was, in fact, not a rebellion throughout the whole vast country but the revolt of one of the three Presidency Armies—that of Bengal, which consisted of 150,000 hitherto loyal and well-disciplined native troops, commanded by British officers in the employ of the Honourable East India Company.
The mutineers received encouragement and active aid from a few Indian chiefs and princes, who were themselves driven to revolt by a very real sense of grievance as a result of the Company’s policy of annexing (annexation by right of lapse) native states and land to which there was no direct heir. By means of this policy, implemented by Lord Dalhousie-Governor-General from 1848 to 1856—250,000 square miles were added to British Indian territory so that, by 1857, the Company held sway over some 838,000 square miles. Under Dalhousie, 21,000 plots of land, to which their owners could not prove documentary right of tenure, were confiscated; the States of Satara, Nagpur, and Jhansi were seized, and the Punjab and Scinde* conquered by force of arms. Finally the ancient kingdom of Oudh—from which the bulk of the sepoys of the Bengal Army were recruited—was also annexed.
Added to the resentment, by both princes and peasants, of this arbitrary seizure of their land, the root cause of the Mutiny was the fear—which rapidly became a widespread conviction among the sepoys—that their British commanders, on instructions from the Company, had embarked on a deliberate campaign aimed at destroying their caste system, with the ultimate intention of compelling the entire army to embrace the Christian religion. The issue of supposedly tainted cartridges, and the sepoys’ refusal to accept them, was the excuse for the outbreak which, by the time Lord Canning succeeded Lord Dalhousie as Governor-General, had become inevitable.
The time was well chosen. In 1857 Britain was still recovering from the ravages of the Crimean War, she was fighting in China, and had recently been fighting in Burma and Persia. As a result, India had been drained of white troops, the British numbering only 40,000, plus about 5,000 serving with native regiments, whilst the sepoys in the three Presidency Armies (Bengal, Madras, and Bombay) numbered 311,000, with the bulk of the artillery in their hands. The territory for which the Bengal Army was responsible included all northern India, from Calcutta to the Afghan frontier and the Punjab. The Punjab had only lately been subdued, and there was a constant threat of Border raids by the Afghan tribes, so that most of the available British regiments (also called Queen’s regiments, to distinguish them from the Company’s) were stationed at these danger points and on the Burmese frontier, with 10,000 British and Indian troops in the Punjab alone.
The 53rd Queen’s Regiment of Foot was in Calcutta, the 10th at Dinapore, 400 miles up the Ganges river; the 32nd was at Lucknow (capital of Oudh) and a newly raised Company regiment, the 3rd Bengal European Fusiliers, at Agra. Thirty-eight miles northeast of Delhi—ancient capital of the Moguls—at Meerut, there was a strong European garrison, consisting of the 60th Rifles, 1,000 strong, 600 troopers of the 6th Dragoon Guards, a troop of horse artillery, and details of various other regiments, 2,200 men in all. Stationed with them were three native regiments—the 3rd Light Cavalry and the 11th and 20th Bengal Native Infantry, under the command of 75-year-old Major-General William Hewitt, whose division included Delhi, which had an entirely native garrison.
On the face of it, Meerut seemed the most unlikely station in all India to become the scene of a revolt by native troops, and the outbreak, when it came, took everyone—not least the Commanding General and his Brigadier, Archdale Wilson—so completely by surprise that they did virtually nothing to put it down, with the result that Delhi was lost.
There had, of course, been warnings, but for the most part these were ignored or treated with scorn and disbelief, and the officers of the Bengal native regiments continued, until the last, to place the most implicit trust in the loyalty of the sepoys they commanded. The first tangible warning came early in 1857, with the incident of the greased cartridges. The new Enfield rifle, which had proved its superiority in the Crimea, was ordered to be issued to the Army in place of the outdated Brown Bess musket. Both were muzzle-loaders, but the cartridge of the new weapon included a greased patch at the top which—like the earlier, ungreased type—had to be torn off with the teeth. The greased patch was used to assist in ramming home the bullet, which was a tight fit in the rifle barrel. It had apparently not occurred to the Ordnance Committee in England or, indeed, to anyone in India, that the composition of the greased patch might offend against the religious scruples of high-caste Hindu sepoys, of whom there were a great many in the Army of Bengal.
At the arsenal at Dum Dum, near Calcutta, a lascar of humble caste was abused by a Brahmin sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry. The man retaliated with the claim that the new Enfield cartridges were smeared with the fat of the cow (sacred to Hindus) and of the pig (considered unclean by Mohammedans). Biting it, the lascar jeered, would destroy the caste of the Hindu and the ceremonial purity of the Mohammedan, and this story spread like wildfire throughout the native regiments. The men were assured that they might grease the cartridges with their own ghee (native butter) or tear them by hand, but the sepoys still refused to accept them, and the leaders of both the Hindu and Mohammedan faiths—conscious that their own power was waning under British rule—fanned the flames of suspicion assiduously. Fakirs and holy men travelled from garrison to garrison and an ancient prophecy was revived and whispered among them—the Battle of Plassey had been fought in 1757 and John Company, the prediction ran, would last for exactly a hundred years, so that this year would see its fall.
Several native regiments were disbanded for refusal to accept the new cartridges and a sepoy named Mangal Pandy—who was to give his name to all mutineers a few months later—was executed at Berhampur, 100 miles from Calcutta, for firing on his British officers.
In Meerut, early on the morning of Saturday, 9th May, General Hewitt ordered a punishment parade of his garrison and, under the guns of the European artillery, he had eighty-five sowars of the 3rd Light Cavalry—men who had previously been condemned by court martial for refusal to accept the infamous cartridges—publicly stripped of their uniforms and put in irons. Next day, when the British troops were preparing for Church Parade, the Light Cavalry mutinied, released their condemned comrades from the jail, and then, joined by the two native infantry regiments, indulged in an orgy of arson and looting, slaughtered a number of Europeans, and finally set off for Delhi. General Hewitt’s inept handling of the situation and his failure to pursue them sealed the fate of Delhi. The native troops there joined the mutineers from Meerut and, after an appalling massacre of Europeans and native Christians, the survivors were compelled to flee, and the eighty-year-old Shah Bahadur, last of the Moguls, was proclaimed Emperor of India. Delhi became the focal point of the Great Mutiny, and from all the outlying stations of northern India, during the ensuing weeks, more and more native troops rose in rebellion and, having in most cases killed their British officers or attempted to do so, they too made for Delhi.
The Governor-General, Lord Canning, and the Commander-in-Chief, General Anson, took what action they could to stem the tide of anarchy. Canning recalled British troops from Persia and Burma and sent for others then on their way to China; Anson, greatly hampered by lack of transport and difficulties in communication, nevertheless contrived to send a small and ill-equipped force to endeavour to recapture Delhi. Brigadier Archdale Wilson was ordered to march from Meerut to join him, with the 60th Rifles and the 6th Dragoon Guards, and the first successful action was fought against the mutineers at the Hindan River crossing outside Delhi on May 30th and 31st.
