The Indian Mutiny of 1857/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE SPREAD OF THE EPIDEMIC.
The conduct of the men of the 19th N. I. at Barhámpur was known to the authorities in Calcutta on the 4th of March. To them, I have said, it appeared to be rather the consequence of the blundering of the commanding officer than of a widespread feeling of discontent among the sipáhís. But, whatever might be the cause, it was a fact which they had to deal with, and to deal with promptly and with effect.
The Commander-in-Chief of the army, General Anson, was in the Upper Provinces; the Adjutant-General was at Mírath; but the Governor-General, Lord Canning, and all the Secretaries to Government, were in Calcutta. These had, then, all the administrative means at their disposal for dealing promptly and effectively with revolt.
Of the terror which the notion of the greased cartridge had spread throughout the minds of the sipáhís they had had evidence since the 22d of January, the day on which the conversation of the lascar at the Dam-Dam factory with the Brahman sipáhí had been reported to them. The general commanding at Barrackpur, General Hearsey, an officer who had passed his career in the native army, and who understood the character of the sipáhís, their language, and their idiosyncracies, had, when reporting the circumstance, recommended that the difficulty might be met by allowing the sipáhís at the depôt to grease their own cartridges. The Government had caught at the idea, and on the 27th January the official sanction had been given to the suggestion. It was ascertained at the same time that, although many cartridges had been greased at Dam-Dam, not one had been issued. The Government then, whilst according their sanction to General Hearsey's suggestion, transmitted orders by telegraph to the Adjutant-General to issue to the several musketry-depôts only cartridges free from grease, and to permit the sipáhís to do the greasing themselves. But the concession of the Government of India had the effect of bringing into prominence the ignorance of the executive branch of the army. The Adjutant-General, a man who had served the greater part of his career with the sipáhís, wired back that the concessions of the Government would rouse the very suspicion they were intended to allay; that for years past the sipáhís had been using greased cartridges, the grease being mutton fat and wax; and that he begged that the system might be continued. The Government, the Military Secretary of which was likewise an officer who had served with sipáhís, raised no objection to this proposal, but replied that the greased cartridges might be issued, provided the materials were only those mentioned by the Adjutant-General.
How the Adjutant-General managed to mislead the Government, and how the Government permitted themselves to be misled on this occasion, seems extraordinary. The Government had the fact before them that up to that moment no greased cartridges had ever been issued to the native army. That army still used the old 'Brown Bess' musket, and for that weapon unsmeared paper cartridges were invariably employed. It is true that a few regiments had rifle companies, or one company armed with rifles, and that, for facilitating the driving home of the bullet used with these, patches smeared with wax had been served out. No suspicion had ever attached to these patches. But for the Adjutant-General, the right-hand man of the Commander-in-Chief, seriously to argue that the issue of these patches warranted him in remonstrating with the Government against their order forbidding the issue of greased cartridges, and for the Government to accept his statement that for some years greased cartridges had been issued, argued an ignorance and an absence of common sense sufficient to account for the many grave blunders which followed.
Such had been the condition of matters at the end of January. There had been sufficient displays of dissatisfaction to cause grave suspicions, and that was all. In those displays the Government had recognised no sign of wide-spread disaffection. There were but two men holding prominent positions in or near Calcutta who saw in the action of the sipáhís something more than a passing wave of discontent, and one of these saw it but dimly. The more prescient of these two men was Major Cavenagh, the Town-Major of Fort William, and the representative in that fortress of the Governor-General. The other was the Commander of the Presidency Division, General Hearsey. I have already recorded the action of the former in January, and I shall have to write of his action in March and April. For the moment I must narrate the proceedings of General Hearsey at Barrackpur.
The revelations of the lascar at Dam-Dam, in January, had deeply impressed that officer. He recognised that the minds of the sipáhís were in a state of great excitement. The real cause, the basis of that excitement, was not apparent to him. His intelligence was limited to the matters which came under his eyes, and it was not in his nature to probe the situation more deeply. He really believed that the whole offence of the Government had been the greasing of the cartridges for use by the sipáhís, and that the latter were under the influence of terror lest their religion should be tampered with. He did not ask how it was that, before a single cartridge had been issued, before one sipáhí had been asked to defile himself by applying his teeth to the greased paper, the demeanour of the men of the four native regiments at Barrackpur had displayed unmistakable signs of the discontent which raged within their minds. Believing that the greased cartridge was the outward sign and inward cause of the evident discontent, he had, with the sanction of Lord Canning, on the 9th of February, paraded his brigade, and addressing the sipáhís of the four regiments in their own language, had endeavoured to dissipate their fears. He had told them that the English were Christians of the Book; that they admitted no proselytes except those whom the reading of that Book had convinced; that the notion that any other mode of conversion was possible was absurd; that baptism only followed conviction; and he implored them to dismiss from their minds the tale told them by designing men that the English had any design to convert them by a trick.
General Hearsey meant well, and he thought he had succeeded in convincing his men of their delusion. But he had missed the point. The conspirators, who had fomented the ill-feeling of the sipáhís all over India, had not told their victims that the English would make them Christians by force. They had rather impressed on their minds that the object of their masters was to deprive them, by the compulsory use of the cartridges, of the caste, to which they adhered with the passionate conviction that it was the one thing necessary for consideration in this life, and happiness in the life to come; and that then, scared and miserable by their degradation, they would seek for admission into the ranks of a religion which had established missions throughout the country for the very purpose of converting them. General Hearsey's argument that his religion was a religion of the Book was all very well when addressed to Brahmans and Rájputs, whose position was secure, whose caste was intact. But, when it should be applied to men whose caste had been broken, who had become pariahs and outcasts, deprived of consideration in this world, and of all hope in the hereafter it would have a different signification. Then the men who had lost the religion of their forefathers would be glad to read the Book, and to gain renewed hope in the religion of their masters.
The answer to General Hearsey's declamation was given by the 19th N. I. at Barhámpur. The news from Barrackpur, carried to Barhámpur by the sipáhís of the 34th, had produced the fermentation and partial outbreak described in the last chapter. And this was the news which disturbed the Government of India on the 4th of March.
It found that Government in a state of some perplexity. Lord Canning was new to the country, and was perforce on all matters pertaining to the native army, dependent on his military advisers. The capacity of his military advisers may be judged from the fact that they were the very men who had allowed him to be swayed by the shallow reasoning of the Adjutant-General regarding the issue of greased cartridges. However, many facts had spoken too loudly to be disregarded. There was the one fact that a native regiment in the Presidency Division had mutinied; another fact that the troops at Barrackpur had displayed a sullenness of demeanour difficult to account for; a third fact in the revelations of Major Cavenagh, described in the last chapter; and a fourth in the fact that between Calcutta and Dánápur, a distance of 344 miles from Calcutta, there was but one weak English regiment. The disaffection at Barhámpur had, they knew, been produced by the communications received by the sipáhís of that regiment from the men of a detachment which had marched thither from Barrackpur. Who was to guard the line of 344 miles if the sipáhís of Barrackpur should emulate the conduct of the men whom some of their comrades had perverted? These facts, and this consideration, produced the conviction that it was necessary to strengthen the central position. They resolved to strengthen it by ordering the 84th regiment to proceed with all speed from Rangoon to the Presidency. On the 20th of March that regiment arrived in the Húglí. Orders were then transmitted to Colonel Mitchell to march the 19th N. I. to Barrackpur.
But there had been many significant occurrences before the 84th reached the Húglí. Máhárájá Sindhiá had visited Calcutta early in March, and, as a return for the civilities showered upon him, had invited the élite of the society of the Presidency to a fête at the Botanical Gardens, situated on the opposite bank of the river Húglí, on the 10th of the month. There can be little doubt but that the leaders of the conspiracy had resolved to strike their blow on that day. During the absence of the official English across the river they had planned to seize the fort and to strike terror into the town. A circumstance, slight in itself, frustrated their combinations. Rain, most unusual at that time of the year in India, fell heavily the day before and on the morning of the 10th, and the Máhárájá, aware that an out-of-door fête could be successful only when the weather was propitious, sent out notices to postpone the entertainment. It happened accidentally that no notice of the postponement reached the Town-Major, Major Cavenagh. That ever vigilant officer had quitted the fort to cross the river; but, on arriving at the ghât, he learned for the first time that no fête would take place that day, so he retraced his steps. His sudden return, and the rumour to which that return gave weight, that the fête had been postponed, roused in the guilty minds of the conspirators the suspicion that their plot had been discovered. Some of them, outside the fort, had indeed begun the part assigned to them in the general programme, but, under the mysterious circumstances of the return of Cavenagh and the postponement of the garden party, the more astute members of the conspiracy declined to move. They even assisted in the capture of their misled comrades, who were brought at once to trial, and suffered fourteen years of penal servitude for their premature temerity.
A week later the 84th entered the Húglí, and landing on the 20th, marched to the quarters assigned them at Chinsurah, twenty miles north of Calcutta. The Government immediately transmitted orders to Colonel Mitchell to march his regiment, the 19th N. I., from Barhámpur to Barrackpur.
In the interval the Court of Inquiry, referred to in the last chapter, had, as already stated, taken evidence, and on its report the Governor-General in Council had resolved to punish the sipáhís by disbanding the regiment. Previous experience of that punishment had proved that it was at best but a clumsy device. It was especially ill-adapted to the actual circumstances, for it would distribute over areas already partially infected a thousand men who regarded themselves, and who would be regarded by others, as martyrs for their religion. But in the Council of Lord Canning there was not one man upon whom had been bestowed the divine gift of imagination. No other remedy presented itself to their matter-of-fact minds. So the order for disbandment was issued. It was hoped that the impressive ceremony of disbandment, carried out in the presence of four native regiments, and supervised by their English comrades, would produce a great effect. But, unhappily for the theories of those in high places, an event took place at Barrackpur, before the arrival of the 19th there, which proved conclusively that the evil, which the disbandment of the 19th was to cure, was far more widely spread and deeply rooted than any official had conceived.