In assuming the chief command of the British Army in this war, Lord Raglan had undertaken a task of peculiar and, in some respects, novel difficulty. He brought ripe experience, it is true, acquired under the greatest soldier of the century, but the lapse of years had brought about so many changes in military appliances and scientific inventions, that much of that experience was rendered obsolete. He was the first British general who had to conduct operations in the field advised, controlled, directed, censured by telegraphic despatches from the War Office. He had, moreover, to act in concert with an ally, brave, indeed, but sensitive, and it was of the nature of things that their counsels should sometimes clash, at least, that their judgment should not always be identical. Little reference has been made to the angry impatience expressed in the English press and Parliament in regard to what was freely condemned as the incapacity and dilatoriness of Lord Raglan, because time and reflection have amply vindicated his renown. But it must have been galling to him at the time, and greatly aggravated the difficulties of his position. The best evidence of his genuine force of character is found in the patient courage with which he fulfilled his office to the last, and the enthusiastic devotion which he won from all ranks serving under him.

The command of the British forces devolved upon General Simpson. On August 16 General Liprandi made a formidable attempt to raise the siege by an attack on the French and Sardinian position on the Tchernaya, but was repulsed with tremendous slaughter. |Battle of Tchernaya.| This was the last encounter in the open field. The final assault on the town was opened by a tremendous fire from the Allied batteries on September 5, and the bombardment continued without intermission throughout the 6th and 7th. On the morning of the 8th the French made a splendid dash at the Malakoff Fort, the key of Sebastopol, and captured it. The English fared not so well in an attempt to storm the Redan and suffered severely in a repulse. But the defence was at an end.

After repeated attempts to retake the Malakoff, the Russian commander resolved on evacuating the town. Fortunately the wires connected with the magazine in the Malakoff were discovered in time by the French and cut, for arrangements had been made for blowing up all the forts. |Evacuation of Sebastopol.| One after another they went up with terrific din during the night; early on the morning of the 9th the Russians executed a masterly evacuation across a floating bridge, leaving their town in flames and their fleet at the bottom of the harbour. Sebastopol had fallen, but not into the hands of the Allies; it had been erased from the face of the earth.

The Congress of Paris met on February 26, 1856, and a treaty of peace was signed by the plenipotentiaries of the Great Powers on March 30. |Conclusion of Peace.| The most important Article was that which guaranteed the perpetual neutrality of the Black Sea; Russia received back the ruins of Sebastopol in exchange for the wreck of Kars, and the Eastern Question was laid to rest, at least for a season.

For this result England had to pay down four and twenty thousand lives and add forty-one millions to her National Debt; but she learned in addition to take vigilant precaution against the enervating influence of prolonged peace. To this may be added the bracing moral effect which follows on the supreme and disciplined exercise of a nation’s power.

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CHAPTER X.
1857–1858.

The Lorcha Arrow—War with China—Defeat of the Government—Dissolution of Parliament—Palmerston returns to Office—Startling News from India—Mutiny at Meerut—The Chupatties—Loyalty of the Sikhs—Lord Canning’s Presence of Mind—Disarmament of Sepoys at Meean Meer—The Rising at Cawnpore—Nana Sahib’s Treachery—The Massacre—Siege of Delhi—The Relief of Lucknow—Death of Havelock—Sir Hugh Rose’s Campaign—The Ranee of Jhansi—Capture and Execution of Tantia Topee—End of the East India Company’s Rule—Marriage of the Princess Royal.

IT is well that the next chapter in British warfare is a short one, for it is one which Britons can peruse with little pride. It is prefaced by a paragraph in the Queen’s Speech at the opening of Parliament on February 3, 1857: “Acts of violence, insults to the British flag, and infraction of treaty rights, committed by the local Chinese authorities at Canton, and a pertinacious refusal of redress, have rendered it necessary for Her Majesty’s officers in China to have recourse to measures of force to obtain satisfaction.”

A dispute had arisen out of circumstances even more trivial than the question of custody of the Holy Places, which led to the Crimean war. A vessel termed a “lorcha,” lying in the Canton river in October 1856, was boarded by Chinese officials, who took away twelve men accused of piracy, although the lorcha Arrow was flying the British flag. |The Lorcha “Arrow.”| The British Consul at Canton demanded the release of these men, according to the treaty of 1843; but the Chinese Governor Yeh declared that the Arrow was not a British vessel but a Chinese pirate, and refused to comply with the Consul’s demand. It was proved, however, that the Arrow had been duly registered as a British vessel, though her registration had actually expired ten days before the arrest of the men. Mr. Parkes, the British Consul, appealed to Sir John Bowring, British Minister at Hongkong. Bowring was determined to stand no nonsense from the Chinaman: nor was he going to trouble himself whether the Arrow was entitled to fly the British ensign or not! As a matter of fact, he wrote to Parkes that the expiry of the registration had deprived her owners of the right, but that as the Chinese did not know that, they must be held responsible for insulting the flag. Anyhow, it was enough for Bowring that Chinese officials had dared to take men by force from under that flag, whether it had been hoisted rightfully or wrongfully. He sent an ultimatum to Yeh, demanding the release of the men and an ample apology within forty-eight hours, or he would begin hostilities. Yeh released the men, and promised that greater caution should be observed in future, but he refused to apologise, maintaining that the Arrow was in fact a Chinese vessel. Incredible as it may seem that such powers should be vested in a British Minister, and still more so, that he should employ them in such a miserable quarrel, nevertheless Bowring ordered up the fleet and Canton was severely bombarded for several days. |War with China.| Yeh made the tactical blunder of offering a reward for the heads of Englishmen. He got no heads, but he forfeited the respect which England always pays to an honourable foe.

There was considerable sensation when the news came to England. Lord Derby moved a vote of censure in the Lords, and the only answer the Lord Chancellor could make to the enquiry whether, supposing a Chinese owner of a Chinese vessel bought a British ensign, that made her a British vessel, was that the Chinese had no right to assume that the flag was hoisted illegally. The House of Lords supported the Government, but it went worse with them in the Commons. |Defeat of the Government, and Dissolution.| On the motion of Mr. Cobden, Ministers were defeated by a majority of sixteen. Mr. Disraeli had dared the Government to go to the country on the question. “I should like,” he had said, in the measured, biting accents of his later manner, “to see the proud leaders of the Liberal party—no reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Pekin invaded!” Palmerston took up the gauntlet; he appealed to the country, and he put his policy—thorough “Jingo,” as it would be termed nowadays—before the constituencies in such sort that he was returned to power stronger than before. Never was a Minister more thoroughly justified in settling his plans for a long spell of office. |Palmerston returns to Office.| But Palmerston himself is said to have observed once that “the life of a Ministry was never worth three months’ purchase,” of which the fate of his own second Administration was a striking illustration. It lasted just long enough to enable him to announce to the House of Commons in February 1858 that Canton had fallen before a combined English and French force; for the French in the interval had managed to pick a quarrel with the Chinese. A treaty was concluded securing access to the interior of China for Englishmen and Frenchmen, establishing diplomatic relations between England and France and the Court of China, and securing the toleration of Christianity.

On June 25, 1857, the Queen issued Letters Patent conferring on Prince Albert the title of Prince Consort, a name which had been popularly applied to him for many years in England, and by which he was known henceforward to the world. The change may seem an unimportant one, but it created some unreasonable dissatisfaction at the time, and the Press of the country betrayed no enthusiasm in its favour.

The transit of news had been greatly accelerated over large tracts of the globe by the use of electricity, but it still took many weeks to convey intelligence between Great Britain and her Empire in India. Little did the people who assembled in London on June 23, 1857, to celebrate the centenary of the Battle of Plassey, by which Bengal was added to the British Dominions, imagine that at that very moment Bengal was the scene of a conflict as mighty in scope as it was horrifying in detail. |Startling News from India.| The story burst upon England with the suddenness of a tornado. The Sepoy army had risen in revolt, murdered their officers, proclaimed the King of Delhi Emperor of India, and the whole peninsula was in rebellion. There had been awful massacres too; English men, women, and children had been slaughtered in hundreds; most hideous of all there were circumstantial stories of outrage, followed by torture, committed upon our women. A terrible moan for vengeance rose throughout the land. There were few families who had not relations, or at least friends and acquaintances, among the British communities in India; the suddenness of the news was not the most appalling part of it; it was the ghastly details of the story that so deeply moved the nation. Black and bloody as the reality afterwards proved to be, the mutineers were not shown to have been guilty of the worst horrors imputed to them in the early days of the rising. Englishwomen perished as women perished in the worst of mediæval massacres, but they were not subjected to outrage or torture, as was circumstantially affirmed and universally believed at first.

This great convulsion is always referred to as the Indian Mutiny, because of the violent revolt of so many native regiments in the British service; but it was far more than a mutiny; it was an insurrection of the Indian races against the European conqueror, a common rising of Hindoo and Mahomedan against the Christian power. Disaffection to British rule had never ceased to smoulder: how should it, seeing that so many native rulers had been deposed, so many others placed in inglorious dependency or on pension? The misrule and oppression of these potentates had been forgotten by the people who once groaned under them, just as the Jacobites who shouted for “the auld Stuarts back again” forgot what the people had endured under the Stuart kings. Dost Mahomed had shown an example how the Feringhi could be dealt with, and there were a thousand grievances against English officers and magistrates to be wiped out.

Lord Dalhousie had resigned the Governor-Generalship in March 1856, and his eight years of rule had been regulated by a policy of annexation. Deeply penetrated with the capacity of the Indian races and their country for moral and material development, he perceived how fatal was the native system of rule to all progress. Consequently he was not rigidly scrupulous in every case about the precise justice of the means by which one principality after another was added to the British dominions. The greatest happiness of the greatest number often involves disappointment and even direct injury to the few. Dalhousie vindicated his policy by the splendid energy he showed in making roads, railways, and telegraphs, in reducing taxation, and in general measures for the good of the people; but he undoubtedly left a feeling of soreness and resentment that only waited a fitting opportunity to take effect.

Out of this discontent arose a widespread conspiracy against British rule in the beginning of 1857. It is believed by some that the military rising was premature, and disconcerted the measures of those organising the general revolt. Be that as it may, the earliest overt acts of rebellion took place among the troops.

The effect of the Minié rifle, carried by some of the Russian troops in the Crimea, had been so remarkable, that the British military authorities had decided that the day of “Brown Bess”—the smooth-bore musket—had gone by. In common with the rest of the forces, therefore, the Enfield rifle was served out to the Indian troops in 1856. Now the paper of the cartridges used in this weapon was greased, and the idea was industriously circulated among the Sepoys that the lubricant used was a mixture of the fat of cows and pigs—a most ingenious falsehood, if falsehood it were—a most unlucky fact, if fact it were—for the native troops were composed partly of Mahomedans, to whom, of all animals, the hog is most loathsome, and partly of Hindoos, by whom, of all animals, the cow is held most sacred. Falsehood or fact, the story served a sinister purpose, for although the issue of the objectionable cartridges was stopped in January, and Lord Canning, the Governor-General, issued a Proclamation in May to the Army of Bengal, declaring that the story of an intentional affront to religion and caste on the part of the Government was utterly groundless, the early months of 1857 witnessed repeated instances of military insubordination, and some of the native regiments had to be disbanded. On Saturday, May 9, eighty-five men of the Bengal Cavalry were sentenced at Meerut to long periods of imprisonment and hard labour for refusing to use the cartridges issued to them. |Rising at Meerut.| Next day, Sunday, the whole native garrison at Meerut, the largest military station in India, mutinied, killed several of their officers, massacred some Europeans, and breaking open the gaol, released their imprisoned comrades. The European troops at Meerut drove them out of their cantonments; but allowed the mutineers to march to Delhi, where the octogenarian representative of the Great Mogul still held his court as a subject of Queen Victoria and pensioner of the East India Company. This old man they proclaimed Emperor of India, and the military mutiny assumed at once the character of national rebellion. All the patriotism that had been outraged, all the aspirations that had been crushed, all the private interests that had suffered by Lord Dalhousie’s annexation of the Punjab, of Oude, of Sattara, and of Jhansi, found their outlet and opportunity in the mutiny of the garrison of Meerut. The great Koh-i-noor diamond, symbol of the sovereignty of Lahore, had been displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851: the diamond might be gone beyond recall, but the tyranny of the Sikh Ameers had passed from memory also, and a resolute effort might restore them. There are known various modes of pre-historic telegraph. In the Scottish Highlands of old the fiery cross, passed from hamlet to hamlet, summoned the clansmen to arms; on the Borders the bale-fires leapt from height to height to rouse the land: not less sure and hardly less swift was the symbol of “chupatties,” little unleavened cakes, of which two were left with the head man of each village of Northern India on an appointed morning, with directions to make similar cakes and pass them on. When the standard of rebellion was hoisted on the citadel of Delhi, the train had been laid and all was in readiness for an explosion which should shatter to fragments British rule in India.

But there was one factor essential to making the convulsion complete, and that was the co-operation of the Sikhs—the most warlike population of India—the people who, only eight years before, had inflicted on British arms what we must be honest enough to own as the defeat of Chilianwalla. While the rebellion was spreading like wildfire through the whole of the rest of the North-West, and blazing through Oude into Lower Bengal, while regiment after regiment was rising, shooting its officers, and joining the native population in pillage and massacre of Christians, the Sikhs never wavered in fidelity to British rule. |Loyalty of the Sikhs.| That was what saved the British Indian Empire—that, and the way in which British officials behaved in the hour of trial.

Of course, severe reflections have been passed on those in command of European troops at Meerut and in the neighbourhood of Delhi for allowing the revolted regiments to pass unmolested from the former to the latter place. There was indecision shown, no doubt. The Commandant at Meerut telegraphed to Delhi what had occurred, and did no more. Next day the Mahomedans of Delhi rose and joined the Sepoys, and the Europeans in the Residency could only blow up their magazine to prevent it falling into the hands of the rebels. It is easy to sit in an elbow chair and pronounce the opinion that if the authorities at Meerut had showed presence of mind the rebellion might have been quashed at the outset; but it is a fearful thing for soldiers to have to turn their arms suddenly against their comrades; and any hesitation or weakness shown on that occasion may be forgotten in the tribute due to the whole body of military and civil officers for their conduct in what followed.

Lord Canning played a splendid part. Of all moods of the human creature there is none so ungovernable as fear. The suddenness of the outbreak, the rapidity of its spread, the atrocious massacres which marked its progress, created a wild panic in Calcutta and other European communities. |Lord Canning’s Presence of Mind.| Canning was assailed on all sides by the insane counsels of terror. He was urged to take the most savage methods of reprisal. The dethroned King of Oude was living near Calcutta. Of all Dalhousie’s annexations perhaps that of Oude was the one which most afflicted sensitive consciences; and the people of Calcutta, convinced that the King of Oude was preparing schemes of vengeance, besought the Governor-General to seize his person. Canning responded by receiving the King and his Vizier to reside in his own house. The clamours against him rose to frenzy: people nicknamed him “Clemency Canning”; they shrieked for his recall; but through all the tumult this great man kept his head cool and his nerve steady.

Happily there were other cool heads besides the Governor-General’s. On May 11 information of the outbreak at Meerut was telegraphed from Calcutta to Lahore, the capital of the Punjab. The Governor, Sir John (afterwards Lord) Lawrence was absent at Rawul Pindee, having left full power in the hands of the Judicial Commissioner, Mr. Robert Montgomery. Four thousand Sepoy troops lay at Meean Meer, five or six miles from Lahore, and Mr. Montgomery had to decide on the instant whether these should be assumed to be contemplating mutiny. He came to a speedy decision. They must not be allowed the chance. There was a great ball in Lahore that night; among the guests were the civil and military chiefs of the district. Mr. Montgomery consulted with them and it was resolved to disarm the native troops. A parade was ordered for daybreak at Meean Meer: twelve guns loaded with grape were placed along one side of the parade ground. The troops were formed up in line of contiguous columns facing the guns and ordered to pile arms. They obeyed, for to hesitate was death. The rifles were carried off in carts, and the station was left in possession of 1,300 European troops. This was perhaps the most critical moment of the Mutiny. Nothing short of Mr. Montgomery’s firmness, supported by the military commanders, could have ensured the safety of the Punjab.

The darkest page of the book of Mutiny is that which contains the story of Cawnpore. In May 1857 there were 3,000 native troops at that place, and about 300 Europeans, under command of Sir Hugh Wheeler, an old man of seventy-five. Wheeler had reason to expect his force to mutiny, and appealed to Nana Sahib, a neighbouring prince representing the dethroned Mahratta Peishwah of Poonah, to help him. Nana had an undoubtedly genuine grievance against the Government. On the death of the last Peishwah, Lord Dalhousie had refused to continue the pension to his adopted son Nana, thereby violating the Hindoo principle that all the rights of sonship, material as well as spiritual, are conveyed by adoption. Nana, whose real name was Seereek Dhoondoo Punth, was rich and hospitable, and delighted in entertaining English officers and their ladies at his residence near Cawnpore. He responded cordially to Sir Hugh’s invitation, and came at once to Cawnpore with 300 men and two guns, to help to keep order. |The Rising at Cawnpore.| His arrival coincided with the revolt of the garrison, and he placed himself at once at the head of the mutineers. Wheeler had taken refuge in an old hospital building with about 1,000 Europeans, of whom 280 were women and girls, with about the same number of children. A hasty entrenchment was thrown up, and Wheeler refused Nana’s summons to surrender. For nineteen days, under the tropical sun of June, this handful of brave men maintained the defence of their crumbling mud wall against thousands of rebels. The assailants were reinforced by a contingent of Oude men, who made a fierce assault on the place; but the English were fighting for more than their mere lives; the presence of their women and children made each man bear himself like a Paladin. The attack was repulsed, and this prolonged resistance soon began to tell on the prestige of Nana, for Hindoos and Mahomedans alike appreciate prowess in the field. He offered terms to the besieged: “All those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and who are willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad.”

The terms were accepted. The little garrison had done all that flesh and blood and gallant souls could do. The survivors of the siege embarked in boats on the Ganges, prepared by Nana’s orders. The women and children were all aboard, the men were following. At that moment a bugle sounded; instantly the straw awnings of the boats burst into flame, and the native rowers leaped out. A fire of grape and musketry poured down on the frail craft, and continued till Tantia Topee, Nana’s lieutenant, sounded the “Cease fire!” Then the survivors, 125 English­women and children, many of them sorely wounded, were collected and driven back to the town. One only of the boats escaped, drifting down the Ganges, a |The Massacre.| target for innumerable marksmen on both banks. A dozen men landed to drive off the assailants; in their absence the boat was captured, and those on board—sixty-five men, twenty-five women, and four children—were haled back to Cawnpore. The men were shot on the spot; the women and children were crammed into the prison-house with the others. Cholera and dysentery soon carried off eighteen women and seven children—more fortunate than their companions.

Nana’s visions of rule were becoming overcast. The English had rallied from the first shock of the Mutiny; troops, before which he knew his men dared not stand, were drawing near; Havelock had already routed Tantia Topee, with 4,000 of Nana’s best fighting men, and Neill was at Allahabad. The rebellion was mastered, but Nana’s vengeance, if it was to be balked of its full scope, at least should be complete on those who were in his power. A company of Sepoys was ordered up to the house where the Englishwomen were imprisoned. Unhappy creatures, their approaching fate cannot have caused them much concern; they were in every circumstance of suffering and misery already. For nearly four weeks they had not been able to change their tattered clothing, nor had a drop of water to wash in. The Sepoys began firing through the windows, but there were traces of mercy in their hearts; they fired high and ineffectively, and were marched home again. In the evening five men were sent up and entered the house; awful sounds were heard within, and twice one of the butchers came out and exchanged his broken, bloody sword for a fresh weapon. At length all was still; the five men, weary with slaughter, came out and went off, locking the door behind them. Next morning they returned with a fatigue party, cleared out that fearful house of blood, and flung the bodies down a dry well.

There is nothing in English history, at least during the last six centuries, approaching in horror to the massacre of Cawnpore, and it is well that one is not often called on to witness—to share in—the fury, the wild cry for revenge, that rose from England when the tale came to be told there. Nana Sahib waited to encounter the victorious Havelock on July 16; he was completely defeated, fled from the field in the direction of Nepaul, and has never since been heard of. Of the twelve men who left the boat which floated down the Ganges, four escaped after extraordinary adventures, by favour of a friendly rajah—the sole survivors of the European community at Cawnpore.

On June 8 General Wilson appeared before Delhi, but his force was far too small to attempt to invest a city held by 30,000 insurgents.|Siege of Delhi.| General Nicholson reinforced him in August, and on September 20 the place was taken by assault, Nicholson falling dead at the head of the storming columns.