THE SEPOY MUTINY OF 1857
Causes of the Sepoy Mutiny
The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that Native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories, and to rush into action in a paroxysm of terror. Panic acts on an Oriental population like drink upon a European mob. The annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie, although dictated by the most enlightened considerations, was distasteful to the Native mind. The spread of education, the appearance at the same moment of the steam-engine and the telegraph wire, seemed to reveal a deep plan for substituting an English for an Indian civilization. The Bengal sepoys especially thought that they could see further than the rest of their countrymen. Most of them were Hindus of high caste; many of them were recruited from Oudh. They regarded our reforms on Western lines as attacks on their own nationality, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and that all India was held. The numerous dethroned princes, or their heirs and widows, were the first to learn and take advantage of this spirit of disaffection and panic. They had heard of the Crimean war, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Our munificent pensions had supplied the funds with which they could buy the aid of skilful intriguers.
Other alleged causes of the Mutiny
On the other hand, the Company had not sufficiently opened up the higher posts in its service to natives of education, talent, or proved fidelity. It had taken important steps in this direction in respect to the lower grades of appointments. But the prizes of Indian official life, many of which are now thrown open to natives of India by the Crown, were then the monopoly of a handful of Englishmen. Shortly before the Mutiny, Sir Henry Lawrence pointed out that even the army supplied no career to a native officer, which could satisfy the reasonable ambition of an able man. He insisted on the serious dangers arising from this state of things; but his warnings were unheeded till too late. In the crisis of the Mutiny they were remembered. He was nominated provisional Governor-General in event of any accident happening to Lord Canning; and the Queen’s proclamation, on the transfer of the Government from the Company to the Crown at the end of the great struggle, affirmed the principle which he had so powerfully urged. “And it is our further will,” are Her Majesty’s gracious words, “that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge.” Under the Company this liberal policy was unknown. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, therefore, found many of the Indian princes, especially the dethroned dynasties, hostile to the Company; while a multitude of its own native officers were either actively disloyal or indifferent to its fate.
The “Greased Cartridges”
In this critical state of affairs, a rumour ran through the Native army that the cartridges served out to the Bengal regiments had been greased with the fat of pigs—animals which are unclean alike to Hindu and Muhammadan. No assurances could quiet the minds of the Sepoys. Indeed the evidence shows that a disastrous blunder had in truth been made in this matter—a blunder which, although quickly remedied, was remedied too late. Fires occurred nightly in the Native lines; officers were insulted by their men; confidence was gone, and only the form of discipline remained.
The Army drained of its Talent
In addition, the outbreak of the storm found the Native regiments denuded of many of their best officers. The administration of the great empire to which Dalhousie had put the corner-stone, required a larger staff than the civil service could supply. The practice of selecting able military men for civil posts, which had long existed, received a sudden and vast development. Oudh, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, British Burma, were administered to a large extent by picked officers from the Company’s regiments. Good and skilful commanders remained; but the Native army had nevertheless been drained of many of its brightest intellects and firmest wills at the very crisis of its fate. At the same time the British troops in India had, in spite of Lord Dalhousie’s remonstrances, been reduced far below the strength which the great Governor-General declared to be essential to the safety of our rule. His earnest representations on this subject, and as to the urgent necessity for a reform alike of the Native and the British armies of India, were lying disregarded in London when the panic about the “greased cartridges” spread through the Native regiments, and the storm burst upon Bengal.
Outbreak of the Mutiny, May 1857
On the afternoon of Sunday, 10th May 1857, the sepoys at Meerut (Mirath) broke into open mutiny. They forced open the jail, and rushed in a wild torrent through the cantonments, cutting down any European whom they met. They then streamed off to the neighbouring city of Delhi, to stir up the Native garrison and the criminal population of that great city, and to place themselves under the authority of the discrowned Mughal emperor. Meerut was then the largest military station in Northern India, with a strong European garrison of foot, horse, and guns, sufficient to overwhelm the mutineers long before they could have reached Delhi. But as the Sepoys acted in irrational panic, so the British officers, in but too many cases, behaved with equally irrational indecision. The news of the outbreak was telegraphed to Delhi, and nothing more was done at Meerut that night. At the moment when one strong will might have saved India, no soldier in authority at Meerut, seemed able to think or act. The next morning the Muhammadans of Delhi rose, and all that the Europeans there could do was to blow up the magazine.
Spread of the Mutiny, June 1857
A rallying centre and a traditional name were thus given to the revolt, which forthwith spread like wild-fire through the North-Western Provinces and Oudh down into Lower Bengal. The same narrative must suffice for all the outbreaks, although each episode has its own story of sadness and devotion. The sepoys rose on their officers, usually without warning, sometimes after protestations of fidelity—protestations in some cases perhaps true at the moment. The Europeans, or persons of Christian faith, were often massacred; occasionally, also, the women and children. The jail was broken open, the treasury plundered, and the mutineers marched off to some centre of revolt, to join in what had now become a national war. Only in the Punjab were the sepoys anticipated by stern measures of repression and disarmament, carried out by Sir John Lawrence and his lieutenants, among whom Edwardes and Nicholson stand conspicuous. The Sikh population never wavered. Crowds of willing Muhammadan recruits joined us from the Afghan hills. And thus the Punjab, instead of being itself a source of danger, was able to furnish a portion of its own garrison for the siege of Delhi. In Lower Bengal most of the sepoys mutinied, and then dispersed in different directions. The Native armies of Madras and Bombay remained, on the whole, true to their colours. In Central India, the contingents of some of the great Chiefs sooner or later threw in their lot with the rebels, but the Muhammadan State of Haidarabad was kept loyal by the authority of its able minister, Sir Salar Jang.
Cawnpur
The main interest of the Sepoy War gathers round the three cities of Cawnpur, Lucknow and Delhi. The cantonments at Cawnpur contained one of the great Native garrisons of India. At Bithur, not far off, was the palace of Dundhu Panth, the heir of the last Peshwa, whose more familiar name of Nana Sahib will ever be handed down to infamy. At first the Nana was profuse in his professions of loyalty; but when the sepoys mutinied at Cawnpur on the 6th June, he put himself at their head, and was proclaimed Peshwa of the Marathas. The Europeans at Cawnpur, numbering more women and children than fighting men, shut themselves up in an ill-chosen hasty entrenchment, where they heroically bore a siege for nineteen days under the sun of a tropical June. Every one had courage and endurance to suffer or to die; but the directing mind was again absent. On the 27th June, trusting to a safe-conduct from the Nana—a safe-conduct supposed to hold good as far as Allahabad—they surrendered; and to the number of 450 embarked in boats on the Ganges. A murderous fire was opened upon them from the river bank. Only a single boat escaped; and four men, who swam across to the protection of a friendly Raja, survived to tell the tale. The rest of the men were massacred on the spot. The women and children, numbering 125, were reserved for the same fate on the 15th July, when the avenging army of Havelock was at hand.
Lucknow
Sir Henry Lawrence, the Chief Commissioner of Oudh, had foreseen the storm. He fortified and provisioned the Residency at Lucknow; and thither he retired, with all the European inhabitants and a weak British regiment, on 2nd July. Two days later, he was mortally wounded by a shell. But the clear head was here in authority. Sir Henry Lawrence had deliberately chosen his position; and the little garrison held out, under unparalleled hardships and against enormous odds, until relieved by Havelock and Outram on 25th September. But the relieving force was itself invested by fresh swarms of rebels; and it was not till November that Sir Colin Campbell (afterwards Lord Clyde) cut his way into Lucknow, and effected the final deliverance of the garrison (16th November 1857). Our troops then withdrew to more urgent work, and did not permanently reoccupy Lucknow till March 1858.
Siege of Delhi
The siege of Delhi began on 8th June, a month after the original outbreak at Meerut. Siege in the proper sense of the word it was not; for our army, encamped on the historic “ridge” of Delhi, never exceeded 8000 men, while the rebels within the walls were more than 30,000 strong. In the middle of August, Nicholson arrived with a reinforcement from the Punjab; his own inspiring presence was perhaps even more valuable than the reinforcement he brought. On 14th September the assault was delivered; and, after six days’ desperate fighting in the streets, Delhi was again won. Nicholson fell heroically at the head of the storming party. Hodson, the daring but unscrupulous leader of a corps of irregular horse, hunted down next day the old Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah, and his sons. The emperor was afterwards sent a State prisoner to Rangoon, where he lived till 1862. As the mob pressed in on the guard around the emperor’s sons, near Delhi, Hodson thought it necessary to shoot down the princes (who had been captured unconditionally) with his own hand.
Oudh reduced by Lord Clyde
After the fall of Delhi and the final relief of Lucknow, the war loses its dramatic interest, although fighting still went on in various parts of the country for about eighteen months. The population of Oudh and Rohilkhand, stimulated by the presence of the Begam of Oudh, the Nawab of Bareilly, and Nana Sahib himself, had joined the mutinous sepoys en masse. In this quarter of India alone, it was the revolt of a people rather than the mutiny of an army that had to be quelled. Sir Colin Campbell (afterwards Lord Clyde) conducted the campaign in Oudh, which lasted through two cold seasons. Valuable assistance was lent by Sir Jang Bahadur of Nepal, at the head of his gallant Gurkhas. Town after town was occupied, fort after fort was stormed, until the last gun had been recaptured, and the last fugitive had been chased across the frontier by January 1859.
Central India reduced by Sir Hugh Rose
In the meanwhile, Sir Hugh Rose (afterwards Lord Strathnairn), with another army from Bombay, was conducting an equally brilliant campaign in Central India. His most formidable antagonists were the disinherited Rani or Princess of Jhansi, and Tantia Topi, whose military talent had previously inspired Nana Sahib with all the capacity for resistance that he ever displayed. The princess fell fighting bravely at the head of her troops in June 1858. Tantia Topi, after doubling backwards and forwards through Central India, was at last betrayed and run down in April 1859.
Summary of the Company’s Charters, 1600 to 1784
The Mutiny sealed the fate of the East India Company, after a life of more than two and a half centuries. The original Company received its charter of incorporation from Elizabeth in 1600. Its political powers, and the constitution of the Indian Government, were derived from the Regulating Act of 1773, passed by the ministry of Lord North. By that statute the Governor of Bengal was raised to the rank of Governor-General; and, in conjunction with his Council of four members, he was entrusted with the duty of controlling the Governments of Madras and Bombay, so far as regarded questions of peace and war: a Supreme Court of Judicature was appointed at Calcutta, to which the judges were nominated by the Crown; and a power of making rules and regulations was conferred upon the Governor-General and his Council. Next came the India Bill of Pitt (1784), which founded the Board of Control in England; strengthened the supremacy of Bengal over the other Presidencies; and first authorized the historic phrase, “Governor-General-in-Council.”
Renewals of the Company’s Charter, 1813-1853
The renewed charter of 1813 abolished the Company’s monopoly of Indian trade, and compelled it to direct its energies to the good government of the people. The Act of 1833, at the next renewal of the Company’s charter for another twenty years, did away with its remaining trade to China. It also introduced successive reforms into the constitution of the Indian Government. It added to the Council a new (legal) member, who need not be chosen from among the Company’s servants, and who was at first entitled to be present only at meetings for making laws and regulations; it accorded the authority of Acts of Parliament to the laws and regulations so made, subject to the disallowance of the Court of Directors; it appointed a Law Commission; and it finally gave to the Governor-General-in-Council a control over the other Presidencies, in all points relating to the civil or military administration. The charter of the Company was renewed for the last time in 1853, not for a definite period of years, but only for so long as Parliament should see fit. On this occasion the number of Directors was reduced, and their patronage as regards appointments to the civil service was taken away, to make room for the principle of open competition.
India transferred to the Crown, 1858
The Act for the Better Government of India (1858), which finally transferred the administration from the Company to the Crown, was not passed without an eloquent protest from the Directors, nor without bitter party discussions in Parliament. It enacted that India shall be governed by, and in the name of, the Queen of England through one of her Principal Secretaries of State, assisted by a Council of fifteen members. The Governor-General received the new title of Viceroy. The European troops of the Company, numbering about 24,000 officers and men, were amalgamated with the royal service, and the Indian navy was abolished. By the Indian Councils Act (1861), the Governor-General’s Council, and also the Councils at Madras and Bombay, were augmented by the addition of non-official members, either Natives or Europeans, for legislative purposes only; and, by another Act passed in the same year, High Courts of Judicature were constituted out of the old Supreme Courts at the Presidency towns.