CAWNPORE story of Cawnpore is as tragic as the tale of the last agonies of the Athenian host in Sicily, and it will be of in terest to Englishmen as long as we care to remember the story of our people. Some of our Indian administrators would like to destroy all memory of that great agony of our race, the Indian Mutiny. But time cannot utterly destroy the written records of great events or the theatre of their en actment. The ridge at Delhi, the Lucknow Residency, and the Ghat at Cawnpore are the witnesses of that world wide tragedy which the flow of centuries will not wipe from memory. And it would not be well they should be effaced. The story of the Mutiny is the prose epic of our Indian Empire, and those who read it in the right spirit will find something beyond cruel atrocities, exciting adventures, or battle scenes. And nowhere surely do the lessons which the Indian Mutiny convey speak with a clearer and nobler voice than they speak at the Residency at Lucknow and the ill-fated Ghat at Cawnporc.
The city of Cawnpore, forty miles south-west of Lucknow, lies on the south bank of the Ganges which formed from very ancient times the frontier defence of the people of Oude and Bengal against their northern neighbours. When Clive decided to maintain and strengthen Oude as a friendly state interposed between Bengal and Northern India, he selected Cawnpore on account of its advanced and com manding position as the best station in the Nawab of Dude's dominions to canton the brigade lent to him subject to a subsidy for the protection of the frontier. In 18o1, when Cawnpore was comprehended within the limits of the Company's powers, it became the frontier station of the time, and attained the prominent military position of being the headquarters of the field command of Bengal, a command which, while including the King's and Company's troops, artillery, cavalry and infantry, amounted to 40,000 effectives. The advance of our frontier to the north, however, occasioned a revisal of our military position, and Cawnpore was most unwisely denuded of its European troops. In the spring of 1857 sixty-one European artillerymen with six guns were the only representatives of the English army at Cawnpore. And at Cawnpore resided the pretender to the honours of the Mah ratta Peshwa. The native troops consisted of the 1st, 53rd and 56th Native Infantry, the 2nd Cavalry, and the native gunners attached to the battery, about 3,00o in number. Most of these men had been recruited from the neighbouring province of Oude, whose annexation had touched their pride and affected their interests. It only required a single act of imprudence—the greased cartridges which roused their caste prejudices—to drive them to mutiny. In May, 1857, the officer in command of the Cawnpore division was Major-General Sir Hugh Wheeler, K.C.B., who had for up wards of fifty years been attached to the Bengal army, had served with it in quarters and on the field : who had fought and bled in its ranks, who had a pride in the courage and devotion of the sepoy and a thorough knowledge of his language and mode of life. But no European can com pletely gauge the feelings and passions of an Oriental. General Wheeler visited the lines daily and had long con versations with the men in the hope of maintaining their confidence and of allaying the feverish excitability which had arisen on account of the belief that their religion was being en dangered by the use of defiled cartridges. The men con versed with the General and his son, his aide-de-camp, with out reserve and without any sign of sullenness, but their fears were not allayed nor their anxiety lessened. On June 3 General Wheeler reported to the Governor-General- "All quiet, but subject to constant fits of excitement." At a late hour that evening he despatched another message to Lord Canning. " Sir Henry Lawrence having expressed some uneasiness, I have just sent him by dak gharries out of my small force two officers and fifty men, Her Majesty's 84th foot ; any conveyance for more not available. This leaves me weak, but I trust holding my own until more Europeans arrive." This was the last message that reached Lord Canning from Sir Hugh Wheeler and it was worthy of the gallant soldier. He had at a comrade's call denuded his own scanty command, though every day brought him fresh reports of the mutineers' intentions to surround him. The very evening that he sent forth fifty men to the aid of Henry Lawrence news reached him that an outbreak of the cavalry was imminent, so he issued orders that the women and non-combatants should assemble within the entrench ment, and that night about eight hundred souls went to their prison-grave. Of these about four hundred were women and children. To guard them there were about two hundred English soldiers of all arms, eighty officers, a few civilians and a small body of loyal sepoys.' The places where the women and children assembled were two large barracks, formerly the hospital barracks of a dragoon regiment, and at the time occupied by the depot of Her Majesty's 32nd Regiment consisting of the invalids, and women and children of the regiment. They were single storied buildings, intended each for the accommodation of a company of one hundred men ; one of them was thatched and both were surrounded by a flat-roofed arcade or veran dah. The walls were of brick, and the usual out-offices were attached to the building. In order that they might resist a sudden attack a trench was dug around these barracks and the earth thrown up on the outside so as to form a parapet about five feet high, and they were armed at their principal points by artillery. Ten guns constituted the sole defence by artillery of the entrenchment, and a mud wall, not even bullet proof at the crest, was its sole bulwark.
A stately church now marks the site where the hospital stood, and a row of pillars indicate what may be called the line of fortifications. As we stood at the door of the church one December morning, we saw in the plain beyond the thin red line of the British soldiers, and the drums and fifes sent forth a lively tune. Looking out in the early morning —the morning of Sunday, June 7,—the besieged saw the enemy busy erecting batteries. Some hours after sunrise they opened fire. Hour by hour the fire grew more severe and dangerous as the enemy got their guns into position. " All through this first weary day the shrieks of the women and children were terrific ; as often as the balls struck the walls of the barracks, their wailings were heart-breaking, but after the initiation of that first day they had learnt silence, and never uttered a sound except when groaning from the horrible mutilations they had to endure. When night sheltered them, our cowardly assailants closed in upon the entrenchments, and harassed us with incessant volleys of musketry." Men, women, and children fell victims to the enemy's fire. But the survivors were more to be pitied than the dead. The pressure of famine became every day more severe. " All were reduced to the monotonous and scanty allowance of one meal a day, consisting of a handful of split peas and a handful of flour, certainly not more than half a pint together, for the daily ration." Now and then the scanty fare was increased by some horse-soup, and it became a more cherished object to shoot a horse than its rider. " One day a strange dog approached the entrench ment. The cur had wandered from the sepoy barrack, and every possible blandishment was employed by my men to tempt the canine adventurer into the soup-kettle. Two or three minutes subsequently to my seeing him doubtfully trotting across the open, I was offered some of his semi roasted fabric, but that, more scrupulous than others, I was obliged to decline." Not far from the church is the only well from which the besieged could procure water. The masonry bears marks of the innumerable bullets which struck it—for the enemy invariably fired grape upon the spot as soon as any person made his appearance, or at night if they heard the creaking of the tackle. The frame work of beam and brick which protected the drawers was soon shot away. The machinery went next, and the buckets were thenceforward hauled up hand over hand from a depth of more than sixty feet. As we stood at the well, we thought of John Mackillop of the Civil Service, one of England's authentic heroes. Veiling devotion under a jocose pretence of self-depreciation, he told his friends that, though no fight ing man, he was willing to make himself useful where he could, and accordingly he took his post at the well. He drew water for the women and children as often as he could, but his tenure of office was of short duration. It was less than a week after he had undertaken this self-denying ser vice, when his numerous escapes were followed by a grape shot wound in the groin, and speedy death. Disinterested even in death, his last words were an earnest entreaty that " somebody would go and draw water for a lady to whom he had promised it." The soldiers could not bear to hear the cry of the thirsty children, and at the cost of many heroic lives it was procured. Captain Thomson, one of the sur vivors of the siege, writes : " I have seen the children of my brother officers sucking the pieces of old water-bags, putting scraps of canvas and leather straps into the mouth to try and get a single drop of moisture upon their parched lips." On the eighth day of the siege a shell filled with combustible materials settled in the thatch of the hospital, and the whole structure was burnt. Then two hundred women and chil dren had to pass twelve days and nights in the trenches upon the bare ground. Many of them were delicately nurtured ladies, who had never known what privation was. But the hour of danger proved their heroic worth. They uttered no cry of despair. They handed round the ammuni tion, encouraged the men to the uttermost, and with tender solicitude attended to the wounded. Kindly death came to some, and put an end to their toil and sorrow. A single shell killed and wounded several of them who were seated in the ditch. Mistress White was walking with a twin child at either shoulder, and her husband by her side. The same ball slew the father, broke both elbows of the mother, and severely injured one of the orphans. " I saw her after wards," writes Captain Thomson, " in the mainguard lying upon her back, with the two children, twins, laid one at each breast, while the mother's bosom refused not what her arms had no power to administer." Day by day the number of the garrison grew less while the number of the enemy increased. The rebels made a determined assault on the en trenchments, and were driven back by the heroic defenders. They then determined to treat with the English. Reduced to the last extremity, the small remnant of British troops made terms securing a safe passage down the river for the women and children and their companions. It was the only resource. The treaty was made with Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the last Peshwa, whose claim to the pension settled on the Sovereign of the Mahrattas Lord Dalhousie rightly disallowed. No suspicion of treachery crossed the minds of the troops, because the Nana had cultivated the society of Englishmen and had showered his civilities upon them. It was to him that Sir Hugh Wheeler in the hour of distress applied for assistance, but at the moment of the Mutiny he put himself at the head of the rebels.