The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8. Dodd George
or exasperated by it, was just the problem which remained to be solved. All the afternoon and evening of that day were the men brooding and whispering, plotting and planning. Unfortunately, the European officers of native regiments were accustomed to mix so seldom with their men, that they knew little of what occurred except on parade-ground: this plotting was only known by its fruits. Judged by subsequent events, it appears probable that the native troops sent emissaries to Delhi, forty miles distant, to announce what had occurred, and to plan an open revolt. The prime plotters were the 3d; the 20th were nearly as eager; but the 11th, newly arrived at Meerut, held back for some time, although they did not betray the rest.
Little did the European inhabitants, their wives and their children, at Meerut, dream what was in store for them on Sunday the 10th of May – a day of peace in the eyes of Christians. It was on the 9th that the sentence of the court-martial on the eighty-five mutineers was enforced: it was on the 10th that the Revolt, in its larger sense, began. Whether these two events stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect, is a question not easily to be answered; but it may safely be asserted that the Revolt would not have resulted from the punishment unless the men had been generally in a state of disaffection. The Sunday opened as most Sundays open in India, quiet and uneventful, and remained so till evening. Ladies and families were then going to evening-service at the church. Some of them passed the mess-room of the 3d cavalry, and there saw servants looking towards the road leading to the native infantry lines. Something was evidently wrong. On inquiry it appeared that a mutiny had broken out, and that fighting was going on in the bazaar. Crowds of armed men soon hurried that way; and families who had been on the route to church, drove or walked back in haste to escape danger. So it was on all sides: whoever on that evening ventured forth, found that blood-shedding instead of church-service would fill their thoughts. The Rev. Mr Smyth, chaplain of Meerut, while driving to church for the seven o’clock service, met two of the 60th Rifles covered with blood; and on reaching the church, he saw buggies and carriages driving away in great confusion, and a body of people pointing to a column of fire and smoke in the direction of the city: frequent shots were heard, amid the cries of a large mob. In another direction the wife of an officer in the 3d cavalry, going like other Europeans to church, and startled like them by sounds of violence, saw a private of the Carabiniers unarmed, and running for very life from several men armed with latthies or long sticks: she stopped her carriage and took in the English soldier; but the men continued to strike at him until the vehicle rolled away. This lady, on reaching her bungalow in haste and dismay, was the first to give notice to her husband that something was wrong among the native troops: he instantly started off on foot to the lines, without waiting for his horse. In another part of the scene, an English officer of the 11th native infantry, at about six o’clock on that evening, while in his bungalow preparing for a ride with Colonel Finnis of the same regiment, had his attention attracted to his servants, and those in the bungalows of other officers, going down towards the front of the several compounds or gardens, and looking steadily into the lines or cantonment of the regiment. He heard a buzzing, murmuring noise, which at first he deemed of no consequence; but as it continued and increased, he hastily finished dressing and went out. Scarcely had he reached his gate, when he heard the sound of firearms, which his practised ear at once told him were loaded with ball-cartridge. An European non-commissioned officer came running towards him, with others, and exclaimed: ‘For God’s sake, sir, leave! Return to your bungalow, change that dress, and fly!’ Shortly afterwards shots came into his own compound; and the havildar-major of the 11th, rushing terrified and breathless into the bungalow, exclaimed: ‘Fly, sahib – fly at once! the regiments are in open mutiny, and firing on their officers; and Colonel Finnis has just been shot in my arms!’ The officer mounted and started off – at first leisurely – because ‘a Briton does not like actually running away under any circumstances;’ but when the havildar-major (native sergeant-major) advised him to gallop off to the European cavalry lines, he saw that the suggestion was good; and he immediately started – over a rugged and barren plain, cut up by nullahs and ravines – towards the lines of the Queen’s Carabiniers.
When these, and a dozen similar mysteries, came to receive their solution, it was found that a mutiny had indeed broken out. Shortly before five o’clock on that Sunday afternoon, the men of the 3d native cavalry, and of the 20th native infantry, rushed out of their lines on a given signal, and proceeded to the lines of the 11th native infantry, all fully armed. After a little hesitation, their comrades joined them; and then all three regiments proceeded to open acts of violence. Colonel Finnis of the 11th, the moment he heard of this startling proceeding, rode to the parade-ground, harangued the men, and endeavoured to induce them to return to their duty. Instead of listening to him, the men of the 20th fired a volley, and he fell, riddled with bullets – the first victim of the Indian Revolt. The other officers present, feeling that their remaining longer on the ground would effect no good, escaped. Whether a daring man might have stemmed the torrent, cannot now be told: no one attempted it after Finnis’s death; his brother-officers were allowed to escape to the lines of the artillery and the Carabiniers, on the other side of the encampment. So far as the accounts are intelligible, the first shots appear to have been fired by the 20th, the 11th joining afterwards in the violence.
While the infantry were thus engaged, the ominous but natural step was taken by the 3d cavalry of releasing their eighty-five imprisoned companions – ominous, because those men, enraged at their incarceration, would join in the disorder with heated blood and excited passions. The troopers proceeded to the jail, set their companions free, armed them, and invited them to share in the mutiny. All this was evidently preconcerted; for native smiths were at hand to strike off the manacles. Yelling and threatening, the whole returned to the lines; and then commenced the direful mischief. Within a very short time, all three regiments became busily engaged in burning and murdering. But this was not all; when the eighty-five troopers were liberated, the other prisoners in the jail, twelve hundred in number, were set at liberty at the same time; and then the scum of Indian society entered into the scenes of violence with demoniac relish, adding tenfold to the horrors perpetrated by the sepoys and sowars. The mutineers and the ruffians set fire to nearly all the bungalows of the native lines, and to the government establishments near at hand, murdering, as they went, the Europeans who fell in their way. The bungalows being mostly thatched with straw, the destruction was very rapid; the cowardly assailants, setting fire to the thatch, waited till the flames had driven out the inmates of the bungalow, and then fell upon them as assassins. The conflagrations were accompanied by the yells of the rioters and the shrieks of the sufferers, rendered more terrible by the approach of darkness. The rabble of the bazaar, and the lowest portion of the population generally, as if intoxicated by release from the dread of Europeans, now joined the mutineers and the released felons, and the horrors thickened. On all sides shot up columns of flame and smoke; on all sides were heard the shouts and curses of some, the cries and lamentations of others. One redeeming feature – there may have been others – marked these proceedings; the sepoys of the 11th, in most instances, connived at the escape of their officers – nay, strove earnestly to save them: it was not by men of his own regiment that poor Colonel Finnis had been shot down.
A few individual examples, drawn from the simple but painful narratives of eye-witnesses, will shew in what way misery and death were brought into homes where the peace of a Christian Sabbath had reigned only a few hours before.
The Rev. Mr Smyth, after returning hurriedly from the church where he had intended to perform divine service, took shelter in the house of an officer of the artillery in the English lines. Shots had just before been aimed at that officer and his wife by eight or ten sepoys of the artillery depôt or school, while standing at the very gate of their compound; and yet Mr Smyth himself was saluted respectfully by several sepoys during his hurried retreat – shewing the strange mixture of deference and ferocity exhibited by these misguided men. Presently afterwards another shot was heard, a horse was seen galloping past with a buggy; and it was soon found that the surgeon and the veterinary surgeon of the 3d cavalry had been wounded and mutilated. The clergyman escaped unhurt, to learn and to mourn over the events transpiring in other parts of the town and cantonment.
A captain of horse, the husband of the lady mentioned in a former paragraph, hastened on the first news from his bungalow to the lines of the 3d cavalry, in which he commanded a troop. He was respected by his men, who offered him no hurt, and who seemed to hesitate for a time whether