‘The troopers told L. they would accompany him to the fort, and protect us from the infantry. They said he and the Colonel of the 46th were the only two they would preserve. Just as they were ready to march, we got into our carriages (we took Miss Graham into ours and Mrs Graham26 went in her own) and set off for the fort with four troopers to keep people from destroying us. What a sight to behold! many of the houses on fire, and men standing on the road ready to take our lives! When we got near the fort we saw Sikh soldiers on the ramparts, who were protecting the Europeans that had escaped. We made signs for them not to fire; but an accidental shot went off, which frightened the troopers, so they fled as fast as they could to the station. We did not mind, as we were then safe so near our own people; and when we got to the gate our officers met us. On our entering the fort a fearful scene of distress met our eyes—our Brigadier (Brind) lying mortally wounded, and the Brigade-Major lying dead.’27
The brigade-major, Capt. W.L. Bishop, and his wife and children, had earlier that morning fled the cantonment in a carriage and took the main road through the Sudder Bazaar as Guise and Smith had also done. As they approached the fort along the road that brought them close to the court-house and treasury, they were suddenly pursued by several sowars. The British assembled in the fort observed the desperate race from the ramparts, as Gordon recounted:
‘On came the carriage and pair as fast as they could be urged. On sped the murderous troopers, “swift as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.” The fugitives seemed almost to have won the race. Shots were fired from the fort to check the pursuers, but without effect. Near the spot now occupied by the Sialkot Railway station, was an excavation in the road, washed out by the rains, over which one of our light “American traps”28 would have skimmed like a swallow; but English carriages are heavy, and though very elegant, are only adapted to toll majestically along smooth roads. The carriage plunged in, and was upset.’29
In order to save his family, Bishop jumped out of the carriage and sought to draw the sowars away as he tried to escape on foot. The pursuers fired and wounded him, and Bishop staggered into a ditch full of water—‘a trooper then rode up and deliberately shot him through the head.’30 Meanwhile Mrs Bishop and the children managed to save themselves and fled into the safety of the fort.
As the pre-arranged rallying point, the fort was now crowded with survivors of the outbreak.31 Aided by the Sikh levies, the British officers had thrown up earthworks to reinforce the gate; muskets and ammunition had been served out and the bastions manned: ‘no time to eat,’ as McMahon put it, ‘and a burning sun over us.’32 From the relative safety of the fort, Reverend Boyle and the others could do little more than watch as their homes and the station were destroyed. When Alum Bheg and all the sepoys and camp-followers eventually left during the afternoon, they marched right past the ramparts in a surprisingly orderly column, leaving Sialkot in a south-easterly direction along the road towards Gurdaspur. Boyle described the spectacle:
‘I stood on the north bastion of the fort for hours, watching all they did, and when the artillery magazine blew up it was grand and fearful. They then collected all our carriages, horses, buggies, and loaded them with the spoils of all our bungalows. Then they mustered the Government camels, and loaded them, and at 4 o’clock, the hour we were to have started, they took the road I was to have taken for Goojeranwalla, passing along by the fort, and so affording us a full view. They took away our dear Edward’s pony, and my only companion, the dog Charlie.’
Although the Europeans at Sialkot had only barely survived the outbreak, what seemed to grieve them most was the loss of their material possessions: clothes, jewellery, a favourite horse, a piano or regimental plate. Apart from the distraught Sarah Graham, several of the other survivors were deeply traumatised by their experience, including the wife of the civil surgeon, whose grief was ‘most painful and heart-rending, and while in the fort she nearly sunk from sorrow.’33 Bishop’s wife was also said to have lost her mind.34
* * *
After the departure of Alum Bheg and the sepoys and sowars, the survivors slowly emerged from their places of hiding and began trickling in to the fort. Mrs Caulfield was reunited with her husband, who came along with Farquharson directly from the lines of the 46th BNI. Missing since the morning, Monckton now appeared as he was brought in from a nearby village, ‘covered up on a charpai, and carried as if dead on the heads of four coolies.’35 Butler and his party spent more than twelve hours in the lumber room before they ventured out at six o’clock in the evening and made their way to the fort. Shortly before, when they thought they were about to be discovered, Butler and his wife had actually handed over their infant boy to the Sikh wet-nurse to save his life. The woman came to the fort the following day with the baby, and the parents were reunited with their child.36 Campbell’s wife described the situation at the fort:
‘All the ladies and children are here, with the exception of Mrs Hunter and her child, who were killed. The mutineers blew up both the magazines before marching, and we saw the explosion. The prisoners were let loose from the jail, who, with the natives, villagers, &c., broke into our houses, smashed all our furniture, and stole every article we possessed; so here we are without a stitch of clothes, shut up in a place with only one room, containing nearly one hundred, and the heat excessive. We have a hard native bedstead to sleep on, without sheets or anything of the kind, which we take outside at night, as every one chooses to sleep in the open air.’37
Outside the fort, the locals were left to fend for themselves. Mohamet Ismael, the Muslim convert who had been a companion of Thomas and Jane Hunter right from the beginning, when they first arrived at Sialkot, had remained at their house in the cantonment, and it was here that he first learned of their deaths:
‘It was on the morning of Thursday, the 9th […], that Mr. Hunter’s bearer came to me with the melancholy news that they were all murdered by the rebellious and cruel sepoys. This heartrending news excited grief and terror in my mind, and I began to cry aloud, when Mr. Hunter’s servant, who was a well-disposed man, advised me not to do so, adding that my life was also in danger, I being a Christian, and having often preached to the natives. So he, though compassion, took me to a neighbouring village, where we both stayed until I heard there was peace and quiet in Sialkot’38
As was usually the case during 1857, the suffering of the local population was barely noticed by the Europeans, and for all the melodramatic details we possess on the experiences of white men, women and children, the archives are largely silent as regards the fate of everybody else. One letter from an officer of the 52nd briefly mentions that, at the time the Hunter family was killed, the prisoners who had been freed also killed ‘several half-castes’.39 People of mixed background, usually known as Eurasians, were often targeted during the uprising, as were Indian Christians, whose very religion marked them as collaborators with the British. According to the French nuns, the Christian drummer who helped them was later ‘maltreated’ by the sepoys, and his hut and possessions burnt.40 Probably referring to the actions of Hurmat Khan, McMahon also stated that the rebels ‘also killed several natives, against whom they had a spite.’41 There is, however, no way of knowing exactly how many Indians and Eurasians were killed during the outbreak at Sialkot.
* * *
The Indian Uprising of 1857 was widely regarded by the British as the outcome of a vast conspiracy. The rumours of the greased cartridges had been no more than a convenient ploy, they believed, used by religious leaders and power-hungry maharajas to manipulate the gullible sepoys. The insidious nature of the conspiracy was further exacerbated by the peculiarities of the ‘oriental’ character, as Reverend Duff of the Church of Scotland described it:
‘Throughout the ages the Asiatic has been noted for his duplicity, cunning, hypocrisy, treachery; and coupled with this,—and, indeed, as necessary for excelling in his accomplishment of Jesuitism,—his capacity of secrecy and concealment. But in vain will the annals even of As
ia be ransacked for examples of artful, refined, consummate duplicity, surpassing those which have been exhibited throughout the recent mutinies. In almost every instance, the sepoys succeeded in concealing their long-concocted and deep-laid murderous designs from the most vigilant officers to the very last.’42
At Sialkot, most of the European residents who had lived through the outbreak could not bring themselves to believe that it had been anything but the result of a plot.43 One of the sisters at the Jesus and Mary Convent claimed that once the sepoys heard they were being disarmed, they ‘secretly planned a revolt. They carried their plans into execution at an early hour on the following morning.’44 The young Lieutenant Princep of the 9th BLC similarly stated that ‘the whole business was evidently preconcerted, although we were quite unprepared for it.’45 The idea of ringleaders guiding events at Sialkot found its full expression in the narrative of Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar Frederic Cooper, written in 1858. Cooper, who himself played a key role in the suppression of the uprising in Punjab, described in great detail the circumstances of the conspiracy—and the devious mindset of the plotters, as he imagined it:
‘Up to the date of events at Jhelum everything had been still and quiet as deep waters at Sealkote. The band played as usual; society partook of its evening recreation. In fact the sepoy did not find it worth his while, as at Jullundar, to test by insolence and incendiarism the temper of the authorities; for he was already master of the situation. Society knew, however, the corruption that lay beneath that shining and polite exterior. The sepoys, too, felt himself suspected, and knew his power. Besides this a hopefully hypocritical aspect had to be worn. By a temporising policy, every day without fresh evidence of “overt” disaffection was of a week’s political value. And though every resident in the ill-fated station had his or her forebodings, none liked to dilate upon them, when every gesture and look was commented upon. Thus on the night of the rising, the Superintending Surgeon begged a friend with whom he was dining, who had remarked on the contemptuous demeanour of the sepoys, not to let “his fears get the better of his senses.” The next morning the slaughtered body of Dr. Graham fell into the arms of his daughter, shot dead by a trooper as he was driving her to the fort!’46
According to Cooper, everything that happened on 9 July had been planned the previous evening, after the arrival of the sowars from Amritsar, and the outbreak itself was thus merely the climax of a well-prepared conspiracy:
‘a second conclave was held with delegates from the 46th N.I. that very night. The whole plan of the morning’s bloody proceedings must have been laid out. The sepoys invited their officers to hold an inspection parade, the invitation was complied with, and the right at once commenced firing on them.’47
Of course, none of this was true, and Cooper could offer no evidence to back up such claims, but many of the newspaper reports that subsequently circulated about the outbreak at Sialkot were no less misleading and no less sensationalist.48 The Times, for instance, reproduced a letter from an Englishwoman writing from the safety of the hill-station at Simla:
‘At Sealkote three of the native Cavalry rode up to the Brigadier Brind’s house, and giving information of an intended meeting and an impending attack from without, asked for a parade, that they (the loyal) might be prepared to receive and defeat the mutineers. A parade was ordered, and these loyal gentlemen fired on their officers! The poor brigadier was shot dead through the body. His widow is two doors from us. Captain Bishop and a third fell. The others escaped with their lives into the fort, finding the station guarded by pickets. The missionary and his wife were murdered. The wretches first cut off the head of their little child of two years old; they then ripped up the mother, and threw her body and child’s out into the road.’49
Another news report claimed that, at Sialkot, ‘some of the European women were violated and other atrocities committed. We shall never hear publicly of half the villainies perpetrated by these Poorbeas throughout the country.’50 Not only were these reports factually inaccurate, but by inventing episodes of Indian treachery and barbarism they also provided the implicit justification for any retributive violence visited on the rebels.
* * *
The truth was that the outbreak at Sialkot was a highly contingent and confusing event, and one that in many ways differed from the mutinies that had taken place earlier that year at Meerut, Delhi and elsewhere. At Sialkot, there were no angry mobs chasing European civilians, no random lynching of isolated sahibs, no sexual attacks on memsahibs and no mutilation of their corpses. There had been numerous opportunities for sepoys and other locals to rape white women should they so have wished, but it never happened. Jane Hunter and her baby were indeed the only woman and child to be killed.51 According to one contemporary newspaper report, ‘the insurgents had resolved to kill every European.’52 The opposite was actually the case, and according to Gordon, who later talked to many of the survivors:
‘The 46th Native Infantry Regiment mutinied with the 9th Cavalry, and marched away with them, but took no part in murdering their officers or other English people. On the contrary, they had entered into a positive agreement with the 9th Cavalry not to murder any of the English; and when the latter violated the engagement they threatened to turn about and fight them.’53
The notion that there was an agreement not to kill any Europeans seems incompatible with the existence of a kill-list—yet both were true, which reveals just how complex the dynamics of the mutiny at Sialkot really were. Within each regiment, there were evidently different cliques, not necessarily in agreement with one another: it was the elite grenadiers of the 46th BNI who protected Farquharson and Caulfield at their quarter guard. Two of the NCO’s of the grenadier company were also the only ones out of the entire 46th to remain loyal and to stay behind at Sialkot when the rest left.54 In the 9th BLC, the division appears to have been along religious lines: the sowars of A troop were explicitly described as ‘Mussulmans’, while Balmain referred to the warning he was given by the Hindu sowars.55
Since the relationship between at least some of the Indian troops and their British officers was so strong within both the 9th BLC and 46th BNI, those sowars committed to the rising, had to make a very deliberate effort to sever the bond of loyalty. Unless all the troops joined in, the mutiny would fail, and those who had taken the initiative would have risked their lives for nothing. They had to do something irreversible to implicate everyone, and this is why a seemingly small group of the sowars were so active and the ones almost exclusively responsible for the attacks on their officers and other Europeans. When the quartermaster Havildar and sowars of A troop, who were the main instigators, chased Brigadier Brind and the other officers, or shot and killed Dr Graham, it was thus calculated and deliberate. Hurmat Khan’s killing of the Hunters, and especially of Jane and the baby, however, was far more transgressive. Carried out up close with a sword, rather than from the distance of pistol-shot, these murders went beyond any of the violence inflicted by the mutineers. Although it was an individual act, it was furthermore one that had a profound collective impact, effectively sealing the fate of all the Indian troops at Sialkot. Colonel Campbell tried to convince the loyal sowars of the 9th not to join their comrades, but ‘as some of them had committed murder they said it was impossible for them to remain.’56 A mutiny required complete solidarity amongst the troops and once officers had been attacked, and women and children murdered, there was no going back. They knew that none of them could expect any mercy from the authorities: their only hope of survival was to stay together and defeat the British.
In his report on the outbreak at Sialkot, McMahon provided another more specific explanation for the murder of Jane Hunter:
‘Mr Hunter and his family had gone on some time before, and had all been murdered on the road. It seemed to have been no part of the Sealkote mutineers’ plan to massacre ladies and children, but perhaps Mrs Hunter had offended the fanatical Mohammedans by establishing a small female school—a crime, in thei
r eyes, deserving death.’57
This is not implausible, but there is also the possibility that when Hurmat Khan could not get hold of Monckton, against whom he held a grudge, he took out his revenge on the Hunters instead when they happened to drive past. During the uprising, personal animosity merged with general discontent, and personal vendettas and political conflicts became virtually inseparable. Apart from buildings, such as churches, prisons and court-houses, every European man, woman and child, were seen to embody the colonial state; during 1857, Europeans were thus often attacked indiscriminately, as if they individually represented an existential threat to the moral order of Indian society. This accounts for the retributive nature of some of the more brutal acts of violence and mutilation that took place at Meerut and Delhi. In other instances, Indian servants simply felt empowered to strike back at their former masters. The sudden implosion of colonial rule ultimately allowed men like Hurmat Khan to take advantage of the chaos and seek revenge for personal reasons.
Yet just as personal animosity might feed into the broader violence of the outbreak, so too did personal friendships and ties of loyalty save lives and shape the course of events at Sialkot. Contemporary accounts made much of the fact that some servants had sided with the mutineers at Sialkot, but the truth was that many of the Europeans owed their lives to sepoys and Indian servants. For every servant who sabotaged his master’s pistols, or pointed out their hiding place, there were those who risked everything to help the frightened and vulnerable Europeans cowering in the intense July heat. During the upheaval of the outbreak, however, the bond between sepoys and sahibs was not enough to prevent even the most loyal troops from throwing in their lot with their brothers in arms. Of the sowars who had spent the entire day protecting Colonel Campbell, his wife and several other Europeans in the Quarter Guard, only one, Havildar Subhan Khan, remained with the officer and went into the fort while the rest of his comrades left Sialkot. Of the more than 900 sepoys in the 46th BNI, just three stayed behind at Sialkot, remaining at the side of Colonel Farquharson. Ultimately, the Indian troops at Sialkot functioned as a tight-knit unit, and their sense of solidarity and cohesion remained firm even as they cast off their loyalty to the East Indian Company. When Farquharson and Caulfield left the Quarter Guard, and headed for the fort in the afternoon, the sepoys of the 46th BNI were genuinely upset:
The Skull of Alum Bheg Page 17