Cawnpore & Lucknow

by Donald Richards

  ‘Often we imagined that we heard the sound of distant cannonading,’ commented Mowbray Thomson. ‘At all hours of the day and night my men have asked me to listen. Their faces would gladden with the elusive hope of a relieving force close at hand, but only to sink back again presently into the old careworn aspect.’ What they dreaded most, and refused to accept, was that Cawnpore might be cut off from the rest of the province, with the bridge of boats destroyed, and every ford closely guarded by the mutineers.

  Whilst battle casualties and sickness was a serious threat to Wheeler’s strength, the number of rebels available to the Nana increased with every influx from the surrounding district. The new arrivals stared in astonishment at the feeble defence works which sheltered the Europeans. That such a patently weak construction should have survived so long reflected badly on the Nana’s tactics, and with much bravado they urged their fellow mutineers to take heart – after a short rest and an appeal to Allah, they would storm the entrenchment and send the infidels to hell. Stung by the criticism, the Nana was determined to mark the 23rd of June – the anniversary of Plassey – by nothing less than the overthrow of the Cawnpore garrison.

  Preparations were thorough, the Muslims turning to Mecca and swearing on the Koran to destroy the infidel or die in the attempt. Field guns harnessed to teams of bullocks were dragged to within a few hundred yards of Wheeler’s entrenchment and for most of the night his pickets were kept on the alert by more than the usual amount of activity behind the rebel lines, where 4,000 mutineers were massing to attack the 250 able-bodied men of Wheeler’s garrison.

  As the sun rose on the morning of the 23rd with its customary brilliance, the rebel artillery erupted in a rolling cloud of black smoke pierced by stabs of flame. Summoned by the call of a bugle, sowars of the 2nd Cavalry, many of them high on drugs, spurred their mounts furiously towards the entrenchment brandishing their tulwars to cries of ‘Deen! Deen!’ followed at a distance by sepoys of the 1st NI. William Shepherd at his post in the north-east corner of the entrenchment was struck by the diversity of the rebels’ attire. ‘Some few had on their jackets and caps,’ he wrote, ‘others were without the former, and nearly the whole dressed like recruits with dhotis.’

  With deafening reports of the artillery ringing in his ears, Sir Hugh Massey Wheeler left his wounded son Gordon in the care of his mother and sisters and hurried to the battery where Lieutenant Ashe commanded two 9-pounder guns. Wheeler held the gunners’ fire until the enemy was within 50 yards before ordering Ashe to discharge a volley of grape which brought down the leading files in a struggling mass of men and horses, forcing those behind to rein in. The survivors, wheeling sharply, turned away in a body across the plain to the accompaniment of jeers from the garrison, who now turned their attention to the sepoys emerging from a cloud of dust. William Shepherd recalled:

  The insurgents in the rear gave a fearful shout and springing up on the walls made a charge, led on by the Subadar-major, who was a powerful looking man, but the first shots from our musketry caught him, he took a bound and fell down dead, a few rounds of canister then properly directed amongst them did good execution, causing a general dispersion.

  The garrison now turned its attention to where a further body was advancing slowly across the sandy plain behind bales of cotton. The sepoys came to within 100 yards of the entrenchment before a further discharge of grape set fire to some of the bales and left more than a score of dead and wounded on the ground. A second fusillade of musketry caused many more to hesitate before making for the rear, leaving their wounded comrades to crawl towards the cover of the brick kilns. The bales of cotton untouched by the flames were quickly retrieved by the garrison troops and used to plug holes in their defence works.

  Another rebel attack against an unfinished barrack block failed just as miserably in the face of the deadly marksmanship of Mowbray Thomson and his team. ‘Mainwaring’s revolver despatched two or three,’ wrote Mowbray Thomson later. ‘Stirling with an Enfield rifle, shot one and bayoneted another … both charges of my double barrelled gun were emptied and not in vain. We were seventeen of us inside that barrack, and they left eighteen corpses lying outside the doorway.’ In the fierce exchange of musketry which had ensued, Thomson was struck in the fleshy part of his thigh, bringing forth the comment: ‘A ball ploughed up the flesh, but happily, though narrowly, escaped the bone.’

  By midday most of the attackers had melted away and the relieved garrison looked at each other in astonishment mixed with relief. Wheeler’s troops had survived the attack prompted by the anniversary of Plassey with remarkably few casualties. Brushing aside his men’s congratulations, General Wheeler left the powder-blackened defenders and hurried back to his room, only to find his wife and daughters sobbing over the decapitated body of his favourite son, Gordon. In the artillery barrage preceding the rebel assault, a 9-pound round shot had crashed through the wall and taken off his head as his mother and sisters were attending to his wound.

  This personal tragedy took its toll of Sir Hugh Massey Wheeler, but then practically every member of the community had suffered in one way or another. William Shepherd was fortunate to have survived the rebel attack without so much as a scratch, much to the relief of his wife Ellen. But, her joy was short lived when he announced to her that it was his intention to leave the entrenchment and pass through the rebel lines to gather intelligence. Shepherd’s plan was to slip by the unfinished barracks at midday when the mutineers were taking their meals, and make for the city.

  It was an audacious idea and at first his superiors refused to sanction the attempt, but persuaded by his enthusiasm and anxious to learn what he could gather about the condition of the rebel army, and the prospect of relief, Wheeler finally agreed to the plan after Jonah Shepherd convinced him that he did not intend to desert the camp.

  Finally, after bidding his friends and family a tearful farewell, William Shepherd, wearing a sepoy’s loin cloth, turban and a grease-smeared cook’s coat, set off on 24 June fortified by a generous tot of rum from a sympathetic soldier. All went well until he had passed the first of the unfinished barracks when he was stopped by a native orderly from the Nana’s headquarters. Realizing that he had been seen coming from the direction of the entrenchment, Shepherd decided to bluff it out. ‘If you spare my life,’ he told his captor, ‘I will tell you the truth.’ He had indeed escaped from Wheeler’s entrenchment, he said, but only to escape being killed by the shot and shell. ‘So do not kill me,’ he begged, ‘but let me go on my way.’

  ‘You will not be killed,’ replied the orderly, ‘but come along with me. You must give all the information about the entrenchment to the Raja Sahib.’

  William Shepherd’s mission had come to an untimely end in less than hour of leaving his family. He was now a prisoner of the Nana Sahib.

  In the rebel circles repeated failure to overrun the European’s entrenchment had bred an indifference to the prosecution of the siege and a growing anger against the man who had brought them back from the rich pickings to be found in Delhi. Even the Nana’s own artillerymen now preferred to spend more time at the stalls selling sweetmeats and sherbert, than in servicing their cannon. Confidence in the Nana’s ability to drive out the English was rapidly waning among the Muslims and to a lesser degree with the Hindus. Muslim disaffection came to a head when two Muslem butchers were brought before the Nana’s older brother, Baba Bhutt, accused of slaughtering a cow in the city’s bazaar. They were tried and sentenced to amputation according to Hindu law, but the operation to sever their hands was bungled and the unfortunate butchers bled to death. The Muslim community, and in particular the sowars of the 2nd Cavalry, were outraged. ‘By whose authority did the Nana act?’ was the cry. ‘Is he not a creature of our own hands and can we not appoint anyone else we like?’ It took all of Azimullah’s skill to appease the Muslim faction, but even so, it left the cavalrymen with a bitter resentment of the Nana Sahib’s rule.

  Faced with a growing threat of the Muslims tu
rning against him, the Nana began to despair of defeating Sir Hugh Wheeler by force of arm; it remained a source of astonishment to him and to many of his advisors that a comparatively small number of Europeans, many of them women and children, could exist for so long under the most appalling circumstances and still show defiance. Ignorant of the real state of affairs within Wheeler’s entrenchment, which was becoming ever more grave with each passing hour, Nana Sahib began to wonder whether the garrison might agree to evacuate the cantonment if they were given the promise of a safe conduct to Allahabad.

  Late that afternoon, William Shepherd whilst in custody, overheard two sepoys discussing a rumour that ‘an old lady from among the Christian prisoners’ was to be sent with a message to the garrison offering safe passage to Allahabad providing they surrendered the entrenchment. He was overjoyed. There seemed to be hope yet for Ellen and Polly.

  South-west of Wheeler’s position beside the Grand Trunk Road stood a large house known as the Savada Koti. It had once been a charitable institution before being taken over by the rebels as their headquarters, and it also served as a prison for those captured and awaiting execution. On the evening of the 24th a woman was seen by a sentry in Thomson’s block to be walking across the parade ground towards the entrenchment. As she neared the earthworks she was recognized by Amelia Home as Mrs Jacobi, the widow of a watchmaker in the city. The letter she brought was addressed to ‘The subjects of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria’, and offered a ray of hope to the beleaguered men and women who had courageously resisted every attempt during the last twenty-one days to batter them into submission.

  Although unsigned, it was recognized to be the handwriting of Azimullah Khan and read as follows:

  All those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and are willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad. It is far better for you who are still alive to go at once to Allahabad, unless you wish to continue fighting; if so you can do so. Let Cawnpore be given up, and you shall be saved.

  It was an offer that at first General Wheeler did not feel inclined to accept, since it did not bear the signature of Nana Sahib. However, he had little choice in the matter.

  The garrison had rations for three days at the most, their ammunition was almost exhausted, and their numbers were being reduced each day. At a hurriedly convened meeting of the officers it was agreed that the alternative of fighting their way through the ring of mutineers was hopeless. The act of capitulation was anathema to many, for as Amelia Horne suggested, ‘The thought of white men surrendering to the blacks was most abhorrent to British prestige.’ Nevertheless, however distasteful, it offered a chance of survival for the women and children. Captain Moore also pointed out that in the rains which were daily expected, the trench would quickly fill with water and there was every likelihood of the barrack walls collapsing from the battering they had undergone. It was his persuasive argument that finally won the day.

  The women in the community, some of whom, wrote Amelia, ‘looked old, haggard, desperate, and imbecile’, were of course less concerned with honour but rather with the survival of their children, and they breathed a sigh of relief when Mrs Jacobi, who had spent the whole day in the entrenchment whilst the issue was debated, returned to the Savada Koti with the garrison’s agreement.

  Despite the doubts held by a few of the officers as to the genuineness of the offer, there was little else the garrison could have done, for as Amelia pointed out: ‘Our ammunition was coming to an end and our food supply had run out. With starvation staring us in the face and black despair at our hearts, who could blame the wisdom of the decision?’

  The next day it seemed that the prayers of many had been answered for a flag of truce was hoisted and an hour after midday Azimullah Khan and Jawala Prasad, the Commander of Nana’s cavalry, approached the entrenchment with an escort of the 2nd Cavalry, to be met by Captains Moore and Whiting, who notified them of the terms on which General Wheeler was prepared to evacuate the defence works. In return for giving up their artillery, Wheeler’s men were to be allowed to march out under arms with sixty rounds of ball ammunition. Carriages were to be provided for the women and children, and doolies for the sick. Covered boats were to be at the river landing stage, provisioned for the journey to Allahabad.

  Later that afternoon, a sowar returned bearing a message to the effect that the Nana Sahib raised no objection to Wheeler’s proposals but requested that the cantonment be abandoned that very night. Captain Moore thought that was an unreasonable demand and could not possibly be carried out until the following day, which brought a threat from the Nana that a further week of bombardment would leave no one alive to dispute the matter.

  It was an ultimatum which left the British negotiators unmoved and with his Irish temper rising, Moore retorted that if the Nana wanted the entrenchment he had only to come and take it, his soldiers knew the way to it and were even more familiar with the way back. In that event, Moore pointed out, Wheeler had a man posted at each of the magazines which held enough powder to blow themselves and the mutineers to eternity should they manage to storm the parapets. The messenger returned once again to the Nana’s headquarters, ‘and by and by he came out to us again,’ wrote Lieutenant Thomson, ‘with the verbal consent that we should delay the embarkation until morning.’

  Although that night the garrison rested unmolested for the first time in twenty-one days, Mowbray Thomson found sleep difficult to come by. ‘After such an acclimation of the brain to incessant bombardment,’ he confessed, ‘the stillness was actually quite painful.’

  Many of the women could not believe that the nightmare was over. ‘It was such happiness to quit a place so fraught with misery and so fearfully haunted with the groans of those death had snatched away,’ observed a relieved Amy Horne.

  A mile to the south, William Shepherd was also spending a sleepless night, languishing in a prison cell without the least notion of how his family was faring. The Eurasian clerk crouched in a corner tormented by the possibility that he would never see them again.

  In the entrenchment, the survivors washed down a breakfast of boiled lentils and perhaps a chapatti, with copious amounts of water from the well. ‘Draught after draught was swallowed, and although the debris of mortar and bricks had made the water cloudy,’ wrote Thomson, ‘it was more delicious than nectar.’

  As the morning drew on, crowds of townspeople and natives from nearby villages, drawn by a rumour that the English were leaving Cawnpore, swarmed down to the Satichaura Ghat, where a flotilla of barges lay beached in the shallows – even the less observant among them could not fail to see that both banks of the river were lined with sepoys. In the early afternoon of the 26th a delegation of officers from the garrison, headed by Lieutenant Delafosse, were taken down to the ghat where they inspected the boats for their river worthiness. ‘They found about forty boats moored and appearing ready for departure,’ wrote Thomson. ‘Some of them roofed and others undergoing the process.’ The boats, most of them grounded in the mud, were the usual eight-oared budgerows, 30 feet long and 10 feet in the beam, roofed over with bamboo and straw to give some protection from the sun, and open at each end for the helmsman and the oarsmen.

  A mile from the landing stage, a few of the redcoats in the entrenchments occupied themselves by beating out marching tunes on wooden casks accompanied by tunes on a penny whistle, for the amusement of the children, in an attempt to banish memories of their recent suffering. Amelia Horne was struck with pity for the miserable state of those redcoats as they danced and sung in front of the children. Many of the soldiers were blistered by the sun and tormented with boils.

  ‘Worked to death, underfed, and, in the later stages of the siege, starved, their uniforms rotting on their backs, their faces unwashed, their hands covered in grime from the guns, which dried and formed hard coatings; they were such a pitiable sight to see,’ she wrote.

  On 27 June, shortly after dawn, the 450 survivors of the
siege made ready to leave. Many of the garrison paid a farewell visit to the 60-feet-deep sepulchral well to breathe a silent prayer over the bodies of their loved ones, and perhaps to drop a note of loving remembrance over the low brick wall. Little time was spent over gathering their scant possessions apart from personal treasures or mementoes. Mowbray Thomson took his father’s Ghuznee medal and a miniature portrait of his mother, but was also careful to stuff his pockets with as many cartridges as he could carry. Others pinned identity notes to their children; many, with little more than memories of a loved one, lingered for a few grief-stricken moments of prayer at the well. The last to leave the area appears to have been Major Edward Vibart, his few belongings carried by a mutineer of his regiment, ‘with the most profuse demonstrations of respect’.

  Mowbray Thomson took the opportunity to ask one of the native officers of the 53rd to put a figure on the number of casualties the rebels had suffered.

  ‘From 700 to 800,’ the man told him.

  ‘I believe this estimate to have been under, rather than over the mark,’ commented a sceptical Thomson.

  By 7.00 am the evacuation was well under way. Sixteen elephants and eighty palanquins and bullock carts had been provided for the women and children, and a particularly magnificent beast for Sir Hugh Wheeler and his family. In low spirits and close to tears, he is said to have declined the offer and instead rode down to the landing stage on ‘a skinny Galloway, muttering that he had once again been duped’.

  Slowly the long column wound its way past the roofless barrack blocks scarred by the impact of round shot, across the plain, on a mile-long journey to the river, escorted by sowars of the 2nd Cavalry. In the van trod the ponderous elephants, their trunks adorned with gleaming brass rings and with colourful howdahs on their backs, one carrying Lady Wheeler and her daughters. It was followed by a train of bullock carts and palanquins with their wretched burdens of emaciated women and children, scorched and blistered by the sun. In the rear marched the surviving members of the 32nd of Foot in threadbare uniforms led by Captain Moore. The doolies bearing the sick and wounded, were even further behind with Major Vibart.