Massacre at Cawnpore

by V. A. Stuart

  There were, inevitably, some who complained, some who yielded to grief, and one or two who held themselves aloof from the tasks which the rest shared. There was some bickering and even an occasional bitter quarrel between them, yet somehow— none of the women could have said how—they contrived to meet the trials and tribulations of each day as it came. They adjusted themselves to new perils and faced bereavement bravely; they accepted the need for fresh sacrifices and bore their anxiety for husband and children, together with the heat, the stench and the flies, with a fortitude at which Emmy could only marvel … unaware that her own was of the same high calibre.

  Always when morale sank, the courage of a few shone like a beacon of hope amidst the general misery. The wife of a private of the Queen’s 32nd, Bridget Widdowson—who confessed that she could neither read or write—kept the children entertained and happy for hours on end with the droll Irish stories she made up for them. Later, armed with an officer’s sword, she coolly stood guard over an intruder found, with matches in his possession, on the thatched roof of the building, while the fire he had started was extinguished.

  Mrs Hillersdon, whose husband was collector and chief magistrate of Cawnpore, although desperately weak from fever and mourning the death of her elder child from the same cause, gave an eloquent rendering of the Twenty-third Psalm each evening at candle-light. She continued until both her strength and her beautiful voice failed her … but only her silence, at the accustomed hour on the evening of 9th June, revealed that she had herself entered the Valley of the Shadow and would not return.

  Other heroines emerged; women who refused to give in to despair or to lower the standards of behaviour in which they had been brought up to believe. Grief-stricken mothers, learning that they had been widowed, said no word of their loss to their children; others, who had watched their husbands or their sons die, returned from the wards to perform once more the chores allotted to them, hiding their heartbreak with a smile. Two—one the wife of an officer who was in Lucknow—reaching their time, were compelled to give birth in the crowded room and stifled the cries that were wrung from them by biting on leather straps, until their agonies were over.

  Squalor, in such conditions, could not be avoided; brick-dust, from the pounding of the guns, was everywhere, often inches deep on the floors; glass from shattered windows, fallen beams and masonry, human excreta … all had to be cleared away, perhaps a score of times each day, but it was done. Gently nurtured girls, officers’ ladies, like Caroline Moore and Grace Kempland who, all their lives had been accustomed to being waited on by a host of native servants, now uncomplainingly performed such menial tasks, cleaning, scouring and even cooking, for there was no one else to do it. The native servants—bearers, ayahs, sweepers and cooks—had begun to flee the entrenchment as the siege went on, sensing defeat and anxious to save their own skins. Those who were left were needed to prepare food for the men defending the perimeter, who could not be spared from their posts, and the women had, perforce, to fend for themselves.

  They made chapattis and lentil stew and pease puddings from the uncooked rations they received. All too often, however, if they were unable to obtain the use of an oven or reach the cooking-fires in daylight, even these meagre supplies had to be eaten raw, washed down by sips of rum or—incongruously—champagne, with which they had been issued at the beginning of the siege. Tea, coffee and milk were unheard of luxuries; the most that could be managed were a few grains of sugar, carefully dissolved in a little of their precious water, which was given to the sick and the younger children. William—since Emmy, to her distress, was no longer able to suckle him—existed on this, with the addition of a drop or two of brandy.

  After the first five days there was no meat, except when the soldiers on out-picket or burial duty contrived to shoot a stray horse or cow, and the few jars of preserved herring, jam and pickles—which had been doled out with the champagne—were soon used up or were kept in reserve for the children. Virtually everything was shared, the needs of the wounded and the sick taking precedence over all others. Women who had had the foresight to bring a stock of clothing with them, intended for their own use, cut up dresses and petticoats from which to make bandages, resisting—with one or two exceptions—the temptation to indulge themselves in the luxury of clean linen. They went bare-legged when an urgent request came from Lieutenant Ashe for all the stockings they could provide. His request was answered at once and later became the subject of wry laughter, when the owners heard that the young artillery officer required them in order to replenish his dwindling supply of cartridge-cases.

  There was, heaven knew, little cause for levity, as endless day followed endless day and no word of the promised reinforcements reached them from Allahabad or Lucknow. Yet, against all reason, a brave spirit of optimism prevailed … even, Emmy observed with wonder, amongst the wounded, many of whom voluntarily returned to duty with bandaged heads and arms in slings, scarcely able to walk.

  The mutineers had increased their number to an estimated eight or nine thousand, with the addition of revolted sepoy regiments, from Jhansi, Saugor and Nowgong. It was also reported, by native spies, that they had seized two boatloads of munitions, sent up-river from Benares and intended for the Cawnpore garrison, but despite their vast superiority in arms and manpower and despite the ceaseless bombardment, they failed to break down the British resistance.

  Every attack, whether by day or night, had been beaten off; the mutineers had not succeeded in entering the entrenchment save as prisoners and all their attempts to occupy the unfinished barrack blocks to the north of Number Four were thwarted by John Moore’s raiding parties. If British casualties were high, those of the enemy were invariably higher. True, the worn-out guns in the entrenchment could no longer be relied on, ammunition was running short and the defenders were unwashed, sweating scarecrows, almost blinded by the glare of the sun, their bodies burnt raw, their strength sapped by the relentless heat … but they could still fight and they gave proof of it daily.

  By the sixth day the rebel attacks had dwindled and become more cautious and, at times, even cowardly. The cavalry sowars seldom showed themselves; the sepoys allowed a dozen half-starved British soldiers and civilians to put ten times their number to flight, with scarcely a shot fired and prisoners, taken on raids, admitted that their leaders were losing heart. Still the heavy guns continued their pounding, with red-hot grapeshot added to the screeching mortar shells and the volleys of musketry. When the bombardment was at its height, as many as three hundred missiles an hour rained down on the parched ground of the entrenchment, and the men behind the parapet dared not move from their posts, taking what rest they could leaning, rifles always to hand, against the bullet-pitted mud wall or in the shallow trenches behind it.

  But they were not defeated; they could hold out, Alex declared, when Emmy ventured to question him. They could hold out until Neill’s relief column reached them; Allahabad was, after all, no more than 128 miles distant. Seven days’ forced march, eight at the outside—they could defend the entrenchment for another eight days, and there was always the hope that aid might be sent from Lucknow.

  Another eight days of this living hell, Emmy thought miserably. Eight more days of slaughter, of heat and squalor, of raging, unquenchable thirst and of wracking anxiety for friends and loved ones … oh no, dear, merciful God, no! Already Alex looked like a ghost, filthy, blistered, unshaven, his clothes hanging on his over-thin frame like rags—how could he imagine that they could hold out for another eight days? But she had learnt the value of silence; she did not dispute his claim, did not voice her own fears—he had enough to bear without that. If he and the other ragged ghosts who haunted the ramparts like sleep-walkers could keep the enemy at bay, then the battle was not lost. She brushed his newly-bearded cheek with her lips and they parted as they had done so many times in the past week, he with a quick smile and she with the prayer in her heart that she would see him again.

  There was, as he had said,
always the hope that aid would come from Sir Henry Lawrence. Lucknow, as far as anyone in the entrenchment knew, was not yet under siege and—although communication by normal channels was clearly impossible— it was rumoured that General Wheeler intended to try to send a message through the sepoy lines. Emmy, uncertain whether or not to believe this rumour, found it unexpectedly confirmed when Brigadier Jack was brought into the hospital. He was suffering from heatstroke and very ill but, in one of his lucid moments, he was able to tell her that a trusted native had offered to attempt the perilous journey to Lucknow for the payment of a hundred pounds. The general was sending an appeal to Sir Henry Lawrence for aid—any aid—and felt sure that Lawrence, once made aware of their desperate plight, would respond to it if he could.

  This news, when she imparted it to the women in the barrack-room on her return there, just before sunset, revived their sorely-tried spirits. Haggard faces broke into smiles, eyes swollen and red-rimmed from weeping lit with new hope, and voices rose in excited chorus, as those who had not heard Emmy’s announcement clustered round her, begging her to repeat it. A thin woman, whose name she did not know, hugged her.

  “Oh but that’s wonderful, Mrs Sheridan! Let us pray God that the messenger gets safely through!”

  “Do you really think they will send us help?” another asked.

  “Sir Henry Lawrence will not fail us,” Grace Kempland said. “When he realises how great our need has become, he will do all in his power to help us. I am sure of that.”

  “Please God he will send the 32nd!” a corporal’s wife exclaimed. “Oh please God let him send our men to save us! They will get through, if anyone can.”

  Her words were echoed eagerly by the rest. “Even two hundred men of the 32nd—two companies would be enough,” Agnes Johnson, the sergeant-major’s wife, asserted. “My husband said, only this morning, that if we had two hundred fit, trained soldiers, we could fight our way to Lucknow. He says the Pandies are so demoralised by their failure to defeat us that now they would not dare stand in our way.”

  “Lucknow is only 53 miles from us, isn’t it?” Mary White looked up from the task of suckling her twin babies, her pale, tired face lit with a flush of excitement. “The messenger could get there in a day and a night, couldn’t he, if he bestirs himself?”

  “He will be on foot, Mary,” another private’s wife reminded her. “And the roads will be guarded.”

  “All right, three days then. If the troops start at once, they could be here in another two or three days, surely. They’d make forced marches.”

  “In less than a week—Holy Mother of God!”

  “If only they’ll come—if only they’ll hurry!”

  “They’ll come, as sure as God they’ll come! Is it not their wives and bairns who will die if they do not?”

  The eagerness with which they had seized on the glimmer of hope her news had offered them alarmed Emmy and, as she listened, she found herself wondering whether she would have been wiser to keep her own counsel, as she had with Alex. She exchanged an anxious glance with Caroline Moore, who said regretfully, “We cannot depend on aid from Lucknow. Sir Henry Lawrence has his own problems there—he is responsible for thousands of lives, compared with our few hundred, we have to remember that. The native inhabitants of Lucknow number close on five hundred thousand and Sir Henry has only the 32nd with which to hold them at bay. I doubt whether he will dare to send them here, even if our messenger reaches him.”

  An unhappy silence followed her words.

  “Not even a company, Mrs Moore?” the sergeant-major’s wife asked gravely.

  Caroline Moore shook her head sadly. “Captain Moore does not think he can afford to take the risk, Agnes.”

  “Then we are lost,” a soft Irish voice whispered. “Sweet Mother in Heaven, we are lost entirely!” Little Mary Kelly held her two-year-old daughter to her and wept. They were the first tears she had shed since the siege began and now she abandoned herself to grief and, although both Emmy and Caroline Moore went to her and endeavoured to console her, she would not be comforted. Rising suddenly to her feet, she ran with the child to the corridor and, before any of them could guess her intention or attempt to dissuade her, she was running across the open compound, screaming hysterically to the mutineers to put an end to her suffering. Musket-balls peppered the ground about her, as if in answer to her cries, but none struck her and a young private of the 32nd, with his arm in a sling, bravely went after her and brought her, with the child, safely back to the hospital—all three of them miraculously unscathed.

  “We must not give up hoping,” Caroline Moore said, when the girl and her daughter were settled at last. “I might be wrong— perhaps Sir Henry Lawrence will be able to send help to us, after all. And there is the relief column, there is Colonel Neill’s regiment—we’ve been promised that it’s on its way to us, with more British regiments following on from Calcutta. They won’t forget or desert us in our hour of need … they are our countrymen. We must have faith in God, trusting in His mercy to deliver us.”

  There were nods and a few tremulous smiles but the hope had gone, Emmy realised, once again regretting her premature attempt to rekindle it. Yet the hope of relief was all they had left now, all they had to live for—without it, they were lost. They would turn their faces to the wall, as Mrs Williams had done, following the death of her husband, the commanding officer of the 56th, and simply die of grief. Or, like Mary Kelly, they would deliberately court death by running out to meet the sepoys’ bullets. She thought of Alex and repeated what he had told her about the coming of Colonel Neill’s relief column, with more conviction than she had felt when she had listened to him.

  “If the men who are defending us say that they can hold out for perhaps another eight days, then we can,” she added. “We know that they will never permit the sepoys to enter the entrenchment whilst any of them are left alive and that, surely, is the worst we have to fear. If God will give us strength, we can endure anything else.”

  Caroline Moore smiled her agreement. “We’ll dole out the rations, shall we?” she suggested, with forced cheerfulness. “One of the soldiers has promised to bring us some meat broth for the children and the guns will stop soon—it’s almost candle-light and …” she broke off, the last remnants of colour draining from her wan cheeks. “Dear heaven, what was that?”

  From the other side of the building they heard a reverberating crash and the sound of running feet. “Fire!” A panic-stricken voice shrieked the warning they all dreaded. “The roof is on fire! Save yourselves!”

  This time there was no doubt of the seriousness of the warning. The intruder who had previously crept in with matches had succeeded only in igniting a few strands of thatch, which they had had little difficulty in containing. Now, however, they realised that a carcass—or fireball, composed of sulphur, resin and tallow—from one of the rebel batteries must have been aimed at the hospital roof, with the intention of setting it on fire. The missile had struck the north side of the roof—where the tiling which General Wheeler had ordered as protection was incomplete—and within minutes the whole thatch was alight and the room below filled with suffocating smoke.

  As the women, frantic with fear, sought to drag or carry their children from the building and others struggled to assist the sick to their feet, some of the roof-rafters fell in and the north wall collapsed, unloosing a cascade of smouldering debris, beneath which many of the helpless were buried.

  For the first few terrible minutes, panic reigned and no attempt at organised rescue was possible. The women milled in the corridors, running this way and that, blinded by the smoke and losing all sense of direction. With the sobbing, terrified children and a few dazed wounded from the wards, they blocked the exits, seeking to escape from the flames and the falling masonry, yet afraid to face the danger of the open compound outside. Every enemy gun seemed to be concentrating its fire on the blazing hospital and, from their trenches in front of the New Cantonment, the sepoys poured volley
after volley of musketry into the open space at the rear, to which some of the fugitives had managed to run and where they presented an easy target, silhouetted against the glow of the flames. The running children were ruthlessly mown down, as were the soldiers who dashed from the parapet in valiant attempts to guide them to safety.

  Emmy lost sight of Lucy Chalmers in the awful confusion and then glimpsed her again, with her mother beside her and William clasped in her arms, crouching behind the bath-house. She attempted to follow them but the shrieks of those still left in the building and their agonised cries for help rang in her ears, louder and more compelling than the thunder of the guns. She turned back, groping blindly for the entrance to the ward where, less than an hour before, there had been men whose wounds she had dressed and to whom she had held out hope of survival. The gallant, stoically uncomplaining Michael Heberden, with his terrible injuries; the eighteen-year-old Ensign Dawson, whose prayers were never for himself but for his mother, safely at home in England; the stout-hearted old artillery pensioner Cox, with both legs amputated, who could still laugh at his own jokes; the brother of Brigadier Jack, a civilian on a visit from his sheep station in Australia, whose right leg had been carried away by a round-shot; the brigadier himself … their faces and a score of others swam before her tear-filled eyes.

  If only she could get help for them, if only she could reach them … some of them, surely, must be still alive. A party of soldiers, who had come in from outside to give what assistance they could, appeared suddenly through the smoke.