The insurgents made no systematic attempt to disrupt the telegraph. Wires were cut for a time between Meerut and Agra (possibly by Gujars), but communications remained open across north-western India for most of May. This was a godsend for administrators and commanders, who were able to trace the course of the unrest and make preparations. Forewarned, they could either appeal directly for loyalty or disarm the sepoys. This was the wisest and most popular response for, as Sir John Lawrence, the commissioner for the Punjab, told Calcutta on 13 May, no faith could now be placed in any Bengali regiment.24
Colonel Thomas Pierce still trusted his 6th Light Cavalry and appealed to them to charge mutineers from the 15th Bengal NI, who had risen at Nasirabad on 28 May.
Men of the 6th corps, listen to me, I have every confidence in you, I beg of you keep order in the ranks and listen to no commands but mine, which I know you obey. When the moment arrives, behave like Heroes, and I will answer that conspicuous gallantry shall not pass unrewarded – if the worst comes to the worst, I am ready to die with you.
His words were enthusiastically received, and Pierce decided to demonstrate his faith in the troopers by sending his wife, Isabella, then eight months pregnant, to the quarters of the native officers’ families.25 After a bloody skirmish with the insurgents, who had seized a cannon, Pierce’s men switched sides. They did not, however, harm their officers or Mrs Pierce. Likewise, Europeans in Nimach were allowed to leave unmolested after the garrison mutinied. Officers there had endeavoured to extract oaths of loyalty from their men, sworn on Ganges water and the Koran, and had demonstrated their confidence in them by sleeping in the sepoy lines.26
In the recently annexed Punjab, Sir John Lawrence and his administrators would pander to no one. He and his judicial commissioner, Robert Montgomery, were Protestant Ulstermen and, in the words of the semiofficial historian of the Mutiny, Sir William Kaye, were ‘familiar with the stirring watch-words of Derry: “No Surrender”.’27 They took that same rigorous line with actual and potential mutineers as their ancestors had done with the Catholic, Gaelic Irish. Immediately the first baleful telegram reached Lahore, Montgomery ordered European civilians to take refuge inside the fort and stopped the issue of arms and percussion caps to the sepoys. There were 6,000 native troops garrisoned near the city and intelligence revealed that they were in a perverse mood. Montgomery acted decisively and swiftly: while a ball was in progress, preparations were secretly put in hand to disarm the entire Indian force. On the morning of 13 May, three regiments of sepoy infantry and one of cavalry were summoned to a special parade where, according to military practice, they would be formally told of the disbandment of the 19th and 34th Bengal NI at Barrackpur six weeks before.
There were six cannon, all loaded with grape shot, and six companies of the 81st Regiment, who were deployed where they could rake the native lines with fire. A junior officer commanded the sepoys to lay down their muskets, an order that was being given, he assured them, ‘not so much for the peace of the country, which the British would maintain, as for the sake of preserving untarnished the names of the regiments’. No one was fooled; but the command, ‘Eighty-first, load!’, followed by the ‘ominous ring of each ramrod as it drove hard the ball-cartridge, carried conviction to the hearts of the waverers’. So too did the gunners standing with lighted linstocks above the touch holes.28 Montgomery had every reason to congratulate himself: his bluff had saved Lahore and with it communications between the Punjab and the rest of India.
Civilians were soon sucked into what had begun as a purely military revolt. Gujars from the hinterland of Meerut joined its inhabitants during the looting of the British cantonments, and once the government’s authority had dissolved there were plenty in Delhi who snatched the opportunity to do the same. These plunderers, and thousands more who emerged as anarchy spread in towns and countryside, were purely self-interested. Officials described them all as badmashes (ruffians and petty crooks), but many, perhaps the majority, were probably poor and glad to turn a public emergency to their own advantage. In Azamgarh the mutiny of the 17th Bengal NI was preceded by three weeks of civilian unrest triggered by news of events in Meerut. The tax assessment on the ryots was heavy, urban weavers suffered from a local impost and a grain shortage was forcing up food prices. As he rode through the countryside during the third week of May, the magistrate Charles Horne found the villagers insolent, and inside the city shopkeepers offered to pay for armed guards on the bazaar.29
Just as there were Indians with much to gain from the collapse of civil order, there were those with much to lose. Their interest lay in the preservation and restoration of British government and they were ready to do all in their power to assist the Raj. After the revolts by the Nasirabad and Nimach garrisons, Takht Singh, the Maharaja of Jodhpur, who depended heavily on British support, immediately offered his own troops to help crush the mutineers. The Jodhpur Legion deserted to the mutineers and provided the cue for one of the maharaja’s local political enemies, Thakur Kushai Singh, to join them, bringing with him 2,000 armed retainers.30 Maharaja Baji Rao Scindia of Gwalior also stuck by the Raj, but his confidence in its survival was not shared by the largely Bengali Gwalior contingent, a force which he financed. On 14 June the Gwalior contingent mutinied and murdered its British officers. It did not, however, join the Delhi mutineers or march to the front, which was opening up along the Ganges, thanks to Baji Rao’s willingness to keep paying its wages. The regent of Bharatpur also stayed true to the government, although his subjects favoured the mutineers. In both instances, princely fidelity rested in large part on an unwillingness to exchange the Governor-General in Calcutta for an emperor in Delhi.31
There was no mistaking the temper of the ordinary people of Gwalior. By 19 May the shock waves from Meerut and Delhi had reached the city and they convinced many that the Raj was tottering. The time was ripe for the venting of long suppressed resentments. Servants were impertinent and some looked as though they might cut the throats of their masters and mistresses. The Reverend George Coopland, a zealous Company chaplain, noted ‘a scowl on every native’s face’ and blamed his employers for ‘weak tampering with idolatry and flattering vile superstition’.32 Elsewhere sahibs were perplexed and dismayed by the frailty of their servants’ loyalty. Colonel Pierce was upset by the sudden departure of his bhisti and washerwoman, who had served him for between twenty and thirty years. There was some consolation in the fidelity of his orderly, who had been at his side throughout the Afghan and Sikh wars and remained in Nasirabad to guard Pierce’s property.33
In areas where British authority had either vanished or was on the point of disintegration, the peasantry moved quickly to settle old scores. Within days of the Meerut revolt, there were upheavals in the adjacent Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar districts in which zamindars and ryots attacked their creditors. The Gujars, a semi-nomadic pastoral tribe prone to banditry, were prominent in the revolt against what they called the ‘bania ka raj’ (the rule of the moneylenders) and they and their account books were favourite targets. Overnight, thousands of debts were unilaterally repudiated. These disturbances temporarily subsided after swift action by two local magistrates, backed by police and a detachment of cavalry from Ambala. R. Spankie, the ‘gallant and active’ magistrate of Saharanpur, was horrified by how brittle the Raj’s authority had proved. ‘The people of this district,’ he wrote after they had been brought to heel, ‘and in all others in this country I suppose, have no sympathy with the Government, British or Native. Separate castes and communities have separate ends and desires to attain, and the weakness of Government is their strength.’34
In these early days, it was far from clear whether or not the mutineers would forge a permanent alliance with the rural insurgents. What was beyond question was that attacks on property, pillaging and assaults on bankers and businessmen convinced men of substance that they had a common cause with the British. The mutineers at Nasirabad had extorted between two and three thousand rupees from each of the
town’s moneylenders and merchants.35 Inside Delhi, Mohan Lal, a munshi and British agent, noticed that many rich and influential Hindu and Muslim businessmen, who had prospered under British rule and had used ‘British laws and courts’ to their advantage, realised that a rebel victory would be their undoing.36 At Mathura, 115 miles south of the city, the powerful Seth banking family were happy to supply the embattled magistrate Mark Thornton with information from their own extensive intelligence network and loan him two nine-pounder cannon which they kept for festivals.37 What had begun as a soldiers’ insurrection had become a civil war from which Indians could not escape. They were confronted with three equally perilous choices: neutrality, support for the Raj, or rebellion.
III
How they would make up their minds depended on the government’s chances of crushing the insurrection swiftly and decisively. During May and early June 1857 most Indians, however deep their grievances, preferred to wait and watch rather than throw themselves behind one side or the other. Old habits of obedience were hard to shake off and the mystique of the Raj still lingered; Mirza Jiwan Bakht spoke for many when he later recalled, ‘I was always afraid of the Company’s government.’38 If past example was anything to go by, Indians might expect the Company’s response to the rebellion to be speedy, aggressive and overwhelming. It was none of these things.
The government had been caught off balance with its military resources stretched to breaking point. Sir John Lawrence exposed its vulnerability in his analysis of the strategic situation on 19 May: ‘Between Meerut and Calcutta we have but five regiments of Europeans scattered over the country at wide intervals. What is to become of them and all our countrymen, if we hold our own at points where we are strong?’39 European troops were isolated and bottled up in key bases, protecting civilians, women and children and defending government property and treasure. The five British regiments immediately available for action in May were strung out along the 750 miles between Delhi and Calcutta: the 53rd and the 84th covering that city, the 10th at Dinajpur, the 32nd at Lucknow, and the 3rd Bengal Europeans at Agra. Priority had been given to holding these strongpoints and, at the latter three, neutralising their sepoy garrisons.
This left approximately 3,800 British and trustworthy Indian troops at Ambala and Meerut who were earmarked for the blockade of Delhi at the end of May. The only strategic reserve of Europeans was scattered across the Punjab, temporarily tied down, as it were, by 36,000 Bengali troops whose loyalty was fragile. By the final fortnight in July more than half had been disarmed by British, Sikh and Gurkha troops. By this time, Sir John Lawrence could no longer resist pressure to reinforce the army besieging Delhi. He gave way grudgingly on 21 July after his arm had been twisted by the commander at Delhi, Brigadier-General Archdale Wilson, who threatened to abandon the siege if he was not sent additional men. Many of the 4,200 soldiers ordered south were withdrawn from the Punjab frontier garrison, a gamble which Lawrence was forced to accept. As one of his subordinates wired Calcutta: ‘It will be vain to attempt to retain the Trans-Indus border while we lose the interior of the Punjab.’ As it was, luck favoured the British. On the whole, the notoriously volatile tribesmen remained quiet, and thousands were happy to join improvised detachments which Lawrence was raising for service against the mutineers.
Like Sir John, Canning had identified the weaknesses of the British strategic position. He also guessed that there was more trouble ahead and, on 19 May, had summoned reinforcements. Four days later the 1st Madras Fusiliers began disembarking at Calcutta and were immediately hurried up country piecemeal, shortly followed by the 35th which had been recalled from Burma. The 64th and the 78th Highlanders, whose kilts, red beards and tanned faces unnerved the Indians, returned from the Persian expedition during the first week of June and were immediately rushed to the front. Canning could also count on another Scottish regiment, the 90th, which had been on its way to Hong Kong as the advance guard of an army sent to force the Chinese government to accept a free trade in opium. Its troopships were intercepted at sea and diverted. The 90th reached Calcutta at the beginning of August and was later joined by the 5th from Mauritius. News of the mutiny reached Cape Town on 9 August and the 93rd Highlanders, then heading for China, were immediately ordered to Calcutta, which they reached thirty-eight days later.40 Further reinforcements, the 48th, 57th and 71st Highlanders, were hurrying from Malta, carried by steamships and via the overland route across the Suez isthmus. This route was a godsend which considerably accelerated the flow of manpower to India. The 8th Hussars who sailed from Southampton on 20 October arrived at Bombay on 24 November.41
Over 4,000 British troops were rushed up from Calcutta to the Benares/Allahabad region during June and a further 4,000 were expected within the next six weeks.42 They were just enough to tip the balance in the fighting around those two cities and forestall the spread of unrest to districts between them and Calcutta. Little help could be expected from the other two presidencies, at least for the time being. The commander-in-chief in Madras was nervous about disaffection among his forces, and his counterpart in Bombay had been taking precautionary measures since 12 May. They were needed, for, on 14 June, seditious correspondence between the mutineers and Bombay sepoys was discovered.43
There was just enough manpower for holding operations and a counterattack towards Cawnpore, but insufficient for the creation of a mobile field force when it was most needed during the last fortnight of May and the first of June. As predicted, the crisis worsened during the first week of June with a second wave of mutinies at Lucknow, Cawnpore, Azamgarh, Allahabad and Bareilly. Awadh and the greater part of the north-western provinces passed out of the Company’s control and much of central India appeared to be in jeopardy after mutinies at Gwalior and Jhansi. The government’s authority evaporated, its servants and remaining soldiers, mostly white, were driven behind hastily constructed fieldworks at Cawnpore and Lucknow and at Agra into the massive Mughal fortress palace, overlooking the Jumma. Beyond these embattled enclaves there was anarchy.
The situation was most perilous in Cawnpore, 260 miles south-east of Delhi. Command was in the hands of General Sir Hugh Wheeler, a veteran of nearly every Indian campaign since 1805. He commanded 200 European soldiers and was responsible for nearly a thousand fugitives, over a third of them women and children, whom he had placed behind makeshift defences close to his house. After a fortnight of alarums, the 2nd Bengal Light Cavalry mutinied on the night of 4–5 May and attempted to subvert the rest of the Cawnpore garrison. The 1st Bengal NI broke immediately, but the 53rd and 56th were less than enthusiastic. Their minds were made up on the morning of 5 June when, in a moment of confusion, they were fired upon from Wheeler’s trenches. Even so, many sepoys and cavalrymen stayed loyal and made their way to the British lines during the next few days.
Within hours of the first rising at Cawnpore, a large body of mutineers made their way to Bithur to plead with Nana Sahib, whose grievances against the British made him a natural ally. Although after the Mutiny there were allegations that Nana had been at the heart of a vast conspiracy and was said to have had secret contacts with Russian agents, Wheeler and many others believed that he would remain loyal and were astounded by his defection. Nana and those close to him claimed afterwards, and when he was a fugitive, that he had been compelled to join the insurgents, not least by threats that they would plunder his property.44 A more likely explanation for his conduct was that he was part trimmer, part political gambler. Recent experience had taught him that he could expect nothing from the British, however hard he tried to ingratiate himself with them. The sepoys offered him a chance to fulfil his ambitions and he snatched at it in the belief that British power was on the verge of disintegration throughout India. On 6 June he appeared with his artillery and armed retainers in front of Wheeler’s fortifications and the siege began.
At Lucknow, Sir Henry Lawrence had been victualling and fortifying the residency since 23 May. He was cautiously optimistic, for he had the 32nd Reg
iment as part of the garrison, but did not feel confident enough to disarm the four Bengal regiments who showed no hints of restlessness. As in so many towns and cities at this time, the European mood was one of outward calm and inner foreboding and, as gruesome details became known of the massacres in Meerut, Delhi and some of the smaller stations, hysteria occasionally broke surface. Everyone expected the sepoys would mutiny, but no one could say when or how. When they did, on 11 June, the disturbances began, as at Meerut and elsewhere, among the cavalrymen. After a brisk fight, the mutineers were expelled from the city and set off towards Delhi. Interestingly, on the eve of the uprising, a loyal sepoy for the 13th Bengal NI warned the authorities of what was about to occur, but was ignored.45 Twelve days later, when a mounted police control discovered a substantial force of mutineers advancing on Lucknow, Martin Gubbins refused to take the matter seriously. ‘The sahib paid no attention,’ remembered his informant, who later joined the mutineers.46 This phrase might easily have been the epitaph for a crumbling Raj.
IV
The events of May and early June dictated the first phase of British operations in northern India. The mutineer command had everywhere opted for static warfare: a growing body of insurgents poured into Delhi and sat tight, while other forces encircled Cawnpore and Lucknow. This timidness made containment easier, allowing a small force to blockade Delhi and another, successively commanded by Colonel James Neill, Major-General Sir Henry Havelock and Lieutenant-General Sir James Outram to push along the Great Trunk road from Benares towards Cawnpore and Lucknow. It was a messy campaign during which commanders were restricted by a lack of manpower. Reinforcements arrived in penny packages, units had to be detached to cope with rural uprisings, and, since this was the hot season, men succumbed in hundreds to sunstroke and fevers.
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