James Talboys Wheeler

“ Many Europeans were carried off by sickness, and their fate was almost to be envied, for life itself was becoming intolerable. Had the Europeans been all men, they might have cut their way to Agra, and forced a passage down the river to Allahabad. But Sir Hugh Wheeler had 300 women and children on his hands, and it was impossible to carry them away in the face of sepoys and rebels. No other alternative was thought of for a moment. No European could dream at such a crisis of leaving women and children to the tender mercies of sepoys. ”

“ The news of battle and the roar of cannon brought the Nawab, the merchants, and half the population of Surat to the sea-shore. The British sunk or burnt several Portuguese ships until the residue of the fleet steered back to Goa. The Moguls were fascinated by the victory. They saw that the British had not only superior strength on their side, but Allah and kismet. The Nawab of Surat feasted the conquerors in his tents on the sands, and the Surat merchants eagerly bought British cargoes and supplied Indian commodities to the brave men who had beaten the Portuguese. ”

“ The sudden attack surprised and bewildered the Arabs. The British sepoys on the hill saw the confusion, and rushed down the slope and drove the Arabs before them like sheep. The memory of this victory has been preserved down to our own time. The hill Sitabuldi is a monument to the loyalty and valour of the Bengal cavalry. Every visitor to Nagpore makes a pilgrimage to Sitabuldi to behold the scene of one of the most glorious triumphs of the old sepoy army in India. Appa Sahib fled from Nagpore, but Lord Hastings refused to annex the principality ”

“ For many years Hyder Ali was the Ishmael of the Deccan and peninsula. His hand was against every man, and every man's hand was against him. He invaded alike the territories of the Mahrattas and the Nizam in the Deccan, and those of the Nawab of the Carnatic up to the suburbs of Madras and Fort St. George. At the same time, he more than once exasperated the British by his secret dealings with the French at Pondicherry. ”

“ The cow is the living representative to the Hindu of all that is beautiful and spiritual in women, and of all that is mysterious in the sex. The cow is the incarnation of the earth, the mother of all things, the goddess of good fortune, the living manifestation of Lakshmi; she who was created by the gods, who descended from the heaven of Indra and churned the ocean, until the bright goddess rose out of the waves, like a Hindu Aphrodite, to become the wife of the supreme spirit, Vishnu. To kill a cow is a sacrilegious crime, like killing a Brahman, a woman, or a Raja. ”

“ He was content to place the East India Company in the position of Dewan, with the additional duty of maintaining a standing army for the defence of the country, but without attempting to invest it with the ruling powers of a Nawab. So long as the Company took over the revenue, the Nawab and his officials were left to govern the people, and administer law and justice, according to their own will and pleasure. For himself, Lord Clive was content to rule the Company's settlement and some small cessions of territory of no account, and to leave the outside masses in utter darkness. ”

“ Nothing remained to complete the pacification of India but the capture of the Peishwa. He had fled southward to Satara, to strengthen his cause by releasing the captive Raja and setting up the old standard of Sivaji. But British prestige had been effectually restored by Lord Hastings, and the restless movements of the Peishwa were little more than feverish efforts to escape from his British pursuers. ”

“ For weeks, and indeed for months, the British force could only hope to hold their position until reinforcements could arrive from Lahore or Calcutta. The city of Delhi was strongly fortified with walls and bastions loaded with cannon, and environed by a broad, deep ditch, filled from the river Jumna, which rendered it as impregnable as Babylon of old. It was impossible to storm such fortifications without a strong army of British soldiers and an adequate siege train, all of which were anxiously expected from the Punjab. ”

“ No one anticipated massacre, and reinforcements of Europeans from Bengal might reach Cawnpore at any moment, and stamp out the mutiny and crush the Nana. Retreat from Oudh would not only have involved the loss of a province, but imparted a fatal strength to mutiny and murder from Bengal to the Punjab. The flag of Mohammedan revolt was still floating over Delhi, and had it floated over Lucknow, the second Mohammedan city in Hindustan, British prestige would have vanished for a while from Northern India. ”

“ Balls, bullets, and fragments of shells fell into every dwelling-place; and ladies and children on beds of sickness were as much exposed to the fire of the enemy as the soldiers in the trenches. There was, however, no slackening on the part of the garrison. Every man in the Residency worked in the trenches. Officers, soldiers, and civilians were either returning the enemy's fire, or digging with spades and pickaxes. The rains allayed the burning heat; but fever, dysentery, and cholera carried off their victims. No one thought of capitulation. Cawnpore had steeled every British heart. ”

“ It is not a mere narrative of military revolt, but a revelation of Asiatic nature; a lesson which every Anglo-Indian statesman must study, if he would avoid defeat or failure. The masses in the British Isles may read Biblical accounts of rebellion and massacre, or the story in Josephus of the atrocities of Herod the Great; but very few seem to realise the fact that they are reading Asiatic history, which has no reflex in Europe, nor in any country under European rule except British India. ”

“ The ruins in the neighbourhood of Delhi are monuments of the triumphs of Islam and the Koran, raised by warriors from Cabul and Bokhara, who were reverenced as Ghazis—as destroyers of idols and idolaters. Indeed, the pilgrim who still wanders amongst the palaces, mosques, mausoleums, towers, domes, archways, terraces, and gardens of Delhi, and the country round, may yet recall the days when the Hindus were a conquered people, and the Mohammedans were their oppressors and persecutors. ”

“ One and all refused, and one and all were eventually butchered in the palace of Aurangzeb.
Flagstaff Tower.
The Europeans in Flagstaff Tower were in sore peril. Ladies were terrified and anxious for absent husbands, whilst children were clamouring for milk and food. The men were distracted by the suddenness of the danger, and the stories of murder and outrage that came from the city. All eyes were strained in the direction of Meerut. Every one longed for the arrival of European soldiers to relieve them from the agony of suspense, and quash the fearful rebellion that was surging up in Delhi. ”

“ The so-called Hands are, however, intensely jealous of each other. For generations each Hand in the towns of Southern India has had its own streets and its own pagoda. At Madras, if one Hand passed in religious procession along the streets of the other Hand, or if the members of one Hand chanted Hindu hymns or mantras before the pagoda of the other, a fray would break out in Black Town, which [11] could only be suppressed by British soldiers, and then would be followed by a strike of weavers or painters, or the flight of all the members of one Hand to the Portuguese settlement at St. Thomé. ”

“ During the generation that followed the mutinies, the administration of British India has been undergoing an important change. The old patriarchal rule of non-regulation provinces has been fading away. The distinction between regulation and non-regulation is being effaced. The Punjab and Oudh, the Central Provinces and British Burma, which for years had been exclusively controlled by the Foreign Office, are being brought more and more under the Home Office; and the same laws and forms of administration will soon prevail throughout every presidency and province of the Anglo-Indian empire. ”

“ Educated men knew that the greater part of India had been previously conquered by Mohammedans, just as Syria and Persia were conquered by Arabs and Turks. It was also known that Mohammedans hated idolatry, broke down idols and pagodas, built mosques in their room, and forced many Hindus to accept Islam. But few, excepting those who had lived in India, knew anything of its affairs, or cared to know anything about them, except when war was declared against Afghans, Sikhs, or Burmese, or when Parliament was about to renew the charter of the late East India Company. ”

“ In those days India was so remote from the British Isles that the existence of the British government mainly depended on the loyalty of its sepoy armies. Suddenly it was discovered that the Madras army was on the brink of mutiny. The British authorities at Madras had introduced an obnoxious head-dress resembling a European hat, in the place of the old time-honoured turban, and had, moreover, forbidden the sepoys to appear on parade with earrings and caste marks. India was astounded by a revolt of the Madras sepoys at the fortress of Vellore, about eight miles to the westward of Arcot. ”

“ But for ages they have lived under the despotism of caste, custom, and religion, which is slowly melting away from European capitals of India, but is still rampant in Asiatic towns and villages. British education is elevating their intellects and enlarging their experiences, but cannot change their nature, nor hastily emancipate them from the usages of ages. The result is that to this day, both Hindus and Mohammedans lack those political ideas of constitutional government and public life, in which Englishmen have been trained since the days of Queen Elizabeth. ”

“ He professed to take the utmost pleasure in the society of Europeans, and was noted for his entertainments at Bithoor, to which he invited all the European society at Cawnpore. He affected to live in state like a Hindu Raja; he kept six guns for firing salutes, and entertained a large number of Mahratta troops and followers. But he never forgot his claim to the pension. He constantly harped upon the so-called injustice that deprived him of it; and he employed agents both in India and Great Britain to urge the British government to treat the pension as perpetual and hereditary. ”

“ At Meerut there was to all appearance literally nothing to fear from the sepoys. The Europeans were all-powerful. Yet at Meerut the agitation against the greased cartridges was as uncontrollable as elsewhere. General Hewitt commanded the station, and he and the colonels of the sepoy regiments expostulated with the men on the absurdity of imagining that the British government had the slightest desire to interfere with their caste or religion. ”

“ The relations between the British government and its Asiatic feudatories are not "international" in the European sense of the word, and are not controlled by international law. They are "political" in the imperial sense of the word, and are governed by the treaties, and regulated by the sovereign authority which is exercised by the British government as the paramount power in India. A British officer is placed in charge of every state, or group of states, and is known as "political agent" or "Resident." ”

“ It turned out, however, that Shere Singh was negotiating with the rebels inside the fortress, whilst swearing fidelity to the British authorities outside. When the British guns had opened fire, and the capture of the fortress was a mere question of hours, Shere Singh suddenly beat the drum of the Khalsa, proclaimed a religious war against the British, and started for the north with the whole of his men as fast as their long Sikh legs could carry them. Whish saw that pursuit was hopeless, and could only entrench his troops and wait for reinforcements whilst keeping watch on Multan. ”

“ A sepoy is proud of his corps, jealous for its reputation, and respectful to his officers. Hindus of the higher castes, such as Brahmans and Rajputs, and Mohammedans of noble and ancient families, are alike amenable to British discipline. But sepoys can be stung to insubordination by insult or injustice, like soldiers of other races. Sepoys have been known to sacrifice caste prejudices to help European officers in time of need, but they resented needless interference or looks of scorn with the sullen pride of Orientals. ”

“ Accordingly the Sikh warriors of the Khalsa, the very men who had fought against British supremacy at Chillianwalla and Goojerat, were now anxious to join the Europeans in putting down the revolt at Delhi and sacking the capital of Islam in India.
Mutinous spirit of sepoy garrisons.
John Lawrence had thus nothing to fear from the Sikhs. Nor had he anything to fear from the Mohammedans, for they were only anxious for protection against the Sikhs. The Hindus of the Punjab cared for no one but themselves ”

“ The Rajputs, the Greeks, and the Indo-Scythians of Hindustan, were all strangers from the north-west. The Turks and Afghans, who invaded India during the Crusades, and the Moguls, who established their empire in the days of the Tudors, were all sojourners from the same remote region. Thus Russia is only following the old instinct of Dravidians and Aryans, as she advances southward from the steppes towards Persia [143] and India. She expands on land just as Great Britain expands on the sea. ”

“ The princes of Rajputana had been engaged in wars and feuds amongst themselves from a remote antiquity, but for nearly a century they had been also exposed to the raids and depredations of Mahratta armies. Lord Wellesley had brought the Rajput princes into subsidiary alliance with the British government, but the treaties had been annulled by Sir George Barlow, and war and pillage were as rampant as ever. The evil had been aggravated by the rise of Afghan adventurers, who had conquered territories and founded new kingdoms in central India amidst the prevailing anarchy ”

“ In Bengal the Hindu village communities had nearly faded away under the domination of zemindars. In the North-West Provinces the village communities had survived every revolution, and have been compared to little commonwealths, each having an individual and domestic life of its own, unchanged by the storms and troubles of the outer world. The village community paid a yearly revenue,—a share of the crops or a commutation in money,—to whatever power might be uppermost, Mogul or Mahratta, Mohammedan or Hindu. ”

“ Lord Auckland landed in Bengal at a grave political crisis. Great Britain was growing jealous of Russia as regards India, and tact and common sense were required, not to promote a war, but to prevent one. Jealousy of Russia was a new sensation. Great Britain had been indignant at the partition of Poland, but the two nations had become reconciled during the wars against France and Napoleon. Later on Russia began to extend her empire, and to menace Turkey on one side and Persia on the other ”

“ Annexation policy. §12. Lord Dalhousie was so convinced of the superiority of British administration, that he considered every opportunity should be taken for bringing the territories of feudatory princes under British rule. Hitherto it had been the policy of the East India Company to perpetuate the dynasties of its feudatories. If a feudatory prince was without a son, he was advised by the British Resident to adopt one. But Hindu princes shrink from the idea of adopting a son. It is often as difficult to persuade a Raja to adopt as it used to be to persuade Englishmen to make wills. ”

“ The war with Tippu taught Lord Wellesley that it was impossible to trust the Mahrattas. They would not join the British government against a common enemy unless paid to do so; and they were always ready to go over to the enemy on the same terms. Accordingly Lord Wellesley proposed to maintain the peace of India, not by a balance of power, but by becoming the sovereign head of a league for the prevention of all future wars. ”