BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Hobhouse,

Reinsch, World Politics and Colonial Administration. Democracy and Reaction. Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism. Cuningham, A Scheme for Imperial Federation. Conant, The United States in the Orient Reich, Imperialism; its prices; its vocation.

CHAPTER II

THE GREAT INDIAN MUTINY

THE Contest between the British and the Indian princes for the decaying Moghul empire, which opened seriously at the battle of Plassey in 1757, continued steadily either in open war or by way of "peaceful penetration." As a result, by the middle of the nineteenth century the valleys of the Ganges and Indus rivers, the eastern and western coast lines and great regions in the heart of the peninsula had become immediate possessions of the British; the remainder of the body of the peninsula consisted of "protected States," also British for practical purposes; and only the northern regions towards China remained independent. While many of these States had been added peaceably, the great majority of them had been wrested from the natives by force. The germs of revolt were thus planted by the conquerors themselves, and in 1857 the great Mutiny broke out which marked a crisis in the history of British dominion in India and a new epoch in the government of that country.

1. Causes of the Mutiny1

The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories and to rush into action in a paroxysm of terror. Panic acts on an Oriental population like drink upon a European mob. The annexation policy of Lord Dalhousie, although dictated by the most enlightened considerations, was distasteful to the native mind. The spread of education, the appearance at the 'Hunter, A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, chap. xv. By permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, Oxford.

same moment of the steam engine and the telegraph wire, seemed to reveal a deep plan for substituting an English for an Indian civilization. The Bengal Sepoys especially thought that they could see farther than the rest of their countrymen. Most of them were Hindus of high caste; many of them were recruited from Oudh. They regarded our reforms on Western lines as attacks on their own nationality, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and that all India was held. The numerous dethroned princes, or their heirs and widows, were the first to learn and take advantage of this spirit of disaffection and panic. They had heard of the Crimean War, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Our munificent pensions had supplied the funds with which they could buy the aid of skilful intriguers.

On the other hand, the Company had not sufficiently opened up the higher posts in its service to natives of education, talent, or proved fidelity. It had taken important steps in this direction in respect to the lower grades of appointments. But the prizes of Indian official life, many of which are now thrown open to natives of India by the crown, were then the monopoly of a handful of Englishmen. Shortly before the Mutiny, Sir Henry Lawrence pointed out that even the army supplied no career to a native officer which could satisfy the reasonable ambition of an able man. He insisted on the serious dangers arising from this state of things; but his warnings were unheeded till too late. In the crisis of the Mutiny they were remembered. He was nominated provisional governor-general in event of any accident happening to Lord Canning; and the Queen's proclamation, on the transfer of the government from the Company to the crown at the end of the great struggle, affirmed the principle which he had so powerfully urged. "And it is our further will," are her Majesty's gracious words, "that so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge." Under the Company this liberal policy was unknown. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, therefore, found many of the Indian princes, especially the dethroned dynasties, hostile to the Company; while a multitude of its own native officers were either actively disloyal or indifferent to its fate.

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In this critical state of affairs, a rumor ran through the native

army that the cartridges served out to the Bengal regiments had been greased with the fat of pigs - animals which are unclean alike to Hindu and Muhammadan. No assurances could quiet the minds of the Sepoys. Indeed, the evidence shows that a disastrous blunder had in truth been made in this matter a blunder which, although quickly remedied, was remedied too late. Fires occurred nightly in the native lines; officers were insulted by their men; confidence was gone, and only the form of discipline remained.

In addition, the outbreak of the storm found the native regiments denuded of many of their best officers. The administration of the great empire to which Dalhousie had put the cornerstone required a larger staff than the civil service could supply. The practice of selecting able military men for civil posts, which had long existed, received a sudden and vast development. Oudh, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, British Burma, were administered to a large extent by picked officers from the Company's regiments. Good and skilful commanders remained; but the native army had nevertheless been drained of many of its brightest intellects and firmest wills at the very crisis of its fate. At the same time the British troops in India had, in spite of Lord Dalhousie's remonstrances, been reduced far below the strength which the great governor-general declared to be essential to the safety of our rule. His earnest representations on this subject, and as to the urgent necessity for a reform alike of the native and the British armies of India, were lying disregarded in London when the panic about the "greased cartridges" spread through the native regiments, and the storm burst upon Bengal.

§ 2. The Outbreak and Course of the Mutiny

On the afternoon of Sunday, May 10, 1857, the Sepoys at Meerut (Mirath) broke into open mutiny. They forced open the jail, and rushed in a wild torrent through the cantonments, cutting down any European whom they met. They then streamed off to the neighboring city of Delhi, to stir up the native garrison and the criminal population of that great city, and to place themselves under the authority of the discrowned Mughal Emperor. Meerut was then the largest military station in Northern India, with a strong European garrison of foot, horse, and guns, sufficient to overwhelm the mutineers long before they could have reached Delhi. But as the Sepoys acted in irrational panic, so the British

officers, in but too many cases, behaved with equally irrational indecision. The news of the outbreak was telegraphed to Delhi, and nothing more was done at Meerut that night. At the moment when one strong will might have saved India, no soldier in authority at Meerut seemed able to think or act. The next morning the Muhammadans of Delhi arose, and all that the Europeans there could do was to blow up the magazine.

A rallying centre and a traditional name were thus given to the revolt, which forthwith spread like wildfire through the Northwestern Provinces and Oudh down into Lower Bengal. The same narrative must suffice for all the outbreaks, although each episode has its own story of sadness and devotion. The Sepoys rose on their officers, usually without warning, sometimes after protestations of fidelity protestations in some cases perhaps true at the moment. The Europeans, or persons of Christian faith, were often massacred; occasionally, also, the women and children. The jail was broken open, the treasury plundered, and the mutineers marched off to some centre of revolt, to join in what had now become a national war. Only in the Punjab were the Sepoys anticipated by stern measures of repression and disarmament carried out by Sir John Lawrence and his lieutenants, among whom Edwards and Nicholson stand conspicuous. The Sikh population never wavered. Crowds of willing Muhammadan recruits joined us from the Afghan hills, and thus the Punjab, instead of being itself a source of danger, was able to furnish a portion of its own garrison for the siege of Delhi. In Lower Bengal most of the Sepoys mutinied, and then dispersed in different directions. The native armies of Madras and Bombay remained, on the whole, true to their colors. In Central India, the contingents of some of the great chiefs sooner or later threw in their lot with the rebels, but the Muhammadan State of Haidarabad was kept loyal by the authority of its able minister, Sir Salar Jang.

The main interest of the Sepoy War gathers round the three cities of Cawnpur, Lucknow, and Delhi. The cantonments at Cawnpur contained one of the great native garrisons of India. At Bithur, not far off, was the palace of Dundhu Panth, the heir of the last Peshwa, whose more familiar name of Nana Sahib will ever be handed down to infamy. At first the Nana was profuse in his professions of loyalty; but when the Sepoys mutinied at Cawnpur on the 6th June, he put himself at their head, and was proclaimed Peshwa of the Marathas. The Europeans at Cawnpur, numbering more women and children than fighting men, shut