The British official in the least enviable position by late May 1857 was Sir Henry Lawrence, the Chief Commissioner of Oudh. The province of Oudh as a whole contained almost 20,000 Indian troops, some of them former soldiers of the ex-King, and many times that number of civilians who were clamouring for an end to Company rule. To deter them from rising, Lawrence had less than a thousand European troops in the form of a weak regiment of British infantry and a single battery of Bengal foot artillery. These Europeans were all concentrated in Lucknow, the capital, alongside 7,000 native soldiers.
Lawrence lived in the Residency, a large three-storey building that had been enlarged by successive Residents in a variety of styles since its original construction in 1780. Its main entrance was from the east, through a superb portico, while the western front included a wide colonnaded veranda. As well as a number of spacious apartments on the ground and two upper floors, it had several lofty underground rooms on the south side, built to shelter the Residents from the extreme heat of the Oudh sun. Surrounding the Residency was the official district, which covered an area in excess of 60 acres. It contained a variety of detached buildings – including a banqueting hall, treasury, hospital, church, storerooms and houses for Lawrence’s subordinates – and was entered through a brick archway known as the Baillie Guard Gate. The whole Residency compound was situated on rising ground close to the River Gumti, with the sprawling city of 600,000 souls spread out beneath it. A quarter of a mile to its north-west lay the iron bridge across the River Gumti and beyond that, on a natural eminence and surrounded by a high, buttressed wall, stood a ramshackle stronghold known as the Machi Bawan, which commanded a stone bridge across the river.
To the south and east, on both sides of the city walls, were the principal palaces, walled gardens and tombs of the former Kings of Oudh, including the Kaisarbagh, the Chattar Manzil, the Moti Mahal, the Shah Najaf and the Sikandarbagh. Three miles to the south-east, beyond the canal that encircled that part of the city, was the Martinière College for European and Eurasian boys, and to the south of that the Dilkusha (or Heart’s Delight), a royal hunting lodge set in an enclosed park of deer and antelope. Observing the city from the roof of the Dilkusha, William Howard Russell described it as a ‘vision of palaces, minars, domes azure and golden, cupolas, colonnade, long façades of fair perspective in pillar and column, terraced roofs – all rising up amid a calm still ocean of the brightest verdure’. He added: ‘There is a city more vast than Paris, as it seems, and more brilliant.’
The location of the troops at Lucknow was, Lawrence believed, ‘as bad as bad can be – all scattered over several miles – the Infantry in one direction, the Cavalry another, the Artillery in a third, the magazine in a fourth and almost unprotected’. The main cantonments were at Muriaon, three miles from the Residency, on the Sitapur road. They contained three regiments of native infantry – the 13th, 48th and 71st – three batteries of native artillery (two of them irregular) and one of European artillery. A mile and a half further on towards Sitapur were the lines of the 7th Light Cavalry at Mudkipur. Quartered south of the river were two regiments of Oudh Irregular Infantry: the 4th and 7th. The sole British regiment, the 32nd Foot,* was in barracks two miles to the east of the Residency. In the same locality, but on the other side of the river, was the 2nd Oudh Irregular Cavalry, while detachments of military police, both horse and foot, were scattered all over the city.
No sooner had news of the Meerut rising reached Lucknow than Lawrence bowed to pressure from Martin Gubbins, his financial commissioner, and began to prepare for a possible outbreak. But this could be done only with the cooperation of the military, and it was not immediately forthcoming because the senior officer, Brigadier Isaac Handscomb, the 51-year-old son of a lace merchant, could not bring himself to believe that his sepoys would mutiny. On 16 May, therefore, Lawrence asked for and was granted ‘plenary military power in Oudh’ by Lord Canning. Three days later he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, thereby outranking Handscomb. Armed with this new authority, he ordered the removal of the magazine and other supplies to the dilapidated but still formidable Machi Bawan; he also sent three companies of the 32nd Foot with six guns to keep an eye on the main body of Indian troops at Muriaon cantonments; and he constructed entrenchments in the form of an irregular pentagon around the Residency compound. Another precaution, on 25 May, was the removal of all European women and children into houses within the Residency compound. Maria Germon, the wife of a captain in the 13th Native Infantry, was given just two hours’ warning to leave her bungalow at Muriaon. She noted in her journal:
When we drove up to the Residency everything looked so warlike – guns pointed in all directions, barricades and European troops everywhere – such a scene of bustle and confusion… Mr Harris went over to see if Dr Fayrer could take us in – he came back saying yes, and away we went, thankful to get into such good quarters – two ladies were there already and five came after us with three children, so that every room was full. This house as well as Mr Gubbins’ and Mr Ommaney’s (both also full) are within the Residency compound and are barricaded all round.
Cramped as conditions were in Dr Fayrer’s house, they were nothing compared to the crush in the Residency. ‘I never witnessed such a scene – a perfect barrack – every room filled with six or eight ladies, beds all round and perhaps a dining-table laid for dinner in the centre, servants thick in all the verandahs,’ wrote Maria Germon on 26 May. ‘Lots of the 32nd soldiers and their officers, and underneath all the women and children of the 32nd barracks… It is an upper storied house – the upper storey not nearly so large as the under one and yet in that, including servants and children, there are 96 people living.’
To deprive an attacking force of cover, Lawrence had even considered razing buildings – including temples and mosques – in the proximity of the Residency perimeter; but he decided not to for fear of inciting the volatile citizenry. Some Europeans at Lucknow, particularly Handscomb and his sepoy officers, regarded Lawrence’s precautions as premature and provocative. But most were impressed by his energy and attention to detail. L. E. Routz Rees, a Swiss-born wholesale merchant, recalled:
Sir Henry Lawrence was indefatigable, and seemed almost never to sleep. Often he would sally out in disguise, and visit the most frequented parts of the native town, to make personal observations, and see how his orders were carried out. He several times had a thin bedding spread out near the guns at the Bailey-guard Gate, and retired there among the artillerists, not to sleep, but to plan and to meditate undisturbed. He appeared to be ubiquitous, and to be seen everywhere. All loved and respected the old gentleman, and indeed everyone had cause, for none was too lowly for his notice, and no details were too uninteresting for him… The uncovenanted, particularly, had a kind friend in him, and with the common soldier he was equally if not even more popular.
Lawrence was often described as ‘old’ at this time. He was in fact just fifty, though he looked much older. ‘His face bore the traces of many years’ toil beneath an Indian sun and the still deeper marks of a never-ending conflict with self,’ wrote a contemporary. ‘His eyes, overhung by massive, craggy brows, looked out with an expression in which melancholy was strangely blended with humour: his thin wasted cheeks were scored down their whole length by deep lines; and a long ragged beard added to his look of age.’
Despite the weakness of his position at Lucknow, Lawrence was mindful of those in even greater danger. At the important military station of Cawnpore on the Ganges, 48 miles from Lucknow, a handful of European soldiers were heavily outnumbered by around 3,000 native troops. So on 21 May, in response to a request from Major-General Sir Hugh Wheeler, the local divisional commander, Lawrence sent fifty of his precious British infantrymen and two squadrons of the 2nd Oudh Irregular Cavalry, regarded as more trustworthy than the regulars, to support the authorities at Cawnpore. Two days later he urged Canning by cable to reinforce Cawnpore ‘with all speed’. Canning’s reply, the following day, was that it would be ‘impossible to place a wing of Europeans at Cawnpore in less time than 25 days’. The railway from Calcutta only extended up-country as far as Raniganj, a distance of 120 miles. Beyond Raniganj the only means of transport were horse dâk, bullock-cart or river steamer; it was far too hot for European troops to march any significant distance, even by night. Canning explained:
The Government dâk and the dâk companies are fully engaged in carrying a company of the 84th [from Raniganj] to Benares at the rate of eighteen men a day. A wing of the [1st] Madras Fusiliers arrived yesterday and starts today; part by bullock train, part by steamer. The bullock train can take 100 men a day, at the rate of thirty miles a day. The entire regiment of the Fusiliers, about 900 strong, cannot be collected at Benares in less than nineteen or twenty days. One hundred and fifty men, who go by steam, will scarcely be there so soon. I expect that from this time forward troops will be pushed up at the rate of 100 men a day from Calcutta, each batch taking ten days to reach Benares. From Benares they will be distributed as required. The regiments from Pegu, Bombay, and Ceylon will be sent up in this way… This is the best I can do for you.
Lawrence feared that such a tiny trickle of troops would not be enough to prevent more mutinies. On 27 May he ‘strongly’ advised Canning to hire as many private dâks as possible to transport European troops to Cawnpore. He ended the short telegram: ‘Spare no expense.’ His own precautions at Lucknow, he told Canning in a separate cable, were now complete, with both the Residency and the Machi Bawan ‘safe against all probable comers’. The likelihood of a general revolt in Oudh was increasing by the day. ‘All quiet, but great uneasiness in Lucknow,’ Lawrence informed Calcutta on 29 May. ‘Tranquillity cannot be much longer maintained, unless Delhi be speedily captured.’
Everywhere in the city there were signs of growing unrest. ‘Seditious placards were found stuck up in all the principal streets,’ wrote one of Lawrence’s assistants, ‘calling upon all good Mussulmen and Hindoos to rise and kill the Christians.’ Dolls were dressed up as European children and, ‘much to the amusement of the mob’, their heads cut off with swords. The servants of the European community began to complain that the grain merchants and shopkeepers would no longer give them credit, while ‘Government paper was selling as low as thirty-seven rupees for the hundred, and even less!’ An obvious precaution would have been to disarm the Indian troops at Lucknow, a solution repeatedly urged by Martin Gubbins. But Lawrence refused on the grounds that the regiments in the outlying districts might mutiny in protest.
During the early evening of Saturday, 30 May, a sepoy of the 13th Native Infantry, who had earlier been rewarded by the chief commissioner for assisting in the capture of a spy, went to the bungalow of a staff officer, Captain T. F. Wilson, and told him that a mutiny of the native troops at Muriaon had been arranged for nine that night. It would, he claimed, begin in the lines of the 71st Native Infantry, the most disaffected of the three regiments at Muriaon. But Lawrence refused to act. He had taken to sleeping in the Resident’s bungalow at Muriaon to demonstrate his trust in the Indian troops, and was dining with his staff there when the firing of the nine o’clock gun came and went. ‘Wilson,’ he remarked drily, ‘your friends are not punctual!’ The words were hardly out of his mouth when the rattle of musketry filled the air. Lawrence ordered his horse and, as he waited for it on his front step, the Indian officer of the guard strode forward and asked Captain Wilson, ‘Am I to load?’ Wilson repeated the question to Lawrence who replied, ‘Yes, let him load.’
The order was at once given [recalled Wilson] and the ramrod fell with that peculiar dull sound on the leaden bullets. I believe that Sir Henry was the only man of all that group whose heart did not beat the quicker for it. But he, as the men brought up their muskets with the tubes levelled directly against us, cried out – ‘I am going to drive those scoundrels out of cantonment: take care while I am away that you remain at your posts, and allow no one to do any damage here, or to enter my house, else when I return I will hang you.’ Whether through the effect of the speech, and Sir Henry’s bearing, I know not, but the guard remained steadily at its post, and with the bungalows blazing and shots firing all round, they allowed no one to enter the house.
Lawrence and his staff rode to the European lines, where they found the detachment of the 32nd Foot and six cannon drawn up ready for action. To prevent the mutineers from marching on Lucknow, Lawrence took a company of the 32nd and two guns to the road leading from the cantonment to the city. The rest of the European infantry and artillery was led by the commanding officer of the 32nd, Lieutenant-Colonel John Inglis, to a position on the right of the lines of the 71st Native Infantry. For a time they were engaged by sepoys of the 71st firing muskets from these lines. But when the guns replied with grape, the mutineers withdrew to the cantonment. On the way they murdered Lieutenant Grant of the 71st, who was commanding the main picket in the centre of the Indian lines. ‘His men remained with him till the mutineers were close upon him,’ wrote a fellow officer. ‘They then broke; but the subadar of the guard, and some men of the 13th and 48th Regiments, composing the guard, tried to save him, by placing him under a bed. A man of the 71st Native Infantry, who was on guard with him, however, discovered the place of his concealment to the mutineers, and he was brutally murdered – receiving no less than fifteen bayonet wounds, besides some musket balls.’ The highest-ranking fatality was Brigadier Handscomb, shot in the chest as he tried to remonstrate with the mutineers.
Of the Indian troops at Muriaon who did not mutiny, the largest proportion was from the 13th Native Infantry. When the firing broke out in the lines of the 71st, more than half the six hundred or so members of the 13th obeyed the orders of their officers and fell in on their parade-ground. They were then marched over to support the main body of British troops, complete with colours and treasure chest, and took up a position to the right of the 32nd Foot. Soon after they were joined by a small number of 71st sepoys. Nothing was heard of the 48th until the following day, when most of the Indian officers and about three hundred sepoys returned to duty. Meanwhile all but thirty of the headquarters wing of the 7th Light Cavalry at Mudkipur had remained loyal. These troopers spent much of that night patrolling the grounds of the Residency and the Machi Bawan, but by morning had linked up with the main British force at Muriaon.
Shortly after daybreak on 31 May, having received word that the mutineers had occupied the nearby cavalry lines at Mudkipur, Lawrence advanced to attack. The rebels, about a thousand strong, were drawn up on the plain in front of the cavalry lines. As soon as the 7th’s ‘loyal’ troopers came into view, in the van of Lawrence’s force, a single horseman rode out of the rebel ranks and waved his sword. This prearranged signal caused about two thirds of the cavalrymen to desert to the enemy with loud yells. Lawrence responded by halting the infantry and ordering the guns to open fire. Just a few shots were enough to cause the rebels to withdraw down the Sitapur road. They were pursued for about seven miles by the remnants of the cavalry and a number of mounted officers and civilians, including Lawrence and Martin Gubbins, who managed to capture sixty mutineers between them.
In total, about seven hundred sepoys remained loyal during the events of 30 and 31 May. The majority were from the 13th and 48th Regiments, though all but ninety of the latter were sent on indefinite leave after news reached Lucknow that two companies of the 48th sent into the Khyrabad Division had, along with the two troops of 7th Light Cavalry, mutinied and murdered their officers on 7 June. The loyalty of the greater part of the 13th was probably due to Major Charles Bruère, their much loved commanding officer, who had served with the regiment for more than two decades. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Palmer of the 48th was also a familiar figure to his men, having joined the regiment as an ensign in 1826. Colonel William Halford, on the other hand, had been with the 71st – the most disaffected regiment – for only eighteen months. Aged sixty, he was the second-eldest regimental commander in the Bengal Army; Bruère, by contrast, was forty-four and Palmer forty-nine.
The mutiny at Lucknow was followed by city riots on 31 May when green flags, the standard of the prophet Muhammad, were raised and one European clerk was murdered. Though the riots were easily suppressed by the city police, evidence soon came to light of an ‘extensive conspiracy in the city and in the cantonments’. A former tahsildar pointed the finger at Shurruf-ud Daula, a senior figure in the court of the ex-King, Wajid Ali Shah, and Prime Minister to two of Wajid’s predecessors. He and two of his relations were imprisoned on Lawrence’s orders, as were Mustapha Ali Khan, the ex-King’s elder brother, the Raja of Tulsipur and two members of the Delhi royal family who lived in Lucknow. Far harsher was the treatment of twenty-two alleged conspirators, said to have been sent from Benares and elsewhere to corrupt the troops, who were shot after a drumhead court martial. The captured mutineers were hanged in batches of eight or nine on the open ground in front of the Machi Bawan.
*
The upheavals of 30 and 31 May were not necessarily a bad thing for the British: their enemies were now out in the open and they could concentrate on defending their posts without fear of betrayal. ‘We are in a much better position at Lucknow,’ wrote Lawrence to Canning on 1 June, ‘but I fear the effects of the émeute in the districts.’ He had good reason to. On 2 June came the news that some troops sent to Cawnpore a fortnight earlier had mutinied and murdered their officers. The original detachment had consisted of half a company of the 32nd Foot under Captain Lowe and a squadron of the 2nd Oudh Irregular Cavalry under Lieutenant Barbor. In overall command was Captain Fletcher Hayes, military secretary to the chief commissioner, who went ‘to confer with [General] Wheeler and report back on the state of affairs to Sir Henry Lawrence’. Hayes was not your typical Bengal officer. An erudite Oxford graduate, he had amassed during his relatively short time in India a ‘splendid library… of priceless Oriental manuscripts; the standard literary and scientific works of every nation of Europe; dictionaries of every language spoken on earth’ (all of which he had generously sacrificed for the barricades around the Residency compound). He had also gained a reputation as a skilful diplomatist during his time as Assistant Resident at the Court of Oudh in the period prior to annexation. Few officers knew the province and its inhabitants better than Hayes.
The detachment had set out from Lucknow at dawn on 21 May. One officer wrote: ‘Owing to the intense heat, the Europeans were conveyed in dâk gharries, buggies and any other conveyance that came to hand. The party reached Cawnpore the same evening, having covered the distance – forty-eight miles – in something less than twelve hours.’ They found the cantonment and city quiet. After a few days kicking his heels, Hayes asked Sir Hugh Wheeler for permission to take the cavalry up the Grand Trunk Road as far as Aligarh. He was convinced, he wrote in his last letter, ‘that a bold front and daring would best assist the cause of order’. Wheeler acquiesced, and Hayes and Barbor left with the cavalry on 27 May. They were accompanied by two volunteers: Robert Fayrer, the doctor’s nephew, and Captain Thomas Carey of the 17th Native Infantry. During the evening of 31 May the column reached the village of Bhongaon, 100 miles from Cawnpore. Hearing reports that a local raja had risen against British rule, Hayes told Barbor and Fayrer to stay with the men while he and Carey rode to the nearby station of Mainpuri to consult the magistrate. The pair stayed the night at Mainpuri and rejoined the column the following morning. Carey recorded:
They were on one road, we on another. I said, ‘Let us cross the plain and meet them.’ As we approached they faced towards us and halted, and when we had cantered up to within about fifty yards of them, one of two of the native officers rode out to meet us, and said in a low voice, ‘Fly, Sahibs, fly.’ Upon this poor Hayes said to me as we wheeled round our horse – ‘Well, we must fly now for our lives,’ and away we went with the two troops after us like demons, yelling and sending the bullets from their carbines all around us. Thank God, neither I nor my horse was hit. Hayes was riding on the side nearest the troopers, and before we had gone many yards, I saw a native officer go up alongside of him, and with one blow cut him down from his saddle… On they all came shouting after me and every now and then ‘ping’ came a ball near me. Indeed, I thought my moments were numbered, but as I neared the road at the end of the maidan, a ditch presented itself. It was but a moment I thought, dug my spurs hard in, and the mare flew over it, though she nearly fell on the other side; fortunately, I recovered her, and in another moment I was leaving all behind but two sowars, who followed me and poor Hayes’ horse tearing on after me… I eased the mare as much as I could, keeping those fiends about 100 yards in rear; and they, I suppose, seeing I was taking it easy, and not urging my horse, but merely turning round every now and then to watch them, pulled up, after chasing me two good miles.
Carey eventually made it back to Mainpuri and safety. The fate of Barbor and Fayrer was later revealed by a Sikh native officer, Shere Singh, who stood aloof from the mutiny and made his way to Mainpuri with a handful of loyal troopers. According to Singh, it was very hot and the column had stopped to refresh itself beside a well. Fayrer was cut down as he drank water from a leather cup. ‘The poor lad, he was only 23, fell dead on the spot: his spine was cut through. The old Native officer… who came back and told us of it said he muttered “Mother” as he fell.’ On Fayrer being struck, a loyal sowar rushed forward to help him, shouting to the others to arrest the murderer. But as he lifted Fayrer’s head he was shot by his comrades. Barbor was killed trying to escape.
The news, when it reached Lucknow, was all the more distressing for the fact that both Hayes and Barbor were married, the latter only recently. Hayes, moreover, had seven children.
The military cantonment at Sitapur, 41 miles north of Lucknow, was the second biggest in Oudh. It contained four regiments – the 41st Native Infantry, the 9th and 10th Oudh Irregular Infantry and the 2nd Oudh Military Police – and was situated to the east of the town in a bend of the Esan River. Next to the cantonment was the civil station and, at its eastern extremity, the bungalow of the commissioner, George Christian, which was bounded on three sides by water. Near by were the bungalows of the deputy commissioner, Mr Thornhill, and his two assistants, Lieutenant Lester and Sir Mountstuart Jackson, Bt.
Sir Mountstuart was the nephew of Coverly Jackson, Lawrence’s predecessor as Chief Commissioner of Oudh. His father, an officer in the 4th Dragoon Guards, had died in Germany when Mountstuart was still a boy, bequeathing him a baronetcy but no money. His mother had also died when he was a child, leaving him and his three sisters to be brought up by their grandmother in a modest cottage at Walmer in Kent. In 1852, at the age of sixteen, Jackson used his uncle’s connections to secure a writership in the Bengal Civil Service and he arrived in India four years later. He was now twenty-one and had been at Sitapur, his first posting, for just four months. Living with him were his two eldest sisters: Georgina, nineteen, and Madeline, seventeen. They had arrived in India from their Paris school at the turn of the year. Madeline described their house as ‘a nice little bungalow, with a big garden, and our pets which Uncle C. had mostly given us – our Arab, two spotted deer (one we had brought up with milk), two gazelles, two spotted Barbary goats, and an Argus pheasant… We had two white bullocks to irrigate the garden, and my brother had a buggy and horse and his Arab.’ This carefree existence was shattered by the news from Meerut.
On 1 June, having received word the night before that mutineers from Lucknow were heading towards Sitapur, Colonel Birch left the station with a wing of the 41st Native Infantry to intercept them. According to one officer, the men ‘went off in good spirits, loudly proclaiming their loyalty, and boasting of the deeds they would do when they met the mutineers’. Fortunately their professions of loyalty were not put to the test because, having covered a fair distance towards Lucknow, Birch was informed by villagers that the mutineers had left the Sitapur road for Maliabad, with Delhi as their ultimate destination. He and his column arrived back at Sitapur in the evening of 2 June.
Commissioner Christian, meanwhile, was labouring under the delusion that the local troops could be trusted. On 1 June he had written to Lawrence: ‘If [the 41st] go over we know the worst. Even then I believe the 9th and 10th Oudh Irregular Infantry and the Military Police will stand firm… I have placed all the ladies and children and women, except some four who will not leave the lines of the 41st… in my house, and have made all secure… I now only wait for the attitude of the 41st.’ In theory Christian’s defensive position around his bungalow was a good one. The local troops were well sited to meet a frontal attack, while the river – wide, deep and fordable in only a couple of places – covered the rear and flanks. But all Christian’s calculations depended upon the fidelity of the Oudh troops: if they turned against their officers, the river would prevent the Europeans from escaping and the position would become a death-trap.
At around ten in the morning of 3 June word reached Colonel Birch that the 10th Irregulars were about to plunder the treasury that was being guarded by a company of the 41st. He at once set off to foil the attack at the head of four companies. But when he reached the treasury, situated to the north of the station about a mile from the lines of the 41st, Birch found no sign of a disturbance and so decided to return. The order, ‘Threes, left shoulders forward’, had hardly left his lips when a sepoy of the treasury guard stepped forward and shot him in the chest, causing him to topple from his horse. Lieutenant Smalley and the sergeant-major were also killed by a volley from the ranks, but the adjutant, Lieutenant Graves, the only other European present, managed to gallop off with a slight bullet wound to his head. He returned to his lines in time to warn his brother officers before the rest of the regiment rose. They quickly gathered together their families and, with an escort of twenty loyal sepoys and the Christian drummers, set off in carriages and on horseback towards Lucknow.
The rest of the station was not so fortunate. On hearing the firing from the treasury, the irregular regiments turned on their officers. Captain Gowan, Lieutenant Green, Dr Hillaud and the sergeant-major of the 9th were all killed on their parade-ground, as were Lieutenants Dorin and Snell of the 10th. Snell’s wife and child were murdered near their bungalow. The only European survivors from the two irregular regiments were Lieutenant Barnes and Quartermaster-Sergeant Morton of the 10th, and Quartermaster-Sergeant Abbott of the 9th, all of whom fled to the commissioner’s house. Abbott arrived out of breath and with a severe flesh wound on his left arm. ‘He [had been] shot by a sepoy of his own regiment,’ recalled a British clerk who had reached the house minutes earlier, ‘and was considerably excited, stating that he feared his family had perished. I succeeded in pacifying him and bound up his arm. He soon after left the premises with some others… These crossed the river which was about 200 yards from the Commissioner’s house and, under cover of a Dhak Jungle on the opposite bank, extending for some miles, sought protection from the villagers.’ The clerk added:
The firing was increased and the Military Police displayed no inclination to cooperate with us. I besought the Commissioner to escape with his family, but he declined, and went forward, armed with his rifle towards the position occupied by the Military Police. I followed reiterating my conviction of the urgent necessity of escape but that gentleman unfortunately could not divest himself of his firm, yet as the event showed, mistaken confidence in the loyalty of the Military Police, declaring that he feared no danger, and could never think of abandoning his post.
By now the military policemen and government chaprassis had also risen, though the commandant of the former, Captain Hearsey, was protected by a group of his men and allowed to escape. Madeline Jackson was cowering in the house when Christian and the other European men rushed in shouting that the ‘police and soldiers had all turned against us’. She recalled:
The confusion was dreadful; people could not find their husbands. Mrs Christian was crying, my dear sister trying to comfort her. They all came in and our brother had not come. I asked Mr Christian where he was? Poor man, he could not answer. At last Mountstuart came – the last in. The house was barricaded, and they fired through holes, but the natives were breaking in, and we all got out at the jungle side. Everyone had been told to try and get to the [Raja of Mithauli’s] palace… Well, only half of a French window could be got open, and everyone was forcing their way through, regardless of anyone else.
Directly we were out we ran across an open plain towards the jungle… Then I noticed an extraordinary whistling sound round us and stopped. I had never been out in the middle of the day before, and thought it had something to do with the sun! – and said, ‘What’s that?’ My brother quietly answered, ‘The bullets.’ Then I got frightened, said, ‘Oh, we must not stop here,’ and pulled him on with me, but after a second stopped, noticing Georgie [her sister] was not with us. Looking back we saw her with Mrs Christian’s English nurse trying to quiet the baby, and cover it from the sun… It was the last time I saw her, my dear sister. We went towards her, but a lot of sepoys came between us and we could not get to her and had to cross the bridge.
The ‘bridge’ in question, a temporary walkway, was soon filled with sepoys who began to fire at the fleeing Europeans. Madeline and her brother kept running until they came across the deputy commissioner, Mr Thornhill, his wife and little girl. He cheered the Jacksons by telling them that he had seen Georgina cross the river. But half a dozen sepoys were approaching and there was no time to talk. ‘We ran on,’ wrote Madeline, ‘and thought we had got away from our pursuers when we saw them on the other side of the ravine. We got down it to hide from their shots, and the last we saw of the poor Thornhills was him hiding his wife and child in a cleft of the rocks and standing in front to cover them.’ Madeline lost her shoes wading across this second river, and her hat soon after. She took off her muslin skirt during one halt because it kept getting caught in thorn bushes. Eventually, too exhausted to go any further, she and Mountstuart collapsed behind some undergrowth. She remembered: ‘We sat there a long time. Then some men came, not sepoys – passees, with bows and arrows. They used to be watchmen I think. They saw my dress, and were evidently pitying the poor murdered people. We kept still and asked them to help us. They said they would take us to a better place, which they did… Later on they came back and took us further into the jungle.’ In the early hours of the morning, however, the Passis announced they would go no further. Mountstuart had already bartered his pistol for some food and handed over his sword as a goodwill gesture. His boots he had given to his barefoot sister, tying leaves around his feet with strips of handkerchief as a substitute, while she had been tricked into handing over their last weapon, a rifle. With nothing more to acquire, the Passis wanted to return home. When Mountstuart objected, the tallest Passi stepped forward and drew back his bow. Madeline intervened by placing her arms around her brother who eventually conceded that they would have to continue alone.
At noon the next day, having just escaped the clutches of some sword-wielding villagers, one of whom wanted to make Madeline his ‘wife’, they were met by a group of ‘very poor looking men’ who said there were other Europeans in the next village. A short time later they were united with Lieutenant Barnes, Quartermaster-Sergeant Morton and two-year-old Sophie Christian, who knew Madeline well and cried when she saw her. Barnes related their dramatic escape. He was the last to leave the commissioner’s house and had soon caught up with the Christians, who were burdened by their two infant children. On hearing Mrs Christian, who was struggling to carry Sophie, cry, ‘Oh save my child, who will save my child!’, Barnes had picked her up. At the river he came across Morton, who was mounted, and handed him the girl. But the horse was shot by a sepoy in midstream, pitching rider and child into the water. Barnes went to their rescue and they escaped together. Meanwhile Sophie’s family had barely made it across the river when George Christian, carrying his six-month-old son, was shot and killed. As the mutineers approached, Mrs Christian was sobbing by her husband’s corpse, the baby in her arms. Without pity they beheaded her with a sword and impaled the baby on a spear before throwing it into the river.
Led by the poor but friendly peasants, the enlarged party set off for Mithauli in the heat of the day. Sophie wanted Madeline to carry her but she was too heavy – ‘almost three, and big’ – and the men took turns instead. They tried to cover her fair skin with a sheet, but she insisted on holding on to Madeline’s hand and her arm was soon blistered from the sun. At one point Madeline collapsed from heat exhaustion and a small pony had to be found before she could continue, with Sophie mounted ahead of her. Finally, during the morning of 5 June, the five fugitives reached the outskirts of Mithauli.
They were taken in by the raja, Loni Singh, and then a couple of days later were moved to the mud fort at Kutchiani, where they received daily parcels of food from a mysterious benefactor. He turned out to be Captain Patrick Orr, the Assistant Commissioner of nearby Muhamdi, who was hiding in the jungle with his wife and child.* Eventually the Orrs were allowed to join them in the fort and there they remained until early August, when Loni Singh sent them back into the jungle because, he said, the mutineers were searching all his residences. During their time in the fort they sent and received letters via the Orrs’ servants, who hid the messages in quills or in the soles of their shoes. One brought the Jacksons the joyful news that their sister Georgina had survived the massacre at Sitapur. Soon a letter arrived from Georgina herself. Letters were also received from Captain Hearsey, who wrote to say that Georgina’s courage and kindness were a ‘great comfort to them all’, and from Sir Henry Lawrence, with an enclosure for Loni Singh, promising the raja a huge reward if the fugitives were delivered safely to Lucknow.
Their chief torments at this time were the heat and boredom. Madeline spent much of her time fanning Sophie in an effort to keep her cool; she even did it in her sleep and developed a lump on her hand as a consequence. Sophie, in return, kept her occupied and amused. ‘The children were a great comfort,’ remembered Madeline. ‘Little Sophie called me Mama, and was a very clever little girl, imitated the natives most amusingly and was a great pet. She had grown quite strong too from being always in the open air. There were no doors or windows except the gateway which was always shut, the servants going through the small one… The poor men used to walk up and down for exercise like tigers in a den.’ Then in late August, by which time they were living in makeshift tents in the jungle, came a final letter from Georgina saying she feared her party had been betrayed. They later heard that Georgina and the others had fled to the jungle. Then nothing.
The survivors from Sitapur reached the Residency compound at Lucknow during the evening of 4 June, escorted the last five miles by Captain Forbes and a party of mounted volunteers. Almost every subsequent day brought news of a fresh outbreak in Oudh and the surrounding localities. During the evening of 3 June the 17th Native Infantry mutinied at Azimgarh, a small town just beyond Oudh’s southern border. Five days later, as the mutinous sepoys of the 17th approached, the Indian garrison at Faizabad in Oudh rose. The officers and their dependants were unharmed and, next morning, were allowed to depart in boats down the River Gogra. But, unbeknown to the officers, their former soldiers had alerted the sepoys of the 17th, who were lying in wait on the river bank. Only six of the twenty-two fugitives survived both the ambush and subsequent attacks by rebel villagers.*
Within three days of the Faizabad rising the rest of Oudh’s garrisons followed suit: Dariabad, Secrora, Salone and Sultanpur on 9 June; Pershadipur and Gonda on 10 and 11 June respectively. In less than a fortnight the British administration in Oudh had virtually ceased to exist. Only Lawrence’s tenuous foothold in Lucknow remained – and he was beginning to feel the strain of his onerous responsibility. ‘If anything happens to me, during present disturbances,’ he cabled to Canning on 4 June, ‘I earnestly recommend that Major [John] Banks succeed me as Chief Commissioner and Colonel [John] Inglis in command of the troops, until better times arrive. This is no time for punctilio – as regards seniority. They are the right men, in fact the only men for the places.’ This was typical of Lawrence’s meritocratic principles. Banks, the 46-year-old Commissioner of the Lucknow Division, was the youngest and least experienced of Lawrence’s four deputies. He was, on the other hand, an expert linguist with a quiet air of authority and had greatly impressed the chief commissioner during their short acquaintance. Inglis had risen to the command of his regiment, the 32nd Foot, in the comparatively short time of seventeen years. He had fought with the 32nd in the Canadian insurrection of 1837 and in both Sikh wars of the 1840s, receiving a lieutenant-colonelcy for his services in the latter campaign. Though outranked at Lucknow by Brigadier Gray, the commander of the Oudh Irregular Force, Inglis was in the ‘prime of his life, an excellent soldier, active, energetic, and quick-sighted’, and Lawrence was convinced that he would make the best military successor.
Before Canning’s affirmative reply could reach Lucknow, however, the Indian troops rose at Cawnpore and cut the telegraph link to Calcutta. Four days later, as more bad news arrived from the outlying stations in Oudh, Lawrence collapsed with nervous and physical exhaustion and Dr Fayrer prescribed a complete rest from official business. Lawrence reluctantly agreed and a provisional council* was appointed to govern in his stead. The council’s rapid demise was due to the unilateral decision of its hot-headed President, Martin Gubbins, to dismiss the remaining Indian troops and rely on the military police alone. Lawrence’s furious response, on 12 June, was to rise from his sickbed, dissolve the council and reassume power. ‘Not that he was well,’ commented Dr Fayrer, ‘for his frame was worn and wasted, but he was sufficiently rested to under the circumstances return to work.’ His first act was to recall the disbanded sepoys ‘who returned to their posts with tokens of delight, the honesty of which was verified by their loyalty during the siege’. Lawrence was convinced that Lucknow could only be held with their assistance and that trusting them was a risk worth taking. So, in addition to the regular sepoys, he enlisted one hundred and seventy pensioners from the five hundred or so who had answered his call to arms, increasing his Indian garrison to almost eight hundred.
He also began to prepare for a last stand at the Residency by ordering his engineer officers to supervise the construction of artillery-proof defences. Two powerful batteries, the Redan on the north side and the Cawnpore on the south, were constructed. The intervening perimeter was protected by an elaborate system of embraced garden walls, ditches, parapets and palisades. Breastworks were built on the roofs of houses, windows and doors barricaded, and walls loopholed. Ammunition was brought down from the Machi Bawan and stored in cellars that had been excavated and strengthened. Two hundred artillery pieces without gun carriages were found in the old arsenal in the city, carried into the compound and placed near to the Redan Battery. ‘Fancy if the enemy had got them,’ commented Captain Fulton, the engineer responsible. A decision was also taken to ignore local sensibilities and use Indian labourers to demolish many of the high buildings overlooking the compound. But because it was assumed that the chief threat during a siege would be from ‘comparatively distant artillery and musketry fire’, a compromise was reached whereby the upper storeys of the nearest structures were knocked down so that the lower floors could act as bulwarks to the enemy’s fire. Only where the British defences were weakest were the houses earmarked for complete destruction. It was, wrote Captain Fulton, ‘a stupendous undertaking. Wall after wall went down. Nawabs’ palaces and coolie huts alike, but alas not a third of the work was done [in time].’
Such precautions seemed doubly necessary on 14 June, when spies confirmed that mutinous regiments were converging on Lucknow from the north, east and south. ‘An attack may be expected on the 18th or 19th June,’ Lawrence’s private secretary informed the authorities at Allahabad. ‘We… are anxiously waiting for news. All communication has been cut off since the 6th instant. All the outposts are fallen.’ On 16 June Lawrence reluctantly turned down a request from General Wheeler to send two hundred Europeans to the assistance of the beleaguered garrison at Cawnpore. ‘I would risk the absence of so large a portion of our small force,’ he wrote to the Commissioner of Benares,
could I see the smallest prospect of its being able to succour him, but no individual here cognizant of the facts, except Mr Gubbins, thinks that we could carry a single man across the [Ganges] river, as the enemy holds all the boats, and completely commands the river. May God Almighty defend Cawnpore, for no help can we afford; our own positions are daily strengthening, and our supplies increasing, but all the outposts are gone, and the rebels and mutineers are said to be closing in on us.