The Skull of Alum Bheg Read online

  Ultimately, the final trigger for the outbreak at Meerut on 10 May was much the same as it had been at other stations earlier that year: the rumour that British troops were preparing to disarm the sepoys caused a panic amongst the sepoys who turned on their officers. The sowars of the 3rd Cavalry took the initiative to free their comrades from the prison, and after the sepoys and local crowds had plundered and fired the station, killing dozens of European men, women and children, the mutineers left for Delhi.76 The arrival of the Meerut mutineers, the next day, caused the sepoys stationed in the Mughal capital to rise up as well, and the British soon lost control of the city. In the early morning of 11 May 1857, sowars from Meerut rode up to the walls of the Red Fort, directly beneath the King’s quarters, at a place called Zerjharokhay, meaning ‘under the lattice’, where the Mughal emperors traditionally showed themselves to their subjects and could be petitioned. In accordance with convention, the sowars called out: ‘Dohai Badshah’ or ‘Help O King! We pray for assistance in our fight for the faith.’77 When asked what had happened, the sowars responded:

  ‘We have come from Meerut, where we have killed our officers, because they insisted on our using cartridges smeared with the fat of cows and pigs, and an attempt has been made to destroy our caste. Hindus and Mahommedans conjointly have created a mutiny (bulwa). There has been a fight, both Europeans and natives have fallen, and we have come here as complainants, seeking justice from the King. Advise us what we shall do, otherwise as we have been ordered, so we must do.’78

  * * *

  Throughout the tumultuous Spring and Summer of 1857, Sialkot had appeared to be strangely untouched by the unrest spreading throughout the cantonments of northern India. John Lawrence had personally visited in early May ‘to see the new School of Musketry, as well as to judge with respect to the feeling among the Sipahis.’79 Lawrence reported that the sepoys were ‘highly pleased with the new musket, and quite ready to adopt it. They already perceive how great an advantage it will give them in mountain warfare.’ The officers at the depot furthermore assured the chief commissioner that there had been no complaints from the troops and the troops and Lawrence himself ‘could perceive no hesitation or reluctance on the part of any of the Sipahis.’80 This might very well have been the British officers at Sialkot putting on a façade for a senior official, but Dr Graham similarly wrote to his nephew a few days later that ‘our sepoys are quiet and well behaved notwithstanding the rumours you see in the papers to the contrary…’81 With the outbreak at Meerut, and the fall of Delhi, all that was about to change.

  If Alum Bheg and the majority of the Indian troops at Sialkot were undecided as to what course of action to take, a hard core of sowars in the A troop of the 9th were fully committed and prepared to force the turn of events.82 It was subsequently discovered that while the British had been carrying on as usual after the dire news of 14 May, the sowars had drawn up a kill-list of the most unpopular British officers whom ‘they were determined to destroy.’83 Only later did officers like Wilberforce realise how close a call it had been, since,

  ‘…one very hot night (it was on May 20), when the officers of the 9th Bengal Cavalry entertained a good many guests at their hospitable mess-table—all windows and doors being open to catch any stray breath of air, and every one round the brilliantly-lighted table being distinctly visible to those outside—that in the darkness a number of cavalry were waiting for an agreed signal from the infantry lines to fire upon us, as signal which fortunately for us never came.’84

  Nothing came of these plans, however, and for the moment Alum Bheg and his comrades in the 46th, 35th and 9th were biding their time, waiting for news of how things were progressing further south. The rebel stronghold of Delhi was hundreds of miles away, across several major rivers, and Sialkot furthermore had a strong contingent of British troops that had to be reckoned with.

  3

  COMMON FAME IS BUT A LYING STRUMPET

  After news of the outbreak reached Sialkot, the British community was thrown into a state of extreme panic and Assistant Commissioner Jones remembered ‘days of anxiety and nights of wakefulness, and pistol always at hand.’1 As it was considered too dangerous for so many Europeans to be gathered within the church at the same time, Sunday service on 17 May was held within the lines of the cantonment instead, with armed guards standing watch.2 Every British officer was on edge around the Indian troops, and Wilberforce recalled inspecting the outposts at night, accompanied by a patrol of sowars of the 9th:

  ‘I was on duty, and of course had my patrol. On leaving the prison Guard I noticed that they were drawing very close to me, and in spite of orders continued to approach. Thoroughly alarmed, I turned my pony and led my patrol such a dance, through compounds, over low walls, &c., that I arrived at the Quarter Guard without my attendants, nor did I see them again; they may have meant nothing, but I had not been long enough in India to have a blind belief in the loyalty of the Mussulman, and I infinitely preferred their [absence] to their company.’3

  For the Europeans at Sialkot, the worst part of the outbreak, which gradually engulfed much of northern India in May 1857, was the uncertainty. ‘The mail being cut off, and the telegraph broken’, Gordon noted, ‘we are very much in the dark as to how the matter is going.’4 Telegraph communication, the lifeline of Empire, could not be established further south than Meerut, which meant that there was not contact between Punjab and either Calcutta or Bombay. The British nevertheless retained control over the lines of communication within Punjab, where letters and local newspapers provided a steady stream of snippets of news and hearsay. Verifiable intelligence was hard to come by and Dr Graham laconically noted that ‘I could fill a quarto sheet with rumours, but it is no use, common fame is in these days but a lying strumpet…’5 Enough rumours had emerged from the south, however, to allow the Europeans at Sialkot to imagine the worst. ‘It makes one shudder’, Graham wrote, ‘to think of the treachery and massacres that have taken place at Meerut and Delhi.’ As time passed, the circulation of horror-stories only intensified. The fact that British women and children had been killed at both Meerut and Delhi, in some cases in extremely gruesome ways, allowed the colonial imagination to run rampant. Writing from the safety of Calcutta, the noted missionary, Alexander Duff, for instance, informed a friend back in Scotland:

  ‘The public journals will furnish you with abundant details of the most harrowing description, though many of the most loathsome and revolting kind have been purposely suppressed, to spare the agonised feelings of distant mourning friends. Really, if the demons of hell had been let loose, with no restraint on their Satanic fury, they could scarcely have exhibited villainies and cruelties more worthy of the tenants of pandemonium.’6

  The art of the innuendo thus found full expression in a distinctly Victorian way of vague, yet unmistakable allusions, to the rape of white women by Indian rebels.7 This was the feverish atmosphere in which Reverend Hunter and his wife, Dr Graham and his daughter, and everybody else at Sialkot now found themselves. ‘What was there to hinder us’, one of the American missionaries lamented, ‘from being every one murdered by heathen, savage butchery, in another hour?’8

  As soon as news of the fall of Delhi reached the British authorities in Punjab, the entire colonial administration was mobilised to gather enough forces to move southwards with the aim of retaking the Mughal capital. In Punjab alone, however, there remained tens of thousands of sepoys from the Bengal Army, none of whom were now considered to be trustworthy. A number of these regiments were disarmed in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak, but it was simply not possible for the British to do so everywhere. The Punjab authorities thus came up with the idea to form a ‘Moveable Column’ of British troops, augmented by new irregular forces recruited locally in the region. This task force was to take the field, the Commissioner of Peshawar, Herbert Edwardes, suggested:

  ‘so as to get between the stations which have mutinied, and those that have not; and move on the first station
that stirs next; and bring the matter, without further delay, to the bayonet. This disaffection will never be talked down now. It must be put down—and the sooner blood be let the less of it will suffice.’9

  Crucially, the backbone of the Movable Column was to be formed of troops from Sialkot.10 The plan was originally for the 52nd and Horse Artillery alone to join the Column, but Brigadier Brind, commanding the forces at Sialkot, protested that it was much too dangerous to leave three full regiments of Indian troops in one place without the check of any British forces. After some negotiation, it was decided that Alum Bheg and the 46th BNI should join the Column, but since Brind considered that regiment to be more trustworthy, the 35th BNI ended up being the one chosen.11 On 25 May, the 52nd and Artillery, along with the 35th BNI and a wing of the 9th BLC, thus left Sialkot ‘leaving us to the tender mercies of the remaining half of the cavalry and the 46th Native Infantry’, as Jones described it.12 For all intents and purposes, the British administration abandoned Sialkot to Indian troops suspected of being disloyal—a desperate gamble, but one that reflected just how precarious the British position in northern India was. Retaking Delhi and maintaining control of Punjab were essential to re-establish British authority in northern India and the concerns for the safety of a single station had to give way to wider strategic concerns. The official records noted that: ‘Brigadier Brind protested; but as the column was much below the strength originally proposed and its efficiency was of paramount importance, his objections were overruled.’13 There were many who thought the Brigadier was criminally negligent for not disarming the remaining sepoys at Sialkot, but once the last of the British force had left the station there was no way to enforce a disarmament. As the safety of the families of the officers and men at Sialkot could no longer be guaranteed, arrangements were made for the women and children to be brought down to Lahore.14 These arrangements, however, only applied to the families of military personnel and no provisions were made for the rest of the Europeans, including the Hunters, Dr Graham and his daughter, or the American missionaries.

  * * *

  With Sialkot denuded of British troops, Brind set about making the most of an impossible situation by mobilising that most British of virtues: the stiff upper lip.15 As Gordon described it:

  ‘There was […] a prevailing sentiment that we must not do anything that would betray our fears. The whole country was really in a very defenceless condition. The enemy, if posted as to all the circumstances, could doubtless have easily overpowered the government and the entire foreign population. To many, therefore, the safest course seemed to consist in putting on a bold front. They feared that if they should betray their fears they might embolden the enemy, and bring on an uprising which, through sheer force of numbers, would be irresistible.’16

  The reality was that they had no choice but to put their faith in the loyalty of the 9th BNC and 46th BNI, the very troops whom Gordon described simply as the ‘enemy’. The Brigadier instead went out of his way to assuage any grievances the sepoys may have harboured, while also avoiding doing anything that might provoke them. Alum Bheg and the sepoys of the 46th were thus allowed to keep their arms and perform their duties as before and, as the ultimate sign of confidence, the civil treasury funds were moved into their lines to guard, and the treasure chest of the executive Engineer was handed over to the 9th BLC.17 Assistant Commissioner Jones, whose work in the civil administration continued as usual, described the precariousness of the new situation:

  ‘sitting every day in Cutcherry with 40 Sepoys in the treasury, a few paces off. As treasurer, I had constantly to go among them to lock up and take out, and also to go to their lines to commit treasure to their main-guard, or to take it from them. Whenever we could we gave them rupees to guard, merely to please them by showing confidence in them. This was all we had left to do without any force at hand, and I can assure you that from the first nothing was omitted that could soothe them or tend to keep them right.’18

  Monckton at the same time received instructions to raise a levy from among the local Sikh population to make up for the shortfall of regular troops at the station.19 Police battalions were to take over the various guard duties previously assigned to the sepoys, and the new levies, known as barkandazes or armed guards, were to assume some of the police duties.20 In compliance with Brind’s instructions to give the sepoys no reason to believe their loyalty was doubted, Monckton had to be circumspect as he organised the new levies: ‘The measures I adopted were first to form a levy, at first cautiously disguised as a town guard, and then as the men had been collected, to select such as would be fit for permanent military service and import to them some simple training.’21 The strict non-interference policy instituted by Brind, eventually brought him into conflict with the missionaries. Preaching and educational instruction had already been suspended, but the Brigadier extended the ban to include private prayer-meetings within the confines of the cantonment. As one of the American missionaries described it:

  ‘At the suggestion of some religious officers, we had established several prayer meetings in the bounds of the cantonments for the benefit of European soldiers. Whilst Hindu temples and heathen orgies were permitted to any extent, the Brigadier interposed his authority for suppressing our Christian prayer meetings, on the ground that they partook of the nature of conventicles. His authority was absolute at the time, and we were obliged to submit. Messrs. Hunter and M‘Mahon, however, undertook to represent the matter by appeal to the Governor General in Calcutta.’22

  Gordon later noted how furious the Brigadier was:

  ‘one time he went so far as to threaten to hang Mr. Boyle, the Chaplain. It was in reference to his order forbidding us to meet together for prayer and conference, that Mrs Hunter said with much spirit and earnest feeling, We will continue to hold our meetings, and I will attend them, if he should take off my head for it.’23

  Outside of Sialkot, however, Brind had no control over the way that British officials dealt with sepoys whose loyalty they questioned. Small detachments of the 46th had so far been providing the treasury guard in the nearby towns of Gujranwala and Shahpur, but the local authorities there no longer felt they could trust them. As one officer at Shapur put it: ‘At the time the men of the 46th, knowing that their comrades had not committed themselves at Sealkote, still professed to be loyal; but even had they been otherwise disposed[,] the treasure was removed from under their charge so suddenly that they had no time to consult about not giving it up.’24 The detachments were subsequently sent back to Sialkot to avoid them causing trouble or colluding with other nearby regiments.25 This lack of trust in the men of the 46th BNI deeply angered Brind, since it undermined his desperate attempts to keep the rest of the regiment in Sialkot contended. One can only imagine what the sepoys of these detachments told their brothers in arms when they returned, but such measures were unlikely to inspire much loyalty.

  * * *

  Ultimately, none of these efforts made the people remaining at Sialkot feel any safer, or, indeed, give them much confidence in the ability of officers like Brind to be able to protect them should matters come to a head. Dr Graham wrote to his nephew how:

  ‘Our sepoys here have shown no signs of open mutiny, but the Brig[adier]’s arrangements have been such that we owe their forbearance more to fear than love. There can be no doubt the mutinous feeling is universal, but we have not the means at our command to adopt strong measures, tho’ every hour’s delay is submitting to a prolonged disgrace showing and proclaiming to the whole world the slender hold we have on this mighty empire.’26

  The vulnerability of their situation, and the tenuous grasp by which the British held India, was slowly beginning to sink in. Like Gordon and the other American missionaries, many had moved together in houses within the cantonment, so as to be near the safety of the British troops. Once the European troops had all left Sialkot, save for some sick soldiers of the 52nd in the artillery hospital, they began questioning the soundness of this strategy, as Go
rdon recounted:

  ‘A few days later we began to re-consider our situation. The English soldiers were nearly all gone from Sialkot and the rest, with the exception of about twenty invalids, were under orders to leave; there was no organisation for self-defence; there was no concerted plan of escape; 1,400 armed Sepoys lay quartered within a rifle shot of us. The place, therefore, to which we had come for safety had now become the most unsafe one that could possibly have been selected.’27

  The American missionaries accordingly moved out of the cantonment and down to their mission compound south of the city. It was not believed that the local population had much love for the sepoys, as Jones noted: ‘Our great strength in the Punjab lay in the hatred that the Punjabee has to the ‘down Easteners,’ as they call the Sepoys, as an inferior and intriguing race, who have obtained offices all over the Punjab which the Sikhs have a much better claim to fill.’28 Jones himself moved out of Dr. Graham’s house, in the heart of the cantonment, and joined McMahon in the Monckton house further away from the sepoys’ lines.29 And so, in an absurd twist of faith, the Europeans at Sialkot felt less safe in the proximity of their Indian troops, and placed more confidence in the local population. According to Gordon, there were serious doubts about the loyalty of the sepoys:

  ‘we do not know how far they can be trusted. Still they have not been disarmed yet. The officers fear that this would create unnecessary alarm. The thought of their being armed is very unpleasant, to say the least, and what makes us feel still worse is, the fact that the guards around the treasury, around the officers’ houses, and, I believe, all the guards in Cantonments, are native soldiers.’30

  As May gave way to June, and the temperature continued to rise, the steady flow of rumours, and stories of new mutinies and more massacres, began to take their toll on the American missionaries. Gordon’s companion at the Presbyterian mission, Stevenson, described the situation at Sialkot which seemed increasingly desperate: