The Press. — London, England, 1857-09-26 00:00:00

938 acquaintance shot or hacked to pieces. Thus the skull of Mr. Wedderburn, the collector, was identified and decently interred. With it were laid such por tions of the remains of his wife and child, of Mrs. Barwell, and of another lady, as were removable from the spot, below the rampart, where they were cast down from their little room of which the blood stained walls yet testified to the butchery that had been perpetrated therein. Mrs. Smith, wife of an assistant in the Kutcherry, took refuge with her five children among some thick bushes in the garden of her house. The gardener knew her retreat, but did not disclose it, assuring the mutineers who attacked and sacked the house that his mistress and her family had escaped to the fort; but a chowkedar, or policeman, who was under deep obligations to Mr. Smith for recent kindness, found out the place where the wife and children of his benefactor were con cealed, and with his own hand slaughtered every one. Portions of bloodstained attire were still cling ing to the bushes when the bones of the victims were collected and interred. Of Lieutenant Barwell's body no traces were found. Such of the prisoners taken by the general's force as were proved to have been concerned in the massacre were summarily dealt with. AU this force is believed to be pushing down to Delhi : We are now promised a large addition to our little army, by Sir .T. Lawrence (says a correspondent). In addition to the Kemaon Battalion of Ghoorkas and Hen derson's regiment of Sikhs now en roule, he was sending 900 European infantry, and could push down Beloochee and Sikh levies to the number of L 2,000, if re quired. Two or three thousand of these latter would, I dare say, be very acceptable for guards, escorts, &c.; but 12,000 would be rather an encumbrance. " Twelve thousand would be rather an encumbrance." That is just the point, for the great question which recurs to every mind upon reading of the introduc tion of so large a Sikh element into Bengal is—what amount of reliance can we place upon these men ? Let us see if our correspondents can help us to an opinion. Now, it is universally allowed that the Punjaubee is a very good fellow so long as you do not dip your hand into his breeches-pocket. He has a national antipathy to pay rent. His pocket is the test of his fidelity. Our Punjaub revenue is col lected in November; that will be the time, therefore, to watch keenly the disposition of our Sikh subjects. Meanwhile, we find the tax-collector going round already in some districts. How he is received, the following extracts from the letter of a civil servant of high rank will tell us : An officer of irregular cavalry was sent out to collect the revenue, and he had no force with him but a squadron of his own regiment—about 120 sabres. He pitched his camp, and rode up to the place with a small escort to advise the men to pay quietly. They fired on him ; he charged into the suburbs, but, getting entangled among the houses, was obliged to retire, with the loss of mix men. The end of this little affair was that the suburbs of the village were pillaged and burned by our men, one hundred of the villagers cut down, and the revenue, with a fine of 1,000 rupees besides, collected at the point of the bayonet. Our civil servant continues : I had only reached K— that day, and immediately afterwards Captain —, the hero of the above tale, marched away, and I bent my steps to another village, where I expected to imitate, though I could not hope to rival, his achievement. In this case the Kungurs had expelled the police station, and taken possession of the strong tower. They had refused to lay down their arms, and, on my sending my assistant with 150 men to replace the police, they had turned out in such numbers that be, having discretionary powers to act according to circum• stances, retreated. His proceedings showed so badly in comparison with those of Captain —, and his retreat was such a triumph to the opposition, that I expected a sharp affair, and took measures accordingly; but, riding up with twenty troopers to reconnoitre, I found the place deserted, and that, although the town is so strong that a dozen men might hold it against a host, nothing remained then but to give up the place to plunder and fire, both which engines of punishment were hard at work in it for two days, and I think the Nirdhuck bitterly rue having ousted my police, and given an armed reception to my assistant. I don't know if any other village will oppose me, but I fancy not. The revenue is coming ir., and heavy fines are being paid in dogged sullenness wherever I go. We fear the " dogged sullenness " of these villagers does not promise well for the future. But, it is asked, is not their conduct in the Punjaub, hunting down the rebels of the Bengal regiments, sufficient proof of their fidelity ? We really believe that no more con fidence is felt in the Sikhs than in any other natives. The following remarks, extracted from a letter by an officer in the civil service, exhibit the amount of real confidence felt by the Europeans in the Sikhs. Re ferring to the Sealkote mutiny, in which Sikhs and sepoys fraternised, he remarks : In one day we had to flog 125 men—forty lashes each. We havo some to hang every day—from one to six in number. A party of our levies have gone out, and are THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 26, 1857. getting the 600 prisoners from Gholab Singh's territory, and shooting or flogging them on the spot, as the case may be. I shall be very glad when all this shooting and hanging is over; it sets people's minds more or less against us, and keeps us all in a stale of excitement. The Sikhs have behaved well hitherto, but I assure you the treachery, ingratitude, and cold•blooded cruelty we have witnessed and seen every day have more or less unsettled the minds of all, and made us mistrust everybody with a black face. If we are preserved through all this I dare say I shall have benefited by it, and seen a good deal of human nature which may be of use afterwards. Such experience, how. ever, has been dearly purchased. In corroboration of this view, by the following extract from the later of an officer stationed at Alluhabad, and recently employed upon some village razzias, it would seem as if our people occasionally took a leaf out of the rebel book : In the expedition of which I have just been writing, and which is only one of several which have taken place in this neighbourhood within the last four weeks, the civilian who was sent out as the acting•ntagistrate con ducted himself in a manner I was astonished to observe in any European having pretensions to the character of a gentleman. When villagers were brought in as prisoners, in order that they might be questioned, he would com mence conversation by walking up to them as they squatted on the ground, and kicking their naked bodies with his heavy riding boots. At another time he would, with his fist, strike the unresisting wretches in the face, and these gentle persuasives failing, he would ha►e them tied up to a tree and whipped with a stick or piece of rope, until they would give the information he required. This appeared to me very like the old mode of putting people to torture to extract evidence. People say, in de fence of these " dours," as these expeditions are called, that the whole of the people are disaffected ; but it seems to me that it is not very likely to reclaim them to serve them in this manner, and I really think I should be inclined to turn rebel myself under similar circumstances. We recur now to our Punjaub correspondent : July 25. The hanging and flogging still go on. Yesterday 120 servants of people in the station, who had bolted with the mutineers, came in under a guard. Our new levy now receiving the prisoners from Cashmere shot seventy-eight the day before yesterday, and are keeping the native officers to be shot in here, to make an impression. We have a hard day's work before us again to-day, for another batch have come in. They are nearly all " down•easters," as we in the Punjaub call them—i.e., men of the north west provinces. These the Sikhs hate, and cordially ap prove our severe measures. The Sikhs are a noble race of men, and are serving us well everywhere. They are far more open and frank and physically finer men than the " down-easters," for whom they entertain a most profoand contempt and hatred. They do not look upon us as such a different race of beings from themselves as the others do; they will drink with us, and eat, I believe, some things with us, but not off the same plate. Grog they have a great weakness for ; nevertheless, there are plenty of fanatics—men of rank and others—who remember the glories of the Khalsa army; and the ferocities which attended their wars with us show us what we should have to expect from their half-savage villagers in case anything should happen to alienate their minds from us, or to make them believe that they might once more recover their own. It is to be ready for such an emergency that the forts at Lahore and Ferozepore have been put in order and pro visioned. Let us only hear that Delhi has fallen, and I think we should have little cause to fear. " Let us only hear that Delhi has fallen, and we shall have little cause to fear." What if the fidelity of the Sikhs before Delhi and elsewhere rest, upon that event? In so much bush-fighting as there is in front of Delhi, there are, of course, not wanting instances of individual courage. Here is a noble one : A European private was the other day hearing a wounded ensign, a mere boy, from the field, or rather the suburb, before Delhi. A mutineer fired from the upper windows of a house. Deliberately the soldier placed his senseless officer under shelter, walked to the house, tramped up stairs, dashed in the door, and shot the mau. Two other mutineers were with h:rn, and before they came to their wits two rapid thrusts of the bayonet had finished their course. The soldier then walked coolly back and resumed his burden. The same writer gives another, and adds a good reason for not attempting the capture of the city with such men : One hundred and fifty mutineers got into a serai (or walled inclosure for travellers) on our flank, and kept up a galling fire upon stragglers; twenty Europeans went at them, but they shut the door ; it was blown open, our men rushed in and shut it behind them. They then slew every traitor inside, actually nulling from one to another, and driving their bayonets through them as if they had been sheep. You'll think with such difference of material l)elhi could easily be taken; and so it could, but our officers say that once in the Europeans could not be held together; they'd be all over the city in a minute, and would be sur• prised at the 'oarricades, or put hors de combat at the grog shops, which are worse than bullets. More troops are wanted, when out of the lot enough may be held in hand to clear the streets and keep the palace. Some force must be near Delhi now from the eastward. How the antiquated commander,' have been giving in! The fourth within two wombs is Wilson. I think this business, atop of Bushire, after Sebastopol, will at last have a chance of ridding us of centenarian generals. Another writer from the camp tells us : The other day C—, of the 2nd Fusiliers, with ltis men, burst open the door of a house in which were a lot of Fondles. C— was in front when the door gave way, and down he fell into the house with it. Lucky for him, as a Pandy blazed away at him from the inside, but the ball went over his head. C— then tried his revolver at the mutineer, but it would not go off, so he ran him through with his sword. His men then went iu and finished off the rest of the Fondles in the house. The remarkable deaths of the three commanders. in -chief, one after the other, has raised suspicions at Calcutta of foul play. A correspondent of the Daily News writes : Brigadier Wilson, of the Bengal Artillery, has been appointed to the chief command at Delhi in the place of General Barnard, who, like the commander•in•chief, General Anson, died, as alleged, of cholera. General Reed has also died of "cholera," but the Government has taken no public notice of the fact. These three deaths following each other so rapidly, have induced people to read for cholera, poison; and if they have all gone off from cholera, it is one of the most remarkable coincidences I remember. There may or may not be truth in the suspicion, but the fact that cholera is in our camp is not denied. "We are suffering a great deal more from cholera than from the enemy's fire," writes an engineer officer on 15th July : In one regiment (the 81st Queen's) seven men died in one day from it. It is now the rainy season, and the men out on duty get wet, have to rewain in their wet clothes for several inure, come home, and are carried off in a few hours. An engineer officer named Walker died a day or two ago in less than twentyfour hours after he was taken ill. You will have heard that General Barnard died of cholera on the sth inst. As to the relative position of the rebels and our selves, this writer observes:— As usual, when people are greatly excited, in the dearth of information rumour supplies it place, and the rumours from Delhi are of a very unpleasant kind. We have heard a dozen times at least of its fall, and now it is said it cannot possibly be taken until very large rein• forcements are sent up—and there are none to send! We hear that there are some 60,0(10 or 70,000 men in arms in the city and its neighbourhood. BERHAMPORE. The Government of Calcutta, taking a lesson from Dinapore, resolved at last to disarm the native troops at Berhampore. The following are the details, which show that the step was not taken too soon : Soon after our arrival at Berhampore on the Ist, our troops, the 90th, landed about 800 strong. and together with a party of the 35th Queen's, about 100 strong, pro ceeded to disarm the 63rd N.I. and 11th Irregular Cavalry. We marched out some three miles in the rain over the midan at double quick time. On nearing the sepoys' lines the 90th deployed into three columns, one extending well to the right so as to get into the rear of the lines; the second so as to outflank them on the left; the third and larger column extending so as to outflank them on their right, or to meet them in front. This movement exposed the two guns manned by the sailors. The .iumna was lying in position to shell them. The sepoys, at the first order given, piled their arms. The officers (native) were allowed to keep their side arms. A company of the 90th disarmed the guards in and about the line, and the 35th disarmed the guards at the treasuries. The cavalry showed strong symptoms of mutiny, and had it not been for the imposing force before them, I feel fully persuad they would have fought. Numbers of their pistols which were picked up were loaded to the very muzzle, and some even loaded on parade, so it is said. Many of them began throwing away their belts, &c. &c., some doubled up their swords, and threw them away; their mutinous conduct was soon put an end to, however, by the flank movement of a couple of companies of the 90th at the double. It was too late for them to do much, and so they submitted to the 90th, which inclosed them in the centre of a three•sided square and marched them off to Berham• pore, where the horses were confined in Hospital•squaro. At this the troopers became infuriated, but they were soon put down. They are a fine-looking set of men, as also were the 63rd, and all their appointments were in excel lent order. The 63rd are nearly all Hindoos and Sikhs. The cavalry are from about Delhi and Benarca, all Mils sulmans ; they have never agreed together, which I take to be the cause of the safety of Berhampore. Sunday, the 2nd, the bazaar was disarmed. A goodly number of guns, pistols, and powder was found, all of which was duly taker: care of. We are now off to disarm the Ilhaugnlpore chaps. The Nawab of Moorshedabad has, of his own accord, disarmed all his followers. THE GARRISON OF FUTTEHGHUR. The following is an extract of a letter containing, it is feared, a too well authenticated account of the fate of the garrison at Futtehghur, August 6 : I fear there is little doubt that the garrison of Fiftieth. ghur have been murdered by that fiend Nana Sahib. I hear the deposition of a servant that has arrived here, stating that after a struggle of nine days the small band was overcome, that the Nawab of Furruckabad furnished them with boats, and that they were all killed by Nana in cold blood after passing Ithitoor. Of the 10th Native Infantry this includes, I believe, Brigadier and Mrs. Smith, Munro, Phillott, Phillimore, Fitzgerald and wife, Simpson, Sweten• ham, Henderson, Eokford, Dr, leathcote and family; then