The Press. — London, England, 1857-09-12 00:00:00

8S everything we ever prized, and that nearly all the people from the out stations are beggars. What I most regret are the dagguerreotypes and pictures, letters, &c., and dear little D----'s picture too; I have nut one relic of him left to me, poor little pet. The position of the unfortunates at Agra is not reassuring. "Here we are," writes . an officer on the 14th July : Here we are all shut up in this wretched fort since the bth. When there was an engagement outside the can tonments the 3rd European Regiment, numbering bW men and a battery of artillery, with some militia, under the brigadier and staff, went out about three p.m., and they came on the mutineers well intrenched in a village and clump of trees, and they had an artillery fight for two hours, when they killed an awful lot of the enemy. They fired beautifully, and blew up two of our ammuni tion tumbrils, andfkilled a lot of the horses, which crippled our battalions, and at five o'clock our artillery had un lin•tunately no ammunition left. Some of the 3rd then stormed the village and carried it, and killed a good many. Our loss from their artillery was great—Captain I►'Oyley, Lamb, of the artillery, severely wounded, D'Oyley, since dead ; Major Thomas, of the 3rd, severely wounded and Williams, of the 72nd, lost his leg. You remember him at Pau with us. Mr. Oldfield, civil service, shot through the lungs ; thirty men killed and about eighty wounded. The good artillery practice of the rebels and our want of ammunition are facts to be noted. Our writer concludes his letter with some bad news : We buried seven one evening who died from wounds, and I regret to say we have had cholera in the fort, and lost some people yesterday. Mitford, of the 3rd Euro. peen Regiment, sleeping next to me in a verandah, was seized with it yesterday morning. He was in great pain, but is now in hospital, and I hope he may keep up. Captain llurlton, of the 2nd Gwalior Cavelry, died in six hours of it. I was at his funeral last night, poor fellow. I have been very ill with dysentery from bad water, but feel a little better today; the man living in my hut is ill, too, but one suffers so much from the wet that it is no wonder we should have cholera, having no woollen clothes ; however, I trust we may escape the pestilence. There are about 4,•500 men, women, and children, in here now, and they are well packed. 4,500 men, women, and children, "well packed" into one fort, and cholera about, may well give the writer couse to hope that " we may escape the pestilence." He adds at the close of his letter an ominous sen• tence,—" The fort is cleaned, and I hope sickness may not be severe." As is usual on all such occasions, there is a mixture of the ludicrous, or apparently (unseemly. Thus, from Jubbulpore (July 20), from " the intrench ments," we read : We muster about fifty at dinner, ten of whom are ladies, and we have fifteen children in the house. Our numbers are nearly 104), including the uncovenanted. We have included some spacious outhouses in our intrenchrnents, which gives them accommodation. We are lucky in having a small room to ourselves. In one room three ladies and a child sleep in one bed. If you could look in upon us you would not think we were a very lugubrious set, but rather that we were met on some festive occasion. At this moment I hear the piano and singing. We are a queer lot, we Britons ; day after day we hear of atrocities too horrid to write about, and of the murder of friends and relatives, and never seem to think of our own fate. Laugh. ing, talking, eating, drinking, music, singing —all seems to go on much as usual. For a day or two we really had a cloud over us when we heard of the death of Sir Henry Lawrence—the uncertain fate, too, of Cawnpore is die. bean ning. Of the " Survivor from Cawnpore" the following account is given : Letters have been received from Ensign Robert Browne, of the late Tilith Bengal Native Infantry, who arrived in General Havelock's camp on the lath ofJuly. He did not escape from the intrenchments at Cawnpore, but was on detached duty at a short distince with two companies of his regiment • they mutinied on the Oth ofJune, b u t th e sepoys allowed their officers to escape. From that date he wandered about the country disguised as a native, until lie reached the English camp, one march above Flitteypore, where he immediately joined the volunteer corps of cavalry cmnposed of officers, and was advancing with the army on Cawnpore. A " distinguished young Irishman, whose gallant ci3nduct has elicited loud encomiums," gives us the following as our position now at Allahabad. The letter is dated Allahabad, June, 15th : This goei by a steamer down the Ganges to Calcutta, Anil will probably reach through that channel. In my letter of the Ath I mentioned all about the murder of all the officers of the 6th Regiment while at mess, the Mahotne dan part of the band playing, derisively, " God Save the Queen" while the poor young officers were being cut and shot down. On the 6th, 7th, and Bth all our houses and carriages, furniture, horses, itc., were destroyed by fire and plunder. It is now our turn. We have got some Euro. peen troops from Madras. We have some old artillery pensioners from Chimer, and several of the railway engineers and mechanics, who, with the other European residents who escaped, form a volunteer regiment. I entered the ranks of the volunteers on the 6th as a full private. I have since been made adjutant of the corps, and THE PRESS, SEPTEMI3n 12,1857. thereby have a great deal of work to do, but the excitement keeps me all right, and my fractured leg is sound and strong for field duty. At present we stand thus :—We are in the fort— Madras Fusiliers about Pensioners Volunteers Total Europeans .. 670 Outside the fort we have on our side doubtful friends in the Sikh Regiment 4OO And about 50 of the late Oude Cavalry 4AO Europeans as above 670 Gross total of our strength 1,120 And the writer then proceeds : Our fort is at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna. The native city stretches therefrom for three miles along the Jumna, and about one mile broad, with many detached bazaars and villages. This city forms the barrier between us and the rebels, who are intrenched in the gardens which surround the touch at Khoosro, the son of Akhbar the Great. At that holy place their standard is hoisted, and up to this they have maintained their ground. We keep up day and night a cannonade on the city, and are now shelling it from our ramparts and from a steamer sent up the Jumna. Two evenings ago the sick and volunteers emerged from this fort into the city. The Sikhs went ahead of us. firing on every one right and left as they went. We took their right, and every man con tinued his fire until all ammunition was gone. At this time the flames ascended from the bazaars and dry inflam mable roofs of the houses until the blaze completely closed across the street from side to aide. The Sikhs could not return through the fire, but joined us by another road, when it became dark, and we returned to the fort, leaving the city in flames behind us. This sort of work continues, and is getting hotter every day. On this morning a com• pany of the Fusiliers, our volunteers, the Oude cavalry, and the Sikhs entered the city. We were met by thou sands of armed men ; the fire was brisk on both sides. We suffered no loss except two officers wounded—one of them was of the Fusiliers, and the other the adjutant of the Sikh regiment. Two of the Fusiliers were killed this morning and five wounded ; also some Sikhs and Oude cavalry. The volunteers have not yet lost a man. We are all overworked on pickets at night, and out by day, morning and evening; but since we are fighting not only for glory but for our lives, we do the work with good cheer. This fort had almost fallen, as it was in the hands of the sepoys, as guards, until the disturbances began, when sod denly the solunteers and pensioners took up their position at the breech of the cannon, and compelled the guard of sepoys to lay down their arms. The moral influence of the white face had that good effect. Had it come to blows, we should have been seaten, as we were only few and un disciplined. We receive rations daily like any other soldiers, and are subject to the same martial law, which is proclaimed. As soon as we get five or six European regiments, we shall give the niggers such a thrashing as was never equalled in any time or country; for every man's blood is boiling, seeing that all Christians, whether man or woman, over the breadth of the land have been hunted down like foxes, and not simply killed but barba rously butchered and mutilated. We know nothing of what is going on around us, as all communication is cut off. I believe history cannot furnish anything equal to the Indian rebellion of 1857. The land will remain un tilled ; tens of thousands will fall, if they have not already fallen, by the sword, and millions must follow by famine. The colonel in command here now is a man of energy and action. He was in the Crimea during the late war as " General Neill." He has this moment called on us, or such of us as are good riders, to join the c..valry. Lord Harris has received an address, signed by several Hindoo and Mahomedan inhabitants of Madras. The tone of the address is Been by the first paragraph : To the Right Honourable Lord . Harris, Governor of Fort Saint George. My Lord,—We, the Hindoo and Mahomedan inhabi tants of Madras, beg to address your lordship in council at the present critical juncture of affairs in Bengal and the North-West, where the Bengal army has added to the guilt of mutiny and rebellion the unprovoked and indis criminate murder of many of their officers, and, still worse, of a great number of defenceless European women and children ; we want words strong enough to convey the feelings which are inspired by the frightful atrocities that have been committed. Their crimes admit of no pallia tion, misguided though they may have been through the secret misrepresentations of evil-minded men ; but we have the fullest confidence that the alarm occasioned among the Bengal soldiery by the introduction of the new cartridges originated solely in a delusion so far as the in• tentions of Government are concerned, and that neither an infringement of the laws of caste, nor an outrage to religious feelings, bad ever for one moment been contem plated; and we earnestly trust that the might of the British Government will be put forth, until all who either actively took part in or abetted the unheard•of barbarities of the revolted troops have been subjected to the condign punishment of the State. It is important to observe the way in which the alarm about the greased cartridges is referred to in the foregoing declaration. The deaths of the two missionaries (Messrs. Hay cock and Cookey) are confirmed by a letter from Dr. Kay, addressed to the Be,. Ernest Hawkins, secretary to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Dr. Kay writes : My last letter from Mr. Haycock was dated May 31. He had then taken refuge in cantonments. He mentioned to me that his maulvie had told him six months previously that the) would " soon feel the sharpness of the Mussul• man's sword." The native Christians had dispersed in various three. tions previously to the last outbreak. Thus it has pleased God to allow His heavy judgments to fall on those two cities (Delhi and Cawnpore), in es- pecial, where the society had maintained missions. What should be done hereafter will be a matter for earnest thought, under the guidance of Him who has bid us " sow beside all waters." Our departed (may I not say martyred ?) brethren were both men of patient, laborious, unostentatious habits—not marked by any great intellectual endowments, but well acquainted with the language of the country, with revealed truth, and, I trust, with the power of religion. May their death be " precious in God's sight 3" The prognostication that before six months "we should feel the sharpness of the Mussulman's sword," is worthy of note. The following letter (says the Glasgow Daily Mail) is from an officer in the Madras Presidency to a gentleman in Glasgow. The gallant officer has been thirty years in India : Witham, Vizagapatam, July 17, 1857. Thanks for your most kind letter, which I received a couple of days ago. In these times of trouble and uncer tainty, I am sure that you will be glad to have it under my own hand and seal that our heads are comfortably on our own shoulders, and that, so far as human foresight goes, matters look well for us in Southern India. Our sepoys have in no instance proved faithless ; they have been severely tried, and invited to strike a blow for native su premacy and their religion. This is a religious war, there is not a doubt of it; but it is one excited by a small party, no doubt of Mahomedans. In this party the King of Delhi and the ex-King of Oude, and their respective fami lies, are deeply interested—implicated, I should rather say. The instigators of this rebellion knew that Lord Canning had about as much intention of coercing them into Christianity as I have of preaching Brahmioism in Glasgow Cathedral ; and, whatever may be said to the contrary, I assure you that perfect neutrality has ever been the attitude of the Indian Government on this question. When the notion was once got into the minds of the sepoys and people it spread like wildfire ; and so deep was the impression, and is, that we were determined on forcible conversion, that even the well disposed zemindars in Oude, who humanely gave protec tion to our poor fugitives, were afraid to cross the Ganges for fear of being made Christians, and even wretches and murderers on the gallows, when about to pay the forfeit of their crimes, of their good-for-nothing lives, have shouted out that, if spared, they would be glad to become Chris tians. ‘Ve hope that the tide has begun to turn, or, at least, that it is now high water in this torrent of disaster. It is difficult, it is impossible, to exaggerate the magni tude of this misfortune—of this terrible crisis. The whole of the Bengal native army, with an insignificant exceptiont is gone—exists only in the Army List. In two months i has melted away ; its officers basely slain under their own colours; their wives—how shall I write it ?—dishonoured first, in many cases, and then murdered, the children being often cast into the flames of the burning houses before the eyes of the still living parents, or hewn in pieces. The details are too revolting, and such things may not be printed ; even now it is with suppressed breath and grind ing teeth that we speak of them. It is little of an exag geration to say that we hunger and thirst for the day of retribution—already it is at hand; for every European murdered at least a hundred of these dogs have died, and that has yet to be multiplied by ten. Nothing could exceed the confusion. The country from ten miles out of Calcutta up the great trunk road to the Sutlej was lost ; nothing remained but what was within range of the muskets of the European soldiers. We had the ground on which they stood no more. For upwards of a month the Governor-General knew nothing that was going on above Benares ; not a line reached him ; all was uncertainty. At last the Government, rather than publish nothing, were driven to publish scraps out of letters of native hankers. In this way they published in general orders the fall of Delhi when it had not fallen; and, when I now write (July 17), we do nut know, although we hope that it has at last fallen; and Lord Canning was no better informed so late as the 10th and llth inst. Benares was saved by the firmness of Colonel Neill and the Ist Madras Fusiliers. Allahabad, a name that will long be remembered with sorrow and with shame in our annals, was recovered by the same officer. Cawn pore, we hope, but are not sure, has been relieved, although two days ago it was believed that brave old Sir Hugh Wheeler had been killed, and the small garrison, with all the hapless women and children, put to the sword. Lucknow, up to last dates, was held, or rather the Residency, by that fine fellow Sir Henry Lawrence, whose praise is in all our mouths, and a small but gallant band. Agra the mutineers never had ; and the Punjaub, in the iron grasp of John Lawrence and noble Chamberlain, a splendid pair, was kept quiet. Indore is gone—the Resident a fugitive ; so is M how ; so is Saugor. But we hope that the force that relieved Cawnpore, with ail front Agra, will push on to relieve Lucknow, and with Delhi in ashes, the mock king slain or a prisoner on his way to Calcutta, things will begin to settle down ; soon troops will come to Calcutta that were destined for China—at least a part of them—and with these we can tide over until aid arrives from England, and all will go well at the last — that is, always provided Southern and Western India keep qu.iet. The want of European troops with ua in this