The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-02 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 2, 1858.

ingly. "But the ball soon languished ; strange
" rumours got about the room concerning the
" morning parade of all troops, which had been
" announced for daybreak." To hold the four
regiments (amounting to 2,300 men) in check,
there were only 850 Europeans, and two troops
of horse artillery. At the parade, the position of
the troops was changed by a simple manoeuvre,
and the intending mutineers found themselves
confronted by loaded cannon and an European
force of 300 men. The regiments laid down
their arms, and marched sulkily back to quar-
ters. At Ferozepore, where there were enor-
mous military stores, the same tactics were
adopted, and with nearly equal success. Irre-
gular troops were organized, rebel villages de-
stroyed, and the immediate crisis got over with-
out serious loss of European life. Nor were
these open measures the only ones to which it
was found necessary to have recourse. The in-
telligence of the intended revolt had been con-
veyed, not only through the post, but by means
of special emissaries under all kinds of disguises.
Fakeers became numerous in the city of Lahore,
and the number of soi-disant amateurs of swords
and matchlocks who thronged the bazaars under-
went an alarmingly rapid increase. A sharp
look-out was kept, and any one who showed
these tastes strongly was arrested and impri-
soned, pending the upshot of events" :

Thus no half-measures were adopted. Moreover the
principle that he who is not for us is against us was
strictly followed. There was no pause. Treason and
sedition were dogged into the very privacy of the harem,
and up to the sacred sanctuaries of mosques and shrines.
Learned moulvies were seized in the midst of a crowd of
fanatic worshippers, and men of distinction and note were
" wanted "at dead 'of night. Like aleugh-hounds, the
district police, on the first scent of treason, and egged on
by the certainty of reward, fastened on the track, and left
it not until the astonished intriguer was grounded in his
lair. As with the detectives of Vidocq, there were spies
in the market-place, at the festival, in the places of
worship, in the gaols, in the hospitals, in the regimental
bazaars, among the casual knot of gossippers on the
bridge, among the bathers nt the tanks, among the village
circle round the well under the big tree, among the
pettifogging hangers-on of the courts, among the stone-
breakers of the highways, among the dusty travellers at
the serais. No man's tongue was his own property.
Asiatic chicane was paralyzed before the newly-aroused
volition of the Anglo-Saxon.

That these measures were not at all unnecessary,
appears from the tenor of the correspondence
actually intercepted. One man wrote that the
Government had mixed pulverized bones with
the flour. At Jhelum a plot for the massacre of a
whole British family was detected. At Peshawar
a letter was opened containing a reply to some
query as to the disposal of the Europeans :—" They
" were all to be massacred without respect to
" sex, age, or person." The recipient of this
advice was, of course, hanged. Another letter
asked for an answer as to the exact date of the
mutitieers march and co-operation with their
fellows at Kurnaul. Symbolic commerce could
not, probably, be prevented. " Pearls,' that is,
" white faces, were quoted low in the market ;
" and red wheat,' i.e., Hindostan, looking up."
Even in the Government school at Umrttsur a
Ilindostanee coolly stated that the King of Delhi
had dismissed Mr. Montgomery from his post,
having " no further occasion for his services," and
gave him permission to retire. The shops, here-
tofore devoted to peaceful quotations of Bass and
pickles, became heated beyond capsicum-point
by talk of swarthy politicians; and "a regular
emissary " from Delhi, provided with suits of
fakeer's clothes and other disguises, made his
appearance to inaugurate the rising against the
British. Great is his discomfiture on being
apprehended and peeled. At Itoopur a sepoy
tore down a Government proclamation ; native
Christians are threatened in the streets; and
budmashes do that which is right in their own
eyes. The Vehm-gericht of the verandah, too,
has sat upon its masters, and has pronounced that
their time is come. General Ilewitt's butler of
twenty years appears not to have received any
tincture of fidelity from the number of corks he
has drawn tbr that worthy warrior. The white
face has wiped the last stain of curry from his
mouth. Henceforth we will fold no more
napkins for him—he shall be wiped out himself;
and his spoons shall be ours ! Butler pockets
said spoons incontinently, and for the dinner
plates, never more to contaminate Asiatic fingers,
he throws them into the air, and dances with
fiendish exultation amid the broken British
crockery ! But grim vengeance is at hand in the

shape of Captain Hogg, the aide-de-camp, who
(watchful, probably, over the hospitable board
where he had so often carved) enters the room
"at the unusual uproar," and allays the pre-
mature transports of that rash domestic by "
ing him on the spot." On the other side, there
were vigorous men in command, a population
eager to be led against the Mussulmans and
Hindoos, and staunch fidelity on the part of some
of the most important of the native princes. A
moveable column was organized,—not so difficult
a matter as in the older provinces, for on the
frontier the atmosphere of peace had not been
long enough breathed to make such preparations
feel strange or unusual. All the great military
positions were rapidly secured. The 4th Native
Infantry were quietly turned out of the hill-fort
of Kangra by Major Younghusband. At Mooltan,
which contained military stores to the amount of
fifteen lakhs of rupees, and commanded the river
communication with Bombay, the delicate opera.
tion of disarming was intrusted to Major Cham-
berlain. All the troops in garrison were paraded,
the Punjab infantry marched to cantonments by
two separate roads, so as to take the suspected
regiments in flank, while in front, at a distance of
200 yards, stood a masked battery, and more
cavalry and infantry. There were not above sixty
available Europeans at the station, and these
were disposed around the guns. The operation
was completely successful, and the disarming
effected without the expenditure of a drop of
blood, a result which justly earned a strong
eulogy from Government. The native population
was, as we have said, eager to be led against the
insurgents :

The Sikhs generally were most eager to aid in the
capture of Delhi, from the existence ot'a most remarkable
prophecy,—that they, in conjunction with lupee wallahs
(hat wearers, or the British), who should come over the
sea, would reconquer Delhi, and place the head of the
king's son on the very spot where the head of Gooroo Teg
Bahadoor had been exposed. one hundred and eighty years
before, by order of Aurungzebe, the Great Mogul. This
vaticination was almost literally carried out, for when the
ga!lant Hodson had captured the old king and shot the
two sons, his Sikh ressalilar, remembering the
oracle, secured its fulfilment ; and for three days, on the
spot foretold, the bodies of the Icing's Bons lay • spectvele
to men ; the glazed eyes of these miscreants staring sternly
out of their dead heads on the very scene where they had
ordered and wituessed the massacre of the English women
and children.

Our third element of strength was the remark-
able fidelity of most of the native princes. Cer-
tainly, as Mr. Cooper remarks, they had a good
deal of Company's paper in their possession, and,
even if successfill in a revolt, they could only
hope to play second fiddle to the Great Mogul;
still, they had some cause of complaint against
us, and neither looked on our difficulty as their
opportunity, nor refused to help us to the
utmost of their power. The Rajahs of Bikaneer
and Kuppoorthullah furnished valuable assist-
ance, and the Rajah of Putteealah, who "seemed
"to sleep with one eye open to the interests of
"the British army," both helped to keep the
line of road open, and sheltered with princely
hospitality the fugitives from Ilansi and llissar.
Where disarming had been too late, or in-
effectual, stronger punishments were resorted to,
which Mr. Cooper chronicles with somewhat
of unctuous appreciation. It is difficult, herhaps,
not to acquire a taste for blood—if tapped from
a black skin—under such circumstances; hence
he enlarges on the " snug disposition" for a com-
bined spectacle of hanging and blowing front
guns, by which the British Government "asserted
itself" (we do not quite make out where), and
which is certainly calculated to shock what he
calls " the pacific English mind" which looks on
such proceedings as matters of painful nez.essity,
not of ferocious exultation. Lieutenant Boswell,
after the battle of Trimmo's Ghat, " having no
ink," was forced to write a letter to the general
"in blood, which was fresh and plentifill around
" him ;" but Mr. Cooper is, perhaps, over fond
of the material. The 26th Native Infantry,
which had murdered Major Spencer, fled to the
bank of the Ravee and took refuge in an island
about a mile from the shore. By the exercise
of extraordinary daring and decision they were
captured (sixty-six sepoys submitting to be
bound by one man!) and marched to Ujnulla
while the "gracious moon" prevented a single
escape. Part were confined in the police-station,
part in a round tower. Rope had been ordered
before the pursuing party went out; a dry well
.
afforded " a convenient solution" of the difficulty

I

"7:=

of disposing of the bodies; and " the climax of
" fortunate coincidences seemed to have arrived
" when it was remembered" that the next day
was the festival of the Bukra lied. A hundred
and fifty were executed, when the oldest of the
firing party swooned away : then they took a little
rest; then eighteen more were shot down—then,
it is reported, the rest " refused to come out of the
bastion.' l'reparations are made for a rush ;
but on the doors being opened, all is quiet. The
tragedy of the Black-hole has been re-enacted,
and forty-five sufibcated wretches, whose cries
have been drowned in the tumult, encumber the
floor. Others were taken to Mecan Meer and
blown away front guns, "pour encourager les
autres; " and, altogether, about five hundred
sepoys perished within forty-eight hours from
the commission of their crime. Swift retribu-
tion, necessary and righteous vengeance; but
not of a nature to be gloated over. In this
execution Mr. Cooper himself was the principal
actor, and received a letter of compliment from
the Judicial Commissioner, Mr. Robert Mont-
gomery :
Sunday, 9 a.m.
My Dear Cooper,—All honour to you for what you have
done, and right well you did it. There was no hesitation
or delay, or drawing back. It will be a feather to your cap
as long as you live.

• • • •
congratulate you very heartily on your success. There
will be some stragglers ; have them nil picked up, and any
you get send us now. You hare had slaughter enough.
We want a few for the troops here, and also for evidence.—
Believe me, yours sincerely, R. MONTGOMERY.
F. Cooper, Esq., D.C.
P.S.—T he other three regiments here were very shaky
yesterday, but I hardly think they will now go. I wish
they wood, as they are a nuisance; and not a man would
escape if they
We may agree with Lord Canning, who "at
" once accorded his high commendation of the
summary proceedings narrated in this chapter,"
and yet find some difhculty in sympathizing with
the tone in which Mr. Cooper describes and Mr.
Montgomery writes. The former of the passages
we have italicised would convey to our mind an
implication of over zeal in the person written to,
did not the latter show that the bloody task had
subdued the hand and mind to that they
worked in.
The moral of Mr. Cooper's book is directed
against the system of centralization and divided
responsibility which prevails in all parts of India
except the Punjab, and to which he attributes
the comparative failure of other attempts to quell
the rebellion at its outset. In the l'unjab the
Commissioner or Deputy of a district is solely
answerable for the good order of all placed under
his charge, while elsewhere the revenue and
judicial authorities were actuated by no comnion
feeling, and only anxious to shift responsibility
on each other. What would be the writer's
views as to the reorganization of the empire we
cannot tell, but we infer that he would lean
rather to a military occupation by adequate
British forces of every stronghold, and a general
system of intimidation, than to the measures of
reconciliation which are now becoming more
popular, and which Mr. Norton, as we saw last
week, would be disposed to support. The book
is well written and interesting, though not
always as clear in description as might be
wished. But in many places there are diagrams
of positions which are lucidly done, and those
who do not mind the horrible details we have
alluded to will certainly find in it a stirring nar-
rative, whose record of vigour and decision shows
an appreciation of the magnitude of the crisis
which it may be wished had been more general
in some other parts of India.

The Backwoods Preacher. An Autobiography
of Peter Cartwright. Edited by W. P. Strick-
land. London : Ileylin.
PETER CARTWRIGHT, the Backwoods Preacher,
was born on the Ist September, 1785, in the
State of Virginia. His father, a poor man,
fought against King George in the War of Inde-
pendence, soon after the conclusion of which he
removed to Kentucky, at that time the chief
hunting-grounds of fierce and warlike tribes of
Indians. The journey thither was through a
Wilderness infested by bands of savages, who cut
off all stragglers and frequently surprised and
murdered large parties of immigrants. The
Word Kentucky is, by interpretation, " the dark
and bloody ground," and was chosen as an appro-
priate designation for a territory which long