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Marx & Engels in the New-York Daily Tribune
September - October 1857
Investigation of Tortures in India, Marx 17 September 1857
British Incomes in India, Marx 21 September 1857
The Indian Revolt, Marx 4 September 1857
The Revolt in India, Marx 3 October 1857
The Revolt in India, Marx 13 October 1857
Investigation of Tortures in India
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, September 17, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
Our London correspondent, whose letter with regard to the Indian revolt we published yesterday, very properly referred to some of the antecedents which prepared the way for this violent outbreak. We propose to-day to devote a moment to continuing that line of reflections, and to showing that the British rulers of India are by no means such mild and spotless benefactors of the Indian people as they would have the world believe. For this purpose, we shall resort to the official Blue Books... on the subject of East-Indian torture, which were laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857. The evidence, it will be seen, is of a sort which cannot be gainsayed.
We have first the report of the Torture Commission at Madras, which states its “belief in the general existence of torture for revenue purposes.” It doubts whether
“anything like air equal number of persons is annually subjected to violence on criminal (barges, as for the fault of non-payment of revenue.”
It declares that there was
“one thing which had impressed the Commission even more painfully than the conviction that torture exists: it is the difficulty of obtaining redress which confronts the injured parties.”
The reasons for this difficulty given by the Commissioners are: 1. The distances which those who wish to make complaints personally to the Collector have to travel, involving expense and loss of time in attending upon his office: 2. The fear that applications by letter
“will be returned with the ordinary indorsement of a reference to the Tahsildar”
the district police and revenue officer — that is, to the very man who, either in his person or through his petty police subordinates, has wronged him; 3. The inefficient means of procedure and punishment provided by law for officers of Government, even when formally accused or convicted of these practices. It seems that if a charge of this nature were proved before a magistrate, he could only punish by a fine of fifty rupees, or a month’s imprisonment. The alternative consisted of handing over the accused
“to the criminal judge to be punished by him, or committed for trial before the Court of the Circuit.”
The report adds that
“these seem to be tedious proceedings, applicable only to one class of offenses, abuse of authority – namely, in police charges, and totally inadequate to the necessities of the case.”
A police or revenue officer, who is the same person, as the revenue is collected by the police, when charged with extorting money, is first tried by the Assistant Collector; he then can appeal to the Collector; then to the Revenue Board. This Board may refer him to the Government or to the civil courts.
“In such a state of the law, no poverty-stricken ryot could contend against any wealthy revenue officer; and we are riot aware of any complaints having been brought forward under these two regulations (of 1822 and 1828) by the people.”
Further, this extorting of money applies only to taking the public money, or forcing a further contribution from the ryot for the officer to put into his own pocket. There is, therefore, no legal means of punishment whatever for the employment of force in collecting the public revenue.
The report from which these quotations are made applies only to the Presidency of Madras: but Lord Dalbousie himself, writing, in September, 1855, to the Directors says that
“he has long ceased to doubt that torture in one shape or other is practiced by the lower subordinates in every British province.”
The universal existence of torture as a financial institution of British India is thus officially admitted, but the admission is made in such a manner as to shield the British Government itself. In fact, the conclusion arrived at by the Madras commission is that the practice of torture is entirely the fault of the lower Hindoo officials, while the European servants of the Government had always, however unsuccessfully, done their best to prevent it. In answer to this assertion, the Madras Native Association presented, in January, 1856, a petition to Parliament, complaining of the torture investigation on the following grounds: 1. That there was scarcely any investigation at all, the Commission sitting only in the City of Madras, and for but three months, while it was impossible, except in very few cases, for the natives who had complaints to make to leave their homes; 2. That the Commissioners did not endeavor to trace the evil to its source; had they done so, it would have been discovered to be in the very system of collecting the revenue; 3. That no inquiry was made of the accused native officials as to what extent their superiors were acquainted with the practice.
“The origin of this coercion,” say the petitioners, “is not with the physical perpetrators of it, but descends to them from the officials immediately their superiors, which latter again are answerable for the estimated amount of the collection to their European superiors, these also being responsible on the same head to the highest authority of the Government.”
Indeed, a few extracts from the evidence on which the Madras Report professes to be founded, will suffice to refute its assertion that “no blame is due to Englishmen.” Thus, Mr. W. D. Kohlhoff, a merchant, says:
“The modes of torture practiced are various, and suitable to the fancy of the tahsildar or his subordinates, but whether any redress is received from higher authorities, it is difficult for me to tell, as all complaints are generally referred to the tahsildars for investigation and information.”
Among the cases of complaint from natives, we find the following:
“Last year, as our peasanum (principal paddy or rice crops) failed for want of rain, we were unable to pay as usual. When the jamabundy was made, we claimed a remission on account of the losses, according to the terms of the agreement entered into in 1837, by us, when Mr. Eden was our collector. As this remission was not allowed, we refused to take our puttahs. The tahsildar then commenced to compel us to pay with great severity, from the month of June to August. I and others were placed in charge of persons who used to take us in the sun. There we were made to stoop and stones were put on our backs, and we were kept in the burning sand. After 8 o’clock, we were let to go to our rice. Suchlike ill treatment was continued during three months, during which we sometimes went to give our petitions to the collector, who refused to take them. We took these petitions and appealed to the Sessions Court, who transmitted them to the collector. Still we got no justice. In the month of September, a notice was served upon us, and twenty-five days after, our property was distrained, and afterward sold, Beside what I have mentioned, our women were also ill treated; the kittee was put upon their breasts.”
A native Christian states in reply to questions put by the Commissioners:
“When a European or native regiment passes through, all the ryots are pressed to bring in provisions, &c., for nothing, and should any of them ask for the price of the articles, they are severely tortured.”
There follows the case of a Brahmin, in which he, with others of his own village and of the neighboring villages, was called on by the Tahsildars to furnish planks, charcoal, firewood, &c., gratis, that he might carry on the Coleroon bridge work: on refusing, he is seized by twelve men and maltreated in various ways. He adds:
“I presented a complaint to the Sub-Collector, Mr. W. Cadell, but he made no inquiry, and tore my complaint. As he is desirous of completing cheaply the Coleroon bridge work at the expense of the poor and of acquiring a good name from the Government, whatever may be the nature of the murder committed by the Tahsildar, he takes no cognizance of it.”
The light in which illegal practices, carried to the last degree of extortion and violence, were looked upon by the highest authority, is best shown by the case of Mr. Brereton, the Commissioner in charge of the Loodhiana District in the Punjaub in 1855. According to the Report of the Chief Commissioner for the Punjaub, it was proved that
“in matters under the immediate cognizance or. direction of the Deputy-Commissioner, Mr. Brereton himself, the houses of wealthy, citizens had been causelessly searched; that property seized on such occasions was detained for lengthened periods; that many parties were thrown into prison, and lay there for weeks, without charges being exhibited against them; and that the laws relating to security for bad character had been applied with sweeping and indiscriminating severity. That the Deputy-Commissioner had been followed about from district to district by certain police officers and informers, whom he employed wherever he went, and that these men had been the main authors of mischief.”
In his minute on the case, Lord Dalhousie says:
“We have irrefragable proof – proof, indeed, undisputed by Mr. Brereton, himself – that that officer has been guilty of each item in the healthy catalogue of irregularities and illegalities with which the chief Commissioner has charged him, and which have brought disgrace on one portion of the British administration, and have subjected a large number of British subjects to gross injustice, to arbitrary imprisonment and cruel torture.”
Lord Dalhousie proposes “to make a great public example,” and, consequently, is of opinion that
“Mr. Brereton cannot, for the present, be fitly intrusted with the authority of a Deputy Commissioner, but ought to be removed from that grade to the grade of a first class Assistant.”
These extracts from the Blue Books may be concluded with the petition from the inhabitants of Talook in Canara, on the Malabar coast, who, after stating that they had presented several petitions to the Government to no purpose, thus contrast their former and present condition:
“While we were cultivating wet and dry lands, hill tracts, low tracts and forests, paying the light assessment fixed upon us, and thereby enjoying tranquillity and happiness under the administration of ‘Ranee,’ Bhadur and Tippoo, the then Circar servants, levied an additional assessment, but we never paid it. We were not subjected to privations, oppressions or ill-usages in collecting the revenue. On the surrender of this country to the Honorable Com ally, they devised all sorts of plans to squeeze out money from us. With this pernicious object in view, they invented rules and framed regulations, and directed their collectors and civil judges to put them in execution. But the then collectors and their subordinate native officials paid for some time due attention to our grievances, and acted in consonance with our wishes. On the contrary, the present collectors and their subordinate officials, desirous of obtaining promotion on any account whatever, neglect the welfare and interests of the people in general. turn a deaf car to our grievances, and subject us to all sorts of oppressions.”
— We have here given but a brief and mildly-colored chapter from the real history of British rule in India. In view of such facts, dispassionate and thoughtful men may perhaps be led to ask whether a people are not justified in attempting to expel the foreign conquerors who have so abused their subjects. And if the English could do these things in cold blood, is it surprising that the insurgent Hindoos should be guilty, in the fury of revolt and conflict, of the crimes and cruelties alleged against them?
British Incomes in India
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, September 21, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
The present state of affairs in Asia suggests the inquiry, What is the real value of their Indian dominion to the British nation and people? Directly, that is in the shape of tribute, of surplus of Indian receipts over Indian expenditures, nothing whatever reaches the British Treasury. On the contrary, the annual outgo is very large. From the moment that the East India Company entered extensively on the career of conquest – now just about a century ago — their finances fell into an embarrassed condition, and they were repeatedly compelled to apply to Parliament, not only for military aid to assist them in holding the conquered territories, but for financial aid to save them from bankruptcy. And so things have continued down to the present moment, at which so large a call is made for troops on the British nation, to be followed, no doubt, by corresponding calls for money. In prosecuting its conquests hitherto, and building up its establishments, the East India Company has contracted a debt of upward of £50,000,000 sterling, while the British Government has been at the expense, for years past, of transporting to and front and keeping up in India, in addition to the forces, native and European, of the East India Company, a standing army of thirty thousand men. Such being the case, it is evident that the advantage to Great Britain from her Indian empire must he limited to the profits and benefits which accrue to individual British subjects. These profits and benefits, it must be confessed, are very considerable.
First, we have the stockholders in the East India Company, to the number of about 3,000 persons, to whom tinder the recent charter there is guaranteed, upon a paid-up capital of six millions of pounds sterling, an annual dividend of ten and a half per cent, amounting to £630,000 annually. As the East India stock is held in transferable shares, anybody may become a stockholder who has money enough to buy the stock, which, under the existing charter, commands a premium of from 125 to 150 per cent. Stock to the amount of £500, costing say $6,000, entitles the holder to speak at the Proprietors’ meetings, but to vote he must have £1,000 of stock. Holders of £3,000 have two votes, of £6,000 three votes, and of £10,000 or upward four votes. The proprietors, however, have but little voice, except in the election of the Board of Directors, of whom they choose twelve, while the Crown appoints six; but these appointees of the Crown must be qualified by having resided for ten years or more in India. One third of the Directors go out of office each year, but may be re-elected or reappointed. To be a Director, one must be a proprietor of £2,000 of stock. The Directors have a salary of £500 each, and their Chairman and Deputy Chairman twice as much; but the chief inducement to accept the office is the great patronage attached to it in the appointment of all Indian officers, civil and military — a patronage, however, largely shared, and, as to the most important offices, engrossed substantially, by the Board of Control. This Board consists of six members, all Privy Councilors, and in general two or three of them Cabinet Ministers — the President of the Board being always so, in fact a Secretary of State for India.
Next come the recipients of this patronage, divided into five classes – civil, clerical, medical, military and naval. For service in India, at least in the civil line, some knowledge of the languages spoken there is necessary, and to prepare young men to enter their civil service, the East India Company has a college at Haileybury. A corresponding college for the military service, in which, however, the rudiments of military science are the principal branches taught, has been established at Addiscombe, near London. Admission to these colleges was formerly a matter of favor on the part of the Directors of the Company, but under the latest modifications of the charter it has been opened to competition in the way of a public examination of candidates. On first reaching India, a civilian is allowed about $150 a month, till having passed a necessary examination in one or more of the native languages (which must be within twelve months after his arrival), he is attached to the service with emoluments which vary from $2,500 to near $50,000 per annum. The latter is the pay of the members of the Bengal Council; the members of the Bombay and Madras Councils ... receive about $30,000 per annum. No person not a member of Council can receive more than about $25,000 per annum, and, to obtain an appointment worth $20,000 or over, he must have been a resident in India for twelve years. Nine years’ residence qualifies for salaries of from $15,000 to $20,000, and three years’ residence for salaries of from $7,000 to $15,000. Appointments in the civil service go nominally by seniority and merit, but really to a great extent by favor. As they are the best paid, there is great competition to get them, the military officers leaving their regiments for this purpose whenever they can get a chance. The average of all the salaries in the civil service is stated at about $8,000, but this does not include perquisites and extra allowances, which are often very considerable. These civil servants are employed as Governors, Councilors, judges, Embassadors, Secretaries, Collectors of the Revenue, &c. — the number in the whole being generally about 800. The salary of the Governor-General of India is $125,000, but the extra allowances often amount to a still larger sum. The Church service includes three bishops and about one hundred and sixty chaplains. The Bishop of Calcutta has $25,000 a year; those of Madras and Bombay half as much; the chaplains from $2,500 to $7,000, beside fees. The medical service includes some 800 physicians and surgeons, with salaries of from $1,500 to $10,000.
The European military officers employed in India, including those of the contingents which the dependent princes are obliged to furnish, number about 8,000. The fixed pay in the infantry is, for ensigns, $1,080; lieutenants, $1,344; captains, $2,226; majors, $3,810; lieutenant colonels, $5,520; colonels, $7,680. This is the pay in cantonment. In active service, it is more. The pay in the cavalry, artillery and engineers, is somewhat higher. By obtaining staff situations or employments in the civil service, many officers double their pay.
Here are about ten thousand British subjects holding lucrative situations in India, and drawing their pay from the Indian service. To these must be added a considerable number living in England, whither they have retired upon pensions, which in all the services are payable after serving a certain number of years. These pensions, with the dividends and interest on debts due in England, consume some fifteen to twenty millions of dollars drawn annually from India, and which may in fact be regarded as so much tribute paid to the English Government indirectly through its subjects. Those who annually retire from the several services carry with them very considerable amounts of savings from their salaries, which is so much more added to the annual drain on India.
Beside those Europeans actually employed in the service of the Government, there are other European residents in India, to the number of 6,000 or more, employed in trade or private speculation. Except a few indigo, sugar and coffee planters in the rural districts. they are principally merchants, agents and manufacturers, who reside in the cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, or their immediate vicinity. The foreign trade of India, including imports and exports to the amount of about fifty millions of dollars of each, is almost entirely in their hands, and their profits are no doubt very considerable.
It is thus evident that individuals gain largely by the English connection with India, and of course their gain goes to increase the sum of the national wealth. But against all this a very large offset is to be made. The military and naval expenses paid out of the pockets of the people of England on Indian account have been constantly increasing with the extent of the Indian dominion. To this must be added the expense of Burmese, Afghan, Chinese and Persian wars. In fact, the whole cost of the late Russian war may fairly be charged to the Indian account, since the fear and dread of Russia, which led to that war, grew entirely out of jealousy as to her designs on India. Add to this the career of endless conquest and perpetual aggression in which the English are involved by the possession of India, and it may well be doubted whether, on the whole, this dominion does not threaten to cost quite as Much as it can ever be expected to come to.
The Indian Revolt
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
London, Sept. 4, 1857
The outrages committed by the revolted Sepoys in India are indeed appalling, hideous, ineffable — such as one is prepared to meet – only in wars of insurrection, of nationalities, of races, and above all of religion; in one word, such as respectable England used to applaud when perpetrated by the Vendeans on the “Blues,” by the Spanish guerrillas on the infidel Frenchmen, by Servians on their German and Hungarian neighbors, by Croats on Viennese rebels, by Cavaignac’s Garde Mobile or Bonaparte’s Decembrists on the sons and daughters of proletarian France.
However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed ail organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.
The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the Ryots, tortured, dishonored and stripped naked by the British, but with the Sepoys, clad, fed, petted, fatted and pampered by them. To find parallels to the Sepoy atrocities, we need not, as some London papers pretend, fall back on the middle ages, not, even wander beyond the history of contemporary England. All we want is to study the first Chinese war, an event, so to say, of yesterday. The English soldiery then committed abominations for the mere fun of it; their passions being neither sanctified by religious fanaticism nor exacerbated by hatred against an overbearing and conquering race, nor provoked by the stern resistance of a heroic enemy. The violations of women, the spittings of children, the roastings of whole villages, were then mere wanton sports, not recorded by Mandarins, but by British officers themselves.
Even at the present catastrophe it would be an unmitigated mistake to suppose that all the cruelty is on the side of the Sepoys, and all the milk of human kindness flows on the side of the English. The letters of the British officers are redolent of malignity. An officer writing from Peshawur gives a description of the disarming of the 10th irregular cavalry for not charging the 55th native infantry when ordered to do so. He exults in the fact that they were not only disarmed, but stripped of their coats and boots, and after having received 12d. per man, were marched down to the river side, and there embarked in boats and sent down the Indus, where the writer is delighted to expect every mother’s son will have a chance of being drowned in the rapids. Another writer informs us that, some inhabitants of Peshawur having caused a night alarm by exploding little mines of gunpowder in honor of a wedding (a national custom), the persons concerned were tied up next morning, and
“received such a flogging as they will not easily forget.”
News arrived from Pindee that three native chiefs were plotting. Sir John Lawrence replied by a message ordering a spy to attend to the meeting. On the spy’s report, Sir John sent a second message, “Hang them.” The chiefs were hanged. An officer in the civil service, from Allahabad, writes:
“We have power of life and death in our hands, and we assure you we spare not.”
Another, from the same place:
“Not a day passes but we string up front ten to fifteen of them (non-combatants).”
One exulting officer writes:
“Holmes is hanging them by the score, like a ‘brick.’”
Another, in allusion to the summary hanging of a large body of the natives:
“Then our fun commenced.”
A third:
“We hold court-martials on horseback, and every nigger we meet with we either string up or shoot.”
From Benares we are informed that thirty Zemindars were hanged or) the mere suspicion of sympathizing with their own countrymen, and whole villages were burned down on the same plea. An officer from Benares, whose letter is printed in The London Times, says:
“The European troops have become fiends when opposed to natives.”
And then it should not be forgotten that, while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigor, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling on disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated. For instance, the circumstantial account first appearing in The Times, and then going the round of the London press, of the atrocities perpetrated at Delhi and Meerut, from whom did it proceed? From a cowardly parson residing at Bangalore, Mysore, more than a thousand miles, as the bird flies, distant from the scene of action. Actual accounts of Delhi evince the imagination of an English parson to be capable of breeding greater horrors than even the wild fancy of a Hindoo mutineer. The cutting of noses, breasts, &c., in one word, the horrid mutilations committed by the Sepoys, are of course more revolting to European feeling than the throwing of red-hot shell on Canton dwellings by a Secretary of the Manchester Peace Society, or the roasting of Arabs pent up in a cave by a French Marshal, or the flaying alive of British soldiers by the cat-o’-nine-tails under drum-head court-martial, or any other of the philanthropical appliances used in British penitentiary colonies. Cruelty, like every other thing, has its fashion, changing according to time and place. Caesar, the accomplished scholar, candidly narrates how he ordered many thousand Gallic warriors to have their right hands cut off. Napoleon would have been ashamed to do this. He preferred dispatching his own French regiments, suspected of republicanism, to St. Domingo, there to die of the blacks and the plague.
The infamous mutilations committed by the Sepoys remind one of the practices of the Christian Byzantine Empire, or the prescriptions of Emperor Charles V.’s criminal law, or the English punishments for high treason, as still recorded by Judge Blackstone. With Hindoos, whom their religion has made virtuosi in the art of self-torturing, these tortures inflicted on the enemies of their race and creed appear quite natural, and must appear still more so to the English, who, only some years since, still used to draw revenues from the Juggernaut festivals, protecting and assisting the bloody rites of a religion of cruelty.
The frantic roars of the “bloody old Times,” as Cobbett used to call it – its, playing the part of a furious character in one of Mozart’s operas, who indulges in most melodious strains in the idea of first hanging his enemy, then roasting him, then quartering him, then spitting him, and then flaying him alive — its tearing the passion of revenge to tatters and to rags – all this would appear but silly if under the pathos of tragedy there were not distinctly perceptible the tricks of comedy. The London Times overdoes its part, not only from panic. It supplies comedy with a subject even missed by Molière, the Tartuffe of Revenge. What it simply wants is to write up the funds and to screen the Government. As Delhi has not, like the walls of Jericho, fallen before mere puffs of wind, Jolin Bull is to be steeped in cries for revenge up to his very ears, to make him forget that his Government is responsible for the mischief hatched and the colossal dimensions it has been allowed to assume.
The Revolt in India
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, October 3, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
The news from India, which reached us yesterday, wears a very disastrous and threatening aspect for the English, though, as may be seen in another column, our intelligent London correspondent regards it differently. From Delhi we have details to July 29, and a later report, to the effect that, in consequence of the ravages of the cholera, the besieging forces were compelled to retire from before Delhi and take up their quarters at Agra. It is true, this report is admitted by none of the London journals, but we can, at the very utmost, only regard it as somewhat premature. As we know from all the Indian correspondence, the besieging army had suffered severely in sorties made on the 14th, 18th and 23rd of July. On those occasions the rebels fought with more, reckless vehemence than ever, and with a great advantage from the superiority of their cannon.
“We are firing,” writes a British officer, “18 pounders and 8-inch howitzers, and the rebels are replying with twenty-fours and thirty-twos.” “In the eighteen sallies,” says another letter, “which we have had to stand, we have lost one-third of our numbers in killed and wounded.”
Of re-enforcements all that could be expected was a body of Sikhs under Gen. Van Cortlandt. Gen. Havelock, after fighting several successful battles, was forced to fall back on Cawnpore, abandoning, for the time, the relief of Lucknow. At the same time, the rains had set in heavily before Delhi, necessarily adding to the virulence of the cholera. The dispatch which announces the retreat to Agra and the abandonment, for the moment, at least, of the attempt to reduce the capital of the Great Mogul, must, then, soon prove true, if it is not so already.
On the line of the Ganges the main interest rests on the operations of Gen. Havelock, whose exploits at Futteypore, Cawnpore and Bithoor have naturally been rather extravagantly praised by our London contemporaries. As we have stated above, after having advanced twenty-five miles from Cawnpore, he found himself obliged to fall back upon that place in order not only to deposit his sick, but to wait for re-enforcements. This is a cause for deep regret, for it indicates that the attempt at a rescue of Lucknow has been baffled. The only hope for the British garrison of the place is now in the force of 3,000 Goorkas sent from Nepaul to their relief by Jung Bahadoor. Should they fail to raise the siege, then the Cawnpore butchery will be re-enacted at Lucknow. This will not be all. The capture by the rebels of the fortress of Lucknow, and the consequent consolidation of their power in Oude, would threaten in the flank all British operations against Delhi, and decide the balance of the contending forces at Benares, and the whole district of Bihar. Cawnpore would be stripped of half its importance and menaced in its communications with Delhi on the one side, and with Benares on the other, by the rebels holding the fortress of Lucknow. This contingency adds to the painful interest with which news from that locality must be looked for. On the 16th of June the garrison estimated their powers of endurance at six weeks on famine allowance. Up to the last date of the dispatches, five of these weeks had already elapsed. Everything there now depends on the reported, but not yet certain re-enforcements from Nepaul.
If we pass lower down the Ganges, from Cawnpore to Benares and the district of Bihar, the British prospect is still darker. A letter in The Bengal Gazette, dated Benares, August 3, states
“that the mutineers from Dinapore, having crossed the Sone, marched upon Arrah. The European inhabitants, justly alarmed for their safety, wrote to Dinapore for re-enforcements. Two steamers were accordingly dispatched with detachments of her Majesty’s 5th, 10th and 37th. In the middle of the night one of the steamers grounded in the mud and stuck fast. The men were hastily landed, and pushed forward on foot, but without taking due precautions. Suddenly they were assailed on both sides by a close and heavy fire, and 150 of their small force, including several officers, put hors de combat. It is supposed that all the Europeans at the station, about 47 in number, have been massacred.”
Arrah, in the British district of Shahabad, Presidency of Bengal, is a town on the road from Dinapore to Ghazepore, twenty-five miles west of the former, seventy-five cast of the latter. Benares itself was threatened. This place has a fort constructed upon European principles, and would become another Delhi if it fell into the hands of the rebels. At Mirzapore, situated to the south of Benares, and on the opposite bank of the Ganges, a Mussulman conspiracy has been detected; while at Berhampore, on the Ganges, some eighteen miles distant from Calcutta, the 63rd Native Infantry had been disarmed. In one word, disaffection on the one side and panic on the other were spreading throughout the whole Presidency of Bengal, even to the gates of Calcutta, where painful apprehensions prevailed of the great fast of the Mohurran, when the followers of Islam, wrought up into a fanatical frenzy, go about with swords ready to fight on the smallest provocation, being likely to result in a general attack upon the English, and where the Governor-General has felt himself compelled to disarm his own body-guard. The reader will, then, understand at once that the principal British line of communications, the Ganges line, is in danger of being interrupted, intersected and cut off. This would bear on the progress of the re-enforcements to arrive in November, and would isolate the British line of operations on the Jumna.
In the Bombay Presidency, also, affairs are assuming a very serious aspect. The mutiny at Kolapore of the 27th Bombay Native Infantry is a fact, but their defeat by the British troops is a rumor only. The Bombay native army has broken out into successive mutinies at Nagpore, Aurungabad, Hyderabad, and, finally, at Kolapore. The actual strength of the Bombay native army is 43,048 men, while there are, in fact, only two European regiments in that Presidency. The native army was relied upon not only to preserve order within the limits of the Bombay Presidency, but to send re-enforcements up to Scinde in the Punjaub, and to form the columns moved on Mhow and Indore, to recover and hold those places, to establish communications with Agra, and relieve the garrison at that place. The column of Brigadier Stuart, charged with this operation, was composed of 300 men of the 3d Bombay European Regiment, 250 men of the 5th Bombay Native Infantry, 1,000 of the 25th Bombay Native Infantry, 200 of the 19th Bombay Native Infantry, 800 of the 3d Cavalry Regiment of the Hyderabad Contingent. There are with this force, amounting to 2,250 native soldiers, about 700 Europeans, composed chiefly of the Queen’s 86th Foot and the 14th Queen’s Light Dragoons. The English had, moreover, assembled a column of the native army at Aurungabad to intimidate the disaffected territories of Khandeish and Nagpore, and at the same time form a support for the flying columns acting in Central India.
In that part of India we are told that “tranquillity is restored,” but on this result we cannot altogether rely. In fact it is not the occupation of Mhow which decides that question, but the course pursued by the Holkar and Scindiah, the two Mahratta princes. The same dispatch which informs us of Stuart’s arrival at Mhow adds that, although the Holkar still remained staunch, his troops had become unmanageable. As to the Scindiah’s policy, not a word is dropped. He is young, popular, full of fire, and would be regarded as the natural head and rallying point for the whole Mahratta nation. He has 10,000 well disciplined troops of his own. His defection from the British would pot only cost them Central India, but give immense strength and consistency to the revolutionary league. The retreat of the forces before Delhi, the menaces and solicitations of the malcontents may at length induce him to side with his countrymen. The main influence, however, on the Holkar as well as the Scindiah, will be exercised by the Mahrattas of the Deccan, where, as we have already stated the rebellion has at last decidedly raised its head. It is here, too, that the festival of the Mohurran is particularly dangerous. There is, then, some reason to anticipate a general revolt of the Bombay army. The Madras army, too, amounting to 60,555 native troops, and recruited from Hyderabad, Nagpore, Malwa, the most bigoted Mohammedan districts, would not be long in following the example. Thus, then, if it be considered that the rainy season during August and September will paralyze the movements of the British troops and interrupt their communications, the supposition seems rational that in spite of their apparent strength, the re-enforcements sent from Europe, arriving too late, and in driblets only, will prove inadequate to the task imposed upon them. We may almost expect, during the following campaign, a rehearsal of the Afghanistan disasters.
The Revolt in India
Source: New-York Daily Tribune, October 13, 1857;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.
The news received from India by the Atlantic yesterday has two prominent points, namely, the failure of Gen. Havelock to advance to the relief of Lucknow, and the persistence of the English at Delhi. This latter fact finds a parallel only in British annals, and in the Walcheren expedition. The failure of that expedition having become certain toward the middle of August, 1809, they delayed re-embarking until November. Napoleon, when he learned that an English army had landed at that place, recommended that it should not be attacked, and that the French should leave its destruction to the disease sure to do them more injury than the cannon, without its costing one centime to France. The present Great Mogul, even more favored than Napoleon, finds himself able to back the disease by his sallies and his sallies by the disease.
A British Government dispatch, dated Cagliari, Sept. 27, tells its that
“the latest dates from Delhi are to the 12th of August, when that city was still in possession of the rebels; but that an attack was expected to be made shortly, as Gen. Nicholson was within a day’s march with considerable re-enforcements.”
If Delhi is not taken till Wilson and Nicholson attack it with their present strength, its walls will stand till they fall of themselves. Nicholson’s considerable forces amount to about 4,000 Sikhs — a re-enforcement absurdly disproportionate for an attack upon Delhi, but just large enough to afford a new suicidal pretext for not breaking up the camp before the city.
After Gen. Hewitt had committed the fault, and one may even in a military point of view say the crime, of permitting the Meerut rebels to make their way to Delhi, and after the two first weeks had been wasted, allowing an irregular surprise of that city, the planning of the siege of Delhi appears an almost incomprehensible blunder. An authority which we shall take the liberty of placing even above the military oracles of The London Times, Napoleon, lays down two rules of warfare looking almost like commonplaces: 1st. That “only what can be supported ought to be undertaken, and only what presents the greatest number of chances of success;” and 2dly. That “the main forces should be employed only where the main object of war, the destruction of the enemy, lies.” In planning the siege of Delhi, these rudimental rules have been violated. The authorities in England must have been aware that the Indian Government itself had recently repaired the fortifications of Delhi so far that that city could be captured by a regular siege only, requiring a besieging force of at least 15,000 to 20,000 men, and much more, if the defense was conducted in an average style. Now, 15,000 to 20,000 men being requisite for this enterprise, it was downright folly to undertake it with 6,000 or 7,000. The English were further aware that a prolonged siege, a matter of course in consequence of their numerical weakness, would expose their forces in that locality, in that climate, and at that season, to the attacks of an invulnerable and invisible enemy, spreading the seeds of destruction among their ranks. The chances of success, therefore, were all against a siege of Delhi.
As to the object of the war, it was beyond doubt the maintenance of English rule in India. To attain that object, Delhi was a point of no strategical significance at all. Historical tradition, in truth, endowed it in the eyes of the natives with a superstitious importance, clashing with its real influence, and this was sufficient reason for the mutinous Sepoys to single it out as their general place of rendezvous. But if, instead of forming their military plans according to the native prejudices, the English had left Delhi alone and isolated it, they would have divested it of its fancied influence; while, by pitching their tents before it, running their heads against it, and concentrating upon it their main force and the attention of the world, they cut themselves off from even the chances of retreat, or rather gave to a retreat all the effects of a signal defeat. They have thus simply played into the hands of the mutineers who wanted to make Delhi the object of the campaign. But this is not all. No great ingenuity was required to convince the English that for them it was of prime importance to create an active field
army, whose operations might stifle the sparks of disaffection, keep open the communications between their own military stations, throw the enemy upon some few points, and isolate Delhi. Instead of acting upon this simple and self-evident plan, they immobilize the only active army at their disposal by concentrating it before Delhi, leave the open field to the mutineers, while their own garrisons hold scattered spots, disconnected, far distant from each other, and blocked up by overwhelming hostile forces allowed to take their own time.
By fixing their main mobile column before Delhi, the English have not choked up the rebels, but petrified their own garrisons. But, apart from this fundamental blunder at Delhi, there is hardly anything in the annals of war to equal the stupidity which directed the operations of these garrisons, acting independently, irrespectively of each other, lacking all supreme leadership, and acting not like members of one army, but like bodies belonging to different and even hostile nations. Take, for instance, the case of Cawnpore and Lucknow. There were two adjacent places, and two separate bodies of troops, both very small and disproportionate to the occasion, placed under separate commands, though they were only forty miles apart, and with as little unity of action between them as if situated at the opposite poles. The simplest rules of strategy would have required that Sir Hugh Wheeler, the military commander at Cawnpore, should be empowered to call Sir H. Lawrence, the chief Commissioner of Oude, with his troops, back to Cawnpore, thus to strengthen his own position while momentarily evacuating Lucknow. By this operation, both garrisons would have been saved, and by the subsequent junction of Havelock’s troops with them, a little army been created able to check Oude and to relieve Agra. Instead of this, by the independent action of the two places, the garrison of Cawnpore is butchered, the garrison of Lucknow is sure to fall with its fortress, and even the wonderful exertions of Havelock, marching his troops 126 miles in eight days, sustaining as many fights as his march numbered days, and performing all this in an Indian climate at the hight of the Summer season — even his heroic exertions are baffled. Having still more exhausted his overworked troops in vain attempts at the rescue of Lucknow, and being sure to be forced to fresh useless sacrifices by repeated expeditions from Cawnpore, executed on a constantly decreasing radius, he will, in all probability, have at last to retire upon Allahabad, with hardly any men at his back. The operations of his troops, better than anything else, show what even the small English army before Delhi would have been able to do if concentrated for action in the field, instead of being caught alive in the pestilential camp. Concentration is the secret of strategy. Decentralization is the plan adopted by the English in India. What they had to do was to reduce their garrisons to the smallest possible number, disencumber them at once of women and children, evacuate all stations not of strategical importance, and thus collect the greatest possible army in the field. Now, even the driblets of re-enforcements, sent up the Ganges from Calcutta, have been so completely absorbed by the numerous isolated garrisons that not one detachment has reached Allahabad.
As for Lucknow, the most gloomy previsions inspired by the recent previous mails a are now confirmed. Havelock has again been forced to fall back on Cawnpore; there is no possibility of relief from the allied Nepaulese force; and we must now expect to hear of the capture of the place by starvation, and the massacre of its brave defenders with their wives and children.
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