Chapter XXXIII (6)

In the other region of India above adverted to—comprising those districts of Malwah, Bundelcund, &c., which are watered by the Betwah, the Chumbul, the Nerbudda, and their tributaries—the leading rebel was Tanteea Topee, one of the most remarkable men brought forward by the Revolt. He had most of the qualities for a good general—except courage. He would not fight if he could help it; but in avoiding the British generals opposed to him, he displayed a cunning of plan, a fertility of resource, and a celerity of movement, quite note-worthy. The truth seems to have been, that he held power over an enormous treasure, in money and jewels, which he had obtained by plundering Scindia’s palace at Gwalior; this treasure he carried with him wherever he went; and he shunned any encounters which might endanger it. He looked out for a strong city or fort, where he might settle down as a Mahratta prince, with a large store of available ready wealth at hand; but as the British did not choose to leave him in quietude, he marched from place to place. Between the beginning of June and the end of November he traversed with his army an enormous area of country, seizing guns from various towns and forts on the way, but usually escaping before the English could catch him. Former chapters have shewn by what strange circumvolutions he arrived at Julra Patteen; and a detail of operations would shew that his subsequent movements were equally erratic. He went to Seronj, then to Esagurh, then to Chunderee, then to Peshore, then arrived at the river Betwah, and wavered whether he should go southward to the Deccan or northward towards Jhansi. Everywhere he was either followed or headed, by columns and detachments under Michel, Mayne, Parkes, Smith, and other officers. Whenever they could bring him to an encounter, they invariably beat him most signally; but when, as generally happened, he escaped by forced marches, they tracked him. He picked up guns and men as he went; so that the amount of his force was never correctly known; it varied from three to fifteen thousand. One of the most severe defeats he received was at Sindwah, on the 19th of October, at the hands of General Michel; another, on the 25th, near Multhone, from the same active general. It was felt on all sides that this game could not be indefinitely continued. Tanteea Topee was like a hunted beast of prey, pursued by enemies who would not let him rest. When it had been clearly ascertained by General Roberts, in Rajpootana, that the fleet-footed and unencumbered rebel soldiery could escape faster than British troops could follow them, a new mode of strategy was adopted; columns from four different directions began to march towards a common centre, near which centre were Tanteea and his rebels; if one column could not catch him, another could head him and drive him back. Thus it was considered a military certainty that he must be run down at last. And if he fell, the great work of pacification in that part of India would be pretty well effected; for there was no rebel force of any account except that commanded by Tanteea Topee. After his defeat at Multhone, Tanteea was in great peril; Michel literally cut his army in two; and if he had pursued the larger instead of the smaller of these two sections, he might possibly have captured Tanteea himself. On the last day in October, the rebel leader crossed the Nerbudda river, thereby turning his back on the regions occupied by the columns of Roberts, Napier, Michel, Smith, and Whitlock. During November, he made some extraordinary marches in the country immediately southward of the Nerbudda—being heard of successively at Baitool, the Sindwara hills, and other little-known places in that region. He was no better off than before, however, for forces were immediately sent against him from Ahmednuggur, Kamptee, and other places; he had lost nearly all his guns and stores, his rebel followers, though laden with wealth, were footsore and desponding; and, for the first time, his companions began to look out for favourable terms of surrender. The Queen’s proclamation was eminently calculated to withdraw his misguided followers from him; and the Nawab of Banda, the most influential among them, was the first to give himself up to General Michel.

Not only was a large measure of forgiveness held out to those who would return to their allegiance; but the British troops in India were becoming so formidably numerous as to render still more certain than ever the eventual triumph of order and good government. The Queen’s troops in India at the beginning of November, those on the passage from England, and those told off for further shipment, amounted altogether to little short of one hundred thousand men. It affords a striking instance of triumph over difficulties, that between November 1857 and November 1858 the Peninsular and Oriental Steam-navigation Company conveyed no less than 8190 officers and soldiers to India by the overland route—in spite of the forebodings that that route would be unsuitable for whole regiments of soldiers; the burning Egyptian desert and the reef-bound Red Sea were traversed almost without disaster, under the watchful care of this company.

The 1st of November 1858 was a great day in India. On this day the transference of governing power from the East India Company to Queen Victoria was made known throughout the length and breadth of the empire. A royal proclamation[204] was issued, which many regarded as the Magna Charta of native liberty in India. At Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, Kurachee, Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, Nagpoor, Mysore, Rangoon, and other great cities, this proclamation was read with every accompaniment of ceremonial splendour that could give dignity to the occasion in the eyes of the natives; and at every British station, large or small, it was read amid such military honours as each place afforded. It was translated into most of the languages, and many of the dialects of India. It was printed in tens of thousands, and distributed wherever natives were wont most to congregate—in order that all might know that Queen Victoria was now virtually Empress of India; that the governor-general was now her viceroy; that the native princes might rely on the observance by her of all treaties made with them by the Company; that she desired no encroachment on, or annexation of, the territories of those princes; that she would not interfere with the religion of the natives, or countenance any favouritism in matters of faith; that creed or caste should not be a bar to employment in her service; that the ancient legal tenures and forms of India should, as far as possible, be adhered to; and that all mutineers and rebels, except those whose hands were blood-stained by actual murder, should receive a full and gracious pardon on abandoning their acts of insurgency. When these words were uttered aloud at Bombay (and the ceremony was more or less similar at the other cities named) the spectacle was such as the natives of India had never before seen. The governor and all the chief civilians; the military officers and the troops; the clergy of all the various Christian denominations; the merchants, shipowners, and traders; the Mohammedans, Hindoos, Mahrattas, Parsees—all were represented among the throng around the spot from whence the proclamation was read, first in English, and then in Mahratta. And then the shouting, the music of military bands, the firing of guns, the waving of flags, the illuminations at night, the fireworks in the public squares, the blue-lights and manning of the ships, the banquets in the chief mansions—all rendered this a day to be borne in remembrance. Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, the Parsee baronet, vied with the Christians in the munificence of rejoicing; and indeed, so little did religious differences mar the harmony of the scene, that Catholic chapels, Mohammedan mosques, Hindoo pagodas, and Parsee temples were alike lighted up at night. It may not be that every one was enabled to assign good reasons for his rejoicing; but there was certainly a pretty general concurrence of opinion that the declared sovereignty of Queen Victoria, as a substitute for the ever-incomprehensible ‘raj’ of the East India Company, was a presage of good for British India. At Calcutta, the proclamation had the singular good-fortune of winning the approval of a community always very difficult to please. The Europeans consented to lay aside all minor considerations, in order to do honour to the great principles involved in the proclamation. The natives, too, took their share in the rejoicing. A public meeting was held early in the month, at which an influential Hindoo, Baboo Ramgopal Ghose, made an animated speech. He said, among other things: ‘If I had power and influence, I would proclaim through the length and breadth of this land—from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from the Brahmaputra to the Bay of Cambay—that never were the natives more grievously mistaken than they have been in adopting the notion foisted on them by designing and ambitious men—that their religion was at stake; for that notion I believe to have been at the root of the late rebellion.’ Some of the more intelligent natives rightly understood the nature of the great change made in the government of India; but among the ignorant, it remained a mystery—rendered, however, very palatable by the open avowal of a Queen regnant, and of a proclamation breathing sentiments of justice and kindness.

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Footnote 194:

Chapter xiii., p. 211.

Footnote 195:

_Account of the Mutinies in Oudh._

Footnote 196:

_Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow._

Footnote 197:

_Eight Months’ Campaign against the Bengal Sepoy Army._

Footnote 198:

_British India; its Races and its History._

Footnote 199:

_The Sepoy Revolt; its Causes and its Consequences._

Footnote 200:

_Notes on the Revolt in the Northwest Provinces._

Footnote 201:

_Letters of Indophilus to the ‘Times.’_

Footnote 202:

_The Indian Rebellion: its Causes and Results._

Footnote 203:

‘The Commander-in-chief proclaims to the people of Oude that, under
the order of the Right Hon. the Governor-general, he comes to enforce
the law.

‘In order to effect this without danger to life and property,
resistance must cease on the part of the people.

‘The most exact discipline will be preserved in the camps and on the
march; and when there is no resistance, houses and crops will be
spared, and no plundering allowed in the towns and villages. But
wherever there is resistance, or even a single shot fired against the
troops, the inhabitants must expect to incur the fate they have
brought on themselves. Their houses will be plundered, and their
villages burnt.

‘This proclamation includes all ranks of the people, from the
thalookdars to the poorest ryots.

‘The Commander-in-chief invites all the well-disposed to remain in
their towns and villages, where they will be sure of his protection
against all violence.’

Footnote 204:

See Appendix.