BOOK VII. Chapter III. Lord Canning, as I have said, clutched at the offer. On the 10th the two vessels were officially August 10. placed at his disposal. On the 18th Captain 1857. Arrival of Sir bell. William Peel started for Allahábád with a naval brigade composed of four hundred men, six 68pounders, two 24-pound howitzers, and two field pieces. I must chronicle one more important arrival, Colin Camp- and then quit Calcutta for the scenes of turmoil and action. In the last week of July the new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Colin Campbell, arrived in Calcutta. Lord Canning had recommended that the post he came to fill should be bestowed upon Sir Patrick Grant. But the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Palmerston, strongly held the opinion enunciated by Sir James Outram, that to suppress the Indian Mutiny action rather than counsel was required in a General. He, therefore, selected a plain blunt soldier, and sent him to Calcutta to assume the supreme direction of military affairs in India. The selection was extremely popular with the army, for Sir Colin had served on the North-West frontier, and had won the confidence and affection of officers and The men who men. Calcutta may now safely be quitted. preserved Mr. Beadon's line reinforcements had made her secure. Numerous The crisis of six hundred which had menaced Mr. Beadon's line of six miles. hundred miles had been successfully surmounted. Many dangers had been overcome. Banaras had been threatened and restored to order; Alláhábád had been snatched from destruction; Patná, Dánápúr, and Bihár, after a terrible trial had been WHO SAVED BIHA'R AND BANA'RAS? 143 brought again under the ægis of British protection. Who had saved that line? Not the Supreme Government, for the action of the Government in refusing to disarm the native troops had fomented the disorder. Not the Local Governments-the one shut up in A'gra, the other hair-splitting in Calcutta. No,-four names indicate the men who saved that line to the British. North of Bihár, Mr. Frederic Gubbins, of the Civil Service, the judge who virtually administered the great Hindú city, and Colonel Neill, whose prompt and resolute action stamped out rebellion whenever and whereever it raised its head. South of Banáras, Mr. William Tayler and Major Eyre. These are names to be honoured, these are the subordinates who won the battle; the untitled upholders of the honour, the glory, and the fair name of England. They were alike the heads that devised, the hands that executed. Associated for ever with theirs, too, in their undying glory, as supports who maintained the over-burdened structure, will be the names of those whose sphere of action, though confined, was of vital importance, the names of the members of that Arah garrison, most fitly represented by their three leaders, by Wake, by Boyle, and by Colvin. BOOK VII. Chapter III. 1857. August. BOOK VIII. The North. West Provinces. CHAPTER I. IN the preceding chapters allusion has been made to the fact that the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces had been debarred from the execution of his administrative functions by the circumstance that he was shut up in A'gra. It has now to be shown what constituted the North-West Provinces, who and what kind of man was the Lieutenant-Governor, and how it had come about that he had been forced to take refuge in the famous fortress which had been one of the glories of the Moghol rule. The provinces, named before the annexation of the Panjab in 1849, North-West, and continuing subsequently to bear that title, comprehended the country lying between the western part of Bihár, the eastern boundary of Rájpútáná and the CisSatlaj States, and the northern line of the provinces comprised in the Central Indian Agency. They touched the Himalayas, included Rohilkhand, and ran into the Central Provinces below Jhánsí. Chapter I. 1857. May. Within their limits were the imperial cities of Dehlí BOOK VIII. and A'gra, the great Hindú city Banáras, the important station and fortress of Alláhábád, the flourishing commercial centres of Mírzápúr and Kánhpúr. The rivers Ganges and Jamná rolled in majestic rivalry through their length. They were peopled by a race the majority of whom we had rescued from the sway of the Maráthás, and whose prosperity under our rule had enormously increased. Here, too, the descendants of the courtiers of Akbar and of Aurangzíb still continued to live, if not to flourish. For them, as for the landowners in Bihár, the action of our revenue system had been fatal. Their doom had been signalled when the Maráthá supplanted the Moghol. It had been pronounced when the Frank ousted the Maráthá. arising to the cultivators of British rule. the soil from But the change which had been fatal to the Benefits descendants of the men who had gained their position at the Moghol court partly by the sword, but more often by intrigue, had been extremely beneficial to the toiling masses. From the time when Mahmud of Ghazní had introduced the crescent as a sign of rule and domination in the country of the Hindús until the period when Lord Lake conquered the imperial city in 1803, the cultivators of the soil of the North-West Provinces had been in very deed hewers of wood and drawers of water.. Gradually, under the fostering rule of the English they had been emancipated from this serfage, until, under the reign of Mr. Thomason, the immediate predecessor of the Lieutenant-Governor who ruled in 1857, Chapter I. BOOK VIII. they had attained a flourishing position; the rights of every village, and of every man in that village, being thoroughly understood and entirely respected. 1857. May. Political arrangement West Provinces. The government of the North-West was divided of the North- into eight commissionerships, those of Banáras, Alláháhád, Jabalpur, Jhánsí, A'gra, Rohilkhand, Mírath, and Dehlí. The provinces were but poorly garrisoned by European troops. In fact, when the mutiny broke out there was but one European infantry regiment, and one battery, at A'gra. The only other European troops were at Mírath. Mr. John The Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces was Mr. John Colvin. Mr. Colvin was a man of considerable ability; conscientious, painstaking, courteous, and amiable. He was animated by a thorough sense of duty, gave all his energies to the public service, and never spared himself. It is not too much to affirm that had his lot been cast in ordinary times his reputation as Lieutenant-Governor would have rivalled that of the most eminent of those who, before and subsequently, have held that office. But with all his ability, his experience of affairs, his devotion to duty, Mr. Colvin lacked that one quality, the possession of which is absolutely necessary to enable a man to buffet successfully against the storms of fortune. Mr. Colvin wanted, in a word, that iron firmness-that rare self-confidencewhich enables a man to impress his will upon others. Supreme at A'gra, his was not sufficiently, during the mutiny, the directing mind. Surrounded by civilians of high standing, men of |