332 THE ENGLISH EVACUATE THE STATION. BOOK VIII. The police had ceased to act. The rabble were Chapter VI. beginning to move. There was but one course to pursue, and that was to save for future service lives which, at Morádábád, would have been uselessly sacrificed. 1857. June 3. The English evacuate Morádábád. Fate of those who remained. Rohilkhand The English started, then: the civilians and their wives, accompanied by a native officer and some men of Irregular Cavalry, who happened to be there on leave, for Mírath; the officers and their families for Nainí Tál. Both stations were reached without loss of life. Those who chose to remain behind, principally Eurasians, clerks in offices, were not so fortunate. An invalided officer, an Englishman, Lieutenant Warwick, and his wife, a native Christian, were killed. Mr. Powell, a clerk, was wounded. But he, and some thirty-one others, purchased immunity from further ill-treatment by embracing the Mahomedan faith. Their subsequent fate is uncertain; but it is believed that but few lived to hear of the fall of Dehlí. With the mutiny of the troops at Morádábád Rohilkhand passed nominally under the sway of Khán Bahadur Khán, the descendant of its last independent ruler, and a pensioned civil officer under the British. I say, nominally, for his authority was never thoroughly established. His sway, in fact, was the sway of disorder. It can best be described by using a proverb familiar to the natives: "The buffalo was the property of the man who held the bludgeon." A social condition was inaugurated, not dissimilar to that which prevailed throughout Maráthá India at the ROHILKHAND UNDER NATIVE RULE. 333 BOOK VIII. Chapter VI. 1857. June. close of the last century. Unarmed sepoys, if in small parties, were certain to be set upon by villagers armed with clubs, and plundered-often murdered. Pious Brahmans, telling their beads, were suddenly assaulted and murdered by Mahomedan stragglers, for the sake of the brass vessels in which they cooked their food. The landowners, dispossessed under the action of the British revenue system, resumed their lands, but The social in many cases, they, and the farmers generally, especially the Mahomedans, exercised the authority they thus acquired, or of which they were possessed, with so much severity that no peaceably disposed man would dare to venture beyond was insecure. the limits of his village, even in the daytime. If he travelled at night the greatest secrecy and precaution had to be observed. life life Such was the social life in Rohilkhand under native sway in 1857. Nor was the political The political condition of the province more flourishing. Over the Thákurs, or barons, the authority of Khán Bahadur Khán was for a long time disputed. These Hindús were just as greedy of plunder as had been the sepoys, and they rejoiced for the moment at the sudden acquisition of power to attack villages and towns. But from some cause or other they and their followers were very badly armed their weapons consisting mainly of bludgeons and matchlocks, antique in form, and rusty from long disuse. Their power, then, was not equal to their will. Badáon, thrice threatened, successfully resisted them. They had no guns. They were, therefore, unable to combat the trained Chapter VI. 1857. Juno. BOOK VIII. troops of the native viceroy. Whenever these trained levies marched against them and beat them, they, their relatives, and their followers, experienced no mercy. Mutilation and murder followed defeat, and confiscation followed mutilation and murder. Sometimes stories of these atrocities induced several Thákurs to combine, but never successfully. Badly armed and untrained, the peasantry whom they led, even when they obtained a transient success, dispersed for plunder. In the end they were always beaten. was unsatis. factory. The people long for the British. It is scarcely surprising, if under these cirreturn of the cumstances, the hearts of the rural population began after a time to yearn for their old rulers. It was in vain that, in a boastful proclamation, Khán Bahádur Khán denounced the English as liars, as destroyers of the creeds of others, as confiscators of property. In the recesses of their own houses the peasantry replied that at least the English were truth-tellers; at least, they did not war on women and children; at least, they were a moral race, above treachery and deceit. The longer the rule of the Mahomedan viceroy lasted the more these opinions circulated. His misgovernment begat contrast. Contrast begat a longing desire for the old master, until at last the victory of the English came to be the hope of every peasant's hut, the earnest desire of every true working man in the province. Fathgarh. The course of events now takes us down to Fathgarh, a station in the A'gra division, on the right bank of the river Ganges, twenty-five miles south of Shahjahánpúr. BOOK VIII. Chapter VI. 1857. May. Fathgarh was the seat of a gun-carriage manufactory-the works connected with which were carried on in a dilapidated fort—and the headquarters of the 10th Regiment of Native Infantry and a native battery. Three or four miles to the west of it, lies the native city of Farakhábád, the seat of a pensioned Patán Nawáb. The inhabitants of the district numbered upwards of a million. About one-tenth of these were Mahomedans, but Mahomedans of a peculiarly tur bulent character, given to murder and rapine beyond their co-religionists in other provinces. They had been under English rule since the year Turbulent 1802, but the characteristics of their race had the Mahome. long secretly rebelled against the system of order dans of the and care for life and property then imposed upon the district in which they lived. The events at Mírath on the 10th of May had awakened in the minds of the men of the 10th Native Infantry sentiments analogous to those which had been produced elsewhere. They resolved to temporise and to bide their time. In this way the month of May was tided over. But on the 3rd of June intelligence was received of the mutinies at Barélí and at Shahjahanpúr character of district. sends away and of the rising of Rohilkhand. It happened Colonel Smith that Colonel Smith, commanding the regiment, the non-comwas a man of energy and decision. He at batants; once summoned a council of the leading residents, and announced to them his intention of despatching that night the women and children by boat, down the Ganges, to Kánhpúr. It was known that Kánhpúr was then safe; that Euro 336 DOUBTFUL BEHAVIOUR OF THE SEPOYS. BOOK VIII. Chapter VI. 1857. June 4. some of whom proceed to Kánhpúr; some stay at pean At 1 o'clock on the morning of the 4th of June, then, about one hundred and seventy non-combatants, a large proportion of whom were women and children, started off in boats. The next day, all sorts of contradictory reports reaching the fugitives, it was resolved to divide into two others return; parties. One hundred and twenty-six continued Dharampúr. to prosecute their journey to Kánhpúr, only to be seized there by the order of Náná Sáhib, and by his order to be foully murdered; the other party, amongst whom were the wife and family of Mr. Probyn, preferred to accept the hospitality of a native landowner, Hardéo Baksh, at Dharampúr. This party was afterwards joined by Mr. Probyn and by Mr. Edwards. They remained, whilst the majority, about forty in number, after some hesitation, returned to Fathgarh (13th of June). Contradic tory demean. our of the sepoys. Meanwhile, affairs in Fathgarh had not progressed very favourably. On the very day of the despatch of the boats Colonel Smith had attempted to move the Government treasure into the fort. But the sepoys had flatly refused to allow this. With strange inconsistency, and although they were corresponding with the mutinous regiments in the province of Oudh, the same men cheerfully obeyed their Colonel's order to destroy the bridge of boats, the sole link between the district of Farakhábád and that province. They seemed to evince a true and loyal feeling, when, on the 16th of June, they handed to their Colonel |