The next day, and the day following, the city was searched for the ringleaders of the outbreak. Thirty-one were apprehended. Amongst these were Pír Ali, the actual leader, and Shekh Ghasíta, the confidential servant of Lútf Ali Khán, the richest banker in the city. Of the thirty-one men who were apprehended, fourteen were tried and executed without delay. With them likewise was hanged the Wáris Ali referred to in a previous page.* Two- the two above-named-were remanded for further examination. Facts seemed to speak strongly against them. It was clearly proved that Pír Ali was a main agent for promoting a crusade against the English; that for months he and the Shekh Ghasíta aboveinentioned had engaged and kept in pay numerous men who should be ready, when called upon, to fight for their religion and the Emperor of Dehlí. But these operations had required a large outlay. Pír Ali was poor. His associate, Ghasíta, was the hand of the great banker. But though it might have been fairly presumed that the great banker was implicated, no proceedings were, for the moment, taken against him. BOOK VII. Chapter II. 1857. July 4-5. Capture and trial of the ringleaders. The two men, Pír Ali and Ghasíta, were tried Lútf Ali. and hanged. Lútf Ali, arraigned subsequently on the charge of harbouring a mutinous sepoy, and acquitted by the judge on the ground of insufficient evidence, was promptly released, and * When taken to the gallows, this man called out in a loud voice, "If there is any one here who professes to be BOOK VII. Chapter 11. 1857. July 5-16. Major shortly afterwards was welcomed and honoured as a martyr by the successor of Mr. Tayler! But the outbreak was suppressed. It had been premature. As Pír Ali admitted, Mr. Tayler's strong measures had forced his hand and compelled him to strike before he was ready. But for those strong measures the conspiracy would have been silently hatched until the outbreak at Dánápúr should have given it the signal for explosion. Whilst Mr. Tayler, thus, in spite of the all but superhuman difficulties in his path, maintained order in the most disaffected city still under British rule in India, and in the districts immediately contiguous, Major Holmes, commanding the 12th Irregular Cavalry, acting in concert with him and pursuing the same system, prevented an outbreak in the frontier district of Sigaolí. It is true, indeed, that Major Holmes still believed in his native soldiers, and equally true that up to the moment of their actual outbreak-almost simultaneous with that at Dánápúr-they had shown no symptom of disaffection. But this belief on the part of Major Holmes was so generally shared by the officers of the Bengal army, that it should attract no surprise. It was natural that the officers should believe in men with whom they had been associated twenty, thirty, and forty years; who had followed them unhesitatingly through the snows of Kábal; whose forefathers had served with goodwill in the expeditions against Egypt, and the isles of France and Bourbon; and who had protested against the indignity of being suspected. That was natural enough. But it MR. WILLIAM TAYLER AND MR. HALLIDAY. 59 BOOK VII. Chapter II. 1857. was not natural that the Government, raised above the passions and prejudices of regimental officers, should more than share their sympathies. July 5-16. With the far wider scope open to their view the Government possessed means, not available to the officers, of testing the truth of the lip-service so freely proffered by the men. It is impossible to say how much loss of life, how much misery, how much evil would have been avoided had the Government of India not refused to take from the native troops of the Dánápúr division the arms, which their own sepoy-trained Major-General had assured them, would be loyally used only if no great temptation or excitement should assail them! Still, order was maintained. The means employed to assure that order, whilst they gained for Mr. Tayler the confidence of the English planters and traders throughout the province, were not at all to the taste of the Government of Bengal. Of that province, Mr. Halliday, of the Bengal Civil Service, was Lieutenant-Governor. It is scarcely to be doubted that if Mr. Tayler and Mr. Halliday could have changed places; if the former had been Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and the latter Commissioner of the Patná division, whilst the affairs of Bengal would not certainly have suffered, the nature of the rule at Patná would have been widely different. I am unwilling to re-open wounds which have partly closed, but no sane man who was in Bihár at the time doubts that whilst the policy of Mr. Tayler, condemned by Mr. Halliday, saved Patná; the policy of Contrast be- tween Mr. Mr. Halliday. BOOK VII. Chapter II. 1857. July 5-16. European interests in Bihár. concealing from the public view facts which it was of vital importance that the public should know, of coquetting, so to speak, with armed rebels, advocated by that gentleman, and employed so uselessly elsewhere, would, if followed, have played the game of the disaffected. The Patná rising, so easily suppressed by Mr. Tayler, would have been indeed a red day in the calendar of Mr. Halliday. I repeat, under Mr. Tayler, order was maintained, under most difficult circumstances, in Patná. About Patná, then, so long as he should remain there, no apprehension was felt. But the case was not so with respect to Dánápúr. There, the sepoys remained armed and trusted. In spite of intercepted letters, of men occasionally caught in mutinous acts, the Government continued to trust to the chance that "no great temptation or excitement" would induce them to rise. Far different was the feeling of the European community of Calcutta. These had important interests in Bihár, large districts of which were watered and fertilised by their capital. These interests seemed to depend entirely on the good behaviour of the sepoys. To many of them it was a question of wealth or poverty, to those on the spot of death or of existence. In Mr. Tayler they had absolute confidence. His measures had warded off one danger. But the other still remained, clear, vivid, threatening; ready to burst forth at any moment; safe to encounter no opposition capable of restraining it for an hour. That the possibility of such an outbreak had THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT ORDER DISARMING. 61 escaped the attention of the Government of India there is evidence to disprove. It may have been, as his latest apologist has asserted, that Lord Canning refrained at an earlier date from issuing a disarming order because he was waiting for "fresh reinforcements, when the game would be more in his own hands." But in the early part of July those fresh reinforcements arrived. Not only so, but those very reinforcements, consisting of a wing of the 37th Foot and of the 5th Fusiliers, had received orders to proceed towards the north-west in steamers, touching at Dánápúr on the way. BOOK VII. Chapter II. 1857. July 5-16. opportunity sepoys. Here then was the opportunity-the oppor- Favourable tunity which would take from the Government for disarming the last excuse not to disarm the native regiments, the Dánápúr unless they were prepared to avow that they would trust rather to the chance of the sepoys remaining quiescent. The Government considered the question carefully and with attention. They arrived at a decision fatal alike to their prescience as statesmen, and to the true conception of the responsibilities of a great Government. They cast from their shoulders the entire responsibility. They would not order that the regiments should retain their arms; neither would they direct that they should be disarmed. They left the decision The Govern to Major-General Lloyd, commanding the Dánápúr their respondivision-the officer who had already reported his sibility to Major-General belief that the sepoys "would remain quiet, unless Lloyd. some great temptation or excitement should assail them, in which case, I fear, they could not be ment transfer |