Guns to the Far East

by V. A. Stuart

  Their fighting strength consisted of the Queen’s 32nd—535 strong, before the Chinhat casualties had been accounted for— 50 men of the Queen’s 84th, 89 European artillerymen, 105 British officers from mutinied native regiments, 153 clerks and male civilians capable of bearing arms, and 750 loyal sepoys and native pensioners. The loyal sepoys were mainly from the 13th Native Infantry and the Sikhs of the garrison, among them Hardinge’s 86 cavalry sowars. The non-combatants included over 600 British women and children and already the hospital—a two-storey building near the Bailey Guard Gate— was crowded with wounded, sick, and dying men. The rest, many of them spent and weary after their fighting retreat from Chinhat, spread themselves out to defend their perimeter of trenches and earthworks and loopholed houses, and to man the batteries of light guns which had been set up at regular intervals along each front. Dr Fayrer’s house became a miniature fortress, under the command of Captain Weston of the Police, with an officer and twenty soldiers of the Queen’s 84th, and a mixed party of Europeans and native pensioners to work the 18-and 19-pounder guns mounted in the compound.

  The women and children were sent for safety to an underground room called the Tye Khana of which Harriet wrote: “It is damp, dark, and as gloomy as a vault … and excessively dirty. Here we sit all day, feeling too anxious, miserable, and terrified to speak and here, also, we are compelled to sleep, with our bedding spread on the floor. The first night we spent there, the house was under a very heavy fire. I was so worried about poor Baby and— although so far they are keeping well—about Augusta and little Phillip, that I was almost beside myself and did not close my eyes. Bless them, both the children are obedient and well-behaved and they do all in their power to help me care for Baby. Phillip even feeds him spoonfuls of sugar and water when I doze off from sheer exhaustion, knowing that Dr Fayrer has ordered this—his sole refreshment—every hour. But he is so weak, my heart bleeds for him, poor little creature …”

  On the 2nd July the worst blow to morale the garrison had yet suffered fell without warning. Sir Henry Lawrence, whose staff had repeatedly begged him to remove to safer quarters, still occupied a room in the upper storey of the Residency which—only the previous day—had been damaged by a shell from the howitzer captured at Chinhat. He had promised to vacate the room but, on waking, was lying on his bed dictating orders to his military secretary, Captain Thomas Wilson, when a second shell entered the room and exploded there in a blinding sheet of flame. Wilson and Sir Henry’s nephew, George, were both hurled to the floor beneath a cascade of shattered brickwork, where they lay stunned.

  Wilson was the first to drag himself to his feet, dazed but uninjured, calling out frantically, “Sir Henry, are you hurt?” He called twice before Henry Lawrence answered him, in a low, shaken voice, “I am killed, Tom.” Horrified, Wilson and George Lawrence groped their way through a pile of debris to the bed, glimpsing a slowly spreading crimson stain on the once-white sheet which covered its occupant. When the dust settled, they saw that his left leg had been smashed to pulp just below the hip and it was evident, before Sir Henry invited their confirmation, that his wound was mortal. He was moved to the verandah of Dr Fayrer’s house, to die there thirty-six hours later.

  Harriet, who had watched her poor baby die during the night, shared the vigil at Sir Henry’s bedside with Dr Fayrer and the Chaplain, the Reverend James Harris, whose young wife alternated with her in such nursing duties as could be performed. Listening to the dying man’s anguished screams, audible even above the incessant roar of the guns, she came closer to despair than she had ever been and, when Lawrence’s long agony was over, she wrote sadly to Phillip:

  “We have lost the brave, noble, and farsighted man who made our defence of this place possible because, months ago—whilst others procrastinated and did nothing, swearing that there was no danger—he planned and prepared for it. If any of us survive, it will be thanks to Sir Henry Lawrence, who died an hour ago.

  “They carried him here, mortally wounded but fully conscious, and the Chaplain, the Reverend Harris, administered Holy Communion to him. Although in terrible pain, with his leg all but taken off at the thigh, he spoke for nearly an hour, quite calmly, expressing his last wishes regarding his children. He sent affectionate messages to them and to his brothers and sisters; he particularly mentioned the Lawrence Asylum and entreated that Government might be urged to give it support. He named Major Banks as his successor in chief authority here, and then he bade farewell to all the gentlemen who were standing about his bed and said a few words of advice and kindness to each. His nephew, Mr George Lawrence, he blessed most affectionately; and expressed the deepest penitence and remorse for his own sins and the most perfect trust and faith in his Saviour.

  “There was not a dry eye there; everyone was grieved and affected by the loss of such a man, and we all felt as if our best friend and staunchest support were being taken from us. I shall never, as long as I live, forget the despair which seemed to take possession of us, as if our last hope were gone.

  “All day and all night he lingered in extreme suffering and the screams and groans which were wrung from him were terrible to hear. Save when under the influence of chloroform, he was in possession of his senses to the last, and he frequently repeated the words of the prayers and psalms the Chaplain read to him. Throughout the day, the enemy directed their fire particularly at this house, as if somehow they had learnt that Sir Henry had been brought here, and several officers waiting on the verandah to pay their last respects to him were shot and wounded. Among them were his poor nephew, Mr George Lawrence, who was shot in the shoulder, and Mr Ommaney, the Judicial Commissioner who, it is feared, will not recover.

  “I was not there when he died but Mrs Harris told me that his end was peaceful. It came at a quarter past eight this morning—Saturday, 4th July—and his last words, uttered most urgently, were, ‘Entrench, entrench … let every man die at his post, but never make terms!’ After that, he spoke his wife’s name, very softly, and slipped into unconsciousness, a smile on his lips as, at last, the terrible pain left him.

  “He was buried after darkness fell but such was the combat raging along every front of our defences that no officers could be spared to attend him. Chaplain Harris and four soldiers of the 32nd carried him to his grave and Mr Harris told us, when he returned, that Sir Henry had asked to be buried in a common grave, without fuss, with any others of the garrison who might die during the day.

  “My own poor Baby’s loss pales into insignificance beside the enormity of this one, yet both torment me sorely as, alas, does the nightmare fear that our dearest Lavinia may be amongst those poor hostages held prisoner by the treacherous Nana in Cawnpore. We all feel sure that the Nana will not spare them—he and his kind show mercy to none. If you ever read this letter, Phillip, spare Mamma and Papa, what you can should the dreadful rumours of their suffering, which reach us here, prove to be true.”

  Harriet put down her pen, folded the pages she had written and placed them carefully in the reticule Mrs Harris had lent her. The guns were still thundering out their menace as she lay down on the uneven floor of the Tye Khana beside her two surviving children and closed her tired and redrimmed eyes.

  For the first time in many years, she did not offer up her nightly prayer—God, it seemed, had deserted them in their hour of need and she no longer had the heart to call on Him in vain. For Lavinia’s sake—if the rumours which spies brought back from Cawnpore were true—she could only pray that death might be merciful and swift and this, as yet, she could not bring herself to do …

  It had come as a relief to Lavinia Hill when, after enduring a prolonged and painful labour, the son to whom she had given birth was stillborn. She had shed no tears for the poor mite— had, indeed, envied it the oblivion it had found—and Captain Moore’s grieving widow, Caroline, when breaking the news, had offered no words of commiseration for her loss.

  Lavinia had expected none. Death, in its most hideous and degrading guises, was
no stranger to the Nana’s unhappy captives … already it had robbed the married women of their husbands, the children of their parents, and to many of the sickly, broken-hearted survivors of the British garrison of Cawnpore its advent was a welcome end to unendurable torment. True, their hopes had been briefly rekindled by the sound of heavy gunfire the previous evening, and the bolder spirits had cried out that, at long last, a relief column was on its way to effect their rescue, but the Commander of their sepoy guard had stoutly denied any such possibility and, after a few dispirited prayers, they had sunk again into the apathy induced by their state of near-starvation and the appalling heat.

  There were over two hundred of them herded, like sheep, into the yellow-painted brick building, known as the Bibigarh, in the centre of Cawnpore’s native city. It was flat-roofed and comprised two main rooms, each about twenty feet by ten feet, with four dark closets at the corners, less than ten feet square. The doors and windows, with the exception of the entrance, were secured by wooden bars and, in the walled courtyard which surrounded it, sepoy sentries patrolled, night and day, to ensure that none could escape. The bungalow had been built originally by a British officer for his native mistress, from whence the name—House of Women—had been derived. Hot and airless, lacking all save the most primitive of sanitary arrangements, the building had been used lately as a store for medical records and would scarcely have been adequate for the accommodation of a single family in normal conditions. As a prison for two hundred ailing European women and children, the Bibigarh was a torture chamber, adding degradation to the mental torment already inflicted upon them by their inhuman captors.

  Deaths from cholera, dysentery, and wounds daily and inevitably reduced their number; a diet of husked grain, dried lentils and water left them with little resistance to infection, and the shock of seeing their loved ones butchered in front of them had robbed all but the most courageous of the will to live. A hundred and twenty-five of them had survived the massacre on the banks of the Ganges. When, at length, the Nana had called a halt to the savage slaughter, they had been driven at musket-point into a building near the river, the Savada Koti, which already housed a number of Eurasian families arrested in the city and forty fugitives from an up-river station, whose menfolk had also been massacred. There they had been left for 24 hours, without food, water, or medical aid, before being moved to their present quarters in bullock carts, jeered at and derided by mobs from the bazaars.

  Clumsy and ungainly with the dead weight of the child she carried and stunned by the loss of her husband, who had been shot down at her side, Lavinia had prayed for death during that ghastly journey, expecting to meet it at the hands of their sepoy escort as they marched beside the slow-moving bullock carts, shrieking insults with the rest. But, strangely, in the Bibigarh a native doctor had been waiting and, to his eternal credit, he had done what he could for the sick and wounded. It was little enough—he was only one man, faced by a multitude of dazed and tormented souls—but Lavinia treasured the memory of the kindness he had shown her and the skill and gentleness he had displayed when her premature labour had begun.

  Now, crouched in a corner of one of the dark, malodorous closets which opened off the main living room of their prison, she watched the dawn of the eighteenth day of their captivity, straining her ears for the sound of gunfire which, Caroline Moore had assured her when taking her leave the previous evening, they would hear at first light … if a relief column were indeed on its way to Cawnpore. But, as the sun rose, its rays slanting through the barred windows to herald the heat that was to come, she heard only the subdued murmurs of the sepoy guards and the shrilly raised voice of Hosainee Khanum—ayah to the Nana’s courtesan—who had been put in charge of the prison servants. These—a bhisti and a motley gang of low caste sweepers—were supposed to supply the captives with water and keep the rooms they occupied swept and scoured but, in such over-crowded conditions, the task was beyond them. Of late they had done little more each morning than remove the bodies of any who died, depositing the meagre rations of the living on the dirty, neglected floor, where a horde of flies immediately settled on anything edible.

  Two of their unpleasant servitors came shuffling into Lavinia’s dark refuge, grumbling under the lash of Hosainee’s tongue, to fling down a chatti of water and some parched grain and, after a cursory inspection of the sick women lying there, one called out sullenly that all were yet living and made to depart, ignoring Lavinia’s plea that he place the water within reach of those who had not the strength to sit up.

  “We shall die without water,” she reproached him in halting, newly learnt Hindustani.

  “You will all die before nightfall,” the man retorted brutally. “You and the feringhi soldiers who seek to save you!”

  Lavinia drew in her breath sharply. His was the first admission any of them had made of the presence of a relief column but, when she attempted to question him, the mehtar denied it.

  “I know nothing, save that no British soldiers will reach here. The Nana Sahib’s victorious army will destroy them when they approach the Panda Nudi River. Perhaps they are already destroyed.”

  One of the sick women raised herself on her elbow, her thin, pale face suddenly alight with joy. “He is lying,” she said. “Just listen, Mrs Hill—listen! The guns are firing again … oh, heaven be praised! Our troops are not destroyed—they are coming nearer!”

  She was right, Lavinia realised, her heart quickening its beat. Faintly at first but steadily growing in volume, the roar of heavy guns could distinctly be heard and, throughout the morning, the sounds of battle continued to reach the prisoners in the Bibigarh, reviving their flagging spirits and putting new life even into those for whom, a few hours before, their native physician had held out little hope. He—the only one of their gaolers who had shown them pity or kindness—freely admitted that a British relief column was within less than a day’s march of Cawnpore.

  “They are few—not more than a handful—but they are led by a resolute General whose name, I am told, is Havelock, and they fight like tigers. Since leaving Allahabad just over a week ago, they have marched a hundred and twenty miles and have three times defeated the Nana Sahib’s army … and now, I have just heard, they have fought their way across the Panda Nudi. The Nana’s brother, Bala Bhat, was wounded in the battle and it is said that his General of Cavalry, Teeka Singh, had his elephant killed under him. Their troops flee the field like jackals as soon as General Havelock’s redcoat soldiers are sighted. Soon, ladies, your countrymen will be here to set you free and your terrible ordeal will be over!”

  They hung on his words, repeating them to each other again and again as the long day wore on, their hopes bolstered by the now almost ceaseless thunder of the guns, some of which, by their proximity to the city, they recognised as being the Nana’s. Soon, Lavinia thought, soon they would be released from this awful place, they would be safe, guarded by British soldiers, their suffering at an end. Fighting off her weakness, she struggled to her feet to join those who waited by the door of their prison, eager to be among the first to greet their rescuers. They prayed, weeping, and sang hymns, their voices choked with tears, the sick, the wounded, and many of the children joining in.

  It fell to Hosainee Khanum to shatter their brittle hopes of rescue. The woman had been absent for several hours; when she returned, one of the Eurasian captives abused her and rounding on her savagely, the ayah said with conscious malice that the Nana had ordered their execution.

  “Pray rather that the feringhi soldiers never reach here, mem!” she added. “For you will die before the first lal-kote sets foot in the city!”

  There was a stunned, unhappy silence; then, as the woman to whom she had spoken burst into a paroxysm of weeping, others passed on the brief and terrible words she had uttered and pandemonium ensued.

  Caroline Moore restored them to calm. “I will ask the Jemadar of our guard,” she volunteered. “If our execution has indeed been ordered, it is he who will have rec
eived the order. The Nana would not have given it to a serving woman … Hosainee must surely be lying in order to frighten us.”

  A number of them accompanied her to the barred window at the front of the building and Yusef Khan, the Jemadar, came in response to their cries. At first he denied all knowledge of the Nana’s order but finally, with evident reluctance, admitted that Hosainee had brought him verbal instructions that the hostages were to be shot if the British column attempted to attack Cawnpore.

  “You have nothing to fear at our hands,” he assured his anxious questioners. “Without a written order.”

  “But our soldiers will attack,” Caroline Moore stated with conviction. “Nothing is more certain. And when they do, then you—”

  “If they do, Memsahib, they will be defeated,” the native officer put in. “They are few and we are many and the Nana Sahib has placed great guns to cover the road.” But he was plainly uneasy; head on one side he, too, was listening to the guns, affecting not to see Hosainee’s angry attempts to attract his attention.

  “If you preserve our lives, General Havelock will reward you,” a Colonel’s white-haired widow promised recklessly. Others reiterated this promise and the Jemadar hesitated, torn between fear and duty. Clearly he had heard of the Nana’s defeat at the Panda Nudi, Lavinia thought and, in the hope of resolving his uncertainty, she said quietly, “If you take our lives and General Havelock’s soldiers learn of it, they will not rest until retribution has been meted out to you. They may be few but they have been victorious whenever they have met the Nana’s army in battle—and there will be more, many thousands more, following after them from Calcutta and from England itself.”