The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

  Forjett trusted that the Muslim leaders would use their influence to ensure that the upcoming Muharram festival was incident-free. If this were done they would benefit by safeguarding life and property and ‘gain the good graces of the government’. Forjett reminded them of the benefits received from the British, including religious tolerance. He then quoted a passage from the Koran that said there should be gratitude for such a government. Forjett’s performance was quoted in full in the papers the next day.

  At noon on 16 August, Husna rode from her apartment to the governor’s residence and insisted on seeing Elphinstone. He was at his desk working when she barged into his office. She opened The Times of India and pointed to the report of Forjett’s comments.

  ‘Are you behind this?’ she demanded.

  ‘Forjett was charged with making the Muslim community, in fact, all communities, understand the consequences of rebellion,’ Elphinstone said, standing. He gestured for her to sit on the couch near his desk. She remained standing.

  ‘I believe he is inciting problems, not calming them down.’ She pointed to the paper. ‘This is all so inflammatory! It will make matters worse!’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ he said, keeping his equanimity. ‘I am waiting for all the leaders of the communities to report in to me. So far the Muslims have not.’

  Husna was distressed.

  ‘Don’t be so concerned,’ he said, coming around his desk.

  ‘I may go back to Paris!’ she said, looking tearful. ‘This is no city for a Muslim!’

  Elphinstone held her close.

  ‘You’ll be safe. I assure you of that.’

  On 17 August, the Muslim community’s key representatives finally came to Government House to pledge their support to Elphinstone, giving assurances of loyalty and devotion to peace. They were the last religious group to do so.

  ‘Better belated than never,’ Elphinstone wrote to the Duke of Cambridge. The governor commended Forjett ‘for not mincing his words’. Elphinstone’s message had a desired effect. Forjett called on the governor early one morning and joined him for breakfast.

  ‘One of the most eminent Muslim leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Kubbay, has told me about nearly 600 troublemakers,’ Forjett informed him.

  ‘What do you propose we do?’ Elphinstone asked.

  ‘I am here to ask you, governor, but I think we should make an example of the ringleaders.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Execution.’

  ‘The Muslims are not so hierarchical,’ Elphinstone said thoughtfully. ‘You would be killing quite a few of them.What are the alternatives?’

  ‘Well, incarceration, governor, but putting so many behind bars would be inviting more trouble.’

  ‘What about shipping them out of the city?’

  ‘Hmm. It could be done.’

  ‘Then do it. Make sure it’s in the middle of the night.’

  29

  THE PRESIDENT’S ENFORCER

  Elphinstone next met with Bombay’s Lord Bishop.They decided that the city should hold a ‘Day of Humiliation’.The bishop announced that it would be on 14 August 1857 ‘in view of the dreadful judgement with which God is visiting on the land’.The result was people flocking to their houses of worship.They dreaded that the outside terror would strike Bombay, yet the population was unaware of how Elphinstone was manipulating all levers of state and the military to ensure that the city could withstand any assault. By 17 August he had the bulk of European troops stationed at Colaba, protecting government offices, the mint and banks at the city’s fort.This also ensured the safety of the nearby docks and harbour. He had a small military guard supported by the police defending the hospitals and the barracks at Colaba. Army units were posted around the town at the entries to the main European residential areas of Malabar Hill, Breach Candy, Byculla and Mazagon.The Indian Navy was called on to send armed sailors to the British Peninsula and Oriental Company office at Mazagon, the powder works at Sewree and Rowlee Hills at Parel. Elphinstone ordered that a train be ready to bring in troops from Bori Bunder on the coast east of Bombay. He directed Brigadier Shortt and Forjett to station armed civilian volunteers at strategic points around Bombay. The governor did not seem to miss anything. He even had suspicious letters that were written in local vernacular sent to a translating department to be checked. This proved fruitful. More would-be troublemakers were rounded up. Elphinstone also made sure that there was some fanfare for the arrival in Bombay of a second detachment of the 33rd Regiment from Mauritius.

  ‘Every scoundrel in the town was closely watched and kept in a state of terror,’ Forjett told Elphinstone. He made police rounds in disguise throughout the city at night. If he found anyone speaking of the success of rebels in other parts of India ‘in anything like a tone of exultation, I seized him on the spot.’ He would blow a whistle. Police would come, bind the ‘culprit’ and take him to prison. Elphinstone was informed that there would be an uprising from the sepoy ranks in Bombay. Brigadier Shortt and other British officers, certain of the soldiers’ loyalties, refused to believe it. The governor sent the more-than-willing Forjett in search of evidence before the beginning of the Muharram festival. The community still feared a Muslim uprising and Forjett responded by stepping up the psychological pressure, which the public knew he coupled with direct, sometimes muscular action. There was always a fear that he would push the governor for martial law, but before such a drastic decree, he had a gallows built in the police station yard. Then he rounded up some of the more criminal and notorious types in Bombay and escorted them down to have a look at the frightening wooden structure. He forced them up the steps to the platform. Then he urged the toughest potential ‘subversive’ among them to put the noose around his neck to see how it felt. Forjett had a big bag attached to the noose. He asked a hangman to demonstrate what happened when the trapdoor was opened. No doubt more than a few onlookers went a little dry in the throat. The demonstration affected the more dangerous of them. Finally, Forjett reminded the gathering that he knew every single one of them and their whereabouts.

  ‘Like the Indian elephant,’ he told them chillingly, ‘Forjett never forgets.’

  The pressure was kept on when actual arrests were made and the men were taken to gaol in view of the gallows. Some were given the choice of hanging or agreeing to be deported during the night. No-one took the former offer. This way some of the more dangerous elements in Bombay were again shipped out under the cover of darkness without fuss or public knowledge. Elphinstone was demonstrating a ruthless side in endorsing Forjett’s terror tactics.

  Husna’s contacts among Bombay citizens told her with more urgency than ever of the fear running through the Muslim community. She accepted an invitation to play golf with Elphinstone at the Royal Bombay Club. When no others would tee off with him because of his partner, they played the course alone together.

  ‘Sorry to cause you so much embarrassment,’ she remarked.‘Pardon me for being a woman, a quasi-doctor, an Indian and a Muslim.’

  ‘And not a member!’ Elphinstone said with a relaxed smile, handing their clubs to a turbaned servant. ‘You are pardoned for all five deficiencies, but I am governor of this presidency and I play with whom I like.’

  As they walked the velvet green, one of the most beautiful links in India, her continuing disdain for Forjett’s tactics emerged.

  ‘It is all brinkmanship,’ she said, as they lined up shots on the fifth green. Elphinstone’s shot meandered off the green and into rough. Hers went close to the hole.‘His approach will precipitate problems, not stop them.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Elphinstone said, bending to line up his next shot. He played it and took two shots to reach the hole. ‘I believe in firm action early, to nip any disturbances in the bud.’

  ‘At the expense of lives?’ Husna asked, hands on hips before she sank her own putt.

  ‘If we stop the massacres occurring,’ he said,‘yes.’

  Rumours of an uprising persisted.Forjett,with El
phinstone’s acquiescence, went more on the offensive rather than waiting for something to happen. The zealous superintendent attempted to break into a home in Sonapore that the governor had been tipped off was a rendezvous point for a clandestine meeting of sepoys. Forjett abducted the house’s owner, Ganga Prasad, and took him to a police station for interrogation. Forjett offered bribes for information.When that failed he made threats. Prasad opened up and disclosed the barest facts about a plot for an uprising in sepoy ranks. Forjett forced him to set up a ‘sting’ operation in which he would lure rebel sepoys to his house. Forjett, his assistant Captain Eddington and an Indian policeman, waited in the house hidden behind wooden panels. They watched the sepoys arrive and then listened to their conversation. There was no doubt in Forjett’s mind that these men were hell-bent on trouble. But he knew that Brigadier Shortt would not accept that any Indian soldiers under his command would plot rebellion. Forjett demanded that Prasad set up a second clandestine meeting of sepoys.This time Forjett took with him Major Barrow, the officer commanding the Marine battalion. They approached the house in disguises and took up their hidden positions once more. Barrow was shocked to recognise men from his 10th and 17th regiments.

  Forjett and Barrow learned that the sepoys planned an outbreak on the last night of the Muharram festival. Elphinstone’s clinically thorough and efficient measures, coupled with Forjett’s intimidation of the would-be rebels, had forestalled any immediate trouble in Bombay. Brigadier Shortt was the only weak link. He accepted the evidence of mutineers in the ranks but hesitated over how and when to react. Two days after the rebels were witnessed in Prasad’s house, Elphinstone received more intelligence about an uprising, which was passed to Forjett. It was set for 15 October 1857, the night of Diwali—an important Hindu festival. Shortt at last cautioned the officers commanding the 10th and 11th regiments. The ringleaders were arrested and court-martialled. Their punishment was as bizarre and spectacular as it was barbaric: they were sentenced to death by being blown from the muzzle of a cannon.

  Husna tried to see Elphinstone. For the first time in their mercurial relationship, he refused to see her. She turned up at another cricket match, this time uninvited. Police would not let her near the member’s marquee. Husna waited until Elphinstone sat in a deck chair next to Forjett to watch the game and then yelled from behind a fence near the guarded entrance: ‘Are you not going to see me now, governor?’

  Elphinstone got up from his chair and walked to her.When he was a few metres away, he said: ‘Not here, not now.’

  ‘How can you sit here, watching a pathetic game of cricket, while your chief of police fires people from a cannon!’ she said raising her voice. ‘What are you? A monster?!’

  Elphinstone looked ruffled. He glanced around to see Forjett striding towards them. ‘If you continue like this, I won’t speak with you,’ he said, as guards moved close. Most of the game’s watchers turned their heads to the disturbance near the ground’s entrance.

  Husna spat in their direction as Forjett reached them.

  ‘I told you that I would not allow the rebels to upset Bombay,’ Elphinstone said, his composure returning, ‘our approach has worked.’

  He turned and walked away with Forjett, leaving Husna crying as she mounted her horse.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of her,’ Forjett said.‘She is hysterical. Muslim women tend to overreact.’

  ‘I am most fond of her,’ Elphinstone said softly, glancing back to see Husna riding away.

  ‘My lord, happy it is for Bombay,’ Forjett said, ‘happy for western India and happy for India itself that you are Governor of Bombay during this period of the mutiny. Otherwise tens of thousands would be massacred in this city. Just remember that, my lord.’

  Elphinstone looked at his police chief, but said nothing.

  On 25 January 1858, seventeen-year-old Vicky married 26-year-old Prince Frederick William of Prussia in London. Victoria insisted that the ceremony take place at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. It was a love match and the first of the dynastic alliances that the queen and Prince Albert both craved and had crafted from their own union. This new match would, hopefully, cement ties between London and Berlin. Even more sanguine was the desire that this marriage would lead to a unified Germany.

  The people of London knew the game in progress.Wherever Vicky ventured a chant went up: ‘God save the prince and bride! And keeps their lands allied.’

  Victoria was overjoyed at her daughter’s wedding, now writing sometimes up to three, even four letters a day to her in what was already a copious, ever-flowing two-way communication.Vicky over the last few years had become an even greater confidante of the queen than Albert. In letters,Victoria let go feelings that she would not express in her diary. Vicky responded with as much enthusiasm as her mother, sometimes even out-writing her in letters.

  30

  THE BRITISH PREVAIL

  By early 1858, the British had begun to take India back under their control using sometimes brutal methods. Massacres occurred in some cities, such as Delhi, adding to the millions killed in the uprising across the nation. The rebels lost ground. They lacked a unified purpose and standout leader to wrest power from the Raj.Their rebellion too was not widespread. Elphinstone had managed to nip any reaction in the bud in Bombay and to maintain vigilance. Madras too was kept quiet. Sikhs and Afghans continued to stay out of the uprising in 1858, while Gurkhas stepped in to help the British suppress rebels. Mutineers ran out of money and men, which forced them to give up on several occasions. They were simply out-resourced by their colonisers.The British battle operations and preparation were at last made easier by the use of an improved telegraph and post, which helped in deciding how many soldiers should be sent where. Mastery of the seas also aided the British in bringing troops from England and, in Elphinstone’s case, from South Africa and Mauritius.

  In April 1858 after central India (Oudh province) was almost under control, Canning proclaimed that the entire province’s land would be confiscated by the British. A former governor of India, Lord Ellenborough, was now president of the Board of Control for India. He drafted a new scheme for governing the country after the rebellion. Ellenborough, known for his impetuosity, sent a caustic dispatch to Canning, censuring his Oudh ruling, and allowed his missive to be published in The Times. His colleagues in the Derby government were displeased and let him know it. Ellenborough was forced to resign. His thoughtless act in condemning Canning in public allowed the governor-general to keep his position when otherwise he would have been brought back from India. Canning also wished to impose income tax in India. Elphinstone objected firmly in private correspondence with Canning. The Governor of Madras, Sir Charles Trevelyan, went further and published his own condemnation of the policy in the Indian press. Trevelyan was forced to resign. There was now a renewed unease in England about Canning’s capacities. Elphinstone, who was due to return to England by the summer of 1858 after a five-year tenure, was asked to stay on in his job. He would be a back-up should Canning’s governorship cause further unrest in India. If Canning was forced out, Elphinstone was recommended by three successive secretaries of state—Vernon Smith, Lord Ellenborough and Lord Stanley—to take over as India’s governor-general.

  Historians Kaye and Malleson summed up Elphinstone’s impact:

  Only those who have enjoyed the privilege of reading his voluminous correspondence during the 1857–58 Uprising can form an idea of the remarkable perspicacity which characterized Lord Elphinstone’s views on every point connected with the stirring events of those years.

  The strong and weak points of a case; the true policy to be pursued; the proper timing for putting it in action; when to withhold the blow, when to strike; the reasons for withholding or striking are laid down in clear and vigorous language in his letters . . .it seems marvellous how a man standing alone should have judged so clearly, so truly. Many of the military movements which tendered to the pacification of the country had their first inspiration fr
om Lord Elphinstone . . .no man in India contributed as much as him to check the mutiny at its outset; no man contributed more to dominate it after it had risen to its greatest height.

  In the glory of the victory, amid the bestowal of well-merited rewards for military service, the great desserts of Lord Elphinstone received but small notice from the public . . .it now becomes the duty of the historian to place him on the lofty pedestal to which his great services, and his pure and noble character entitle him.’

  Elphinstone never sought ‘notice from the public’. It was not in his nature. He just wished to do his duty for his queen, to whom he was dedicated with passion, and the empire, of which he was a prominent creature. The Bombay experience had given him a sense of fulfilment, which he had craved while carrying out his duties with diligence at the docile House of Lords and parochial royal court. All his exceptional skills were drawn out in India. Elphinstone was exhausted but content that he had taken on a huge challenge and won. He would not now go through life wondering about his capacities or the depth of his courage. But his successes would soon be subsumed by the need to better govern India.

  With peace breaking out, the British government and press concentrated on what should be done with this vast, unsettled land. Elphinstone warned Victoria, the prime minister and others in private that it had to be organised and led far better. He was not alone but still a strong voice in persisting with the view, expressed a decade earlier to the queen, that the East India Company should be disbanded. He had always advised that India would be better off if the crown took it over. The thought titillated Victoria, whose passion about India had been kindled then kept up by Elphinstone over more than two decades. Albert also began urging the transfer of power where India would come under the control of the British government rather than that of a private company.