HOW THEY PUT DOWN THE INDIAN MUTINY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 244, 4 January 1878, Page 9

HOW THEY PUT DOWN THE INDIAN MUTINY

In the October supplement to the Papular Science Monthly there is an article by Prof. Goldwin Smith on " The Policy of Aggrandizement," in. which the writer calls attention to the dreadful atrocities perpetrated by the English soldiers in stamping out the Indian Mutiny. Prof. Smith, "himself an Englishman, says :— " The wholesale slaughter of these wretched men, in cold blood, when they had laid down their arms, and in some cases when they had apparently been guilty of little more than being carried away like animals by a stampede, may have been a political necessity of conquest, but it will never be described by impartial history as an act of moral justice, and participation in it, and in the hideous scenes of that period generally, could hardly fail to affect the character of the Englishmen engaged. The work of Dr. Russell is well known. Lieutenant Majendie's 'Up among the Pandies ' is not so well known, but it is a vivid, simple, and apparently truthful photograph of scenes which that officer Himself witnessed. We give a couple of extracts :—: — " I have before adverted to the hardness of heart which in some cases was shown by our men, and to the careless and callous indifference with which they took away human life ; and I will here relate one of the several instances which came under my notice in illustration of this fact. After we had occupied the Iron Bridge' for some days, and when we supposed that the houses in the neighbourhood were quite clear of the enemy, we were astonished one evening by healing a &hot in one of the many buildings which, we occupied, and, directly after, some of the soldiers rushingin dragged out a decrepit old man, severely wounded in the thigh. It seems that the sentry, having heard somebody moving about the house, had challenged, and, receiving no answer, tired, and hit the poor old wretch in question in the leg. He was brought out,, and soon surrounded by a noisy, gaping crowd of soldiers, who clamoured loudly for his immediate execution, expressing themselves in language more remarkable by its vigour than either its elegance or its humanity. " 'Aye his nut off," said one : " Hang the brute," cried another : " Put him out of mess," said a third ; " Give him a Cawnporc dinner " (six inches of steel), cried a fourth : but the burden of all their cries was the same, and they meant death. The only person in the group who appeared unmoved and indifferent to what was going on was he who certainly had every right to be the most interested. I mean the old man himself, whose stoicism one could not but admire. He must have read his fate a hundred times over in the angry gestures and looks of his captors, but never once did he open his lips to supplicate for mercy, or betray cither agitation or emotion, giving one the idea of a man bored by the noise and the proceedings generally, but not otherwise affected. His was a case which hardly demanded a long or elaborate trial. He was a native — he could give no account of: himself — he had been found prowling about our position at night ; stealthily moving among houses, every one of which contained a quantity of gunpowder, and where, for aught we knew, and as was more than probable, mines may have existed, which a spark dropped from his hand would have ignited — or he was a spy," or — but what need of more ? In this time of stern and summary justice (?) such evidence was more than ample ; he was given over to two men, who received orders to ' destroy him ' (the expression usually employed on these occasions, and implying in itself how dreadfully common such executions had become), and they led him away. This point being settled, the soldiers returned to their games of cards and their pipes, and seemed to feel no' further interest in the matter, except when the two executioners returned, and one of their comrades carelessly asked, -'Well, Bill, what did ycr do to him? ' ' Oh,' said the man as he wiped the blood off an old tulwar, with an air of cool and horrible indifference which no words can convey — ' oh, sliced his 'ed off, resuming his rubber, and dropping the subject much as a man might who had drowned a litter of puppies.'' This old man, it will be observed, was not a Sepoy, he was only a native, and not the slightest attempt appears to have been made to verify the suspicion as to a mine of gunpowder. In the next case the victim was a Sepoy, taken in a skirmish, in which a British officer of a Sikh regiment had fallen :—: — " Infuriated beyond measure by the death of their officer, the Sikhs (assisted, I regret to say, by some Englishmen) proceeded to take their revenge on this one wretched man. Seizing him by the two legs, they attempted to tear him ■in; tn'o. Failing in this, they dragged him along by the legs, stabbing him in the face with their bayonets as they went. I could see the poor wretch writhing as the blows fell upon him, and could hear his moans as his captors dug the sharp bayonets into his lacerated and, trampled body, while his blood, trickling down, dyed the white sand over which ho was being dragged. But the worst was yet to come : while still alive, though faint and feeble from his many wounds, he was deliberately placed upon a small pile of dry sticks, which had been improvised for the purpose, and there held down, in spite of his dying struggles, which, becoming weaker and more feeble every moment, were, from their very faintness and futile desperation, cruel to behold. Once, 'during this frightful operation, the wretched victim, maddened by pain, managed to break away from his tormentors, and already horribly burnt, fled a short distance, but he was immediately brought back and placed upon the fire, and there held till life was extinct."