A HISTORY OF THE INDIAN MUTINY.* THE difficulties that lie
in the way of a clear, comprehensive, and impartial history of the Indian Mutiny are very great. The subject is obscure and confused in origin and mani- festation, and the very materials which should elucidate it present in themselves enormous obstacles. Indian officials have ever loved the pen ; and. round the fierce controversies that arose month after month during the progress of the revolt sprang up a thick jungle of reports, pamphlets, Parliamentary papers, and newspaper articles and letters. The two previous histories,—those of Sir John Kaye and Colonel Malleson,—have done something towards clearing the ground ; but neither can lay claim to be considered a critical history. Sir John Kaye's work, admirable as it is in many ways, was, nevertheless, written too near the events for complete information ; while that of Colonel Malleson is necessarily coloured by the views which the author adopted in the very crisis of the outbreak. In truth, to sift the materials in order to supplement these narratives, and to harmonise the whole, is a task demanding the most patient labour, the nicest judgment, and the finest historic temper.
Mr. Holmes, the author of the present work, has seen the need, and has attempted to satisfy it. How far has ha suc- ceeded in making his history clear, comprehensive, and impar- tial? At least, his book has some claim to be called clear. He has brought to the accomplishment of his task a considerable literary gift. The style throughout is good, and the workman- • A History Jf the Indio,' Mutiny, and of the Disturbances which accompanied it among the Civil Population. By T. R. E. Holmes. London: W. B. Allen and Co. like manner in which he has supplied references to 'authorities for every statement is deserving of special praise. A dread of fine writing is apt to come upon the reader, when he approaches another account of the massacre at Cawnpore or the defence of Luckuow. Mr. Holmes, however, is quite safe here ; and he no mbre insults the dignity of woe, than he renders English valour ridiculous by clumsy panegyrics.
That Mr. Holmes attains to anything like real comprehensive- ness or unity of treatment cannot be admitted. The account he gives of the origin of the Mutiny, and of the causes which led up to it, is, on the whole, satisfactory ; but once launched in the intricacies of the revolt, this unity disappears—as it may well
do, except in the hands of an inspired historian—and we wander on in a wilderness of facts and accusations, •characters and descriptions. The best thing in the book is undoubtedly the history of the Sepoy Army. Mr. Holmes tells clearly the glorious traditions of the old Bengal regiments. The force was at its best in the beginning of the century ; but as English power became consolidated throughout India, it began slowly but surely to be disintegrated by the mistaken policy of the Government. This policy was bad in all directions. Towards the officers because, by withdrawing them from individual con- nection with a regiment, by lessening their numbers, and by pro- moting the best to civil employments, it destroyed confidence and esprit de corps; towards the men because, by vexatious regula- tions, the better kind of natives were prevented from enlisting, and because when the tendency towards insubordination had become apparent there was an injudicious, though well-meant, yielding to some of the sillier prejudices of caste. With an army ap- proaching mutiny by such a road, the very successes of the Sikh war were a source of a danger ; for it made the Bengal soldier believe that his arms were invincible, and that the English rule depended on his help. Mr. Holmes summarises the situation well when he says :— "On the eve of Lord Canning's arrival the Native Army was a heterokeneous body, as in race, caste, and religion, so also in quality. There were a few superb irregular regiments, commanded by a hand- ful of picked European officers. These were the useful troops of Bombay; and Madras. There was the Bengal Army, composed of stalwart men of martial aspect, who had been, perhaps, better endowed by nature with soldierly qualities than the men of the other Presi- dencies, but who had under a corrupt system been suffered to become a dangerous mob. It was no wonder that those regiments in which the sentries relieved each other when and how they pleased, in which it was an every-day occurrence for hundreds of men to quit their ranks without leave, and scour the country in quest of plunder, were ripe for mutiny. The marvel is that they had so long preserved the sem- blance of an army. Yet so great is the force of habit, that while the ablest men in India kept repeating the solemn warning that it was in the force on which the safety of the Empire depended that its greatest danger lay, the Bengal officers regarded the insubordination, which they could not wholly ignore, as inseparable from the constitution of a Native Army. They were deaf to the rumbling of the volcano, for they did not know that it lay beneath them until its eruption startled them out of their fatal slumber."
The condition of the Army in Bengal was to some extent reflected in the civil population. Lord Dalhousie's annexations, and his policy with regard to the land settlement, had made the English many powerful enemies ; and the popular uneasiness had been increased by the propaganda of religious fanatics,— Alahommedan and Hindoo. This religious agitation was, in a great measure, due to the rapid introduction of the railway and the telegraph. These new and, to the natives, terrible inven- tions, boded nothing, it was thought, but absolute and forcible conversion to Christianity. From native intrigues India never is, and never can be, wholly free ; but it happened in the year 1857 that, owing tu the causes just enumerated, the number and importance of those on foot were extraordinary. Large numbers of desperate men were ready to work on the inflam- mable material in the army. Among these, the followers of the dispossessed King of Oudh, and the Ministers and creatures of the-smaller States that had been annexed, were especially dangerous. Chance, too, had at this very time created another enemy. Lest there should be wanting a representative of Mahratta hatred, Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the last of the Peshwas, had been made our bitter enemy by the refusal of the Government to recognise him as heir to the huge annuity that had been granted to Rajee Rao. When the Mutiny had begun, the most potent tradition of dominion in India was added, and the survivor of the race of Aurungzebe became the centre of the revolt.
It is impossible to attempt any detailed criticism of the manner in which Mr. Holmes deals with the events of the rebellion, save to repeat again that he makes no advance on the previous his- tories in treating the subject with a proper sense of unity. We must, however, remark that it is absurd to say, as he does, that we should never have heard of the Well of Cawnpore if Lord Canning had, earlier consented to the enrolment of the Calcutta Volunteers, and the disarming of the Sepoys at Barrackpore and Dinapore. No doubt the delay in allowing the Volunteer movement at Calcutta was a mistake; but the effect which it would have had in permitting troops to be pressed on must not be exaggerated in this way. The manner in which Mr. Holmes, in at least one instance, plunges into the intricacies of a very bitter controversy—that which concerns Mr. Tayler and Sir Frederick Halliday—is certainly to be deprecated. Without wish- ing to invite correspondence or in any way to revive this heated controversy, we cannot, after reading the papers on the subject• laid before Parliament, refrain from stating our conviction that Mr. Holmes has no excuse for using the language he does con- cerning Sir Frederick Halliday. There are, of course, two sides to the question, and Mr. Holmes has a right to adopt Mr. Tayler's view. He would hive shown better judgment and taste, however, had he confined himself to temperate language such as that employed by Sir John Kaye, whose words may be quoted to show the furthest point to which Mr. Tayler's case can be carried :—" I cannot," he says, " after full consideration of all the circumstances of the case, resist the conviction that if there was not a miscarriage of justice, there was a lack of that generous disposition to overlook occasional errors of judgment, committed by men who had done good service in critical conjunctions, which is a distinguishing characteristic of Indian Govern- ment." These expressions are undoubtedly strongly in favour of Mr. Tayler, and carry considerable weight, even though it is remembered that they were written before Sir Frederick Halliday's memorandum of June, 1879; yet on the whole, we feel inclined to consider that the juster view is that expressed by the Court of Directors after their investigation of the matter in 1858. The Court of Despatch to the Government of India on the occasion of Mr. Tayler's appeal gave him credit for much of his conduct which had been undoubtedly worthy of praise, And rightly absolved him from the charge of panic ; but they continued :—"At the same time We agree with you in the opinion that Mr. Taylor's instructions involved a very great. error of judgment, and were proved by subsequent occurrences at some of the stations, especially Gaja and Mazufferpore, to have been uncalled for by any pressing emergency at the date of their issue, and not inaptly described by the Lieutenant- Governor as a flight nothing short of scandalous and disgrace-
ful to the British name.'" They proceed :—" We concur with you that the Lieutenant-Governor was thoroughly justified in removing Mr. Tayler summarily from the office -of Com- missioner of the Patna Division on the, ground that at so critical a period the Division could not safely be left in his charge.'" Before leaving Mr. Hohnes's work it may be suggested that there is one great want-'a want, however, which is felt in all records of our rule in India. We are with diffi- culty able to form any idea of the motives and policy of the Natives from their side. That the paucity of information makes such an attempt very difficult is true ; but still, in the case of the Mutiny, there is a certain amount of material. Could this be carefully sifted, and an approach to an account of the great. revolt, as it stood before the native population, be constructed, it would be of the greatest value. Taking all the faults and ex- cellences of Mr. Hohnes's book together, we gladly admit that he has made a useful history,—a history which, though not likely to remain as an authority, has at least done something towards digesting the vast literature of the Mutiny.
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