Biblia

217. The City of Blood

217. The City of Blood

The City of Blood

Psa_141:7 : ’93Our bones are scattered at the grave’92s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. But mine eyes are unto thee, O God the Lord.’94

Though you may read this text from the Bible, I read it as cut by chisel into the pedestal of a cross beneath which lie the mutilated bodies of many of the massacred at Cawnpore, India. To show you what Hinduism and Mohammedanism really are, where they have full swing, and not as they represent themselves in a ’93Parliament of Religions,’94 and to demonstrate to what extent of cruelty and abomination human nature may go when fully let loose, and to illustrate the hardening process of sin, and to remind you how our glorious Christianity may utter its triumph over death and the grave, I preach this, my second sermon, wherein I shall speak of ’93The City of Blood,’94 or Cawnpore, India.

Two hours and ten minutes after its occurrence, Joseph Lee, of the Shropshire Regiment of Foot, rode in upon the scene of the Cawnpore massacre. He was the first man I met at Cawnpore. I wanted to hear the story from some one who had been here in 1857, and with his own eyes gazed upon the slaughtered heaps of humanity. I could hardly wait until the horses were put to the carriage, and, Mr. Lee, seated with us, started for the scene; the story of which makes tame in contrast all Modoc and Choctaw butcheries.

It seems that all the worst passions of the century were to be impersonated by one man, and he, Nana Sahib; and our escort at Cawnpore, Joseph Lee, knew the man personally. Unfortunately, there is no correct picture of Nana Sahib in existence. The pictures of him published in the books of Europe and America, and familiar to us all, are an amusing mistake. This is the fact in regard to them: A lawyer of England was called to India for the purpose of defending the case of a native who had been charged with fraud. The attorney came, and so skilfully managed the case of his client that the client paid him enormously for his services; and he went back to England, taking with him a picture of his Indian client. After a while the mutiny in India broke out, and Nana Sahib was mentioned as the champion villain of the whole affair, and the newspapers of England wanted a picture of him and to interview some one on Indian affairs who had recently been in India. Among others, the journalists called upon this lawyer, lately returned. The only picture he had brought from India was a picture of his client, the man charged with fraud. The attorney gave this picture to the journals as a specimen of the way the Hindus dress, and forthwith that picture was used, either by mistake or intentionally, for Nana Sahib. The English lawyer said he lived in dread that the original of the picture would some day see the use made of his likeness, and it was not until the death of his Hindu client that the lawyer divulged the facts. Perhaps it was never intended that the face of such a demon should be preserved amid human records.

I said to our escort: ’93Mr. Lee, was there any peculiarity in Nana Sahib’92s appearance?’94 The reply was: ’93Nothing very peculiar; he was a dull, lazy, cowardly, sensual man; brought up to do nothing, and wanted to continue on the same scale to do nothing.’94 From what Mr. Lee told me, and from all I could learn in India, Nana Sahib ordered the massacre in that city from sheer revenge. His father abdicated the throne, and the English paid him annually a pension of four hundred thousand dollars. When the father died, the English Government declined to pay the same pension to the son, Nana Sahib; but the poor fellow was not in any suffering from lack of funds. His father left him eighty thousand dollars in gold ornaments; five hundred thousand dollars in jewels; eight hundred thousand dollars in bonds, and other resources amounting to at least one million five hundred thousand dollars. But the poor young man was not satisfied, and the Cawnpore massacre was his revenge. General Wheeler, the Englishman who had command of this city, although often warned, could not see that the Sepoys were planning for his destruction, and that of all his regiments and all the Europeans in Cawnpore.

Mr. Lee explained all this to me by the fact that General Wheeler had married a native, and he naturally took her story, and thought there was no peril. But the time for the proclamation from Nana Sahib had come, and such a document went forth as never before had seen the light of day. I give only an extract:

’93As by the kindness of God, and the good fortune of the emperor, all the Christians who were at Delhi, Poonah, Sattara, and other places, and even those five thousand European soldiers who went in disguise into the former city and were discovered, are destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops, who are firm to their religion; and as they have all been conquered by the present government, and as no trace of them is left in these places, it is the duty of all the subjects and servants of the government to rejoice at the delightful intelligence, and carry on their respective work with comfort and ease. As by the bounty of the glorious Almighty and the enemy-destroying fortune of the emperor, the yellow-faced and narrow-minded people have been sent to hell, and Cawnpore has been conquered; it is necessary that all the subjects and land owners and government servants should be as obedient to the present government as they have been to the former one; that it is the incumbent duty of all the peasants and landed proprietors of every district to rejoice at the thought that the Christians have been sent to hell, and both the Hindu and Mohammedan religions have been confirmed, and that they should, as usual, be obedient to the authorities of the government, and never suffer any complaint against themselves to reach to the ears of the higher authority.’94

’93Mr. Lee, what is this?’94 I said to our escort as the carriage halted by an embankment. ’93Here,’94 he said, ’93is the intrenchment where the Christians of Cawnpore took refuge.’94 It is the remains of a wall which at the time of the mutiny was only four feet high, behind which, with no shelter from the sun, the heat at one hundred and thirty degrees, four hundred and forty men and five hundred and sixty women and children dwelt nearly a month. A handful of flour and split peas was the daily ration, and only two wells near-by, the one in which they buried their dead, because they had no time to bury them in the earth, and the other well the focus on which the artillery of the enemy played, so that it was a choice between death by thirst and death by bullet or shell. Ten thousand yelling Hindus outside this frail wall and one thousand suffering, dying people inside. In addition to the army of the Hindus and Moslems, an invisible army of sicknesses swooped upon them. Some went raving mad under exposure; others dropped under apoplexy. A starving, mutilated, fevered, sunstruck, ghastly group waiting to die. Why did not the heathen dash down those mud walls and the ten thousand annihilate the now less than one thousand? It was because they seemed supernaturally defended.

Nana Sahib resolved to celebrate an anniversary. The 23d of June, 1857, would be one hundred years since the battle of Plassy, when under Lord Clive India surrendered to England. That day the last European in Cawnpore was to be slaughtered. Other anniversaries have been celebrated with wine; this was to be celebrated with blood. Other anniversaries have been adorned with garlands; this with drawn swords. Others have been kept with songs; this with execrations. Others with the dance of the gay; this with the dance of death. The infantry and cavalry and artillery of Nana Sahib made on that day one grand assault, but the few guns of the English and Scotch put to flight these Hindu tigers. The courage of the fiends broke against that mud wall as the waves of the sea against a lighthouse. The cavalry horses returned full run, without their riders. The Lord looked out from the heavens, and on that anniversary day gave the victory to his people.

Therefore, Nana Sahib must try some other plan. Standing in a field not far from the intrenchment of the English was a native Christian woman, Jacobee by name, holding high up in her hand a letter. It was evidently a communication from the enemy, and General Wheeler ordered the woman brought in. She handed him a proposed treaty. If General Wheeler and his men would give up their weapons, Nana Sahib would conduct them into safety; they could march out unmolested, the men, women, and children; they could go down to-morrow to the Ganges, where they would find boats to take them in peace to Allahabad.

There was some opposition to signing this treaty, but General Wheeler’92s wife told him he could trust the natives, and so he signed the treaty. There was great joy in the intrenchment that night. Without molestation they went out and got plenty of water to drink, and water for a good wash. The hunger and thirst and exposure from the consuming sun, with the thermometer from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty, would cease. Mothers rejoiced at the prospect of saving their children. The young ladies of the intrenchment would escape the wild beasts in human form. On the morrow, true to the promise, carts were ready to transport those who were too much exhausted to walk.

’93Get into the carriage,’94 said Mr. Lee, ’93and we will ride to the banks of the Ganges, for which the liberated combatants and non-combatants started from this place.’94 On our way Mr. Lee pointed out a monument over the burial place which was opened for General Wheeler’92s intrenchment, the well into which every night the dead had been dropped. Around it is a curious memorial. There are five crosses, one at each corner of the garden and one at the center, from which inscription I today read my text. Riding on, we came to the memorial church built to the memory of those fallen in Cawnpore. The walls are covered with tablets and epitaphs. I copied two or three of the inscriptions: ’93These are they who come out of great tribulation;’94 also, ’93The dead shall be raised incorruptible;’94 also, ’93In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world;’94 also, ’93The Lord gave; the Lord hath taken away;’94 also, ’93Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.’94

’93Get into the carriage,’94 said Mr. Lee, and we rode on to the Ganges, and got out at a Hindu temple standing on the banks. ’93Now,’94 said Mr. Lee, ’93here is the place to which General Wheeler and his people came under the escort of Nana Sahib.’94 I went down the steps to the margin of the river. Down these steps went General Wheeler and the men, women, and children under his care. They stood on one side of the steps, and Nana Sahib and his staff stood on the other side. As the women were getting into the boats, Nana Sahib objected that only the aged and infirm women and children should go on board the boats. The young and attractive women were kept out. Twenty-eight boats were filled with men, women, and children, and floated out into the river. Each boat contained ten armed natives. Then three boats fastened together were brought up, and General Wheeler and his staff got in. Although orders were given to start, the three boats were somehow detained. At this juncture a boy twelve years of age hoisted on the top of the Hindu temple on the banks two flags, a Hindu and a Mohammedan flag, at which signal the boatmen and armed natives jumped from the boats and swam for the shore; and from innumerable guns the natives on the bank fired on the boats, and masked batteries above and below roared with destruction, and the boats sank with their precious cargo, and all went down save three strong swimmers, who got to the opposite shore. Those who struggled out near-by were dashed to death. Nana Sahib and his staff with their swords slashed to pieces General Wheeler and his staff, who had not got well away from the shore.

I said that the young and attractive women were not allowed to get into the boats. These were marched away under the guard of the Sepoys.

’93Which way?’94 I inquired. ’93I will show you,’94 said Mr. Lee. Again we took seats in the carriage and started for the climax of desperation and diabolism. Now we are on the way to a summer-house, called the Assembly Rooms, which had been built for recreation and pleasure. It had two rooms, each twenty-nine by ten, and some windowless closets, and here were imprisoned two hundred and six helpless people. It was to become the prison of these women and children. Some of these Sepoys got permission of Nana Sahib to take one or more of these ladies to their own place, on the promise that they should be brought back to the summer garden next morning. A daughter of General Wheeler was so taken and did not return. She afterward married the Mohammedan who had taken her to his tent. Some Sepoys amused themselves by thrusting children through with bayonets and holding them up before their mothers in the summer-house. All the doors closed and the Sepoys standing guard, the crowded women and children waited their doom for eighteen days and nights amid sickness, and flies and stench and starvation.

Then Nana Sahib heard that Havelock was coming, and his name was a terror to the Sepoys. Lest the women and children imprisoned in the summer-house, or Assembly Rooms, should be liberated, he ordered that their throats should be cut. The officers were commanded to do the work, and attempted it, but failed, because the law of caste would not allow the Hindu to hold the victims while they were being slain. Then one hundred men were ordered to fire through the windows, but they fired over the heads of the imprisoned ones, and only a few were killed. Then Nana Sahib was in a rage, and ordered professional butchers from among the lowest of the Gipsies to go at the work. Five of them with hatchets and swords and knives began the work, but three of them collapsed and fainted under the ghastliness, and it was left to two butchers to complete the slaughter. The struggle, the sharp cut, the blinding blow, the cleaving through scalp and skull, the begging for life, the death agony of hour after hour, the tangled limbs of the corpses, the piled-up dead’97only God and those who were inside the summer-house can ever know. The butchers came out exhausted, thinking they had done their work, and the doors were closed. But when they were again opened, three women and three boys were still alive. All these were soon dispatched, and not a Christian or a European was left in Cawnpore. The murderers were paid fifty cents for each lady slain. The Mohammedan assassins dragged by the hair the dead bodies out of the summer-house and threw them into a well, by which I stood with such feelings as you cannot imagine. But after the mutilated bodies had been thrown into the well, the record of the scene remained in hieroglyphics of crimson on the floor and wall of the slaughter-house. An eye-witness says that, as he walked in, the blood was shoe deep, and on this blood were tufts of hair, pieces of muslin, broken combs, fragments of pinafores, children’92s straw hats, a card-case containing a curl with the inscription, ’93Ned’92s hair, with love’94; a few leaves of an Episcopal prayer-book; also a book entitled, ’93Preparation for Death’94; a Bible, on the fly-leaf of which was written ’93For darling mamma, from her affectionate daughter, Isabella Blair’94’97both the one who presented it and the one to whom it was presented departed forever.

I said, ’93Mr. Lee, I have heard that indelicate things were found written on the wall.’94 He answered: ’93No; but these poor creatures wrote in charcoal and scratched on the wall the story of the brutalities they had suffered.’94

When the English and Scotch troops came upon the scene, their wrath was so great that General Neill had the butchers arrested, and before being shot, compelled them to wipe up part of the floor of this place of massacre, this being the worst of their punishment, for there is nothing that a Hindu so hates as to touch blood.

When Havelock came upon the scene, he had this order annulled. The well was now not only full of human bodies, but corpses piled on the outside. The soldiers were for many hours engaged in covering the dead.

It was about five o’92clock in the evening when I came upon this place in Cawnpore. The building in which the massacre took place has been torn down and a garden of exquisite and fragrant flowers surrounds the scene. Mr. Lee pointed out to us about seventy mounds containing bodies or portions of bodies of those not thrown into the well. A soldier stands on guard to keep the foliage and flowers from being ruthlessly pulled. I asked a soldier if I might take a rose as a memento, and he handed me a cluster of roses, red and white, both colors suggestive to me’97the red typical of the carnage there enacted, and the white for the purity of those who from that spot ascended.

But, of course, the most absorbing interest concentered at the well, into which hundreds of women and children were flung or lowered. A circular wall of white marble incloses this well. The wall is about twenty feet high. Inside this wall there is a marble pavement. I paced it, and found it fifty-seven paces around. In the centre of this inclosure, and immediately above the well of the dead, is a sculptured angel of resurrection, with illumined face, and two palm branches, meaning victory. This angel is looking down toward the slumberers beneath, but the two wings suggest the rising of the Last Day. Mighty consolation in marble! They went down under the hatchets of the Sepoys; they shall come up under the trumpet that shall wake the dead. I felt weak and all a-tremble as I stood reading these words on the stone that covers the well: ’93Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, cruelly massacred near this spot by the rebel, Nana Sahib, and thrown, the dying with the dead, into the well beneath, on the 15th day of July, 1857.’94 On the arch of the mausoleum were cut the words, ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation.’94

The sun was sinking beneath the horizon as I came down the seven or eight steps of that palace of a sepulchre, and I bethought myself, ’93No emperor, unless it was Napoleon, ever had more glories around his pillow of dust, and no queen, unless it were the one of Taj Mahal, had reared for her grander mausoleum than crowns the resting-places of the martyrs at Cawnpore. But where rest the bones of the Herod of the nineteenth century, Nana Sahib? No one can tell. Two men sent out to find the whereabouts of the daughter of General Wheeler tracked Nana Sahib during a week’92s ride into the wilderness, and they were told that for a while after the mutiny Nana Sahib set up a little pomp in the jungles. Among a few thousand Hindus and Mohammedans he took for himself the only two tents the neighbors had, while they lived in the rain and mud. Nana Sahib, with one servant carrying an umbrella, would go every day to bathe, and people would go and stare. For some reason, after a while he forsook even that small show of state, and disappeared among the ravines of the Himalaya mountains. He took with him in his flight that which he always took with him’97a ruby of vast value. He wore it as some wear an amulet, on his bosom. The Hindu priest told him as long as he wore that ruby his fortunes would be good, but both the ruby and the prince who wore it have vanished. Not a treasure on the outside of the bosom, but a treasure inside the heart, is the best protection. Solomon, who had rubies in the hilt of swords, and rubies in the lips of the tankards, and rubies in his crown, declared that which Nana Sahib did not find out in time: ’93Wisdom is better than rubies.’94 When the forests of India are cleared by the axes of another civilization, the lost ruby of this Cawnpore monster may be picked up, and be brought back again to blaze among the world’92s jewels. But who shall reclaim for decent sepulture the remains of Nana Sahib? Ask the vultures! Ask the reptiles! Ask the jackals! Ask the midnight Himalayas!

Much criticism has been made of Sir Henry Havelock and Sir Colin Campbell because of the exterminating work they did with these Sepoys. Indeed, it was awful. My escort, Mr. Lee, has told me that he saw the Sepoys fastened to the mouths of cannon, and then the guns would fire, and for a few seconds there would be nothing but smoke, and as the smoke began to lift, fragments of flesh would be found flying through the air. You may do your own criticism. I here express no opinion. There can be no doubt, however, that that mode of finally treating the Sepoys broke the back of the mutiny. It was chosen because it had special terror for the Hindu, who believes that in order to enter his heaven his body must be intact when he dies. The Hindus found that the Europeans could play at the same game which the Asiatics had started. The plot was organized for the murder of all the Europeans and Americans in India. Under its knives and bludgeons American Presbyterianism lost its glorious missionaries, Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, Rev. Mr. and Mrs. MacMullin, Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Freeman. The work of slaughter had been begun in all directions on an appalling scale, and the commanders of the English army made up their minds that this was the best way to stop it. A mild and gentle war with the Sepoys was an impossibility.

The natives of India ever and anon have demonstrated their cruelty. I stood on the very spot in Calcutta where the natives of India in 1756 enacted that scene which no other people on earth could have enacted. The Black Hole prison has been torn down, but a stone pavement twenty feet by twenty indicates the ground covered by the prison. The building had two small windows and was intended for two or three prisoners. These natives of India crowded into that one room of twenty by twenty feet one hundred and forty-six Europeans. The midsummer heat, the suffocation, the trampling of one upon another, the groaning and shrieking and begging and praying of all are matters of history. The Sepoys that night held lights to the small windows and mocked the sufferers. Then all the sounds ceased. That night of June 20, 1756, passed, and one hundred and twenty-three corpses were taken out. Only twenty-three people of the one hundred and forty-six were alive, and they had to be pulled out from under the corpses. Mrs. Carey, who survived, was taken by the Indian Nabob into his harem and kept a prisoner six years. Lucknow in 1857 was only an echo of Calcutta in 1756. During the mutiny of which I have been speaking, natives who had been in the service of Europeans and well treated by them, and with no cause of offense, would at the call of the mutineers and without any compunction stab to death the fathers and mothers of the household and dash out the brains of the children. These natives are at peace now, but give many of them a chance, and they will re-enact the scenes of 1756 and 1857. They look upon the English as conquerors and themselves as conquered. The mutiny of 1857 occurred because the British government was too lenient and put in places of trust and in command of forts too many of the natives. I call upon England to stop the present attempt to placate the natives by allowing them to hold positions of trust. I am no alarmist, but the only way that these Asiatics can be kept from another mutiny is to put them out of power, and I say beware! or the Lucknow and Cawnpore and Delhi martyrdoms over which the hemispheres have wept will be eclipsed by the Lucknow and Cawnpore and Delhi martyrdoms yet to be enacted. I speak of what I have seen and heard. I give the opinion of every intelligent Englishman and Scotchman and Irishman and American whom I met in India. Prevention is better than cure. I do not say it is better that England rule India. I say nothing against the right of India to rule herself. But I do say that the moment the native population of India think there is a possibility of driving back Europeans from India they will make the attempt, and that they have enough vindictiveness and hatred, for the time suppressed, which if let loose would submerge with carnage everything from Calcutta to Bombay, and from the Himalayas to Coromandel.

Now, my friends, go home, after what I have said, to see the beauties of the Mohammedanism and Hinduism, which many think it will be well to have introduced into America; and to dwell upon what natural evolution will do where it has had its unhindered way for thousands of years; and to think upon the wonders of martyrdom for Christ’92s sake; and to pray more earnest prayers for the missionaries, and to contribute more largely for the world’92s evangelization, and to be more assured than ever that the overthrow of the idolatries of nations is such a stupendous work that nothing but an Omnipotent God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ can ever achieve it. Amen!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage