057. Martyrdom at Lucknow

Martyrdom at Lucknow

Deu_20:19 : ’93When thou shalt besiege a city a long time in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an ax against them.’94

The awfulest thing in war is besiegement, for to the work of deadly weapons it adds hunger and starvation and plague. Besiegement is sometimes necessary; but my text commands mercy even in that. The fruit trees must be spared, because they afford food for man. ’93Thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an ax against them.’94 But in my recent journey around the world I found at Lucknow, India, the remains of the most merciless besiegement of the ages; and I proceed to tell you that story for four great reasons: to show you what a horrid thing war is and to make you all advocates for peace; to show you what genuine Christian character is under bombardment; to put a coronation on Christian courage; and to show you how splendidly good people die.

As our train glided into the dimly lighted station, I asked the guard, ’93Is this Lucknow?’94 and he answered, ’93Lucknow;’94 at the pronunciation of which proper name strong emotions rushed through body, mind and soul.

The word is a synonym of suffering, of cruelty, of heroism, of horror such as is suggested by hardly any other word. We have for thirty-five years been reading of the agonies there endured and the daring deeds there witnessed. It was my great desire to have some one who had witnessed the scenes transacted in Lucknow in 1857 conduct us over the place. We found just the man. He was a young soldier at the time the greatest mutiny of the ages broke out, and he took refuge with others inside the Residency, which was a cluster of buildings making a fortress in which the representatives of the English Government lived, and which was to be the scene of an endurance and a bombardment the story of which, poetry and painting and history and secular and sacred eloquence have been trying to depict. Our escort not only had a good memory of what had happened, but had talent enough to rehearse the tragedy.

In the early part of 1857 all over India the natives were ready to break out in rebellion against all foreigners, and especially against the civil and military representatives of the English Government. A half dozen causes are mentioned for the feeling of discontent and insurrection that was evinced throughout India. The most of the causes were mere pretexts. Greased cartridges were no doubt an exasperation. The grease ordered by the English Government to be used on these cartridges was taken from cows or pigs, and grease to the Hindus is unclean, and to bite these cartridges at the loading of the guns would be an offense to the Hindus’92 religion. The leaders of the Hindus said that these greased cartridges were only part of an attempt by the English Government to make the natives give up their religion; hence unbounded indignation was aroused. Another cause of the mutiny was that a large province of India had been annexed to the British Empire, and thousands of officials in the employ of the king of that province were thrown out of position, and they were all ready for trouble-making. Another cause was said to be the bad government exercised by some English officials in India. The simple fact was that the natives of India were a conquered race, and the English were the conquerors. For one hundred years the British sceptre had been waved over India, and the Indians wanted to break that sceptre. There never had been any love or sympathy between the natives of India and the Europeans; there is none now.

Before the time of the great mutiny the English Government risked much power in the hands of the natives. Too many of them manned the forts; too many of them were in governmental employ. And now the time had come for a wide outbreak. The natives had persuaded themselves that they could send the English Government flying, and to accomplish it, dagger and sword and firearms and mutilation and slaughter must do their worst.

It was evident in Lucknow that the natives were about to rise and put to death all the Europeans they could lay their hands on, and into the Residency the Christian population of Lucknow hastened for defense from the tigers in human form which were growling for their victims. The occupants of the Residency, or fort, were, military and non-combatants, men, women and children, in number about one thousand six hundred and ninety-two. I suggest in one sentence some of the chief woes to which they were subjected, when I say that these people were in the Residency five months without a single change of clothing; some of the time the heat at one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty degrees; the place black with flies, and all a-squirm with vermin; firing of the enemy upon them, ceasing neither day nor night; the hospital crowded with the dying; smallpox, scurvy, cholera, adding their work to that of shot and shell; women brought up in all comfort and never having known want, crowded and entombed in a cellar where nine children were born; less and less food; no water except that which was brought from a well under the enemy’92s fire, so that the water obtained was at the price of blood; the stench of the dead horses added to the effluvia of corpses’97and all waiting for the moment when the army of sixty thousand shrieking Hindu devils should break in upon the garrison of the Residency; now reduced by wounds and sickness and death to nine hundred and sixty-seven men, women, and children.

’93Call me early to-morrow morning,’94 I said, ’93and let us be at the Residency before the sun becomes too hot.’94 At seven o’92clock in the morning we left our hotel in Lucknow, and I said to our obliging, gentlemanly escort, ’93Please take us along the road by which Havelock and Outram came to the relief of the Residency.’94 That was the way we went. There was a solemn stillness as we approached the gate of the Residency. Battered and torn is the masonry of the entrance. Signature of shot, and punctuation of cannon ball, all up and down and everywhere. ’93Here to the left,’94 said our escort, ’93are the remains of a building, the first floor of which in other days had been used as a banqueting hall, but then was used as a hospital. At this part the amputations took place, and as the surgeons had no antiseptic appliances, all such patients died. The heat was so great and the food so insufficient that the poor fellows could not recover from the loss of blood; they all died. Amputations were performed without chloroform. All the anaesthetics were exhausted.’94 Sir Henry Lawrence had been in poor health for a long time before the mutiny. He had been in the Indian service for years, and he had started for England to recover his health; but getting as far as Bombay, the English Government requested him to remain at least a while, for he could not be spared in such dangerous times. He came here to Lucknow; and, foreseeing the siege of this Residency, had filled many of the rooms with grain, without which the Residency would have been obliged to surrender. He had the foresight to take also into this Residency rice and sugar and charcoal and fodder for the oxen and hay for the horses. But now, at the time when all the people were looking to him for wisdom and courage, Sir Henry is dying. Our escort describes the scene, unique, tender, beautiful and overpowering; and while I stood on the very spot where the sighs and groans of the besieged and lacerated and broken-hearted met the whizz of bullets, and the demoniac hiss of bursting shell, and the roar of batteries, my escort gave me the particulars.

As soon as Sir Henry was told that he had not many hours to live he asked the chaplain to administer to him the Holy Communion. He felt particularly anxious for the safety of the women in the Residency who, at any moment, might be subjected to the savages who howled around the Residency, their breaking in only a matter of time, unless re-enforcements should come He would frequently say to those who surrounded his death couch, ’93Save the ladies. God help the poor women and children!’94 He gave directions for the desperate defense of the place. He asked forgiveness of all those whom he might unintentionally have neglected or offended. He left a message for all his friends. He forgot not to give direction for the care of his favorite horse. He charged the officers, saying, ’93By no means surrender. Make no treaty or compromise with the desperadoes. Die fighting.’94 He took charge of the asylum he had established for the children of soldiers. He gave directions for his burial, saying, ’93No nonsense, no fuss. Let me be buried with the men.’94 He dictated his own epitaph, which I read above his tomb: ’93Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty. May the Lord have mercy on his soul.’94 He said, ’93I would like to have a passage of Scripture added to the words on my grave such as: ’91To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him’92’97isn’92t it from Daniel?’94 So, as brave a man as England or India ever saw, expired. The soldiers lifted the cover from his face and kissed him before they carried him out. The chaplain offered a prayer. Then they removed the great hero amid the rattling hail of the guns and put him down among other soldiers buried at the same time. All of which I state for the benefit of those who would have us believe that the Christian religion is fit only for women in the eighties and children under seven. There was glory enough in that departure to halo Christendom.

’93There,’94 said our escort, ’93’91Bob the Nailer’92 did the work. ’93Who was ’91Bob the Nailer?’92’93 ’93Oh, he was the African who sat at that point, and when any one of our men ventured across the road he would drop him by a rifle ball. Bob was a sure marksman. The only way to get across the road for water from the well was to wait until his gun flashed and then instantly cross before he had time to load. The only way we could get rid of him was by digging a mine under the house where he was hidden. When the house was blown up ’91Bob the Nailer’92 went with it.’94 I said to him, ’93Had you made up your minds what you and the other sufferers would do in case the fiends actually broke in?’94 ’93Oh, yes,’94 said my escort, ’93we had it all planned, for the probability was every hour for nearly five months that they would break in. You must remember it was one thousand six hundred against sixty thousand, and for the latter part of the time it was nine hundred against sixty thousand, and the Residency and the earthworks around it were not put up for such an attack. It was only from the mercy of God that we were not massacred soon after the besiegement. We were resolved not to allow ourselves to get into the hands of those desperadoes. You must remember that we and all the women had heard of the butchery at Cawnpore, and we knew what defeat meant. If unable to hold out any longer we would have blown ourselves up, and all gone out of life together.’94

’93Show me,’94 I said, ’93the rooms where the women and children staid during those awful months.’94 Then we crossed over and went down into the cellar of the Residency. With a shudder of horror indescribable I entered the cellars where six hundred and twenty-two women and children had been crowded until the whole place was full. I know the exact number, for I counted their names on the roll. As one of the ladies wrote in her diary’97speaking of these women, she said: ’93They lay upon the floor fitting into each other like bits in a puzzle.’94 Wives had obtained from their husbands the promise that the husbands would shoot them rather than let them fall into the hands of the desperadoes. The women within the Residency were kept on the smallest allowance that would maintain life. No opportunity of privacy. The death-angel and the birth-angel touched wings as they passed. Flies, mosquitoes, vermin in full possession of the place, and these women in momentary expectation that the enraged savages would rush upon them, in a violence of which club and sword and torch and throat-cutting would be the milder forms.

Our escort told us again and again of the bravery of these women. They did not despair. They encouraged the soldiery; they waited on the wounded and dying in the hospital; they gave up their stockings for holders of the grape-shot; they solaced each other when their children died. When a husband or father fell such prayers of sympathy were offered as only women can offer. They endured without complaint. They prepared their own children for burial. They were inspiration for the men who stood at their posts fighting till they dropped.

Our escort told us that again and again news had come that Havelock and Outram were on the way to deliver these besieged ones out of their wretchedness. They had received a letter from Havelock, rolled up in a quill and carried in the mouth of a disguised messenger; a letter telling them he was on the way, but the next news was that Havelock had been compelled to retreat. It was constant vacillation between hope and despair. But one day they heard the guns of relief sounding nearer and nearer. Yet all the houses of Lucknow were fortresses filled with armed miscreants, and every step of Havelock and his army was contested’97firing from house-tops; firing from windows; firing from doorways.

I asked our friend if he thought that the world-famous story of a Scotch lass in her delirium thinking she heard the Scotch bagpipes advancing with the Scotch regiment, was a true story. He said he did not know but that it was true. Without this man’92s telling me, I knew from my own observation that delirium sometimes quickens some of the faculties, and I rather think the Scotch lass in her delirium was the first to hear the bagpipes. I decline to believe that class of people who would like to kill all the poetry of the world and banish all the fine sentiment. They tell us that Whittier’92s poem about Barbara Frietchie was founded on a delusion, and that Longfellow’92s poems immortalized things that never occurred. The Scotch lass did hear the slogan. I almost heard it myself as I stood inside the Residency while my escort told of the coming on of the Seventy-eighth Highland Regiment.

’93Were you present when Havelock came in?’94 I asked, for I could suppress the question no longer. His answer came: ’93I was not at the moment present, but with some other young fellows I saw soldiers dancing while two Highland pipers played, and I said, ’91What is all this excitement about?’92 Then we came up and saw that Havelock was in, and Outram was in, and the regiments were pouring in.’94

’93Show us where they came in!’94 I exclaimed, for I knew that they did not enter through the gate of the Residency, that being banked up inside to keep the murderers out. ’93Here it is,’94 answered my escort, ’93here it is’97the embrasure through which the men came.’94 We walked up to the spot. It is now a broken-down pile of bricks a dozen yards from the gate. Long grass now, but then a blood-spattered, bullet-scarred opening in the wall.

As we stood there, although the event was thirty-seven years ago, I saw them come in; Havelock, pale and sick, but triumphant; and Outram, whom all the equestrian statues in Calcutta and Europe cannot too grandly present.

’93What then happened?’94 I said to my escort. ’93Oh,’94 he said, ’93that is impossible to tell. The earth was removed from the gate and soon all the army of relief entered, and some of us laughed and some cried and some prayed and some danced. Highlanders so dust-covered and enough blood and wounds on their faces to make them unrecognizable, snatched the babes out of their mothers’92 arms and kissed them, and passed the babies along for other soldiers to kiss, and the wounded men crawled out of the hospital to join in the cheering, and it was wild jubilee, until the first excitement passed; the story of how many of the advancing army had been slain on the way began to have tearful effect, and the story of suffering that had been endured inside the fort, and the announcement to children that they were fatherless, and to wives that they were widows, submerged the shouts of joy with wailing of agony.’94

’93But were you not embarrassed by the arrival of Havelock and fourteen hundred men who brought no food with them?’94 He answered, ’93Of course, we were put on smaller rations immediately, in order that they might share with us; but we knew that the coming of this re-enforcement would help us to hold the place until further relief should come. Had not this first relief arrived as it did, in a day or two at most, and perhaps in an hour, the besiegers would have broken in and our end would have come. The Sepoys had dug six mines under the Residency and would soon have exploded all.’94

After we had obtained a few bullets that had been picked out of the wall, and a piece of a bombshell, we walked around the eloquent ruins, and put our hands into the scars of the shattered masonry, and explored the cemetery inside the fort, where hundreds of the dead soldiers await the coming of the Lord of hosts at the Last Day, and we could endure no more. My nerves were all a-tremble, and my emotions were wrung out, and I said, ’93Let us go.’94

On the following day I visited the grave of Havelock, about four miles from the Residency. The scenes of hardship and self-sacrifice through which he had passed were too much for mortal endurance, and a few days after Havelock left the Residency which he had relieved, he lay in a tent a-dying, while his son, whom I saw in London on my way here, was reading to the hero the consolatory Scriptures. He had received the message of congratulation from Queen Victoria over his triumphs and had been knighted, and such a reception as England never gave to any man since Wellington came back from Waterloo awaited his return. But he will never again see his native land. He has led his last army, and planned the last battle. Yet he is to gain another victory. He declared it when, in his last hours, he said to General Outram, ’93I die happy and contented. I have for forty years so ruled my life that when death came I might face it without fear. To die is gain.’94 Indeed this was no new sentimentality with him. He once stated that in boyhood, with four companions, he was accustomed to seek the ’93seclusion of one of the dormitories for purposes of devotion, though certain in those days of being branded as Methodists and canting hypocrites.’94 He had in early life been immersed in a Baptist church. He acknowledged God in every victory, and says in one of his despatches that he owes it ’93to the power of the Enfield rifle in British hands, to British pluck, and to the blessing of Almighty God on a most righteous cause.’94 He was accustomed to spend two hours every morning in prayer and Bible-reading, and if the army was to march at eight o’92clock he arose for purposes of religious devotion at six o’92clock. What a speech that was Havelock made to his soldiers as he started for Cawnpore, India: ’93Over two hundred of our race are still alive in Cawnpore. With God’92s help we will save them from death. I am trying you severely, my men; but I know what you are made of.’94 His epitaph is as beautiful and comprehensive as anything I have ever seen, and I copied it then and there, and it is as follows: ’93Here rest the mortal remains of Henry Havelock, Major-General in the British Army and Knight Commander of the Bath, who died at Delkhoosha, Lucknow, of dysentery, produced by the hardships of a campaign in which he achieved immortal fame, on the 24th of November, 1857. He was born on the 5th of April, 1795, at Bishop Wearmouth, County of Durham, England. Entered the army 1815. Came to India 1823, and served there with little interruption till his death. He bore an honorable part in the wars of Burmah, Afghanistan, the Wahvetta campaign of 1843, and the Sutlej of 1845. Retarded by adverse circumstances in a subordinate position, it was the aim of his life to show that the profession of a Christian is consistent with the fullest discharge of the duties of a soldier. He commanded a division in the Persian expedition of 1857. In the terrible convulsions of that year his genius and character were at length fully developed and known to the world. Saved from shipwreck on the Ceylon coast by that Providence which designed him for greater things, he was nominated to the command of the column destined to relieve the brave garrison of Lucknow. This object, after almost superhuman exertion he, by the blessing of God, accomplished. But he was not spared to receive on earth the reward so truly earned. The Divine Master whom he served saw fit to remove him from the sphere of his labor in the moment of his greatest triumphs. He departed to his rest in humble but confident expectation of far greater rewards and honors than those which his country was anxious to bestow. In him the skill of a commander, the courage and devotion of a soldier, the learning of a scholar, the grace of a highly-bred gentleman, and all the social and domestic virtues of a husband, father, and friend were blended together and strengthened, harmonized and adorned by the spirit of a true Christian, the result of the influence of the Holy Spirit on his heart and of a humble reliance on the merits of a crucified Saviour. II. Timothy, 4:7-8: ’91I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.’92 This monument is erected by his sorrowing widow and family.’94 Is not that magnificent?

A plain monument marks Havelock’92s grave. But I said while standing at the sacred place, why does not England take his dust to herself, and in Westminster Abbey make him a pillow? In all her history of wars there is no name so magnetic, yet she has expressed nothing on this man’92s tomb. His widow reared the tombstone. Do you say, ’93Let him sleep in the region where he did his grandest deeds?’94 The same reason would have buried Wellington in Belgium, and Von Moltke at Versailles, and Grant at Vicksburg, and Stonewall Jackson far away from his beloved Lexington, Virginia. Take him home, O England! The rescuer of the men, women and children at Lucknow! Though his ear, now dulled, could not hear the roll of the organ when it sounds through the venerable Abbey the National Anthem, it would hear the same trumpet that brings up from among those sacred walls the form of Outram, his fellow-hero in the overthrow of the Indian mutiny.

Let Parliament make appropriation from the National treasury, and some great warship under some illustrious admiral sail across Mediterranean and Arabian seas and wait at Bombay harbor for the coming of the dust of this conqueror of conquerors; and then, saluted by the shipping of all free nations, let him come under the arches and along the aisles where have been carried the mightiest heroes of many centuries.

Some audiences and some readers are so slow of thought and so stupid that they need an application made of every subject. But the people who get this sermon have made the application for themselves already. I challenge you to say whether or not I have kept my promise when in the opening of this discourse I said I would show you four things: what an awful affair war is; what genuine Christian character is under bombardment; what is the coronation of Christian courage; and how splendidly good people die.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage