CHAPTER XXXIII. THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF PLASSEY. THE news of the outbreak at Meerut, and the proclamation in Delhi, broke upon Calcutta with the shock of a thunderclap. Yet it was not wholly a shock of surprise. For some time there had been vague anticipations of some impending danger. There was alarm in the air. There had long been a prophecy known to India that the hundredth anniversary of the battle of Plassey would see the end of English rule in Hindostan; and now the hundredth anniversary was near. There is a fine passage in Sir Henry Taylor's 'Philip van Artevelde,' in which Van Ryk says to the hero of the drama If you mark, my Lord, Mostly a rumour of such things precedes and Philip musingly answers It is strange-yet true That doubtful knowledge travels with a speed I know not why, when this or that has chanced, The smoke had apparently outrun the flash in many parts of India during this eventful season. Calcutta 1857. PANIC IN CALCUTTA. 69 heard the news of what had happened with wild alarm and horror, but hardly with much surprise. For one or two days Calcutta was a prey to mere panic. The alarm was greatly increased by the fact that the dethroned King of Oudh was established near to the city. At Garden Reach, a few miles down the Hooghly, the dispossessed king was living. There he lived for many years after, with his host of dependents and hangers-on round him. A picturesque writer lately described the 'grotesque structures' in which the old man, with his mania for building, 'quarters not only his people but his menagerie.' "Tower after tower rises high above the lower buildings, on the top of each of which, comfortably quartered in a spacious den, abides a huge Bengal tiger, whose stripes glisten in the sun, in the sight of the passer-by on the river. He owns vast flocks of trained pigeons, which fly or alight at the word of command-wild but not unmusical shouts of coolies stationed on the housetops, who appear to direct their motions by the waving of long bamboos.' The inhabitants of Calcutta, when the news of the mutiny came, were convinced that the King of Oudh harboured close to their city companions more dangerous than pigeons, or even than Bengal tigers. They were sure that the place was the head-quarters of rebellion, and were expecting the moment when, from the residence at Garden Reach, an organised army of murderers was to be sent forth to capture and destroy the ill-fated city, and to make its streets run with the blood of its massacred inhabitants. Lord Canning took the prudent course of having the king, with his prime minister, removed to the Governor-General's own residence within the precincts of Fort William. There is no recklessness, no cruelty, like the cruelty and the recklessness of panic. Perhaps there is hardly any panic so demoralising in its effects as that which seizes the unwarlike members of a ruling race set down in the midst of overwhelming numbers of the subject populations, at a moment when the cry goes abroad that the subjected are rising in rebellion. Fortunately there was at the head of affairs in India a man with a cool head, a quiet, firm will, and a courage that never faltered. If ever the crisis found the man, Lord Canning was the man called for by that crisis in India. He had all the divining genius of the true statesman; the man who can rise to the height of some unexpected and new emergency; and he had the cool courage of a practised conqueror. The greatest trial to which a ruler can be subjected is to be called upon at a moment's notice to deal with events and conditions for which there is no precedent. The second-class statesman, the official statesman, if we may use such an expression, collapses under such a trial. The man of genius finds it his opportunity, and makes his own of it.. Lord Canning thus found his opportunity in the Indian Mutiny. Among all the distracting counsels and wild stories poured in upon him from every side, he kept his mind clear. He never gave way either to anger or to alarm. If he ever showed a little impatience, it was only where panic would too openly have proclaimed itself by counsels of wholesale cruelty. He could not, perhaps, always conceal from frightened people the fact that he rather despised their terrors. Throughout the whole of that excited period there were few names, even among the chiefs of rebellion, on which fiercer denunciation was showered by Englishmen than the name of Lord Canning. Because he would not listen to the bloodthirsty clamours of mere frenzy, he was nicknamed 'Clemency Canning,' as if clemency were an attribute of which a man ought to be ashamed. Indeed, for some time people wrote and spoke, not merely in India but in England, as if clemency were a thing to be reprobated, like treason or crime. Every allowance must be made for the unparalleled excitement of such a time, and in especial for the manner in which the elementary passions of manhood were inflamed by the stories, happily not true, of the wholesale dishonour and barbarous mutilation of women. But when the fullest allowance has been made for all this, it must be said by any one looking back on that painful time, that some of the public instructors of England betrayed a fury and ferocity which no conditions can excuse on the part of civilised and Christian men who have time to reflect before they write or speak. The advices which some English journals showered upon the Government, the army, and all concerned in repressing the mutiny, might more fittingly have come from some of the heroes of the Spanish Fury.' Nay, the Spanish Fury itself was, in express words, held up to the English army as an example for them to imitate. An English paper, of high and well-earned authority, distinctly declared that such mercy as Alva showed the Netherlands was the mercy that English soldiers must show to the rebellious regions of India. There was for a while but little talk of repression. Every one in England well knew that the rebellion would be repressed. It has to be remembered, to the credit of England's national courage and resolve, that not at the worst moment of the crisis did it seem to have occurred to any Englishman that there was the slightest possibility of the rebellion being allowed to succeed. It is painful to have to remember that the talk was not of repression, but of revenge. Public speakers and writers were shrieking out for the vengeance which must be inflicted on India when the rebellion had been put down. For a while it seemed a question of patriotism which would propose the most savage and sanguinary measures of revenge. We shall see farther on that one distinguished English officer was clamorous to have powers given to him to impale, to burn alive, and to flay mutineers who had taken part in the murder of English women. Mr. Disraeli, to do him justice, raised his voice in remonstrance against the wild passions of the hour, even when these passions were strongest and most general. He declared that if such a temper were encouraged we ought to take down from our altars the images of Christ and raise the statue of Moloch there; and he protested against making Nana Sahib, of whom we shall hear more, the model for the conduct of a British officer. Mr. Disraeli did, indeed, at a |