Sixty Years a Queen Part 19

Painted in 1859.]

[Sidenote: The Lorcha "Arrow."]

[Sidenote: War with China.]

A dispute had arisen out of circ.u.mstances even more trivial than the question of custody of the Holy Places, which led to the Crimean war.

A vessel termed a "lorcha," lying in the Canton river in October 1856, was boarded by Chinese officials, who took away twelve men accused of piracy, although the lorcha _Arrow_ was flying the British flag. The British Consul at Canton demanded the release of these men, according to the treaty of 1843; but the Chinese Governor Yeh declared that the _Arrow_ was not a British vessel but a Chinese pirate, and refused to comply with the Consul's demand. It was proved, however, that the _Arrow_ had been duly registered as a British vessel, though her registration had actually expired ten days before the arrest of the men.

Mr. Parkes, the British Consul, appealed to Sir John Bowring, British Minister at Hongkong. Bowring was determined to stand no nonsense from the Chinaman: nor was he going to trouble himself whether the _Arrow_ was ent.i.tled to fly the British ensign or not! As a matter of fact, he wrote to Parkes that the expiry of the registration had deprived her owners of the right, but that as the Chinese did not know that, they must be held responsible for insulting the flag. Anyhow, it was enough for Bowring that Chinese officials had dared to take men by force from under that flag, whether it had been hoisted rightfully or wrongfully.

He sent an ultimatum to Yeh, demanding the release of the men and an ample apology within forty-eight hours, or he would begin hostilities.

Yeh released the men, and promised that greater caution should be observed in future, but he refused to apologise, maintaining that the _Arrow_ was in fact a Chinese vessel. Incredible as it may seem that such powers should be vested in a British Minister, and still more so, that he should employ them in such a miserable quarrel, nevertheless Bowring ordered up the fleet and Canton was severely bombarded for several days. Yeh made the tactical blunder of offering a reward for the heads of Englishmen. He got no heads, but he forfeited the respect which England always pays to an honourable foe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._

INTERIOR OF THE GUN-COTTON FACTORY AT WALTHAM ABBEY.

The picture represents the Pulping and Moulding Room. Gun-cotton consists of cotton-waste subjected to the action of nitric acid, washed, boiled, chopped into pulp, and pressed into blocks.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Eyre & Spottiswoode._

BARREL-ROOM AT THE SMALL ARMS FACTORY, ENFIELD.]

[Sidenote: Defeat of the Government, and Dissolution.]

[Sidenote: Palmerston returns to Office.]

There was considerable sensation when the news came to England. Lord Derby moved a vote of censure in the Lords, and the only answer the Lord Chancellor could make to the enquiry whether, supposing a Chinese owner of a Chinese vessel bought a British ensign, that made her a British vessel, was that the Chinese had no right to a.s.sume that the flag was hoisted illegally. The House of Lords supported the Government, but it went worse with them in the Commons. On the motion of Mr. Cobden, Ministers were defeated by a majority of sixteen. Mr. Disraeli had dared the Government to go to the country on the question. "I should like," he had said, in the measured, biting accents of his later manner, "to see the proud leaders of the Liberal party--no reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Pekin invaded!" Palmerston took up the gauntlet; he appealed to the country, and he put his policy--thorough "Jingo," as it would be termed nowadays--before the const.i.tuencies in such sort that he was returned to power stronger than before. Never was a Minister more thoroughly justified in settling his plans for a long spell of office.

But Palmerston himself is said to have observed once that "the life of a Ministry was never worth three months' purchase," of which the fate of his own second Administration was a striking ill.u.s.tration. It lasted just long enough to enable him to announce to the House of Commons in February 1858 that Canton had fallen before a combined English and French force; for the French in the interval had managed to pick a quarrel with the Chinese. A treaty was concluded securing access to the interior of China for Englishmen and Frenchmen, establishing diplomatic relations between England and France and the Court of China, and securing the toleration of Christianity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._

WINDING CORDITE IN THE GOVERNMENT FACTORY.

Cordite is composed of gun-cotton and nitro-glycerine. In the form of greasy cord it is wound on reels, and afterwards cut into lengths.]

On June 25, 1857, the Queen issued Letters Patent conferring on Prince Albert the t.i.tle of Prince Consort, a name which had been popularly applied to him for many years in England, and by which he was known henceforward to the world. The change may seem an unimportant one, but it created some unreasonable dissatisfaction at the time, and the Press of the country betrayed no enthusiasm in its favour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Eyre & Spottiswoode._

MACHINE-GUN SHOP AT THE SMALL ARMS FACTORY, ENFIELD.]

[Sidenote: Startling News from India.]

The transit of news had been greatly accelerated over large tracts of the globe by the use of electricity, but it still took many weeks to convey intelligence between Great Britain and her Empire in India.

Little did the people who a.s.sembled in London on June 23, 1857, to celebrate the centenary of the Battle of Pla.s.sey, by which Bengal was added to the British Dominions, imagine that at that very moment Bengal was the scene of a conflict as mighty in scope as it was horrifying in detail. The story burst upon England with the suddenness of a tornado.

The Sepoy army had risen in revolt, murdered their officers, proclaimed the King of Delhi Emperor of India, and the whole peninsula was in rebellion. There had been awful ma.s.sacres too; English men, women, and children had been slaughtered in hundreds; most hideous of all there were circ.u.mstantial stories of outrage, followed by torture, committed upon our women. A terrible moan for vengeance rose throughout the land.

There were few families who had not relations, or at least friends and acquaintances, among the British communities in India; the suddenness of the news was not the most appalling part of it; it was the ghastly details of the story that so deeply moved the nation. Black and b.l.o.o.d.y as the reality afterwards proved to be, the mutineers were not shown to have been guilty of the worst horrors imputed to them in the early days of the rising. Englishwomen perished as women perished in the worst of mediaeval ma.s.sacres, but they were not subjected to outrage or torture, as was circ.u.mstantially affirmed and universally believed at first.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photographed from examples_} {_in the Tower Armouries._

THE FIRE-ARMS OF THE EARLY YEARS OF HER MAJESTY'S REIGN.

1. "Brown Bess" (smooth-bore flint-lock).

2. Baker's rifle (flint-lock).

3. Baker's rifle, with sword-bayonet.

4. Brunswick rifle (percussion).

5. Minie rifle (1851).

The above were all in use at the time of the Crimean War.]

This great convulsion is always referred to as the Indian Mutiny, because of the violent revolt of so many native regiments in the British service; but it was far more than a mutiny; it was an insurrection of the Indian races against the European conqueror, a common rising of Hindoo and Mahomedan against the Christian power. Disaffection to British rule had never ceased to smoulder: how should it, seeing that so many native rulers had been deposed, so many others placed in inglorious dependency or on pension? The misrule and oppression of these potentates had been forgotten by the people who once groaned under them, just as the Jacobites who shouted for "the auld Stuarts back again" forgot what the people had endured under the Stuart kings. Dost Mahomed had shown an example how the Feringhi could be dealt with, and there were a thousand grievances against English officers and magistrates to be wiped out.

Lord Dalhousie had resigned the Governor-Generalship in March 1856, and his eight years of rule had been regulated by a policy of annexation.

Deeply penetrated with the capacity of the Indian races and their country for moral and material development, he perceived how fatal was the native system of rule to all progress. Consequently he was not rigidly scrupulous in every case about the precise justice of the means by which one princ.i.p.ality after another was added to the British dominions. The greatest happiness of the greatest number often involves disappointment and even direct injury to the few. Dalhousie vindicated his policy by the splendid energy he showed in making roads, railways, and telegraphs, in reducing taxation, and in general measures for the good of the people; but he undoubtedly left a feeling of soreness and resentment that only waited a fitting opportunity to take effect.

Out of this discontent arose a widespread conspiracy against British rule in the beginning of 1857. It is believed by some that the military rising was premature, and disconcerted the measures of those organising the general revolt. Be that as it may, the earliest overt acts of rebellion took place among the troops.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photographed from examples_} {_in the Tower Armouries._

THE RIFLES OF THE LATER YEARS OF HER MAJESTY'S REIGN.

6. Enfield long rifle (1853).

7. Snider-Enfield rifle (1864).

8. Martini-Henry rifle (1871).

9. Lee-Metford magazine rifle, with short sword-bayonet (the present regulation weapon).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._

CYCLIST CORPS.

The value of the bicycle in actual warfare has yet to be proved; but, like the field telegraph and the military balloon, it has already taken its place in the equipment of European Armies. The Corps represented is the 2nd V.B. West Kent Regiment.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._

"TROOPING THE COLOURS" ON HER MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY.

The annual "trooping of the colours" of the Household Troops on the Horse Guards Parade is the prettiest military pageant to be seen nowadays in London.]

[Sidenote: Rising at Meerut.]

The effect of the Minie rifle, carried by some of the Russian troops in the Crimea, had been so remarkable, that the British military authorities had decided that the day of "Brown Bess"--the smooth-bore musket--had gone by. In common with the rest of the forces, therefore, the Enfield rifle was served out to the Indian troops in 1856. Now the paper of the cartridges used in this weapon was greased, and the idea was industriously circulated among the Sepoys that the lubricant used was a mixture of the fat of cows and pigs--a most ingenious falsehood, if falsehood it were--a most unlucky fact, if fact it were--for the native troops were composed partly of Mahomedans, to whom, of all animals, the hog is most loathsome, and partly of Hindoos, by whom, of all animals, the cow is held most sacred. Falsehood or fact, the story served a sinister purpose, for although the issue of the objectionable cartridges was stopped in January, and Lord Canning, the Governor-General, issued a Proclamation in May to the Army of Bengal, declaring that the story of an intentional affront to religion and caste on the part of the Government was utterly groundless, the early months of 1857 witnessed repeated instances of military insubordination, and some of the native regiments had to be disbanded. On Sat.u.r.day, May 9, eighty-five men of the Bengal Cavalry were sentenced at Meerut to long periods of imprisonment and hard labour for refusing to use the cartridges issued to them. Next day, Sunday, the whole native garrison at Meerut, the largest military station in India, mutinied, killed several of their officers, ma.s.sacred some Europeans, and breaking open the gaol, released their imprisoned comrades. The European troops at Meerut drove them out of their cantonments; but allowed the mutineers to march to Delhi, where the octogenarian representative of the Great Mogul still held his court as a subject of Queen Victoria and pensioner of the East India Company. This old man they proclaimed Emperor of India, and the military mutiny a.s.sumed at once the character of national rebellion.

All the patriotism that had been outraged, all the aspirations that had been crushed, all the private interests that had suffered by Lord Dalhousie's annexation of the Punjab, of Oude, of Sattara, and of Jhansi, found their outlet and opportunity in the mutiny of the garrison of Meerut. The great Koh-i-noor diamond, symbol of the sovereignty of Lah.o.r.e, had been displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851: the diamond might be gone beyond recall, but the tyranny of the Sikh Ameers had pa.s.sed from memory also, and a resolute effort might restore them. There are known various modes of pre-historic telegraph. In the Scottish Highlands of old the fiery cross, pa.s.sed from hamlet to hamlet, summoned the clansmen to arms; on the Borders the bale-fires leapt from height to height to rouse the land: not less sure and hardly less swift was the symbol of "chupatties," little unleavened cakes, of which two were left with the head man of each village of Northern India on an appointed morning, with directions to make similar cakes and pa.s.s them on. When the standard of rebellion was hoisted on the citadel of Delhi, the train had been laid and all was in readiness for an explosion which should shatter to fragments British rule in India.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Chevalier L. W. Desanges._} {_In the Victoria Cross Gallery, Crystal Palace._

THE BATTLE OF KOOSHAB, February 8, 1857.

The Persian War of 1856-1857 was undertaken to establish the independence of Afghanistan, and the Persians were defeated in an action at Kooshab, about forty-four miles from Bushire. When the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry charged the enemy's square, Lieut. Moore, who was foremost, leapt into the square and had his horse killed under him.

Lieut. Malcolmson fought his way to his brother officer and rescued him.

Both officers were awarded the Victoria Cross.]