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and India was a large country. No one but a handful of men – Roland Everlee and Anthony Weaver
evidently among them – saw the potential for the violence to become widespread.
And the truly strange thing is that when it did, the mutineers appeared to have no plan.
They chose Cawnpore, a middling sized station, seemingly at random. It was relatively unguarded,
since the majority of the men had been drawn to other parts of the district that were thought to be in
greater danger. The station quickly fell under siege and remained that way for weeks.
Rayley could only surmise that for those trapped within the walls of the city, waiting for
help must have felt like hell. They were half-starved, lacking all medical care, shot at if they dared to
move near a door or window. But those within Cawnpore, terrified though they might be, must have
considered themselves the lucky ones. The stories from the countryside just outside the station walls
were far worse. Women hacked to death, thrown from windows to slowly die of their injuries in the
heat. Children hoisted on the points of swords, babies run through with rapiers. An old man set fire
to in his sickbed, a woman strangled while in the very process of giving birth.
Help was only two days away, but they didn’t know it. Three boatloads of English
attempted to escape Cawnpore at night, by the river. One hundred twenty-five men, women, and
children. Two boats were overtaken at once, the occupants slaughtered on the spot, until it was said
the river ran red with blood. The majority of the bodies, most dead but some reportedly still living,
were thrown down the Cawnpore well.
The boat which escaped was captured less than a mile up river, by a different branch of
the rebellion. Its passengers, almost exclusively women and children, were not killed but were rather
taken hostage and kept in a large schoolhouse. Perhaps a bit of hope flourished among these
survivors. They had certainly seen what had happened to the others but as the days went by and they
were still alive, it is possible they began to convince themselves that redemption was at hand. Their
husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers were returning from their various posts, spurred on by reports of
the horrors. They must have thought that the rebels intended to use them as bargaining chips, a way to
force the hand of the Raj into granting at least some of their demands.
Who can say why even that slight hope was not granted? The mutineers were a
disorganized army, subdivided into many groups, some more militant than others, all with their
separate aims. Perhaps the bloodthirsty lot that had killed the civilians in the other two boats caught
up with the branch that was more inclined toward hostage swapping and took matters into their own
hands. Perhaps the kidnappers got tired of waiting for their demands to be met. Either way, at some
point, prompted by apparently no particular incident, the school was overrun.
Stories of precisely what happened next varied. All were horrid. There were rumors
that the women were raped, which likely were true. Rumors that they were crucified, which likely
were not. Stories of women hanged by their hair, children bundled together and burned alive. There
are some among the Raj who still believe that the youngest English children were taken as slaves and
lived to this day among the natives, now adults and with no memory of their former families. But
whatever happened, it was a scene tailor made for revenge. The army arrived within hours of the
slaughter to find a schoolhouse splattered with blood, a well now so full of corpses that it was said
the stench traveled for miles. The mutineers were forced to lick the blood from the floorboards
before being executed and the number of Indians killed in retaliation for Cawnpore was reported in
Rayley’s papers to be “inexact.”
Inexact. That meant thousands. At least ten times the number of English who had
perished, this Rayley knew without question. Descriptions of men shot from cannons… or rather
strapped over the mouths of cannons that were then fired, obliterating the victims in the most