How to Thwart an Army

Following the mutiny, the Contingent quickly appointed a new commanding officer with the rank of General, one Inayat Khan, until then subedar-major of the 1st Infantry Regiment. His appointment was met with the general consensus of the Contingent, and all the positions vacated by the English were swiftly occupied similarly. This newly raised team of officers directed all regiments serving outside Gwalior to immediately return to their headquarters after removing their English officers. The only exception is the 7th Regiment at Neemuch, who were acting against the orders of their leaders in Gwalior and rebelled on the 3rd of June without consulting them first. Instead of returning to Gwalior, they marched with the Bengal Brigade directly to Agra and participated in that rather inconclusive action against the British forces and then marched off to Delhi.
By and large, all the other Gwalior regiments acted as ordered by General Inayat Khan and returned to the Contingent. There was also a concerted effort by the leaders of the Gwalior Contingent to keep it as a fully functional military force. Each regiment continued to guard its colours and emblems. The practice of posting guards, grand rounds and drills continued without exception and were meticulously carried out. The artillery, too, was kept in the best working order, and slackness was not permitted, either in duty or form. They also took steps to produce their own percussion caps with fulminating powder designed for use with the very latest English handguns given out to the regiment.

Paying for Mutiny

However, for finances, they had to rely on Scindia.

The 4.5 lac rupees Macpherson had handed over to Scindia for the upkeep of the Contingent was, in their estimation, rightfully theirs. On the 11th of June, when Scindia took charge of Bhander and Kuchwahgarh, the revenues from these districts were set aside primarily for the Contingent’s use. The contingent’s leaders did have a very precise set of demands they expected Scindia to adhere to, and these were as follows:

a. That the 4.5 lac from the Oorai revenue should be given over to them
b. That he should lead the contingent in an attack on Agra Fort
c. That the Contingent, after conquering Agra on Scindia’s behalf, should be allowed to move freely wherever they chose
d. That in “anticipation of this service, Scindia should give to the contingent a sum of an additional Rs 12 to 15 lacs  when it needed for replenishing supplies and repair of equipment.”

In light of these proposals, Scindia baulked -understanding the political implications this would have for him as he saw the rebels were trying to convince him to use the Contingent to regain the territory his predecessors had lost in the past 30 years to the English. Like many of his Maratha sardars, Scindia was not convinced the English were gone for good. Dinkar Rao believed the company as a whole would never be defeated, and thus Scindia did not see that by acceding to the plans of the rebels. He was, after all, thinking of the future of Gwalior.
As such, Scindia announced his acceptance of the whole contingent into his own personal service, thereby implying he was ready to foot the bill for the upkeep. The rebel leaders saw they were in no position to refuse as the sepoys would quickly throw in their allegiance to a master who promised to pay them directly from his own treasury. It was also a move intended to undermine their own management of the Contingent, leaving them effectively without the autonomy they had so tried to preserve since the outbreak. It also left the sepoys with little scope to act independently against English rule elsewhere in India.
The leaders were very well aware that at no point in time had Scindia stopped communicating with Macpherson or the other officers at Agra and Jabalpur, so they knew his loyalties were far from the rebellion, and forcing him to their side was beyond their power. Yet, to keep the contingent as one body, they needed the sepoys, and the sepoys would only stay if they were paid. So, with great reluctance, they agreed to Scindia’s offer. What they did not reckon with was how far Scindia was prepared to go in his loyalty to the British. His main intention, as agreed to with Macpherson before he left Gwalior on the 15th of June, was to tie down the Contingent in Gwalior until the end of September and prevent them from joining any of the large-scale rebel troop movements in North India until the British had got themselves organised enough to counter-attack. The leaders simply reckoned that with time, Scindia could be won over to their side, but over the next four months, it became increasingly clear he had no intention of doing so.
Scindia and, of course, Dinkar Rao were by far smarter leaders than the rebels gave them credit for, and Scindia was in no way as malleable as Shah Bahadur in Delhi. He had his personal army of 10’000 men, and although many of them would have very much liked to bid the British good riddance, they were invested in the personage of Scindia himself – a personal humiliation of their leader would have essentially been their own failure, and they were not willing to go that far. While there was a distinct possibility the rebel leaders could have turned their artillery against Scindia and bombed the fort to pressure him into switching sides, this again would have been a foolish stratagem – the Contingent would have had to contend with the wrath of Scindia’s private army. There was also a considerable section of the Rajput chiefs in his pay who could have turned against the Contingent, making their position anywhere in Gwalior State untenable.

Scindia Negotiates

Scindia opened up negotiations with the Gwalior Contingent. Aware that the leaders were not inclined to leave Gwalior unless they could do so as one army, and to do so would need his funds. They demanded he place himself at their head and lead them to Agra while they promised to help him regain all of the lost Maharatta territories. If he did not acquiesce to their wishes, they would bombard the fort, plunder his palace and city, empty the treasury and carry Scindia off by force. Scindia listened to them with all earnestness and countered the Gwalior Contingent with an announcement of his own – the men were now under his direct command, and as such, he would provide them with all the funds they needed. It would have been so much easier for Scindia to simply throw in the towel and join the rebels, but he had given his word to Macpherson, and besides, he knew for Gwalior it would be suicidal if he did. The Dewan remained close by his side, pointing out to him daily the folly of giving up now. Then, Scindia did the next best thing – he tied down the Contingent for the next four months.

“The rebels, after the outbreak, had called to be their general a native officer of the 1st Regiment, but the most violent sepoys, in fact, commanded. These troops spent their whole time in councils, Punchayets, courts, and deputations, and the Maharajah was compelled to receive daily ‘ to report’ one of the latter, composed of officers from every corps with privates delegated to watch them bodies of from thirty or forty to a hundred men. They menaced, beseeched, dictated, wheedled, and insulted Scindia by turns. For four months he confronted, defied, flattered, deceived them; above all, through endless arts, kept them at loggerheads..”

The Contingent was caught up in this endless stream of councils, panchayats courts and deputations either among each other or with him and his council, in which they debated whether to go against Scindia, to force Scindia to act or to continue to remain under his tutelage. Every single deputation was accompanied by thirty to 100 “private delegates who would be there to watch over the conduct of their representatives”, and Scindia met with all of them in his palace.” Not once did any of the batteries open fire, and the leaders continued to hold enough control over their men to prevent them from an all-out attack. There was also further internal squabbling.
The Hindu sepoys of the Gwalior Contingent wanted, in July, that the Contingent move closer to Cawnpore and thus to their homeland – however, the Muslims recruited from the Doab region as well as those from Gwalior itself continued to insist the Contingent move to Agra and then onto Delhi. However, the leaders were still determined to hold the Contingent as one body and all of these proposals were rejected. They even refused the formal offers in August of the vakil of the Nana Sahib and the Rani of Jhansi – sent to Scindia – to employ them at least temporarily in their own battles. In spite of offering up large sums of money, the Contigent’s leadership stuck to their lines and sent the vakil packing.
In August, Scindia had to contend with new elements of confusion. The mutineers of Indore and Mhow set up a pretender whom they grandly called a prime minister of the Imperial House of Delhi, and honoured him with a salute of 22 guns, requiring Scindia to pay homage to this “phantom”; but he replied evasively “that his predecessors had so often been deceived that he would wait until the King of Delhi should himself honour Gwalior with His presence.” The Indore and Mhow mutineers were scarcely deceived by Scindia’s answer, and after weeks of delays, they called him a baseless traitor and marched away from Gwalior. In reply, Scindia would make this as difficult as possible: he swept up all the boats on the Chambal River so that those rebels who remained in his territory could not move forward and the others who had already crossed could not return. He further summoned all the chieftains and thakurs with their retainers to Gwalior. As his subjects, he reminded them, their loyalty was not to the Gwalior Contingent but to Scindia himself, and they were now ordered to stand their ground.
Because Scindia was not just a clever statesman but well-versed in the art of war, he knew the Gwalior Contingent could not move if it did not have the means to do so – the easiest thing to do was to remove the means. While he was sowing dissension in the rebel ranks to keep them squabbling, he ordered the removal of all the wheels from the carts in their range and sent all elephants and camels to distant jungles on useless patrols.