The 4th of January

If the people of Farrukhabad required any extra encouragement in their decision, the next morning, the 93rd Highlanders were ordered to parade in fighting order. They had not marched a mile when Colonel Leith-Hay rode up and said the terms had been complied with, and the 93rd were no longer needed.
As they stepped down, the Sikhs of the Punjab cavalry were carrying the mortal remains of Lieutenant Younghusband to his grave in the churchyard at Fatehgarh Fort. Reverend Mackay, General Wyndham, Brigadier Little, Captain Peel, and some of their staff, along with Younghusband’s men and the officers of the Punjab Cavalry, all attended; the Sikhs wept and said he had led them in their last battle. Anson and the 9th Lancers had all sworn to go, but they were sent off on duty, patrolling Farrukhabad.

When the funeral was over, the officers decided to make their way to Farrukhabad to witness “Hanging Power” at work, and it was very ugly indeed. The district was no longer under martial law since the final defeat of the Gwalior Contingent on the 6th of December; civil power had retaken authority on the right bank of the Ganges. Effectively, this gave civilian magistrates like John Power the upper hand when dealing with people suspected of any sort of wrongdoing. “This merely meant,” observed Forbes-Mitchell, “that the hangman’s noose was to be substituted for rifle bullets and bayonets.” The Nazir was brought out, tied hand and foot to a charpoy and carried by coolies. His trial was cursory at best and could not have lasted even a day. Power found him guilty of the murders of the Europeans at Fatehgarh and of mutiny; he was sentenced to be hanged the next day at sunset.

“There is a principal street which runs through the whole length of the town, which is divided by six or seven gateways, some very handsome. Close to the middle one grew a fine tree, and this, from its central position, was chosen for the place of execution, one of the branches of the tree being made use of for the gallows. We found an immense crowd collected, both of natives and inhabitants and of the idlers from the camp, besides a considerable military force to maintain order.” (Jones)
Tied to the charpoy, the Nazir was forced to endure the wrath of the crowd and the soldiers gathered. The sailors, with the sanction of Mr Power, “had what they considered the satisfaction of cramming some pieces of pork down his reluctant throat” (Mackay). Others grabbed his hair, rubbed dirt on his face, and smeared his body with pig’s fat. Among the officers present were Wyndham, Hope Grant, Little, Adrian Hope, William Peel, Powys, Steele, Sarel, Anson and Jones, among others, and the Reverend Mackay.

“One would have thought that, on so serious an occasion as that of an execution, especially of a person of rank, there would have been some decorum and decency of behaviour; but on the contrary, most people seemed to think very lightly of it and were cutting their gibes and cracking their jokes. Some country people came up with some poultry, which was seized and sold by a mock auction, by an officer acting as auctioneer; in the middle of which good fun the guard with the convict arrived. He was tied down on a charpoy and carried under the fatal tree, upon which he cast an anxious look when he saw the noose suspended therefrom. He was then stripped, flogged, and hanged. He had on a handsome shawl, which an officer took possession of on the spot, an action which requires no comment.” (Jones)

The rope was tied improperly by the sweepers to whom the task had been given and on the first attempt to hang the Nazir, it broke. He fell to the ground and broke his nose. The European soldiers dragged him to his feet, “The man behaved with great firmness. While the rope was being adjusted, a soldier struck him on the face; upon which he turned round with great fierceness, and said—’ Had I had a sword in my hand, you dared not have struck that blow:’ his last words before he was launched into eternity.” The scene was so horrible and barbaric, that while the defilement of the prisoner was going on, Peel and Sir Colin Campbell, among others, complained that it was unnecessary, repulsive, and barbaric; Power replied that he deemed it necessary that his punishment should be ‘exemplary.’

The District “Pacified.”

On the 3rd of January, Colonel Seaton, with his convoy, was at Bewar, 15 miles (ca. 24 km) on the Fatehgarh road, waiting for General Walpole, who arrived on the 5th — on the 7th, they marched into camp. Seaton, whose duties as commander had effectively concluded with Walpole’s arrival, would see his last duty of ferrying the convoy across the river before reverting to being a “simple colonel of the 1st Fusiliers.” The guns, sappers, and cavalry struck off to join their respective regiments, and Seaton would spend the next few weeks in Fatehgarh, riding about the cantonments and the fort.
With him came Emery Churcher, one-time commissioner of Etah, now back in Fatehgarh to find out the fate of his brothers.
With the arrival of the convoy and the two forces, Sir Colin Campbell now had 10’000 men and enough supplies to invade Rohilkhand and put the rebels to the test. However, Calcutta had other ideas. Under Canning’s insistence, Lucknow was still the main objective; no matter what arguments Campbell now put forward, the answer was always the same – take back Lucknow. However, cautious to the last degree, Campbell decided that before he left Fatehgarh, there would be no force left in the district that could take him by surprise. He wasted little time, and on the 6th of January, the rest at Fathegarh was, for at least some of his force, over. With them would ride Mr Power.

“My squadron is off with Brigadier Hope’s Brigade to burn a place called Mhow about fourteen miles from this we are likely to away some days” (Anson)

For this particular expedition, Hope’s Brigade consisted of the 93rd and 42nd Highlanders and was reinforced by a squadron of the 9th Lancers, a regiment of Punjab infantry, Hodson’s Horse, a battery of Horse Artillery and Lieutenant Young with an 8-inch howitzer and a 24-pounder with 30 men of the Naval Brigade. The 53rd remained behind in Fatehgarh. Verney noted the sailors went to Mhow to “procure rum”, but the duty on hand was hardly so innocent nor was it a punitive expedition.
There appeared to be no hurry in taking the place: the force only marched 8 miles on the 6th; owing to the bad roads, the baggage and tents lagged far behind. The next day, they encamped on the outskirts of the town. The former native revenue collector had declared himself Raja of the district and maintained for some months a band of malcontents as his army. Expecting this “hotbed of rebels” to put up a serious fight, the brigade was surprised when they approached it, not a single shot was fired. Anyone who had had any sense had run for his life, as far away from Mhow as possible. Power, with his civil police, marched into the town, and the arrests began, including the self-proclaimed Raja. Forbes-Mitchell, in the company of 93rd, a squadron of Hodson’s Horse and two artillery guns formed Power’s guard at the town square, where he held his court. In what was quickly becoming Power’s style, the trials were short and served only one purpose -to find everyone guilty.
“…they were marched up in batches, and shortly after marched back again to a large tree of the banian species, which stood in the centre of the square, and hanged thereon. This went on from about three o’clock in the afternoon till daylight the following morning, when it was reported that there was no more room on the tree, and by that time, one hundred and thirty men were hanging from its branches. A grim spectacle indeed!”
To lend his mock trials and executions the spectacle he so coveted, Power called on the men of the 93rd. He wanted one of them to act as a hangman and offered the volunteer as a prize, any money or jewellery he found on the condemned man. No one volunteered. Stepping up to a large Highlander, Jack Brian by name, who seemed in Power’s eye to fit the image of an executioner, he asked Brian to be the volunteer. Brian took a step back and, with a look of disgust, said, “What do ye tak’ us for? We of the 93rd enlisted to fight men with arms in their hands. I widna’ become yer hangman for all the loot in India!” Close by stood Hodson, who had come up to see how his squadron was doing. He smiled at Power’s discomfort and shook Brian by the hand. Then, turning to Captain Dawson, said, “I’m sick of work of this kind. I’m glad I am not on duty.” He then mounted his horse and rode off. Power, however, was not bereft of executioners – he found plenty of them among Mhow’s sweepers, who were more than glad to receive their unjust reward. While the executions proceeded, Power ordered fatigue parties to destroy all the houses and property belonging to the men he was hanging. The sappers blew them to bits.
Meanwhile, Anson was having his misgivings about this expedition. As he rightly surmised, he did not believe there was “any force of the enemy within hundred miles of us this side of the river.” What was happening on the other side was anyone’s guess, but here, the country was quite empty of mutineers. His men were bored – when visiting his picquet of a sergeant and twelve men, he found five of them and the sergeant drunk. Regardless of whether there were any mutineers or not, the picquet would have been, in its present state, unable to watch out for them, much less act with any efficiency. Furious, Anson ordered the sergeant to be tried by court-martial and the others to be severely punished.
Mhow offered something else for the brigade, and that was plunder. Before the sappers could get to the houses, the brigade picked them over.
Meanwhile, Power continued his work. On the 10th of January, Anson noted:
“There were fourteen men hung, or rather tortured to death (some of them), in the town here yesterday afternoon. One fat Patan was pinioned and taken to a rather low branch of a fine tree and lifted up like a stuffed dummy to the noose, into which he himself was very anxious to put his own head. However, it was just out of reach, so the people hanging him got two small morahs and, putting one on the top of the other, stood, with the doomed on the topmost one; but the morah slipping down, they all came a heavy fall, especially for the pinioned Patan. Well, they put a piece of wood between the morahs, but this proved also a failure, so, at last, they got an elephant, hoisted the doomed man on upon him, adjusted the rope, and the elephant walked away, leaving the man to slip into eternity. He must have died a most painful death, for there was no proper knot on the rope, and he had nothing of a drop to help break his neck. Only fancy, fourteen hanging at the same time close to one another, some dead, and some living, and it being very difficult to distinguish between the two.” On the 11th, they began their march back to Fatehgarh, but Power was still not done – at every village on the route, he found yet more men to hang but spared even less time for trials than he had in Mhow.
“Here we are halfway back to Futtyghur …We marched at seven this morning, and, going through the village, I saw one of the most remarkable sights I ever in my life beheld; no less than twenty men all
hanging naked to one tree, besides three or four others hanging to different trees close by. I thought for a moment that I was in Madame Tussaud’s wax exhibition in Baker Street. I cannot describe to you what a queer sight it was, seeing twenty fat and lean fellows all hanging pendulous on one tree.” (Anson)