Loot and Looters

Looting a conquered city was not a new-fangled phenomenon but one that had raged on through millennia, nor during the mutiny, was it a past time exclusive to the British. After the Battle of Najafgarh, no one was more surprised than they were to find the mutineers had been carting along with them boxes filled with European ladies’ dresses and an English buggy. Every station was systematically plundered – after his home was looted in Bulandshahr, Brand Sapte found many of his possessions at Malagarh Fort, including a box of his underthings and his wife’s jewel case. Following the sacking of homes in Delhi in May, much of the loot found its way into the bazaar; in Neemuch, one of the civilians ended up purchasing back his own furniture, stolen from his house, from the shop of a merchant. The mutineers were notorious for plundering villages, sacking the homes of nobles who refused to fall in with their cause and leaving destruction in their wake.
Those British soldiers who had served at Delhi knew full well they would most likely never see a penny of the prize money they had been hoping for, and they were right. What was finally paid out, years after the siege was over, was trifling. The vast amount of treasure accumulated at Delhi ended up in governmental coffers and in private accounts. Just how rampant the problem was was illustrated by the Banda-Kirwi Prize Money Case, where men who had not even participated in the Central India Campaign received extremely handsome payouts, Sir Colin Campbell being one of them. The plunder collected at Lucknow would eventually be valued at a million and a quarter sterling in the money of the day, but the soldiers received Rs. 17.80 for the capture of the city. What became of the £300’000 of treasure found at Bithur was anyone’s guess. There was little doubt that the prize-agents themselves were not adverse to helping themselves from the till, and certain “small caskets in battered cases” found their way back to England to raise debt-ridden estates out of dire straits.

On the scene in Lucknow was a man who was no stranger to war – William Russell – who had covered the Crimean War in all its gore and blood. His cushy appointment in India, where he was given free rein by Sir Colin Campbell to more or less report as he pleased, as long as it pleased Sir Colin, the destruction of Lucknow did have a direct witness. However, Russell was also not adverse to certain embellishments, such as reporting the death by strangulation of a man in Fatehgarh when he had not witnessed it, jumbling his story together with others told to him well after the fact, to create a narrative so far from the truth it should be viewed as fiction. Gordon Alexander certainly believed so, but on the other hand, Alexander himself was not adverse to a little fantasy of his own and his claim that not a single man of the left wing of the 93rd ever held plunder in his hands in Lucknow should be taken for what it is – a recollection written well after the fact. Forbes-Mitchell is perhaps closer to the truth when he says the 93rd did not get as much plunder as others:

“The Sikhs and Goorkhas were by far the most proficient plunderers, because they instinctively knew
where to look for the most valuable loot. The European soldiers did not understand the business, and articles that might have proved a fortune to many were readily parted with for a few rupees in cash and a bottle of grog.”

While at the Muslam-au-Duala palace, where Alexander and half his company had been left on guard, an old woman, who had once been in employ there, turned up one night at the gates, demanding to see the officer in charge. Without the regimental interpreter on hand, the cookboy took his place and, after much back and forth, informed Alexander that the woman, who bore a grudge against her late employer, wanted to show the officer where he had hidden his treasure. As old women were at this time not to be trusted (in an incident which will be related later) and worried this was just a ruse to separate him from his men before an attack, Alexander only allowed a sergeant with ten men and a company of pioneers with the pick axes and tools the woman insisted they would need – their instructions were to follow her carefully, keeping an eye out for ambushes and only partially open up anything the woman pointed out. They were then to mount a guard over their find and keep her as a prisoner until Alexander could come and see things for himself.
At daylight, Alexander was informed they had indeed found something, and it would be worth his while to take a look. It turned out to be a room in a building some quarter mile from the post, where the night before the pioneers had, on the woman’s instructions, shattered a false wall, behind which was concealed a “lofty wooden doorway…” Alexander examined it himself and ordered the remaining wall to be taken down.

“Within I found a very dry storeroom about 14 feet square and rather lofty, fitted on three sides with
shelves, at a distance of 3 feet apart, right up to the ceiling. These shelves were crowded with valuables, such as great cases containing the finest Kashmir shawls, silver – mounted and jewelled swords and other weapons, a solid gold casket, divided into compartments exactly like a British kitchen spice-box, which I carried myself, and handed over to the prize- agent, each compartment being quite full of gems, such as diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The box, as the prize agent informed me, was called a pandan, or receptacle for the ingredients necessary to preparing the bítul-nut for chewing purposes, as our sailors chew tobacco. Another curious find was that of numerous tiaras, equivalent to the coronets of our peers, studded with precious stones, including diamonds, but made of a flimsy sort of cardboard, covered with silk velvet of various colours. Sending a messenger to report my find to the prize-agent, I waited his arrival, and shortly afterwards made the acquaintance of himself and his assistant, my find being deemed of such value that both officials came to take it over. I obtained permission to retain a brass sword-cane as a souvenir, and accompanied the two officials to receive my receipt for the treasure, an acknowledgement which I insisted upon, although the prize-agent himself informed me that such receipts were never asked for. I pressed the prize-agent, however, to give me a rough estimate of my prize, and he informed me that he thought it could not be less than three lakhs of rupees, £30,000. My own souvenir of the find was, perhaps, worth two shillings.”

Collecting souvenirs was not restricted to Alexander. In many of the personal accounts, the men who wrote them call themselves “hopeless” at plundering (Ruutz Rees, who was looking for eatables, and was sorry he did not stuff his boots with trinkets from the Chattar Manzil), undecided plunderers (Major Anson, in deciding whether bronze figurines of Indian deities presented to him by a fellow officer as toys for his children would perhaps turn them all into atheists) and Lang who upon seeing a man holding up a bag of jewels as big as his head, was saddened that he did possess a bold enough spirit to partake in plundering. They might well have seen plundering as something beneath their own natures, but they did not begrudge others for indulging in it. Lang remarked that an officer in the tent next to his enriched himself to the tune of Rs 30’000 in diamonds, rubies and pearls. Oliver Jones, stating he had not come to India to make money, helped himself to a handsome sword while General Mansfield, irritated that the men had destroyed a quantity of jade bowls, was brought a few undamaged pieces by another officer as a gift. Even Russell, who wrote extensively on the looting of Lucknow, was not above accepting a “gift” from a soldier who was making off with a box of jewels. “That which fell to my share was a nose ring of small rubies and pearls, with a single stone diamond drop. My friend was made happy with a very handsome brooch, consisting of a large butterfly, with opal and diamond wings.” Back at camp, Russell’s servant, Simon, was doing a roaring trade weighing out gold and silver, “…for natives who had already returned with or got plunder from the soldiers. For days the chink, chink of his scales never ceased. He had a percentage for weighing…”

It was not until the 28th of March that the order was given that plundering was to cease completely and everything handed over to the prize-agents, only after part of the army had been dispersed. However, Alexander saw it all as a half-measure, and in respect of the prize-agents themselves, he was not wrong.

“I myself was on a court-martial which sentenced two men to be flogged for secreting one or two valuable Kashmir shawls, instead of handing them over for delivery to the prize agent. This strict discipline in the matter of looting was most necessary and proper; but as the Commander – in – Chief gave his personal attention to the enforcement of his orders against individual plundering, it behoved him all the more to watch over the manner in which the prize -agents performed their duty towards the army, especially as to the strictness with which their inventories were made out, the methods they employed for the disposal of the prizes to the best advantage, and the exhaustive nature of the final accounts rendered to the military authorities. That none of these precautions were taken was a great scandal, the full effects of which we shall not realise until a British army has tarnished its reputation in some future great war by throwing discipline to the winds during the sack of some wealthy city.”