Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1884 — THE MASSACRE OF CAWNPORE. [ARTICLE]

THE MASSACRE OF CAWNPORE.

A Vizit to the Scene o t “The Blackest Crime hi Unman History.” Cawnpore is a thriving manufacturing city of some 125,000 inhabitants. In commercial importance it is only second to Calcutta and Bombay. It furnishes the railways centering here with more traffic than any two or three interior towns pat together. Its greatest notoriety, however, is associated with its past. Here was perpetrated what many have called “the blackest crime in human history,” the horrible Cawnpore massacre. I shall only review the incidents of this massacre, which are necessary in connection with my visitation of the scenes which it involved. Early one morning after Chota Hazree, I rode over to the Memorial Church in company with a citizen. The Memorial Church, as the name implies, is an edifice of the state religion, erected near the scene of the memorable resistance of Gen. Wheeler. Just without the church was the intrenchment of 1857, a miserable mud wall about four feet high, every vestige of which has disappeared. Here 1,000 persons defended themselves for twen-ty-two days against the hottest kind of a fire from thousands of blood-thirsty pagan foes Of the number 560 were women and children, and only 440 men. The sufferings of these women and children are almost beyond belief. They had no shelter Except such as their distraught male protectors could provide for them. The thermometer went up to 140 degrees in the shade, and the sun’s rays penetrated every part of the intrenchment. Many perished from sunstroke or disease. Their food was scarcely sufficient to keep them alive. "When they wanted water they had to risk their lives i y venturing out to a well, w hich is still to be seen here, in plain view of the enemy. Shot and shell wrought sad mischief until the 27th of June, when the men ordered a semi-surrender, chiefly out of consideration for the dyiDg women and children. The Nana Sahib, leader of the Sepoy mutineers, had promised to honorably couduct the party to the Ganges, embark them, and send them down the river in perfect safety. Accordingly the people who were not sick emerged from the intrenchment and confided themselves to the protection of the treacherous Nana. It was understood the sick should be returned for.

The eager prisoners marched down to the river, and embarked from the Gate Chowra Ghat. No sooner had they been loaded upon the boats tliau hundreds of unseen natives opened fire upon them. Their boats were stranded, and though they did their best to return the fire and get off they could but become easy victims to this, the foulest instance of treachery on record in military history. Only three men in all that company of 1,000 escaped death, and but 206 women and children were left. Among the massacred were a few Americans. These 206 women and children were then dragged to a building which has gone down into history as the House of Massacre. They were crowded into two small rooms, twenty by ten feet in dimensions, and kept there until July 15, when, by the order of this same Nana, they were every one slaughtered. Nana had heard of Gen. Havelock’s advance, and, while he boasted of the strength to vanquish him in battle, he gave orders that this most shocking deed should be carried into execution, lest by any chance a rescue should be effected. But even the cruel Sepoys rebelled at the thought of such a crime, and Nana had to hire five butcher? of the city to enter the house and professionally carry out his will. This they did, the five men consuming an hour and a half in taking the 206 lives. They were paid one rupee per victim, or, in Amerioan money, about SBS jointly, for the bloody deed. Then, by order of Nana, the mangled bodies were dragged to a well in the immediate vicinity, and cast down, the dying with the dead, into its crimson waters fifty feet below! It is a matter of regret to every sympathetic traveler to know that this inhuman monster Nana soon after disappeared, and has never since been heard from; so that he probably escaped the punishment he merited. When Gen. Havelock, the pious soldier, at length arrived at Oawnpore, and repaired to this assembly-room, he found himself just thirty-six hours too late. The floor was still nearly ankle deep with coagulating blood, while shreds of flesh and tufts of hair told of the barbarous violence that had been administered. The cuts on the wall made with the butchers’ knives were low down, showing how the poor victims had crouched before their assailants. In the meantime the sick who had been left behind at the intrenehments had also been slaughtered. There were many other massacres in the country round about, that were aB shocking, but none that were so wholesale. I have talked with men here who saw as mere boys the forms of European women cut open, a bottle of gunpowder inserted while they were still alive, and then the whole body blown to atoms.— Cor. New Orleans Times-Democrat.