Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (50 page)

In the new year, Sir Hugh Rose, in the process of mopping up the remaining rebel encampments, set off for Jhansi. It was time for the Rani to put aside the peaceful mien of Lakshmi and mount the tiger of Durga. To this end she began to recruit a large army of her own, securing fourteen thousand volunteers from a population of some two hundred and twenty thousand, as well as fifteen hundred sepoys. She also strengthened the defences of the city itself. The siege of Jhansi began on 20 March 1858. One eyewitness, an Indian, told of the fierce British fire, including ‘red-hot balls’ which thundered over the city walls ‘like the rains in autumn’.
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An attempt by Tatya Tope to relieve Jhansi from Kalpi, ended in a disastrous defeat at the Betwa river, with many Indian casualties, or as Thomas Lowe put it: ‘a bloody day for not a man of the enemy asked for quarter or received it’.
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Jhansi, it seemed, stood alone, with Rose determined not to allow the rebels to
escape (as had happened at certain other fortresses
en route
) and the Rani, supported by the inhabitants, determined not to surrender.

On the British side, the energetic quality of the defence, Indian soldiers scurrying about with more vigour than they had ever been seen to display under British orders, was especially noted. ‘They worked like bees,’ wrote Lowe, apparently surprised. The women of Jhansi, organized by the Rani, joined in; they were seen by the British working the batteries, carrying ammunition and otherwise bringing food and water to the soldiers.
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As for the Rani herself, whose standard flew proudly from one white turret, she was constantly visible both to her own followers and to the enemy. To the one she was a source of encouragement, to the other not entirely a source of abhorrence for all the mutterings of ‘Jezebel’: for already the strange double standard which could sometimes protect a Warrior Queen, where it would not protect her male counterpart, was in operation. There was wonderment and even admiration there too.

It is said that one of the bombardiers told Rose that ‘he had covered the Queen and her ladies with his gun’; he asked permission to fire. To this Rose chivalrously replied that he did not approve of that kind of warfare.
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Yet this was a woman who, it is suggested, would have been executed if she had been captured. There is certainly, from this point on, a dichotomy between the reactions of the soldiers who fought against her – who, in sum, admired her for her pluck, ‘a perfect Amazon in bravery … just the sort of daredevil woman soldiers admire’, as the historical records of the 14th Light Dragoons described her
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– and those who preferred to write about her in the vivid terms of the Voracity Syndrome, recalling those charges of sexual licence which Semiramis, Cleopatra and other Warrior Queens in the past had incurred. Both these types of judgement were of course directly inspired by her sex, and for better or for worse would not have been applied to a man.

Afterwards Sir John Kaye summarily dismissed the tradition of the Rani’s ‘intemperance’, as he phrased it, as ‘a myth’ based on
contemporary prejudice. It is true that tales of the hot-blooded Indian, avid to lay his fingers upon Anglo-Saxon womanhood, widely embellished the true horrors of the Mutiny with further not-quite-unspeakable (and untrue) details. For the coming of the white womenfolk to British India had brought to an end those jolly eighteenth-century days when a young Englishman would happily set his heart on ‘A lass and a lakh a day’ – to adapt the conventional lament – a lakh being 100,000 rupees and the lass being Indian. As the races drew apart, the customs of child marriage and polygamy seemed to give credence to the notion of Indian lustfulness.
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Once again the Rani, for all the discretion of her personal behaviour, suffered by association.

A typical comment was that of Ellen C. Clayton (author of
Celebrated Women, Notable Women
, etc.) in her omnibus study
Female Warriors
published in 1879, the year before Sir John’s own more judicious work: ‘All agreed as to the extreme licentiousness and immorality of her [the Rani’s] habits; and the rooms in her palace are said to have been hung with pictures “such as pleased Tiberius at Capri”’ – the delicate Victorian allusion is to pornographic art, although the Rani’s keen detractor Lowe, who actually saw her apartments, mentioned no such titillatory detail in his own full description. One of the most damning – but equally quite unsupported – judgements was that of George W. Forrest in
A History of the Indian Mutiny
, published between 1904 and 1912, since his former position as the Director of Records for the government of India naturally carried weight. Picking eagerly on the phrase ‘the Jezebel of India’, he wrote that ‘to speak of her [the Rani], as some have done, as “The Indian Joan of Arc” is indeed a libel on the fair name of the Maid of Orleans’. (Given Forrest’s nationality, a somewhat self-righteous comment in any case.)
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He who had so described her – Sir Hugh Rose in two letters back to his royal Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Cambridge – and had just spared her life, was granted no similar mercy by the lady in question. He watched the Rani first firing in his direction and then peering through a telescope to see what harm she had
done. ‘Like the 3rd Europeans and the 86th she requires a good deal of drilling,’ commented Rose sardonically, ‘nobody having been able to discover where the Ranee’s shot went.’
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But these days of mutual observation and raining fire could not last for ever. The British assault upon Jhansi, which was to be both fierce and final, took place on 3 April. It may have been prompted by knowledge of a weakness in the defence supplied from inside: all accounts agree that the Rani herself was in the thick of the fighting.

At some point that night, however, the Rani escaped with about four followers, including her father. It is sometimes supposed that Rose laid a trap for her by allowing her to escape: but if there was a trap, she certainly eluded that too.
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Riding hard, outdistancing her pursuers, in particular one Lieutenant Bowker, she succeeded by stages in reaching the fortress of Kalpi. She had travelled over one hundred miles in twenty-four hours. Here were congregated, among Indian rulers who had joined the rebels, not only Nana Sahib but the Nana’s nephew, Pandurang Rao, known as Rao Sahib, as well as Tatya Tope.

Lieutenant Bowker’s own story has him perceiving the Rani aloft on her celebrated grey (or white) horse and pursuing her with Rose’s permission. A shot – possibly but not certainly fired by the Rani herself – disabled him, and so ‘the lady escaped for the time being’. Indian sources have the Rani wounding the Lieutenant in a sword fight at Bhander, a small village where she stopped for food; some of these accounts take on the already heady quality of incantation, as in this one written by a barrister and published in Calcutta in 1930: ‘But Lakshmi, put your horse now into a gallop. For Lieutenant Bowker is galloping behind, followed by select horsemen, in order to capture you. And you, O Horse, fortunate on account of the sacred treasure you carry, gallop on! … The dawn has now broken. So, heroic goddess, flying all night on the wings of the wind, test thee!’
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There can be no question that Lakshmi Bai was right to escape both from her own point of view and that of her cause. The vengeance taken in Jhansi was frightful by any standards; some
British historians have suggested that while four to five thousand died in battle, the civilians were spared. But Vishnu Godse, a priest from Bombay who was present, recalled four days of fire, pillage, murder and looting without distinction; it was difficult to breathe, he wrote, for the stink of burning flesh. Lowe’s words, that the enemy were slain in their ‘puffed up thousands … such was the retribution meted out to this Jezebel Ranee and her people …’ do not suggest there was much of a distinction between soldiers and civilians.
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In his description of the vanished Rani’s personal apartments, however, Lowe dipped his pen into the ink of Sir Walter Scott, as he described the palace doors inlaid with plate-glass, mirrors, chandeliers, velvet and satin beds, bedsteads with silver feet, velvet-cushioned chairs, brazen throne, gold-and silver-handled tulwars, spears, silver bird cages, ivory footstools, dozens of shawls, silver candlesticks ‘and a thousand other things such as a luxurious woman would have’ (although there is no mention of pictures ‘such as pleased Tiberius’). All these accoutrements, as well as the works of Horace, Longfellow and Browning said to have belonged to the dead officers, ‘lay here and there in chaotic confusion in every part of the building’. ‘The soldiery went to and fro tramping over and through these things and kicking them about as they would any heap of rubbish’, wrote Lowe, ‘until order was somewhat restored.’ Meanwhile the rebels fought like tigers ‘so the bayonetting went on till after sunset’. The fate of the Rani might not have been so summary as that of her luxurious belongings but it is difficult to believe she would in the end have fared much better.
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While the Union Jack flew once more over Jhansi, in Kalpi, in contrast, the Rani was given an honoured reception by Rao Sahib, with a special parade of his soldiers. The next engagement which followed was that of Kalpi itself, to which Sir Hugh Rose and his army patiently slogged their way in heat so great that big tears trickled down the cheeks of the patient elephants and the very camels groaned. It is sometimes suggested that if Rao Sahib had given the command to the Rani, not to Tatya Tope, the result of
the battle – another total defeat for the Indians – might have been different.
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Another expression of the general admiration for the Rani is the widespread belief that she was responsible, as ‘their most determined, spirited and influential head’, for the Indians’ next plan, one of extreme daring, to seize the fortress of Gwalior (although Tatya Tope, with contacts inside Gwalior, is perhaps a more likely author).
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As a manoeuvre it was certainly remarkably successful, at a time when the rebel fortunes were badly in need of some coup to rally them. Gwalior was seized, and there the coronation of Rao Sahib took place. From the great regalia of Scindia, which resided in the Treasury at Gwalior, the Rani was granted by Rao Sahib a fabulous pearl necklace. Like the torc of Boadicea, it was to prove an ornament of ritual significance.

For all the daring which had attended its seizure. Gwalior could not expect to remain long immune from reprisal. When that attack came, the Rani was said to have been put in charge of the eastern side of the defence. She wore her armour, her sword with its jewelled scabbard – and her wonderful new acquisition, the pearl necklace. According to tradition, she took as her motto on this occasion the celebrated verse: ‘If killed in battle we enter the heaven and if victorious, we rule the earth.’

Of the two alternatives, it seemed that the Rani of Jhansi was not destined to rule the earth. She was killed at some point in the fierce but ultimately unsuccessful battle to defend Gwalior: the most likely date being 17 June – the second day of the fighting. As Boadicea’s daughters traditionally died with their mother, two of the Rani’s ‘maids of honour’ – in the British phrase – were said to have died with her: Indian sources give their names as Mandar and Kashi. One was described as ‘most beautiful’ and in her last agony stripped off her clothes.
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The exact manner of the Rani’s death is not known for certain, nor who actually killed her. The British clearly took some trouble afterwards to find out. Three independent accounts written within a week of her death agree that she was mortally wounded as a result of a blow received during hand-to-hand fighting.
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As J. Henry Sylvester, who was present, wrote: ‘the gallant Queen of
Jhansi fell from a carbine wound, and was carried to the rear, where she expired, and was burnt according to the custom of the Hindoos’. This is probably the truth although some local Indian ballads and songs have the Rani carried by faithful servants to the nearby monastery of Baba Gangadas and whispering to the Baba as he put the Ganges water in her mouth: ‘I leave my [son] Damodar in your charge.’

A small locked notebook was found among Lord Canning’s papers after his death (in 1862: like Lord Dalhousie, who died in 1860, he did not long survive his Indian experience). Canning had jotted down the following observations:
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‘Ranee of Jhansi
. Killed by a trooper of 8th Hussars, who was never discovered. Shot in the back, her horse baulked. She then fired at the man and he passed his sword through her … She used to wear gold anklets, and Sindia’s pearl necklace, plundered from Gwalior. (Sindia says its value is untold.) These when dying she distributed among the soldiery, when taken to die under the mango clump.’ (Sir Hugh Rose told the Duke of Cambridge, apropos ‘these ornaments’, that Tatya Tope had ‘intercepted’ the necklace.)
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Lord Canning went on: ‘The army mourned her for two days.’ But even in this terse report he paid tribute by implication to the Rani’s gallantry – and to her continued femininity: ‘The Infantry attacked the Cavalry for allowing her to be killed. The Cavalry said she would ride too far in front.’ He added: ‘Her tent was very coquettish.’

At the time, Sir Hugh Rose’s report back to the Duke of Cambridge in England confirmed the story of the Rani’s speedy immolation. After burning, she was buried ‘with great ceremony, under a tamarind tree under the Rock of Gwalior, where I saw her bones and ashes’. His own epitaph contained the generous tribute of one soldier to another: ‘The Ranee was remarkable for her bravery, cleverness and perseverance; her generosity to her Subordinates was unbounded. These qualities, combined with her rank, rendered her the most dangerous of all the rebel leaders.’ In its regimental history, the 8th Hussars, at whose hands the Rani probably died (the squadron commander was granted a VC for
his conduct in the course of that charge), reiterated Sir Hugh Rose’s praise: ‘in her death the rebels lost their bravest and best military leader’.
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