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ogczeat Go gle
The Great Revolt
A Left Appraisal
. .
Or g I from
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

•
•
01git1ie "Y GoL gle
0f1Qlnal fror:-1
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

. .
.
The
Great Revolt
~ .·
A Left Appraisal ·
Editorial Committee
Sitaram Yedury
Rajendra Prawl
Biswamoy Pali
Am8r Farooqui
Ravindran Gopinadl
Natinj 1lmeja
Archana Pruad
Edited bY
Sitaram Yechury
A PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY PUBUCATION
•
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First edition 2008
ISBN-978-81-906218-0-9
This publication or any part of it
. lilllY be used freely only for non-profit purposes
provided the
source is
clearly acknowledged.
Published by:
. People's Democracy
15, Talkatom Road,
New Delhi 110001
E.,mail: [email protected]
Tclephone:Oll-23747435;23738125
Prinud at:
Progressive Printers
A-21,Jhilmil Industrial Arca,
G.T. Road. Shahdara, Delhi -110095
Phone:22582847,22119770
Cover Design : Ram Rahman
Cover Image: Photograph: By Ram Rahman, 1857 Gmvestone,
Lothian Cemetery, Delhi.
Price: Rs. 300.00 (PB)
Rs. "500.00 (HB)
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CONTENTS
. . .
Ec;litor's Comment
Introduction
1. 1857 aod Syncretic Evolution
. Sitartllw Y edmry
2 1857: In the Hearts and Minds of People
PnziArh Kami
3. · The 1857 Revolt in India: Lessons for Us
1..,.,;»-.
,u-DGSll ..
.
IX
xv
01
06
11
4. Remembering 1857 16
lif1111 Habib
. .
5. Re&ctions on 1857 . 33
Prabhal P"""1il: ·
6. 1857: An Overview of Events 38
Naiini T anga
7. The Revolt and lt$ Historiography: An Overview 49
~Pali .
.
· 8. Background to the Gttat Rebellion 55
Gopinalh RapinJnzn
9. 'Ilic 1857 Rebellion: A Prehistory 62
Arrhana Pnutlli
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10. Patriotic and Comprado,:-Zamindars in the
Great Rebellion of 1857
Utsa P"""1iJf. .
11. Agrarian Uprisings and Rural Society:
The 1857 Rebellion and its.Aftermath
Arrhatla Pfrllllli .
12 Bah.adur Shah~ and the 1857 Revolt
AmarFarrxxpli .
13. The Battle for Delhi: Myths of the 'Mutiny'
and the Construction of the Raj
MlllihM Pfrllllli
14. RebelJoumalism: Dthli UniN~bar,
May-September 1857
ShinmMOOSlli
15. 'Delhi Renaissance', Intellectuals and the
69
78
83
91
107
. .
1857 Uprising 115
S. Itf1t11 Habib
16. Lucknowin1857-58:TheEpicSiegc 121
Amar Ruooqlli
17. Making the 'Maigin' V !Sible: Councsans
and the Rebellion in Kanpur 131
l ""'Singh
18. Some Aspects of the 1857 Rebellion in Bihar 138
P.KSh#lda
Appendix : The July 1857 Rebellion at Patna 145
. .
19. Role of Punjab, Haryana anJ Himachal Pradesh
'in 1-857 154
'k.CY~
.
20. The Impact of the 1857 Revolt in Tamilnadu 161
N.&gmdnzn
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21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
••
Vil
GUjamt during the Gttat Revolt The R.cbdlion in
Okhamandal 168
s. V.]tllli
Echoes of the 1857 Uprising in North-Eastern India 173
Dal1ilJ R. S.fam/ieh .
The Revolt of 1857 in Eastan IndiA: An Overview 180
&SlldtlJC~
Jhadrhancl in the 1857 War of Indcpc ndencc 192
JS .~
Rethinking Sepoy 'Mutinies' in Ototmagpur 196
S""1haM. Sitlhd
'J1le 185~ Rebellion in Oiissa: Looking for the
'Echoes'? 202
13i.°""""'.1 Pllli
.
The; 1857 War of Indepcndcncc:
The Dalit Connection 208
S~Sm
Tbeocrac:yand the~ of1857: Assessing the
Role of the Wahabis 218
Iqtidar .Almtt Khati
.
The Myth of Eady Savarkar: His 'Nationalist'
. .
1857Book . 224
NalilfiT: .
11119"
The War of Independence and Contmiporary
Hindi Litaab:are 236
Mllfii~ PnutJJ Siit/)
Utdu Litcn.turc in.the Context of the
Gttat Uprising · 253
Nansb'N°"'1tlw'
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32 The ~t Rebellion of1857 in the Ninctccnth
Century Colonial Novel
Illlirani Sm .
33. 1857 and the HmJoo Plllriot Other Voices
M4'iniBhtill4tharya
34. Bomgeoisation and the Gteat Revolt oft 857
· Alllit KlmtarGllJ>ltl
.
35~ 1857: An Intcmationalist Pctspcctive;
The Lessons of Chartism
BaJri Raina
36. Marx and Engels on the Revolt oft 857
Irf1111 Habib
37. Notes on Contributors
38 .. Index
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263
269
'276
283
290
296
299

. .
.. . .
Editor's Comment
•
People's D1111«r"'.J has great plcaswc in putting together in a single
. . .
volume its obscrv2tions of the 1 SOth anniYersary of the Gat Uprising
of 1857. This is our humble contribution to the much rcqui.rcd effort
to n:consttuCt this glorious chapter in the history of the Indian people's
long struggle for indc;pendence and freedom.
..
Initially, we had planned that this series beginning with the
Republic
bay issue,
2007, would end with the Independence Day
issue marking the 60th anniver5ary of our freedom from British
ooionkl rule. SUbsequendy, wc .decideq to cxtcod this till Septrmbcr
eod to omk the birthcmlJef"lryof one of India's greatesti:erolUtionary
fm:dom fightCrs, Shahid Bhagat Singh. The ser'-<:S however continued
till October 21, 2007.
This was so because of the trem(:D<ious icsponse that wc had
received ·from our contributors-historians, artists, cultural
Pers<>nalities and creative thinkers-On the various aspects 0£ the
1857 uprising. We have been overwhelmed by this response. When
wc decided to observe this event, wc were conscious of the official
ob~wtions that the government had decided to conduct through a
specially fui1ncd coimmittcc. Givcii the inadcqnacics of this committcc
and the lack of clarity on its objectives we decided on this parallel
obscr vation -to bring out various hitherto unknown aspects of the
uprising Truly, this series has been m:ntful in the sense that it brought
various aspects hitherto unkn~ in terms of the spread of the
upDsing. the impact it had on laying the foundations for the subscqucOt
evolution of a pan-Indian nationalism, and the imm~nse and
profound iinpact
it had on the evolution of folk
culture and
. .
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x I TM Greaz Revolt
connected imagery. We wish to place ~n record our deep sense of
appreciation and gratitude to our distinguished ooottibutors for having
served this very much needed pmposc.
Such a nCcd in fact arises from the scrupulous effort made by
the Bntish to msc records and· chronicles of the uprising and to seek
to eliminate it from people's memory. In the &cc of this, the
oonscqucnt distortions of Indi2's history of its struggles against foreign
rule laid the basi.s for colonial histoi:ical writings. However, as these
observations
reveal, notwithst211ding
the suppression of this record,
even the British could not eliminate the collective memory impact
even on their own officers. For insl2ncc, many decades later when
Col. Dyer was vacationing in Shimla he was informed of the
'disturbances' in the Punjab.. He notes that his first apprehension wu
that these disturbances were not of the nature of 1857. His rctum to
Amritsar and the in&mous Jallianwala Bagh massacre is well known
as one of the darkest chapters of British colonial oppression of the
· Indian people. Such was ·the impact of 1857 that dcspi~ all cffoits a . ·
collective memory continued with even the British officers who were.
not even h9m in 1857.
. .
It was therefore ncccssary to rcconstruct this glQrious chap~ in
the history
of
the Indian people's struggle for freedom. As has been
noted in this series, 1857 was probably the biggest and the most
powerful people's uprising anywhere in the world against colonial
occupation in the nineteenth century. Through these observations
People's Demomuy makes its humble contribution to this ~(fort at
reconstruction which
we hope will be
CQntinucd in right camcst.
There is another import2nt reason for these observations. This
has to do with the manner in which British coloni alism adapted itself
to controlling and continuing its occupation of India. This in tum has
had an impact on the evolution of Indian pohtics itself. Some of the
political t:>attics being waged today in fact stem from the seeds sown
by the British rule
of India post 1857.
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Editor :r Comment I xi
Following the British triump~ in quelling the 1857 war of
independence, Qn 27th of January 1858 the trial ofMughal emperor
Bahadur Shah Z.C.r hcgiDs oo chsugcs of leading the td>cllion. which
constituted, accotdi,ng to the laws of the colonial power, grounds of
treason against the British c-own. The British, having established their
presence in 1757 through deception, violence and forgery, later
· ~onsolidatcd their empire in 1857 through a ruthless butchery of
those who rose in revolt against their rule. On the '.recapture' of
Delhi, the British had murdcmi in broad daylight virtually Jhc entire
1incagc of the emperor including his twO sons. The emperor himself
was then incan::cmtedin Rangoon, where he died four years later-in
1$62.Jn a &mous couplet, Zafu bemoaned that hew so unformQatc
that he could not even get two SQUatC yards of land for his burial in
his homeland.
.
It is imj:>->ssible not to notice some parallcls in contemporary
Indian
politial rcalitics. While Zafiar ycarncd
in vain for a burial in his
. homeland, the RSS/BJP chan.:teri:zc him and his anccscors as ''Bahar
lei .A•ilad". The consequent whipping of hatred against the MusllmS ·
is based oo the spmad of commooal poisondaiming that the Mughal
empire was established by usurping so-called Hindu lands. Such
historical realities as that of Bahar defeating anOthcr Muslim emperor
Ibrahim LOdhi in the first battle of l>anipat to establish the Mughal
empire doCs not bother the conscience (lf they have one) of the
coaununalfon:cs. ·
. The fact remains that the British, learning from the 1857
experience, came to the conclusion that if they weie tc permit ever
again the W'ity of the various religious, linguistic and ,ethnic identities
in Ir>dia, in a .struggle against their alien rule, they would have no
d11~of survival. A cootx:mpomry British· chronicler, Thomas Lowe.
who was in Central Jndia during Jte rebellion of 1857-59 wrote in
1860: 'To live in India now was like standing on the verge of a
volcanic crater, the sides of which were fast crumbling away from
our feet, while the boiling lava was ready to erupt and consume us' .
.
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xii /TM Great Rev<AI
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Further, he~ 7hc infanticide Rajput, the bigoted Brahmin,
the fanatic Mussalman, had joined together in the cause; cow-killer
and the eow-worshippcr, the pig-hater and the pig-cater ... ' bad
. revolted together.
· Prcasciy tO prevent such a unity ffom ever again sur&c:ing,
there emerged the infamous policy of divide and rule. This also
generated some 'native' (as the British would call) expressions ..
The Muslim League on the one hand and the· Hindu ~bha
and RSS on the other very ably assisted the British in perpetuating
their colonial rule. The demand for an Islamic state post
indcpcndcncc fron:i the British, eventually ltd to the partition of
the country and its horrendous consequences that ccntinuc to
haunt and affect us till date. The RSS, on the other hand, seeks
the esablishmcnt of their rabicUy intolerant fascistic version of~
Hindu rashtra. Having been born with such a vWon that is in
. .
complete antagonism with the aspirations of the Indian fttcdom
struggle which sought and established a secular democratic
modem republic, the RSS has never rccondlCcl to these modem
realities. Having created th~ conditions and circumstances that
consumed the life
of the Mahatma and
lalchs of other innocent
lives through commurial holocausts, the RSS and its current
political arm the BJP continue to reaffirm that the raison d'etre
.
of their political existence can only be hued on the sharpening
of communal polarization.
150 years ago the British learnt that the unity of India's vast
div~ity amongst its peoples is the surest guarantee for its freedom
and prospcrity,,:uid hence worked assiduously to prevent this from
happening in order to continue and consolidate their rule. In t:Oday's
India, such:& unity of the rich diversity amongst our.people, so crucial
for
our
advance and prosj>crity, is once again being prevented from
being realized by the communal forces in pursuit of their political
objective
of establishing their Hindu
rashtta .. Victory over of such
communal machinations is thus imperative if India has to march
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Editor~ Comment /xiii
. .
forwud as a mQdcm nation.aiming to be an economic powerhouse
and a knowledge society in the twenty-fust centurf. .-
Ironically therefore, the current battles being W2gcd by us in a
sense arc esscntially against the very forces that either enslaved India
in the past or arc seeking to subjugate India iii various ways today,
and against those who arc preventing the In~ people in their
advance in consolidating their frccdorn and.prosperity. The struggles
againstimpc mlism,
to stead&sdy safcguaid
our politia1 and ccooomic
sovereignty and the struggles against the communal forces that seek
to destroy the very unity and integrity of the modem Indian republic
must therefore once again engage the attention to consolidate and
adVll1lcc our struggles for a better India.
There WllS yet another aspect that cmctged through these
observations which has .imuicnsc significance for the present and the
future. Apart from evcfything else, the post-1857 British Raj
repttSCDted an important break in the syncrctic evolution of Indian
civilisation. But for the conscious policy ·of 'diyide and rule'
perpetuated by the British to continue and consolidate their rule, aided
admitably by the local communal forces, the syncrctic cvob.~tion of
our civilisational ethos wauld. surely have been elevated to higher
levels of enlightenment. It is a pity that today we have to mr:isit this
history and ethos rather than being products of much higher
cnligl llleM>Cnt.
Commemorating 1 SO years of 1857 needs, therefore, to bring
on to the agenda the task of picking up lost threads of such syncrctic
evolution. Instead of being devoured by fratrici~ communal
passions and poison, India's future ttuly lies in picking up these lost
threads and carrying them forward. ·
We sincerely thank all olir contribQtors for the enthusiastic
response and support they have rendered in this effort. We arc deeply
indebted to the team of historians who conceived the series. Needless.
to add, this publication would not have seen the light of the day but
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xiv /TM Gna1 Revolt
for the efforts.of the editorial committee. We would ·like to thank
the PIOj>le:r DllllOtnlt.YI l....o.t Lzhm-tcam comprising Rajcndra Shuma,
Narcsh
'Nadccm', Sahiram,
Ajay Srivastava, Raj~ Jha, N S Arjun.
and G Mamatha, for all their assistance and coopcation.
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•
.
· Introduction
The 150th annivctsary of 1857 has rc-ocasionCd the recovery of
the events, memory and namtivcs that constituted the great rebellion.
r'Or obvious reasons the Left in this country has always been more
intercst.c:d in it than other political tendencies as it marked the first big
and widespread show of strength by the lod~o people against British.
rule and its anti-colonial character is indisputable. The Revolt was a
signi6cant landmark in both the history of imperialism and resistance
to it.. People fought against the British, but they ~ fought for .
~and articulated thcii OWil aspllatlons in maoy"Wy& These
aspintions did not nc:cessirily 6nd sympathy among the rnling-,=lasscs
then, and do not CVC1l today.
In the post -independence~ therefore, while there has been
silence on th~ part of political parties allied with the ntling classes,·
communists like E.MS. NamboOdripad, B. T. Ranadivc, AjOy Ghosh
and PC Joshi have cclcbatcd and analyzed the events of 1857 in
speeches on different annivctsary ocasions of 1857 and in their
writings, Despite being popular writings, these writings and spccches
raised important historical ·questions, many of which. historians arc
still grappling with and tackling, particularly for the nuances and
complexities that these questions generated, in order to arrive at a
better understanding of the cVCDts. Historians have followed athcr
than led in framing the lines of rcscarch on 1857 .
.
One can say with equal certainty that given the abundance of
.archival material on 1857 and the significance of the uprising in our
history, very little existed by way of books on the subject.
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xvi I The Grea1 R°evoll
A significant academic landmark in the historiogmphy on 1857
has also been an initiative by the communist left-both to undcrst20d
thC different fu:ctS of 1857 and ti:> uphold its legacy. The book edited
. by P.C. Joshi 18.57: A Symposilmt, which as the tide suggests, resulted
&om a symposium to commemorate its 1 OOth anniversary, fifty years
ago, remains one of the best books on the subject. It has inaptcrs on
many more themes-which continued to be unexplored. It remains an
essential reading given the5c explorations in the very i;eccnt efforts
inspired by the
1 SOth
anniversary last year and the new publications,
which arc its off-shoots.
This book, dcrivro from articles published in the J>a#t Dtmoauty,
the oi:gan of the CPI (M), revives the tradition of c2rrying forwa,rd
the people's history of the events of 1857. Th2t it is a collaborative
effort has only enriched its contents.
The first few essays present a historial understanding of the
~events that collcctivcly co~tutc the uprising of 1857. l>rakasl)
. Karat, Ir&n IUbib and Prabhat Patnaik undcdinc the anti-impcri2list
thrust of the uprising and its popular base. Iifan Habib has moic· ·
specifically placed it in the context of the impact of colonial policies
and
also described the role of the different social actors who
.
conn:ibuted to making it the
largest anti-colonial upsurge in the
nineteenth century. He has drawn particular attention to the role of
the soldiers, showing that in their sheer numbers and in constituting
the most modem clement among the rebels they contributed new
clements of protest not present earlier. Prabhat Patnaik hlls
concentrated on analyzing the nature and forms of peasant rebellions
in 1857 in the light of Marx's understanding of peasant protcsts
thcir strengths and weaknesses -in the specific context of the
dominance
of pre-capitalist
social relations and absence of modem
bourgeois leadership.
Nalini Taneja has provided an (>verview of the main
developments and the different sections ofpcople who participated
in it Biswamoy Pati has surveyed the historiography on 1857, pointing
towards the
main trends in the British writings, in the
many phases of
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l"""""-ctto I xvii
the natioi>alis.t perspective, and in the contribution of the Muxist
understanding. as also the new thcmc:s being mkcit up DO'& He shows
that rione of .the~e streams of writing were simplistic· and
w;idiffcrcntiatccl. He points towards the different clements within
each historical perspective in the Writing OD 1857.
The oat three essays, by Ravindran Gopinat;b, Archana PiUad
and Utsa Psitnaik deal with the background of late ~pany rule in r
. . '
India to Wld,crstmd the context in which the Revolt of 1857 unfoJdcd.
Ravindran Gopinath studies the economic history of the English
East
India
Company's expansion in India. He shows that economic
exploitation and uncertainty played a major role in setting the cont.at
of the Revolt. Disparate class interests ranging from the poor weaver
to the feudal landlord and the ripahis of the Company army drawn
froin
diff~t legions ~ icligions participated
not because of any
unifying ideology or theory, but in iesponsc to a common pattern of
exploitation. In some areas the thrc!lt of impending cxplc?itation was
enough to drive people to rebellion. The blood and gore of the
Revolt of1857 conclusively disproves the asscrtipo that capitalist
expansion was essentially a pcaccful process, benefiting the conqueror
and the vanquished alike.
In~ 1857 Rebellion: A Prehistory', Archana Pmad disc:usscs
the agrarian uprisings of the late eighteenth and first half of the
ninctccnth centuries in the background of the 1857 R.cbcllion. These
movements contested the effort by the Company's administration to
re-order the existing feudal order over the first ccntuiy of colonial
rule
in order to ensure the political and economic stability of the Empire. This attempt led to a severe discontent amongst the
tnditional landholders and the peasantry that included cwltivators and
tenant farmers, as well as pastoralists, tribals and JandlcSs labourers,
who depended on agriculture and its allied sectors (or survival.
. .
Utsa Patnaik raises the question of why the laigc Bengal z.lllllintiars
were mmpradorcollaborators while their equally feudal North Indian
counterparts actively opposed colonial rule. She answers this question
in terms
of the differences
in· te'nurial arrangements between
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xviii/The Grear Revolt
permanently settled BengAI. and the temporary revenue .settlements
of northern India. The growing rent-revenue differential in Bengal
lulled the Bengal zam.indar into collaboration whilc his counterpart in
northern India, exposed
to the
inci'casing exactions of the colonial
. state and the social churning of landed magnates, was forced into
9J>P<>Sition. .
The scope and space encompassed by the rebellions of 1857
showed that these protests were a watershed~ the integration of the
pre-colonial feudal system into colonial capitalism. The nature and
im~ct of this process was differentiated in character. Some ilcas
rocked by the revolts had already faced a century of protests and
colonisation, while the experience
of others
was morc rcccnt. These
two trends· created the general conditions of revolt which led to
tcnuo1'5 class alliances between different sections of society. But the
nature and intensity of the colonial impact also revealed and
ac.Ccntnated the contradictions within the feudal structurc underwhoSc
weight inany of these rcbcllions only achieved limited sucCcss. Thus,
the suppress.ion of the rebellions of 1857 lcd to the consolidation of
colonial rule. 1bis, in turn, structured new forms of protest and
politics which werc significantly different from earlier prc-modem
forms of protest. In this way an inquiry into the unexplored aspects
leads us to a better understanding of the rclevancc of 1857 in Indian
history and politics. These arc some of the issues cwnined by .An:hana
Prasad in her second essay, ~ Uprisings and Rural Society:
The 1857 Rebellion and its Aftermath'.
The contributions of Amar Farooqui, Madhu Prasad, Shireen
Moosvi and S.Irfan Habib focus
on Delhi, where the
s.ipahis set
up a new regime between May and September 1857. In 'Bahadur
Shah Zafar and the
1857 Revolt', Farooqui
examines the symbolic
importance
of the Mughal emperor in order to underline the
politicai significance
of the decision of the
Mecrut sipahis to march
to Delhi and declare Bahadur Shah Zafar as the nominal head of
their new regime. It was by upholding the sovereign status of
the emperor that the sipahis de-legitimized the colonial state
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Introduction I xix
thereby announcing the overthrow. qf the government of the
East India Company and g:aioing wide acceptability for the sipahi
state. The evolution of the Comp~y's relationship with the
Mughal emperor during the fini half of the nineteenth century
is outlined to draw attentioQ to the Company's ac~cptancc of
the de jurc authority of the Mughals, which was to be
systematically denied in post-1857 colonial historiography.
.
Madhu
Prasad forcefully brll)gs out the manner in. which
colonial narratives of the Revolt have falsified the history of the
battle for Delhi ·and the brutal 'recapture' of the city by the
British. With a wealth of quotations from a wide range of
contcm.porary sources -memoirs, letters, diaries - she highlights
on the one hand the heroic resistance put up by the rebels and
on the other the devastation of the city after the British took it
over in September 1857. There was of course 12igc-scalc and
systematic physi!=al destruction, but what bapPcncd along with
the supprasion of the Revolt wa5 the annihilation of an entire
ethos, a way of life, a rich cultural tradition. This destruction ·
was crucial for the subsequent 'construction of the· Raj'.
Shirccn Moosvi throws fresh light on the rebels of Delhi
by using a crucial, but oot adcquatcly used, contemporary source,
the D1b/i UrJM ·Ali!.bbar. The Ali!.bbar had pioneered 'Urdu
journalism in Delhi, and continued to be published throughout
the duration of the sipahi regime. It was sympathetic to the rebels
aOd its issues far the period May-September 1857 offer a glimpse
of the ideas of the iebcls, their relationship with the inhabitant:;
of the city, the ups aod downs of the tesistancc and the composite
nature of the anti-colonial struggle.·
S. Ir&n Habib's piece examines the impact of the Great Uprising
on the intcllectual life of Delhi, especially in the background . of what
iS often termed as the 'Delhi Renaissance' during the 1840s and 50s.
Herc he takes up the growth of the Delhi College and the pivotal
role played
by this institution. Although the college did suffer as it
was targeted by the rebels in 1857, Habib argues that the
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xx I The Gnat Revolt
"Rcmissancc" that it wu associated with did not end with it, but
garnered more strength with time and expanded beyond Delhi,
inro north India.
. In another essay, 'Lucknow in 1857-58: The Epic Siege',
Amar
Faroequi pr:cscnts
an account of the epic siege of the Laiclmow
Residency, which lasted from July 1857toMatth1858. ThrougboUt
this period the erstwhile capiw of the state of Avadh wu in the
hands i:>f the rebels. In &ct for most of this period the Company's
rule vmished in Avadh. Begum Hurat Mahal played a key role in
leading the rcsist211ce at Luc;know and the countryside of Avadh.
Notwithoutrcason,Britishrcttibutionagainstthcpcoplcofl.ucknaw
was
seven:
and brutal.
The spread of the rebellions of 1857 was not only all India
in character, but also attracted all sections of society. For rumple
LataSigh's contribution throws light on how the soldiers of Avadh
found unlikely allies and supporters in courtesans like Azizun. The
active participation of courtesans in the anti-B~ struggle stcn uncd
from the erosion of their cultW:al power as a n:sult of the advent of
the colonists.
P.K. Shukla provides an overview of the Revolt in Bilw:. A
very large partofBihar, indudingprcscnt-Oay Jhaikh2Dd, was engulfed
by the Revolt. Kunwar Singh ofJagdishpurwas one of the ~dary
heroes of the anti-colonial struggle in the n:gion and is the subject of
perhaps the laigcst number of popular folk;songs about the Revolt.
The military skills of Kunwar Singh and his brother Amar Singh
drew admiration from Marx and Engels. Shukla also looks at the
outbreak of the rebellion at Patna, led by Pir Ali (an appendix to the
essay contains extracts from a contemporary account of the Patna
events, written by William Tayler who was 9>mmissioncr of Patna
Division at the time of the outbreak of the Revolt). · ·
KC. Yadav explodes the myth of the 'ioy:al Punjab'. He survqs
the events of 1857-59 in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh
('Greater Punjab1 to show that these ~cas were very much part of
the anti-colonial upheaval. Mutinies a5 well as popular rcbellions took ·
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· lntrodMCtion I xxi
pJace over a wide region extending from the borders of Delhi
right up to Peshawar. Y adav emphasizes that all communities
arid
sCCtions of society participated
in the Revolt in Punjab -
including the Sikhs. In fact, he points out that contrary to colonial
accounts the ~ritiSh found it very difficult to mobiliu troops in
Punjab for their counttt~ffensivc in north India.
C.OOVattional historloppby has usually prescnttd IJlc Rd>dlioos
of 1857 as rebellio0$ of the Indian heartland: that is, revolts whose
. .
centre lay in Delhi, J\Vlldh and Middle India. They are also seen as
mOvanent5 whose primary social base~ drawn from the soldiering
and peasant classes of these regions. But recent resean:h has shown
tbatthenatureof1857
was not~ to
this since ~~ssc:d
areas beyond the heartland and cla.sses whose participation has.
been 1ugdY ignored by historians· of Modern India. At another
level some of the articles presented here extend and qualify the
existing historiography on 185'7 when it comes to the role of ~e
adivasis,'· .
. .
Many of the articles in this series show that revolts tgainst the
British dcvdopcd in 'unlikely areas', such as Tamil Nadu and in
Okhamandal in Gujarat. N. Rajendrm focuses on the way the protest
of tf;le Poligars at the tum of the century against the taxation sys~
produced a significant impact on the uaiy, intdl.igcrusia and common
people
of the region, and formed the
backdrop to the attempts to
organize rebdlions in the Madr.as Presidency in 1857 The soldier
peasant connection that has been demonstrated in the case of the
heartland repeated itself here. S. VJani explores the way people of
Gujarat responded to 1857. He focuses on the Waghcrs and the anti
impe rialist struggle that saw the rebels confront the colonial army as
· well.as the princely stita that were actively supporting the imperialist
forces.
.
Another case of ignored histories is that of north-eastern and
. .
eastern India: David R. Syiemlieh, Basudeb Chattopadhyay, J.S.
~jumdar, Shashank Sioh2 and BiSW3Dloy Pati examine the diverse
ways in which the 1857 Rebellion impacted 'the north-cast, Bengal,
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xxii/The Great R"evolt
J~khand and Orissa. Thus, the impact of the 1857 Rebcllio.n
resonated
in the revolt of the armies in Jorhat,
Guwahati and · ·
Dibrugarh which was crafted by Maniram Dewan; in the
Chhittagong Mutiny and the rebellion of the ~ Attillcry.
Further away, the participation of the Santhals of Jharkhand
and the Gonds and Binjhals of western Orissa (under the
leadership of Surendra Sahai)° showed that it was not just the
. heartland but the entire country that was involved· in this
powerful anti-imperialist struggle. In fact, the revolts of the adivasis
in Jharkhand and Orissa had an agrarian dimension that exposed
the class contradictions within the 'general rebellion' of the period.
Thus, the nature· of the protests was structured by ethnic, caste
and class contradictions.
Another area that has been largely ignored in historical
writing,
but covered by this
book, is the dalit connection of
1857. The incident of greased cartridges at the Oum Oum
Otdnance Factory showed the caste contradictions within the
sipahi mutiny. It's analysis has also given the dalit movement
some unsung heroes like Matadin Bhangi and Jhalkari Bai.
A theme that has received fair amount .of attention has been
the relationship between the Muslim theocracy and the revolts
of 1857. The conclusion that the Wababis gave the main ·
ideological leadership to the revolt of the _heartland has been
deftly contested in this volume by lqtidar Alam Khan. In ·fact,
the limited participation of the Muslim theoaacy in Bihar showed
that the revolt of 1857 cannot be given a communal colour.
In her essay, "The Myth of Early Savarkar: His ''Nationalist''
1857 Book', N:llini. Taneja questions a trend in Indian historiography
·that affects some historians who talk of an 'early' and a 'btc' Smirkar.
She takes up Savarkar's well known book, Indian War of Iflliepmtlmtr
(1907 /9) to unmask the not-so-hidden agenda of its author. Among
other points, Taneja shows bow Savarkar's vision of an independent
India was less forward looking than many of the people who were
actively involved with the 1857 Rebellion.
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Introduction I xx.iii
M.M.P. Singh and Naresh Nadcem focus· on the w<?rld of
cttativc writings in Hindi and Urdu, rcspcctiVcly, of this phase. MM.P.
Singh's essay examines the absence of writ!ngs in Hindi that reflect
the spirit of 1857, especially over the 1857-60 period. In contrast,
N.aresh Nadeem points to the voluminous Ui;du tracts that
recount the events of the Rebellion and the terror struck by
coloniili.sm in course of the countcr-inswgcncy operations. As
emphasised, these writingS stirfaced after two or three years,
:which he connects to the terror campaigns. · ·
Malini Bhattacharya's essay intcrroglltcs the commonly held
assumption that the bhadraloks in Bengal were opposed to 1857.
Bhattacharya
examines
the is$ucs of The HintJoo P.tdliatthatwas edited
by Hurrish Chundcr Mookctji. Examining the issues of the 1857-58
period. she refers to a series of lead articles published regularly on
the 'Mutinies' and how it recorded the incident of the banging of
Tantia Topi in 1859 and made appreciative comments on him as also ·
on KwtwaiSingh and I akshnubai, at a time when most other English
journals were blisy dcmonising them. Whereas in its early phase, The
Hintloo Pllh'Wi had a subscription of only about 200 (the actual
readership would have been somewhat larger), its readership
substmtiallyincrcascd from the end of 1857.Bhattacharya suggcs~
the possible links between this and the independence and critical
reporting that it displayed on the basis of some of the coacspondcncc
published on the subject.
In her essay Indr.Uu Sen discusscS how the highly popular colonial
'Mutiny' novel played a role in propagating imperialist ideologies.
Most of them projected racial stereotypes and fuelled racism.
Interestingly, as
Sen observes, there also existed a small handful of
'Mutiny' novels which were different.
Protesting against
misrepresentation of Indians and their culture, they attacked the
growing trend o( racism and critiqued the post-Rebellion cultural
arrogmcc of the British Raj and wgcd inter-racial harmony.
The last three essays are by Amii Kumar Gupta, Badri Raina
and lrfan Habib. Gupta's contribution examines the effort by some
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l
•
xxiv /TM Glllll Revolt
reformers
associated with the Company to industrialisc the
'colony'.
As ugucd. this effort boomeranged and acated severe dislocations
and provided the basis of the Gicat Rd>cllioo. Raina's essay oegociatcs
the international mnifications of die 1857 Rebellion and the way it
inspired the Ch2rtists. Finally, Habib's essay describes the way M2rX
and Engels delineate the Gteat Rebellion in their writing.
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1857 and_ Syncretic Evolution
Silarrun Yech.,,,
The obscrwtion 9f the 1 SOth anniversary of 1857, its idcV2nce and
the lessoos to be dmwn, have become the ammt flavour ofintd!emnl
discussions. Many official functions arc being hdd but more
impomnt have ~ the new insights thrown up by a variety of
intdlcctual discussions ocgiaoiscd by rcoowDcd ICSCa«h oigaoisations
and those rcspoosiblc for historical inquiry. Many cultural.and lite my
-~~~~ttiblJtrxiby~~~~~~
The mote such discussions and activities, the better for all of us, and
for India. Better still if the right conclusions arc drawn from this
•
cxpenmce
.
Apart from everything else, post-1857 British Raj reptcSCntrd
an important break in the synactic evolution of Indian civilisation. .
But for the conscious policy
of
'divide and rule' perpetuated by the
British to continue and consolidate their rule, aided admiably by the
local communal forces, the syocrctic evolution of our civilisational
ethos would surely have been elevated to higher levels of
enlightenment. It is a pity that today we have to revisit this history and
ethos rather than being products of such higher enlightenment.
Remembering 1857 would eminently serve the purpose if we arc
able to pick up tf:tcsc threads ratller than being pre-occupied with
current fratricidal communal contlictS.
· A digression is in order. On my maiden visit to the Andamans
some time back, I discovered, quite distinct from our current pre-
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2 I TM Great Revolt
occupation with OBC reservatio~, a community called the LBCs.
They have a significant, if not a majority presence in the islands. The
British
had
classified this category as 1ocally bom communities'. They
were the progeny of those incarccrated in the notorious leaJa pani.
Periodically, the British would parade the male and female prisoners
asking them to choose their partners, as people were needed to fight
the wars of British colonial expansion and to man British repression
in the Indian sub-continent.· The present curator of the museum is
one such product tracing her lineage to a Pathan prisoner brought
there following 1857 and the mother reaching there after the Mapilla
rebellion in Kectla. Though these two events arc separated by time, it
must be remembered that the offspring of c:.adier generations of
prisoners would marry later arrivals. Such progeny, however, could
be considered as syncrctic evolution through the force of the colonial
power. But, there had been a powerful natural evolution of syncrctic
civilisational culture that existed prior
to the State-sponsored institutionaliScrl policy of divide and rule that the British Raj practiced
follo~1857.
.
There has been for at least two centuries prior to 1857, an exciting
intellectual interaction between religions and civilisations in India. I
have recently
laid my hands on a long forgotten.English translation
·
, of the seminal work of Prince Dara Sbukoh (Shahjahan's eldest son
who
was murdered by
Aurangazeb in the struggle for the Mughal
throne) titled Majma-Nl-Bahrain (The Mingling of 1\vo Oceans) in
Persian, authored in 1654-55. Dara Shikoh
had not
merely learnt
Sanskri.t but translated the Upanishads into Persian, 'in order to
discover Wabdata/Wtgtidhiddcnin them'. He bemoans thercluct20cc
of open discussions on the Vedic works (though not mentioning the
caste system preventing all lower castes from access ti:> this knowledge)
which led to, 'hiding the Upanishadic truth from both Hindus and
Muslims'.
In this particular treatise, a study of
Islamic· Sufism and
Hindu
mysticism, he comes to the conclusion that, 'thcywcrc identical'.
It is not necessary to agree with Dara Shukoh's views. The point at
issue
is to note that such theological and intellectual exercises which
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Syncretic EvolUlion I 3
. could have been .capable of raising the levels of civilisatiqnal
enlightenment were
t2lcing place at
that time.
Through his theological discourses, Dara Shukoh not only.carried
forwaro these synactic traditions bid down by Akbu but also infused
a spirit of hberalism into the medieval Indian life expanding the ·
horizons of the Indian mind. The impact of this was such that in
May 1857, at the outbreak of the revolt, the widely circulated daily
Dihli UrriM Alr.hbaar reported that the 'rebellion had been sent by
Gods to punish the leafirs for their arrogant plan to wipe out the
religions ofln~'. .
Gopal Gandhi (presently the Governor of West Bengal),
dedicates his ~ficeiit play in verse, 'Dara Shukoh' to the Peri
Mahal, the magical 'Fairies' Palace' built by Dara Shukoh on a barely
accessible spur overlooking lake Dal in Srinagar. Intended by Dara
to be a centre for the study of celestial bodies, the magnificcnt structure
••
is now derelict, its broken terrace a reminder of.the precariousness
of lofty visions. ,
. .
And, this vision is articulated as follows in Dara's words:
&Jmr laid tht jr»nulaJiqn/ For Old' fatm'e nation,·/ H1111tt!JNn slltled it
from.mfJf'allders/ Within and IM_Jond its bordm./Thm Alr.har bNi1t
in granite bride./ Stalwart walis, elephant thkk,/To withstand siege,
doYm or qtklh/ Which none bNt God coNIJ shah./ A strmgth that
"1111e not from rock/ Or some man-extlMJing l«k/ B11t from the
t1tr1ali/#J/ Of Hinilollall} p~/ ]ehangir made the howJah/ Of
lfafehood tlltfl prolllier/ By a meanmJ olfenfalionf Which "{Jfather's
eelebration/ Of po"" has final!! &r01allltd ••• India nttds a thinker/
On the P~ Throne./ A thinker, tdJo 1"ill link her/ With ma/ion}
~/Who WI prodaim an 'ilahi'/ greater than ever thoNghtof yet,/
Not for abelkr baJshahi/ BNI a rr-defined Whal!Jat/That 1lli1J
transform Delhi} fJl/er/From a 'nwy-soz.zjeJ, ~/King of varying
tiemeano111/ Into India} First T nutee.
Dari Shukoh proceeds to state: 'India 1INlir a 1&hola1/ On the Pea&o&le
Throne./ Al!)Ont 111ho is smaller,/That seat llliU no111 diso.11111.' Though the
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4 I TM Greal Revolt
.
peacock throne did not disown Aurangazeb, it. was nevertheless
subsequently looted by Nadir
Shah and given
as tribute to the Caliph,
Sultan of the Ottoman em'pire. It is now a priud possession of the
museum at the Topkapi palace in Istanbul.
History can never be the realm for speculation. It is a different
matter as to what would have happened if Aurangazeb had riot
come
on to the scene and usurped .the Moghal Crown. We
are not
attempting an historical evaluation. We are recollecting all this only to
note that somc:whcic down the line, these thttads of synactic evolution
have faded into the background post 1857 Briti.Sh Raj.
A look at the campaign for the 'liXJ'7 assembly elections in Uttar
Pnadcsh rudely jostles us to the parameters of p!CSCllPday disc:ow:ses.
The BJP's strident plank of pr,aJ:JJar HillliMJrJa, the abortions to rid
India of &brzr h mJaJ (notwithstanding the &ct that, amongst many
others,
the
devout Hindu qucco ofJhansi Lakshmi Bai annointed the
·same . .Babar h mJaJBahadur Shah Zafar,~ the sovereign monarch .
of India after getting rid of the British rule), the obnoxious CD
arculating ainongst the electorate only proves' the &Ct that rabid
communal polarisation for politic2l and elcctoI2l gains rules the roost.
lndeed..thc 'precariousness of lofty visions• once~ plagues us.
From a feudal absolute monarchy and dynasty.
India overcoming two centuries of colonial occupation has emcigcd as a modem State
where the sovereignty rests with the people. As a self-proclaimed
sc~ democratic republic, a status gained by a gigmtic freedo~
struggle and innumerable sacrifices, we have created for ourselves a
structure and system that is best suited to carry fol'Wllrd the battle of
id.eas to a higher level of syncrctic enlightcninent.
Surely, suc:Q an opportunity cannot. be allowed to be hijacked by
communal forces whose very ideological existence is the antithesis
.
of a
secular dcmOaatic republic. Equally, this opportunity cannot be
allowed to be squandc~ed. Remembering 1857 means the need to
consolidate this opportunity and build on it to strengthen the modem
.secular democratic republic
of India.
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Syncretic Evolution IS
In fact, n:ligi<>U$ !91crancc for us in India is no western concept
borrowed in modern times. Way back in the third century BC,
EmpCrOr Asoka oommandl'd in his edicts, 'Whosoever honours one's
own sect. and condemns other sects, out of devotion. to one's own
sect, intending to glorify it, in acting thus injures his own sect the
more.'
Decades after 1857, Swami Vivekananda visuali.scd the future
oflndia ~'a vcdanti.c mind in an Islamic body'. On religious to1rmna;
even die Bhagavad Gita says: 'Whatever celestial form a devotee
5ccks to worship with faith, I stabilise the faith of that particular
devotee in that particular form' [Otaptcr VII (21 )). Vrvckananda cods
his famous address to the world parliament of religions in Chicago
at the end of the nineteenth century thus: 'If anybody dreams of the
exclusive surviV'al of his own rcligiOn and the destruction of others,
I pity
him from the bottom of my
heart and point out to him that
:Upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, iii spite of
rcsillwicc; help. and not fight, assimilation and not destruction,
harmony and peace and not dissension'. ·
Rcmcnlbcring the one hundred and fifty years since 1857 needs,
therefore, to bring on to the~ the task of i:ccovcring thC synacti.c
stnnd in our cultural evolution. · Instead of ·being devoured by
fr:atticidal communal passions and poison, India's future truly lies in
picking
up these lost
threads and cattying them forwud.
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1857: In the Hearts and
Minds of People
Prakash Karat .
The significance of 1857 is that it was the first major national revolt
against
Bri!Wl
colonialism. All through the eighteenth and ninctccnth
centuries, there were a series of uprisings against the British. These
began with the Sanyasi rebellions which took place in the last three
decades of the 'eighteenth century. These revolts punctuated the early
efforts of the East India Company to extend its domination all over
the country. On the eve of the 1857 revolt by the Bengal Army, thcic
took place the great Santhal rebellion of 1854-55. 15,000 S211thalis
were slaughtered by the British in putting down the uprisins
· As against these uprisings, the 1857 revolt assumed the char2cter
of a national revolt. It is a rcmarkilble coincidence of history that the
founder
of scientific socialism who
began his studies on India in
1853 got drawn to the rcv0lt in India which he tcrnacd 'not a military
mutiny, but a national revolt'. In a series of articles in the N1111 Yri
Dai!J T ribNnt, Karl Marx wrote with sympathy for the people of
India suffering under the rapacious loot of the East India Company.
For the most comprehensive and accur.atc collection of articles
by Marx on India in the New York Daify T ribNnt, one is indebted to
the volume Karl Marx on India edited by Iqbal Hussain (Aligarh
Historians
Society,
T11/ika, 2006) which came out recently. It provides
a fascinating glimpse into how Marx viewed the British rule in India
from 1853
to 1862.
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1857: Jn the Hearts and Minds of People 11
Marx had looked forward, in one of his fust articles in 1853; to
. a·time when 'the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough
to throw off the English yoke altogether.' Commenting on the 1857
revolt, Marx could see that the _uprising would be aushed despite the
heroic ef~orts of the native fighters. He could analyse with the
information available to him, the matcri21 conditions of the people
subject
to colonial loot and exploitation.
He kn~ that the natuie of
the leadership of the revolt doomed it to failure, yet his sympathy
for the rebels and his condemnation
of the British atrocities
come
through strongly.
The 1857 revolt can be called the fust war of fudepcildence
because it ~ed a huge area stretching from Bcngal to the Punjab,
involving l2khs of people. As Ir&n Habib has pointed out, a hundred
and twenty eight thousand men out of a total of hundred and thirty
five thousand soldiers of the Bengal Army joined the rebellion. Marx
recognised the Bcngal Army a:s 'the fust general centre of resistance'
in modem India. Wherever this army was stationed, it became: the
centre for rev~lt which spread to the populace of the neighbouring
ueas. Historical icsearch about the various areas affected by the revolt,
such as the Awadh and Bundelkband, have shown how the vast
Gangctic belt saw a popular uprising spearheaded by the sepoys'
revolt. which spread to the kasbas and the villages. It toc>k two years
for the British to fully subdue the revolt. ·
. The Bengal Army was composed of both Hindus and Muslims
drawn from different castes. It provided the basis for a levd of.
Hindu-Muslim unity not seen before in those times. Just as the Hindu
and Muslim sepoys fought together, so also Hindu and Muslim
talukdars and rajas banded together. It was the ordinary people, both
Hindus
and
M~, who fought valiantly and bore the brunt of the
British repression..
It
was this army which was used as cannon fodder by the British
. . . .
for their colonial expeditions to Afghanistan and Burma The racism
of the British officers and the colonial system further devalued the
sepoys' self-esteem and pride. As such,
it was a crucial
step in
developing the national consciousness that emetged in the fight iigainst
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8 I The Gra Revoll
•
the British rule. The 1857 revolt was, thus, a pm:ursOr to the oational
movement which developed in the early 20th century.
The 1857 tcvolt was among the great anti-colonial uprisings of
the ninctccnth century. There was nothing like it in scale except the
Taiping rebellion in China, which was mainly directed against the
Qing dynascy. The nineteenth century saw the peoples of Asia and
Africa rising against the colonial masters time and again in the form
of revolts by peasants, tribes and dispossessed rulers taking to arms.
But all thcSc rebellions were crushed by the superior miliwy force,
resources and strategy of the colonial powers who represented a
more advanced social formation. ·
The 1857 revolt bore the hallmarlt of such rebellions. Though
fought
by
'peasants in uniform', they relied on traditional leaders and
religious symbols. India was still in the ~talist s12ge, where only ·
such feudal princes and talukdars could provide the leadership. It
was 'national in character' neither in the sense of a movement for a
'nation state nor
of the nationalism of the
20th century, but because
. . .
of the way classes came together from the feudals to the peasants
and the artisans, all of whom experienced the rapacity of the oolonial
rule.
· A key factor which contribu.tcd to the sepoy revolt and the
popular uprising was the rapacious policies adopted by the British
East Indian Company. After systematically destroying the crafts and
vlork of artisans, the British imposed agr:u:ian policies which became
a naked instrument for extracting tribute in the countryside. The
Permanent Settlement and the settlement
in Awadh
were glaring
examples of this policy of loot. The annexation of Awadh in 1856
saw the dispossession of hundreds of talukdars of their revenue
collecting villages. The effects of colonial rule and plunder had its
disastrous impact
on the society and life in
areas where the sepoys of
the Bengal Army came from.
However,
it
will be incorrect to characterise the 1857 revolt as
an anti-feudal uprising. It was primarily an anti-colonial revolt. The
feudal princes and talukdars joined with sepoys and the commoners
to participate in the
revolt because they
were also badly affected by
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1857: In the Heam and Mlnth of People 19
the ~t India Company's oppressive regime. Though· many of the .
talnkdtrs made peace with the BritiSh during the course of the
~the .popular~ forced others to join the ranks of the· :
. rebellion. It will be wrong, therefore, to chatactcrisc ~ t 857 ~volt · ·
as only a l_'CVOlt of the fcwlals ~ wqe dispossessed by the. British.
Many of the princes and fcudals, such as the kings of Gwalior, Patiala
aod Nepal supported the British, without~ support the colonial
· power could not have survived. The~ of the feudal Icaacishi~
were also visible in thcii disunity, petty intcttsts and. lack of an
orgmiscd and coherent plan of action. Very often, they _clwigcd
sides and made pcaec with the British at an opportune time. But the
rebellion threw up heroic ~ from the mks of the feudal rulers ·.
aod zamir>dars. The figures of Nana SQhib, the Rani of jbang, Kuawar .
Singh, Bckht Ahmad Khan and Tantiya Tope come alive with their
heroism. At the same time, the real heroes were the common sepoy .
aod the ordinary folk. They fought with great valour and &ced dcadt ..
with·_stoic coungc. None of them surrendcied. A~ from those .
, who died in the battle, thousands were captured and killed in a bestial
&.Won. . .
The 'c:Mlising nation', in bringing onler among the 'baib:lrians•,
proved more barbarous than the 'natives'. Delhi witnessed the
massacre of thousands after it was recaptured by the British. The &ll
of Lucknow led to killings and loot of shocking proportions.
Aax>iding to The Tnu, within a week, the loot amounted to a million
and a quarter pounds. Mu.it's r_cvulsion at the bloodbath perpetrated
by the British army finds powerful expression in a lead article attribUtcd
to him in the Nt111 Y~ Dai!J T riblmt. Describing the British atrocities,
he concludes 'the bloodthirsty spirit, hateful enough in a single
tycult, but which when adopted by a whole nation, becomes horrible
indeed'. .
The British learnt lessons from 1857. Divide and rule became
the pronounced instrument for perperuating its domitianon. The
Hindu-Musfup unity shown in the revolt had to be disrupted at all
costs.
The British compronliscd with the feudal princes. The taluk~
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· 10/77te Gruu Revolt
of Awadh were bought off by restoring their ~t2tes to them. They
became a blight on the peasantry till inclcpcadcocc: The new Indian ·
ruling clas~ too learnt similar lessons, When they compromised with
laruUordism after gaining frecdo~ ·
The army was rcsttucturod to reinforce loyalty with the so-ailed
·~races' and with an inacased component of British soldiers.
But the fire that was lit in by 1857 could not be snuffed out. It took
another nine decades after 1857 for India to become &cc. . . . .
The 20th century saw the spread of new ideas of national
i.µdcpcndcncc, democracy and socialism, and thcSc were ~
embraced by new classes which gtcw under the impact of new rule
'and it2lism.
cap .
The masses, in the meanwhile, continued to rise in revolt in the
maMcr they knew best. Birsa Munda led his fellow tribal people in a
revolt which went up to 1899. This was the last major uprising of the
nineteenth century before the advent of the modern national
movement.
.
C~mmcmoratipg the 150th anniversary of 1857, and
mncmbering this heroic chapter in India's 6ght against oolooial slavuy,
we pay ttibuti: to the 'sepoys' who rose up in revolt and the tens of
thousands of ordinary pcopJc~ peasants, artisans. ttligiolJs prcachcrs
and rUnl caftsmcn -who joined the revolt and sacrificed their
lives.
The popular
imagination of the revolt and its heroes can be
witnessed even today in the folk songs and ballads sung in parts of
Utw PrUlcsh and Madhya,hadcsh by the ordinary people.
It~ necessary to taJ,k'about this legacy because the ruling classes
aod the official ideologues W2Dt to observe 1857 by making it devoid
of its 'anti-impcri21fst' content. It reduces the revolt to 'heroes' and
'heroines' who fought the oppressor without the context of what
India is c:xpcriencing.150 years bt.cr. At a time the Indian ruling classes
. . .
arc espousing colbboration and surrender to the dcsccndents of the
mamudingcolonial powers, it is time to r:cmind them that. the ordinary
people of India still carry with them the spirit and essence of 1857 in
their hearts and minds.
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The 1·857 Revolt in India:
Lessons for Us
Jyoti Basu
The great Revolt of 1857 was a watershed in the history of modem
India, It marked the first national challenge to the English in India,
emboldened the growth ~f~ nationalist politics and presaged
significant conStitutional changes in British India. Today one hund~
fifty years later as we comQlemocuc the event, the rcbdlion provides
us with a new soun:c of inspir.ltion to cbmpletc the nation-building
project. Provides us with a new source of inspir.ltion to complete
. .
the nation-building project
The ninettmth cmturywitnessed many anti-impcria1is up.risings
against imperialism. rnost notably in Latin America against Spanish
colonialism under the leadership . of Simon Bolivar and the
revolutionary priest Hidalgo. But both in terms of social base and ·
geographical distribution, the 1857 Revolt in India was much more
powerful. The Revolt started with the mutiny of the Indian sepoys
· over the use of grc<ased cartridges, but the sepoys were soon joined
by broader sections of the civil society whose moral economy had
been disrupted by the political system that had been imposed by the
East India Company. The conjunction between the sepoy 'mutiny
·
'With
the civil uprisings imparted the rebellion of 1857 the charaetcr
of a national popular armed RevOlt. Writing shortly a£tcr the outhiqk
in the N1111 York TribN11e of 28 July 1857, Karl Mux had correctly
described it as 'not a military mutiny, but a national Revolt'. On 14
September 1857 inNn11 Yor.t TribNne Mux compared the 1857 Revolt
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•
12/TM Great Revolt
·with the 1789 Ficnch revolution and noted:
The first blow dealt to the French mori2rchy proc.cecled from
the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian Revolt docs
bot similarly commence with the f)UtS. tortured, dishooourcd,
stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fled,
{>attcd, fatted and pampered by them. .
It is unfortunate that some profcssiooal hisioriansof ourcountty
could not appreciate either the national or the popular character of
the 1857 ~olt and preferred to call it a Sepoy Mutiny. But I
understand that i:cccnt rcscarchcrs have exposed the fallacy of such a
contention, and the historians in India and abroad arc increasingly
acknowledging the national char.acter of the 1857 Revolt.
The 1857Revoltbcganon:z9'1' Match 1857whcnMangalPandey
of the 34ih infantty iri Barrackporc became the first martyr. The mutiny
spread 12pidly in eastern and northern India. Dchti, Patna, Arrah,
Azanigarh, Allahabad, Gorilkhpur, Faizabad, Fatehpur, Jhansi, .
. Lucknow, Kanpur, Etaw-ah, Fatchguh, Gwalior, Shahjahanpur, Agra,
Bhacupur, Rohilkhand,MathU12, Agra, Hath.ms, Ddhi, Mccrut, BarciDy
and Roorki -these emerged as storm-centres of the Revolt. On
11
111
May 1857 _the sepoys of the Mcerut regiment captured Delhi
and prod2imcd the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as
their widisputcd leader. In this entire region the dispossessed talukdars
and impoverished peasants and artisans joined the sepoys to contest
the English ailthority. The English Jand.:revcnuc experiments not only
deprived the talukdars and landlords of their estates and social status,
but also subjected the peasants to excessive revenue demands. At the
same time the acute crisis faced
by urban
handicraft industty due to
the intrusion of cheaper English products and the disappcat20cc _ of
the patronage of the traditional local courts and ruling classes Clislocatcd
the livelihood of the artisans. Despite their class contradictions the
zamindars, th-e peasants and artisans joined hands_ with the sepoys to
fight their common enemy--the English. According to one estimate
one-fifth of the Indian population in 1857 directly or indirectly
participated
in the Revolt
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TM 1857 Revoll inlndia/ 13
· The English authority virtually collapsed~ the entire pl•ins ·
ofUttllr Pl'lldesli. In Rohilkhand the BritiJb r.uJe w '~-existent' ·
for almost a year. Contemporary British officials mn1rked that in
Oudh and its surrounding areas it was difficult to·distinguish who
among the rebels were the sepoys afi4 the pe2sants. In some areas
like Bijnaur the civil population even rose up in l:Cv:olt before any
help could be received from the sepoys. In other cases as in
B~hahr the popular uprising coincided with the arrival of the
rebel army from .Aliguh. Recent tesCarcbes have thus tended to _stress
. that in the affecb:d area the mutiny of the sepoys were either~
by or accompanied by or followed by a civil rebellion. The popular
violence was . .characterised by killing of Europe2DS, pillaging of
English est2biishments and record rooms, indigo factories and
burning of land rccotds and official documents. In some amas such
~ts on symbols ofEoglish authority were contrmporaileous with
attacks
on
indigenous moneylenders. In parts of North-Western
province the peasant participation in the Revolt wu motivated by
the aim to win bac:Jt the land that they bad lost because of English
· revenue settlement. Contemp0rary.English obsetvers like Kaye
admium that then: was lwdly any Indian belonging to any religious
·&ith betwcco the Ganges andJamunawhowasnottgainstthcBritisb.
• •
Although traditionally believed that Bengal remained aloof from the
blDlult, I undc l'Sfli!nd thati-coeot historians in Bcogal are demonstrating
~the English in Bengal Were also panic-stricken and the area, too,
was seething with unrest. ·
. The other unique feature of the 1857 Revolt was the solidarity.
amongst tqc iebds rutting across religious and provincial lines. Leaders
of the ReVolt issued proclamations to stress the importance of
commMal amity amongst the iebels, emphasising the need of Hindus
and Muslims to join their hands to drive out the English and protect
their own religious eustoms and rituals. Mention may bC .oiade in this
connection of the pamphlet 'Fath i Islam (Victory to Islam) issued
from
Lucknow.
Again, the Azamguh proclamation called upon the
Indians of all classes and religions to rise up. against the faithless.
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14/TM Gnat Revolt
English. The rebel l~ Fctme Shah's proclamation of August 1857
reiterated the same national spirit ·
. .
It is well known to all that in this· age, the people of
Hindoostan, both Hindoos and Mohammedans, arc being
ruined undet the tyranny and oppression of the infidel and
ttcacherous English.
Historians have also drawn our attention to such examples as
the Muslim rebel leaders banning sacrifices of co'Ws during th~ Id
festival to avoid any Hindu-Muslim discotd
.
It is unfortunate that sometinles the Revolt of 1857 is denied
.
the national cbaactcr since the ideal of a unified all-India nation state
was premature for most people of nineteenth cennuy India. But
how
can we deny a national character 'to a popular outburst
against
an alien regime, particularly when it enjoyed the support of a large
mass of population and affected a large part of the country? We
neCd not forget that based on this particular criterion inany Europcaii
episodes have been considered as national events, as for ~le, the
Russian peasants fighting Napoleon or the French fighting the English
under Joan of Arc or the Carbonaris fighting for I tali an unification
even When the concerned Russians, French or the Italians were yet to ·
develop the notion of a united Russia, France or Italy. Double
swldards in historical judgements must be avoided. · ·
The R~olt failed, thanks to the brutalities committed by the
English
on the rebels. But the
Revolt generated new national ideas.
Historians like Irfan Habib have demonstrated that apart from laying
stress on communal harmony the rebel leaders visualised a new
national order. Tl}ey sought to establish 'a kind of elective military
rule', assured economic relief to the zamirtdars, peasants and artisans
alike aDd promised better service conditions for the sepoys. The ~bcl
leaders certainly deserve credit. for nursing this ~tional vision at a
time when nationalism
in the modern bourgeois sense was yet to develop.
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The 1857 Revolt in India I 1 S
. '
· What then is the lesson tobc diawn from the 1857 Revolt? The
uprisihgWldcdines thcllnpamoee of fightingimpcrialism·atall oosts. ·
1bc 1857 rebels fought and died for a cause -the cause of national
libcntion from an all~ rule. They raised the standard of rebellion.
when the English power in India was at its ascendant height, and
fought relentlessly shoulder to shoulder t9r a national cause till the
last hour, ignoring religious, ethnic.and local divides. Today when WC
arc bghring to uphold the secular and dcmocmtic whics of our fcdenl ·
polity, to strengthen the national Unity of our country and to frustrate
the~ desigm of the forces of nco-impcrialism wc can dmw strength .
from the martyrs of the 1857 Revolt. This should bC the context of
the co~cmon.tion of the 150 years of the 1857 Revolt. I am
happy that thf: government of India has constituted a committee to
observe the anniversary. But this should not be only con6ncd to high .
level conferences for cst2hlishcd academics or officials. We should
use the occasion to coi'rcct any distorted understanding of the great
event, publish credible accounts of the Revolt in vcmacular and in a
~that can be understood by the rank and file in our society,
and disseminate the political lesson of the uprising at the gn.ss-root
level Only then the commemoration of the glorious chapter in our
struggle for freedom can have a multiplier effect, and only then can
we
pay our real tribute to the
martyrs who died for the noble cause
to make our country a better place to live in.
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Remembering ~857
Ir/an Habib
It is difficult in Free India to ttall the times under the British, when
no free and open discussion of the events of 1857 was possible. it
w2s, then. only aft.er independence that people became more and
more fiamiliar about the rebellion itscll Documents not known to
sCholars before 1947 have now been published, especially rebels'
proclamations, and other documents, ncwS,Papcr accounts of the
Revolt, etc.
.We did not, indeed, have merely an ~ed revolution -the
only armed revolution
on that scale that
we have ever .known in
India. But it was more than that: it was the largest anti-colonial upris
ing anywhere in the world in the nineteenth century. If one looks. at
the whole of the nineteenth century, among anti-colonial revolutions
all over the world, one will find successful anti-colonial revolutions in
Latin America, but there was no anti-colonial revolution even there,
•
remotely on this scale. There were armed revolutionaries under the .
great Bolivar, but they never exceeded more dw:l a few thousands
· of armed.men at any time. •
Herc iii India, on the other hand, dlerc were over one. hundred
· and twenty-five thousand of Bengal Army sepoys going into armed
revolt. According to official figures, the Bengal Army consisted of
over one htindred and thirty-five thousand '~rive· sepoys. Of these
only some seven thousand remained loyal according to a report laid
before British Padiament in 1858 .. No less than a hundtcP and twenty-
. .
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Remembering 1857I17
·eight thous~ men thus wo1t into rebellion. We arc here 1:2lking
about what was the most modem army in Asia at the.time, and the
largcSt army within the British Empire ovcncas. In terms of the.
pctccntagc of people inhabiting the rebellious territory involved, it
cons,istcd of about thirty percent of the population of the territory.
of the present Un.loµ of India. Thus if we look at the scale from any
angle whatsoever, then 1857 was not only a major event in Indian
bistot'f, it was a majpr event in modern world history.
. . ' .
Revolutions often break out in situations often created by the
n1ling classes thcmsdvcs. The .revolt of the Bengal Amiy, seemingly
the favoured child of the British regime (as Marx bad noted) was
brought about in part by a new phase in British colonial expansion,
the Imperialism of Free Trade, which put this entire army under
wiprcccdcntcd pressure .
The Bcn8at Army was the 'sword arm' of British Impcrialistn
. in India and outside of it. Marx was completely sceptical about the
peace pretensions of the Free Traders, who dominated British poli
tics from the early 1830s onwards, a &ct not known even to Lcriin,
for these articles ofMarx bad not yet been traced and published. HiS
scepticism proved to. be fully justified when historians like John
Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, in England, developed in the 1950's
began to analyse the phenomenon of'thc imperialism of.free trade'.
They underlined the empirically observed &ct that aftct the British
Padiamcntary Reforms of 1832, when British industrial classes came
virtually into power, a new powerful WaVC of British colonial expan
sion began. It was in the process of this expansion that the Bengal
Army sepoys were continuously made canon-fodder, to fight and
die
in battle-fields from Crimea to China.
.
The first
campaign the Bengal Army was thrown in was the
gruesome first Afghan War, in 1839-1842; then it fought in the Gwalior
war of 1843, a half-forgotten war causing great losses on both sides;
this was followed by the war to conquer Sind in 1844; then came the
Punjab Wars, with huge losses for the BcngalArmy in 1845-46 artd
in 1848-49. In 1852 the Army'Wlis sent to Burma for the Second
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18/The GreOI Revolt
Burma War, during which amidst dreadful pestilence it conquered
southern Burma for the British. In 1840-42, it had to fight in China in
the infamous Opium War, and then again during 1856-60. In 1854,
contingent sent off to Crimea, to fight against ~sia. °It had thus
been continuously fighting from 1839to1857.
Even in 1856-57 a war was going on with Persia, with Indian troops fighting there. No
other army in the world was so continuously involved in wars in
contemporary times. It is an ordinary perception of professional
generals that armies need rest; for eighteen years, such rest mnaincd .
· unknown to the Bengal Army. ·
John William Kaye, who was more honest than other British
military historillfllt of the day, notes, wrote that it was common for
British
officials, while reprimanding the Sepoys of the
Bcng.al Army,
for any fault, to say that they would be 'sent to Burma, or to China ·
, where the men would die.' It was not that the sepoys were cxces
Sivcly religious; it was just that they were human beings. Why was not
the British Army, the home army; sent on all those expeditions? The
only exception was die war in Crimea, the single war, and that seem
ingly bled Britain white.
The frustration that the sepoys felt as soldiers was given expres
sion to in
ways that
were determined by the very kin~ of army that'·
the British had built For reasons of convenience, the British recruited
soldiers for the Bengal Army from an area where people s~ke and
understood the same language, namely, Hintimtani. Therefore, the
recruits came baSically from an area comprising the present te1rito
rics of UP, Western Bihar and Haryana. A Vcrf latgc recruiting ground
in UP, consisted of the two present Divisions of Faizabad and
Lucknow, which constituted before 1856, the kingdom
of Oudh.
Some
40,000 of Bengal Army men came from Oudh alone. An
other point about this army was that it was recruited Wgcly on a
caste basis. ''the ~nhmans constituted a vcr.:y large part of the infan
try. They were often literate, and were seen to be more prone to
accept the discipline needed'in for modem warfare, than the uswd
'martial' clements in traditional Indian arinics. Rules were ftamcd in
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Rememberingl857/l9
1850 to include the stipulation that upper caste men only would be
recruited to thc .. Bcngal Army. At the same time in order to encour
age cohesive action at cor:nm3nd, divisions on religious lines were
not introduced in the Bengal Army. Imperialism had not discovered
till then that it could~ USC religious divisions bctwccn Hin-.
dus and Muslims. For this lapse they were CCllSwcd by a loyal official.
and future educationist, Syed Ahmed Khan, when he wrote his book,
.Asbab+&gawat+HinJ (Gauscs of the Indian Jkbcllion), in which he
argued that it WllS a mistake for the British Government to put both
Hindu and Muslim Sepoys in the same regiments and companies, for
when they shed their blood together, they became closer than br:oth
crs to each other, and could 90 longer be used against each other.
Soldiers of. this modern army, which had very little to dQ with the ·
Indian n>ling classes of older days, and which was perhaps the most
numerous modern clement
in Indian society of
that time, had thus
evolved tWo important features. It was very highly caste-sensitive,
and yet
it was
not communal.
· That is why the greased cartridges Were ~culaHy difficult foi
•
the Sepoys to accept. Caste WllS important for them. ,That kind of
status was perhaps the only thing left to them: They could not be-
. come officers,
or get promotions.
.At best, one out of twenty, or it
could be thirty, ~uld become a jt1111adar. Then from such j11111111ian,
one out of thirty, perhaps, could become a S11bttlar.; from those, just
a few could become a S11"""1r Mt9or; and that was the end in the
promotion ladder. They had hardly any dignity as men left to them in
the army. 'rhcy 'Were paid, but constantly humiliated by their officers
as people
of an inferior race. Only the pride of caste had been left to
'
them and the British government was now
taking even that away
with
its
greased cartridges containing tallow from cow and pig fat. It
is true, many good reasons could be given in favour of the use of
,greased cartridges. The difference between. biting the Cartridge or
breaking it by fingers, could be one between life and death in battle .
.
When Bahadur Shah WllS put on trial, the British prosecutor said
that the mutineers who had objected to the greased cartridges when
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issued 'by their British officers, were using and biiuig the ~ry same
carttidgc when they were firing them ilfpitlst /he British. But that was
dOoc by.them at their own free will, not under coercion. Their rejec
tion of the greased carttidgcs stemmed from all the cumulative hu-:
-:t:A..:~- . lly the . I and-""""''" L.-!t: • ..: ___ -'--bad b -
u..........,..,. cspcaa rana £~ nuuUllllUUID ~
1
ezn
constmtly subjected to, such as having to march off on a Sunday to
hear some white missionary glorifying his &ith at the cost of theirs,
or suffcriQg ~nal insults at the hands of European ofticcn.
.
· But there were more fundamenl21 auscs too behind the Bengal
Army's Mutiny than the 'accident of the greased cartridgeS. It was,
however, no 'accident that the area the bulk of its sepoys came
&om, had been turned into the highest t:axc-A area of the country.
The peasantry as well as the 'village zamindars' here l:iad been made
subject to an ever rising burden of tax under the M.aha'1Pati system
since 1822. Bcogal proper WU under the Permanent Sctdcmcnt, with
land cu permanently fixed; the~ of the Madr:.as Ptcsideacy
"WU also a permanent sctrlcmcot, made mainly with peasants; Bombay
had sctdancnts of thirty years; In~ nOt only were the setdc-
•
mcots made.for twenty years only, but the revenue-rates could be
chaogcd at any time. There wu also collective responsibility for pay
ment Even if one pcasan~ 0r landholder paid his tu, but his neighbour
had not paid, then his own land would also stand forfcitc4 to Gov-·
cmment. In Aligarh district, Eric Stokes tell us, between 1 ~39 and
1858 half of.the land changed hands; in Mnzaffamagu, a quarter,
between 1841 and 1861. The tax-free (mafi) lands had also been
rcswncd whoJcsaJc after 1833. The BI3hmans and also. 'shaikhs', from
amoogstMnslims, who were particulady ~in the BcogalArmy,
often held l1l'!ft lands, which were ordinarily given to J>llllliits and
Muslims scholars under the pie-British regilncs. Both as peasants and
as mafi-holdcrs, the classes that the Sepoys came &om, ~crc Uicrcas
iogly adversely~ and this; of course, Jed to discoriu:nt spre<ading
· among the sepoys as well.
Whatever sources of the discontent might have been, the fact
1
that practically the entire Bcogal army revolted, step by step, but with,
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R~ring .1857 /21
inacasing trmpo; reo;iains a dramatic phcoomcnno. Over a hundred
and twenty-five thousaoo l'CVolting out of one hundred thirty-five
thousand
is
itself, as wc have mentioned abOvc, an inctt.dible devel
opment however one looks at it. It began in West Bengal, in Dum
dum first, in January 1857; then, Mangal Pandey,_ enacted the first
bold act of defiance, in March at Barrackpoic. The flames spread~
Lucknow early in May; and on May 9 and 10, a full scale mutiny
erupted at Mccrut. The MCciutScpoys occupied Ddhi on May 1.1.
This proved to be the decisive gcnml signal fo~ the whole army to
revolt.
Uptill now, despite much speculation, thac has been no solid
evidence that behind this sudden upsurge there was any long prc
mcdibltcd plan or a ~hie leadership, beyond a strong sen~
of brothcthood among the Sepoys. The brothcdiood that had long
been developed through shedding blood together in their masters'
war5 can only explain how the mass of sepoys decided to follow the·
caH of solidarity with the first rebels. HindU and Muslim SCpoys of
the Bengal Army thought that they had a common identity. Hence,
when one set of sepoys revolted, the others could not hold back.
When we deprecate the term 'Mutiny' _given to the Revolt of 1857,
we should not at the same time underestimate the vital role of the
. rebelling soldiers in the uprising They remained throughout its 00\JnC
the backbone of the Revolt. The proper estimation of the Sepoys'
role in the rebellion is found in even the conventional narrative
of Vincent Smith in his Oxford History of lntlia (1916). One finds him
speaking of how these hundrcq and tweney .thousand men, went to
their deaths, on the battlefield, or on the gallows, or in the tarai de
files; any one hardly escaping. with few ever surrcndcrin& The Ben
gal Army Sepoys certainly deserve every tribute wc can offer them,
and the mcmoty of th~ staunchness in rCsistancc and suffering would
hc;ipcfully live fotcv~ in the heart of the Indian people. It is also true .
that the rebel soldiers immediately found response in the civil popu
lation. The areas, where the Sepoys were recruited from,-were im-·
mediately convulsed by a widespread sense of sympathy for the
•
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22 /The GreaJ Revolt
rebels; and other classes also revoluid.
A ~cry well documented artidC, byTalmiz Khaldunin a volume
on 1857 edited
by
P.C. Joshi argues that the Revolt turned into 'a
~sant war against indigenous landlordism and foreign imperial
ism'; and was thus primarily an anti-feudal movement, and only sec-·
ondarily an anti-colonial uprising. One would agree with P.C. Joshi
that ~s is an unjustified dilution of the anti-<:<>lonial character of .
1857 and very unrealistic in its excluding landloid classes from the
ranks of the Rebels. It is 1l2tUrally also not in accordance with Marx's
assessment of the rebellion of 1857, as we have seen. To him, it was
'a revolution', 'a national revolt', in which die peasants, as well as
· section of the {IVJ'i.lfdanand the 14/MAularswcrc also involved. All the
classes in
India were adversely affected by imperialism at that time,
and the contradiction
bcrivccn Imperialism and the Indian people
was at that particular juncture conccntfttcd in those areas, where the
Bengal Army Sepoys mostly came from. The liuld tax 'W2S inttnsc\y
heavy there; and the land rights of the zamindars were being ren
dered inacasingtyvulncrable to forfeiture. 1bc annaation of Oudh
had taken p'2cc in 1856; and the f411th/an, who were the.great landed
magnates of Oudh were thrcatcncd with the imposition of the same
M""""""'1 system that had ruined landed classes i,n the rest of the
province. So there was a situation, in which both the peasants and the
landed classes had to bear oppression from the same source.
As would happen in any agnrian revolution, the conditions on
the
ground
undoubtedly varied. Mark Thornhill claimed in a report
(15 November 1858) that the upper landed castes, who had suffered
most in the Maha/Jvari system in U. P., remained loyal to the British,
whereas the peasants, 'who have derived the most benefit from our
rule(!) were the m()st hostile to its continuance.' This is an o!:>viously
one-sided version, foreshadowing the subsequent British policy of
. winning over the landlords and repressing the ~try. 1n· any case,
in Oud.h the Govcinor General Canning himself thought that the
/a/N/etianwcre the leaders of the rebellion, and therefore, issued his .
famous proclamation of 1857, in which he declared that the entire
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Remembering/857123
land of Oudh "Qndcr the taiN/ukm' possession was now forfeited to
the British Government It was stated repeatedly on the floor of the ·
British Parliament that both the llllMletltm and the peasants of OUdh
had joined bands in the rebellion against the British Government .
MorcoVcr, apart from the ru1'2l roots of the rebellion that Maa
has underlined, there were also urban clements ipvolved in it British
rule had meant considerable growth of urb~ unemployment
Lucknow might
not have
had a population of one million at the .
tiine of annexation (1856), as estimated by some British observers,
but it certainly had a p0pulation of above six hundred thousand, at
that time, to judge from a police-house-survey made just before the
Revolt. It was therefore, a large city, possibly even larger at the time
than Calcutta. After the Annexation it was full of people deprived
of their livclibood, because the court was gone. The artisans, espe
cially weavers, were the hardest hit because of imports of British
products. This
was
notably because while, on the ooe hand, there
Was aq influx of Cheap factory .~madc cloth and other products from
Britain, there was simultaneously the loss of their mditional marltcts
for town artisans, as the princely courts and their dependents were
destroyed. As LE.s. Recs, an English eye-witness of the events at
Lucknow in 1857, admitted: rrhat the Lucknow people should rise
against us was a very probable event.· .. We had done very little to
deserve their love and much to merit their detestation.' What was
true of Lucknow was true, in vuying measure, of most towns of ·
the affected region. Therefore; the Revolt' of 1857 was more than an
agrarian war: people of cities also joined the rebellion: Pdhi. Lucknow,
Barcilly, Kanpur,Jhansi and other towns became determined centres
of resistance.
We must remember that the British regime by the processes of
tribute exmction and de-industrialiµtion it had unlcaspcd had caused
extreme impoverishment among millions of Indians. Tribute was
the cause behind heavy taxation; and
it had to be
remitted constantly
to meet_ what would later be known as the 'Home Charges', and for
.... _ ....
tw)sfcrs of private wealth to Europe. The degree of colonial ex~
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,

24/T'he Great Revolt
ploitation was so extreme durtmany classes. which pcm.ps did not
·understand what their misery was due to, still took to the path of
revolt. They sensed that in the over.throw of the British. lay.the only
source of relief; and so, whether in villages or in towns, they joined
the Revolt.
.
The documents that became known to us in the 1950s are im-
portant in this i:cgard, as they bring out soine of~ sentiments of
the rebels. For example the Mughal Prince Firoz Shah's p.roclamation
of 25 August 1857 lists many of the popula:r grlCvanccs of the time
and ~ks by certain specific promises to attract many sections of the
population to the Rebel banner. It begins with an appeal to the
zamindars: the British were levying heavy mes on them, and the
Badshahi Govcmmcntwould only take half the produce in tu; those
landowners who aided it with money and men will be made tu
cxcmpt; those who g:lVC money only would need to pay only a fourth
of the produce in tax. Moreover, their dignity as against 'commosi
Ryots' would be protected. The merchants would be aided with
funds and 'Will have the· benefit of the Government steam vessels
and stcam~s for the conveyance of their mcrchandisc gmbl'
-this Ms the appearance of a particularly 'modem' project. Salaries
of public servants and soldiers would be raised Artisans wuc prom--
. iscd employment, their present plight being described th\is: 'fhe
Europeans by the introduction of English articles into India, have
thrown the weavers, the cotton dressers, the carpenters, the black
smiths and the shoemakers, etc., out of employ ... so that every de
scription
of
native artisan has been reduced to beggary'. Fmally, 'pun
dits, fakirs and learned men', both Hindu and Muslim, would be
given lands, provided they declare in favour of the Rebels. It will be
seen that practically every class of society is appealed to -except
the peasants. Ocarly, even among the more intclligcnt and dctenninoci
rc~l leaders, as F~oz Shah turned out to be, the full potential. of.
peasant unrest and its value for the success of the Rebellion was n<>t
still uiidcrstood.
Yet even the most traditional of rebel leaders were conscious
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R~membering 1857125
of the need for making an appeal to the INSSCS. This is particularly to
be seen in their u5c of the printing press to publish their proclama-·
tions. The Oudh Court, in the name ofBirjis Qadr, issued a printed
'Gencr2l Notice (Ishliharnama) to the~ And General Inhab
itants of this Country', which was a bilingual doaimc:l)t in Hindustmi
in Urdu characters (on the right) and Nagari (on the left). The lan-·
guagc was deliberately kept simple, and the document shows that the
days of Hindi-Urdu controversy bad not yet dawned. & Athar Abl;>as
Rizvi has published a facsimile of this 'Notice' as well as a printed ·
ishtiharof Nana SajUb, printed at Kanpur in July 18S.7, in similarly
idiomatic but simple Urdu. Throughout the period of rebel control
of Delhi .(May-September 1857) weekly Urdu newspapers contin
ued
to be printed and issued in the city.
.
The last-mentioned
prodamation of Nana Sahib is also impor-
tant in another respect. It has long been the custom of certain histo
rians to treat Nana Sahib and I akshmi Bai ofJhansi as representing
the chiefly 'Hindu' centres of the Rebellion, while Delhi and Ban:illy
were regarded as particularly 'Muslim' centres, with an assumption
of an underlying seilsc of hostility between them. One can see how
this assumption is at work in V .A Smith's account of the Revolt in his
Oxford History of India. How wrong such a conception could be is
show~ by the fact that not only is Nana Sahib's irhliharpublished in
Urdu, and bears a Hijri date, but its main theme is that the Sultan of
Turkey had intervened on behalf of the Indians, so that when the
British sl:llps had brought the European troops to Egypt on their
way to India, the Sultan issued a farmaan to the Pasha of Egypt to
slaughter the English, and he
had done so. This
was nothing but
&ntasy, of course. Yet the expectation of support from the Sultan is
good evidence that Nana Sahib's world-view was not clouded by
religious prejudices.
As for .the Rani of
Jhailsi. some of her mos't
determined fighters .were Muslim gunners and Pathan guar4s. On
the supposedly 'Muslim' side, the way the standard of jehad was
removed from the Jama Masjid in May 1857 at Delhi, lest it be
apprehended
as being directed
against the Hindus, and all cow and
buffalo-slaughter
was banned at
the Muslim lduz Zuha festival in ·
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26 /The Gna1 Revolt
July, showed the Rebels' qetcrrnination to prevent all religious dispu
tation - a realm in which Percival Spear (f lllilight of the Mlighals) in
his detailed account of the Rebel regime in Delhi, credits them with
the 'most striking success.' At Barcilly, Bahadur Khan, the principal
rebel leader, printed an appeal to Hindu chiefs
to join the struggle ag:Unst the British, detailing the attacks on Hindu customs and t2boos
by the British and offering, on behalf of Muslims, to utterly abjure
cow-slaughter and the eating
of beef!
In his
important book, fi/JC011111111ni!J, Rajat Kanta Ray has very
comprchcrisivcly dealt with the attitude of mind of the various sec
tions
of the rebels. He
particularly underlines the fact that in the re
bellion of 1857, in the minds of most of the participants, even when
they were not Sepoys, but civilians, the sense of religious differences
receded to a surprising degree: Hindu <ontingcnts would elect Mus
lims as their representatives; Muslim contingents would accept a Hindu
S11bttiar llkjJras their head. Among the Muslims who voluntarily joined
the Rebellion, under the in a pulse of joining a righteous war, or jihad
and so were called mlfiahids orjihaJis t&natics' in official British trans-
. lation and often wrongly identified with W ahabir), there was the same
acceptance
of the need for Hindus and Muslims coming
together to
fight for a common cause: the target was the British alone.
In the P.isala F'ath-i Islmn (fract on the Victory of Islam) com-
. .
posed under the supposed aegis of the famous rebel leader-and
theologian Ahmadnllah Shah the appeal is repeatedly made to both .
Hindus
and Muslims to fight unitedly to defend their
respective faiths
against their English oppressors. In a contemporary eye-witness de-
. scription
of a mass rebel
ceremony at Barcilly that Rajat Ray extracts
from a Bengali source, we are told ofBahadur Khan moving through
Barcilly with two bannc:rs, one the banner of Islam, the green ban
ner, and another large banner, the holy dhvaj. A similar ceremony
had been undertaken by Nana Saheb at Kanpur.
The final aspect, and that is often ignored
in the discussions
about the rebellion, is the
racial question.
WW. Hunter, in the preface
to
his book
Indian MNSalmans (1871 ), admitted that 'the chronic peril,
which environs the British power in India, is the gap between the
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pedibus, inutiles suis remisit... His rustici expertis, festinato
concionibus omissis, ad sua aratra sunt reversi.»
392: Rob. Wace, Roman du Rou, vers 5979-6038.
Li païsan e li vilain
Cil del boscage et cil del plain,
Ne sai par kel entichement,
Ne ki les meu premierement;
Par vinz, par trentaines, par cenz
Unt tenuz plusurs parlemenz...
Priveement ont porparlè
Et plusurs l'ont entre els juré
Ke jamez, par lur volonté,
N'arunt seingnur ne avoé.
Seingnur ne lur font se mal nun;
Ne poent aveir od elss raisun,
Ne lur gaainz, ne lur laburs;
Chescun jur vunt a grant dolurs...
Tute jur sunt lur bestes prises
Pur aïes e pur servises...
«Pur kei nus laissum damagier!
«Metum nus fors de lor dangier;
«Nus sumes homes cum il sunt,
«Tex membres avum cum ils unt,
«Et altresi grans cor avum,
«Et altretant sofrir poum.
«Ne nus faut fors cuer sulement;
«Alium nus par serement,
«Nos aveir e nus defendum,
«E tuit ensemble nus tenum.
«Es nus voilent guerreier;
«Bien avum, contre un
«Trente u quarante païsanz
«Maniables e cumbatans.»

393: Voy. Thierry, Lettres sur l'Histoire de France.
394: Maximilien, en 1492.
395: Miranda, c'est-à-dire les merveilles.
396: Guibert de Nogent.
397: Guibert de Nogent.
398: Louis VI s'était opposé à ce que les villes de la couronne se
constituassent en communes. Louis VII suivit la même politique; à
son passage à Orléans, il réprima des efforts qu'il regardait comme
séditieux: «Là, apaisa l'orgueil et la forfennerie d'aucuns musards de
la cité, qui, pour raison de la commune, faisoient semblant de soi
rebeller, et dresser contre la couronne, mais moult y en eut de ceux
qui cher le comparèrent (payèrent); car il en fit plusieurs mourir et
détruire de male mort, selon le fait qu'ils avoient desservi.» Gr.
Chron. de Saint-Denis. Il abolit la commune de Vézelay.
399: C'est le fameux Oriflamme. Il devint l'étendard de rois de
France, lorsque Philippe I
er
eut acquis le Vexin, qui relevait de
l'abbaye de Saint-Denis.
400: Il fut empoisonné dans sa jeunesse, et en resta pâle toute sa
vie. (Orderic Vital.)
401: Philippe I
er
disait à son fils, Louis le Gros: «Age, fili, serva
excubans turrim, cujus devexatione pene consenui, cujus dolo et
fraudulenta nequitia nunquam pacem bonam et quietem habere
potui.» Suger.
402: Il voyageait quelquefois dans ce seul but.
403: Guibert de Nogent. «Examina contraxerat puellarum.»
404: Sigebert de Gemblours.

405: Suger.
406: Les moines de Saint-Denis élurent Suger pour abbé sans
attendre la présentation royale. Louis s'en montra fort irrité, et mit
en prison plusieurs moines. (Suger.)—Ainsi l'exception prouve ici la
règle.
407: Il le lui avait acheté 60,000 liv. Foulques le Rechin avait aussi
cédé le Gâtinais, pour obtenir sa neutralité.
408: Suger.
409: Il y a moins de lacunes dans la suite des historiens. Les plus
distingués qui parurent furent d'abord des Allemands, comme Othon
de Freysingen, pour célébrer les grands empereurs de la maison de
Saxe, puis les Normands d'Italie et de France, Guillaume Malaterra,
Guillaume de Jumiéges, et le chapelain du conquérant de
l'Angleterre, Guillaume de Poitiers. La France proprement dite avait
eu le spirituel Raoul Glaber, et un siècle après, entre une foule
d'historiens de la croisade, l'éloquent Guibert de Nogent; Raymond
d'Agiles appartient au Midi.
410: Depuis longtemps des écoles de théologie s'étaient formées
aux grands foyers ecclésiastiques: D'abord à Poitiers, à Reims, puis
au Bec, au Mans, à Auxerre, à Laon et à Liége. Orléans et Angers
professaient spécialement le droit. Des écoles juives avaient osé
s'ouvrir à Béziers, à Lunel, à Marseille. De savants rabbins
enseignaient à Carcassonne; dans le Nord même, sous le comte de
Champagne, à Troyes et Vitry, et dans la ville royale d'Orléans.
411: Proslogium, c. II.
412: Libellus pro insipiente.
413: Les partisans de l'empereur accusèrent Grégoire d'avoir
ordonné un jeûne aux cardinaux, pour obtenir de Dieu qu'il montrât
qui avait raison sur le corps du Christ, Bérenger ou l'Église romaine?

414: Chaucer dit d'une abbesse anglaise de haut parage: «Elle
parlait français parfaitement et gracieusement, comme on l'enseigne
à Stratford-Athbow, car pour le français de Paris, elle n'en savait
rien.»
415: Epistola I, Heloissæ ad Abel. (Abel. et Hel. opera, edid.
Duchesne): «Quod enim bonum animi vel corporis tuam non
exornabat adolescentiam?»—Abelardi Liber Calamitatum mearum. p.
10: «Juventutis ei formæ gratiâ.»
Abel. liber Calam., p. 12. «Jam (à l'époque de son amour) si qua
invenire licebat carmina, erant amatoria, non philosophiæ secreta.
Quorum etiam carminum pleraque, adhuc in multis, sicut et ipse
nosti, frequentantur et decantantur regionibus, ab his maxime quos
vita simul oblectabat.»—Heloissæ epist. I: «Duo autem, fateor, tibi
specialiter inerant quibus feminarum quarumlibet animos statim
allicere poteras; dictandi videlicet, et cantandi gratia. Quæ cæteros
minime philosophos assecutos esse novimus. Quibus quidem quasi
ludo quodam laborem exerciti recreans philosophici, pleraque
amatorio metro vel rhythmo composita reliquisti carmina, quæ præ
nimia suavitate tam dictaminis quam cantus sæpius frequentata,
tuum in ore omnium nomen incessanter tenebant: ut etiam illiteratos
melodiæ dulcedo tui non sineret immemores esse. Atque hinc
maxime in amorem tuum feminæ suspirabant. Et cum horum pars
maxima carminum nostros decantaret amores, multis me regionibus
brevi tempore nunciavit, et multarum in me feminarum accendit
invidiam.»
Liber Calam., p. 4. «Et quoniam dialecticorum rationum armaturam
omnibus philosophiæ documentis prætuli, his armis alia commutavi
et trophæis bellorum conflictus prætuli disputationum. Præinde
diversas disputando perambulans provincias.....»
Liber. Calam., p. 5. «Quoniam de potentibus terræ nonnullos ibidem
habebat (Guillelmus Campellensis) æmulos, fretus eorum auxilio,
voti mei compos extiti.»

416: Né en 1079, près de Nantes, il était fils aîné, et renonça à son
droit d'aînesse.
417: On voit par une de ses lettres qu'il avait d'abord étudié les lois.
418: «De là l'enivrement des laïques et la stupéfaction des docteurs.
Nouveau Pierre l'Ermite d'une croisade intellectuelle, il entraînait
après lui une jeunesse tourmentée de l'inextinguible soif de savoir,
aventureuse et militante, impatiente de s'élancer vers un autre
Orient inconnu, et d'y conquérir, non pas le tombeau du Christ, mais
le Verbe éternellement vivant et Dieu lui-même. De l'Europe entière
accouraient par milliers ces jeunes et ardents pèlerins de la pensée,
tout bardés de logique et tout hérissés de syllogismes. «Rien ne les
arrêtait, dit un contemporain, ni la distance, ni la profondeur des
vallées, ni la hauteur des montagnes, ni la peur des brigands, ni la
mer et ses tempêtes. La France, la Bretagne, la Normandie, le
Poitou, la Gascogne, l'Espagne, l'Angleterre, la Flandre, les Teutons
et les Suédois célébraient ton génie, t'envoyaient leurs enfants; et
Rome, cette maîtresse des sciences, montrait en te passant ses
disciples, que ton savoir était encore supérieur au sien.» (Foulques,
prieur de Deuil.) «Lui seul, ajoute un autre de ses admirateurs,
savait tout ce qu'il est possible de savoir.» De son école, où cinq
mille auditeurs ordinairement venaient acheter sa doctrine à prix
d'or, sortirent successivement un pape (Célestin II), dix-neuf
cardinaux, plus de cinquante évêques ou archevêques, une
multitude infinie de docteurs, et avec eux une espèce de
régénération intérieure de l'Église d'Occident.» Les Réformateurs au
XII
e
siècle, par M. N. Peyrat, p. 128, 1860.
419: C'est, comme on le sait, à Sainte-Geneviève, au pied de la tour
(très-mal nommée) de Clovis, qu'ouvrit cette grande école. De cette
montagne sont descendues toutes les écoles modernes. Je vois au
pied de cette tour, une terrible assemblée, non-seulement les
auditeurs d'Abailard, cinquante évêques, vingt cardinaux, deux
papes, toute la scolastique; non-seulement la savante Héloïse,

l'enseignement des langues et la Renaissance, mais Arnaldo de
Brescia, la Révolution.
Quel était donc ce prodigieux enseignement, qui eut de tels effets?
Certes, s'il n'eût été rien que ce qu'on a conservé, il y aurait lieu de
s'étonner. Mais on entrevoit fort bien qu'il y eut tout autre chose.
C'était plus qu'une science, c'était un esprit, esprit surtout de grande
douceur, effort d'une logique humaine pour interpréter la sombre et
dure théologie du moyen âge. C'est par là qu'il enleva le monde,
bien plus que par sa logique et sa théorie des universaux.
420: Guil. de S. Theodor. epist. ad S. Bern. (ap. S. Bernardi opera, t.
I, p. 302): «Libri ejus transeunt maria, transvolant Alpes.»—Saint
Bernard écrit en 1140, aux cardinaux de Rome: «Legite, si placet,
librum Petr. Abelardi, quem dicit Theologiæ; ad manum enim est,
cum, sicut gloriatur, a pluribus lectitetur in Curia.»
Les évêques de France écrivaient au pape, en 1140: «Cum per totam
fere Galliam, in civitatibus, vicis et castellis, a scholaribus, non solum
inter scholas, sed etiam triviatim, nec a litteratis aut provectis
tantum, sed a pucris et simplicibus, aut certe stultis, de S. Trinitate,
quæ Deus est, disputaretur...» T. Bernardi opera, I, 309.—S. Bern.
epist. 88 ad Cardinales: «Irridetur simplicium fides, eviscerantur
arcana Dei, quæstiones de altissimis rebus temerarie ventilantur.»
421: Tel est le point de vue chrétien au moyen âge. Je l'ai exposé
dans sa rigueur. Cela seul explique comment Abailard, dans sa lutte
avec saint Bernard, fut condamné sans être examiné, sans être
entendu.
422: Sa mère était de Montbar, du pays de Buffon. Montbar n'est
pas loin de Dijon, la patrie de Bossuet.—Il était né en 1091.
423: Voy. sur cette affaire les lettres de saint Bernard aux villes
d'Italie (à Gênes, à Pise, à Milan, etc.), à l'impératrice, au roi
d'Angleterre et à l'empereur.

424: Gaufridus: «Subtilissima cutis in genis modice rubens.»
425: Guill. de S. Theod. «Jusqu'ici tout ce qu'il a lu dans les saintes
Écritures, et ce qu'il y sent spirituellement, lui est venu en méditant
et en priant dans les champs et dans les forêts, et il a coutume de
dire en plaisantant à ses amis, qu'il n'a jamais eu en cela d'autres
maîtres que les chênes et les hêtres.»—Saint Bernard écrivit à un
certain Murdach qu'il engage à se faire moine: «Experto crede;
aliquid amplius in silvis invenies quam in libris. Ligna et lapides
docebunt te quod a magistris audire non possis... An non montes
stillant dulcedinem, et colles fluunt lac et mel, et valles abundant
frumento?»
426: Elle était fille, à ce qu'on croit, d'Hersendis, première abbesse
de Sainte-Marie-aux-Bois, près de Sézanne, en Champagne; ou,
selon d'autres suppositions, d'une autre mère inconnue et d'un vieux
prêtre, qui la faisait passer pour sa nièce, de Fulbert, chanoine de
Notre-Dame. (N. Peyrat, 1860.)
427: Sur les terres de Thibauld, comte de Champagne.
428: Il voulut aussi réformer les mœurs du couvent. Cela déplut à la
cour, dit-il lui-même.
429: «Sciebam in hoc regii consilii esse, ut quo minus regularis
abbatia illa esset, magis regi esset subjecta et utilis, quantum
videlicet ad lucra temporalia.» Liber Calamit., p. 27.
430: S. Bern. epist. 189: «Abnui, tum quia puer sum, et ille vir
bellator ab adolescentia: tum quia judicarem indignum rationem fidei
humanis committi ratiunculis agitandam.»
S. Bern. epist. ad papam, p. 182: «Procedit Golias (Abælardus)...
antecedente quoque ipsum ejus armigero, Arnaldo de Brixia.
Squama squamæ conjungitur, et nec spiraculum incedit per eas. Si
quidem sibilavit apis, quæ erat in Francia, api de Italia, et venerunt
in unum adversus Dominum.»—Epist. ad episc. Constant., p. 187:

«Utinam tam sanæ esset doctrinæ quam districtæ est vitæ! Et si
vultis scire, homo est neque manducans, neque bibens, solo cum
diabolo esuriens et sitiens sanguinem animarum.»—Epist. ad Guid.,
p. 188: «Cui caput columbæ, cauda scorpionis est; quem Brixia
evomuit, Roma exhorruit, Francia repulit, Germania abominatur,
Italia non vult recipere.»—Il avait eu aussi pour maître Pierre de
Brueys. Bulæus, Hist. Universit. Paris., II, 155. Platina dit qu'on ne
sait s'il fut prêtre, moine ou ermite.—Trithemius rapporte qu'il disait
en chaire, en s'adressant aux cardinaux: «Scio quod me brevi clam
occidetis?... Ego testem invoco cœlum et terram quod annuntiaverim
vobis ea quæ mihi Dominus præcepit. Vos autem contemnitis me et
creatorem vestrum. Nec mirum si hominem me peccatorem vobis
veritatem annuntiantem morti tradituri estis, cum etiam si S. Petrus
hodie resurgeret, et vitia vestra quæ nimis multiplica sunt,
reprehenderet, et minime parceretis.» Ibid., 106.
431: Jean de Salisbury explique parfaitement qu'après la dispersion
de l'école d'Abailard et la victoire du mysticisme, plusieurs
s'enterrèrent dans les cloîtres. D'autres, Jean lui-même, qui devint le
client de l'ami du pape Adrien IV, se tournèrent vers le néant des
cours (nugis curialibus). D'autres plus sérieux partirent pour Salerne
ou Montpellier, où les croyants de la nature et de la science
trouvaient un abri. Voir Renaissance, Introduction.
432: À Paris, au cimetière de l'Est.
433: C'est Abailard qui rapporte ces paroles.
434: «Domino suo, imo patri; conjugi suo, imo fratri; ancilla sua,
imo filia; ipsius uxor, imo soror; Abelardo, Heloissa.»
435: «In omni (Deus scit!) vitæ meæ statu, te magis adhuc
offendere quam Deum tereor; tibi placere amplius quam ipsi appeto.
Tua me ad religionis habitum jussio, non divina traxit dilectio.»
436:

. . . . . O maxime conjux!
O thalamis indigne meis! hoc juris habebat
In tantum fortuna caput! Cur impia nupsi,
Si miserum factura fui? Nunc accipe pœnas,
Sed quas sponte luam.
437: Comment. in epist. ad Romanos.
438: L'ordre de Fontevrault eut trente abbayes en Bretagne.—Fondé
vers 1100, il comptait déjà, selon Suger, en 1145, près de cinq mille
religieuses.—Les femmes étaient cloîtrées, chantaient et priaient; les
hommes travaillaient.—Malade, il appelle ses moines, et leur dit:
«Deliberate vobiscum, dum adhuc vivo, utrum permanere velitis in
vestro proposito; ut scilicet, pro animarum vestrarum salute,
obediatis ancillarum Christi præcepto. Scitis enim quia quæcumque,
Deo cooperante, alicubi ædificavi, earum potentatui atque dominatui
subdidi... Quo audito, pene omnes unanimi voce dixerunt: Absit hoc,
etc.» Avant de mourir il voulut donner un chef aux siens. «Scitis,
dilectissimi mei, quod quidquid in mundo ædificavi, ad opus
sanctimonialium nostrarum feci: eisque potestatem omnem
facultatum marsum præbui: et quod his majus est, et me et meos
discipulos, pro animarum nostrarum salute, earum servitio submisi.
Quamobrem disposui abbatissam ordinare.» Considérant qu'une
vierge élevée dans le cloître, ne connaissant que les choses
spirituelles et la contemplation, ne saurait gouverner les affaires
extérieures, et se reconnaître au milieu du tumulte du monde, il
nomme une femme veuve et lui recommande que jamais on ne
prenne pour abbesse une des femmes élevées dans le cloître.—Il
recommande aussi de parler peu, de ne point manger de chair, de se
vêtir grossièrement.
Lettre de Marbodus, évêque de Rennes, à Robert d'Arbrissel:
«Mulierum cohabitationem, in quo genere condam peccasti, diceris
plus amare... Has ergo non solum communi mensa per diem, sed et
communi occubitu per noctem digeris, ut referunt, accubante simul
et discipulorum grege, ut inter utrosque medius jaceas, utrique sexui

vigiliarum et somni leges præfigas.» D. Morice, I, 499. «Feminarum
quasdam, ut dicitur, nimis familiariter tecum habitare permittis et
cum ipsis etiam et inter ipsas noctu frequenter cubare non erubescis.
Hoc si modo agis, vel aliquando egisti, novum et inauditum, sed
infructuosum martyrii genus invenisti... Mulierum quibusdam, sicut
fama sparsit, et nos ante diximus, sæpe privatim loqueris earum
accubitu novo martyrii genere cruciaris.» Lettre de Geoffroi, abbé de
Vendôme, à Robert d'Arbrissel, publiée par le P. Sirmond (Daru,
Histoire de Bretagne, I, 320): «Taceo de juvenculis quas sine
examine religionem professas, mutata veste, per diversas cellulas
protinus inclusisti. Hujus igitur facti temeritatem miserabilis exitus
probat; aliæ enim, urgente partu, fractis ergastulis, elapsæ sunt;
aliæ in ipsis ergastulis pepererunt.» Clypeus nascentis ordinis
Fontebraldensis, t. I, p. 69.
439: Manuscrit de l'abbaye de Vaulx-Cernay (cité par Bayle).
440: Vit. Lud. Gross., ap. Scr. fr.
441: Chart. ann. 1115. «Si quelque plainte est portée devant lui ou
devant son épouse...—La septième année de notre règne, et le
premier de celui de la reine Adèle.»—Adèle prit la croix avec son
mari.—Philippe-Auguste, à son départ pour la croisade, lui laissa la
régence.
442: En 1134, Ermengarde de Narbonne succédant à son frère,
demande et obtient de Louis le Jeune l'autorisation de juger, chose
interdite aux femmes par Constantin et Justinien. Voy. dans
Duchesne, t. IV: la réponse du roi... «apud vos deciduntur negotia
legibus imperatorum: benignior longe est consuetudo regni nostri,
ubi si melior sexus defuerit, mulieribus succedere et hæreditatem
administrare conceditur.»
443: Cela est très-frappant dans leurs sceaux. Le roi d'Angleterre
est représenté, sur une face, assis; sur l'autre, à cheval, et
brandissant son épée. Le roi de France est toujours assis. Si Louis

VII est quelquefois représenté à cheval (1137, 1138, Archives du
Royaume, K. 40), c'est comme Dux Aquitanorum. L'exception
confirme la règle.
444: On sait l'énorme grosseur de Guillaume le Conquérant (Voy.
plus haut). «Quand donc accouchera ce gros homme?» disait le roi
de France. Lorsqu'il fallut l'enterrer, la fosse se trouva trop étroite et
le corps creva. Il dépensait pour sa table des sommes énormes
(Gazas ecclesiasticas conviviis profusioribus insumebat, Guill.
Malmsb. l. III, ap. Scr. fr. XI, 188). Les auteurs de l'Art de vérifier les
Dates (XIII, 15) rapportent de lui, d'après une chronique manuscrite,
un trait de violence singulière. Lorsque Baudouin de Flandre lui
refusa sa fille Mathilde, «il passa jusques en la chambre de la
comtesse; il trouva la fille au comte, si la prist par les trèces, si la
traisna parmi la chambre et défoula à ses piés.»—Son fils aîné
Robert était surnommé Courte-Heuse, ou Bas-Court (Order. Vit., ap.
Scr. fr. XII, 596..... facie obesa, corpore pingui brevique statura
Gambaon cognominatus est, et Brevis-ocrea); il se laissait ruiner par
les histrions et les prostituées (ibid., p. 602: Histrionibus et parasitis
ac meretricibus; item, p. 681.).—Le second fils du Conquérant,
Guillaume le Roux, était de petite taille et fort replet; il avait les
cheveux blonds et plats, et le visage couperosé. (Lingard, t. II de la
trad., p. 167.) «Quand il mourut, dit Orderic Vital, ce fut la ruine des
routiers, des débauchés et des filles publiques, et bien des cloches
ne sonnèrent pas pour lui, qui avaient retenti longtemps pour des
indigents ou de pauvres femmes» (Scr. rer. fr. XII, 679).—Ibid.
«Legitimam conjugem nunquam habuit; sed obscœnis
fornicationibus et frequentibus mœchiis inexplebiliter inhæsit.» p.
635: «Protervus et lascivus.» p. 624: «Erga Deum et ecclesiæ
frequentationem cultumque frigidus extitit.»—Suger, ibid., p. 12:
Lasciviæ et animi desideriis deditus..... Ecclesiarum crudelis exactor,
etc.»—Huntingd., p. 216: «Luxuriæ scelus tacendum exercebat, non
occulte, sed ex impudentia coram sole, etc.»—Henri Beauclerc, son
jeune frère, eut de ses nombreuses maîtresses plus de quinze
bâtards. Suivant plusieurs écrivains, sa mort fut causée par sa
voracité en mangeant un plat de lamproies (Lingard, II, 241). Ses

fils, Guillaume et Richard, se souillaient des plus infâmes débauches.
(Huntingd., p. 218: «Sodomitica labe dicebantur, et erant irretiti.»
Gervas., p. 1339: «Luxuriæ et libidinis omni tabe maculati.)» Glaber
(ap. Scr. fr. X, 51) remarque que dès leur arrivée dans les Gaules, les
Normands eurent presque toujours pour princes des bâtards.—Les
Plantagenets semblèrent continuer cette race souillée. Henri II était
roux, défiguré par la grosseur énorme de son ventre, mais toujours
à cheval et à la chasse. (Petr. Bles., p. 98.) Il était, dit son secrétaire,
plus violent qu'un lion (Leo et leono truculentior, dum vehementius
excandescit, p. 75); ses yeux bleus se remplissaient alors de sang,
son teint s'animait, sa voix tremblait d'émotion (Girald. Cambr., ap.
Camden, p. 783.). Dans un accès de rage, il mordit un page à
l'épaule. Humet, son favori, l'ayant un jour contredit, il le poursuivit
jusque sur l'escalier, et ne pouvant l'atteindre, il rongeait de colère la
paille qui couvrait le plancher. «Jamais, disait un cardinal, après une
longue conversation avec Henri, je n'ai vu d'homme mentir si
hardiment.» (Ép. S. Thom... p. 566.) Sur ses successeurs, Richard et
Jean, voyez plus bas.—L'idéal, c'est Richard III, de Shakespeare,
comme celui de l'histoire.
445: «The rusty curb of old father antic the law.» Shakespeare.
446: «De Diabolo venientes, et ad Diabolum transeuntes.»
447: Il enleva à Louis VII sa femme Éléonore, le Poitou, la Guienne,
etc.
448: Encore Louis VII est-il saint lui-même, suivant quelques
auteurs. On lit dans une chronique française, insérée au douzième
volume du Recueil des Historiens de France, p. 226: «Il fu mors....;
sains est, bien le savons;» et dans une chronique latine (ibid.): «.....
Et sanctus reputatur, prout alias in libro vitæ suæ legimus.»
449: Voy. une charte de Louis VII, ap. Scr. fr. XII, 90..... «Ecclesiam
parisiensem, in cujus claustro, quasi in quodam maternali gremio,
incipientis vitæ et pueritiæ nostræ exegimus tempora.»

450: Suger était né probablement aux environs de Saint-Omer, en
1081, d'un homme du peuple nommé Hélinand.—Lorsque Philippe I
er
confia aux moines de Saint-Denis l'éducation de son fils Louis le
Gros, ce fut Suger que l'abbé en chargea.—Sa conduite, comme celle
de ses moines, excita d'abord les plaintes de saint Bernard (Ép. 78);
mais plus tard il mena, de l'aveu de saint Bernard lui-même (Ép.
309), une vie exemplaire.—Il écrivit lui-même un livre sur les
constructions qu'il fit faire à Saint-Denis, etc. «L'abbé de Cluny ayant
admiré pendant quelque temps les ouvrages et les bâtiments que
Suger avait fait construire, et s'étant retourné vers la très-petite
cellule que cet homme, éminemment ami de la sagesse, avait
arrangée pour sa demeure, il gémit profondément, dit-on, et s'écria:
«Cet homme nous condamne tous, il bâtit, non comme nous, pour
lui-même, mais uniquement pour Dieu.» Tout le temps, en effet, que
dura son administration, il ne fit pour son propre usage que cette
simple cellule, d'à peine dix pieds en largeur et quinze en longueur,
et la fit dix ans avant sa mort, afin d'y recueillir sa vie, qu'il avouait
avoir dissipée trop longtemps dans les affaires du monde. C'était là
que, dans les heures qu'il avait de libres, il s'adonnait à la lecture,
aux larmes et à la contemplation; là, il évitait le tumulte et fuyait la
compagnie des hommes du siècle; là, comme le dit un sage, il n'était
jamais moins seul que quand il était seul; là, en effet, il appliquait
son esprit à la lecture des plus grands écrivains, à quelque siècle
qu'ils appartinssent, s'entretenait avec eux, étudiait avec eux; là, il
n'avait pour se coucher, au lieu de plume, que la paille sur laquelle
était étendue, non pas une fine toile, mais une couverture assez
grossière de simple laine, que recouvraient, pendant le jour, des
tapis décents.» Vie de Suger, par Guillaume, moine de Saint-Denis.
451: En 1128, il détourne un abbé du pèlerinage de Jérusalem.
(Operum t. I, p. 85; voy. aussi p. 323.)—En 1129, il écrit à l'évêque
de Lincoln, au sujet d'un Anglais nommé Philippe, qui, parti pour la
terre sainte, s'était arrêté à Clairvaux et y avait pris l'habit:
«Philippus vester volens proficisci Jerosolymam, compendium viæ
invenit, et cito pervenit quo volebat... Stantes sunt jam pedes ejus in
atriis Jerusalem; et quem audierat in Euphrata, inventum in campis

silvæ libenter adorat in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus. Ingressus est
sanctam civitatem... Factus est ergo non curiosus tantum spectator,
sed et devotus habitator, et civis conscriptus Jerusalem, non autem
terrenæ hujus, cui Arabiæ mons Sina conjunctus est, quæ servit
cum filiis suis, sed liberæ illius, quæ est sursum mater nostra. Et si
vultis scire, Claræ-Vallis est (p. 64).—Voici un passage d'un auteur
arabe, qui offre, avec les idées exprimées par saint Bernard, une
remarquable analogie: «Ceux qui volent à la recherche de la Caaba,
quand ils ont enfin atteint le but de leurs fatigues, voient une maison
de pierre, haute, révérée, au milieu d'une vallée sans culture; ils y
entrent, afin d'y voir Dieu; ils le cherchent longtemps et ne le voient
point. Quand avec tristesse ils ont parcouru la maison, ils entendent
une voix au-dessus de leurs têtes: Ô adorateurs d'une maison!
pourquoi adorer de la pierre et de la boue? Adorez l'autre maison,
celle que cherchent les élus!» (Ce beau fragment, dû à un jeune
orientaliste, M. Ernest Fouinet, a été inséré par M. Victor Hugo dans
les notes de ses Orientales, p. 416 de la première édition.)
452: Ποὐτξγ, Αλαμὰνε.
453: Odon de Deuil: «... Et à son retour, il demandait toujours
vêpres et complies, faisant toujours de Dieu l'Alpha et l'Oméga de
toutes ses œuvres.»
454: «L'empereur, dit-il, invitait par des lettres pressantes le sultan
des Turcs à marcher contre les Allemands.»
455: «Se monacho, non regi nupsisse.»
456: Hallam. Il est vrai que ses possessions étaient dispersées: 248
manoirs dans le Cornwall, 54 en Sussex, 196 en Yorkshire, 99 dans
le comté de Northampton, etc.
457: Nove forest. C'était un espace de trente milles que le
conquérant avait fait mettre en bois, en détruisant trente-six
paroisses et en chassant les habitants.

458: Ainsi Guillaume le Roux et son successeur Henri Beauclerc
appelèrent tous deux un instant les Anglais contre les partisans de
leur frère aîné, Robert Courte-Heuse.
459: «Mirabilis militum mercator et solidator.» Suger.
460: Orderic Vital.
461: «Je me propose, leur dit-il, de vous maintenir dans vos
anciennes libertés; j'en ferai, si vous le demandez, un écrit signé de
ma main, et je le confirmerai par serment.»—On dressa la charte, on
en fit autant de copies qu'il y avait de comtés. Mais quand le roi se
rétracta, il les reprit toutes; il n'en échappa que trois. (Math. Paris.)
462: Math. Paris. Lingard en doute, parce qu'aucun contemporain
n'en fait mention. Mais celui qui laissa crever les yeux à ses petites-
filles, et qui fit passer sa fille en hiver, demi-nue, dans un fossé
glacé, mérite-t-il ce doute?
463: C'était Robert, révolté contre son père, et qui le combattit sans
le connaître. On les réconcilia, ils se brouillèrent encore, et Guillaume
maudit son fils.
464: Il eut la Marche pour quinze mille marcs d'argent. Le comte
partait pour Jérusalem et ne savait que faire de sa terre. (Gaufred
Vosiens.)
465: Tout le clergé de cette ville était composé de légistes au XIII
e
et au XIV
e
siècles. Sous l'épiscopat de Guillaume Le Maire (1290-
1314), presque tous les chanoines de son église étaient professeurs
en droit (Bodin). Sur dix-neuf évêques qui formèrent l'assemblée du
clergé en 1339, quatre avaient professé le droit à l'Université
d'Angers.
466: Robert de Monte.—Orderic Vital: «La renommée de sa science
se répandit dans toute l'Europe, et une foule de disciples

accoururent pour l'entendre, de France, de Gascogne, de Bretagne
et de Flandre.»
467: Radevicus, II, c. IV, ap. Giesler, Kirchengeschichte, II, P. 2, p.
72. «Scias itaque omne jus populi in condendis legibus tibi
concessum, tua voluntas jus est, sicuti dicitur: «Quod Principi
placuit, legis habet vigorem, cum populus et in eum omne suum
imperium et potestatem concesserit.»—Le conseiller de Henri II, le
célèbre Ranulfe de Glanville, répète cette maxime (de leg. et
consuet. reg. anglic., in proem.).
468: Radevicus.
469: Lingard.
470: Elle ne savait que deux mots intelligibles pour les habitants de
l'Occident, c'était Londres, et Gilbert, le nom de son amant. À l'aide
du premier, elle s'embarqua pour l'Angleterre; arrivée à Londres, elle
courut les rues en répétant: Gilbert! Gilbert! et elle retrouva celui
qu'elle appelait.
471: Radulph. Niger.
472: Newbridg., II, 10. Chron. Norm. Lingard, II, 325.—Lingard, p.
321: «Le lecteur verra sans doute avec plaisir dans quel appareil le
chancelier voyageait en France. Quand il entrait dans une ville, le
cortége s'ouvrait par deux cent cinquante jeunes gens chantant des
airs nationaux; ensuite venaient ses chiens, accouplés. Ils étaient
suivis de huit chariots, traînés chacun par cinq chevaux, et menés
par cinq cochers en habit neuf. Chaque chariot était couvert de
peaux, et protégé par deux gardes et par un gros chien, tantôt
enchaîné, tantôt en liberté. Deux de ces chariots étaient chargés de
tonneaux d'ale pour distribuer à la populace; un autre portait tous
les objets nécessaires à la chapelle du chancelier, un autre encore le
mobilier de sa chambre à coucher, un troisième celui de sa cuisine,
un quatrième portait sa vaisselle d'argent et sa garde-robe; les deux
autres étaient destinés à l'usage de ses suivants. Après eux venaient

douze chevaux de somme sur chacun desquels était un singe, avec
un valet (groom) derrière, sur ses genoux; paraissaient ensuite les
écuyers portant les boucliers et conduisant les chevaux de bataille
de leurs chevaliers; puis encore d'autres écuyers, des enfants de
gentilshommes, des fauconniers, les officiers de la maison, les
chevaliers et les ecclésiastiques, deux à deux et à cheval, et le
dernier de tous enfin, arrivait le chancelier lui-même conversant avec
quelques amis. Comme il passait, on entendait les habitants du pays
s'écrier: «Quel homme doit donc être le roi d'Angleterre, quand son
chancelier voyage en tel équipage?» Steph., 20. 2.
Le prédécesseur de Becket, au siége de Kenterbury, lui écrivait: «In
aure et in vulgis sonat vobis esse cor unum et animam unam» (Bles.
epist. 78).—Petrus Gellensis: Secundum post regem in quatuor
regnis quis te ignorat?» (Marten. Thes. anecd. III.)—Le clergé
anglais écrit à Thomas: «In familiarem gratiam tam lata vos mente
suscepit, ut dominationis suæ loca quæ boreali Oceano ad
Pyrenæum usque porrecta sunt, prostestati vestræ cuncta
subjecerit, ut in his solum hos beatos reputati opinio, qui in vestris
poterant oculis complacere.» Epist. S. Thom., p. 190.
473: C'est le seul Anglais qui ait été fait pape.
474: «Citissime a me auferes animum; et gratia, quæ nunc inter
nos tanta est, in atrocissimum odium convertetur.»
475: S. Dunstan, archev. de Kenterbury, fit des remontrances à
Edgar, et lui fit faire pénitence. Il ajouta deux clauses à leur traité de
réconciliation, 1
o
qu'il publierait un code de lois qui apportât plus
d'impartialité dans l'administration de la justice; 2
o
qu'il ferait passer
à ses propres frais dans les différentes provinces des copies des
saintes Écritures pour l'instruction du peuple.—Et même, selon
Lingard, le véritable texte d'Osbern doit être: «... Justas legum
rationes sanciret, sancitas conscriberet, scriptas per omnes fines
imperii sui populis custodiendas mandaret, au lieu de sanctas
É

conscriberet scripturas.—Lingard, Antiquités de l'Église anglo-
saxonne, I, p. 489.
476: Vie de saint Lanfranc.
477: Spence.
478: Les conseillers du roi attribuèrent à Becket le projet de se
rendre indépendant. On rapporta qu'il avait dit à ses confidents que
la jeunesse de Henri demandait un maître, et qu'il savait combien il
était lui-même nécessaire à un roi incapable de tenir sans son
assistance les rênes du gouvernement.
479: Henri II lui avait adressé par deux de ses justiciers des
instructions plus dures encore que les coutumes de Clarendon.
Voyez la lettre de l'Évêque, ap. Scr. fr. XVI, 216.—Voyez aussi (ibid.
572, 575, etc.) les lettres que Jean de Salisbury lui écrit pour le tenir
au courant de l'état des affaires de Thomas Becket.—En 1166,
l'évêque de Poitiers céda, et fit sa paix avec Henri II, Joann.
Saresber. epist., ibid. 525.
480: Élu évêque en 1176 par les moines de Saint-David, dans le
comté de Pembroke (pays de Galles), et chassé par Henri II, qui mit
à sa place un Normand; réélu en 1198 par les mêmes moines, et
chassé de nouveau par Jean sans Terre. Trop faiblement soutenu, il
échoua dans sa lutte courageuse pour l'indépendance de l'Église
galloise; mais sa patrie lui en garde une profonde reconnaissance.
«Tant que durera notre pays, dit un poëte gallois, ceux qui écrivent
et ceux qui chantent se souviendront de ta noble audace.»
481: Salisbury fait partie du pays de Kent, mais non du comté de ce
nom. Du temps de l'archevêque Thibaut, ce fut Jean de Salisbury
qu'on accusa de toutes les tentatives de l'Église de Kenterbury pour
reconquérir ses priviléges. Il écrit, en 1159: «Regis tota in me
incanduit indignatio... Quod quis nomen romanum apud nos invocat,
mihi imponunt; quod in electionibus celebrandis, in causis
ecclesiasticis examinandis, vel umbram libertatis audet sibi Anglorum

ecclesia vindicare, mihi imputatur, ac si dominum Cantuariensem et
alios episcopos quid facere oporteat solus intruam.....» J. Sareber,
epist., ap. Scr. fr. XVI, 496.—Dans son Policraticus (Leyde, 1639, p.
206), il avance qu'il est bon et juste de flatter le tyran pour le
tromper, et de le tuer. (Aures tyranni mulcere... tyrannum occidere...
æquum et justum.)—Dans l'affaire de Thomas Becket, sa
correspondance trahit un caractère intéressé (il s'inquiète toujours
de la confiscation de ses propriétés, Scr. fr. XVI, 508, 512, etc.),
irrésolu et craintif, p. 509: il fait souvent intercéder pour lui auprès
de Henri II, p. 514, etc., et donne à Becket de timides conseils, p.
510, 527, etc. Il ne semble guère se piquer de conséquence. Ce
défenseur de la liberté n'accorde au libre arbitre de pouvoir que pour
le mal (Policrat., p. 97). Il ne faut pas se hâter de rien conclure de ce
qu'il reçut les leçons d'Abailard; il vante saint Bernard et son disciple
Eugène III. (Ibid., p. 311.)
482: Lorsque dans la suite il débarqua en France, il aperçut des
jeunes gens dont l'un tenait un faucon, et ne put s'empêcher d'aller
voir l'oiseau; cela faillit le trahir.
483: Dixit: «Sinite pauperes Christi.... omnes intrare nobiscum, ut
epulemur in Domino ad invicem.» Et impleta sunt domus et atria
circumquaque discumbentium.
484: «Il portait le cilice et se flagellait. Il obtint d'un frère, qu'outre
le repas délicat qu'on lui servait, il lui apportât secrètement la
pitance ordinaire des moines, et il s'en contenta à l'avenir. Mais ce
régime, si contraire à ses habitudes, le rendit bientôt assez
grièvement malade.» Vita quadrip.
485: Jean de Salisbury.
486: Id.
487: Louis envoya au-devant de l'archevêque une escorte de trois
cents hommes.
À

488: À Montmirail, Henri se remit, lui, ses enfants, ses terres, ses
hommes, ses trésors, à la discrétion de Louis.
489: Mais Louis se repentit d'avoir abandonné Becket; peu de jours
après, il le fit appeler. Becket vint avec quelques-uns des siens,
pensant qu'on allait lui intimer l'ordre de quitter la France.
—«Invenerunt regem tristi vultu sedentem, nec, ut solebat,
archiepiscopo assurgentem. Considerantibus autem illis, et diutius
facto silentio, rex tandem, quasi invitus abeundi daret licentiam,
subito mirantibus cunctis prosiliens, obortis lacrymis projecit se ad
pedes archiepiscopi, cum singultu dicens: «Domine mi pater, tu solus
vidisti.» Et congeminans cum suspirio: «Vere, ait, tu solus vidisti.
Nos ommes cæci sumus... Pœniteo, pater, ignosce, rogo, et ab hac
culpa me miserum absolve: regnum meum et meipsum ex hac hora
tibi offero.» Gervas. Cantuar., ap. Scr. fr. XIII, 33. Vit. quadrip., p. 96.
490: Ce fut Lanfranc qui bâtit, sur l'ordre de Guillaume le
Conquérant, l'église de Saint-Étienne de Caen, dernier et magnifique
produit de l'architecture romane.
491: On avait choisi cette messe, parce qu'on ne s'y donnait pas de
baiser de paix à l'évangile, comme aux autres offices.
492: Voyez cependant dans Hoveden la vie austère et mortifiée que
menait le saint. Sa table était splendide, et cependant il ne prenait
que du pain et de l'eau. Il priait la nuit, et le matin réveillait tous les
siens. Il se faisait donner la nuit trois ou cinq coups de discipline,
autant le jour, etc.
493: Vit. quadrip.; Jean de Salisbury.
494: Roger de Hoveden.
495: Thierry.
496: «Modo sit rex, modo sit rex.» «Et in hoc similes illis qui
Domino in cruce pendenti insultabant.» Vit. quadrip.

497: Ibid.
498: Præterea ego et major filius meus rex, juramus quod a domino
Alexandro papa et catholicis ejus successoribus recipiemus et
tenebimus regnum Angliæ.» Baron. annal., XII, 637.—À la fin de la
même année il écrivait encore au pape: «Vestræ jurisdictionis est
regnum Angliæ, et quantum ad feudatarii juris obligationem, vobis
duntaxat teneor et astringor.» Petr. Bles. epist., ap. Scr. fr. XVI, 650.
499: Robert du Mont.
500: J. Bromton.
501: Id. «Richardus.... asserens non esse mirandum, si de tali
genere procedentes mutuo sese infestent, tanquam de Diabolo
revertentes et ad Diabolum transeuntes.»
502: J. Bromton.
503: La prophétie était: «Aquila rupti fœderis tertia nidificatione
gaudebit.»
504: Aquila bispertita. Il désigne ainsi Éléonore.
505: Richard de Poitiers.
506: Jean de Salisbury: «Impregnavit, ut proditor, ut adulter, ut
incestus.»
507: Bromton: «Quam post mortem Rosamundæ defloravit.»
508: Id: «Huic puellæ fecerat rex apud Wodestoke mirabilis
architecturæ cameram, operi Dedalino similem, ne forsan a regina
facile deprehenderetur.
509: Peu de temps après la mort de son fils, il fit prisonnier
Bertrand de Born. «Avant de prononcer l'arrêt du vainqueur contre le
vaincu, Henri voulut goûter quelque temps le plaisir de la

vengeance, en traitant avec dérision l'homme qui s'était fait craindre
de lui, et s'était vanté de ne pas le craindre. «Bertrand, lui dit-il,
vous qui prétendiez n'avoir en aucun temps besoin de la moitié de
votre sens, sachez que voici une occasion où le tout ne vous ferait
pas faute.—Seigneur, répondit l'homme du Midi, avec l'assurance
habituelle que lui donnait le sentiment de sa supériorité d'esprit, il
est vrai que j'ai dit cela, et j'ai dit la vérité.—Et moi, je crois, dit le
roi, que votre sens vous a failli.—Oui, seigneur, répliqua Bertrand
d'un ton grave, il m'a failli le jour où le vaillant jeune roi, votre fils,
est mort; ce jour-là j'ai perdu le sens, l'esprit et la connaissance.»—
Au nom de son fils, qu'il ne s'attendait nullement à entendre
prononcer, le roi d'Angleterre fondit en larmes et s'évanouit. Quand il
revint à lui, il était tout changé; ses projets de vengeance avaient
disparu, et il ne voyait plus dans l'homme qui était en son pouvoir,
que l'ancien ami du fils qu'il regrettait. Au lieu de reproches amers,
et de l'arrêt de mort ou de dépossession auquel Bertrand eût pu
s'attendre: «Sire Bertrand, sire Bertrand, lui dit-il, c'est à raison et de
bon droit que vous avez perdu le sens pour mon fils; car il vous
voulait du bien plus qu'à homme qui fût au monde: et moi, pour
l'amour de lui, je vous donne la vie, votre avoir, et votre château. Je
vous rends mon amitié et mes bonnes grâces, et vous octroie cinq
cents marcs d'argent pour les dommages que vous avez reçus.»
Thierry.
510: Thierry.
511: Coronatio Phil. I, ap. Scr. fr. XI, 32: «Ipse legit, dum adhuc
septennis esset: «Ego... defensionem exhibebo, sicut rex in suo
regno unicuique episcopo et ecclesiæ sibi commissæ... debet.»
512: Comme il revenait d'un voyage (1154), la nuit le surprend à
Créteil. Il s'y arrête, et se fait défrayer par les habitants, serfs de
l'église de Paris. La nouvelle en étant venue aux chanoines, ils
cessent aussitôt le service divin, résolus de ne le reprendre qu'après
que le monarque aura restitué à leurs serfs de corps, dit Étienne de
Paris, la dépense qu'il leur a occasionnée. Louis fit réparation, et

l'acte en fut gravé sur une verge que l'église de Paris a longtemps
conservée en mémoire de ses libertés.
513: Les rois d'Angleterre ne s'attribuèrent ce pouvoir qu'après avoir
pris le titre et les armes des rois de France.
514: Chronica reg. franc., ibid. 214: «.... Remansit in silva sine
societate Philippus; unde stupefactus concepit timorem, et tandem
per carbonarium fuit reductus Compendium; et ex hoc timore sibi
contigit infirmitas, quæ distulit coronationem.»
Ibid.... «Fecit spoliari omnes una die... Recesserunt omnes qui
baptizari noluerunt.» «Ils donnèrent pour se racheter 15,000
marcs.» Rad. de Diceto, ap. Scr. fr. XIII, 204.—Rigordus, Vita Phil.
Aug., ap. Scr. fr. XVII. Philippe remit aux débiteurs des Juifs toutes
leurs dettes, à l'exception d'un cinquième qu'il se réserva. Voy. aussi
la chronique de Mailros, ap. Scr. fr. XIX, 250.
Guilelmi Britonis Philippidos, l. I. «Dans tout son royaume il ne
permit pas de vivre à une seule personne qui contredit les lois de
l'Église, qui s'écartât d'un seul des points de la foi catholique, ou qui
niât les sacrements.»
515: Les membres de cette association n'étaient liés par aucun
vœu; ils se promettaient seulement de travailler en commun au
maintien de la paix. Tous portaient un capuchon de toile, et une
petite image de la Vierge qui leur pendait sur la poitrine. En 1183, ils
enveloppèrent sept mille routiers ou cotereaux, parmi lesquels se
trouvaient quinze cents femmes de mauvaise vie. «Les coteriau
ardoient les mostiers et les églises, et traînoient après eux les
prêtres et les gens de religion, et les appeloient cantadors par
dérision; quand ils les battoient et tormentoient, lors disoient-ils:
cantadors, cantets.» Chroniq. de Saint-Denis.—Leurs concubines se
faisaient des coiffes avec les nappes de la communion, et brisaient
les calices à coups de pierres. (Guillaume de Nangis.)

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