INDIA.--WITH SABRE AND GUN AGAINST SEPOY.
The siege of Delhi, which was begun a month after the rebellion had
broken out, ranks with the most historic sieges of modern times. In its
course it yielded many notable Crosses.
Defended by high bastions and walls of solid masonry, the city proved a
hard nut to crack, and Generals Barnard and Wilson, who conducted the
operations with an army of British, Afghan, Sikh, and Ghurka troops,
spent several months before reducing the stronghold. Even then its
capture was only made possible by the arrival of a siege train under
Brigadier-General John Nicholson.
To Nicholson belongs a great share of the credit for the fall of Delhi.
By a series of remarkable forced marches he brought a strong force of
artillery and British and Sikh soldiers from the Punjab to the Ridge at
Delhi, which added greatly to the strength of the army there encamped.
And by his impetuosity in council he compelled the wavering General
Wilson to decide on the final assault in September.
Before I come to this point, however, I have to tell of some gallant
deeds that were performed in the fighting round Delhi. While the army
lay on the Ridge preparing for its leap upon the rebel city, a number
of engagements with the enemy took place. These were mostly of a very
desperate character, and the individual deeds of some who distinguished
themselves therein were fittingly rewarded with the Cross for Valour.
In one of the sorties made by the sepoys at Delhi in July of that year,
1857, Lieutenant Hills and Major Tombs, of the Bengal Horse Artillery,
had a fierce encounter with the rebels, which gained the V.C. for each of
them.
With a cavalry picket and two guns, Hills was on outpost duty on the
trunk road, near a piece of high ground called the Mound, when a large
body of sepoy sowars from the city charged upon him. The picket, taken by
surprise, took to flight and left the guns undefended, but Hills remained
at his post. To save his guns and give the gunners a chance of opening
fire was the plucky lieutenant’s first thought, so clapping spurs to his
horse he bore down alone on the enemy.
In narrating the incident himself he says: “I thought that by charging
them I might make a commotion, and give the guns time to load, so in
I went at the front rank, cut down the first fellow, slashed the next
across the face as hard as I could, when two sowars charged me. Both
their horses crashed into mine at the same moment, and, of course, both
horse and myself were sent flying. We went down at such a pace that I
escaped the cuts made at me, one of them giving my jacket an awful slice
just below the left arm--it only, however, cut the jacket.
“Well, I lay quite snug until all had passed over me, and then got up and
looked about for my sword. I found it full ten yards off. I had hardly
got hold of it when these fellows returned, two on horseback. The first
I wounded, and dropped him from his horse. The second charged me with his
lance. I put it aside, and caught him an awful gash on the head and face.
I thought I had killed him. Apparently he must have clung to his horse,
for he disappeared. The wounded man then came up, but got his skull
split. Then came on the third man--a young, active fellow.
“I found myself getting very weak from want of breath, the fall from my
horse having pumped me considerably, and my cloak, somehow or other, had
got tightly fixed round my throat, and was actually choking me. I went,
however, at the fellow and cut him on the shoulder, but some ‘kupra’
(cloth) on it apparently turned the blow. He managed to seize the hilt of
my sword and twisted it out of my hand, and then we had a hand-to-hand
fight, I punching his head with my fists, and he trying to cut me, but I
was too close to him.”
At this critical moment Hills slipped on the wet ground and fell. He lay
at the sowar’s mercy, and nothing could have saved him from death had not
Major Tombs come within sight of the scene. The major was some thirty
yards away, and had only his revolver and sword with him. There was no
time to be lost, so resting the former weapon on his arm he took a quick
steady aim and fired. The shot caught the sepoy in the breast, and as his
uplifted arm fell limply to his side he tumbled dead to the ground.
Thanking Heaven that his aim had been true, Major Tombs hastened to
assist Hills to his feet and help him back to camp. But as they stood
together a rebel sowar rode by with the lieutenant’s pistol in his hand.
In a moment Hills, who had regained his sword, dashed after the man, who
proved no mean adversary.
They went at it cut and slash for some time; then a smashing blow from
the sowar’s tulwar broke down the lieutenant’s guard and cut him on the
head. Tombs now received the sepoy’s attack, but the major was among the
best swordsmen in the army, and closing with his opponent he speedily ran
him through.
Both the officers had had their fill of fighting for the day, and
fortunately, perhaps, for them, no more rebels appeared to molest them
on their return to the camp. The lieutenant, I may note in passing,
is now the well-known Lieut.-General Sir J. Hills-Johnes, G.C.B.; his
fellow-hero of the fight died some years ago, a Major-General and a K.C.B.
Another veteran of the Indian Mutiny still alive, who also won his V.C.
at Delhi, is Colonel Thomas Cadell. A lieutenant in the Bengal European
Fusiliers at the time, Cadell figured in a hot affray between a picket
and an overwhelmingly large body of rebels. In the face of a very severe
fire he gallantly went to the aid of a wounded bugler of his own regiment
and brought him safely in. On the same day, hearing that another wounded
man had been left behind, he made a dash into the open, accompanied by
three men of his regiment, and succeeded in making a second rescue.
The heroes of Delhi are so many that it is difficult to choose among
them. Place must be found, however, for brief mention of the dashing
exploit of Colour-Sergeant Stephen Garvin of the 60th Rifles. The Rifles,
by the way, now the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, have the goodly number of
thirteen V.C.’s to their credit.
In June 1857 the British army on the Ridge was greatly harassed by
rebel sharpshooters who took up their position in a building known as
the “Sammy House.” It was essential that this hornet’s nest should
be destroyed, and volunteers were called for. For this service
Colour-Sergeant Garvin promptly stepped forward and, with a small party
of daring spirits, set out on what looked to most like a forlorn hope.
What the rebels thought of this impudent attempt to oust them from
their stronghold we cannot tell, for but one or two of them escaped to
the city with their lives. Such an onslaught as they received at the
“Sammy House,” when Garvin and his valiant dozen rushed the place, quite
surpassed anything in their experience. The colour-sergeant is described
as hewing and hacking like a paladin of romance, and for his bravery and
the example he set to his followers he well deserved the Cross that later
adorned his breast.
At Bulandshahr, a little to the south of Delhi, in September of the same
year, there was a gallant action fought by a body of the Bengal Horse
Artillery, which resulted in no fewer than seven V.C.’s being awarded;
but there is, I think, no more heroic act recorded in the annals of this
famous corps than that of brave Gunner Connolly at Jhelum, two months
previously.
While working his gun early in the action he was wounded in the left
thigh, but he said nothing about his wound, mounting his horse in the
team when the battery limbered up to another position. After some hours’
hot work at this new post, Connolly was again hit, and so badly that his
superior officer ordered him to the rear.
“I gave instructions for his removal out of action,” says Lieutenant
Cookes in his report, “but this brave man, hearing the order, staggered
to his feet and said, ‘No, sir, I’ll not go there whilst I can work
here,’ and shortly afterwards he again resumed his post as a spongeman.”
Throughout the fighting that day Connolly stuck to his gun, though his
wounds caused him great suffering and loss of blood, and it was not until
a third bullet had ploughed its way through his leg that he gave up. Then
he was carried from the field unconscious. That was the stuff that our
gunners in India were made of, and we may give Connolly and his fellows
our unstinted admiration. For sheer pluck and devotion to duty they had
no peers.
A highly distinguished artilleryman, who won his Cross in a different
way, was a young lieutenant named Frederick Sleigh Roberts, now known
to fame as Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, K.G. The scene of his valour was
Khudaganj, near Fatehgarh, in the Agra district, and the date the 2nd of
January 1858.
Some five thousand rebels under the Nawab of Farukhabad being in force
in the neighbourhood, Sir Colin Campbell pushed on with his troops to
disperse the enemy. Lieutenant Roberts was attached to Sir Hope Grant’s
staff, and with his leader came into contact with the rebels at the
village of Khudaganj. Here a sharp engagement took place, which resulted
in the Nawab’s army being completely routed.
At the end of the fight, while the mounted men were following up the
fugitives, the young lieutenant saw a sowar of the Punjab Cavalry (a
loyal native regiment) in danger of being worsted by a sepoy armed
with fixed bayonet. Wheeling his horse in their direction, he quickly
thrust himself between the two and, with a terrific sweep of his sword
across the other’s face, laid the sepoy low. A minute or two later he
caught sight of a couple of rebels making off with a standard. Roberts
determined that this should be captured, so setting spurs to his horse he
galloped after them.
He overtook the pair just as they were about to seek refuge in a village
close by, and engaged them both at once. The one who clutched the
standard he cut down, wrenching the trophy out of the other’s hands, but
the second sepoy, ere he could turn, placed his musket close to the young
officer’s body and pulled the trigger. Fortunately for him, the musket
missed fire (it was in the days of the old percussion caps), whereupon
the sepoy made off, leaving Roberts to return in triumph.
In other engagements like those at Bulandshahr and Khudaganj many young
cavalry officers who came to high honour in later years distinguished
themselves by personal bravery. Prominent among these were Captain
Dighton Probyn and Lieutenant John Watson, both of the Punjab Cavalry.
Their exploits are well worth narrating.
At the battle of Agra Probyn at the head of his squadron charged a body
of rebel infantry, and in the mêlée became separated from his men. Beset
as he was by a crowd of sepoys, he cut his way through them and engaged
in a series of single combats of an Homeric kind. In one instance he rode
down upon a cluster of sepoys, singled out the standard-bearer, killed
him on the spot, and dashed off again with the colours. His gallantry on
this and other occasions was, as Sir Hope Grant said in his despatch, so
marked that he was promptly awarded the V.C.
Lieutenant Watson had a similar heroic encounter with a rebel on November
14th, 1857, when just outside Lucknow he and his troop of Punjabis came
into contact with a force of rebel cavalry which far outnumbered them.
As they approached the Ressaldar in command of the rebels rode out in
advance of his men with half a dozen followers. He is described as
having been “a fine specimen of the Hindustani Mussulman,” a stalwart,
black-bearded, fierce-looking man. Here was a foeman worthy of one’s
steel. With all the daring that had already made him beloved by his
sowars and feared by the enemy, Watson accepted the challenge thus
offered, and rode out to give the other combat.
He had got within a yard or so of his opponent when the Ressaldar fired
his pistol point blank at him, but luckily the shot failed to take
effect. It can only be supposed that the bullet had fallen out in the
process of loading, for the two were too close together for the rebel
leader to have missed his mark. Without hesitating, the lieutenant
charged and dismounted the other, who drew his tulwar and called his
followers to his aid.
Watson now found himself engaged with seven opponents, and against their
onslaught he had to defend himself like a lion. It is not recorded that
he slew the Ressaldar, though it is to be hoped that he did so, but he
succeeded in keeping them all at bay until his own sowars came to the
rescue with some of Probyn’s Horse who had witnessed the combat. And
when the rebels were put to flight the brave lieutenant’s wounds bore
evidence of the fierce nature of the combat. A hideous slash on the head,
a cut on the left arm, another on the right arm that disabled that limb
for some time afterwards, and a sabre cut on the leg which came near to
permanently laming him, were the chief hurts he had received, while a
bullet hole in his coat showed how nearly a shot had found him.
There were many tight corners that the young cavalry leader found himself
in before the Mutiny came to an end, and despatches recorded his name
more than once for distinguished services, but if you were to ask General
Sir John Watson (he is a G.C.B. now, like his brother-officer, Sir
Dighton Probyn) to-day, I doubt if he could remember another fight that
was so desperate as that hand-to-hand combat with the mighty Ressaldar.
And if it should ever come to fade from his memory he has only to look at
a little bronze Maltese cross which hangs among his other medals on his
breast, to remind himself of a time when it was touch-and-go with death.