THE NINETY-THIRD--ANECDOTES OF THE SECUNDRABAGH--GENERAL EWART--THE SHAH
NUJEEF
In the first chapter of these reminiscences I mentioned that, before
leaving Dover, the Ninety-Third obtained a number of volunteers from the
other Highland regiments serving in England. Ours was the only Highland
regiment told off for the China expedition, and it was currently
whispered that Lord Elgin had specially asked for us to form his guard
of honour at the court of China after he had administered a due
castigation to the Chinese. Whether the report was true or not, the
belief did the regiment no harm; it added to the _esprit de corps_ which
was already a prominent feeling in the regiment, and enabled the boys to
boast to the girls in Portsmouth that they were "a cut above" the other
corps of the army. In support of this, the fact is worthy of being put
on record that although the regiment was not (as is usually the case)
confined to barracks the night before embarking, but were allowed leave
till midnight, still, when the time to leave the barracks came, there
was not a single man absent nor a prisoner in the guard-room; and
General Britain put it in garrison orders that he had never been able
to say the same of any other corps during the time he had commanded the
Portsmouth garrison. But the Ninety-Third were no ordinary regiment.
They were then the most Scotch of all the Highland regiments; in brief,
they were a military Highland parish, minister and elders complete. The
elders were selected from among the men of all ranks,--two sergeants,
two corporals, and two privates; and I believe it was the only regiment
in the army which had a regular service of Communion plate; and in time
of peace the Holy Communion, according to the Church of Scotland, was
administered by the regimental chaplain twice a year. I hope the young
second battalion of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders are like the
old Ninety-Third in this respect. At the same time, I don't ask them
ever to pray for the men who took away the numbers from our regiments;
may their beards be defiled, is the only feeling I have for them. By
taking away the old numbers a great deal was lost, and as far as I can
see nothing has been gained except confusion and the utter effacement of
all the old traditions of the army. The old numbers could easily have
been retained along with the territorial designations. I hope at all
events that the present regiment will never forget they are the
descendants of the old Ninety-Third, the "Thin Red Line" which Sir Colin
Campbell disdained to form four deep to meet the Russian cavalry on the
morning of the memorable 25th of October, 1854:--"Steady, Ninety-Third,
keep steady! Damn all that eagerness!" were Sir Colin's memorable
words. But I am describing the relief of Lucknow, not the "Thin Red
Line" of Balaclava.
Among the volunteers who came from the Seventy-Second was a man named
James Wallace. He and six others from the same regiment joined my
company. Wallace was not his real name, but he never took any one into
his confidence, nor was he ever known to have any correspondence. He
neither wrote nor received any letters, and he was usually so taciturn
in his manner that he was known in the company as the Quaker, a name
which had followed him from the Seventy-Second. He had evidently
received a superior education, for if asked for any information by a
more ignorant comrade, he would at once give it; or questioned as to the
translation of a Latin or French quotation in a book, he would give it
without the least hesitation. I have often seen him on the voyage out
walking up and down the deck of the _Belleisle_ during the watches of
the night, repeating the famous poem of Lamartine, _Le Chien du
Solitaire_, commencing:
Helas! rentrer tout seul dans sa maison deserte
Sans voir a votre approche une fenetre ouverte.
Taking him all in all Quaker Wallace was a strange enigma which no one
could solve. When pressed to take promotion, for which his superior
education well fitted him, he absolutely refused, always saying that he
had come to the Ninety-Third for a certain purpose, and when that
purpose was accomplished, he only wished to die
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.
During the march to Lucknow it was a common thing to hear the men in my
company say they would give a day's grog to see Quaker Wallace under
fire; and the time had now come for their gratification.
There was another man in the company who had joined the regiment in
Turkey before embarking for the Crimea. He was also a man of superior
education, but in many respects the very antithesis of Wallace. He was
both wild and reckless, and used often to receive money sent to him from
some one, which he as regularly spent in drink. He went under the name
of Hope, but that was also known to be an assumed name, and when the
volunteers from the Seventy-Second joined the regiment in Dover, it was
remarked that Wallace had the address of Hope, and had asked to be
posted to the same company. Yet the two men never spoke to one another;
on the contrary they evidently hated each other with a mortal hatred. If
the history of these two men could be known it would without doubt form
material for a most sensational novel.
Just about the time the men were tightening their belts and preparing
for the dash on the breach of the Secundrabagh, this man Hope commenced
to curse and swear in such a manner that Captain Dawson, who commanded
the company, checked him, telling him that oaths and foul language were
no signs of bravery. Hope replied that he did not care a d---- what the
captain thought; that he would defy death; that the bullet was not yet
moulded that would kill him; and he commenced exposing himself above the
mud wall behind which we were lying. The captain was just on the point
of ordering a corporal and a file of men to take Hope to the rear-guard
as drunk and riotous in presence of the enemy, when Pipe-Major John
M'Leod, who was close to the captain, said: "Don't mind the puir lad,
sir; he's not drunk, he is fey! [meaning doomed]. It's not himself
that's speaking; he will never see the sun set." The words were barely
out of the pipe-major's mouth when Hope sprang up on the top of the mud
wall, and a bullet struck him on the right side, hitting the buckle of
his purse belt, which diverted its course, and instead of going right
through his body it cut him round the front of his belly below the
waist-belt, making a deep wound, and his bowels burst out falling down
to his knees. He sank down at once, gasping for breath, when a couple of
bullets went through his chest and he died without a groan. John M'Leod
turned and said to Captain Dawson, "I told you so, sir. The lad was fey!
I am never deceived in a fey man! It was not himself who spoke when
swearing in yon terrible manner." Just at this time Quaker Wallace, who
had evidently been a witness of Hope's tragic end, worked his way along
to where the dead man lay, and looking on the distorted features he
solemnly said, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. _I came to the
Ninety-Third to see that man die!_" All this happened only a few seconds
before the assault was ordered, and attracted but little attention
except from those who were immediate witnesses of the incident. The
gunners were falling fast, and almost all eyes were turned on them and
the breach. When the signal for the assault was given, Quaker Wallace
went into the Secundrabagh like one of the Furies, if there are male
Furies, plainly seeking death but not meeting it, and quoting the 116th
Psalm, Scotch version in metre, beginning at the first verse:
I love the Lord, because my voice
And prayers He did hear.
I, while I live, will call on Him,
Who bow'd to me His ear.
And thus he plunged into the Secundrabagh quoting the next verse at
every shot fired from his rifle and at each thrust given by his bayonet:
I'll of salvation take the cup,
On God's name will I call;
I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.
It was generally reported in the company that Quaker Wallace
single-handed killed twenty men, and one wonders at this, remembering
that he took no comrade with him and did not follow Sir Colin's rule of
"fighting in threes," but whenever he saw an enemy he "went for" him! I
may here remark that the case of Wallace proved that, in a fight like
the Secundrabagh where the enemy is met hand to hand and foot to foot,
the way to escape death is to brave it. Of course Wallace might have
been shot from a distance, and in that respect he only ran an even
chance with the others; but wherever he rushed with his bayonet, the
enemy did their utmost to give him a wide berth.
By the time the bayonet had done its work of retribution, the throats of
our men were hoarse with shouting "Cawnpore! you bloody murderers!" The
taste of the powder (those were the days when the muzzle-loading
cartridges had to be bitten with the teeth) made men almost mad with
thirst; and with the sun high over head, and being fresh from England,
with our feather bonnets, red coats, and heavy kilts, we felt the heat
intensely.
In the centre of the inner court of the Secundrabagh there was a large
_peepul_[18] tree with a very bushy top, round the foot of which were
set a number of jars full of cool water. When the slaughter was almost
over, many of our men went under the tree for the sake of its shade, and
to quench their burning thirst with a draught of the cool water from the
jars. A number however lay dead under this tree, both of the Fifty-Third
and Ninety-Third, and the many bodies lying in that particular spot
attracted the notice of Captain Dawson. After having carefully examined
the wounds, he noticed that in every case the men had evidently been
shot from above. He thereupon stepped out from beneath the tree, and
called to Quaker Wallace to look up if he could see any one in the top
of the tree, because all the dead under it had apparently been shot from
above. Wallace had his rifle loaded, and stepping back he carefully
scanned the top of the tree. He almost immediately called out, "I see
him, sir!" and cocking his rifle he repeated aloud,
I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.
He fired, and down fell a body dressed in a tight-fitting red jacket and
tight-fitting rose-coloured silk trousers; and the breast of the jacket
bursting open with the fall, showed that the wearer was a woman, She was
armed with a pair of heavy old-pattern cavalry pistols, one of which was
in her belt still loaded, and her pouch was still about half full of
ammunition, while from her perch in the tree, which had been carefully
prepared before the attack, she had killed more than half-a-dozen men.
When Wallace saw that the person whom he shot was a woman, he burst into
tears, exclaiming: "If I had known it was a woman, I would rather have
died a thousand deaths than have harmed her."
I cannot now recall, although he belonged to my company, what became of
Quaker Wallace, whether he lived to go through the rest of the Mutiny or
not. I have long since lost my pocket company-roll, but I think Wallace
took sick and was sent to Allahabad from Cawnpore, and was either
invalided to England or died in the country.
By this time all opposition had ceased, and over two thousand of the
enemy lay dead within the building and the centre court. The troops were
withdrawn, and the muster-roll of the Ninety-Third was called just
outside the gate, which is still standing, on the level spot between the
gate and the mound where the European dead are buried.
When the roll was called it was found that the Ninety-Third had nine
officers and ninety-nine men, in all one hundred and eight, killed and
wounded. The roll of the Fifty-Third was called alongside of us, and Sir
Colin Campbell rode up and addressing the men, spoke out in a clear
voice: "Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, you have bravely done your share
of this morning's work, and Cawnpore is avenged!" Whereupon one of the
Fifty-Third sang out, "Three cheers for the Commander-in-Chief, boys,"
which was heartily responded to.
All this time there was perfect silence around us, the enemy evidently
not being aware of how the tide of victory had rolled inside the
Secundrabagh, for not a soul escaped from it to tell the tale. The
silence was so great that we could hear the pipers of the Seventy-Eighth
playing inside the Residency as a welcome to cheer us all. There were
lately, by the way, some writers who denied that the Seventy-Eighth had
their bagpipes and pipers with them at Lucknow. This is not true; they
had their pipes and played them too! But we had barely saluted the
Commander-in-Chief with a cheer when a perfect hail of round-shot
assailed us both from the Tara Kothi on our left and the Shah Nujeef on
our right front. But I must leave the account of our storming the Shah
Nujeef for a separate chapter.
I may here remark that on revisiting Lucknow I did not see a single
tablet or grave to show that any of the Ninety-Third are buried there.
Surely Captains Dalzell and Lumsden and the men who lie in the mound to
the east of the gate of the Secundrabagh are deserving of some memorial!
But it is the old, old story which was said to have been first written
on the walls of Badajoz:
When war is rife and danger nigh,
God and the Soldier is all the cry;
When war is over, and wrongs are righted,
God is forgot and the Soldier slighted.
I am surprised that the officers of the Ninety-Third Regiment have never
taken any steps to erect some monument to the memory of the brave men
who fell in Lucknow at its relief, and at the siege in March, 1858.
Neither is there a single tablet in the Memorial Church at Cawnpore in
memory of the Ninety-Third, although almost every one of the other
regiments have tablets somewhere in the church. If I were a millionaire
I would myself erect a statue to Sir Colin Campbell on the spot where
the muster-roll of the Ninety-Third was called on the east of the gate
of the Secundrabagh, with a life-sized figure of a private of the
Fifty-Third and Ninety-Third, a sailor and a Sikh at each corner, with
the names of every man who fell in the assault on the 16th of November,
1857; and as the Royal Artillery were also there, Sir Colin should be
represented in the centre standing on a gun, with a royal artilleryman
holding a port-fire ready.
Since commencing these reminiscences I met a gentleman in Calcutta who
told me that he had a cousin in the Ninety-Third, General J. A. Ewart,
who was with the regiment in the storming of the Secundrabagh, and he
asked me if I remembered General Ewart. This leads me to believe that it
would not be out of place if I were to relate the following narrative.
General Ewart, now Sir John Alexander Ewart, I am informed, is still
alive, and some mention of the part played by him, so far as I saw it,
will form an appropriate conclusion to the story of the taking of the
Secundrabagh. And should he ever read this narrative, I may inform him
that it is written by one who was present when he was adopted into the
Clan Forbes by our chief, the late Sir Charles Forbes, of Newe and
Edinglassie, Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, and this fact alone will make the
general receive my remarks with the feelings of a clansman as well as of
my old commander.
The reminiscence of Secundrabagh which is here reproduced was called
forth, I should state, by a paragraph which appeared at the time in the
columns of _The Calcutta Statesman_ regarding General Ewart. The
paragraph was as follows:
General Ewart, not having been employed since he gave over
the command of the Allahabad division on the 30th of
November, 1879, was placed on the retired list on the 30th
ultimo [Nov. 1884]. General Ewart is one of the few, if not
the only general, who refused a transfer from the Allahabad
Command to a more favourite division. He has served for over
forty-six years, but has only been employed once since
giving over the command of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders in
1864, and that was for two and a half years in this country.
He commanded the Ninety-Third for about eighteen months
before joining the Seventy-Eighth. He is in possession of
the Crimean medal with four clasps, a novelty rather
nowadays. He lost his left arm at the battle of Cawnpore.
I accordingly wrote to _The Statesman_ desiring to correct a slight
inaccuracy in the statement that "General Ewart commanded the
Ninety-Third for about eighteen months before joining the
Seventy-Eighth." This is not, I remarked, strictly correct; General
Ewart never commanded the Ninety-Third in the sense implied. He joined
the regiment as captain in 1848, exchanging from the old Thirty-Fifth
Royal Sussex with Captain Buchanan of the Ninety-Third, and served in
the regiment till he received the regimental rank of lieutenant-colonel
on the death, at Fort Rooyah in April, 1858, of the Hon. Adrian Hope.
Colonel Ewart was then in England on sick-leave, suffering from the loss
of his arm and other wounds and exchanged into the Seventy-Eighth with
Colonel Stisted about the end of 1859, so that he never actually
commanded the Ninety-Third for more than a few days at most. I will now
give a few facts about him which may interest old soldiers at least.
During the whole of his service in the Ninety-Third, both as captain
and field-officer, Colonel Ewart was singularly devoted to duty, while
careful, considerate, and attentive to the wants of his men in a way
that made him more beloved by those under his command than any officer I
ever met during my service in the army. To the best of my recollection,
he was the only officer of the Ninety-Third who received the clasp for
Inkerman. At that battle he was serving on the staff of Lord Raglan as
Deputy-Assistant-Quartermaster-General, and as such was on duty on the
morning of the battle, and I believe he was the first officer of the
British army who perceived the Russian advance. He was visiting the
outposts, as was his custom when on duty, in the early morning, and gave
the alarm to Sir George Brown's division, and then carried the news of
the attack to Lord Raglan. For his services at Inkerman he was promoted
brevet lieutenant-colonel, and on the termination of the war, besides
the Crimean medal with four clasps (Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, and
Sebastopol), he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the
Sardinian Medal, with the motto _Al valore Militare_, and also the
Turkish Order of the Medjidie.
Early in the attack on the Secundrabagh three companies of the
Ninety-Third were detached under Colonel Leith-Hay to clear the ground
to the left and carry the barracks, and Colonel Ewart was left in
command of the other seven companies. For some time we lay down
sheltered by a low mud wall not more than one hundred and fifty to two
hundred yards from the walls of the Secundrabagh, to allow time for the
heavy guns to breach the garden wall. During this time Colonel Ewart had
dismounted and stood exposed on the bank, picking off the enemy on the
top of the building with one of the men's rifles which he took, making
the owner of the rifle lie down.
It was an anxious moment. The artillerymen were falling fast, but, after
a few discharges, a hole,--it could not be called a breach--was made,
and the order was given to the Fourth Punjab Rifles to storm. They
sprang out of cover, as I have already described, but before they were
half-way across the intervening distance, their commanding officer fell
mortally wounded, and I think two others of their European officers were
severely wounded. This caused a slight halt of the Punjabis. Sir Colin
called to Colonel Ewart, "Ewart, bring on the tartan;" one of our
buglers who was in attendance on Sir Colin, sounded the _advance_, and
the whole of the Ninety-Third dashed from behind the bank. It has always
been a disputed point who got through the hole first. I believe the
first man in was Lance-Corporal Donnelly of the Ninety-Third, who was
killed inside; then Subadar Gokul Sing, followed by Sergeant-Major
Murray, of the Ninety-Third, also killed, and fourth, Captain Burroughs,
severely wounded.
It was about this time I got through myself, pushed up by Colonel Ewart
who immediately followed. My feet had scarcely touched the ground
inside, when a sepoy fired point-blank at me from among the long grass
a few yards distant. The bullet struck the thick brass clasp of my
waist-belt, but with such force that it sent me spinning heels over
head. The man who fired was cut down by Captain Cooper, of the
Ninety-Third, who got through the hole abreast with myself. When struck
I felt just as one feels when tripped up at a football match. Before I
regained my feet, I heard Ewart say as he rushed past me, "Poor fellow,
he is done for." I was but stunned, and regaining my feet and my breath
too, which was completely knocked out of me, I rushed on to the inner
court of the building, where I saw Ewart bareheaded, his feather bonnet
having been shot off his head, engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fight with
several of the enemy. I believe he shot down five or six of them with
his revolver. By that time the whole of the Ninety-Third and the Sikhs
had got in either through the wall or by the principal gate which had
now been forced open; the Fifty-Third, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon
of the Ninety-Third, and Captain B. Walton (who was severely wounded),
had got in by a window in the right angle of the garden wall which they
forced open. The inner court was rapidly filled with dead, but two
officers of the mutineers were fiercely defending a regimental colour
inside a dark room. Ewart rushed on them to seize it, and although
severely wounded in his sword-arm, he not only captured the colour, but
killed both the officers who were defending it.
By this time opposition had almost ceased. A few only of the defenders
of the Secundrabagh were left alive, and those few were being hunted
out of dark corners, some of them from below heaps of slain. Colonel
Ewart, seeing that the fighting was over, started with his colour to
present it to Sir Colin Campbell; but whether it was that the old Chief
considered that it was _infra dig_. for a field-officer to expose
himself to needless danger, or whether it was that he was angry at some
other thing, I know not, but this much I remember: Colonel Ewart ran up
to him where he sat on his gray charger outside the gate of the
Secundrabagh, and called out: "We are in possession of the bungalows,
sir. I have killed the last two of the enemy with my own hand, and here
is one of their colours," "D--n your colours, sir!" said Sir Colin.
"It's not your place to be taking colours; go back to your regiment this
instant, sir!" However, the officers of the staff who were with Sir
Colin gave a cheer for Colonel Ewart, and one of them presented him with
a cap to cover his head, which was still bare. He turned back,
apparently very much upset at the reception given to him by the old
Chief; but I afterwards heard that Sir Colin sent for him in the
afternoon, apologised for his rudeness, and thanked him for his
services. Before I conclude, I may remark that I have often thought over
this incident, and the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that,
from the wild and excited appearance of Colonel Ewart, who had been by
that time more than an hour without his hat in the fierce rays of the
sun, covered with blood and powder smoke, and his eyes still flashing
with the excitement of the fight, giving him the appearance of a man
under the influence of something more potent than "blue ribbon"
tipple--I feel pretty sure, I say, that, when Sir Colin first saw him,
he thought he was drunk. When he found out his mistake he was of course
sorry for his rudeness.
After the capture of the Shah Nujeef, a field officer was required to
hold the barracks, which was one of the most important posts on our left
advance, and although severely wounded, having several sabre-cuts and
many bruises on his body, Colonel Ewart volunteered for the post of
commandant of the force. This post he held until the night of the
evacuation of the Residency and the retreat from Lucknow, for the
purpose of relieving Cawnpore for the second time from the grasp of the
Nana Sahib and the Gwalior Contingent. It was at the retaking of
Cawnpore that Colonel Ewart eventually had his arm carried off by a
cannon-shot; and the last time I saw him was when I assisted to lift him
into a _dooly_ on the plain of Cawnpore on the 1st of December, 1857.
But I must leave the retaking of Cawnpore to its proper place in these
reminiscences, and resume my narrative of the capture of the
Secundrabagh.
I mentioned previously that the muster-rolls had scarcely been called
outside the gateway, when the enemy evidently became aware that the
place was no longer held for them by living men, and a terrible fire was
opened on us from both our right and left, as well as from the Shah
Nujeef in our direct front.
Let me here mention, before I take leave of the Secundrabagh, that I
have often been told that the hole in the wall by which the Ninety-Third
entered is still in existence. This I had heard from several sources,
and on Sunday morning, the 21st of August, 1892, when revisiting
Lucknow, I left the Royal Hotel with a guide who did not know that I had
ever seen Lucknow before, and who assured me that the breach had been
preserved just as it was left on the 16th of November, 1857, after the
Ninety-Third had passed through it; and I had made up my mind to
re-enter the Secundrabagh once again by the same old hole. On reaching
the gate I therefore made the _gharry_ stop, and walked round the
outside of the wall to the hole; but as soon as I arrived at the spot I
saw that the gap pointed out to me as the one by which the Ninety-Third
entered was a fraud, and I astonished the guide by refusing to pass
through it. The hole now shown as the one by which we entered was made
through the wall by an 18-pounder gun, which was brought from Cawnpore
by Captain Blount's troop of Royal Horse-Artillery. This was about
twenty yards to the left of the real hole, and was made to enable a few
men to keep up a cross fire through it till the stormers could get
footing inside the actual breach. This post was held by Sergeant James
Morrison and several sharp-shooters from my company, who, by direction
of Sir Colin, made a rush on this hole before the order was given for
the Fourth Punjab Infantry to storm. Any military man of the least
experience seeing the hole and its size now, thirty-five years after
the event, will know this to be a fact. The real breach was much bigger
and could admit three men abreast, and, as near as I can judge, was
about the centre of the road which now passes through the Secundrabagh.
The guide, I may say, admitted such to be the case when he found that I
had seen the Secundrabagh before his time. Although it was only a hole,
and not what is correctly called a breach, in the wall, it was so wide,
and the surrounding parts of the wall had been so shaken by round-shot,
that the upper portion forming the arch must have fallen down within a
few years after 1857, and this evidently formed a convenient breach in
the wall through which the present road has been constructed.[19] The
smaller hole meanwhile has been laid hold of by the guides as the
identical passage by which the Secundrabagh was stormed.
Having corrected the guide on this point, I will now give my
recollections of the assault on the Shah Nujeef, and the Kuddum Russool
which stands on its right, advancing from the Secundrabagh.
The Kuddum Russool was a strongly-built domed mosque not nearly so large
as the Shah Nujeef, but it had been surrounded by a strong wall and
converted into a powder magazine by the English between the annexation
of Lucknow and the outbreak of the Mutiny. I think this fact is
mentioned by Mr. Gubbins in his _Mutinies in Oude_. The Kuddum Russool
was still used by the mutineers as a powder-magazine, but the powder had
been conveyed from it into the tomb of the Shah Nujeef, when the latter
was converted into a post of defence to bar our advance on the
Residency.
Before the order was given for the attack on the Shah Nujeef, I may
mention that the quartermaster-general's department had made an estimate
of the number of the enemy slain in the Secundrabagh from their
appearance and from their parade-states of that morning. The mutineers,
let me say, had still kept up their English discipline and parade-forms,
and their parade-states and muster-rolls of the 16th of November were
discovered among other documents in a room of the Secundrabagh which had
been their general's quarters and orderly-room. It was then found that
four separate regiments had occupied the Secundrabagh, numbering about
two thousand five hundred men, and these had been augmented by a number
of _budmashes_ from the city, bringing up the list of actual slain in
the house and garden to about three thousand. Of these, over two
thousand lay dead inside the rooms of the main building and the inner
court. The colours, drums, etc., of the Seventy-First Native Infantry
and the Eleventh Oude Irregular Infantry were captured. The mutineers
fought under their English colours, and there were several Mahommedan
standards of green silk captured besides the English colours. The
Seventy-First Native Infantry was one of the crack corps of the
Company's army, and many of the men were wearing the Punjab medals on
their breasts. This regiment and the Eleventh Oude Irregulars were
simply annihilated. On examining the bodies of the dead, over fifty men
of the Seventy-First were found to have furloughs, or leave-certificates,
signed by their former commanding officer in their pockets, showing that
they had been on leave when their regiment mutinied and had rejoined
their colours to fight against us. It is a curious fact that after the
Mutiny was suppressed, many sepoys tendered these leave-certificates as
proof that they had _not_ taken part in the rebellion; and I believe all
such got enrolled either in the police or in the new regiments that were
being raised, and obtained their back pay. And doubtless if the
Ninety-Third and Fifty-Third bayonets had not cancelled those of the
Seventy-First Native Infantry all those _loyal_ men would afterwards
have presented their leave-certificates, and have claimed pay for the
time they were fighting against us!
When the number of the slain was reported to Sir Colin, he turned to
Brigadier Hope, and said "This morning's work will strike terror into
the sepoys,--it will strike terror into them," and he repeated it
several times. Then turning to us again he said: "Ninety-Third, you have
bravely done your share of this morning's work, and Cawnpore is avenged!
There is more hard work to be done; but unless as a last resource, I
will not call on you to storm more positions to-day. Your duty will be
to cover the guns after they are dragged into position. But, my boys,
if need be, remember I depend on you to carry the next position in the
same daring manner in which you carried the Secundrabagh." With that
some one from the ranks called out, "Will we get a medal for this, Sir
Colin?" To which he replied: "Well, my lads, I can't say what Her
Majesty's Government may do; but if you don't get a medal, all I can say
is you have deserved one better than any troops I have ever seen under
fire. I shall inform the Governor-General, and, through him, Her Majesty
the Queen, that I have never seen troops behave better." The order was
then given to man the drag-ropes of Peel's guns for the advance on the
Shah Nujeef, and obeyed with a cheer; and, as it turned out, the
Ninety-Third had to storm that position also.
The advance on the Shah Nujeef has been so often described that I will
cut my recollections of it short. At the word of command Captain
Middleton's battery of Royal Artillery dashed forward with loud cheers,
the drivers waving their whips and the gunners their caps as they passed
us and Peel's guns at the gallop. The 24-pounder guns meanwhile were
dragged along by our men and the sailors in the teeth of a perfect hail
of lead and iron from the enemy's batteries. In the middle of the march
a poor sailor lad, just in front of me, had his leg carried clean off
above the knee by a round-shot, and, although knocked head over heels by
the force of the shot, he sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood
spouting from the stump of his limb like water from the hose of a
fire-engine, and shouted, "Here goes a shilling a day, a shilling a day!
Pitch into them, boys, pitch into them! Remember Cawnpore, Ninety-Third,
remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties!" and he fell back in a dead
faint, and on we went. I afterwards heard that the poor fellow was dead
before a doctor could reach the spot to bind up his limb.
I will conclude this chapter with an extract from Sir Colin's despatch
on the advance on the Shah Nujeef:
The Ninety-Third and Captain Peel's guns rolled on in one
irresistible wave, the men falling fast, but the column
advanced till the heavy guns were within twenty yards of the
walls of the Shah Nujeef, where they were unlimbered and
poured in round after round against the massive walls of the
building, the withering fire of the Highlanders covering the
Naval Brigade from great loss. But it was an action almost
unexampled in war. Captain Peel behaved very much as if he
had been laying the _Shannon_ alongside an enemy's frigate.
But in this despatch Sir Colin does not mention that he was himself
wounded by a bullet after it had passed through the head of a
Ninety-Third grenadier.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] _Ficus Indica._
[19] The author is quite right in this surmise; the road was made
through the old breach in 1861.