THE DEFENCE OF LUCKNOW
The focus of the insurrection was now at Lucknow, where ever since the
end of June the Residency defences had been besieged by the rebels of
Oudh, and thus most serviceably kept engaged a host of fighters, who
might else have marched to turn the wavering scale at Delhi. Apart from
its practical result, the gallantry displayed, both by the much-tried
garrison and by two armies which successfully broke through to their
aid, has marked this defence as one of the principal scenes of the
Indian Mutiny and one of the most stirring episodes in modern history.
Some of the closing scenes of the war, also, long after the Residency
had been gloriously abandoned, came to be enacted round the same spot,
for ever sacred to English valour.
[Illustration: City of Lucknow.
Page 164.]
There is no Englishman's heart but must thrill to behold those patches
of blackened and riddled ruin, half-hidden among gorgeous Eastern
flowers, where idle cannon stand now as trophies by the battered walls,
and brown-limbed gardeners water the smooth turf-lawns once drenched
with so brave blood. Set in a beautiful garden, the remnants of the
Residency buildings are preserved no less reverently than the tombs
and monuments of their defenders, over which rises the flowery mound
that bears aloft a white cross sacred to the memory of the Christian
dead, famous and nameless, lying side by side around. Pillars and
tablets carefully record the situation of this and that post, house,
or battery, some hardly traceable now, some mere shells, or no more
than names; but the ground has been so much changed by the clearing
away of _débris_ and the demolition of adjacent structures, that it
is difficult for us to realize the scene, some of the chief actors in
which, years afterwards, found themselves not quite clear as to all its
original features. A model, however, preserved in the Lucknow Museum,
presents the localities restored as far as possible to their original
state, according to the best authorities, giving us some idea of what
this frail fortress was, and exciting our amazement that it held out
for a single day.[5]
We must not, then, imagine a citadel enclosed by solid walls like those
of Delhi or the palatial fort at Agra, but a group of buildings widely
scattered round the tower of the Residency, the outer ones turned each
into a defensive work, with its own separate garrison, the gaps between
filled up as means or accidents of situation best allowed. Mud walls,
banks, hedges, ditches, lanes, trees, palisades and barricades, were
all put to use for these irregular and extemporary fortifications,
composed among other materials of carriages, carts, boxes, valuable
furniture, and even a priceless library that went to stop bullets. It
would take too long to give a full description of all the points made
memorable by this siege, such as the Bailey Guard Gate, the Cawnpore
Battery, the Sikh Square, Gubbins' House, the Church Post, the Redan,
which formed the most salient features of the circle marked out for
defence. The hastily thrown-up bastions were not finished when that
rout of Chinhut made them so needful. A bolder enemy might have
carried the lines at once with a rush. The half-ruined buildings
outside gave the assailants cover within pistol-shot of the besieged;
while indeed the latter were thus to a large extent shielded against
artillery fire, as had been Lawrence's design in not completing his
work of destruction here. Some of the rebel batteries played upon the
works at a range of from fifty to a hundred yards. On one side, only a
dozen yards of roadway separated the fighters; and from behind their
palisades the loyal Sepoys could often exchange abuse, as well as
shots, with the mutineers, who would steal up at night, tempting them
to desert, as many did in the course of the siege, yet not so many as
might have been expected under such trying circumstances.
[Illustration: PLAN OF LUCKNOW
Page 160.]
This entrenchment was occupied by nearly a thousand soldiers,
civilians, clerks, traders, or travellers turned by necessity into
fighting-men, with a rather less number of staunch Sepoys, as well as
about five hundred women and children, shuddering at the peril of a
fate so fearful that English ladies kept poison ready for suicide in
case of the worst, and loving husbands promised to shoot their wives
dead, rather than let them fall alive into hands freshly blood-stained
from the horrors of Cawnpore. As there a girls' school were among the
victims, so at Lucknow the motley garrison included the boys of the
Martinière College, whose experiences have been already mentioned.
In all, counting some hundreds of native servants, not far short of
three thousand persons must have been crowded within an irregular
enclosure about a mile round, where on that disastrous last day of
June the enemy's bullets began to fly across a scene of dismay and
confusion--men hardly yet knowing their places or their duties; women
wild with fear; bullocks, deserted by their attendants, wandering
stupidly about in search of food; horses, maddened by thirst, kicking
and biting one another, in the torment which no one had time to
relieve. The siege had come to find these people too little prepared
for its trials, or for the length to which it was protracted. Some
thought they might have to hold out a fortnight. Few guessed that their
ordeal would endure nearly five months.
When, on June 30th, the city fell into the hands of the rebels, we
still occupied another position not far from the Residency, the old
fortress of Muchee Bhawun, which, though more imposing in appearance,
was not fit to resist artillery, nor, after the losses of Chinhut, were
there men enough to defend both points. On the second day of the siege,
therefore, Colonel Palmer, commanding here, was ordered by semaphore
signals from the Residency tower, to bring his force into the other
entrenchment, spiking the guns, and blowing up what ammunition he could
not carry away. At midnight he marched silently through the city,
without attracting any notice from the enemy, who were perhaps too
busy plundering elsewhere. They had hardly joined their comrades, when
a terrific explosion announced the destruction of the Muchee Bhawun,
blown up by a train set to go off in half-an-hour. One soldier had been
accidentally left behind, who, strange to say, escaped unhurt from the
explosion, and next morning walked coolly into the Residency, meeting
no one to stop him, perhaps because he was quite naked, and the people
took him for a madman or a holy man!
It was sad news that awaited Colonel Palmer. His daughter, while
sitting in an upper room of the Residency, had been wounded by a shell,
one of the first among many victims. She died in a few days, by which
time the besieged had to mourn a greater loss. The Residency building,
elevated above the rest, was soon seen to be a prominent mark for the
enemy's fire, and on the first day, after a shell had burst harmlessly
in his own room, Lawrence was begged to move into less dangerous
quarters. With characteristic carelessness of self, he put off doing
so; then next morning, July 2, was mortally wounded while lying on
his bed. Two days later he died, visited by many weeping friends, of
whom he took leave in the spirit of an earnest Christian. Well known
is the epitaph which, amid the din of shot and shell, he dictated for
his grave: "_Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty. May
the Lord have mercy on his soul!_" He nominated Major Banks as his
successor in the Commissionership and Brigadier Inglis to command the
troops. The latter had his wife with him throughout all, to whose
recently published reminiscences we owe one of the most interesting
narratives of the siege.
Gloom fell upon the garrison when they came to learn this heavy loss.
Every man had so much to do at his own post, that he hardly knew what
went on a few hundred yards off, and some days seem to have passed
before it leaked out to all how their leader had been buried "darkly
at dead of night," in the same pit with less distinguished dead. A
common grave had to be dug each night, the churchyard being exposed
to fire. Every day now had its tale of deaths, soon from fifteen to
twenty, once the enemy had got the range and given up wild firing at
random--an average which grew smaller as the besieged were taught to
be more cautious in exposing themselves. Six weeks passed before
the diary of the chaplain's wife can record, for once, a day without
a single funeral. Death was busy everywhere in various forms. Men
were more than once buried beneath the ruins of houses crushed by the
storm of shot. Delicate women panted for air in crowded cellars, and
sickened amid the pestilential stenches that beset every corner of the
entrenchment, or despairingly saw their children pine away for want
of proper nourishment. The poor sufferers in hospital would sometimes
be wounded afresh or killed outright by balls crashing among them. An
amputation was almost certain death in that congregation of gangrened
sufferers, increased hour by hour. There were daily duties to be done
always at the peril of men's lives, and spots where no one could show
himself without the risk of drawing fire. "Many a poor fellow was shot,
who was too proud to run past places where bullets danced on the walls
like a handful of peas in a fry-pan." One building, called "Johannes'
House," overlooking the defences as it did, was long a thorn in the
side of the besieged, from the top of which a negro eunuch, whom they
nicknamed "Bob the Nailer," was believed to have shot down dozens of
them by the unerring aim of a double-barrelled rifle that gave him
such grim celebrity.
The native servants soon began to desert, adding to the troubles of
masters whose pride and practice had been to do nothing that could
be helped for themselves. Then the younger Martinière boys were told
off to take their place in the cramped households, set to perform the
menial services looked upon as belonging to the lowest caste. They
attended the sick, too, and were of especial use in defending them
against an Egyptian plague of flies which assailed the entrenchment,
as well as in pulling punkahs to cool fevered brows. All these
school-boys, whose terrible holidays began so unseasonably, took their
turns in washing, grinding corn, bringing wood and water, besides
general fetching and carrying at various posts, while some dozen of
the oldest stood guard, musket in hand, or helped to work the signals
on the tower--a service of no small danger, as the movements of the
semaphore drew a hot fire; and, what with the clumsiness of the
apparatus and the cutting of the ropes by shot, it took three hours to
convey the order for evacuation of the Muchee Bhawun.
Though their post seems to have been an exposed one, just opposite
Johannes' House, where that black marksman stationed himself, and
where the enemy were literally just across the street, the school-boys
had throughout only two of their number wounded, while two died of
disease. Mr. Hilton, whose narrative has been already quoted, can
tell of more than one narrow escape, once when a spent cannon-ball
passed between his legs; again when a fragment of shell smashed the
cooking pot from which he was about to draw his ration; and another
time he was assisting to work the semaphore on the roof, when a shell
burst so near as to disgust him with that duty. He did manage to get
hurt in a singular manner. A badly-aimed shell from one of their own
batteries fell into the court-yard where he was sitting, and in the
wild stampede which ensued he stumbled over his sister and cut his knee
on a sharp stone. This wound ought to have healed in a few days, but
constant hardship had thrown him into such a bad state of health, that
it festered and kept him in pain for more than two months, under the
terrible warning that his leg might have to be amputated if he did not
take care of it.
Before this accident he had entered into his duties as a soldier with
rather more zeal than discretion. The boys trusted with arms, used, it
seems, to take ten or twenty rounds to the top of the house, and fire
through the loop-holes at whatever seemed a fair target. Fed on stews
of tough beef and coarse _chupatties_, the hand-cakes of the country,
their mouths watered at the sight of pumpkins and other vegetables
growing in Johannes' garden, just beyond the line of their defences, so
near yet so far out of reach; for the Sepoy marksmen were always on the
watch to shoot any one who exposed himself here. Seeing they could not
get these gourds for themselves, the lads found amusement in shooting
at them to spoil them at least for the enemy. But this sport was soon
interfered with. One boy having been wounded by a rebel lurking in
the sheds opposite, Hilton and a comrade, named Luffman, went up to
the roof to get a shot at the fellow. While they were firing from a
loop-hole protected by a basket full of rubbish, another boy came out
to join them with a fresh supply of ammunition; then their attention
being for a moment diverted to him, the Sepoy over the way saw his
chance for an aim. His bullet struck Luffman's musket, glanced along
the barrel, and lodged in the lad's left shoulder. This accident drew
on the young marksmen a severe reprimand from the Principal, and their
supplies of ammunition for promiscuous shooting were henceforth cut off.
Mr. Hilton makes no complaint on his own account; but Mr. Rees, an
ex-master of the Martinière, who has also given us an account of the
siege, says that the boys were rather put upon in his opinion. He
describes them as going about "more filthy than others, and apparently
more neglected and hungry." Up till the end of June they had been able
to draw supplies of food and clean clothes from the college. Now they
were reduced to what they had on their backs, a serious trial in the
Indian climate, and had to do their washing for themselves as best
they could. The Martinière was in the hands of the mutineers, who
had wreaked their wrath by digging up poor General Martin's tomb and
scattering his bones.
One honourable charge these youngsters had. There was a store of wines
and spirits in the garrison, which some of the soldiers broke into, and
were once found helplessly drunk when called to arms on a sudden alarm.
After that, the liquor was guarded in the Martinière post, till it
could be disposed of so as to do least mischief.
The women, who in private houses or in the underground vaults of the
Residency were kept out of danger as well as possible, had their share
of toils, to which some would be little used. Many found enough to
do in looking after their own ailing families. Others distinguished
themselves by zeal in tending the sick and wounded. The wonder is that
the diseases which had broken out from the first did not sweep off the
whole community, pent up in such unwholesome confinement. Fortunately,
in the course of a few days, a heavy shower of rain fell to wash away
the filth that was poisoning them. This was the opening of the rainy
season, on the whole welcome, yet not an unmixed blessing. The climate
of India runs always to extremes; so glare and dust were exchanged only
for the enervation of a perpetual vapour-bath.
In heat and wet, by night and day, every able-bodied man must take
weary spells of watching and working, and at all hours be ready to
run to his post on the first sign of danger. Nearly fifty guns had to
be served. Officers and men, civilians and soldiers, black and white,
laboured side by side, a tool in one hand, it may be said, a weapon in
the other. At the quietest intervals, they had to be repairing their
defences, shifting guns, carrying stores, burying the bodies of putrid
animals. Constant false alarms kept them harassed before they had
completed their works. For hours together the enemy sometimes went on
shouting and sounding the advance, without showing themselves, so that
all night the defenders, exhausted by the day's toil, might still have
to stand on guard. Yet, overwrought as they were, small parties would
here and there dash from their lines to spike a gun or drive away the
occupants of some annoying outpost.
On our side there were many instances of daring prowess, but few of
cowardice and shirking, as is testified by Lady Inglis. "As an example
of brilliant courage, which to my mind made him one of the heroes of
the siege, I must instance Private Cuney, H.M. 32nd. His exploits were
marvellous; he was backed by a Sepoy named Kandial, who simply adored
him. Single-handed and without any orders, Cuney would go outside our
position, and he knew more of the enemy's movements than any one else.
It was impossible to be really angry with him. Over and over again
he was put into the guard-room for disobedience of orders, and as
often let out when there was fighting to be done. On one occasion he
surprised one of the enemy's batteries, into which he crawled, followed
by his faithful Sepoy, bayoneting four men, and spiking the guns. If
ever there was a man deserving the V.C., it was Cuney. He seemed to
bear a charmed life. He was often wounded, and several times left his
bed to volunteer for a sortie. He loved fighting for its own sake.
After surviving the perils of the siege, he was at last killed in a
sortie made after General Havelock's arrival."
Three weeks passed thus before the besiegers, swarming soon in tens of
thousands around them, took courage for a general assault. The signal
was an ineffectual explosion of a mine against the Redan battery;
then from all sides they came pouring up to the works under cover
of their cannon. But here every man was at his post to receive them
desperately, many believing that their last hour was come. Some of the
wounded had staggered out of hospital, pale and blood-stained, to lend
a weak hand in the defence. The whole enclosure became quickly buried
in sulphureous smoke, so that men hardly saw how the fight went in
front of them, and still less knew but that their comrades had been
overwhelmed at some other point, as well they might be, and whether at
any moment the raging foe might not break in upon their rear. Again and
again the Sepoys were urged on, to be mowed down by grape and musketry.
Here they got right under our guns, driven away by hand grenades,
bricks toppled over upon them, and whatever missiles came to hand;
there they brought ladders against the walls, but were not allowed to
make use of them. At one point, led on by the green standard of Islam
in the hands of a reckless fanatic, they succeeded in bursting open a
gate, only to block up the opening by their corpses. Four hours the din
went on, under the fatal blaze of a July sun; but at length the enemy
fled, leaving some thousands fallen round the unbroken walls, within
which a surprisingly small number had been hurt.
This repulse put new heart into the victors, so much in need of
cheering; and their spirits were soon raised still further by news
of Havelock's army on its way to relieve them. They were not without
communications from the outside world. An old pensioner named Unged
several times managed to slip through the enemy's lines, bringing back
messages and letters which were not always good news. Thus they had
learned the fate of their kinsmen at Cawnpore; and their own temporary
elation soon passed away under continued sufferings and losses.
The day after the assault, Major Banks was shot dead. Others who
could be ill-spared fell one by one, every man placed _hors de
combat_ leaving more work to be done by his overstrained comrades.
Then there were dissensions among the remaining leaders. The English
soldiers, made reckless by peril, sometimes gave way to a spirit of
insubordination, or disgraced themselves by drunkenness. The Sepoys
could not be fully trusted. The enemy, there was reason to fear, had
spies within the place to report its weak points and the embarrassment
of its defenders. A proof of this was that they had ceased firing on
the hospital when some native dignitaries, held as prisoners, were
quartered there in the lucky thought of making them a shield for the
sick. It was hard on those hostages, who had to take their share of the
general want and peril. The rations of coarse beef and unground grain
were found insufficient to keep the garrison in good case; and before
long these had to be reduced, while the price of the smallest luxury
had risen beyond the means of most. If a hen laid an egg it came as a
god-send; a poor mother might have to beg in vain for a little milk for
her dying child. What the English soldiers missed most was tobacco;
and when some of the Sikhs deserted, they left a message that it was
because they had no opium. The priceless Crown Jewels of Oudh, and the
public treasure guarded in the Residency, were dross indeed in the eyes
of men longing for the simplest comforts. How yearningly they fixed
their eyes on the green gardens and parks blooming among the towers of
Lucknow! And Havelock did not come to fulfil their hopes, soon dashed
by news that he had been forced to fall back on Cawnpore, to recruit
his own wasted forces.
At the beginning of August, our people had heard heavy firing and the
sound of English music in the city, which brought them out cheering and
shaking hands with each other on the tops of the houses, eager to catch
the first sight of their approaching friends. That night they slept
little, and rose to be bitterly disappointed. The rebels tauntingly
derided this short-lived joy, shouting over the cause of yesterday's
commotion. They had been saluting the boy crowned as puppet-king of
Oudh. Their bands, indeed, were often heard playing familiar tunes,
taught them in quieter days, and always wound up their concerts with
"God Save the Queen!" which must have sounded a strange mockery in
those English ears. Once it was the turn of the English to make a
joyful demonstration, firing off a general salute on a report of the
fall of Delhi, which turned out false, or at least premature.
On August 10, the Sepoys delivered another assault, but were more
easily beaten off this time. It began by the explosion of a mine,
which threw down the front of the Martinière post, ruining also
some fifty feet of palisading and other bulwarks on each side. The
assailants wanted boldness to master the breach thus made; but they
lodged themselves in an underground room of this house, from which
they had to be expelled by hand-grenades, dropped among them through a
hole in the floor, and they got no further within the quickly-restored
defences. At first, it is said, they could have walked in through an
open door, which Mr. Schilling and his boys had the credit of shutting
in their faces. The School would all have been blown up, but for the
good fortune of having just been called in to prayers in an inner room.
Three soldiers had been hurled by the explosion on to the enemy's
ground, but ran back into the entrenchment, unhurt, under a shower of
bullets.
The Sepoys' fire was kept up as hotly as ever, though at times they
seemed to be badly off for shot, sending in such strange projectiles as
logs of wood bound with iron, stones hollowed out for shells, twisted
telegraph wires, copper coins and bullocks' horns; even the occasional
use of bows and arrows lent a mediæval feature to the siege.
Their main effort now seemed directed to the destruction of the walls
by mining. Here they were foiled, chiefly through the vigilance of
Captain Fulton, an engineer-officer, who took a leading part in the
defence, only to die before its end, like so many others. In the ranks
of the 32nd, he found a number of old Cornish miners, with whose help
he diligently countermined the subterranean attacks. Now the burrowing
Sepoy broke through into an unsuspected aperture, to find Fulton
patiently awaiting him, pistol in hand. Again, a deep-sunk gallery
from within would be pushed so far, that our men blew up not only the
enemy's mine, but a house full of his soldiers. The garrison had always
their ears strained to catch those muffled blows, which announced new
perils approaching them underground; then, as soon as the situation and
direction of the mine could be recognized, Fulton went to work and the
dusky pioneers either gave up the attempt or came on to their doom.
Once, however, they did catch the watchers at fault. At the corner of
the defences called the Sikh Square, the warning sounds were mistaken
for the trampling of horses tied up close by--a mistake first revealed
by an explosion which made a breach in the works, overwhelming some of
its defenders and hurling others into the air, most of whom came off
with slight hurt. The Sepoys rushed on, but did not venture beyond the
gap they had made, while some time passed before our men could dislodge
them. One native officer was shot within the defences, the first and
last time they were ever penetrated till they came to be abandoned.
Of nearly forty mines attempted, this was the only one that could be
called a success.
Several unhappy drummers, buried among the ruins, cried lamentably for
assistance; but the risk of going to their assistance under fire was
too great. A brave fellow did steal forward, and with a saw attempted
to release one of the men held down by a beam across his chest, but the
Sepoys drove him back when they saw what he was at. These half-buried
lads had all died a miserable death of suffocation or thirst, if not
from their injuries, when towards nightfall a party of the 32nd,
shielding themselves behind bullet-proof shutters, advanced to
recapture the lost ground at the point of the bayonet, which they not
only did, and barricaded the breach with doors, but, while they were
about it, made a dash forth to blow up some small houses that had given
cover to the enemy.
This was one of several gallant sorties, in another of which Johannes'
House was blown up, and the redoubtable "Bob the Nailer" killed in the
act of exercising his deadly skill from the top of it. But his place
as a marksman was taken by a brother negro of scarcely less fatal
fame; and the enemy always expressed their resentment for these attacks
by fresh bouts of more furious bombardment. Once, they had nearly
destroyed a vital point of our line by piling up a bonfire against the
Bailey Guard Gate; but Lieutenant R.H.M. Aitken, the burly Scot who
held this post with his Sepoys, rushed out and extinguished the flames,
under a rain of bullets, before much mischief could be done.
By this time the inmates of the Residency, from looking death so
hard in the face, had grown strangely callous both to suffering and
to danger. Men now showed themselves indifferent before the most
heart-rending spectacles, while they coolly undertook perilous tasks
at which, two months ago, the boldest would have hesitated. Children
could be seen playing with grape-shot for marbles, and making little
mines instead of mud-pies. Women took slight notice of the hair-breadth
escapes that happened daily with them as with others. "Balls fall
at our feet," says Mr. Rees in his journal, "and we continue the
conversation without a remark; bullets graze our very hair, and we
never speak of them. Narrow escapes are so very common that even
women and children cease to notice them. They are the rule, not the
exception. At one time a bullet passed through my hat; at another, I
escaped being shot dead by one of the enemy's best riflemen, by an
unfortunate soldier passing unexpectedly before me, and receiving the
wound through the temples instead; at another, I moved off from a place
where, in less than the twinkling of an eye afterwards, a musket-ball
stuck in the wall. At another, again, I was covered with dust and
pieces of brick by a round-shot that struck the wall not two inches
away from me; at another, again, a shell burst a couple of yards away
from me, killing an old woman and wounding a native boy and a native
cook, one dangerously, the other slightly--but no; I must stop, for I
could never exhaust the catalogue of hair-breadth escapes which every
man in the garrison can speak of as well as myself."
Still, their hearts could not but grow heavy at times, especially as
the feast of the Mohurrem drew near, when Moslem zeal might be expected
to stimulate its votaries to more desperate fury. Desertions went on
fast among the servants, and it was feared that, if relief came not
soon, the Sepoys would go over to their mutinous comrades, who daily
tried to seduce them with threats and promises. Some native Christians
and half-castes, of whom better might have been expected, did run away
in a body, only to be butchered by the fanatics among whom they so
faithlessly cast their fortunes. A third of the Europeans had perished;
the rest were worn with sickness and suffering, but they had not lost
an inch of ground.
It was no fault of Havelock if he still lay at Cawnpore, forty miles
away. Once and again he had advanced, beating the enemy every time
they ventured to face him; but after two pitched battles, in which
this fearless General had already had six horses killed under him, and
several minor combats, the country-people rising up about him in fierce
opposition, cholera also decimating the ranks, his losses were so heavy
that he could not yet hope to force a way to Lucknow, much less through
the narrow streets, where every house might be found a fortress.
Now reinforcements were being pushed up from Calcutta; and at the end
of August, the besieged had a letter promising relief in twenty-five
days. "Do not negotiate," was Havelock's warning to them, "but rather
perish, sword in hand." So they meant to do, if it came to that, rather
than fall alive into the power of such a cruel and treacherous foe.
Meanwhile, there was nothing for it but to hold out doggedly till their
deliverer could gather strength to reach them.
On September 5 the enemy tried another assault, which was more of a
failure than ever. Evidently, on their side, they were losing heart.
And at last, on the night of the 22nd, Unged, the trusty messenger,
rushed into the entrenchment under fire, with news that Havelock and
Outram were at hand. The latter's noble generosity here is one of his
best titles to fame. He came to supersede the General who had so long
strained every nerve in vain; but, knowing how Havelock had at heart
the well-deserved honour of relieving Lucknow, the "Bayard of India,"
for the time, waived his own right to command, serving as a volunteer
till this task should have been accomplished. In this, Sir James Outram
afterwards judged himself to have done wrong, as putting sentiment
before duty.
Two days of suspense followed, every ear within the Residency bent
to catch the sound of the cannon of the advancing army. On the third
day, the welcome din drew nearer, clouds of smoke marked the progress
of a hot battle through the streets, and, as a hopeful sign, routed
natives could be seen flying by hundreds, their bridges of boats
breaking down under a confused mob of horsemen and foot-passengers,
camels, elephants, and carriages. Havelock had forced the Char Bagh
bridge of the canal, and was working round by its inner bank, to turn
along the north side of the city, the ground here being more open.
But all that long day lasted the doubt and the fear, as well as the
joy, for our troops, their entrance once won into Lucknow, had to make
a devious circuit about the most thickly-built quarters, and after
all blunderingly fought their way, inch by inch, through the streets
into a narrow winding road that led to the Residency. It was not till
nightfall those strained eyes within could, by flashes of deadly fire,
see the van of their countrymen struggling up to the riddled buildings,
where--
"Ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew."
The struggling progress of the column is described, in a letter home,
by Mr. Willock, a young civilian, who had volunteered to share its
perils.
"The fire from the King's Palace, known as the 'Kaiser Bagh,' was so
severe that we had to run double-quick in front of it, as hard as we
could; and a scene of great confusion ensued when we halted--guns and
infantry mixed up, soldiers wandering in search of their companies, and
the wounded in the dhoolies carried here and there without any orders.
We had been there about half-an-hour when the Second Brigade joined
us, passing in front of the palace, emerging from a narrow lane close
to it. Here they had to pass under the very walls, while the rebels on
the walls hurled down stones and bricks, and even spat at our fellows,
a fierce fire being kept up from the loop-holes. After a little time
order was re-established, and after a fresh examination of the map, the
column was drawn up, and we started again. It was cruel work--brave
troops being exposed to such unfair fighting. What can men do against
loop-holed houses, when they have no time to enter a city, taking house
by house? In fact, we ran the gauntlet regularly through the streets.
"After we passed the Palace, our men were knocked down like sheep,
without being able to return the fire of the enemy with any effect.
We passed on some little way, when we came to a sudden turning to the
left, with a huge gateway in front, and through this we had to pass,
under a shower of balls from the houses on each side. The Sikhs and 5th
Fusiliers got to the front, and kept up a steady fire at the houses
for some time, with the hope of lessening the enemy's musketry fire,
but it was no use. Excited men can seldom fire into loop-holes with
any certainty, and we had to make the best of our way up the street,
turning sharp round to the right, when we found ourselves in a long,
wide street, with sheets of fire shooting out from the houses. On we
went, about a quarter of a mile, being peppered from all sides, when
suddenly we found ourselves opposite to a large gateway, with folding
doors completely riddled with round-shot and musket-balls, the entrance
to a large enclosure.
"At the side of this was a small doorway, half blocked up by a low mud
wall; the Europeans and Sikhs were struggling to get through, while the
bullets were whistling about them. I could not think what was up, and
why we should be going in there; but after forcing my way up to the
door, and getting my head and shoulders over the wall, I found myself
being pulled over by a great unwashed hairy creature,[6] who set me on
my legs and patted me on the back, and, to my astonishment, I found
myself in the 'Bailey Guard!'"
The scene then ensuing has been often described--the garrison pressing
forward with cheers of welcome and triumph--the rough Highlanders
suddenly appearing through the darkness among the ruins they had fought
so many battles to save--their begrimed faces running with tears in
the torchlight, as they caught up in their arms the pale children, and
kissed their country-women, too, in that spasm of glad emotion; even
the ladies ready to hug them for hysteric joy--the gaunt, crippled
figures tottering out to join in the general rejoicing, now that for a
moment all believed their trials at an end. That picturesque incident
of a Highland Jessie, first to catch the distant strains of the
bagpipes, appears to be a fiction. But bagpipes were not wanting; and
one of the defenders, strolling over as soon as he could leave his own
post, hardly able to believe the good news true, tells us how he found
dancing going on to the music of two Highland pipers--a demonstration,
however, soon put a stop to by Havelock's orders.
Havelock had cause to think this no time for dancing. While the common
soldiers might exult over their melodramatic victory, the leaders
knew too well at what a cost it had been won, and what dangers still
encompassed them. Not all the little army of two thousand five hundred
men had pushed through on that memorable evening. Nearly a fifth part
of them were lost in the attempt. Neill had been shot dead, with the
goal already in sight. Outram himself was hurt. It had been necessary
to leave most of the wounded on the way, many of whom, deserted by the
natives who bore their litters, suffered a horrible fate, massacred
or burned alive while their comrades were making merry within the
works. Part of the relieving force bivouacked all night on the road
outside, where in the confusion a lamentable affair occurred, some of
our faithful Sepoys at the Bailey Gate being attacked in mistake by the
excited new-comers.
Only two days later, the rear-guard, hampered by the heavy guns,
could join its commander at the Residency; and even then a force, in
charge of baggage and ammunition, was left besieged in the Alum Bagh,
a fortified park beyond the city, which henceforth became an isolated
English outpost.
The relieving army had been hurried on at all risks, under a mistaken
belief that the garrison was in immediate straits of famine. It turned
out they had still food to last some weeks, even with so many more
mouths to fill, an unreckoned store of grain having been found heaped
up, by Lawrence's foresight, in the plunge-bath below the Residency.
Means of transport, however, were wanting; and Outram, who now assumed
command, could not undertake to fight his way out again with the
encumbrance of a long train of non-combatants. Much less was he in a
position to clear the city, still occupied by the enemy in overwhelming
numbers. All he could do was to hold on where he was, awaiting the
arrival of another army now on the march.
It was a relief and not a rescue over which so much jubilation had
been spent. It came just in time, now that the fall of Delhi had set
free a swarm of Sepoys to swell the ranks of the Lucknow besiegers.
The mere sight of their countrymen, and the sure news they brought,
was enough to put fresh spirit into the defenders, who, by the help of
such a reinforcement, no longer doubted to hold the fortress that had
sheltered them for three miserable months, with the loss of more than
seven hundred combatants by death and desertion.
Here, then, the siege entered upon a second period, the characteristic
of which was an extended position occupied by the garrison. Now that
they had plenty of men, they seized some of the adjacent palaces, and
pushed their lines down to the river-bank. Like men risen from a long
sickness, they stretched their legs on the ground that for weeks had
been raining death into their enclosure. There must have been a strange
satisfaction in strolling out from their own half-ruined abodes, to
examine the damage they had wrought among the enemy's works, at the
risk of an occasional shot from his new posts, as the Martinière boys
found when they let curiosity get the better of caution.
Some of these youngsters soon managed to run into mischief. A few
days after the relief, being sent out to pick up firewood among the
_débris_, they stole a look where still lay the mutilated corpses of
Havelock's wounded men murdered so basely, then rambled into one of
the royal palaces--a labyrinth of courts, gardens, gateways, passages,
pavilions, verandahs, halls, and so forth, all in the bewildering style
of Eastern magnificence, where it was difficult not to lose one's way.
Here a general plunder was going on, and our people, even gleaning
after the Sepoys, could help themselves freely to silks, satins,
velvets, cloth of gold, embroideries, costly brocade, swords, books,
pictures, and all sorts of valuables. In some rooms were nothing but
boxes full of gorgeous china, ransacked so eagerly that the floors
soon became covered a foot deep with broken crockery. Others of the
besieged pounced most willingly upon articles of food, especially on
tea, tobacco, and vegetables, which to them seemed treasures indeed.
For their part, the Martinière boys ferreted out a store of fireworks,
and must needs set off some rockets towards the enemy. One of these
dangerous playthings, however, exploded in their hands, kindling others
and setting fire to the building. The boys scampered out without being
noticed, and took care to hold their tongues about this adventure, so
that it was not ascertained at the time, though strongly suspected, on
whom to lay the blame of a conflagration that went on for several days.
The former King of Oudh who built this costly pile, little thought
how one day its glories were to perish by the idle hands of a pack of
careless school-boys.
The trials of the garrison were by no means over. Sickness continued
to make havoc among them for want of wholesome food, especially of
vegetables, the best part of their diet being tough artillery bullocks.
The smallest luxury was still at famine price. The cold weather
drawing on found many of these poor people ill-provided with clothing.
One officer had gained asylum here in such a ragged state, that he
was fain to make himself a suit of clothes from the green cloth of
the Residency billiard-table. All were heartily sick of confinement
and anxiety. Yet nearly two months more had to be passed in a state
of blockade, the enemy no longer at such close quarters, but still
bombarding them with his artillery, and keeping them on the alert by
persistent attempts to mine their defences.
They were now, however, able to do more than stand on the defensive,
making vigorous sallies, before which the Sepoys readily gave way, and
held their own ground only by the weight of numbers. Good news, too,
cheered the inmates of this ark of refuge. All round them the flood
of mutiny seemed to be subsiding. Delhi had fallen at length, while
they still held their shattered asylum. Sir Colin Campbell was coming
to make a clean sweep of the rebel bands who kept Oudh in fear and
confusion. The heroes of Lucknow knew for certain that they were not
forgotten by their countrymen. They could trust England to be proud of
them, and felt how every heart at home would now be throbbing with the
emotion, which the Laureate was one day to put into deathless verse.
"Men will forget what we suffer and not what we do. We can fight--
But to be soldier all day and be sentinel all through the night!
Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their lying alarms,
Bugles and drums in the darkness, and shoutings and soundings to arms;
Ever the labour of fifty that had to be done by five;
Ever the marvel among us that one should be left alive;
Ever the day with its traitorous death from the loop-holes around;
Ever the night with its coffinless corpse to be laid in the ground.
* * * * *
Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief;
Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief;
Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butchered for all that we knew.
Then day and night, night and day, coming down on the still shattered walls,
Millions of musket bullets and thousands of cannon balls--
But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: The author has gone over the ground, noting its features
on the spot; but for refreshing his memory and making all the positions
clear, he has to acknowledge his obligation especially to the pictures
and plans in General McLeod Innes' _Lucknow and Oude in the Mutiny_.]
[Footnote 6: This "great unwashed hairy creature" appears to have
been "Jock" Aitken, in whom, as his kinsman, the author must own to a
special interest. A monument to him now stands by the post he guarded
so well.]