LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England flew.—TENNYSON.
On the night of May 30, 1857, the steps of the Residency at Lucknow
witnessed a strange sight. On the uppermost steps stood a group of
British officers in uniform. Sir Henry Lawrence was there, with his
staff; Banks, the chief commissioner; Colonel Inglis, of the 32nd. The
glare of a flaming house a hundred and fifty yards distant threw on the
group a light as intense almost as noonday. Forty paces in front of the
group stood a long line of Sepoys loading in swift silence. The light of
the flames played redly on their dark faces, on their muskets brought
quickly into position for capping. For weeks the great city had been
trembling on the verge of revolt, and an officer of his staff had brought
Lawrence news that gun-fire that night, nine o’clock, was to be the
signal for the outbreak.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY LAWRENCE
_Reproduced by permission of SIR HENRY WALDEMAR LAWRENCE, from a drawing
in his possession_]
Lawrence had taken all human precautions, and was familiar with such
warnings as that now brought to him, and he sat down with his staff to
dinner with iron composure. At nine o’clock there rolled through the
sultry darkness the sound of a gun, and silence fell for a moment on
the dinner party. Nothing followed the roar of the gun. Lawrence leaned
forward with a smile on his face, and said to the officer who brought the
news, “Your friends are not punctual.”
At that moment there rose in sharp succession on the still night air
the crack of a dozen muskets. Then came the sound of running feet, the
confused shouts of a crowd. The Mutiny had come!
Lawrence, without a change of countenance, ordered the horses, waiting
ready saddled, to be brought round, and, followed by his staff, went
out on to the Residency steps to wait for them. As they stood there red
flames were breaking out at a score of points in the black mass of houses
on which they looked. The air was full of tumult. An English bungalow
only a hundred and fifty yards distant broke into flame, showing how near
the mutineers were.
At that moment, with the tramp of disciplined feet, a body of Sepoys came
running up at the double out of the darkness, and swung into line facing
the Residency steps. It was the native officer bringing up the Residency
guard; and, saluting Captain Wilson, Lawrence’s aide-de-camp, he asked
“if the men should load.” These men were known to be disloyal; before the
morning dawned, as a matter of fact, they were in open mutiny. Ought they
to be treated as loyal, and permitted to load with the entire British
staff of the city at the muzzles of their muskets? Wilson reported the
native officer’s question to Lawrence. “Yes,” said he quietly, “let them
load,” and the group on the Residency steps quietly watched while ramrods
rang sharply in the musket barrels, and the gun-nipples were capped. The
sound of ramrods falling on the leaden bullets was perfectly audible in
the hush; and, says Colonel Wilson, “I believe Sir Henry was the only man
of all that group whose heart did not beat the quicker for it.”
Then there came a thrilling pause. These men had the entire British
staff at Lucknow before them at point-blank distance! A single gesture,
a shout, and that line of muskets would have poured its deadly fire upon
the group on the Residency steps, and with the sound of that one volley
Lucknow must have fallen, and perhaps the course of history been changed.
These brave men standing there under the very shadow of death knew this,
and not a figure stirred! Had there been the least sign of agitation
or fear, perhaps the Sepoys would have fired. But the cool, steadfast
bearing of that group of Englishmen put a strange spell on the Sepoys.
Another moment of intensest strain, and the native officer gave a sharp
word of command. The magic of discipline prevailed: the men swung
round and marched off into the darkness. But the fate of Lucknow and a
thousand British lives hung on those few critical moments. It was the
haughty, ice-cold courage of that heroic group on the Residency steps
which, for the moment, averted a great disaster.
Sir Henry Lawrence is the hero of the earlier stages of the siege of
Lucknow, and it is difficult to imagine a loftier or more gallant
character. He came of that sturdy, strong-brained North of Ireland stock,
which has given to the British Empire so many gallant soldiers and
famous administrators, so many great engineers and captains of labour.
Lawrence’s face, with its long features, thin-flowing beard, deep-set,
meditative, not to say dreamy eyes, and high cheek bones, was an odd
compound of, say, Don Quixote and Abraham Lincoln. His valour was “a
sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper”; but he had better qualities
than even valour of that fine edge. He was an administrator of the
first order. His intellect had in it a curious penetrating quality, and
perhaps his brain alone forecast, in its true scale, the great Mutiny
which shook almost to its fall the British rule in India. His courtesy,
his unselfishness, his passionate scorn of injustice, his generous pity
for the oppressed, gave a strange charm to Lawrence’s character, while
his meditative piety added gravity and depth to it. The whole interval
between the tragedy of Cawnpore and the glory of Lucknow is to be
measured by the single personality of Henry Lawrence. That he was of a
different type from Wheeler, explains how Lucknow escaped while Cawnpore
perished.
The two cities are about forty-five miles distant from each other.
Wheeler and Lawrence had each to face, practically, the same situation,
and with resources not very unequal. Wheeler’s credulous faith in his
Sepoys flung away the last chance of the ill-fated British in Cawnpore.
It was this which made him gather them within those thin lines of earth,
shelterless from shot or sunstroke, and without supplies, where no fate
except death or surrender was possible. Lawrence, with surer insight,
measured the problem before him. He chose wisely the spot where the
British must make their stand for existence. He gathered within the lines
he selected all the treasure and warlike resources of the city, with
supplies that a siege of five months did not exhaust. And his splendid
foresight and energy saved Lucknow.
There is no space to tell here in detail the tale of the noble courage
and energy with which Lawrence kept the seething and turbulent city from
revolt through May and June. The mere garrison figures of Lucknow show
Lawrence’s position. He had 700 Europeans on whom he could rely. There
were 7000 Sepoys, all potential, and highly probable mutineers. Beyond
this was a great turbulent and fanatical city, with a population of, say,
700,000, a magazine waiting to explode at the touch of a match.
The peril was certain in its character, but was uncertain in scale,
and time, and form. Lawrence had to arm himself against that vague,
formless, yet terrific peril, without letting those who watched him
closely and keenly discover that he was conscious of its existence. He
had to hide an anxious brain behind a cheerful face; to prepare minutely
for swift-coming and desperate war, while wearing the dress, and talking
the language of peace; to turn a hospitable Residency into a fortress;
and yet keep open doors and an open table. And he did it all! When, the
morning after Chinhut, the Residency was closely and furiously besieged,
it was found to be provisioned, organised, and armed for a stern and
obstinate and, in the end, successful defence!
Lawrence read the whole position of affairs so truly that his forecast
of events has in it a gleam of something like prophecy, or of magic. “He
told me,” says Colonel Wilson, “that nearly the whole army would go, but
not, he thought, the Sikhs; that in every native regiment there was a
residuum of loyal Sepoys, and he meant, if possible, to retain these—as
he actually did. If Cawnpore held out, Lucknow would be unassailed; but
if Cawnpore fell, Lucknow would be hard pressed, and no succour could
reach the city before the middle of August; that the outbreak would
remain a revolt of the Sepoys, and not a rising of the people.”
Lawrence’s own policy, meanwhile, was to fight for time. Every hour the
Mutiny could be postponed lessened its chances of success. “Time,” he
writes in his diary on May 18, “is everything just now; time, firmness,
promptness, conciliation, prudence.” But Lawrence had many difficulties
in carrying out that wise policy, some of them created by the divided
judgments of his own staff. Mr. Gubbins, the financial commissioner, in
particular, vehemently mistrusted Lawrence’s mild handling of the Sepoys.
Gubbins was clever, audacious, quick-witted, fatally over-quick, perhaps,
in judgment, with a gift for giving advice in confident—not to say
imperious—accents, which his official superiors found somewhat trying.
He valued his own advice, too, so highly that he could not forgive the
dulness in his superiors which failed to discern its excellence, or the
hesitation which lingered in putting it into practice. He was perpetually
urging Lawrence to disarm and expel all the native troops in Lucknow.
Yet Lawrence’s milder policy was justified by events. Some seven hundred
Sepoys remained true to their salt, and served through the great siege
with a devotion and a courage beyond praise. “Neither temptation nor
threats from their comrades without,” says Fayrer, “or hardships and
privation within, could induce them to desert. There is nothing in the
history of the Sepoy army more creditable or honourable than their
behaviour.”
Lawrence had other troubles with the Europeans in Lucknow. An indiscreet
editor in Lucknow published some alarmist articles of a singularly
mischievous character, and Lawrence sent for him, and warned him that,
if he continued to write in a fashion calculated to provoke mutiny, he
would suppress his paper. But Lawrence knew human nature too well to
believe that mere threats would keep a foolish editor from committing
folly. A few days afterwards, happening to ride by the newspaper office,
he suddenly drew rein, and said to his staff, “Let us go in and edit the
paper for Mr. ⸺.” He entered, said to the astonished editor, “Mr. ⸺, to
show you I bear no ill-will, I am come to write you a leading article;”
and, sitting down, dashed off an article expounding the resources of the
Government for meeting and putting down a revolt. The article acted as a
tonic on native and European opinion in the city; but it also captured
the editor.
Lawrence had not a very keen sense of humour, but occasionally humour—of
a grim sort—broke out from him. A Hindu of some rank advised that a
number of monkeys should be collected in the Residency, and be attended
and fed by high-caste Brahmins. This would ensure the favour of all
the Hindu divinities, and would make the English popular. Lawrence
listened gravely, then said, “Your advice is good. Come,” he said,
rising and taking his hat, “I will show you my monkeys.” He led the way
to a battery which had just been completed; and laying his hand on an
18-pounder gun, said, “See! here is one of my monkeys. That”—pointing to
a pile of shot—“is his food, and this”—laying his hand on the shoulder
of a sentry of the 32nd, who stood at attention close by—“is the man who
feeds them. Now go and tell your friends of my monkeys!”
The serene quality of Lawrence’s courage is shown by a letter he
writes to Raikes on May 30: “We are pretty jolly ... but we are in
a funny position.... We are virtually besieging four regiments—in a
quiet way—with 300 Europeans. I ... reside in cantonments guarded by
the gentlemen we are besieging.” That very night, as it happened, the
outbreak came!
On the last day of June the disastrous fight at Chinhut brought affairs
at Lucknow to a crisis. The revolted regiments from Eastern Oude were
marching on Lucknow, and Lawrence, acting on the one principle of British
war in India—of striking and never waiting to be struck—marched out to
crush the approaching mutinous regiments. His little force consisted of
300 of the 32nd, 230 more or less loyal Sepoys, 36 British volunteers
on horseback, 120 native cavalry, and 10 guns, of which six were manned
by Sepoys. There was grave doubt as to how the native artillery would
behave; but Lawrence said, “We must try and ‘blood’ them.”
As it happened, Lawrence was completely deceived as to the strength of
the enemy. He reckoned they might number 5000; they were nearer 15,000,
with not less than thirty guns. By some accident, too, the 32nd were
marched out without having broken their fast, and, marching eight miles
under the glare of an Indian sun, were exhausted before they fired a shot.
The day at Chinhut, in brief, was one of blunders and disasters.
“Everything,” says Fayrer, “was against us.” The force started late, and
without adequate preparation. The supplies of food and water never came
up. The men of the 32nd had to attack when exhausted by heat, thirst, and
fatigue, and want of food. The native artillerymen deserted; the Sikh
cavalry fled. The one formidable gun the British had, an 8-inch howitzer,
was thrown out of action owing to the elephant that drew it taking
fright. The British, in addition, were badly armed. Many of their muskets
would not go off. In the confusion of the retreat an officer called on a
private of the 32nd by name to turn round and fire on the enemy. “I will
do so, sir, if you wish,” said the man, “but it’s no use! I have snapped
six caps already and the piece won’t go off.” The Sepoys, as it happened,
were armed with new and clean muskets.
The enormous number of the Sepoys enabled them to outflank the scanty
British force, and nothing remained but retreat. There were many
individual acts of gallantry; but, in broken, desperately fighting
clusters, the 32nd had to fall back, many of the men dropping from
exhaustion or sunstroke while they tried to fight. An officer in the
battle has described the huge mass of the Sepoys as it pressed on the
flank of the retreating British. “The plain,” he says, “was one moving
mass of men. Regiment after regiment of the Sepoys poured steadily
towards us, the flanks covered with a foam of skirmishers. They came on
in quarter-distance columns, the standards waving in their places, and
everything performed as steadily as possible. A field-day on parade could
not have been better.” Under the terrific fire poured on their flank the
gallant 32nd simply melted away. Their colonel, Case, a splendid soldier,
fell desperately wounded, and one of the officers ran to assist him.
“Your place,” Case told him, “is with your men. Never mind me. Leave me
to die, but stand by your men.”
Lawrence rode, hat in hand, wherever the fire was fiercest, cheering
the men; but again and again he wrung his hands, and was heard to say,
“My God! I have brought them to this!” A great body of native cavalry
was about to charge down on the clusters of broken red-coats, when the
thirty-six volunteers on horseback rode at them with such fury that
the whole hostile mass was broken, and, with its two guns and sea of
glittering sabres, was actually driven off in flight! The retreating
column had reached the iron bridge; the Sepoys, outnumbering them by
hundreds to one, were pressing on, when Lawrence saved them by a flash
of warlike genius.
The British gun ammunition was exhausted, but Lawrence ordered the empty
guns to be planted across the bridge, and the gunners to stand beside
them with lighted port-fires, and before the menace of those unloaded
guns the Sepoy pursuit was arrested! Out of his little European force no
fewer than 112 men and five officers of the 32nd were slain. The memory
of those gallant men poisoned Henry Lawrence’s dying moments. He blamed
himself because, as he said, he “had been moved by the fear of man to
undertake so hazardous an enterprise.”
How darkly that night settled down on Lucknow may be imagined. The
scene when the broken troops, blackened with dust, staggering with
exhaustion, bloody from wounds, came streaming into the Residency, was
one of the wildest confusion. It seemed as if everything was lost. The
victorious Sepoys might carry the Residency with one breathless rush.
“The end of all things seemed to have come,” says Dr. Fayrer—who was busy
dressing wounds amid all the tumult. “The poor ladies,” he adds, “who,
like others, were anticipating immediate death, were perfectly calm,
and showed great fortitude.” Lady Inglis has told how she “watched our
poor soldiers returning—the most mournful sight. They were straggling
in by twos and threes; some riding, some on guns, some supported by
their comrades.” “Almost every other cavalry volunteer,” says another
eye-witness, “was encumbered with two, three, or even four foot-soldiers;
one perhaps holding his hand, another laying fast hold on the crupper, or
the tail of the horse, or the stirrup, or on all together.”
Lady Inglis tells the story of how the news of Colonel Case’s death was
brought to his wife. “Mrs. Case came up to me and said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Inglis,
go to bed. I have just heard that your husband and mine are both safe.’
I said, ‘Why, I did not know Colonel Case went out.’ Just then John
(Colonel Inglis) came in. He was crying, and after kissing me turned to
Mrs. Case and said, ‘Poor Case!’ Never shall I forget the cry of agony
from the poor widow.”
It was at a crisis like this that the gallant and masterful spirit of
Henry Lawrence shone out. The Sepoys had a saying that “when Lawrence
Sahib had looked once down to the ground, and once up to the sky, and
stroked his beard, he knew what to do.” He had, that is, in an unrivalled
degree, the faculty of seeing into the heart of a difficulty, and the
twin faculty of swift decision. The disaster of Chinhut had changed
the whole situation. Lawrence had armed and garrisoned a cluster of
castellated buildings, called the Mutchee Bhawan, about a thousand yards
from the Residency, for the purpose of over-awing the city. But his
losses at Chinhut made it difficult to hold the Residency, and impossible
to hold both the Residency and the Mutchee Bhawan; and on the morning of
July 1, from a rough semaphore on the roof of the Residency, a message
was signalled to the Mutchee Bhawan, “Retire to-night at twelve. Blow up
well.”
Colonel Palmer, of the 48th Native Infantry, was in command at the
Mutchee Bhawan; he called his officers together, and laid his plans
with perfect skill and coolness. There was a magazine consisting of 250
barrels of gunpowder and nearly 1,000,000 cartridges; these were put
together in a huge pile; every gun that could not be carried off was
spiked, and at midnight the garrison filed silently out, and the fuse
was lighted. The garrison reached the Residency gate without meeting an
enemy, and just as the last man entered, with a shock as of an earthquake
and a flame that for a moment lit up half the city, Mutchee Bhawan blew
up. It turned out that a private of the 32nd was left drunk and sound
asleep in the building. He was blown up, of course, but the next morning
was standing, stark naked, hammering at the Residency gate, shouting,
“Arrah, then, open your ⸺ gates!”
Lawrence had thus concentrated all his force within the lines of that
scanty patch of soil which was to witness a defence as heroic and
stubborn as that of Saragossa against the French, or of Jerusalem
against the Romans; and which for the next eighty-eight days—till
Havelock’s Highlanders, that is, with blackened faces and crimsoned
bayonets came streaming through the Bailey Guard—was to be ringed with
the fire of hostile guns.
What was called the Residency was really an irregular cluster of houses
and gardens, covering an area of about thirty-three acres, looking down
from a slight ridge upon the river Goomtee. In the centre stood the
Residency itself, a lofty three-storeyed building with many windows
and wide-circling verandahs: a spacious and comfortable residence, but
singularly ill adapted for the purposes of war. The houses and gardens
around it had been woven together with trenches and earthworks, with
light batteries sprinkled at regular intervals on each front, and the
external walls of the houses along the outer fronts were pierced with
loopholes. But in the whole position there was not a defence anywhere
that could resist artillery fire.
The whole position formed a rough, irregular pentagon. What may be called
the northern front looked down a gentle slope, and across a line of
native shops called the Captan Bazaar, to the river, the north-western
angle being prolonged, like the horn of a rhinoceros, to include a little
point of rising ground occupied by a residence known as Innes’s house.
The exterior defence was divided into seventeen posts, each post having
its commandant and its tiny garrison of soldiers or of civilians, or of
the few Sepoys still faithful to their salt. And each post had to fight,
like Hal o’ the Wynd, for “its ain hand”; to dig its own trenches, drive
its own mines, make sorties on its own account, and repel assaults with
its own muskets and bayonets as best it could. One man from each post
was detailed to fetch each morning provisions for the day, but, for the
rest, the little cluster of smoke-blackened heroes held their post with
desperate valour on their own account, and without communication with any
other post. There were no reliefs. Every man was on continuous duty day
and night, and if he cast himself down for a brief and broken slumber, it
was with his musket by his side, and without undressing.
Innes’s post, at the extreme north-west angle, was commanded by
Lieutenant Loughnan with a little garrison of clerks and men of the
32nd. Next came a stretch of earthworks called the North Curtain, under
Colonel Palmer. The Redan, a projecting battery of three guns, was held
by Lieutenant Lawrence, of the 32nd, with a few men of his regiment.
The hospital, an unsheltered post, was held by Lieutenant Langmore; the
Bailey Guard adjoining it by Lieutenant Aitken, with some Sepoys of
the 13th Native Infantry. The post was armed with two 9-pounders and a
howitzer, and the Sepoys regarded the tiny battery entrusted to them with
peculiar pride.
Following down the east face, Dr. Fayrer’s house was held by Captain
Weston, with some Sepoy pensioners; Sago’s house was in charge of
Lieutenant Clery, of the 32nd, with some men of that regiment. The
Financial Commissioner’s office was held by Captain Saunders, with a
mixed garrison of uncovenanted clerks and men of the 32nd; the Judicial
Commissioner’s office, or Germon’s post, as it was called, was in
charge of Captain Germon, and a batch of Sepoys and clerks. Anderson’s
garrison—a two-storeyed house at the south-east angle of the position—was
held by Captain Anderson and a cluster of the 32nd, and some volunteers.
The Cawnpore battery formed the extreme east of the southern face.
This was armed with three light guns, and was so completely under the
enemy’s fire that, when that fire was in full blast, no man could live
beneath it, and the commander of this post was changed every day. The
Sikhs’ square formed the western angle of the south front, and was held
by Captain Harding, with some Sikh cavalry. Gubbins’ battery formed the
southern extremity of the west front; it had a mixed garrison of Sepoy
pensioners, some men of the 32nd, and some native levies raised by Mr.
Gubbins. The Racket-court, the Slaughterhouse, the Sheep-pen, and the
Church formed the defences of the west front, and were held chiefly by
men of the commissariat department. The Residency itself was held by a
company of the 84th, under Captain Lowe, as a reserve, though only once
during the siege was it called out.
Above the Residency flew, in haughty challenge to the whole world, the
flag of England. That flag provoked in a quite curious degree the wrath
of the mutineers. Every gun that could be brought to bear on it pelted it
with shot, and again and again the staff was carried away. But the damage
was instantly repaired, and through the whole of that desperate siege,
while the tumult of the fight raged on every face of the entrenchments—
“Ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England blew!”
Upon this patch of soil, a little over thirty acres in extent, ringed
with trenches and palisades, with loopholed house-walls and low
earthworks, were gathered some 3000 human beings. Of these, more than
600 were European women and children; nearly 700 were native servants,
non-combatants; another 700 were Sepoys, of somewhat dubious loyalty. The
real fighting strength of the garrison consisted of 535 men of the 32nd,
50 of the 84th, 89 artillerymen, 100 British officers—mainly escapees
from revolted regiments—and 153 civilians, mostly clerks, who now
suddenly had to exchange the pen for the musket and bayonet.
About 900 British, that is, constituted the true fighting force of
Lucknow, and these 900 had to be distributed amongst seventeen “posts,”
or batteries, and round the 2500 yards, or thereabouts, of constantly
threatened front. This gave an average of, roughly, fifty men to each
post, a number, of course, which grew less every day.
The position had one remarkable feature. The Residency resembled nothing
so much as a low island, set in a sea of native houses. Lawrence, with
wise prevision, had attempted to clear each front of the Residency, and
from June 12 he had some 600 workmen employed on this task. Nawabs’
palaces and coolies’ huts alike were attacked with pickaxe and gunpowder;
but the undertaking was stupendous, and practically only the upper
storeys of these houses were destroyed, so that they could not sweep the
British entrenchments with their fire. But the lower walls were left
standing, and these afforded perfect cover to the Sepoys, and enabled
them to carry on their mining operations undetected.
Along the eastern face these houses were at distances from the British
entrenchments ranging from twenty-five to fifty yards; on the southern
face they came up to within thirteen yards of the Residency front, an
interval, say, as wide as a city lane! So close were the two hostile
lines for those eighty-eight desperate days, that the British could
easily overhear the talk of the Sepoys; and when bullets ceased to fly
across the narrow space between, expletives—couched in shrill Hindu or in
rough Anglo-Saxon—naturally took their place!
The strength of the mutineers was a varying and uncertain quantity.
Sometimes it was wildly guessed to have risen to 100,000, at other times
to have sunk to 30,000. Colonel Inglis, in his official report of the
siege, after speaking of “the terrific and incessant fire day and night,”
says “there could not have been less than 8000 men firing at one time
into our position.” This describes the common experience of eighty-eight
days. And yet this great host, with all their constant tempest of fire,
their repeated assaults, their innumerable mines, never gained a single
foot of that ground above which flew the flag of England!
Sir Henry Lawrence’s keen and forecasting intellect made the triumphant
defence of Lucknow possible, but in that defence he himself took the
briefest share. The siege practically began on July 1. Lawrence had taken
up his quarters in a room in the Residency, which gave him a complete
view of the enemy, but was also peculiarly open to their fire. On that
first day the Sepoys threw an 8-inch shell into the room where Lawrence
was sitting, but he escaped without injury. He was entreated to change
his quarters, but answered, with a laugh, he did not think the enemy had
a gunner good enough to put a second shot through that same window! He
was still pressed, however, to change, and at last he consented to do so
“when he had arranged for moving his papers.”
At 8 P.M. on July 2 Lawrence was lying on his bed in this room, with
Colonel Wilson sitting beside him writing down some instructions from
his lips. Lawrence’s nephew, George, was reclining on a bed a few feet
distant from his uncle; a coolie sat on the floor pulling the punkah.
Suddenly, with a terrific rush, a second shell from that fatal howitzer
broke into the room and exploded there. As George Lawrence describes it,
“There was an instant’s darkness, and a kind of red glare, and a blast
as of thunder. I found myself uninjured, though covered with bricks from
top to toe.” The very clothes were torn off Wilson’s body, but he, too,
was uninjured. Lawrence was the only member of the group struck by the
exploding shell, and he was mortally wounded, the whole of the lower part
of his body being shattered.
Colonel Wilson tells graphically the story of the exploding shell, the
sheet of flame, the blast of sound, the dust, the thick darkness, the
strangling smoke. He was himself thrown on the floor, and lay for a few
moments stunned. Staggering to his feet, he cried, “Sir Henry, are you
hurt?” “Twice I thus called without any answer; the third time he said,
in a low tone, ‘I am killed.’” When the dust cleared away, it was seen
that the coverlet on Lawrence’s bed, a moment before white, was now
crimsoned with his blood. He died on the morning of July 4, and the story
of the thirty-six hours between his wound and his death is strangely
pathetic.
Fayrer, who was the resident surgeon, was brought hurriedly in, and
Lawrence in a whisper asked him how long he had to live. A fragment
of the shell had struck the hip and comminuted the upper part of the
thigh-bone. The wound was plainly fatal; and as the walls of the room
in which Lawrence lay were shaking continually to the stroke of the
enemy’s round-shot, the dying man was carried to the verandah of Dr.
Fayrer’s house, and there lay through the night, while life ebbed away.
The Sepoys, somehow, got to know that Lawrence was lying under this
particular verandah, and they turned on it what Fayrer describes as a
“most fiendish fire of round-shot and musketry.” Through it all Lawrence
kept the most perfect composure. He named his successor, Major Banks,
and dictated exact and most luminous instructions as to the conduct of
the siege. No finer proof of his clear, tenacious, forecasting intellect
can be imagined than is supplied by the counsels which, whispered with
dying breath, he gave to those on whom the responsibility of the defence
must rest. Lawrence thought of everything and foresaw everything. The
whole tactics of defence—how to keep the English members of the garrison
in health, how to use the Sepoys, how to economise the provisions.
“Entrench, entrench,” was the burden of his whispered counsels, urged
with dying lips. “Let every man,” he said, “die at his post, but never
make terms.” Only when he mentioned his wife’s name did his iron
composure fail, and he wept those rare, reluctant tears which strong men
know. He wished to partake of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The
service was held in the open verandah, the sound of the chaplain’s voice
being broken by the incessant crackle of hostile muskets and the crash of
cannon-ball. Brave men knelt with unshamed tears by Lawrence’s bedside,
and partook of the Sacrament with him.
After it was over the dying man begged them to kiss him. The whole story,
indeed, recalls that scene in the cockpit of the _Victory_, and the dying
Nelson’s “Kiss me, Hardy!” “Bury me,” said Lawrence, “without any fuss,
and in the same grave with any men of the garrison who may die at that
time.” Then, records his biographer, “speaking rather to himself than to
those about him,” he framed his own immortal epitaph, a sentence which
deserves to be remembered as long as Nelson’s great signal itself, and
which, indeed, has the same key-word: “Here lies Henry Lawrence, who
tried to do his duty. May God have mercy on him.” It is not so well known
that Lawrence wished a verse of Scripture should be added to his epitaph.
To the chaplain, Harris, he said, “This text I should like, ‘To the Lord
our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against
Him.’” “It was,” he added, with a sudden touch of loving memory, “on my
dear wife’s tomb.”
He was buried at nightfall. The combat was raging fiercely along each
front of the Residency’s defences, and not an officer could follow the
general to his grave. Four men of the 32nd were detailed to carry his
body to its last rough resting-place. Before they lifted the couch on
which it lay, one soldier drew down the sheet, and stooping, kissed with
rough and quivering lips the dead man’s forehead, and each man of the
party followed his example. What better sign of soldierly honour could be
imagined? Lawrence’s burial curiously recalls that of Sir John Moore at
Corunna. He, too, was buried, according to somewhat inaccurate tradition,
“darkly, at the dead of night,” and had for his requiem the thunder of
the foeman’s guns.
The story of the siege is, in the main, one of personal combats; of the
duels of hostile sharpshooters; of desperate fighting underground in
the mines; of sorties by the few against the many; of the assaults of
thousands repulsed by scores. As a type of the long-enduring courage with
which individual “posts” were held may be taken the single fact that
Captain Anderson, whose residence formed what was called “Anderson’s
post,” and who had a garrison of only twenty men, held his position for
five months, though a battery of nine 9-pounder guns was playing upon it
almost day and night!
The standing orders were, “Keep under cover, be always on the alert,
and never fire a shot unless you can see your man.” But it was very
difficult to enforce the first clause of those instructions, at least.
Lady Inglis tells how she once personally remonstrated with a too daring
private of the 32nd for exposing himself too rashly, and reminded him of
the “instructions.” “Yes,” he said, “but it’s not the way of Englishmen
to fight behind walls!”
As a matter of fact, the sorties were incessant and most daring, and were
commonly got up by small independent parties, who wished to clear out a
house held by the enemy, or silence a gun that proved too tormenting.
“The local sorties,” says Innes, “were made generally by parties of not
more than half-a-dozen men.” They would choose their own leader, creep
out close to the site of some hostile gun or picket, dash on it, spike
the gun, kill a few of the enemy, send the others flying, and return in
triumph!
In the more regular sorties an engineer officer and a sergeant leading
would run out, carrying a bag of gunpowder or a couple of hand grenades.
If the door of the attacked house was open, grenades were thrown in. If
it were shut they drove in a bayonet, or screwed a gimlet in its wood,
suspended a bag of powder to it, and lit the fuse. The moment the crash
came the stormers charged into the building, bayoneted the Sepoys holding
it, placed another bag of gunpowder on the floor, lit the fuse, and fell
back, the house five minutes afterwards flying up in fragments into
the air. So expert did the men become in these house attacks that they
learned the art of always going to the right, not the left, of a doorway
or passage, so that they could fire into it without exposing the whole
body.
This sort of fighting naturally brought the more gallant spirits to the
front. A private of the 32nd, called Cooney, played a great part in these
independent combats. With a single comrade he charged into an enemy’s
battery, shouting, as he leaped over the ridge of earth, “Right and left,
extend!” so that the Sepoys imagined a strong body was following, and
fled precipitately, leaving the ingenious Cooney and his comrade to spike
the guns at leisure!
Captain Birch says: “Cooney’s exploits were marvellous. He was backed by
a Sepoy named Kandiel, who simply adored him. Single-handed, and without
any orders, Cooney would go outside our position, and he knew more about
the enemy’s movements than anybody else. 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. He was often wounded,
and several times left his bed to volunteer for a sortie.” Cooney was an
Irishman, and loved fighting for its own sake. He fell in a sortie made
after Havelock’s relief.
Fayrer, the Residency surgeon, combined with equal energy the somewhat
contradictory duties of inflicting wounds and of healing them. He worked
with tireless energy, attending to the sick and wounded in the Residency
itself. But he records, “I have constant opportunity of using my guns and
rifles from the roof of my house, or from the platform in front of it.”
And when this indefatigable doctor was not going his round among the sick
and dying, he was to be found on his house-roof bringing down Sepoys with
the deadly skill he had learned in the jungle against tigers and deer.
The best shot on the British side was Lieutenant Sewell, who, happy in
the possession of a double-barrelled Enfield rifle, from a loophole on
the top of the brigade mess, which commanded a thoroughfare through the
Sepoy position, bagged his men as a good sportsman might bag pheasants
in a crowded cover. But the Sepoys, too, had their marksmen, whose
accuracy was deadly, and whose exploits won from the British garrison the
nicknames of “Jim the Rifleman” and “Bob the Nailer.” “Bob the Nailer,”
from his perch high up in what was called Johannes’ house, wrought deadly
mischief. The British at last paid him the compliment of levelling a
howitzer at him, and dropping a shell into his eyrie. But shells were
vain. It was discovered afterwards that “Bob the Nailer,” when he saw
that the gun was about to fire, dropped down into a sheltered room, to
emerge, as soon as the shell had exploded, with his fatal rifle once more.
Once a dash was made at Johannes’ house, and its garrison slaughtered,
but “Bob the Nailer” escaped, and there was not time to blow up the
house. Later in the siege a mine was run under his perch, and Johannes’
house, crowded with Sepoys, with “Bob the Nailer” at its summit, was
blown into space.
There were moments in the siege when, naturally, the spirits of many
in the garrison sank. The children were dying from want of air, of
exercise, of wholesome food. They shrank into mere wizen-faced old
men—tiny skeletons with tightened, parchment-like skin, instead of
round, cherub-like faces. Scurvy tainted the blood of the unfortunate
garrison. Sleeplessness and the ever-present atmosphere of danger
shook their nerves. Men stole out day after day, at the risk of their
lives, to gather the leaves of a cruciferous plant, whose green leaves,
unscorched by the flame of powder, could be seen amongst the ruins. A
rank and dreadful stench of decaying bodies hung over the shot-tormented
Residency, and poisoned the very air. Lady Inglis tells how the ladies
held rueful debate among themselves as to the lawfulness of taking their
own lives if the Residency fell.
Amongst the Sepoys within the Residency, again, as the few weeks grew
into months and no relief came, there spread a conviction that the fate
of the sahibs was sealed, and there were many desertions. Sixteen went
off in a body one night, headed by a Eurasian with the very British name
of “Jones.” They left the post they held open to the enemy, and scribbled
on the walls in several places the explanation, “Because we have no
opium.” Jones and his fellow-deserters, it is not unsatisfactory to know,
were shot by the Sepoys.
One of the ugly features of the siege was that several European
renegades—amongst them at least one Englishman—were fighting on the side
of the mutineers. Rees says that at the battle of Chinhut a European—“a
handsome-looking man, well built, fair, about twenty-five years of age,
with light moustache, and wearing the undress uniform of a European
cavalry officer”—headed a cavalry charge on the men of the 32nd. He
might have been a Russian, but was vehemently suspected of being an
Englishman, who had forsaken both his faith and his race. His name was
even whispered, and Rees adds that he was of good family. Two of his
cousins were fighting valiantly in the Residency against the rebels, a
third was wounded at Agra, a fourth held a high military appointment.
Yet this apostate was recognised laying a gun against the Residency! His
shrift would have been particularly short had he fallen into British
hands. The British privates in the Residency, too, were kindled to
a yet higher temperature of wrath by hearing the bands of the Sepoy
regiments playing—as if in irony—“God save the Queen” under the shelter
of the ruined buildings that came almost up to the line of the British
entrenchments.
But on the whole the average Briton is apt to be grimly cheerful when a
good fight is in progress, and even this dreadful siege was not without
its humours. Thus Rees tells how, on the night of July 26, the men of
his post were spreading themselves out in the chorus of “Cheer, Boys,
cheer,” with the utmost strength of their voices, when an alarm was given
at the front. They dashed out, and, with the unfinished syllables of that
chorus yet on their lips, found themselves in the tumult and fury of a
desperate assault. After the fight was over they returned and finished
their interrupted song!
Innes, again, relates how, when a long mine of the enemy had been seized,
and two officers were exploring its darkness, they heard the earth fall
in behind them. One of the two, famous for his resonant laugh, shouted
with a burst of merriment, “What fun! They are cutting us off,” and
turned round gaily to charge on his foes!
Danger, in a word, had become an inspiring jest to these brave spirits.
“Sam” Lawrence, who commanded the Redan, was famous for the cheerful
view he always took of affairs. It was known that the Sepoys had several
mines converging on the projecting horn of the Redan, and Lawrence, as
unconquerably jolly as Mark Tapley himself, expressed his view of the
situation to his brigadier by saying, with a laugh, that “he and his men
expected very shortly to be up amongst the little birds!”
On June 14, Fayrer records, “If we can believe our enemies, we are the
last Englishmen in the country.” This might or might not be the case;
but the garrison determined grimly that, if they were the last of their
race, they would not disgrace it. In the vernacular of the camp, they had
agreed to “blow the whole ⸺ thing into the air” rather than surrender. “I
was quite determined,” says Fayrer, “that they should not take me alive,
and I would kill as many of them as I could before they took me.... Some
men asked me to give them poison for their wives, if the enemy should get
in. But this I absolutely refused to do.”
Courage, when high-strung, sometimes evolves an almost uncanny
cheerfulness. The Sepoys brought a mortar into action that dropped
shell after shell on one particular house. “We got the ladies up out of
the Tyekhana,” records Fayrer, and they amused themselves by trying to
be cheerful and singing part-songs in the portico, to the rushing of
shells and the whistling of musket-balls. When before were such songs
attempted to such an accompaniment? But the women of the Residency
showed throughout a courage quite as high as that of the men. During
the great assault on July 20, when, on the explosion of a mine, the
Sepoys attempted to storm the Residency at half-a-dozen points, “every
one,” says Fayrer, “was at his post, and poured shot, shell, grape, and
musketry into them as hard as possible. The noise was frightful, the
enemy shouting and urging each other on. It certainly seemed to me as if
our time had come. But all the poor ladies were patiently awaiting the
result in the Tyekhana.”
“During the whole siege,” says Gubbins, “I never heard of a man among
the Europeans who played the coward. Some croaked, no doubt, many were
despondent, yet others grew grimly desperate during those terrible days.”
Gubbins relates how he was one evening taken aside by an officer, who
explained that he had arranged with his wife that, if the Sepoys forced
their way in, he would shoot her. “She had declared herself content to
die by a pistol-ball from his hand.” He offered to do the same friendly
service for Gubbins’s wife, if necessary, and wanted Gubbins to undertake
a like desperate office for his wife, if required. To such desperate
straits were civilised and Christian men driven!
The courage shown by the women was uniform and wonderful. Dr. Fayrer
relates how a shell broke in the bedroom where his wife was lying. It
shattered the room and set fire to the bedclothes with its explosion.
Fayrer ran in; and, he says, “My wife immediately spoke to me out of
the smoke, and said she was not hurt. She was perfectly composed and
tranquil, though a 9-pound bombshell had just burst by the side of her
bed.”
There were three great all-round attacks, on July 20, August 10, and
September 5. The most desperate, perhaps, was that on the Cawnpore
battery, the most nearly successful that on the Sikh square. The attack
on the Sikh square was preceded by the explosion of a mine which made a
breach thirty feet wide in the British defences, and buried seven of its
defenders under the ruins. There was good cover for the enemy close up
to the breach, and no reason why they should not have swarmed in, except
the argument of the smoke-blackened, grim-looking sahibs who suddenly
appeared, musket in hand, to guard the great gap.
A rush was, indeed, made by the Sepoys, and a native officer of the
Irregular Cavalry, who headed the rush gallantly enough, actually crossed
the line of the entrenchments—the only mutineer who, during the long
siege, succeeded in putting his foot on the soil held by the British. He
was instantly shot, and so cruel and swift was the fire poured in upon
the Sepoys that they fell back in confusion, and under Inglis’s orders
planks and doors were brought quickly up, and arranged, one overlapping
the other, till the whole gap was covered, and a pile of sand-bags built
behind it.
Gubbins describes one critical moment in the siege. On July 21st it was
discovered the Sepoys had dug through an adjoining wall and found their
way into a narrow lane which skirted the compound; and, literally, only
a canvas screen parted them from the British position! Gubbins ran to
the single loophole which commanded the lane, and, with his rifle, shot
down every Sepoy who attempted to cross it while the gap in the British
defences was being hurriedly built up. “At this moment,” he says, “I
heard the voice of a European behind me, and, without turning my head,
begged that the wall in the rear of the mutineers might be loopholed and
musketry opened upon them. The person behind me, it seems, was Major
Banks. He approached my post to get a sight of the enemy, and while
looking out incautiously received a bullet through the temples. I heard
the heavy fall, and turned for a second. He was dead. He never moved, and
I resumed my guard over the enemy.” For two stern hours Gubbins guarded
the gap. Then assistance came, the Sepoys were driven from their point of
vantage, and the gap in the defences built up.
Later on in the siege the fighting was carried on beneath the surface
of the earth. The Sepoys had amongst them many men belonging to a caste
famous for skill with the spade, and from more than a score of separate
points they drove mines towards the entrenchments. Spade had to fight
spade; and, as in the 32nd were many Cornishmen familiar with mining
work, these were employed to countermine the enemy. The Sepoys undertook
37 separate mines, and of these 36 were failures, only one—that directed
against the Sikh square—proving successful.
One of the most heroic figures in the immortal garrison was Captain
Fulton, the garrison engineer, who, on the death of Major Anderson, took
charge of all engineering operations. Fulton was a superb engineer, and
all the stories of the siege do justice to the part he played in the
defence. Gubbins says he was “the life and soul of everything that was
persevering, chivalrous, and daring,” and declares that he deserved to be
called “the Defender of Lucknow.” Mr. Fulton, of Melbourne, a relation
of this brave man, still preserves the journal of the siege kept by
his kinsman. It is a document of real historical value, and gives a
graphic picture of the great struggle from day to day. He tells again
and again how he met the enemy’s mines by countermines, how he broke in
upon them, swept them from their drive like flying rabbits, and blew the
whole affair up, as he puts it, “with great enjoyment of the fun and
excitement!”
Fulton once found that they had driven a mine close up to the wall of
a house that formed part of the British defence, and he could hear the
sound of pick and shovel distinctly. “I thought this very impudent,”
he writes; “they could be so easily met; but it seemed a bore to begin
to counter. So I just put my head over the wall and called out in
Hindustanee a trifle of abuse and ‘Bagho! bagho!’—‘Fly! fly!’—when such
a scuffle and bolt took place I could not leave for half-an-hour for
laughing. They dropped it for good—that was the best of the joke.”
Fulton took his full part in the general fighting. Thus, in the assault
on the Cawnpore battery, he relates that he “found the enemy led by a
man in pink, whom I had noticed several times directing them as they
came up. I put a rifle-ball through him, and then sent Tulloch to order
hand-grenades, the second of which, well thrown, cleared the ditch.” Here
is a picture, again, of one of Fulton’s many sorties to destroy houses by
which the British were annoyed:
We sneaked out of our lines into a house. I had only a
penknife, slow match, and port-fire in my hand, and was
followed close by two Europeans, and supported by a dozen
more. We expected to find the house empty, but George
Hutchinson, who was first, suddenly startled us by firing his
revolver and calling out “Here are twenty of them!” The two
Europeans—indeed, all of them—fell back a pace or two; but I
seized a musket from one, and ran forward. They followed, and I
put them in position to guard doors, while I twitted the enemy
with not showing their faces, as I did, in front of the door,
but standing with only their firelocks showing. The chaff had
the effect, for one dashed out and fired at me, but I shot him
instanter. They then bolted as I gave the word “Charge!” and we
blew up the house. Great fun and excitement in a small way!
Fulton detected a mine the enemy had driven a certain distance; he ran
a short countermine to meet it, and then sat patiently, revolver in
hand, waiting for the unconscious enemy to break through. “Some one,”
he relates, “looking for me, asked one of the Europeans if I was in the
mine. ‘Yes, sir!’ said the sergeant, ‘there he has been for the last two
hours, like a terrier at a rat-hole, and not likely to leave it either
all day!’” It was to the energy, skill, and daring of this gallant
officer that the complete defeat of the enemy’s mines was due.
The last entry in his journal is dated September 11; on September 13 he
was killed. Says Captain Birch, “The death of this brilliant officer was
occasioned by one of the most curious of wounds. He had been inspecting
a new battery in an earthwork opposite Mr. Gubbins’s house. He was lying
at full length in one of the embrasures, with a telescope in his hand. He
turned his face, with a smile on it, and said: ‘They are just going to
fire,’ and sure enough they did! The shot took away the whole of the back
of Captain Fulton’s head, leaving his face like a mask still on his neck.
When he was laid out on his back on a bed, we could not see how he had
been killed. His was the most important loss we had sustained after that
of Sir Henry Lawrence.”
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY HAVELOCK, K.C.B.
_From an engraving_]