THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN
The losses of the beleaguered English during the siege of the Residency
were, of course, great. When the siege began the garrison consisted of
927 Europeans—not three out of four being soldiers—and 765 natives. Up to
the date of the relief by Havelock—87 days—350 Europeans, more than one
out of every three of the whole European force, were killed or died of
disease!
It is curious to note how all the swiftly-changing events and passions
of the Mutiny are reflected in such of the diaries and journals of the
period as have been published; and frequently a view of the actors in the
great drama and of their actions is obtained from this source, such as
grave historians, much to the loss of their readers, never give us. One
of the best diaries of the kind is that of Lady Canning, as published
in “The Story of Two Noble Lives,” by Augustus J. C. Hare. This journal
gives us dainty little vignettes of the principal figures in the Mutiny,
with pictures of all the alternating moods of fear and hope, of triumph
and despair, as, moment by moment, they were experienced by the little
circle of Government House in Calcutta. Here, for example, is a quaint
picture of Havelock, which Lady Canning draws when the news reached
Calcutta of his death:—
_Nov. 27._—We had a grievous piece of news from Alumbagh.
Havelock died two days ago. He died of dysentery, worn out
in mind and body.... It is curious now to remember how his
appointment was abused here, when he was called “an old fossil
dug up and only fit to be turned into pipe-clay.” I knew him
better than almost any one, and used to try and keep him in
good-humour when he seemed a little inclined to be affronted.
He was very small, and upright, and stiff, very white and grey,
and really like an iron ramrod. He always dined in his sword,
and made his son do the same. He wore more medals than ever
I saw on any one, and it was a joke that he looked as if he
carried all his money round his neck. He certainly must have
had eleven or twelve of those great round half-crown pieces.
Lady Canning goes on to picture Campbell’s march back to Cawnpore, with
his great convoy of wounded men and women and children, and her woman’s
imagination fastens naturally on this long procession of helpless human
beings. “Sir Colin,” she writes, “has sent off four miles long of women
and wounded!” Later on she reports the procession as fourteen miles
long! And no doubt the business of transporting such a host of helpless
creatures out of a city which contained 60,000 hostile troops, and across
nearly fifty miles of an enemy’s country, was a feat calculated to
impress the human imagination.
Campbell had one tremendous source of anxiety. He had to carry his
huge convoy of non-combatants, guns, treasure, and material across the
slender, swaying line of boats which bridged the Ganges at Cawnpore
before safety was reached. That bridge, indeed, formed his only possible
line of retreat. If it were destroyed or fell into the enemy’s hands, the
tragedy of Cabul—where only one man escaped out of an army—might have
been repeated.
Campbell had left Windham to guard the bridge and hold Cawnpore, but
Windham had only 500 men—a force scarcely stronger in fighting power than
that with which Wheeler held the fatal entrenchments—and within easy
striking distance was the Gwalior contingent, numbering, with a fringe
of irregulars, some 25,000 men, with forty guns, the most formidable
and best-drilled force, on the Sepoy side, in the whole Mutiny. At its
head, too, was Tantia Topee, the one real soldier on the enemy’s side the
Mutiny produced, with quite enough warlike skill to see the opportunity
offered him of striking a fatal blow at Campbell’s communications. If
Windham’s scanty force had been crushed, and the bridge destroyed,
Campbell’s position would have been, in a military sense, desperate, and
the tragedy of Cawnpore might have been repeated in darker colours and
on a vaster scale. Sound generalship required Campbell to smash the
formidable force which threatened Cawnpore before advancing on Lucknow;
but Campbell took all risks in order to succour the beleaguered Residency.
Having plucked the beleaguered garrison out of the very heart of the
enemy’s forces, it may be imagined with what eagerness Campbell now set
his face towards Cawnpore again. There was no safety for his helpless
convoy till the bridge was crossed. For days, too, all communications
with Windham had been intercepted. An ominous veil of unpierced silence
hung between the retreating English and their base. Campbell set out from
the Alumbagh on the morning of November 27. All day the great column
crept along over the desolate plain towards the Ganges. At nightfall they
had reached Bunnee Bridge, and that “veil of silence” was for a moment
lifted. Or, rather, through it there stole a faint deep sound, full of
menace, the voice of cannon answering cannon! Windham was attacked! He
was perhaps fighting for his life at the bridge-head!
All through the night those far-off and sullen vibrations told how
the fight was being maintained, and with what eagerness the march was
resumed next morning may be guessed. Forbes-Mitchell relates how Campbell
addressed the 93rd, and told them they must reach Cawnpore that night
at all costs. The veteran was fond of taking his Highlanders into his
confidence; and he went on to explain:—
“If the bridge of boats should be captured before we got there
we would be cut off in Oude with 50,000 of our enemies in our
rear, a well-equipped army of 40,000 men, with a powerful train
of artillery, numbering over 40 siege guns, in our front, and
with all the women and children, sick and wounded to guard. So,
93rd,” said the grand old chief, “I don’t ask you to undertake
this forced march in your present tired condition without good
reason. You must reach Cawnpore to-night at all costs.” “All
right, Sir Colin,” shouted one voice after another from the
ranks; “we’ll do it!”
The men, it must be remembered, had not had their clothes off or changed
their socks for eighteen days, and what a tax on the fortitude of the men
that forced march was, can hardly be realised. Alison tells the story
very graphically:—
Not a moment was to be lost. The danger was instant, and the
whole army eagerly pressed on towards the scene of danger. At
every step the sound of a heavy but distant cannonade became
more distinct; but mile after mile was passed over, and no news
could be obtained. The anxiety and impatience of all became
extreme. Louder and louder grew the roar—faster and faster
became the march—long and weary was the way—tired and footsore
grew the infantry—death fell on the exhausted wounded with
terrible rapidity—the travel-worn bearers could hardly stagger
along under their loads—the sick men groaned and died. But
still on, on, on, was the cry. Salvoes of artillery were fired
by the field battery of the advanced guard in hopes that its
sound might convey to the beleaguered garrison a promise of the
coming aid. At last some horsemen were seen spurring along
the road; then the veil which had for so long shrouded us from
Windham was rent asunder, and the disaster stood before us in
all its deformity.
The story of Windham’s disastrous fight at Cawnpore is a sort of bloody
appendix to Campbell’s march on Lucknow. It must be told here to make the
tale complete.
Windham was a soldier of a fine, if not of the highest type, a man of
immense energy and of cool daring which, if it always saw the peril,
scorned to turn aside on account of it. His sobriquet was “Redan”
Windham, and no one who has read the story of how, on September 8, 1855,
he led the British stormers through the embrasures of the Redan can doubt
that Windham’s courage was of a lion-like quality. He was the first of
the stormers of the Second Division to cross the great ditch in front
of the Redan, and the first to clamber through an embrasure. When his
men—young soldiers belonging to half-a-dozen separate regiments—hung back
under the great ramparts of the Redan, Windham thrice ran forward alone
with his brandished sword into the centre of the work, calling on the men
to follow. He has told the story of how, again and again, he went back to
his men, patted them on the back, and begged them to follow him.
Five times he sent to the rear for reinforcements, and it shows the
coolness of the man in the hell of that great fight that, determined at
last to go himself in search of additional troops, he first turned to an
officer standing near and asked his name. Then he said to him, “I have
sent five times for support, now bear witness that I am not in a funk”—at
which the officer smiled—“but I will now go back myself and see what I
can do.”
He went back, but before he could bring up new troops, the men still
clinging to the Redan gave way, and the attack failed. Windham’s judgment
was challenged, but he was as brave as his own sword. He no doubt had his
limitations as an officer. Russell, a perfectly good critic, says that he
“seemed always to have something to do in addition to something that he
had done already.” There was a certain note of hurry in his character,
that is, which does not add to the efficiency of a leader. His failing
as an officer, Russell adds, was “reckless gallantry and dash”—grave
faults, no doubt, in a general, but faults which are not without their
compensations in a mere leader of fighting men. This was the man whom
Campbell chose to keep the bridge at Cawnpore while he made his dash for
the relief of Lucknow.
Windham’s force consisted of 500 men, made up of convalescent
artillerymen, some sailors, and four companies of the 64th. Some
earthworks had been thrown up to guard the bridge-head, but, in a
military sense, the position was scarcely defensible. Windham’s orders
were to forward with the utmost speed to Campbell all reinforcements as
they came up; to keep a vigilant watch on the Gwalior contingent, and
hold the bridge to his last man and the last cartridge.
Windham sent on the reinforcements for a time, loyally, but as the
Gwalior contingent—which had now been joined by Nana Sahib and all his
forces—began to press more menacingly upon him, he strengthened himself
by holding the troops as they came up; until, at the moment when the
fight commenced, he had a force of some 1700 men. On November 19, the
Gwalior contingent and their allies were distributed in a semicircle
round Cawnpore—the nearest body being fifteen miles distant, the main
body some twenty-five miles off.
Windham, always disposed to attack rather than wait to be attacked, first
formed a plan for leaping on these hostile forces in detail. He could
move from the interior of the circle; they were scattered round a segment
of its circumference. Windham left 300 men to hold the bridge-head, and,
with the main body of his force, took a position outside the town, in
readiness for his dash. Two divisions of the enemy were about fifteen
miles to the north, on either side of a canal running parallel to the
Ganges. Windham proposed to place 1200 men in boats on the canal at
nightfall, quietly steal up through the darkness, and in the morning leap
on the enemy on either bank in turn and destroy them, then fall swiftly
back on his base.
It was a pretty plan, but Tantia Topee had his military ideas too. He
thrust forward the Gwalior contingent along the road from the west, and
on November 25 their leading division crossed the Pando River only three
miles from Windham’s camp outside Cawnpore. Windham promptly swung round
to his left, marched fiercely out—1200 men with eight guns against 20,000
with twenty-five guns—and fell impetuously on the head of the enemy’s
nearest column. He crumpled it up with the energy of his stroke, and
drove it, a confused mass, in retreat, leaving three guns in Windham’s
hands.
But from a ridge of high ground Windham was able to see the real strength
of the enemy. He had crushed its leading division of 3000 men, but behind
them was the main body of 17,000 men with twenty guns moving steadily
forward. Windham’s killed and wounded already amounted to nearly 100
men, and he had no choice but to fall back. His scanty little battery of
six light guns, with undrilled gunners, could not endure the fire of the
heavy artillery opposed to them.
Windham, with characteristic tenacity, would not abandon the city and
fall back on his entrenchments. He took a position on open ground outside
the town, across what was called the Calpee road—the road, that is,
running to the north—and waited the development of the enemy’s plans. In
the town were enormous stores—the supplies for Campbell’s force, with
Windham’s own baggage. He ought, no doubt, to have sent all these back
to the entrenchments, and he admitted afterwards that he had blundered in
not doing so; and the blunder cost the British force dearly.
The morning of the 27th dawned, and Windham stood to arms. He could get
no information as to the enemy’s movements. He had no cavalry, and his
spies crept back to him horribly mutilated. He could only wait for Tantia
Topee’s stroke. That general proved throughout the day that he had a good
soldierly head, and could frame a clever and daring plan of battle.
Windham expected to be assailed on his left flank. But at ten o’clock
the roar of cannon broke out on his right and on his front. A strong
rebel force moving on the Calpee road from the north struck heavily on
Windham’s front, while a yet stronger force coming in from the east
threw itself on his right flank. It was in the main an artillery attack,
and the rebel fire was of overwhelming fury. At the front, the 88th
(the Connaught Rangers) and the Rifles, with a battery of four guns,
held their own valiantly. Some companies of the 82nd and the 34th held
the right flank, and here, too, the fight was gallantly sustained. Two
battles, in brief, were in progress at the same moment, and at each of
the assailed points the British numbered scarcely 600 bayonets, with two
or three guns, while at each point the artillery fire of the enemy was of
terrific severity.
For nearly five hours the tumult and passion of the battle raged. At the
front the British ammunition began, at last, to fail, the native drivers
deserted, and Windham found it necessary to withdraw two companies from
his right flank to strengthen his front. At that moment he discovered
that Tantia Topee—who up to this stage had maintained the fight chiefly
with his artillery, and had with great skill gathered a heavy mass of
infantry on the left flank of the British—was developing a third attack
at that point. He thrust his infantry, that is, past Windham’s left,
and tried to seize the town, so as to cut off the fighting front of the
British from the bridge.
Two companies of the 64th were brought up from the scanty garrison at the
bridge-head to check this dangerous movement; and then Windham found that
the enemy had broken in on his right flank, and were in possession of the
lower portions of the town!
Windham was out-generalled, and had no choice but to fall back on his
entrenchments, and he had to do this through narrow streets and broken
ground while attacked in front and on both flanks by a victorious enemy
ten times stronger than himself in bayonets, and more than ten times
stronger in artillery. Adye says that the retreat to the entrenchments
“was made in perfect order, and not a man was lost in the operation”;
but on this subject there is the wildest conflict of evidence. Moore,
the chaplain of Windham’s force, says “the men got quite out of hand,
and fled pell-mell for the fort. An old Sikh officer at the gate tried
to stop them and to form them up in some order, and when they pushed
him aside and brushed past him he lifted up his hands and said, ‘You
are not the brothers of the men who beat the Khalsa army and conquered
the Punjab!’” Mr. Moore goes on to say that “the old Sikh followed the
flying men through the fort gate, and, patting some of them on the back,
said, ‘Don’t run, don’t be afraid; there is nothing to hurt you.’” If
there was disorder the excuse is that the men were, for the most part,
young soldiers without regimental cohesion—they were mere fragments of
half-a-dozen regiments—they had been for five hours under an overwhelming
artillery fire, and were exhausted with want of food: and a retreat under
such conditions, and through a hostile city, might well have taxed the
steadiness of the best troops in the world. As a matter of fact, the men
of the 64th, the 34th, and the 82nd held together with the steadiness
of veterans, and their slow and stubborn retreat, their fierce volleys
and occasional dashes with the bayonets, quite cooled the ardour of the
mutineers as they followed the retreating British.
At one point, indeed, on the right flank of the British there was a clear
case of misconduct, and the culprit was an officer. His name in all the
published reports is concealed under the charity of asterisks. Campbell,
in his despatch, says:—“Lieut.-Colonel * * * misconducted himself on the
26th and 27th November in a manner which has rarely been seen amongst
the officers of Her Majesty’s service; his conduct was pusillanimous and
imbecile to the last degree, and he actually gave orders for the retreat
of his own regiment, and a portion of another, in the very face of the
orders of his General, and when the troops were not seriously pressed by
the enemy.”
Every man who wears a red coat and a pair of epaulettes is not
necessarily a hero, and human courage, at best, is a somewhat unstable
element. This particular officer had risen to high rank and seen much
service, but some failure of nerve, some sudden clouding of brain, in the
stress of that desperate fight, made him play—if only for a moment—the
part both of an imbecile and a coward, and surrender a position which was
essential to the British defence. He was court-martialled after the fight
and dismissed the service.
Windham’s retreat involved the sacrifice of all the military stores
in the town, a great supply of ammunition, the mess plate, and the
paymaster’s chests and baggage of four Queen’s regiments, &c. Some 500
tents, as one item alone, were turned into a huge bonfire that night
by the exultant rebels. But, though Windham had fallen back to the
entrenchments at the bridge-head, he was as ready for fight as ever. He
held a council of his officers that night and proposed to sally out under
cover of darkness and fall on the enemy, a proposal which at least proves
the unquenchable quality of his courage.
This plan was not adopted, but, it being discovered that a gun had been
overturned and abandoned in the streets of the city, Windham sent out 100
men of the 64th, with a few sailors, to bring that gun in. It was a feat
of singular daring, carried out with singular success, and this is how
the story of it is told by an officer who took part in the adventure:—
We marched off under the guidance of a native, who said he
would take us to the spot where the gun lay. We told him he
should be well rewarded if he brought us to the gun, but if he
brought us into a trap we had a soldier by him “at full cock”
ready to blow his brains out. We passed our outside pickets,
and entered the town through very narrow streets without a
single Sepoy being seen, or a shot fired on either side. We
crept along. Not a soul spoke a word. All was still as death;
and after marching this way into the very heart of the town our
guide brought us to the very spot where the gun was capsized.
The soldiers were posted on each side, and then we went to
work. Not a man spoke above his breath, and each stone was laid
down quietly. When we thought we had cleared enough I ordered
the men to put their shoulders to the wheel and gun, and when
all was ready and every man had his pound before him I said
“Heave!” and up she righted. We then limbered up, called the
soldiers to follow, and we marched into the entrenchment with
our gun without a shot being fired.
On the morning of the 28th, Windham, still bent on “aggressive defence,”
sallied out to fight the enemy in the open—or rather on either flank. On
the left front the Rifles and the 82nd, under Walpole, thrashed the enemy
in a most satisfactory manner, capturing two 18-pounders. On the right,
the 64th and the 34th, under Carthew, fought for hours with desperate
courage. General Wilson, in particular, led two companies of the 64th
in a very audacious attempt to capture a battery of the enemy. Wilson
himself was killed, and two officers of the 64th—Stirling and McCrae—were
each cut down in the act of spiking one of the enemy’s guns, and the
attempt, though gallant as anything recorded in the history of war,
failed.
When evening came the British had fallen back to their entrenchments,
upon which a heavy fire, both of artillery and small arms, was poured.
The enemy was in complete possession of the town, and, planting some guns
on the bank of the river, tried to destroy the bridge. “The dust of no
succouring columns,” says Alison, “could be seen rising from the plains
of Oude, and the sullen plunge of round shot into the river by the bridge
showed by how frail a link they were bound to the opposite bank, whence
only aid could arrive.”
Suddenly at this dramatic moment Campbell himself—who had pushed ahead of
his column—made his appearance with his staff on the scene. Says Alison:—
The clatter of a few horsemen was suddenly heard passing over
the bridge and ascending at a rapid pace the road which leads
to the fort. As they came close under the ramparts, an old man
with grey hair was seen to be riding at their head. One of the
soldiers recognised the commander-in-chief; the news spread
like wildfire: the men, crowding upon the parapet, sent forth
cheer after cheer. The enemy, surprised at the commotion, for a
few moments ceased their fire. The old man rode in through the
gate. All felt then that the crisis was over—that the Residency
saved, would not now be balanced by Cawnpore lost.
A characteristic incident marked Campbell’s arrival. A guard of the 82nd
held a hastily constructed _tête de pont_ which covered the bridge, and
its officer, in answer to Campbell’s inquiry as to how matters stood,
replied with undiplomatic bluntness that “the garrison was at its last
gasp.” At this announcement the too irascible Sir Colin simply exploded.
“He flew at the wretched man,” says Lord Roberts, “as he was sometimes
apt to do when greatly put out, rating him soundly, and asking him ‘how
he dared to say of Her Majesty’s troops that they were at the last
gasp!’” This, in Campbell’s ears, was mere egregious and incredible
treason!
With the arrival of Campbell and his convoy, and the splendid little
fighting force he commanded, the story of what happened at Cawnpore
becomes very pleasant reading. On the morning of the 30th, the further
bank of the Ganges was white with the tents and black with the masses
of Campbell’s force. With what wrath Campbell’s soldiers looked across
the river and saw all their baggage ascending, in the shape of clouds of
black smoke, to the sky may be guessed, but not described. Many wrathful
camp expletives, no doubt, followed the upward curling smoke!
Peel’s heavy guns were swung round, and opened in fierce duel with the
enemy’s battery firing on the bridge. One of the first shots fired from
one of Peel’s 24-pounders struck the gun which Nana Sahib had at last got
to bear upon the bridge, and dismounted it. An 8-inch shell next dropped
amongst a crowd of his troops, and they quickly fell back. Then the
British troops commenced to file across the river, still under the fire
of the enemy. The enemy’s advance batteries were quickly driven back, and
the great convoy began to creep over the bridge.
For thirty-six hours the long procession of sick and wounded, of women
and children, of guns and baggage crept across the swaying bridge. On
the night of the 29th, the mutineers tried to interrupt the process by
sending down fire-rafts upon the bridge. Tried earlier, the scheme might
have succeeded, or tried even then with greater skill and daring, it
might have had some chance of success; as it was, it failed ignobly,
and the endless stream of non-combatants was brought over the river
into safety. Campbell, for all his fire of courage—and it may be
added of temper—had an ample measure of Scottish coolness, and he kept
quietly within his lines for five days till his helpless convoy had been
despatched under escort to Allahabad, and was beyond reach of hostile
attack. Then, with his force in perfect fighting form, he addressed
himself to the task of crushing the enemy opposed to him.
His own force, steadily fed by reinforcements, by this time numbered
5000 infantry, 600 sailors, and 35 guns; that of the enemy amounted
to something like 25,000 men with 40 guns. Nana Sahib, with his mass
of somewhat irregular troops, occupied the left wing between the city
and the river; the Gwalior contingent, still formidable in numbers and
military efficiency, occupied the town as a centre, and formed the
enemy’s right wing, thrust out into the plain towards the canal. It was
a very strong position. The enemy’s left, perched on high wooded hills,
was covered with nullahs and scattered buildings. An attack on their
centre could only be made through the narrow and crooked streets of the
city, and was therefore almost impossible. But their right lay open to
Campbell’s stroke, and if turned it would be thrust off the Calpee road,
its only line of retreat.
Campbell’s strategy was simple, yet skilful. Alison, indeed, says,
somewhat absurdly, that it will “bear comparison with any of the
masterpieces of Napoleon or Wellington.” Kaye, too, says that the plan of
this battle “establishes the right of Sir Colin Campbell to be regarded
as a great commander.” Whether these somewhat high-flown eulogiums
are justifiable may perhaps be doubted; but Campbell’s plan certainly
succeeded. Campbell, in brief, fixed the attention of the enemy on their
left wing—the one he did not mean to attack—by opening on it on the
morning of the 6th with the roar of artillery. He paralysed the centre
with a feigned infantry assault, under Greathed. Then by a swift and
unexpected attack he shattered the enemy’s right wing, at once smiting it
in front and turning its flank.
The drifting clouds of battle-smoke helped him to concentrate,
unobserved, on his left, a strong force consisting of Hope, with the
Sikhs, the 53rd, the 42nd, the 93rd, and Inglis with the 23rd, the 32nd,
and 82nd.
The iron hail of Campbell’s guns smote the town cruelly, while the
rattle of Greathed’s musketry formed a sort of sharp treble to the
hoarse diapason of the artillery. Presently, through the white drifting
smoke of the guns, came the Rifles, under Walpole, firing on the edge
of the town, to Greathed’s left. Campbell was still keeping back his
real stroke, and this clatter of artillery and musketry, and the clouds
of drifting battle-smoke, held the senses of the enemy. Suddenly, from
behind a cluster of buildings on the British left, line after line of
infantry moved quickly out. It was Hope’s and Inglis’s brigades, which,
in parallel columns of companies, left in front, now—to quote the
language of an eye-witness—“shot out and streamed on, wave after wave of
glittering bayonets, till they stretched far across into the plain, while
the cavalry and horse artillery, trotting rapidly out, pushed on beyond
them, raising clouds of dust, and covering their advance.”
Campbell’s plan was now developed, and the enemy opened all their guns
with the utmost fury on the steady lines of the two brigades. At a given
signal, the British columns swung round, formed front to the enemy’s
position, and, in perfect order, as Alison puts it, “swept on with a
proud, majestic movement” against a cluster of high brick mounds which
covered the bridge across the canal—both bridge and mounds being held
in great force by the enemy. “Grouped in masses behind the mounds, the
rebels fired sharply, while their guns, worked with great precision and
energy, sent a storm of shot and shell upon the plain, over which, like
a drifting storm, came the stout skirmishers of the Sikhs and the 53rd,
covering their front with the flashes of a bickering musketry, behind
whom rolled in a long and serried line the 93rd and 42nd, sombre with
their gloomy plumes and dark tartans, followed, some hundred yards in
rear, by the thin ranks of Inglis’s brigade.”
The skirmishers quickly cleared the mounds, and the Sikhs and the
Highlanders went forward at a run to the bridge. It was held with fierce
courage by the enemy. A sleet of shot swept along its entire length. It
seemed to be barred as by a thousand dancing points of flame—the flash of
musketry and the red flames of the great guns.
As Sikhs and Highlanders, however, pressed sternly forward, they heard
behind them the tramp of many feet and the clatter of wheels. It was Peel
with his sailors bringing up a 24-pounder. They came up at a run, the
blue-jackets “tailing on” to the ropes, and clutching with eager hands
the spokes of the wheels. The gun was swung round on the very bridge
itself, and sent its grape hurtling into the ranks of the Sepoys on the
further side. Sikhs and Highlanders kindled to flame at the sight of that
daring act. With a shout they ran past the gun, and across the bridge;
some leaped into the canal, splashed through its waters and clambered up
the further bank. The bridge was carried! A battery of field artillery
came up at the gallop, thundered across its shaking planks, and, swinging
round, opened fire on the tents of the Gwalior contingent, while the two
brigades pressed eagerly forward on the broken enemy.
Forbes-Mitchell, who fought that day in the ranks of the 93rd, gives a
very picturesque description of the combat. Campbell, who was almost
as fond of making speeches as Havelock, and understood perfectly how
to stir the blood of his men, gave a brief address to the 93rd before
launching the turning movement. He gave the Highlanders one somewhat
quaint warning. There was a huge accumulation of rum, Campbell said, in
the enemy’s camp; it had been drugged, he added, by the enemy, and no man
must touch it. “But, 93rd!” he said, “I trust you! Leave that rum alone!”
As a matter of fact, when the men swept with a rush across the canal,
they found the rum against which Sir Colin had warned them standing—great
casks with their heads knocked out for the convenience of intending
drunkards—in front of the enemy’s camp, with their infantry drawn up in
columns behind them. “There is no doubt,” says Forbes-Mitchell, “that the
enemy expected the British would break their ranks when they saw the rum,
and make a rush for it, and they made careful and tempting provision for
that contingency.” That expectation forms a somewhat severe commentary on
the thirsty character the British private had won for himself in India!
The 93rd, however, virtuously marched past the rum barrels, while the
supernumerary rank, as Campbell had ordered, upset the barrels and poured
their contents out. It was, fortunately, _not_ whisky! Forbes-Mitchell,
again, describes how, covered by the heavy fire of Peel’s guns, their
line advanced, with the pipers playing and the colours in front of the
centre company. “By the time,” he says, “we reached the canal, Peel’s
blue-jackets were calling out, ‘⸺ these cow-horses’—meaning the gun
bullocks. ‘Come, you 93rd! Give us a hand with the drag-ropes as you
did at Lucknow;’” and a company of the 93rd slung their rifles and
dashed to the help of the blue-jackets! The sailors gave a vehement
cheer for “the red and blue,” and some well-known vocalist in the ranks
of the 93rd struck up a familiar camp-song with that title, and, says
Forbes-Mitchell, “the whole line, including the skirmishers of the 53rd
and the sailors,” joined with stentorian voices in singing—
“Come, all you gallant British hearts,
Who love the red and blue!”
The British line swept across the enemy’s camp, and so complete was the
surprise, so unexpected was the onslaught, that the chupatties were
found in the very process of being cooked upon the fires, the bullocks
stood tied behind the hackeries, the sick and wounded were lying in the
hospitals. The smith left the forge and the surgeon his patient to fly
from the avenging bayonets. Every tent was found exactly as its late
occupants had sprung from it.
Beyond the camp the Gwalior contingent had rallied, and stood drawn up
in steady lines. The eagerly advancing British line—to the wonder of the
men—was halted. Suddenly through some fields of tall sugar-cane the 9th
Lancers came galloping, and behind them, masked by the close lines of
the Lancers, was a field battery. When the enemy saw the gleaming tips
of the British lances, they fell instantly into squares of brigades,
and opened fire on the cavalry at a distance of about three hundred
yards. “Just as they commenced to fire,” says Forbes-Mitchell, “we could
hear Sir Hope Grant, in a voice as loud as a trumpet, give the command
to the cavalry, ‘Squadrons outwards!’ while Bourchier gave the order to
his gunners, ‘Action front!’ The cavalry wheeled as if they had been at
a review on the Calcutta parade-ground, and thus uncovered the guns.”
The guns, charged with grape, were swung round, unlimbered as quick as
lightning within about 250 yards of the squares, and round after round of
grape was poured into the enemy with murderous effect, every charge going
right through, leaving a lane of dead from four to five yards wide. The
Highlanders could see the mounted officers of the enemy, as soon as they
caught sight of the guns, dash out of the squares, and fly like lightning
across the plain!
The victory, in a word, was complete. The Gwalior contingent was
destroyed as a military force: its camp, magazines, and guns fell into
the hands of the British, and Campbell urged a furious pursuit of the
broken soldiery along the Calpee road. For fourteen miles the cavalry
and horse artillery rode at the gallop, capturing ammunition waggons and
baggage carts, dispersing and slaying such of the infantry as still tried
to keep some formation, till at last the panting rebels flung away their
arms, and fled into the jungle, or crouched in the fields of sugar-cane,
seeking cover from the red sabres and lances of the horsemen. The enemy’s
centre had no choice but to abandon the town, and fall hurriedly back and
melt into the general stream of fugitives.
Nana Sahib, with the left wing, had the Bithoor road, diverging widely
from the Calpee road, for his line of retreat, and Campbell pushed
forward a strong force under General Mansfield, his chief of staff, to
thrust the flying enemy off that road.
Mansfield was a brave man, singularly expert in the routine work of
a military office, but quite unfitted for the rough shock of the
battlefield. For one thing, he was very short-sighted, and, as Malleson
puts it, “was too proud to trust to the sight of others.” He reached the
point where he commanded the road, but halted his men, stared with dim
and spectacled eyes at the stream of fugitives, with their guns, and
allowed it all to flow past him undisturbed and unpursued. Nana Sahib
himself, as it happened, rode somewhere amongst the fugitives, unsmitten
by British lead! Campbell had to despatch Hope Grant the next day along
the Bithoor road, in pursuit of this wing of the fugitives, and that fine
soldier overtook the flying enemy after a march of twenty-five miles,
captured all their guns, and tumbled them into hopeless ruin.
Campbell’s victory was splendid and memorable. With 5000 men he had
overthrown 25,000, captured thirty-two guns and the whole of their
baggage, and driven his enemy in flying rout along two diverging lines
of retreat. And it was a victory won rather by the brains of the general
than by the bayonets of the soldiers. Campbell’s entire loss in killed
was only ninety-nine of all ranks. The army of 25,000 Campbell overthrew
so utterly, it must be remembered, included the best-trained and most
perfectly-equipped native force in all India—the Gwalior contingent, at
least 10,000 strong.