DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD
All the passion, the tragedy, and the glory of the Indian Mutiny
gathers round three great sieges. We vaguely remember a hundred tales
of individual adventure elsewhere on the great stage of the Mutiny; we
have perhaps a still fainter and more ghostly mental image of the combats
Havelock fought on the road to Lucknow, and the battles by which Campbell
crushed this body of rebels or that. But it is all a mist of confused
recollections, a kaleidoscope of fast-fading pictures. But who does not
remember the three great sieges of the Mutiny—Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi?
The very names are like beacon lights flaming through leagues of night!
At Cawnpore the British were besieged and destroyed, a tragedy due to
Wheeler’s fatal blunder in choosing the site where the British were to
make their stand for life, and his failure in collecting provisions for
the siege. At Lucknow, again, the British were besieged, but triumphed,
becoming themselves in turn the besiegers. Success here was due to the
genius of Henry Lawrence in organising the defences of the Residency,
and his energy in storing supplies before the Mutiny broke out. The
brave men who died behind Wheeler’s ridges of earth, or in the Slaughter
Ghaut at Cawnpore, showed valour as lofty and enduring as that of the men
who held the Residency with such invincible courage at Lucknow. But the
interval between the tragedy at Cawnpore and the triumph at Lucknow is
measured by the difference between the two leaders, Wheeler and Lawrence.
Both were brave men, but Lawrence was a great captain.
At Delhi the British, from the outset, were the besiegers, and nothing
in British history—not the story of Sir Richard Grenville and the
_Revenge_, of the Fusileers at Albuera, or of the Guards at Inkerman—is
a more kindling tale of endurance and valour than the story of how for
months a handful of British clung to the Ridge outside Delhi, fighting
daily with foes ten times more numerous than themselves, and yet
besieging—or maintaining the show of besieging—the great city which was
the nerve-centre and heart of the whole Mutiny.
[Illustration: LORD LAWRENCE
_Reproduced from the Life of Lord Lawrence by permission R. BOSWORTH
SMITH, Esq._]
At Cawnpore and Lucknow the British fought for existence. At Delhi they
fought for empire! While the British flag flew from the Ridge at Delhi
it was a symbol that the British _raj_ was still undestroyed. It was a
red gleaming menace of punishment to all rebels. Had that flag fallen
for twenty-four hours, India, for a time at least, would have been lost
to England. But it flew proudly and threateningly aloft, undestroyed by
a hundred attacks, till at last Nicholson led his stormers through the
Cashmere Gate, and the fate of the Mutiny was sealed!
The mutineers from Meerut rode into Delhi on May 11. It was the city
of the Great Mogul. It appealed by a thousand memories to both the
race-pride and the fanaticism of the revolted Sepoys. Here the Mutiny
found, not only a natural stronghold, but an official head, and Delhi
thus became a far-seen signal of revolt to the whole of Northern India.
But on June 7—or less than four weeks after Willoughby in heroic despair
blew up the great magazine at Delhi—Sir Henry Barnard’s microscopic army
made its appearance on the Ridge, and the siege of Delhi began. It was
a real stroke of military genius that thus, from the earliest outbreak
of the Mutiny, kept a bayonet, so to speak, pointed threateningly at its
very heart!
And the hero of the siege of Delhi is not Barnard, or Wilson, or
Baird-Smith, or Neville Chamberlain, or Nicholson—but a man who never
fired a shot or struck a sword-stroke in the actual siege itself—John
Lawrence. Lawrence, and not Havelock, nor Outram, nor Canning, was the
true saviour of the British _raj_ in India in the wild days of the Mutiny.
John Lawrence was five years younger than his gallant brother Henry,
who died in the Residency at Lucknow. He had no visible gleam of the
brilliancy which makes Henry Lawrence a character so attractive. Up to
middle life, indeed, John Lawrence was a silent, inarticulate, rugged
man, with the reputation of being a great worker, but whom nobody
suspected to be a genius, and for whom nobody—least of all Lawrence
himself—dreamed fame was waiting. He came of that strong-bodied,
strong-brained, masterful race of which the North of Ireland is the
cradle. But England, Ireland, and Scotland all had a share in the
making of John Lawrence. He was actually born in England. His father
was a gallant Irish soldier, who led the forlorn hope at the storming
of Seringapatam. His mother was a lineal descendant of John Knox, the
Scottish reformer. And perhaps the characteristic traits of the three
countries never met more happily in a single human character than in John
Lawrence. In Ulster he was known amongst his schoolmates as “English
John.” At Haileybury, in England, he was looked upon as a typical
Irishman.
The truth is, he was Englishman, Irishman, Scotchman all in one. He had
Celtic glow and fire under a crust of Scottish silence and caution; and
he added the Englishman’s steady intelligence and passion for justice to
Scottish hard-headedness and the generous daring of the Irish character.
Or, to put the matter in a different way, in any perilous crisis he
could survey the situation with the balanced judgment of an Englishman;
could choose his course with the shrewd and calculating sagacity of a
Scotchman; then carry it out with Irish fire and daring!
Lawrence shone as a youth neither in studies nor in games, and both
as a youth and man he had a magnificent faculty for silence. By blood
and genius he was a soldier. But duty was the supreme law of life for
him; and at the bidding of what he deemed to be duty, he surrendered
a soldier’s career and entered the Indian Civil Service. His silent
energy, his strong brain, his passion for work, his chivalrous loyalty
to righteousness, quickly assured him a great career. He was above the
middle height, strongly built, with an eager, forward gait. His massive
head gave him a sort of kingly look—the forehead broad, the eyes deep-set
and grey, but with a gleam in them as of a sword-blade. The firm lips had
a saddened curve; the face was ploughed deep with furrows of thought and
work. His voice, when his feelings were aroused, had a singular resonance
and timbre, and his whole aspect was that of silent, half-melancholy
simplicity and strength.
But Lawrence was exactly the man for a great crisis. He had a kingly
faculty for choosing fit instruments. He saw with perfect clearness
every detail of the visible landscape; but he had also that subtler
vision—which only great poets and great statesmen possess—of the
tendencies and forces which underlie external facts and determine their
flow. The Celtic element in him, perhaps, gave Lawrence that rare and
subtle faculty; but by virtue of his Scottish strain he was essentially a
man of action. He could grasp a great purpose with a hand of steel, and
hold it unshaken through all the shocks of conflict and adversity.
Lawrence, it may be added, was pre-eminently fortunate in his officers.
Partly by the attraction which draws like to like, and partly by his
own rare genius for choosing fit instruments, he had gathered round him
a group of splendid soldiers and administrators, all in the prime of
life. Nicholson, for example, was only thirty-five; Edwardes and Neville
Chamberlain only thirty-seven. The general average of age, indeed, on
Lawrence’s staff was much below that of India in general. All the energy
of youth, in brief, was in Lawrence’s men; all the sagacity of ripest
statesmanship was in Lawrence himself.
Lawrence’s contribution to the history of the Mutiny must be compressed
into a dozen sentences. In 1857 he was Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub,
the “land of the five rivers,” with a population of 20,000,000. The
Punjaub was newly-conquered territory; its population was the most
warlike in India; its frontiers marched for 800 miles with those of
Afghanistan, and the hill passes were held by wild Moslem clans always
ready to storm down with clattering shield and gleaming spear on the fat,
defenceless plains at their feet. In eight years, under the _régime_ of
the Lawrences, the Punjaub was rendered orderly, loyal, and prosperous;
while the Punjaub Frontier Force, a body of 12,000 men, which kept the
mountain tribes in order, was perhaps the first body of native troops
which ever followed British officers into battle.
Then came the cataclysm of the Mutiny. As with the shock of an
earthquake, British rule in Northern India seemed to crumble to the
ground, and British officers who yesterday were rulers of kingdoms and
cities, were to-day fugitives, or fighting in tiny and broken clusters
for their lives. The Mutiny, too, cut Oude and the Punjaub off from the
centre of authority at Calcutta. For weeks no whisper from the outside
world reached Lawrence. He was left to keep his own head and shape his
own policy.
His policy may be told almost in a sentence. He anticipated mutiny, and
outpaced it. He disarmed with iron resolution and swift decision all
the Sepoy regiments whose loyalty was doubtful, and put all the forts,
arsenals, treasuries, and strategic points in the Punjaub under the guard
of British bayonets. Then he organised a movable column of European
troops—scanty in dimensions, but of the finest fighting quality—under
the command, first, of Neville Chamberlain, and next of Nicholson; and
this force stood ready to strike at any point where mutiny threatened to
lift its head. In the Punjaub, that is, mutiny was anticipated, robbed
of weapons and left helpless, and under the ceaseless menace of the
light-footed, almost ubiquitous, movable column.
Next, having dismissed into air, as with a gesture of his hand, the army
whose loyalty was tainted, Lawrence had to create another native army,
with loyalty above reproach. And from the wild mountain clans and the
Sikhs—themselves a conquered people—Lawrence actually created a new army,
nearly 50,000 strong, with which he was able to crush the very Sepoys
who, under British leadership, had been the conquerors of the Punjaub!
Lawrence’s genius and masterful will, too, determined the whole strategy
to be employed for the suppression of the Mutiny. He settled the question
that Delhi must be instantly besieged. He formed a military base for the
siege at Umballa, a distance of a hundred miles, and he kept sleepless
guard over that long line of communications. He fed the besieging force
with supplies and munitions of every kind; reinforced it with, first, his
own frontier troops, the famous Guides and the Ghoorkas, and, later, with
his own movable column. He cast into the scale against Delhi, in effect,
his last coin, his last cartridge, and his last man. And in that terrible
game, on which hung the fate of the British rule in India, Lawrence won!
“Through him,” wrote Lord Canning, “Delhi fell.” And the fall of Delhi
rang the knell of the Mutiny.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HERBERT B. EDWARDES, K.C.B., K.C.S.I.
_From a lithograph_]
Once, it is true, even John Lawrence’s iron courage seemed to give way,
or, rather, the strain of the peril threw his cool judgment off its
balance. The fate of India visibly hung on Delhi. The force on the Ridge
was absurdly inadequate for its task, and Lawrence conceived the idea
that, to succeed at Delhi, it would be necessary to abandon Peshawur,
give up the Punjaub to Dost Mohammed, and retire across the Indus. There
were three European regiments, with powerful artillery, and the best
native troops locked up beyond the Indus. On the Ridge at Delhi they
would decide the issue of the siege. “If Delhi does not fall,” Lawrence
argued, “Peshawur must go. Let us abandon the Punjaub for the sake of
Delhi.”
It is still thrilling to read the sentences in which Herbert Edwardes
protested against this evil policy. To abandon Peshawur, he urged, would
be to fail not only at Delhi, but all over India. “Cabul would come
again!” Lawrence quoted Napoleon against Edwardes. Did not Napoleon
ruin himself in 1814 by holding fast to the line of the Elbe instead of
falling back to the Rhine? But Edwardes knew the Eastern mind. India is
not Europe. To waver, to seem to withdraw, to consent to disaster, was
to be ruined. To abandon the Punjaub, Edwardes warned Lawrence, was to
abandon the cause of England in the East. “Every hand in India would be
against us. Don’t yield an inch of frontier!... If General Reed, with
all the men you have sent him, cannot get into Delhi, let Delhi go. The
Empire’s reconquest hangs on the Punjaub.” Then he quotes Nelson against
Lawrence. “Make a stand! ‘Anchor, Hardy, anchor!’” The quotation was,
perhaps, not very relevant; but it is curious to note how one brave
spirit seems to speak to another across half a century, and give a new
edge to its courage.
There can be no doubt that Edwardes showed, at this moment, not only
the more heroic temper, but the sounder judgment of the two. Canning
settled the dispute. “Hold on to Peshawur to the last,” he wrote; and
the question was decided. But Lawrence’s momentary lapse into indecision
only sets in more dazzling light his courage afterwards. It was after
he had seriously meditated abandoning the Punjaub that he despatched
the immortal movable column, under Nicholson, 4200 strong, with a
powerful battering-train, to Delhi, thus feeding the gallant force on the
Ridge with his own best troops, and yet not giving up “an inch of the
frontier,” or abating one whit of his own haughty rule in the Punjaub!
General Anson, as we have seen, was commander-in-chief in India when
the Mutiny broke out. He was a brave man, had fought as an ensign at
Waterloo, and had seen forty-three years’ bloodless service after that
great battle. But his gifts were rather social than soldierly. He was a
better authority on whist and horses than on questions of tactics and
strategy, and he was scarcely the man to face an army in revolt. Lawrence
acted as a military brain and conscience for Anson, and determined that
Delhi must be attacked; though, as a matter of fact, Anson had only
three regiments of British troops, almost no artillery, and absolutely no
transport at his command.
On May 16 Anson held a council of war with his five senior officers at
Umballa, and the council agreed unanimously that, with the means at
Anson’s command, nothing could be done. It is a curious fact, showing
the speed with which, from this point, events moved, that, within less
than two months from the date of that council, all its members were
dead—either killed in battle, or killed by mere exposure and strain! But
Lawrence’s views prevailed. “Pray, only reflect on the whole history
of India,” he wrote to Anson. “Where have we failed when we have acted
vigorously? Where have we succeeded when guided by timid counsels?”
Anson and his advisers gave that highest proof of courage which brave
men can offer: they moved forward without a murmur on an adventure which
they believed to be hopeless. From an orthodox military point of view it
was hopeless. Only, the British empire in India has been built up by the
doing of “hopeless” things.
On May 24 Anson reached Kurnal, where his troops were to arrive four days
afterwards. On the 26th Anson himself was dead, killed by cholera after
only four hours’ illness!
Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded him, had been Chief of the Staff in
the Crimea. He was an utter stranger to India, having landed in it only
a few weeks before. He was a brave soldier, and a high-minded English
gentleman; but he was, perhaps, even less of a general than Anson. His
force consisted of 2400 infantry, 600 cavalry, and 22 field-guns. Barnard
had to fight one fierce and bloody combat before he reached the Delhi
Ridge. This took place on June 7. It was the first time the British and
the mutineers had met in the shock of battle; and the Sepoys who had
revolted at Meerut, and the British troops who had been so strangely
held back from crushing the revolt at the moment of its outbreak, now
looked grimly at each other across a narrow interval of sun-baked turf.
Lord Roberts says that when, as night fell on June 6, it was known that
the troops were to move forward and attack the rebel force which stood
in their path to Delhi, the sick in hospital declared they would remain
there no longer, and “many quite unfit to walk insisted upon accompanying
the attacking column, imploring their comrades not to mention they were
ill, for fear they should not be allowed to take part in the fight!”
The rebels fought with an obstinacy unsurpassed in the whole record of
the Mutiny; but British troops in such a mood as we have described,
were not to be stayed. The 75th carried the rebel guns at the point of
the bayonet; Hope Grant with his scanty squadrons of horse swept round
their left flank. The British lost less than 200 killed and wounded, the
rebels lost over 1000 men and 13 guns; and, as night fell, Barnard took
possession of the famous Ridge. Then from the streets of the revolted
city, the crowds looked up and saw the British flag, a gleaming and
fluttering menace, a stern prophecy of defeat and retribution, flying
from the Flagstaff Tower.
[Illustration: DELHI 1857.
Walker & Cockerell sc.]
Delhi lies on the right bank of the Jumna; and nearly six miles of
massive stone wall twenty-four feet high, with a ditch twenty-five feet
broad and nearly as many feet deep in front, sweep round the city,
forming a bow, of which the river is the string. Napier, afterwards
Lord Napier of Magdala, had employed his rare skill as an engineer in
strengthening the defences of the city. The walls were knotted with
bastions, mounting 114 heavy guns. Behind them was a huge fanatical
population and over 40,000 revolted Sepoys, with some 60 field-guns and
exhaustless magazines of warlike supplies. Every week, from one revolted
station after another, new waves of mutineers flowed into the city. Some
3000 British soldiers, with a few battalions of native troops, and 22
light guns, stood perched on the Ridge to undertake the desperate feat of
besieging this huge stronghold!
The historic Ridge, it may be explained, is a low hill, not quite sixty
feet high, and some two miles long, running obliquely towards the city
walls. Its left touches the Jumna itself, at a distance of more than
two miles from the city; its right was within 1200 yards of the hostile
walls. At the middle of the Ridge stood the Flagstaff Tower. On its right
extremity the Ridge overlooked the trunk road, and was surrounded by a
fringe of houses and gardens, making it the weak point of the British
position. The various buildings along the crest of the Ridge, Hindu
Rao’s house, the observatory, an old Pathan mosque, the Flagstaff Tower,
&c., were held by strong pickets, each with one or more field-guns.
The external slope of the Ridge was covered with old buildings and
enclosures, giving the enemy dangerous shelter in their attacks. The main
body of the British was encamped on the reverse slope of the Ridge.
Delhi, it will be seen, was in no sense “invested.” Supplies and
reinforcements flowed in with perfect safety on its river front
throughout the whole siege. All that Barnard and his men could do was to
keep the British flag flying on the Ridge, and hold their ground with
obstinate, unquenchable courage, against almost daily assaults, until
reinforcements reached them, and they could leap on the city.
The first reinforcement to arrive took the surprising shape of a baby!
One officer alone, Tytler, of the 38th Native Infantry, had brought his
wife into the camp; she was too ill to be sent to the rear, and, in a
rough waggon for bed-chamber, gave birth to a son, who was solemnly named
“Stanley Delhi Force.” The soldiers welcomed the infant with an odd
mixture of humour and superstition. A British private was overheard to
say, “Now we shall get our reinforcements. This camp was formed to avenge
the blood of innocents, and the first reinforcement sent us is a new-born
infant!”
The next day the famous Guides sent by Lawrence from his Frontier Force
marched into camp, three troops of cavalry and six companies of infantry,
under Daly, an officer of great daring and energy. This little force had
marched 580 miles in twenty days, a feat of endurance unsurpassed in
Indian history. The cavalry consisted mainly of Afghans, tall, swarthy,
fierce-looking. The Ghoorkas were sturdy, undersized little Highlanders,
born fighters all of them, and ready to follow their commanding officer,
Major Reid, on any dare-devil feat to which he might lead them. The
battalion numbered 490 men, and of these no less than 320—or three out
of four—were killed or wounded during the siege. On the day of the
assault (September 14) no fewer than 180 of them, who were lying sick or
wounded in the hospital, volunteered for the assault, and came limping
and bandaged into the ranks of their comrades, to join in the mad rush
through the Cashmere Gate!
The revolted Sepoys, on their side, were full of a fierce energy quite
unusual to them, and on the very first day they flung themselves in great
numbers, and with great daring, on the detachment holding Hindu Rao’s
house. Two companies of the 60th held this post, with two guns from
Scott’s battery; and for half the afternoon the quick flashes, the white
smoke of cannon, and the incessant rattle of musketry round the assailed
post told with what fury the attack was being urged, and how stubbornly
the defence was being maintained.
At last the cavalry of the newly-arrived Guides was sent at the enemy.
They rode in upon the Sepoys with magnificent courage, broke them into
flying fragments, and pursued them, wounding and slaying, to the walls
of the city. Their victory was brilliant, but it was dearly bought,
their commander, Quentin Battye, being mortally wounded. He was little
more than a lad, but was almost worshipped by his dark-faced horsemen.
He had been an English public-school boy, and, Lord Roberts says, was
curiously fond of quotations. Almost his last words, spoken to a friend,
were, “Good-bye! ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’ That’s how it
is with me, old fellow!” The victories of England are still won, as in
Wellington’s days, on the playing grounds of its great schools.
The Guides found in the camp a soldier of mingled yet splendid fame who
had been their leader in many a gallant charge—Hodson, of Hodson’s Horse.
Hodson had been, rightly or wrongly, under a cloud; but the crisis of
the Mutiny naturally gave, to the most daring horseman and the most
brilliant light cavalry leader in India, a great opportunity. He was
now at the head of a body of irregular horse, and one of Barnard’s most
trusted officers. He was tall, fair-haired, with bloodless complexion,
heavy curved moustache, and keen, alert, and what some one called
“unforgiving” eyes.
When the Guides, as they rode into the camp, met Hodson, a curious
scene took place. They crowded round him with wild gesticulations and
deep-voiced, guttural shouts. “They seized my bridle,” says Hodson
himself, “my dress, hands, and feet, and literally threw themselves
down before the horse with tears streaming down their faces!” Hodson
was the ideal leader for fierce irregulars like the Guides, a brilliant
swordsman, of iron nerve, and courage as steadfast as the blade of his
own sword. And with leaders like Daly, and Hodson, and Reid, and Battye,
Sikhs and Ghoorkas made soldiers that might have charged through Russian
Life Guards, or broken a square of Pomeranian Grenadiers!
On June 10 the Sepoys delivered another attack, in great strength, on
Hindu Rao’s house, which they looked upon as the key of the British
position, and which was held on this day by the Ghoorkas under Reid. The
Sepoys hoped that the Ghoorkas would join them, and, as they came on,
instead of firing, they waved their hands, and shouted, “Don’t fire. We
are not firing. We want to speak to you. Come and join us.” “Oh yes! we
are coming,” answered the sturdy little Ghoorkas, with fierce, jesting
humour, and, running forward to within thirty yards of the Sepoys, they
poured a quick and deadly fire upon them, driving them back with great
slaughter. From that stage of the siege, Hindu Rao’s house, perhaps the
most fiercely attacked point in the British front, was held by Reid and
his Ghoorkas, and a better officer or better men were not to be found on
the Ridge.
The more eager spirits among the British were burning to leap on the
city, and, on June 12, a plan of attack was actually prepared by the
engineer officers and Hodson, and approved by Barnard. The whole force
was to be divided into three columns; one was to break its way through
the Cashmere Gate, a second through the Lahore Gate, a third was to fling
itself on the walls, and attempt an escalade—practically, the same plan
by which the city was finally carried. It was a project, considering
the force available for its execution, almost insane in its daring; and
Barnard, though he consented to it, took no decided and methodical steps
to carry it out.
It would almost seem, indeed, as if physical strain, want of sleep, and
the terrible responsibility he was carrying, had affected Barnard’s head.
The situation might well have taxed—and over-taxed—the brain of a greater
general than Barnard. The light guns of the British, firing at a distance
of a thousand yards, could make no impression on the walls. Their
strength was dwindling daily; that of the enemy was growing fast. And it
was natural that the British temper, under such conditions, should become
explosive, and that the more daring spirits were eager, in the face of
any risks, to come to the sword’s point with their enemies. The General’s
nerve was curiously shaken. Hope Grant tells how Sir Henry Barnard sent
for him on the evening of the 12th: “He hushed me into a whisper, and
asked me if I thought any person could possibly overhear us, adding,
‘There is treason around us.’ Then he explained, ‘I mean to attack the
town to-night.’” Barnard’s manner produced on Hope Grant’s mind the
impression that his brain was slightly off its balance.
At one o’clock that night the troops were suddenly paraded, ammunition
served out, and leaders assigned to the three columns. But the 75th Foot
had, somehow, been left at the extreme front without orders, and before
they could be brought up the grey dawn was breaking, and the proposed
attack had to be abandoned. Lord Roberts says that this “blunder” was
“a merciful dispensation, which saved the British from an irreparable
disaster.” That was not Hodson’s judgment. In his journal he says: “The
attack was frustrated by the fears and absolute disobedience to orders
of ⸺, the man who first lost Delhi, and has now, by his folly, prevented
its being recaptured.” But Hodson was more impatient and blunt-spoken
than is permissible to even a gallant soldier, and his diary reflects,
perhaps, rather the condition of his liver than the deliberate judgment
of his head. Thus he writes: “That old woman ⸺, has come here for nothing
apparently, but as an obstacle; ⸺ is also a crying evil to us!”
On the 12th, indeed, the Sepoys themselves were attacking Flagstaff
Tower with great fury, but were repelled with steady valour. On June 14,
General Reed arrived in camp; he was in chief divisional command, and
should at once have taken over the charge of the siege from Barnard; but
a ride of 500 miles had left him little better than a physical wreck, and
Barnard still remained in command.
On the 13th, 14th, and 15th there were new attacks pluckily urged by
the Sepoys, and repelled with cool and stern courage by the British.
“They came on,” is Hodson’s summary, “very boldly, and got most heartily
thrashed.” On the 17th the British were attacked along their whole front,
and from almost every direction, and an attempt was made to construct a
battery which would enfilade the Ridge. Two small columns, under Tombs
and Reid, were sent out with a dash, broke up the proposed battery in
brilliant style, and drove the troops that covered it in wild and bloody
flight to the city walls.
Week after week the fighting went on most gallantly, and the story gleams
with records of shining pluck; it rings with the clash of steel on steel;
it thrills to the rattle of musketry volleys and the deeper voice of the
cannon. Thus Hope Grant tells how, on the night of the 19th, from sunset
till half-past eleven, he kept back, by repeated charges of squadrons
of the 9th Lancers and the Guides, with the help of some field-guns, an
attack on the rear of the British position.
The fighting was close and furious. As Daly came up through the darkness
into the fight, Tombs said, “Daly, if you don’t charge, my guns are
taken;” and Daly, shaking his reins, and followed by a handful of his
Guides, dashed on the enemy, and saved the guns. Colonel Yule, of the 9th
Lancers, was killed; Daly himself was severely wounded; and the enemy,
in the dark, worked round the flanks of the British guns, and two of the
pieces were on the point of being taken.
Hope Grant collected a few men, and rode fiercely into the enemy’s ranks.
His horse was shot, and, galloping wildly into the mass of Sepoys, fell
dead. Hope Grant was thus left unhorsed in the darkness, and in the midst
of the enemy! His orderly, a fine, tall Sowar, who had remained loyal
when his regiment mutinied, was in a moment by his side, and cried,
“Take my horse; it is your only chance of safety.” Hope Grant refused
the generous offer, and, taking a firm grasp of the horse’s tail, bade
the Sowar drag him out of the _mêlée_. The next day Hope Grant sent for
the Sowar, warmly praised his gallant conduct, and offered him a reward
in money. The brave fellow drew himself up with dignity, salaamed, and
said, “No, Sahib, I will take no money.”
Seaton describes how, during that wild night combat, they watched, from
the Ridge above, the flashes of the guns, rending the gloom with darting
points of flame, and listened to the shouts, the clash of weapons, the
crackle of the musketry that marked the progress of the fight. Presently
there came a sudden glare, then a roar that for a moment drowned all
other sounds. One of the British limbers had blown up. The fight was
going badly. Then, out of the darkness, came the cry of a human voice,
“Where is the General?” It was an officer asking reinforcements, and
three companies of the 1st Fusileers, who were standing hard by, silent
and invisible in the dusk, were sent down to the fight. They moved
forward at the curt word of command: presently the rolling crash of their
volleys was heard; a line of red, dancing points of fire through the
darkness marked their progress, and the guns were saved!
June 23 was the centenary of Plassey, and a prediction, widely spread
amongst the Sepoys, announced that on that day the _raj_ of the British
was to end. As it happened, that particular day was also a great
religious festival for the Hindus, whilst it was the day of the new moon,
and so was held by Mohammedans as a fortunate day. Accordingly an attack
of great fury, and maintained for eight long hours, was made on the
British right. Some reinforcements, amounting to 850 men, were on the
22nd within twenty miles of Delhi, and a staff officer was despatched to
hurry them on; and they actually reached the Ridge in time to take part
in the final effort which drove back the enemy. Roberts says that “no men
could have fought better than did the Sepoys. They charged the Rifles,
the Guides, and the Ghoorkas again and again.” But nothing could shake
the cool and obstinate—the almost scornful—valour of the British.
Every available man in the camp was at the front, and when the 2nd
Fusileers and the 4th Sikhs, who formed the approaching reinforcement,
came pressing on with eager speed to the crest of the Ridge, over which
the battle-smoke was drifting in dense white clouds, they were at once
sent into the fight, and the enemy was finally driven back with a loss of
over 1600 men. It is not easy to picture the exhaustion of the British
at the close of a fight so stern and prolonged. “When I arrived at Hindu
Rao’s,” wrote an eye-witness, “I found every one exhausted. There were
the 1st Fusileers and some Rifles all done up. I went on to the new
advanced battery; it was crowded with worn-out men. The artillerymen,
likewise done up, had ceased firing; another party of Rifles in a similar
state in another position. 120 men of the 2nd Fusileers, who had marched
twenty-three miles that morning and had had no breakfast, were lying
down exhausted. Three weak companies of Ghoorkas were out as skirmishers;
but they, too, were exhausted, and the remainder were resting under a
rock. The heat was terrific, and the thermometer must have been at least
140 degrees, with a hot wind blowing, and a frightful glare.” Of ten
officers in the 2nd Fusileers five were struck down by _coup de soleil_.
The next day Neville Chamberlain, Lawrence’s favourite officer, rode into
the camp, and assumed the post of adjutant-general.
On July 3 Baird Smith reached the Ridge, and took charge of the
engineering operations of the siege. On July 5 Sir Henry Barnard died,
killed by the burden of a task too great for him, and Reed assumed
command. He held it for less than ten days, and then passed it over to
Archdale Wilson, who had shared in the discredit of Meerut, and who,
though a brave man, had scanty gifts of leadership.
Twice over during those days of fierce and prolonged battle a time
had been fixed for assaulting the city, and twice the plan had been
spoiled by an earlier counter-attack of the enemy. Baird Smith, on his
arrival, approved of the scheme for an assault, and urged it on Reed, who
hesitated over it during the brief period of his command, and then handed
it over as a perplexing legacy to his successor Wilson. The proposal to
leap on Delhi was finally abandoned; but Baird Smith, the coolest brain
employed in the siege, recorded long afterwards his deliberate judgment
that “if we had assaulted any time between the 4th and 14th of July we
should have carried the place.”
On July 9, an attack of great strength, and marked by great daring, was
made by the enemy, and was almost lifted into success by the disloyalty
of a detachment of the 9th Irregular Cavalry. They were on outpost duty,
watching the trunk road. They allowed the enemy to approach the British
position without giving warning, and when Hills, who commanded two guns
in front of the General’s mound, ran out of his tent and leaped on his
horse, he found a troop of Carabineers in broken flight, sweeping past
him, and the enemy almost on his guns. He shouted “Action front!” then,
to give his gunners a chance of firing, rode single-handed into the
enemy’s squadrons, a solitary swordsman charging a regiment!
Hills actually cut down the leading man, and wounded the second; then
two troopers charging him at once, he was rolled over, man and horse,
and the troops swept over him. Hills struggled, bruised and half-dazed,
to his feet, picked up his sword, and was at once attacked by two of the
rebel cavalry and a foot soldier. Hills coolly shot the first horseman
riding down upon him, then catching the lance of the second in his left
hand, thrust him through the body with his sword. He was instantly
attacked by the third enemy, and his sword wrenched from him. Hills, on
this, fell back upon first principles, and struck his opponent in the
face repeatedly with his fist. But he was by this time himself exhausted,
and fell. Then, exactly as his antagonist lifted his sword to slay him,
Tombs, who had cut his way through the enemy, and was coming up at a
gallop to help his comrade, with a clever pistol-shot from a distance of
thirty paces killed the Sepoy. It was a Homeric combat, and both Tombs
and Hills received the Victoria Cross.
The enemy meanwhile had galloped past the guns, eager to reach the native
artillery, which they hoped would ride off with them. The 9th Lancers,
however, had turned out in their shirt-sleeves, and they, riding fiercely
home, drove off the enemy.
It is always interesting to listen to the story of a gallant deed, as
told by the doer himself. The reckless valour which Lieutenant Hills
showed in charging, single-handed, a column of rebel cavalry, in order to
secure for his gunners a chance of opening fire, can hardly be described
by a remote historian. But Hills has told the story of his own deed, and
an extract from his tale, at least, is worth giving:—
I thought that by charging them I might make a commotion, and
give the gun time to load, so in I went at the front rank,
cut down the first fellow, slashed the next across the face
as hard as I could, when two Sowars charged me. Both their
horses crashed into mine at the same moment, and, of course,
both horse and myself were sent flying. We went down at such a
pace that I escaped the cuts made at me, one of them giving my
jacket an awful slice just below the left arm—it only, however,
cut the jacket. Well, I lay quite snug until all had passed
over me, and then got up and looked about for my sword. I found
it full ten yards off. I had hardly got hold of it when three
fellows returned, two on horseback. The first I wounded, and
dropped him from his horse. The second charged me with a lance.
I put it aside, and caught him an awful gash on the head and
face. I thought I had killed him. Apparently he must have clung
to his horse, for he disappeared. The wounded man then came up,
but got his skull split. Then came on the third man—a young,
active fellow. I found myself getting very weak from want of
breath, the fall from my horse having pumped me considerably,
and my cloak, somehow or other, had got tightly fixed round my
throat, and was actually choking me. I went, however, at the
fellow and cut him on the shoulder, but some “kupra” (cloth)
on it apparently turned the blow. He managed to seize the hilt
of my sword, and twisted it out of my hand, and then we had a
hand-to-hand fight, I punching his head with my fists, and he
trying to cut me, but I was too close to him. Somehow or other
I fell, and then was the time, fortunately for me, that Tombs
came up and shot the fellow. I was so choked by my cloak that
move I could not until I got it loosened. By-the-bye, I forgot
to say that I fired at this chap twice, but the pistol snapped,
and I was so enraged I drove it at the fellow’s head, missing
him, however.
The Sepoys had planted a battery of guns at a point in their front called
Ludlow Castle, and maintained from it a constant fire on Metcalfe House.
Their skirmishers, too, crept up with great audacity, and maintained a
ceaseless fire on the British pickets. It was necessary to silence this
battery, and early in the morning of August 12, without call of bugle or
roll of drum, a force of British, Sikhs, and Ghoorkas, with a handful
of cavalry, stole down the slope of the Ridge in order to carry the
offending guns. The order was given for profoundest silence, and almost
like a procession of shadows the little column crept over the Ridge
through the gloom, and disappeared in the midst of the low-lying ground
on its way to the rebel guns.
Undetected in the sheltering blackness, the column reached the sleeping
battery. A startled Sepoy, who caught through the haze and shadow a
sudden glimpse of stern faces and the gleam of bayonets, gave a hasty
challenge. It was answered by a volley which ran like a streak of jagged
flame through the darkness, and with a rush the British—their officers
gallantly leading, and Sikh and Ghoorka trying to outrace their English
comrades—swept on to the battery. The Sepoys succeeded in discharging two
guns on their assailants; but Lord Roberts records that the discharge of
the third gun was prevented by a gallant Irish soldier named Reegan.
He leaped with levelled bayonet over the earthwork, and charged the
artilleryman, who was in the very act of thrusting his port-fire on to
the powder in the touch-hole of the gun. Reegan was struck at on every
side, but nothing stopped him, and the fierce lunge of his bayonet
slew the artilleryman and prevented the discharge of the gun. Captain
Greville, followed by two or three men, flung himself on another gun, and
slew or drove off its gunners.
Hodson characteristically says, “It was a very comfortable little
affair!” As a matter of fact, it was, for a dozen fierce minutes, a
deadly hand-to-hand combat. “The rebel artillerymen,” says Roberts,
“stood to their guns splendidly, and fought till they were all killed.”
The rebels, too, were in great force, and as the passionate _mêlée_
swayed to and fro, and the muskets crackled fiercely, and angry thrust
of bayonet was answered by desperate stroke of tulwar, the slaughter
was great. Some 250 Sepoys were slain, while the British only lost one
officer and nineteen men, though nearly a hundred more were wounded. But
the battery was destroyed, and four guns brought back in triumph to the
camp.
The return of the force was a scene of mad excitement. A wounded
officer sat astride one gun, waving his hand in triumph. A soldier,
with musket and bayonet fixed, bestrode each horse, and dozens of
shouting infantrymen—many with wounds and torn uniform, and all with
smoke-blackened faces—clung, madly cheering, to the captured pieces.
On August 7 there rode into the British camp perhaps the most famous
and daring soldier in all India, the man with whose memory the siege
of Delhi, and the great assault which ended the siege, are for ever
associated—John Nicholson.
Nicholson was of Irish birth, the son of a Dublin physician, who had
seen twenty years’ service in India—service brilliant and varied beyond
even what is common in that field of great deeds. There is no space
here to tell the story of Nicholson’s career, but as he rode into the
British camp that August morning, he was beyond all question the most
picturesque and striking figure in India. He was a man of splendid
physique, and is said to have borne an almost bewildering resemblance to
the Czar Nicholas. He was six feet two in height, strongly built, with
a flowing dark-coloured beard, colourless face, grey eyes, with dark
pupils, in whose depths, when he was aroused, a point of steady light, as
of steel or of flame, would kindle. Few men, indeed, could sustain the
piercing look of those lustrous, menacing eyes. His voice had a curious
depth in it; his whole bearing a singular air of command and strength—an
impression which his habit of rare and curt speech intensified. “He was
a man,” says one who knew him well, “cast in a giant mould, with massive
chest and powerful limbs, and an expression, ardent and commanding, with
a dash of roughness; features of stern beauty, a long black beard, and
sonorous voice. His imperial air never left him.” “Nicholson,” says
Lord Roberts, “impressed me more profoundly than any man I had ever met
before, or have ever met since.”
Nicholson, like the Lawrences, like Havelock, and Herbert Edwardes, and
many of the Indian heroes of that generation, was a man of rough but
sincere piety, and this did not weaken his soldiership—it rather gave
a new loftiness to its ideals and a steadier pulse to its courage. “If
there is a desperate deed to be done in India,” Herbert Edwardes told
Lord Canning, “John Nicholson is the man to do it”; and exactly that
impression and conviction Nicholson kindled in everybody about him.
“He had,” says Mrs. Steel, “the great gift. He could put his own heart
into a whole camp, and make it believe it was its own.” Such a masterful
will and personality as that of Nicholson took absolutely captive the
imagination of the wild, irregular soldiery of which he was the leader.
What was Nicholson’s fighting quality, indeed, may be judged, say,
from the fashion in which he smashed up the mutinous Sepoys at Mardan
(as told in Trotter’s “Life” of him), and chased them mile after mile
towards the hills of Swat, Nicholson leading the pursuit on his huge grey
charger, “his great sword felling a Sepoy at every stroke!” His faculty
for strategy, and for swift, sustained movement is, again, told by the
manner in which he intercepted and destroyed the Sealkote mutineers at
the fords of the Ravi on their way to Delhi, The mutineers were two days’
march ahead of him, and Nicholson made a forced march of forty-four miles
in a single day, and under a July sun in India, to get within stroke of
them. Nicholson’s little force started at 9 P.M. on July 10, and marched
twenty-six miles without a break; after a halt of two hours they started
on their second stage of eighteen miles at 10 A.M. During the hottest
hour of the afternoon the force camped in a grove of trees, and the men
fell, exhausted, into instant slumber.
Presently an officer, awakening, looked round for his general. “He saw
Nicholson,” says Trotter, “in the middle of the hot, dusty road, sitting
bolt upright on his horse in the full glare of that July sun, waiting
like a sentinel turned to stone for the moment when his men should resume
their march!” They might take shelter from the heat, but he scorned it.
A march so swift and fierce was followed by an attack equally vehement,
Nicholson leading the rush on the enemy’s guns in person, and with his
own sword cutting literally in two a rebel gunner in the very act of
putting his linstock to the touch-hole of his cannon.
The worship of force is natural to the Eastern mind; and, in 1848, when
Nicholson was scouring the country between the Attock and the Jhelum,
making incredible marches, and shattering with almost incredible valour
whole armies with a mere handful of troops, the mingled admiration and
dread of the native mind rose to the pieties of a religion. “To this
day,” a border chief told Younghusband, twelve years after Nicholson
was dead, “our women at night wake trembling, and saying they hear the
tramp of Nikalsain’s war-horse!” A brotherhood of Fakirs renounced all
other creeds, and devoted themselves to the worship of “Nikkul-Seyn.”
They would lie in wait for Nicholson, and fall at his feet with votive
offerings.
Nicholson tried to cure their inconvenient piety by a vigorous
application of the whip, and flogged them soundly on every opportunity.
But this, to the Fakir mind, supplied only another proof of the great
Irishman’s divinity; and, to quote Herbert Edwardes, “the sect of
Nikkul-Seynees remained as devoted as ever. _Sanguis martyrum est semen
Ecclesiæ!_ On one occasion, after a satisfactory whipping, Nicholson
released his devotees on the condition that they would transfer their
adoration to John Becher; but as soon as they attained their freedom they
resumed their worship of the relentless Nikkul-Seyn.” The last of the
sect, says Raikes, dug his own grave, and was found dead in it shortly
after the news came that Nicholson had fallen at Delhi.
Nicholson’s ardour had made him outride the movable column he was
bringing up to reinforce the besiegers; but on August 14, with drums
beating and flags flying, and welcomed with cheers by the whole camp,
that gallant little force marched in. It consisted of the 52nd, 680
strong, a wing of the 61st, the second Punjaub Infantry, with some
Beloochees and military police, and a field battery.
Work for such a force, and under such a leader, was quickly found. The
siege train intended to breach the walls of Delhi was slowly creeping
along the road from the Punjaub, and with unusual daring a great force of
mutineers marched from Delhi to intercept this convoy. The movement was
detected, and on August 25 Nicholson, with 1600 infantry, 400 cavalry,
and a battery of field guns, set out to cut off the Sepoy force.
The rain fell in ceaseless, wind-blown sheets, as only Indian rain can
fall. The country to be crossed was mottled with swamps. The roads were
mere threads of liquid mud, and the march was of incredible difficulty.
The enemy was overtaken at Nujutgurh, after a sort of wading march which
lasted twelve hours. “No other man in India,” wrote a good soldier
afterwards, “would have taken that column to Nujutgurh. An artillery
officer told me that at one time the water was over his horses’ backs,
and he thought they could not possibly get out of their difficulties. But
he looked ahead, and saw Nicholson’s great form riding steadily on as if
nothing was the matter.”
The rebels, 6000 strong, held an almost unassailable position, edged
round with swamps and crossed in front by a deep and swift stream with
an unknown ford. In the dusk, however, Nicholson led his troops across
the stream. As they came splashing up from its waters he halted them,
and, with his deep, far-reaching voice, told them to withhold their fire
till within thirty yards of the enemy. He then led them steadily on, at a
foot-pace, over a low hill, and through yet another swamp, while the fire
of the enemy grew ever fiercer.
When within twenty yards of the enemy’s guns, Nicholson gave the word to
charge. A swift volley, and an almost swifter rush, followed. The British
in a moment were over the enemy’s guns, Nicholson still leading, his
gleaming sword, as it rose and fell in desperate strokes, by this time
turned bloody red. Gabbett, of the 61st, ran straight at one of the guns,
and his men, though eagerly following, could not keep pace with their
light-footed officer. He had just reached the gun, fully twenty paces in
advance of his men, when his foot slipped, he fell, and was instantly
bayoneted by a gigantic Sepoy. With a furious shout—a blast of wrathful
passion—his panting men came up, carried the gun, and bayoneted the
gunners.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN NICHOLSON
_From a portrait in the East India United Service Club_]
Nicholson had the true genius of a commander. The moment he had carried
the guns he swung to the left; and led his men in a rush for a bridge
across the canal in the enemy’s rear, which formed their only line of
retreat to Delhi. An Indian force is always peculiarly sensitive to a
stroke at its line of retreat, and the moment Nicholson’s strategy was
understood the Sepoy army resolved itself into a flying mob, eager only
to outrun the British in the race for the bridge. Nicholson captured
thirteen guns, killed or wounded 800 of the enemy, and drove the rest,
a mob of terrified fugitives, to Delhi, his own casualties amounting to
sixty.
His men had outmarched their supplies, and they had at once to retrace
their steps to Delhi. They had marched thirty-five miles, under furious
rains and across muddy roads, and had beaten a force three times stronger
than their own, holding an almost impregnable position, and had done it
all in less than forty hours, during twenty-four of which they had been
without food. It was a great feat, and as the footsore, mud-splashed
soldiers came limping into the camp all the regimental bands on the Ridge
turned out to play them in.
The few hours preceding Nicholson’s arrival at the Ridge were the
darkest hours of the siege, and some at least of the British leaders
were hesitating whether the attempt to carry the city ought not to be
abandoned. The circumstances, indeed, were such as might well strain
human fortitude to the breaking point. The British force of all arms,
native and European, was under 6000. Its scanty and light artillery
commanded only two out of the seven gates of Delhi. The siege, in fact,
was, as one writer puts it, “a struggle between a mere handful of men
on an open ridge and a host behind massive and well-fortified walls.”
Cholera was raging among the British. The 52nd on August 14 marched into
camp 680 strong with only six sick. On September 14—only four weeks
later, that is—the effectives of the regiment were only 240 of all ranks.
Nearly two men out of every three had gone down!
There was treachery, too, in Wilson’s scanty force. Their plans were
betrayed to the enemy. The slaughter amongst the British officers in the
native regiments was such as could only be explained by the fact that
they were shot down by their own men from behind, rather than by their
open foes in the front. The one good service General Reed did during his
brief interval of command was to dismiss from the camp some suspected
regiments.
Archdale Wilson’s nerve, like that of Barnard and of Reed, his
predecessors, was shaken by the terrific strain of the siege, and he
contemplated abandoning it. “Wilson’s head is going,” wrote Nicholson to
Lawrence on September 7; “he says so himself, and it is quite evident
he speaks the truth.” It was due chiefly to John Lawrence’s clear
judgment and iron strength of will that a step so evil and perilous was
not taken. Lawrence had flung his last coin, his last cartridge, his
last man into the siege, and he warned Wilson that the whole fate of
the British in India depended on an immediate assault. “Every day,” he
wrote, “disaffection and mutiny spread. Every day adds to the danger of
the native princes taking part against us.” The loyalty of the Sikhs
themselves was strained to the breaking point. Had the British flag
fallen back from the Ridge, not merely would Delhi have poured out its
armed host, 50,000 strong, but every village in the north-west would have
risen, and the tragedy of the Khyber Pass might have been repeated, on a
vaster scale, upon the plains of Hindustan. The banks of the Jumna might
have seen such a spectacle as Cabul once witnessed.
But there were brave men on the Ridge itself, trained in Lawrence’s
school, and in whom the spirit of John Lawrence burned with clear and
steady flame. Baird Smith and Neville Chamberlain, Norman and Nicholson,
and many another, knew that the fortunes and honour of England hung on
the capture of Delhi. Lord Roberts tells a curious and wild story that
shows what was Nicholson’s temper at this crisis:—
I was sitting in Nicholson’s tent before he set out to attend
the council. He had been talking to me in confidential terms
of personal matters, and ended by telling me of his intention
to take a very unusual step should the council fail to arrive
at any fixed determination regarding the assault. “Delhi
must be taken,” he said, “and it is absolutely essential
that this should be done at once; and, if Wilson hesitates
longer, I intend to propose at to-day’s meeting that he
should be superseded.” I was greatly startled, and ventured
to remark that, as Chamberlain was _hors de combat_ from his
wound, Wilson’s removal would leave him (Nicholson) senior
officer with the force. He smiled as he answered, “I have
not overlooked that fact. I shall make it perfectly clear
that, under the circumstances, I could not possibly accept
the command myself, and I shall propose that it be given to
Campbell of the 52nd. I am prepared to serve under him for the
time being, so no one can ever accuse me of being influenced by
personal motives.”
Roberts puts on record his “confident belief” that Nicholson would have
carried out this daring scheme, and he adds that, in his deliberate
judgment, Nicholson was right. Discipline in a crisis so stern counts for
less than the public honour and the national safety.
It is to be noted that on a still earlier date, September 11—Nicholson
had written to Lawrence telling him Wilson was talking of withdrawing
the guns and giving up the siege. “Had Wilson carried out his threat of
withdrawing the guns,” adds Nicholson, “I was quite prepared to appeal
to the army to set him aside, and elect a successor. I have seen lots of
useless generals in my day; but such an ignorant, croaking obstructive as
he is, I have never hitherto met with!”
Fortunately, Wilson found a tonic in the spirit of the men who sat round
his council-table. “The force,” he wrote to the Chief Commissioner, “will
die at their post.” Reinforcements came creeping in, till the forces
on the Ridge rose to 8748 men, of whom, however, less than half were
British. The battering-train from Umballa, too, safely reached the camp.
It consisted of six 24-pounders, eight 18-pounders, and four 8-inch
howitzers, with 1000 rounds of ammunition per piece. The huge convoy,
with its tumbrils and ammunition-carts, sprawled over thirteen miles of
road, and formed an amazing evidence of the energy and resources of John
Lawrence.
Now at last the siege really began. Ground was broken for the new
batteries on September 7, at a distance of 700 yards from the walls,
and each battery, as it was armed, broke into wrathful thunder on the
city. Each succeeding battery, too, was pushed up closer to the enemy’s
defences. Thus Major Scott’s battery was pushed up to within 180 yards of
the wall, and the heavy guns to arm it had to be dragged up under angry
blasts of musketry fire. No fewer than thirty-nine men in this single
battery were struck down during the first night of its construction! A
section of No. 1 Battery took fire under the constant flash of its own
guns, and, as the dancing flames rose up from it, the enemy turned on the
burning spot every gun that could be brought to bear. The only way to
quench the fire was to take sand-bags to the top of the battery, cut them
open, and smother the fire with streams of sand.
A Ghoorka officer named Lockhart called for volunteers, and leaped upon
the top of the battery, exposed, without shelter, to a storm of cannon
balls and musket bullets. Half-a-dozen Ghoorkas instantly followed him.
Four out of the seven men—including Lockhart himself—were shot down, but
the fire was quenched.
The fire of the batteries was maintained with amazing energy and daring
until September 13. Colonel Brind, for example, records that he never
took off his clothes or left his guns from the moment they opened on the
8th to the 14th inst.