1856-1859.
OPERATIONS DURING THE MUTINY IN INDIA.
Four days after the Queen had inspected the regiment it moved to
Dublin, where the arrival of the reserve companies from Malta and
the depôt from Preston brought up the numbers at headquarters to
seventeen hundred and sixty-nine of all ranks. On the 25th of August,
new Colours were presented by the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland, the old Colours finding a fitting resting-place in St
Patrick’s Cathedral, where they hang over the monuments to the Royal
Irishmen who laid down their lives for their country in the swamps
of China, in the jungles of Burma, and on the blood-stained glacis
of the fortress of Sebastopol. A few months later the regiment was
warned for foreign service, this time at the Cape of Good Hope, but
the order was cancelled when the news reached England that the native
army of Bengal had mutinied, and the XVIIIth remained in Ireland,
very indignant at not being sent at once to help quell the rising
in India. It was not until the autumn of 1857 that the War Office
determined to employ the Royal Irish in the East: an advance party of
three companies (in all, 208 officers and men) embarked on September
24, followed in two months by headquarters and the remainder of the
XVIIIth (666 of all ranks), who reached Bombay early in February,
1858.[181] They landed, hoping to be in time to take an active part
in the campaign, and their disappointment was bitter when they were
ordered to Poona, a great city in the Bombay Presidency. The Royal
Irish found much heavy work awaiting them, for the place was then, as
it still is, a hot-bed of sedition, ready to revolt at any moment;
and the troops were constantly under arms to prevent an outbreak.
But as the accounts of successive British victories in northern and
central India reached the malcontents, the danger diminished, and in
April, 1858, the local situation had sufficiently improved to warrant
the withdrawal of part of the British garrison from Poona. On the
Royal Irish was thrown the duty of providing detachments in various
places in western India, to watch native regiments of doubtful
loyalty, and help the civil power in re-establishing law and order
round their posts. With the dispersal of the regiment disappeared its
chances of service as a complete unit, but each company commander
still hoped to have to deal individually with a body of rebels, or
with one of the bands of marauders called into existence by the
mutiny. Fate, however, was not kind to the Royal Irish in 1858-59:
the strenuous work of the detachments was unrelieved by a single
fight, and even when three or four companies were brought together
for some combined movement they had no luck; in extreme heat they
made forced marches, cut roads through jungle, forded rivers, but all
to no purpose: wherever they went the enemy disappeared, to fall into
the hands of some column operating many miles away.
In a letter from D^r Ffolliott, one of the regimental
assistant-surgeons, are preserved a few details of the experiences
of one of the detachments. Captain J. Canavan started from Poona on
April 23, 1858, with two subalterns and a hundred and twenty of the
Royal Irish, a company of Bombay native infantry, camel transport,
and dhoolies for the sick and wounded, and at the end of a month’s
hard marching brought his column to Asseerghur without a casualty
and with no sick men. According to Ffolliott, who was in medical
charge, this immunity from disease was due to the care taken to keep
the men’s clothing dry at the numerous fords through which the road
ran: the troops were allowed ample time to undress before going into
the water, and to put their clothes on again before the march was
resumed. Asseerghur was an old native fortress, perched on the top of
an almost perpendicular rock rising nearly eight hundred feet out of
the plain. As it had never been occupied by European troops, there
were no barracks; the men were quartered in an old mosque; while the
officers occupied a large bungalow, where they used to entertain a
few European ladies who had taken refuge in Asseerghur while their
husbands were in the field. Every week there was a dinner-party,
followed by a dance to the drums and fifes of the detachment.
On his way to take up the command of a brigade at Mhow, Colonel
Edwards was present at one of these entertainments, where he must
have been pleased at the determination of his officers to keep up
their spirits under the bitter disappointment of finding themselves
thus completely “sidetracked.” In November, Asseerghur was greatly
excited at the report that Tantia Tope was in the neighbourhood.
Tantia was one of the few native leaders who had shown good military
qualities; he had fought well against Lord Strathnairn (then Sir
Hugh Rose) in central India, and when after many defeats he had
betaken himself to the country north of the Nerbudda, he had evaded
the columns threatening him from many directions. The net, however,
was now closing in upon him; it was believed he would try to break
southwards into the Deccan, and as Asseerghur commanded one of the
approaches to this part of India it became a place of temporary
importance. One evening the Fort Adjutant bustled into the quarters
of the XVIIIth with great news: in a few hours Tantia Tope, with
eight or nine thousand men, was going to attack Burhanpore, a rich
and populous town not many miles away; Canavan with fifty men of the
Royal Irish was to throw himself into the city, and Ffolliott was
to accompany him. While Canavan was issuing his orders, Ffolliott
went off to make medical arrangements at the hospital, where, to
use his own words, “I found every sick man in war paint. My acting
hospital sergeant said there was not much the matter with them; they
had heard there was to be a fight that night, and wanted to join the
party going, so I discharged them out of hospital. Canavan made no
distinction; the first fifty for duty were ordered to fall out, and
in two hours from the time we were warned we were on the march.”
As Canavan and his party were considered to be going on a forlorn
hope, every European not on duty was on the parade ground to wish
the Royal Irish “good luck” as they moved off, and the ladies were
in tears, until their grief was changed to mirth at the discovery
that the doctor had filled his pouch, not with medical appliances,
but with revolver cartridges. Many of the garrison sat up till dawn,
listening anxiously for the burst of fire with which it was feared
the detachment would be overwhelmed. But no crash of musketry broke
the stillness of the night, and before Canavan reached Burhanpore he
learned the place had been reinforced by a larger column, with whose
movements the Commandant of Asseerghur was unacquainted, and that
Tantia Tope had disappeared. As no fighting was expected, Canavan was
ordered to return to his own post without delay--another instance
of bad luck, for in a day or two there was a sharp skirmish near
Burhanpore, in which his company would certainly have taken part.
In January, 1859, the greater part of the regiment was brought
together under Lieutenant-Colonel Call, and made many marches through
the district of Jaulna, vainly pursuing Rohilla freebooters who had
no intention of standing up to fight. As soon as these robber bands
dispersed, the XVIIIth went back to garrison duty at detached posts,
and in three or four months, when the country had begun to settle
down, most of the companies joined headquarters at Sholapur, and then
marched to Hyderabad in the Deccan, which they reached on June 21,
1859. The muster roll shows that three officers, Captain W. F. G.
Forster, Lieutenant T. Watt, and Assistant-Surgeon C. E. Porteous,
and twenty-seven of the rank and file died of disease during the
Indian Mutiny campaign.[182]