Title: Colin Campbell - Lord Clyde
Author: Forbes, Archibald
Language: English
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  English Men of Action

  COLIN CAMPBELL

  LORD CLYDE

[Illustration: (Publisher's colophon.)]

[Illustration: SIR COLIN CAMPBELL, LORD CLYDE

After the Picture by Sir FRANCIS GRANT, P.R.A.]



  COLIN CAMPBELL

  LORD CLYDE


  BY

  ARCHIBALD FORBES


  London
  MACMILLAN AND CO.
  AND NEW YORK
  1895

  _All rights reserved_



  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I

                                                          PAGE
  EARLY LIFE--THE PENINSULA                                  1


  CHAPTER II

  COLONIAL AND HOME SERVICE                                 22


  CHAPTER III

  CHINA AND INDIA                                           39


  CHAPTER IV

  THE CRIMEA                                                82


  CHAPTER V

  THE INDIAN MUTINY--ORGANISATION--RELIEF OF
  LUCKNOW--DEFEAT OF GWALIOR CONTINGENT                    110


  CHAPTER VI

  THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW                                  144


  CHAPTER VII

  THE CAMPAIGN IN ROHILCUND                                173


  CHAPTER VIII

  THE CAMPAIGN IN CENTRAL INDIA                            187


  CHAPTER IX

  THE PACIFICATION OF OUDE--END OF THE MUTINY              198


  CHAPTER X

  FROM SIMLA TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY                          212



CHAPTER I

EARLY LIFE--THE PENINSULA


The British Military Service is fertile in curious contrasts. Among
the officers who sailed from England for the East in the spring of
1854 were three veterans who had soldiered under the Great Duke in
Portugal and Spain. The fighting career of each of those men began
almost simultaneously; the senior of the three first confronted
an enemy's fire in 1807, the two others in the following year. In
1854 one of these officers, who was the son of a duke and who had
himself been raised to the peerage, was the Commander-in-Chief of
the expeditionary army. Lord Raglan was a lieutenant-colonel at
the age of twenty-four, a colonel at twenty-seven, a major-general
at thirty-seven. He had been colonel-in-chief of a regiment since
1830 and a lieutenant-general since 1838; and he was to become
a field-marshal before the year was out. Another, who belonged,
although irregularly, to an old and good family, whose father was a
distinguished if unfortunate general, and who enjoyed the patronage
and protection of one of our great houses, belonging though he
did to an arm of the service in which promotion has always been
exceptionally slow, was a lieutenant-colonel at thirty and a colonel
at forty, and was now a lieutenant-general on the Staff and second
in command of the expeditionary force. The third, who was the son
of a Glasgow carpenter, sailed for the East, it is true, with the
assurance of the command of a brigade; but, after a service of
forty-six years, his army-rank then and for three months later, was
still only that of colonel. Neither Lord Raglan nor Sir John Burgoyne
had ever heard a shot fired in anger since the memorable year of
Waterloo; but during the long peace both had been attaining step
after step of promotion, and holding lucrative and not particularly
arduous offices. Since the Peninsular days Colin Campbell had been
soldiering his steadfast way round the world, taking campaigns
and climates alike as they came to him in the way of duty,--now
a brigade-major, now serving and conquering in the command of a
division, now holding at the point of the bayonet the most dangerous
frontier of British India against onslaught after onslaught of the
turbulent hill-tribes beyond the border. He had fought not without
honour, for his Sovereign had made him a Knight of the Bath and
appointed him one of her own aides-de-camp. But there is a certain
barrenness in honours when unaccompanied by promotion, and it had
fallen to the lot of the son of the Glasgow carpenter to serve for
eighteen years in the capacity of a field-officer commanding a
regiment.

Yet even in the British military service the aphorism occasionally
holds good, that everything comes to him who knows how to wait. Colin
Campbell, the half-pay colonel of 1854, was a full general in 1858
and a peer of the realm in the same year; in 1862 he was gazetted
a field-marshal. In less than nine years the half-pay colonel had
attained the highest rank in the service,--a promotion of unique
rapidity apart from that conferred on soldiers of royal blood. Along
with Lord Clyde were gazetted field-marshals Sir Edward Blakeney and
Lord Gough, both of whom were lieutenant-generals of some twenty
years' standing when Colin Campbell was merely a colonel. Sir John
Burgoyne, almost immeasurably his senior in 1854, did not become a
field-marshal until 1868.

Colin Campbell was born in Glasgow on the 20th of October 1792, the
eldest of the four children of John Macliver, the Glasgow carpenter,
and his wife Agnes Campbell. How Colin Macliver came to bear the
name of Colin Campbell will presently be told. The family had gone
down in the world, but Colin Campbell came of good old stock on both
sides of the house. His grandfather, Laird of Ardnave in the island
of Islay, had been out in the Forty-five and so forfeited his estate.
General Shadwell, the biographer of Colin Campbell, states that his
mother was of a respectable family which had settled in Islay near
two centuries ago with its chief, the ancestor of the existing Earls
of Cawdor. But the Campbell who was the ancestor of the Cawdors was a
son of the second Earl of Argyle who fell at Flodden in 1513, and he
belonged to the first half of the sixteenth century; so that, since
Colin Campbell's maternal family settled in Islay with its chief, it
could reckon a longer existence than that ascribed to it by General
Shadwell. Not a few of Colin Campbell's kinsmen had served in the
army; and the uncle after whom he was christened had fallen as a
subaltern in the war of the American Revolution.

His earliest schooling he received at the Glasgow High School,
whence at the age of ten he was removed by his mother's brother,
Colonel John Campbell, and placed by him in the Royal Military and
Naval Academy at Gosport. Scarcely anything is on record regarding
young Colin's school-days there. The first Lord Chelmsford was one
of his schoolfellows; and there is a tradition that he spent his
holidays with the worthy couple by whom the Academy was established,
and by a descendant of whom it is still carried on. When barely
fifteen and a half his uncle presented him to the Duke of York, then
Commander-in-Chief, who promised him a commission; and supposing
him to be, as he said, "another of the clan," put down his name
as Colin Campbell, the name which he thenceforth bore. General
Shadwell states that on leaving the Duke's presence with his uncle,
young Colin made some comment on what he took to be a mistake on
the Duke's part in regard to his surname, to which the shrewd uncle
replied by telling him that "Campbell was a name which it would suit
him, for professional reasons, to adopt." The youngster was wise in
his generation, and does not appear to have had any compunction in
dropping the not particularly euphonious surname of Macliver. On the
26th of May 1808 young Campbell received the commission of ensign in
the Ninth Foot, now known as the Norfolk regiment; and within five
weeks from the date of his first commission he was promoted to a
lieutenancy in the same regiment.

He entered the service at an eventful moment. Napoleon had attained
the zenith of his marvellous career. He was the virtual master of
the whole of continental Europe. The royal family of Spain were in
effect his prisoners, and his brother Joseph had been proclaimed
King of Spain. The royal family of Portugal had departed to the New
World lest worse things should befall it, and Junot was ruling in
Lisbon in the name of his imperial master. But the Spaniards rose _en
masse_ in a national insurrection; and no sooner had they raised the
standard of independence than they felt the necessity of applying
to England for aid. Almost simultaneously the Portuguese rose, and
no severity on Junot's part availed to crush the universal revolt.
Almost on the very day on which young Campbell joined his regiment
in the Isle of Wight, the British force of nine thousand men to the
command of which Sir Arthur Wellesley was appointed, sailed from Cork
for the Peninsula. Spencer's division joined Wellesley in Mondego
Bay, and on the night of the 8th of August 1808 thirteen thousand
British soldiers bivouacked on the beach--the advanced guard of
an army which, after six years of many vicissitudes and much hard
fighting, was to expel from the Peninsula the last French soldier and
to contribute materially to the ruin of Napoleon.

Campbell was posted to the second battalion of the Ninth, commanded
by Colonel Cameron, an officer of whom he always spoke with
affectionate regard. The first battalion of the regiment had
already sailed from Cork, and the second, which belonged to General
Anstruther's brigade, took ship at Ramsgate for the Peninsula on
July 20th. Reaching the open sandy beach at the mouth of the Maceira
on the 19th of August, it was disembarked the same evening, and
bivouacked on the beach. Campbell notes, "lay out that night for the
first time in my life;" many a subsequent night did he lie out in
divers regions! On the following day the battalion joined the army
then encamped about the village of Vimiera. Wellesley had only landed
on the 8th, but already he had been the victor in the skirmish of
Obidos and the battle of Roleia; and now, on the 21st, he was again
to defeat Junot on the heights of Vimiera.

Directly in front of the village of that name rose a rugged isolated
height, with a flat summit commanding the ground in front and to
the left. Here was posted Anstruther's brigade, its left resting
on the village church and graveyard. Young Campbell was with the
rear company of his battalion, which stood halted in open column of
companies under the fierce fire of Laborde's artillery covering the
impending assault of his infantry. The captain of Campbell's company,
an officer inured to war, chose the occasion for leading the lad
out to the front of the battalion and walking with him along the
face of the leading company for several minutes, after which little
piece of experience he sent him back to his company. In narrating
the incident in after years Campbell was wont to add: "It was the
greatest kindness that could have been shown to me at such a time,
and through life I have been grateful for it." It is not unlikely
that the gallant and considerate old soldier may have intended not
alone to give to his young subaltern his baptism of fire, but also to
brace the nerves of the men of a battalion which, although part of a
regiment subsequently distinguished in many campaigns and battles,
was now for the first time in its military life to confront an enemy
and endure hostile fire.

The brigade was assailed at once in front and flank. The main
French column, headed by Laborde in person and preceded by swarms of
tirailleurs, mounted the face of the hill with great fury and loud
shouts. So impetuous was the onset that the British skirmishers were
driven in upon the lines, but steady volleys arrested the advance of
the French, and they broke and fled without waiting for the impending
bayonet charge. It would be interesting to know something of the
impressions made on young Campbell by his first experience of actual
war; but the curt entry in his memorandum is simply--"21st (August),
was engaged at the battle of Vimiera."

At the end of the brief campaign Campbell was transferred to the
first battalion of the Ninth, and had the good fortune to remain
under the command of Colonel Cameron, who had also been transferred.
In the beginning of October a despatch from England reached Lisbon,
instructing Sir John Moore to take command of the British army
intended to co-operate with the forces of Spain in an attempt to
expel the French from the Peninsula. The disasters which befell the
enterprise committed to Moore need not be recounted in detail because
of the circumstance that a young lieutenant shared in them in common
with the rest of the hapless force. The battalion in which Campbell
was serving was among the earliest troops to be put in motion. It
quitted its quarters at Quelus, near Lisbon on October 12th, and
reached Salamanca on November 11th. When Moore's army was organised
in divisions, the battalion formed part of Major-General Beresford's
brigade belonging to the division commanded by Lieutenant-General
Mackenzie Fraser. On reaching Salamanca Moore found that the Spanish
armies which he had come to support were already destroyed, and
that he himself was destitute alike of supplies and money. In this
situation it was his original intention to retire into Portugal,
which might have been his wisest course; but Moore was a man of a
high and ardent nature. When on the point of taking the offensive in
the hope of affording to the Spaniards breathing-time for organising
a defence of the southern provinces, he became aware that French
forces were converging on him from diverse points; and on the 24th of
December began the memorable retreat, the disasters of which cannot
be said to have been compensated for by the nominal victory of Coruña.

In the hardships and horrors of that midwinter retreat young Campbell
bore his share. Little, if any fighting came in his way, since the
division to which his battalion belonged was for the most part in
front. During the retreat it experienced a loss of one hundred and
fifty men; but they are all specified as having died on the march or
having been taken prisoners by the enemy. Nor had it the good fortune
to take part in the battle of Coruña, having been stationed in the
town during the fighting. There fell to a fatigue party detailed from
it the melancholy duty of digging on the rampart of Coruña the grave
of Moore, wherein under the fire of the French guns he was laid in
his "martial cloak" by his sorrowing Staff in the gray winter's dawn.
Beresford's brigade, to which Campbell's battalion belonged, covered
the embarkation and was the last to quit a shore of melancholy
memory. General Shadwell writes that, "To give some idea of the
discomforts of the retreat, Lord Clyde used to relate how for some
time before reaching Coruña he had to march with bare feet, the soles
of his boots being completely worn away. He had no means of replacing
them, and when he got on board ship he was unable to remove them, as
from constant wear and his inability to take them off the leather had
adhered so closely to the flesh of the legs that he was obliged to
steep them in water as hot as he could bear and have the leather cut
away in strips--a painful operation, as in the process pieces of the
skin were brought away with it."

After a stay in England of little more than six months Campbell's
battalion was again sent on foreign service, an item of the fine
army of forty thousand men under the command of the Earl of Chatham.
The main object of the undertaking, which is known as the Walcheren
Expedition, whose story occupies one of the darkest pages of
our military history, was to reduce the fortress of Antwerp and
destroy the French fleet lying under its shelter, in the hope of
disconcerting Napoleon and creating a diversion in favour of Austria.
But opportunities were lost, time was squandered, and the expedition
ended in disastrous failure. Montresor's brigade, to which Campbell's
battalion belonged, disembarked on the island of South Beveland in
the beginning of August, to be the gradual prey of fever and ague in
the pestilential marshes of the island. Nothing was achieved save
the barren capture of the fortress of Flushing; and towards the end
of September most of the land forces of the expedition, including
Campbell's battalion, returned to England. Over one-sixth of the
original army of forty thousand men had been buried in the swamps
of Walcheren and South Beveland; the survivors carried home with
them the seeds of the "Walcheren fever," which affected them more or
less for the rest of their lives. Colin Campbell was an intermittent
sufferer from it almost if not quite to the end of his life.

The second battalion of the Ninth had been in garrison at Gibraltar
since July, 1809, and to it Colin Campbell was transferred some
time in the course of the following year. In the beginning of 1811
the French Marshal Victor was blockading Cadiz, and General Graham
(afterwards Lord Lynedoch) determined on an attempt in concert with a
Spanish force to march on his rear and break the blockade. Landing at
Tarifa he picked up a detachment, which included the flank companies
of the Ninth in which Campbell was serving. Graham's division of
British troops was now somewhat over four thousand strong, and the
Spanish army of La Peña was at least thrice that strength. The allied
force reached the heights of Barrosa on March 5th. Graham anxiously
desired to hold that position, recognising its value; but he had
ceded the command to La Peña, who gave him the order to quit it and
move forward. In the conviction that La Peña himself would remain
there, he obeyed, leaving on Barrosa as baggage-guard the flank
companies of the Ninth and Eighty-Second regiments under Major Brown.
Graham had not gone far when La Peña abandoned the Barrosa position
with the mass of his force. Victor had been watching events under
cover of a forest, his three divisions well in hand; and now he saw
his opportunity. Villatte was to stand fast; Laval to intercept
the return of the British division to the height; Ruffin to seize
the height, sweep from it the allied rear-guard left there, and
disperse the baggage and followers. Major Brown held together the
flank companies he commanded, and withdrew slowly into the plain.
Graham promptly faced about and made haste to attack. Brown had sent
to Graham for orders, and was told that he was to fight; and the
gallant Brown, unsupported as he was, charged headlong on Ruffin's
front. Half his detachment went down under the enemy's first fire;
but he maintained the fight staunchly until Dilke's division came up,
when the whole, Dilke's people and Brown's stanch flank companies,
"with little order indeed, but in a fierce mood," in Napier's words,
rushed upwards to close quarters. The struggle lasted for an hour
and a half and was "most violent and bloody"; only the unconquerable
spirit of the British soldiers averted disaster and accomplished the
victory. Many a fierce fight was Colin Campbell to take part in, but
none more violent and bloody than this one on the heights of Barrosa.
His record of his own share in it is characteristically brief and
modest: "At the battle of Barrosa Lord Lynedoch was pleased to take
favourable notice of my conduct when left in command of the two flank
companies of my regiment, all the other officers being wounded."

Late in the same year Campbell saw some casual service while
temporarily attached to the Spanish army commanded by Ballasteros in
the south of Spain. In the disturbed state of the surrounding region
many Spanish families of rank were glad to find quiet shelter within
the fortress of Gibraltar, and their society was eagerly sought by
young Campbell, who was anxious to take the opportunity of improving
himself in the French and Spanish languages. When in December, 1811,
a French force under Laval undertook what proved an abortive and
final attempt to reduce the fortified town of Tarifa, he accompanied
the light company of his battalion to take part in the vigorous and
successful defence of the place, a result achieved by the courage and
devotion of the British garrison sent to hold it by General Campbell,
the wise and energetic governor of Gibraltar, and by the skill and
resource of Sir Charles Smith the chief engineer.

At the close of 1812 Colin Campbell had just turned his twentieth
year, and had been a soldier for four and a half years, during which
time he had seen no small variety of service. Vimiera and Barrosa
had been stiff fights, but neither belonged to the category of "big
wars" which are said to "make ambition virtue." Young Campbell had
virtue, and certainly did not lack honest ambition. In a sense he
had as yet not been very fortunate. In a period when interest was
almost everything, he had absolutely none. While he had been on a
side track of the great war, his more fortunate comrades of the
first battalion had fought at Busaco and Salamanca under the eye of
the Great Captain himself. But the time had now come when he, too,
was to belong to the army which Wellington was to lead to final and
decisive victory. He accompanied a draft from the second battalion
of his regiment which in January 1813 was sent to join the first
battalion lying in its winter cantonments in the vicinity of Lamego
on the lower Douro, and to his great joy found himself again under
the command of his original chief, Colonel Cameron. In its winter
quarters the allied army had recovered the cohesion and discipline
so sadly impaired during the retreat from Burgos in the preceding
autumn, and, strengthened by large reinforcements, was now in fine
form and high heart. The advance began in the middle of May, when
Wellington's army, seventy thousand strong, swept onward on a broad
front, turning the positions of the French and driving them before
it towards the Pyrenees. Of the three corps constituting that army
Sir Thomas Graham's had the left, consisting of the first, third,
and fifth divisions, to the second brigade of which, commanded by
General Hay, belonged the first battalion of the Ninth, to the light
company of which Colin Campbell was posted. The march of Graham's
corps through the difficult mountainous region of Tras-os-Montes and
onward to Vittoria was exceptionally arduous, but the obstacles were
skilfully surmounted. Of the part taken by his battalion on this
advance Colin Campbell kept a minute daily record, which has been
preserved. He acted as orderly officer to Lieutenant-Colonel Crawford
of his battalion, who commanded the flank companies of the third and
fifth divisions in the operation of crossing the Esla at Almandra
on May 31st. Continuing its march towards the north-east Graham's
corps crossed the Ebro with some skirmishing, and on the morning of
the 18th of June its advance debouched from the defile of Astri and
marched on Osma, where the French General Reille with two divisions
was unexpectedly met. Reille occupied the heights of Astalitz. The
light companies of the first brigade were sent against the enemy, who
were evincing an intent to retreat, and Campbell accompanied his
company. He notes as follows:--"This being our first encounter of the
campaign, the men were ardent and eager, and pressed the French most
wickedly. When the enemy began their movement to the rear, they were
constrained to hurry the pace of their columns, notwithstanding the
cloud of skirmishers which covered their retreat. Lord Wellington
came up about half-past three. We continued the pursuit until dusk,
when we were relieved by the light troops of the fourth division. The
ground on which we skirmished was so thickly wooded and so rugged and
uneven, that when we were relieved by the fourth division, and the
light companies were ordered to return to their respective regiments,
I found myself incapable of further exertion from fatigue and
exhaustion, occasioned by six hours of almost continuous skirmishing."

On the 20th Wellington's army moved down into the basin of Vittoria.
King Joseph's dispositions for the battle of Vittoria, which was
fought on June 21st, were distinctly bad. His right flank at Gamara
Mayor was too distant to be supported by the main body of his army,
yet the safe retreat of the latter in the event of defeat depended
on the staunchness of this isolated wing. Graham, moving southward
from Murguia by the Bilbao road, was to attack Reille who commanded
the French right, and to attempt the passage of the Zadora at Gamara
Mayor and Ariaga; should he succeed, the French would be turned, and
in great part enclosed between the Puebla mountains on one side and
the Zadora on the other by the corps of Hill and Wellington.

Graham approached the valley of the Zadora about noon. Before moving
forward on the village of Abechuco, it became necessary to force
across the river the enemy's troops holding the heights on the
left and covering the bridges of Ariaza and Gamara Mayor. This was
accomplished after a short but sharp fight in which Colin Campbell
participated. Sarrut's French division retired across the stream,
and the British troops occupied the ground from which the enemy had
been driven. Campbell thus describes the sequel:--"While we were
halted the enemy occupied Gamara Mayor in considerable force, placed
two guns at the principal entrance into the village, threw a cloud
of skirmishers in front among the cornfields, and occupied with six
pieces of artillery the heights immediately behind the village on
the left bank. About 5 P.M. an order arrived from Lord Wellington
to press the enemy in our front. It was the extreme right of their
line; and the lower road leading to France, by which alone they could
retire their artillery and baggage, ran close to Gamara Mayor. The
left brigade moved down in contiguous columns of companies, and our
light companies were sent to cover the right flank of this attack.
The regiments, exposed to a heavy fire of musketry and artillery,
did not take a musket from the shoulder until they carried the
village. The enemy brought forward his reserves, and made many
desperate efforts to retake the bridge, but could not succeed. This
was repeated until the bridge became so heaped with dead and wounded
that they were rolled over the parapet into the river below. Our
light companies were closed upon the Ninth, and brought into the
village to support the second brigade. We were presently ordered
to the left to cover that flank of the village, and we occupied the
bank of the river, on the opposite side of which was the enemy. After
three hours' hard fighting they retired, leaving their guns in our
possession. Crossing the Zadora in pursuit, we followed them about a
league, and encamped near Metanco." The French left and centre had
been driven in, and Graham had closed to the enemy their retreat
by the Bayonne road, so that there remained to them only the road
leading towards Pampeluna, which was all but utterly blocked by
vehicles and fugitives. In the words of one of themselves, the French
at Vittoria lost all their equipages, all their guns, all their
treasure, all their stores, all their papers, so that no man could
prove even how much pay was due to him; generals and subordinate
officers alike were reduced to the clothes on their backs, and most
of them were barefooted.

After the battle of Vittoria Graham moved forward to the investment
of San Sebastian. In itself before that battle the fortress was of
little account, but since then the French General Rey had used great
energy in restoring its powers of defence; and its garrison at the
beginning of Graham's operations reached a total of about three
thousand men. San Sebastian is situated on a peninsula jutting out
into the sea, and is connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus.
The western side of the peninsula is washed by the sea, the eastern
by the estuary of the river Urumea. At its northern extremity rose
the steep height of Monte Urgullo, the summit of which was occupied
by the castle of La Mota, a citadel of great strength, capable
of being defended after the town should have fallen. The town,
surrounded by a fortified _enceinte_, occupied the entire breadth
of the peninsula. The high curtain protecting it on the southern or
landward side had in front of it a large hornwork, with a ravelin
enclosed by a covered way and glacis. The east and west defences were
weak; along the eastern side the water of the Urumea estuary receded
at low tide for some distance from the foot of the wall, leaving
access thereto from the isthmus. At the neck of the peninsula, about
half a mile in advance of the town defences, was the height of San
Bartolomeo, near the eastern verge of which was the convent of the
same name. This building the French had fortified and had thrown up
a redoubt in connection with it, convent and redoubt forming the
advanced post of the garrison.

Graham was in command of the operations, his force amounting to
about ten thousand men. The obvious preliminary was the capture
of the redoubt and convent of San Bartolomeo. An attack on this
position, made on the 14th of July after an artillery preparation,
had failed with heavy loss. A second attempt made on the 17th was
more successful, three days of unintermitting artillery fire having
reduced the convent to ruins and silenced the redoubt. The attack
was made in two columns, the right one of which Colin Campbell
accompanied with his own, the light company. The chief fighting of
the day was done by his regiment, which stormed both convent and
redoubt and after some hard fighting drove the French out of the
adjacent suburb of San Martino and occupied what fire had spared
of it. In this affair the Ninth lost upwards of seventy officers
and soldiers. Campbell's laconic entry in his journal for this day
is simply, "Convent taken." But he must have distinguished himself
conspicuously, since in Graham's despatch to Lord Wellington, among
"the officers whose gallantry was most conspicuous in leading on
their men to overcome the variety of obstacles exposed to them" was
mentioned "Lieutenant Colin Campbell of the Ninth Foot."

The Commander-in-Chief desired judicious speed, and the operations
were hurried on unduly by men who were too impetuous to adhere to
the scheme sanctioned by their chief. After a four days' bombardment
of the place the assault was ordered for the early morning of the
25th. The storming-party consisted of a battalion of the Royals,
with the task of carrying the great breach; of the Thirty-Eighth,
told off to assail the lesser breach further to the right; and of
the Ninth, to act in support of the Royals. Colin Campbell had a
special position and a special duty, of a kind seldom entrusted to
a subaltern and markedly indicative of the estimation which he had
thus early earned. He was placed in the centre of the Royals with
twenty men of his (the light) company, having the light company
of the Royals as his immediate support and under his orders, and
accompanied by a ladder-party under an engineer officer. His specific
orders were on reaching the crest of the breach to gain the ramparts
on the left, sweep the curtain to the high work in the centre of the
main front, and there establish himself. The signal for an advance
to the assault was given prematurely, while it was still dark, by
the explosion of a mine, and the head of the storming-party moved
out of the trenches promptly but in straggling order. The space
between the exit from the parallel and the breach, some three hundred
yards, was very rugged, broken by projecting rocks, pools, seaweed
and other impediments. These difficulties, the darkness, and the
withering fire from the ramparts, increased the tendency to disorder,
and presently Campbell was not surprised to find an actual check.
The halted mass had opened fire and there was no moving it forward.
He pushed on past the halted body having there lost some men of
his detachment; and reached the breach, the lower part of which
he observed to be thickly strewn with killed and wounded. "There
were," to quote from his journal, "a few individual officers spread
on the face of the breach, but nothing more. These were cheering,
and gallantly exposing themselves to the close and destructive fire
directed on them from the round tower and other defences. In going up
I passed Jones of the Engineers[1] who was wounded; and on gaining
the top I was shot through the right hip and tumbled to the bottom.
Finding on rising that I was not disabled from moving, and observing
two officers of the Royals who were exerting themselves to lead some
of their men from under the line-wall near to the breach, I went
to assist their endeavours and again went up the breach with them,
when I was shot through the inside part of the left thigh." In the
language of the brilliant historian of the Peninsular War--"It was
in vain that Lieutenant Campbell, breaking through the tumultuous
crowd with the survivors of his chosen detachment, mounted the
ruins--twice he ascended, twice he was wounded, and all around him
died." The assault failed; and the siege of San Sebastian was
temporarily exchanged for a blockade. There was much angry discussion
and recrimination as to the causes of the disastrous issue. It was
remarked that no general or staff officer had quitted the trenches,
and that what leading there was devolved entirely on the regimental
officers. They, at least, had fought well and exposed themselves
freely, and none had behaved himself more gallantly than Colin
Campbell. This was heartily and handsomely acknowledged by Graham
when he thus wrote in his despatch to Lord Wellington describing
the assault:--"I beg to recommend to you Lieutenant Campbell of the
Ninth, who led the forlorn hope, and who was severely wounded in
the breach." Such a recognition, barren of immediate results though
it was, Colin Campbell probably thought cheaply earned at the cost
of a mere couple of bullet-holes. These, however, hindered him from
participating in the desperate fighting of the final and successful
assault on San Sebastian; and, indeed, when after the surrender of
the place his division departed, he had to remain an invalid in the
shattered town. He was now about to perpetrate the only breach of
military discipline ever laid to his charge. Having heard of the
early prospect of a battle, he and a brother officer who had also
been wounded took the liberty of deserting from hospital for the
purpose of joining their regiment. How long it took them to limp from
San Sebastian to Oryarzun is not specified; but they reached the
regiment on October 6th just in time to join the midnight march to
the left bank of the Bidassoa opposite Andaya, and on the following
morning to wade the river and enter France. The British cannonade
awoke the French to find their country invaded by an enemy and
hostile cannon-balls falling in their bivouacs.

From Andaya the division in which Colin Campbell marched sprang up
the slopes to assail the key of the position, the Croix des Bouquets.
To that stronghold reinforcements were hurrying, and attacks on it
had already been made in vain; "But," in the burning words of Napier,
"at this moment Cameron arrived with the Ninth regiment, and rushed
with great vehemence to the summit of the first height. The French
infantry opened ranks to let the guns retire, and then retreated
themselves at full speed to a second rise where they could only be
approached in a narrow front. Cameron quickly threw his men into
a single column and bore against this new position, which curving
inwards enabled the French to pour a concentrated fire upon his
regiment; nor did his violent course seem to dismay them until he
was within ten yards, when, appalled by the furious shout and charge
of the Ninth, they gave way and the ridges of the Croix des Bouquets
were won as far as the royal road." The regiment in this encounter
lost nearly one hundred men; and Colin Campbell, who commanded the
light company in its front, was now again severely wounded. The
breach of discipline he had committed in discharging himself from
the hospital his colonel condoned with no sterner punishment than
a severe reprimand, on account of his gallant conduct in the first
action fought on French soil.



CHAPTER II

COLONIAL AND HOME SERVICE


With the wound which struck him down on the Croix des Bouquets on the
7th of October 1813 Colin Campbell's active service in his original
regiment ended, and on the 9th of November in the same year he was
promoted to a captaincy without purchase in the Sixtieth Rifles.
Still enfeebled by his wounds, he came home before the end of the
year with the strongest recommendations to the Horse Guards from the
commanders under whom he had served in the field,--recommendations
which do not appear to have availed him materially. He made good
his claim to a temporary wound-pension of £100 a year, but the
application made on his behalf for staff-employment with Sir Thomas
Graham in Holland was not successful.

One would fain gain some introspection into the nature, character,
and tendencies of this young soldier, who in his twenty-first
year was already a veteran of war after more than five years of
pretty constant active service. It would be pleasant to have
opportunities for regarding him as something other than a mere
military lay-figure,--to attain to some conversance with his habits,
his tastes, his attitude towards his comrades, his relations with
his family, the character of such study and reading as he could find
time for, and so forth. But the means for doing this are altogether
lacking. Lord Clyde was a very modest man, and it was with reluctance
that he allowed his papers to be used for the purposes of a memoir.
He, however, left it by his will to the discretion of his trustees
to dispose of his papers, with the characteristic injunction: "If a
short memoir should appear to them to be absolutely necessary and
indispensable (which I should regret and hope may be avoided), then
it should be limited as much as possible to the modest recital of
the services of an old soldier." The trustees, seventeen years after
Lord Clyde's death, judged wisely in sanctioning the compilation of
a memoir, the material available for which was confided to the late
General Shadwell who had been long and intimately associated with
Lord Clyde both at home and on campaign. General Shadwell's biography
of his chief is a most careful and accurate work; but probably
because of a lack of such material as, for instance, familiar
correspondence affords, it somewhat fails to furnish an adequate
presentment of Colin Campbell as he was during the long years
before he emerged from comparative obscurity, and became gradually
a marked and characteristic figure familiar to and cherished by his
fellow-countrymen.

Campbell served with a battalion of the Sixtieth in Nova Scotia
from October, 1814, to July, 1815, when ill-health caused by his
wounds compelled him to return to Europe. After a course of thermal
treatment in southern France he served for two years at Gibraltar,
and early in 1819 followed to Barbadoes the Twenty-First Fusiliers
to which regiment he had been transferred. The next seven years
of his life he passed in the West Indies,--the first two years
of the seven in Barbadoes, the latter five in Demerara, where he
served as aide-de-camp and brigade-major to the Governor, General
Murray. The tropical climate of the West Indies agreed with him,
and notwithstanding recrudescences of Walcheren fever and frequent
annoyances from his wounds he was able to enjoy life and relish
the society of the colony. During his soldiering in Spain he and
his friend and comrade Seward had perforce lived on their pay,
and had firmly avoided incurring debt. With his captain's pay
and his wound-pension Campbell found himself no longer obliged
to live penuriously, and indeed was able to assist his father
by a considerable annual payment. And now in Demerara with his
staff-appointment he was so well off that, in his disregard for
money, he carelessly allowed his pension to lapse, a neglect which
he had bitter reason to regret later. His friend General Murray was
succeeded in the Demerara command by General Sir Benjamin D'Urban, a
distinguished Peninsular officer, between whom and his brigade-major
there was speedily engendered a mutual esteem and affection.
Probably, indeed, those years in Demerara were the pleasantest of
Colin Campbell's life. Comfortable (and we may be sure efficient) in
his staff-position, and the right hand man of a chief who loved him,
he was happy in his regiment and welcome everywhere in society. When
in November, 1825, the opportunity presented itself for his promotion
by purchase to a majority in his regiment, it was the spontaneous
generosity of a colonial friend which mainly enabled him to buy the
step. The promotion was of the greatest professional importance to
him, and indeed may be considered the turning-point of his career;
but it required him to vacate his pleasant appointment and to take
leave of the chief whose friendship he so warmly cherished. Returning
to England in 1826 to join the depôt of his regiment, he took home
with him the strongest recommendations from Sir Benjamin D'Urban to
the authorities at the Horse Guards; but he continued to serve with
his regiment at home until the autumn of 1832 in the rank of major,
although through the kindness of a relative the money was ready for
the purchase of his promotion to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

General Shadwell furnishes us with an interesting sketch of Colin
Campbell's personal aspect from a portrait taken of him in his
uniform at this period of his career. "A profusion of curly brown
hair, a well-shaped mouth and a wide brow, already foreshadowing the
deep lines which became so marked a feature of his countenance in
later years, convey the idea of manliness and vigour. His height was
about five feet nine, his frame well knit and powerful; and but that
his shoulders were too broad for his height, his figure was that of a
symmetrically-made man. To an agreeable presence he added the charm
of engaging manners, which, according to the testimony of those who
were familiar with him at this period, rendered him popular both at
the dinner-table and in the drawing-room."

After several disappointments, in October, 1832, through the good
offices of Lord Fitzroy Somerset he was gazetted to an unattached
lieutenant-colonelcy by purchase. The promotion cost him £1300
and relegated him for a time to half-pay, "after," to use his own
words, "a period of nearly twenty-five years on full pay--viz.
upwards of five years as a subaltern, nearly thirteen as captain,
and seven as major." His time being now at his own disposal, his
active and energetic temperament would not allow him to vegetate
in idleness. He determined to watch the operations of the siege of
Antwerp conducted by a French force under Marshal Gérard against
the resolute but scanty Dutch garrison, which under the energetic
command of General Chassé was holding the citadel and outworks of
the historic Flemish city. He kept a detailed and technical journal
of the siege operations and of Chassé's obstinate defence, from
which he compiled reports for the Horse Guards; and for these he was
afterwards thanked by Lord Hill and Lord Fitzroy Somerset. It was an
experience which must have been of service to him when he came to
hold high command; as he wrote at the time, "To have been present at
and to have witnessed the operations of a siege commenced and carried
on _en règle_ to the crowning of the crest of the glacis, and the
establishment of the breaching and counter batteries thereon and the
descent of the ditch completed, has given me great satisfaction."
After the capitulation of Antwerp Campbell wintered in the quaint
old city of Marburg in Hesse-Cassel, with the twofold purpose of
acquiring the German language and of living economically. The summer
and autumn of 1833 he spent in Germany, but was in England during
most of 1834 undergoing disappointment after disappointment. His
means he found wholly inadequate for a London life, yet it was
clear that it would be unwise to absent himself from proximity to
the authorities. "Doing nothing and expecting nothing" is one dreary
note of this period. Indeed inaction, which he detested, and the
dregs in his constitution of the old pestilential Walcheren mischief,
were combining to make Colin Campbell morbid and desponding. Yet,
considering all things, he had attained better advancement than many
of his old Peninsular comrades. Take, for example, George Bell of
the Royals, a fellow subaltern with Campbell in Hay's brigade of
Graham's corps in the Vittoria campaign. Bell was a younger soldier
than Campbell by three years, but he had seen infinitely more
service than his senior. Bell "was engaged in the action of Arroyo
de Molino, the final siege of Badajos, capture of Fort Napoleon and
bridge at Almaraz, in the retreat from Burgos and Madrid, the battles
of Vittoria, the Pyrenees, Pass of Maya and Roncevalles, the Nive,
Bayonne, St. Pierre, Orthes, Tarbes, and Toulouse, with many other
affairs and skirmishes; and he possessed the Peninsular War medal
with seven clasps for as many pitched battles." Since the Peninsular
War he had fought in India and the Burmese War and had served in the
West Indies. And whereas Colin Campbell was a lieutenant-colonel
in 1832 George Bell was still a captain in 1839. To complete the
contrast, while Campbell was a peer and a full general in the middle
of 1858 Bell was still a colonel, after having fought throughout the
Crimean War in the command of a battalion. If the former despaired
of fortune when a lieutenant-colonel after twenty-seven years of
service, how bitterly must the latter have known the hope deferred
that maketh the heart sick when still a colonel after forty-eight
years of continuous service!

In the early part of 1835 Colin Campbell, still despondent, was
in London "living in very scanty hopes of employment." But in
May of that year he was offered and accepted the command of the
Ninety-Eighth regiment. Its service companies were at the Cape, but
as the regiment had nearly completed its period of foreign service
it was finally determined that it was not necessary that he should
join it there. How poor he was when he had the good fortune to revert
to full-pay, may be gathered from his hesitation to become a member
of the United Service Club. "My debts and embarrassments" he records
"indisposed me to entering it;" but a wise friend insisted upon his
taking up his election and backed his insistence by advancing the
entrance fees. The depôt of the Ninety-Eighth was at Devonport,
commanded by Captain Henry Eyre, afterwards General, and Colonel of
the Fifty-Ninth regiment; an officer between whom and Colin Campbell
there soon began a friendship which ripened into a most affectionate
and enduring intimacy. By dint of questioning this officer regarding
the minutest details of the regiment, its new chief was already
familiar with its interior economy before its arrival at Portsmouth
in the summer of 1837. He then assumed command, and at once set about
putting in practice the sound principles on which he himself had been
trained in the Ninth regiment,--principles which were the legacy of
Sir John Moore to the British army. In the camp at Shorncliffe that
great soldier had introduced a system of instruction and interior
economy which, in the words of General Shadwell, had produced in the
regiments serving under his command an excellence that had borne the
test of trial in the varied phases of the great Peninsular struggle,
and had left a permanent mark on the service at large. Campbell's
anxious and successful endeavour was to make the Ninety-Eighth a
well disciplined, thoroughly instructed and trustworthy regiment.
The material to his hand was good. He found the depôt in fine order;
the service companies brought home by Major Gregory required merely
the weeding out of some hard drinkers whose example was prejudicial
to the younger soldiers and whom the colonel was able to obtain
permission to discharge.

Colin Campbell had a genuine liking for and a thorough knowledge of
the private soldier. Throughout life he was by no means slow to wrath
when occasion stirred it, and sometimes, indeed, when the incentive
was inadequate, for hot Highland blood ran in his veins; and when
his face flushed and his gray eyes scintillated with passion, he was
not a man with whom it were wise to argue. The slack officer and the
bad soldier found no sympathy from a chief whose rebukes were strong
and whose punishments were stern; but he had a true comradeship with
those in whom he recognised some of that zeal of which he himself
had perhaps an excess. Himself ever sedulous in the fulfilment of
duty and sparing himself in nothing, he required of his officers a
scrupulous attention to their duties in everything regarding the
instruction, well-being, and conduct of their men. General Shadwell
writes: "Frugal in his habits by nature and force of circumstances,
Colonel Campbell laid stress on the observance of economy in the
officers' mess, believing a well-ordered establishment of this
kind to be the best index of a good regiment. Regarding the mess
as one of the principal levers of discipline, he made a rule of
attending it even when the frequent return of his fever and ague
rendered late dinners a physical discomfort. Cramped in his means,
he denied himself many little comforts in order that he might
have the wherewithal to return hospitality and be able to set an
example to his brother officers in the punctual discharge of his
mess liabilities. His intercourse with his officers off duty was
unrestrained and of the most friendly character. He sympathised with
them in their occupations and sports, and though the instruction and
discipline of the regiment was carried on with great strictness, the
best feeling pervaded all ranks."

In the ordinary tour of duty the Ninety-Eighth removed from
Portsmouth to Weedon, and thence it proceeded to Manchester which
was in what was then known as the Northern District command, now
subdivided into the North-Eastern and North-Western Districts. In
those days there were no railways, and the long marches by road,
in many respects advantageous though they were, and worthy as they
are, at least to some extent, of being reverted to at present,
certainly tested severely the discipline of regiments. An officer
who took part in the marches of the Ninety-Eighth thus records his
recollections:--"The regiment was in such a high state of discipline
in these marches through the length and breadth of the land, that
none of those occurrences which have since been the subject of
complaint took place. Day after day I had seen the regiment turn out
without a man missing; and drunkenness was very trifling considering
how popular the army then was, and how liberally the men were
treated. The fact was that Colin Campbell appealed to the reason and
feelings of his men, and made it a point of honour with them to be
present and sober in their billets at tattoo and at morning parade
for the march. He could invite, as well as compel obedience."

In April, 1839, the command of the troops in the Northern District,
which then comprised eleven counties, was entrusted to Sir Charles
Napier. For some time previous the disquiet among the manufacturing
population in this wide region had occasioned great anxiety to
the Government; and it seemed that the Chartist movement might
culminate in actual insurrection. An outbreak was apprehended almost
momentarily, and might occur at any point; so that all over the north
magistrates were nervously calling for military protection. Napier
had at his disposition a force of barely four thousand men; and those
were so dispersed that on assuming command he found them broken up
into no fewer than twenty-six detachments, spread over half England.
Those scattered handfuls of soldiers were worse than useless; their
weakness was dangerous and actually invited to mischief. Fortified by
the cordial support of the Home Secretary Napier insisted on three
points: the concentration of his troops, and, where detachments had
to be granted, proper quarters for them so as to keep the soldiers
together; that magistrates instead of clamouring for troops should
rally loyal citizens around them for self-defence; that the army was
to be regarded as a force of ultimate reserve, and that therefore it
was the duty of Government to establish throughout the country a
strong police force,--a measure which was soon to be dealt with by
Sir Robert Peel.

Napier had been in command of the district for some three months
before he and Colin Campbell met, although in the interval they had
corresponded officially and thus may have come to know something
of each other. Napier, at least, had gauged the character of his
subordinate officer. In July he had ordered the Ninety-Eighth from
Hull to Newcastle-on-Tyne. Things were then at about their worst,
and Napier wrote: "Great anxiety about the colliers in the north.
I have sent Campbell, Ninety-Eighth, there from Hull. The colliers
had better be quiet; they will have a hardy soldier to deal with;
yet he will be gentle and just, or he should not be there." During
its march the Ninety-Eighth was halted in billets over Sunday in
York. It chanced that Napier during a tour of inspection arrived
there by coach about noon, and alighted at the inn where the hurried
coach-dinner was served. Ascertaining that Colonel Campbell was
quartered in the house, the General promptly introduced himself.
Mentioning the number of minutes allotted for the meal, he asked
if it would be possible to collect the men under arms before the
coach went on. With perfect confidence Colin Campbell replied in
the affirmative. The "assembly" was sounded; and as the men were
gathering from their billets Napier, as he ate, cross-examined the
colonel of the Ninety-Eighth regarding the internal economy of the
regiment. He then inspected the troops, and on finishing the last
company as the horses were being put to, he mounted the box with
the remark, "That's what I call inspecting a regiment." "It was,"
comments General Shadwell, "what some commanding officers might term
sharp practice; but it was a satisfactory test of the discipline
and order which Colin Campbell had perfected in the Ninety-Eighth."
And he adds that this hurried meeting "formed an important epoch
in Campbell's career. From that moment he conceived an esteem and
respect for the noble soldier under whose command he had been so
fortunate as to find himself placed, sentiments which speedily
developed into a feeling of affectionate regard well-nigh amounting
to veneration."

The arrival of the regiment at Newcastle was welcomed by the
magistrates, colliery owners, and county gentlemen of Northumberland,
who in their apprehension of a Chartist rising leaned upon its
commanding officer for the maintenance of order. At no period of
his career did Colin Campbell evince greater wisdom and shrewdness
than during this critical and sensitive time. Neither rash nor
weak, he reassured the apprehensive and awed the disaffected. He
visited in person many of the Chartist meetings, and was not slow to
discern that the movement included a large proportion of supporters
who advocated moral in preference to physical methods for the
accomplishment of their objects. He became convinced that no serious
rising would take place, yet he took every precaution to meet such a
contingency. The regiment was carefully trained in street firing, and
such dispositions as would be requisite in the event of the troops
being called upon to act were sedulously practised. The Ninety-Eighth
were loyal to a man, and their discipline was faultless. Once the
Chartists seized a drummer-boy of the regiment and forced him to
beat his drum at the head of a procession. The cry rose that the
soldiers were fraternising with the mob and a magistrate hurried
to the barracks with the ominous tidings. Campbell immediately
answered--"Come, and I will show how the soldiers feel in the matter,
midnight though it is!" Ordering the bugler to sound the "assembly"
he took the magistrate into the barrack-yard. From the barrack-rooms
came rushing out the soldiers armed and accoutred, venting vehement
imprecations on the malcontents; and Campbell grimly called the
magistrate's attention to the wholesome views expressed by a local
"Geordie" of the regiment, who frankly signified his readiness to
"stick his own grandmother if she were out." But midnight _alertes_
on scant provocation Campbell steadfastly discountenanced. His most
sedulous care was for the health of his men. He habitually dispensed
with all superfluous and needless guards, and he resolutely cut down
sentry-duty which he did not consider absolutely necessary for the
protection of public property or the requirements of the service.
In this solicitude for the well-being of the soldier Campbell was
stoutly upheld by Sir Charles Napier. Holding though he did to
his conviction that no rising would occur, he nevertheless could
not resist an urgent application from the magistracy of Durham
for military assistance, and he took upon himself to despatch a
detachment to that town, reporting his having done so to the general
commanding the district. Napier approved of his conduct, but enjoined
on him the exaction from the Durham authorities of the stipulation
specified in the following terms:--"If the detachment is to remain
at Durham, the magistrates must furnish a barrack with everything
requisite for the men, and this barrack must be so situated that
the communication with the open country can be maintained--that
is to say, on the outskirt of the town. It must also be perfectly
comfortable for the soldiers, and the officers' quarters attached
to it. Unless these conditions be complied with, you must inform
the magistrates that I must positively order the detachment back to
Newcastle. I will not have troops in billets."

The disaffection in the north gradually died down as Colin Campbell
had prognosticated; and his wise and judicious conduct during the
troublous time was fully acknowledged by the authorities. From the
Home Office came the following approval of his behaviour. "Lord John
Russell desires to express to you the satisfaction he has received
from the report of the Newcastle-on-Tyne magistrates of the prompt
and valuable services which you have constantly rendered them since
the commencement of their intercourse with you. Lord John Russell
has not failed to make known to Lord Hill" (the Commander-in-Chief)
"the testimony borne by the magistrates to your valuable services,
and Lord John requests that you will accept his best thanks for your
exertions, and for the zeal manifested by you in supporting the Civil
authorities, and in the preservation of the public peace." Lord
Fitzroy Somerset conveyed to Campbell Lord Hill's satisfaction in
learning that "his conduct had met with the unqualified approbation
of Her Majesty's Government;" and the magistrates of the county
tendered him their acknowledgment of the cordial and efficient manner
in which he and the troops under his command had co-operated with
the civil power in the preservation of the public peace.

It is the experience of all soldiers that a regiment broken up in
detachments tends to fall into slackness as well in discipline as
in drill. But throughout his command of the Ninety-Eighth Colin
Campbell had the invaluable advantage of having exceptionally good
and zealous officers serving under him. Alike at headquarters and on
detachment discipline was rigid without being unduly severe; and when
the regiment was together at Newcastle its drill was admirable,--"so
steady, so perfect in battalion movements, so rapid and intelligent
in light-infantry exercise." It was when the regiment was stationed
at Newcastle that Campbell taught it to advance firing in line, which
was a specially difficult movement with the old muzzle-loader of
the period, but which on two subsequent occasions he brought into
practice against the enemy with particularly advantageous results.

The Ninety-Eighth had been serving for more than two years in
the Northern District, and a move was imminent in the summer of
1841. But it would seem to have been considered that the regiment
before leaving the north should receive new colours, and those were
presented to it by Sir Charles Napier on the 12th of May on the
Newcastle racecourse in presence of a great assemblage gathered to
witness the ceremony. Sir Charles addressed the regiment in a long
oration in the true Napier vein, in the course of which he paid
an almost ruthless compliment to Colin Campbell. The episode, if
somewhat theatrical, must have had a stirring effect. In the course
of his address the General said: "Of the abilities for command which
your chief possesses, your own magnificent regiment is a proof. Of
his gallantry in action hear what history says, for I like to read to
you of such deeds and of such men; it stimulates young soldiers to
deeds of similar daring." Then he read from his brother's _History
of the Peninsular War_ the account of Lieutenant Campbell's conduct
in the breach of San Sebastian: "'Major Fraser,'" he read in his
sonorous tones, "'was killed in the flaming ruins; the intrepid
Jones stood there a while longer amidst a few heroic soldiers hoping
for aid; but none came, and he and those with him were struck down.
The engineer Machel had been killed early, and the men bearing the
ladders fell or were dispersed. Thus the rear of the column was in
absolute confusion before the head was beaten. It was in vain that
Colonel Greville of the Thirty-Eighth, Colonel Cameron of the Ninth,
Captain Archimbeau of the Royals, and many other regimental officers,
exerted themselves to rally their disciplined troops and refill the
breach; it was in vain that Lieutenant Campbell, breaking through
the tumultuous crowd with the survivors of his chosen detachment,
mounted the ruins--twice he ascended, twice he was wounded, and all
around him died.' There," continued Sir Charles--"there stands the
Lieutenant Campbell of whom I have been reading; and well I know
that, if need be, the soldiers of the Ninety-Eighth will follow him
as boldly as did those gallant men of the glorious Ninth who fell
fighting around him in the breaches of San Sebastian!"

In July the Ninety-Eighth left Newcastle for Ireland, where, however,
it remained only a few months, its term of home service being nearly
completed. The original intention was that it should be sent to the
Mauritius. Colin Campbell worked hard to have its destination altered
to Bermuda, in the belief that the strained relations then existing
between Great Britain and the United States would result in war, in
which event the regiment at Bermuda would be advantageously situated.
But the roster of service, he found, could not be dislocated to meet
his desire; and all that he could accomplish was the permission
on arrival at Mauritius to effect an exchange with the officer
commanding the Eighty-Seventh, then garrisoning the island, should
that officer desire to remain there, and to return to Great Britain
in command of that regiment. Later he had reason to believe that the
Ninety-Eighth was intended for service in China; but that this was so
he did not ascertain for certain until the middle of October, when he
was informed that the service companies were destined to take part in
the hostilities against China which had been in progress with more
or less vigour for the last two years, and which were intended to be
prosecuted to a final issue when Lord Ellenborough, in the beginning
of 1842, should succeed Lord Auckland as Governor-General of India.



CHAPTER III

CHINA AND INDIA


The Ninety-Eighth had been moved to Plymouth in anticipation of
departure on foreign service, and on the 20th of December, 1841,
it embarked for Hong-Kong on H.M.S. _Belleisle_, a line-of-battle
ship which had been commissioned for transport service. According to
present ideas the _Belleisle_, whose burden did not exceed 1750 tons,
was abominably overcrowded, especially for a voyage of six months
or longer. The Ninety-Eighth embarked eight hundred and ten strong;
and what with staff officers, details, women and children and crew,
the ship carried a total of nearly thirteen hundred souls. Among her
passengers was Major-General Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont,
who was going out as second in command of the Chinese expeditionary
force. During a short stay in Simon's Bay Colin Campbell had the
pleasant opportunity of visiting his old Demerara chief Sir Benjamin
D'Urban, who since they last met had served a term of office as
Governor of Cape Colony, and was now living in retirement among his
orchards and vineyards a few miles from Cape Town. The _Belleisle_
made a fairly quick voyage to Hong-Kong, where she arrived on June
2nd, 1842, and where orders were awaiting the Ninety-Eighth to make
all haste to join the force of Sir Hugh Gough operating in the region
of the estuary of the Yang-tse-Kiang. Active hostilities had for some
time previously been in progress. After the capture of the town of
Chapoo on May 18th the fleet carrying the expeditionary force had
proceeded to an anchorage off the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang, where
it lay for a fortnight while the bar was being surveyed and buoyed.
The Chinese had constructed a great line of defensive works about
Woosung, but the British fleet anchored in face of the batteries on
the 16th of June, and as the result of a two hours' bombardment the
Chinese fire was crushed and the garrisons were driven from their
batteries by the sailors and troops. Shanghai was occupied, and
the expedition remained in the vicinity of Woosung while surveying
steamers were prospecting the river. It was during this halt that the
_Belleisle_ with the Ninety-Eighth aboard joined the expeditionary
force at Woosung on the 21st of June. The regiment was assigned to
the first brigade under Lord Saltoun, and occupied part of the third
division of vessels during the ascent of the river.

The expedition left Woosung on July 6th, its objectives being the
great cities of Chin-Kiang and Nanking. The strength of it was
overwhelming, for the fleet consisted of fifteen ships of war,
ten steamers and fifty transports and troop-ships, on which were
embarked nine thousand soldiers and three thousand disciplined
seamen ready for service on shore in case of need. The _Belleisle_
was off Chin-Kiang on the 19th, and on the morning of the 21st
the troops disembarked in three brigades. The columns of Sir Hugh
Gough and General Schoedde had some hard fighting with the Tartar
garrison of the city commanded by the gallant Haeling. Lord Saltoun's
brigade, with the Ninety-Eighth in advance, marched against a Chinese
force occupying a low ridge some miles inland and to westward of
the city. The opposition encountered was trivial, and was easily
overcome by the light company of the Ninety-Eighth in skirmishing
order supported by a few discharges from a mountain-battery. But
the regiment, debilitated as it was by a long tropical voyage in
an overcrowded ship, unsupplied with an equipment suitable for the
climate and wearing its ordinary European clothing, was in no case
to resist the fierce summer-heat of China. The sun had its will of
the men, thirteen of whom died on the ground; and Colin Campbell,
seasoned veteran as he was, was himself struck down, though he soon
recovered. From this day forth for months, and even for years,
disease maintained its fell grip on the victims of overcrowding,
and Napier would have been puzzled to recognise in the shattered
invalids of Hong-Kong the "beautiful regiment" which had sailed from
Plymouth in fine physique and high heart. On the night following
the disembarkation several cases of cholera occurred, and fever and
dysentery became immediately prevalent. Within ten days from the
landing at Chin-Kiang fifty-three men of the Ninety-Eighth had died,
and the _Belleisle_ was rapidly becoming a floating hospital.

A garrison was left in Chin-Kiang, and on August 4th the _Cornwallis_
man-of-war anchored in front of that very gate of Nanking which
twenty-six years earlier had been rudely shut in the face of a
British ambassador. Opposite that same gate it was destined that
severe terms should now be dictated by a victorious British
force. The mass of the expedition reached Nanking on the 9th and
preparations for the attack on that city were promptly begun.
The Ninety-Eighth men fit for service were transferred from the
_Belleisle_ to a steamer which conveyed them to a point where a
diversion was intended. Colin Campbell was too ill to accompany
his regiment, and when he joined it a few days later he was again
prostrated by fever. But Nanking escaped its imminent fate.
Negotiations resulted in a treaty of peace which was concluded on
August 26th; the expedition retraced its steps, and in October the
_Belleisle_ reached Hong-Kong with the wreck of the unfortunate
regiment. Even after those long months fate still kept imprisoned
on ship-board what remained of the hapless Ninety-Eighth. The
regiment had to remain on the _Belleisle_ until barracks could be
built for its reception. Writing to his sister in December, Colin
Campbell had the following sad tale to tell:--"The regiment has
lost by death up to this date two hundred and eighty-three men, and
there are still two hundred and thirty-one sick, of whom some fifty
or sixty will die; and generally, of those who may survive, there
will be some seventy or eighty men to be discharged in consequence
of their constitutions having been so completely broken down as to
unfit them for the duties of soldiers. This is the history of the
Ninety-Eighth regiment, which sailed from Plymouth in so effective a
state in all respects on the 20th of December of last year--and all
this destruction without having lost a man by the fire of the enemy!"
His estimate of the losses, grave as it was, did not reach the grim
actual total. From its landing at Chin-Kiang on July 21st, 1842,
up to February, 1844, a period of nineteen months, the unfortunate
regiment lost by death alone four hundred and thirty-two out of a
strength of seven hundred and sixty-six non-commissioned officers and
men; and there remained of it alive no more than three hundred and
thirty-four, an awful contrast to the full numbers with which it had
embarked at Plymouth twenty-six months earlier.

When the expeditionary force was broken up at the end of 1842 Colin
Campbell became commandant of the island of Hong-Kong, and he devoted
himself to the care of the survivors of his regiment. The worst cases
were sent to a hospital ship, those less serious to a temporary
hospital on shore. The remainder of the corps, some three hundred and
thirty men, at last, in February, 1843, quitted the _Belleisle_ and
occupied quarters at Stanley. While at Hong-Kong he learned that he
had been made a Companion of the Bath and aide-de-camp to the Queen,
the latter appointment conferring promotion to the rank of colonel.
In January, 1844, he left Hong-Kong to succeed General Schoedde in
command of the garrison quartered on the Island of Chusan, a transfer
which gave him the position of brigadier of the second class. In the
more bracing and salubrious climate of Chusan Campbell materially
regained his health; and he had not been many months in his new
command when he began his efforts to have the Ninety-Eighth removed
from its unhealthy quarters in Hong-Kong to the reinvigorating
atmosphere of Chusan. This he was able to accomplish in the earlier
months of 1845, and he immediately set about the restoration of the
regiment to its former efficiency. He was a rigorous task-master, but
if he did not spare others he never spared himself. He seldom missed
a parade, and except in the hot season there were three parades a
day. Leave of absence except on medical certificate was refused to
officers who had come from England with the regiment, on the ground
that their experience was needed to instruct the comparatively raw
material from the depôt. The officers of the Ninety-Eighth who
belonged to the garrison staff were also required to perform their
regimental duty. The painstaking and laborious chief thus notes in
his journal the progress of the regiment in the midsummer of 1845:
"Parade as usual morning and evening; men improving, but still in
great want of individual correctness in carriage, facings, motions
of the firelock, etc.; but they move in line and open column very
fairly, and I confidently expect before the end of the year to have
them more perfect than any battalion in this part of the world." When
toward the close of the year the health of the regiment was fully
re-established, its colonel conceived that it should undergo higher
tests than the ordinary movements of the drill-ground afforded. He
accordingly took it out into the open country and divided it into an
attacking and a defending force, in order to train the men in the
art of taking cover and skill in skirmishes over broken ground. By
the beginning of 1846 he was "quite at ease as to the appearance the
regiment would make on landing in India."

The time fixed by the treaty of Nanking for the evacuation of the
island of Chusan by the British troops was now approaching, and
on May 10th the Chinese authorities resumed jurisdiction over the
island. Until then Campbell's duties had not been purely military,
the entire civil charge of Chusan having been vested in his hands.
The most friendly relations existed between the British Brigadier and
the Chinese Commissioners. Arrangements were made without a trace
of friction for the preservation of the European burial-grounds
and in regard to other matters. Campbell was the recipient of an
interesting letter from the Commissioners, passages in which deserve
to be quoted:--"While observing and maintaining the treaty, you
have behaved with the utmost kindness and the greatest liberality
towards our own people, and have restrained by strict regulations
the military of your honourable country.... The very cottagers have
enjoyed tranquillity and protection, and have not been exposed to
the calamity of wandering about without a home. All this is owing
to the excellent and vigorous administration of you, the Honourable
Brigadier.... Now that you are about to return to your own country
crowned with honour, we wish you every happiness."

Notwithstanding occasional attacks of ague which rendered him
liable to depression and irritation, Campbell appears to have been
fairly happy during his stay in Chusan. He writes on the eve of his
departure of "'my last walk' in Chusan, where I have passed many days
in quiet and peace, and where I have been enabled to save a little
money, with which I hope to render my last days somewhat comfortable.
My health upon the whole is pretty good; and altogether I have every
reason to be thankful to God for sending me to a situation wherein
I have been enabled to accomplish so much for my own benefit and
the comfort of others, whilst my duty kept me absent from them."
The latter allusion was to his father and sister, for both of whom
he had been able to make provision in the event of his predeceasing
them. Having left England heavily embarrassed, the increase of his
emoluments during his stay in China had enabled him to relieve
himself of liabilities, and this without being at all niggardly in
the hospitalities which he dispensed.

Sailing from Chusan on July 5th in the transport _Lord Hungerford_,
the colonel and headquarters of the Ninety-Eighth landed at Calcutta
on October 24th, 1846; the last of the detachments carried by
other transports arrived at the end of November, when the regiment
was complete. Colin Campbell meanwhile had been in charge of
Fort-William, but when the regiment began its march to Dinapore
in December he resumed its command. He really seemed to live for
the Ninety-Eighth. Lord Hardinge had expressed his intention of
appointing him a brigadier of the second class. "This," writes
Campbell, "is very flattering; but I would prefer to remain with
my regiment." He writes with soldierly pride of its conduct on the
route-march: "The march of the regiment has been conducted to my
entire satisfaction, no men falling out, and the distance of sections
so correctly preserved that their wheeling into line is like the
operation of a field-day. Those who follow me will benefit by this
order and regularity in conducting the line of march." On arrival at
Dinapore in the end of January, 1846, he found his appointment in
general orders as brigadier of the second class to command at Lahore.
Before starting for his new sphere he held what proved to be his last
inspection of the Ninety-Eighth. "Men steady as rocks," he writes,
"moving by bugle-sound as correctly as by word of command--equally
steady, accurate, and with the same precision." In the evening he
spoke to the regiment some simple manly, soldierly words, to which
the men must have listened with no little emotion. He dined with
the mess the same night, when the president rose and proposed his
health in connection with the day's inspection of the regiment and
the exertions he had made as commanding officer to produce such
results. "The toast," he wrote, "was received with great warmth and
cordiality.... I could not speak without emotion, and my manner could
not conceal my deep anxiety respecting a corps in which I had served
so long. I begged that, if their old colonel had been sometimes
anxious and impatient with them, they would forget the manner and
impatience of one who had no other thought or object in life but to
add to their honour and reputation collectively and individually."

Next day he started for Lahore, "feeling," as he records in his
restrained yet sincere manner, "more than I expected when taking
leave of the officers who happened to be at my quarters at the
moment of my departure." He had a pleasant meeting at Cawnpore with
his old West Indian comrades of the Twenty-First Fusiliers; and on
the road between Kurnal and Meerut he had an interview with the
Governor-General. Lord Hardinge received him with the frank kindness
of an old Peninsular man to a comrade, described Henry Lawrence, the
British Resident in the Punjaub, as "the King of the country, clever
and good-natured, but hot-tempered," and gave Campbell to understand
that if any part of the force in the Punjaub should be called upon
to take the field, he should have a command. A few days later he
reached Saharunpore, the headquarters for the time of Lord Gough, the
Commander-in-Chief, also an old Peninsular man, whom he found most
cordial and friendly. The old Chief asked him whether he could be of
any service to him. Colin Campbell, sedulous as ever for the welfare
of the Ninety-Eighth, replied that he had no favour to ask for
himself, but that his lordship would give him pleasure by removing
his regiment nearer to the frontier as early as might be, away from
its present station which afforded the men so many temptations to
drink. On his arrival at Lahore in the end of February, 1847, he was
cordially received by Henry Lawrence, whose guest at the Residency he
became until he should find accommodation for himself.

Campbell came into the Punjaub at a very interesting period. The
issue of the war of 1845-46 had placed that vast territory at the
mercy of the British Government, and Lord Hardinge might have
incorporated it with the Company's dominions. But he desired to
avoid the last resource of annexation; and although he considered it
necessary to punish the Sikh nation for past offences and to prevent
the recurrence of aggression, he professed his intention to perform
those duties without suppressing the political existence of the
Punjaub State. The Treaty of Lahore accorded a nominally independent
sovereignty to the boy Prince Dhulip Singh, a British Representative
was in residence at Lahore, and the Sikh army was being reorganised
and limited to a specified strength. Within a few months Lall
Singh, who had been appointed Prime Minister, had been deposed, and
a fresh treaty was signed in December, 1846, which provided that
a council of regency composed of eight leading Sikh chiefs should
be appointed to act under the control and guidance of the British
Resident, who was to exercise unlimited influence in all matters of
internal administration and external policy. British troops were to
be stationed in various forts and quarters throughout the country,
maintained from the revenues of the State. The management was to
continue for eight years until the Maharaja Dhulip Singh should reach
his majority. The treaty conferred on the Resident unprecedented
powers, and Major Henry Lawrence, an officer of the Company's
artillery, became in effect the successor of Runjeet Singh.

This settlement had a specious aspect of some measure of permanency.
It might have lasted longer if the state of his health had enabled
Henry Lawrence to remain at his post; but it was unsound at the core,
for a valiant and turbulent race does not bow the neck submissively
after a single disastrous campaign on its frontier. But the Punjaub
seemed in a state of unruffled peace when Colin Campbell shook hands
with Henry Lawrence in the Residency of its capital. In those days
the familiar _sobriquet_ of "Kubhur-dar," of which the English is
"Take care!", had not attached itself to him; but Campbell, even
when his Highland blood was aflame in the rapture of actual battle,
was never either reckless or careless; and the motto "Be Mindful,"
which he chose for his coat of arms when he was made a peer, was
simply a condensation of the principles of cool wisdom and shrewd
caution on which he acted through life. A strong Sikh force, he
found, was located in and about Lahore, and the population of the
city had a name for turbulence. In order to inform himself as to how
the troops were posted in relation to the defences of the city, as
well against an interior as an exterior attack, one of his earliest
concerns was to make a careful inspection of the positions along with
the responsible engineer. In choosing his residence he held it to be
his duty to have it in the proximity of his troops. Soon after his
arrival there was a _fête_ in the Shalimar gardens to which all the
garrison had been invited, but he allowed only half of the officers
of his command to be absent from their men, giving as his reason
that "if the Sikhs wanted to murder all the officers, they could not
have a better chance than when these were gathered four miles away
from their men, enjoying themselves at a _fête_." In the measures of
precaution which he adopted he had the approval of Henry Lawrence and
of Sir Charles Napier, to the latter of whom he wrote on the subject.
Napier expressed himself in his trenchant fashion:--"I am delighted
at all your precautions against surprise. In India we who take these
pains are reckoned cowards. Be assured that English officers think
it a fine dashing thing to be surprised--to take no precautions.
Formerly it was an axiom in war that no man was fit to be a commander
who permitted himself to be surprised; but things are on a more noble
footing now!"

In the end of 1847 Henry Lawrence left Lahore and went home to
England in the same ship with Lord Hardinge. A week before they
sailed from Calcutta Hardinge's successor, Lord Dalhousie, arrived
there and took the oaths as Governor-General,--a potentate at whose
hands a few years later Colin Campbell was to receive treatment
which caused the high-spirited soldier to resign the command he held
and leave India. In the Lahore Residency Henry Lawrence was succeeded
temporarily by his brother John, who in March, 1848, gave place to
Sir Frederick Currie, a member of the Supreme Council. The position
was one which required the experience and military knowledge of a
soldier, but Sir Frederick Currie was a civilian. In January Sir
John Littler had been succeeded in the Punjaub divisional command
by Major-General Whish, an officer of the Company's service, an
appointment which disappointed Colin Campbell who had hoped for the
independent command of the Lahore brigade.

The deceptive quietude of the Punjaub was now to be exposed. When
Sir Frederick Currie reached Lahore, he found there Moolraj the
Governor of Mooltan, a man of vast wealth who had come to offer the
resignation of his position for reasons that were chiefly personal.
Moolraj stipulated for some conditions which were not conceded, and
ultimately he resigned without any other condition than that of
saving his honour in the eyes of his own people. A new Governor was
appointed in his place, who set out for Mooltan accompanied by Mr.
Vans Agnew of the Bengal Civil Service and Mr. Agnew's assistant,
Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay Army. Moolraj marched with the
escort of the new Governor, to whom, on the day after the arrival
of the party in Mooltan, he formally surrendered the fort. After
the ceremony Agnew and Anderson started on their return to camp,
Moolraj riding alongside the two English gentlemen. At the gate of
the fortress Agnew was suddenly attacked,--run through by a spear
and slashed by sword-cuts. At the same moment Anderson was cut down
and desperately wounded. Moolraj galloped off, leaving the Englishmen
to their fate. Khan Singh's people carried them into a temple wherein
two days later they were brutally slaughtered; their bodies were
cut to pieces and their heads thrown down at the feet of Moolraj.
What share Moolraj had taken in this treacherous butchery was never
clearly ascertained; but every indication pointed to his complicity.
This much is certain, that on the morning after the assassination he
transferred his family and treasure into the fort, and placed himself
at the head of the insurrectionary movement by issuing a proclamation
summoning all the inhabitants of the province, of every creed, to
make common cause in a religious war against the Feringhees.

News of the outrage and rising at Mooltan reached Lahore on April
24th. It was emphatically a time for prompt action, if an outbreak
was to be crushed which else might grow into a general revolt
throughout the Punjaub. It was extremely unlikely that the fort of
Mooltan was equipped for an early and stubborn defence. To maintain
our prestige was essential, for it was by prestige and promptitude
only that we have maintained our pre-eminence in India. Sir Henry
Lawrence would have marched the Lahore brigade on Mooltan without an
hour's hesitation. Lord Hardinge would have ordered up the troops and
siege-train from Ferozepore and the strong force collected at Bukkur;
and would have invested Mooltan before Moolraj could have made any
adequate preparations for prolonged defence. Marches through Scinde,
from the north-western frontier, and from Lahore, could not have
been made in the hot season without casualties; but, in the words of
Marshman, "our Empire in India had been acquired and maintained, not
by fair-weather campaigns, but by taking the field on every emergency
and at any season."

On the first tidings from Mooltan Sir Frederick Currie ordered a
strong brigade of all arms to prepare for a march on that stronghold,
being of opinion that the citadel, described in poor Agnew's report
as the strongest fort he had seen in India, would not maintain a
defence when a British force should present itself before it, but
that the garrison would immediately abandon Moolraj to his fate.
Colin Campbell, on the other hand, held that since the fort of
Mooltan was very strong it was to be anticipated that Moolraj would
obstinately defend it; in which case a brigade sent to Mooltan would
be obliged to remain inactive before it while siege-guns were being
brought up, or, as seemed more probable, should no reinforcements
arrive in support, it would have to retrace its steps followed and
harassed by Moolraj's active and troublesome rabble. Eventually,
in great measure because of the arguments advanced by Campbell,
the movement from Lahore on Mooltan was countermanded; and the
Commander-in-Chief, with the concurrence of the Governor-General,
intimated his resolve to postpone military operations until the cold
weather, when he would take the field in person.

Meanwhile a casual subaltern, for whom swift marches and hard
fighting in hot weather had no terrors, struck in on his own
responsibility. Gathering in the wild trans-Indus district of Bunnoo
some fifteen hundred men with a couple of guns, Lieutenant Herbert
Edwardes marched towards Mooltan. Colonel Cortland with two thousand
Pathans and six guns hastened to join him; and on May 20th the united
force defeated Moolraj's army six thousand strong. The loyal Nawab of
Bhawalpore sent a strong force of his warlike Daudputras across the
Sutlej to join hands with Edwardes and Cortland; and the junction had
just been accomplished on the field of Kinairi some twenty miles from
Mooltan, when the allies, about nine thousand strong, were attacked
by Moolraj with a force of about equal magnitude. After half a day's
hard fighting the enemy fled in confusion from the field. Edwardes
and Cortland moved up nearer to Mooltan, their force now raised to
a strength of about eighteen thousand; and there was a moment when
Moolraj seemed willing to surrender if his life were spared. But he
rallied his nerves and came out on July 1st with twelve thousand men
to give battle on the plain of Sudusain within sight of the walls of
Mooltan. After another obstinate fight his troops were thoroughly
beaten and fled headlong into the city. "Now," wrote Edwardes to the
Resident, "is the time to strike; I have got to the end of my tether.
If," added the gallant and clear-sighted subaltern, "you would only
send, with a few regular regiments, a few heavy guns and a mortar
battery, we could close Moolraj's account in a fortnight, and obviate
the necessity of assembling fifty thousand men in October."

Meanwhile the Resident had taken the strange course of empowering
the Lahore Durbar to despatch to Mooltan a Sikh force of some five
thousand men under Shere Singh. It was notorious that both commander
and troops were thoroughly disaffected; and so anxious was the
Resident to prevent the force from approaching Moolraj that Shere
Singh had orders to halt fifty miles short of Mooltan, and was only
allowed to join Edwardes after his victory of July 1st. In tardy
answer to that young officer's appeal for reinforcements, in the
end of July a force of seven thousand men with a siege-train was
ordered to converge on Mooltan from Lahore and Ferozepore under
the divisional command of General Whish. It had been chiefly at
Colin Campbell's dissuasion that the Resident had relinquished his
intention of sending a force to Mooltan in April. Campbell's argument
in that month had been the unfavourable season for marching; and
now in a season not less unfavourable he was scarcely justified in
considering himself the victim of a job in not obtaining the command
of the Lahore brigade ordered on Mooltan. The disappointment proved
fortunate, since a few months later he found himself in command of a
division in the field with the rank of brigadier-general. By August
24th the whole of Whish's field-force was before Mooltan, but it
was not until September 7th that the siege-guns were in position.
Moolraj, confident in the increased strength which our delay had
afforded him, spurned a summons to surrender. Active and bloody
approaches were carried on for a week, when Shere Singh with his
contingent suddenly passed over to the enemy. After this defection
Whish held it impossible to continue the siege, and he retired to a
position in the vicinity pending the arrival of reinforcements from
Bombay. The siege was reopened late in December: the city was stormed
after a hard fight; and finally on January 22nd, 1849, Moolraj
surrendered at discretion. It must be said of him that he had made a
heroic defence.

By the end of September, 1848, the local outbreak was fast swelling
into a national revolt. The flame of rebellion was spreading over
the Land of the Five Rivers, and by the end of October only a few
brave English officers were still holding together the last shreds
of British influence in the Punjaub outside of Lahore and the camp
of General Whish. Moolraj was the reverse of cordial to Shere Singh,
who on October 9th quitted Mooltan and marched northward towards
Lahore, his original force of five thousand men strengthened at every
step by the warriors of the old Khalsa army who flocked eagerly to
his standard. After threatening Lahore he moved westward to meet the
Bunnoo insurgents, who had mutinied and murdered their officers, and
he finally took up a position _à cheval_ of the Chenab at Ramnuggur,
his main body on the right bank of the river.

During the summer and autumn Colin Campbell passed an uneasy and
anxious time. It was not until the beginning of November that he had
the full assurance of being employed in the manifestly impending
campaign. By this time Cureton's cavalry brigade and Godby's infantry
brigade were in the Doab between the Ravee and the Chenab, and on
November 12th Colin Campbell joined Cureton there with two native
infantry regiments, taking command of the advanced force with the
temporary rank of brigadier-general. At length Lord Gough himself
took the field, and on the 19th he crossed the Ravee at the head
of an army of respectable strength. Apart from the division before
Mooltan and the garrison required for Lahore, he had available for
field service four British and eleven native infantry regiments. He
was strong in cavalry, with three fine British regiments, five of
native light cavalry, and five corps of irregular horse; and his
powerful artillery consisted of sixty horse and field-guns, eight
howitzers, and ten 18-pounders. On the early morning of the 22nd
his lordship, with Colin Campbell's infantry division and a cavalry
force under Cureton with horse and field artillery, marched from
Saharun towards Ramnuggur with the object of driving across the
Chenab some Sikh infantry reported to be still on the left bank. Some
small detachments hurrying towards the river were pursued somewhat
recklessly by horse-artillery, which had to retire under the heavy
fire opened from the Sikh batteries on the commanding right bank.
A gun and two waggons stuck fast in the deep sand and could not be
extricated. Colin Campbell suggested to Lord Gough the measure of
protecting the gun until it could be withdrawn at night, by placing
infantry to cover it in a ravine immediately in its rear; but the
Commander-in-Chief disapproved of this measure. The enemy lost no
time in sending the whole of his cavalry across the river to take
possession of the gun under cover of his overwhelming artillery fire.
Our cavalry was foolishly sent forward to charge the superior hostile
horse,--a folly which was committed, according to Colin Campbell,
under the personal direction of the Commander-in-Chief. Ouvry's
squadron of the Third Light Dragoons made a brilliant and useful
charge which materially aided the withdrawal of the artillery. In the
face of a heavy fire Colonel William Havelock, a noble soldier who
had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, led on the Fourteenth
Light Dragoons to a desperate combat with the Sikh horse. The horses
of the dragoons were exhausted by the long gallop through the heavy
sand and the casualties were heavy. Among the slain was Havelock
himself, after a hand-to-hand combat; and while riding forward to
stay Havelock's last advance Brigadier-General Cureton, who had
raised himself to distinction from the ranks in which he had enlisted
as a runaway lad, was killed by a Sikh bullet.

Lord Gough withdrew his troops beyond the reach of the Sikh batteries
and awaited the arrival of his heavy guns and the remainder of
his force. If his intention was to refrain from coming to close
quarters with the enemy until the fall of Mooltan should bring him
reinforcements, he was well placed on the left bank of the Chenab,
covering Lahore and the siege of Mooltan and leaving Shere Singh
undisturbed. If on the other hand he preferred the offensive, that
offensive should have been prompt; a rapid stroke might have ended
the business, for the Sikhs, as the sequel proved, were eager enough
for fighting. And to all appearance the Commander-in-Chief meant to
gratify their desire. To do so he had in the first instance to cross
the Chenab. To accomplish this by direct assault on the Sikh position
on the opposite bank was impracticable; and he resolved to compel
the enemy's withdrawal by a wide turning movement with part of his
force under the command of Sir Joseph Thackwell, an experienced
soldier. Thackwell's command consisted of Colin Campbell's strong
division, a cavalry brigade, three troops of horse-artillery, two
field-batteries and two heavy guns,--in all about eight thousand men.
This force started in the early morning of December 1st, and after a
march of twenty-four miles up the left bank of the Chenab was across
that river at Wuzeerabad by noon of the 2nd. The same afternoon the
force marched ten miles down the right bank and bivouacked. During
the short march of the following morning Thackwell learned that a
brigade was on its way to reinforce him, crossing by an intermediate
ford; whereupon he halted the force and rode away in search of this
reinforcement. Before he departed Colin Campbell asked permission to
deploy and take up a position. Thackwell replied, "No--remain where
you are until my return."

The force was then in open ground in front of the village of
Sadoolapore, which has given its name to the engagement. Campbell
rode to the front to reconnoitre. In front of the centre were some
hostile horse; to the right in wooded ground some detachments of
cavalry and infantry were seen scattered about. Certain that the
enemy was in force and near at hand, he returned to the force and as
a measure of precaution occupied with an infantry company each of the
three villages in his front,--Langwala, Khamookhan and Rutta. The
force, in his own words, "was not in a state of formation for troops
to be when liable to be attacked at any moment. However, my orders
were imperative not to deploy." Two hours later the enemy opened
fire with their artillery from the woodland behind the villages. At
that moment Thackwell returned, and he ordered the companies holding
the three villages to withdraw and rejoin their respective corps.
The columns were immediately deployed. Between the British line and
the Sikh troops, which had occupied the villages and were firing
heavily from some twenty pieces of artillery while large bodies of
their cavalry were threatening both flanks of the British force,
was a smooth open space over which Thackwell desired to advance to
the attack. Colin Campbell suggested that "as they were coming on
so cockily, we should allow them to come out into the plain before
we moved." He states in his journal that, since presently the enemy
halted at the villages and there plied their artillery fire, he was
convinced that they did not intend to come further forward; and
that he twice begged of Thackwell to be allowed to attack with his
infantry but was not permitted. The affair then resolved itself
into a simple cannonade the result of which was to silence the
Sikh fire. By this time Thackwell had received permission from the
Commander-in-Chief to act as his judgment should dictate, whether
his reinforcements had come up or not. It seemed the moment for an
advance; the troops were full of eagerness, and a portion at least
of the enemy's guns were in Thackwell's grasp. Thackwell, however,
exercised caution for the time, hoping most likely for a decisive
victory on the morrow. But during the night the enemy withdrew and
marched away towards the Jhelum, probably without having sustained
serious loss. That of the British amounted to some seventy men.
Thackwell's turning movement had not been brilliant, and Sadoolapore
was not an affair to be very proud of; but it had brought about
the relinquishment by the Sikhs of their position on the right bank
of the Chenab, and this enabled the main British force to cross the
river. By the 5th the mass of the army was at Heylah, about midway
between Ramnuggur and Chillianwallah; but the Commander-in-Chief and
headquarters did not cross the Chenab until December 18th.

If until then Lord Gough had been trammelled by superior authority,
a few days later he was set free to act on his own judgment,--the
result of which was simply absolute inaction until January, 1849.
On the 11th of that month he reviewed his troops at Lassourie, and
next day he was encamped at Dinjhi, whence the Sikh army had fallen
back into the sheltering jungle, its right resting on Mung, its left
on the broken ground and strong entrenchments about the village
and heights of Russoul. Colin Campbell had been suffering from
fever resulting from night exposure in bivouac during Thackwell's
flank march; he had been on the sick list until the 10th and was
still weak. In the memoir of the late Sir Henry Durand by his son
occurs an interesting passage illustrative of Campbell's anxiety
that the ground on which the enemy's position was to be approached
should be properly reconnoitred. Durand writes: "Whilst in the
Commander-in-Chief's camp to-day (11th) the projected attack on the
enemy's position was described to me by General Campbell. He had just
been with the Commander-in-Chief, who had spoken of attacking the
Sikh position on the 13th. Campbell, seeing that his lordship had no
intention of properly reconnoitring the position, was anxious on the
subject; and we went into the tent of Tremenheere the chief engineer,
to discuss the matter. Campbell opened on the subject, announcing
the intention to attack, and that it was to be done blindly, that
was to say without any reconnaissance but such as the moment might
afford on debouching from the jungle. He advocated a second march
from Dinjhi, the force prepared to bivouac for the night, and that
the 13th should be passed by the engineers in reconnoitring. Campbell
wished Tremenheere to suggest this measure in a quiet way to the
Commander-in-Chief; but he said that since the passage of the Chenab
the Chief was determined to take no advice, nor brook any volunteered
opinions; and he proposed that I should speak to John Gough (the
Commander-in-Chief's nephew) and try to engage him to put it into the
Commander-in-Chief's mind to adopt such a course." It is not certain
that anything came of this improvised council of war: but there is no
question that up to the afternoon of the 13th Lord Gough intended to
defer the attack until the following morning.

Early on the 13th the army was at length marching on the enemy. The
heavy guns moved along the road leading over the Russoul ridge to
the Jhelum fords. Gilbert's division marched on their right, Colin
Campbell's (the third) on their left, with the cavalry and light
artillery on their respective flanks. The original intention was
that Gilbert's (the right) division, with the greater part of the
field-guns, was to advance on Russoul, while Campbell's division and
the heavy guns should stand fast on the left, overthrow the left of
the Sikhs, and thus cut them off from retiring along the high road
toward Jhelum. Their left thus turned, Gilbert and Campbell were
to operate conjointly against the Sikh line, which it was hoped
would be rolled back upon Moong and driven to the southward. A
reconnaissance made by Tremenheere and Durand reported the road clear
and practicable up to Russoul, but that the enemy was marching down
from the heights apparently to take up a position on the plain. The
march was resumed to beyond the village of Umrao; but when deserters
brought in the intelligence that the enemy was forming to the left
front of Gough's line of march behind the village of Chillianwallah,
he quitted the Russoul road, inclined to his left, and moved straight
on Chillianwallah. An outpost on the mound of Chillianwallah was
driven in upon the main body of the enemy, and from that elevated
position was clearly discernible the Sikh army drawn out in battle
array. Its right centre directly in front of Chillianwallah was about
two miles distant from that village, but less from the British line,
which was being deployed about five hundred yards in its front. There
was a gap nearly three-quarters of a mile wide between the right
wing of the Sikhs under Utar Singh, and the right of the main body
under Shere Singh. The British line when deployed could do little
more than oppose a front to Shere Singh's centre and right, which
latter, however, it overlapped a little, so that part of Campbell's
left brigade was opposite to a section of the gap between Shere
Singh's right and Utar Singh's left. Between the hostile lines there
intervened a belt of rather dense low jungle, not forest, but a
mixture of thorny mimosa bushes and wild caper.

It was near two o'clock in the afternoon of a winter day, and the
troops had been under arms since daybreak. Lord Gough, therefore,
wisely determined to defer the action until the morrow, and the
camping-ground was being marked out. But the Sikh leaders knew well
how prone to kindle was the temperament of the gallant old Chief.
They themselves were keen for fighting, and the British commander
needed little provocation to reciprocate their mood when they gave
him a challenge of a few cannon shots. Late in the day though it was,
he determined on immediate attack. The heavy guns were ordered up and
opened fire at a range of some sixteen hundred yards, the gunners in
the thick jungle having no other means of judging distance than by
timing the intervals between the flash and report of the Sikh guns.
The advance of the infantry soon obliged the fire of the British
guns to cease. The line pressed on eagerly, its formation somewhat
impaired by the thickness of the jungle through which it had to force
its way, and met in the teeth as it pushed forward by the artillery
fire which the enemy, no longer smitten by the heavy guns, poured on
the advancing ranks of the British infantry. For a while nothing but
the roar of the Sikh artillery was to be heard; but after a short
time the sharp rattle of the musketry told that the conflict had
begun in earnest and that the British infantry were closing on the
hostile guns. Of the two divisions Gilbert's had the right, Colin
Campbell's the left. The latter had been the first to receive the
order to advance and was the first engaged. Pennycuick commanded
Campbell's right brigade, consisting of the Twenty-Fourth Queen's,
and the Twenty-Fifth and Forty-Fifth native infantry regiments;
Hoggan's, his left brigade, was formed of the Sixty-First Queen's and
the Thirty-Sixth and Forty-Sixth Sepoy regiments. In the interval
between the brigades moved a field-battery, and on the left of the
division three guns of another. At some distance on Campbell's left
were a cavalry brigade and three troops of horse-artillery under
Thackwell, whose duty it was to engage the attention of Utar Singh's
detachment and to attempt to hinder that force from taking Campbell
in flank and in reverse. The nature of the ground to be fought
over rendered it impossible that the divisional commander could
superintend the attack of more than one brigade; and Colin Campbell
had arranged with Pennycuick that he himself should remain with the
left brigade. Pennycuick's brigade experienced an adverse fate.
During the advance its regiments were exposed to the fire of some
eighteen guns on a mound directly in their front, from which they
suffered very severely. The Twenty-Fourth, a fine and exceptionally
strong regiment, advancing rapidly on the hostile batteries carried
them by storm, but encountered a deadly fire from the infantry masses
on either flank of the guns. The regiment sustained fearful losses.
Pennycuick and thirteen officers of the regiment were killed at the
guns, nine were wounded, two hundred and three of the men were killed
and two hundred and sixty-six wounded. The native regiments of the
brigade failed adequately to support the Twenty-Fourth, and musketry
volleys from the Sikh infantry, followed by a rush of cavalry,
completed the disorder and defeat of the ill-fated body. Already
broken, it now fled, pursued with great havoc by the Sikh horse
almost to its original position at the beginning of the action.

Hoggan's brigade, the left of Colin Campbell's division, had better
fortune. Campbell himself conducted it and its advance was made
without any great difficulty. Its experiences he thus described in
his journal:--"I took care to regulate the rate of march of the
centre or directing regiment (H.M.'s Sixty-First), so that all could
keep up; and consequently the brigade emerged from the wood in a
very tolerable line. We found the enemy posted on an open space on a
slight rise. He had four guns, which played upon us in our advance;
a large body of cavalry stood directly in front of the Sixty-First,
and on the cavalry's left a large body of infantry in face of the
Thirty-Sixth N.I. That regiment went at the Sikh infantry and was
repulsed; the Sixty-First moved gallantly and steadily on the Sikh
cavalry in its front, which slowly retired. When the Sixty-First had
nearly reached the ground which the cavalry had occupied, I ordered
the regiment to open its fire to hasten their departure." This fire
was delivered as the corps advanced in line, a manœuvre constantly
practised by Campbell, and it put the Sikh cavalry to a hasty flight.
At this moment the enemy pushed forward two of their guns to within
about twenty-five yards of the right flank of the Sixty-First, and
opened with grape while their infantry were actually in rear of its
right. Campbell promptly wheeled to the right the two right companies
of the Sixty-First and headed them in their charge on the two Sikh
guns. Those were captured, whereupon the two companies opened fire
on the flank of the Sikh infantry in pursuit of the Thirty-Sixth
Native Infantry and obliged the former to desist and fall back. While
the Sixty-First was completing its new alignment to the right, an
evolution by which Shere Singh's right flank was effectually turned,
the enemy advanced with two more guns strongly supported by infantry.
Neither of the two native regiments had succeeded in forming on
the new alignment of the Sixty-First; "but," writes Campbell, "the
confident bearing of the enemy and the approaching and steady fire of
grape from their two guns made it necessary to advance, and to charge
when we got within proper distance. I gave the word to advance and
subsequently to charge, heading the Sixty-First immediately opposite
the guns as I had done in the former instance. These two attacks," he
continues, "gave the greatest confidence to the Sixty-First, and it
was evident that in personally guiding and commanding the soldiers
in these two successful attacks under difficult circumstances, I had
gained the complete confidence and liking of the corps, and that with
it I could undertake with perfect certainty of success anything that
could be accomplished by men."

While Campbell was leading the earlier charge on the two first Sikh
guns, one of the enemy's artillerymen who had already fired at him
from under a gun apparently without result, rushed forward sword in
hand and cut at the General, inflicting a deep sword-cut on his right
arm. Not until the following morning was it discovered that the Sikh
gunner's bullet had found its billet, fortunately an innocuous one.
It had smashed to atoms the ivory handle of a small pistol which
Campbell carried in a pocket of his waistcoat, and had also broken
the bow of his watch. The Sikh's aim was true, and but for the pistol
and the watch Colin Campbell would never have seen another battle.
His charger was found to be wounded by a musket-shot which had
passed through both sides of the mouth and finally had lodged and
flattened in the curb-chain.

The journal thus continues:--"After the capture of the second two
guns, and the dispersion of the enemy, we proceeded rolling up his
line, continuing along the line of the hostile position until we had
taken thirteen guns, all of them by the Sixty-First at the point
of the bayonet. We finally met Mountain's brigade coming from the
opposite direction. During our progress we were on several occasions
threatened by the enemy's cavalry on our flank and rear. The guns
were all spiked, but having no means with the force to remove them
and it being too small to admit of any portion being withdrawn for
their protection, they were, with the exception of the last three
that were taken, unavoidably left on the field."

Colin Campbell had to fight hard for his success, and it was well
for him that in the gallant Sixty-First he had a staunch and
resolute English regiment. But he would have had to fight yet more
hard, and then might not have attained success, if away on his left
Thackwell had not been holding Utar Singh in check and impeding his
efforts to harass Campbell's flank and rear. Brind's three troops
of horse-artillery expended some twelve hundred rounds in a hot
duel with Utar Singh's cannon which else would have been playing on
Campbell's flank, and Unett's gallant troopers of the famous "Third
Light" crashed through Sikh infantry edging away to their left with
intent to take Campbell in reverse. Thackwell did his valiant best
until he and his command were called away to the endangered right,
but before then he had time to serve Campbell materially, although
he could not entirely prevent Utar Singh's people from molesting that
commander; and although Campbell did not record the critical episode,
there was a period when he found himself engaged simultaneously in
front, flank, and rear, and when the brigade was extricated from
its entanglement only by his own ready skill and the indomitable
staunchness of the noble Sixty-First.

In spite of the disasters which chequered it the battle of
Chillianwallah may be regarded as a technical victory for the British
arms, since the enemy was compelled to quit the field, although they
only retired into the strong position on the Russoul heights from
which in the morning they had descended into the plain to fight. The
moral results of the action were dismal, and the cost of the barren
struggle was a loss of two thousand four hundred killed and wounded.
At home the intelligence of this waste of blood excited feelings
of alarm and indignation, and Sir Charles Napier was immediately
despatched to India to supersede Lord Gough in the position of
Commander-in-Chief. Meanwhile the army lay passive in its encampment
at Chillianwallah, within sight of the Sikh position at Russoul,
awaiting the surrender of Mooltan and the accession of strength it
would receive in consequence of that event. The Sikh leader more than
once gave the British Commander-in-Chief an opportunity to fight, but
Gough with tardy wisdom resisted the offered temptation, resolved not
to join issues until his reinforcements from Mooltan should reach
him. On the night of February 13th the Sikh army abandoned Russoul,
marched round the British right flank, and on the 14th was well
on its way to Goojerat. Gough, who had slowly followed to within
a march of Goojerat, was joined at Koonjah by the Mooltan force
on the 18th and 19th, and on the 20th advanced to Shadawal whence
the Sikh encampment around the town of Goojerat was within sight.
The battlefield of February 21st was the wide plain to the south
of Goojerat, intersected by two dry water-courses. The Sikh line
of battle extended from Morarea Tibba, where their cavalry was in
force, along an easterly bend of the Bimber (the western) channel,
thence across the plain, behind the three villages of Kalra which
were occupied by infantry, to Malka-wallah a village on the left
bank of the eastern channel. Against this extended front advanced
the British army, now twenty-three thousand strong with ninety guns,
eighteen of which were heavy siege-pieces. The heavy guns, followed
by two and a half infantry brigades, moved over the plain between
the two channels. Campbell's division and Dundas' brigade were on
the left bank of the western channel, with Thackwell's cavalry still
further to the left. The Sikhs, ever ready with their artillery,
opened the battle with that arm. Gough at last had been taught by
hard experience that an artillery preparation should precede his
favourite "cold steel." The British batteries went out to the front
and began a magnificent and effective cannonade which lasted for
two hours and crushed the fire of the Sikh guns. The infantry then
deployed and marched forward, stormed the three Kalra villages
after experiencing a desperate and prolonged resistance, and swept
on up the plain toward Goojerat. There was little bloodshed on the
right of the Bimber channel, where marched Campbell and Dundas,
but there was plenty of that skill which spares precious lives.
Campbell describes how he handled his division:--"I formed my two
brigades in contiguous columns of regiments with a very strong line
of skirmishers--the artillery in line with the skirmishers. When we
arrived within long range of the enemy's guns, we deployed into line.
In this order, the artillery--twelve 9-pounders with the skirmishers
and the infantry in line close in rear, advanced as at a review;
the guns firing into the masses of infantry and cavalry behind the
nullah, who gradually melted away and took shelter in its channel. I
then caused the artillery of my division to be turned on the flank of
these throngs while the Bombay troop of horse-artillery fired direct
on their front. I finally dislodged them by artillery which enfiladed
the nullah, and which was moved forward and placed in position
for that object. I was ordered to storm this nullah; but to have
done so with infantry would have occasioned a useless and needless
sacrifice of life. Recognising that the result could be obtained
by gun-fire without risking the life of a man, I proceeded on my
own responsibility to employ my artillery in enfilading the nullah;
and after thus clearing it of the enemy, I had the satisfaction of
seeing the whole of our left wing pass this formidable defence of the
enemy's right wing without firing a shot or losing a man. We had too
much slaughter at Chillianwallah because due precaution had not been
taken to prevent it by the employment of our magnificent artillery.
Having felt this strongly and expressed it to the Commander-in-Chief
in warm terms, I had determined to employ this arm thenceforth to the
fullest extent; and I did so, accordingly, in the battle of Goojerat."

The discomfiture of the enemy was thorough. Cavalry, infantry,
and artillery left the field in utter confusion. The rout was too
complete to allow of the reunion of formed bodies in anything
like order. A body of Sikh horse with a brigade of Afghan cavalry
adventured an advance on Thackwell's flank. He hurled against them
the Scinde Horse and the Ninth Lancers, and a wild stampede resulted.
The rest of the British cavalry struck in and rushed on, dispersing,
riding over, and trampling down the Sikh infantry, capturing guns
and waggons, and converting the discomfited enemy into a shapeless
mass of fugitives. The horsemen did not draw rein until they had
ridden fifteen miles beyond Goojerat, by which time the army of
Shere Singh was a wreck, deprived of its camp, its standards, and
fifty-three of its cherished guns. On the morning after the battle
Sir Walter Gilbert started in pursuit of the broken Sikh host, while
Campbell took out his division in the direction of Dowlutanuggur,
but the latter was recalled on the 25th. On March 6th, however, he
received the order to join Gilbert's force in room of Brigadier
Mountain who had been injured by the accidental discharge of his
pistol. On the road to Rawul Pindi on the 15th he passed the greater
part of the Sikh army with its chiefs, who were laying down their
arms. Campbell was moved by the fine attitude of the men of the
Khalsa army. "There was," he wrote, "nothing cringing in the manner
of these men in laying down their arms. They acknowledged themselves
beaten, and they were starving--destitute alike of food and money.
Each man as he laid down his arms received a rupee to enable him to
support himself while on his way to his home. The greater number of
the old men especially, when laying down their arms, made a deep
reverence or salaam as they placed their swords on the heap, with the
muttered words 'Runjeet Singh is dead to-day!' This was said with
deep feeling; they are undoubtedly a fine and brave people." On the
21st Gilbert and Campbell reached Peshawur, and the latter encamped
near the fort of Jumrood at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, through
which the Afghans, whom Dost Mahomed had sent into the Punjaub to
reinforce the Sikhs in their warfare with the British forces, had
retreated very shortly before. The campaign was at an end; and early
in April Colin Campbell took command of the Sind Sagur District
with his headquarters at Rawul Pindi. There he shared a house with
his friend Mansfield, who in the time of the Mutiny was to be his
Chief-of-Staff. In July there occurred an event which called for all
his firmness and discretion. Two native infantry regiments stationed
at Rawul Pindi refused to accept the cantonment scale of pay, which
was lower than they had been receiving when on campaign. Evidence
was clear that the combination to resist the cantonment scale had
spread to other stations, and the situation was temporarily critical;
but fortunately there was a British regiment at Rawul Pindi, and
the sepoys came to reason without the necessity on Campbell's part
of resorting to strong measures. When at Rawul Pindi he had the
gratification to learn of his having been promoted to be a Knight of
the Bath for his services in the recent campaign; and Sir Charles
Napier in sending him the intimation added that "no man had won it
better," and expressed the hope that "he would long wear the spurs."

In November he was transferred to the divisional command of the
Peshawur District, a more important, but also a more unquiet post
than Rawul Pindi. Thenceforth for three years he was to be the
Warden of the turbulent north-western frontier. It pleased him to
find in his command his old regiment the Ninety-Eighth, and also the
Sixty-First which he had led at Chillianwallah. When in February,
1850, Sir Charles Napier reached Peshawur on a tour of inspection,
Sir Colin was able to assemble for review quite a little army of
all ranks; three troops of horse-artillery and two field-batteries,
three cavalry regiments, three European and three native infantry
regiments. While Sir Charles was in Colin Campbell's district, it
happened that he came under hostile fire for the last time in his
tumultuous life. Between Peshawur and Kohat, both places in British
territory, a mountain road ran outside that territory through a long
and dangerous defile. The Afridis inhabiting the intervening hill
country had complained that their subsidy for keeping open the pass
had not been paid, and in revenge had slaughtered a working party
of sappers and miners. Sir Charles determined to force the defile
in person. Campbell, on Napier's requisition, detailed a tolerably
strong force as escort to the Commander-in-Chief. It chanced that
before starting Napier inspected a regiment of irregulars under the
control of the much-vaunted Punjaub Government. The men were of fine
physique, but "one soldier had a musket without a lock, another a
lock without a musket. A stalwart soldier, his broad chest swelling
with military pride, his eyes sparkling with a malicious twinkle,
held on his shoulder between his finger and thumb a flint--his
only arm." The defile was duly forced, but its passage was one
long skirmish. Kohat was inspected and reinforced, but Napier, on
commencing his return march, found that the pickets left to keep the
road open had been roughly handled and had suffered serious loss.
The Afridis were very daring, and actually fired on Sir Charles
and his staff at short range. The loss sustained in this somewhat
quixotic expedition amounted to one hundred and ten men killed and
wounded--"not much," comments Napier grimly, "when one considers
the terrible defile through which we passed, defended by a warlike
race." His biographer calls the enterprise an "interesting episode";
it certainly was not a very wise enterprise to be undertaken by
the Commander-in-Chief of British India. It was Napier's last
eccentricity of a military character. By the end of the year he
resigned the command of the army of India, and was succeeded by Sir
William Gomm, an old brother officer of Colin Campbell in the Ninth
in the Peninsula days.

In March, 1851, Lord Dalhousie visited Peshawur and discussed with
Sir Colin the policy to be adopted towards the troublesome and
turbulent tribes on the north-western border. Scarcely had the
Governor-General gone when news came in that a Momund tribe, of the
region north of Peshawur between the Swat and Cabul rivers, had
been raiding into British territory. Dalhousie left to Sir Colin
the decision whether to make signal reprisals or to adopt defensive
measures, and, as the result of the description of the wild and
rugged region sent him by Sir Colin after a reconnaissance he had
made, elected for the defensive as an experiment. It failed, for in
October the Momunds of Michni made an irruption upon some villages
within British territory. The Governor-General now decided on an
immediate resort to active measures, and Sir Colin was ordered to
inflict summary chastisement on the offending tribe. He marched
from Peshawur on October 25th with a force of all arms about
twelve hundred strong, and advanced to the confines of the Michni
territory. He did not hurry, because he desired that his political
officer should have opportunity to inform the inhabitants of the
conditions intended to be offered them; which were annexation of
the territory, exile for the irreconcilables, and the retention of
their lands by the cultivators on payment of revenue. Campbell's
humane view was that "to drive into the hills the whole population
of Michni, occupying some seven and twenty villages, could only
result in forcing them to prey on the plunder of the villages inside
the border." The villages and fortalices whose inhabitants were
implicated in the violation of British territory were destroyed under
a harmless fire maintained by the mountaineers; but, as Campbell
records, "while engaged in duties in which no soldier can take
pleasure no lives were lost on either side. God knows the rendering
homeless of two or three hundred families is a despicable task
enough, without adding loss of life to this severe punishment."
The British camp was more than once assailed by bodies of Momund
tribes, and one of those attacks was made by some five thousand
hillmen whom Sir Colin dispersed by shell fire. A fort was built and
garrisoned in the Michni country, and the field-force returned to
Peshawur in February, 1852. With the results it had accomplished the
Governor-General expressed his entire satisfaction.

The column had scarcely settled down in Peshawur when fresh troubles
were reported from the wearyful Momund frontier. Sir Colin hurried
thither with two horse-artillery guns and two hundred and sixty
native troopers, to find the Momund chief Sadut Khan in position
on the edge of the Panj Pao upland, fronting towards Muttah, with
six thousand matchlock men and some eighty horsemen. The affair
had its interesting features. Sir Colin took in reverse the Momund
hordes with his artillery fire, broke up their masses, put them to
flight, and pursued them. As he was preparing to return the Momunds
suddenly wheeled in their tracks and rushed upon him over the broken
ground. The guns were instantly unlimbered, and double charges of
grape checked the wild and gallant attack,--a brilliant rally after
the endurance of two hours' shell fire followed by a hasty retreat.
The mountaineers continued to press Campbell's slow retirement
across the table-land, notwithstanding the fire of grape which he
maintained. The incident strengthened his belief in the superior
efficacy of defensive operations, and he declined to fall in with
the anxious wish of the Punjaub Board of Administration that he
should act on the offensive against the Momunds, on the ground that
he was not prepared to execute operations of that character without
the most precise orders by the Commander-in-Chief, the authority
to which he was responsible. His reply met with the full approval
of the Commander-in-Chief, which however the Governor-General did
not share. Sir Colin maintained his ground with the approval of the
former authority, when pressed by the Commissioner of Peshawur to
enter Swat. Meanwhile the Ootman-Kheyl tribe had become implicated in
the murder of a native official in British employ at Charsuddah. Sir
Colin had no hesitation in taking measures to inflict punishment on
this powerful and turbulent clan. A column of all arms, two thousand
four hundred and fifty strong, was assembled on the left bank of the
Swat river, and on May 11th proceeded to destroy a group of deserted
villages belonging to the Ootman-Kheyl. The column then advanced on
the large village of Prangurh, the Ootman-Kheyl stronghold. It had
been prepared for defence, and was crowded with men who opened fire
on Sir Colin's advanced guard. Covered by artillery fire his troops
carried the village with a rush, after a stout defence on the part
of the enemy. During the destruction of Prangurh letters were found
proving a strong feeling of hostility towards the British Government
on the part of the rulers of Swat. Sir Colin then fell in with the
views of the Commissioner, and declared himself prepared to invade
the Swat territory unless he should be absolutely prohibited by the
Commander-in-Chief.

The British force next moved upon Iskakote, a large village of
Ranizai, a dependency of Swat, whither large bodies of hillmen
hastened to defend the village and valley. Sir Colin estimated the
number of the hostile clansmen to be not less than six thousand.
They made a stubborn resistance, and endured a sharp cannonade with
great firmness. The Guides and Ghoorkas stormed the nullah with some
hand-to-hand fighting, whereupon, having suffered severe loss, the
enemy broke up and made for the hills pursued by the cavalry.

The Commander-in-Chief interposed no veto on the invasion of Swat,
but it became apparent to Sir Colin Campbell that the transport
for that operation was inadequate and inefficient. Experience of
the opposition he had encountered in the Iskakote affair, and a
subsequent reconnaissance in the Ranizai valley, convinced him
that his infantry would require a reinforcement of two thousand
five hundred men, without receiving which he could not proceed to
the invasion of Swat. The Punjaub Board of Administration refused
his requisition for the number of troops he asked, and as it was
unadvisable to keep the force in the field in the hot weather, the
column returned to Peshawur in the beginning of June.

Campbell had already been made aware by the Commander-in-Chief
of the Governor-General's dissatisfaction, which in the shape of
a formal censure awaited him at Peshawur. Lord Dalhousie used
expressions which must have cut the old fighting man to the quick.
His lordship chose to tell the soldier of many battles that he had
manifested "over-cautious reluctance" in advancing against the Swat
marauders in March. Presently came the further charge that not only
had he "transgressed the bounds of his proper province," but that
"he had placed himself in an attitude of direct and proclaimed
insubordination to the authority of the Governor-General in Council."
Campbell replied with disciplined dignity and self-respect,
expressing his regret that expressions so strong should have been
used in regard to him, and his painful surprise that after a
lifetime of unswerving military subordination he should be accused
of the reverse. He was aware that he was in disaccord with the
Government, and already when in the field he had determined to
resign his command, an intention which he had communicated to the
Commander-in-Chief. To that old friend he wrote without heat:--"I
have come to the conclusion that I should be wanting in what is due
to myself, if, after what has passed, I were to continue in this
command; there is a limit at which a man's forbearance ought to stop,
and that limit has in my case been reached."

Sir Colin resigned his command on July 25th. He declined a farewell
banquet to which the officers of the Peshawur garrison desired to
invite him, believing that in the circumstances to accept the honour
would be contrary to the spirit of the Queen's regulations. After
spending three months in the bracing hill-station of Murree, in the
end of October he visited at Dugshai the Ninety-Eighth regiment,
to his original position as senior lieutenant-colonel of which he
had reverted on the resignation of his divisional command; then,
after a brief visit to Simla, he sailed from Bombay, arriving
in England in March, 1853. Before leaving India he had read the
official acknowledgment by the Government of the services of the
troops engaged in the recent operations. The despatch recorded the
Governor-General's regret "that any incident should have occurred
to deserve a censure of any portion of Sir Colin Campbell's
conduct;" but it "acknowledged in the most ample terms the ability,
the personal intrepidity and activity, and the sterling soldierly
qualities, which this distinguished officer had displayed in the
military command of the troops at Peshawur upon every occasion on
which they had taken the field." The _amende honorable_ was well
enough in its lumbering way; but it could scarcely take away the
bitter flavour of the barbed and venomous insinuation conveyed in the
cruel words "over-cautious reluctance."



CHAPTER IV

THE CRIMEA


Soon after his return to England Sir Colin Campbell vacated the
command of the Ninety-Eighth and went on half-pay. He had earned a
modest competence, and after those long years of campaigning abroad
he considered himself at the age of sixty-one entitled to enjoy
peaceful repose at home for the rest of his life. But this was not to
be; there was still before him much arduous and active service in the
field before he went to his final rest.

Kinglake in his _War in the Crimea_ pays Colin Campbell a fine
tribute--not less fine, however, than deserved; a passage from which
may fittingly be inserted here:--

"After serving with all this glory for some forty-five years, he
returned to England; but between the Queen and him stood a dense
crowd of families extending further than the eye could reach, and
armed with strange precedents which made it out to be right that
people who had seen no service should be invested with high command,
and that Sir Colin Campbell should be only a colonel. Yet he was of
so fine a nature that, although he did not always avoid great bursts
of anger, there was no ignoble bitterness in his sense of wrong.
He awaited the time when perhaps he might have high command, and be
able to serve his country in a sphere proportioned to his strength.
His friends, however, were angry for his sake; and along with their
strong devotion to him, there was bred a fierce hatred of a system of
military dispensation which could keep in the background a man thus
tried and thus known."

The time was soon to come when such a man as Colin Campbell could
no longer be kept in the background. England and France had formed
an alliance in defence of Turkey against Russia, and in the end of
March, 1854, war was actually declared. English troops had already
been despatched to the East; Lord Raglan had been appointed to the
command of the expeditionary force, and Sir Colin Campbell had been
nominated to a brigade command. He embarked for the East on the 3rd
of April accompanied by Major Sterling his brigade-major and Captain
Shadwell his aide-de-camp. On the 23rd he reached Constantinople,
where on the arrival of Lord Raglan a few days later he was
appointed to the Highland Brigade consisting of the Forty-Second,
Seventy-Ninth, and Ninety-Third regiments. That brigade and the
Guards formed the First Division, of which the Duke of Cambridge had
the command. The Highland Brigade was completed in the second week of
June by the arrival of the Forty-Second.

Although himself a Highlander, it had never until now fallen to the
lot of Colin Campbell to command Highlanders. But he understood
the Highland nature, which has its marked peculiarities; and he
speedily won the respect and goodwill of the fine soldiers whom he
was privileged to command. A thoroughly good understanding soon
grew up between him and them; not only was he commanding officer of
the brigade; he was also regarded as somewhat in the character of
the chief of a clan. He was fortunate in finding in the commanding
officer of the Forty-Second, the son of his old chief Sir John
Cameron of the Ninth, and not less fortunate in being able to
avail himself of Colonel Cameron's long experience at the head of
a Highland regiment in many important details connected with the
internal management and economy of the brigade.

In accordance with the scheme of operations agreed upon by the
English and French commanders in conference with Omar Pasha at Varna,
the allied armies were gradually concentrated about that place and
inland therefrom in support of the Turkish army at Schumla. The
position at Varna was found unhealthy and the Duke of Cambridge
marched his division on to the plateau of Aladyn, where it was
visited by Omar Pasha who expressed his great admiration of the
magnificent appearance of the Guards and Highlanders paraded for
his inspection. But tidings arrived that the Russians had raised
the siege of Silistria and recrossed the Danube, and presently the
troops of the Tsar withdrew altogether from the Principalities. The
object for which the allied armies had been moved into Bulgaria no
longer existed; and on July 18th the resolution was taken to make a
descent on the Crimea and assail Sevastopol. The preparations for
this daring enterprise were at length completed, and the Highland
Brigade embarked at Varna on August 29th. Sir Colin sailed in the
steam-transport _Emu_. He was now at length a Major-General after a
service of forty-six years and one month; the date of the promotion
was July 10th. "This rank," he remarks philosophically, "has arrived
at a period of life when the small additional income which it carries
with it is the only circumstance connected with the promotion in
which I take any interest."

The voyage across the Black Sea, the landing on Crimean soil, and the
advance to the Alma, are familiar history to every reader. Campbell
had given up his journal before the landing, and all that he wrote
of his personal experiences in the battle of the Alma is contained
in two letters, one to his sister, the other to his friend Colonel
Eyre. The former is a mere sketch, alluding to the fine courage
exhibited by his young Highlanders and to the circumstance, mentioned
with characteristic modesty, that "he was supposed to have made a
disposition and an attack of importance which led to results of
considerable advantage." He thus concludes, "I lost my best horse--a
noble animal. He was first shot in the hip the ball passing through
my sabretasche, and the second ball went right through his body
passing through the heart. He sank at once, and Shadwell kindly lent
me his horse which I immediately mounted."

The letter to Colonel Eyre is more detailed. "When," he writes,
"the Light Division was ordered to advance, we (the First Division)
followed in close support. My brigade was on the left of the Guards.
On the face of the slope immediately in front of the Light Division,
the enemy had made a large redoubt protected on each side by
artillery on the heights above and on either side, covered on flanks
and front by a direct as well as an enfilading fire. This artillery
was supported by numerous large masses of troops near their guns,
and also by other large masses in rear on the inward slopes of the
heights. These heights extended far to the enemy's right, with a
bare slope without bush or tree to afford cover down to the bank of
the river, on which we had to form and advance to the attack after
crossing.

"The vineyards and garden enclosures in the narrow valley through
which the river runs, completely broke the formation of the troops.
They crossed necessarily in a disorderly manner; but the left
bank being high, I was able to collect my right regiment (the
Forty-Second) under its cover. On gaining the top of the bank I
observed a large portion of the Light Division advancing to attack
the redoubt, which was a good deal to the right of my right regiment.
I hastened its formation, the other two regiments being still
struggling through the difficult bottom from which I had emerged....
The Forty-Second continued its advance, followed, as I had previously
ordered, by the two other regiments (Ninety-Third and Seventy-Ninth)
in _échelon_, forming in that order as they gained in succession the
summit of the left bank of the Alma. On gaining the ascent we found
the enemy who had withdrawn from the redoubt, attempting to form on
two large masses of troops advancing over the plateau to meet the
attack of the Forty-Second. The men were too much blown to charge,
so they opened fire while advancing in line, an operation in which
I had practised them, and they drove before them in confusion with
cheers and a terrible slaughter both masses and the fugitives from
the redoubt.

"Before reaching the inner crest of the heights, another heavy
mass of troops came forward against the Forty-Second, and this was
disposed of in the same manner as the two first we encountered. I
halted the regiment on the inner crest of the heights, still firing
and killing more of the enemy as they were descending the inner
slope, when two large bodies came down from the right of the enemy's
position direct on the left flank of the Forty-Second. Just at this
moment the Ninety-Third showed itself coming over the table-land, and
attacked these bodies, which did not yield readily. The Ninety-Third,
which I had great difficulty in restraining from following the
enemy, had only time to inflict great loss, when two bodies of
fresh infantry with some cavalry, came boldly forward against the
left flank of the Ninety-Third, whereupon the Seventy-Ninth made
its appearance over the hill, and went at these troops with cheers,
causing them great loss and forcing them away in great confusion. The
Guards during these operations were away to my right, quite removed
from the scene of this fight which I have described. It was a fight
of the Highland Brigade.

"Lord Raglan came up afterwards and sent for me. When I approached
him I observed his eyes to fill and his lips and countenance to
quiver. He gave me a cordial shake of the hand, but he could not
speak. The men cheered very much. I told them I was going on to ask
of the Commander-in-Chief a great favour,--that he would permit me
to have the honour of wearing the Highland bonnet during the rest of
the campaign, which pleased them very greatly, and so ended my part
in the fight of the 20th inst.... My men behaved nobly. I never saw
troops march to battle with greater _sang froid_ and order than those
three Highland regiments.... I write on the ground. I have neither
stool to sit on nor bed to lie on. I am in capital health, for which
I have to be very thankful. Cholera is rife among us, and carrying
off many fine fellows of all ranks!"

This description is not in Kinglake's style, but in its soldierly
curtness it may strike the reader as having the valuable attribute of
greater directness and lucidity, and it was written by the man who
not only controlled every movement on his own side of the fight on
the left of the great redoubt, but also watched with cool, keen eyes
every evolution of his adversaries. He had need to be on the alert,
if ever man had; for he had to his hand but three battalions, and he
had in his front no fewer than twelve Russian battalions each one of
which was numerically stronger than any one of his three. Nor were
his opponents raw militia or reserve battalions such as confronted
Prince Napoleon's division. The Russian regiments on the British
side of the great road, the Vladimir, Sousdal, Kazan, and Ouglitz,
constituted the Sixteenth Division, the division _d'élite_ of the
Tsar's troops of the line; that same division which three and twenty
years later won for Skobeleff his electrical successes. It was twelve
battalions of this historical division against whose massive columns
Colin Campbell led his brigade in the old two-deep British line
formation with the result he has told in his quiet sober manner. No
wonder that Lord Raglan's "eyes filled and his lips and countenance
quivered" as, too much moved to speak, he shook the hand of the
commander of the Highland Brigade.

"So ended my part in the fight of the 20th inst.," writes Sir Colin
in the soldierly and modest narrative of his share in the victory
which he sent home to his friend Eyre. That narrative, lucid
though it is, is also almost provokingly curt. Fortunately, thanks
chiefly to the industry of Kinglake, there exists the material for
supplementing and amplifying it. According to that writer during the
last of the halts on the march on the morning of the Alma, while the
men were lying down in the sunshine, Sir Colin, the provident soldier
of experience, quietly remarked to one of his officers, "This will be
a good time for the men to get loose half of their cartridges;" and
Kinglake adds that, "when the command travelled along the ranks of
the Highlanders, it lit up the faces of the men one after another,
assuring them that now at length, and after long experience, they
indeed would go into action."

It does not appear that Colin Campbell ever made any reference to
an incident which Kinglake mentions. The brigade of Guards before
crossing the river was exposed, it seems, to a fire of artillery,
which, as is not uncommon with that arm, struck down some men. There
was a tendency to hesitation, when, according to Kinglake, some
weak-kneed brother in the shape of an officer of "obscure rank" had
the pusillanimity or the impertinence to exclaim, "The brigade of
Guards will be destroyed; ought it not to fall back?" "When Sir Colin
Campbell heard this saying," says Kinglake in his high-strung manner,
"his blood rose so high that the answer he gave--impassioned and
far-resounding--was of a quality to govern events:--'It is better,
sir, that every man of Her Majesty's Guards should lie dead on the
field than that they should turn their backs upon the enemy!' Doubts
and questionings ceased. The division marched forward."

Mr. Kinglake owns that he did not himself hear the words; and it is
permissible, therefore, to doubt whether they were uttered. They
certainly are not in Colin Campbell's manner. It would have been
more like him to express himself in strong and frank vernacular to,
or of the officer of "obscure rank" who had evinced a propensity for
"falling back." No doubt he was with the Duke of Cambridge in front
of the left of the Coldstreams when the Guards were encountering
obstacles among the vineyards before reaching the river. In that
position the Highland Brigade would be under his eye. Sir Colin
Campbell, a soldier inured to war, certainly was of great service
on the advance to the brigade of Guards, scarcely a man of which
had ever seen a shot fired in anger. He remained near the Duke of
Cambridge until the Guards had crossed the river; and when the
Light Division was retreating in disorder on the brigade of Guards
he advised His Royal Highness to move the latter somewhat to the
left, to avoid the dislocation of his line which otherwise would be
occasioned by the rush of fugitives. After the momentary confusion
caused by the retreat of the Light Division behind the advancing
Guards to reform, the Duke thought it would be well to make a short
halt for the purpose of dressing his line, but Sir Colin earnestly
desired him to make no such delay but to press forward on the enemy
with the initial impulse, and the advice was followed with triumphant
result.

It fell to Sir Colin Campbell and his Highland Brigade to protect the
left flank of the British army, with three battalions to vanquish
and put to flight eight Russian battalions, and to compel the
retreat of four more. The arena of this exploit was the slopes and
hollows of the Kourganè _terrain_ to the Russian right of the great
redoubt from which the British Light Division had been forced to
recoil with heavy loss. On the extreme Russian right flank and rear
stood three thousand horsemen, and to protect his own left Campbell
had given the order to the Seventy-Ninth, the left regiment of his
brigade, to go into column. But a little later, when he had ridden
forward and so gained a wider scope of view, it became apparent to
his experienced eye that he need fear nothing from the stolid array
of Russian cavalry on his flank. He therefore recalled his order to
the Seventy-Ninth and allowed it to go forward in line. His brigade
after crossing the Alma fell into direct _échelon_ of regiments, the
Forty-Second on the right being the leading regiment of the three,
the Ninety-Third in the centre, and the Seventy-Ninth on the left.
Just before the Guards began their advance on the redoubt which
the right Vladimir column was still holding, Sir Colin Campbell
was in his saddle in front of the left of the Coldstreams talking
occasionally with the Duke of Cambridge. When the Guards began
their advance Sir Colin also proceeded to act. He discerned that
by swiftly moving a battalion up to the crest in front of him, he
would be on the flank of the position about the great redoubt where
the right Vladimir column was confronting the Guards. This attitude
of his would probably compel the retirement of the Vladimirs; if it
did not, by wheeling to his right he would strike the flank of the
Russian column while the Guards were assailing its front. He had the
weapon wherewith to effect this stroke ready to his hand in the
Forty-Second, which having crossed the river now stood ranged in line.

Before his brigade had moved from column into line Campbell had
spoken a few straightforward soldierly words to his men, the gist
of which has been commemorated. "Now, men," said he, "you are going
into action. Remember this: whoever is wounded--no matter what his
rank--must lie where he falls till the bandsmen come to attend to
him. No soldiers must go carrying off wounded comrades. If any man
does such a thing his name shall be stuck up in his parish church.
The army will be watching you; make me proud of the Highland
Brigade!" And now, when the time had come for action and that rugged
slope had to be surmounted, he rode to the head of the "Black Watch"
and gave to the regiment the command "Forward, Forty-Second!"

He himself with his staff rode rapidly in advance up to the crest.
In his immediate front there lay before him a broad and rather deep
depression on the further side of which there faced him the right
Kazan column of two battalions, on the left of which was reforming
the right Vladimir column whose retreat from the vicinity of the
redoubt had been compelled by the pressure of the Guards on front and
flank. Both columns had suffered considerably; but assuming their
previous losses to have been one-third of their original strength,
they[2] still numbered three thousand against the eight hundred and
thirty of the Forty-Second. And when Campbell looked to his left,
he saw on the neck bounding the left of the hollow another and a
heavier column consisting of two perfectly fresh battalions of the
Sousdal regiment. This last column, however, was stationary, and
notwithstanding that the men were out of breath Sir Colin sent the
Forty-Second, firing as it advanced, straight across the hollow
against the Kazan and Vladimir columns. The regiment had not gone
many paces when it was seen that the left Sousdal column had left the
neck and was marching direct on the left flank of the Forty-Second.
Campbell immediately halted the regiment and was about to throw
back its left wing to deal with the Sousdal advance, when glancing
over his left shoulder he saw that the Ninety-Third, his centre
battalion, had reached the crest. In its eagerness its formation had
become disturbed. Campbell rode to its front, halted and reformed it
under fire, and then led it forward against the flank of the Sousdal
column. The Forty-Second meanwhile had resumed its advance against
the Vladimir and Kazan columns.

Before the onslaughts of the two Scottish regiments the Russian
columns were staggering, and their officers had extreme difficulty
in compelling their men to retain their formation, when from the
upper ground on the left was seen moving down yet another Russian
column,--the right Sousdal column--and heading straight for the flank
of the Ninety-Third. It was taken in the flagrant offence of daring
to march across the front of a battalion advancing in line. At that
instant the Seventy-Ninth came bounding forward; after a moment's
halt to dress their ranks, the Cameron men sprang at the flank of the
Sousdal column and shattered it by the fierce fire poured into its
huddled ranks. And now, the left Sousdal column almost simultaneously
discomfited by the Ninety-Third, and the Kazan and Vladimir columns
which the "Black Watch" had assailed being in full retreat, the hill
spurs and hollows became thronged by the disordered masses of the
enemy. Kinglake brilliantly pictures the culmination of the triumph
of the Highlanders:--"Knowing their hearts, and deeming that the
time was one when the voice of his people might fitly enough be
heard, the Chief touched or half-lifted his hat in the way of a man
assenting. Then along the Kourganè slopes and thence west almost home
to the Causeway, the hillsides were made to resound with that joyous
assuring cry which is the natural utterance of a northern people
so long as it is warlike and free." It is curious that nowhere in
his vivid description of the part taken by the Highland Brigade in
the achievement of the victory of the Alma, does Kinglake make any
mention of the bagpipes. It is certain that they were in full blast
during the advance of the regiments and throughout the fighting, and
their shrill strains must have astonished the Russians not less than
did the waving tartans and nodding plumes of the Highlanders.

Sir Colin, careful ever in the midst of victory, halted his brigade
on the ground it had already won, for his supports were yet distant;
and mindful of his situation as the guardian of the left of the army,
he showed a front to the south-east as well as to the east. The great
Ouglitz column, four thousand strong and still untouched, remained
over against the halted British brigade. Chafing at the defeat of
its comrades, it moved down from its height, striving to hinder
their retreat and force them back into action. But the Ouglitz
column itself had in its turn to withdraw from under the fire of the
Highland Brigade, and to accept the less adventurous task of covering
the retreat of its vanquished fellow-columns.

After the flank march to the south side of Sevastopol the allied
forces took possession of the Chersonese upland, and the Highland
Brigade, leaving the Ninety-Third at Balaclava, encamped with the
Guards in rear of the Light Division. Lord Raglan was solicitous
regarding the port of Balaclava which had become the British base of
operations, and measures had already been set on foot to protect it
by a series of batteries and field-works. On the 16th of October Sir
Colin was assigned by the Commander-in-Chief to the command of the
troops and defences covering the port, and he promptly undertook the
important and responsible duty of protecting the rear of the army.
The inner defences of Balaclava consisted of a series of batteries
connected by a continuous trench extending from the sea eastward of
the port round the landward face of the heights to the chapel of
St. Elias near the road from Balaclava to the Traktir bridge. This
line of batteries and trench was held by some twelve hundred marines
landed from the fleet with a weak detachment of marine artillery.
About Kadikoi, on the low ground at the head of the gorge leading
down to Balaclava, were several batteries, and in front of that
village was the camp of the Ninety-Third Highlanders with Barker's
field-battery on its flank. The exterior line of defence consisted
of a chain of redoubts on the low ridge dividing the southern or
inner plain from the exterior or northern valley, along which on
the 25th of October the British light cavalry brigade was to make
its memorable charge. Those redoubts, which were still unfinished
on the day of the battle, were very weak. They were garrisoned by
Turks, and their armament consisted of but nine guns in all. It was
to the assault of those poor redoubts that Liprandi's field-army,
some twenty-four thousand strong, advanced across the Tchernaya at
daybreak of the 25th. Doubtless the Russian general had ulterior
designs, comprising the discomfiture of Campbell's Highlanders and an
attempt against Balaclava.

Riding with Lord Lucan in the early morning of the day of Balaclava,
Sir Colin Campbell witnessed the advance of the Russian columns, and
it was by his advice that the cavalry chief refrained from taking the
offensive. One after another of the four easternmost redoubts fell
into Russian possession. The Turks garrisoning No. 1 made a gallant
and stubborn defence; but they were only six hundred against eleven
battalions with thirty guns, and after losing one-fourth of their
number they fled towards Balaclava followed by the garrisons of the
other redoubts. The Turks rallied for a time on either flank of the
Ninety-Third, which stood drawn up in line in front of the knoll
before Kadikoi. Sir Colin's active share in the further proceedings
of the day was soon over. He sums it up in a few sentences of his
official report:--"When the enemy had taken possession of the
redoubts, their artillery advanced with a mass of cavalry and
their guns ranged. The Ninety-Third Highlanders, with one hundred
invalids under Colonel Daveney, occupied, very inefficiently from
the smallness of their numbers, the slightly rising ground in front
of No. 4 battery. As I found that round shot and shell began to
cause casualties among the Ninety-Third and the Turkish battalions on
their right and left flanks, I made them retire a few paces behind
the crest of the hillock. During this period our batteries on the
heights manned by the Royal and Marine artillerymen made excellent
practice on the enemy's cavalry which came over the hill in our
front. One body of that cavalry, amounting to about four hundred,
turned to their left, separating themselves from those who attacked
Lord Lucan's division, and charged the Ninety-Third, who immediately
advanced to the crest of the hill on which they stood and opened
their fire, forcing the Russian cavalry to turn to their left; after
which the latter made an attempt to turn the right flank of the
Ninety-Third on observing the flight of the Turks who had been posted
there. Upon this the grenadiers of the Ninety-Third under Captain
Ross were wheeled up to their right and fired upon the enemy, and by
this manœuvre entirely discomfited them."

The erratic charge upon him of four Russian squadrons gave the old
infantry commander very little concern. That approach he confronted
calmly in line,--the "thin red streak tipped with a line of steel"
which a brilliant phrase-maker has made historical. When it was a
subject of remark in his presence that the Ninety-Third never altered
its formation to receive the Russian cavalry in a period when the
square was the approved formation in which to meet an onslaught of
horse, he said in his genial way, "No--I did not think it worth while
to form them even four deep." His concern was in the fact that his
regiment was the only infantry body on the British side in the field,
while the Russian chief was the master of many battalions. Those six
companies of kilted men, with a few guns, were the sole protection
of the port the possession of which alone enabled the British army
to remain in the Crimea. It was in the consciousness of a momentous
responsibility that, as he rode along the face of his noble regiment,
he judged it wise to impart to the men the gravity of the occasion.
"Remember," said he, "there is no retreat from here, men! You must
die where you stand!" The cheery answer must have gone to his
heart--"Aye, aye, Sir Colin; we'll do that!"

There were a great many young soldiers in the ranks of the
Ninety-Third, and it needed to be controlled with a firm hand. As
the Russian squadron approached, the impetuous youngsters of the
regiment, stirred by their northern blood, evinced a propensity to
break ranks and rush forward to meet the Muscovite sabres with the
British bayonet; but, in the words of Kinglake, "In a moment Sir
Colin was heard shouting fiercely, 'Ninety-Third, Ninety-Third! damn
all that eagerness!'" and the angry voice of the old soldier quickly
steadied the line.

The main mass of the Russian cavalry, from which the four squadrons
which were repulsed by the Ninety-Third had detached themselves, rode
up the north valley until it was abreast of the abandoned redoubt
No. 4, when it inclined to its left, crossed the low ridge and moved
down the gentle hither slope falling into the inner valley. It was
there met by the charge of the British heavy cavalry brigade; and
during the short but warm encounter Barker's battery, at Sir Colin's
order, opened fire with round shot on the Russian centre and rear.
The Ninety-Third watched with keen rapture their fellow-countrymen
of the Scots Greys slashing their way through the graycoated mass of
Russian troopers; and when the enemy's column wavered, broke, and
then fled in disorder, Scarlett's victorious troopers were greeted
from afar by the ringing cheers of the delighted Highlanders. When
the brigade had completed its triumph, Sir Colin Campbell came
galloping up to offer his congratulations. As he approached the Greys
he uncovered and spoke to the regiment. "Greys! gallant Greys!" he
exclaimed, "I am sixty-one years old, and if I were young again I
should be proud to be in your ranks." Sir Colin does not appear to
have seen anything of the subsequent charge made by Cardigan at the
head of the light cavalry brigade, which was made down the north or
outer valley, on the further side of the ridge on the crest of which
were the abandoned redoubts.

In the afternoon the troops which had moved down from the plateau
in the morning returned to their camps, but the Forty-Second and
Seventy-Ninth passed again under the command of their own brigade
commander. The contiguity of the enemy's forces in such great
strength made very welcome the accession to Sir Colin's scanty
means of defence. During this critical night the Forty-Second and
Seventy-Ninth held the ground between the Ninety-Third camp and the
foot of the Marine heights, and Vinoy's French brigade was sent to
the high ground overlooking the Kadikoi gorge to strengthen Sir Colin
in the defence of his position. He was so apprehensive of a night
attack that he placed the Ninety-Third in No. 4 battery, half the
men posted behind the parapet, the other half lying down with their
loaded rifles by their sides. He himself was on the alert throughout
the night, moving about among the men; his anxiety was great, for
he was not aware of the distaste of the Russians for night attacks.
Amidst his cares it was pleasant to receive and promulgate the
following general order complimenting himself and the Ninety-Third
on their conduct on the 25th: "The Commander of the forces feels
deeply indebted to Major-General Sir Colin Campbell for his able and
persevering exertions in the action of the 25th; and he has great
pleasure in publishing to the army the brilliant manner in which
the Ninety-Third Highlanders under his able directions repulsed the
enemy's cavalry."

For weeks, while the Russians were so close, Sir Colin never relaxed
his activity and vigilance. Not for an hour did he leave the
position. He was awake and about all night and the little sleep he
took was by snatches in the daytime. By constant industry and with
many devices he laboured to strengthen and improve his defences. The
first relief from toil and anxiety which he experienced was when on
December 5th the Russian field-army withdrew across the Tchernaya
to Tchorgoum. "Then," writes Shadwell, "that night for the first
time Sir Colin lay down with his clothes off in the house; but even
with a roof over his head he was restless; and such was the tension
of his nervous system from the continuous strain of long weeks of
anxious watching, that an officer who shared his room was startled
in the middle of the night by his chief jumping up and shouting,
'Stand to your arms!'" Towards the end of December the Seventy-First
Highlanders arrived and joined his command, and on Christmas Day he
received the notification of his appointment to the colonelcy of the
Sixty-Seventh regiment.

Towards the end of January, 1855, Sir Colin was able to have nearly
all his troops hutted. Before the end of the first week in February
the whole brigade was comfortably in huts; and he was able to spare
daily large fatigue-parties for the carriage of shot and shell to
the front. An experience he underwent on February 20th illustrates
the risks and vicissitudes attending an attempt to effect a combined
movement in the darkness of a winter night. Sir Colin had received
instructions to support, with four infantry regiments and a force
of artillery and cavalry, the movement of a considerable body of
French troops under General Bosquet, with the object of surprising
the Russian troops on the right bank of the Tchernaya behind the
Traktir bridge. It was a bitter night of snow and frost, but the
English details duly rendezvoused and marched to the named point
without seeing anything of Bosquet's people. Sir Colin covered the
bridge and left bank with a couple of battalions, holding the rest
in reserve; his troops were in position before daybreak. He was not
entitled to take the offensive save in combination with the French,
of whom there was no appearance. The Russians as day broke were seen
taking up positions, but they remained on the defensive. Sir Colin
stood fast until 8.30 A.M. expecting the arrival of Bosquet; then,
concluding that the expedition had been countermanded, he prepared to
return. His conjecture was correct; a countermand had been despatched
which had duly reached Bosquet, but the messenger charged with the
countermand for Campbell had lost his way and did not arrive. As the
British force was about retiring the French general Vinoy appeared
with his brigade. He had learnt at daybreak that no countermand had
reached Kadikoi, whereupon the gallant Frenchman, unsolicited and
on his own responsibility, hurried with his brigade to support his
English comrade who, isolated as he was and with an overwhelmingly
strong force in his front, might well have found himself in
difficulties. Vinoy's kindly and helpful action was heartily
appreciated by Sir Colin's soldiers.

In the end of February the brigade of Guards came down to Balaclava
from the front, and Sir Colin, who had succeeded the Duke of
Cambridge in the command of the First Division, now had the whole
of it under him. By steadfast labour and attention he had very
materially increased and developed the strength and scope of the
Balaclava lines. When he contrasted the existing with the early state
of the position, he frankly owned that for a great part of the time
he "had held the lines by sheer impudence." In May he experienced
a great mortification in not being allowed to accompany, on the
expedition to Kertch, his Highland Brigade and other details of his
original Balaclava command. Lord Raglan tried to pay him a compliment
by explaining that he could not be spared from the position which he
had guarded so long and so well; but Campbell felt the disappointment
deeply, nor was it mitigated when a newly-arrived Highland regiment
with detachments for the Brigade was sent off to join the Kertch
expedition. On its return the First Division, now again reunited
under his command, moved up to the front in the middle of June. It
was in reserve and not engaged in the unsuccessful assault on the
Redan on June 18th; and thenceforth for a time it took its regular
term of duty in the trenches. But Sir Colin was soon to undergo
another disappointment. He had been cherishing the hope that the
division, which was in full efficacy and high _morale_, would take
a prominent part in the final assault on Sevastopol, and he had
prepared a scheme of operations in case the conduct of the assault
should be committed to him. But he had now to endure the disruption
of his command. The Highland Brigade was withdrawn from the First
Division and formed into a separate division, the complement of which
was to be made up by the addition of other Scottish regiments. The
nucleus of the new Highland Division, consisting of the Forty-Second,
Seventy-Second, Seventy-Ninth, and Ninety-Third regiments, was sent
down to Kamara in support of the Sardinians, and remained there until
September when it returned to the front to serve as a reserve to the
troops taking part in the final assault. The British assault on the
Redan unfortunately failed, and Sir Colin took up the defence of the
trenches with his Highland regiments on the withdrawal of the troops
employed in the abortive affair. The same evening he was desired
by the Commander-in-Chief to hold himself in readiness to make a
renewed assault on the Redan with his Highlanders on the following
day. But during the night the Russians withdrew to the north side. A
patrol of the Ninety-Third entered the Redan at midnight and found it
abandoned. The long siege was over, and Sevastopol had fallen at last.

Sir Colin Campbell was a man who could admire a brave and skilful
enemy. He wrote: "The Russians, it must be acknowledged, made a noble
defence; and surely never was a retreat from an untenable position
so wonderfully well-managed, carried out as it was in the face of a
powerful enemy and without any loss whatever, while the withdrawal
of the troops from their defences through the town and across a
single bridge was being effected. I cannot conceive anything more
perfect and complete in every detail than the manner in which they
accomplished the withdrawal from Sevastopol and the transport of
their troops across the harbour.... While they fired all the other
magazines along the line of their defences, they did not touch those
in the Great Redan--an act of great humanity, for the whole of our
wounded who remained in the ditch and our trenches would have been
destroyed. Indeed, before the Russians left the Redan some of our
wounded were carefully dressed by them and placed in safety from the
fire of our own shells."

Campbell's position in the Crimea had become exceedingly
uncomfortable. Before the final assault General Simpson had informed
him that he was desired by Lord Panmure to offer him the Malta
command, an offer which appeared an indirect attempt to remove
him from the army. Later he became by virtue of seniority second
in command, and it was known that Simpson was about to vacate the
chief command. The tone of the press was emphatic in favour of the
employment of a younger man in that position, and the Government
followed the lead of the journals. Sir Colin could not but realise
that his presence with the army in the Crimea was no longer desired
by the War Minister. Having seen the Highland Division comfortably
hutted for the winter during which no active operations in the
field would be possible, he took farewell of his troops and sailed
for England on November 3rd. Three days later was announced Sir
William Codrington's nomination to the chief command; and with
that despatch came a letter from Lord Panmure to Sir Colin, the
contents of which he did not learn until he visited his lordship on
his arrival in London on November 17th. This letter, in Campbell's
own words, "contained an appeal to my patriotism of the strongest
nature, to induce me to accept a command under Codrington." To his
old friend Lord Hardinge, now Commander-in-Chief, Campbell frankly
said that he had come home to tender his resignation. "But," he
added, "if her Majesty should ask me to place myself under a junior
officer, I could not resist any request of hers." He was promptly
commanded to Windsor; and, to quote General Shadwell, "the gracious
reception accorded to him by the Queen and the Prince Consort struck
a responsive chord in Sir Colin's heart. It completely dispelled
all angry feeling from his mind, and in a true spirit of loyalty he
expressed to her Majesty his readiness to return to the Crimea and
'to serve under a corporal if she wished it.'" At the Queen's request
he sat for his photograph, and by her Majesty's special desire, "the
gallant and amiable old soldier was asked to have it taken in the
uniform he wore at the Alma and at Balaclava."

On his way back to the Crimea he visited Paris where he was presented
to the Emperor and Empress, and where to his great joy he found
his genial Crimean friend General Vinoy. When he returned to the
Crimea he found that the division of the army into two army corps,
the Government's intention to carry out which scheme Lord Panmure's
letter had intimated to him and to take the command of one of which
it was that he had returned to the East, had not been effected,
and that Sir William Codrington did not intend to carry out the
arrangement until immediately before the army should take the field.
The Highland Division was placed under him with the understanding
that it should contribute the nucleus of an army corps to be formed
later if hostilities were to be prosecuted. He quartered himself at
Kamara with his division, resolved, as he wrote--"to accommodate
himself to all that might happen, and that nothing should disturb the
cordiality which ought to exist between himself and the commander
under whose orders he was to serve." He had not long to practise
patience. By the end of February, 1856, an armistice was arranged
and in the beginning of April peace was proclaimed. Before finally
leaving the Crimea Sir Colin assembled the regiments of the original
Highland Brigade that he might take farewell of the soldiers who had
served under him since the beginning of the war. He was not much of
an orator, but when he was moved he could be eloquent in language
which went right to the hearts of soldiers. His farewell was uttered
in the following words worthy alike of him and of them.

"Soldiers of the Forty-Second, Seventy-Ninth, and Ninety-Third!--old
Highland Brigade with whom I passed the early and perilous part of
this war, I have now to take leave of you. In a few hours I shall be
on board ship, never to see you again as a body. A long farewell!
I am now old and shall not be called to serve any more; and nothing
will remain to me but the memory of my campaigns, and the memory
too, of the enduring, hardy, generous soldiers with whom I have been
associated, and whose name and glory will long be kept alive in the
hearts of our countrymen. When you go home, as you gradually fulfil
your term of service, each to his family and his cottage, you will
tell the story of your immortal advance in that victorious _échelon_
up the heights of Alma, and may speak of the old brigadier who led
you, and who loved you so well. Your children and your children's
children will repeat the tale to other generations, when only a
few lines of history will remain to record all the enthusiasm and
discipline which have borne you so stoutly to the end of this war.
Our native land will never forget the name of the Highland Brigade,
and in some future war the nation will call for another one to equal
this, which it never can surpass. Though I shall be gone, the thought
of you will go with me wherever I may be, and cheer my old age with
a glorious recollection of dangers confronted and hardships endured.
The bagpipes will never sound near me without carrying me back to
those bright days when I was at your head and wore the bonnet which
you gained for me, and the honourable decorations on my breast,
many of which I owe to your conduct. Brave soldiers, kind comrades,
farewell!"

This address, delivered with much feeling, was received with manifest
emotion by the troops, who regarded as final the separation from
the chief they had learned to regard with affection. They did not
know that the farewell was to be but temporary, and that ere long
the three regiments would be under his command in another continent,
ready there to display the same soldierly virtues which had already
earned them the gratitude of their chief and countrymen.

In the summer of 1856 Sir Colin was appointed to the post of
Inspector-General of Infantry in succession to the Duke of Cambridge,
who became Commander-in-Chief of the army on the resignation of Lord
Hardinge. In December of that year he was sent to Berlin as the
representative of her Majesty, on the errand of presenting to his
Royal Highness the Prince of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor William
the First) the insignia of the military Grand Cross of the Order
of the Bath. During the first half of 1857 he was actively engaged
in the official duties of his important position. Beginning with
the depôts in the south of England, he then spent some time in his
inspections in Ireland, whence he visited Scotland and returned to
London in the beginning of June. How retentive was his memory for
faces, names, and events, is illustrated by the following incident
told on the authority of the gentleman to whom Sir Colin related it.
"While," said Campbell, "I was inspecting the depôt at Chichester,
I noticed that an old man, evidently an old soldier though in plain
clothes, was constantly on the ground and apparently watching my
movements. As I was leaving the barrack-yard at the end of the
inspection, he came towards me, drew himself up, made the military
salute, and with much respect said, 'Sir Colin, may I speak to you?
Look at me, sir! do you recollect me?' I looked at him and replied,
'Yes, I do.' 'What is my name?' he asked. I told him. 'Yes, sir;
and where did you last see me?' 'In the breach of San Sebastian,' I
replied, 'badly wounded by my side.' 'Right, sir!' answered the old
soldier. 'I can tell you something more,' I added--'you were No. --
in the front rank of my company.' 'Right, sir!' said the veteran. I
was putting my hand into my pocket to make the old man a present,
when he stepped forward, laid his hand on my wrist, and said:--'No,
sir; that is not what I want; but you will be going to Shorncliffe to
inspect the depôt there. I have a son in the Inniskillings quartered
at that station, and if you will call him out and tell him that you
knew his father, that is what I should wish.'"

The anecdote is a typical sample of the kindly and self-respecting
relations of the men of the old army with their officers, before
the era of short service set in. When Colin Campbell commanded the
Ninety-Eighth he knew the face, name, and character of every man in
the regiment. When he was Commander-in-Chief in India, which position
he was now immediately to attain, he could recognise by name all the
Crimean men of his favourite regiment the Ninety-Third Highlanders.



CHAPTER V

THE INDIAN MUTINY--ORGANISATION--RELIEF OF LUCKNOW--DEFEAT OF GWALIOR
CONTINGENT


In the beginning of 1857 the clouds that presaged the awful storm
of mutiny which Sir Charles Napier had foretold and temporarily
averted seven years earlier, were ominously gathering over the
Bengal Presidency. On the 19th of February the first flash of
actual outbreak burst forth at Berhampore. The revolt spread to
Barrackpore, and in the course of a few weeks it became apparent
that the spirit of insubordination was gradually but surely ripening
throughout the Bengal army. In the middle of May the crisis which
had been threatening for three months came to a head at Meerut. The
revolt of the native troops at that great station was consummated
in rapine and slaughter. Delhi, with its vast munitions of war
unprotected save by a handful of devoted European soldiers, fell
into the hands of the insurgents. The pensioned King of Delhi was
drawn from his senile obscurity and proclaimed Emperor of India, and
the great city became the capital of a rival power and the centre
of attraction to the revolted army. The native regiments in the
stations of the North-West Provinces broke out successively into
revolt and hastened tumultuously to Delhi, which soon contained
within its walls a turbulent mass of many thousand mutinous soldiers.
Within a month after the outbreak at Meerut British authority had
become almost extinct throughout the North-West Provinces. From
Meerut to Allahabad, among a population of some thirty millions and
throughout an area of many hundred miles, there remained no vestige
of British occupation, save where at Agra the British residents were
waiting anxiously for the signal to withdraw from their bungalows
into the shelter of Akbar's fort, and the hapless people closely
beleaguered in Wheeler's miserable entrenchment at Cawnpore. Across
the Ganges throughout Oude, British men, women, and children were
being mercilessly slaughtered by revolted sepoys; and Henry Lawrence,
himself in the midst of troops scarcely caring to cloak their
mutinous intentions, had soon sadly to realise that all Oude was
gone except the Lucknow Residency, where he was to die after having
exhausted himself in successful exertions to make that position
defensible by the brave and steadfast men who survived him.

While on the march from Umballa towards Delhi the Commander-in-Chief
in India, General the Hon. George Anson, died of cholera at Kurnal
on May 27th. Tidings of this misfortune did not reach the War
Office until July 11th. On that same afternoon Sir Colin Campbell
was sent for by Lord Panmure, who made him the offer of the high
command rendered vacant by Anson's decease. Campbell promptly
accepted the offer and expressed his readiness to start that same
evening if necessary. He stipulated successfully that his friend
Colonel Mansfield, then Consul-General at Warsaw (afterwards Lord
Sandhurst), should be offered the appointment of chief of staff with
the rank of major-general. This settled, Campbell had an interview
with the Duke of Cambridge, then as now Commander-in-Chief, who
approved of the selection of Major Alison[3] as military secretary,
and of Sir David Baird and Lieutenant Alison as aides-de-camp.

It had been arranged at Sir Colin's interview with Lord Panmure
that he should start next morning. He was ready and his modest kit
complete; but sundry matters intervened delaying his departure for
a few hours. The Queen, for one thing, had desired that he should
wait on her. The Duke of Cambridge brought him to Buckingham Palace;
and, so Sir Colin wrote in his journal, "Her Majesty's expressions of
approval of my readiness to proceed at once were pleasant to receive
from a Sovereign so good and so justly loved." He left London by the
continental night train, full of a justifiable elation. "Never,"
he wrote, "did a man proceed on a mission of duty with a lighter
heart and a feeling of greater humility, yet with a juster sense
of the compliment that had been paid to a mere soldier of fortune
like myself in being named to the highest command in the gift of
the Crown." Hurrying through Paris he found time to breakfast with
General Vinoy his old Crimean friend, and reaching Marseilles on
the morning of the 14th he immediately embarked for India on a
vessel which was in readiness with its steam up. During the voyage
he prepared a strategic scheme, the essence of which was a great
concentric advance upon the Central Indian States, to be undertaken
by the whole disposable military forces of the Madras and Bombay
Presidencies, that would effectually engage the whole rebel strength
of those turbulent territories, and so in some degree divert the
severe pressure of the Gwalior Contingent on the left flank of the
long and precarious main line of communication. This object obtained,
Bengal and the Punjaub once more united by the reconquest of the
intervening territory, and the left flank and rear of the reconquered
base secured by the reduction of Central India, the most arduous
work of the war could be safely undertaken; the vast, populous, and
bitterly hostile province of Oude might then be subdued, with the
result of securing non-molestation on the right flank of the region
through which the principal line of communication must pass. The
operation of this grand strategic scheme was weakened and retarded
by various causes; but the sound wisdom of Campbell's prescient
conception was ultimately in great measure vindicated.

The new Commander-in-Chief landed at Calcutta on the 13th of August
and became Lord Canning's guest at Government House. The situation
which confronted him was gloomy almost to utter hopelessness.
It was true, indeed, that John Lawrence was holding the Punjaub
in his strong hand, and was pressing forward all his available
reinforcements to strengthen the British force contending against
overwhelming odds before the walls of Delhi. But meanwhile that
force was little over four thousand strong, and it seemed more than
doubtful whether it could hold its ground until reinforcements should
reach it. The garrison at Agra was isolated and cut off from all
communication. That of Lucknow, hemmed within the feebly-defensive
position of the Residency and its environs by many thousands of
fierce and relentless enemies, encumbered also with a great company
of helpless women and children, had numbers wholly inadequate to
man the defences and was maintaining an almost hopeless resistance
against overwhelming odds. Havelock, at the head of less than two
thousand brave men, had fought his way from Allahabad to Cawnpore,
too late to save the lives of the hapless women and children who had
been reserved from the massacre of the men of Wheeler's command only
to endure a crueller fate. His gallant and persistent efforts to
relieve Lucknow had failed and he had been obliged to fall back to
Cawnpore, where with an attenuated force he was maintaining himself
precariously in the face of the threatening attitude of the revolted
Gwalior Contingent on the further bank of the Jumna.

Through the gloom there was one gleam of sunshine. The fortress of
Allahabad, with its magazines of military stores, remained in British
possession. At the point where the Ganges and the Jumna blend their
waters, distant by land five hundred miles from Calcutta, it was a
position of the highest strategical importance, forming as it did
an advanced base for operations in the regions beyond having for
their object the relief of beleaguered places and the restoration of
communications with Delhi and the Punjaub. From Calcutta to Allahabad
there were two available routes; by the Ganges a distance of eight
hundred miles, to accomplish which by steamer required from twenty
to thirty days; by the land route of five hundred miles, one hundred
and twenty of which was by railway and three hundred and eighty by
the Grand Trunk Road. The troops as they landed were despatched up
country in detachments by one or other of those routes. The common
objective for the time was Allahabad, where Sir James Outram, who
had returned from the command of the Persian expedition and had left
Calcutta on the 6th of August to assume the command of the combined
Cawnpore and Dinapore divisions along with the civil appointment
of Chief Commissioner in Oude, was to collect the detachments of
reinforcements as they arrived, preparatory to moving upward to
Cawnpore there to join Havelock and advance with him to attempt the
relief of the beleaguered garrison in the Residency of Lucknow.

But the troops, which as soon as possible after landing at Calcutta
should have been pushing straight up country to Allahabad either by
land or by water, suffered unavoidable detentions by the way. So
disturbed was the country that posts had to be maintained to keep
the routes open, and their occupation absorbed a certain proportion
of the scanty European force. The mutinies of native troops at
Dinapore and Bhagulpore caused the temporary detention by the local
authorities of important reinforcements; and it was not until the
first week of September that Outram was able to collect his scattered
detachments at Allahabad. After a sharp and successful fight on the
way he reached Cawnpore on September 15th; bringing reinforcements
which raised to a strength of about three thousand men the force
of which he chivalrously waived the command in favour of Havelock.
Ten days later was accomplished what is commonly though erroneously
styled the First Relief of Lucknow,--not a "relief" in any sense of
the term, but simply a great augmentation to the defensive strength
of the garrison which had been holding the weak position of the
Residency with a heroism so staunch.

Sir Colin found Calcutta all but entirely bare of material for a
campaign; nothing was in readiness for the equipment of the troops
fast converging on his base on the Hooghly. Means of transport there
were scarcely any; horses for cavalry or artillery there were none;
ammunition for the Enfield rifles was deficient; flour even was
running out; guns, gun-carriages, and harness for the field-batteries
were either unfit for active service or did not exist. Prompt and
active were the exertions made by the energetic Chief and his
subordinates to cope with needs so pressing. Horses were purchased
no matter at what cost; ammunition was gathered in far and wide;
flour was commissioned from the Cape; field-guns were cast at the
Cossipore foundry; gun-carriages and harness were made up with all
possible haste. The Commissariat and Ordnance departments were
stirred from their lethargy and stimulated to an activity previously
undreamed of; and the whole military machine was set throbbing at
high pressure. As the falling of the Ganges gradually made the river
route precarious, great exertions were made to quicken and extend the
means of transport by the Grand Trunk Road, for which purpose the
Bullock Train, as it was called, was established. Relays of soldiers
travelled up night after night in bullock-waggons, halting during the
heat of the day at prepared resting-places. Ultimately this system
was so perfected that two hundred men were daily forwarded from the
end of the railway at Raneegunge; and they reached Allahabad after
about a fortnight's travel, perfectly fresh and fit for immediate
service.

In the midst of the pressure of his preparations Sir Colin found time
to write with soldierly appreciation and cordiality to the principal
officers now under his command. His first message to Outram concluded
with the words, "It is an exceeding satisfaction to me to have your
assistance, and to find you in your present position." To Havelock
he wrote: "The sustained energy, promptitude, and vigorous action
by which your whole proceedings have been marked during the late
difficult operations deserve the highest praise. I beg you to express
to the officers and men under your command the pride and satisfaction
I have experienced in reading your reports of the intrepid valour
they have displayed upon every occasion they have encountered the
vastly superior numbers of the enemy, and how nobly they have
maintained the qualities for which British soldiers have ever been
distinguished--high courage and endurance." To Archdale Wilson,
commanding the force before Delhi, he sent on August 23rd some words
of generous encouragement, the first communication which had reached
that officer from any military authority for many weeks: "I must
delay no longer to congratulate you on the manner in which the force
under your command has conducted itself and upheld the honour of our
arms. You may count on my support and help in every mode in which it
may be possible for me to afford them." And when on September 26th
the happy news reached him that Delhi, the head and heart of the
rebellion as it was then considered to have been, was once more in
the occupation of a British garrison, the Chief promptly telegraphed
to Wilson, "Accept my hearty congratulations on your brilliant
success."

It seems quite clear that Sir Colin regarded it as virtually certain
that Outram, who assumed command when Havelock and he had fought
their way into the Lucknow Residency, would succeed in speedily
effecting the relief and withdrawal of the garrison which was
still holding that precarious position. But his confident hope
for the prompt relief of Lucknow was doomed to early and utter
disappointment. Outram's column had proved to be simply in the nature
of a reinforcement, and that, too, with no corresponding addition to
the supplies of the original garrison. The beleaguerment was close;
the position environed by some sixty thousand armed and rancorous
enemies. Outram sent word on October 7th, just a fortnight after
his entry, to the effect that by eating his horses and gun-draught
bullocks he would be able to subsist for a month; and he added that a
force equal at least to two strong brigades would be required for the
extrication of the garrison.

The sudden and pressing danger threatening Outram's isolated and
beleaguered force in Lucknow imposed on the Commander-in-Chief the
most urgent exertions. Every military department was stimulated to
the utmost; the whole resources of the Government were thrown into
violent action. Stores, provisions, carriages, ammunition, guns, all
were hurried forward upon Allahabad. But the available resources
were sadly limited. The infantry were straggled in small detachments
all along the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Cawnpore. No cavalry
existed except some two hundred men of the military train, and there
were scarcely any horses for the field-batteries which were being
organised at Allahabad. All told, the troops on the up-country march
constituted a force hardly equivalent to a single weak brigade,
less than half the strength which Outram had specified as requisite
for his extrication. To relieve Lucknow in time seemed a sheer
impossibility and disaster to the garrison there inevitable.

Fortunately, while every nerve was being strained to succour Outram
from below, the welcome tidings were received that invaluable
co-operation was approaching from the opposite direction. As soon
as Delhi had fallen General Wilson had sent out in pursuit of the
fugitive rebels a mixed column under the command of Colonel Greathed.
The strength of this force amounted to two thousand eight hundred
men, of whom nine hundred and thirty were Europeans. It was made up
of two troops and one battery of artillery with sixteen guns, the
Ninth Lancers three hundred strong, the Eighth and Seventy-Fifth
Regiments four hundred and fifty strong, two hundred native sappers,
four hundred Punjaub cavalry, and two regiments of Punjaub infantry
twelve hundred strong. Marching down the Gangetic Doab, Greathed
defeated bodies of mutineers at Bolundshuhur, Malaghun, and Allyghur.
Failing to overtake the main body of fugitives which had crossed his
front towards Oude, he pushed on to Agra by forced marches, and had
barely pitched his camp there when he was suddenly attacked by the
Indore brigade. Recovering from their momentary surprise, the British
troops notwithstanding their exhaustion met the hostile onslaught
with vigour, and after a sharp engagement routed the enemy with heavy
slaughter and the capture of thirteen guns and a great quantity of
baggage and stores in the lengthened pursuit following on the combat.
During the march from Agra down the Doab Colonel Hope Grant overtook
the column, and having taken command of it in virtue of seniority
arrived at Cawnpore on October 26th. Four days later, at the head of
the Delhi column reinforced by several companies of the Ninety-Third
Highlanders and some infantry detachments, he crossed the Ganges into
Oude. Strictly enjoined to refrain from any serious operation pending
the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief, Grant halted at Buntera, six
miles short of the Alum Bagh, with the garrison of which position
he established communications. As the reinforcements and supplies
reached Cawnpore they were sent forward to the depôt-camp at Buntera.
The arrival of this Delhi column was of priceless value to Sir Colin,
on whom his all but utter want of cavalry and his deficiency in
field-artillery had hitherto weighed sorely. The column had come well
provided with carriage, a hardly less valuable acquisition than the
cavalry and artillery it brought. Now the Chief had to his hand the
elements wherewith to organise a field-force strong enough to justify
the opening of active operations at an early date.

Sir Colin left Calcutta on the 27th of October, and hurried with all
speed to the seat of war. On the way he narrowly escaped falling
into the hands of a body of mutineers who were crossing the road
just as he came up. At Allahabad on November 1st intelligence
reached him that Outram considered himself able to hold out on
further reduced rations until beyond the middle of the month,--a
welcome announcement, since it afforded Sir Colin more time to
complete his arrangements and gave opportunity for the arrival of
reinforcements still on the way. On the morning of the 3rd he reached
Cawnpore, where he remained a few days to get the engineer train and
commissariat in trim for the projected operation.

That operation was of the most difficult and embarrassing character.
Its urgent objective was the relief of Lucknow, whence came an
importunate cry for succour. Yet to attempt the immediate relief
of Lucknow was at the imminent risk of the sacrifice of his
communications; and the result of relieving the city at the cost of
the forfeiture of his communications, would be simply to find himself
in the air, hampered by a great convoy of sick and wounded, of women
and children, his scanty force ringed around by vast hordes of
enemies. For, as he knew, at Calpee on the Jumna, forty miles south
of Cawnpore and directly on the flank of the road between Allahabad
and Cawnpore, was gathering the revolted Gwalior Contingent, a large
force under the Nana Sahib, and portions of the Dinapore mutineers--a
collective body at least triple his own strength, having the obvious
intention of striking at Cawnpore and his communications so soon as
he should be fairly committed to the Lucknow enterprise. Of this
eventuality he had no alternative but to take the risk, leaving
in Cawnpore General Windham with a few hundred men to remain on
the defensive in an intrenched position and not to move out unless
compelled by threat of bombardment.

On the 9th Sir Colin reached the camp at Buntera, where he placed
Hope Grant in divisional command, reserving to himself a general
superintendence of the operations. During the halt there the brave
Kavanagh, who had volunteered to pass from beleaguered Lucknow
through the hostile lines in the guise of a native scout, came
into camp with despatches for the Chief. The scheme of operations
settled on was to skirt the city from the Alumbagh to the Dilkoosha;
thence to advance upon the Martinière and the line of the canal; to
follow the right bank of the Goomtee seizing the barracks and the
Secundrabagh; thence under cover of batteries to be opened on the
Kaiserbagh to carry the remaining buildings; and after effecting a
junction with the Residency to withdraw its garrison. A message was
sent in to Outram informing him that the Commander-in-Chief would
leave the Alumbagh on the 13th; that he hoped to gain possession of
the barracks and the Secundrabagh on the 14th; and on the 16th to
carry out the women and children and the sick and wounded.

On the afternoon of the 11th Sir Colin's little army, all told barely
four thousand five hundred strong, was formed up on the plain for the
inspection of its Chief. A spectator has graphically depicted the
scene. The field-guns from Delhi looked blackened and service-worn;
but the horses were in good condition and the harness in perfect
repair; the gunners bronzed; stalwart, and in perfect fighting
case. The Ninth Lancers, with their gallant bearing, their flagless
lances and their lean but hardy horses, looked the perfection of
regular cavalry on active service. Wild and bold was the bearing
of the Sikh horsemen, clad in loose fawn-coloured dress, with long
boots, blue or red turbans and sashes, and armed with carbine and
tulwar. Next to them were the worn and wasted remains of the Eighth
and Seventy-Fifth Queen's, who with wearied air stood grouped under
their colours. Then came the two regiments of Punjaub Infantry, tall
of stature, with fierce eager eyes under their huge turbans,--men
swift in the march, forward in the fight, and eager for the pillage.
On the left of the line, in massive serried ranks, a waving sea of
plumes and tartan, stood the Ninety-Third Highlanders, who with loud
and rapturous cheers welcomed the veteran commander whom they knew so
well and loved so warmly. Till he reached the Highlanders no cheer
had greeted Sir Colin as he rode along the line of men to whom as yet
he was strange. But the Ninety-Third were his old familiar friends.
"Ninety-Third!" so ended his little speech--"You are my own lads, I
rely on you to do yourselves and me credit!" "Aye, aye, Sir Colin!"
answered a voice from the ranks, "Ye ken us and we ken you; we'll
bring the women and bairns out o' Lucknow or we'll leave our ain
banes there!"

The expected reinforcements having joined, the column, Sir Colin
riding at its head, began the flank march towards the Dilkoosha at
daybreak on the morning of the 14th. No opposition was met with until
the advance approached the Dilkoosha park, whence came a smart fire
which was soon overpowered. The Dilkoosha was promptly occupied and
the straggling enemy hurried down the slope towards the Martinière,
whence presently came a heavy fire of artillery and musketry which
was beaten down by Travers' heavy guns. At the approach of the
British skirmishers the Martinière was evacuated, and all the
ground on the hither side of the canal was won. The field-hospital
and commissariat were installed in the Dilkoosha and headquarters
were established in the Martinière, the wood to the west of which
was occupied by Hope's brigade with guns on the higher ground on its
left. An attack on the position made by the enemy in the afternoon
met with defeat, and they were driven back across the canal by a
couple of regiments which made good a lodgment on its further side.

All the 15th the advance halted to admit of the closing up of the
rearguard, which had been constantly engaged with the enemy during
the previous day and did not reach the Dilkoosha until late next
morning. The nearest road from Sir Colin's position to the Residency
was by the Dilkoosha bridge, the Begum's palace, and the Huzrut
Gunj,--the road followed by the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders in the
first relief; but it was manifestly extremely dangerous. Another
road, starting also from near the Begum's palace and passing between
the barracks and a suburb, led straight to the Secundrabagh. This
was the route traversed by Outram and Havelock's main force on the
25th of September, and it was recommended in the plan Outram had
sent out by Kavanagh. But Sir Colin was assured that this road also
would present formidable obstacles to his advance; and he could not
afford to run the risk of compromising his scanty resources, already
diminished by the detachments he was obliged to leave in his rear.
He wisely resolved to make a detour to his right and approach the
Secundrabagh by the open ground near the river. In the afternoon a
reconnaissance was made by the Commander-in-Chief of the position
opposite his left, the intention being to impress the enemy with the
belief that his advance was to be made in that direction. The massing
of all his artillery on that point and the maintenance upon it of a
fire of mortars during the night, together with the entire absence of
outposts on his right, were measures intended to contribute to that
conviction.

By daybreak of the 16th the army was in motion. The enterprise before
it was arduous in the extreme. After the subtraction of the details
necessary to hold the Alumbagh, the Martinière, and the Dilkoosha,
there were available for the relief operations only the Ninety-Third,
part of the Fifty-Third, two weak Sikh regiments, two provisional
battalions of detachments, and portions of the Twenty-Third and
Eighty-Second regiments--in all not above three thousand bayonets.
Opposed to this handful was a host of some sixty thousand armed men
concentrated in a central position of great strength. The task would
have been rash even to madness but for Campbell's great strength in
artillery, on which he chiefly depended for overcoming the obstacles
which interposed between him and the garrison he had come to relieve.
That artillery comprised the gallant Peel's naval brigade, consisting
of six 24-pounders, two 8-inch howitzers, and two rocket-tubes;
the sixteen field-guns of Greathed's column, a heavy and a light
field-battery and a mortar-battery of the Royal Artillery, one
half field-battery of the Bengal Artillery, and two native Madras
horse-artillery guns--in all thirty-nine guns and howitzers, six
mortars, and two rocket-tubes.

The line of Campbell's advance was from his extreme right along the
right bank of the river for about a mile, and then by a narrow
and tortuous lane through thickly-wooded enclosures and between
low mud-houses until the vicinity of the rear of the Secundrabagh
should be approached. A strong advance-guard of cavalry with Blunt's
troop of Bengal Horse Artillery and a company of the Fifty-Third
led the way. Hope's and Russell's brigades followed, the ammunition
and engineer park came next, and Greathed's brigade brought up the
rear. After passing the village of Sultangunge the lane by which the
force was advancing turned sharp to the left, when the rear of the
Secundrabagh became immediately visible, from the loopholes in which
and from the adjacent huts on either side of the lane came a brisk
fire. The moment was extremely critical; for the movement in advance
was checked, while the cavalry, jammed and helpless in the narrow
lane, hindered the passage forward of the artillery and infantry. Sir
Colin pushed to the front regardless of the enemy's fire, thrust the
cavalry into the side alleys of the village, and ordered a company
to line and cover the continuation of the lane passing along the
west side of the Secundrabagh and debouching into the open space in
its front. He himself then brought up to the front of the building
two of Travers' 18-pounders, which promptly set about battering a
breach in the south-west bastion of the Secundrabagh. Blunt's troop
of horse-artillery came tearing up at a gallop through a heavy
cross-fire till it reached the open space between that building and
the serai a couple of hundred yards to the southward. Blunt gallantly
maintained his fire in three different directions, sustaining heavy
losses in men and horses. The Ninety-Third now coming up, three
companies of that regiment cleared the serai and the adjacent
buildings, drove out the enemy holding those positions, and pursuing
the rebels across the plain seized and held the barracks while part
of the Fifty-Third in skirmishing order connected that post with
the main attack against the Secundrabagh. Sir Colin was near one of
Blunt's guns when a bullet which had passed through a gunner struck
him with great force on the thigh, but it did not penetrate and he
escaped with a severe bruise.

While the 18-pounders were doing their work the infantry were lying
down behind an embankment waiting impatiently till their time should
come. After an hour's battering a Sikh native officer, without
waiting for the word, sprang forward sword in hand followed by his
men. Sir Hope Grant[4] states that the brave Sikh was outrun by
Sergeant-Major Murray of the Ninety-Third. Mr. Forbes-Mitchell[5]
says that the Sikh officer was killed on the way and that the two
European officers of the Sikh regiment were wounded, misfortunes
which caused a temporary halt on the part of the Punjaubis. "Then,"
according to Forbes-Mitchell, "Sir Colin called to Colonel Ewart,
'Ewart, bring on the tartan!'; his bugler sounded the advance, and
the seven companies of the Ninety-Third dashed from behind the
bank. It has always been a moot point who got through the hole
first. I believe the first man in was Lance-Corporal Donnelly of the
Ninety-Third, killed inside; then Subadar Gokul Singh, followed by
Sergeant-Major Murray of the Ninety-Third also killed, and, fourth,
Captain Burroughs[6] severely wounded."

The foremost men climbed in through the narrow breach. The bulk of
the Ninety-Third and the Sikhs entered by the great gate further left
after its massive locks had yielded to many bullets, and they were
followed by Barnston's battalion of detachments. The Fifty-Third
broke in through a window to the right. The vast interior garden
in which the deadly strife was proceeding rang with the clash of
weapons, the crackle of musketry, the shouts and yells of the
combatants. The scene baffled all description. The enemy, caught in
a death-trap, fought with the courage of despair. The conflict raged
for hours and the carnage was appalling. When the enclosure and
buildings were finally cleared of their ghastly contents, no fewer
than two thousand native soldiers were found to have been slain.

That Sir Colin's temper was apt to break out in sudden passion, he
himself was very ready to admit; and if the passion were causeless,
he was equally ready to make amends for the outburst. Forbes-Mitchell
tells a story of him which illustrates both characteristics. Colonel
Ewart, he says, in the fighting inside the Secundrabagh had captured
a regimental colour from two native officers, both of whom he had
killed notwithstanding that he had been himself severely wounded; and
seeing that the fight was over, Ewart, bareheaded, covered with blood
and powder-smoke, his eyes still flashing with the excitement of the
fray, ran up to where Sir Colin sat on his gray charger outside the
gate of the Secundrabagh and called out "We are in full possession of
the place, sir! I have killed the two last of the enemy with my own
hand, and here is one of their colours!" Sir Colin had been chafed
by events, and he turned angrily on Ewart. "Damn your colours, sir!"
he thundered--"it is not your place to be taking colours; go back to
your regiment this instant!" Ewart turned away, much disconcerted
by the reception given him by the Chief; but Forbes-Mitchell adds
that he subsequently heard that Sir Colin sent for the colonel later
in the day, apologised for his rudeness, and thanked him for his
services.

Some distance beyond the Secundrabagh, and about one hundred yards
right of the road towards the Residency, was the Shah Nujeef, a
great mosque and tomb surrounded by a high loopholed wall fringed
by trees, jungle, and enclosures. About midway between the two
places lay a village to left of the road. Having drawn off his
brigade from the Secundrabagh Hope cleared and occupied this
village, while Peel brought up his heavy guns and placed them in
battery within short range of the Shah Nujeef. The defence of that
stronghold was most obstinate, the enemy maintaining from it a
severe and incessant musketry-fire which cost Peel very heavy loss.
The attack had lasted for nearly three hours, yet no impression
had been made on the massive structure; and Peel was enduring a
double cross-fire from the left bank of the Goomtee and from the
Kaiserbagh in addition to the injury wrought him by the garrison
of the Shah Nujeef. A gallant attempt made by Barnston's battalion
of detachments to clear the outlying enclosures failed; Barnston
was struck down, and the determined attempt then made by Wolseley
to escalade could not succeed, for he and his men were raked by a
storm of missiles,--grenades and round-shot hurled from wall-pieces,
arrows and brickbats, burning torches of rags and cotton saturated
with oil. A dangerous crisis was imminent. Retreat was not to be
thought of, even had it been possible, which it was not. The veteran
Chief was equal to the occasion. He sent orders to Middleton's light
field-battery to advance, to pass Peel's guns on the right, and,
getting as near as possible to the Shah Nujeef, to open a quick and
well-sustained fire of grape. Peel, for his part, was to redouble
his fire; and the Chief rode back to the village occupied by the
Ninety-Third to tell his favourite regiment that no matter at what
cost the Shah Nujeef must be taken, and since the place had withstood
gun-fire the cold steel would have to play its part. Many words were
not needed, for Sir Colin and the Ninety-Third understood each other;
and so, announcing to the regiment that he would himself head its
advance, he led it out from the village into the open, ready to press
forward at the word.

Middleton's battery came up grandly. With loud cheers, the drivers
waving their whips, the gunners their caps, it galloped through
the storm of fire to within pistol-shot of the wall, and poured in
round upon round of grape. Peel, manning all his guns, worked them
with swift measured energy. The Ninety-Third, with flashing eyes
and ardent step, the Highland blood throbbing in every vein, came
rolling forward in a great eager wave, the war-loving veteran of
many battles riding at its head. As he approached the nearest angle
of the enclosure the men began to fall fast, but without a check its
foot was reached. There, however, the gallant Scots were brought
to a stand in face of a loopholed wall twenty feet high. There was
no breach and there were no scaling-ladders. Unable to advance and
resolute not to retire, the Ninety-Third resorted to a stationary
fire of musketry; but the garrison of the place had all the advantage
and the assailants suffered severely. Of Sir Colin's staff both
the brothers Alison were struck down, and many of the mounted
officers, including Hope, his aide-de-camp, and his brigade-major,
had their horses shot under them. The aspect of affairs had become
exceedingly grave; the dusk was falling and the Shah Nujeef still
remained untaken. Just at this critical moment Sergeant Paton of
the Ninety-Third came running to Hope with the glad tidings that he
had found a breach in the north-east corner of the rampart near the
river. Hope quietly gathered a company and followed the sergeant
through the jungle to where the latter indicated the narrow fissure
he had discovered. He clambered up and then assisted Hope, Allgood,
and others; the soldiers followed in single file. A body of sappers
hurried up and enlarged the opening, and then the supports rushed in.
The garrison, taken by surprise, glided away amidst the rolling smoke
into the dark shadows of the night. The main gate was thrown open and
at last the Shah Nujeef was in British possession.

Enough had been done for one day. The Shah Nujeef was garrisoned
by the Ninety-Third, where also headquarters were established for
the night. The roads and positions in rear of that advanced post
were strongly held, and the wearied troops lay down to well-earned
rest. The relief of the Residency, a few hours before problematical
in the extreme, was now fairly assured. Taken between Campbell's
batteries and Outram's cannon, the enemy could not long maintain
themselves in the intervening buildings. In the early morning of
the 17th Peel's heavy guns were already in steady action on the
Mess House, a place of considerable strength, with a ditch twelve
feet broad backed by a loopholed wall. For several hours it was
bombarded, until, the musketry fire from it having been subjugated,
about 3 P.M. it was successfully attacked by Captain Wolseley[7] with
a company of the Ninetieth and a detachment of the Fifty-Third. As
Wolseley's men, flushed with success, followed their gallant leader
in pursuit of the fugitives across the open into the Motee Mahal,
Lieutenant Roberts[8] raised the flag on the top of the Mess House,
the specified signal which notified to the Residency garrison the
near approach of the relieving force. On the 16th Havelock had made
a sally the result of which was to give him the possession of the
advanced posts of the Herrn Khana and the Engine House; and thus
communication was opened between the two forces as soon as the Motee
Mahal had been carried. The meeting of Sir Colin Campbell, Outram,
and Havelock, commemorated in a well-known picture, marked the
virtual consummation of the operations for the relief. That object
had been accomplished at the cost of a loss of forty-five officers
and four hundred and ninety-six men. It still remained, however, to
withdraw from Lucknow the garrison and its encumbrances. To effect
this evacuation in security required the utmost vigilance on the
part of the troops and the greatest nicety in their handling, for
the enemy still held threatening positions in overwhelming strength,
and the long line from the Residency to the Dilkoosha which had to
be traversed by the garrison and its convoy, was exposed to hostile
fire at many points. From the 17th until the evacuation on the night
between the 22nd and 23rd, Campbell's force in effect constituted a
huge outlying picket which could not be relieved until the ultimate
withdrawal should have been effected. Sir Colin's first operation
was to protect the left flank and left rear of his force by a chain
of posts extending from the barracks to Banks' house, and this was
accomplished after some sharp fighting. To protect the women and
children from exposure to fire from the Kaiserbagh while crossing the
open space between the Engine House and the Motee Mahal, a flying sap
with canvas screens was constructed; and during the afternoon of the
19th their retirement as far as the Secundrabagh was accomplished
in safety. They were received by Sir Colin at his headquarters near
that building. To assure their safety he detained the ladies until
nightfall, when he sent them on to the Dilkoosha in doolies. The
Government treasure, the crown jewels of the King of Oude, and all
the serviceable guns were then gradually sent out; and at midnight
of the 22nd the withdrawal of the garrison began. In deep silence
the original garrison quitted the Residency and passed through the
advanced posts to the rear. Those in succession fell back until the
ground had been abandoned as far as the Secundrabagh, where Hope's
brigade was in position with fifteen guns. The troops were then drawn
back across the canal, Sir Colin remaining with a detachment until
the last gun was reported clear of the last village. Before dawn
of the 23rd the whole force was in its assigned positions at the
Dilkoosha and the Martinière. So adroit had been the arrangements
that the enemy continued to fire on the positions for many hours
after they had been relinquished. Thus terminated a series of
difficult and delicate operations, the entire success of which was
mainly owing to the steadfast adherence to Sir Colin Campbell's
original design. Wisely planned and skilfully executed, it proved how
much a comparative handful of disciplined soldiers could accomplish
against stupendous odds and in difficult ground, under the guidance
of a leader who combined great experience in war with the full
possession of the confidence of his troops.

On the afternoon of the 24th, just as the life was quitting the worn
frame of the noble Havelock, the relieving force with its unwieldy
convoy began its march to the Alumbagh, its rear covered by Outram's
division which closed up next day. It was not until midday of the
27th that Sir Colin, leaving Outram at the Alumbagh with four
thousand men and twenty-five guns, put in motion towards Cawnpore his
own vast miscellaneous column of soldiers, women and children, sick
and wounded, guns, treasure and material. When the camp at Bunnee
was reached in the evening, the sound of heavy firing was heard in
the direction of Cawnpore. For several days all communication with
Windham had been cut off; and when it was known that a cannonade
had been heard at Bunnee on the previous day, the conclusion became
inevitable that the Gwalior Contingent had caught at the opportunity
to assail the feeble garrison of Cawnpore. The apprehension of this
had been haunting Sir Colin ever since the rupture of communications
some days back; but nevertheless it must be said that there had
been a certain measure of deliberation since the accomplishment of
the relief. The weakness of Windham's resources and the disastrous
consequences of his being overwhelmed by numbers, occasioned very
serious disquietude. Cawnpore and the bridge over the Ganges in
hostile possession, it was but too obvious that Campbell's force
with its huge and helpless convoy would be gravely compromised. A
night-march made by such troops as could be spared from escort-duty
might have saved some valuable hours, but the force did not resume
its progress until the morning of the 28th. The thunder of the
cannon waxed louder as the column advanced; and note after note from
Windham, delivered by panting messengers, gave ominous intimation how
greatly endangered had become the situation at Cawnpore.

Leaving the infantry to hurry forward with the convoy and heavy guns,
Sir Colin pushed on rapidly with the cavalry and horse-artillery.
Leaving those in the Mungulwar camping-ground he galloped on to
Cawnpore with his staff. Near the bridge an officer reported to him
that "Windham's garrison was at its last gasp." His soldierly nature
chafed by the flaccid despondency which tone and expression alike
disclosed, the hot old Chief spurred his horse across the bridge and
rode straight for the entrenchment. As he passed, some men whom
he had commanded in the Crimea recognised through the gloom the
familiar face and figure; and cheer on cheer was raised as the word
passed like lightning that the Commander-in-Chief had arrived. No
more caitiff babble now of the garrison being "at its last gasp!"
The feeling was universal that with Sir Colin's arrival disaster was
no longer to be dreaded; and the situation was already retrieved in
spirit.

Windham had not followed the instructions given him by the
Commander-in-Chief before the latter crossed into Oude. He had
loyally forwarded to Sir Colin the reinforcements as they arrived,
until the communications were cut off between him and his Chief. Left
then to his own resources both moral and material, and aware that
a rebel force of trained soldiers, fourteen thousand strong with
some forty guns, was daily drawing nearer and nearer, he abandoned
the defensive prescribed to him, and on the 24th of November he
pushed some six miles out into the country with his mixed force of
detachments, numbering all told less than fourteen hundred men with
eight guns. Accepting his challenge, Tantia Topee, the rebel general,
and the only real soldier the mutiny produced, threw forward his
advanced guard into a strong position lining the dry bed of a nullah.
That position Windham on the morning of the 26th carried at the first
rush; but he found it necessary to withdraw in face of the main body
of the rebels, and he fell back nearer to his base. At noon next day,
skilfully withholding his infantry, the rebel general opened a heavy
cannonade on Windham's front and flanks. For five hours the British
troops held their ground staunchly against overwhelming odds, but
at length they were forced to retreat. This movement through narrow
streets and broken ground was attended by considerable disorder, and
the camp-equipage had to be abandoned. Reluctant to withdraw into
the entrenchment, Windham during the night between the 27th and 28th
still held with his right the broken and wooded ground between the
city and the river, while his left stretched into the plain beyond
the canal. The fighting, renewed on the morning of the 28th, proved
disastrous to the attenuated forces of the defence. Walpole on
the left held his ground and even took the offensive, and Carthew
gallantly maintained his position on the right until it became quite
untenable. But the retirement of the latter gave possession to the
enemy of the Church and Assembly Rooms containing the stores and
baggage of the Commander-in-Chief's army, which Windham had omitted
to remove within the cover of the entrenchment. Gradually the hostile
batteries closed in around Windham's last defensive position near
the bridge head, and directed their fire also on the bridge itself.
A sally was made which for a time gave promise of a retrieval, but
it was ultimately repulsed with heavy loss and great discouragement.
By nightfall the garrison had been obliged to take shelter in the
entrenchment; and when Sir Colin rode into the work it had become
the mark for the cannon-balls and even the musketry-fire of the
victorious rebels.

On the morning of the 29th Sir Colin's artillery on the left bank,
aided by that of the entrenchment, gradually beat down the fire which
the enemy were directing on the bridge; and the crossing of the
troops then began. The passage of the vast convoy lasted unceasingly
for thirty-six hours. As the women and children, the sick and wounded
crossed, the interminable _cortège_ swept by the rampart of the fort
and encamped on the plain among the mouldering remains and riddled
walls of the weak shelter wherein Wheeler's people had fought and
died. Day after day the enemy cannonaded Sir Colin's camp, but
effective reprisals had to be postponed until the convoy of families
and wounded which had started for Allahabad on the night of December
3rd should have been far enough on the journey to be safe from danger
at the hands of the rebels. Meanwhile, the communications having been
restored, the current of reinforcements was resumed, and the eager
soldiers needed only to recover the fatigue of their march.

The enemy, whose forces were now increased to some twenty-five
thousand men, had their left strongly posted in the broken ground of
the old cantonments between the city and the river. Cawnpore itself
was occupied; and its face towards the canal, opposite the advanced
posts of the British camp, was thickly lined with troops. The hostile
right was behind the canal on the southern plain, the Calpee road
covered by the camp of the Gwalior Contingent. To fall on the enemy's
right and prevent assistance being rendered it by their left, was the
governing idea of Sir Colin's plan of attack. He determined to throw
the whole weight of his force on the rebel right on the plain, to
strike at the camp of the Gwalior Contingent, establish himself on
its line of retreat, and having thus separated it from the Bithoor
force constituting the rebel left, to effect the discomfiture of
both bodies in detail. The troops at his disposal amounted to five
thousand infantry, six hundred cavalry, and thirty-five guns.

At 10 A.M. of the 6th, while the troops of Sir Colin's left were
being formed in order of battle on either side of the Grand Trunk
Road, Windham opened a fire of heavy artillery from the entrenchment
upon the enemy's right between the city and the river, with the
object of concentrating their attention on that quarter and of
masking the main point of Campbell's attack. When this cannonade
slackened Greathed, moving up to the line of the canal, engaged the
enemy holding the edge of the city with a heavy musketry-fire for
the purpose of detaining them in that position. On Greathed's left
Walpole with his riflemen and the Thirty-Eighth crossed the canal,
skirted the southern edge of the city, then bringing forward his
right shoulder, swept across the plain towards the enemy's camp.
Simultaneously the columns of Hope and Inglis, forming in successive
lines further to the left under cover of the heavy artillery and
preceded by the Sikhs and the Fifty-Third, drove the enemy across the
canal, followed them up closely, and pressed eagerly forward upon
the camp of the Gwalior Contingent, hurling back the foe in utter
confusion. A battery galloping to the front poured round after round
of grape into the tents, which were speedily cleared. So complete
was the surprise, so sudden the onslaught, that the _chupatties_
were found baking on the fires, the bullocks stood tied beside the
carts, the sick and wounded were lying in the hospitals. By noon
the enemy were in full flight by the road to Calpee. Such was the
demoralisation that a pursuit by Sir Colin, his staff and personal
escort, along with Bourchier's field-battery, sufficed to keep the
fugitives on the run; for the cavalry which was intended to cut
off the enemy's retreat had missed its way, and only joined in the
pursuit some miles beyond the abandoned camp. Gun after gun was
captured in the chase. Sir Colin maintained the pursuit with the
cavalry and the horse-artillery along the Calpee road for fifteen
miles, capturing seventeen guns with their ammunition waggons and a
great booty of material. The Gwalior Contingent, for the time being,
was utterly discomfited.

The defeat of the rebels would have been complete, but for the escape
of the Bithoor troops constituting the enemy's left in the ground
between the city and the river. After the capture of the Gwalior
Contingent's camp there had been assigned to General Mansfield, Sir
Colin's Chief-of-Staff, the task of cutting off the retreat of the
rebel left along the Bithoor road. Mansfield advanced, with the
Rifles in skirmishing order followed by the Ninety-Third and covered
by an artillery fire, to a position near the Subadar's Tank, where
he halted short of the road which was the enemy's line of retreat.
This passive attitude not only permitted the escape of the enemy,
but emboldened them to venture an artillery-attack on Mansfield's
stationary troops; and the rebels were allowed to carry off their
guns without hindrance and to make good their retreat on Bithoor.
Mansfield's inaction would have more seriously detracted from the
completeness of the British victory, but for the success of the
enterprise which Sir Colin committed to Hope Grant on the 8th. That
gallant soldier hurried in pursuit of the Bithoor fugitives with some
two thousand five hundred men and eleven guns. On the early morning
of the 9th he overtook them at Serai Ghaut twenty-five miles above
Cawnpore. Promptly opening fire on them, he drove them across the
river and captured fifteen guns. Of the forty guns with which the
rebels had advanced on Cawnpore, they had now lost all but one. Sir
Colin had disposed of some twenty-five thousand enemies, including
the formidable Gwalior Contingent, at the cost of only ninety-nine
casualties among the troops he had led to a success so signal.

He was free at last to appreciate the virtue of the old proverb,
"All's well that ends well." But he had run great risks and had
narrowly escaped disaster. Nobly stimulated by an exigence in the
urgency of which he put faith, he had set aside ordinary military
considerations and concentrated every energy on the relief of
a garrison which he had been led to believe was in extremity.
As a matter of fact, there was no such imminency as had been
represented to him. It must be said that both the chiefs who
successively conducted the defence of Lucknow were unduly impatient
of beleaguerment. Havelock sacrificed half his scanty force in
successive attempts to reach Lucknow, urged to try and to try again
by Inglis' needless nervousness on the subject of rations. Outram's
sole edible contributions to the resources of the original garrison
were the bullocks which had hauled his guns and ammunition waggons;
yet no approach to starvation threatened either the original garrison
or the so-called "relieving force." As a matter of fact there was no
resort to horse-flesh; and there never should have been any occasion
for reduced rations of farinaceous food, of which, indeed, Sir Colin
carried away one hundred and sixty thousand lbs. The commissariat had
simply miscalculated; and there was really no need that Sir Colin
should have strained every nerve for the immediate relief of Lucknow,
involving as it did the postponement of military undertakings
of more imminent importance. This fact impressed itself on the
Commander-in-Chief; and the realisation that he had been influenced
by representations which circumstances did not warrant gave occasion
to a coolness on his part towards Sir James Outram.

It is fair, however, to state that Outram wrote from Lucknow to
Captain Bruce in the following terms:--"However desirable it may
be to support me here, I cannot but feel that it is still more
important that the Gwalior rebels should be first disposed of.... We
can manage to screw on, if absolutely necessary, till near the end
of November, on further reduced rations.... But it is so absolutely
to the advantage of the State that the Gwalior rebels should first
be effectually destroyed, that our relief should be a secondary
consideration." Had Outram written in this tone three weeks earlier,
the option would have been with Sir Colin to strike at Calpee before
undertaking the relief of Lucknow. But it was not until the 28th
of October, when Sir Colin had already taken his line, that Outram
wrote as above; and his communication was addressed neither to the
Commander-in-Chief nor to Brigadier Wilson in command at Cawnpore,
but to a subordinate officer. Outram adds that his letter, since
it reached Bruce on October 30th, was no doubt communicated to Sir
Colin who did not leave Cawnpore for Lucknow until November 9th. But
a plan of campaign cannot be altered at a moment's notice and at
the eleventh hour. Nor is there any evidence that Sir Colin ever saw
Outram's letter to Bruce. It is true that intelligence reached him at
Allahabad on November 1st that Outram "was prepared, if absolutely
necessary, to hold out on further reduced rations till near the end
of November;" and the announcement pleased him, as it afforded him
a longer period in which to make his preparations for the relief of
Lucknow. But he wrote to the Duke of Cambridge on November 8th that
"all accounts from Lucknow show that Sir James Outram is in great
straits;" and his biographer Shadwell testifies that "the urgent
cry for succour which reached him from Lucknow overbore every other
consideration."



CHAPTER VI

THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW


Sir Colin Campbell had effected the relief of the Residency of
Lucknow and the withdrawal of its garrison, and he was now free to
devote himself to the strategic prosecution of the main campaign.
Some delay had to be endured pending the return of the carriage
which had conveyed the great convoy from Lucknow to the advanced
base at Allahabad; but the interval enabled him to concert the
measures necessary for the restoration of British authority in the
Gangetic Doab and the opening of communications with Agra and Delhi.
Greathed's column on its descent from Delhi had already traversed
this region through fire and blood; but the wave of rebellion had
closed in upon its rear and obliterated every trace of its hurried
progress. Campbell had now not merely to traverse but to subdue and
occupy; and this was to be accomplished only by the methodised sweep
through the length and breadth of the Doab of columns restoring,
as they moved, the British authority, and expelling the numerous
bands of mutineers. Sir Colin with a wise perception decided on the
fort of Futtehghur as the objective point on which the columns to
be employed should converge. For various reasons the possession of
this strong place, situated as it was on the Ganges about midway
between Allahabad and Delhi, was of great strategical importance.
It was close to the town of Furrukhabad, the Nawaub of which was
a bitter rebel; and it covered the floating bridge on the Ganges
at a point where the states of Oude and Rohilcund met, from which
hostile territories the enemy were as yet free to enter the Doab and
intercept the communication by the Grand Trunk Road with Agra, Delhi,
and the Punjaub. His occupation of Futtehghur, on the other hand,
would carry with it the command of the fourth side of the Doab; while
Agra, Allahabad, and Delhi, whose respective positions dominated the
other three, were already in British possession.

Sir Colin fully recognised the strong strategic temptation, before
advancing up the Doab, to root out from Calpee the Gwalior Contingent
which he had just defeated before Lucknow, and so secure his flank
and communications. But he also realised that the Contingent had been
so cowed and weakened by its recent overthrow that many weeks must
elapse before it could rally sufficiently to venture on any serious
offensive operation. The brigade left at Lucknow under the command of
Inglis, Sir Colin judged amply sufficient to prevent the interruption
of his rearward communications; and it was with no apprehensions
on that score that he proceeded to carry out the details of his
project for the subjugation of the Doab by a concentric movement on
Futtehghur. Before the close of November Colonel Seaton had already
left Delhi in command of a column of all arms about nineteen hundred
strong, in charge of a vast convoy covering some seventeen miles of
road, and comprising carts, camels and elephants laden with tents,
stores and ammunition for the headquarter column. Marching down the
Trunk Road and sweeping the upper Doab, Seaton was the victor in two
successive sharp combats with insurgent bodies, and having reached
Bewar on December 31st he remained there until January 3rd, when he
was joined by Brigadier Walpole. From that point the united force
under Walpole was to move straight on Futtehghur, driving before it
the rebel bands from the Delhi, Agra, and Etawah sections of the Doab.

Of the two columns marching up country, one commanded by Walpole the
other by Sir Colin himself, the former had the greater distance to
travel and was therefore the earlier to move out. On December 16th
Walpole quitted Cawnpore with two thousand men consisting of two
battalions of Rifles and a strong force of cavalry and artillery.
Making a semicircular sweep to the left through the lower Doab in
the direction of Calpee, a movement in the nature of a threatening
demonstration against the Gwalior Contingent, he swung round to his
right by Akbarpore and marched up the left bank of the Jumna to
Etawah, whence he struck across to Mynpooree and, as has been said,
joined Seaton at Bewar. On December 24th Sir Colin at the head of the
main army some five thousand strong set out from Cawnpore, moving by
easy marches up the Grand Trunk Road and clearing the right bank of
the Ganges as he advanced. Thus three columns, from the north-west,
from the south, and from the south-east, were simultaneously moving
to converge on Futtehghur, driving before them the malcontents of
the Doab with intent to push them across the Ganges into Oude and
Rohilcund.

No matter how careful may be the pre-arrangements for precision in
the execution of a combined operation when the distances are wide,
as often as not there interposes some complication which detracts
from the fulfilment of the combination. Sir Colin had anticipated a
simultaneous concentric advance on Futtehghur, but events forestalled
this operation. On the 1st of January 1858 Brigadier Hope with
two infantry regiments and some cavalry and artillery reached the
point, about fifteen miles from Futtehghur, where the road crossed
the Kala Nuddee stream by a fine suspension bridge, just in time to
prevent its total destruction by the enemy who had torn up a great
part of the planking. The engineers and sailors had already repaired
the structure when in the early morning of the 2nd several rebel
battalions of the Nawaub's force under cover of a thick fog came down
to dispute the passage of the river. When the fog lifted the enemy
were seen to have occupied in great force the village of Khoodagunj,
whence they opened a vigorous musketry-fire covered by several heavy
guns, one of which, a 24-pounder, had been placed in the toll-house
commanding the bridge. Sir Colin had come up and promptly made his
dispositions to meet the enemy's rapidly developing attack. He sent
back the order for the main body to hurry up; and meanwhile he
pushed the Fifty-Third across the bridge to reinforce the pickets,
with strict orders not to advance but to remain on the defensive so
as to allow time for the cavalry, which had been sent across five
miles up stream, to get behind the enemy and cut off his retreat to
Futtehghur. One wing of the Ninety-Third was in reserve behind the
bridge; the other with some horse-artillery guns was detached to hold
a ford three miles down stream for the purpose of securing the right
flank.

Peel sent an eight-inch shell through the window of the toll-house
which burst under the enemy's big gun in that building, upsetting it
and killing or disabling most of the rebel gunners. Campbell's main
body came up, and under cover of a heavy artillery fire which soon
silenced the hostile guns, the passage of the river was accomplished.
The Fifty-Third regiment had been lying for hours under the bank of a
road which afforded inadequate cover, and had lost a good many men.
It was comprised chiefly of Irishmen,--fine stalwart fellows and ever
keen for fighting, but somewhat difficult to keep in hand when their
blood was up. When the main body began to cross, the Fifty-Third
conceived the idea that they were to be relieved; and this suspicion,
coupled with glimpses of the enemy attempting to withdraw some of
their guns, overmastered their sense of discipline. All of a sudden,
and in spite of the attempts to restrain them, they made a dash with
loud cheers and charged and captured several of the rebel guns. Sir
Colin had intended to make a waiting fight of it, to give plenty of
time for the cavalry turning movement; when the hot-headed Irishmen
interfered with this project he galloped up to the regiment in high
wrath and objurgated it in terms of extreme potency. But each volley
of his invective was drowned by repeated shouts of "Three cheers for
the Commander-in-Chief, boys!" until, finding that the men were
determined not to give him a hearing, the sternness of the commander
gradually relaxed and the veteran turned away with a laugh. He might
have made his voice heard over the cheery clamour of the Irishmen,
but that a few minutes before he had been hit in the stomach by a
spent bullet, happily with merely the momentary inconvenience of loss
of breath.

The village of Khoodagunj when attacked by the Ninety-Third and
Fifty-Third was carried with little opposition, the enemy abandoning
their guns which had been posted in and about the place and retiring
with the remainder of their artillery in good order along the road
to Futtehghur. But they had yet to experience the fierce mercies
of Hope Grant and his horsemen. Making a detour to the left, that
fine cavalry leader rode parallel with the rebels' line of retreat,
screened from their sight by groves and tall crops. Then, wheeling
suddenly to his right, he crashed in on the flank of the insurgent
force moving on a narrow front along the high road. Taken utterly
by surprise, the mutineers fled panic-stricken before this terrible
onslaught. Hope Grant's cavalry, committing ruthless havoc with
lance and sabre, maintained the pursuit for miles, capturing
guns, ammunition waggons and material of all descriptions; and
so demoralised was the foe that he never halted in his camp at
Futtehghur, but rushed across the floating bridge into Rohilcund. The
return of Grant's troopers to camp in the evening was described by
Alison's vivid pen as "a stirring scene of war." "The Ninth Lancers
came first, with three standards they had taken waving at their head;
the wild-looking Sikh cavalry rode in their rear. As they passed Sir
Colin, he took off his hat to them and said some words of soldierly
praise. The Lancers waved their lances in the air and cheered; the
Sikhs took up the cry, shaking their sabres over their heads; the
men carrying the standards spread them to the wind. The Highland
Brigade encamped close by, ran down and cheered the victorious
cavalry, waving their bonnets in the air. It was a beautiful sight,
and recalled the old days of chivalry. When Sir Colin rode back to
camp through the tents of the Highland Brigade, the cheering and
enthusiasm of the men exceeded anything I had ever seen."

Hitherto Sir Colin Campbell had been carrying on the plan of campaign
which he had formulated without interference on the part of the
Governor-General. If he had continued to have a free hand, no doubt
he would have followed up the clearance of the Doab by the immediate
invasion of Rohilcund and the destruction of the rebel power at the
important centre of Bareilly. Those objects he would have had ample
time to accomplish before the setting in of the hot season. At its
approach he would have distributed his force in quarters throughout
the recovered provinces, and while restraining the Oude insurgents
within the borders of their own territory, he would have employed
the summer in the restoration of our authority in our old provinces.
With the advent of the autumn cool weather he would have concerted a
great concentric movement on Lucknow, driving the Oude rebels from
the circumference of that territory into the heart of it, there to
be hemmed in and finally crushed. His scheme was based alike on
strict military and hygienic principles, avoiding at once a harassing
guerilla warfare and the depletion of his invaluable European army
in a hot weather campaign. The project thus outlined furnishes in
itself the fullest testimony to the scope and accuracy of Sir Colin
Campbell's strategic _coup d'œil_.

But he was now no longer free to conduct military operations in
accordance with his soldierly sense of the fitness of things.
Political considerations intervened, and Lord Canning was strongly in
favour of proceeding to the reduction of Lucknow and the subjugation
of Oude in advance of any other enterprise. Sir Colin's views, on
the other hand, were in favour of the course briefly summarised in
the preceding paragraph; but he fully realised that the decision of
the Government was paramount as regarded the future course of the
campaign. A long correspondence ensued on the subject between Lord
Canning and Sir Colin, the terms of which illustrate the cordial
relations existing between the head of the Government and his
military subordinate. Some short extracts from this correspondence
will serve to indicate its character. Lord Canning took the
initiative. In his letter of December 20th, 1857, he writes: "So
long as Oude is not dealt with, there will be no real quiet on this
side of India. Every sepoy who has not already mutinied will have
a standing temptation to do so, and every native chief will grow
to think less and less of our power.... I am therefore strongly in
favour of taking Oude in hand after Futtehghur, Mynpooree, etc.,
and when the Great Trunk Road communication shall have been made
safe." Sir Colin forwarded to his lordship a memorandum in which
it was pointed out that twenty thousand men were necessary for
the reduction of Lucknow, and thirty thousand for the complete
subjugation of the Oude province. "It is," in the words of the
memorandum, "for the Government to decide whether it be possible,
with regard to the circumstances of the Presidency, to effect the
necessary concentration of troops for this purpose." It was further
pointed out that, "If through exposure during the hot weather of
1858, the strength of the British forces in India be seriously
reduced--viz. by one-third, and less than that number could not be
reckoned on were the campaign to be prolonged throughout the year--it
will not be in the power of the Government at home to replace them."
In his reply to Sir Colin's memorandum Lord Canning was willing to
limit his demand to the capture and holding of Lucknow, without
attempting more for the present. "Paradoxical as it may appear,"
wrote his lordship, "I think it of more importance to establish our
power in the centre and capital of Oude, which has scarcely been two
years in our hands, than to recover our older possessions. Every
eye is now upon Lucknow, as it lately was upon Delhi. I grant that,
as with Delhi so with Lucknow, we may find ourselves disappointed
of a very wide-spread and immediate effect from its capture. Still
I hold that the active mischief which will result from leaving it
untaken will be incalculable and most dangerous--just as a retirement
from Delhi would have been, and scarcely less in degree." Sir Colin
replied temperately but firmly, maintaining his standpoint so far
as true military principles were concerned. "After much thought,"
he wrote, "it appears to me advisable to follow up the movement now
made by this force by an advance into and occupation of Rohilcund,
to root out the leaders of the large gatherings of insurgents which
we know to exist there, and to establish authority as is now being
effectually done in the Doab. It seems to me that if we halt in this
course to divert the only force at our command to another object,
we run no slight risk of seeing the results of our late labours
wasted, and of an autumn, perhaps a summer, campaign on the present
ground to rescue the garrisons left in Futtehghur and Mynpooree.
I come therefore to the conclusion that Oude and Lucknow ought to
wait till the autumn of 1858." The Governor-General naturally had
the last word, and his decision was for the earlier operations
against Lucknow. "I am obliged," he wrote, "to say that I hold those
operations should be directed against Lucknow at no long interval. I
believe it to be impossible to foresee the consequences of leaving
that city unsubdued." The tone of the correspondence, though
expressing divergent convictions, may be held up as a pattern of the
temper in which the interchange of opinions between the civil and
military chiefs of a great Government should be carried on.

Sir Colin lost no time in giving loyal effect to the views of
the Governor-General by pressing on the preparations for the
reduction of Lucknow. An inevitable pause in the active operations
now occurred while the siege-train at Agra was being equipped,
while reinforcements and Peel's 68-pounders were being brought
up from Allahabad to Cawnpore, and while the needful amount of
ammunition, provisions, and carriage, and the numerous requirements
of the artillery and engineer parks were being concentrated in
the same depôt. The soldiers meanwhile were in expectation of an
immediate forward movement, and they wondered exceedingly at the
incomprehensible delay which their Chief seemed to be maintaining.
Keeping his own counsel, the Commander-in-Chief awaited the
development of his plans, wholly indifferent to the abuse of the
Indian press. Pending the moment for renewed action he took post
at Futtehghur, where he could cover from above the concentration
of his resources at Cawnpore, and at once dominate the reconquered
territory and keep in check the enemy in the regions still unsubdued.
Futtehghur was an excellent strategic centre whence troops could
promptly be pushed out to points threatened by insurgents from
Oude, Rohilcund, or the trans-Jumna territory, while it covered the
long-distance transport of the siege-train from Agra to Cawnpore.
From Futtehghur movable columns were from time to time sent out
to scour the surrounding country and reduce the still insurgent
villages. Sir Colin for weeks deceived the Rohilcund mutineers as to
his intentions, and for some ten or twelve days they were kept in
position on the Ramgunga watching Walpole, whose force they supposed
to be the advanced guard of Campbell's army of invasion. When at
length, losing patience, some five thousand of them crossed into
the Doab some miles above Futtehghur, Hope made matters extremely
unpleasant for them. He overwhelmed them with gun-fire, crashed in
upon them with cavalry; and although they fought desperately, four of
their guns were taken, their camp was captured, and they were pursued
hot-foot for several miles.

Before quitting the Doab Sir Colin assigned a brigade under Colonel
Seaton to the task of holding several main positions in that
territory, to be relieved presently in some degree by a force from
the Punjaub which was being organised at Roorkee for the purpose
of invading Rohilcund from the north-west. The siege-train was now
well forward on its way to Cawnpore; the secret which Sir Colin
had rigidly kept for three weeks, was a secret no longer; and on
February 1st he left Futtehghur with his cavalry and horse-artillery,
and making forced marches reached Cawnpore on the 4th. A few days
later he made a short visit to Allahabad for an interview with Lord
Canning, who had arrived there. By the middle of February the greater
part of the army destined for the operation against Lucknow was in
_échelon_ along the road from the Ganges to the Alumbagh, covering
the advance of the vast military stores and supplies which were
constantly being brought up. Sir Colin anticipated that he should
be ready to begin operations about the 18th of February with his
own army of ten thousand men. But the Nepaulese force of some nine
thousand men with twenty-four guns under Jung Bahadoor, which had
been on the frontier of Oude since the beginning of January and had
subsequently done a good deal of sharp fighting in the eastern part
of that province, was expected to prove an important reinforcement
to Sir Colin's army. The gallant Franks was fighting his way from
south-eastern Oude with some three thousand men. The twelve thousand
additional troops which Sir Colin might look forward to obtain from
those sources would be extremely valuable, bringing up his total
strength to twenty-two thousand men. But neither body could reach
Lucknow at the earliest before the 27th. Sir Colin left the decision
to the Governor-General, whether he should proceed at once, which
he was quite ready to do holding himself perfectly able to reduce
Lucknow with the force now at his hand; or whether he should delay
operations until Franks and the Nepaulese should arrive. Lord Canning
promptly replied, "I wish," he wrote, "that the delay could have been
avoided; but I am sure that we ought to wait for Jung Bahadoor, who
would be driven wild to find himself deprived of a share in the work."

After some tentative efforts the Lucknow mutineers on the 21st made
a serious attempt on both flanks of Outram's position behind the
Alumbagh. Assailed by artillery and cavalry they accepted a defeat
after sustaining heavy loss. They came at him again on the 25th, when
they fought under the eyes of the Begum and her minister. Between
twenty and thirty thousand came into the field. But Outram handled
these masses so roughly that they gave way, and their retreat became
a headlong rout when British cavalry attacked them on both flanks.
Outram's loss was trivial; the enemy suffered heavily.

Towards the end of January the convoy of ladies from Agra had passed
safely through Cawnpore on their way down country, and a month later
Walpole rejoined the army after having given the Agra convoy escort
to Allahabad. The whole siege-train by this time had come up; the
engineer park, the commissariat supplies, the countless legions of
camp-followers. The dense battalions, the glittering squadrons, the
well-horsed batteries had traversed the bridges across the Ganges,
and were faring over the sandy plains of Oude, every man's face
set towards Lucknow. It was a great convergence. Such a force India
had never before seen. Under the Commander-in-Chief were arrayed
seventeen battalions of infantry, fifteen of which were British,
twenty-eight squadrons of cavalry, including four English regiments,
fifty-four light and eighty heavy guns and mortars; while from the
south, right across Oude, Franks with three British and six Ghoorka
battalions with twenty guns was pressing on strenuously, and from the
south-east Jung Bahadoor with nine thousand men and twenty-four guns
was marching on the common goal, to join the strange miscellaneous
force whose rendezvous was before the rebel defences of the capital
of Oude.

On February 27th Sir Colin Campbell established his temporary
headquarters at Buntera, where the Second Division had already
arrived. His force had now increased to eighteen thousand seven
hundred men with eighty heavy guns and mortars and fifty-four
field-guns; and in addition he could reckon on Franks' column and
eventually on the Nepaulese contingent under Jung Bahadoor, when his
total effective would amount to about thirty-one thousand men and
one hundred and sixty-four guns. To the command of the artillery was
assigned Sir Archdale Wilson of Delhi fame: the brigade of engineers
was confided to the able charge of Brigadier Robert Napier; and the
cavalry division was placed under Brigadier-General Hope Grant. Of
the three infantry divisions, the first was under Major-General Sir
James Outram, the second under Brigadier-General Sir E. Lugard, the
third under Brigadier-General Walpole. Sir Colin had come to the
conclusion that it would be impossible to invest the city, the
circumference of which was quite twenty miles, and he determined,
therefore, to operate simultaneously upon both sides of the Goomtee.
By so doing he would be able to enfilade with his artillery fire
the enemy's triple line of works, and thus weaken the resistance
to his advance on the line of the canal and the approaches to the
Kaiserbagh, which the rebels regarded as their citadel. It was
covered by three successive lines of defence, of which the outer
conformed to the line of the canal, the second circled round the
Mess House and the Motee Mahal, and the inner one was the principal
rampart of the Kaiserbagh itself. Those lines were flanked by
numerous bastions, and rested at one end on the Goomtee, at the
other on the massive buildings of the Huzrut Gunj, all of which were
strongly fortified and flanked the street in every direction. The
artillery of the defence was believed to consist of about one hundred
and thirty guns. Apart from the normal population of Lucknow, which
was reckoned about two hundred and eighty thousand, a turbulent and
bitterly hostile community, the rebel garrison was estimated to
amount to one hundred thousand fighting men, consisting of mutineers
of the sepoy army, the Oude force, irregular regiments, and the
levies of disaffected chiefs.

On March 2nd the Commander-in-Chief, with Lugard's division,
a cavalry division, four heavy guns and three troops of
horse-artillery, moved forward to the Dilkoosha by way of the
Alumbagh and the fort of Jellalabad, sweeping aside as he marched
some trivial opposition. When all the forces had come up, his camp
in rear of the Dilkoosha extended to Bibiapore and the Goomtee on
the right, to the left as far as the Alumbagh. Franks arrived on
the 5th and his column became the Fourth Infantry Division. The
position was strongly garnished with heavy guns on the edge of the
Dilkoosha plateau to keep down the fire from the canal front and the
Martinière, and with others down on the river side on the outer flank
of the Dilkoosha park to enfilade the Martinière and command the left
bank of the Goomtee.

For the important duty of operating on the left bank the Chief had
selected Sir James Outram, who for the last three months had been
gallantly holding the Alumbagh against overwhelming odds. While he
was receiving his instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, two
cask-bridges were being thrown across the Goomtee near Bibiapore.
As by a mistake they were constructed within range of the fire from
the Martinière, Outram was ordered to cross with his division before
dawn of the 6th. Hope Grant, who was Outram's second in command and
had charge of the passage of the river, records that, "Sir Colin,
being anxious to get the division across before the enemy could
discover our position and open upon us, rode down to the river side,
and pitched into everybody most handsomely, I catching the principal
share. But this," he frankly says, "had a good effect and hastened
the passage materially--everything was got over in safety just as
daylight appeared." Sir Colin understood the art of "pitching in"
better than most people; he did not frequently resort to it, but the
impression it created was immediate and stirring.

Outram took out a very fine force consisting of the Third Infantry
Division, the Bays, and the Ninth Lancers with a body of Punjaub
horse, five field-batteries, and an engineer detachment. When about
to camp across the Fyzabad road he was threatened by a body of
rebels, who were speedily driven back into Lucknow by the field-guns
and artillery. In this skirmish fell a gallant officer, Major Percy
Smith of the Bays. During the night of the 8th, under instructions
from headquarters, Outram's people were engaged in preparing
batteries for twenty-two heavy guns which Sir Colin had sent across
for the purpose of bombarding the Chukur Kotee, the key of the
enemy's position on the left bank. The batteries opened at daybreak
of the 9th and in a few hours Outram's ardent infantry had carried
the Chukur Kotee, whereby the enemy's outer line of entrenchments on
the right bank was turned and taken in reverse, and had reached and
occupied the enclosed position of the Badshahbagh. Outram promptly
moved to the village of Jugrowlee on his extreme left a heavy battery
whose fire enfiladed the enemy's outer line on the canal.

Meanwhile the Commander-in-Chief was perfecting his dispositions.
From noon until 2 P.M. of the same day Peel's bluejackets were
pouring shot, shell, and shrapnel into the Martinière, whose fire was
replied to occasionally by a battery at the corner of that building,
and by a heavy but wild musketry-fire a bullet from which wounded
in the thigh the gallant Peel, who later, to the grief of the whole
army, died of smallpox when being carried down to Calcutta on his way
home. At two o'clock the order came for Lugard's division to advance,
and the Forty-Second and Ninety-Third swept down the slope abreast,
clearing off the enemy from the earthworks, trenches and rifle-pits
in front of the Martinière. The rebels abandoned the place in panic
and fell back hurriedly upon their first line of works whence they
opened a sharp fire. Outram's artillery at Jugrowlee had cleared
the rebels from their position at the junction of the canal with
the Goomtee, but this circumstance had not been noticed by Lugard's
people. Thereupon Lieutenant Butler of the First Bengal Fusiliers
swam the Goomtee from the left bank, mounted the parapet of the
abandoned work, and under a heavy fire signalled to the Highlanders,
who along with Wilde's Sikhs speedily relieved the daring Fusilier,
occupied the position, and swept along the line of rebel defences
till they reached the vicinity of Banks' house where they remained
for the night. Butler, having done his gallant part, swam back to his
own side, and in course of time worthily received the Victoria Cross.
The outer line of the rebel defences having been occupied in force
by his troops, the first instalment of Sir Colin's plan had been
successfully accomplished; and this, too, with little loss, owing to
the effect of Outram's enfilading fire from the left bank.

Sir Colin Campbell was unquestionably a deliberate man. This was not
so in his original nature, which was quick and ardent; but in the
course of his long military life he had seen much evil come of hurry.
Fighting man as he was, there probably never was a greater economist
of the lives of his soldiers. When absolute need was, he did not
hesitate to avert failure at the cost of men's lives, as he showed in
the long and bloody fight under the walls of the Shah Nujeef; but
whenever and wherever there was the possibility, his most earnest
anxiety was to spare his men to the utmost of his endeavour. The
chief object he had now in view was to attain the possession of
Lucknow with no more loss to his force than the ordinary risk of such
a service would justify. All his instructions, all his measures,
conduced to this end. He was a man to whom a "big butcher's bill" was
an utter abomination. And thus it was that he moved with a systematic
deliberation which rash and callous men have sneered at as slowness.
There were men about him, for instance, who would have stormed
Banks' house on the evening of the 9th. Since no heavy guns were up,
that enterprise would have cost dear in infantry-men. But the cool,
shrewd, steadfast old Chief waited till next morning, when Lugard had
his instructions to knock a breach with heavy guns in the high wall
surrounding the house; which done, the infantry entered and at noon
the building was captured and presently converted into a military
post.

The preliminaries accomplished, there was no delay in the operations.
Arrangements were at once made for prosecuting the advance on the
Kaiserbagh. On the 10th Outram had placed his heavy guns in battery
to play on that citadel and on the Mess House, on the former of
which a battery of five mortars had already opened. Hope Grant with
his cavalry scoured the ground between the Goomtee and the old
cantonments. On the morning of the 11th some of the 68-pounders and
heavy howitzers were brought up into position near Banks' house. A
gradual approach was being made towards the Begum's palace, and the
intervening gardens and suburbs were occupied by the troops designed
for the assault--the Ninety-Third, Fourth Punjaub Rifles, and some
Ghoorkas, under the command of Adrian Hope. It was Sir Colin's
design to advance successively through the courts and palaces on
either side of the Huzrut Gunj street, and profiting by the cover
thus afforded, take in reverse the enemy's second and third line of
works instead of sapping up to their front. During this progress on
his part the rebels' position would be simultaneously enfiladed from
the left bank by Outram's heavy cannon. About 4 P.M. the breach was
pronounced practicable and the assault was promptly delivered. Sir
Colin well termed it "the sternest struggle of the siege." Captain
M'Donald of the Ninety-Third was shot down just after he had led his
company through the breach in the outer rampart. About twenty paces
further the advance was arrested by a ditch nearly eighteen feet
wide and from twelve to fourteen deep. The stormers dashed into the
ditch but they could not scale its further face. Lieutenant Wood,
hoisted on the shoulders of a Ninety-Third grenadier, scrambled up
claymore in hand. He was the first to enter the inner works of the
Begum's palace, and when the enemy saw him emerge from the ditch they
fled to barricade the further accesses. Then Wood reached down and
caught hold of the men's rifles by the bends of the bayonets, so that
with assistance from below all his people finally cleared the ditch.
Barrier after barrier was then forced, and independent detachments
headed by officers pushed on into the great inner square, where the
mutineers in great strength were prepared to stand and fight. The
numbers were very unequal but the Highlanders did not care to count
heads. "The command," says Forbes-Mitchell, "was--'Keep together and
use the bayonet!' The struggle raged for some two hours from court
to court and from room to room; the pipe-major of the Ninety-Third,
John MacLeod, playing the pipes amid the strife as calmly as if
he had been walking round the officers' mess-tent at a regimental
festival." Within two hours from the signal for the assault over
eight hundred and sixty mutineers lay dead within the inner court.
The assailants were by this time broken up into small parties in
a series of separate fights. A room whose door had been partly
broken in was found full of rebels armed to the teeth. The party of
Highlanders watching the door stood prepared to shoot every man who
attempted to escape, while two of their number went back for a few
bags of gunpowder with slow matches fixed, to be lighted and heaved
in among the mutineers. Forbes-Mitchell, himself a leading figure in
the tragic scene, thus describes how the gallant Hodson met his fatal
wound. "The men sent by me found Major Hodson, who did not wait for
the powder but came running up himself sabre in hand. 'Where are the
rebels?' he asked. I pointed to the door, and Hodson, shouting 'Come
on!' was about to rush in. I implored him not to do so, saying 'It's
certain death, sir! wait for the powder.' Hodson made a step forward,
and I seized him by the shoulder to pull him out of the line of the
doorway, when he fell back shot through the body. He gasped out a few
words, but was immediately choked by blood." Placed in a dooly he was
sent back to the surgeons, but his wound was mortal. Forbes-Mitchell
adds: "It will thus be seen that the assertion that Major Hodson was
looting when he was killed, is untrue. No looting had been then
commenced, not even by Jung Bahadoor's Ghoorkas. Major Hodson lost
his life by his own rashness; but to say that he was looting is a
cruel slander on one of the bravest of Englishmen."

The ignited bags of gunpowder drove the enemy out from their lair
to be promptly bayoneted. One soldier, using butt and bayonet and
shouting "Revenge for Hodson!", killed more than half of them
single-handed. In another doorway Lieutenant MacBean, Adjutant
of the Ninety-Third, a soldier who rose from the ranks to die a
Major-General, encountered eleven sepoys and killed them all with his
claymore, one after the other. With the advent of night opposition
for the most part ceased, although numbers of rebels were still in
hiding in the dark rooms. The troops bivouacked in the courts of
the palace under cover of strong guards. Horrible spectacles were
presented with the daylight of the 12th. Hundreds of bodies lay about
smouldering in the cotton clothing which had caught fire from the
exploding bags of gunpowder, and the stench of burning flesh was
sickening. During the morning the camp-followers dragged the corpses
into the deep ditch which had been found so difficult to cross on
the previous day. The Begum's palace was recognised to be the key to
the enemy's position, and our heavy guns were promptly advanced for
the object of breaching the Imambara, which was the only building of
magnitude intervening between the Begum's palace and the Kaiserbagh.

From the early morning of the 11th Sir Colin had been at the front
superintending the preparations for the assault of the Begum Kotee.
But before that enterprise was ripe he was reluctantly summoned
from the scene of action to receive a visit from Jung Bahadoor,
who had just arrived at the Dilkoosha with the Nepaulese army after
an interminable series of delays. In the midst of the formal durbar
there occurred a striking scene. Captain Hope Johnstone, aide-de-camp
to General Mansfield, covered with powder-smoke and the dust of
battle, strode up to the Chief with the welcome tidings that the
Begum Kotee had been taken. Thereupon Sir Colin, to whom ceremonial
was detestable, seized the occasion to bring the durbar to a close,
and after announcing the news to his guest hurried to the front. Next
day the Nepaulese troops came up into position holding the line of
the canal between Banks' house and the Charbagh bridge, thus covering
the left of the main attack. On the right the Shah Nujeef had been
occupied on the evening of the 11th, on a parallel front with the
position in the Begum Kotee.

By the afternoon of the 13th the engineers had driven a practicable
way through the buildings intervening between the Begum Kotee and
the Imambara. Heavy guns were brought into action close to the
massive containing wall of the latter structure, and on the morning
of the 14th the breach was reported practicable. The storming force
consisted of Brasyer's Sikhs and the Tenth Foot, with the Ninetieth
in support. After a short but sharp struggle the garrison fled in
disorder, the Imambara was in possession of the stormers, and the
second line of the enemy's defence was thus turned. The assailants in
the ardour of their success pursued the fugitives into the buildings
intervening between the Imambara and the Kaiserbagh itself. Those
occupied, the engineers proposed to suspend active operations for
the day and to resort to the process of sap. Sir Colin himself, who
had ridden through the fire in the Huzrut Gunj and had entered the
Imambara amidst the cheers of the troops, was understood to favour
that course. But the men in the front were not to be restrained,
and under a fierce fire they forced their way into a courtyard
communicating with the Kaiserbagh, driving the enemy before them.
Reinforcements were sent for and came hurrying up. After a brief
consultation Napier and Franks resolved to push on. Franks sent his
men through Saadat Ali's Mosque into the Kaiserbagh itself. Its
courts, gardens and summer-houses were full of sepoys who from the
roofs and battlements rained down a musketry-fire on the assailants.
But the British troops fought their way into this chief citadel of
the hostile position, and after a short interval of hard fighting the
Kaiserbagh was in possession of Sir Colin's valiant soldiers. Its
fall took in reverse the third and last line of the enemy's defence.
By nightfall the palaces along the right side of the Goomtee, the
Motee Mahal and the Chattee Munzil, were occupied; as also the nearer
buildings of the Mess House and the Tara Kotee. With the capture
of the Kaiserbagh and the other buildings within the third line of
defence, Lucknow may be said to have fallen.

Mr. Russell in his _Diary in India_ has given a vivid description of
the scene in the Kaiserbagh immediately after the capture. "Imagine
courts as large as the Temple Gardens, surrounded with ranges of
palaces, with fresco paintings on the blind windows, and with green
jalousies and venetians closing the apertures which pierce the walls
in double rows. In the great courtyard are statues, fountains,
orange-groves, aqueducts, and kiosks with burnished domes of metal.
Through these with loud shouts dart hither and thither European and
native soldiers, firing at the windows, whence come occasionally
dropping shots, or hisses a musket-ball. At every door there is an
eager crowd, smashing the panels with the stocks of firelocks or
bursting the locks by discharges of their weapons. Here and there
the invaders have forced their way into the long corridors; and
you hear the musketry rattling inside, the crash of glass, and the
shouts and yells of the combatants, as little jets of smoke curl out
of the closed lattices. Lying amid the orange-groves are dead and
dying sepoys, and the white statues are reddened with blood. Leaning
against a smiling Venus is a British soldier shot through the neck,
gasping, and at every gasp bleeding to death. Officers are running to
and fro after their men, persuading or threatening in vain. From the
broken portals issue soldiers laden with loot--shawls, rich tapestry,
gold and silver brocades, caskets of jewels, arms, splendid dresses.
The men are wild with fury and lust of gold--literally drunk with
plunder. Some come out with china vases or mirrors, dash them to
pieces on the ground, and return to seek more valuable booty. Some
are busy gouging out the precious stones from stems of pipes, from
saddle-cloths, from hilts of swords, or from butts of pistols and
firearms. Many swathe their bodies in stuffs crusted with precious
metals and gems; others carry off useless lumber, brass pots,
pictures, or vases of jade and of china."

The success attained was magnificent; but, in Colonel Malleson's
words, it might, and ought to have been greater. On the 11th Outram
had pushed his advance on the left bank of the Goomtee up to the iron
bridge, to sweep which he had established a battery. On the 12th and
13th he continued to occupy his positions commanding the bridge, but
was restricted from crossing it by Sir Colin's orders. On the 14th,
the day of the capture of the Kaiserbagh, he applied for permission
to cross the bridge, which was in the vicinity of the Residency. The
presence of his division on the line of the enemy's retreat could not
but have produced important results in spreading panic and cutting
off the fugitive rebels. Outram was informed in reply by the Chief of
the Staff that he might cross the iron bridge, but with the proviso
that "he was not to do so if he thought he would _lose a single
man_." This of course was equivalent to an absolute prohibition.
The stipulation was utterly incomprehensible, and no explanation in
regard to the subject was ever made. Mr. Russell makes it clear that
the order emanated from Sir Colin himself. It is significant that his
biographer General Shadwell ignores the matter altogether, a course
which seems to savour of disingenuousness.

Already on the 14th the rebels had begun to recognise that the
game was up, and on the 15th they were streaming out of Lucknow
in thousands. Detachments of horse and foot were sent to cut off
their retreat by the Sundeela and Seetapore roads, but it appeared
that the fugitives had taken neither. Their chief exodus was by the
stone bridge, whence some twenty thousand followed the Fyzabad road.
On the 16th Outram with a brigade crossed the river and drove the
rebels out of the old Residency position. Pushing onward and taking
in reverse the iron bridge and the rebel batteries crossing it, he
opened a heavy fire on the Muchee Bawun which was followed by its
capture by the infantry, and the great Imambara later shared the same
fate. Although by the 18th most of the mutineers had been expelled
from Lucknow, it was found that a considerable body were threatening
to make a stand in the Moosabagh, a vast building on the right bank
of the Goomtee about four miles north-west of Lucknow. On the 19th
Sir Colin ordered out a column under Outram composed of an infantry
brigade and some artillery and cavalry, with instructions to make a
direct attack on the Moosabagh while Hope Grant from the left bank
of the Goomtee cannonaded it with his horse-artillery guns. A mixed
force of all arms under the command of Brigadier Campbell was put
in march with directions to intercept the retreat of the enemy when
dislodged from the Moosabagh. The dislodgment occurred so soon as
Outram's guns opened; but the expected interception of the fugitives
failed, and great masses of the rebels were allowed to escape with
comparative impunity in a northwesterly direction.

With the capture of the Moosabagh and the expulsion from the city of
the Moulvie of Fyzabad and his band of fanatics, there terminated
a series of operations which had extended over a period of twenty
days. Sir Colin's plan of turning the enemy's defensive works, and
thus promptly expelling many thousands of armed men from formidable
positions prepared with great labour and no little skill, had
been accomplished with a total loss of eight hundred of all ranks
exclusive of the Nepaulese casualties, which were reckoned at about
three hundred. To have achieved a success so great at a cost so
small, was a result of which the most exacting commander might well
have been proud.

In the course of the early operations against Lucknow Sir Colin had
the gratification of receiving a letter from the Duke of Cambridge
intimating to Sir Colin that he had recommended Her Majesty to
confer on him the colonelcy of the Ninety-Third Highlanders. "I
thought," wrote His Royal Highness, "that this arrangement would be
agreeable to yourself, and I know that it is the highest compliment
that Her Majesty could pay to the Ninety-Third Highlanders to
see their dear old Chief at their head." By the same mail there
reached the Commander-in-Chief a letter from the Queen written by
her own hand. This lofty and touching letter is printed in full
in Sir Theodore Martin's _Life of the Prince Consort_, but it is
impossible to refrain from quoting here one or two extracts. Her
Majesty wrote:--"The Queen has had many proofs already of Sir Colin
Campbell's devotion to his Sovereign and his country, and he has now
greatly added to that debt of gratitude which both owe him. But Sir
Colin must bear one reproof from his Queen, and that is, that he
exposes himself too much; his life is most precious, and she entreats
that he will neither put himself where his noble spirit would urge
him to be--foremost in danger, nor fatigue himself so as to injure
his health.... That so many gallant and distinguished men, beginning
with one whose name will ever be remembered with pride, General
Havelock, should have died and fallen, is a great grief to the
Queen.... To all European as well as native troops who have fought so
nobly and so gallantly, and among whom the Queen is rejoiced to see
the Ninety-Third Highlanders, the Queen wishes Sir Colin to convey
the expression of her great admiration and gratitude."

Sir Colin thus tersely replied:--"Sir Colin Campbell has received the
Queen's letter, which he will ever preserve as the greatest mark of
honour it is in the power of Her Majesty to bestow. He will not fail
to execute the most gracious commands of Her Majesty, and will convey
to the army, and more particularly to the Ninety-Third regiment, the
remembrance of the Queen."



CHAPTER VII

THE CAMPAIGN IN ROHILCUND


It will be remembered that in the beginning of the year, when the
Commander-in-Chief was desirous of effecting the settlement of
Rohilcund before proceeding to the final reduction of Lucknow in
the autumn, the Governor-General had evinced his preference for
postponing operations in Rohilcund and for proceeding as early as
possible to the conquest of the capital of Oude. That great task
had now been accomplished, and it was the opinion of the sagacious
veteran that, Oude having been entered and Lucknow in British
possession, it was the wise and proper course to proceed to the
subjugation and settlement of the great province of which Lucknow
was the centre, before committing the British arms to a campaign
beyond the boundaries of that province. But now again Lord Canning
differed from his military subordinate. "I feel," he wrote to Sir
Colin, "the full force of the reasons which you have urged in favour
of limiting active operations in the field to Oude for the present,
and of making clean work of that province while we are about it."
But he argued that, unlike Oude the inhabitants of which had been
and still were bitterly hostile, Rohilcund contained a "numerous
well-affected population." The argument had a real weight, but was
somewhat belated. If Sir Colin had been permitted to settle Rohilcund
in the beginning of the year, the numerous "well-affected population"
of that province, on behalf of whom Lord Canning was now suddenly so
solicitous, would have escaped several months of anarchy and disorder.

Sir Colin, disciplined soldier as he was, bowed to the superior
authority and promptly set about the preparations for the Rohilcund
campaign. Napier's engineers established a secure military position
for the troops appointed to garrison Lucknow. To Hope Grant was given
the command of the Lucknow field-force, inclusive of the troops
available for the garrison of Lucknow and for operations in the
districts; a formidable force the infantry alone of which comprised
eleven regiments, with a siege-train, nine batteries, and adequate
cavalry. Lugard led a column of all arms into the disturbed Azimghur
district beyond south-eastern Oude, which with local reinforcements
was to constitute the Azimghur division. On April 8th Walpole's
column, in which marched one Punjaub and three Highland regiments
with a strong artillery force and two cavalry regiments, started on
its road for Rohilcund by way of Sandeela, Rhooyah, and the Ramgunga
river. Sir Colin's plan for the invasion of Rohilcund was based on
the projected advance of two columns from opposite points; Walpole's
force marching up from Lucknow, and a fine body of troops collected
at Roorkee by the exertions of Sir John Lawrence, consisting of
four infantry regiments, the Mooltan Horse, a field-battery and two
18-pounders under the command of Brigadier-General John Jones.
Those columns, sweeping the country during their respective onward
movements, were destined to converge on Bareilly the capital of the
province, which thus became the objective point of this strategical
combination.

Sir Colin Campbell had a high opinion of Walpole, which the latter
had certainly justified at Cawnpore and throughout the recent
operations against Lucknow. In the course of his march towards
Rohilcund, some fifty miles from Lucknow there was reached the
jungle-fort of Rhooyah. The Rajah in possession refused to surrender.
Walpole then ordered an attack without having previously reconnoitred
the position; and the attack was unfortunately delivered against the
strongest face of the paltry place. The garrison took advantage of
this folly to make an obstinate defence, with the result of heavy
losses among the assailants and of their failure to carry the fort.
Several officers of distinction fell; but the most grievous loss was
the death of that noble soldier Adrian Hope, the heroic leader of the
Highland Brigade. The feeling against Walpole throughout the column
was so strong as almost to endanger discipline, and to this day his
name is execrated by the survivors of that time. From Rhooyah Walpole
advanced to Allehgunj after having defeated at Tirsa a large body
of the enemy, whom he pursued with artillery and cavalry, capturing
their guns and camp and saving from destruction the bridge of boats,
whereby he was enabled to cross to the right bank of the Ramgunga.
He encamped at Inigree two miles in advance of Allehgunj to await
the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief. Brigadier-General Jones began
his march from Roorkee on the 17th of April. In the course of his
advance after crossing the Ganges he had several sharp engagements
with rebel bodies resulting in the capture of twenty-three guns. In
the last week of April he reached Moradabad, where he halted in a
position whence he should be able to time his arrival at Bareilly
simultaneously with that of Walpole's column from Lucknow.

A siege-train of twenty-eight guns and mortars commanded by
Lieutenant Tod Browne and escorted by two infantry regiments and a
squadron of cavalry, had left Cawnpore on April 15th, and moved up
by the usual stages to Futtehghur. Three days later, having assured
himself that the arrangements for the efficient maintenance of the
Lucknow garrison were complete, Sir Colin went to Cawnpore with
Mansfield, headquarters having preceded them to that station. They
started next day for Futtehghur and moving rapidly reached that place
on the 24th. Next day the artillery-park and siege-train crossed the
Ganges by the bridge of boats commanded by the guns of the fort,
and on the 27th Sir Colin and his staff joined Walpole's column at
Inigree. The advance on Bareilly began on the following morning. The
route was across the Ramgunga at Bajpoorea Ghat through Jellalabad
to Shahjehanpore, a large town which the enemy were known to hold in
force, but which when entered on May 1st was found deserted and the
cantonment destroyed. A detachment of all arms under Colonel Hale
of the Eighty-Second was placed in the jail and its enclosure as
the most defensible position, and the army resumed its march on the
2nd. A considerable detachment from the Meerut division joined at
Meranpore Kuttra on the same day. It had been commanded by General
Penny, a gallant officer who had fallen in a night skirmish, and
the command had now devolved upon Brigadier Richmond Jones. Thus
reinforced Sir Colin's force continued its advance on Bareilly, from
which place on the 4th it was distant one march. Next morning the
column moved on Bareilly.

At the sixth milestone the troops halted for the baggage to close
up. At 6 A.M. the force was formed in order of battle and advanced
against the enemy who, full of confidence, had come out from the city
and taken up a position on the hither bank of the Nerkuttea nullah
with that stream in their rear. Sir Colin advanced in two lines, the
Highland Brigade leading supported by the Fourth Punjaub Infantry
and the Belooch battalion, with a heavy field-battery in the centre
on the road,--the front and flanks covered by horse-artillery and
cavalry. The second line had the duty of protecting the baggage and
siege-train, a necessary precaution against the enemy's numerous and
daring cavalry. The strength of the British column amounted to seven
thousand six hundred and thirty-seven men, with nineteen guns apart
from the siege-train.

About 7 A.M. the enemy opened fire from guns commanding the approach
to the bridge. The British cavalry rode out on both flanks covering
the horse-artillery, until the latter unlimbered and replied so
sharply to the enemy that they fled across the stream abandoning
such of their guns as were on the near side of the bridge. Meanwhile
the infantry, along with the heavy field-battery, moved rapidly
forward in line. As the nullah was approached the left wing halted
on its right bank while the right crossed the bridge and continued
its advance for some distance in the direction of the town; but
the progress was slow partly on account of the great heat, partly
because the enemy's position was masked by dense groves. As the
heavy guns crossed the bridges and were brought up, they opened fire
on the hostile line holding the suburbs and ruined cantonments.
About 11 A.M. a fierce onslaught, described by Sir Colin as "the
most determined effort he had seen during the war," was delivered
by a body of Ghazees or Mussulman fanatics. The Fourth Punjaub
Rifles were in broken order in the irregular cavalry lines when the
Ghazees, numbering about one hundred and thirty, caught the Sikhs
at a disadvantage and rushed upon them. Brandishing their swords,
with heads low covered by their shields, and uttering wild shouts
of "_Deen! Deen!_" they fell on with furious impetuosity and hurled
the Punjaubis back on the Forty-Second Highlanders. Sir Colin had
formed up the latter regiment, with strong warnings on his part to
the young soldiers to be steady and hold their ground against the
impending assault, but it was barely ready to meet the whirlwind of
the charge when the Ghazees were upon the bayonets. Giving ear to
the injunctions of their veteran commander to trust to the bayonet
and to keep cool, the Forty-Second never wavered; but some of the
fanatics swept round its flank and fell upon its rear. A brief but
bloody hand-to-hand struggle ensued, and in a few moments every
Ghazee was killed right in the very ranks of the Highlanders. Colonel
Cameron of the Forty-Second was dragged from his horse by three men
and would certainly have been slain but for the timely and gallant
interposition of Colour-Sergeant Gardiner who bayoneted two of the
fanatics. General Walpole was wounded and escaped with his life only
by the promptitude with which the Black Watch used the bayonet. When
the Ghazees had been exterminated the Highlanders and Punjaubis
advanced into the cantonments.

Almost simultaneously with the onslaught of the Ghazees a large body
of rebel cavalry swept in upon the flank of the baggage-column,
cutting down camels, camel-drivers and camp-followers in all
directions. The confusion for the moment amounted almost to a panic.
Mr. Russell of _The Times_ had an extremely narrow escape. He was
very ill and was being carried in a dooly. In the alarm caused by the
rush of the enemy's horsemen he had left his dooly and mounted his
horse undressed and bareheaded as he was. "Several of the enemy's
_sowars_," writes Forbes-Mitchell, "were dodging through the camels
to get at him. We turned our rifles on them, and I shot down the
one nearest to Mr. Russell just as he had cut down an intervening
camel-driver and was making for _The Times_ correspondent; in fact,
his tulwar was actually raised to swoop down on Mr. Russell's bare
head when my bullet put a stop to his proceedings. I saw Mr. Russell
tumble from his saddle at the same instant as the _sowar_ fell; and
I got a rare fright, for I thought my bullet must have struck both.
However, I rushed to where Mr. Russell had fallen, and I then saw
from the position of the slain _sowar_ that my bullet had found
its proper billet, and that Mr. Russell had been struck down with
sunstroke, the blood flowing freely from his nose."

The wild dash of rebel cavalry was sharply checked by the fire of
Tombs' guns, and their rout was soon completed by the Carabineers and
the Mooltanee Horse. The cantonments and civil lines were occupied
in force. The action had lasted for six hours; the sun's rays were
oppressive, and a hot wind intensified the distress so greatly that
several fatal cases of sunstroke occurred. The trophies of the day
consisted of seven guns, and several more were found abandoned in the
town when the column finally entered it. Owing to the prudence with
which the troops were handled Sir Colin's casualties were remarkably
few. His halt outside the city enabled Khan Bahadoor Khan, the rebel
commander, quietly to withdraw his trained forces under cover of
darkness, leaving only a rabble to maintain a show of resistance
while he marched away to Pileebheet, thirty-three miles north-east of
Bareilly. When on the morning of the 6th the British forces opened
fire on the city, they met with no reply. But the sound of artillery
was heard from the further side of Bareilly--the guns of the force
which Brigadier John Jones had brought forward from Moradabad having
encountered and defeated some opposition by the way. He took up
positions in the city and opened communication with Sir Colin. On the
7th Bareilly was entirely occupied by the united force.

On the same day tidings reached Sir Colin that the detachment
under Colonel Hale left to hold Shahjehanpore was surrounded in
its position by a force several thousand strong, which had been
brought up from Mohumdee by the Fyzabad Moulvie and the local Rajah
within twenty-four hours after Sir Colin had quitted Shahjehanpore
on the morning of the 2nd. Since the 3rd the rebels had bombarded
the position incessantly, Hale steadfastly maintaining a gallant
resistance. Sir Colin promptly despatched to his support a column
of all arms under Brigadier-General John Jones, which left Bareilly
on the 8th and reached the vicinity of Shahjehanpore on the 11th.
The enemy, consisting chiefly of great masses of horsemen, was
encountered in fair fight and was defeated with the loss of a gun.
Jones then pressed forward, passed through the town and crossing the
parade-ground reached the jail where for eight days Hale had been
stoutly holding his own against heavy odds. But now Jones in his turn
found himself compelled to accept the defensive until reinforcements
should arrive. To the standard of the Moulvie, meanwhile, there
rallied contingents from far and near. In his camp were the Begum of
Oude, the Prince Feroze Shah, and a body of warlike followers sent by
the Nana Sahib; not to speak of _budmashes_ and freebooters from the
Nepaul frontier to the Doab. On the 15th the Moulvie attacked Jones
with his whole force. The rebels fought with ardour and persistency,
but they achieved no success. Jones, for his part, destitute as he
was of cavalry, could do no more than maintain the defensive and
abide in his position the arrival of reinforcements.

So far as the occupation of Bareilly and the dispersion of the
main body of insurgents were concerned, Sir Colin had brought the
Rohilcund campaign to a satisfactory conclusion. Having thereby
secured the re-establishment of British authority vested in Mr.
Alexander the Civil Commissioner, he considered himself in a position
to break up the Rohilcund force. The Second and Fourth Punjaub
Infantry regiments, which had served with great distinction during
the past year, were despatched on their return to the Punjaub. A
force consisting of a troop and battery of artillery, the Second
Punjaub Cavalry, the Forty-Second, Seventy-Eighth and Ninety-Third
Highlanders, and the Seventeenth Punjaub Infantry, was chosen to
constitute the garrison of Bareilly. General Walpole was nominated
as divisional commander of the troops in Rohilcund. On the 15th Sir
Colin, with Tombs' troop of horse-artillery, part of the siege-train,
the Ninth Lancers, a Punjaub Cavalry regiment, the Sixty-Fourth
Foot, the Belooch battalion, and the artillery-park, started from
Bareilly and moved in the direction of Futtehghur, believing that he
might now safely betake himself to some central point on the great
line of communication, whence he might direct the general campaign.
But at Faridpore on the 16th he received a message from Jones at
Shahjehanpore asking for assistance. Sir Colin hastened towards
Shahjehanpore, sheltering his men from the terrific heat under the
groves by the wayside. As he approached the town on the 18th, he
swept aside a hostile force threatening him with a demonstration, and
traversing the city effected a junction with Jones. An engagement
occurred in the afternoon in which the enemy displayed more than
ordinary skill and courage, and although in the end they were
repulsed no attempt was made to pursue them. Sir Colin waited until
the arrival of Brigadier Coke's column, which, while it was on the
march to Pileebheet he had recalled to Shahjehanpore. Coke arrived
on the 22nd, and on the evening of the 23rd Sir Colin, having given
Jones orders to attack the enemy next morning, left Shahjehanpore
with his staff and a small escort, and proceeding by double marches
reached Futtehghur on the morning of the 25th, where he remained
until June 5th, once more in direct communication with Lord Canning
at Allahabad, and in a position to exercise a more active supervision
over the columns operating in Oude, Behar, and Bundelcund.

Brigadier-General Jones in accordance with his instructions advanced
upon the Moulvie's position at Mohumdee, which fell into his hands;
but the rebels crossed the Goomtee too promptly to admit of his
cavalry capturing their guns. A few weeks later the Moulvie, one of
the most bitter and stubborn antagonists of the British rule, met
his death by the treachery of one of his own countrymen, the Rajah
of Powain. The Rajah's brother shot him dead; the Rajah himself cut
off the Moulvie's head, and wrapping it in a cloth carried it to
Shahjehanpore. He entered the magistrate's house, opened the bundle
and rolled the bloody head at the feet of the official. On the day
following it was exposed to view in a conspicuous part of the town,
"for the information and encouragement of all concerned."

Sir Colin left Futtehghur on June 5th, having made the necessary
arrangements regarding the troops he could spare to support Sir Hugh
Rose's advance on Gwalior, and having satisfied himself that affairs
in Rohilcund and the Doab were progressing favourably. Since the
settlement of the early spring the latter territory had remained
undisturbed save by a few casual irruptions. Sir Colin proceeded
directly to Allahabad where he remained during the hot weather in the
house which Lord Canning had prepared for him. There awaited him in
Allahabad a letter from Lord Derby, then Prime Minister, in which
his lordship intimated that he "had been honoured with the Queen's
commands to signify to you her Majesty's unqualified approval of the
distinguished services you have rendered to her Majesty and to the
country as Commander-in-Chief of the armies in India.... Her Majesty
deems the present a fitting moment for marking her high sense of your
eminent and brilliant services by raising you to the dignity of a
peer of the United Kingdom by such title as you may think it proper
to assume." Sir Colin, with his innate modesty of character, at
first shrank from the proffered honour. He was, in the words of Sir
William Mansfield, "much disposed to run restive at being put into
such strange harness; but he is now reconciled, and, I think, very
much pleased." His constant friend the Duke of Cambridge suggested
that he should be called up by the title of "Lord Clyde of Lucknow."
But he modestly wrote in reply, "I have thought it proper not to add
the word 'Lucknow,' as the baronetcy of the late Sir Henry Havelock
was distinguished in that manner. It would be unbecoming in me to
trench, as it were, on the title of that very distinguished officer."
Ultimately, at the suggestion of Lord Derby, he took the title of
"Lord Clyde of Clydesdale." But he was curiously reluctant to make
use of his new title. Not one of his letters to his intimate friends
has the signature of "Clyde." They uniformly bear his initials "C.
C." or "C. Campbell"--a retention of the simplicity which had been
a marked feature of his character in the days of his comparative
obscurity. To accompany his peerage the grant of an annuity of £2000
was made to him by the East India Company--one of the last acts of
that body before its extinction by Act of Parliament. On the 14th of
May he had been gazetted to the rank of full General.

An old Ninety-Third man still to the fore, tells a genial little
anecdote about Lord Clyde when he first met his favourites after
having been raised to the peerage. He had a great regard for worthy
old Pipe-Major John MacLeod of that regiment. When Sir Colin took
what he believed to be his final farewell of the Ninety-Third when
he left the Crimea in May, 1856, the last man he shook hands with
was John MacLeod. When the _Mauritius_ on the third anniversary of
the Alma reached Calcutta with the Ninety-Third aboard, the first
man to recognise Sir Colin as he came alongside in a dinghy was John
MacLeod, who electrified his comrades with the shout, "Lord save us!
wha could hae believed it? Here's Sir Colin himsel'!" "Aye, aye,
John," replied Sir Colin, "it's just me, able to go through another
campaign with you. Little did I think, when we last parted, that
I should hear your pipes on the plains of India!" When he met the
regiment for the first time after becoming Lord Clyde, he as usual
called the pipe-major to the front. After the customary greetings
John came to attention, saluted and said, "I beg your pardon, Sir
Colin, but we dinna ken hoo tae address you noo that the Queen
has made you a lord!" The old Chief replied, with just a touch of
sadness in his voice,--"Just call me Sir Colin, John, the same as in
the old times; I like the old name best. Except yourselves of the
Ninety-Third there are but few now alive in whom I take interest
enough to care how they call me."

After a good deal of fighting in the Azimghur district with Koer
Singh, Sir E. Lugard and Brigadier Douglas had followed that
notable rebel across the Ganges. An attempt, however, to dislodge
him from his native jungles of Jugdeespore, resulted in a serious
discomfiture. In the hope of effecting a surprise a small force
of one hundred and fifty British infantry, fifty men of the Naval
Brigade, and one hundred and fifty Sikhs penetrated into the
jungle, where they encountered the enemy at dawn of April 23rd. The
rebels were on the alert; a panic ensued, the guns were abandoned,
and most of the Europeans were killed or died of sunstroke. With
the co-operation of the Dinapore Brigade Lugard now approached
Jugdeespore through the open country on the western side instead of
taking the direct route through the jungle. The rebel force covering
Jugdeespore was taken by surprise and driven in; and on the 9th of
May the Jugdeespore stronghold was captured. It was ascertained
that Koer Singh had died of his wounds, and his followers were
now discouraged. Lugard succeeded in defeating and dispersing the
main rebel force, and the guns lost by the Arrah detachment were
recovered. It was an unsatisfactory and harassing warfare, in which
the rebels played the part of guerillas. No longer formidable as
a military body, they kept the province in a state of anarchy and
confusion; and they gave no rest to the troops, many of whom fell
victims to the deadly effect of exposure in the unhealthy season.



CHAPTER VIII

THE CAMPAIGN IN CENTRAL INDIA


The operations which, during the long campaign of the Mutiny, were
carried on under Lord Clyde's direct supervision were confined to
the region north of the Jumna; he himself never crossed that river.
But in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief he was mainly responsible
for the grand strategy of the campaign throughout the whole area of
military operations, the outlines of which he had laid down in the
scheme prepared during his voyage from England. Of this scheme an
essential feature was, it may be remembered, a great concentrated
advance upon the Central Indian States to be undertaken by the
available military forces of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The
fulfilment of this plan of campaign was retarded by various causes,
but the wisdom of the Commander-in-Chief's conception was justified
in the event.

Something had already been done in Central India before Colin
Campbell set foot on Prinsep's Ghat on the strand of Calcutta. On the
12th of July, 1857, there left Aurungabad for Mhow a little column
under the command of Brigadier C. S. Stuart, consisting of half of
the Fourteenth Dragoons, the Third Hyderabad Cavalry, Woolcombe's
battery, the Twenty-Fifth Bombay Native Infantry, and detachments
of Bombay and Madras sappers. On August 2nd this force relieved
Mhow, but remained there doing nothing until after the middle of
October. On the 21st of that month, accompanied by Colonel Durand,
the acting Resident at Mhow, and strengthened by the Eighty-Sixth
regiment, Hungerford's battery and sundry details including a small
siege-train, the column, now bearing the title of the Malwa Field
Force, marched on Dhar and on the 25th prepared to bombard that
strong fort. Its garrison abandoned it during the night of the
31st. The main body marched northward on Mundasore on the 8th of
November, while Major Orr's column of the Hyderabad Contingent moved
on Mahidpore, where the fugitives from Dhar had been joined by the
Mahidpore Contingent, which had killed the Europeans attached to
it. Orr overtook the mutineers at Rawul, and inflicted on them a
severe defeat with the loss of all their guns. On the morning of
the 21st the Field Force took up a position between Mundasore and
Neemuch, where it was attacked in force but routed its assailants
with heavy loss, and the cavalry drove them into Mundasore sabring
them as they fled. On the 23rd the column pushed on to Neemuch, where
it was known that the British people of that station had been shut
up in the fort for months surrounded by about ten thousand of the
enemy. They had beaten off two desperate attacks, but provisions
and ammunition were running short, and word had come from the fort
that they could not hold out many days longer. While on the march
the rear of the column was harassed by troops from Mundasore, and
presently there became visible in front a large mass of cavalry
and two bodies of infantry which had come out from Neemuch to
resist the British advance. Those Rohillas were exceedingly daring
and stubborn, and fought to the last gasp. They held with extreme
obstinacy the village of Ghorariah, from which they maintained a
constant heavy fire. As the night closed in the village became one
great blazing fire; death stared its occupants in the face; yet they
clung to it throughout the night. In the morning the place was a
mere shell into which was being poured a stream of heavy missiles,
yet the garrison held out until after mid-day, when at length some
two hundred and fifty survivors came out and surrendered. With the
storm of Ghorariah and the relief of Neemuch, Durand, scanty as the
force at his disposal was, had succeeded in crushing the rebellion
in the Malwa country and in cutting off the disaffected troops of
Holkar from the supports on which they had rested. Leaving the
Hyderabad Contingent at Mundasore under Major Orr he returned by way
of Mahidpore and Oojein to Indore, where he disarmed Holkar's troops.
With this service ended the short Malwa campaign. On December 16th
there arrived at Indore Major-General Sir Hugh Rose, the officer who
had been nominated by Lord Canning to conduct the operations of the
body of troops thenceforth known as the Central India Field Force.
Rose had seen much war, and had displayed brilliant gallantry in the
field as well as great capacity in the cabinet. He was a man who
wore the silk glove over the iron hand, and while the suaveness of
his manner seemed to the superficial observer to indicate a lack of
force, it was apparent to the more clear-sighted that he possessed
the _fortiter in re_ which marked him as a man of promptitude,
determination, and vigour. His division, consisting of five and a
half infantry battalions, five cavalry regiments, six batteries,
detachments of Bombay and Madras sappers and a siege-train, was
divided into two brigades, of which the second, which Rose himself
accompanied, marched on Rhatghur and Saugur, while the first moved on
a parallel line farther to the west heading for Goona and the Trunk
Road from Bombay to Agra.

Rose began his advance on January 6th and arrived in front of the
fortress of Rhatghur on the 24th. After two days' bombardment it was
evacuated by the garrison during the night of the 28th, an attempt on
the part of the forces of the Rajah of Baunpore to raise the siege
having been easily frustrated. Rose then pushed forward to Saugur,
which had been beleaguered for the last eight months. The place
was relieved in the beginning of February, when the Europeans who
had been so long cooped up in their fort came out to welcome their
deliverers; by whom and by the Thirty-First Bengal Native Infantry,
one of the few regiments of that army which had remained faithful,
Rose was escorted past the fort into the cantonment. On February
11th with part of his force he was before the fort of Gurrah Kota,
which was garrisoned by the revolted sepoys of the Fifty-First and
Fifty-Second Bengal Native Infantry. One day's bombardment sufficed
to reduce the place. The garrison escaped during the night of the
12th, but the fugitives were pursued by cavalry for twenty-five miles
and suffered considerable loss. Rose was back in Saugur on the 17th,
eager to prosecute his advance on Jhansi distant one hundred and
twenty-five miles farther north. He had been informed that General
Whitlock with the Madras column had reached Jubbulpore, but he could
not quit Saugur until he should be assured that the Madras general
had begun his advance towards that place. The interval he utilised in
gathering supplies, replenishing the ammunition of his siege-train,
and strengthening it by the addition of heavy guns, howitzers, and
mortars from the Saugur arsenal. At length tidings came that Whitlock
had left Jubbulpore, and Rose moved from Saugur on the 27th. A few
days later, by a flank movement through the pass of Madanpore, he
turned the more formidable pass of Malthon by which the enemy had
been expecting him, and after some extremely hard fighting entered
the town of Madanpore. On March 19th he was within fourteen miles of
Jhansi, whither he despatched the cavalry and field-artillery of his
second brigade to reconnoitre and invest that place.

Jhansi was the chief stronghold of the rebel power in Central India;
and it was a place, moreover, in which the slaughter of British men
and women had been perpetrated in circumstances of peculiar atrocity.
It was of great strength, both natural and artificial, its walls
varying in thickness from sixteen to twenty feet. Town and fortress
were garrisoned by eleven thousand men, rebel sepoys, mercenaries,
and local levies under the command of the Ranee, a woman of fierce
and dauntless character. The cavalry having invested the place on
the 22nd, the siege operations began on the night of that day. The
batteries opened fire on the morning of the 25th, on which day the
first brigade came up into line, having on its march bombarded,
breached, and stormed the important fortress of Chandairee, situated
about eighty miles south-west of Jhansi. For seventeen days the duel
between the besieging batteries and the guns of the defence was
incessant. By the 31st a breach had been effected, but it was barely
practicable; and on the same evening tidings came to Rose that Tantia
Topee with twenty-two thousand men and twenty-eight guns was on the
march from the north to the relief of Jhansi. He realised that his
position, placed as it was between two superior hostile forces, was
critical in the extreme. But Rose was the man to pluck the flower
of safety out of the nettle of danger. Maintaining his grip on the
fortress, he resolved to take the offensive against Tantia Topee on
the following morning.

As the rebel army advanced, he struck both its flanks simultaneously
with cavalry and horse-artillery. As soon as that evolution had
manifested itself, his infantry advanced, poured in a volley,
and then charged. The first line of the rebels broke and fled in
disaster hotly pursued. Brigadier Stuart struck in upon the right
flank of the second line and hurled it into confused flight. Tantia
fired the jungle, and under cover of the smoke made for the Betwa.
But the British cavalry and horse-artillery pursued with ardour,
and did not desist until every rebel gun had been taken. Fifteen
hundred of the mutineers were killed or wounded. Tantia Topee and his
discomfited host fled towards Calpee. Rose took prompt advantage of
the discouragement which he realised that Tantia's defeat must have
wrought on the garrison of Jhansi. He stormed the fortified city
at dawn of April the 3rd. It was an arduous task. "The fire of the
enemy waxed stronger, and amid the chaos of sounds of volleys of
musketry and roaring of cannon, of hissing and bursting of rockets,
stink-pots, infernal machines, huge stones, blocks of wood and trees,
all hurled on their devoted heads, the men wavered for a moment and
sheltered themselves behind stones." Everywhere fierce and bloody,
the conflict was most severe near and inside the palace, which had
been prepared by the rebels for a centre of resistance in the last
resort. Four hundred men who had taken up a position outside the
fortress were surrounded by Rose's cavalry and slain almost to a man.
Desultory fighting continued for thirty-six hours. The Ranee made
her escape and galloped straight to Calpee. The fortress was finally
occupied by Rose on the 5th. The loss sustained in its subjugation,
including that in the action of the Betwa, amounted to three hundred
and forty-three killed and wounded, of whom thirty-six were officers.
The enemy's loss was reckoned to exceed five thousand.

It now only remained for Sir Hugh Rose to march on Calpee, and
to exterminate from that important position the mutinous bodies
which had so long threatened Sir Colin Campbell's main line of
communications. He began his advance in the end of April and on May
7th reached Koonch, where the rebels were in an entrenched position
covering the Calpee road. That position he turned, stormed the town,
and pursued the rebels for eight miles along the road to Calpee,
capturing eight guns and a quantity of ammunition and stores. He had
now been joined by the Seventy-First Highlanders, and continuing his
advance reached the Jumna at Gowlowlee six miles below Calpee. The
Commander-in-Chief had sent to co-operate with him Colonel Maxwell
with the Eighty-Eighth Foot, some Sikhs and the Camel Corps, part of
which crossed the river and joined Rose's force on the right bank.
After four days of constant skirmishing Maxwell's batteries opened
fire from the left bank on the fort and town, and Rose determined
to strike the decisive blow on the 22nd. But the rebels anticipated
him. On the morning of that day they came out in great masses to
attack him. There was a critical moment when the thin British line
momentarily yielded. But Sir Hugh brought up the Camel Corps,
dismounted the men, and led them forward in person to the charge. The
victory was won; Calpee was evacuated during the following night, and
the rebel force, pursued by the horse-artillery and cavalry, lost
formation and dispersed, losing all its guns and baggage. "This,"
writes Dr. Lowe,[9] "was a glorious success won over ten times our
number under most trying circumstances. The position of Calpee; the
numbers of the enemy, who came on with a resolution and display of
tactics we had never before witnessed; the exhausted and weakened
state of Sir Hugh Rose's force; the awful, suffocating hot wind and
burning sun which the men had to endure all day without time to eat
or drink; combined to render the achievement one of unsurpassed
difficulty. Every soul engaged suffered more or less. Officers and
men fainted away, or dropped down as if struck by lightning in the
delirium of sunstroke. Yet all this was endured without a murmur,
and in the cool of the evening we were speculating on the capture
of Calpee on the morrow." The speculation was justified. Calpee was
occupied, fifteen guns and several standards were taken; and Sir Hugh
Rose, considering the campaign ended, issued a complimentary order
to his troops and prepared to proceed to Bombay on sick certificate.

But in the first week in June he had suddenly to alter his plans. The
main body of the Calpee mutineers had reached Morar, the cantonment
of the old Gwalior Contingent, situated close to Scindiah's capital.
Remaining steadfast to the British cause the young Maharajah moved
out from Gwalior on June 1st and engaged the enemy in the Morar
position. It was obvious from the first that Tantia Topee had been
successfully tampering with the Maharajah's troops, who went over
in a body to the rebels and Scindiah had to seek safety in flight
to Agra. The daring project of the Ranee had thus far succeeded,
and she and her confederates were prompt to take advantage of the
temporary good fortune which had come to them. They took possession
of fortress, treasury, arsenal, and town, and proceeded to form
a regular government. Nana Sahib was proclaimed as Peishwah and
Rao Sahib as Governor of Gwalior. The royal property was declared
confiscated. The command of the troops outside the city was vested in
the Ranee; those inside were under the command of Tantia Topee.

On receiving intelligence of this extraordinary state of things,
Sir Hugh Rose resumed his command and advanced on Gwalior by forced
marches, gathering up reinforcements as he moved. Of his two
brigades one was commanded by Brigadier C. S. Stuart of the Bombay
Army; the other by Brigadier R. Napier of the Bombay Engineers.
Approaching Gwalior on June 18th, the ninth day from Calpee, he
attacked the insurgents on the following morning, drove them out of
the cantonments and pursued them vigorously. Smith with the Sipree
column joined by Orr with his people of the Hyderabad Contingent,
fought his way through the defile of Kotah-ke Serai after a stout
defence on the part of the enemy, in which the Ranee of Jhansi lost
her life while attempting to escape. Reinforced by Smith and Orr,
Sir Hugh advanced on the 19th with the combined force against the
heights in front of the city. In face of a heavy fire of artillery
the assaulting columns carried the heights gallantly, capturing all
the twenty-seven guns of the enemy. Then the rebels lost heart and
fled pursued by the cavalry, while Rose advanced on the city. That
same evening Scindiah, who had accompanied a force from Agra, found
himself once more sovereign of the Gwalior State. The rock-fortress
of Gwalior was daringly captured on the morning of the 20th by a
couple of lieutenants at the head of a handful of men, after a
hand-to-hand struggle with the garrison in which the gallant young
Lieutenant Rose met his death. A flying column of cavalry organised
by Sir Hugh was placed in command of Brigadier Napier, who on the
morning of the 21st, after a ride of twenty-four miles, struck the
enemy at Jowra Alipore. He had barely six hundred men all told, and
only six guns; the enemy were reckoned twelve thousand strong--the
remnants of the Calpee force with additions picked up at Gwalior.
Lightfoot with his troop of horse-artillery galloped to the enemy's
left flank, fired a couple of rounds, and then dashing forward at
full speed with Abbott's cavalry rolled up the enemy's line and
drove him from his guns. The mutineers, stricken and demoralised,
dispersed, abandoning sixteen guns which Napier brought in. The
Central India Field Force was now broken up, and the troops
composing it were distributed at Gwalior, Jhansi, Sipree, and Goona.
Its gallant chief repaired to Bombay, there to recruit his health
impaired by the triumphant march he had accomplished through Central
India. The doings of Whitlock with his Madras column in the Banda and
Kirwee territories were not brilliant and need not be summarised.
With the pacification of Gwalior began what Sir Colin Campbell
described as "that hunt of the rebel leaders which was finally
brought to a conclusion by the capture and execution of Tantia Topee
in April, 1859," after a chase which lasted nearly ten months.



CHAPTER IX

THE PACIFICATION OF OUDE--END OF THE MUTINY


Satisfied of the "military safety" of the troops engaged in Oude,
Goruckpore, and Behar, the Doab and Rohilcund, Lord Clyde during
his hot-weather residence at Allahabad was resolved not to endanger
the health of his forces until he should be able "to move them on
a general plan and with one common object." His design, therefore,
was to remain quiescent until his preparations should be complete;
and then, in his own words, "to break in upon the rebel bodies
simultaneously in each province, to leave them no loophole for
escape, and to prevent them from travelling from one district
to another, and so prolonging a miserable guerilla warfare."
One exception to this programme had to be made. Maun Singh, an
influential chief of Eastern Oude, after a long hesitation had at
length in June deserted the rebel cause and thrown in his lot with
the conquering power. The local rebels, twenty thousand strong,
irritated by his secession from their side, had besieged him in his
fort of Shahgunj near Fyzabad. The Commander-in-Chief deputed Hope
Grant to relieve Maun Singh, and also to take the opportunity of
beginning the occupation of Oude in accordance with the plan it
was intended to carry out on a large scale during the ensuing cold
season. Hope Grant, marching from Nawabgunj, reached Fyzabad on July
29th, where his presence caused the dispersion of the rebel hordes
which had been besieging Maun Singh. After a satisfactory interview
with that personage, Grant, by the Commander-in-Chief's instructions,
marched further east to Sultanpore, following up the rebels who had
abandoned the siege of Maun Singh's stronghold. They showed fight and
actually advanced to the attack; but when Grant moved against them
on the morning of August 29th he found that they had dispersed. From
Sultanpore Grant visited Allahabad, where Lord Canning invested him
and Mansfield with the Knight Commandership of the Bath.

The operations for the subjugation of Oude were to be directed from
two points simultaneously: on the one hand, from the frontier of
Rohilcund with the object of driving the rebels in a north-easterly
direction towards the Gogra: on the other, from the south-east
against the Baiswarra district lying between the Ganges and the
Goomtee, in which territory the most powerful and stubborn rebels
were Lal Mahdo of Amethee and Beni Mahdo of Roy Bareilly and
Shunkerpore. Lord Clyde's first object was to sweep the Baiswarra
region and drive the rebels from it beyond the Gogra; his second
and final object to cross the Gogra, draw gradually tighter the
cordon by which the rebels were hemmed in north of that river, and
force them back across the Raptee upon the frontier of Nepaul. The
task was onerous, for it was officially estimated that in Southern
Oude alone there were sixty thousand men in arms exclusive of the
disbanded sepoys, and as many as three hundred guns scattered about
in the numerous forts in the jungles. But the burden of the task was
diminished by the progress made in the organisation of a body of
native military police under the superintendence of Captain Bruce
the former head of the intelligence department, who in July reported
that he had already five thousand men ready for this employment. As
the columns advanced defeating the enemy and expelling him from his
strongholds, those auxiliaries were to occupy the positions won, and
were to support the civil authority in the maintenance of order.

Lord Clyde remained in Allahabad to be present on November 1st when
the proclamation announcing the direct government of British India by
the Crown was promulgated by Lord Canning. On the 2nd he joined his
headquarters at the Beylah cantonment near Perturbghur, thirty-five
miles from Allahabad. He occupied a small tent, not only as an
example to his staff but also to facilitate rapidity of movement from
column to column. Three columns were immediately to his hand in the
Baiswarra district. Pinckney's column, consisting of three and a half
infantry regiments, two cavalry regiments, two batteries and details,
was at Perturbghur with a post on the Sultanpore road. Hope Grant's,
comprising four infantry and two cavalry regiments, two and a half
batteries and a company of sappers, was two miles north-east of the
fort of Amethee. The third was Wetherall's, who with one cavalry and
two and a half infantry regiments and twelve guns, contrary to his
orders and without the specified co-operation, had just captured the
fort of Rampoor Kussia on the Sye, with its armament of twenty-three
guns. He had killed some three hundred of the enemy with a loss to
himself of about eighty killed and wounded, but had allowed the
garrison to escape, and Lord Clyde was much annoyed that he should
have disregarded his instructions.

The first act of the Commander-in-Chief on reaching his headquarters
in the field was to summon Lal Mahdo the Talukdar of Amethee to make
his submission, and a copy of the Queen's proclamation was forwarded
to him with the intimation that if he remained recalcitrant the
Commander-in-Chief would invest his fort. Lal Mahdo had afforded
protection to British fugitives at the outbreak of the rebellion,
and as he had thereby established a claim to the clemency of the
Government, he was allowed until the 6th to form his decision. He
failed to present himself on that date, and his jungle fortress was
then invested by the headquarter column and those of Hope Grant and
Wetherall. Lal Mahdo surrendered himself on the 10th and gave up his
fortress, which when entered was found to have been evacuated. The
Rajah's conduct was so equivocal that he was made a prisoner. Mr.
Russell thus describes the scene when the Commander-in-Chief rode
into the place with the Rajah in attendance. "The latter was pale
with affright, for his Excellency, more irritated than I have ever
seen him, and conscious of the trick which had been played upon him,
was denouncing the Rajah's conduct in terms which perhaps the latter
would not have minded much had they not been accompanied by threats
of unmistakable vigour."

Leaving a post at Amethee to destroy the fort Lord Clyde moved
promptly on Shunkerpore, the stronghold of Beni Mahdo who had been
joined by the fugitive rebels from Rampoor Kussia and Amethee.
Grant and Wetherall invested the fort on two faces, the headquarter
column on the third. Eveleigh's column, which had recently stormed
the fort of Simree, should have arrived to complete the investment;
but he arrived too late and thus was afforded a means of escape
to Beni Mahdo and his followers. Shunkerpore was a strong place
of considerable importance; the circumference of its outer ditch
measured nearly eight miles and the area of the fort exceeded
five acres. Before resorting to hostile action the Talukdar was
summoned; but he refused to lay down his arms, and on the night
of the 15th the garrison, about ten thousand strong, evacuated
the fort, carrying off ten guns and heading northward with the
probable intention of reaching the trans-Gogra region. Leaving a
detachment at Shunkerpore to destroy the fort and the surrounding
jungle, the Commander-in-Chief on the night of the 18th moved with
the headquarter column to Roy Bareilly. Wetherall's brigade, now
commanded by Colonel Taylor, Seventy-Ninth Highlanders, had been
despatched to Fyzabad with instructions to continue the operations
beyond the Gogra as soon as the rebels had been cleared out of the
Baiswarra district; and Sir Hope Grant proceeded to the same place to
take command of the forces which were to operate in the trans-Gogra
country. Horsford was acting on his instructions to reduce the
country on the right bank of the Goomtee between Jugdespore and
Lucknow. Lord Clyde on the 20th had advanced to Buchraon, twenty
miles on the road to Lucknow, when information reached him that
Beni Mahdo had been headed by Hope Grant's movement and had turned
towards the Ganges, on the way to which he had been defeated at Bera
by Brigadier Eveleigh, who was following the rebel chief towards
Simree. Lord Clyde determined to join the brigadier, who was weak in
infantry, and to attack Beni Mahdo. He reached Simree on the 23rd,
and on the morning of the 24th advanced to the village of Bidhoura,
whence a summons was sent to the rebel chief giving him a last chance
of surrender. No reply came and the advance was resumed.

Beni Mahdo's position was strong, but too extended to be properly
defended. It lay on a branch of the Ganges between two villages,
the village of Doundea-Khera on the west, the village of Buksar on
the east. The advance of the British skirmishers and the artillery
fire sufficed to break the rebel line. Part of the enemy were forced
into the river; the occupants of both villages were summarily driven
out. The rebels left between three hundred and four hundred dead
on the ground and abandoned the seven guns they had possessed. But
Beni Mahdo escaped, and having been joined by part of his followers
hurried northward pursued by Colonel Carmichael's force, till on
December 4th he was driven into the country beyond the Gogra. The
clearance of the Baiswarra district having been effected, the
Commander-in-Chief marched to Lucknow, where he arrived on November
28th to find that the wide region west of Lucknow between the Ganges
and the Chouka had been swept clear of rebels by Brigadiers Barker
and Troup. The former officer, having reduced the regions of Kuchowna
and Benagunj, had reached Khyrabad and a few days later advanced to
Biswah. Troup with the Shahjehanpore force had crossed the Rohilcund
frontier, stormed the fort of Mittowlee on November 8th, engaged in a
sharp and victorious action at Mehndee, and moving to the south-west
established himself at Jehangirabad near the right bank of the Chouka.

Thus one half of the task of subjugating Oude had been accomplished.
An elaborate plan, which involved exceptional punctuality and
precision, had been undeviatingly followed with successful results.
Lord Clyde could truthfully report to Lord Canning that, "In the
theatre of operations extending over a line of march of more than
two hundred miles, each movement and each apparently isolated attack
was made to defend and support what was being done on the right and
left. The advance in line, stretching from the confines of Rohilcund
to Allahabad and Azimghur, had put down everything like rebellion in
a large sense of the word, in the region on the right bank of the
Gogra." Some critics found occasion to charge his movements with
tardiness; but the Commander-in-Chief had a far greater aim than the
temporary dispersal of the rebel bands. Unless justified by some
urgent military necessity, Lord Clyde was on principle averse from
entering any district which could not be permanently occupied. He was
determined to leave no territory, through which his columns moved,
unfurnished with police posts under civil authority of sufficient
strength to guarantee order for the future. In a word, he insisted on
the permanent settlement of the country as he advanced.

There remained to him now only the prosecution of the campaign in the
trans-Gogra country. Leaving Lucknow on December 5th with a column
consisting of fourteen guns, three cavalry and five and a half
infantry regiments under the command of Brigadier Horsford, he picked
up at Nawabgunj Purnell's column, consisting of four guns, a wing
of the Twenty-Third, and the Ninetieth Light Infantry, and marched
in the direction of Byram Ghat on the Gogra, at the confluence of
the Chouka and the Surjoo. Hearing that a body of fugitives were
crossing the river at that point, the ardent veteran with the cavalry
and four guns, on the waggons of which were mounted a few marksmen
of the Rifle Brigade, galloped forward in the hope of intercepting
the rebels in the act of crossing. But he was just in time to be
too late. There were no means of crossing the river at Byram Ghat,
and Lord Clyde, anxious to prosecute the campaign with a minimum of
delay, moved down to Fyzabad with the headquarter column and the
siege-train, crossed the river at that point, and on the 14th reached
Secrora, a couple of marches beyond the Gogra. Certain dispositions
were made at this point, tending to assure the object in view of
clearing the region of rebels and hindering them from recrossing
into the settled territory. Purnell was sent to watch the fords on
the Chouka as far up as Jehangirabad, whence Troup took up the duty
to the confines of Rohilcund, while Pratt patrolled the Mullapoor
Doab between the Chouka and the Surjoo. From Baraitch on the 17th
Christie's column was detached to cover on the left the further
advance of the headquarter column up to the edge of the Nepaul
hill-territory. On the right in the Goruckpore country Rowcroft's
column, advancing from Bustee and crossing the Raptee, was marching
on Toolseepore, which place, was believed to be held in strength
by Bala Rao the brother of Nana Sahib. After some fighting Rowcroft
occupied Toolseepore on December 23rd, where he was joined by Hope
Grant, who had parted from the Commander-in-Chief at Secrora on the
14th and had marched to Bulrampore, at which point he covered on the
right the advance of the headquarter column.

Lord Clyde marched due north on Baraitch, where he arrived on the
17th. As he approached, the Nana Sahib and the Begum of Oude, who
had been holding Baraitch, fell back in the direction of the Nepaul
frontier. The end was now near at hand, and symptoms of disruption
among the insurgents were manifesting themselves, the vakeels of
the Rajahs and Talukdars who were still "out" coming in to ask for
terms. The Begum herself sent a representative to inquire what she
might expect. An advance was made on the 23rd towards Nanparah, and
on the 26th, hearing that the rebels were in force at Burgidiah, a
march beyond Nanparah, the Commander-in-Chief moved on that place.
Late in the afternoon the rebel pickets fell back, disclosing the
main body drawn up in advance of a village opposite the left front of
the British force. After a brief reconnaissance Lord Clyde disposed
his troops for action, and himself galloped to the front with the
guns and cavalry of the advance guard. Coming under the enemy's fire
he rapidly took ground to his right, and when he had gained their
extreme left he again advanced and brought his guns into action. The
effect of the evolution was instantaneous; the enemy's flank was
turned and they hurried in disorder towards Burgidiah and Churdah,
losing all their guns in the flight. Here Lord Clyde, while guiding
the pursuit, met with a serious accident. His horse fell and he was
thrown violently to the ground. Mackinnon, his surgeon, found him in
great pain with blood flowing down his cheek. One of his shoulders
was put out and a rib broken. Much shaken though he was, the gallant
old Chief, as soon as the dislocation was reduced, promptly rose and
walked towards the front as if he had been unhurt.

An incident, characteristic of Lord Clyde, occurred this evening. Mr.
Russell, himself an eye-witness of it, has thus vividly portrayed
the scene:--[10] "On returning to camp it was quite dark; not a tent
was pitched; the baggage was coming up in darkness and in storms
of angry voices. As the night was cold, the men made blazing fires
of the straw and grass of the houses of the neighbouring hamlet in
which Nana Sahib's followers had so long been quartered. At one of
those fires, surrounded by Beloochees, Lord Clyde sat with his arm
in a sling on a _charpoy_ which had been brought out to feed the
flames. Once, as he rose to give some order for the disposition of
the troops, a tired Beloochee flung himself full length on the crazy
bedstead, and was jerked off in a moment by one of his comrades with
the exclamation--'Don't you see, you fool, that you are on the Lord
Sahib's _charpoy_?' Lord Clyde interposed--'Let him lie there; don't
interfere with his rest,' and himself took his seat on a billet of
wood."

Next day the force marched onward to the fort of Mejiddiah, the
Commander-in-Chief carried on an elephant at the head of the column.
The place was found to be very strong, full of guns and crowded
with men. Some casualties occurred from the enemy's fire, which
was obstinate; but shell after shell burst inside the fort and the
round-shot tore great masses of earth off the parapets. Detachments
of infantry closed in upon it and poured through the embrasures a
constant rain of bullets, which, with the fire from the big guns,
ultimately crushed down an exceptionally stubborn resistance. The
28th was spent in the demolition of the fort, and next day Lord Clyde
marched back to Nanparah, in the belief that there he would be in
a more central and advantageous position from which to watch the
enemy's movements. On the afternoon of the 30th intelligence came in
that Nana Sahib, Beni Mahdo, and other outlaw leaders had gathered
in force near Bankee, about twenty miles north of Nanparah. The camp
was left standing and orders issued for the troops to parade without
bugle sound at 8 P.M. The infantry were carried on the elephants of
the force, on one of which Lord Clyde accompanied the column. The
expedition consisted of the Seventh Hussars, part of the Carabineers,
First Punjaub Cavalry, a troop of Horse Artillery, a battalion of
the Rifle Brigade, a detachment of the Twentieth and a wing of the
Belooch battalion. After a march of fifteen miles in pitch darkness
a halt was made until dawn of the 31st, when the column continued
its advance and presently the enemy's outposts became visible with
the main body in rear. The hostile line was in position on the edge
of the forest between two roads, one leading toward the Raptee, the
other to the pass entering the Soonar valley in Nepaul. At the first
onslaught the rebels turned and fled. Part of them hurried towards
a ford on the Raptee. A squadron of the Seventh Hussars followed
hard upon the flying troopers; the other three squadrons, ordered to
support it, swept along the bank under the gauntlet of the artillery
fire from the other side of the river. The panic-stricken rebel
horsemen precipitated themselves into the waters of the Raptee. At
the sight the pursuing hussars dashed after them, and cut them down
as they struggled in the whirling stream. Major Horne and two hussars
were drowned. Captain Stisted, who commanded the leading squadron,
was carried away by the current, but was saved by his comrade Major
Fraser,[11] who received the Victoria Cross for his opportune
gallantry. The rebels thus driven and dispersed, the camp was pitched
at Bankee. On information that the fugitives were gathered again
in the Soonar valley within Nepaulese territory, Lord Clyde on the
5th of January, 1859, marched up from Bankee to Sidinhia Ghat, the
scene of the action of December 31st, where an encampment was taken
up on a site favourable for watching the pass leading into Nepaul,
and there a column was left on duty under the command of Brigadier
Horsford. Hope Grant, while at Bulrampore, had heard that the Nana's
brother Bala Rao had taken possession of the fort of Toolseepore with
a considerable body of followers, and was aiming at entering the
Goruckpore district. Grant interfered materially with that project
by hitting on Bala Rao's force at Kumdahkote about thirteen miles
north-east of Toolseepore. He attacked them on January 4th, drove
them into the neighbouring hills, and captured fifteen guns. Like
his brother the Nana, Bala Rao sought refuge in Nepaul.

Lord Clyde had now fairly accomplished the task which he had
undertaken. By means of the wide-sweeping movement begun in October,
the three great provinces of Oude, Behar, and Goruckpore, which "till
that time had been in a state of insurrection, were now absolutely
cleared of even the semblance of rebellion." Although from the nature
of the work there had been no great battles, the number of small
affairs had been very considerable. In Oude alone one hundred and
eighty thousand armed men, of whom at least thirty-five thousand
were sepoys of the old native army, had succumbed to the British
power. About one hundred and fifty guns had been captured in fight;
many more guns and three hundred and fifty thousand arms of various
descriptions had been collected; and more than three hundred forts
had been destroyed. The disarmament of the country could at length
be taken systematically in hand, and on its completion by the civil
authorities some months later, Lord Clyde was able to report that
"seven hundred additional guns had been recovered from the various
forts, more than eleven hundred of which had been razed to the
ground." Owing to the free employment of heavy ordnance and vertical
fire, the casualties which had occurred during the campaign since
Lord Clyde took the field in the beginning of November, 1858, did not
exceed eighteen killed and eighty-four wounded,--a loss infinitesimal
in proportion to the importance of the results.

On January 8th Lord Clyde began his return march to Lucknow.
At Baraitch on the way down he met by appointment his trusted
lieutenant Sir Hope Grant, whom he placed in command of all the
forces in Oude and who for the present remained to watch matters on
the frontier. Since his accident, until he left the front, the hardy
old soldier had directed the military operations from the back of
an elephant; but he now exchanged into a dooly in which more easy
conveyance he was carried to Lucknow, where he arrived on January
17th.



CHAPTER X

FROM SIMLA TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY


The Mutiny had come to an end, although there was still a
ground-swell of disturbance on the Oude frontier opposite Nepaul, in
Bundelcund, and in some other districts of Central India. It was not
until the end of May, 1859, that Lord Clyde could confidently state
that the last embers of rebellion had been extinguished, and that
the provinces of India which during the preceding two years had been
the scene of so much lawlessness, bloodshed, and disorder, were now
subsiding into a state of profound tranquillity.

The oldest soldier on active service of all the army in India, so
strong was Lord Clyde's constitution that from the day he first
took the field until the accident which befell him on the Nepaul
frontier a few days before the termination of the final campaign, he
had never suffered a day's illness. His vigour and energy had been
extraordinary; the heat which prostrated so many of his followers was
borne lightly by the tough and seasoned veteran, who despised all
luxury, lived in a small tent, was content with the rations of the
soldiers, and cheerfully bivouacked with them under the stars. But
now that the stress of campaigning was over, and when he had reached
Lucknow from the Nepaul frontier, the irritation of the broken rib,
which was among the injuries he received in the accident that befell
him before Burgidiah, resulted in a sharp attack of inflammation of
the lungs. For some days he was very ill, and his surgeon Mackinnon
found him the reverse of a docile patient, for he hated medicine
and could scarce be induced to remain quietly in bed. He gradually,
however, recovered; and then, urged by Lord Canning to betake himself
for rest to the hills, he left Lucknow with the headquarters on March
1st and proceeded by way of Agra and Delhi to Simla. At Delhi he
spent several days investigating with the keenest interest the scenes
of the memorable struggle there, and everything connected with the
operations before that fortress. At Umbala he reviewed the troops
quartered in that station, and reached Simla in the last week of
April. His great work accomplished, he had a right to believe that
there had now come an end to the cares which the rebellion entailed
on him. In the bracing atmosphere of the hills he looked forward to
a perfect restoration to health, and to the early realisation of his
cherished hope of spending his last years with friends at home. But
scarcely had he settled himself at Simla when tidings reached him of
a grave danger confronting the Government of India. When in November,
1858, the assumption of the Government of India by the Crown was
announced, some of the soldiers of the Company's European troops
had set up an alternative claim for a free discharge or a bounty on
re-enlistment into the service of the Crown. The law-officers of the
Crown decided that the claim was inadmissible; and therefore a not
unnatural discontent was engendered which finally culminated in the
regrettable disturbance familiarly known as the "White Mutiny." It
was well for the Government that in Lord Clyde there was available to
meet the crisis a man who understood and sympathised with the nature
and prejudices of the soldier. An actual collision was imminent, and
as Lord Clyde informed the Viceroy, "no one could tell what would be
the effect of a collision on the remainder of the local army, and on
the native mind throughout India." A proclamation of a temporising
character issued to the local European troops at Meerut produced a
good effect, as establishing what the Commander-in-Chief termed the
"tranquillity of expectation" in place of open discontent. But it was
manifest, from the reports received from the stations where troops of
the late Company's European force were serving, that the feeling of
dissatisfaction was general; and the Government, recognising how wide
was the agitation, became convinced of the necessity of granting a
discharge to every man who desired it. With a strange inconsistency
the Indian Government, notwithstanding that the law-officers of the
Crown had decided that the alternative claims of the soldiers were
alike inadmissible, granted them their discharges, but obstinately
refused to give a bounty on re-enlistment, a concession which nine
out of ten men would have accepted contentedly. The outcome was
a study in the art of "how not to do it." The Company's European
troops took their discharges and came home almost in a body,--from
the Bengal Presidency alone came seven thousand men--most of whom
had been fairly acclimatised to the Indian climate. The recruiting
sergeants in Charles Street re-enlisted them for the Queen's service
as they landed or even when the transports were coming up the Thames;
and the great majority of the men who had been John Company's
soldiers were back in India as soldiers of the Queen among the first
reliefs. The operation, involving as it did the cost of the double
voyage and the enlistment money at home, was not a brilliant sample
of economy. The simpler method would have been to give the men the
two guineas per head bounty, which was all they asked to transform
them from Company's into Queen's soldiers. The disaffection of the
local European troops made a great impression on Lord Clyde, and he
expressed himself to the Viceroy on the subject in the following
terms: "I am irresistibly led to the conclusion that henceforth it
will be dangerous to the State to maintain in India a local European
army. I believe, as a consequence of this recent experience, that it
will be unsafe to have any European forces which do not undergo the
regular process of relief, and that this consideration must be held
paramount to all others. We cannot afford to attend to any other
considerations than those of discipline and loyalty, which may be
constantly renovated by the periodical return to England of all the
regiments in every branch of the service."

Lord Clyde had been intending to tender his resignation and return
to England about the end of February, 1860, when events occurred
which were to detain him some months longer in India. In the spring
of 1859 the English and French Ministers to China, finding that the
Chinese Government were raising obstacles to their visit to the
capital for the purpose of exchanging ratifications of the treaty of
the previous year, put themselves in the hands of the Admiral in
command of the British Squadron. The attempt to force the passage
of the Peiho and seize the Taku forts was repulsed so severely as
to necessitate the return of the expedition to Shanghai. It was
obvious that the enforcement of reparation would necessitate a joint
expedition on a large scale to be undertaken by England and France.
The troops and material of the former Power were to be supplied
mainly from India, and Lord Canning was empowered to make the
necessary arrangements acting in concert with the Commander-in-Chief.
The latter made the wise suggestion which was acted on, that Sikh
troops would be more useful in China than either Hindostanis or
Madrassis. His recommendations in regard to the clothing and
provisioning of the force proved most valuable; and his services
were so essential that Lord Canning, who depended greatly on his
counsel and recommendations, prevailed on him to delay his departure
for some months longer. In the beginning of October Lord Clyde left
Simla, and inspecting the military stations on the way joined at
Cawnpore the camp of the Viceroy who was accompanied by Lady Canning.
After a visit to Lucknow the Viceregal tour was extended through the
military stations of the North-West Provinces and the Punjaub to the
frontier at Peshawur. Lord Clyde, who had shared in most part of this
expedition, then accompanied the Viceroy to Calcutta, where on the
eve of his departure he issued the following soldierly and modest
farewell order:

"On leaving this country I take the opportunity of thanking the
officers and soldiers of the two services for their valour and
endurance, so severely tried, especially in the early part of the
insurrection. History does not furnish a finer display of heroical
resistance to many adverse conditions than was shown by the British
troops during those mutinies. The memory of their constancy and
daring will never die out in India; and the natives must feel that
while Britain possesses such sons the rule of the British Sovereign
must last undisputed. Soldiers, both British and native, I bid you
farewell; and I record as my latest word, that the bravery and
endurance of which I have spoken with admiration, could not alone
have insured success. That success was owing in a great measure to
your discipline, which is the foundation of all military virtues, and
which, I trust, will never be relaxed."

India had relapsed into a state of profound peace and security: the
Chinese expedition under the efficient command of Sir Hope Grant
had embarked; and his work accomplished, Lord Clyde gave over the
command to his successor Sir Hugh Rose and sailed from Calcutta on
June 4th after taking a final and touching farewell of Lord Canning.
Honours met him before he reached his native land. On his arrival in
Paris the Emperor Napoleon summoned him to an audience; the Duke of
Cambridge hastened to announce to him that her Majesty had graciously
conferred on him the colonelcy of the Coldstream Guards. He reached
London in time to take his seat in the House of Lords, and to speak
and vote in favour of the Bill for the amalgamation of the armies
of India. Nothing could be more flattering than his reception by
all classes of his countrymen, but with the retiring modesty which
characterised him, he shrank from all attempts to make him an object
of popularity. The freedom of the City of London had already been
conferred upon him in his absence by a vote of the Court of Common
Council; and soon after his return he and Sir James Outram were the
recipients of Swords of Honour presented by the conscript fathers of
the city, followed by a banquet at the Mansion-House. A few weeks
later, when the thanks of the House of Lords were voted to the China
force whose exertions had resulted in a satisfactory peace, Lord
Clyde declined to receive the tribute paid him for his services in
the preparation of the expedition, unless it was shared in by his
coadjutor Lord Canning.

After a visit in Paris to his old Crimean comrade General Vinoy, he
travelled on the Italian battlefields of 1859 and held some pleasant
interviews with Della Marmora and Cialdini, old soldier-friends of
the Sardinian Contingent in the Crimea. In the autumn of 1861 he was
selected to represent the British military service at the manœuvres
of the Prussian army, and on the termination of the manœuvres he
had the honour of being received by the Royal Family at Brühl. In
November of the same year he accompanied Sir John Lawrence to Windsor
on the occasion of the first Chapter of the newly established order
of the Star of India being held by Her Majesty, and was installed as
a Knight of the Order.

But in the midst of these triumphs a twofold blow was to strike his
heart. Ever since leaving India he had maintained an affectionate
correspondence with Lady Canning. That cherished friend he was now
deprived of to his great sorrow. Her constitution impaired by the
climate and by the anxiety which she had suffered during the strain
of the Mutiny, Lady Canning fell a victim to an attack of fever.
Lord Clyde's last letter to her arrived after her death, and was
acknowledged by Lord Canning, who expressed in a few touching words,
"how cordially she whom he had lost reciprocated the regard Lord
Clyde entertained for her." A few months later Lord Canning himself,
on whose constitution, enfeebled by climate, labour, and anxiety,
disease had made rapid inroads, died on the day of his arrival in
England. Of the many who followed to their grave in Westminster Abbey
the remains of the first Viceroy of Queen Victoria's Indian Empire,
none mourned him more deeply than did his former Commander-in-Chief,
who had been his associate in the triumph of restoring British
ascendancy in the East. By the grave of their dead master and friend
Clyde and Outram stood arm in arm, both destined at no long interval
to be laid in the earth now covering the coffin of their revered
Chief.

His latest honour was the highest to which a British officer can
attain. In an _Extraordinary Gazette_ published on the 9th of
November 1862,--the twenty-first anniversary of the birth of the
Prince of Wales--it was intimated that the Duke of Cambridge, Sir
E. Blakeney, and Lords Gough and Clyde were promoted to the rank of
Field-Marshal. If Colin Campbell had served for over forty-six years
before attaining the rank of major-general, his subsequent promotion
had been exceptionally rapid, since in eight years he had run up
through the list of general officers into the highest position of the
military service.

With the exception of health, Lord Clyde had "all which should
accompany old age--honour, love, troops of friends." But he was
visibly, if gradually, breaking up. He had never spared himself when
duty called, but when the strain slackened with the extinction of
the mutiny, his constitution began to fail. His illness in Lucknow
after leaving the Nepaul frontier was the first premonition of
decay. During his stay in Simla he had begun to relax his custom of
early rising and to manifest an indisposition to take his morning
walk; while a casual cold, of which a year earlier he would have
thought nothing, resulted in a sharp attack of influenza accompanied
by fever and inflammation of the eyes. When on his subsequent tour
up-country with the Viceroy, he began to evince a disinclination
for the saddle, and preferred, contrary to his old predilection, to
be driven in a wheeled vehicle. Later, after returning to Europe,
he suffered much at times from fever and ague which he traced back
to the old Walcheren days; and in the end of 1861 he had a serious
illness which left him permanently enfeebled even after he had been
pronounced convalescent. Yet he was still able to make long journeys,
and he commanded the Volunteer Review on the Brighton Downs on the
Easter Monday of 1862, when some twenty thousand men were in the
field. He expressed his surprise at the steadiness and intelligence
of the citizen soldiery. "It was not," he wrote, "a simple affair of
marching past and saluting, but a readiness of movement and facility
of change of position not always surpassed by the oldest and most
practised troops." This was the last occasion of his appearing at the
head of troops in the field.

The end of the old warrior came at last somewhat suddenly.
Derangement of the heart had been discovered, and in May, 1863, he
had an attack of so alarming a character that his medical advisers
recommended him to put his affairs in order. Near the end of June he
went to Chatham to be with his dearest friends General and Mrs. Eyre.
There he gradually grew worse. Almost to the last his memory would
revert to the Highland soldiers who were always so eager to follow
where he led, and he would express his gratitude for their staunch
fidelity to the Chief who loved them so well. When the news of his
illness reached the Queen, her Majesty directed Sir Charles Phipps
"to say in her name everything to her old, loyal, faithful servant
that could be said of sympathy and sincere regard." "He was," added
Sir Charles, "a very great favourite of her Majesty; and if he still
can listen to such expressions, it may soothe him to hear how deep
is the Queen's feeling for him." After several rallies, it became
evident about noon of the 14th of August that Lord Clyde was sinking
fast; and half an hour later, while his sister, General and Mrs.
Eyre, and his faithful soldier-servant White knelt around him, the
veteran of many battles calmly passed to his rest.

In accordance with Lord Clyde's desire that his funeral should be
devoid of all ostentation, preparations were made for his interment
in Kensal Green Cemetery. But the Government, rightly interpreting
the public feeling and in unison with the ecclesiastical authorities,
held it fitting that a national tribute should be paid to his
memory by according to his remains a grave in Westminster Abbey.
Thither accordingly without ostentation all that was mortal of him
who had died the foremost soldier of England was borne on August
22nd; and with every demonstration of respect from the highest and
noblest of the land and in the presence of a great company of his
friends and followers, Lord Clyde was laid to his rest among the
brother-warriors, the statesmen, and the other illustrious men who
sleep around him. On a plain stone marking his grave is inscribed the
following epitaph:--

                BENEATH THIS STONE
                REST THE REMAINS OF
            COLIN CAMPBELL, LORD CLYDE,
              WHO, BY HIS OWN DESERTS,
        THROUGH FIFTY YEARS OF ARDUOUS SERVICE
    FROM THE EARLIEST BATTLES IN THE PENINSULAR WAR
        TO THE PACIFICATION OF INDIA IN 1858,
  ROSE TO THE RANK OF FIELD-MARSHAL AND THE PEERAGE.
                  HE DIED LAMENTED
        BY THE QUEEN, THE ARMY, AND THE PEOPLE,
                  14TH AUGUST 1863,
            IN THE 71ST YEAR OF HIS AGE.


THE END


_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.



FOOTNOTES:

[1] Afterwards Sir Harry Jones.

[2] Four battalions; _i.e._ the two forming the right Kazan column,
and the two forming the right Vladimir column.

[3] Now General Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., G.C.B.

[4] _Life of Sir J. Hope Grant_, edited by Colonel H. Knollys, 1894.

[5] _Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny_, by W. Forbes-Mitchell, 1894.

[6] Now Lieutenant-General Traill-Burroughs.

[7] Now Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley, K.P., G.C.B., K.C.M.G.

[8] Now General Lord Roberts, V.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E.

[9] Dr. Lowe's _Central India in the Rebellion of 1857-58_.

[10] _My Diary in India_, by William Howard Russell.

[11] Now Lieut.-Gen. Sir C. C. Fraser, V.C., K.C.B.



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  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  Except for those changes noted below, misspelling in the
  text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
  For example: midday, mid-day; round-shot, round shot; up country,
  up-country; disaccord; troublous; persistency.

  Pg 163. 'Goorkhas' replaced by 'Ghoorkas'.
  Pg 184. 'proferred' replaced by 'proffered'.
  Pg 189. 'Goorariah' replaced by 'Ghorariah'.
  Pg 201. 'Madho' replaced by 'Mahdo'.
  Pg 203. 'clearance of of' replaced by 'clearance of'.
  Pg 219. 'ascendency' replaced by 'ascendancy'.





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