Cawnpore & Lucknow

by Donald Richards

  This forthright communication brought a furious reply from the senior of the two Generals:

  I do not want and will not receive any advice from an officer under my command, be his experience what it may. Understand this distinctly; and that a consideration of the obstruction that would arise to the public service at this moment alone prevents me from taking the stronger step of placing you under arrest. You now stand warned … I alone am responsible for the course which I have pursued.

  Commenting on the exchange of words between the two generals, John Sherer wrote of Neill; ‘He sometimes said things which others would have kept to themselves. He would laugh and declare, not heeding who was present, that “the old gentleman [himself] looked upon himself as the heir-at-law, so he would not expect to be liked more than heirs-at-law usually are.”’

  Brigadier General Henry Havelock’s eventual decision to retire upon Cawnpore was not influenced in any way by Neill’s demand, but rather by a report that the 4,000 sepoys who had occupied Bithur were a direct threat to Cawnpore. His reason for abandoning the attempt to relieve Lucknow had not been disclosed to the junior officers and caused dismay and disappointment to many. ‘We are still in the dark about the General’s intention,’ noted Lieutenant William Tate Groom. ‘Everybody is frightfully disgusted at his conduct, but he doubtless is acting on the best information and has very good reasons for his apparent want of energy.’

  George Blake, however, was more sympathetic to the idea of falling back on the old camping ground of Mangalwar. ‘It is true that in these actions we always licked them well,’ he wrote, ‘but we could not afford to lose nearly 100 men a day, and the enemy’s strength being more in thousands than we in hundreds, they did not feel their losses.’

  Now that he had made a decision to retire on Cawnpore, Henry Havelock had no desire to leave an impression that he was in fear of facing the many rebels who threatened the approaches to Lucknow, and with this in mind he decided to inflict a second defeat upon the sepoys who had returned to Bashiratganj.

  The rebels were now well served by artillery and entrenched in a strong position in the village of Burhia-ka-Chauki. Once again the Highlanders braved a storm of grape to wade knee deep through fields inundated with water from the monsoon rains and mount a fierce bayonet charge to capture the rebel guns before turning them against the enemy. ‘Oh! if you could have seen the Highlanders,’ young Harry Havelock enthused to his cousin. ‘A handful – 120 men – overwhelmed almost with shot, shell and grape – up to their middles in swamp – rush with a cheer on two guns defended by not less than 2,000 sepoys and wrest them from them without a second’s check – you would have been proud of your countrymen for ever.’

  Following the successful outcome of this encounter with the rebels at Bashiratganj, Havelock sent a telegraph to Sir Patrick Grant in Calcutta: ‘This action has inspired much terror among the enemy and I trust will prevent him effectually opposing our embarkation at Cawnpore.’ By 13 August he was across the Ganges and back in Cawnpore having lost a quarter of his force from battle casualties and sickness.

  Because thousands of rebels were known to be regrouping at Bithur, Havelock’s men were allowed to rest for just three days before being told that they were to engage with the sepoys of the 42nd NI who were deployed near the Nana’s palace with two field guns. Other mutineers lay entrenched in two villages where on more than one occasion John Sherer had heard musket shots and ‘the clatter of troops as of a body of horse on the road’.

  In discussing the situation with General Neill, who had suggested that the steamer Brahmaputra be used as a transport whilst a second column proceeded by bullock train to cut the rebels’ line of retreat, Henry Havelock took a different view and on the 15th a disgruntled Neill protested in his diary: ‘General Havelock after a great deal of parade determines to move out tomorrow against Bithoor in one column, and will not employ the steamer. I only fear he will fatigue his men and will not strike the blow. We shall see however.’

  Although it had been planned to make an early start, the sun was well above the horizon before the men, who were dispersed in various bivouacs, could be assembled in full. The punitive column of 1,400, complete with two batteries of light field guns, set off across a tract of smooth country interspersed with stunted trees and numerous thickets of sugar cane. ‘It was a beautiful day,’ remembered Lieutenant Swanston, ‘the country all round was looking nice and green, and it was pleasantly cool with a fresh wind blowing.’ The welcome breeze was to be short lived and as the sun climbed in the sky, the day proved to be one of intense heat, with Havelock’s tired troops taking eight hours to cover a distance of just 6 miles. In order to enter Sheorajpur from the south, the column was obliged to face the fortified villages which Havelock acknowledged to be one of the strongest objectives he had yet encountered. The Madras Fusiliers and the Sikhs were ordered to lie flat on the ground whilst Maude’s cannon pounded the rebels’ earthworks to little effect. ‘There was a severe conflict on both sides … his artillery fire was very heavy,’ admitted Major Bingham. ‘The sound of a 24 pound shot going through the air and close to you is anything but pleasant.’

  Havelock’s troops were pitting themselves against what was said to be ‘the flower of the mutinous soldiery’, but undaunted, Fusiliers, Highlanders and Sikhs advanced steadily towards their objective as hundreds of sowars massed on their left flank. One rebel troop, bolder than the rest, broke away from the main body and galloped down the road towards the ‘Blue Caps’, but finding themselves unsupported, reined to an ignominious halt after refusing to confront the jeering fusiliers.

  A frantic struggle soon developed, however, with the sepoys of the 42nd, supported by the Gwalior contingent, meeting the Europeans with great determination and bravery, refusing to withdraw until many of their comrades had fallen. ‘They stood to their guns to the last,’ admitted Lieutenant Moorsom with grudging respect, ‘and fought their two guns against our fourteen or fifteen right well.’

  ‘They fought desperately,’ confirmed General Havelock in drawing up his official report, ‘otherwise they could not for a whole hour have held their own, even with much advantage of ground, against my powerful artillery fire, the stream prevented my turning there, and my troops were received in assaulting the position, by heavy rifle and musket fire.’

  ‘“Cawnpore, my lads, remember Cawnpore!” was the battle cry,’ related William Swanston. ‘At least 250 must have been cut up before being driven back, their guns captured and infantry chased off the field in full retreat.’

  The losses sustained by Havelock’s column were not insignificant comprising fifty battle casualties plus another dozen from heat stroke. At the end of the engagement the General made a point of riding along the line of his exhausted soldiers to the accompaniment of their cheers. ‘Don’t cheer me, my men,’ he exclaimed. ‘You did it all yourselves.’

  Pursuit had been out of the question for Havelock had no cavalry, and his infantry was in no condition to give chase. They returned to Cawnpore the next day in pouring rain having first, as Major North observed, ‘blown up the buildings, the property of the Nana Sahib at Bithoor’.

  The decision to abandon the relief of Lucknow and the effect it must have had upon that garrison was a cause for concern among Havelock’s men, a point raised by Major G.W.F. Bingham. ‘Their feelings can easily be conceived,’ he wrote. ‘We did our best but could not go to their relief owing to the vast numbers of the enemy around Lucknow and also to the large numbers of sick and wounded and having no carriage for them.’

  On his return, Henry Havelock read in the Government Gazette that two important changes had taken place in his absence. Sir Patrick Grant had been replaced as Commander-in-Chief by Sir Colin Campbell, a veteran of fifty years distinguished service, stretching from the Peninsula War to the Crimea. Promotion had been slow in coming but Sir Colin enjoyed the reputation of being a ‘fighting general’ who at sixty-five retained the vigour of mind and body of a man half his ag
e, and was adored by the men of the Highland Brigade he had commanded in the Crimea. Lady Canning, who had met him three months previously, held him in equally high regard. ‘Very agreeable and cheerful,’ she thought, ‘if an endless talker and raconteur.’ Secondly, the Dinapore and Cawnpore Divisions were to be combined under the leadership of Lieutenant General Sir James Outram, a man eight years younger than Havelock, who was expected to reach Cawnpore in early September. Disappointed Havelock may have been, but he at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he would be able to work in greater harmony with Outram than he had ever done with General James George Neill.

  At Cawnpore the situation was generally peaceful and only a few thieves troubled the merchants in the bazaar. News of the Nana was scarce and there was only the occasional rumour to report on his movements. One had it that he was at Fatehpur Chaurasi preparing to cross the river and join Tatya Tope. Another that he had fled to Chandemagore in a bid to secure the assistance of the French, whose possession it was. Sir Colin Campbell, however, was more concerned with pacifying the country between Cawnpore and Lucknow than in chasing rumours, and on 3 November he arrived at Cawnpore from Allahabad with his staff.

  The Bibighar had still not been cleaned after inspecting the rooms littered with pathetic reminders of the massacre, the men Campbell had brought with him departed thirsting for revenge. ‘Here am I in the town of horrors, scarcely a soul visible and all the houses in ruins,’ wrote Surgeon Francis Collins. ‘Even now the traces of what happened on that fearful day of slaughter are only too visible … the sight of all this makes, to say the least about it, one shudder.’

  Forbes-Mitchell doubted whether those being punished for the crime were the guilty offenders, a view supported by Lieutenant Edward Hope Verney. ‘We hear of reports circulated of the barbarities practised by the sepoys upon our countrymen and women, which we believe to be greatly exaggerated,’ he explained in a letter to his sister. ‘This is a war in which the worst passions are likely to be excited, but I have heard of great cruelties being perpetrated by our own people.’

  It was left to Sir Colin Campbell to put a stop to these acts of vengeance, in particular that of licking portions of the bloodstained floor, which he described as being ‘unworthy of the English name and a Christian Government’, before leaving for Lucknow on 9 November, confident that an attack would not be made on Cawnpore before he returned. It was debatable whether Campbell’s assurance was shared by many of his soldiers, for as Forbes-Mitchell observed:

  When proceeding on our march to Lucknow it was as clear as noonday to the meanest capacity that we were in an enemy’s country. None of the villages along the route were inhabited, the only visible signs of life about them being a few mangy dogs … it needed no great powers of observation to fully understand that the whole population of Oude was against us.

  Left in command of the garrison was 47-year-old Major General Charles Ashe Windham of Crimean fame, with 500 European troops and a battery of four field guns. His orders were to hold Cawnpore as a staging post for the Lucknow refugees Sir Colin expected to bring back with him now that the bridge of boats had been restored. Campbell’s parting instructions had been clear and concise: under no circumstance was General Windham to engage the enemy unless it became necessary to protect the bridge of boats. He was to observe the movements of the Gwalior contingent, but British troops arriving in Cawnpore were not to be detained, merely redirected along the Grand Trunk Road to Lucknow.

  Meanwhile, 46 miles south-west of Cawnpore, the Nana Sahib’s most able commander, the thirty-year-old Tatya Tope, informed by his spies in Cawnpore that General Campbell had departed for Oudh with 3,400 men, including a Naval Brigade armed with heavy guns and rocket launchers, crossed the Jumma with the intention of cutting off Windham’s communications with the north. The thousands of rebels who Tatya Tope had accumulated began to deploy along the banks of the Jumma until almost every town and village from Akbarpur to Sheorajpur, 20 miles north-west of Cawnpore, was occupied. Windham did what he could to improve his field of fire by demolishing houses and reducing groves of mango trees, but he could be forgiven for feeling that Campbell’s departure for Lucknow had prejudiced his position in Cawnpore.

  Chapter 9

  THE GWALIOR CONTINGENT

  Despite the improvements Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson had made to General Wheeler’s earthworks, little had been done to minimize the danger facing Windham’s garrison from a labyrinth of narrow streets in the old native quarter, no more than 100 yards distant, considerably limiting any early warning the garrison would have of the approach of the enemy. The threat facing Windham’s small garrison was no idle one. Tatya Tope was known to have at least 9,000 sepoys, a strong force of cavalry and an artillery strength of thirty cannon.

  Of some assurance to Windham, however, was the fact that since the end of October he had been able to detain troops from regiments bound for Lucknow, which had given him a further 1,700, considerably adding to his strength and raising the morale of the garrison. This change in circumstances had encouraged the General to consider taking punitive action against Tatya Tope’s leading column, now on the banks of the Ganges Canal, 15 miles from the city.

  Although Campbell’s orders had strictly forbidden an attack unless absolutely necessary, General Windham felt confident that with his increase in manpower and artillery – on 14 November he had received Campbell’s blessing to retain as many men as deemed necessary to defend Cawnpore – an assault against the two rebel-held villages before Tatya Tope could arrive with his main force was bound to be crowned with success.

  Less than half a mile from Windham’s position the canal ran north to where two villages, one on each side of the canal, were occupied by the mutineers from Oudh. It would be a boost to morale and no doubt a feather in his cap, reasoned Windham, if a detachment of 1,200 troops were to be floated down the canal at night and disembarked at dawn at a point close to the two villages. Supported by light field guns galloped along a parallel path, and fresh from their boat journey, the men would be able to inflict a damaging blow against each of the two groups of mutineers, which might conceivably weaken an attack against the entrenchment.

  So confident was Charles Ash Windham of success, that he quietly assembled a number of flat-bottomed native boats before requesting permission from Campbell’s headquarters for the assault. The reply he received on the 19th was non-committal, Campbell’s Chief of Staff merely suggesting that it would be advisable to wait for the Commander’s approval before launching the operation. Shortly afterwards communication with Lucknow ceased and for several days nothing more was heard from Sir Colin’s headquarters.

  In the absence of further messages from Lucknow Major General Windham’s anxiety increased, for the last report had confirmed that the Residency had been reached and for all that Windham knew, refugees might already be on their way to Cawnpore. On the 29th a message brought in by a native proved to be nothing more than a request for commissariat stores. The note caused Windham some alarm for it seemed to imply that Campbell was trapped in Lucknow and unable to return. He decided to ignore the request since transport and the provision of an escort to Lucknow was beyond his ability to provide.

  After two days, Windham’s native spies reported movements which indicated that the Gwalior contingent was being strengthened by groups of rebels from Oudh crossing the river at different points, signs which pointed to the fact that an attack against the bridge of boats was likely in the next few days. This intelligence altered the General’s plans, for he dare not risk any part of his force in a separate engagement along the canal whilst the bridge of boats across the Ganges was under threat. Now that the majority of his force was positioned behind the brick fields on the city’s outskirts, General Windham ordered his troops to advance to a point where the Kalpi Road crossed the canal. From there it would be possible to keep a watchful eye on the bridge, whilst in a position to proceed along the canal should Windham revert to his original plan.


  By late November a large part of the Gwalior contingent had advanced to within 3 miles of Cawnpore, Windham’s troops were put on full alert and the baggage train sent to the rear. Charles Windham and his staff, accompanied by a troop of the 9th Lancers, rode forward to reconnoitre and soon established the movements of the enemy from the cloud of dust which enveloped them in a thin brown haze. The rebels appeared to be in considerable strength but although it was desirable to prevent the native quarter from being overrun, Windham was nevertheless restricted in what he could do by virtue of his brief from Sir Colin Campbell.

  At a later meeting with his staff, the General seems to have decided to act upon his own initiative, since the situation called for immediate action. ‘These small engagements are awkward things, very little glory gained in winning them and perhaps some valuable life is lost,’ he told Captain F.C. Maude. ‘I am certainly not going to let these fellows think that we cannot act on the offensive.’

  Leaving behind a token force to guard the baggage, Windham advanced with 1,200 men from the 34th, 82nd and 88th of Foot, plus the 2nd Battalion of the KRRC, supported by eight field guns from the Bengal Artillery, towards Tatya Tope’s advance columns at Pandu Nadi.

  The battle began in the early hours of 26 November with the Rifles advancing through high-standing corn, closely followed by the Connaught Rangers and four quick-firing guns. The 34th took up the left side of the road with four 9-pounder guns, whilst the men of the 82nd were kept back in reserve. The Riflemen and the Irishmen soon came under fire from six rebel cannon and musketry from 3,000 rebels occupying the dry bed of a stream, but in spite of the numerical disadvantage Windham’s troops carried the position with a rush, driving the enemy through a nearby village and going on to capture two 8-inch howitzers and a 6-pounder cannon.