Cawnpore & Lucknow

by Donald Richards

  A second mine exploded at Sago’s house, destroying several other houses and hurling two redcoats of the 32nd of Foot into the road, fortunately without serious injury, one sustaining bruises and slight burns, whilst the other, still grasping his musket, succeeded in scrambling back over the debris with bullets kicking up brick dust all around him.

  In the melee which followed, Lieutenant Anderson and his men fought a savage hand-to-hand encounter knowing that defeat would mean the death of every man, woman and child in the Residency. The sepoys were beaten off, and the men in Anderson’s post were able to wipe away the perspiration and wonder whether the posts on either side of them had remained as firm in their resistance.

  In fact the attack by several hundred rebels against the fortified house owned by Martin Gubbins had fared no better, despite grape from their batteries ‘rattling and hammering the walls like peas in a frying pan’. A few feet from Rees a corporal of the 32nd had part of his sleeve bearing his stripes torn away by a musket ball, whilst Rees himself was showered with pieces of brick when a round shot struck the wall beside him. Partially concealed by swirling clouds of black smoke, a few determined sepoys succeeded in reaching the ditch in front of the house, but, as they quickly discovered, each defender could maintain an almost continuous fire as he had a collection of loaded muskets at his side. So the day ended as it had begun, with not a single rebel inside the Residency perimeter defences.

  Although the enemy assault had been defeated, it had been at the expense of casualties the garrison could ill afford. Part of the Residency wall had collapsed burying six men beneath the rubble from which only two were taken out alive. Each day there occurred two or three deaths, due either to enemy action or to sickness, and by the beginning of September, when the siege was into its second month, more than 300 Europeans had died from various causes. So accustomed to death did the besieged become that Rees was able to comment: ‘Balls fall at our feet, and we continue the conversation without a remark. Bullets graze over our very hair and we never speak of them. Narrow escapes are so very common that even women and children cease to notice them.’

  Lieutenant Anderson’s house was now little more than a ruin, the upper storey having been abandoned as being too dangerous even for a solitary sniper, whilst a constant artillery bombardment had reduced Colonel Inglis’ house to a heap of rubble. The Residency itself had not escaped serious damage, and to many of the occupants it seemed that only a strong gust of wind was required to topple what remained of the north-east wing.

  Despite the losses from enemy action and the ever-present danger from mining activities, morale in the garrison had greatly improved due in some measure to the ease with which the rebels had been defeated. The failure of Havelock’s column to reach Lucknow had understandably been a huge disappointment, but a keen watch was still kept for activity which would signal Havelock’s approach, although it was becoming increasingly clear to all but the fiercest optimist that relief was a matter of weeks rather than days.

  As August drew to a close the rains slackened and the stagnant pools around the entrenchments quickly dried, leaving a noxious green slime which gave rise to fears of a fever epidemic. In the event such alarms proved groundless, but deaths from cholera persisted, with the hasty business of nightly burials being conducted by the Revd. James Harris, who had succeeded the Revd. Polehampton, sometimes having to dig the grave himself. This was indeed a dangerous business for the churchyard was constantly targeted by the mutineers, and often as he read the burial service, the Minister’s words would be lost in the sudden whistle of grape sweeping across the cemetery. Of necessity the service would be short and if any doubt existed over the denomination of the deceased, it was left to the senior officer present to decide between Protestantism or Catholicism.

  The weight of shot directed at the Residency buildings had been immense and by September no less than 280 round shots of varying calibre were collected from the roof of the Brigade Mess alone. Mrs Maria Germon, an army officer’s wife, was led to comment on the continuous artillery fire, noting in her diary that never more than a few minutes, day or night, ever elapsed without some firing taking place. Despite her bed being no more than 50 yards from the site of an 18-pounder mortar, its noise did not seem to affect her any more than if she had been accustomed to it all her life. ‘Eighty days of siege life,’ she explained, ‘does wonders for the nervous system.’

  Contact with General Neill had been made by the garrison on a number of occasions through the endeavours of a sepoy pensioner by the name of Ungud Tewari. On 16 September, having been promised a reward of 5,000 rupees should he be successful, the pensioner set off with a letter concealed in a quill in his rectum. It was written partly in Greek and partly in French, a security measure which had been used in the Afghan campaigns. Not many in the Residency expected him to return but at midnight on the 22nd, Ungud was back with encouraging news. The message he brought had been written by Sir James Outram, who disclosed that the relief force had crossed the Ganges and was even then marching on Lucknow.

  Hardly daring to believe that relief could come so early, Colonel Inglis let it be known that it would be at least two weeks before Havelock could be expected. Even so, his announcement was welcomed by European and Asian alike and did much to raise the spirits of the sick and wounded. For the first time in weeks, the hospital patients were able to look forward to a measure of security and the change of air that an end of the siege would bring. Katherine Bartrum wondered whether her husband would be numbered among the relief column and, after so many months of separation, how wonderful it would be when they were at last together.

  On 19 September Havelock’s relief force, amounting to just over 3,000, of which 2,400 were British, crossed the Ganges by means of the reconstructed bridge of boats, and on the 21st, after another night of heavy rain, began its third encroachment into Oudh, supported by three batteries of guns and a small force of cavalry. There were, in effect, two commanders. General Henry Havelock, nominally in overall charge of the column, and Sir James Outram who, although senior to Havelock, had magnanimously agreed to waive his rank and allow his subordinate to reap the glory of relieving Lucknow. It was a gesture much appreciated by Havelock’s staff. ‘We all like Sir J. Outram extremely,’ wrote Captain Wade after meeting him in Cawnpore. ‘He is a first rate officer, very clever and amusing. His conversation you can listen to any time.’

  The contents of the letter delivered to General Neill by Ungud Tewari had been disclosed to the troops, who, appreciating the need for haste, set off at an increased pace despite the treacherous going underfoot, their thoughts gripped by the plight of the women and children in the beleaguered Residency. ‘Everybody is in high spirits and we hope to be back in less than a fortnight,’ wrote Lieutenant Groom in what was to be the last letter to his wife. ‘Then we start for Agra and Delhi … as a second Sebastopol it will give us much trouble.’

  Around 6 miles on they encountered a small force of the enemy at Mangalwar, but had no difficulty in dispersing them and capturing two cannon. The cavalry, led by Sir James Outram, immediately gave chase, killing more than 100 of the rebels although Sir James declined to use his sword, merely striking about with a Malacca cane.

  General Havelock had joined Outram in the charge but had been obliged to turn back. The moment the charge was over,’ remembered Captain Maude, ‘Havelock rode straight up to my guns, his horse bleeding from four or five tulwar cuts. As the poor beast commenced to stagger, the General quickly dismounted, saying to me, with a proud but melancholy intonation, “That makes the sixth horse I have had killed under me!” and sure enough the animal died in a few minutes.’

  Following this brief encounter with the rebels, Havelock led the relief force through the familiar territory of Unao and Bashiratganj, his troops splashing ankle deep in the mud of a raised road, with the crops in the fields on either side barely discernable in the flood water.

  Progress was confined to a slow crawl beyond Bashiratga
nj, with the commissariat wagons lagging far in the rear. The breakdown in supplies led to some angry exchanges as Lieutenant Moorsom made clear in a letter to his father. ‘The large commissariat wagons are the greatest imaginable nuisance – they stick and refuse to move wherever the ground affords them the slightest pretext,’ he wrote. ‘I would not have one of them with the force if I had anything to say to it.’

  Then came a stroke of luck. When they reached the swollen River Sai the column found the bridge to be intact, the rebels having neglected to destroy it, and so Havelock’s column crossed unopposed by the enemy. That night, as the troops did their best to sleep in rain-soaked clothing, they could hear the faint rumble of artillery 16 miles away in Lucknow,

  In the beleaguered garrison, a further twenty-four hours would pass before a sound as of distant thunder was heard, giving rise to further speculation. In the late afternoon, kites were to be seen circling the area before flying towards the Residency from the direction of Cawnpore.

  The next morning, the few observers stationed in the Residency Tower, eagerly scanning the approaches to the perimeter, reported that although there appeared to be a mass exodus of rebel cavalry, there was still no sign of the relief force; but when later that day the booming of cannon was heard, hopes were raised despite the fact that the gunfire seemed no nearer than it had been the day before.

  No further intelligence of the column’s movement was forthcoming, but early on the morning of 25 September another cannonade was heard from the south and this time the listeners were left in no doubt that relief was fast approaching. That morning, as the watchers on the Residency roof looked for signs of the column’s approach, Havelock gave the order for the troops to resume their march in bright sunshine. Some 3 miles south of the Residency perimeter a cavalry patrol sent forward to reconnoitre returned with the information that large numbers of rebels were drawn up with their left flank on the Alambagh, and their centre and right wing behind a series of hillocks, their flank being protected by a marsh.

  The enemy’s strength was thought to be approaching 10,000, but despite the odds ranged against him, Havelock ordered a general advance on the Alambagh, his men encouraged by the news that Delhi had been recaptured. The Alambagh was soon overrun, enabling the cavalry led by Outram to drive the rebels as far as the canal south of the city. That night the relief force pitched its tents on a ridge near the Alambagh, and the troops sought shelter from yet another rainstorm which quickly turned their bivouac area into an expanse of mud.

  The next day Generals Outram, Havelock and Neill debated the problem of attacking Lucknow, a city of 12 square miles. The first of the two options open to them was to advance over a canal bridge and then battle through the narrow streets, overlooked by loopholed houses, which was certainly the most direct but also the most dangerous, since it would involve lengthy street-fighting. Havelock’s preference was to take a wide detour across the Gumti before coming down on the Residency from the north, which would avoid the costly casualties of the first option, but suffered the disadvantage of advancing over flooded fields, thereby seriously inhibiting the use of artillery.

  The difficulties of a split command were recognized by many of the junior officers, leading Captain Maude to comment:

  There was a difference of opinion between the two Generals. Outram was for taking the shortest route into the city, whilst Havelock wished to make a detour. Outram’s principal, if not his only objection, having been that the surface of the ground was too soft for the heavy guns. That may have been the case, but the elephants of Eyre’s battery were left behind in the Alambagh; and if his guns were brought into action at all that day, which I doubt, they certainly did no good whatever.

  The route eventually taken was that decided by Sir James Outram who was familiar with the area having once been the Chief Commissioner for Lucknow – a crossing of the canal before turning right through the south-eastern outskirts of the city, and then left towards the Kaiserbagh to approach the Residency by the Baillie Guard Gate. ‘One is forced to the conclusion that from a military point of view, our advance was undertaken with an insouciance, of which the culpability was only redeemed by the exceeding courage of the men,’ wrote Francis Maude.

  At 8.00 am and in bright sunshine, General Outram, together with General Neill and his brigade, supported by Maude’s battery and two companies of the 84th, advanced towards the Charbagh bridge across the canal. The plan was for Havelock to follow with Hamilton’s brigade, but there was an enforced delay, Neill’s men being obliged to halt for ten minutes whilst they sought to avoid casualties from the enemy’s fire by lying down in the road. Since it was too narrow for Maude’s guns to deploy, the brigade suffered grievously from the grape and round shot scouring the road, Outram himself being fortunate enough to escape with nothing more than a flesh wound.

  Losses occasioned by this brief halt were severe, but they were to be even greater when the brigade came to take the heavily defended canal bridge and the buildings on either side. A two-pronged attack was launched, with Outram taking part of Neill’s brigade to the right, whilst skirmishers from the Madras Fusiliers attacked on the left, leaving Maude’s guns to silence the rebel batteries from the road. Because of the road’s narrow width, it was only possible to engage the enemy with two guns, and the artillerymen came under such severe fire that Maude called out in desperation to Hamilton’s brigade to ‘Do something, in the name of heaven!’ Upon hearing that, Neill would do nothing without the permission of General Outram, who at that moment could not be found. Major Henry Marsham Havelock rode off on the pretence of finding his father. Once out of sight, with admirably commendable initiative, he turned his horse and rode back to Neill saying, ‘You are to take the bridge at once, Sir.’

  Immediately the order was given, Havelock, together with Colonel Tytler and a score of men from the Fusiliers and the 84th Regiment, dashed forward with the two senior officers at their head. They were met by a hail of bullets which killed Tytler’s horse and wounded all but two of the men. Astonishingly, Havelock was left sitting in his saddle with nothing more than a hole in his cap and a graze across his forehead.

  Once the rest of the brigade caught up, the bridge was overrun and the Fusiliers made good progress driving the rebels before them until the Alambagh was reached. The position there was bitterly contested by the rebels and for half an hour Maude’s light field guns were engaged in a fierce duel with the enemy’s batteries until a further infantry charge cleared the approach to the Baillie Guard Gate, but casualties had been heavy. Brigadier General Henry Havelock suffered a seventh horse killed under him, and Sir James Outram, looking more agitated than his adjutant had ever seen him, proposed that a halt be made whilst a less contested route to the Residency was investigated. But General Havelock could not agree. ‘There is the street,’ he pointed out to Outram, ‘we see the worst. We shall be slated, but we can push through and get it over.’

  Sir James Outram, who was suffering from his wound and not in the best of humours, grudgingly consented. ‘Let us go on then, in God’s name,’ he replied.

  Having agreed to proceed, the two generals led the way, with the Highlanders advancing along the narrow street followed by the Sikhs and Madras Fusiliers, all subjected to a continuous fire from the rebels on the flat roofs and loopholed houses.

  A raking discharge of grape from three rebel batteries stripped the leaves from the trees and left the road strewn with dead and wounded. The guns were taken at a rush but there remained hundreds of mutineers to scour the streets with a punishing fire of musketry which did nothing to lessen the determination of the attacking troops, as Captain John Gordon confessed in describing his part in the action: ‘I was in such a state of excitement with the cheering of the men who were running as hard as they could and yelling, that I scarcely knew what happened.’

  One ball ripped through Ensign George Blake’s jacket, another struck the scabbard of his sword and bent it. In a rage, the young officer set spurs to his ho
rse and brought down the nearest sepoy with a cut which almost cleft the man’s head from his shoulders.

  Every house and wall overlooking the street seemed to swarm with the enemy and as Blake left a house he had been ordered to clear, General Neill passed him on his brown gelding. ‘Hot work this, Blake,’ the General grunted. Before the young man could reply, a sepoy fired a rifle held at arm’s length and General Neill fell from his horse with a bullet in his brain. Wrote Blake in his diary later: ‘Oh, I was sorry. He was the sternest and at the same time, kindest and best hearted of men and in him, we lost a good and brave General.’

  Major Havelock was seriously wounded in the melee, as was Colonel Tytler, but the survivors surged forward to where the Residency building could be seen through the smoke less than 100 yards away. To the besieged, anxiously watching the progress of the fighting, it was obvious that a heavy toll was being exacted on the relief force. Undeterred by their losses, however, Havelock’s troops fought their way towards the Baillie Guard Gate. There, as Scots brogue was heard above the skirl of the pipes, dozens from the garrison leapt onto the walls, heedless of the flying bullets, to cheer on the stream of Europeans and Sikhs running towards them. The shot-riddled and battered gate was thrown back for the first time in more than twelve weeks, to allow a horde of sweat-stained and powder-blackened Highlanders, Madras Fusiliers and Sikhs to pour through the entrance to a tumultuous welcome from men, women and children who had all but abandoned hope. ‘Oh! what welcome, what joy,’ enthused Henry Metcalfe. ‘Comrades shaking hands, rough soldiers embracing and kissing little ones. Women asking about friends.’

  Among the new arrivals,’ noted Ensign Ruggles, ‘was Lieutenant Delafosse.’

  Lucknow had been reached by the relief force and the pent-up feelings of anxiety, the doubts and fears of the past few weeks were released in waves of enthusiastic cheering. Even the patients in the hospital left their beds to witness an event which for many would linger long in their memory. Rees likened his feelings to the criminal condemned to death, who, just when he is about to be launched into eternity, is reprieved and pardoned. It was to be 3 o’clock in the morning before the Calcutta merchant retired to his bed.