Mrs Germon was possibly the first to recognize that the celebrations were premature, for Havelock’s column, having lost 28 per cent of its strength, was in no position to conduct an evacuation of the Residency. Referring to recent events, she wrote: ‘It could scarcely be called a relief seeing that we have to feed the new troops on our own scant rations and have them in consequence further reduced.’
Whilst accepting the truth of that statement, Major North was nevertheless of the opinion that ‘our advance had been most timely – it saved the garrison. The Residency had been completely undermined, and the delay of even a day would have proved fatal.’
The best that can be said was that the arrival of Havelock and Outram brought a much-needed reinforcement to the beleaguered garrison. Captain Maude was scathing in his criticism of the two generals. ‘It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the affair was a muddle, however gloriously conducted, from beginning to end,’ he wrote. ‘The officers led their men right well; but of Generalship, proprement dit, that day there was little if anything at all.’
Ruutz Rees, however, took a far more generous view. ‘That the honour of having, under Providence, saved our lives is really due to Generals Havelock and Outram is unquestionable,’ he suggested. ‘But for their timely arrival, our native troops, who had up to that time behaved nobly … would certainly have abandoned us. Nor could we have reasonably found fault with them had they done so, for life is sweet, and hope had almost entirely left us.’
One cause for concern was the influx of wounded which had accompanied the relief force, for conditions in the hospital were now in an appalling state. ‘The hospital is so densely crowded that many have to lie outside in the open air, without bed or shelter,’ wrote Georgina Harris. ‘It is far worse than after Chinhat – amputated arms and legs lying about in heaps all over the hospital.’
Katherine Bartrum’s first thought, however, was for the husband she had not seen for four months. Impatient to meet him after their long separation she was overjoyed to learn from one the officers that he had shared a tent with her husband the previous night, and that he would most likely arrive with the heavy artillery in the morning. The next day Mrs Bartrum was up early and wearing the one clean dress she had kept throughout the siege. She eagerly scanned every new face for a glimpse of Robert, and in the evening took her little son to the roof of the Residency building to look for late arrivals. The rearguard was in but there was still no sign of her husband. Katherine returned to her room bitterly disappointed and sick with apprehension.
By the afternoon of 27 September it was obvious that something had happened to delay him. ‘How strange it is that my husband is not come in,’ she confided to the surgeon with the relief force.
‘Yes’, replied the doctor, ‘it is strange,’ before turning away to leave the room without a further word.
It was left to Mrs Polehampton to break the sad news. Surgeon Robert Bartrum had been shot dead within sight of the Baillie Guard Gate. A dazed Katherine Bartrum could not understand: ‘why God had forgotten to be gracious?’ She was later to suffer another blow, losing her son in February, the day before she was due to sail home to England.
The timely arrival of the relief force was crucial, for the garrison’s fighting strength had been reduced from an initial total of 1,700 at the beginning of July, to 979, of which only 577 were European. Sir James Outram, who had now resumed overall command, was quick to extend the perimeter area by taking over the buildings and palaces to the east of the Residency. These not only provided accommodation for the extra personnel but also strengthened the outer defences. An added bonus for the troops was the opportunity it gave them for plunder, for as Ensign Blake confessed: ‘All our baggage, our sick and wounded had fallen into enemy hands as we fought our way in and we had lost everything except what we stood up in.’
Few soldiers had any idea of the value of the property to be found in the apartments and by nightfall the ground was covered with bolts of the finest silk, divan coverings studded with pearls, cashmere shawls, dresses laced with gold thread, brass ornaments and tulwars decorated in gold and silver. ‘Everywhere might be seen people helping themselves to whatever they pleased,’ wrote L.E.R. Rees. ‘Plunder was the order of the day.’ Young George Blake managed to collect eleven fine pearls, but since there was precious little in the way of provisions, he was obliged to sell them to a native for 200 rupees in order to be able to satisfy his hunger.
A few days after the arrival of Havelock’s column, the ration of dhal was stopped altogether, salt was reduced to 1½ ounces, beef from slaughtered bullocks to 6 ounces a day, rice to 4 ounces and ground wheat to no more than 1 pound. The wheat was often mouldy from being damp, and since there were no bakers chapattis continued to form a staple part of the diet.
After the recent excitement the monotony of siege life was becoming hard to bear and the craving of many soldiers for alcohol became almost irresistible. Their search was not without risk and inevitably the bodies of several artillerymen who had ventured outside the perimeter were recovered without their heads.
The first week of October saw a number of attacks against enemy gun emplacements which, in addition to military success, sometimes brought unexpected rewards such as chickens or other livestock, making a welcome addition to the soldiers’ diet of stringy beef and dry chapattis. One soldier returning from a sortie, clutching a chicken, was stopped by Captain Anderson who asked him what success the raiding party had achieved. ‘Damned the ha’porth we got, sir,’ was the reply, ‘but an auld cock and a hen.’ Then, after a pause, he added, ‘Oh yes, we did get a sepoy or two!’
The savage fighting in the streets of Lucknow, the murders of the sick and wounded who had fallen into rebel hands, and the memory of the well at Cawnpore, had blunted the feelings of many Europeans in their treatment of the sepoy. George Blake, who was by no means insensitive to the feelings of others, did his best to excuse the behaviour of some of his colleagues who showed no mercy, even to prisoners. He wrote:
This was not a war at this stage, it was a mutiny accompanied by unexampled atrocities and was treated as such in its suppression. In the storm and stress of the Lucknow fighting however, and with the recollection of what horrors had been inflicted to their women and children, and with the day-to-day experiences of what was the fate of any soldier who fell into enemy hands, the anger of the regimental soldier can be understood.
From the beginning of October work was resumed on strengthening the defences without a break, thanks to the pool of labour provided by the camp followers who had accompanied the relief force. In examining the newly acquired rebel positions, Mr Rees was full of praise for the work the mutineers had lavished upon them. In front of the gun emplacements deep trenches had been excavated and ladders installed at intervals to enable the artillerymen to descend and keep a listening watch for counter-mining. Saps reached out to the very edge of the Residency perimeter, whilst several emplacements were as close as 40 yards. All were well constructed and the Calcutta merchant could only marvel that the Residency had not been overrun. ‘Truly,’ he thought, ‘the right hand of the Lord is manifest in all this plainly enough, for in spite of all our courage, we could never have kept them out.’
With the extension of the Residency defence works, the women and children were free to walk about in comparative safety for the first time since the beginning of the siege. To exchange a claustrophobic cellar for the pleasures of walking in the moonlight came as a welcome relief to Mrs Case as she strolled the ravaged gardens in the company of Mrs Inglis for an hour.
As October drew to a close the weather became noticeably cooler, a change which brought a degree of discomfort to the new arrivals, most of whom had nothing but their summer uniforms. Warm clothing was in scant supply and in an auction of deceased officers’ effects, a mud-stained flannel shirt of Captain Fulton’s fetched the equivalent of £4.50, whilst a tweed coat and trousers was sold for an equally inflated price. Captain Anderson, who view
ed with distaste the sale of dead officers’ clothing, expressed a somewhat pessimistic view that the purchaser had merely come into ‘possession of his own winding sheet’.
For those who were by now heartily sick of the siege, there was a crumb of comfort in the news from Cawnpore. On 6 November it was reported that Sir Colin Campbell, of Crimea fame, had arrived in Cawnpore with 3,400 men and eight large-calibre naval guns under the command of Captain William Peel. Given confirmation of that report, it now seemed reasonably certain to many in the garrison that the end of a siege, which for so long had seemed nothing more than a tantalizing dream, was now close to becoming fact. On the strength of that welcome news, more than one person emptied his last bottle of wine, or smoked a long-cherished cheroot.
Chapter 12
ENTER SIR COLIN CAMPBELL
Whilst at Cawnpore, Sir Colin Campbell had learnt that the soldiers of Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior had rebelled against their ruler and the European officers, and were even now marching south towards Kalpi, with the intention of joining the Nana Sahib and placing themselves under the command of Tatya Tope, arguably the rebel army’s most able general. The Gwalior Contingent as it was known, was a formidable force, reputed to have been trained to a higher standard than even John Company’s sepoys. Campbell’s main concern, however, was the relief of Lucknow and he rejected the advice of Sir James Outram that he should first meet and destroy the threat the Gwalior Contingent posed to Cawnpore before marching for the Residency.
Leaving just 500 European soldiers with General Windham, Campbell departed for the Alambagh on 9 November, hoping to join Sir Hope Grant who was encamped on the sandy plain with a store of provisions.
It was as well that Sir Colin refused to take Outram’s advice for the latest report from the besieged garrison had told of severe hardships. Food stocks were rapidly diminishing, and only the fortunate discovery of a supply of grain stored in a plunge bath kept the garrison from near starvation.
The increase in manpower provided by Havelock’s arrival had enabled the besieged garrison to extend the Residency perimeter to the north and west by occupying the palaces along the line of the river. Doing so, however, proved to be a mixed blessing, for although the extra accommodation was welcome, where previously much of the enemy artillery fire had been largely ineffective, now that the rebel guns were sited further away, a greater proportion of shot was hitting its target. Areas once thought to be relatively peaceful were becoming increasingly hazardous and casualties were mounting. An Ensign of the Bengal Artillery, making a sketch of the Residency in what he believed to be a safe spot, fell victim to a round shot which on previous occasions had sailed harmlessly overhead. ‘Poor young Dashwood, while out sketching some portion of the Residency yesterday [4 November] was hit in both legs by a round shot and amputation of both followed,’ reported Ludlow-Smith. ‘He is now pretty well but there is very little hope for him.’
On the 6th, morale was lifted with the news that Sir Hope Grant was across the Sai on the Lucknow side of the river, less than 2 miles away, waiting the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell. A semaphore quickly set up on the Residency roof established communication with Grant’s forces at the Alambagh, and the garrison’s hopes of a speedy relief was renewed.
Sir James Outram was convinced that the heavy loss of life which had accompanied his and Sir Henry Havelock’s storming of the Baillie Guard Gate could be avoided by using another route, and he set to work on drawing up a street map for Sir Colin Campbell which he hoped would bring about the relief with considerably fewer casualties. The route he mapped out necessitated a wide detour to the east from the Alambagh towards the Dilkusha, before turning north to cross the canal near the Martiniere, before swinging west past the Sikanderbagh towards the Brigade Mess and the Residency.
The detailed street map was obviously of great value, but there remained the problem of delivering it to Sir Colin Campbell, for unlike worded messages it could not be encoded. As it happened, one man in the Residency who had seen the map was giving serious thought to just such an undertaking.
Thomas Henry Kavanagh, a 36-year-old uncovenanted civil servant, had already gained a reputation for fearlessness having spent many hours underground with the Cornish miners of the 32nd, even on one occasion attacking the enemy miners by the light of a candle. Here lay an opportunity for further glory and he immediately volunteered his services. The fact that Kavanagh was taller than most natives, and had fair hair and blue eyes, was hardly a recommendation for success, and at first Outram refused to entertain the idea. However, in the clothes of a native irregular, and with his skin and hair stained with a mixture of lampblack and oil, Kavanagh finally obtained Outram’s approval. With the General’s words – ‘Noble fellow! You will never be forgotten’ – ringing in his ears, he left with a native guide on 9 November.
For a large-limbed individual with the unmistakable blue eyes of a European, it seemed a suicidal mission, but as he and his native companion crept through the darkness to the north bank of the Gumti, the Irishman had no thought of failure, despite the prospect of negotiating the streets of Lucknow. An hour later, after wading through a mangrove swamp, it did seem that fortune had deserted them when they were challenged by a group of villagers. ‘They were,’ explained Kavanagh ‘poor travellers on their way to a village near Banni to report the death of a friend’s brother.’ Fortunately, their story was believed and the pair were allowed to proceed on their way. Luck remained with them, for with patches of the colouring disappearing from the Irishman’s hands and arms, they were challenged again. With great relief Kavanagh recognized the shout of ‘Hoo cum da?’ as coming from a friendly sepoy, whose appearance heralded their arrival in the British lines, thus bringing to an end Thomas Kavanagh and Kamaujie’s highly dangerous 5-mile journey.
Forbes-Mitchell was unstinting in his praise of the Irishman’s feat. ‘Only those who knew the state of Lucknow at that time can fully appreciate the perils he encountered, or the value of the service he rendered,’ wrote the Scot in admiration.
Two days later, on the 12th, Sir Colin Campbell’s column joined Sir Hope Grant’s small force, having experienced little opposition other than artillery harassment which proved to be of short duration once the heavy guns of the Naval Brigade were brought into action. Before deciding to follow Outram’s route, Campbell reviewed his force, now 5,000 strong, on the plain beside the Alambagh.
Apart from the 9th Lancers, the men on parade could scarcely claim to have a soldierly appearance. A lieutenant of the 84th confessed: ‘I had no uniform to speak of, wearing instead a grey flannel coat and trousers and a sowar’s belt and pouch I had picked up.’ The men of the 75th Regiment wore khaki uniforms now ‘sadly patched and worn’, and although the 53rd of Foot, and the 2nd and 4th Punjab Infantry passed muster, many of the Madras Fusiliers had patched their jackets with whatever material had come to hand, some even wearing coats of green baize. As for the Naval Brigade, they boasted an assortment of sailors’ attire, and were distinctive from the number of pet monkeys and parrots sitting on their shoulders. Only the 93rd, in full Highland dress complete with feather bonnet, half of whom were wearing the Crimea medal on their chests, raised a cheer as Sir Colin rode past. Delighted, the General responded with a stirring address, ending with the exhortation: ‘Ninety-third, you are my own lads. I rely on you to do the works.’
In the early hours of the 14th, Sir Colin Campbell set off at the head of his force for the Dilkusha, leaving Sir Hope Grant with a small garrison of 300 at the Alambagh. Warned of Campbell’s approach, the rebels fell back to the Martiniere College, whose pupils had long since made themselves useful in the Residency. Before the Mutiny the Dilkusha had been a park filled with spotted deer and other fauna. There was still game to be had and the officers made sure of roast venison for dinner, both for themselves and the men they commanded. After a good breakfast, the troops left the park on 16 November having spent the night patrolling in a different direction in a bid to deceive the re
bels as to their approach to Lucknow.
Nearing the Martiniere the 93rd came under fire from a concealed battery of six cannon. A Highlander was eviscerated by a ricocheting 9-pound shot near to Forbes-Mitchell, whilst another ball cut down several of the Light Company. As the 93rd began to shuffle uncomfortably, the Colonel sought to calm them. ‘Keep steady, men,’ he called. ‘Close up the ranks and don’t waver in the face of a battery manned by cowardly Asiatics!’ In the opinion of the Adjutant, Lieutenant William MacBean, this was altogether the wrong advice and he called out sharply, ‘Damn the Colonel, open out and let them [the cannon balls] through. Keep plenty of room, and watch the shot.’ The exasperation in his voice broke the tension and as the round shot continued to bound across the turf, the men joked among themselves that there seemed to be ‘a guid wheen footba’s kicking aboot Lucknow’. The 93rd’s ordeal was short lived, however, for the heavy guns of the Naval Brigade quickly dispersed the enemy and Leith Hay’s men advanced across the plateau to reach the wall of the Martiniere without further casualties.
Two guns which had been brought to bear upon the British cavalry screen were driven off in a similar fashion, and when a battalion of mixed infantry companies advanced on the College the rebels hastily abandoned the building and retreated across the canal bridge hotly pursued by the cavalry. With the Dilkusha and the Martiniere abandoned by the rebels after little more than two hours, and the ground up to and including the canal bridge in British hands, Campbell’s troops bivouacked for the night fully accoutred and ready for whatever the next day might bring.
Cawnpore & Lucknow Page 20