Cawnpore & Lucknow

by Donald Richards

  The night air was chill and damp as the surgeon of the 93rd stood close to the fire with two companions speculating on what action could be expected on the morrow. As they whiled away the hours, the tropical sun rose abruptly above the horizon and Surgeon Munro turned to admire the dawn display of colour. He felt a touch on his arm and Captain John Lumsden, an officer on temporary assignment, remarked in a quiet voice, ‘That is the last sunrise that many will see, and God knows to which of us three standing by this fire, it may be the last.’ Shortly afterwards the Regiment was called to assembly and the three shook hands before going their separate ways. They never met again, for in the space of two hours Munro’s two companions were dead, killed in the very forefront of the battle for the Sikanderbagh, having displayed a degree of gallantry ‘which excited the admiration of all who followed them’.

  The mutineers presented a solid front at the Sikanderbagh, where a concentrated fire of musketry raked the exposed flanks of the advancing troops, and for a while the situation verged upon the critical. Impatient at being kept waiting for an hour whilst the artillery endeavoured to widen a breach in the palace wall, a sergeant known to Forbes-Mitchell as ‘Dobbin’ called out to Sir Colin Campbell, ‘Sir Colin, your Excellency, let the infantry storm; let the two ‘Thirds’ at them and we’ll soon make short work of the murderous villains!’

  Campbell, who had a good memory for names and places, addressed the Sergeant. ‘Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?’

  Back came the reply without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Part of us can get through and hold it until the pioneers widen it with their crowbars to allow the rest to get in, sir.’

  The Sergeant’s enthusiasm moved Sir Colin and he turned to Colonel Ewart commanding the 93rd. ‘Bring on the tartan,’ he urged in his strong brogue. ‘Let my own lads at them.’

  From the shelter of a mud wall, Lieutenant Gordon Alexander looked at the spurts of dust being kicked up in the road from a shower of musket balls, and wondered for a moment whether even a rabbit could escape unscathed. It was no time for hesitation, however, and the young subaltern joined the men of the other six companies in leaving his shelter to face a storm of musketry the like of which he had not seen since the crossing of the Alma. Led by the pipes, the Highlanders dashed towards the breach accompanied by the men of the 53rd and the Sikhs.

  Forbes-Mitchell thrust himself through the narrow opening close upon the heels of a taciturn Scot known as ‘Quaker’ Wallace, renowned for quoting verses from the Psalm 116 whenever he bayoneted a mutineer. Barely had Forbes-Mitchell gained the other side of the wall before a ball struck the thick brass clasp of his waist belt with a force sufficient to cause him to stagger back amongst the rubble. Lying winded on the ground, he distinctly heard Colonel Ewart’s voice as he passed, ‘Poor fellow, he’s done for!’

  No quarter was given, or asked for, by the 2,000 rebels in the Sikanderbagh, for the atrocity of the well at Cawnpore was fresh in the memory of the Highlanders, and shouting ‘Cawnpore! You bloody murderers, Cawnpore!’ the Scots surged forward in a sea of waving plumes and tartans, closely followed by the 53rd Foot.

  In a savage encounter during which the mutineers fought with a fury born of desperation, some even hurled their muskets, bayonet first, like javelins, whilst others drew tulwars and threw themselves beneath outstretched bayonets to slash at the Highlanders’ legs. The sepoys were gradually driven from court to court and from room to room. In more than two hours of continuous fighting, described by Forbes-Mitchell as ‘a horrible and brutalising war of downright butchery’, every corner of the palace’s four towers was contested until the last defender had been killed, and his body thrown out of the window to fall on the stone paving below. ‘Dreadful sight,’ noted Major Bingham, ‘the dead were lying in some places twenty deep.’ The fact that sixty-four mutineers threw down their weapons and surrendered to the Sikhs did not save them – they were slaughtered to a man.

  The ghastly mounds of bodies, in which the dying were entangled with the dead, horrified young Fred Roberts. ‘There they lay in a heap as high as my head,’ he wrote. ‘One of those sights which even in the excitement of battle and the flush of victory make one feel strongly what a horrible side there is to war.’

  In this atmosphere of death, thick with smoke and the pungent smell of burning flesh, Surgeon Munro went in search of the wounded. In one corner of the court, more than 100 bodies lay smouldering, a sight which nauseated the surgeon of the 93rd, and yet he could not rid himself of a feeling of satisfaction that the massacre at Cawnpore had been well and truly avenged. Later that evening, having attended to the wounded, Munro went to look for the bodies of the two officers he had shaken hands with in the company of Captain Lumsden. He discovered that they were to be buried close to the breach, and as he raised the covering, Munro looked down ‘on such calm and peaceful expressions that but for the peculiar pallid hue which marked the rigid features, I might have been gazing upon the faces of men hushed in the sound sleep of weariness and not of death’.

  Now that the Sikanderbagh was in British hands, there remained one more obstacle to be overcome before the Residency buildings could be reached – the Shah Najif, enclosed in a garden surrounded by a high stone wall. Seizing this tomb of the first king of Oudh looked to be a difficult and dangerous operation, but whatever the cost it was a necessity since it barred the way to the Residency, and Campbell was determined that its fall should be accomplished before nightfall.

  A hail of musketry poured down on the assembled Highlanders from the castellated top of the building, stopping them from making any appreciable headway. The defenders included a body of archers whose arrows flew ‘with great force and precision’. One soldier of the 93rd who raised his head incautiously above the shelter of a wall paid for the rash act with a shaft through his brain which projected more than a foot from the back of his skull. ‘Boys,’ Forbes-Mitchell heard a senior NCO say, ‘this is no joke. We must pay them off.’ After very nearly three hours, as bullets rained about them with a noise like ‘stones being thrown at a saucepan’, and in which the heavy artillery and rocket batteries of Peel’s Naval Brigade had made little impression against the massive stone walls, there occurred a noticeable slackening in the enemy’s fire. It was then, when the infantry were about to retire, that Sergeant Paton of the 93rd stumbled upon a narrow gap in the wall, half concealed in the undergrowth. Followed by his comrades he reached the tomb, only to find it deserted. The mutineers, after witnessing the Naval Brigade’s rockets dipping and twisting in a trail of fire which had come roaring above the wall, had abandoned their post and fled.

  Whilst Campbell’s men had been engaged in the bloody business of storming the palaces, Outram had been doing his best to create a diversion. It had never been his intention to merely watch Campbell’s progress from the roof of the Residency, and on his orders a battery was set up in a garden no more than 100 yards from the Shah Najif. Possessing a good field of fire, his guns began to pound the two buildings in which the rebels had sought shelter. Each was strongly held, but a bugle call sounding the advance was greeted with a storm of cheers by Outram’s men, seething for action after the frustration of the past two weeks, and the rebels quickly discovered that with no artillery to support them their places of refuge were indefensible.

  Only a short distance now separated the Residency from the relief force, and Outram and Havelock’s men spent the hours of darkness in a fever of excitement, watching shells from Campbell’s mortars describe a fiery arc against the eastern sky.

  To Forbes-Mitchell, the Residency buildings seemed invitingly close as he endeavoured to seek some warmth from a bivouac fire, but the glow which threw the trees and bushes into sharp relief brought little warmth to the Scot, for without his greatcoat he soon discovered that the kilt afforded scant protection against the chill night air. Unable to sleep, he spent the night listening to the men reliving their terrible experiences of the day in their fitful dreams.

  The
next morning, the 17th, having secured his left flank by occupying the suburbs adjacent to the canal, Campbell ordered the guns of the Naval Brigade to open fire against the old Mess House of the 32nd, whilst he sent in a mixed battalion against another palace, the Mothi Mahal. By mid-afternoon the Mess House had fallen to the 53rd led by Captain Hoskins, but the Mothi Mahal proved a harder nut to crack. At length, the rebels were driven from its orange and lemon groves and the last obstacle to reaching the besieged garrison was overcome.

  At the Engine House, Generals Outram and Havelock were conferring with their staffs. The question of how best to render assistance to the relieving force was a vexing one and they broke off in irritation at the sudden appearance of a tall, bearded, jack-booted figure in the quilted jacket of a staff officer, and wearing a pith helmet.

  Suddenly, one of the officers raised a delighted shout. ‘It’s Kavanagh! He’s the first to relieve us.’

  In the congratulations which followed, Kavanagh almost forgot the point of his visit. Turning to Outram he asked, ‘Are you willing, Sir James, to join the Commander-in-Chief at once?’

  An open space of almost half a mile, occasionally the subject of musketry, separated the generals but, giving way to the excitement of the occasion, Outram, Havelock and Kavanagh, accompanied by six other officers, hurried towards Sir Colin Campbell waiting at the Mothi Mahal. It was a journey not without risk and inevitably four of the officers were wounded. Havelock narrowly escaped with his life when a shell, rebounding from a wall, burst at his feet. The General was knocked on his back, but to the astonishment of his aides he regained his feet and continued slowly on his way showing not the slightest concern.

  With this meeting on 17 November, the relief of Lucknow had become an established fact. ‘Oh! How thankfully we welcomed them,’ confessed Mrs Huxham, and then, conscious of the part played by the garrison, she added: ‘Over 400 of the brave defenders of our garrison lay buried in the graveyard and the remainder who have been fortunate enough to survive were now to bid adieu to the trials and harrowing scenes that had been their lot for six months.’

  To the gaunt, ragged and louse-infested garrison troops, the relatively smart appearance of their rescuers was something to marvel at. The Naval Brigade excited particular attention and the children gazed wide eyed at the sailors led in by Captain William Peel. The unfamiliar uniform, particularly the straw hats, so impressed the Asians in the Residency that they spoke of the sailors in awestruck tones, of being a strange race of men 4 feet high and 4 feet wide, of enormous strength, who carried 24-pounder cannon on their shoulders with ease.

  As they stared at the shot-encrusted walls, the tumbled ruins and the foul trenches, the soldiers of Campbell’s relief force could only admire the fortitude of those who had defended the Residency for 140 days against the many thousands of rebels who still swarmed the streets of Lucknow. That night Brigadier Inglis warned the women that they should make preparations to withdraw from the Residency the following evening, and that luggage was to be limited to that which could be easily carried in a small bundle. Mrs Inglis and Mrs Adelaide Case exchanged concerned glances. ‘How are all the wounded and sick people, and women and children to be got off in such a hurried manner,’ asked Mrs Case, ‘at only a few hours notice?’

  It did not seem to have been a concern for Mrs Katherine Bartrum. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed upon hearing the news, ‘I can only carry my baby, and my worldly effects can be put into a very small compass, since they consist merely of a few old clothes.’

  Only Mrs Germon seems to have been fully prepared. She noted in her diary that as soon as she heard that the Alambagh had been captured, she began to pack, ‘for if the troops come in, we may be sent off at a moment’s notice’.

  In fact, the women were given an extra day in which to prepare for the evacuation, but it was still received with mixed feelings, not only by them but by a few civilians who bitterly resented abandoning positions to the enemy that they had held at such cost. Mrs Case nevertheless celebrated the announcement with a fruit pie for dinner, something which she and the others in her room had not tasted for weeks. The restriction on the number of possessions they would be allowed to take with them caused a great deal of consternation among the ladies, many of whom spent the day feverishly packing away as many valuables as they possibly could. Capacious pockets were sewn into dresses to accommodate jewelry, linen was folded into pillow cases or packed into boxes. Mrs Germon wrote that she donned

  four flannel waistcoats, three pairs of stockings, three chemises, three drawers, one flannel and four white petticoats, my pink flannel dressing gown, skirt, plaid jacket, and overall my cloth dress and jacket that I had made out of my old habit, then tied my cashmere shawl sash-fashion round my waist and put on a worsted cap and hat and had my drab cloak put on the saddle … I also had two under-pockets, one filled with jewelry … the other with my journal and valuable papers.

  ‘Much comment was made on some of the ladies turning out so well dressed,’ remarked a sympathetic Ensign Ruggles, ’but this arose from their very natural wish to save the best of their wardrobe.’ Only Katherine Bartrum remained relatively unencumbered, for all she possessed in the world were a few clothes and her little son Bobby.

  The rigours of the siege had not improved the disposition of several of the soldiers’ wives who passed the picket at the shattered gateway with surly expressions and scarcely a word of thanks to the men who had rescued them. Some even complained of the inadequacies of the transport provided, a criticism which reached the ears of Sir Colin Campbell, who rebuked them with the words ‘Ladies – women, I mean – you ought to be thankful that you have got out with your lives, for I do not know how it might have been in two hours more with you.’

  At 10.00 am on 19 November, the first stage of the refugees’ long journey to Allahabad, by way of Cawnpore, began with a stream of carts, palanquins and carriages drawn by coolies, some ladies riding ponies, and the sick and wounded being carried on doolies over the 4 miles to the Sikanderbagh, a large house in its own grounds within the confines of the city. To guard the refugees from unwelcome attention, British marksmen in the Shah Najif, and artillery at the Moti Mahal, were put on alert and the slow-moving column eventually arrived unmolested, to be greeted with every sympathy by the men and officers who provided them with much-needed refreshment and rest before the time came for their departure to the Dilkusha, a journey not without its difficulties and alarms.

  ‘We were obliged to halt frequently, because of the waterlogged ground,’ wrote Major North, ‘and each time we stopped, those in the rear, unconscious of what was passing in front, suffered all the terrors of uncertainty.’ Eventually the long column of refugees arrived with a new escort just before midnight.

  There, in sharp contrast to their reception at the Sikanderbagh, they met with total confusion. ‘No one could tell us where to go,’ complained Mrs Brydon, ‘and it was in vain to look for a servant in such a crowd and in the dark.’

  Having been refused entry to a building which, she was told, already housed 1,100 sick and wounded, at 2.00 am Mrs Adelaide Case was too tired to do anything but lie down fully dressed where she was, under a rezais, and try to sleep.

  Mrs Germon fared a little better. After confronting a stranger with a lantern and asking him where she might go, she was directed to some tents a long way off:

  After tumbling over a lot of tent pegs and ropes we reached them and lay down on the ground for the night. It was impossible to find my pony with my bedding, but we got a duree [rug] to lie upon and I put my head on my basket – the tents were so open that I of course got a cold – however daylight soon appeared.

  In the morning order was restored and the breakfast served by the 9th Lancers beneath the trees was such as to banish entirely the discomforts of the previous night.

  Among the delicacies not seen for many months by the refugees were cold beef and mutton, tea with milk and sugar, and biscuits and jam. ‘I don’t think that we ever enj
oyed any meal in our lives so much,’ admitted Mrs Huxham.

  Most welcomed by the children was the sight of fresh white bread with butter. ‘Oh Mamma!’ shrieked a little girl. ‘There is a loaf of bread on the table. I am certain of it. I saw it with my own eyes.’

  ’We had none of us tasted bread and butter since the 30th of June till today,’ wrote Mrs Harris, ‘so it was indeed a treat.’ The one occurence to mar their enjoyment, of the meal was the death of the popular Ensign Charlie Dashwood.

  There was to be one further incident which led to a deep feeling of dismay affecting the whole community. General Sir Henry Havelock had contracted dysentery in Lucknow and now lay dying in a soldier’s tent at the Dilkusha. He would permit of no assistance save that proffered by his son Harry, who read him passages from the Bible. He died peacefully in his son’s arms soon after dawn on 24 November and was buried at the Alambagh. Curiously, only the letter ‘H’, carved on the trunk of a mango tree, marked the position of his grave.

  The withdrawal of the Europeans and loyal sepoys of John Company’s army did not begin until three days after the evacuation of the non-combatants. ‘We left Lucknow on the night of the 23rd November at mid-night in silence,’ recorded Captain Anderson, ‘and as we left our outposts, the rascals were firing on our outer walls. We got safe out without the loss of a single man.’

  By 4.30 am on the 23rd, most were encamped in the Dilkusha park to join the others for the next stage of the journey to the Alambagh.

  ‘Left the Dilkoosha Palace in carts which had been provided for us,’ entered Mrs Katherine Bartrum in her diary dated 24 November. ‘We arrived at the Alam Bagh late at night, tired to death by our weary march.’

  ‘Never shall I forget the scene – as far as the eye could search on all sides were strings of vehicles, elephants, camels, etc.,’ recalled Maria Germon. ‘The dust was overpowering. We went across country to avoid the enemy – our road lay over cultivated fields and such ups and downs it was a wonder how the vehicle got over them.’