by David Rooney
Gough crossed into the State of Gwalior, from Agra, with the main part of the army, while sending a division under General Grey to provide a distraction and divert the opposition from the south. On 26 December 1843, Gough invited the Maharatta leaders to meet him to negotiate, but they were so suspicious of Grey’s divisional moves and upset by the violation of their territory that they were not prepared to attend.
Harry, far from sitting in the headquarters, went out on a reconnaissance patrol of his own. Having identified the position of an enemy force of about 10,000, he immediately reported to Gough. Grey’s exact whereabouts were unknown and so Harry recommended that, as speed was essential to catch the enemy off guard, they should not wait for Grey but attack the enemy as soon as possible. They therefore set off before dawn the following day, 29 December, on an approach march of some 8 miles and attacked the enemy at Maharajpore, just outside Gwalior. Remarkably, they were accompanied by several of the officers’ ladies, including Juana, mounted on elephants. Harry noted: ‘Juana was under heavy cannonade with Lady Gough, Miss Gough, and a Mrs Curtis on their elephants. Juana had this command of Amazons, and, as she was experienced and they young, her command was anything but satisfactory.’ Sir Charles Napier, writing in early 1844, could not resist pulling Harry’s leg:
I congratulate you on your feats of arms. You had a tough job of it: these Asiatics hit hard, methinks. How came all the ladies to be in the fight? I suppose you all wanted to be gloriously rid of your wives? Well, there is something in that; but I wonder the women stand so atrocious an attempt. Poor things! I dare say they too had their hopes. They talk of our immoral conduct in Scinde! I am sure there never was any so bad as this. God forgive you all. Read your Bible, and wear your laurels.
In spite of Napier’s disparaging remarks, Queen Victoria subsequently awarded Juana a special medal for her bravery when the elephants came under fire and she calmly took control.
The battle was a considerable success, though not without loss. Nearly half the 800 casualties were suffered by two British regiments, the 39th (later the Dorsets) and the 40th (later the South Lancashires), without whom, in Harry’s view, the result might have gone the other way. The Maharattas fought hard and well, even firing horseshoes from their cannon when they ran out of ball. Harry had a narrow escape when a round bruised his foot, tearing off his stirrup leather and passing under his horse. His foot was numb for days. Peace was quickly concluded and the Maharatta army disbanded, but not before 10,000 men were enlisted into the British Army under European officers – the forerunners of many fine Sikh and Maharatta regiments which served with great distinction in the Indian Army until after the Second World War. Ellenborough, with his love of decorations, had medals made from captured cannon. Juana, having been as involved in the battle as anyone else, was also, properly, awarded the medal. Harry was so proud of his wife that he wrote to his sister, Alice, that he wanted her to have his jeweller make a gold star, as per his enclosed sketch, with enamel to represent the ribbon, which Juana could wear as a brooch. (This anticipated the diamond regimental badges of today that officers give their wives.) The two medals exist today (see plate section, photo 14). Interestingly, Harry also mentions his two nephews in the same letter. Hugh, son of Tom, was in Grey’s Division and distinguished himself in their battle. Harry, Charles’s son, was not so involved but reportedly conducted himself ‘as cool as his usual placidity renders him’. Harry must have been very proud of them. He himself was Mentioned in Dispatches and elevated from Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) to Knight Commander (KCB). Probably even more satisfying for Harry was the personal letter from the Duke of Wellington, telling him of the award. Harry, understandably perhaps, could not fail to reply:
Headquarters, Army of India, Simla, 23rd June, 1844.
MY LORD DUKE,
I have this day had the honour to receive your Grace's letter, 'Horse Guards, 29th April,' acquainting me with an expression of satisfaction that Her Majesty had, upon your recommendation, been graciously pleased to appoint me a Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath. While my gratitude to my Sovereign is unbounded, my heart dictates, it is to your Grace I am indebted for every honorary distinction, promotion, and appointment I have received during a long and an eventful period of the history of the world.
Among the many thousands of the gallant soldiers who so nobly fought and conquered under your Grace, I may conscientiously hope none could desire more zealously to do his duty, or was ever more actuated by personal devotion or inspired with greater confidence throughout the numerous struggles of war, than he who now renders his grateful thanks for this mark of distinction so honourable to the soldier, and thus conferred by Her Majesty through the recommendation of his Commander-in-Chief, the Great Captain of the Age.
I have, etc.,
(Signed) H.G. SMITH.
Field Marshal His Grace the Duke of Wellington.
There now followed a relatively quiet time before the start of what, subsequently, came to be known as the First Sikh War in December 1845. The Sikhs of the Punjab, who lorded it over a poor and largely Muslim peasantry, were fiercely independent, having consistently resisted the Moghul kings in Delhi and the Muslims of Afghanistan. The charismatic ruler, Ranjit Singh, had, over the years, built up a powerful army. Its infantry were trained and modelled on European lines and their artillery, trained by French officers, was as good as any. Their weakness was the cavalry, which tended to be ill-disciplined and headstrong. With the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839, the ruling family in Lahore started to fall apart and was incapable of controlling the powerful army. There was intense intrigue, coupled with suspicions of treachery at Court, and they deeply distrusted the British, whom they had not allowed to cross their territory during the Afghan War. The British, in their turn, were highly suspicious of the Sikhs who made no secret of their ambitions to invade India. The army – the Khalsa – was difficult to deal with and some factions would have been happy to unleash it on the British; if it won, they would bask in its glory, if it lost, good riddance to a dangerous irritant. The smell of treason was never far away.
For Harry, with Juana in Simla, this was a time for serious reflection. He was, by now, a very seasoned soldier, both as a leader in the field and on the Staff. In the absence of any kind of Staff College or courses of instruction, he had learnt by experience. He had seen how the great leaders operated and behaved: Wellington, Picton, Craufurd, Moore and Beckwith. He had also observed the inadequacies and failures of Whitelocke, Leveson-Gower, Erskine, Dalrymple and the like. He tried, often successfully, to emulate the former and learn lessons from the latter. However, his experience was with physically hardened, highly disciplined and battle-inoculated troops of the Peninsula and Waterloo. Harry confessed India to be a different military scene altogether. No one seemed to give the enemy any credit for daring, dash and ability and, under Gough, the answer merely seemed to be a frontal assault with little finesse. Cooperation between the Arms – infantry, artillery and cavalry – was uncoordinated and Harry saw it as an unwieldy machine. Baggage trains were over-large, overextended and lacked proper administration. Soldiers frequently lacked basic equipment. Officers lacked real experience in handling Indian troops, and tactical intelligence on the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses lay in the hands of a sprinkling of political officers and unreliable paid informers.
Maharajpore taught Harry a lesson he would never forget:
In this country almost every war has been terminated in one or two pitched battles fought as soon as the one army comes in sight of the other, and accordingly all the science attaching to advance and retreat, the posting of picquets, reconnaissance of the enemy, the daily contemplating of his movements, both when he is before you and on the march, are lost, and war is reduced at once to 'there are people drawn up who will shoot at you, so fire away at them.' You blindly and ineptly rush upon them, drive them from the field with considerable loss, take all their guns, and never see the vesti
ge of them after. Thus we must judiciously and with foresight organize ourselves for a campaign in the Punjab – a very probable event – for the armies of India are not now the rabble they were in Clive's time, but organized and disciplined by European officers of experience (many French), and the art of war has progressed rapidly among our enemies, whose troops are invariably far more numerous than those we oppose to them; thus by superior ability we could alone calculate on their defeat. As it is, we calculate alone on the bulldog courage of Her Majesty's soldiers, and our loss becomes what we lately witnessed.
He urged that soldiers should be properly equipped with haversacks and water bottles (in one action, thirst was the major problem as the water-carriers had run away). He suggested proper training exercises, pitching one brigade against another, with blank ammunition, in the cold season. There was nothing wrong with the willingness or courage of the soldier, whether Indian or British, but as Harry neatly put it: ‘the material is excellent … but now, like a dictionary, it contains all the words, but cannot write a letter.’
So while the British, for some time, anticipated a Sikh advance into India across the Sutlej River, they had made little practical preparation. Additionally, they were loath to expose their Sepoys to the Sikh propaganda of doubling the pay of anyone who fought for them. The British feared that even the smallest military reverse therefore could result in widespread desertion. Sikh commanders, however, for all their spirit, courage and daring, preferred to take up a position and wait to be attacked rather than developing the initiative themselves.
In 1844, Sir Henry Hardinge succeeded Lord Ellenborough as Governor General. He was a man of quality and ability with considerable military experience in the Peninsula, and he had lost his left hand at Waterloo. Seeing, quite rightly, that war with the Sikhs in the Punjab was inevitable, he began to have troops quietly moved north-west, and boats sent up the Indus and then onto the Sutlej to be prepared for pontooning. The isolated fortress of Ferozepore was reinforced with the task of watching the Sutlej river crossings and identifying any Sikh incursions.
By December 1845, all negotiations with the Sikhs had failed. Only Harry can explain the complexities:
From the death of Runjeet Singh in 1839 to 1845 a succession of revolutions and murders of Kings and Princes continued, first one party, then another, supporting a reputed son of Runjeet on the throne, who was as sure to be murdered in the sanguinary struggles of that Reign of Terror. A Hill family, elevated for their personal beauty rather than their talents (although some of them were far from wanting abilities), became conspicuous, and many fell with the puppets of their creation. This family received the soubriquet of Lords of the Hills, Jummoo being the fortified hold of the head of the family. Its most conspicuous members were Goolab Singh and Dhyan Singh. Dhyan and his son Heera Singh were both Prime Ministers, or Wuzeer, and both were murdered in 1844. Such was the power of the standing army, it acknowledged no other authority, set up Kings and deposed them at pleasure, and at the period of the commencement of the war, a boy (Dhuleep Singh), born of a Hill woman of great ability and reputed the son of old Runjeet, was the nominal King, Lal Singh was Wuzeer, and Tej Singh Commander-in-Chief of this rabble (though highly organized and numerous) army. It must be obvious that such a state of things could not last. The resources of the treasury were rapidly consuming, and with them the only power of the Queen Mother, the Rani or Regent, which consisted in her presents and consequent popularity. All the foreign officers had absconded except one Frenchman, a man of neither note nor talent, and a Spanish Engineer by name Hubon, a low-bred man, but clever, acute, and persevering. The British Government of India had acknowledged this Regency, and was desirous to retain amicable relationship with the Punjaub, but in the middle of the year 1845, so unruly and clamorous for war was the Sikh army, all negotiations terminated, and a state of uncertainty ensued which made it necessary for British India, without declaring hostility, to place itself on a footing to resist it, should so mad an enterprise ensue.
It was additionally rumoured that the Sikhs had already made plans, with a certain amount of local connivance, to place their Queen on the throne in Delhi. To Harry’s amazement, a force reputed to be in the region of some 70,000 Sikhs managed to cross the Sutlej under the nose of Sir John Littler, commanding Ferozepore, and establish themselves in strength without Littler taking any action. With mounting anxiety, Gough pushed his Army towards the enemy by forced marches, reaching Moodkee on 18 December, but with the troops thoroughly exhausted and worn out. The Sikhs, meanwhile, had withdrawn to a position north-west of the town. By now, to his great satisfaction, Harry had been relieved of his Adjutant General’s appointment and given command of the 1st Infantry Division. This proved to be the most important military appointment of his life, and he grasped the opportunity eagerly. Fearing the Sikhs would evaporate into the jungle, Gough ordered an immediate attack, despite the fatigue of his troops. The battle was straightforward, but hard fought. The British cavalry attacked both enemy flanks, leaving Harry’s Infantry Division and a further two brigades to assault the centre. At one stage, when the 50th Foot (later the Royal West Kent Regiment) formed line to continue their advance from a square, Harry himself seized one of their Colours and led the charge with it. To everyone’s relief, darkness brought an end to the battle and the Sikhs melted away. Gough’s simple frontal attack caused substantial losses, including two major generals, McCaskill and Sale, the hero of Jellalabad and husband of Florentia. The Sikhs had fought well and, losing fewer troops than the British, lived to fight another day.
After the evacuation of the wounded and resupplying his Division, Harry prepared his troops for the next event, the battle for Ferozeshah, to which Lal Singh’s Sikh force had withdrawn following Moodkee. The Sikhs now occupied strongly fortified positions surrounding the town. Gough ordered the luckless General Littler in Ferozepore to leave the town, evade the Sikh blockade, and join forces with him before Ferozeshah. Characteristically, Gough was determined to attack the town without waiting for Littler’s men. Luckily he was persuaded to wait by Sir Henry Hardinge who, although Governor General, had placed himself under Gough as his Second-in-Command. The assault began at 3.00pm, and with two hours of light left, Littler’s troops led the attack from the left flank. Harry’s Division was in reserve behind Hardinge and Gough. Immediately on contact, Littler’s attack started to falter under the intense and accurate Sikh artillery fire and Harry pushed forward one of his brigades to reinforce them. Fierce fighting went on into the night, when Gough was forced to withdraw his forces from the town to pass the rest of the night as best they could amongst the casualties of the day’s fighting, and still under sporadic Sikh fire. Harry himself was heavily involved, leading from the front, as was his custom. At the head of the 50th, he penetrated the heart of the enemy’s position in the town and before dark had pushed through to the far side of it with a motley collection of troops. Moonlight, however, exposed the fragility of his unsupported position and the enemy rapidly closed in on him. At 3 o’clock in the morning, he found himself and his stragglers surrounded. Under a volley of covering fire, he managed to extract his troops and sought to rejoin Gough’s force, leaving Ferozeshah on his left. Despite rumours of defeat and spurious orders to make his way to Ferozepore, Harry met up with Gough just before dawn. As the sun rose, to his chagrin, he could see, not 2 miles distant, the town he had just fought through so fiercely and escaped from so narrowly. Now, he was going to have to attack again.
The subsequent renewed attack was thoroughly successful. As the exhausted troops were, rightly, congratulating themselves, to their horror a fresh Sikh force from Ferozepore appeared. Almost out of ammunition, a horse artillery battery kept them at bay to allow time for Gough’s forces to establish themselves into defensive positions. The Sikhs kept up a long artillery bombardment until, with a final heroic effort, Gough’s cavalry put in a charge, forcing the enemy to abandon the field. By 4.00pm the battle was over. Gough could count himself
lucky that the Sikh reinforcements had not pressed home their attack, which would have been almost impossible to resist given his troops’ exhaustion and lack of ammunition. (To this day, the regiments involved hand over their Colours to the Sergeants’ Mess on the anniversary of Ferozeshah, to commemorate the vital part played in the battle by sergeants.)
Gough now closed up to Ferozepore and regrouped, but was in no position yet to eliminate the Sikhs as a fighting force; he needed reinforcements to replace casualties and awaited the slow supply column, containing his heavy equipment, ponderously making its way from Delhi 200 miles to the south. The Sikhs, taking advantage of this inactivity and full of confidence, again crossed the Sutlej at Sobraon, with a force of some 8,000 troops and seventy guns, under Ranjodh Singh, to threaten the British base at Ludhiana and Gough’s supply route.
Gough therefore dispatched Harry and his Division to counter the Sikh threat to Ludhiana and ultimately clear the incursion over the Sutlej. Typically, Harry wasted no time and set out two hours before dawn on 17 January 1846. Finding the small fort of Futteyghur unoccupied, he quickly moved on to Dharmkot just with his cavalry because the infantry were slowing him down. He gave the enemy garrison twenty minutes to consider their position. Wisely, they surrendered without an effective shot being fired. Gough then reinforced this success by providing Harry with the 16th Lancers and another battery of guns, and ordered him to proceed to Jagraon on the more southerly road, where he was to take under command the 53rd Foot (later the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry). He was then to march the 25 miles to Ludhiana via Budowal. At Ludhiana he was to liaise with Colonel Godby who had four native regiments under him, including two Gurkha battalions, and four guns. Harry sent messages to Godby that he expected him to join his force halfway in order to put in a joint attack on the Sikhs. Harry left his slower moving baggage train under escort at Jograon and, in the early hours of 21 January, left to join Godby on the way to Ludhiana. After he had gone about 16-18 miles, he received word from Godby that further Sikh forces had arrived, giving them a total of around 10,000 troops and forty guns. He advised that their intention appeared to be to cut Harry’s approach route from Jagraon to Ludhiana, at Budowal. Godby stayed put. Harry invariably lavished praise where he thought it was due but he was, properly, intolerant of backsliders during the intensity of operations. On 25 January, he wrote to Gough: ‘I send you Brigadier Gowran. I assure Your Excellency, I have no desire to retain him. I like young and spritely fellows who desire to overcome difficulties, not create them.’