Even though they had clearly expected the attack, the Mahratta were taken completely by surprise by the speed of the collapse of the outer fort. It was all over in a couple of minutes and the fastest redcoats were running amongst the retreating defenders towards the gate of the inner fort. Other redcoats had already started to fire up at the battlements of the inner fort, making the defenders keep their heads down, and the men at the gates of the inner fort must have panicked and slammed them shut. The gates were key to their defence and they could not afford to let the sepoys through with their own men as the redcoats could then hold the gates open for their comrades to storm the inner fort as well. I could not see what was happening in the gatehouses from the tower, but suddenly I saw that instead of running towards the gate, the Mahratta were now streaming along the narrow path that led down to the ravine floor. Those Mahratta defenders who had run towards the inner fort gate were now also running back to go down the path and the sepoys were opening fire on them from the ramparts of the outer fort as they passed. More sepoys came out on the path and, forming themselves into ordered ranks, began to follow the Mahratta down the path, firing volleys as they went... and then the screaming began.
I could not see the bottom of the ravine but I could guess what was happening. When I had been briefed by Wellesley on the plan of the attack, the 78th Highlanders were set to come up the ravine path. The Mahratta defenders of the outer fort were now trapped between the Highlanders in front and the sepoys behind. The sepoys I could see following the Mahratta down the path formed themselves into a tightly packed wedge shape designed to force the Mahratta to the precipice edge. They now marched steadily forward, jabbing the Mahratta with their long bayonets. Those in front of the stabbing blades pushed desperately at their comrades to get away, but there was simply no room on the slowly shrinking space on the ravine path. Hundreds of men were being forced over the edge. Some grabbed for friends to hold them back, but more often than not both were pushed over instead. Sometimes they would go in ones and twos; other times whole groups of men who had been trying to hold on to each other would be dragged or pushed off, screaming in terror. Many of the desperate men tried to climb down the rough stone of the cliff, searching for hand and foot holds either to stay just below the path or to attempt a descent to the bottom. Some made progress, but others were dislodged by bodies falling from above so that they also fell to their doom.
“My God,” breathed Carstairs from beside me as we both watched.
From the top of the tower and beyond musket range from the outer fort we had probably the best view of the unfolding drama. It was awful to watch, but you could not take your eyes away either. Those on the inner fort ramparts would look over the battlements occasionally, but their glimpses would be met by a hail of musket fire from the outer fort opposite. Most of the garrison could only gauge the scale of the tragedy outside their walls by the continuous shrieks, screams and yells. They knew that the outer fort garrison was being horribly slaughtered and it filled most of them with fear. The sepoys and Highlanders continued their slow, prodding march and hardly lost a man, while hundreds more of the enemy were killed. It was the panic and terror that killed the Mahratta, not the bayonets. The British commanders must have been torn between a sense of humanity and the wish to destroy an enemy at little cost to their own men. Even if they had wanted to let the Mahratta escape, they were blocking the only escape routes. As we watched, the sepoys prodded the remaining Mahratta further down the cliff and mercifully beyond our line of sight so that now all we could hear was the screaming too. I turned to Khaled, who along with the guards had been frozen and silent as they had watched the sickening scene unfold. I noticed that the hand that gripped his sword hilt had white knuckles and I remembered seeing earlier many of the white-robed Arab troops in the outer fort garrison. Their courage would have been no use them in the tightly packed crowd that slowly descended down the ravine.
It is easy to read these words in black and white, but when you have been two hundred yards away from several thousand men struggling desperately just to live, climbing over each other, trampling people or pushing others off to save themselves, well, it is a sickening sight. You forget for a moment about enemies and allies and just think of them as men, and so without thinking I put out a hand and gripped Khaled’s shoulder in a gesture of support. He shook my hand off angrily and turned around with his eyes glaring furiously.
“I don’t need your sympathy; the battle is not over yet. When your foul red-coated dogs try to enter the inner fort we will show you what real slaughter is!”
I stepped back to look at him. He was angry but he was also shaken, I could see that. If I was unsure then the guards standing behind him were definitely looking shocked, glancing nervously between Khaled, Carstairs and me as though unsure what would happen next. I didn’t reply as I could not think of anything helpful to say. Carstairs and I retreated to the opposite side of the tower while Khaled and the guards stayed where they were.
“God, Flash, did you know that the Mahratta would be trapped like that?” whispered Carstairs.
“I had an idea,” I lied, for I had only remembered about the 78th coming up the ravine when the screaming started. “The 78th Highlanders are coming from the ravine and the 74th should be coming up the cliff path to the southern gate.”
Carstairs looked impressed that I knew the general’s plan. “What are they going to do about the gates?” he asked quietly. “The general does know about them, doesn’t he?”
That was the all-important question. Wellesley had certainly not mentioned them at the one briefing I had been at, but that may have been deliberate. If he knew we had to fight our way through them, he would not have wanted to worry his men early. But if he had known that there were four gates to fight through, surely he would have made alternative plans. For example, bring his siege guns into the outer fort and spend a day or two creating a new breach near the first gate. There was no mention of this in the briefing, but that was two weeks ago. Jock Malcolm must have been speaking to prisoners who had been at the fort, so perhaps one of them had revealed the presence of the gates. They were not new; they had probably been there for centuries. I stared anxiously at the outer fort and beyond for any sign that the plans had been changed, but there seemed to be no activity to move the siege guns at all.
“I hope so, Teddy,” I replied. “I really do hope so.”
Even the bloodthirsty Highlanders were finally sickened with the slaughter on the ravine path, and so a while after the trapped Mahratta had disappeared from our view Colonel Chalmers called his men and the sepoys opposite to a halt. Both units stepped back ten paces and called on the Mahratta to surrender and throw any weapons down. Most of the trapped men had already abandoned their swords and muskets in the struggle to stay alive. Single files of shaken prisoners were then allowed to pass the redcoats, some going to the top of the ravine and through the outer fort and some going to the bottom. The first we knew of this was when the screaming stopped. Then we saw the sad trail of prisoners coming up the path, some weeping, some being sick and the fight taken out of all them. Several wore the white robes of our guards and one of the guards tried shouting at a friend he saw on the path, but the man just stared back and did not respond.
“Quiet,” snarled Khaled at the guard. “We will avenge them, brother. Now it is our turn to do the killing.”
It seemed he was right, for as the redcoats appeared back up the path from the ravine they began to gather by the gate of the outer fort as though preparing for the assault on the inner fortress. No siege guns had moved, but I saw some gunners around a cannon in the outer fort bringing it round to bear on the first gate of the inner fort. This gate would be easy to destroy, but it just opened the way to the corridor of death that stretched around a corner and out of reach of further artillery support. With a sickening feeling, I realised that the British were about to walk right into the Mahratta trap
The musket fire between the two armies, which h
ad died down during the conflict in the ravine, now increased. Mahratta were firing over the battlements at the mass of redcoats by the outer fort, while redcoats from that fort fired back to keep the heads of the defenders down during the assault. Some rockets were fired at the British defenders, but the Mahratta were not really trying to stop the redcoats from attacking. Instead, they gathered around the gatehouses and the walls between them and readied themselves to create their own bloodbath.
Carstairs and I watched in dismay as the cannon in the outer fort opened fire on the gate, for it seemed that we alone among the British knew what waited on the other side of that entrance.
“We have to do something,” said Carstairs urgently as the assault party started to work its way around the ravine path towards the inner fort gate. I saw some were carrying axes, but it would take forever for them to chop their way through four gates and they would never be given the chance.
“What can we do?” I asked. “They would never hear now if we shouted a warning, and we can’t get out of the fort to tell them. We cannot even get out of this tower. Khaled has more of his white-robed men gathered at the bottom if we try to make a run for it.” While my hopes had risen at the fast fall of the outer fort, now that the redcoats were about to charge into the Mahratta trap I could see myself taking that message to the begum after all.
“I am not going back to that prison cell,” said Carstairs firmly. Of course he did not know that his incarceration was as a hostage to ensure that I would do as Bappoo wanted – or that I had been weighing up the odds of running out on him.
Thoughts were interrupted by the booming of the cannon opposite, which punched its first hole in the inner fort gate. The assault party standing on the ravine path to one side cheered but did not move as through the dust they could see that the gate was still standing. I watched as the gun crew rushed to reload and in a few moments the gun crashed out again, this time with its aim slightly adjusted. This shot must have worked, for while I could not see the gate I could see the assault part rush forward, cheering again, and then all hell broke loose.
While the redcoats in the outer fort maintained a covering fire they could not see the Mahratta on the inner walls of the corridor between the gates and these men now fired down with impunity on the first redcoats through the broken entrance. Rockets were also thrown down, and while notoriously unreliable, in a confined space they were lethal, bouncing off the walls and hitting and scorching men until they exploded. The roar of gunfire as the first troops entered was terrific. Every Mahratta there seemed to want to exact revenge for the slaughter that they had been forced to listen to earlier. The commanding officer of the assault, Colonel Kenny, had been killed early on, but I heard later that several of the axemen had got through to the next gate before they were cut down. The rest saw quickly that they could not survive in that maelstrom and pulled back out through the gate, taking as many wounded as they could with them.
The redcoats milled around on the ravine path in confusion. I could see officers running to and from the assault party with news and orders. There was no sign of Wellesley; it was Stevenson’s column that was to make the assault and the general had evidently decided not to interfere in its command. We watched as they tried to manoeuvre a gun onto the path to the inner fort, but the wheels of the gun carriage were too wide for parts of the path and as it was then blocking the way it was deliberately wheeled over the edge to crash down into the gorge below. More men came forward with axes and this time they also had bundles of sticks and torches; they were evidently going to try using smoke to give them cover. If there was just one gate that might have worked, but not with four. Once more the redcoats began to gather outside the gateway. Some leaned around to fire up at the Mahratta waiting for them on the inner wall while others lit and threw in the bundles of sticks as far as they could. The sticks began to burn. Some must have been damp, for the smoke was thick as it rose up out of the gap between the walls leading to the first gate in the corridor. I could not see as the men went in again, but I heard the effect for there was a sudden increase in gunfire from the Mahratta and the fizz and crack of more rockets. The British had the cover of the smoke but it hindered them too as they tried to cough their way through to the first gate in the passage. For the Mahratta, while they could not see, it was still like shooting fish in a barrel.
Chapter 31
It was Carstairs who saw it first. I was staring towards the battle at the gate when he nudged me and pulled me back, away from where Khaled and the guards stood also watching the gate. He nodded to a stretch of wall that faced the outer fort but was on the opposite end of the wall from the corridor of gates. There, looking through a gap in the battlements, was a face, an unmistakably white face, where a face had no right to be. For beneath that face and the wall it was on was a cliff that led down into the ravine, and consequently the wall was hardly manned at all. In fact, there were just three Mahratta guards on that stretch of the wall and they had gone much closer to the gate to watch what was happening there, confident that no one could reach the top of the wall behind them.
I found out later that the face I was looking at belonged to a Captain Campbell of the 94th regiment, part of Stevenson’s division. When the first attack on the gateway had been repulsed he had looked for another way in. He had done some climbing in Scotland and thought that the cliff to the right of the gate was rough enough to be climbed. On his own initiative he had found a rope and a light bamboo ladder and led his light company along the path past the gate. Then he had started to climb, the rope tied to his waist and the ladder over his shoulder. Two men had gone with him to help and they had made it to a small rocky outcrop at the base of the wall. They tied the rope to a large rock so that it could support those who followed and then Campbell had put the ladder up against the wall. As his men swarmed up the rope behind him, he climbed the ladder to see what strength of enemy waited at the top of the wall. This was when we noticed him.
Carefully the captain slipped over the wall and, clever lad, he took off his shako and stood staring out over the wall as though he were on guard – far less conspicuous than if he had crouched down, looking furtive. Soon two more redcoats had appeared, adopting the same casual pose, then a steady stream of redcoats were coming over the wall. There must have been eight or nine standing there in their faded red coats and with their hats under their arms, but still the Mahratta guards further along the battlements had not seen them. Someone noticed them, though, for with a sudden Arabic oath Khaled pointed them out to the guards and then leant over the parapet to speak to his men waiting outside the tower. They were among the nearest to stop the redcoat incursion and I leant over the parapet to see how many there were. Twenty of the white-robed elite soldiers were staring up at Khaled.
The Persian commander had barely got the first words out when he emitted a shriek and started to lean out even further. I turned my head just in time to find that Carstairs had got behind Khaled and was in the act of lifting the man’s ankles high above his head and the Persian was sliding over the edge. He flailed wildly for a grip but his body was over the tipping point now and Carstairs gave him a final shove with one hand while grabbing Khaled’s sword from its scabbard before that disappeared from sight. The two guards who had been staring with astonishment at the British troops were for a moment stunned at their master’s disappearance. Khaled’s final scream terminated in a wet splat sound as he hit the stone-paved street below. Before they could recover their wits, Carstairs charged the guards with his captured sword, but the nearest one did not get chance to lower his pike before Carstairs was on him and jamming the captured sword in the guard’s guts. The second guard, now outnumbered, did not stay around to contest the issue, but instead fled to the stairs down to the ground.
“What the hell have you done?” I shouted at Carstairs as I looked back over the edge of the tower. Instantly two muskets flashed and a ball chipped stone from the parapet inches away from my head. There were yells of outrage as
the white-robed soldiers looked down at their fallen leader. Already several were running for the door of our tower.
“But you said we should look for chances to help with the attack,” said Carstairs with what seemed childlike simplicity. He was bending to jam the shaft of the wounded guard’s pike into a bracket to block the trap door. We could hear more shouts and yells coming from the floors of the tower below us as the Persians charged upwards.
“And listen,” continued Carstairs with a note of pride at his own ingenuity, “they are coming up the stairs of the tower now rather than attacking our men.”
This was true as the redcoats were now running along the wall to start attacking from behind the Mahratta in the gatehouse, killing the three sentries on the way. All this was fine, but it seemed to miss the more pertinent point.
“You bloody idiot,” I shouted at him. “What do you think is going to happen when they get to the top of the tower? That stick isn’t going to stop them. They are going to chop us to pieces. We are trapped up here!”
“Don’t worry, Flash, we are not trapped.” Carstairs was still talking calmly as he ran across the tower. “We can escape along the top of this wall.”
With that he swung his legs over the top and dropped until just his face was showing over the parapet. That wall was far too narrow to walk across as I remembered it, but as I ran to him I saw his head moving towards the unoccupied eastern rampart. I looked down at the top of the wall again. It was bloody narrow, just a double course of bricks. That is fine if you are walking down a strip of bricks in the street to keep your boots out of the mud, but when there is a two-storey drop on either side it is a different matter. The trap door rattled behind me as a shoulder slammed into it from the floor below to remind me that I did not have long to make a decision. The chances were I would either be chopped up by a vengeful Persian or fall to my death on the street below, but at least there was a chance of survival walking along the wall. I swung my legs over and gingerly dropped down as once more there was a slamming sound behind me, but this time the noise of splintering too as the pike shaft was giving way.
Flashman and the Cobra Page 32