Acknowledgements
I would like first to thank Philip Haythornthwaite, who not only very kindly offered to write the foreword, but also checked the book before publication. The following also read the manuscript and offered invaluable advice: Mary Chapman, Jonathan Hellewell, Leo Lester, Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm McVittie, Nigel Smith, David Sorrell, Dunstan Speight and Matt Wheeldon. At The History Press Shaun Barrington, Lauren Newby and Jo De Vries, and their editors and designers, have all put in a great deal of work preparing the book for publication and deserve praise.
I am very grateful to Her Majesty the Queen for permission to quote from the various sources made available to me at the Royal Archives. Also thanks to the staff of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Caird Archive and Library at the National Maritime Museum, Lady Margaret Hall College Library, the National Archives, the National Library of Scotland, National Museums Scotland, the Oxford Union Society, the Templer Study Centre at the National Army Museum, the Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum, the School of Oriental and African Studies Library, Spinks, the Staffordshire Regiment Museum, Wigan Archive Services and the Rector, Librarian and staff of the High School of Glasgow. I would also like to thank Peter Gawn for his help and research concerning Campbell’s time in Gosport.
Contents
Title
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Note on Nomenclature
Chronology of the Life of Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde
Prologue
1. Witness to War: The Peninsular War – The Battle of Vimeiro –
The Retreat to Corunna – Walcheren
2. Into Battle: The Battle of Barrosa Hill – The Battle of Vitoria –
The Siege of San Sebastian – The Crossing of the Bidassoa
3. Policeman: The West Indies – The Demerara Slave Revolt –
Ireland and the Tithe War – The Chartists
4. Imperialist: The First Opium War – The Battle of Chinkiangfoo –
The Treaty of Nankin – Chusan
5. Mutiny Apprenticeship: The Punjab – Ramnuggur – Action at
Sadoolapore – The Battle of Chillianwala – The Battle of Goojrat
6. Soldier Sahib: The North-West Frontier – Dalhousie
7. Highlander: The Crimean War – The Battle of the Alma
8. Modern Major-General: The Battle of Balaklava – The Siege of Sebastopol
9. Commander-in-Chief: The Indian Mutiny – The Relief of Lucknow
10. Deliverer: The Battle of Cawnpore – Defeat of the Gwalior Contingent
11. Conqueror: The Taking of Lucknow – Pacification of India
12. Old Soldier: White Mutiny – Second Opium War – Return to Britain
Appendices
Appendix A The extent of British Casualties in the Summer Campaign of 1858 in India
Appendix B Campbell’s Ancestry
Bibliography
Glossary
Plates
Copyright
Foreword
The officer corps of the British Army of the late Georgian and early Victorian periods was drawn from a diversity of backgrounds. Contrary to one perception, the aristocracy represented only a minor, if influential, component: more prolific were those drawn from the lesser gentry, minor landowners and the professional classes, and it was possible for a soldier of even humbler origins to rise to high rank if he possessed the talent and the luck. During the years of the Peninsular War, for example, no less than 803 ‘rankers’ were commissioned as officers,1 although it was difficult for them to prosper after the war if devoid of either influence or financial resources. The opportunities were a degree more auspicious for those who had some military connections, and one of the most remarkable officers from a relatively modest background is the subject of this study: Colin Campbell.
From a family more artisan than gentry, Colin Campbell had a reasonable education and was commissioned while still a boy. He began to learn his trade during a gallant career in the Peninsular War but, in common with many junior officers, Campbell’s promotion was slow in the limited opportunities for distinction following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. However, he served widely and clearly capably until he became famous for his command of the Highland Brigade in the Crimea, and, following that, in higher command in India, where he reached the pinnacle of his reputation.
In the pantheon of military heroes of the Victorian era, Colin Campbell was unusual, and while he may not have been among those of the first rank as a tactician, he surely was in terms of the rapport he established with those under his command. Fairness and understanding seem to have dictated his conduct, as related by a number who encountered him. William Munro graduated as MD from Glasgow in 1844 at the age of 22 and joined the 91st Foot as assistant surgeon in the same year. Ten years later he was appointed surgeon to the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders and shortly after joining his new regiment in the Crimea first met Campbell. As an experienced officer his observations on his commander are significant:
… on being introduced to him, he shook me kindly by the hand, and bade me to ‘look well after my regiment as it would soon need all my care and attention’. he was the picture of a soldier; strong and active, though weather-beaten. Ever after my first introduction to him, in the Crimea and in India, Sir Colin was kind and friendly to me.2
When recalling Campbell’s participation in the action at Balaklava, notably that involving the 93rd that became known as the Thin Red Line, Munro observed that after the regiment had fired a couple of volleys at the approaching Russian cavalry:
The men of the 93rd at that moment became a little, just a little, restive, and brought their rifles to the charge, manifesting an inclination to advance, and meet the cavalry half-way with the bayonet. But old Sir Colin brought them sharply back to discipline. He could be angry, could Sir Colin, and when in an angry mood spoke sharp and quick, and when very angry, was given to use emphatic language; and such he made use of on that occasion. The men were quiet and steady at a moment.
Although not born in the Highlands, but from Glasgow, Campbell understood the Highlanders, who clearly adored him, and their esteem was reciprocated. Munro explained:
The men were very proud of Sir Colin as a leader, and were much attracted to him also, and for the following reason. He was of their own warlike race, of their own kith and kin, understood their character and feelings, and could rouse or quiet them at will with a few words … He lived amongst them, and they never knew the moment when, in his watchfulness, he might appear to help and cheer or to chide them. He spoke at times not only kindly, but familiarly to them, and often addressed individuals by their names, for long use and constant intercourse with soldiers had made his memory good in this respect. He was a frequent visitor to the hospital, and took an interest in their ailments, and in all that concerned their comfort when they were ill. Such confidence in and affection for him had the men of the old Highland brigade, that they would have stood by or followed him through any danger. Yet there was never a commanding officer or general more exacting on all points of discipline than he.3
Another 93rd Highlander, William Forbes-Mitchell, quoted an example of Campbell’s memory for faces before the assault on the Sekundrabagh. A Welsh sergeant of the 53rd named Joe Lee, who had served previously under Campbell:
presuming an old acquaintance, called out, ‘Sir Colin, your Excellency, let the infantry storm … and we’ll soon make short work of the murderous villains!’ Sergeant Lee was known by his nickname, Dobbin, and Campbell remembered even this, asking, ‘Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?’ When the attack was mounted the 4th Punjabis in the first wave faltered, and as
soon as Sir Colin saw them waver, he turned to Colonel Ewart, who was in command of the seven companies of the Ninety-Third … and said, ‘Colonel Ewart, bring on the tartan – let my own lads at them!’ Before the command could be repeated or the buglers had time to sound the advance, the whole seven companies, like one man, leaped over the wall, with such a yell of pent-up rage as I had never heard before or since.4
For all the rewards bestowed upon him, Campbell seems to have remained level-headed, even modest. On his first encounter with the 93rd after he had been elevated to the peerage, the regiment’s pipe-major, John MacLeod, said, ‘I beg your pardon, Sir Colin, but we dinna ken hoo tae address you noo that the Queen has made you a Lord’. Campbell replied, ‘Just call me Sir Colin, John, the same as in the old times; I like the old name best’.
The Times correspondent William Russell recalled an incident from the mutiny in which Campbell, with his arm in a sling following an injury sustained in a fall from his horse, sat on a native bed around a camp fire, surrounded by Baluchi troops:
Once he rose to give an order, when a tired Beloochee flung himself on the crazy charpoy, but was jerked off by an indignant comrade with the loud exclamation, ‘Don’t you see, you fool, that you are on the Lord Sahib’s charpoy?’ Lord Clyde broke in, ‘No – let him lie there; don’t interfere with his rest’, and himself took his seat on a billet of wood.
Inevitably a degree of romanticism intruded upon the reality of the Highland regiments and their commanders during the Victorian period, perhaps tending towards an over-simplification of complex factors. Some half a century after Campbell’s death it was stated that ‘Fifty years of arduous service had raised him from a carpenter’s son to the peerage, but he always remained a simple, God-fearing Scot, beloved by the rank and file of his army’.5 It is important that a remarkable individual is now reassessed and commemorated in an important new biography.
Philip Haythornthwaite
Notes
1 USJ, 1835, 413.
2 Munro, 2.
3 Munro, 36–7.
4 Forbes-Mitchell (London 1887 edition), 47–8.
5 Gilliat, 331.
Note on Nomenclature
The spelling and choice of place names is a thorny issue. Take, for example, the Indian town of Kanpur in the state of Awadh. In Campbell’s day it was ‘Cawnpore’ in the kingdom of ‘Oudh’ and many modern British books still use that spelling. ‘Cawnpore has not made the transition to Kanpur’, complained Indian historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee recently. ‘This is not a semantic quibble. “Cawnpore” is the sign that the massacres have not lost their pride of place in the white man’s chamber of horrors.’ This seems extreme. Barely anyone in England has even heard of them.
As this is the biography of a British officer, drawing mainly on British sources, I have used British place names current at the time and, where possible, Campbell’s own spelling. Using modern spelling would, for consistency, demand using the modern Chinese Romanisation of place names too. It is awkward to quote from a nineteenth-century British source which refers to the island of ‘Chusan’, and then in the next sentence use its modern spelling ‘Zhoushan’. Likewise, British accounts of the landing in Portugal in 1808 refer to the River ‘Maceira’. To use its local name, ‘Alcabrichel’, would be utterly confusing.
The one exception made is the land of Campbell’s birth. In the nineteenth century it was a near universal convention to refer to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland as ‘England’, and its soldiers as ‘English’. To do otherwise is somewhat anachronistic, but given that Campbell was a Scot who commanded Highland regiments, it avoids absurd phrases like the ‘English battalion of Highlanders’, or ‘the Black Watch won an English victory’, which would jar too much. Therefore, I use ‘Britain’ and ‘British’.
For the revolt of 1857 I use the term ‘Indian Mutiny’. It has been variously called India’s First War of Independence, the Great Rebellion, the Uprising or Revolt of 1857, the Sepoy War and the Sepoy Mutiny. No wonder that when Surendra Sen was commissioned to write a definitive, objective account by the Indian government for the centenary in 1957, he elected to call his work simply Eighteen Fifty-Seven. The revolt was first known as the ‘Indian mutinies’ because, having reported mutinous rumblings for months before violence broke out at Meerut in May 1857, the newspapers continued to report it as a series of isolated events. The majority of nineteenth-century sources use the same terminology, even though it was more cataclysmic than a mere mutiny. One could argue the virtues of the various rebrandings, but the fact remains that if you refer to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ more readers know what you mean than if you use any of the others.
Confusing Campbells
Campbell’s most famous contemporary namesake was Lieutenant-General Sir Colin Campbell (1776–1847), aide-de-camp to Wellington, and later Governor of Ceylon. There was also a Lieutenant-General Colin Campbell (1754–1814) appointed Governor of Gibraltar during the Peninsular War. Campbell has also been mistaken for fellow Crimean War general Sir John Campbell; Captain Colin Frederick Campbell, whose letters from Sebastopol were published in 1894; Colonel Robert Campbell, who served in the Crimea and during the mutiny; and Brigadier William Campbell, who served under Sir Colin Campbell in India. Some have even confused him with the biographer of Princess Diana, Lady Colin Campbell.
For simplicity’s sake, where a source refers to ‘Lord Clyde’ in a context prior to his peerage, I have changed it to ‘Sir Colin’ or ‘Campbell’.
Confusing Regiments
The 1st Foot Guards were known as the Grenadier Guards from 1815, the 2nd Foot Guards as the Coldstream Guards from 1670, and the 3rd or Scots Regiment of Foot Guards as the Scots Fusilier Guards from 1831 to 1877. During Campbell’s time the Scots Fusilier Regiment of Foot was known as the 21st Royal North British Fusilier Regiment of Foot and, from 1877, as the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The 7th Regiment of Foot was known as the Royal Fusiliers.
The 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot, renamed from February 1812 ‘the 1st Regiment of Foot (Royal Scots)’, was often referred to as ‘the Royals’ or the ‘Royal Scots’. Not to be confused with the 1st (Royal) Regiment of Dragoons, also called the ‘Royals’.
As regards the Indian army, all corps referred to as Native Infantry are Bengal Native Infantry, unless otherwise stated. The Bengal Light Cavalry, Light Infantry and Irregular Cavalry did not use the term ‘Native’ in their title, although the rank and file were Indian. A few short-lived light cavalry regiments were raised during the mutiny from white troops. These were designated European Light Cavalry.
Confusing Ranks
Brevet: As a suffix this indicated temporary rank. A brevet-lieutenant-colonel, for example, was a major promoted to acting lieutenant-colonel. So, during the Indian Mutiny, Major Ewart of the 93rd was promoted brevet-lieutenant-colonel because the regiment’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Hope, had been promoted brigadier. After the battle or campaign, the officer reverted to his previous rank. A ‘brevet’ was also a mass promotion for senior officers granted at the end of a war or on a coronation, e.g. in July 1821. This type of brevet was discontinued under Queen Victoria.
Local rank: This was a temporary rank given to an officer for the duration of a campaign overseas. It included three ranks which were only used locally, viz. brigadier (1st class), brigadier (2nd class) and brigadier-general. These ranks were generally granted to colonels placed in command of brigades during war, or colonels with extra responsibilities, such as commandants of garrisons. Local rank was also granted to general officers, so a major-general might be promoted to the local rank of lieutenant-general. Officers reverted to their original, substantive rank at the end of the campaign.
Double rank: An officer could hold a different rank in his regiment than in the army. The highest serving rank in a regiment was lieutenant-colonel, but each regiment also had a colonel of the regiment, a chiefly honorary position often given to a senior general. So, for example, Campbell was made Colonel of the 67th F
oot during the Crimean War, while his army rank was major-general. Confusingly, a month later he was given the local rank of lieutenant-general.
Double rank was standard in the Foot Guards, an honour granted by James II. This meant that all Guards officers automatically had a higher rank in the army than in their regiment. So an ensign in the Grenadier Guards was a lieutenant in the army, a Guards lieutenant also a captain in the army, a captain also a lieutenant-colonel, and Guards majors and lieutenant-colonels also full colonels. In wartime, this double rank was extremely important. Supra-regimental command was based on seniority of army rank rather than regimental rank. In a normal infantry regiment of the line, an officer had to be promoted first major, then lieutenant-colonel, then full colonel before becoming a major-general. However, a Guards major was automatically also a full colonel in the army, and could be promoted major-general immediately. This also meant that when Campbell’s Highland Brigade served alongside the Guards Brigade in the 1st Division in the Crimea, although Campbell had been a lieutenant-colonel eighteen years longer than Henry Bentinck, the Guards’ brigade commander, Bentinck was his senior because when promoted major in his regiment (the Coldstream Guards) he also became a full colonel in the army, a year and a month before Campbell.
Chronology of the Life of Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde
1792
Born in Glasgow.
c. 1797
Attends Glasgow Grammar School. Mother dies.
1803
Attends Royal Naval and Military Academy, Gosport.
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