Colin Campbell

After the battle of Vittoria Graham moved forward to the investment of San Sebastian. In itself before that battle the fortress was of little account, but since then the French General Rey had used great energy in restoring its powers of defence; and its garrison at the beginning of Graham's operations reached a total of about three thousand men. San Sebastian is situated on a peninsula jutting out into the sea, and is connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The western side of the peninsula is washed by the sea, the eastern by the estuary of the river Urumea. At its northern extremity rose the steep height of Monte Urgullo, the summit of which was occupied by the castle of La Mota, a citadel of great strength, capable of being defended after the town should have fallen. The town, surrounded by a fortified enceinte, occupied the entire breadth of the peninsula. The high curtain protecting it on the southern or landward side had in front of it a large hornwork, with a ravelin enclosed by a covered way and glacis. The east and west defences were weak; along the eastern side the water of the Urumea estuary receded at low tide for some distance from the foot of the wall, leaving access thereto from the isthmus. At the neck of the peninsula, about half a mile in advance of the town defences, was the height of San Bartolomeo, near the eastern verge of which was the convent of the same name. This building the French had fortified and had thrown up a redoubt in connection with it, convent and redoubt forming the advanced post of the garrison.

Graham was in command of the operations, his force amounting to about ten thousand men. The obvious preliminary was the capture of the redoubt and convent of San Bartolomeo. An attack on this position, made on the 14th of July after an artillery preparation, had failed with heavy loss. A second attempt made on the 17th was more successful, three days of unintermitting artillery fire having reduced the convent to ruins and silenced the redoubt. The attack was made in two columns, the right one of which Colin Campbell accompanied with his own, the light company. The chief fighting of the day was done by his regiment, which stormed both convent and redoubt and after some hard fighting drove the French out of the adjacent suburb of San Martino and occupied what fire had spared of it. In this affair the Ninth lost upwards of seventy officers and soldiers. Campbell's laconic entry in his journal for this day is simply, "Convent taken." But he must have distinguished himself conspicuously, since in Graham's despatch to Lord Wellington, among "the officers whose gallantry was most conspicuous in leading on their men to overcome the variety of obstacles exposed to them" was mentioned "Lieutenant Colin Campbell of the Ninth Foot."

The Commander-in-Chief desired judicious speed, and the operations were hurried on unduly by men who were too impetuous to adhere to the scheme sanctioned by their chief. After a four days' bombardment of the place the assault was ordered for the early morning of the 25th. The storming-party consisted of a battalion of the Royals, with the task of carrying the great breach; of the Thirty-Eighth, told off to assail the lesser breach further to the right; and of the Ninth, to act in support of the Royals. Colin Campbell had a special position and a special duty, of a kind seldom entrusted to a subaltern and markedly indicative of the estimation which he had thus early earned. He was placed in the centre of the Royals with twenty men of his (the light) company, having the light company of the Royals as his immediate support and under his orders, and accompanied by a ladder-party under an engineer officer. His specific orders were on reaching the crest of the breach to gain the ramparts on the left, sweep the curtain to the high work in the centre of the main front, and there establish himself. The signal for an advance to the assault was given prematurely, while it was still dark, by the explosion of a mine, and the head of the storming-party moved out of the trenches promptly but in straggling order. The space between the exit from the parallel and the breach, some three hundred yards, was very rugged, broken by projecting rocks, pools, seaweed and other impediments. These difficulties, the darkness, and the withering fire from the ramparts, increased the tendency to disorder, and presently Campbell was not surprised to find an actual check. The halted mass had opened fire and there was no moving it forward. He pushed on past the halted body having there lost some men of his detachment; and reached the breach, the lower part of which he observed to be thickly strewn with killed and wounded. "There were," to quote from his journal, "a few individual officers spread on the face of the breach, but nothing more. These were cheering, and gallantly exposing themselves to the close and destructive fire directed on them from the round tower and other defences. In going up I passed Jones of the Engineers[1] who was wounded; and on gaining the top I was shot through the right hip and tumbled to the bottom. Finding on rising that I was not disabled from moving, and observing two officers of the Royals who were exerting themselves to lead some of their men from under the line-wall near to the breach, I went to assist their endeavours and again went up the breach with them, when I was shot through the inside part of the left thigh." In the language of the brilliant historian of the Peninsular War – "It was in vain that Lieutenant Campbell, breaking through the tumultuous crowd with the survivors of his chosen detachment, mounted the ruins – twice he ascended, twice he was wounded, and all around him died."

The assault failed; and the siege of San Sebastian was temporarily exchanged for a blockade. There was much angry discussion and recrimination as to the causes of the disastrous issue. It was remarked that no general or staff officer had quitted the trenches, and that what leading there was devolved entirely on the regimental officers. They, at least, had fought well and exposed themselves freely, and none had behaved himself more gallantly than Colin Campbell. This was heartily and handsomely acknowledged by Graham when he thus wrote in his despatch to Lord Wellington describing the assault: – "I beg to recommend to you Lieutenant Campbell of the Ninth, who led the forlorn hope, and who was severely wounded in the breach." Such a recognition, barren of immediate results though it was, Colin Campbell probably thought cheaply earned at the cost of a mere couple of bullet-holes. These, however, hindered him from participating in the desperate fighting of the final and successful assault on San Sebastian; and, indeed, when after the surrender of the place his division departed, he had to remain an invalid in the shattered town. He was now about to perpetrate the only breach of military discipline ever laid to his charge. Having heard of the early prospect of a battle, he and a brother officer who had also been wounded took the liberty of deserting from hospital for the purpose of joining their regiment. How long it took them to limp from San Sebastian to Oryarzun is not specified; but they reached the regiment on October 6th just in time to join the midnight march to the left bank of the Bidassoa opposite Andaya, and on the following morning to wade the river and enter France. The British cannonade awoke the French to find their country invaded by an enemy and hostile cannon-balls falling in their bivouacs.

From Andaya the division in which Colin Campbell marched sprang up the slopes to assail the key of the position, the Croix des Bouquets. To that stronghold reinforcements were hurrying, and attacks on it had already been made in vain; "But," in the burning words of Napier, "at this moment Cameron arrived with the Ninth regiment, and rushed with great vehemence to the summit of the first height. The French infantry opened ranks to let the guns retire, and then retreated themselves at full speed to a second rise where they could only be approached in a narrow front. Cameron quickly threw his men into a single column and bore against this new position, which curving inwards enabled the French to pour a concentrated fire upon his regiment; nor did his violent course seem to dismay them until he was within ten yards, when, appalled by the furious shout and charge of the Ninth, they gave way and the ridges of the Croix des Bouquets were won as far as the royal road." The regiment in this encounter lost nearly one hundred men; and Colin Campbell, who commanded the light company in its front, was now again severely wounded. The breach of discipline he had committed in discharging himself from the hospital his colonel condoned with no sterner punishment than a severe reprimand, on account of his gallant conduct in the first action fought on French soil.

CHAPTER II

COLONIAL AND HOME SERVICE

With the wound which struck him down on the Croix des Bouquets on the 7th of October 1813 Colin Campbell's active service in his original regiment ended, and on the 9th of November in the same year he was promoted to a captaincy without purchase in the Sixtieth Rifles. Still enfeebled by his wounds, he came home before the end of the year with the strongest recommendations to the Horse Guards from the commanders under whom he had served in the field, – recommendations which do not appear to have availed him materially. He made good his claim to a temporary wound-pension of £100 a year, but the application made on his behalf for staff-employment with Sir Thomas Graham in Holland was not successful.

One would fain gain some introspection into the nature, character, and tendencies of this young soldier, who in his twenty-first year was already a veteran of war after more than five years of pretty constant active service. It would be pleasant to have opportunities for regarding him as something other than a mere military lay-figure, – to attain to some conversance with his habits, his tastes, his attitude towards his comrades, his relations with his family, the character of such study and reading as he could find time for, and so forth. But the means for doing this are altogether lacking. Lord Clyde was a very modest man, and it was with reluctance that he allowed his papers to be used for the purposes of a memoir. He, however, left it by his will to the discretion of his trustees to dispose of his papers, with the characteristic injunction: "If a short memoir should appear to them to be absolutely necessary and indispensable (which I should regret and hope may be avoided), then it should be limited as much as possible to the modest recital of the services of an old soldier." The trustees, seventeen years after Lord Clyde's death, judged wisely in sanctioning the compilation of a memoir, the material available for which was confided to the late General Shadwell who had been long and intimately associated with Lord Clyde both at home and on campaign. General Shadwell's biography of his chief is a most careful and accurate work; but probably because of a lack of such material as, for instance, familiar correspondence affords, it somewhat fails to furnish an adequate presentment of Colin Campbell as he was during the long years before he emerged from comparative obscurity, and became gradually a marked and characteristic figure familiar to and cherished by his fellow-countrymen.

Campbell served with a battalion of the Sixtieth in Nova Scotia from October, 1814, to July, 1815, when ill-health caused by his wounds compelled him to return to Europe. After a course of thermal treatment in southern France he served for two years at Gibraltar, and early in 1819 followed to Barbadoes the Twenty-First Fusiliers to which regiment he had been transferred. The next seven years of his life he passed in the West Indies, – the first two years of the seven in Barbadoes, the latter five in Demerara, where he served as aide-de-camp and brigade-major to the Governor, General Murray. The tropical climate of the West Indies agreed with him, and notwithstanding recrudescences of Walcheren fever and frequent annoyances from his wounds he was able to enjoy life and relish the society of the colony. During his soldiering in Spain he and his friend and comrade Seward had perforce lived on their pay, and had firmly avoided incurring debt. With his captain's pay and his wound-pension Campbell found himself no longer obliged to live penuriously, and indeed was able to assist his father by a considerable annual payment. And now in Demerara with his staff-appointment he was so well off that, in his disregard for money, he carelessly allowed his pension to lapse, a neglect which he had bitter reason to regret later. His friend General Murray was succeeded in the Demerara command by General Sir Benjamin D'Urban, a distinguished Peninsular officer, between whom and his brigade-major there was speedily engendered a mutual esteem and affection. Probably, indeed, those years in Demerara were the pleasantest of Colin Campbell's life. Comfortable (and we may be sure efficient) in his staff-position, and the right hand man of a chief who loved him, he was happy in his regiment and welcome everywhere in society. When in November, 1825, the opportunity presented itself for his promotion by purchase to a majority in his regiment, it was the spontaneous generosity of a colonial friend which mainly enabled him to buy the step. The promotion was of the greatest professional importance to him, and indeed may be considered the turning-point of his career; but it required him to vacate his pleasant appointment and to take leave of the chief whose friendship he so warmly cherished. Returning to England in 1826 to join the depôt of his regiment, he took home with him the strongest recommendations from Sir Benjamin D'Urban to the authorities at the Horse Guards; but he continued to serve with his regiment at home until the autumn of 1832 in the rank of major, although through the kindness of a relative the money was ready for the purchase of his promotion to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

General Shadwell furnishes us with an interesting sketch of Colin Campbell's personal aspect from a portrait taken of him in his uniform at this period of his career. "A profusion of curly brown hair, a well-shaped mouth and a wide brow, already foreshadowing the deep lines which became so marked a feature of his countenance in later years, convey the idea of manliness and vigour. His height was about five feet nine, his frame well knit and powerful; and but that his shoulders were too broad for his height, his figure was that of a symmetrically-made man. To an agreeable presence he added the charm of engaging manners, which, according to the testimony of those who were familiar with him at this period, rendered him popular both at the dinner-table and in the drawing-room."

After several disappointments, in October, 1832, through the good offices of Lord Fitzroy Somerset he was gazetted to an unattached lieutenant-colonelcy by purchase. The promotion cost him £1300 and relegated him for a time to half-pay, "after," to use his own words, "a period of nearly twenty-five years on full pay – viz. upwards of five years as a subaltern, nearly thirteen as captain, and seven as major." His time being now at his own disposal, his active and energetic temperament would not allow him to vegetate in idleness. He determined to watch the operations of the siege of Antwerp conducted by a French force under Marshal Gérard against the resolute but scanty Dutch garrison, which under the energetic command of General Chassé was holding the citadel and outworks of the historic Flemish city. He kept a detailed and technical journal of the siege operations and of Chassé's obstinate defence, from which he compiled reports for the Horse Guards; and for these he was afterwards thanked by Lord Hill and Lord Fitzroy Somerset. It was an experience which must have been of service to him when he came to hold high command; as he wrote at the time, "To have been present at and to have witnessed the operations of a siege commenced and carried on en règle to the crowning of the crest of the glacis, and the establishment of the breaching and counter batteries thereon and the descent of the ditch completed, has given me great satisfaction." After the capitulation of Antwerp Campbell wintered in the quaint old city of Marburg in Hesse-Cassel, with the twofold purpose of acquiring the German language and of living economically. The summer and autumn of 1833 he spent in Germany, but was in England during most of 1834 undergoing disappointment after disappointment. His means he found wholly inadequate for a London life, yet it was clear that it would be unwise to absent himself from proximity to the authorities. "Doing nothing and expecting nothing" is one dreary note of this period. Indeed inaction, which he detested, and the dregs in his constitution of the old pestilential Walcheren mischief, were combining to make Colin Campbell morbid and desponding. Yet, considering all things, he had attained better advancement than many of his old Peninsular comrades. Take, for example, George Bell of the Royals, a fellow subaltern with Campbell in Hay's brigade of Graham's corps in the Vittoria campaign. Bell was a younger soldier than Campbell by three years, but he had seen infinitely more service than his senior. Bell "was engaged in the action of Arroyo de Molino, the final siege of Badajos, capture of Fort Napoleon and bridge at Almaraz, in the retreat from Burgos and Madrid, the battles of Vittoria, the Pyrenees, Pass of Maya and Roncevalles, the Nive, Bayonne, St. Pierre, Orthes, Tarbes, and Toulouse, with many other affairs and skirmishes; and he possessed the Peninsular War medal with seven clasps for as many pitched battles." Since the Peninsular War he had fought in India and the Burmese War and had served in the West Indies. And whereas Colin Campbell was a lieutenant-colonel in 1832 George Bell was still a captain in 1839. To complete the contrast, while Campbell was a peer and a full general in the middle of 1858 Bell was still a colonel, after having fought throughout the Crimean War in the command of a battalion. If the former despaired of fortune when a lieutenant-colonel after twenty-seven years of service, how bitterly must the latter have known the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick when still a colonel after forty-eight years of continuous service!

In the early part of 1835 Colin Campbell, still despondent, was in London "living in very scanty hopes of employment." But in May of that year he was offered and accepted the command of the Ninety-Eighth regiment. Its service companies were at the Cape, but as the regiment had nearly completed its period of foreign service it was finally determined that it was not necessary that he should join it there. How poor he was when he had the good fortune to revert to full-pay, may be gathered from his hesitation to become a member of the United Service Club. "My debts and embarrassments" he records "indisposed me to entering it;" but a wise friend insisted upon his taking up his election and backed his insistence by advancing the entrance fees. The depôt of the Ninety-Eighth was at Devonport, commanded by Captain Henry Eyre, afterwards General, and Colonel of the Fifty-Ninth regiment; an officer between whom and Colin Campbell there soon began a friendship which ripened into a most affectionate and enduring intimacy. By dint of questioning this officer regarding the minutest details of the regiment, its new chief was already familiar with its interior economy before its arrival at Portsmouth in the summer of 1837. He then assumed command, and at once set about putting in practice the sound principles on which he himself had been trained in the Ninth regiment, – principles which were the legacy of Sir John Moore to the British army. In the camp at Shorncliffe that great soldier had introduced a system of instruction and interior economy which, in the words of General Shadwell, had produced in the regiments serving under his command an excellence that had borne the test of trial in the varied phases of the great Peninsular struggle, and had left a permanent mark on the service at large. Campbell's anxious and successful endeavour was to make the Ninety-Eighth a well disciplined, thoroughly instructed and trustworthy regiment. The material to his hand was good. He found the depôt in fine order; the service companies brought home by Major Gregory required merely the weeding out of some hard drinkers whose example was prejudicial to the younger soldiers and whom the colonel was able to obtain permission to discharge.

Colin Campbell had a genuine liking for and a thorough knowledge of the private soldier. Throughout life he was by no means slow to wrath when occasion stirred it, and sometimes, indeed, when the incentive was inadequate, for hot Highland blood ran in his veins; and when his face flushed and his gray eyes scintillated with passion, he was not a man with whom it were wise to argue. The slack officer and the bad soldier found no sympathy from a chief whose rebukes were strong and whose punishments were stern; but he had a true comradeship with those in whom he recognised some of that zeal of which he himself had perhaps an excess. Himself ever sedulous in the fulfilment of duty and sparing himself in nothing, he required of his officers a scrupulous attention to their duties in everything regarding the instruction, well-being, and conduct of their men. General Shadwell writes: "Frugal in his habits by nature and force of circumstances, Colonel Campbell laid stress on the observance of economy in the officers' mess, believing a well-ordered establishment of this kind to be the best index of a good regiment. Regarding the mess as one of the principal levers of discipline, he made a rule of attending it even when the frequent return of his fever and ague rendered late dinners a physical discomfort. Cramped in his means, he denied himself many little comforts in order that he might have the wherewithal to return hospitality and be able to set an example to his brother officers in the punctual discharge of his mess liabilities. His intercourse with his officers off duty was unrestrained and of the most friendly character. He sympathised with them in their occupations and sports, and though the instruction and discipline of the regiment was carried on with great strictness, the best feeling pervaded all ranks."

In the ordinary tour of duty the Ninety-Eighth removed from Portsmouth to Weedon, and thence it proceeded to Manchester which was in what was then known as the Northern District command, now subdivided into the North-Eastern and North-Western Districts. In those days there were no railways, and the long marches by road, in many respects advantageous though they were, and worthy as they are, at least to some extent, of being reverted to at present, certainly tested severely the discipline of regiments. An officer who took part in the marches of the Ninety-Eighth thus records his recollections: – "The regiment was in such a high state of discipline in these marches through the length and breadth of the land, that none of those occurrences which have since been the subject of complaint took place. Day after day I had seen the regiment turn out without a man missing; and drunkenness was very trifling considering how popular the army then was, and how liberally the men were treated. The fact was that Colin Campbell appealed to the reason and feelings of his men, and made it a point of honour with them to be present and sober in their billets at tattoo and at morning parade for the march. He could invite, as well as compel obedience."

In April, 1839, the command of the troops in the Northern District, which then comprised eleven counties, was entrusted to Sir Charles Napier. For some time previous the disquiet among the manufacturing population in this wide region had occasioned great anxiety to the Government; and it seemed that the Chartist movement might culminate in actual insurrection. An outbreak was apprehended almost momentarily, and might occur at any point; so that all over the north magistrates were nervously calling for military protection. Napier had at his disposition a force of barely four thousand men; and those were so dispersed that on assuming command he found them broken up into no fewer than twenty-six detachments, spread over half England. Those scattered handfuls of soldiers were worse than useless; their weakness was dangerous and actually invited to mischief. Fortified by the cordial support of the Home Secretary Napier insisted on three points: the concentration of his troops, and, where detachments had to be granted, proper quarters for them so as to keep the soldiers together; that magistrates instead of clamouring for troops should rally loyal citizens around them for self-defence; that the army was to be regarded as a force of ultimate reserve, and that therefore it was the duty of Government to establish throughout the country a strong police force, – a measure which was soon to be dealt with by Sir Robert Peel.