Colin Campbell

Next day he started for Lahore, "feeling," as he records in his restrained yet sincere manner, "more than I expected when taking leave of the officers who happened to be at my quarters at the moment of my departure." He had a pleasant meeting at Cawnpore with his old West Indian comrades of the Twenty-First Fusiliers; and on the road between Kurnal and Meerut he had an interview with the Governor-General. Lord Hardinge received him with the frank kindness of an old Peninsular man to a comrade, described Henry Lawrence, the British Resident in the Punjaub, as "the King of the country, clever and good-natured, but hot-tempered," and gave Campbell to understand that if any part of the force in the Punjaub should be called upon to take the field, he should have a command. A few days later he reached Saharunpore, the headquarters for the time of Lord Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, also an old Peninsular man, whom he found most cordial and friendly. The old Chief asked him whether he could be of any service to him. Colin Campbell, sedulous as ever for the welfare of the Ninety-Eighth, replied that he had no favour to ask for himself, but that his lordship would give him pleasure by removing his regiment nearer to the frontier as early as might be, away from its present station which afforded the men so many temptations to drink. On his arrival at Lahore in the end of February, 1847, he was cordially received by Henry Lawrence, whose guest at the Residency he became until he should find accommodation for himself.

Campbell came into the Punjaub at a very interesting period. The issue of the war of 1845–46 had placed that vast territory at the mercy of the British Government, and Lord Hardinge might have incorporated it with the Company's dominions. But he desired to avoid the last resource of annexation; and although he considered it necessary to punish the Sikh nation for past offences and to prevent the recurrence of aggression, he professed his intention to perform those duties without suppressing the political existence of the Punjaub State. The Treaty of Lahore accorded a nominally independent sovereignty to the boy Prince Dhulip Singh, a British Representative was in residence at Lahore, and the Sikh army was being reorganised and limited to a specified strength. Within a few months Lall Singh, who had been appointed Prime Minister, had been deposed, and a fresh treaty was signed in December, 1846, which provided that a council of regency composed of eight leading Sikh chiefs should be appointed to act under the control and guidance of the British Resident, who was to exercise unlimited influence in all matters of internal administration and external policy. British troops were to be stationed in various forts and quarters throughout the country, maintained from the revenues of the State. The management was to continue for eight years until the Maharaja Dhulip Singh should reach his majority. The treaty conferred on the Resident unprecedented powers, and Major Henry Lawrence, an officer of the Company's artillery, became in effect the successor of Runjeet Singh.

This settlement had a specious aspect of some measure of permanency. It might have lasted longer if the state of his health had enabled Henry Lawrence to remain at his post; but it was unsound at the core, for a valiant and turbulent race does not bow the neck submissively after a single disastrous campaign on its frontier. But the Punjaub seemed in a state of unruffled peace when Colin Campbell shook hands with Henry Lawrence in the Residency of its capital. In those days the familiar sobriquet of "Kubhur-dar," of which the English is "Take care!", had not attached itself to him; but Campbell, even when his Highland blood was aflame in the rapture of actual battle, was never either reckless or careless; and the motto "Be Mindful," which he chose for his coat of arms when he was made a peer, was simply a condensation of the principles of cool wisdom and shrewd caution on which he acted through life. A strong Sikh force, he found, was located in and about Lahore, and the population of the city had a name for turbulence. In order to inform himself as to how the troops were posted in relation to the defences of the city, as well against an interior as an exterior attack, one of his earliest concerns was to make a careful inspection of the positions along with the responsible engineer. In choosing his residence he held it to be his duty to have it in the proximity of his troops. Soon after his arrival there was a fête in the Shalimar gardens to which all the garrison had been invited, but he allowed only half of the officers of his command to be absent from their men, giving as his reason that "if the Sikhs wanted to murder all the officers, they could not have a better chance than when these were gathered four miles away from their men, enjoying themselves at a fête." In the measures of precaution which he adopted he had the approval of Henry Lawrence and of Sir Charles Napier, to the latter of whom he wrote on the subject. Napier expressed himself in his trenchant fashion: – "I am delighted at all your precautions against surprise. In India we who take these pains are reckoned cowards. Be assured that English officers think it a fine dashing thing to be surprised – to take no precautions. Formerly it was an axiom in war that no man was fit to be a commander who permitted himself to be surprised; but things are on a more noble footing now!"

In the end of 1847 Henry Lawrence left Lahore and went home to England in the same ship with Lord Hardinge. A week before they sailed from Calcutta Hardinge's successor, Lord Dalhousie, arrived there and took the oaths as Governor-General, – a potentate at whose hands a few years later Colin Campbell was to receive treatment which caused the high-spirited soldier to resign the command he held and leave India. In the Lahore Residency Henry Lawrence was succeeded temporarily by his brother John, who in March, 1848, gave place to Sir Frederick Currie, a member of the Supreme Council. The position was one which required the experience and military knowledge of a soldier, but Sir Frederick Currie was a civilian. In January Sir John Littler had been succeeded in the Punjaub divisional command by Major-General Whish, an officer of the Company's service, an appointment which disappointed Colin Campbell who had hoped for the independent command of the Lahore brigade.

The deceptive quietude of the Punjaub was now to be exposed. When Sir Frederick Currie reached Lahore, he found there Moolraj the Governor of Mooltan, a man of vast wealth who had come to offer the resignation of his position for reasons that were chiefly personal. Moolraj stipulated for some conditions which were not conceded, and ultimately he resigned without any other condition than that of saving his honour in the eyes of his own people. A new Governor was appointed in his place, who set out for Mooltan accompanied by Mr. Vans Agnew of the Bengal Civil Service and Mr. Agnew's assistant, Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay Army. Moolraj marched with the escort of the new Governor, to whom, on the day after the arrival of the party in Mooltan, he formally surrendered the fort. After the ceremony Agnew and Anderson started on their return to camp, Moolraj riding alongside the two English gentlemen. At the gate of the fortress Agnew was suddenly attacked, – run through by a spear and slashed by sword-cuts. At the same moment Anderson was cut down and desperately wounded. Moolraj galloped off, leaving the Englishmen to their fate. Khan Singh's people carried them into a temple wherein two days later they were brutally slaughtered; their bodies were cut to pieces and their heads thrown down at the feet of Moolraj. What share Moolraj had taken in this treacherous butchery was never clearly ascertained; but every indication pointed to his complicity. This much is certain, that on the morning after the assassination he transferred his family and treasure into the fort, and placed himself at the head of the insurrectionary movement by issuing a proclamation summoning all the inhabitants of the province, of every creed, to make common cause in a religious war against the Feringhees.

News of the outrage and rising at Mooltan reached Lahore on April 24th. It was emphatically a time for prompt action, if an outbreak was to be crushed which else might grow into a general revolt throughout the Punjaub. It was extremely unlikely that the fort of Mooltan was equipped for an early and stubborn defence. To maintain our prestige was essential, for it was by prestige and promptitude only that we have maintained our pre-eminence in India. Sir Henry Lawrence would have marched the Lahore brigade on Mooltan without an hour's hesitation. Lord Hardinge would have ordered up the troops and siege-train from Ferozepore and the strong force collected at Bukkur; and would have invested Mooltan before Moolraj could have made any adequate preparations for prolonged defence. Marches through Scinde, from the north-western frontier, and from Lahore, could not have been made in the hot season without casualties; but, in the words of Marshman, "our Empire in India had been acquired and maintained, not by fair-weather campaigns, but by taking the field on every emergency and at any season."

On the first tidings from Mooltan Sir Frederick Currie ordered a strong brigade of all arms to prepare for a march on that stronghold, being of opinion that the citadel, described in poor Agnew's report as the strongest fort he had seen in India, would not maintain a defence when a British force should present itself before it, but that the garrison would immediately abandon Moolraj to his fate. Colin Campbell, on the other hand, held that since the fort of Mooltan was very strong it was to be anticipated that Moolraj would obstinately defend it; in which case a brigade sent to Mooltan would be obliged to remain inactive before it while siege-guns were being brought up, or, as seemed more probable, should no reinforcements arrive in support, it would have to retrace its steps followed and harassed by Moolraj's active and troublesome rabble. Eventually, in great measure because of the arguments advanced by Campbell, the movement from Lahore on Mooltan was countermanded; and the Commander-in-Chief, with the concurrence of the Governor-General, intimated his resolve to postpone military operations until the cold weather, when he would take the field in person.

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1

Afterwards Sir Harry Jones.