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.

Meanwhile a casual subaltern, for whom swift marches and hard fighting in hot weather had no terrors, struck in on his own responsibility. Gathering in the wild trans-Indus district of Bunnoo some fifteen hundred men with a couple of guns, Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes marched towards Mooltan. Colonel Cortland with two thousand Pathans and six guns hastened to join him; and on May 20th the united force defeated Moolraj's army six thousand strong. The loyal Nawab of Bhawalpore sent a strong force of his warlike Daudputras across the Sutlej to join hands with Edwardes and Cortland; and the junction had just been accomplished on the field of Kinairi some twenty miles from Mooltan, when the allies, about nine thousand strong, were attacked by Moolraj with a force of about equal magnitude. After half a day's hard fighting the enemy fled in confusion from the field. Edwardes and Cortland moved up nearer to Mooltan, their force now raised to a strength of about eighteen thousand; and there was a moment when Moolraj seemed willing to surrender if his life were spared. But he rallied his nerves and came out on July 1st with twelve thousand men to give battle on the plain of Sudusain within sight of the walls of Mooltan. After another obstinate fight his troops were thoroughly beaten and fled headlong into the city. "Now," wrote Edwardes to the Resident, "is the time to strike; I have got to the end of my tether. If," added the gallant and clear-sighted subaltern, "you would only send, with a few regular regiments, a few heavy guns and a mortar battery, we could close Moolraj's account in a fortnight, and obviate the necessity of assembling fifty thousand men in October."

Meanwhile the Resident had taken the strange course of empowering the Lahore Durbar to despatch to Mooltan a Sikh force of some five thousand men under Shere Singh. It was notorious that both commander and troops were thoroughly disaffected; and so anxious was the Resident to prevent the force from approaching Moolraj that Shere Singh had orders to halt fifty miles short of Mooltan, and was only allowed to join Edwardes after his victory of July 1st. In tardy answer to that young officer's appeal for reinforcements, in the end of July a force of seven thousand men with a siege-train was ordered to converge on Mooltan from Lahore and Ferozepore under the divisional command of General Whish. It had been chiefly at Colin Campbell's dissuasion that the Resident had relinquished his intention of sending a force to Mooltan in April. Campbell's argument in that month had been the unfavourable season for marching; and now in a season not less unfavourable he was scarcely justified in considering himself the victim of a job in not obtaining the command of the Lahore brigade ordered on Mooltan. The disappointment proved fortunate, since a few months later he found himself in command of a division in the field with the rank of brigadier-general. By August 24th the whole of Whish's field-force was before Mooltan, but it was not until September 7th that the siege-guns were in position. Moolraj, confident in the increased strength which our delay had afforded him, spurned a summons to surrender. Active and bloody approaches were carried on for a week, when Shere Singh with his contingent suddenly passed over to the enemy. After this defection Whish held it impossible to continue the siege, and he retired to a position in the vicinity pending the arrival of reinforcements from Bombay. The siege was reopened late in December: the city was stormed after a hard fight; and finally on January 22nd, 1849, Moolraj surrendered at discretion. It must be said of him that he had made a heroic defence.

By the end of September, 1848, the local outbreak was fast swelling into a national revolt. The flame of rebellion was spreading over the Land of the Five Rivers, and by the end of October only a few brave English officers were still holding together the last shreds of British influence in the Punjaub outside of Lahore and the camp of General Whish. Moolraj was the reverse of cordial to Shere Singh, who on October 9th quitted Mooltan and marched northward towards Lahore, his original force of five thousand men strengthened at every step by the warriors of the old Khalsa army who flocked eagerly to his standard. After threatening Lahore he moved westward to meet the Bunnoo insurgents, who had mutinied and murdered their officers, and he finally took up a position à cheval of the Chenab at Ramnuggur, his main body on the right bank of the river.

During the summer and autumn Colin Campbell passed an uneasy and anxious time. It was not until the beginning of November that he had the full assurance of being employed in the manifestly impending campaign. By this time Cureton's cavalry brigade and Godby's infantry brigade were in the Doab between the Ravee and the Chenab, and on November 12th Colin Campbell joined Cureton there with two native infantry regiments, taking command of the advanced force with the temporary rank of brigadier-general. At length Lord Gough himself took the field, and on the 19th he crossed the Ravee at the head of an army of respectable strength. Apart from the division before Mooltan and the garrison required for Lahore, he had available for field service four British and eleven native infantry regiments. He was strong in cavalry, with three fine British regiments, five of native light cavalry, and five corps of irregular horse; and his powerful artillery consisted of sixty horse and field-guns, eight howitzers, and ten 18-pounders. On the early morning of the 22nd his lordship, with Colin Campbell's infantry division and a cavalry force under Cureton with horse and field artillery, marched from Saharun towards Ramnuggur with the object of driving across the Chenab some Sikh infantry reported to be still on the left bank. Some small detachments hurrying towards the river were pursued somewhat recklessly by horse-artillery, which had to retire under the heavy fire opened from the Sikh batteries on the commanding right bank. A gun and two waggons stuck fast in the deep sand and could not be extricated. Colin Campbell suggested to Lord Gough the measure of protecting the gun until it could be withdrawn at night, by placing infantry to cover it in a ravine immediately in its rear; but the Commander-in-Chief disapproved of this measure. The enemy lost no time in sending the whole of his cavalry across the river to take possession of the gun under cover of his overwhelming artillery fire. Our cavalry was foolishly sent forward to charge the superior hostile horse, – a folly which was committed, according to Colin Campbell, under the personal direction of the Commander-in-Chief. Ouvry's squadron of the Third Light Dragoons made a brilliant and useful charge which materially aided the withdrawal of the artillery. In the face of a heavy fire Colonel William Havelock, a noble soldier who had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, led on the Fourteenth Light Dragoons to a desperate combat with the Sikh horse. The horses of the dragoons were exhausted by the long gallop through the heavy sand and the casualties were heavy. Among the slain was Havelock himself, after a hand-to-hand combat; and while riding forward to stay Havelock's last advance Brigadier-General Cureton, who had raised himself to distinction from the ranks in which he had enlisted as a runaway lad, was killed by a Sikh bullet.

Lord Gough withdrew his troops beyond the reach of the Sikh batteries and awaited the arrival of his heavy guns and the remainder of his force. If his intention was to refrain from coming to close quarters with the enemy until the fall of Mooltan should bring him reinforcements, he was well placed on the left bank of the Chenab, covering Lahore and the siege of Mooltan and leaving Shere Singh undisturbed. If on the other hand he preferred the offensive, that offensive should have been prompt; a rapid stroke might have ended the business, for the Sikhs, as the sequel proved, were eager enough for fighting. And to all appearance the Commander-in-Chief meant to gratify their desire. To do so he had in the first instance to cross the Chenab. To accomplish this by direct assault on the Sikh position on the opposite bank was impracticable; and he resolved to compel the enemy's withdrawal by a wide turning movement with part of his force under the command of Sir Joseph Thackwell, an experienced soldier. Thackwell's command consisted of Colin Campbell's strong division, a cavalry brigade, three troops of horse-artillery, two field-batteries and two heavy guns, – in all about eight thousand men. This force started in the early morning of December 1st, and after a march of twenty-four miles up the left bank of the Chenab was across that river at Wuzeerabad by noon of the 2nd. The same afternoon the force marched ten miles down the right bank and bivouacked. During the short march of the following morning Thackwell learned that a brigade was on its way to reinforce him, crossing by an intermediate ford; whereupon he halted the force and rode away in search of this reinforcement. Before he departed Colin Campbell asked permission to deploy and take up a position. Thackwell replied, "No – remain where you are until my return."

The force was then in open ground in front of the village of Sadoolapore, which has given its name to the engagement. Campbell rode to the front to reconnoitre. In front of the centre were some hostile horse; to the right in wooded ground some detachments of cavalry and infantry were seen scattered about. Certain that the enemy was in force and near at hand, he returned to the force and as a measure of precaution occupied with an infantry company each of the three villages in his front, – Langwala, Khamookhan and Rutta. The force, in his own words, "was not in a state of formation for troops to be when liable to be attacked at any moment. However, my orders were imperative not to deploy." Two hours later the enemy opened fire with their artillery from the woodland behind the villages. At that moment Thackwell returned, and he ordered the companies holding the three villages to withdraw and rejoin their respective corps. The columns were immediately deployed. Between the British line and the Sikh troops, which had occupied the villages and were firing heavily from some twenty pieces of artillery while large bodies of their cavalry were threatening both flanks of the British force, was a smooth open space over which Thackwell desired to advance to the attack. Colin Campbell suggested that "as they were coming on so cockily, we should allow them to come out into the plain before we moved." He states in his journal that, since presently the enemy halted at the villages and there plied their artillery fire, he was convinced that they did not intend to come further forward; and that he twice begged of Thackwell to be allowed to attack with his infantry but was not permitted. The affair then resolved itself into a simple cannonade the result of which was to silence the Sikh fire. By this time Thackwell had received permission from the Commander-in-Chief to act as his judgment should dictate, whether his reinforcements had come up or not. It seemed the moment for an advance; the troops were full of eagerness, and a portion at least of the enemy's guns were in Thackwell's grasp. Thackwell, however, exercised caution for the time, hoping most likely for a decisive victory on the morrow. But during the night the enemy withdrew and marched away towards the Jhelum, probably without having sustained serious loss. That of the British amounted to some seventy men. Thackwell's turning movement had not been brilliant, and Sadoolapore was not an affair to be very proud of; but it had brought about the relinquishment by the Sikhs of their position on the right bank of the Chenab, and this enabled the main British force to cross the river. By the 5th the mass of the army was at Heylah, about midway between Ramnuggur and Chillianwallah; but the Commander-in-Chief and headquarters did not cross the Chenab until December 18th.

If until then Lord Gough had been trammelled by superior authority, a few days later he was set free to act on his own judgment, – the result of which was simply absolute inaction until January, 1849. On the 11th of that month he reviewed his troops at Lassourie, and next day he was encamped at Dinjhi, whence the Sikh army had fallen back into the sheltering jungle, its right resting on Mung, its left on the broken ground and strong entrenchments about the village and heights of Russoul. Colin Campbell had been suffering from fever resulting from night exposure in bivouac during Thackwell's flank march; he had been on the sick list until the 10th and was still weak. In the memoir of the late Sir Henry Durand by his son occurs an interesting passage illustrative of Campbell's anxiety that the ground on which the enemy's position was to be approached should be properly reconnoitred. Durand writes: "Whilst in the Commander-in-Chief's camp to-day (11th) the projected attack on the enemy's position was described to me by General Campbell. He had just been with the Commander-in-Chief, who had spoken of attacking the Sikh position on the 13th. Campbell, seeing that his lordship had no intention of properly reconnoitring the position, was anxious on the subject; and we went into the tent of Tremenheere the chief engineer, to discuss the matter. Campbell opened on the subject, announcing the intention to attack, and that it was to be done blindly, that was to say without any reconnaissance but such as the moment might afford on debouching from the jungle. He advocated a second march from Dinjhi, the force prepared to bivouac for the night, and that the 13th should be passed by the engineers in reconnoitring. Campbell wished Tremenheere to suggest this measure in a quiet way to the Commander-in-Chief; but he said that since the passage of the Chenab the Chief was determined to take no advice, nor brook any volunteered opinions; and he proposed that I should speak to John Gough (the Commander-in-Chief's nephew) and try to engage him to put it into the Commander-in-Chief's mind to adopt such a course." It is not certain that anything came of this improvised council of war: but there is no question that up to the afternoon of the 13th Lord Gough intended to defer the attack until the following morning.