Colin Campbell

Early on the 13th the army was at length marching on the enemy. The heavy guns moved along the road leading over the Russoul ridge to the Jhelum fords. Gilbert's division marched on their right, Colin Campbell's (the third) on their left, with the cavalry and light artillery on their respective flanks. The original intention was that Gilbert's (the right) division, with the greater part of the field-guns, was to advance on Russoul, while Campbell's division and the heavy guns should stand fast on the left, overthrow the left of the Sikhs, and thus cut them off from retiring along the high road toward Jhelum. Their left thus turned, Gilbert and Campbell were to operate conjointly against the Sikh line, which it was hoped would be rolled back upon Moong and driven to the southward. A reconnaissance made by Tremenheere and Durand reported the road clear and practicable up to Russoul, but that the enemy was marching down from the heights apparently to take up a position on the plain. The march was resumed to beyond the village of Umrao; but when deserters brought in the intelligence that the enemy was forming to the left front of Gough's line of march behind the village of Chillianwallah, he quitted the Russoul road, inclined to his left, and moved straight on Chillianwallah. An outpost on the mound of Chillianwallah was driven in upon the main body of the enemy, and from that elevated position was clearly discernible the Sikh army drawn out in battle array. Its right centre directly in front of Chillianwallah was about two miles distant from that village, but less from the British line, which was being deployed about five hundred yards in its front. There was a gap nearly three-quarters of a mile wide between the right wing of the Sikhs under Utar Singh, and the right of the main body under Shere Singh. The British line when deployed could do little more than oppose a front to Shere Singh's centre and right, which latter, however, it overlapped a little, so that part of Campbell's left brigade was opposite to a section of the gap between Shere Singh's right and Utar Singh's left. Between the hostile lines there intervened a belt of rather dense low jungle, not forest, but a mixture of thorny mimosa bushes and wild caper.

It was near two o'clock in the afternoon of a winter day, and the troops had been under arms since daybreak. Lord Gough, therefore, wisely determined to defer the action until the morrow, and the camping-ground was being marked out. But the Sikh leaders knew well how prone to kindle was the temperament of the gallant old Chief. They themselves were keen for fighting, and the British commander needed little provocation to reciprocate their mood when they gave him a challenge of a few cannon shots. Late in the day though it was, he determined on immediate attack. The heavy guns were ordered up and opened fire at a range of some sixteen hundred yards, the gunners in the thick jungle having no other means of judging distance than by timing the intervals between the flash and report of the Sikh guns. The advance of the infantry soon obliged the fire of the British guns to cease. The line pressed on eagerly, its formation somewhat impaired by the thickness of the jungle through which it had to force its way, and met in the teeth as it pushed forward by the artillery fire which the enemy, no longer smitten by the heavy guns, poured on the advancing ranks of the British infantry. For a while nothing but the roar of the Sikh artillery was to be heard; but after a short time the sharp rattle of the musketry told that the conflict had begun in earnest and that the British infantry were closing on the hostile guns. Of the two divisions Gilbert's had the right, Colin Campbell's the left. The latter had been the first to receive the order to advance and was the first engaged. Pennycuick commanded Campbell's right brigade, consisting of the Twenty-Fourth Queen's, and the Twenty-Fifth and Forty-Fifth native infantry regiments; Hoggan's, his left brigade, was formed of the Sixty-First Queen's and the Thirty-Sixth and Forty-Sixth Sepoy regiments. In the interval between the brigades moved a field-battery, and on the left of the division three guns of another. At some distance on Campbell's left were a cavalry brigade and three troops of horse-artillery under Thackwell, whose duty it was to engage the attention of Utar Singh's detachment and to attempt to hinder that force from taking Campbell in flank and in reverse. The nature of the ground to be fought over rendered it impossible that the divisional commander could superintend the attack of more than one brigade; and Colin Campbell had arranged with Pennycuick that he himself should remain with the left brigade. Pennycuick's brigade experienced an adverse fate. During the advance its regiments were exposed to the fire of some eighteen guns on a mound directly in their front, from which they suffered very severely. The Twenty-Fourth, a fine and exceptionally strong regiment, advancing rapidly on the hostile batteries carried them by storm, but encountered a deadly fire from the infantry masses on either flank of the guns. The regiment sustained fearful losses. Pennycuick and thirteen officers of the regiment were killed at the guns, nine were wounded, two hundred and three of the men were killed and two hundred and sixty-six wounded. The native regiments of the brigade failed adequately to support the Twenty-Fourth, and musketry volleys from the Sikh infantry, followed by a rush of cavalry, completed the disorder and defeat of the ill-fated body. Already broken, it now fled, pursued with great havoc by the Sikh horse almost to its original position at the beginning of the action.

Hoggan's brigade, the left of Colin Campbell's division, had better fortune. Campbell himself conducted it and its advance was made without any great difficulty. Its experiences he thus described in his journal: – "I took care to regulate the rate of march of the centre or directing regiment (H.M.'s Sixty-First), so that all could keep up; and consequently the brigade emerged from the wood in a very tolerable line. We found the enemy posted on an open space on a slight rise. He had four guns, which played upon us in our advance; a large body of cavalry stood directly in front of the Sixty-First, and on the cavalry's left a large body of infantry in face of the Thirty-Sixth N.I. That regiment went at the Sikh infantry and was repulsed; the Sixty-First moved gallantly and steadily on the Sikh cavalry in its front, which slowly retired. When the Sixty-First had nearly reached the ground which the cavalry had occupied, I ordered the regiment to open its fire to hasten their departure." This fire was delivered as the corps advanced in line, a manœuvre constantly practised by Campbell, and it put the Sikh cavalry to a hasty flight. At this moment the enemy pushed forward two of their guns to within about twenty-five yards of the right flank of the Sixty-First, and opened with grape while their infantry were actually in rear of its right. Campbell promptly wheeled to the right the two right companies of the Sixty-First and headed them in their charge on the two Sikh guns. Those were captured, whereupon the two companies opened fire on the flank of the Sikh infantry in pursuit of the Thirty-Sixth Native Infantry and obliged the former to desist and fall back. While the Sixty-First was completing its new alignment to the right, an evolution by which Shere Singh's right flank was effectually turned, the enemy advanced with two more guns strongly supported by infantry. Neither of the two native regiments had succeeded in forming on the new alignment of the Sixty-First; "but," writes Campbell, "the confident bearing of the enemy and the approaching and steady fire of grape from their two guns made it necessary to advance, and to charge when we got within proper distance. I gave the word to advance and subsequently to charge, heading the Sixty-First immediately opposite the guns as I had done in the former instance. These two attacks," he continues, "gave the greatest confidence to the Sixty-First, and it was evident that in personally guiding and commanding the soldiers in these two successful attacks under difficult circumstances, I had gained the complete confidence and liking of the corps, and that with it I could undertake with perfect certainty of success anything that could be accomplished by men."

While Campbell was leading the earlier charge on the two first Sikh guns, one of the enemy's artillerymen who had already fired at him from under a gun apparently without result, rushed forward sword in hand and cut at the General, inflicting a deep sword-cut on his right arm. Not until the following morning was it discovered that the Sikh gunner's bullet had found its billet, fortunately an innocuous one. It had smashed to atoms the ivory handle of a small pistol which Campbell carried in a pocket of his waistcoat, and had also broken the bow of his watch. The Sikh's aim was true, and but for the pistol and the watch Colin Campbell would never have seen another battle. His charger was found to be wounded by a musket-shot which had passed through both sides of the mouth and finally had lodged and flattened in the curb-chain.

The journal thus continues: – "After the capture of the second two guns, and the dispersion of the enemy, we proceeded rolling up his line, continuing along the line of the hostile position until we had taken thirteen guns, all of them by the Sixty-First at the point of the bayonet. We finally met Mountain's brigade coming from the opposite direction. During our progress we were on several occasions threatened by the enemy's cavalry on our flank and rear. The guns were all spiked, but having no means with the force to remove them and it being too small to admit of any portion being withdrawn for their protection, they were, with the exception of the last three that were taken, unavoidably left on the field."

Colin Campbell had to fight hard for his success, and it was well for him that in the gallant Sixty-First he had a staunch and resolute English regiment. But he would have had to fight yet more hard, and then might not have attained success, if away on his left Thackwell had not been holding Utar Singh in check and impeding his efforts to harass Campbell's flank and rear. Brind's three troops of horse-artillery expended some twelve hundred rounds in a hot duel with Utar Singh's cannon which else would have been playing on Campbell's flank, and Unett's gallant troopers of the famous "Third Light" crashed through Sikh infantry edging away to their left with intent to take Campbell in reverse. Thackwell did his valiant best until he and his command were called away to the endangered right, but before then he had time to serve Campbell materially, although he could not entirely prevent Utar Singh's people from molesting that commander; and although Campbell did not record the critical episode, there was a period when he found himself engaged simultaneously in front, flank, and rear, and when the brigade was extricated from its entanglement only by his own ready skill and the indomitable staunchness of the noble Sixty-First.

In spite of the disasters which chequered it the battle of Chillianwallah may be regarded as a technical victory for the British arms, since the enemy was compelled to quit the field, although they only retired into the strong position on the Russoul heights from which in the morning they had descended into the plain to fight. The moral results of the action were dismal, and the cost of the barren struggle was a loss of two thousand four hundred killed and wounded. At home the intelligence of this waste of blood excited feelings of alarm and indignation, and Sir Charles Napier was immediately despatched to India to supersede Lord Gough in the position of Commander-in-Chief. Meanwhile the army lay passive in its encampment at Chillianwallah, within sight of the Sikh position at Russoul, awaiting the surrender of Mooltan and the accession of strength it would receive in consequence of that event. The Sikh leader more than once gave the British Commander-in-Chief an opportunity to fight, but Gough with tardy wisdom resisted the offered temptation, resolved not to join issues until his reinforcements from Mooltan should reach him. On the night of February 13th the Sikh army abandoned Russoul, marched round the British right flank, and on the 14th was well on its way to Goojerat. Gough, who had slowly followed to within a march of Goojerat, was joined at Koonjah by the Mooltan force on the 18th and 19th, and on the 20th advanced to Shadawal whence the Sikh encampment around the town of Goojerat was within sight. The battlefield of February 21st was the wide plain to the south of Goojerat, intersected by two dry water-courses. The Sikh line of battle extended from Morarea Tibba, where their cavalry was in force, along an easterly bend of the Bimber (the western) channel, thence across the plain, behind the three villages of Kalra which were occupied by infantry, to Malka-wallah a village on the left bank of the eastern channel. Against this extended front advanced the British army, now twenty-three thousand strong with ninety guns, eighteen of which were heavy siege-pieces. The heavy guns, followed by two and a half infantry brigades, moved over the plain between the two channels. Campbell's division and Dundas' brigade were on the left bank of the western channel, with Thackwell's cavalry still further to the left. The Sikhs, ever ready with their artillery, opened the battle with that arm. Gough at last had been taught by hard experience that an artillery preparation should precede his favourite "cold steel." The British batteries went out to the front and began a magnificent and effective cannonade which lasted for two hours and crushed the fire of the Sikh guns. The infantry then deployed and marched forward, stormed the three Kalra villages after experiencing a desperate and prolonged resistance, and swept on up the plain toward Goojerat. There was little bloodshed on the right of the Bimber channel, where marched Campbell and Dundas, but there was plenty of that skill which spares precious lives. Campbell describes how he handled his division: – "I formed my two brigades in contiguous columns of regiments with a very strong line of skirmishers – the artillery in line with the skirmishers. When we arrived within long range of the enemy's guns, we deployed into line. In this order, the artillery – twelve 9-pounders with the skirmishers and the infantry in line close in rear, advanced as at a review; the guns firing into the masses of infantry and cavalry behind the nullah, who gradually melted away and took shelter in its channel. I then caused the artillery of my division to be turned on the flank of these throngs while the Bombay troop of horse-artillery fired direct on their front. I finally dislodged them by artillery which enfiladed the nullah, and which was moved forward and placed in position for that object. I was ordered to storm this nullah; but to have done so with infantry would have occasioned a useless and needless sacrifice of life. Recognising that the result could be obtained by gun-fire without risking the life of a man, I proceeded on my own responsibility to employ my artillery in enfilading the nullah; and after thus clearing it of the enemy, I had the satisfaction of seeing the whole of our left wing pass this formidable defence of the enemy's right wing without firing a shot or losing a man. We had too much slaughter at Chillianwallah because due precaution had not been taken to prevent it by the employment of our magnificent artillery. Having felt this strongly and expressed it to the Commander-in-Chief in warm terms, I had determined to employ this arm thenceforth to the fullest extent; and I did so, accordingly, in the battle of Goojerat."

The discomfiture of the enemy was thorough. Cavalry, infantry, and artillery left the field in utter confusion. The rout was too complete to allow of the reunion of formed bodies in anything like order. A body of Sikh horse with a brigade of Afghan cavalry adventured an advance on Thackwell's flank. He hurled against them the Scinde Horse and the Ninth Lancers, and a wild stampede resulted. The rest of the British cavalry struck in and rushed on, dispersing, riding over, and trampling down the Sikh infantry, capturing guns and waggons, and converting the discomfited enemy into a shapeless mass of fugitives. The horsemen did not draw rein until they had ridden fifteen miles beyond Goojerat, by which time the army of Shere Singh was a wreck, deprived of its camp, its standards, and fifty-three of its cherished guns. On the morning after the battle Sir Walter Gilbert started in pursuit of the broken Sikh host, while Campbell took out his division in the direction of Dowlutanuggur, but the latter was recalled on the 25th. On March 6th, however, he received the order to join Gilbert's force in room of Brigadier Mountain who had been injured by the accidental discharge of his pistol. On the road to Rawul Pindi on the 15th he passed the greater part of the Sikh army with its chiefs, who were laying down their arms. Campbell was moved by the fine attitude of the men of the Khalsa army. "There was," he wrote, "nothing cringing in the manner of these men in laying down their arms. They acknowledged themselves beaten, and they were starving – destitute alike of food and money. Each man as he laid down his arms received a rupee to enable him to support himself while on his way to his home. The greater number of the old men especially, when laying down their arms, made a deep reverence or salaam as they placed their swords on the heap, with the muttered words 'Runjeet Singh is dead to-day!' This was said with deep feeling; they are undoubtedly a fine and brave people." On the 21st Gilbert and Campbell reached Peshawur, and the latter encamped near the fort of Jumrood at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, through which the Afghans, whom Dost Mahomed had sent into the Punjaub to reinforce the Sikhs in their warfare with the British forces, had retreated very shortly before. The campaign was at an end; and early in April Colin Campbell took command of the Sind Sagur District with his headquarters at Rawul Pindi. There he shared a house with his friend Mansfield, who in the time of the Mutiny was to be his Chief-of-Staff. In July there occurred an event which called for all his firmness and discretion. Two native infantry regiments stationed at Rawul Pindi refused to accept the cantonment scale of pay, which was lower than they had been receiving when on campaign. Evidence was clear that the combination to resist the cantonment scale had spread to other stations, and the situation was temporarily critical; but fortunately there was a British regiment at Rawul Pindi, and the sepoys came to reason without the necessity on Campbell's part of resorting to strong measures. When at Rawul Pindi he had the gratification to learn of his having been promoted to be a Knight of the Bath for his services in the recent campaign; and Sir Charles Napier in sending him the intimation added that "no man had won it better," and expressed the hope that "he would long wear the spurs."

In November he was transferred to the divisional command of the Peshawur District, a more important, but also a more unquiet post than Rawul Pindi. Thenceforth for three years he was to be the Warden of the turbulent north-western frontier. It pleased him to find in his command his old regiment the Ninety-Eighth, and also the Sixty-First which he had led at Chillianwallah. When in February, 1850, Sir Charles Napier reached Peshawur on a tour of inspection, Sir Colin was able to assemble for review quite a little army of all ranks; three troops of horse-artillery and two field-batteries, three cavalry regiments, three European and three native infantry regiments. While Sir Charles was in Colin Campbell's district, it happened that he came under hostile fire for the last time in his tumultuous life. Between Peshawur and Kohat, both places in British territory, a mountain road ran outside that territory through a long and dangerous defile. The Afridis inhabiting the intervening hill country had complained that their subsidy for keeping open the pass had not been paid, and in revenge had slaughtered a working party of sappers and miners. Sir Charles determined to force the defile in person. Campbell, on Napier's requisition, detailed a tolerably strong force as escort to the Commander-in-Chief. It chanced that before starting Napier inspected a regiment of irregulars under the control of the much-vaunted Punjaub Government. The men were of fine physique, but "one soldier had a musket without a lock, another a lock without a musket. A stalwart soldier, his broad chest swelling with military pride, his eyes sparkling with a malicious twinkle, held on his shoulder between his finger and thumb a flint – his only arm." The defile was duly forced, but its passage was one long skirmish. Kohat was inspected and reinforced, but Napier, on commencing his return march, found that the pickets left to keep the road open had been roughly handled and had suffered serious loss. The Afridis were very daring, and actually fired on Sir Charles and his staff at short range. The loss sustained in this somewhat quixotic expedition amounted to one hundred and ten men killed and wounded – "not much," comments Napier grimly, "when one considers the terrible defile through which we passed, defended by a warlike race." His biographer calls the enterprise an "interesting episode"; it certainly was not a very wise enterprise to be undertaken by the Commander-in-Chief of British India. It was Napier's last eccentricity of a military character. By the end of the year he resigned the command of the army of India, and was succeeded by Sir William Gomm, an old brother officer of Colin Campbell in the Ninth in the Peninsula days.

In March, 1851, Lord Dalhousie visited Peshawur and discussed with Sir Colin the policy to be adopted towards the troublesome and turbulent tribes on the north-western border. Scarcely had the Governor-General gone when news came in that a Momund tribe, of the region north of Peshawur between the Swat and Cabul rivers, had been raiding into British territory. Dalhousie left to Sir Colin the decision whether to make signal reprisals or to adopt defensive measures, and, as the result of the description of the wild and rugged region sent him by Sir Colin after a reconnaissance he had made, elected for the defensive as an experiment. It failed, for in October the Momunds of Michni made an irruption upon some villages within British territory. The Governor-General now decided on an immediate resort to active measures, and Sir Colin was ordered to inflict summary chastisement on the offending tribe. He marched from Peshawur on October 25th with a force of all arms about twelve hundred strong, and advanced to the confines of the Michni territory. He did not hurry, because he desired that his political officer should have opportunity to inform the inhabitants of the conditions intended to be offered them; which were annexation of the territory, exile for the irreconcilables, and the retention of their lands by the cultivators on payment of revenue. Campbell's humane view was that "to drive into the hills the whole population of Michni, occupying some seven and twenty villages, could only result in forcing them to prey on the plunder of the villages inside the border." The villages and fortalices whose inhabitants were implicated in the violation of British territory were destroyed under a harmless fire maintained by the mountaineers; but, as Campbell records, "while engaged in duties in which no soldier can take pleasure no lives were lost on either side. God knows the rendering homeless of two or three hundred families is a despicable task enough, without adding loss of life to this severe punishment." The British camp was more than once assailed by bodies of Momund tribes, and one of those attacks was made by some five thousand hillmen whom Sir Colin dispersed by shell fire. A fort was built and garrisoned in the Michni country, and the field-force returned to Peshawur in February, 1852. With the results it had accomplished the Governor-General expressed his entire satisfaction.

The column had scarcely settled down in Peshawur when fresh troubles were reported from the wearyful Momund frontier. Sir Colin hurried thither with two horse-artillery guns and two hundred and sixty native troopers, to find the Momund chief Sadut Khan in position on the edge of the Panj Pao upland, fronting towards Muttah, with six thousand matchlock men and some eighty horsemen. The affair had its interesting features. Sir Colin took in reverse the Momund hordes with his artillery fire, broke up their masses, put them to flight, and pursued them. As he was preparing to return the Momunds suddenly wheeled in their tracks and rushed upon him over the broken ground. The guns were instantly unlimbered, and double charges of grape checked the wild and gallant attack, – a brilliant rally after the endurance of two hours' shell fire followed by a hasty retreat. The mountaineers continued to press Campbell's slow retirement across the table-land, notwithstanding the fire of grape which he maintained. The incident strengthened his belief in the superior efficacy of defensive operations, and he declined to fall in with the anxious wish of the Punjaub Board of Administration that he should act on the offensive against the Momunds, on the ground that he was not prepared to execute operations of that character without the most precise orders by the Commander-in-Chief, the authority to which he was responsible. His reply met with the full approval of the Commander-in-Chief, which however the Governor-General did not share. Sir Colin maintained his ground with the approval of the former authority, when pressed by the Commissioner of Peshawur to enter Swat. Meanwhile the Ootman-Kheyl tribe had become implicated in the murder of a native official in British employ at Charsuddah. Sir Colin had no hesitation in taking measures to inflict punishment on this powerful and turbulent clan. A column of all arms, two thousand four hundred and fifty strong, was assembled on the left bank of the Swat river, and on May 11th proceeded to destroy a group of deserted villages belonging to the Ootman-Kheyl. The column then advanced on the large village of Prangurh, the Ootman-Kheyl stronghold. It had been prepared for defence, and was crowded with men who opened fire on Sir Colin's advanced guard. Covered by artillery fire his troops carried the village with a rush, after a stout defence on the part of the enemy. During the destruction of Prangurh letters were found proving a strong feeling of hostility towards the British Government on the part of the rulers of Swat. Sir Colin then fell in with the views of the Commissioner, and declared himself prepared to invade the Swat territory unless he should be absolutely prohibited by the Commander-in-Chief.