Colin Campbell

The British force next moved upon Iskakote, a large village of Ranizai, a dependency of Swat, whither large bodies of hillmen hastened to defend the village and valley. Sir Colin estimated the number of the hostile clansmen to be not less than six thousand. They made a stubborn resistance, and endured a sharp cannonade with great firmness. The Guides and Ghoorkas stormed the nullah with some hand-to-hand fighting, whereupon, having suffered severe loss, the enemy broke up and made for the hills pursued by the cavalry.

The Commander-in-Chief interposed no veto on the invasion of Swat, but it became apparent to Sir Colin Campbell that the transport for that operation was inadequate and inefficient. Experience of the opposition he had encountered in the Iskakote affair, and a subsequent reconnaissance in the Ranizai valley, convinced him that his infantry would require a reinforcement of two thousand five hundred men, without receiving which he could not proceed to the invasion of Swat. The Punjaub Board of Administration refused his requisition for the number of troops he asked, and as it was unadvisable to keep the force in the field in the hot weather, the column returned to Peshawur in the beginning of June.

Campbell had already been made aware by the Commander-in-Chief of the Governor-General's dissatisfaction, which in the shape of a formal censure awaited him at Peshawur. Lord Dalhousie used expressions which must have cut the old fighting man to the quick. His lordship chose to tell the soldier of many battles that he had manifested "over-cautious reluctance" in advancing against the Swat marauders in March. Presently came the further charge that not only had he "transgressed the bounds of his proper province," but that "he had placed himself in an attitude of direct and proclaimed insubordination to the authority of the Governor-General in Council." Campbell replied with disciplined dignity and self-respect, expressing his regret that expressions so strong should have been used in regard to him, and his painful surprise that after a lifetime of unswerving military subordination he should be accused of the reverse. He was aware that he was in disaccord with the Government, and already when in the field he had determined to resign his command, an intention which he had communicated to the Commander-in-Chief. To that old friend he wrote without heat: – "I have come to the conclusion that I should be wanting in what is due to myself, if, after what has passed, I were to continue in this command; there is a limit at which a man's forbearance ought to stop, and that limit has in my case been reached."

Sir Colin resigned his command on July 25th. He declined a farewell banquet to which the officers of the Peshawur garrison desired to invite him, believing that in the circumstances to accept the honour would be contrary to the spirit of the Queen's regulations. After spending three months in the bracing hill-station of Murree, in the end of October he visited at Dugshai the Ninety-Eighth regiment, to his original position as senior lieutenant-colonel of which he had reverted on the resignation of his divisional command; then, after a brief visit to Simla, he sailed from Bombay, arriving in England in March, 1853. Before leaving India he had read the official acknowledgment by the Government of the services of the troops engaged in the recent operations. The despatch recorded the Governor-General's regret "that any incident should have occurred to deserve a censure of any portion of Sir Colin Campbell's conduct;" but it "acknowledged in the most ample terms the ability, the personal intrepidity and activity, and the sterling soldierly qualities, which this distinguished officer had displayed in the military command of the troops at Peshawur upon every occasion on which they had taken the field." The amende honorable was well enough in its lumbering way; but it could scarcely take away the bitter flavour of the barbed and venomous insinuation conveyed in the cruel words "over-cautious reluctance."

CHAPTER IV

THE CRIMEA

Soon after his return to England Sir Colin Campbell vacated the command of the Ninety-Eighth and went on half-pay. He had earned a modest competence, and after those long years of campaigning abroad he considered himself at the age of sixty-one entitled to enjoy peaceful repose at home for the rest of his life. But this was not to be; there was still before him much arduous and active service in the field before he went to his final rest.

Kinglake in his War in the Crimea pays Colin Campbell a fine tribute – not less fine, however, than deserved; a passage from which may fittingly be inserted here: —

"After serving with all this glory for some forty-five years, he returned to England; but between the Queen and him stood a dense crowd of families extending further than the eye could reach, and armed with strange precedents which made it out to be right that people who had seen no service should be invested with high command, and that Sir Colin Campbell should be only a colonel. Yet he was of so fine a nature that, although he did not always avoid great bursts of anger, there was no ignoble bitterness in his sense of wrong. He awaited the time when perhaps he might have high command, and be able to serve his country in a sphere proportioned to his strength. His friends, however, were angry for his sake; and along with their strong devotion to him, there was bred a fierce hatred of a system of military dispensation which could keep in the background a man thus tried and thus known."

The time was soon to come when such a man as Colin Campbell could no longer be kept in the background. England and France had formed an alliance in defence of Turkey against Russia, and in the end of March, 1854, war was actually declared. English troops had already been despatched to the East; Lord Raglan had been appointed to the command of the expeditionary force, and Sir Colin Campbell had been nominated to a brigade command. He embarked for the East on the 3rd of April accompanied by Major Sterling his brigade-major and Captain Shadwell his aide-de-camp. On the 23rd he reached Constantinople, where on the arrival of Lord Raglan a few days later he was appointed to the Highland Brigade consisting of the Forty-Second, Seventy-Ninth, and Ninety-Third regiments. That brigade and the Guards formed the First Division, of which the Duke of Cambridge had the command. The Highland Brigade was completed in the second week of June by the arrival of the Forty-Second.

Although himself a Highlander, it had never until now fallen to the lot of Colin Campbell to command Highlanders. But he understood the Highland nature, which has its marked peculiarities; and he speedily won the respect and goodwill of the fine soldiers whom he was privileged to command. A thoroughly good understanding soon grew up between him and them; not only was he commanding officer of the brigade; he was also regarded as somewhat in the character of the chief of a clan. He was fortunate in finding in the commanding officer of the Forty-Second, the son of his old chief Sir John Cameron of the Ninth, and not less fortunate in being able to avail himself of Colonel Cameron's long experience at the head of a Highland regiment in many important details connected with the internal management and economy of the brigade.

In accordance with the scheme of operations agreed upon by the English and French commanders in conference with Omar Pasha at Varna, the allied armies were gradually concentrated about that place and inland therefrom in support of the Turkish army at Schumla. The position at Varna was found unhealthy and the Duke of Cambridge marched his division on to the plateau of Aladyn, where it was visited by Omar Pasha who expressed his great admiration of the magnificent appearance of the Guards and Highlanders paraded for his inspection. But tidings arrived that the Russians had raised the siege of Silistria and recrossed the Danube, and presently the troops of the Tsar withdrew altogether from the Principalities. The object for which the allied armies had been moved into Bulgaria no longer existed; and on July 18th the resolution was taken to make a descent on the Crimea and assail Sevastopol. The preparations for this daring enterprise were at length completed, and the Highland Brigade embarked at Varna on August 29th. Sir Colin sailed in the steam-transport Emu. He was now at length a Major-General after a service of forty-six years and one month; the date of the promotion was July 10th. "This rank," he remarks philosophically, "has arrived at a period of life when the small additional income which it carries with it is the only circumstance connected with the promotion in which I take any interest."

The voyage across the Black Sea, the landing on Crimean soil, and the advance to the Alma, are familiar history to every reader. Campbell had given up his journal before the landing, and all that he wrote of his personal experiences in the battle of the Alma is contained in two letters, one to his sister, the other to his friend Colonel Eyre. The former is a mere sketch, alluding to the fine courage exhibited by his young Highlanders and to the circumstance, mentioned with characteristic modesty, that "he was supposed to have made a disposition and an attack of importance which led to results of considerable advantage." He thus concludes, "I lost my best horse – a noble animal. He was first shot in the hip the ball passing through my sabretasche, and the second ball went right through his body passing through the heart. He sank at once, and Shadwell kindly lent me his horse which I immediately mounted."

The letter to Colonel Eyre is more detailed. "When," he writes, "the Light Division was ordered to advance, we (the First Division) followed in close support. My brigade was on the left of the Guards. On the face of the slope immediately in front of the Light Division, the enemy had made a large redoubt protected on each side by artillery on the heights above and on either side, covered on flanks and front by a direct as well as an enfilading fire. This artillery was supported by numerous large masses of troops near their guns, and also by other large masses in rear on the inward slopes of the heights. These heights extended far to the enemy's right, with a bare slope without bush or tree to afford cover down to the bank of the river, on which we had to form and advance to the attack after crossing.

"The vineyards and garden enclosures in the narrow valley through which the river runs, completely broke the formation of the troops. They crossed necessarily in a disorderly manner; but the left bank being high, I was able to collect my right regiment (the Forty-Second) under its cover. On gaining the top of the bank I observed a large portion of the Light Division advancing to attack the redoubt, which was a good deal to the right of my right regiment. I hastened its formation, the other two regiments being still struggling through the difficult bottom from which I had emerged… The Forty-Second continued its advance, followed, as I had previously ordered, by the two other regiments (Ninety-Third and Seventy-Ninth) in échelon, forming in that order as they gained in succession the summit of the left bank of the Alma. On gaining the ascent we found the enemy who had withdrawn from the redoubt, attempting to form on two large masses of troops advancing over the plateau to meet the attack of the Forty-Second. The men were too much blown to charge, so they opened fire while advancing in line, an operation in which I had practised them, and they drove before them in confusion with cheers and a terrible slaughter both masses and the fugitives from the redoubt.

"Before reaching the inner crest of the heights, another heavy mass of troops came forward against the Forty-Second, and this was disposed of in the same manner as the two first we encountered. I halted the regiment on the inner crest of the heights, still firing and killing more of the enemy as they were descending the inner slope, when two large bodies came down from the right of the enemy's position direct on the left flank of the Forty-Second. Just at this moment the Ninety-Third showed itself coming over the table-land, and attacked these bodies, which did not yield readily. The Ninety-Third, which I had great difficulty in restraining from following the enemy, had only time to inflict great loss, when two bodies of fresh infantry with some cavalry, came boldly forward against the left flank of the Ninety-Third, whereupon the Seventy-Ninth made its appearance over the hill, and went at these troops with cheers, causing them great loss and forcing them away in great confusion. The Guards during these operations were away to my right, quite removed from the scene of this fight which I have described. It was a fight of the Highland Brigade.

"Lord Raglan came up afterwards and sent for me. When I approached him I observed his eyes to fill and his lips and countenance to quiver. He gave me a cordial shake of the hand, but he could not speak. The men cheered very much. I told them I was going on to ask of the Commander-in-Chief a great favour, – that he would permit me to have the honour of wearing the Highland bonnet during the rest of the campaign, which pleased them very greatly, and so ended my part in the fight of the 20th inst… My men behaved nobly. I never saw troops march to battle with greater sang froid and order than those three Highland regiments… I write on the ground. I have neither stool to sit on nor bed to lie on. I am in capital health, for which I have to be very thankful. Cholera is rife among us, and carrying off many fine fellows of all ranks!"

This description is not in Kinglake's style, but in its soldierly curtness it may strike the reader as having the valuable attribute of greater directness and lucidity, and it was written by the man who not only controlled every movement on his own side of the fight on the left of the great redoubt, but also watched with cool, keen eyes every evolution of his adversaries. He had need to be on the alert, if ever man had; for he had to his hand but three battalions, and he had in his front no fewer than twelve Russian battalions each one of which was numerically stronger than any one of his three. Nor were his opponents raw militia or reserve battalions such as confronted Prince Napoleon's division. The Russian regiments on the British side of the great road, the Vladimir, Sousdal, Kazan, and Ouglitz, constituted the Sixteenth Division, the division d'élite of the Tsar's troops of the line; that same division which three and twenty years later won for Skobeleff his electrical successes. It was twelve battalions of this historical division against whose massive columns Colin Campbell led his brigade in the old two-deep British line formation with the result he has told in his quiet sober manner. No wonder that Lord Raglan's "eyes filled and his lips and countenance quivered" as, too much moved to speak, he shook the hand of the commander of the Highland Brigade.

"So ended my part in the fight of the 20th inst.," writes Sir Colin in the soldierly and modest narrative of his share in the victory which he sent home to his friend Eyre. That narrative, lucid though it is, is also almost provokingly curt. Fortunately, thanks chiefly to the industry of Kinglake, there exists the material for supplementing and amplifying it. According to that writer during the last of the halts on the march on the morning of the Alma, while the men were lying down in the sunshine, Sir Colin, the provident soldier of experience, quietly remarked to one of his officers, "This will be a good time for the men to get loose half of their cartridges;" and Kinglake adds that, "when the command travelled along the ranks of the Highlanders, it lit up the faces of the men one after another, assuring them that now at length, and after long experience, they indeed would go into action."

It does not appear that Colin Campbell ever made any reference to an incident which Kinglake mentions. The brigade of Guards before crossing the river was exposed, it seems, to a fire of artillery, which, as is not uncommon with that arm, struck down some men. There was a tendency to hesitation, when, according to Kinglake, some weak-kneed brother in the shape of an officer of "obscure rank" had the pusillanimity or the impertinence to exclaim, "The brigade of Guards will be destroyed; ought it not to fall back?" "When Sir Colin Campbell heard this saying," says Kinglake in his high-strung manner, "his blood rose so high that the answer he gave – impassioned and far-resounding – was of a quality to govern events: – 'It is better, sir, that every man of Her Majesty's Guards should lie dead on the field than that they should turn their backs upon the enemy!' Doubts and questionings ceased. The division marched forward."

Mr. Kinglake owns that he did not himself hear the words; and it is permissible, therefore, to doubt whether they were uttered. They certainly are not in Colin Campbell's manner. It would have been more like him to express himself in strong and frank vernacular to, or of the officer of "obscure rank" who had evinced a propensity for "falling back." No doubt he was with the Duke of Cambridge in front of the left of the Coldstreams when the Guards were encountering obstacles among the vineyards before reaching the river. In that position the Highland Brigade would be under his eye. Sir Colin Campbell, a soldier inured to war, certainly was of great service on the advance to the brigade of Guards, scarcely a man of which had ever seen a shot fired in anger. He remained near the Duke of Cambridge until the Guards had crossed the river; and when the Light Division was retreating in disorder on the brigade of Guards he advised His Royal Highness to move the latter somewhat to the left, to avoid the dislocation of his line which otherwise would be occasioned by the rush of fugitives. After the momentary confusion caused by the retreat of the Light Division behind the advancing Guards to reform, the Duke thought it would be well to make a short halt for the purpose of dressing his line, but Sir Colin earnestly desired him to make no such delay but to press forward on the enemy with the initial impulse, and the advice was followed with triumphant result.

It fell to Sir Colin Campbell and his Highland Brigade to protect the left flank of the British army, with three battalions to vanquish and put to flight eight Russian battalions, and to compel the retreat of four more. The arena of this exploit was the slopes and hollows of the Kourganè terrain to the Russian right of the great redoubt from which the British Light Division had been forced to recoil with heavy loss. On the extreme Russian right flank and rear stood three thousand horsemen, and to protect his own left Campbell had given the order to the Seventy-Ninth, the left regiment of his brigade, to go into column. But a little later, when he had ridden forward and so gained a wider scope of view, it became apparent to his experienced eye that he need fear nothing from the stolid array of Russian cavalry on his flank. He therefore recalled his order to the Seventy-Ninth and allowed it to go forward in line. His brigade after crossing the Alma fell into direct échelon of regiments, the Forty-Second on the right being the leading regiment of the three, the Ninety-Third in the centre, and the Seventy-Ninth on the left. Just before the Guards began their advance on the redoubt which the right Vladimir column was still holding, Sir Colin Campbell was in his saddle in front of the left of the Coldstreams talking occasionally with the Duke of Cambridge. When the Guards began their advance Sir Colin also proceeded to act. He discerned that by swiftly moving a battalion up to the crest in front of him, he would be on the flank of the position about the great redoubt where the right Vladimir column was confronting the Guards. This attitude of his would probably compel the retirement of the Vladimirs; if it did not, by wheeling to his right he would strike the flank of the Russian column while the Guards were assailing its front. He had the weapon wherewith to effect this stroke ready to his hand in the Forty-Second, which having crossed the river now stood ranged in line.

Before his brigade had moved from column into line Campbell had spoken a few straightforward soldierly words to his men, the gist of which has been commemorated. "Now, men," said he, "you are going into action. Remember this: whoever is wounded – no matter what his rank – must lie where he falls till the bandsmen come to attend to him. No soldiers must go carrying off wounded comrades. If any man does such a thing his name shall be stuck up in his parish church. The army will be watching you; make me proud of the Highland Brigade!" And now, when the time had come for action and that rugged slope had to be surmounted, he rode to the head of the "Black Watch" and gave to the regiment the command "Forward, Forty-Second!"

He himself with his staff rode rapidly in advance up to the crest. In his immediate front there lay before him a broad and rather deep depression on the further side of which there faced him the right Kazan column of two battalions, on the left of which was reforming the right Vladimir column whose retreat from the vicinity of the redoubt had been compelled by the pressure of the Guards on front and flank. Both columns had suffered considerably; but assuming their previous losses to have been one-third of their original strength, they[2] still numbered three thousand against the eight hundred and thirty of the Forty-Second. And when Campbell looked to his left, he saw on the neck bounding the left of the hollow another and a heavier column consisting of two perfectly fresh battalions of the Sousdal regiment. This last column, however, was stationary, and notwithstanding that the men were out of breath Sir Colin sent the Forty-Second, firing as it advanced, straight across the hollow against the Kazan and Vladimir columns. The regiment had not gone many paces when it was seen that the left Sousdal column had left the neck and was marching direct on the left flank of the Forty-Second. Campbell immediately halted the regiment and was about to throw back its left wing to deal with the Sousdal advance, when glancing over his left shoulder he saw that the Ninety-Third, his centre battalion, had reached the crest. In its eagerness its formation had become disturbed. Campbell rode to its front, halted and reformed it under fire, and then led it forward against the flank of the Sousdal column. The Forty-Second meanwhile had resumed its advance against the Vladimir and Kazan columns.

Before the onslaughts of the two Scottish regiments the Russian columns were staggering, and their officers had extreme difficulty in compelling their men to retain their formation, when from the upper ground on the left was seen moving down yet another Russian column, – the right Sousdal column – and heading straight for the flank of the Ninety-Third. It was taken in the flagrant offence of daring to march across the front of a battalion advancing in line. At that instant the Seventy-Ninth came bounding forward; after a moment's halt to dress their ranks, the Cameron men sprang at the flank of the Sousdal column and shattered it by the fierce fire poured into its huddled ranks. And now, the left Sousdal column almost simultaneously discomfited by the Ninety-Third, and the Kazan and Vladimir columns which the "Black Watch" had assailed being in full retreat, the hill spurs and hollows became thronged by the disordered masses of the enemy. Kinglake brilliantly pictures the culmination of the triumph of the Highlanders: – "Knowing their hearts, and deeming that the time was one when the voice of his people might fitly enough be heard, the Chief touched or half-lifted his hat in the way of a man assenting. Then along the Kourganè slopes and thence west almost home to the Causeway, the hillsides were made to resound with that joyous assuring cry which is the natural utterance of a northern people so long as it is warlike and free." It is curious that nowhere in his vivid description of the part taken by the Highland Brigade in the achievement of the victory of the Alma, does Kinglake make any mention of the bagpipes. It is certain that they were in full blast during the advance of the regiments and throughout the fighting, and their shrill strains must have astonished the Russians not less than did the waving tartans and nodding plumes of the Highlanders.