The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8

With the besiegers, on the other hand, prospects were brightening. The siege-train, when it arrived early in September, made a formidable increase in the ordnance before Delhi. As the name implies, the guns were larger, and carried shot and shell more weighty, than those used in battles and skirmishes; their main purpose being to make breaches in the defence-works of the city, through which infantry might enter and capture the place. Sir John Lawrence had been able to collect in the Punjaub, and send to Delhi from Ferozpore, a train of about thirty heavy pieces of artillery, consisting of guns, howitzers, and mortars of large calibre. The difficulty was not to obtain the guns, but to secure and to forward men to escort them, animals to draw them, ammunition to serve them, carriages to convey the auxiliary stores, food and camp-equipage for the men, fodder for the animals – whether horses, oxen, camels, or elephants. Such was the disturbed state of India at that time, that Lawrence had not been able to send this reinforcement until September; and even then, all his skill, influence, and energy, were required to surmount the numerous difficulties. About the same time there arrived in camp a Belooch battalion from Kurachee, the 4th Punjaub infantry, the Patan Irregular Horse, and reinforcements to H.M. 8th, 24th, 52d, and 60th regiments. The siege-army now reached an aggregate of about 9000 men of all arms, effectives and non-effectives, including gun-lascars, syce-drivers, Punjaubee Sappers and Miners, native infantry recruits, and other men not comprised in regular regiments. There were also near the camp or on their march to it, numerous troops belonging to the Cashmere, Jheend, and Putialah Contingents. Out of the total number of troops of all kinds, Wilson hoped to be enabled to find 9000 effective infantry to make an assault on the city after a bombardment. To what extent this hope was realised, we shall see presently.

It is important to bear clearly in mind the relative positions of the besiegers and the besieged, the siege-camp and the fortified city, at that time. Let it not be forgotten that the British position before Delhi, from the early days of June to those of September, was purely a defensive one. The besiegers could neither invest the city nor batter down its walls; the troops being too few for the first of these enterprises, and the guns too weak for the second; while an assault, though twice intended, was not attempted, because there was no force sufficient to hold the city, even if it were captured. The position on the north of the city, from Metcalfe House to the Subzee Mundee, was the only one which they could successfully maintain. Nevertheless, though limited to that one side, it was invaluable, because it enabled the British to keep open a road of communication with the northwest, whence all supplies must necessarily be obtained. The English public, grieved and irritated by the astounding news from India, often reproached Barnard and Wilson for their delay in ‘taking Delhi;’ and many of the officers and soldiers on the spot longed for some dashing movement that would restore British prestige, and give them their hour of revenge against the mutineers. Subsequent experience, however, has gone far to prove that the generals were right. The grounds for so thinking have been thus set forth by an artillery-officer whose account of the siege has found a place among the Blue-books: ‘Whether the city might or might not have been carried by a coup de main, as was contemplated first in June and afterwards in July, it is needless now to inquire; but judging from the resistance we afterwards experienced in the actual assault, when we had been greatly reinforced in men and guns, it appears to me fortunate the attempt was not made. The strength of the place was never supposed to consist in the strength of its actual defences, though these were much undervalued; but every city, even without fortifications, is, from its very nature, strongly defensible, unless it can be effectually surrounded or bombarded. Moreover, within Delhi, the enemy possessed a magazine containing upwards of two hundred guns, and an almost inexhaustible supply of ammunition; while their numbers were certainly never less than double those of the besiegers.’ But, more than this, Delhi was not so weak a place as public opinion in England at that time represented it to be. The numerous bastions presented regular faces and flanks of masonry, with properly cut embrasures. The portions of wall or curtain between the bastions were twenty-four feet high, two-thirds of the height being twelve feet thick, and the remainder near the top being a parapet three feet in thickness. Outside the wall was a broad beam or ledge, screened by a parapet as a place for musketeers; below the beam was a ditch, sixteen feet deep by twenty feet wide at the bottom, with well-constructed escarp and counterscarp; and a good sloping glacis, descending from the outer edge of the ditch, covered nearly half the height of the wall from all assaults by distant batteries. Captain Norman, who was present during the whole of the siege as assistant adjutant-general, and who wrote a very lucid semi-official account of the siege-operations, fully corroborates this statement of the strength of the position.

As a memento of a remarkable event in the military history of India, it may be acceptable to present here a detailed list of all the troops constituting the siege-army of Delhi in the second week of September, when the assault was about to be made. The number, it will be seen, was 9866,76 besides ‘unarmed and undisciplined pioneers,’ of whom no enumeration was given. These, it must be remembered, were all effective troops, and did not include those who were disabled by wounds or sickness. It should also be observed, that the Cashmere, Jheend, and Putialah Contingents find no place in this list; they were scarcely mentioned by General Wilson in his dispatches, although from other sources of information they seem to have reached nearly three thousand in number. Why the general and his staff should have had to make the entry ‘strength unknown,’ in reference to them, does not clearly appear. Concerning the other or more important elements of the army, many of the regiments were represented only by detachments or wings in the camp, the rest being at other places; but all that need be noted in the list is the exact number of men. Glancing over this list, it is impossible to avoid being struck with the fact how nearly the Oudian or Hindustani element is excluded from it. There are Europeans, Goorkhas, Sikhs, Punjaubees, Beloochees, and mountaineers from the Afghan frontier; but the only entry referring clearly to the Bengal native army is that of 78 men of the 4th irregular cavalry, and these appear in the unsoldierlike condition, ‘disarmed and unhorsed.’ The horse-artillery were frequently referred to in dispatches by the names of the officers in command – such as Tombs’, Turner’s, Renny’s, and Remington’s troops; while two light field-batteries were named after Scott and Bourchier. There were also several companies of foot-artillery serving with the siege-guns, which altogether numbered more than sixty heavy pieces of ordnance of various kinds. It has been said above that the list of 9866 excluded sick and wounded; these latter numbered at that time no less than 3074; therefore the total of all ranks and all degrees of efficiency nearly reached 13,000 men, even excluding the unenumerated pioneers and contingents. In five regiments alone there were 1300 men sick and wounded, almost equalling in number those in an effective state; the 52d royal regiment and the Sirmoor battalion exhibited a greater number on the sick-list than on that of the effectives.

Now commenced those operations of siege-warfare which depend more on engineers and artillerymen than on infantry and cavalry – the arrangements for bringing near the city guns numerous and powerful enough to batter the walls. All hands were busy. The engineers and their assistants had made 10,000 fascines, 10,000 gabions, and 100,000 sand-bags; field-magazines, scaling-ladders, and spare platforms had been made in great number. The north side of the city being that which was to be assaulted, it was resolved to maintain the right of the position strongly against the enemy, while the main attack was pushed on the left – first, because the river would protect the left flank of the advancing columns; and, secondly, because the troops would find themselves in comparatively open ground in that part after a successful assault, instead of being cooped up in narrow and fiercely defended streets. One of the subsidiary measures taken was to form a trench to the left of the Samee, and to construct at the end of it a battery for four guns and two large howitzers. This Samee, better known to the soldiers as the Sammy House, was an old temple, situated some way down the slope of the ridge towards the city, and about half a mile distant from the Moree Bastion; it had for some weeks been held by the British. The purpose of this newly constructed Samee Battery was to prevent sorties from the Lahore or Cabool Gates passing round the city wall to annoy the breaching-batteries, and also to assist in keeping down the fire of the Moree Bastion. The three main works on the north side of the city were the Moree, Cashmere, and Water Bastions – all of which had been strengthened by the British authorities some years before, when no one dreamed that those strengthenings would be a disaster to the power which ordered them to be effected.

It was on the 7th of September that the besiegers began to render visible those works which pertain especially to the storming of a fortified post. Until then, there had been few or no trenches, parallels, or zigzags, intended to enable the besiegers to approach near the beleaguered city, preparatory to a forcible entry. On that night, however, a working-party was sent out to establish two batteries about seven hundred yards distant from the Moree Bastion. The sappers, attacked by the enemy and defended by infantry, prosecuted their work amid the peril which always surrounds that species of military labour. One battery, on the left, of four 24-pounders, was intended to hold the Cashmere Bastion partially in check; while the other, of five 18-pounders and one 8-inch howitzer, was to silence the Moree Bastion, and prevent it interfering with the attack on the left. A trench was made to connect the two batteries, and extending beyond them a little to the right and left, so as to communicate with a wide and deep ravine which, extending very nearly up to the left attack, formed a sort of first parallel, affording good cover to the guard of the trenches. All this was completed during the night or by the forenoon of the 8th; and the two portions, with the trench connecting them, became known as Brind’s Battery, named after the officer who worked it.

At dusk on the evening of the 8th, a second working-party set forth, to construct a battery to be called ‘No. 2.’ The enemy, influenced by an opinion that the attack would be made on the right, had neglected the ground at and near Ludlow Castle, a house situated barely seven hundred yards from the Cashmere Gate. The British engineers, taking advantage of this neglect, seized the position, occupied it with a strong detachment, and employed the nights of the 9th and 10th in constructing a battery upon it. The enemy, alarmed at this near approach, kept up a fierce cannonade from the Cashmere and Water Bastions and from the Selimgurh; but the besiegers had made their approach so carefully, that few of them suffered. This battery, like Brind’s, was in two portions; one, immediately in front of Ludlow Castle, for nine 24-pounders, was intended to breach the wall between the Cashmere and Water Bastions, and to render the parapet untenable by musketeers; the other, two hundred yards further to the right, for seven 8-inch howitzers and two 18-pounders, was to aid in attaining the same objects. The ‘No. 2’ Battery, from its magnitude, and the important duty assigned to it, was placed under the control of two officers; Major Kaye commanded the right position; while the left was intrusted to Major Campbell, who, being wounded soon afterwards, was succeeded by Captain Johnson.

Still further was the powerful machinery for attack carried. On the night of the 10th, Battery No. 3 was commenced, within two hundred yards of the Water Bastion, behind a small ruined house in the custom-house compound; it was bold and hazardous work to construct a battery in such a spot, for the enemy kept up a destructive fire of musketry the whole time. The object of No. 3, when mounted with six 18-pounders, was to open a second breach in the Water Bastion. Battery No. 4 was in like manner constructed during the nights of the 10th and 11th, at the Koodseebagh near Ludlow Castle; it was mounted with ten heavy mortars, placed under the charge of Major Tombs. Later in the siege a battery of light mortars was worked by Captain Blunt from the rear of the custom-house. To enable the whole of the siege-batteries to be armed, most of the heavy guns were withdrawn from the ridge, leaving only a few that were necessary to defend it from any attacks made by the enemy from the Kissengunje and Subzee Mundee quarters. There being a deficiency of foot-artillerymen to man the heavy guns and mortars, nearly all the officers and men of the horse-artillery quitted the duties to which they more especially belonged, and worked in the batteries during the bombardment; as did likewise many volunteers from the British cavalry, who were eager to take part in the fray. Even the infantry regiments furnished volunteers from among the officers, who practised at the ridge-batteries for many days before the breaching-batteries opened their fire, when they transferred their services to the latter. The newly raised Sikh artillerymen, proud to share the dangers and emulate the courage of the British, were intrusted with the working of two of the great guns, a duty which they afterwards performed to admiration.

It thus appears that the works at the newly constructed breaching-batteries bristled with forty-four heavy pieces of ordnance, besides guns of lighter weight and smaller calibre at more distant points. The murderous conflict could not much longer be delayed. The besieged knew well the danger impending over them, and made arrangements for a desperate resistance. No sooner did Brind’s Battery open fire on the 8th than the enemy made a sortie from the city, principally of cavalry; but they were soon driven in by the artillery. From the broken ground below the ridge, and from a trench in front of the battery, they kept up a constant fire of musketry; grape-shot had to be used against them, from a light gun-battery near the Samee House. In like manner, during the construction of the remaining breaching-batteries, the enemy kept up a fierce and continuous fire from every available point, causing great loss to the besiegers – not only among the fighting-men, but among the natives employed as porters, magazine lascars, ordnance-drivers, &c. The enemy went to work on the night of the 11th, and constructed an advanced trench parallel to the British left attack, three or four hundred yards distant from it; and from this they opened a very hot fire of musketry. They also got some light guns, and one of heavier calibre, into the open ground on the right of the siege-position, from which they maintained an annoying enfilade fire. At the Custom-house Battery, within two hundred yards of the city, the British were continually assailed with a storm of bullets, which rendered their passage to and from the spot extremely perilous. On more than one occasion, before Battery No. 2 was finished, the mutineers sallied out from the Cashmere Gate, and poured forth a volley of musketry at that spot; and it required a very strong guard of infantry to protect the battery from a closer attack. Some of the enemy’s guns, planted to enfilade the batteries Nos. 1 and 2, were so sheltered that the ordnance on the ridge and at the Samee House were never able effectually to silence them. From another quarter, the Selimgurh or old fort, a constant fire of shells was kept up, so skilfully pointed as to drop with perilous accuracy upon three of the breaching-batteries. During the actual progress of the bombardment and assault, only one attempt was made by the enemy to annoy the besiegers in the rear; a body of horse crossed the canal at Azadpore (at the junction of the two roads leading from the city and the cantonment), drove in a picket of irregular horse, and created some confusion; but parties of Punjaub and Guide cavalry, quickly arriving at the spot, checked, pursued, and dispersed the intruders.

Now commenced the fearful thunder of a cannonading. The engineers having finished their work, handed it over to the artillerymen, who collected around them vast stores of shot and shell. It was on the 11th of September that the British siege-guns may be said to have opened their systematic fire, although some had been already tested, and others were not quite ready. The nine 24-pounders, in Major Campbell’s No. 2 Battery, ‘opened the ball,’ to use the language of one of the engineers, and soon shewed their tremendous power in bringing down huge pieces of the wall near the Cashmere Bastion. The enemy’s guns on that bastion attempted to reply, but were soon knocked over, and the bastion itself rendered untenable. The work was hot on the 11th, but much hotter on the 12th, when Battery No. 3 opened its fire, and upwards of forty ponderous pieces of ordnance belched forth ruin and slaughter on the devoted city. All that night, all the next day and night, until the morning of the 14th, did this cannonading continue, with scarcely an interval of silence. Soldiers like to be met in soldierly fashion, even if they suffer by it. The British did not fail to give a word of praise to the enemy; who, though unable to work a gun from any of the three bastions that were so fiercely assailed, stuck to their artillery in the open ground which enfiladed the right attack; they got a gun to bear through one of the holes breached in the wall; they sent rockets from one of their martello towers; and they poured forth a torrent of musketry from their advanced trench and from the city walls. Throughout the warlike operations here and elsewhere, the enemy were more effective in artillery than in infantry, and less in cavalry than in either of the other two.

When the great day arrived – the day with which hopes and fears, anxieties and responsibilities, had been so long associated – General Wilson made arrangements for the final assault. The plan of operations was dependent on the state to which the breaching-batteries had brought the defence-works of the city during two or three days’ bombarding, by the engineers under Colonel Baird Smith, and the artillery under Major Gaitskell. It was known that the force of shot and shell poured against the place had made breaches near the Cashmere and Water Bastions, destroyed the defences of those bastions, and knocked down the parapets which had afforded shelter to the enemy’s musketeers; but wishing to ascertain the exact state of matters, the general, on the night of the 13th, sent down Lieutenants Medley and Lang on the dangerous duty of examining the breach made in the city wall near the Cashmere Bastion; while Lieutenants Greathed and Home made a similar examination of the breach near the Water Bastion. These officers having announced that both breaches were practicable for the entrance of storming-parties, the general resolved that the next day, the 14th of September, should be signalised by a storming of the great Mogul stronghold. He marshalled his forces into columns,77 the exact components of which it will be interesting to record here; and to each column he prescribed a particular line of duty. The 1st column, of 1000 men, was to assault the main breach, and escalade the face of the Cashmere Bastion, after the heavy siege-guns had finished their destructive work; it was to be covered by a detachment of H.M. 60th Rifles. The 2d column, of 850 men, similarly covered by a body of Rifles, was to advance on the Water Bastion and carry the breach. The 3d column, of 950 men, was to be directed against the Cashmere Gate, preceded by an explosion-party of engineers under Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, and covered by a party of Rifles. The 4th column (strength unrecorded) was to assail the enemy’s strong position in the Kissengunje and Pahareepore suburbs, with a view both of driving in the rebels, and of supporting the main attack by forcing an entrance at the Cabool Gate; for this duty a miscellaneous body of troops, almost wholly native, was told off. In addition to the four columns, there was a reserve of 1300 men, covered by Rifles, which was to await the result of the main attack, and take possession of certain posts as soon as the columns entered the place. No more troops were left at camp than were absolutely necessary for its protection; a few convalescents of the infantry, and a few troopers and horse-artillery, were all that could be spared for this duty. Nearly all the pickets were handed over to the cavalry to guard. Arrangements were, however, made to send back a force as speedily as possible to the camp to guard the sick, wounded, stores, &c., which naturally became objects of much solicitude to the general at such a time. Brigadier Grant, with the bulk of the cavalry and some horse-artillery, moved down to the vicinity of No. 1 Battery, to check any attempt that might be made by the enemy, after a sortie from the Lahore or Ajmeer Gates, to attack the storming columns in flank.

The night which closed in the 13th and opened the 14th of September was not one to be soon forgotten by the soldiers of the siege-army. Few of them, officers or men, slept much; their thoughts were too intensely directed towards the stern realities of the morrow, which would end the career of so many among their number. At four o’clock on the morning of the 14th, the different columns set forth on their march from the camp to their respective places. The first three columns were, according to the programme just cited, to engage in the actual assault on the northern side of the city; the heads of those columns were to be kept concealed until the moment for assault had arrived; and the signal for that crisis was to be, the advance of the Rifles to the front, to act as skirmishers.

Brigadier Nicholson took the lead. He gave the signal; the Rifles rushed to the front with a cheer, and skirmished along through the low jungle which extended to within fifty yards of the ditch. The 1st and 2d columns, under himself and Brigadier Jones, emerged from behind the Koodseebagh, and advanced steadily towards the breached portions of the wall. Up to this time the enemy’s guns had wrought little mischief on the columns; but as soon as the latter emerged into the open ground, a perfect storm of bullets met them from the front and both flanks; officers and men were falling fast on the glacis; and for several minutes it was impossible to get the ladders placed for a descent into the ditch and an ascent of the escarp. After a fierce struggle, the British bayonet, as usual, won the day; the troops dashed through and over all obstacles, and entered the city through the breaches which the guns had previously made in the walls. Now within the boundary of the imperial city, the two brigadiers at once turned to the right, proceeded along the ramparts, fought the sepoys inch by inch, overcame all opposition, and captured in succession a small battery, a tower between the Cashmere and Moree Bastions, the Moree itself, and the Cabool Gate; but the vigorous attempts they made to take the Burn Bastion and the Lahore Gate failed, so determined was the resistance opposed to them, and so terrible the loss they suffered in officers and men. It was in one of the many attacks on the Lahore Gate, when the troops had to advance along a narrow lane swept by the enemy’s grape-shot and musketry, that the bullet was fired which laid low the gallant Nicholson – an officer in whom the whole army had reposed a full and deep reliance. As far as the Cabool Gate, the two columns were enabled to maintain their conquests; and they immediately made preparations for opening fire from the bastions inwards upon the yet unconquered buildings of the city – a sand-bag parapet being constructed across the gorge or open rear of each bastion.

We have now to see what was transpiring in another quarter, on this morning of heroism and slaughter. While the 1st column was engaged in forcing an entrance through the breach near the Cashmere Bastion, and the 2d column a similar entrance through that near the Water Bastion, the 3d directed its operations against the Cashmere Gate – through which, it will be remembered, the troops of that column were to rush after an explosion-party had blown in the gate itself. If there be any sublimity in bloody warfare, it is manifested in the self-devotion with which a soldier marches steadfastly to a position where he knows that death will be almost certain and immediate. Such self-devotion was shewn by the little band of heroes forming this explosion-party. They had to advance in broad daylight to the gate, amid a storm of bullets from above, from both flanks, and from a wicket in the gate itself; they had carefully to lay down and adjust the bags of gunpowder close to the gate, to arrange a train or fuse, to fire the bags, and to take their chance of being themselves blown up by the explosion. The gallant men intrusted with this dangerous duty were divided into two parties – an advanced and a firing party. The first consisted of an engineer officer, Lieutenant Home, two non-commissioned officers, Sergeants Smith and Carmichael, and a few native sappers, who carried the powder-bags. The firing-party consisted of Lieutenant Salkeld, Corporal Burgess, and a few native sappers. Owing to some delay, the two parties did not set out for their rendezvous at Ludlow Castle until broad daylight, and then they had to encounter a heavy fire of musketry all the way. When the advanced party reached the gate – a heavy wooden structure, flanked by massive walls – they found that a part of the drawbridge over the ditch had been destroyed; but, passing across the precarious footing afforded by the remaining beams, they proceeded to lodge their powder-bags against the gate. The wicket was open, and through it the enemy kept up a heavy fire. Sergeant Carmichael, and a native sapper named Madhoo, were killed while laying the bags; but Lieutenant Home only received a blow from a stone thrown up by a bullet. The perilous duty of laying the bags being completed, the advanced party slipped down into the ditch, to make room for the firing-party, which then advanced. ‘Lieutenant Salkeld,’ said Colonel Baird Smith, in his report of the engineering operations of the day, ‘while endeavouring to fire the charge, was shot through the arm and leg, and handed over the slow match to Corporal Burgess, who fell mortally wounded just as he had successfully accomplished the onerous duty. Havildar Tilluh Singh, of the Sikhs, was wounded, and Ramloll Sepoy of the same corps, was killed during this part of the operation. The demolition being most successful, Lieutenant Home, happily not wounded, caused the bugler (Hawthorne) to sound the regimental call of the 52d, as the signal for the advancing columns. Fearing that amid the noise of the assault the sounds might not be heard, he had the call repeated three times, when the troops advanced and carried the gateway with complete success.’ Sergeant Smith had a narrow escape from being blown up. Seeing Burgess fall, and not knowing the exact result of the gallant fellow’s efforts to fire the train, he ran forward; but seeing the train alight, he had just time to throw himself into the ditch before the explosion took place. The perilous nature of this kind of duty gave rise to a correspondence in the public journals, from which a few lines may not unsuitably be given in a note.78