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

On the 2d, Sir Colin marched at daybreak from his camp at Buntara, diverged from the road to the Alum Bagh, and took that which went near the Jelalabad fort towards the eastern margin of the suburbs. With a portion only of his army, he advanced to the Dil Koosha, the palace and park at the easternmost extremity of the city. The chief officers with him at the time of this advance were Generals Lugard, Adrian Hope, Hope Grant, Little, and Archdale Wilson. His main object at first, with a force of five or six thousand men, was to march to such a spot, near the Dil Koosha, as would enable him to form a camp just beyond reach of the enemy’s guns; and to protect his enormous siege-train as it gradually arrived, until the time was come for commencing active operations. Not only the siege-train, but the countless appendages of an Indian army, would equally require protection during its passage from Buntara to the Dil Koosha. Mr Russell, who accompanied this expedition in person, says that no language can correctly convey an idea of the vastness in the number of elephants, camels, oxen, horses, camp-followers, and vehicles that daily demanded the commander-in-chief’s attention at this period. ‘Who really can bring before his mind’s eye a train of baggage-animals twenty-five miles long, a string of sixteen thousand camels, a siege-train park covering a space of four hundred by four hundred yards, with twelve thousand oxen attached to it, and a following of sixty thousand non-combatants?’ Even the doolies or litter-carriages for wounded men constituted a formidable item. To each company of a regiment there were ten doolies, and to each dooly were six coolies or native porters: thus there were nearly five hundred dooly-carriers for each average regiment; and even with this large supply, if the sick and wounded in any one regiment exceeded eighty men, there would be more than the coolies could properly attend to.

The force with which Sir Colin started from Buntara brought a few guns only. These were dragged along the centre of the line of route; the infantry were on either side of them, the cavalry and horse-artillery outside all, and the baggage in the rear. Each soldier took a small quantity of food with him. The march was through a flat well-cultivated country, past the Jelalabad fort, but a mile or so distant from the Alum Bagh. The skirmishers at the head of the column, as they approached the Dil Koosha, found a body of insurgent troopers watching their progress. When the column began to close on the advance-guard, the enemy opened fire with several guns which were in position in strong bastions along the line of canal – the outermost of the three lines of defence before adverted to. This fire was heavy and well sustained. It was not difficult to capture the Dil Koosha itself; but Sir Colin’s troops were much annoyed by the enemy’s fire over the open country, until they could secure the Dil Koosha and the Mahomed Bagh as advanced pickets, with heavy guns placed in battery to oppose the enemy’s artillery. This once effected, a secure base for further operations was obtained, with the right resting on the river. It was a good day’s work, not in conquest, but in the preparations for conquest.

When Sir Colin came to reconnoitre the enemy’s position, he found that the new lines of defence, constructed since November, were vast and well planned. He further saw that no immediate attack could be successfully made upon them by infantry, without such a sacrifice of life as he had determined if possible to avoid. To fight with artillery, before sending in his foot-soldiers to fight, was his plan; and he now at once sent back a messenger to the camp at Buntara, for the rest of the troops and heavy siege-artillery to advance without delay. All during the following night was the road from Buntara to the Dil Koosha filled with an apparently endless train of soldiers, guns, commissariat-carts, beasts of burden and of draught, and camp-followers – ready to swell the large number already at the last-named place. This train was protected on either side by cavalry and horse artillery, ready to dash out against any of the enemy that should threaten interruption.

During the whole day on the 3d, the operations consisted chiefly in this bringing forward of guns and bodies of troops to positions necessary to be occupied when the regular siege began. When the remainder of the siege-train had arrived, and also General Walpole’s division, Sir Colin’s position embraced all the open ground on the southeastern margin of the city, with his right flank resting on the Goomtee, and his left in the direction of the Alum Bagh. The Alum Bagh and the Jelalabad fort were both occupied by portions of his troops, and the country between them was controlled by Hodson’s Irregular Horse; while a strong brigade of cavalry, under Brigadier W. Campbell, swept the suburbs northwest of the Alum Bagh. By this arrangement, almost the entire southern half of the city was invested by his forces. The Dil Koosha was head-quarters, surrounded by the tents in which the soldiers took their few brief hours of repose. The palace, built in an Italian style, still retained much of the splendour belonging to it in more peaceful days, when it was the ‘Heart’s Delight’ of the sensual monarch; but now it was well guarded by 42d Highlanders, ready to grapple with princelings and sepoys at any moment. From the roof of this palace could be seen the chief buildings of the city, as well as the vast defensive preparations which the enemy had made. The sepoys in the Martinière maintained a rifle-fire against such of the British as made their appearance on the flat roof of the Dil Koosha; but the distance was too great to render the fire dangerous.

The operations of the 4th were a sequel to those of the 3d – not an actual commencement of the siege, but a furtherance of the arrangements necessary to render the siege successful. The camp was extended from the Dil Koosha to Bibiapore, a house and enclosure a little further down the right bank of the river. From the glimpses obtained by the skirmishers and pickets, and from the information brought in by spies, it was ascertained that many of the inhabitants, terrified at the formidable preparations for the siege, were fleeing from the city on the opposite side; and that the ‘authorities’ were endeavouring to check this flight, wishing the inhabitants to fight for their property and their lives within the city itself. There were intelligible reasons for this on both sides. The citizens, whether their love for their native royal family was great or small, had little inclination to sacrifice their own personal interests to that sentiment; while, on the other hand, the rebel leaders cared not how many townsmen were ruined, so long as the privileges and profits of government remained with themselves, rather than reverting to the British.

It was on the 5th that General Franks joined the commander-in-chief, with that corps which now became the fourth division of the army of Oude. He had fought his way half across the province, from the Jounpoor frontier, defeating many bodies of rebels on the way, and arriving at Lucknow precisely at the time which had been agreed on. Jung Bahadoor and his large Nepaulese army did not arrive at the time specified: a want of punctuality which disturbed both the plans and the equanimity of Sir Colin. The components of the army of Oude, as laid down by the commander-in-chief on the 10th of February, were enumerated in a note at the end of the last chapter. At present, on the 5th of March, when Franks had arrived, the army before Lucknow consisted approximately of the following numbers of troops – First division of infantry, under Outram, about 5000 strong; second, under Lugard, 5400; third, under Walpole, 4300; fourth, under Franks, 4800; cavalry, under Hope Grant and other commanders, distributed among the infantry divisions; artillery, including the naval brigade, 1100; and engineers, 1700. The army of Oude was often said to consist of 30,000 troops, of whom 18,000 were British and the rest native; but such an estimate was worth little unless the exact day be named to which it applied. The army varied both by arrivals and departures.

The portion of the siege-plan connected with the left bank of the river had never been lost sight of during the preparatory operations on the right. While the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and commissariat were busily engaged in camping near the Dil Koosha, the engineers were collecting the casks, fascines of fagots, ropes, and timbers, necessary for forming a bridge, or rather two bridges, across the Goomtee, at some point below where the enemy were in greatest force. The spot selected was near head-quarters at Bibiapore, where the river was about forty yards wide. The enemy, uneasy at the proceedings of the engineers, gradually assembled in considerable numbers on the opposite bank; but as the British brought up guns to oppose them, the engineering works proceeded without much molestation. These bridges exemplified some of the contrivances which military commanders are accustomed to adopt, in the course of their onerous duties. The groundwork of each was a collection of empty beer-casks, lashed by ropes to timber cross-pieces, and floated off one by one to their positions; a firm roadway of planking was afterwards fixed on the top of the whole range from end to end. Firm indeed must the construction necessarily have been; for troopers on their horses, heavy guns and mortars, ammunition-wagons, and commissariat carts, all would have to pass over these bridges, secure so far as possible from accident to man or beast.

To Sir James Outram was intrusted the command of that portion of the army which was to cross by these bridges of casks, and operate against the city from the left bank of the Goomtee. This gallant officer had been in and near the Alum Bagh for a period of just one hundred days, from November to March, defending himself successfully against numerous attacks made on him by the enemy, as narrated in former chapters. It was right that he should now have the most important command under Sir Colin. He took his departure from the Alum Bagh – leaving that important post, which he had so long and so well defended, to the care of Brigadier Franklyn and of the 5th and 78th Queen’s regiments of foot. The force intrusted to him consisted of Walpole’s division of infantry, together with regiments and detachments from other divisions.131 Franks with his division took Walpole’s place near the Dil Koosha. The plan of attack agreed upon was, that Outram, after crossing the Goomtee, should advance up the left bank; while the troops in position at the Dil Koosha were to remain at rest until it should have become apparent that the first line of the enemy’s works, or the rampart running along the canal and abutting on the Goomtee, had been turned. Sir James, arriving at the Dil Koosha from the Alum Bagh, effected his crossing safely on the 6th, and pitched his camp for the night on the left bank of the river, near the race-course. It was a formidable burden for the bridges to bear, comprising, besides the infantry and cavalry, thirty guns, and a large train of baggage and ammunition animals; nevertheless the floating fabrics bore up well, and fully answered their intended purpose. English troops of the line, Highlanders, lancers, hussars, dragoons, artillery, engineers, commissariat, horses, oxen, camels, elephants – all passed safely over, and speedily fell into orderly array on the other side of the river. This was, of course, not done without a little fighting. The enemy could not be blind to the proceeding, nor to the consequences likely to result from it. There was skirmishing in front of the Chukkur Walla Kothee, or Yellow House, a circular building on the left bank of the river; and there was much prancing about of leading personages who hastily came out of the city; but nothing disturbed Sir James from securely encamping at night.

While Outram was thus crossing the river on the 6th, Sir Colin remained simply on the defensive near the Dil Koosha, deferring all active operations until the subsidiary force had got into fighting order on the left bank. The enemy maintained a continuous fire from the Martinière; but the gunnery was not good, and very little mischief was occasioned. One of the most striking circumstances connected with the position and proceedings of the commander-in-chief was that he carried the electric telegraph with him from camp to camp, from post to post. Chiefly through the energy of Lieutenant Patrick Stewart, poles were set up and wires extended wherever Sir Colin went. Calcutta, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Buntara, and the Alum Bagh, could all communicate instantly; and now a wire made its appearance through a drawing-room window at the Dil Koosha itself, being stretched over a row of poles along the line of route which the commander-in-chief and his troops had followed. Nay, the wires even followed Outram over the river, and made their appearance – for the first time in the history of Oude – on the left bank. No sooner did Sir Colin advance a few miles, than Stewart followed him with poles and wires, galvanic batteries and signalling apparatus – daring all dangers, conquering all difficulties, and setting up a talking-machine close to the very enemy themselves. It may almost literally be said that, wherever he lay down his head at night, Sir Colin could touch a handle, and converse with Lord Canning at Allahabad before he went to sleep. The value of the electric telegraph was quite beyond all estimate during these wars and movements: it was worth a large army in itself.

On the 7th, Sir James Outram, while making his arrangements on the opposite side of the river, was attacked in great force by the enemy. On the preceding day, he had baffled them in all their attempts, with a loss of only 2 killed and 10 wounded; and he was not now likely to be seriously affected even by four or five times his number. The enemy occupied the race-course stand with infantry, and bodies of cavalry galloped up to the same spot with the intention of disturbing Outram’s camp. He resisted all the attacks, chased them to a distance with his cavalry, and maintained his advantageous camping-ground.132 The road from Fyzabad and from the cantonment passed near his camp; and as all that region had for many months been entirely in the hands of the rebels, there was a liability at any moment of some sudden onslaught being made on him. The commander-in-chief had foreseen this, when he placed at the disposal of Outram a division strong enough to form a compact little army in itself.

The result of a careful reconnaissance made on the 8th, by Sir Colin, resulted in instructions to Outram to arrange his batteries during the night, and on the following day to attack the enemy’s position, the key to which was the Chukkur Walla Kothee. On the morning of the 9th, accordingly, Sir James made the attack with excellent effect; the enemy being driven out at all points, and the Yellow House seized. He advanced his whole force for some distance through ground affording excellent cover for the enemy. He was by that means enabled to bring his right flank forward to occupy the Fyzabad road, which he crossed by a bridge over a nullah, and to plant his batteries for the purpose of enfilading the works upon the canal. During this day’s operations, much skirmishing took place between his Sikhs and Rifles and the enemy; but the most obstinate contest was maintained within the Yellow House itself, where a few fanatics, shutting themselves up, resisted for several hours all attempts to dislodge them. They were at length expelled, fighting desperately to the last. Outram was then enabled to take the villages of Jeamoor and Jijowly, and to advance to the Padishah Bagh or King’s Garden, opposite the Fureed Buksh palace, and to commence an enfilade fire on the lines of the Kaiser Bagh defences.

While Outram was engaged in these successful operations of the 9th on the left bank of the Goomtee, a very heavy fire was kept up against the Martinière, from mortars and guns placed in position on the Dil Koosha plateau. Sir Colin had purposely deferred this assault until Outram had captured the Yellow House, and commenced that flank attack which so embarrassed the enemy. The sailors of the naval brigade were joyously engaged on this day; for the thicker the fight, the better were they pleased. They commanded four great guns on the road near the Dil Koosha; and with these they battered away, not only against the Martinière, but also against a cluster of small houses near that building. Captain Sir William Peel managed to throw not only shot and shell, but also rockets, into enclosures which contained numerous insurgent musketeers – a visitation which necessarily prompted a hasty flight. It had well-nigh been a bad day for the British, however; for Peel received a musket-ball in the thigh while walking about fearlessly among his guns; the ball was extracted under the influence of chloroform; but the wound nearly proved fatal through the eagerness of the gallant man to return to the fray. He was, however, spared for the present. The enemy resisted this day’s attack with a good deal of resolution; for they fired shot right over the Martinière towards the Dil Koosha, from guns in their bastions on the canal line of defence. When the cannonading had proceeded to the desired extent, a storming of the Martinière took place, by troops under the command of Sir Edward Lugard and other able officers. The instructions given by the commander-in-chief for this enterprise were minute and complete,133 and were carried out to the letter. The infantry marched forward from their camp behind the Dil Koosha, their bayonets glittering in the sun; and it was remarked that the sight of these terrible bayonets appeared to throw the enemy into more trepidation than all the guns and howitzers, mortars and rockets. A bayonet-charge by the British was more than any of the ‘Pandies’ could bear. Silently and swiftly the Highlanders and Punjaubees marched on, the former towards the Martinière, and the latter towards the trenches that flanked that building; while the other regiments of Lugard’s column followed closely in the rear. Distracted by Outram’s enfilade fire from the other side of the river, and by Lugard’s advance in front, the enemy made but a feeble resistance. The 42d Highlanders and the Punjaubee infantry climbed up the intrenchment abutting on the river, and rushed along the whole line of works, till they got to the neighbourhood of Banks’s house. Meanwhile, another body of infantry advanced to the Martinière, and captured the building and the whole of the enclosure surrounding it. All this was done with very little bloodshed on either side; for Lugard’s men, in obedience to orders, did not fire; while the enemy escaped from the walls and trenches without maintaining a hand-to-hand contest. This abandonment of the defence-works would not have taken place so speedily had not Outram’s flanking fire enfiladed the whole line; but the insurgent artillerymen found it impossible to withstand the ordeal to which they were now exposed. Sir Colin’s plan had been so carefully made, and so admirably carried out, that this capture of the enemy’s exterior line of defence was effected almost without loss.

On the 10th, while Outram was engaged in strengthening the position which he had taken up, he sent Hope Grant with the cavalry of the division to patrol over the whole of the country between the left bank of the Goomtee and the old cantonment. This was done with the view of preventing any surprise by the approach of bodies of the rebels in that quarter. An extensive system of patrolling or reconnaissance had formed from the first a part of Sir Colin’s plan for the tactics of the siege. Outram on this day brought his heavy guns into a position to rake the enemy’s lines, to annoy the Kaiser Bagh with a vertical and direct fire, to attack the suburbs in the vicinity of the iron and stone bridges, and to command the iron bridge from the left bank; all of which operations he carried out with great success. The enemy, however, still held the right end of the iron bridge so pertinaciously, that it was not until after a very heavy cannonading that the conquest was effected.

On the city side of the river, on this day, the operations consisted mainly in securing the conquests effected on the 9th. At a very early hour in the morning, while yet dusk, the rebel sepoys advanced in great strength to reoccupy the defence-line of the canal, apparently not knowing that the Highlanders and Punjaubees had maintained that position during the night; they were speedily undeceived by a volley of musketry which put them to flight. At sunrise a disposition of troops and heavy guns was made by Lugard for an attack on Banks’s house; and this house, captured about noon, was at once secured as a strong military post.

Thus did this remarkable siege go on day after day. Nothing was hurried, nothing unforeseen. All the movements were made as if the city and its environs formed a vast chess-board on which the commander-in-chief could see the position of all the pieces and pawns. Nay, so fully had he studied the matter, that he had some such command over the ground as is maintained by a chess-player who conducts and wins a game without seeing the board. Every force, every movement, was made conducive to one common end – the conquest of the city without the loss of much British blood, and without leaving any lurking-place in the hands of the enemy.

The conquest and fortifying of Banks’s house enabled Sir Colin to commence the second part of his operations. Having captured the enemy’s exterior line of defence, he had now to attack the second or middle line, which (as has been already shewn) began at the river-side near the Motee Mehal, the Mess-house, and the Emanbarra. The plan he formed was to use the great block of houses and palaces extending from Banks’s house to the Kaiser Bagh as an approach, instead of sapping up towards the second line of works. ‘The operation,’ as he said in his dispatch, ‘had now become one of an engineering character; and the most earnest endeavours were made to save the infantry from being hazarded before due preparation had been made.’ The chief engineer, Brigadier Napier, placed his batteries in such positions as to shell and breach a large block of the palaces known as the Begum Kothee. This bombardment, on the 11th, was long and severe; for the front of the palaces was screened by outhouses, earthworks, and parapets, which required to be well battered before the infantry could make the assault. The 8-inch guns of the naval brigade were the chief instruments in this formidable cannonade. At length, about four o’clock in the afternoon, Napier announced that the breaches were practicable, and Lugard at once made arrangements for storming the Begum Kothee. He had with him the 93d Highlanders, the 4th Punjaub Rifles, and 1000 Goorkhas, and was aided in the assault by Adrian Hope. His troops speedily secured the whole block of buildings, and inflicted a very heavy loss on the enemy. The attack was one of a desperate character, and was characterised by Sir Colin as ‘the sternest struggle which occurred during the siege.’ From that point Napier pushed his engineering approaches with great judgment through the enclosures, by the aid of the sappers and the heavy guns; the troops immediately occupying the ground as he advanced, and the mortars being moved from one position to another as the ground was won on which they could be placed. Outram was not idle during these operations. He obtained possession of the iron bridge, leading over the river from the cantonment to the city, and swept away the enemy from every part of the left bank of the river between that bridge and the Padishah Bagh; thus leaving him in a position to enfilade the central and inner lines of defence established by the enemy among the palaces.

It was while these serious and important operations were in progress, on the 11th of March, that the commander-in-chief was called upon to attend to a ceremonial affair, from which he would doubtless have willingly been spared. The preceding chapters have shewn how Jung Bahadoor, descending from the Nepaulese mountains with an army of 9000 Goorkhas, rendered a little service in the Goruckpore and Jounpoor districts, and then advanced into Oude to assist in the operations against Lucknow. His movements had been dilatory; and Sir Colin was forced to arrange all the details of the siege as if no reliance could be placed in this ally. At length, however, on the afternoon of the 11th, Jung Bahadoor appeared at the Dil Koosha; he and Sir Colin met for the first time. The meeting was a curious one. The Nepaul chieftain, thoroughly Asiatic in everything, prepared for the interview as one on which he might lavish all his splendour of gold, satin, pearls, and diamonds; the old Highland officer, on the other hand, plain beyond the usual plainness of a soldier in all that concerned personal indulgences,134 was somewhat tried even by the necessity for his full regimentals and decorative appendages. A continuous battle was going on, in which he thought of his soldiers’ lives, and of the tactics necessary to insure a victory; at such a time, and in such a climate, he would gladly have dispensed with the scarlet and the feathers of his rank, and of the oriental compliments in which truth takes little part. A tasteful canopy was prepared in front of Sir Colin’s mess-tent; and here were assembled the commander-in-chief, Archdale Wilson, Hope Grant, a glittering group of staff-officers and aids-de-camp, a Highland guard of honour, an escort of Lancers, bands, pipers, drums, flags, and all the paraphernalia for a military show. Sir Colin was punctual; Jung Bahadoor was not. Sir Colin, his thoughts all the while directed towards Lugard’s operations at the Begum Kothee, felt the approaching ceremony, and the delay in beginning it, as a sore interruption. At length the Nepaulese chieftain appeared. Jung Bahadoor had, as Nepaulese ambassador, made himself famous in London a few years before, by his gorgeous dress and lavish expenditure; and he now appeared in fully as great splendour. The presentations, the greetings, the compliments, the speeches, were all of the wonted kind; but when Captain Hope Johnstone, as one of the officers of the chief of the staff, entered to announce that ‘the Begum Kothee is taken,’ Sir Colin broke through all ceremony, expressed a soldier’s pleasure at the news, and brought the interview to a termination. Jung Bahadoor returned to his own camp; and the commander-in-chief instantly resumed his ordinary military duties. Sir Colin was evidently somewhat puzzled to know how best to employ his gorgeous colleague; although his courtesy would not allow him to shew it. The Goorkhas moved close to the canal on the 13th; and on the following day Sir Colin requested Jung Bahadoor to cross the canal, and attack the suburbs to the left of Banks’s house. As he was obliged, just at that critical time, to mass all the available strength of his British troops in the double attack along the banks of the Goomtee, the commander-in-chief had few to spare for his left wing; and he speaks of the troops of the Nepaulese leader as being ‘most advantageously employed for several days,’ in thus covering his left.