by V. A. Stuart
Phillip, breathless and half-blinded by the streams of perspiration pouring down his face, came to a halt at last to find himself looking down at the body of a black-bearded Native Cavalry officer, whose pistol shot—fired at point-blank range—had miraculously skimmed over his head. He had no recollection of having killed the man but … He withdrew his sword from the medal-bedecked blue and silver jacket and saw that the blade was sticky with blood. Beside him, the 93rd’s Commander, Captain Cornwall, dropped on one knee to examine the body and then looked up at him, a smile lighting his smoke-blackened face.
“Congratulations—you’ve just put a well-deserved end to one of the butchers of Cawnpore! This is Teeka Singh, the Nana’s General of Cavalry … quite a prize, if I may say so.”
“Are you sure?” Phillip questioned doubtfully.
“Yes, pretty sure.” The Highland officer straightened up, brushing the dust from his bare knees. “For one thing, he’s in the uniform of the Second Light Cavalry, the swine who mutinied at Cawnpore. For another, when our spies reported that he was here, I obtained a description of him from one of the Police sowars—short, inclined to corpulence, and with a black beard. He fits the description—it’s Teeka Singh all right, Commander.”
An eye for an eye, Phillip thought, with bitter satisfaction … a Pandy general, one of the Nana’s men, had paid with his life for Lavinia’s murder.
“Then I hope his soul will rot in hell,” he said savagely and went to report to William Peel.
“We’re going back to Bindki to make camp,” Peel told him. “Pursuit, alas, is out of the question—the men are too done up and we’ve too many wounded. Hay’s among them but it’s only slight—a graze on the hand—and poor young Stirling’s taken a musket ball in the leg. In all, I think we’ve nearly a hundred casualties, but I haven’t got the surgeon’s report yet.” He expelled his breath in a weary sigh. “Dear God, I’m tired, Phillip! But our Jacks did pretty well, didn’t they? They’ve had their baptism of fire as soldiers … I don’t think they’ll be found wanting when we get to Lucknow, do you?”
Phillip shook his head. “No, they won’t, sir. And neither will you.”
CHAPTER SIX
After spending a day at Futtehpore to rest the men, obtain fresh gun-bullocks and send the wounded back to Allahabad, William Peel’s party resumed the march to Cawnpore with the siege-train, arriving there on 3rd November. The Lucknow Relief Force was under orders to push on to Buntera—10 miles from their objective, where Brigadier Hope Grant’s Movable Column from Delhi was waiting to join forces with them for the final advance.
Two companies of the 93rd had already left; Lieutenant Vaughan’s party followed and Peel was ordered to leave with the rest of the siege-train and its escort on the 8th.
Phillip was thankful at the prospect of putting Cawnpore behind him. During the time they spent in camp there, he had seen the heartrending relics of the siege and massacre, and had entered and wondered at the mud-walled entrenchment which the garrison had defended with such heroic fortitude for three long and terrible weeks. The crumbling walls, the shell-battered, roofless buildings, the pathetic holes scooped in the bare, foul-smelling earth which had provided the only shelter General Wheeler’s people had had, seemed to him even more terrible than the sun-bleached skeletons which still, in places, littered the river bank. It was impossible to identify the skeletons but, as he had stood in the burnt-out hospital on the east side of the entrenchment, it had been peopled with ghosts and, at every turn, he had imagined that he saw Lavinia coming to meet him with a baby in her arms, weeping and crying to him for aid.
He had not intended to go to the Bibigarh, although the yellow-painted bungalow in the centre of the city, where the Nana’s poor hostages had been butchered, had become a place of pilgrimage for every newly arrived member of the Lucknow Force. Finally, in the company of Edward Daniels, he had done so reluctantly and had regretted it ever since. Brigadier-General Neill had ordered that the house should be kept exactly as it had been when General Havelock’s Force had recaptured the city, Daniels told him. The well in the courtyard, into which the bodies of the victims had been flung, had been filled in and a memorial Cross erected over it but, inside the house itself, Neill’s orders had been carried out to the letter and—a stone’s throw from its ghastly, blood-splattered walls—a gallows stood in stark reminder of the retribution which Neill had exacted, from guilty and innocent alike.
“They say that any native, who was even remotely suspected of having taken part in either of the massacres, was hanged,” the midshipman added. “And they also say—I don’t know if it’s true, sir—that General Neill made each one of them clean up a measured patch of blood before they were executed. They were forced to go down on their hands and knees and cleanse the floor with their tongues. It sounds pretty revolting, but apparently the mere touch of Christian blood defiles them and Neill wanted them to believe that he’d taken their immortal souls, as well as their lives, in revenge for what they’d done to our poor women and children. When General Havelock returned from Oudh in the middle of August, he put a stop to it. He’s very religious, it seems, and doesn’t believe in what he calls meeting barbarism with barbarism. Not everyone agrees with him, I gather, but most people seem to think that Neill went too far. I don’t know what to think. After going in there and seeing that room, I … I just don’t know, sir.”
He had chattered on but Phillip had scarcely heard him as he had made his own, horror-stricken inspection of the small, shadowed room in which the pathetic survivors of the Suttee Chowra Ghat shambles had lived in fear for over two weeks before meeting their hideous death. The blood had dried—where it had not been cleansed and whitewashed over—to a black stain, none the less evocative for its change of colour and, from walls and verandah beams hung lengths of cord by which, Daniels told him, the children had been suspended to witness their mothers’ slaughter and await their own. On the wall behind a door, a message had been scratched with a knife or some other sharp instrument, and he had read it, sickened.
“Countrymen and women, remember 15 July, 1857. Your wives and families are here in misery and at the disposal of savages, who have ravished both old and young and then killed us. Oh my child, my child! Countrymen, revenge it!”
“They didn’t write that, sir,” Edward Daniels had assured him. “Although it’s probably true. But some of General Havelock’s soldiers are said to have carved the message with their bayonets, after they’d been in here a few days after it happened.”
His assurance had been of some slight consolation but, walking dazedly from the house of massacre, Phillip felt a savage anger well up inside him and it did not fade until long after his return to camp, becoming then a nagging ache from which, sleeping or waking, there was no relief. Most of the men in the column—seamen, soldiers, and Marines—felt much as he did following their arrival in Cawnpore, and there was little grumbling, however arduously they might have to toil and however little rest was permitted them, as preparations for the advance on Lucknow were completed and they moved out to join Brigadier-General Hope Grant’s camp at Buntera.
The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Colin Campbell, reached Allahabad on 1st November. Received at the Bridge of Boats by the Shannon’s cutter, with a guard of honour and a salute of seventeen guns, he had left at first light and entered Cawnpore on the evening of 3rd. The sight of his familiar small, slightly stooped figure in the immaculate blue frock coat put fresh heart into all of them and, in particular, into those who had served with him in the Crimea. Inevitably, he had aged but he had lost none of his energy; his temper was as explosive as ever, his eye as keen and searching, his voice, with its aggressively Scots accent, as rasping as Phillip remembered it from that day at Balaclava when—his “thin red line” of 93rd Highlanders all that stood between the Russians and the Harbour—he had warned them that they must die where they stood, if need be, and had then admonished them for their eagerness.
Another Crimean veteran, Majo
r-General Windham—one of the heroes of the British attack on the Redan at Sebastopol in 1855—had been chosen by Sir Colin to assume the unenviable responsibility of the Cawnpore command during his absence. Despite the ever-present threat posed by the Gwalior contingent—five thousand well-trained sepoys, with twentyfour guns, only forty miles away, across the Jumna at Kalpi— and the Nana’s levies, also amounting to about five thousand, only five hundred British and five hundred and fifty Madras troops could be spared from the Lucknow Relief Force for Cawnpore’s defence, and William Peel had returned from his first meeting with the Commander-in-Chief looking strained and anxious.
“Sir Colin has asked me to leave an officer of lieutenant’s rank and two guns’ crews here,” he told Phillip. “Fifty of our best gunners, he specified, to assist in General Windham’s defence. You’ve seen the entrenchment General Neill constructed at the Baxi Ghat, to cover the Bridge of Boats across the river, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have, sir.” Phillip waited, frowning. If Sir Colin Campbell’s request was complied with—as obviously it would have to be—the strength of the Naval Brigade would be barely two hundred, including Marines and rifle companies.
“The entrenchment’s solid enough,” Peel went on thoughtfully. “And well supplied with guns and ammunition. Whatever happens, Windham should be able to hold it with a thousand men—even if the Gwalior contingent and the Nana attack him simultaneously. But Sir Colin is anxious, so I’ve had to agree … although it’s going to leave us pretty short. Ted Hay’s the obvious choice to command the guns’ crews, with young Garvey as his second-in-command and the two cadets … and you’d better select the men least able to march, Phillip, and detail them to stay here.”
“None of them will like it,” Phillip said reluctantly.
“For God’s sake, I know they won’t!” Peel sighed. “But I can’t refuse a direct request from the Commander-in-Chief, can I? As he pointed out to us this morning, he’s taking a hell of a gamble by going to Lucknow at all, before securing his base here. He’s on the horns of a dilemma. If he attempts to meet and defeat the Gwalior rebels and the Nana, they can hold him up indefinitely. Since they’re on the other side of the Jumna and all the boats are in their hands, they can choose their own time and place to do battle. If the Chief waits, Lucknow could well fall—they’ve been under siege for over four months, poor souls—and if he goes to their relief, he knows that the Nana will almost certainly attack Cawnpore. His only chance and the one he’s gambling on, is that he can push on to Lucknow, evacuate the garrison, and return here before the Nana and his allies have had time to launch their attack.”
“He’ll be cutting it fine, will he not?” Phillip demurred.
“Yes, he will,” Peel agreed. “But what else can he do? Even with the addition of Hope Grant’s column from Delhi, he only has … what? About five thousand men of all arms available to him. In the circumstances, the minimum number he can leave here is a thousand, the absolute minimum. With the rest, he must defeat an estimated sixty thousand Pandies at Lucknow.”
Phillip eyed him sombrely. “Then it is a gamble?”
Peel laughed shortly. “Sir Colin said himself, at the end of our conference, that this is the greatest gamble he’s ever taken in his life … and he said it a trifle cynically, reminding us that he’s always had a reputation for being overcautious! But I think he’s right to take the gamble—Lucknow cannot be allowed to fall, whatever the cost. If Outram is forced to surrender, he’ll be served as poor old Wheeler was served—and my God, Phillip, another Cawnpore would be more than any of us could bear!”
Phillip shuddered, thinking of the yellow-painted bungalow in the heart of the city and of Harriet and her children. There was not a man in the Relief Force, he knew, who would not gladly give his life to prevent another Cawnpore. War was one thing, the brutal slaughter of defenceless women and children quite another …
“As I said,” the Shannon’s Commander went on, “the entrenchment Windham has to defend is a strong one—poor old Wheeler’s doesn’t compare with it. Sir Colin has instructed him to ‘show the best front possible’—his words—but not to move out to the attack unless he’s compelled to do so by the threat of heavy bombardment.”
“Then as long as General Windham can hold the entrenchment and keep the bridge across the river intact, all should be well?” Phillip suggested.
Peel nodded. “Yes, it should—after all, the late General Neill held the same entrenchment with only three hundred men, when Havelock’s Force was in Oudh. I gather that Windham intends to post one of our twenty-four-pounders on the bridge itself, under a strong guard, to prevent any attempt by the enemy to blow it up. In any event, we move out tomorrow, ahead of the Chief and his staff, and join up with Hope Grant’s column and our advance guard at Buntera. We’ve to be there by the tenth, which will mean two marches of seventeen miles. The Chief hopes to push on to the Alam Bagh and relieve the holding force there on the twelfth. The Alam Bagh garrison has been reinforced and supplied, and their wounded evacuated, so they will join us in the attack on Lucknow, being replaced by Hope Grant’s sick and footsore men.” William Peel smiled suddenly, his blue eyes gleaming. “When you come to think about it, Phillip,” he said, with a swift change of tone, “we took a hell of a gamble at Kudjwa, didn’t we? According to Sir Colin we did”—his smile widened— “but it came off. Given a modicum of luck and the guts and determination our fellows displayed at Kudjwa, so will this one, God willing! This force doesn’t lack guts and Hope Grant’s column has carried all before it since leaving Delhi—having taken part in the recapture and then saved Agra, which was no mean achievement. We could hardly ask for better comrades in arms, could we? Not to mention the 93rd and poor Colonel Powell’s 53rd, both splendid fighting regiments.” He rose, still smiling. “First light tomorrow, Phillip—make sure that we leave on time, if you please, with all officers mounted. I’ll join you in a little while but first I’ll have to find Ted Hay and break the bad news to him that he’s to stay here. Edward Daniels can come with us in his place—he’s earned it, he’s done a fine job here.”
The siege-train moved out the following morning, the men in great heart despite the long hours spent loading stores the previous day, and Buntera was reached on the evening of 10th November. On the 11th, Sir Colin Campbell reviewed the combined Relief Force which, during the afternoon, was drawn up in quarter-distance columns in the centre of a flat, sandy plain surrounded by trees.
Pickets were posted and the Commander-in-Chief, mounted on a small white hack, rode out with his staff to inspect them. With him—although few of the assembled troops were aware of his identity or of the perils he had faced in order to reach them—was a civilian clerk named Henry Kavanagh. A tall, redbearded Irishman of the Lucknow garrison, he had made his way through the rebel lines during the hours of darkness, in native guise and accompanied by a trusted Hindu cossid, in order to offer his services as guide to the Relief Force.
Phillip, when the parade was dismissed, wrote a description of it and of their journey to his father. He had, as yet, received no mail from England and, reluctant to write more than was strictly necessary of Cawnpore, simply mentioned that he had passed through the city on the way to Lucknow.
“We march, on average, twelve miles a day,” he wrote. “But coming here we did seventeen—as much as our gun-bullocks can stand in a day. We have with us six 24-pounder guns—two had to be left with General Windham in Cawnpore—and two 8-inch howitzers, with bullock-draft, and our rocket-tubes, which are mounted on country carts, known as hackeries. Our siege-train, when complete with ammunition waggons, stores, tents, and camp followers, is nearly three miles in length, so you can understand why all officers, including mids, have to be mounted. Our baggage animals include camels, elephants, and, of course, oxen and horses and, apart from the gunners and Marines, our bluejackets serve as rifle companies to defend the train. They are armed with Enfield and Minié rifles and drill with the soldiers, under their
own divisional officers.
“There are certain differences, however. The troops frequently set out on a march before daylight and without breaking their fast—which they do at the first or second halt—but Captain Peel has issued orders that our men are always to eat before they leave camp. He also insists on our paying very strict attention to camp hygiene and shaving daily and, although the soldiers are permitted to grow beards, we are not. It is a chore sometimes but we are really none the worse for it and our men, in blue frocks, with white duck trousers and polished black boots, always present a smart appearance. As protection from the sun, they wear cotton suncurtains over their straw hats, extending down the back of the neck, and the officers’ are similar, but worn over caps or pith helmets.
“William Peel is the best of Commanders, taut enough but considerate and immensely popular with all ranks, and discipline in his brigade—like morale—has never been higher. At today’s parade, held prior to the advance on Lucknow, Sir Colin Campbell inspected us and, we were told, made most complimentary remarks concerning us, which was gratifying.
“It was a very impressive and colourful parade, with our Lucknow column joined to that from Delhi, and divided into three nominal brigades of Infantry and one each of Cavalry and Artillery with attached Engineers … in all, I believe, numbering 3,400 men. We were most interested in the troops from Delhi. Their guns looked blackened and service-worn, but the horses were in good condition and the men very tanned and seemingly in perfect fighting trim.
“The 9th Lancers—their Commanding Officer is the Brigadier, Hope Grant—looked workmanlike and ready for anything in their blue uniforms, with white turbans twisted ’round their forage caps, flagless lances, and lean but hardy looking horses, and their bearing is most soldierly. By contrast, the Sikh cavalry—which includes Hodson’s Horse—are wild-looking fellows, clad in loose, fawncoloured robes, with long boots, blue or red turbans, and armed with carbines and sabers. (They call them ‘tulwars’ I believe.) Their British officers dress as they do, even to the turbans and look extremely picturesque, especially those serving in Hodson’s Horse, who wear brilliant scarlet turbans and ride splendid horses, in appearance as wild as themselves. The only ones who can match them are the Punjab infantry, fine, tall men in sand-coloured uniforms, all of them bearded and wearing enormous turbans, which add to their height.
