Impossible Victories

by Bryan Perrett

  The siege dragged on through August and on into September without any prospect of relief on the horizon. The primary purpose of this chapter, however, is not solely to describe its course, but also to examine the relief attempts, which involved some of the most difficult and dangerous operations the British Army has ever been asked to perform.

  To understand this it is necessary to place the siege in the overall context of the Great Mutiny. Physical possession of the Residency itself was of no military importance whatever to either side, although as long as it remained in British hands it continued to absorb the enemy’s attention. It was, however, of immense emotional and political significance to the rebels and the British alike.

  It was estimated that at any one time there were between 50,000 and 100,000 mutineers and their supporters in and around Lucknow. This was natural enough, as they wished to re-establish the independent principality of Oudh. In emulation of their comrades in Delhi, who had proclaimed the aged King Bahadur Shah II as Emperor of Hindustan, they appointed a son of the deposed King of Oudh who was now under guard in Calcutta, as Wali (Governor) and set up an administration to govern the country. Ostensibly, their cause had triumphed, the only reminder that their sojourn in power might only be temporary being the repeatedly patched and mended Union Flag, flown defiantly from the tallest tower of the Residency. Every effort must therefore be made to eliminate the hated symbol.

  The official British attitude to Lucknow was ambivalent. The military authorities in India recognised that Delhi had become the epicentre of the rebellion and were concentrating their resources on its capture. Substantial reinforcements, including Crimean veterans, were on their way from the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world, but they would take time to arrive. There were strong arguments against sending what would, of necessity, be a small relief column to Lucknow, not least the consideration that within Oudh the enemy was concentrated in overwhelming strength. Nevertheless, the electric telegraph and the popular press at home ensured that the general public, already outraged by the frightful atrocities that had accompanied the outbreak of the mutiny, were fully aware that in the shot-battered Residency fewer than 1,000 Britons, including women and children, were fighting for their lives alongside their own soldiers and a handful of loyal sepoys. For the British as well as the rebels, therefore; the Residency had become a symbol and, whatever the military considerations, it was politically quite unacceptable that those within should be abandoned without any attempt to reinforce or relieve them.

  On 30 June Brigadier-General Sir Henry Havelock arrived at Allahabad, a town containing a major arsenal, situated on the Ganges just south of the Oudh frontier, from which the local rebels had been dispersed. His orders stated that ‘He should lose not a moment in supporting Sir Henry (Lawrence) at Lucknow and Sir Hugh Wheeler at Cawnpore, and should take prompt measures for dispersing and utterly destroying all mutineers and insurgents.’ Such a brief was absurdly ambitious in the prevailing circumstances. Again, while the use of the vague and in this context meaningless term ‘support,’ rather than the more specific ‘reinforce’ or ‘relieve,’ might perhaps be generously construed as permitting Havelock considerable discretion, its more probable intention was to absolve those who drafted the order from any responsibility if disaster struck.

  Havelock, the son of a failed Sunderland shipbuilder, was a Regular Army officer who had chosen to perform his service in India for the very good reason that, having no money of his own, it was cheaper to do so. Now he was aged 62, and some considered him to be too old for the job, but he had a wide-ranging experience of active service, including the epic siege of Jellalabad, a reputation for being cool in action, and was entirely reliable.

  It took some days for him to concentrate his supplies, transport and troops, which included three British regiments, the 64th, the 78th and 84th (later, respectively, the North Staffordshire Regiment, 2nd Seaforth Highlanders and 2nd York and Lancaster Regiment) and one Company European regiment, the Madras Fusiliers (later the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers4 ), the 3/8th Battery Royal Artillery with four guns and two howitzers, a detachment of Sikhs and about twenty volunteer cavalry. Also present was an irregular cavalry unit of dubious value. As all the regular units were under strength Havelock had less than 2,000 men with which to commence this apparently impossible undertaking.

  By the time he left Allahabad on 7 July the fate of the Cawnpore garrison was known. Following their surrender on 27 June Wheeler and his men had been treacherously massacred; their womenfolk and children, it was said, were now being held in captivity as hostages in Cawnpore by the Nana Sahib, otherwise known as Dondhu Pant, Maharaja of Bithur, a town to the north of Cawnpore, who had assumed leadership of the insurgents in that area.5

  Havelock’s first task, therefore, was to secure the release of the women and children. This made no difference to his planned axis of advance which would, in any event, have taken him north to Cawnpore, then across the Ganges into Oudh and eastwards to Lucknow. An advance guard, commanded by a Major Renaud, had left a week earlier and was already well on the way to Cawnpore. On learning of the massacre Renaud took his own indiscriminate revenge, burning the villages he passed through and hanging from the trees every man of military age who could not prove his innocence. Recognising that in the long term such measures were counter-productive, Havelock ordered him to desist unless the villages were clearly in insurgent hands.

  The march of the main body from Allahabad commenced by easy stages, mainly because many of the infantry were recruits whose feet had not yet hardened sufficiently. It was also the hot season, when temperatures regularly soared well above 100°F, and because heat-stroke cases were common most marches took place at night. Sensibly, woollen serge tunics and formal headgear were consigned to the regimental baggage, being replaced by shirt-sleeve order and forage cap, the latter with a white cover and neck cloth which, by association, became known as a Havelock.

  On 11 July the main column caught up with Renaud four miles from Fatehpur. Havelock’s intention was to rest the following day, but while the troops were waiting for their breakfast a rebel force, consisting of approximately 3,500 men and twelve guns, closed in on the encampment. Believing that they had only Renaud’s small force to deal with, the mutineers came on full of fight but pulled up sharply when all of Havelock’s regiments deployed into line. To their horror they discovered that the new Enfield rifle, with which the British were armed, was extremely effective at ranges beyond the reach of the old Brown Bess musket they had chosen to retain; nor can it have helped when Captain Francis Maude, commanding 3/8 Battery, personally laid a gun that brought down the rebel commander’s elephant with the first shot. Seeing the wavering opposite, Havelock gave the order to attack. Panic stricken, the enemy fled before bayonets could be crossed, abandoning all their guns from which Maude was able to re-equip his battery with five 9-pounders and one 24-pound howitzer, the standard armament of a British field battery at the time. From start to finish, the incident had lasted a mere ten minutes. The full extent of the mutineers’ loss is not known, but it cannot have been excessive. It would undoubtedly have been much heavier if an irregular cavalry unit serving with the British had not refused to carry out a pursuit; Havelock promptly disarmed it and sent its members on their way. No British casualties had been sustained as a result of enemy action, but twelve men had dropped dead from heat-stroke.

  Three days later and ten miles further on, Havelock defeated another enemy force at Aong. This time the rebels put up a much stiffer fight and were only dislodged by a flank attack, the unexpected delivery of which put them to flight, leaving their baggage and stores strewn across a wide area. Among the British casualties was Renaud, mortally wounded. As a direct result of this action Havelock, who lacked any sort of bridging train was able follow up his success and secure the only bridge across the Pandu Nadi river which, though normally fordable, was now swollen by seasonal rains.

  It was now necessary for the Nana Sahib to ta
ke the field in person or lose all credibility with his followers. Believing, correctly, that the British would advance on Cawnpore along the Grand Trunk Road, he set up a strong blocking position with 8,000 men and eight guns some seven miles outside the city. Havelock, however, had been informed of his dispositions by two very courageous loyal sepoys who had been sent to infiltrate the rebel army the day before, and on 16 July his main body, under cover of a feint directed at the enemy centre, swung off to the right and, concealed by mango groves, carried out a rapid advance which brought it opposite the rebel left. Unable to redeploy quickly enough to meet this unexpected threat, and with most of its guns now masked by their own troops, the Nana Sahib’s army was simply rolled up as the 78th Highlanders, pipes skirling, overran a battery with a ferocious bayonet charge, then, with the 64th, cleared a village in the centre of his line. With most of his troops now in flight, the Nana Sahib summoned reinforcements from the city, including several guns which for a while halted the British infantry, advancing in line some way ahead of their own ox-drawn artillery. Unwilling to lose the momentum of the advance, Havelock rode along the ranks, pointing at the enemy battery and urging them on:

  The longer you look at it, men, the less you will like it. Rise up! The brigade will advance!’

  Together, the Madras Fusiliers, the 64th, 78th and 84th clambered to their feet and began moving forward again. ‘It was irresistible,’ wrote Havelock in his despatch. The enemy sent round shot into our ranks until we were within three hundred yards, and then poured in grape with such precision and determination as I have seldom witnessed. But the 64th, led by Major Sterling and my aide-de-camp, who had placed himself in their front, were not to be denied. Their rear showed the ground strewed with wounded; but on they steadily and silently came, then with a cheer charged and captured the unwieldy trophy of their valour (a 24-pounder gun). The enemy lost all heart, and after a hurried fire of musketry gave way in total rout. Four of my guns came up and completed their discomfiture by a heavy cannonade; and as it grew dark the roofless barracks of our artillery were dimly descried in advance, and it was evident that Cawnpore was in our possession.’

  The victorious column bivouacked for the night outside the city, from within which a series of explosions indicated that the mutineers were blowing up the arsenal and therefore leaving. No resistance was encountered the following morning but on reaching the house known as the Bibighur it was discovered that the hostages, women and children alike, had been slaughtered and mutilated in the most barbaric circumstances the previous day.6 Blood covered the entire floor of the building, the interior walls of which were also splashed and smeared scarlet while human hair still adhered to the marks made by sword and cleaver cuts. The dead and dying had then been flung down a well in the courtyard until it could hold no more.

  The massacre marked a turning point in the Mutiny. The British, fighting for their own survival and to rescue the hostages, were already highly motivated, but after the discoveries at Cawnpore they would fight for vengeance with a savage zeal that was utterly alien to their nature. For the soldiers of the 84th the spectacle was particularly horrible as the victims included some of the regiment’s own womenfolk. Some men kept scraps of bloodstained clothing or trinkets which they subsequently took into action with them. The head of one of Wheeler’s daughters was discovered and, when a lock of her hair was cut off to send to her relatives, several of the 78th Highlanders also asked for and were given locks. When asked why they were counting the strands they replied with cold, hard fury that they had sworn to kill a rebel for every one of them. Thus far, neither side had sought or given quarter, but from this point on, for the British, the war had become one of extermination.

  The troops had marched 126 miles in eight days, during which they had fought several pitched battles against heavy odds and captured 24 guns. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that after discovering the horrors of the Bibighur, they should have located a stock of liquor and rendered themselves insensible for a while.

  Nevertheless, Havelock was determined that, if it was humanly possible, the tragedy of Cawnpore would not be repeated at Lucknow. With some difficulty, he collected sufficient boats to bridge the Ganges and, having left a small garrison at Cawnpore, he commenced his march into Oudh on 25 July. He beat the rebels on several occasions in the area of Unao, approximately one third of the way to Lucknow but by the second week of August casualties and cholera had reduced his strength to about 1,500 effectives and he was short of artillery ammunition for his ten guns. With the rebels massing in his path, his lines of communication threatened and the Nana Sahib massing a fresh army at Bithur on his flank, he reluctantly reached the conclusion that, for the moment, it would be necessary to retire to Cawnpore and await the reinforcements he had already requested. During what must have been one of the lowest moments of his career, he wrote to Inglis at Lucknow, urging him that ‘When further defence becomes impossible, do not negotiate or capitulate. Cut your way out to Cawnpore.’

  This was quite unrealistic, as Inglis indicated in his reply:

  ‘It is quite impossible, with my weak and shattered force, that I can leave my defences. You must bear in mind how I am hampered; that I have upwards of 120 sick and wounded, and at least 220 women and about 230 children, and no carriage of any description, besides sacrificing twenty-three lakhs of treasure and about thirty guns of sorts. In consequence of the news received, I shall soon put this force on half rations. Our provisions will last us then until about the 10th of September.

  ‘If you hope to save this force, no time must be lost in pushing forwards. We are daily being attacked by the enemy, who are within a few yards of our defences … My strength now in Europeans is 350, and about 300 Natives, and the men are dreadfully harassed; and, owing to part of the Residency having been brought down by round shot, many are without shelter. Our native force having been assured, on Colonel Tytler’s authority, of your near approach some twenty-five days ago, are naturally losing confidence, and if they leave us, I do not see how the defences are to be manned.’

  In the meantime, Havelock had mounted a punitive expedition against Bithur, where the Nana Sahib, now on his home ground, had collected about 4,000 men and several guns. For some reason he chose to give battle in front of an unfordable stream crossed by a single bridge. The engagement took place in furnace temperatures that cost the British numerous casualties from heat-stroke, but after an hour’s hard fighting the mutineers broke and were driven into the stream or across the bridge and through the town. The Nana Sahib’s palace and several other buildings were burned to the ground and in December much of his personal treasure, including gold and silver plate and boxes containing the then enormous sum of £200,000 in gold coin, was recovered from the well in which it had been concealed. The entire hoard was claimed by the government, not one penny being allocated as prize money to the troops; in the nature of things, it would have been very surprising indeed if some of the latter had not already found less official ways of benefiting from the find. Now a fugitive who would be hunted implacably by the British, the Nana Sahib played little further part in the Mutiny.7

  The long-awaited reinforcements, including the 5th (later Royal Northumberland) Fusiliers, the 90th Light Infantry (later 2nd Cameronians), 2/3 and 1/5 Batteries Bengal Artillery, and a contingent of Sikhs from the Punjab had reached Cawnpore by 15 September, raising the strength of the relief column to over 3,000 men. With them came Major-General Sir James Outram, who had been designated commander of the enlarged force and also Civil Commissioner for Oudh. Outram knew Havelock well, the two having served together during the recent campaign in Persia, and, conscious that Havelock had produced the first clear-cut British victories since the Mutiny began, he did not wish his own appointment to be interpreted as an adverse reflection upon him. He therefore issued an order to the effect that while he would personally accompany the column as a volunteer, Havelock would remain in command until Lucknow had been relieved. Technically, such an order
was illegal, but it was also extremely generous.

  Despite Inglis’ gloomy prediction that his rations would not last beyond 10 September, he was still holding out. The relief force began crossing the Ganges again on 18 September and made unexpectedly good progress, defeating an enemy force at Mangalwar three days later. The following day the enemy were found not only to have abandoned their positions covering the vital bridge spanning the river Sai, but also failed to demolish the bridge itself. That night the column bivouacked at Bani, just sixteen miles from Lucknow, within sound of the guns bombarding the Residency.

  Such obvious neglect was indicative of rebel disorganisation rather than demoralisation. In an attempt to satisfy their various factions, the rebels had chosen leaders from among them, dispensing with the services of real soldiers such as Barhat Ahmad, who had defeated Lawrence at Chinhut. Consequently, any decisions taken tended to be those of a parliament of fools. Among the mutineers themselves, too, the bonds of discipline had relaxed to the point that regiments had fragmented into bands led by barrack-room lawyers or brigands on the make. Be that as it may, at this period the rebels certainly did not consider themselves to be beaten men, and, moreover, there were 60,000 of them in Lucknow. Very probably, their intention was to allow Havelock to advance until he was in their midst, then destroy his relief column within sight of the Residency garrison.