Sahib

by Richard Holmes

  Clark Kennedy was witnessing the end of a difficult journey, for hauling a siege train along Indian roads was no easy business, as Charles Callwell discovered in 1879:

  The armament of the battery consisted of a couple of muzzle-loading 40-pounders, each of which was drawn ordinarily by two elephants with a spare elephant kept handy to hook in on occasion, and of a couple of 6.3-inch howitzers, each of which was drawn by a team of sixteen bullocks – or ‘bhails’ in native parlance. A couple of sixteen-bhail teams were also kept in reserve, that were intended to be attached to the 40-pounders in case of the battery going into action against the enemy; for elephants are intelligent animals, and entertain a strong objection to the ping of a bullet, and they are consequently prone to quit the battlefield in haste when the affray begins; they are, moreover, somewhat difficult to conceal while fighting is in progress. Besides the guns and howitzers, the battery has its limbered ammunition wagons, drawn by bhails … Even when this imposing caravan was properly closed up in column of route on a level road, it of necessity extended several hundred yards from head to tail. When it had been elongated by those accidents and hitches that are inseparable from the progress of a chain of vehicles which is making a progress through a difficult country, the caravan extended for miles.

  The journey was accomplished thanks in part to the ‘frenzy of forcible exhortation’ supplied by the battery commander, whose language, ‘English at times, Hindustani at times, more often a queer mixture of both tongues, positively seemed to lift guns and howitzers and tumbrils along the worst parts of the road. The gunners were charmed with his originality of expression.’

  Even at this stage of the British army’s history, a siege battery on parade presented a splendid sight, with the elephants caparisoned in red and their mahouts with crimson and blue turbans. Most of the bullocks were cream-coloured, ‘or else black and white piebalds, they also included a proportion of russet and of buff specimens in their ranks’.190 Rudyard Kipling caught that portentous moment when the site of the breaching batteries was close, the enemy’s roundshot skipped about, and the elephants were unhooked for the bullock teams to replace them:

  Then we come into action and tug the guns again, –

  Make way there, way, for the twenty yoke,

  Of the Forty-Pounder train!191

  There was something very Indian about the bullocks, so patient and enduring as they heaved the guns forward the final few yards, staying calm as roundshot carried off their yokemates, and leaning into their harness for the last haul.

  At Multan, when the attackers were ready to proceed in September 1848, they formed up in parade order, fired a royal salute and formally demanded the surrender of the place in the name of Her Majesty Queen Victoria and her ally Maharaja Duleep Singh. Mulraj’s men were unimpressed, and replied with long-range roundshot which narrowly missed Major General Whish, the British commander. It tuned out to be a false start, for the city was too strong, and the attacking force too weak, for the dance to continue for the moment. ‘Our chief engineer,’ reported an officer,

  had found the place much stronger than any of us had expected and we have not enough infantry to man the many working parties which are necessary. Most of the men have not been to bed for nights! So the general decided that he must raise the siege. The guns are now being withdrawn from the trenches and the whole force is moving round to the Western side of the city in order to maintain our communications with Bombay.192

  The Sikhs tried to exploit the British withdrawal, but were roughly handled. Corporal John Ryder of the 32nd recalled the vicious hand-to-hand battle:

  The fighting here was awful. What with the rolls of musketry, the clash of arms, and the shrieks, cries and groans of the wounded and dying, all was a dreadful scene of confusion. In one place might be seen men in their last death-struggle, grappling each other by the throat; while others were engaged hand to hand with the deadly weapon, the bayonet, thrusting it through each other’s bodies, or blowing out each other’s brains – blood, brains, skin, skulls and flesh, all being dashed in our faces.193

  Resuming the siege in early December, Whish was better prepared, and on the 27th he took the suburbs, which enabled him to establish breaching batteries to engage the citadel. There were thirteen large mortars in position that night; two 24-pounders, six 18-pounders and four heavy howitzers were added on the 29th, and another five heavy mortars followed on the 30th. The main Sikh magazine was blown up by a mortar bomb on the morning of the 30th, and most of the guns on the ramparts were silenced by direct hits, leaving British gunners free to work on the walls. Private Waterfield of the 32nd broke off from digging trenches to look at one of the batteries:

  I visited the Sailor’s Battery. It was as good as a comic farce to stay there for a time to watch their proceedings. They were the drollest lot of men I ever met with: their quaint expressions and disregard of danger made them the favourites of the army. I remember the first morning they came to Multan they pitched their tent the wrong side out, after letting it fall several times. They were some of them without shoes, and very indifferently clad, but a lighter hearted lot of fellows never fired a gun. They belonged to the Indian Navy, and their firing was as good as that of the land artillery … I also witnessed the death of one of the artillery men. A shot from the enemy struck the top gabions, bounced off and hit the poor fellow on the chest, causing instant death. He had just fired a gun, and stood chatting and joking with his comrades. Such it was!194

  There were two practicable breaches on 2nd January, and Whish gave orders for the storming to take place in the early hours of the 3rd. His right ‘Bengal’ column, under Brigadier Markham, was headed by HM’s 32nd, backed by 49th and 79th BNI, and his left ‘Bombay’ column, under Brigadier Stalker, was led by the 1st Bombay European Fusiliers, followed by 4th and 19th BoNI. HM’s 60th Rifles were to support the assault with their fire. The three companies of Bombay Fusiliers, constituting the storming party of the left column, had a straightforward time, as one officer reported:

  I found the men lying under some cover from the fire of the walls. At the word of command they sprang up and, advancing at the double, reached the breach. The batteries stopped firing. A British cheer and the men started scrambling up the ruined masonry. The enemy in their part, having discharged their muskets, met them at the top with drawn tulwars. Our men were forced to contend every inch. The struggle lasted about 20 minutes. Then we saw a Union Jack, planted by a sergeant of the Fusiliers planted at the top.195

  The breach assaulted by the storming party of the right column (two companies of the 32nd under Captain James Carmichael Smyth of the grenadier company) was only in the outer wall, and when the attackers reached the top they found the main wall intact behind it. Private Waterfield saw Smyth wounded:

  Our gallant leader … received a heavy blow on the back of the head; the blood gushed forth from the wound. I told him he was wounded and he replied ‘It’s of no consequence!’ but I could tell by his looks he was suffering greatly.

  Seeing the way ahead blocked, Markham, the column commander, at once led his men to the other breach, where the attackers had already made good progress. Lieutenant Henry Daly was with the fusiliers, and getting up the breach reminded him of:

  the ascent of Vesuvius. We did not climb this unmolested, and thick and hot the balls fell amongst us, but not a man was killed and strangely few wounded. When Leith commenced the descent a volley from below was essayed, but they were too eager to fire and it passed overhead … A few shots were fired on our side, but both sides relied on the steel. Leith’s long cavalry sword, such as no one but a stout man could wield, was smashed to pieces near the hilt. He himself received a couple of sword cuts in the left arm, and a ball through his right shoulder, and was taken to the rear.

  Colour Sergeant John Bennet of the fusiliers soon stuck the Union Jack at the top of the breach: in recommending Bennet for reward, the brigade commander noted that ‘the colour and staff are riddled with balls’
.196

  Even when the attackers were through the breach, the fighting went on, as John Clark Kennedy reported in a letter home:

  Many Sikhs had built themselves into their homes with bricks and mortar. You remember Charles King, a capital officer and a powerful man? At the head of his column he encountered a Sikh who gave him a cut on his hand with his sword. He immediately closed with him, got him by the throat and drove his sword through him to the hilt. Markham broke his sword in a Sikh’s body and then floored him with his fists. Many officers and men were engaged in this way and the number of blades broken testifies to the mediocrity of our sword cutlery. I could fill my paper twice over with minor events of this kind …

  Private Waterfield recorded how: ‘Our brave Captain held out to the last; he fell in the street, having fainted from loss of blood.’ The 32nd’s Lieutenant Colonel Richard Pattoun was upwards of sixty. Leaving for the campaign he had bade such a tender farewell to his wife that even private soldiers remarked upon it. At Maltan he had been:

  Amongst foremost, cutting his way sword in hand … I saw our Colonel’s body; it lay under, or rather about a dozen of the enemy, in a small square yard, in front of some half-dozen huts. It was maimed in several places; his wrist was nearly cut off and on one side of his head was a deep cut. A musket-ball had passed through his body. He looked noble, even in death. The whole regiment lamented his loss.197

  The same principles of attack applied at Seringapatam in 1799. Operations were hampered by the fact that the fortress was cleverly sited, at the confluence of the North and South Cauvery Rivers, and this prevented breaching batteries from being pushed quite as far forward as would have been ideal, and impeded the final assault. On 21 April the attackers seized vital ground just south-west of the confluence, and on the 26th they silenced the fire of Tipu’s guns on the ramparts opposite them. The two assaulting columns were led by Major General David Baird, who had spent some time as a prisoner of Tipu’s and had a point to make. The assault splashed through the shallow river on the afternoon of 4 May, and although there was a brief check when the attackers met intact inner defences just inside the breach, soon they were deep inside the town fighting against a defence which quickly unravelled. Tipu himself died fighting, possibly finished off by a musket shot to the temple at short range, fired by a British soldier who admired the jewel in his turban.

  Not all assaults were crowned with success. When Lord Lake besieged Bhurtpore in early 1805 he made slow progress. The walls were breached, but could only be approached across wet ditches. John Shipp, recently promoted to sergeant in the 22nd Foot, had resolved ‘to make a name for myself in the field’, and volunteered for the ‘forlorn hope’. The first two assaults were repulsed with loss, and Shipp was in hospital with a head wound when another unsuccessful attack was mounted. He led the fourth attempt across ground already strewn with the human debris of three failed attacks, and:

  The scene was enough to overwhelm men who were already dispirited and disappointed. Those who had been wounded in our previous attacks lay there, some stripped naked, some without heads, some without arms or legs, others with their bodies slashed about in the most hideous fashion … Could anything be more distressing for affectionate comrades to look upon? I say affectionate, for soldiers living together in tents, or barracks, in daily familiar intercourse, get to know each others qualities, good or bad, and the hardships of the service bind them together in a way unknown to more casual acquaintances. Many of these mutilated objects were still alive. We could see their agonised breathing. Some raised their heads clotted with blood, and other the stumps of arms, or legs, and faintly cried for help and pity.198

  They reached the breach to find the defenders in armour: ‘a coat, breastplate, shoulder plates and armlets, with a helmet and chain faceguard – so that bullets had little effect’. Despite the courage of the attackers they could make no progress.

  Before I had been on the breach five minutes I was hit by a large shot in the back, which threw me down from the bastion, toppled me over and over, and sent me rolling sideways down the steep slope until one of our grenadiers brought me up with his bayonet which he jabbed through my shoe, injuring the fleshy part of my foot under the great toe. The man who helped me get back up was shot dead that minute … I got back to my place to see poor Lieutenant Templar, who had planted his flag on top of the bastion as he said he would, cut to pieces by one of the enemy. Before I had been back long, a stinkpot, or earthen jar of some combustible material, fell on my pouch, in which I had fifty rounds of ball cartridge. The whole lot blew up. I never saw the pouch again, and I was hurled down from the top to the bottom of the bastion. How I got there I never knew, but when I came to I was lying below the breach with my legs in the water, my clothes burned, my face severely scorched and all the hair burned off the back of my head.199

  Lake raised the siege, having lost over 3,000 men and a good deal of prestige. Shipp’s heroism, however, was recognised by the grant of an ensigncy in HM’s 65th Foot. ‘On the day of my appointment, ’ he wrote, ‘I was metamorphosed into a gentleman. I had a new coat, my hair was cut and curled, and I was invited to dine with the Commander-in-Chief.’ The kindly Lord Lake sent him a tent, two camels and a horse, and ‘the rest of my outfit was generously given me by my excellent patron, Captain Lindsay’.200 Three weeks later Shipp was promoted lieutenant in HM’s 76th Foot and soon returned to England but, falling into debt, sold his commission. He then re-enlisted in the 24th Dragoons to make his way again. Bhurtpore was eventually taken by Lord Combermere in 1826.

  Commanders were often reluctant to risk an assault, not only because of the risk of failure and the possibility of heavy casualties, but because it was axiomatic that troops engaged in such a venture would be impossible to control once they got into the fortress. Lieutenant Charles Griffiths of HM’s 61st Foot reflected on this general truth when he got into Delhi in September 1857:

  There is no more terrible spectacle than a city taken by storm. All the pent-up passions of men are here let loose without restraint. Roused to a pitch of fury from long-continued resistance and eager to take vengeance on the murderers of women and children, the men in their pitiless rage showed no mercy. The dark days of Badajoz and San Sebastian were renewed on a scale at Delhi; and during the assault, seeing the impetuous fury of our men, I could not help recalling to my mind the harrowing details of the old Peninsular wars, here reproduced before my eyes.201

  At Multan, John Ryder described how:

  The victors and the vanquished were now become equally brutish; the former by excess of fortune, the latter by excess of misery. Every one was plundered whom our men could lay their hands upon, regardless of their pitiful cry, and in some instances women and children were shot down amongst the men. Our men now appeared to be brutish beyond everything, having but little mercy for one another – still less for an enemy, and very little pity indeed could be found in any one …

  No one with Christian feeling should be guilty of such cowardly and unsoldierly actions as those committed. English-men! Blush at your cruelty, and be ashamed of the unmanly actions perpetrated upon old men, entirely harmless; and still worse, upon the poor, helpless women. In several instances, on breaking into the retreats of these unfortunate creatures, a volley of shots was fired amongst them, as they were huddled together in a corner, regardless of old men, women and children. All shared the same fate …

  A man of the 3rd Company of my regiment, an Irish Roman Catholic, named B—, went into a room and took a young girl from her mother’s side, and perpetrated that offence for which he has to answer to God who heard that poor girl’s cries and petitions. Had I been upon the spot I would have shot him dead.202

  The same shocking drama was played out almost whenever a place was taken by storm. In 1843 Henry Daly entered a small town in Kohistan, and found:

  The scene entering the town is beyond description. Tents, baggage, things of all description lying about the streets, and the bodies of the unfortu
nate men who had delayed their departure too long, or who were too brave to fly and leave their wives and children without first sacrificing their lives in their defence. I suppose I need not tell you that no males above fourteen years were spared …

  Daly rescued an Afghan lady and gave her to a soldier for safe escort, warning them not to be rough with her. ‘Lor bless you, sir,’ replied the man, ‘I wouldn’t hurt one of these poor creatures for the world, but I would shoot one of these (pointing to the men) like a dog.’ Daly carried some drinking water to an old woman, ‘but all she said was “Curse the Feringhees!” Well had we merited them.’203

  The most celebrated siege endured by the British in India was, of course, that of Lucknow; its first and most serious phase running from July to late September 1857, when Havelock and Outram managed to force their way into the Residency compound, and continuing until Campbell arrived to end the siege in November. The garrison, initially around 800 British officers and men with HM’s 32nd as their nucleus, slightly fewer loyal sepoys and some 153 civilian volunteers, just outnumbered the 1,280 noncombatants, a mixture of officers’ and soldiers’ wives and children, local Christians and Indian servants. Henry Lawrence, as major general and chief commissioner, both the military commander and senior civil official, was mortally wounded on 2 July and died on the 4th, handing over military command to Brigadier Inglis and civil authority to Major Banks, himself killed by a sniper on 21 July, when civil authority also devolved on Inglis.

  The defence of Lucknow became a classic example of a colonial siege. Outside, a numerically superior enemy, dangerous both when initially flushed with victory and later when embittered and facing defeat and retribution, and inside a microcosm of Anglo-Indian society, striving to remain brave and confident despite a steady toll caused by disease and hostile fire, with anguish sharpened by the slow erosion of family groups. On the day Henry Lawrence was hit, Maria Germon, wife of an officer in 13th BNI, thought that she too was going to die: