Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  Whish’s Mooltan Field Force (two brigades of infantry, one of cavalry and a full siege train) set out from Lahore in two columns at the end of July, with Dalhousie’s grudging assent. ‘For me to have countermanded them when once ordered to move, would have been, in the eyes of all India, fear, and would have set the whole frontier and Scinde in a blaze’, explained the governor-general. Meanwhile, Gough despatched reinforcements to Lahore to make up the shortfall in Campbell’s garrison.

  These troop movements vindicated Campbell’s fears. By the time a detachment of the 14th Light Dragoons staggered into Lahore, thirteen men were dead and nearly half the regiment sick, and these were mounted men, not foot soldiers. A column from Ferozepore sent to Mooltan to join Whish expired like ants under a magnifying glass. ‘We had not marched more than two miles upon the road before men began to fall dead in the ranks, and numbers fell senseless to the ground. Our line of march was strewed with dead, dying and sick. The moanings and cries were heartrending’, recalled a private of the 32nd Foot. On 23 July only thirteen men of the 32nd Foot’s grenadier company marched unaided into camp at the end of the day.78 Even those troops left in Ferozepore, loading shot, were perishing from over-exertion. ‘Scarcely a day passed but we put some poor man in the grave’, recorded one soldier.79

  By 4 September Whish’s troops and siege train had reached Mooltan, but as he invested the town ‘the inadequacy of the force for the regular and severe toil of a siege was now plainly seen’, as one artillery historian wrote.80 As Campbell and Gough had warned, Whish had not nearly enough men or guns. Morale was momentarily lifted when Moolraj’s men found some tinned British provisions, and mistaking them for canister shot, ‘fired nothing from his guns for three days but fresh lobsters, pickled salmon, potted shrimps and other delicacies, supplying the whole British camp with a shower of the freshest English provisions’,81 but overall Whish’s predicament was grievous and about to get worse (see Plate 11).

  On 14 September, Shere Singh, who had led a column of Durbar troops from Lahore, abruptly switched sides,* simultaneously weakening the British and reinforcing Moolraj. After two days Whish had to withdraw, his troops debilitated and depressed. ‘We were faint, and looked more like moving skeletons than men; after our long toil, and the sacrifice of a number of valuable lives, some of our bravest men had here fallen uselessly’, wrote one soldier. ‘All this produced a great impression upon the men’s minds. We were obliged to leave everything to the enemy. All seemed lost: even our chief officers looked downcast.’82 Campbell’s opinion was that even:

  without the defection of the Rajah, the siege must have been given up, from our numbers being inadequate to carry on the duties of the trenches and from the natural difficulties outside being far greater than we had expected to find them … This suspension of the siege will give great encouragement to the enemy … There is evidently the commencement of a nice little war in the Punjab.83

  At this point the old hands could be forgiven for indulging in a chorus of ‘I told you so’. Much of the invective was targeted at Edwardes for forcing the issue. ‘Sir Henry Lawrence’s protégé Edwardes … after being brought forward as a young Clive by the Directors, proved to be no Clive at all’,84 wrote Charles Napier. ‘I suspect he is a greatly over-rated man,’ wrote another officer, ‘one who had been made by circumstances, and thrust into a position which he lacks ability to fill.’85 ‘Currie, instead of being stimulated by his energetic subordinate, should have controlled him’, complained the Calcutta Review.86

  ‘This is short and sweet and decides the question’, wrote Dalhousie upon hearing of Shere Singh’s duplicity. ‘No other course is open to us than to prosecute a general Punjab war with vigour, and ultimately to occupy the country with our own troops.’87 ‘The Sikh nation has called for war and on my word, sirs, they will have it with a vengeance’, he declared,88 but how the governor-general would come up with the troops for Gough to square the account was a moot point. Throughout the summer Dalhousie had sat on his hands. Only now did he restore the native infantry regiments to their old level of 1,000 men and request additional troops from England.

  Besides the shortage of men, Gough laboured under a host of other problems, including Dalhousie’s lack of faith in his abilities. ‘The C-in-C has been all I could wish hitherto’, admitted the governor-general. ‘What he may be when he gets into the field remains to be seen.’89 Gough was further hampered by the chronic lack of military transport, and, following the failure of the rains, a scarcity of forage for his pack animals. Then there was the British ignorance of Punjabi topography; the Lawrences had never bothered to instigate any survey from a military standpoint.

  A Sikh uprising was a greater challenge than any Campbell had confronted. He had faced slaves, Irishmen and Geordies in rebellion, but none of them commanded a professional army and several hundred cannon. The declaration of war found him disconsolate. Back in May he had basked in good health and the anticipation of a lucrative future but, as one historian wrote, ‘most Englishmen who survived the fevers and climate of India, lapsed after a year or two into fatalism, ennui or debauchery’.90 By September the black clouds had gathered once more. ‘The life of an honourable man who is deeply in debt is a life of thraldom, frequently of despair, always of anxiety, and never of comfort’, he confided to his diary.

  This despair came just as the countryside became ungovernable. British dominion shrank until it barely stretched beyond the walls of Lahore. In Jullundur Brigadier Wheeler’s brigade was struggling to contain dissent, while at Bunnoo the Sikhs had risen up, and at Attock a single British lieutenant and a small Muslim garrison were left beleaguered. In October Sikh troops in Peshawur mutinied. The city was a vital bargaining chip: the Sikh rebels had promised it to the Afghan ruler Dost Mohammed in return for his support. As in Newcastle, fevered demands piled up from far-flung civil servants for detachments to put the malcontents to the sword, but both Gough and Campbell wished to avoid the diffusion of scarce troops, so Campbell restricted his actions to the area immediately around Lahore. In the case of Umritsar, however, he was prepared to make an exception. As ‘the chief centre of religious fanaticism’, he explained, ‘the necessity of securing the fort at this juncture was obvious’. Its Golden Temple, the holiest site of Sikhism, had immense symbolic importance, and Campbell had to have it. On 19 September he sent 273 men of the 14th Bengal Irregular Cavalry plus the 1st Bengal Native Infantry to secure Umritsar’s Govindghur Fort, ‘if possible, without a fight’. This being India, Campbell’s men came up with a plan worthy of a penny dreadful. A party of soldiers in mufti appeared at the gate, claiming to be escorting treasure, with a posse of bogus prisoners in tow. They were welcomed inside. The next morning at dawn, they overpowered the guards and let in the Bengal sepoys, who had just arrived after an exhausting night march. Officially, Govindghur had only two cannon in its arsenal but inside they found fifty-two guns, most of them buried. ‘The fort is in our keeping, in which I presume it will remain’, reported Campbell. ‘I hope this will satisfy the old lord.’91

  Meanwhile, Gough’s army was massing. His first goal was to prevent the union of Shere Singh, who had left Mooltan, and his father Chuttur Singh, who had raised a rebel army to the north. Shere was holed up at Ramnuggur, a small walled town near the Chenaub River. Having confirmed Campbell in the rank of brigadier-general, Gough ordered him to take a brigade and join Brigadier-General Cureton’s cavalry near Ramnuggur. Restricted in rations and the transport to carry them by the commissariat, Campbell could take only the 36th and 46th Bengal Native Infantry. He started out from Lahore on 10 November and two days later made Dadur-sing-ki-killa, where he found Cureton* and a second infantry brigade under Brigadier Eckford. Between the British and Sikh armies lay the Chenaub, at this season a broad, dry riverbed or nullah, with just a few trickles in the middle.

  By the 21st Gough had met up with Campbell. Having received reports that Shere Singh had crossed the river, the commander-in-chief directed Campbe
ll to launch a preliminary assault in the early hours of the 22nd. Gough’s intention was to probe the Sikh defences, not to start an all-out battle, yet he gave Campbell five battalions, an entire cavalry brigade, two troops of horse artillery and a field battery. Gough could not resist joining in. ‘When my division was forming, the commander-in-chief, with his staff and escort, came upon the ground, and virtually assumed the command of the operation’, reported Campbell.

  Gough’s advance soon flushed out a few scattered enemy troops, who fled towards the river. Cureton’s horse artillery encouraged them on their way but, as Campbell recalled, ‘The battalions supposed to have been on this side – if ever there were any in the position which had been described to us – had gone.’ Gough sent forward the 3rd Light Dragoons to clear any remaining Sikhs’ pickets from his side of the river. ‘They showed us their backs, leaving their tents behind them’, wrote one trooper. ‘Down to the river they went, and us after them, neck or nothing, but they took the ford and joined their army, which lay quiet enough but was soon on the alert.’ As the Sikhs scampered back across the Chenaub, so the horse artillery pressed on their heels, but in their haste one gun careered into the dry riverbed and stuck fast in the sand. Campbell rode forward, dismounted and tried to help shift the gun but even with two more teams of horses it wouldn’t move. ‘The truth is, the gun could only be got out of the position in which it was by cutting down the bank’, explained Campbell, ‘or by taking the gun to a considerable distance on either side of where it was placed – in doing which, our men would have been exposed to the fire of the whole of the enemy’s artillery, posted on the opposite bank, numbering twenty-eight guns.’ Losing a gun has a mystical significance for the British army far beyond its tactical importance. Wellington was (incorrectly) reputed never to have lost one, encouraging British generals to commit whole battalions to preserve a single cannon. This is what would make the Light Brigade charge at Balaklava. So Campbell cantered off to order up two entire regiments to cover the artillery teams trying to extricate the gun. On the way he ran into Gough, who sensibly overruled him. All they could do now was to spike the gun and pull back.92

  Cheered by this British loss, between three and four thousand Sikh cavalrymen crossed the dry riverbed. What had started as a manoeuvre was fast turning into a major engagement. British cavalry charged the Sikhs repeatedly. ‘These isolated fights of cavalry could lead to no positive result or advantage,’ Campbell insisted, ‘for the enemy’s cavalry were under the protection of their artillery and could retire to the bed of the river, where they were under cover of musketry as well.’ Each time the Sikh horsemen retreated to the nullah, their guns on the high bank could fire over their heads into the British troopers. Campbell urged Cureton to put a stop to it, but:

  while in conversation with him to this effect, I observed the 14th Light Dragoons get in movement in direction of the enemy … they were no doubt going to engage in one of these useless encounters with the enemy in the broken ground on the banks of the river. I begged him to go and look after them, to prevent their acting wildly or foolishly. He observed that the Chief ought either to take the whole management [of the cavalry] into his hands, or leave it to those whom he made responsible. Thus we parted. I never saw Cureton again.93

  ‘If you see a favourable opportunity of charging, charge’, Gough had instructed Colonel William Havelock of the 14th Light Dragoons, and he needed no further encouragement. ‘The 14th came on in pretty style, so steady and straight,’ reported one soldier, ‘but Colonel Havelock knew nothing of the nullah in their front, full of the enemy’s infantry.’ ‘My God! This isn’t the way to use cavalry!’ shouted Cureton, heading after him. He had not got far before he was felled by a matchlock ball.94 ‘I saw him, poor fellow, just before his death’, wrote another officer:

  He was riding along in front of our regiment, when a round shot passed close over his head. Somebody remarked, ‘Rather a near shave that, general’. ‘Oh, I am used to it’ replied he, smiling, and stroking his moustaches. In three minutes more, he was lying on the sand with a ball through his head, and many a brave fellow by his side.95

  Gough had despatched an officer to stop Havelock but even at a gallop, he could not catch him in time. At the nullah the dragoons hesitated, but seeing Havelock ride down fearlessly, they dutifully followed, right into the matchlock fire of the Sikh infantry hiding in the riverbed. Havelock retired, but then re-formed his squadrons for another charge. It was no more successful than the first. ‘Much valuable life was sacrificed’, lamented one officer, ‘without any benefit whatsoever having been obtained.’96 ‘The day was now getting advanced, and the sun showed signs of putting an end to the dreadful sight, so the army formed itself into battle order for the morrow and returned to the bivouac for the night’, explained one soldier. ‘At the same time the Sikhs crossed the river, having had enough of it themselves.’97 Fourteen dragoons had been killed, fifty-nine had been wounded and twelve were missing. Havelock’s headless body was found twelve days later.

  Cureton’s death necessitated a reordering of command, so Gough offered Campbell Cureton’s old job as Adjutant-General of the Queen’s Troops. He declined. ‘No desire for the appointment’, he wrote. ‘Stated fairly and unhesitatingly my wish to get back to Europe.’ Colonel Mountain was appointed instead. ‘If they had made Campbell [adjutant] they would have deprived us of one of the best men we have for a command’, wrote a relieved Dalhousie.98 Sir Joseph Thackwell, who had charged at Sahagun and lost an arm at Waterloo, took over the cavalry.* That left the 3rd Division without a general, so Gough gave it to Campbell.

  For the moment though, war was put on hold. The waste of life at Ramnuggur made Dalhousie cautious. ‘I will not risk a reverse by permitting the army to move until it is of a strength and in a condition to do so, leaving everything safe behind it, and sure of being able to beat everything in front of it’, he told the Duke of Wellington. ‘On no consideration … advance with your army into the Doab beyond the Chenaub, except for the purpose of attacking Shere Singh in his present position, without further communication with me and my consent obtained’,99 he instructed Gough. That left Gough the chance to strike his enemy if he stayed put, so he decided to keep the Sikhs on the far bank pinned down with his artillery, while Thackwell led 7,000 men and thirty-two guns upstream to ford the river before rushing the enemy in the flank. As part of this column, Campbell would command three infantry brigades led by Brigadiers Pennycuick (24th Foot and 25th Bengal Native Infantry plus flank companies of the 22nd Bengal Native Infantry), Hoggan (61st Foot, 36th and 46th Bengal Native Infantry) and Eckford (31st and 56th Bengal Native Infantry). This was by far the greatest mass of soldiery Campbell had ever been given on campaign. Nevertheless, he was uneasy: ‘The movement was … a hazardous one – the placing of a force under 7,000 in a position in which they could not be supported, and where they might be opposed by 30,000.’100 Secrecy was vital. Thackwell had to outflank the Sikhs before they realised he was on his way. As Cameron had done thirty-five years before at the Bidassoa, Campbell had the men leave their fires burning, tents standing, and bugles and drums silent. Unfortunately, his efforts were confounded by the baggage train whose camels, bullocks and camp followers** kept up an unholy row loud enough to alert the sleepiest Sikh scout.

  The column was due to depart in the early hours of 1 December, but two of Campbell’s brigades lost their way in the dark and showed up late, by which time Thackwell had set off without them. Encumbered by a ponderous pontoon train, Campbell had to halt repeatedly to allow it to catch up. The path was narrow and uneven, and by the time he met up with Thackwell at the ford 15 miles away, his schedule had slipped further.

  Campbell had arranged for William Hodson of the Guide Corps to survey the crossing some time before. His report called it practicable but ‘objectionable’.101 Once there, Thackwell instructed Lieutenant Paton to survey it again.*** After three hours Paton concluded it was near impassable. The deep sand of the riverb
ed would snare the artillery. ‘Besides, the bank on the opposite side had a dark appearance, the sure sign of its being a quicksand’,102 explained Campbell. The pontoon bridge was too short to reach across. Meanwhile, Sikhs were gathering on the far bank, and could be relied upon to report back to Shere Singh, thus robbing Thackwell of the advantage of surprise. Communication with Gough was now tenuous and rations dwindling. Thackwell called his officers together for a conference. According to Thackwell’s son Edward,**** Campbell recommended abandoning the expedition.’His arguments’, Edward Thackwell observed, ‘were not without reason.’103 Campbell feared a further detour would leave the men exhausted and hungry, but Sir Joseph was determined to press on and ordered his men to march 10 miles along the river to Wuzeerabad, where they would cross by boat.

  The column did not reach its destination until around 7.30 p.m., soldiers fainting as they stumbled into camp, others arriving carried in dhoolies. Irregular cavalry had gone on ahead, secured the ford and collected seventeen boats to ferry Campbell’s infantry across. Having no further use for the pontoon train, the 12th Bengal Irregular Cavalry and two companies of the 22nd Bengal Native Infantry were detailed to escort it back to Gough, along with the two 18-pounder guns pulled by elephants. Pennycuick’s brigade was soon ensconced on the far bank with two guns to form a bridgehead. ‘In the mazes of small channels and pools of water which chequered the loose sands, many a regiment lost its way,’ recalled one captain, ‘while the increasing darkness added to the general confusion, and the knowledge of abounding quick sands produced a sense of insecurity. It is hard to say what might have befallen the force had the enemy only taken the trouble to guard this ford, or to form an ambuscade.’104 Even without an enemy resisting them, three sowars and a horse drowned while crossing. The 31st and 56th Bengal Native Infantry waded part way across, got stuck and had to spend a chilly night on a sand bank in midstream. With their tents still standing at Ramnuggur, ‘The night was very cold’, reported Campbell. ‘I had nothing but a small coverlet between Haythorne [Campbell’s ADC] and myself.’105