Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  Progress was slow but by noon the last soldier had made it to the far bank, and so Thackwell headed towards Doorawal. Gough was becoming impatient. On 1 December he had unleashed a barrage upon Shere Singh’s position at Ramnuggur. ‘The twenty fours went off with a roar that shook the very ground’, recalled one officer, ‘and the shot rushed through the air with a noise like a mighty winged spirit, till the very atmosphere was stunned.’ Next day, ‘all was quiet and not a man to be seen on the other side of the river’.106 A young officer went across to reconnoitre and returned to confirm the Sikhs had vanished. Shere Singh had left to crush Thackwell’s column.

  That evening a camel rider rode into camp with express orders from Gough for Thackwell to fall on the enemy’s left early the next day, while the commander-in-chief advanced at Ramnuggur. Early next morning they marched, but after 6 miles another message arrived from Gough, this time telling Thackwell to hold the ford at Gurra-ke-Puttun and postpone his assault until reinforced. Thackwell split off a strong detachment of the 56th Bengal Native Infantry and the 3rd Bengal Irregular Cavalry to guard the crossing. This left his original force cut in three, now that the pontoon train and escort had turned back.

  While Thackwell headed for the ford, he left Campbell in command near Sadoolapore. Though Thackwell had left strict instructions to ‘Remain as you are until my return’, Campbell could not resist reconnoitring. ‘On riding some four or five hundred yards to the front of the centre, I saw several of the enemy’s horsemen’, he wrote, ‘and on proceeding a little farther, I observed in some ground, rather wooded and enclosed to the right, a good many cavalry and infantry scattered over the ground.’ He ordered forward three infantry companies, one each to occupy the villages of Langwala, Khamookhan and Rutta.107 For the next two hours Campbell waited for Thackwell to return, while the Sikhs remained where they were. When at last Thackwell appeared, he recalled the men Campbell had sent ahead.* To the Sikhs, abandoning defensible outposts without contesting them smacked of weakness, so they opened fire with their artillery. The camp followers fled at the first volley. Worried that the tall sugar cane in front would provide excellent cover for Sikh skirmishers, Thackwell pulled his infantry back a further 200 yards. Taking this to be another British retreat, the Sikhs, waving their great brass-studded hide shields and shouting ‘Feringhee baghjaten!’ (‘The foreigners are running!’), filled the cane. ‘Into this our guns fired grape and canister and killed a great number’, reported one soldier.108 Thackwell considered an advance, but Campbell urged him to wait and see if the Sikhs broke cover. They would have to traverse a field swept by British musket and cannon. Shere Singh instead prudently stuck to his artillery barrage, while his cavalry nipped at the British flanks. Under orders not to advance until reinforcements arrived, Thackwell stood his ground, repulsing the enemy horse and replying to their guns. And so it went on for more than two hours while the villagers of Sadoolapore climbed up on their roofs, braving the round shot to get a better view.

  As to what happened next, the generals differ. According to Campbell:

  [once] the enemy halted at the villages and opened an artillery fire, it was manifest to me that they had no intention of coming beyond that point; and I accordingly asked Sir Joseph Thackwell to allow me attack them with my infantry, advancing in echelons of brigades from the centre … He replied that he was afraid of his flanks.

  As the deadlock continued, Campbell again asked permission to attack, but was again refused.* ‘Thus the day passed off in a cannonade from both sides’, he explained.109 Some of the promised reinforcements made it across the ford, but with the light failing they could do little more than pitch their tents in the twilight. By the next morning Shere Singh was gone.

  Gough was incandescent. He had been so good as to place ‘the ball at Thackwell’s foot, and Thackwell had declined to kick it’.110 Thackwell replied that ‘nearly the whole of the Sikh army were employed against my position’, and, but for his artillery, his detachment would have been swamped by Shere Singh. Fortunately for Campbell, Dalhousie blamed Gough and Thackwell. The governor-general dismissed his commander-in-chief’s request for a royal salute. ‘I told him frankly that I could not consider it a victory’, he explained, but rather ‘an attack quite without an object, and without a result’.111 Having said that, although the British had failed to outflank the Sikhs, in a roundabout way they had achieved their objective; the enemy had been ferreted out from a fortified position at minimal cost in lives.

  British attention focused once again on Mooltan. Now with reinforcements from Bombay, Whish resumed his siege two days after Christmas, helped three days later by a chance hit on the main Sikh magazine and its 360,000lb of gunpowder. The force of the explosion blew British soldiers in camp clean off their feet. By 2 January a breach had been punched in the walls so large that ‘a whole company in line could enter’.112 Whish sent Moolraj a final offer to surrender. Moolraj had the letter rammed down a gun and fired back. After a bloody assault, all but the fort fell to Whish, and with the original fount of revolt almost subdued, the British could concentrate on the hunt for Chuttur and Shere Singh. Dalhousie cast aside his earlier reservations. His political agent, Major Mackeson, urged Gough ‘to strike an effectual blow at the enemy in our front’, recommending ‘that the blow should be struck with the least possible delay’.113

  Campbell had spent December suffering another bout of fever, made worse by an unspecified bowel complaint, but the prospect of battle proved wonderfully therapeutic. For the new offensive Gough gave him the majority of his infantry: three brigades camped at Dingee, about 8 miles from Shere Singh’s camp at Russool. On 12 January he summoned Campbell to his tent to explain tactics. Major-General Sir Walter Gilbert’s division would launch at the Sikh left at Russool. Campbell, Gilbert and the cavalry were then ‘to throw themselves fairly perpendicularly across the left centre of the opposing force, and to hurl it southward’.114 Gough showed little desire to reconnoitre so Campbell went to see the chief engineer, Tremenheere, to recommend the army instead advance and bivouac for the night, and then the engineers could survey the area on the 13th, supported by infantry. Tremenheere replied wearily that, since crossing the Chenaub, Gough ‘was determined to take no advice, nor brook any volunteered opinions’, and suggested Campbell voice his concerns to Gough’s nephew, John Gough (quartermaster-general), who might have some influence.115 Campbell’s suggestion filtered through and Gough sent the engineers ahead to inspect. At about 10 a.m. on 12 January, they reported Sikhs leaving the entrenchments at Russool and moving down on to the plain. Gough ordered his army forward. ‘We marched on … occasionally halting for intelligence or orders,’ wrote one surgeon, ‘each brigade taking its own way through hedges and ditches, across fields of young corn, or scrubby brushwood, passing numerous large and small villages, each walled in … one and all of them had been plundered of everything by the Sikhs.’

  At this point Major Mackeson received reports that the Sikhs were in strength to the west, so Gough turned left towards the village of Chillianwala, to engage them. Battle seemed guaranteed so, during a halt, Campbell addressed his division, reliving the past glories of the Peninsular War, and priming them for the fight. However, when Gough reached Chillianwala around noon he found only a solitary Sikh picket on a mound. ‘We halted, and the artillery attached to our brigade dashed on and opened with shells and round shot among them’, wrote Surgeon Stewart. ‘I got up a tree with my spyglass and could see the havoc our guns made among them.’116 With the mound cleared, Gough had a view across to the Jhelum River. Thirty thousand Sikhs with sixty-two guns were deployed along a string of villages, but jungle camouflaged their exact location and strength. The Sikhs were protected on their left by hills and on their right by more jungle, making a flanking manoeuvre awkward, so Gough decided to camp for the night.

  ‘The day being so far advanced, I decided upon taking a position in rear of the village’,117 reported Gough.* ‘Arms were piled, artillery parked, horse
s off-saddled, and all preparations made for encamping’, recalled one officer, ‘as we thought the inevitable battle would follow in the morrow’,118 but suddenly Sikh horse artillery appeared and began to fire. Two 6-pounder rounds passed close to the commander-in-chief.** As one Victorian historian put it, ‘The first echo of the enemy’s gun stirred in him an impulse stronger than the prudence of age or the resolve of education could control.’119 Gough ordered the Sikh fire be returned immediately. ‘Our heavy guns opened at a distance of 1,800 yards,’ recalled Campbell, ‘which immediately brought a reply from twenty or thirty of their guns in the centre of their position. This was about quarter past 1 pm.’120 Masked by the jungle, the British could only guess the distance of the Sikh cannon by timing the gap between flash and report, but ‘after about an hour’s fire, that of the enemy appeared to be, if not silenced, sufficiently disabled to justify an advance upon his position and his guns’, maintained Gough.121 Dispensing with his original plan to lay into the Sikhs at Russool and turn their flank, he now ordered a bold frontal assault. Gough’s 13,000 troops were severely outnumbered and there were only a few hours of daylight left. At each end the Sikh line extended well beyond the British, leaving Gough’s flanks vulnerable. Furthermore, the British barrage had made little impression. Almost all the Sikh guns were still serviceable. Gough was being lured into battle through thick jungle, on ground of his enemy’s choosing. Mackeson implored him not to pitch in. ‘I am the C-in-C of this army and I desire you to be silent!’ he replied.122

  ‘The ground … was covered with wood, dense and thick, as was also our front’, explained Campbell, so he climbed a tall mud pillar to get a better view. From here he could see the Sikhs about half a mile ahead. Gough had placed Campbell on his left, commanding Hoggan’s brigade (far left) and the one under Pennycuick (centre left). To the right were Godby’s brigade (far right) and Mountain’s (centre right), both in Sir Walter Gilbert’s division. In reserve was Campbell’s third brigade led by Brigadier Nicholas Penny. At both ends were cavalry to protect the flanks. Between Hoggan and Pennycuick was Major Mowat’s battery of six 9-pounder guns. To the left of Hoggan’s brigade were a further three guns under Lieutenant Robertson. Gough had confirmed that three troops of horse artillery (eighteen guns) under Colonel Brind were to support Campbell, though command of them lay with Thackwell. Believing the Sikhs opposite Campbell had little useable artillery, Gough instructed him to take the enemy guns at the point of the bayonet, without further elaboration.123

  Campbell’s division, having the widest stretch of country to cross, set off first at 3 p.m. Campbell ordered Mowatt and Robertson to advance their guns alongside the skirmishers, ahead of the line. Campbell felt that his place was with the short-sighted Hoggan,* ‘considering this arrangement more advisable as he could discern faintly in the distance that the enemy’s right, very much outflanked the British left’, and that the nature of the ground made it ‘utterly impossible that any commander could superintend the attack of more than one brigade’.124 ‘The enemy had chosen a rare place for us to work’, recalled one soldier. ‘We could not combine one regiment to the other, so close was the jungle in places.’125

  To the right, Pennycuick faced the same difficult ground, but he had forty years’ experience of fighting in all terrains, in Java, Burma, Afghanistan and Aden, so Campbell left him to his own devices. Led by the 24th’s grenadier company under Captain Travers, the brigade plunged into the thick scrub and thorny acacias. ‘The jungle became denser at every step and the keekur and kureel bushes higher’, reported one officer. ‘The advance was continued at a rapid pace and in such alignment as the various companies, now broken into sections or files, could manage to preserve, acting on the independent judgment of individuals, and the habit of previous training.’126 Following behind, Surgeon Stewart found that ‘the most tremendous pealing of thunder was little compared with the incessant roaring of the guns, the whizzing of the round shot, and the pattering of the musket balls – the sky was completely overcast with the thick, brown clouds of smoke which hung over the combatants.’127 In this cacophony it was impossible for men at the extremities of the line to hear commands from the centre. The 45th Bengal Native Infantry, advancing beside the 24th Foot, buckled as it struggled forward. Pennycuick was soon dismounted ‘from some cause or other’ and had to proceed on foot.128 ‘It was soon anything but a line – marching through thick jungle, having to clear our way through enclosures of thorns, how could it be otherwise than broken?’ wrote one officer. ‘Our light companies were ordered to skirmish but not to fire. They might have knocked over many of the enemy … had it not been for this extraordinary order. We received this order from Brigadier Pennycuick, with the remark that everything was to be done with the bayonet.’129 Campbell had ordered Pennycuick to hold fire until he had overrun the guns, in keeping with Gough’s own predilection for the ‘cold steel’.130

  Worryingly, there was no sign of the field guns. Campbell had ordered Mowatt’s six guns to ‘open fire as soon as he could get a good sight of the enemy’, but Pennycuick had dashed off with such haste that he had crossed in front of Mowatt and ‘rendered the battery next to useless’.131 Campbell must have guessed from the lack of cannon fire that something was amiss, and despatched Lieutenant Sweton Grant to investigate – too late as it turned out.

  ‘After this advance, almost at random, had been continued for about 1,800 yards, the jungle suddenly ceased’, explained one soldier. ‘When the regiment, pounded incessantly with round shot by an unseen enemy, emerged from it, rapid discharges of grape and canister swept away whole sections.’132 The 24th, well ahead of its two neighbouring regiments, charged forward towards the Sikh artillery, accompanied by their regimental mascot, a black goat called Billy.** They found ‘on each flank of the guns, large bodies of regular infantry, with a body of cavalry directly in rear of the guns’, as Campbell reported, who ‘opened a deadly fire upon the 24th’.133 ‘Such a mass of men I have never set eye on’, wrote another officer, ‘and as plucky as lions: they ran right on the bayonets of the 24th, and struck at their assailants when they were transfixed’,134 while Sikh cavalry closed in, ‘slaughtering all they got near’.135

  It was a consummate disaster. The brigade suffered nearly 800 casualties, among them almost 250 dead, including Pennycuick himself and his 17-year-old son. The high proportion of dead was due to the ruthlessness of the Sikh cavalry, who showed no mercy to the wounded. The 24th suffered worst of all with 276 wounded and 204 killed, among them Colonel Brookes, who as an ensign had served in the 9th Foot with Campbell. ‘The two officers carrying the colours, Lieutenant Collis and Ensign H. Phillips, were both struck down by grape within a few yards of the muzzles of the guns’, reported Captain Blachford.136 The rest of the colour party were dead and the Queen’s Colour was lost.

  Astonishingly, at the right-hand end of the battlefield, Campbell’s incompetence was being exceeded. The sight of 400–500 Sikh irregular cavalry had encouraged Brigadier Pope’s cavalry, guarding the far right flank, to advance. But ‘before they met these miserable creatures, the whole four regiments halted, turned about, and galloped to the rear as hard as they could ride’, fumed Dalhousie:

  They galloped over our own artillery, broke the harness and were followed by the Goorchurras [Sikh irregular cavalry] who cut to pieces nearly every man of the battery and took three guns. The 14th and 9th galloped on till they rode amongst the field hospital, and upset the surgeons who were operating on the wounded. They were stopped by the chaplain, pistol in hand, who was helping to hold a man under operation, and not till then!137*

  ‘The wounded were abandoned by the cowardly bearers’, reported Surgeon Stewart. ‘I drew my sword and tried, like the progenitors of the earls of Errol, to stop the fugitives by entreaties, abuse, etc, but without success. I was knocked over, horse and all, by the crowd, and ridden over by a gun driver in a moment.’138 The Sikh cavalry thundered on, and were soon within 100 yards of Gough. With his right flank cru
mbling under the weight of the enemy charge, and his infantry in the centre convincingly repulsed, it seemed the day was lost.

  Far to the left, Hoggan, like Pennycuick, had run into ‘a dense jungle of trees and bushes which precluded the possibility of seeing a hundred yards in any direction’.139 Nevertheless, according to Campbell, they ‘advanced without any great difficulty. I took care to regulate the rate of march of the centre, or directing regiment, so that all could keep up.’140 Consequently, half a mile on, the brigade disgorged from the jungle in a ragged, but distinguishable line. In the middle were the men of the 61st Foot, to their right the 36th Bengal Native Infantry, and on the left the 46th Bengal Native Infantry. Robertson’s three guns, which should have been on the left, were nowhere to be seen. Campbell sent a galloper to find Brind’s horse artillery, which had also vanished. Mowatt’s six guns were still hacking their way through the jungle. As the brigade broke cover, four enemy guns opened fire. Ahead was a large body of Sikh cavalry, but contemptuous of the dangers of using infantry to charge cavalry, Campbell urged the 61st forward, firing as they advanced, and sent the horsemen packing. Sadly, a similar advance against Sikh infantry by the 36th was sternly repulsed, leaving the right flank of the 61st exposed. Seizing the opportunity, the Sikhs wheeled two guns up to within 25 yards of the 61st’s flank and opened fire with grape shot. Campbell calmly ordered the 61st to change front to the right, to meet the new threat, and, spurring his horse forward, led two companies to charge the guns. As he drew near, two Sikh artillerymen raised their matchlocks and fired. One missed,** but the other hit Campbell in his side. Without time to reload, one of the Sikhs sprang forward and with his tulwar landed Campbell a deep cut on his right arm.