Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  ** However, Ryder claimed the two bodies were found in the fort in January, in an advanced state of decay (Ryder, 150) and Hope Grant that they were beheaded and then blown up with gunpowder (Knollys, 120).

  *** Gough had been elevated to Baron Gough after the Opium War.

  **** Masterminded by Khan Singh; a different Khan Singh to the man in Mooltan.

  * A rude kind of palkee, very light, made for the purpose of carrying the sick, and borne by four men; has a cane bottom, and is open at the top and sides, over which a cloth is thrown to protect you from the sun. Altogether it looks very much like a coffin’ (Sandford, 198).

  * ‘I know not why this should have caused great surprise, as his disaffection had been long mooted’, wrote one officer (Daly, 32).

  * A veteran of the Peninsular War, Cureton was the sole example, at that time, of a soldier who rose from the ranks to make general.

  * He had turned the 15th Hussars into the envy of every colonel. It paid a very handsome dividend in 1832, when he was persuaded to exchange with a wealthy but inexperienced lieutenant-colonel on half-pay, the Earl of Cardigan, who reportedly offered him £35,000 for the post.

  ** Because each officer took ten to thirty servants, plus their wives, children, mothers, luggage, etc., the baggage train was usually several times the size of the army. This at least meant provision for the wounded was excellent. For a force of 1,000 men, 630 bearers with 100 dhoolies was the norm (Singh, M., 233–4).

  *** Gough’s biographer suggests that Thackwell never actually found the right ford. Campbell is somewhat confusing. ‘It was the ford of Ranee-Ke-Puttun and above this, about a mile higher up was the ford at which it was intended the force should pass. Lt Paton, AQMG, was sent to examine it and the approaches to it.’ It is unclear whether he meant Paton surveyed the ford a mile up, or the one at Ranee-Ke-Puttun (Shadwell, I, 189).

  **** Durand was dismissive of his version of events (see Durand, II, 60–3), as were the officers of the 45th Bengal Native Infantry in a letter to the United Service Magazine.

  * Hope Grant wrote that Thackwell had received orders from Gough not to go ‘beyond a certain point’ and because the villages were beyond that point, he pulled the troops back (Knollys, I, 129).

  * In William Napier’s The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier, these requests were inflated to three. ‘The assertion that Campbell three times begged for leave to advance and take them [the guns] and then to charge, which I have never heard of before, is totally unfounded in fact’, wrote Thackwell. ‘I believe Thackwell’, wrote Fortescue, dismissing Campbell with the line, ‘An officer who wished to run back to Ramnuggur because the ford at Khanki was impracticable shows no very enterprising nature.’ However, Campbell recorded his version in his private journal shortly after the event, a journal never intended to be published. Thackwell, meanwhile, was writing eight years later and for publication. Shadwell and Haythorne both confirmed Campbell’s two requests.

  * General Mountain said a staff officer told him, ‘Major Mackeson has persuaded the Chief not to attack today’, putting a rather different complexion on things (Mountain, 259).

  ** An officer heard Gough say, ‘Indeed I had not intended to attack today, but the impudent rascals fired on me. They put my Irish blood up, and I attacked them’ (Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 210; see also Yule, 36). The USM suggested Gough should have ‘retreated a little until measures could be taken for annihilating them [the Sikhs]’ (April 1849, 502).Fortescue claimed the notion that, ‘in the actual circumstances, he [Gough] could have deferred a general action, seems impossible’, without explaining why.

  * Hodson describes an unnamed brigadier of infantry who ‘could not see his regiment when I led his horse by the bridle until its nose touched the bayonets; and even then he said faintly, “Pray which way are the men facing, Mr Hodson?”’ (Hodson, 101). If this was Hoggan, it explains Campbell’s decision.

  ** Billy survived and was awarded a campaign medal (Atkinson, C.T., 292); however, he became so aggressive that his horns had to be sawn down and fitted with brass caps. Eventually, he was put down (Macpherson, 39).

  * One explanation is that the cavalry had drifted to the left, into the artillery’s line of fire. Pope’s order of ‘threes right’, to correct this, was misheard as ‘threes about’, the order to retire (Burton, R.G., 101; Symons, 26). Thackwell supports this, but Bradford dismisses it as ‘without foundation’ (Durand, II, 87).

  ** The first ball passed through the mouth of Campbell’s horse and lodged in the curb chain. That night Campbell brought the animal into his tent to convalesce.

  *** Pocket pistols, or ‘muff pistols’, were more usually used by women. At close range they were still lethal. John Wilkes Booth used one to assassinate Abraham Lincoln in 1865. They seemed very popular in India at the time (see Robinson, D., 133). The waistcoat had been ‘worked for him years before by a fair Northumbrian friend’, according to Shadwell (I, n.207).

  * To put that in context, the allies’ final bombardment of Sebastopol in September 1855 used around 33,000 rounds.

  * Commanded by fellow Belleisle survivor Hope Grant, now a lieutenant-colonel.

  * Mooltan had been besieged by Alexander the Great in 325 bc. Alexander personally climbed up a ladder and over the walls to lead the Macedonians to victory. Written by prisoners of their own classical education, allusions to this campaign litter the correspondence of the time. Campbell himself was not immune to this (Shadwell, I, 226). Most forgot that Alexander fought during the winter. Even the ancient world’s boldest military commander avoided the heat of the Indian summer.

  ** Batta was originally an extra allowance paid while on active service in India (Singh, M., 103–6).

  *** It was valued at £3 million in 1838 (Latif, 380). It resides in the platinum crown made for Queen Elizabeth, consort of George VI, for their coronation in 1937. ‘I tell you, I, Colin Campbell, have had that stone in a box with me in the Punjab, as if it were a toilet article, and no one the wiser’ (Maude and Sherer, II, 402). When the jewel was presented to him, John Lawrence idly pushed it into his waistcoat pocket. Six weeks later, Henry Lawrence told John that the queen had requested the diamond. John replied that it should be sent for at once. ‘Why, you’ve got it!’ pointed out his brother. John had left it in his waistcoat, which he had then dropped on the floor when dressing for dinner. Fortunately, his native valet had secreted it in a tin box, thinking it was just paste (Howarth, 130). Lady Login rubbished this tale for ‘taxing too much the credulity of the average individual’ (Login, 82); however, on the next page she describes how her husband found in the Lahore treasury one of the largest emeralds ever seen, set in the pommel of a saddle earmarked for burning.

  1 Hardinge, 221.

  2 Barnett, 273.

  3 Brodie, 56.

  4 Arnold, D., 65.

  5 Lawrence, H., 35.

  6 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 5.

  7 Singh, G., Private Correspondence, 35.

  8 Shadwell, I, 142.

  9 Ahluwalia, Maharani, 14.

  10 Napier, P., 190.

  11 Shadwell, I, 228.

  12 Robinson, D., 183.

  13 Shadwell, I, 228.

  14 Shadwell, I, 147.

  15 Conran, 128–9.

  16 Edwardes, M., The Necessary Hell, 45.

  17 Diver, 318–19.

  18 Hodson, 102.

  19 Harries-Jenkins, 16–17.

  20 Conran, 209.

  21 Hardinge, 85.

  22 Postans, 33.

  23 Malcolm, 27.

  24 Ray, 1.

  25 Shadwell, I, 149, 156.

  26 Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 16; Shadwell, I, 152.

  27 Shadwell, I, 154.

  28 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.47.

  29 Khilnani, 86.

  30 Burton, R.G., 45.

  31 Shadwell, I, 158.

  32 Arnold, E., I, 59–60.

  33 Allen, 339.

&nbs
p; 34 Shadwell, I, 159.

  35 Bell, E., 56.

  36 Khilnani, 128.

  37 Ahluwalia, ‘Some Facts’, 9; Maharani, 74.

  38 Shadwell, I, 161.

  39 Edwardes, H., A Year on the Punjab Frontier, II, 76–9.

  40 Shadwell, I, 161.

  41 Thornton, II, 60.

  42 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.171; Ryder, 62.

  43 Singh, G., Private Correspondence, 448.

  44 For details see: Shadwell, I, 162.

  45 Waterfield, R., 135.

  46 Fortescue, XII, 422.

  47 Shadwell, I, 164, 167.

  48 Hodson, 65.

  49 Shadwell, I, 166–7.

  50 Rait, II, 126.

  51 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 181.

  52 Dalhousie, 26.

  53 Diver, 341.

  54 Morison, 210.

  55 Edwardes, A Year on the Punjab Frontier, II, 75–87.

  56 Diver, 317.

  57 Khilnani, 77.

  58 Edwardes, H., A Year on the Punjab Frontier, II, 176.

  59 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.202.

  60 Ahluwalia and Singh, 33.

  61 Carlyle, 199.

  62 Edwardes, M., The Necessary Hell, xix.

  63 The Carlyle Letters Online, Jane Carlyle’s Journal, 28 June 1856 (carlyleletters.dukejournals.org).

  64 Allen, 107.

  65 Stokes, The English Utilitarians, 35.

  66 Postans, 17.

  67 Napier, C., Defects, 250.

  68 Pandey, 15.

  69 Stokes, The English Utilitarians, xiii.

  70 Edwardes, H., Political Diaries, 318.

  71 Diver, 333.

  72 Burton, R.G., 57.

  73 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.263.

  74 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 160.

  75 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.267.

  76 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 194.

  77 Shadwell, I, 147, 171–3.

  78 Waterfield, R., 51,

  79 Ryder, 49–55.

  80 Stubbs, III, 168.

  81 Sandford, 27.

  82 Ryder, 81.

  83 Shadwell, I, 176.

  84 Edwardes and Merivale, 435.

  85 Daly, 35.

  86 Durand, II, 66.

  87 Dalhousie, 34; Burton, R.G., 79.

  88 Gough, 186.

  89 Dalhousie, 35.

  90 Brodie, 55.

  91 Shadwell, I, 176–7.

  92 Shadwell, I, 183–5; Pearman, 71.

  93 Shadwell, I, 186–7.

  94 Pearman, 74, 76.

  95 Sandford, 61.

  96 Jervis, 273.

  97 Pearman, 76.

  98 Dalhousie, 60.

  99 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 193–5.

  100 Shadwell, I, 189.

  101 Rait, II, 193.

  102 Shadwell, I, 190.

  103 Thackwell, E., 76.

  104 Burton, R.G., 86.

  105 Shadwell, I, 190.

  106 Sandford, 76–8.

  107 Shadwell, I, 192.

  108 Pearman, 82.

  109 Shadwell, I, 194–5.

  110 Fortescue, XII, 440.

  111 Dalhousie, 37–8.

  112 Waterfield, R. 80–1.

  113 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.578.

  114 Durand, II, 77.

  115 Durand, I, 114.

  116 Stewart, 218.

  117 Anon., Record Book of the Scinde, I, 200.

  118 Macpherson, 30.

  119 Arnold, E., I, 169.

  120 Shadwell, I, 198.

  121 Anon., Record Book of the Scinde, I, 200.

  122 Dalhousie, 45.

  123 Thackwell, E., 128.

  124 Campbell, C., Memorandum, 5.

  125 Pearman, 89.

  126 Burton, R.G., 96.

  127 Stewart, L., 219.

  128 Thackwell, E., 156.

  129 Durand, II, 91.

  130 Rait, II, 224–5; Lawrence-Archer, 129; Macpherson, 22.

  131 Shadwell, I, 210.

  132 Burton, R.G., 96.

  133 Shadwell, I, 200.

  134 Sandford, 108.

  135 Stewart, 222.

  136 Campbell, C., Memorandum, 43.

  137 Dalhousie, 46.

  138 Stewart, 220.

  139 Campbell, C., Memorandum, 6.

  140 Shadwell, I, 201.

  141 Shadwell, I, 203.

  142 Anon, Record Book of the Scinde, I, 201.

  143 Campbell, C., Memorandum, 8.

  144 Everard, 466–7.

  145 Sandford, 106.

  146 Campbell, C., Memorandum, 15–16.

  147 Pearman, 93.

  148 Sandford, 113–15.

  149 Indian Annals of Medical Science, No. 8, 666.

  150 London Gazette, 3 March 1849, 3.

  151 Bombay Times, 31 January 1849.

  152 Pandey, 106.

  153 Yule, 37–8.

  154 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 211.

  155 Illustrated London News, 10 March 1849.

  156 Singh, G., Maharaja Duleep Singh Correspondence, 33.

  157 Anon., Record Book, I, 201.

  158 Dalhousie, 46–7.

  159 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 209.

  160 Dalhousie, 55.

  161 Greville, VI, 162.

  162 Shadwell, I, 221.

  163 Shadwell, I, 200.

  164 London Gazette, 3 March 1849, 2. Contradicted by Burton, R.G., 97. See also Anon., Record Book of the Scinde, I, 201.

  165 Fortescue, XII, 459, 455.

  166 Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 30.

  167 Mountain, 259–60.

  168 Yule, 36.

  169 Napier, W.F.P., IV, 350.

  170 Collins, 189–90.

  171 Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaklava, 27–8.

  172 Spilsbury, 52.

  173 Keegan, 115.

  174 Sampson, 81.

  175 Atkinson, C.T., 297.

  176 Shadwell, I, 77; Thackwell, J., 309–309.

  177 Shadwell, I, 209–10.

  178 Yule, 40.

  179 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 208.

  180 Knollys, I, 149.

  181 Shadwell, I, 246.

  182 Daly, 72.

  183 PP.H/C.General Report Punjab. Vol. LXIX.797.

  184 Arnold, E., I, 159.

  185 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 210.

  186 Stubbs, III, 183.

  187 Arnold, E., I, 170.

  188 Dalhousie, 50.

  189 Shadwell, I, 215–19.

  190 Mountain, 267.

  191 Shadwell, I, 217–19.

  192 Anon., Record Book, I, 234.

  193 Thackwell, E., 230.

  194 Shadwell, I, 219.

  195 PP.H/C.Papers Relating Punjab. Vol. XLI.638.

  196 Shadwell, I, 220–1.

  197 Sandford, 150.

  198 Anon., Record Book of the Scinde, I, 195.

  199 Edwardes and Merivale, II, 121.

  200 Sandford, 155.

  201 Sandford, 157–8; Thackwell, E., 225.

  202 Macpherson, 61.

  203 Shadwell, I, 222.

  204 Mountain, 271–2.

  205 Shadwell, I, 224.

  206 Khilnani, 157.

  207 Edwardes and Merivale, II, 121.

  208 Diver, 364.

  209 Macpherson, 79.

  210 The Times, 25 April 1849.

  211 The Mofussilite, 27 February 1849.

  212 Bombay Times, 10 March 1849.

  213 Edwardes, M., The Necessary Hell, 111.

  214 Lee-Warner, The Life of the Marquis, I, 230–1.

  215 Shadwell, I, 236.

  216 USM, January 1849, 141.

  217 Dalhousie, 33.

  218 Diver, 354.

  219 Dalhousie, 59.

  220 Lawrence, J., 173.

  221 Dalhousie, 62.

  222 Singh, G., Maharaja Duleep Singh Correspondence, 36.<
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  6

  Soldier Sahib

  * * *

  ‘After the fall of Mooltan and the total defeat of the Sikhs at Goojrat, the Sirkar took possession of all the land of the Punjab or Five Rivers. The mighty power of the Sikh nation became as dust, and the mantle of rule descended upon the Sirkar, the Great Company Bahadoor.’

  Sita Ram Pandey, From Sepoy to Subedar

  * * *

  ‘The Sikhs, as a nation, have been completely subdued,’ reported Campbell, ‘and, happily for the comfort of both parties, are perfectly sensible of their discomfiture and of the utter helplessness of their ever being able to contend with our power in this country.’1 It seemed the Punjab was finally conquered. For the defeated there was gaol, exile or death. Agnew’s murderer, Gudhar Sing Mazbi, was publicly executed. Chuttur Singh and his sons were incarcerated in Calcutta. Moolraj was condemned to death, but had his sentence commuted to imprisonment. He died in 1851, a broken man, his family reduced to penury, eleven of them living in one room. Letters from the Ranee of Lahore to Chuttur Singh and Moolraj, intercepted by the British, gave Dalhousie cause to imprison her in the fort at Chunar, but somehow she managed to get the better of her sixty guards and escape. She found asylum in Nepal from where she continued to foment rebellion, until finally she gave up and moved to England to be with her son, the deposed maharajah.

  Rule over the Punjab was handed to a new, three-man Board of Administration, composed of John Lawrence, Henry Lawrence and Charles Greville Mansel. Though inevitably dominated by the Lawrences, the board did not enjoy the brothers’ accustomed autonomy. Dalhousie was determined to put an end to Henry Lawrence’s loose-reined style of government and the independence of his Young Men:

  The sooner you set about disenchanting their minds, the better for your comfort and their own … I don’t doubt you will find a bit and martingale for them speedily. For my part, I will come down on every one of them who may try it on, from Major Edwardes, C.B.,* to the latest enlisted general-ensign-plenipotentiary on the Establishment.2

  Of greater moment for Campbell was the arrival of the new commander-in-chief in India, Sir Charles Napier. Wellington had offered Napier the position when Gough’s reputation collapsed after Chillianwala. Given his disdain for the board of the East India Company, Napier was at first reluctant,3 but the duke as good as ordered him. ‘Either you or I must go out’, the octogenarian declared, at which point Napier caved in. He arrived in Calcutta to find no war to fight, no more worlds to conquer and precious little else to do. Not that the absence of enemies had ever prevented Napier from finding new ogres to bawl at.