Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  For Lawrence this affront deserved a pitiless reprimand and he was all for levelling every building in the pass between Akhor and Kohat and destroying the Afridis’ crops, waiting until harvest for maximum effect. Napier, who had left Peshawur after his return from Kohat, was reluctant. He ordered Campbell not to retaliate unless the troops at Kohat were threatened. Meanwhile, he referred the matter to the governor-general. ‘I will not consent to sacrifice soldiers in such work,’ Napier informed Dalhousie on 11 March, ‘unless I have positive orders from the Supreme Government’, adding, ‘As to my opinion, it is that it will be much better to secure the free passage of the defile between Peshawar and Kohat by paying the tribes than force of arms.’35 ‘Pay them an annual subsidy to keep the peace!’ thundered the governor-general. ‘All very well, but we must show them we are masters first.’36 As Napier later put it, ‘Dalhousie preferred the opinions of young men of slight ability and little or no experience, to mine, and that of the war-bred Sir Colin.’*37

  By April it seemed the Afridis were tiring of the struggle. Their chiefs sued for peace. It was agreed that, in exchange for an ‘allowance’, they would keep the pass open. At last it seemed there might be a return to the status quo ante, but as petty acts of violence and thuggery multiplied it became clear that not all the Afridi chiefs were party to the agreement.

  While the Afridi question remained unresolved, the sepoys were restless. The 32nd Bengal Native Infantry at Wuzeerabad had refused their pay in January 1850** and a further reduction in allowances was imminent. Concerned that these cuts might incite mutiny, Napier suspended the reduction until it had been reviewed by Dalhousie, who happened to be away on a cruise. The total cost of sticking to the old pay level was around £40.

  The sepoys still felt that they were being taken for granted and on 25 February the 66th Bengal Native Infantry at Govindghur refused their pay as well. Unlike at Rawal Pindi and Wuzeerabad, this was no mere strike; this was armed revolt. The only European soldiers in the fort were a handful of officers. Fortunately, the 1st Bengal Light Cavalry were camped outside. Their colonel, sure of his men, led his troopers on foot towards the gate. A bureaucratic British lieutenant insisted they remain outside until he obtained permission from his commanding officer, and as the subaltern went to confer, the mutineers pressed forward to shut the gates. Captain McDonald, a British officer from the garrison, leapt forward brandishing his sword, and kept the gate open just long enough for the cavalry to get inside and reassert control. Napier disbanded the 66th immediately, replacing it with a Gurkha regiment.

  Due to Dalhousie’s holiday, Napier did not get an official response to his tactics at Wuzeerabad and Govindghur until 25 April 1850. It made no concession to Napier’s pride: ‘The Governor-General in Council will not again permit the commander-in-chief, under any circumstances, to issue orders which shall change the pay and allowances of troops’, it declared, before accusing Napier of exceeding his authority, overreacting in disbanding the 66th and exaggerating the risk of mutiny. The final insult was that the letter had been written by a mere brevet-major. As one Punjab historian put it, ‘there was no room in India, much less at the same council table, for two infallibles’.38 Napier was far too peppery to submit to Dalhousie and on 25 May he sent in his resignation. In the envelope was a critique so vicious the governor-general labelled it ‘the most discreditable paper that ever was traced by the pen of a public man’.39 He spat out an eighteen-page memo in response. There followed an escalating exchange of acrimonious charges and countercharges, each more splenetic than the last, all to the great amusement of the Indian press. Napier’s tone sank to outright contempt. He dismissed one of Dalhousie’s paragraphs with the remark ‘Contains nothing more than an offensive sneer’.40

  While this cockfight raged, Campbell was plagued by the incessant predations of one tribe or another. He was at least rid of George Lawrence, who was recuperating from fever in Simla, leaving Lieutenant Harry Lumsden of the Guides as commissioner in his place. In contrast to his predecessor, Lumsden favoured building friendly relations with the hill tribes, especially the Afridis, because the alternative – military occupation – in such rugged country would be prohibitively costly in lives and treasure. Campbell agreed. He knew that the Afridis’ well-rehearsed tactic of abandoning their homes and escaping to caves in the mountains made them a hard enemy to pin down. ‘They fly before you faster than you can follow’, he told Henry Lawrence, ‘and a retreat is open to them even into Afghanistan … I scarcely think one could manage in such a country to drive them into a corner.’41 Regardless of Campbell’s reservations, Dalhousie demanded an iron hand. ‘I have ordered that they [the Afridis] shall be rigidly excluded from the two valleys of Kohat and Peshawur, whereby I expect to starve them into humility’, he declared that June. ‘If not, they must be proceeded against next autumn, I hope with better management than the last time.’42 Campbell managed to mitigate Dalhousie’s plans and pursue negotiation instead, and by November 1850 an uneasy peace had been agreed which kept the pass open through liberal bribes.

  Meanwhile, Napier’s dispute with the governor-general had been referred back to Wellington in London. The duke, ever the stickler for authority, sided unequivocally with Dalhousie. For the governor-general this was much more than the besting of a vexatious opponent. His authority over the commander-in-chief had been confirmed publicly by Wellington himself. Nevertheless, Napier left India unrepentant. ‘We shall be well rid of him’, wrote Henry Lawrence. ‘His natural arrogance has been so increased by the circumstances of his return to India that there is no holding him … To us, in the Punjab, he has become a greater hindrance than all the ex-chiefs and rebels.’43

  Napier’s replacement was Sir William Gomm, late of the 9th Foot. Sir James Hogg, Chairman of the East India Company, questioned the wisdom of appointing a man of 70, but Gomm was respected as an all-round good egg. Dalhousie soon warmed to his new commander-in-chief, recognising in him a man, in the words of his own quartermaster-general, ‘quite content to sit inside the coach, and let another drive it’.

  In March 1851 Dalhousie stopped off in Peshawur for a brief tour of this most volatile of his estates. Despite Campbell’s association with Napier, the governor-general was polite, even effusive. ‘He told me he could not spare me from this frontier’, reported Campbell; a sentiment repeated by Dalhousie in private.44 Campbell put on a brave face for the governor-general but he had stayed in the Punjab two years longer than he had planned. He was sick of India. ‘Stern duty and obligations to fulfil towards others have kept me here, and not any liking or inclination of my own’, he wrote.45

  Campbell’s latest source of irritation was the Momunds, whose territory stretched from the Swat border to just beyond the Caubul River. They had a proven commander in Sadut Khan, who had resisted the British during their disastrous foray into Afghanistan. He kept a stronghold at Lalpura, a useful retreat conveniently outside British territory. Through March and April, Momund banditry in the Doab (the delta between the Swat and Caubul rivers) increased, culminating in a raid on the village of Muttah by Nawab Khan, chief of the Pundiali Momunds and Sadut Khan’s ally. Bypassing Gomm completely, Dalhousie ordered Campbell to mount an immediate surprise attack, advising him that the Momunds’ punishment should be ‘as severe as was consistent with humanity’.46 To judge the need for reprisals for himself, Campbell set out with Lumsden for Muttah on 24 April 1851.

  Campbell reported back that taking the fight to the Pundiali Momunds was unworkable. The only two roads to their lair were ‘mere footpaths through the hills, quite impracticable for guns, and barely wide enough to admit of the passage of a laden mule’. ‘The country … is exactly adapted to the independent kind of fighting to which these hillmen have been practised from their youth’, warned Campbell. ‘Your lordship will see that a certain, though not a great, loss must be incurred by troops forcing their way through such country.’47 He suggested instead throwing a pontoon bridge over the Caubul River 7 miles
from Peshawur, to allow roving cavalry patrols to impose the British will. Dalhousie agreed to give it a try. Campbell and Lumsden also recommended the construction of a chain of fortified posts, connecting roads and bridges, manned by detachments from Peshawur. Again the governor-general approved.

  Following a bloody summer of skirmishes between Lumsden’s Guides and the Momunds, in September 1851 rumours spread that the hill tribes were about to close the Kohat and Juwaki passes to extract a ransom from the British. In response, Campbell planned to stop caravans from using those routes, and so halt their lucrative salt trade. ‘This system of retaliation will tend more effectually to annoy them and bring them to reason than the overthrow of their mud dwellings, which cannot be effected without much loss of life and expenditure of money’, Campbell explained. Fortunately, the rumours came to nothing. Then, on 15 October, exasperated at the never-ending raids, a furious Dalhousie announced the confiscation of Momund fiefs in the Doab in retaliation. Campbell was ordered to march deep into Momund territory, leaving the approved trail of devastation in his wake, build a new fort at Michni as a tangible sign of British domination and destroy the small entrenchments and defensive walls erected by the Momunds nearby. On 25 October, Campbell left Peshawur with 1,593 crown and company troops, meeting up with four companies of Lumsden’s Guides at the bridge of boats over the Caubul. Campbell proceeded at a leisurely pace to give Lumsden, who had gone on ahead, enough time to negotiate with the Momunds. ‘Lumsden’s views, those of common sense, are the most prudent and best’, wrote Campbell. ‘Punish those of the leading men who have shown enmity or have done injury to those we are bound to protect, but leave the cultivators of the soil upon the land unmolested.’48

  Upon reaching the first villages, Campbell was relieved to find them deserted and on 28–29 October a party of Guides burnt them. ‘No lives were lost on either side’, he wrote. ‘God knows, the rendering of two or three hundred families homeless is a disagreeable task enough to be executed, without adding loss of life to this severe punishment.’49 He then advanced to Michni and began to dig in.

  As so often in the past, these punitive missions only hardened the tribesmen’s resolve. On 22 November Sadut Khan stole into the Peshawur cantonment and murdered four butchers. It was a small but brazen raid, right at the heart of the British garrison. The Momunds kept up the pressure through November, killing two men at Uchwala and burning a village in Khalil. Then finally, on 7 December 1851, Khan showed his full strength. An army of 4,000–5,000 tribesmen emerged from the gorge in front of Campbell’s camp near Michni, screaming and brandishing their jezails. Campbell was unruffled. His chief concern was Major Fisher, whose cavalry detachment was guarding some camels grazing out beyond the walls. Campbell fired a few shells to keep the Momunds at arm’s length and, when Fisher eventually showed himself, led out a small detachment to escort him back to the entrenchments. That night the Momunds gained the hills to the west and occupied the left bank of the Caubul River behind the camp, poised, it seemed, to obliterate Campbell. But then suddenly, unexpectedly, inexplicably and despite their improved position, they vanished. Having gathered as an army, Campbell doubted the Momunds would disperse before they had been rewarded for their trouble. ‘We have upset a hive, and the hornets it contained will not settle in a hurry’, he warned. Sure enough, Sadut Khan’s Momunds moved on to Muttah, but here Khan found the combined force of Guides, Gurkhas, irregular cavalry and British artillery too daunting for him, and fell back, with no casualties on either side. The constant minor scuffles continued but the bulk of the Momund army melted into the hills, leaving Campbell free to finish his defences at Michni. By 15 February 1852 Campbell’s troops had returned to Peshawur, minus a garrison to guard the new fort.

  The clash with the Momunds had crystallised Campbell’s reservations. ‘I would respectfully submit that there is no force here sufficient to furnish detached columns in the hills, strong enough to maintain communications and carry on a mountain war, whether it be one of posts or of expeditionary nature’, he informed Gomm on 4 February 1852. Ducking any discussion of the morality of these punitive expeditions, Campbell instead questioned their practical effect: ‘In three days the burnt village is again occupied, the inhabitants having lost nothing but the roofs of their huts, all their property having been conveyed carefully away, to the last seed of grain, before the appearance of the invaders.’50

  The press was appalled. ‘Twelve months ago we were squabbling over salt dues at Kohat and wrestling with Afredees for the use of a road,’ thundered one Times editorial, ‘but the Afredees are now far behind, and we are fighting, by the last intelligence, with “Momunds” … for no known object at all.’51 The governor-general felt a more granite-hearted agent was required, and so, having praised the conciliatory Lumsden for his work as commissioner, on 5 January he sacked him. Dalhousie’s votary, Colonel Mackeson, took his place.

  On 6 March a party from the Great Trigonometrical Survey at Gujar Garhi, escorted by thirty Guides, was savaged by 180 horsemen under Mokurrum Khan, a chieftain with lands in Swat, safely outside British jurisdiction. Outnumbered and surprised, the Guides were lucky to come away with only one dead sowar and two wounded. The Ranizai tribe were held to blame for giving Mokurrum Khan free passage through their lands to launch the raid. The new commissioner, Mackeson, charged Campbell with leading a column to teach them a lesson. Campbell and Mackeson set off from Peshawur for Tangi on 11 March 1852 with a troop of Bengal Horse Artillery and 600 men from the 32nd Foot, plus the 15th Bengal Irregular Cavalry, the 66th Gurkha Regiment and a detachment of the 29th Bengal Native Infantry. After halting at Turangzai to give the elephants pulling the howitzers time to catch up, on the 19th the force set off again, soon reinforced by the corps of Guides and the 3rd Punjab Infantry. By 22 March they had reached the Ranizai village of Iskakote, where Campbell drew up his men ready for battle while Mackeson exchanged pleasantries with the tribesmen. After some haggling, they agreed to a fine of 5,000 rupees. Campbell would keep ten chiefs hostage until the money was paid. No villages were burned.

  Scarcely had the Ranizai threat been neutralised than the Momunds regained their old bluster. On 30 March Campbell heard from Captain James at Shubkudur that tribesmen were congregating at Rugmaniah, on the road to Michni, ready to burn Muttah. Colonel Mackeson dismissed the report as hearsay, and in any case the fort at Shubkudur was already garrisoned by four companies of the 71st Bengal Native Infantry and 190 sowars from the 15th Irregular Cavalry. Nevertheless, Campbell set out for Shubkudur with 150 more sowars and two guns just to be on the safe side. He reached the gates on 14 April. By 3 p.m. the next day the foothills were swarming with tribesmen. ‘The whole of the high ground between the Punjpao villages and the hills, for a distance in length of from two and a half to three miles, was covered with men assembled in groups and clusters,’ reported Lieutenant Peter Lumsden, Harry’s younger brother, ‘and from rough computations formed on the spot and from information obtained, not less than 7 to 8,000 Infantry were present on the ground.’ Campbell had around 700 men to oppose them. Unusually for him, Campbell decided to use his cavalry as his principal weapon. Out of the fort he burst, at the head of 266 horsemen, charging towards the Momund horde on the heights to the north. Around 500 yards from the enemy, his cavalry wheeled left and right to reveal two horse artillery cannon. ‘The practice of the guns was very good,’ he recorded, ‘and the enemy soon began to shake in their purpose.’ ‘As soon as they had been cleared’, explained Lumsden, ‘the guns limbered up, and with a cheer the Cavalry and Artillery men, at a gallop, rushed up the heights above Punjpao, driving everything before them.’ Then:

  as the shades of evening began to approach … the force, having accomplished the object for which it came out, viz. driven the Enemy back to their own hills and shown them that British soil was not to be encroached upon with impunity … commenced, now that the sun had set, to retire towards the fort, distant about two and a half miles; the guns in the rear, follo
wed by the cavalry in line.

  However, ‘The guns were hardly limbered up, the gunners had actually not mounted, when a shout ran down the whole line, and swarms rushed forward’, recalled Campbell. ‘As if the very fiends of hell had been let loose, a shout rent the air and from all directions the Momunds commenced to pour out of all the crevices in the hills, where but a few minutes before not a living thing was to be seen’, wrote Lumsden. ‘They evidently thought their own time was now come; but the guns were instantly unlimbered and double charges of grape checked their wild but really gallant attack’, remembered Campbell. ‘No hurry, no disorder attended this demonstration’, explained Lumsden. ‘A heavy fire was immediately opened on the enemy, who, screaming like jackals, again took to their scrapers, but as we again retired, began to recover their courage, and to approach to close quarters.’

  There followed a painfully stilted retreat back to the fort. Campbell’s two guns would see off the tribesmen and buy the column enough time to march a few hundred yards, before the crackle of the enemy’s jezails would start once more, and Campbell had to halt again. ‘Three times were the guns unlimbered and the enemy driven back’, recalled Lumsden. Fortunately, three companies of the 71st Native Infantry emerged from the fort to provide covering fire as Campbell drew near. The Momunds’ final act was to try to set light to Shubkudur village, but a few rounds from a 24-pounder dispersed them. The only damage done was to the brushwood stockade.