Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  ‘It may now indeed be said that the Indian mutiny is at an end’, declared The Times.165 ‘India is saved’, wrote one civil servant. ‘Mohammedan hopes expire with the fall of Delhi and all will now go well.’ Perhaps, but that still left tens of thousands of Hindu rebels with no allegiance to the ‘King of Delhi’. ‘It had been generally believed that the fall of Delhi would terminate the revolt’, explained Malleson. ‘It did nothing of the sort. The rebellious sepoys, cooped up till its fall in Delhi, spread in detachments over the country.’166 Lucknow was the most popular destination.

  Victory in Delhi also had the unfortunate side effect of releasing a new rebel force – the Gwalior Contingent. The loyal Maharajah of Gwalior maintained one of the most powerful private armies in India,* but since Meerut its allegiance had wavered. The maharajah’s obvious relief at the fall of Delhi was the final straw. The troops repudiated the rajah, pledging loyalty instead to Tantia Topee, friend of the Nana Sahib. Nearly 50 years old, a stout 5ft 6in tall with ‘piercing black eyes … surmounted by sharply-arched, grey eyebrows’,167 Tantia was the rebels’ best general. Now he commanded the ‘most highly organised and best-drilled native force in India’.168 At a stroke the Gwalior Contingent’s defection made relieving Lucknow much harder. Tantia’s army was just west of Cawnpore. From here he could threaten the supply lines of any British column marching north to relieve Lucknow. Given the growing complexity of the task, and the hash Outram and Havelock had made of it, Campbell decided that he should command the column himself. ‘The Commander-in-Chief is coming to relieve us’, wrote one Lucknow defender. ‘Let us see if this proves true, or if it is only to be added to the great mass of unredeemed expectancies.’169

  As usual, Campbell was not to be hurried. Troops were landing in quick succession, and he was determined to wait until enough had reached Oudh before advancing. A vital 1,500 infantry, 900 cavalry and eighteen guns170 arrived in Cawnpore from Delhi on 26 October, so the next day he set out. A few hours by train and he was in Raneegunge, a war profiteer’s paradise, full of ‘wooden huts, in which are exposed for sale, à la Kadikoi (of Crimea celebrity), the miscellaneous goods which merchants have been enterprising enough to bring up here’, recalled Majendie, ‘the prices of which may be briefly stated as à la Kadikoi also’.171 Dispensing with his dress uniform, Campbell changed into simple white trousers, a blue frock coat, pith helmet and puggaree, with his old Peninsular War cavalry sabre by his side. Accompanying him were a military staff of five* and the Deputy Superintendent of Telegraphs, Lieutenant Patrick Stewart of the Bengal Engineers, who would lay a flying line to Lucknow. Other than that, Campbell took no guard or escort. ‘We begged them all to take care of Sir Colin, who has the habit of exposing himself most rashly’, wrote Lady Canning.172

  At Raneegunge they transferred to six carriages and set off into rebel country. As they neared Mohuneea, an officer scanning the horizon with a pair of opera glasses noticed nine elephants bearing mutineers up ahead. The locals reported there were a further 350 to 400 rebel infantrymen nearby. The nearest British troops in strength were 10 miles away. ‘We immediately got our pistols and swords out’, wrote one of the staff, prompting most of the wagon drivers to flee. ‘Fortunately the mutineers had not the least idea who we were,’ the officer explained, ‘and kept on their own course without molesting us.’173 Campbell’s party, two of them riding ‘borrowed’ ponies bareback, made for the British garrison at Jahanabad, where they arranged an escort for the commander-in-chief. ‘What a prize he would have been!’ wrote Lady Canning.174

  Campbell reached Cawnpore on 4 November. To provide the maximum number of troops to assault Lucknow, he decreed that Major-General Charles Windham, veteran of the Great Redan, would remain at Cawnpore with just 500 British soldiers. A further 500 loyal sepoys were scheduled to arrive soon to reinforce him.** Windham’s only stronghold was Wheeler’s old entrenchment – a ‘very miserable and defective’ position, in Campbell’s opinion. Worried that if Campbell got bogged down in Lucknow the Gwalior Contingent would crush Windham, Outram sent word from Lucknow advising Campbell to settle Tantia first. However, he simultaneously reported that it was only a matter of days before the Residency would fall. ‘All accounts from Lucknow show that Sir James Outram is in great straits’, Campbell warned the Duke of Cambridge, four days after reaching Cawnpore. ‘Our friends in Lucknow have food only for five or six days’, he told his sister. ‘The effort must be made to save them at any cost.’175 And so, he decided to advance without securing his line of operations, gambling that he could rescue the garrison before Tantia cut off his escape route.

  Escorted by two horse guns and a couple of squadrons of cavalry this time, Campbell left Cawnpore at 3 a.m. on 9 November. His colleague from the Opium War, James Hope Grant (now Brigadier) had already led the rest of the troops north to Bunthera, 6 miles from the Alumbagh. Campbell arrived at Grant’s camp at 4 p.m. the same day, looking ‘worn and anxious’. ‘It was not to be wondered at,’ explained Major Ewart of the 93rd, ‘for the Nana was stated to be only waiting for an opportunity to attack us, with 10,000 men and sixteen guns, whilst the Gwalior mutineers and others were threatening Cawnpore.’176

  Albumen print of Lucknow by Felice Beato, c. 1858. (Courtesy of Bonhams. Part of Lot 89 from Sale 21102)

  A critical complication was the British lack of intelligence. Good maps were non-existent. ‘Strange to say that there is not a plan or Sketch of Lucknow in any of the offices of the Departments under Government, either civil or military’, complained Campbell.177 Ten days previously Outram had sent plans of the town, compound and recommended line of attack, but they were brief and sketchy. Messages had to be written on scraps of paper, rolled in quills and smuggled out by native couriers. Even using a miniature hand the amount conveyed was limited.*** A British messenger from the Residency able to act as Campbell’s guide would be a godsend, but any expedition to reach the commander-in-chief would be extremely perilous. As one of the garrison warned, should a white courier fall ‘into the enemy’s hands he would undoubtedly have suffered a death of the most refined cruelty’.178

  On 10 November, a man volunteered unprompted. A 36-year-old Irish clerk, Thomas Kavanagh offered to sneak out and make his way to Campbell’s camp. Having served throughout the siege and led a raid against the Red Gate during Havelock’s ‘relief’, his courage was beyond question, but visually a less likely candidate was hard to imagine. ‘A square-shouldered, large-limbed, muscular man, a good deal over middle height, with decided European features, a large head, covered with hair of – a reddish auburn, shall I say?’ reported Russell. ‘Moustaches and beard still lighter, and features and eyes such as no native that ever I saw possessed’. ‘It is a fearful risk, for the poor man is almost sure to be taken,’ wrote Mrs Harris, ‘but he volunteered and would not be dissuaded.’179

  James Hope Grant, from George Allgood’s China War 1860.

  Kavanagh opted to disguise himself as a native badmash, in cream turban, yellow jacket, Indian slippers, silk trousers and a white waistband. To darken his skin he had only lamp black and oil.180 ‘I did not think the shade of black was quite natural’, he admitted, but ‘came to the conclusion that the darkness of the night was favourable’. To test his disguise he walked into Outram’s headquarters and sat down, uninvited, with his shoes on; both taboos for a native in British quarters. ‘The eyes of the officers, who sat at the General’s table, were at once turned angrily and inquiringly upon the queer man who did such impudent things’, recalled Kavanagh. ‘Questions and answers were exchanged without detecting the disguise.’ After the Irishman revealed his true identity, Outram could hardly refuse to let him try. Native courier Kunoujee Lal would accompany him as a guide, since Kavanagh’s Hindu ‘though good, might not have stood the test of a too long examination under the crushing sensations of death’, as he himself put it. Outram then dabbed some more lamp black onto the Irishman’s face and handed him a double-barrelled pocket pistol to use on himself in cas
e of capture.

  Kavanagh and Lal set out at 8.30 p.m., waded across the Goomtee, and then crossed back over the stone bridge into Lucknow. Believing brazenness to be the best camouflage, Kavanagh decided to take the Chouk, the main road through the busiest part of town. Lal urged him to use the backstreets but the Irishman ‘resisted his wish to avoid the crowd, feeling sure that our safety lay in courting enquiry’. Astonishingly, it worked. He and Lal made it out of Lucknow undetected, but after a few miles found they had taken a wrong turn and were now in the rebel-held Dil Khooshah (Heart’s Delight) park. Kavanagh’s solution was to persuade one of the locals to show him the way. The first pleaded ‘old age and lameness’. The second ‘ran off screaming, and alarmed the dogs of the village, which made us run quickly into the canal’. Undismayed, Kavanagh continued his search for a co-operative Indian. ‘I entered a wretched hut and groping in the dark for an occupant, pressed the soft thigh of woman, who started, but heeded my earnest whisper to be quiet. The good-natured creature woke her mother; and both put us on the right road.’

  The pair did not get far before, once again, they lost their way. At about 1 a.m. they came across a rebel picket. ‘I thought it safer to go to the picket than to try to pass unobserved’, explained Kavanagh, who approached the sepoys and asked them to point him in the direction of the Alumbagh. They did.

  Kavanagh managed to go for a full two hours before losing his bearings, and running into a second picket in a grove of mangos. The strain proved too much for Lal, who, terrified of capture, threw away his copy of the despatch, but Kavanagh again convinced the rebels to tell him the way. This time they ended up in a swamp, which took the pair two hours to cross. As he emerged on the far side, Kavanagh noticed that ‘the colour was gone from my hands and I feared there would be little left upon my countenance, which would then have been the death of me.’ Dawn was fast approaching. Still unabashed, the Irishman collared any locals he could find to get directions, but after more muddle and misdirection, and exhausted after a night’s adventures, he decided to settle down for a nap, despite Lal’s protests. Just before he dozed off the sound of a ‘challenge in a native accent “Who comes there?”’ reached his ears. More by luck than good judgement, they had made it to the British lines.*

  Kavanagh was taken immediately to see the commander-in-chief. ‘The most delicious visions of the future lingered in my mind as I thought of the success of the enterprise’, he recalled. ‘For less than this, names have descended from age to age as if never to be obliterated from the heroic pages of history.’ But the man who had just pulled off one of the most daring escapades of the war was making a mistake if he expected fawning adoration for it. Campbell hated VC hunters, and Kavanagh had all the markings of one. It would be hard to find any man in the British army less likely to fall to his knees and hail Kavanagh as the heir of Achilles than Sir Colin Campbell.

  On approaching the commander-in-chief’s tent, Kavanagh noticed ‘an elderly gentleman with a stern face … Going up to him, I asked for Sir Colin Campbell.’

  ‘I am Sir Colin Campbell!’ came the curt reply. ‘And who are you?’

  With supreme theatricality, Kavanagh pulled off his turban and extracted Outram’s vital despatch from its folds. ‘This, sir, will explain who I am, and from whence I came.’

  Campbell silently read it through, ‘his piercing eyes being raised to my face almost at every line’, as Kavanagh put it.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I hope, sir, you do not doubt the authenticity of the note?’

  ‘No, I do not’, replied Campbell, looking up and down at what appeared to be a reject from an amateur production of Aladdin, ‘But it is surprising. How did you do it?’

  But rather than explain, Kavanagh begged to be allowed to rest. While he slept, the flag at the Alumbagh was hoisted to show he had arrived safely. Spotting the signal, members of the garrison rushed to the Post Office, where Kavanagh’s wife was quartered, to tell her the good news. Only then did they discover her husband had told her nothing of his escapade.

  A few hours later, Kavanagh emerged refreshed to discuss tactics. In Calcutta, Campbell had roughed out a plan of attack, using the route to the Residency taken in September. ‘I see no way of liberating the garrison except by taking the different palaces in succession on the right of the road followed by Outram’, Campbell had informed Cambridge in late October. ‘A road must be opened by heavy guns and the desperate street fighting so gallantly conducted by Sir James Outram and General Havelock … must if possible be avoided.’181 However, as he neared Lucknow, he was minded to approach from the north, shell the rebel strongholds and throw a pontoon bridge across the river to rescue the garrison. This would allow Campbell to stick to open country, where he could use his cavalry and artillery to best advantage, and would avoid an advance through Lucknow, that ‘strange compound of the meanly filthy and the gorgeously magnificent’,182 with its maze of narrow alleys to the west* and sumptuous palaces and pleasure gardens to the east.

  Outram instead advised occupying the Dil Khooshah park east of Lucknow, and then La Martinière School, in preparation for an assault from the east, across the canal and through the suburbs.183 After weighing his options, Campbell decided to follow this plan to start with, but from La Martinière turn north to take the palaces along the southern bank of the Goomtee.** These residences could then act as staging posts for the retreating garrison. The downside was that it would leave Campbell with a flank several miles long, and as he left men to secure each palace, the closer he got to the Residency, the more his force would shrink.

  The following afternoon the men assembled. ‘A mere handful it seemed’, admitted Campbell’s military secretary.184 After his failed relief, Havelock had advised that Lucknow ‘demanded the efforts of 10,000 good troops’.185 Campbell had about half that. Furthermore, his was an unusually diverse force of soldiers and sailors, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Highlanders, Irishmen and English, mostly in small detachments, including British troops who thought they were clearing up the Company’s mess, and Company troops from Delhi who looked down on the new arrivals. Meanwhile, as Kavanagh pointed out, ‘the enemy were stronger in November, and it was to be expected that the obstacles along the route to be forced by Sir Colin Campbell would be greater now than when General Havelock passed’.186

  Campbell had only three infantry brigades to take Lucknow. The strongest, under Brigadier the Hon. Adrian Hope,*** included the 93rd (the only battalion at full strength), a wing of the 53rd Foot, the 4th Punjab Infantry and a battalion of sundry detachments. Brigadier Greathed had the 2nd Punjab Infantry, the 8th Foot (both depleted by fighting in Delhi) and another mixed battalion. Brigadier Russell led two companies of the 82nd and a wing of the 23rd Foot, which, after the regiment’s mauling in the Crimea, comprised mainly green recruits. Campbell’s most serious shortage was cavalry. All he could field was two squadrons of the 9th Lancers, one squadron each from the 1st, 2nd and 5th Punjab Cavalry, plus Hodson’s Horse.**** He did at least boast a thunderous arsenal under Brigadier Crawford: thirty-nine guns, six mortars and two rocket tubes, including twelve 6-pounders from the Bengal and Madras Horse Artillery and six big 24-pounders***** (commanded by Captain Peel and escorted by 250 sailors and Marines), as well as four companies of sappers. It was they who would blast a path through to the Residency.

  Campbell received a polite but restrained welcome as he rode down the ranks, until, that is, he reached the 93rd, who broke into a rapturous cheer. ‘Ninety-third! When I took leave of you in Portsmouth, I never thought I should see you again’, he declared:

  I expected the bugle, or maybe the bagpipes, to sound a call for me to go somewhere else long before you would be likely to return to our dearly-loved home. But another commander has decreed it otherwise … I must tell you, my lads, there is a work of difficulty and danger before us – harder work and greater dangers than any we encountered in the Crimea. But I trust you to overcome the difficulties … The eyes of the people at
home, I may say the eyes of Europe and of the whole of Christendom are upon us, and we must relieve our countrymen, women and children, now shut up in the Residency of Lucknow … When you meet the enemy you must remember that he is well armed and well provided with ammunition and that he can play at long bowls as well as you can, especially from behind loop-holed walls. So when we make an attack you must come to close quarters as quickly as possible; keep well together and use the bayonet … Ninety-third! You are my own lads and I rely on you to do the work.187

  Ahead lay a heavily fortified city defended by 60,000 rebels. ‘I do not know of any instance in military history where a general was called upon to face a more difficult, a more dangerous problem than that which Sir Colin Campbell had before him in the relief of Lucknow’s beleaguered garrison’, wrote Wolseley.188 ‘I am here with a very weak force, deficient in all essentials’, Campbell warned Outram. ‘I have not ammunition for more than three days’ firing … My communications are threatened from Calpee, where the Gwalior Contingent, with forty guns, sixteen of which are heavy, are swelled by remnants of many regiments … to about ten thousand men.’ For those reasons, it was to be a rescue, not a reinforcement. ‘You must make your arrangements for getting everyone clear of the Residency when I am able to give the order, abandoning baggage, destroying guns, but saving the treasure’, Campbell explained. Once everyone was out, he would blow up the compound.189