Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  Then again, if Campbell had followed Outram’s original advice, and defeated Tantia before relieving Lucknow, the crisis at Cawnpore would never have arisen. So runs the traditional critique, but hitting the Gwalior troops first would have brought its own risks. Tantia could have led Campbell a merry dance across India, leaving the Lucknow garrison to perish: although Outram had certain foods, like wheat, in abundance, the beef ran out on the last day of the defence. The British might have staved off starvation, but not malnutrition. Then there was the question of whether striking at the Gwalior Contingent would have removed that army as a threat. Even if Tantia had been accommodating enough to participate in a pitched battle, the lesson of the mutiny was that rebel armies, once engaged, tended to scatter and head for the hills. Would defeating Tantia’s troops first have prevented them from re-forming and threatening Cawnpore while Campbell marched on Lucknow?

  For Fortescue, the rush to Lucknow ‘suggests a preference for spectacular over sound operations’. But Campbell was under pressure to do the spectacular. Rescuing Lucknow’s civilians was the prime concern. In August, Canning had told Outram that if relieving Lucknow required relinquishing Cawnpore, ‘do not hesitate to abandon it. The political importance of it, and the cost of recovering it are not to be weighed against the relief of Lucknow.’60 Moreover, leaving Windham for a fortnight with 1,000 troops in an entrenched position,*** with permission to hold back further reinforcements if necessary, scarcely seemed rash. If things became desperate, Windham had permission to call on the garrison at Futtehpore and, in any case, Campbell’s intelligence suggested that the Gwalior rebels would ally with their colleagues at Lucknow rather than fall on Cawnpore.61

  The press blamed Windham. It was he who had picked the fight. The Bombay Times bemoaned his ‘singular want of prudence and generalship’, characterised by ‘a degree of criminality which calls for the severest censure’.62 But was he just unlucky? ‘It was very hard for him to know how to act,’ argued Lady Inglis, ‘and perhaps, had he allowed the Gwalior Force to advance without opposition, he would have been accused of supineness and want of energy.’63 As Russell pointed out:

  Had he beaten the Gwalior people on the second day as he had done on the first, he would have been cried up as the greatest of generals and of soldiers and of fighters. We should not have heard one word of disobedience of orders, or rashness, ignorance, imprudence, etc.64

  Campbell was equally forbearing. The ‘troops at Cawnpore consisted, for the most part, of detachments en route to join their regiments’, he explained, and therefore lacked cohesion and esprit de corps. In three weeks at Cawnpore, Windham had had ‘no sufficient opportunity of organising the detachments in battalions’, although Campbell himself had managed such reorganisations in a matter of hours when required.65 Instead the commander-in-chief blamed Lieutenant-Colonel Robertson, who had abandoned the village of Sesamhow, near Cawnpore, ‘without orders and without resistance’.66 Due to Robertson’s retreat, ‘the men became excited and a state of things arose which Major-General Windham could not control’.* The colonel had ‘misconducted himself on the 26th and 27th November in a manner which has rarely been seen amongst the officers of Her Majesty’s service’, reported Campbell. ‘His conduct was pusillanimous and imbecile to the last degree.’67

  The Hero of the Redan had been spared disgrace, the civilians were safe and British India’s favourite villains had fled the scene. Surely, declared the press, the mutiny was at last at an end? But as one Calcutta vicar wrote, ‘the very fact of such a vast armed force being able to assemble so many months afterwards on the very scene of Havelock’s triumphs … ought to satisfy the British people that the task of “stamping out” the rebellion is a more formidable one than many were willing to imagine or believe’.68 There was still an area the size of Britain to pacify, and Campbell had only a couple of infantry divisions available for the task.

  He wanted first to reconquer the Doab, the long tract of land between the Jumna and the Ganges, running from Delhi to Allahabad. This would secure the Grand Trunk Road and, critically, its telegraph, which for Campbell was a tactical priority.** ‘One of the features peculiar to the advance of the army is the erection of electric telegraph posts, and the stretching along of the speaking wire’, explained one officer. ‘The command which the telegraph gives to Sir Colin over his widely-dispersed forces, and the power of combination which it affords, are incalculable advantages.’69 But, unless the area through which it was laid had been subdued, the line would soon be vandalised. The ‘wooden telegraph posts were fixed in iron sockets about three feet long, to protect the wood from the ravages of white ants’, reported one officer. ‘The ingenuity of the rebels had converted these iron sockets into miniature cannon, cutting up telegraph wire as ammunition.’70

  To secure the Doab, and with it his communications, Campbell had detailed three columns: his own, which would march from Cawnpore, north-eastwards; Walpole’s, which would head south from Cawnpore and then sweep north-eastwards; and Colonel Seaton’s, which had already left Delhi and was proceeding south-east. All three would rendezvous at Futtehghur. With the furthest to go, Seaton had set out three days after Campbell had arrived in Cawnpore. Walpole began his march on 18 December, but Campbell was still waiting for the wagons which had carried the wounded to Allahabad. ‘Want of transport made it impossible for us to move until the carts returned’, explained Roberts.71 The carriage reappeared on 23 December and, although his old fever had flared up again, Campbell led his column out of Cawnpore the next morning.

  His first goal was the suspension bridge at Kalee Nuddee, which the rebels had done their best to destroy. By the time Grant reached it on New Year’s Day, 1858, the enemy had burnt a 30ft section before retreating to the village of Khudaganj on the opposite side. The next day the commander-in-chief went to investigate. Campbell ‘saw some Natives on the rising ground, and told an officer to assure them of being kindly treated’, reported Lieutenant Evelyn Wood, ‘but before he reached the village, the rebels opened fire’.72 The 53rd were despatched to hold the far bank. ‘A fine-looking set of fellows and equally good hands at fighting’, recalled Grant. ‘Their discipline however, was not by any means perfect, and it was difficult to keep them well in hand.’73

  At 11 a.m. the rest of the column arrived. Each side now brought up its artillery. The rebel musket fire intensified, and both Campbell and Grant were hit by spent rounds. Convinced Campbell was delaying the assault to allow the 93rd the honour of storming the rebel position, the 53rd were impatient to be at the enemy. The approach of the Highlanders confirmed their fears, and ‘suddenly the “advance” was sounded, then the “double”,*** followed by a tremendous cheer, and we saw the 53rd charge the enemy’, recalled Roberts. ‘Sir Colin was very angry, but the 53rd could not be brought back, and there was nothing for it but to support them.’74 When Campbell caught up with them he ‘began pitching into them for daring to advance without orders’, but ‘all the reply he got was “Three cheers for Sir Colin!”, and on his turning to Mansfield and saying “Speak to them, they are your old regiment” there was immediately “Three cheers for General Mansfield!”’75

  With the bridge safe, the next day Campbell took the nearby towns of Futtehghur and Furruckabad without a fight, gaining a valuable gun carriage factory in the process. ‘There were immense quantities of seasoned wood, mostly shaped out in the rough,’ explained one officer, ‘which could not have been replaced for years.’76 Three days later Campbell was joined by the troops under Seaton and Walpole. Seaton, in particular, had had a trying time of it. As the Rev. Alexander Duff observed:

  The fact that, two or three months ago, Greathed’s column opened the way from Delhi to Cawnpore, and that two months afterwards, Seaton’s column had to open the way anew by fighting two or three battles, might help to open the eyes of people at home to the real state of things in Northern India.77

  As well as securing the road to Delhi, Seaton brought with him vital supplies; 4,000 c
amels and ‘a vast quantity of servants, a class of people till then very scarce and difficult to get, for the immense number of new arrivals in India had absorbed all the spare ones down country, and the demand far exceeded the supply’.

  Reinforced, resupplied, rid of civilians and with his communications restored, Campbell was ready to go on the offensive. At most, three months of campaigning remained before the weather became unbearably hot, but, to the troops’ surprise, Campbell stayed put. ‘We remained a whole month in Futtehghur,’ recalled Roberts, ‘and loud were the complaints in camp at the unaccountable delay.’78 It came down to politics. Canning’s priority was Lucknow, while his commander-in-chief was for reconquering Rohilcund, to the north-west. A pacified Rohilcund, Campbell reasoned, would leave Oudh hemmed in, and so its subjugation could be left until the autumn. Moreover, if the territories around Oudh ‘were not sufficiently dealt with and held, we should be troubled with very extended and annoying Campaigns throughout the hot weather’, advised Campbell.79 In his mind, reducing Oudh was the tougher task, one which might drag on well into summer and cost a third of the British forces in India.* Encouraged by Colonel Robert Napier’s** assessment that it would take 20,000 men to retake Lucknow, Campbell insisted he would need 30,000 to pacify Oudh. There was something to be said for a big army to get the job done quickly, but this sounds like he was pitching his requirements deliberately high in order to dissuade Canning. Or perhaps he was employing the well-worn tactic of asking the government for twice what he needed, on the basis that he would be granted half what he requested.

  Once again, the action-promptitude school won the argument. Leaving Oudh until the autumn would be too shameful. There were powerful voices backing Canning’s plan to invade Oudh instanter. Outram was especially vocal. Sceptical of his position at the Alumbagh from the start, he had been sending messages detailing the precariousness of his garrison almost as soon as Campbell was over the horizon. The rebels had indeed mounted several concerted offensives at Outram in December and January, but the fact that during the same period his men had organised a steeplechase in the garden does not suggest a garrison in extremis.80 ‘Our camp is exceedingly strong and secure,’ insisted Outram’s chief of staff, ‘and the enemy dare not come near it’.81 Campbell was sure Outram could ‘hold his own against any thing’.82 Nevertheless, the embarrassment of British troops commanding only a tiny enclave in a nominally British province was too great an affront to the Company’s pride. The feeling in Calcutta was that even if Campbell could not pacify Oudh, he must at least snatch back its capital. ‘Lucknow taken, the heart of the rebels would be broken’, wrote Malleson. ‘No other great rallying point would remain to them.’83 As for postponement, Canning was ‘most anxious that there should be no risk of deferring the Great Blow to another cold season’.84 ‘The Supreme Government are bent upon an immediate attack upon Lucknow’, explained Cambridge. ‘Sir Colin and Mansfield evidently think this is a great mistake, and I think so too, but he is prepared to carry out the orders he has received.’85

  Apart from the weeks of debate over strategy, there was a second reason why Campbell stood his ground. Canning insisted he wait for a new ally, Jung Bahadoor*** of Nepal, and the 10,000 Gurkhas he had promised. Jung had pledged troops as soon as the mutiny broke out, and from July 1857 3,000 Nepali soldiers under the command of Brigadier Franks had been operating in the vicinity of Jaunpur, but Canning had been reluctant to accept more. During the British invasion of Afghanistan the Nepalis had made minor incursions into British India, and although matters had been patched up the affair still rankled. Inviting a whole Nepali army into India would be controversial given that, as Lady Canning put it, ‘they are here regarded as no better than mutineers’.86 But by the start of 1858 Canning had no alternative. He needed the men. Palmerston’s priority was Elgin’s campaign in China, so he was reluctant to send Canning further troops. Moreover, with the rebels gradually being herded north towards Nepal, the governor-general needed a friendly despot to refuse them asylum. Turning down Jung’s offer of assistance might cause offence.

  Critically, Jung’s help would no longer be an embarrassment. ‘We accept his kindness now that our strength has been again proved to the world,’ Campbell explained, ‘while it was rejected till the notion of our weakness should be swept away.’ That was especially true in Oudh. ‘There is a shade less humiliation in using him against that half-digested possession than in bringing him into our older provinces across the Ganges’, wrote Canning. ‘The appearance of the Gurkhas alone, or accompanied only by an insignificant show of Europeans, in Saugor, Bundelcund, or any quarter where our supremacy has been long established, would leave a very mischievous impression. This does not apply with the same force to Oudh.’87 So, for the moment, Campbell would just have to wait, while British India seethed at his inaction.

  Notes

  * Upon seeing it, ‘Sir Colin did not seem to like it’ (Gordon-Alexander, 223).

  ** Given that Campbell was planning on subduing Rohilcund next before returning to Lucknow that autumn, this meant Outram would be left at the Alumbagh for nearly a year, removing him from the dynamic side of the war.

  * Lady Inglis had either not noticed the guns Campbell heard the night before, or got the days confused.

  ** Fortescue complained that Windham was ‘supposed, somehow, with this quite inadequate force to protect the whole city of Cawnpore’ (XIII, 332), implying it was Campbell’s fault. Actually, the overextended position was Windham’s choice: ‘I thought it was my duty to hold as much of the town as I could, as we might expect a large number of women and children, sick and wounded to arrive shortly, that it would be cruel to shut them all up in the fort’, he explained (Forrest, Selections, II, 407).

  *** There was enough time for Windham to send the baggage to the rear, but he argued that removing it would signal to the townsfolk that the British were giving up Cawnpore (Windham, Observations, 14). Windham later admitted ‘it was an error’ (Windham, Crimean Diary, 230).

  * As at Lucknow, they were concentrated in the artillery and the 93rd (Forrest, Selections, II, 401).

  ** According to Forrest, ‘992 were killed and 2845 wounded. Many more died from disease and exposure’ (Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny, I, 150).

  *** Fortescue complained that Campbell left Windham without big guns to answer Tantia’s heavy artillery. In fact, he left two 24-pounders. It would have been difficult for Campbell to leave more siege guns at Cawnpore when he was about to besiege Lucknow.

  * Despite this defence of his colleague, ‘Sir Colin was not pleased with General Windham’, according to Grant. ‘He had not done his work properly at Cawnpore, and chose to be “cheeky” to Sir Colin. This would not do, so Sir Colin has removed him to Lahore’ (Knollys, I, 334). Though eventually promoted to lieutenant-general, Windham had to wait until 1865 for a knighthood, an honour freely given to other Indian Mutiny generals who already held the CB.

  ** ‘To carry the telegraph wire along with the troops thro’ a country in which nearly every soul is hostile, was in itself a new experiment’, Lady Canning told the queen (RA/VIC/MAIN/Z/502/24). During the American Civil War, ‘as a novelty which would astonish the benighted Britishers’, an American told William Russell how Union General McDowell ‘had a telegraphic wire laid in his wake as he advanced; to which Mr Russell replied so had Lord Clyde in India’ (The Times, 25 December 1862).

  *** The bugler said in his defence, ‘Please sir, if I had not sounded, the men would have licked me’ (Wood, E., Revolt in Hindustan, 241).

  * This was a ludicrous exaggeration by Campbell. Less than a third of British troops in India would be campaigning in Oudh.

  ** Napier (Royal Engineers) was Outram’s chief of staff at the Alumbagh.

  *** Jung was variously described by British writers as rajah, king or prince. Actually, he was prime minister and de facto ruler, having imprisoned the King of Nepal. Two of Jung’s daughters married the heir apparent, and the resulting son
ascended to the throne in 1881, securing Jung’s dynasty.

  1 The Times, 12 December 1857.

  2 The Tablet, 26 December 1857, 817.

  3 RA/VIC/MAIN/Z/502/31.

  4 The Times, 30 January 1858.

  5 Knollys, I, 302.

  6 Maude and Sherer, II, 541.

  7 Forrest, Selections, II, 359.

  8 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 22 November 1857.

  9 The Times, 8 January 1858.

  10 Verner, I, 171.

  11 Gordon-Alexander, 155.

  12 Bartrum, 58.

  13 Fayrer, 240.

  14 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 360.

  15 Forrest, Selections, II, 373.

  16 Munro, 169.

  17 Inglis, Lady, 211.

  18 Windham, Observations, 11.

  19 Forrest, Selections, II, 411.

  20 Hare, II, 351.

  21 Windham, Crimean Diary, 229.

  22 Pearson, 88.

  23 Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny, II, 200.

  24 Mackay, II, 272.

  25 Maude and Sherer, II, 385.

  26 Russell, My Diary in India, I, 206.

  27 Maude and Sherer, II, 387.

  28 Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny, II, 191.

  29 Forrest, Selections, II, 373.

  30 Munro, 170.

  31 Forbes-Mitchell, 129.

  32 Inglis, Lady, 213.

  33 Shadwell, II, 30.

  34 Knollys, I, 307.

  35 Inglis, Lady, 221.