Victoria’s Scottish Lion
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Walpole was the first to run into trouble. At Ruiya on 15 April, eight days after leaving Lucknow, he reached the fort of Nirput Singh, son of a supporter of the Nana Sahib. Walpole ‘sent forward some infantry in extended order to enable the place to be reconnoitred, when a heavy fire of musketry was opened upon them, and an occasional gun’.175 In response, he brought up two 18-pounders and a couple of mortars, and ordered an advance. It cost him around 100 men and officers killed, including Brigadier Adrian Hope of the 93rd, before they withdrew. Because, argued Walpole, ‘these men had gone much nearer to the fort than I wished’, he had been forced to sound the retreat. ‘The Highland Brigade ordered to retire!’ fumed Gordon-Alexander. ‘The Highland Brigade, composed of the same regiments that had climbed the heights of Alma together; one of them my own regiment, the “thin red line” of Balaklava fame!’176 ‘After we retired from the fort the excitement was so great that if the officers had given the men the least encouragement, I am convinced they would have turned out in a body and hanged General Walpole’, reported Forbes-Mitchell. Their commander had ‘acted in such a pig-headed manner that the officers considered him insane’.177 ‘I felt beside myself with rage, mortification, and contempt for our leader,’ confessed Gordon-Alexander, ‘and gave audible vent to these feelings, which were entirely shared by the men.’178
‘The Chief is greatly grieved’, reported Russell. ‘But who is not? Walpole seems to have made the attack in a very careless, unsoldierly way.’179 ‘A check is always serious, but at this particular juncture … the consequence may be very serious,’ Campbell told Canning, ‘not as regards the column, but the general feelings in Oudh, and the increased boldness of the insurgent chiefs.’ It certainly destroyed the troops’ faith in Walpole, as Campbell saw for himself, when he caught up with them at Thigree, twelve days later. As the newly appointed Colonel of the 93rd, Campbell expected a warm welcome from the Highlanders, ‘but he received short and rather surly answers’, recalled Gordon-Alexander:
such as ‘Nane the better for being awa frae you, Sir Colin’ or ‘As weel as maun be wi’ a chief like Walpole’, till, the news spreading that Sir Colin was among the tents, all the men turned out and fairly shouted at him ‘Hoo about Walpole?’ … Sir Colin was evidently much disconcerted and, instead of going on to the mess tent, went straight back to his own camp.180
Notwithstanding Walpole’s fiasco, by 3 May Campbell was nearing Bareilly, as planned. Khan’s garrison there was estimated to exceed 35,000. On this occasion Campbell adopted the Gough tactic of smashing straight into the enemy, and at 7 a.m. on 5 May marched his men towards the rebels in two lines: the 4th Punjab Infantry, the Highlanders and a Baluch battalion up front, with a heavy field battery in the centre, the flanks covered by horse artillery and cavalry. As they approached the Nukutte Bridge the enemy opened fire. ‘Our guns advanced to the front at a rapid pace,’ wrote Captain Allgood, ‘and replied to the enemy’s guns with such precision that they fled across the nullah, abandoning their guns which were on this side.’181 Unfortunately, ‘A large force of the rebel cavalry … swept round the flank and among the baggage, cutting down camels, camel drivers, and camp followers in all directions’, recalled Forbes-Mitchell.182 ‘It was a veritable stampedo of men and animals’, Russell reported:
Elephants were trumpeting shrilly as they thundered over the fields, camels slung along at their utmost joggling stride, horses and tats [ponies], women and children were all pouring in a stream which converged and tossed in heaps of white and black as it neared the road – an awful panic!183
‘I remember the Rev. Mr Ross, chaplain of the 42nd, running for his life, dodging round camels and bullocks with a rebel sowar after him,’ wrote Forbes-Mitchell, ‘till, seeing our detachment, he rushed to us for protection, calling out “Ninety-third, shoot that impertinent fellow!” Moral – when in the field, padres, carry a good revolver.’184
‘A most furious charge was made by a body of about three hundred and sixty Rohilla Ghazis, who rushed out shouting “Bismillah! Allah! Allah! Deen! Deen!”’ continued Forbes-Mitchell:
Sir Colin was close by, and called out ‘Ghazis! Ghazis! Close up the ranks! Bayonet them as they come on’ … The Ghazis charged in blind fury, with their round shields on their left arms, their bodies bent low, waving their tulwars over their heads, throwing themselves under the bayonets and cutting at the men’s legs.185
Colonel Cameron was dragged from his horse, and ‘only saved from being cut to pieces by the plucky behaviour of two of his own men’.186 ‘Sir Colin had a narrow escape. As he was riding from one company to another his eye caught that of a quasi-dead Ghazi, who was lying, tulwar in hand, just before him’, reported Russell:
The Chief guessed the ruse in a moment. ‘Bayonet that man!’ he called to a soldier. The Highlander made a thrust at him, but the point would not enter the thick cotton quilting of the Ghazi’s tunic; and the dead man was rising to his legs, when a Sikh who happened to be near, with a whistling stroke of his sabre, cut off the Ghazi’s head with one blow, as if it had been the bulb of a poppy!187
All this was performed on ‘the hottest day on which British European soldiers were ever called upon to fight a general action’.188 ‘The heat was intense,’ complained Forbes-Mitchell. ‘It attained such a pitch that the barrels of our rifles could not be touched by our bare hands!’189 ‘The trees were scanty by the roadside. There was no friendly shade to afford the smallest shelter from the blazing sun,’ Russell recalled. ‘I had all the sensations of a man who is smothering in a mud-bath.’190 Wolseley at least had:
a good helmet with an unusually long turban wound round it, yet the sun seemed to gimlet a hole through it into my brain. My very hair seemed to crackle from the burning heat, and the nails of one’s fingers became as if made of some brittle material that must soon break.191
Once the rebels had been beaten back to the cantonments, Campbell let the men rest. Consequently only eight men died of sunstroke, from just eighteen deaths that day.192 ‘More was exacted from them, I do believe, than British troops ever were exposed to, except in the Crimea – certainly more than Europeans were ever heretofore exposed to in India’, Outram told Campbell. ‘And I attribute the comparatively little loss our army has suffered, under such exposure, to your lordship’s most judicious arrangements.’193
The next morning, Campbell’s artillery started a fresh barrage while Colonel Jones’s column approached from the far side of town. Within twenty-four hours the rebels had abandoned Bareilly. Another rebel stronghold was back under British control, but Campbell’s troops were reaching the limits of their endurance. ‘The news is bad,’ reported Cambridge:
for the Army was becoming fearfully sick from the hard work that it had undergone, and the fearful heat of the sun killing numbers by sunstroke. Mutinous feelings are also showing themselves in various parts of the country, and there had been a rising in several districts of the Bombay Presidency, especially in the Southern Mahratta country, which is most serious.194
In addition, the Maulvi of Faizabad, the last rebel leader to leave Lucknow, had taken Shajahanpore with 8,000 men and twelve guns, and on 2 May had begun shelling the gaol held by the small British garrison. Having subdued Bareilly, Campbell despatched Jones with a column to deal with this new threat. Four days later, Jones reached Shajahanpore and beat the enemy back, but the Maulvi soon returned with reinforcements and pinned the British down. On the 18th Campbell arrived with five squadrons of cavalry, seven companies of the 64th Foot, one troop of Bengal Horse Artillery and sundry guns.195 ‘As our men advanced the enemy fell back on a fort, which we could see crowded with men,’ reported Russell, ‘but it was too late to press them; the soldiers were much fatigued.’196 Campbell decided to wait for extra troops, giving the Maulvi time to remove most of his men to Mohumdee. Concerned that ‘the various columns which are in movement in other parts, stand in need of constant direction by telegraph’,197 on the 23rd Campbell left Jones to finish the job, and rode fo
r Futtehghur from where he could direct the campaign by cable.
The heat was getting to him. By the time he had reached Futtehghur ‘he seemed very much knocked up’, reported one officer, ‘but his spirits were cheery and a few days’ rest in a cool house quite restored him’.198 Campbell having done as Canning asked, and taken the fight to Rohilcund, the rebels in Oudh had, in his absence, turned to guerrilla tactics. They had started to ‘harass and drive in all our thannahs and outposts, avoiding as much as possible close contact with any disciplined troops’, explained the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Oudh. The region was ungovernable. ‘We hold the Lucknow District and the line of road to Cawnpore, most of our other posts have been abandoned’, the secretary reported. ‘Throughout the country of Oudh the rebels are complete masters and harass all the followers of the British.’199
‘In the provinces of Oudh and Bundelcund, the mere march of troops is unattended by any real and substantial results’, Campbell explained to Cambridge:
We beat the enemy in the open field with the utmost ease – we take his guns; he appears utterly routed. A fortnight afterwards we again hear of the reassemblage of rebels at another point – perhaps at three or four points – while our movable columns have marched away to meet danger in another quarter.
For Campbell, the problem was that ‘the people who show their duty to us are treated with the utmost barbarity and cruelty’, and so revolt was perpetuated. ‘We must cling together. When we go to our homes, we are hunted down and hanged. We have no choice’, he heard one rebel say. ‘The unhappy man only spoke the truth. A very grave question is contained in the moral of this anecdote’, wrote Campbell. ‘We cannot look for the extermination of the entire remnant of the sepoy army. According to the terms on which we are now with that remnant, they look for nothing else than extermination, and we propose nothing else. What, then, can be the sequel, but a most protracted contest?’200 ‘There are many sepoys driven solely by desperation to fight against us, who would gladly desert the mutinous ranks,’ explained the Chief Commissioner for Oudh, ‘if they could find a door of repentance open to them.’201 None was offered.
The ability to defeat and chase mutineers, but not pacify rebel territory, had characterised the first year of the mutiny. Until such time as a pardon was offered, there was no end in sight to the fighting. This was true not simply of Oudh and the north-west provinces, but of Central India as well. This territory had been in revolt since the earliest days of the mutiny, spurred on by local potentate the Ranee of Jhansi.* The deaths of sixty Europeans who surrendered to the ranee in June 1857 had, in the public imagination, lumped her with the Nana Sahib in the first rank of villains, but among her own people she was an Indian Joan of Arc.
Sir Hugh Rose, from Owen Tudor Burne’s Clyde and Strathnairn.
In December 1857 Campbell had ordered in Major-General Sir Hugh Rose with a detachment of Bombay troops (dubbed the Central India Field Force) to defeat her. Rose’s column was one of three sent, but during that winter he blasted along at such a pace that he ended up doing most of the fighting and garnering most of the laurels.
It was a campaign of which Brigadier Neill would have been proud. After 149 rebels surrendered at Sehore in January 1858, Rose had them all shot.** On another occasion, one native made the mistake of recounting the massacre of Europeans at Jhansi the previous summer:
Sir Hugh Rose is said to have listened patiently till the man had finished, when he inquired ‘And you witnessed all this?’ The man replied that he had. Sir Hugh at once called for the provost-marshal, exclaiming ‘Take him away and hang him like a dog! No Indian shall live to say he saw an Englishwoman dishonoured and murdered.’202
Rose brazenly reported to Campbell, ‘Your Excellency will be glad to learn that my men conduct themselves very well, and treat the inhabitants in a way which inspires confidence and forms a striking contrast with the rebels.’203
Whether by inspiring confidence or just plain terror, Rose’s victories mounted and, having relieved the garrison at Saugor and forced the Mudenpore Pass, by 22 March he had besieged Jhansi, 200 miles south-west of Lucknow. Tantia Topee had retired to Calpee but, hearing of the ranee’s plight, he now led his remaining troops to relieve her. Outside Jhansi on 1 April, Rose defeated Tantia and two days later took the town. The ranee escaped dressed as a man. Rose then chased her to Calpee, which he stormed on 23 May.
Rose had only been able to secure these victories by marching his troops to prostration. In the unbearably hot weather, ‘officers and men dropped down as though struck by lightning’, but Rose seemed to regard them as disposable. He was unable to keep up the pursuit. ‘The Rebel force under Tantia Topee had not been much pressed after the fall of Calpee’, Campbell complained. ‘Sir Hugh Rose’s troops being represented to be in a state of great exhaustion, the General himself being in bad health and conceiving the campaign of his column to be at an end.’204
Tantia and the ranee seized their chance to mount a counter-attack and descended on Gwalior. There were no other British troops nearby, so, despite the condition of Rose’s men, ‘As soon as the news reached me, I anticipated the orders of the Government, and sent instant orders for the whole force which had been engaged at Calpee to march on Gwalior’, Campbell told the Duke of Cambridge:
What I am afraid of is that the rebel leaders will have been so much enriched by the plunder of Gwalior, that they will be supplied with the means of carrying on the war for an almost indefinite period in a manner most annoying to us, by which they will wear down our troops, while they constantly elude our grasp.205
‘It is all the more awkward because Sir Colin has sent down a general order to Allahabad, somewhat in the form of a proclamation, announcing the close of the summer campaign, and thanking the troops for their services’, explained Russell.206
On grounds of ill health, Rose had handed command over to Robert Napier following the fall of Calpee. Now, upon hearing that the rebels had taken Gwalior, Rose made an overnight recovery. ‘As soon as it became apparent that an important Campaign, likely to be attended by much éclat, would ensue … Sir Hugh Rose forgot his ailments and positively reassumed his Command without in the first place asking my permission’, complained Campbell.207 Rose had already persuaded the governor-general to confirm him in his post, so Campbell accepted this fait accompli and ‘assisted him with a Brigade from the far South, drawn from the Rajpootana force and with a strong detachment from Agra’.208
The Ranee of Jhansi. (Arthur Milner, lot 168, sale 6 November 2014, © 25 Blythe Road Ltd)
Drawing up on 16 June, Rose prepared to storm Gwalior. The next day, the Ranee of Jhansi was killed in a cavalry skirmish. By the 20th, the town had fallen. His enemy defeated for a second time, Rose again absented himself on sick leave. ‘The difficulties of re-establishing our Government and authority are enormously increased by this tendency on the part of the General Officers to fly off as soon as the brilliant part of the Campaign is at an end’, wrote Campbell to the Duke of Cambridge. ‘I was in the field months before Sir Hugh Rose … and am so still.’209
For India’s Young Turks, Rose had shown what was possible when Campbell was too far away to intervene, how fast India could be subdued if only the commander-in-chief was faster and more daring; a surmise lent weight by Burne’s biographical comparison of the two generals, and one which persists today. But the suggestion that their Indian campaigns represent two distinct, contrasting methods of war, each the product of one commander alone, is nonsense. In fact, the Central India strategy was not Rose’s work. It had been formulated months in advance, at the commander-in-chief’s request. The previous August, Campbell had asked Sir Robert Hamilton, the governor-general’s agent for Central India, for a memorandum on taking back the region. Campbell approved the resulting plan and, along with Hamilton, appointed Rose to implement it.210 Far from being the hare to the commander-in-chief’s tortoise, Rose was actually three weeks behind Campbell’s original schedule* when he reach
ed Calpee on 23 May 1858.211 The strategy was Campbell and Hamilton’s, but Rose got the credit. Campbell himself ascribed much of the success to Hamilton’s presence in the column. ‘The successful marches of Sir Hugh Rose and General Whitlock would not have been made if it had not been in the power of Sir Robert Hamilton, the governor-general’s agent, to play off certain Rajahs and Chiefs against others’, Campbell told the Duke of Cambridge. ‘By such means their communications and supplies were secured.’212 Of course, dull essentials like logistics held little appeal for Victorians who believed all a British officer needed was a swagger stick and God’s own confidence. Unpreparedness had become a virtue to the extent that, as Russell reported, ‘great censure was bestowed on the Commander-in-Chief because Sir E. Lugard’s column was despatched to Azimghur with ample provisions and heavy guns … Most fortunate it was that they were so well provided.’213
Rose looked so dashing compared to ‘Sir Crawling Camel’ that it was impossible for the public to share the glory between them. The success of the one had to be at the expense of the other. ‘Sir Hugh Rose has done very well indeed, and had such great opportunities that it is no wonder he is such a hero in public estimation,’ observed Lady Canning, ‘but it is most unjust to cry down Sir Colin in consequence!’214 Nevertheless, posterity kept Rose on the pedestal, to Campbell’s detriment. ‘Sir Hugh Rose’s march from Mhow to Gwalior has been projected out of proportion as an outstanding feat of arms’, explained one recent historian, who argues that this tendency emerged after Rose became commander-in-chief, as officer-authors sought to curry favour with their new commander.215 Tactical errors, held against Campbell, were mysteriously forgotten in Rose’s case. For letting mutineers escape at Cawnpore and Lucknow, Campbell was lambasted, yet, as William Russell pointed out, ‘at Jhansi and at Calpee and at Gwalior thousands of the enemy got away from Sir Hugh Rose’216 and no one seemed to mind.