‘Take a hold of them, man!’ Hastings roared, face brick red with fury, ‘Get a grip on ‘em! Come on now, be stout fellahs keep on moving!’
The general leading tried, he really did. John saw him momentarily through drifting gunsmoke, as he reared up his horse and waved his sword towards the battlements. Here and there more determined groups of sepoys surged forward once more. But the impetus had gone. Most of the survivors simply stood dazed or crouched miserably under the lethal hail of fire like lost children. And already from within the fortress came the clatter of hooves indicating a new danger.
Hastings was always quick to make decisions; it had been the saving of him and the Company’s arms on many a bloody battle-field. ‘Bold ... Captain Bold,’ he cried urgently. ‘Take your squadron and see what you can do!’
‘Sir!’
John doubled to his waiting horse. ‘Bugler, sound the alarm!’
The young sowar raised the silver instrument to his lips. Without even spitting, he sounded the urgent call. Within seconds, or so it seemed, Bold’s Horse was surging over the battle-littered ground at a fine lick, heading for the smoke and confusion of battle.
The first stragglers from the decimated sepoy brigade were already running to the rear, weapons cast aside, eyes wild and staring in contorted, glistening brown faces. Unseeingly they brushed by the cavalry, stopped neither by taunts, threats nor blows until Jones called in the native language, ‘Let those sons of a serpent run!’
A group of four sepoys came towards him. They had made a stretcher of their muskets on which they bore the general. Half the side of his head had been blown off. John swallowed hard at the great gaping scarlet wound through which he could see the white shattered bone and the grey mass of the general’s brain still pulsating. Next to the makeshift stretcher, clutching the general’s hand like a distraught child leading an injured parent home, was a cornet, bloody bandage round his head, sobbing heartbrokenly.
‘What news, Cornet?’ John gasped.
But all he got from the youth, uttered in an eerie unreal little voice, was, ‘Calamity ... There has been a great calamity ... calamity ... ’
Even as they galloped on, shells now bursting to left and right, John seemed to still hear that uncanny voice: ‘Calamity!’
Now the sepoys were streaming back in total defeat, officers and sergeants among them attempting to cover their retreat, turning at regular intervals and firing their pistols into the fog of war at their heels.
John knew he had to protect the rear of the fleeing survivors. If Pindaree cavalry got among the sepoys they’d slaughter the lot. Raising himself so that all his men could see, he yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Form a skirmish line ... extend the column ... Sergeant Jones ... rissaldar ... form a skirmish line — at once!’
Despite the noise, they understood. Urging their horses through the retreating sepoys, some of them now dragging their wounded, they formed up in extended order; while above them the drum-roll of thunder grew ever louder.
Now they were almost through the sepoy brigade. Everywhere in the churned-up earth, scattered in the unreal poses of those who had been violently done to death, lay their comrades in arms.
The battlements loomed out of the smoke. The firing had almost ceased — the defenders were not going to fire on their own cavalry, which would soon emerge; the clatter of their horses in the courtyard was all too obvious.
With a loud huzzah, skidding and fighting to keep upright, jostling and crowded together in a great sweating mass of horseflesh, white and black men cursing each other, kicking out with their spurs to gain space from the other riders, the Pindarees’ cavalry burst into the open.
Immediately they fanned out, faces wild with excitement, swinging their swords, digging their spurs cruelly into their panicked mounts. Here and there brave little groups of sepoys stood and fought. But after the first burst of musket fire, which felled a good half dozen of the riders, the cavalry were upon them, slicing and cutting mercilessly, hacking them to the ground in moments.
Now the enemy cavalry surged forward, crouched low over their horses, carried away by the mad lust of the chase. Sepoys went down everywhere, sliced from behind, howling with absolute agony as they fell, skulls cleaved, arms severed, great gaping scarlet holes skewered in their backs.
‘Halt! ... fire!’ John commanded his bugler as the enemy horse streamed to his right, seeing nothing but the fleeing sepoys and exposing the whole of their flank. His troopers needed no urging. Hardly had the second bugle call ceased than they began firing right into the whirling ranks of the unsuspecting enemy. Riders went down everywhere, slammed from their saddles or slumped on their horses’ necks and carried away from the battle — dead already. Others fell with foot trapped in a stirrup and were thrashed screaming along the uneven ground, bumping and jolting, mouths vomiting blood until they collapsed like boneless dummies.
But the rest reacted quickly enough. Now more and more of them were reining their sweat-lathered steeds to a skidding halt and were pointing in the direction of the motionless line of troopers firing into their flank. For what seemed a long time, though it could only have been a matter of moments, they remained motionless thus, taking fire and casualties and not even seeming to notice until finally an order was shouted. The whole mass began to wheel round to face the sowars, the manoeuvre accompanied by cursing and much shouting.
John raised his sword in warning as his troopers worked feverishly to reload before the enemy charged. Even as he did so, he heard the first soft hiss as a raindrop splattered on the parched dust at his horse’s feet.
‘They’ll cheer first!’ he cried so that all could hear. ‘The French always do. Then they’ll charge!’
‘You heard the officer!’ Jones cried loyally. ‘And don’t let the squadron down. Stand fast when they come.’ The little Welshman eyed the massed ranks of white and black cavalry facing them — outnumbering Bold’s Horse by at least ten to one — and rattled off a quick prayer. At least, he consoled himself as the enemy formed up in their final attack formation, I’ll die on horseback and not in a prison cell!
John tensed. The enemy were almost ready, their officers filing through the massed columns to the front. Flag-bearers followed them, the first drops of the monsoon rain pattering off their ornate silver breastplates. He raised his sword once more. Behind him his troopers, trying to control their skittish horses with pressure from their knees, raised their carbines and took aim. John licked his suddenly parched lips and prepared to shout what could be his final command, for Bold’s Horse did not stand a chance against such a mass, especially when it contained Nom de Dieu’s hard-bitten rakes.
‘Prepare to fire!’ he called, hearing his own voice as if it were a long, long way off, at the far end of some great tunnel.
His troopers’ fingers curled and whitened on the triggers of their short carbines, one eye closed, the other glued to the sight. It could only be a matter of moments now. The patter of raindrops increased. The air was becoming noticeably cooler, too, and the wind beginning to whip up sand devils which danced and toyed with the silent faces of the dead.
‘HURRAH!’ That great expected cheer startled John all the same. His horse attempted to bolt. Tugging cruelly at the bit, he cried, ‘Stand fast, men ... Stand fast ... here they come!’
‘À l’attaque!’ The French war cry rose from many a hoarse throat. Next moment the enemy cavalrymen were streaming across the plain, eyes narrowed against the sudden rain, sabres stretched outright, parallel to the flying manes. It was a fine, brave sight. But John had no time for the terrible beauty of the battlefield. Above the great thunder of flying hooves, he bellowed, ‘FIRE!’
A hundred and fifty carbines spoke as one. The volley struck the attackers like a solid iron punch. Horses and riders went down on all sides, bowled over in full gallop, men whipped from the saddle as if by magic, flung to one side, screaming in their death agonies. Horses went to their knees, great scarlet patches appearing suddenly
on their flanks as their riders cursed and screamed, digging spurs into mounts which were dying under them.
Great gaps appeared in the charging ranks, men and broken horses on the ground everywhere with those coming on behind skidding helplessly into the pile-up. Rapidly John’s troopers rammed their carbines into the leather bucket holsters and grabbed for their swords. The attackers — those who had survived that terrible volley — were almost upon them now. The fight to the death was about to commence.
John fired his pistol at a swarthy-faced Frenchman only fifty yards away, and watched him slide from the saddle almost casually, to disappear beneath the flying hooves of the following horsemen.
John threw his now useless pistol to the ground and gripped his sword in a hand wet with sweat, waiting for the great shock of the charge, holding his mount steady between tight knees.
Suddenly he gasped, peering amazed through the falling rain. There was no mistaking that over-large brown beaver hat and those tight-fitting buckskins which revealed the gentler female curve of the thigh.
It was the Ranee — the Ranee of Burrapore — personally leading the charge, a great black dragoon moustache painted on her lip. On another person it would have looked absurd, but not on the Ranee, whose face was set in lethal determination. The she-devil of Burrapore was intent on slaughtering the lot of them.
‘Prepare ... prepare to withstand a charge,’ he croaked, knowing now that he would never survive this charge.
In that very moment the monsoon broke in all its terrible fury. The wind struck across the plain at a hundred miles an hour, bringing a howling dust through which the tropical rain belted in penny-size missiles. Then solid sheets poured down, deadening every sound bar its own persistent hiss and banshee whine.
Saved by a miracle, John didn’t hesitate. Bending his head close to Sergeant Jones’ cheek, the wind tearing the words from his mouth, his face dripping with raindrops, lashed by rain, he screamed, ‘Retire!’
John nodded with an exaggerated movement, his turban sodden and limp already.
The squadron turned while scarlet shots seared the howling grey gloom in vain, for the Ranee and her men could no longer see them although they were only yards away. Skidding in the sudden glutinous morass, bent against the storm, Bold’s Horse slipped away, saved at the eleventh hour.
EIGHT
Outside Hastings’ big tent it rained: a steady, never-ending downpour that filled the nullahs and creeks with tawny water, swirling the dead, the rotting corpses, the debris of battle into the raging Burra River. For two days the monsoon had held sway and Hastings’ camp had turned into a sea of mud.
The monsoon brought the usual fevers and ailments, prickly heat, tick typhus, malaria and dysentery. Day and night men squatted miserably all over the camp, evacuating their bowels, moaning with the pain of their rotten guts, sometimes falling over un-conscious to disappear slowly, but surely, into that mucilaginous swamp.
Supplies were failing to come up from the rear. Water was polluted. Even the hardtack was soggy and full of weevils. As Sergeant Jones had moaned to John as he squatted, racked with dysentery, ‘Nothing’s going in, sir — and everything’s going out!’ And again his skinny bones had been racked by another painful spasm.
These had been two days of doubt and indecision for Lord Hastings. Due to Captain Bold’s daring — and good luck — the defeated sepoy brigade had not been wiped out altogether, and Lord Hastings treasured every man who was still capable of bearing arms; the army was melting from disease and fevers at an alarming rate. Yet what was he going to do with those men, that was the question uppermost in his mind, as the damned rain thudded down. Should he withdraw to the south while there was still time, or should he attempt one more attack? As long as the fortress of Burrapore was under siege, the Pindarees would be unable to launch an assault on the Presidency of Madras; there was no room for them to manoeuvre in the tight valley of the Burra. That was, at least, one consolation.
But how long could he maintain the siege with his men falling sick? And there was always the danger, while his back was turned, of the treacherous Mahratta princes rising again. It was all damnably irritating and perplexing.
Of course, there were among his staff the ‘bookkeepers’, as he called them contemptuously, who advised retaining a pretence of a siege at Burrapore, while the bulk of his army marched back to the frontier. But he didn’t like to put his forces in penny packets like that. The aim was to concentrate, for in the end, spreading your forces meant you didn’t have sufficient strength anywhere.
On the afternoon of the third day after the attack, while the warm rain still sheeted down, Major Tomkins, himself pale and wan and racked with the ‘the thin shits’, as the common soldiers called them, reported to the Governor General that Captain Bold was requesting an interview on a matter of some importance. Managing to summon up a feeble smile, Major Tomkins said, ‘Our young hothead has a plan, sir.’
Hastings gave a feeble smile of his own, for he felt the first headache which heralded the onset of malaria. ‘Half the damned camp has got plans, Tomkins,’ he said. ‘But do show him in. Bold deserves the courtesy at least of being listened to. He is a brave young man.’
A few moments later John was ushered in, his uniform as wet and as mud-spattered as everyone else’s. But although he looked bedraggled, there was no mistaking his hard determined look, and Hastings thought once again: Nomen est omen.
‘Well, Bold,’ Hastings commenced immediately, ‘you have a plan, I hear.’
‘Yessir,’ John answered eagerly. ‘If I could request a chart of the fortifications?’
The Governor General nodded and Tomkins spread out a map of Burrapore and its fort on the rough trestle table.
‘You see here, sir, to the right of the main gate?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, here — where the wall runs close to the Burra — is an area of dead ground both inside and outside the fortifications.’
‘What kind of dead ground, Bold?’
‘The constructor of the fort must have made some mistake,’ John continued, ‘for this area — here — is out of musket shot to both sides. And only those men on the wall immediately above any attackers would be able to spot them.’
Hastings whistled softly. ‘You mean the defenders cannot bring any enfilading fire to bear from left and right of that spot?’
‘Correct, sir,’ John answered, eyes full of energy and purpose. ‘Of course, they could fire, but they would be firing blind, with most of their balls flying above the heads of the attackers.’
Hastings flashed a wild look at Tomkins, and the Major nodded hastily, as if to confirm what Hastings was thinking.
‘But how are we to get the men to this dead ground? They would have to cross the whole front of the fort under enemy fire.’ Hastings frowned, as if angry with himself for raising such objections.
John licked his lips and pointed to the map again. ‘We would not need to do that,’ he replied, ‘but cross the Burra — here — about a mile away from the fort and out of its sight, take this track on the right bank — again out of sight of the fort. I know, sir, because we used this route when we made our escape. Then we would cross the Burra once more — here — directly opposite that area of dead ground — and attack ... !’
*
‘Don’t like it, sir,’ Sir John Campbell snorted in his dour downright Scots fashion. ‘Don’t like it one bit.’
‘I agree, sir,’ General Doveton, the victor of Nagpore, chipped in equally firmly, ‘there are too many imponderables.’
‘What?’ Hastings snapped.
Outside, the world rocked and shook crazily, lightning shot great burning violet bolts back and forth across the Burra, the whole valley seemed to quiver. The rain continued.
‘Well, sir,’ Doveton said, ‘this plan entails two doubtful river crossings in terrible weather. Supposing the crossings were successful — ’
John opened his mouth to object, but a glum Lord Hast
ings raised his hand for him to desist.
‘ — Then we will have to storm the fort with’ — he shrugged — ‘how many men? A battalion at the most, for that is about all we would be able to get twice across the Burra.’
‘Aye,’ Sir John agreed, ‘and the loss of one battalion, which would be insufficient to overwhelm the defenders, would be a serious blow, a very serious blow indeed, My Lord.’
The meeting relapsed into silence while Hastings brooded. He could see what the objectors meant, and, God, how he wished his damned head would stop aching so that he could think straight! In the end the Governor General gave up. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said wearily, get me think the matter over before I make my decision.’ He looked pointedly at Bold, who obviously had more to say, indicating by his gaze that the young officer should remain silent.
When they had gone, splashing out into the rain and mud, he lay on his bed, already breaking out into the first sweats of malaria, a sorely troubled man. For he knew that if he made the wrong decision now, he risked the whole presence of the British in Central India. Perhaps the rot might not even stop there. Madras might go, Calcutta perhaps, even Bombay! He dabbed his sweat-lathered brow and moaned. The whole of British India was at risk!
Miserably he tossed and turned on his narrow camp bed, racked by indecision ... But it was not only in the British camp that there was indecision and discord. A mile away from where Lord Hastings tossed and turned on his trestle bed the Ranee of Burrapore and Cheethoo of the Pindarees faced each other, the one flushed and excited, the other hard-faced and glacial.
Ever since that wild exhilarating ride with her cavalry when they had repulsed the English, the Ranee had refused to take off her male attire, even in Cheethoo’s presence, and the Chief of the Pindarees didn’t like it. He was used to the usual complacent Indian woman, who regarded the male as her lord and master. The sight of this woman, princess as she might be with power of life and death over her subjects, upset him — though, as always, he was careful to conceal his anger.
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