Some five thousand rebels under the Nawab of Farukhabad being in force in the neighbourhood, Sir Colin Campbell pushed on with his troops to disperse the enemy. Lieutenant Roberts was attached to Sir Hope Grant’s staff, and with his leader came into contact with the rebels at the village of Khudaganj. Here a sharp engagement took place, which resulted in the Nawab’s army being completely routed.
At the end of the fight, while the mounted men were following up the fugitives, the young lieutenant saw a sowar of the Punjab Cavalry (a loyal native regiment) in danger of being worsted by a sepoy armed with fixed bayonet. Wheeling his horse in their direction, he quickly thrust himself between the two and, with a terrific sweep of his sword across the other’s face, laid the sepoy low. A minute or two later he caught sight of a couple of rebels making off with a standard. Roberts determined that this should be captured, so setting spurs to his horse he galloped after them.
He overtook the pair just as they were about to seek refuge in a village close by, and engaged them both at once. The one who clutched the standard he cut down, wrenching the trophy out of the other’s hands, but the second sepoy, ere he could turn, placed his musket close to the young officer’s body and pulled the trigger. Fortunately for him, the musket missed fire (it was in the days of the old percussion caps), whereupon the sepoy made off, leaving Roberts to return in triumph.
In other engagements like those at Bulandshahr and Khudaganj many young cavalry officers who came to high honour in later years distinguished themselves by personal bravery. Prominent among these were Captain Dighton Probyn and Lieutenant John Watson, both of the Punjab Cavalry. Their exploits are well worth narrating.
At the battle of Agra Probyn at the head of his squadron charged a body of rebel infantry, and in the mêlée became separated from his men. Beset as he was by a crowd of sepoys, he cut his way through them and engaged in a series of single combats of an Homeric kind. In one instance he rode down upon a cluster of sepoys, singled out the standard-bearer, killed him on the spot, and dashed off again with the colours. His gallantry on this and other occasions was, as Sir Hope Grant said in his despatch, so marked that he was promptly awarded the V.C.
Lieutenant Watson had a similar heroic encounter with a rebel on November 14th, 1857, when just outside Lucknow he and his troop of Punjabis came into contact with a force of rebel cavalry which far outnumbered them.
As they approached the Ressaldar in command of the rebels rode out in advance of his men with half a dozen followers. He is described as having been “a fine specimen of the Hindustani Mussulman,” a stalwart, black-bearded, fierce-looking man. Here was a foeman worthy of one’s steel. With all the daring that had already made him beloved by his sowars and feared by the enemy, Watson accepted the challenge thus offered, and rode out to give the other combat.
He had got within a yard or so of his opponent when the Ressaldar fired his pistol point blank at him, but luckily the shot failed to take effect. It can only be supposed that the bullet had fallen out in the process of loading, for the two were too close together for the rebel leader to have missed his mark. Without hesitating, the lieutenant charged and dismounted the other, who drew his tulwar and called his followers to his aid.
Watson now found himself engaged with seven opponents, and against their onslaught he had to defend himself like a lion. It is not recorded that he slew the Ressaldar, though it is to be hoped that he did so, but he succeeded in keeping them all at bay until his own sowars came to the rescue with some of Probyn’s Horse who had witnessed the combat. And when the rebels were put to flight the brave lieutenant’s wounds bore evidence of the fierce nature of the combat. A hideous slash on the head, a cut on the left arm, another on the right arm that disabled that limb for some time afterwards, and a sabre cut on the leg which came near to permanently laming him, were the chief hurts he had received, while a bullet hole in his coat showed how nearly a shot had found him.
There were many tight corners that the young cavalry leader found himself in before the Mutiny came to an end, and despatches recorded his name more than once for distinguished services, but if you were to ask General Sir John Watson (he is a G.C.B. now, like his brother-officer, Sir Dighton Probyn) to-day, I doubt if he could remember another fight that was so desperate as that hand-to-hand combat with the mighty Ressaldar.