The moon shone brightly as the columns marched out of their camps to the appointed places. The Sappers, the 3rd Europeans, and the Hyderabad Infantry were to scale the walls; the 86th Foot and the 25th Native Infantry were to go in at the breach. The signal was given and the men emerged from cover into the broad moonlight. The enemy were on the alert and met the columns with a storm of shot. "We had upwards of 200 yards to march through this fiendish fire," writes Mr. Lowe, who, as medical officer to the Sappers, accompanied the right column, "and we did it. The Sappers planted the ladders against the wall in three places for the stormers to ascend; but the fire of the enemy waxed stronger, and amid the chaos of sounds, of volleys of musketry, and roaring of cannon, and hissing and bursting of rockets, stink-pots, infernal machines, huge stones, blocks of wood, and trees, all hurled upon their devoted heads—the men wavered for a moment, and sheltered themselves behind stones. But the ladders were there, and there the Sappers, animated by the heroism of their officers, keeping firm hold until a wound or death struck them down beneath the walls. At this instant, on our right, three of the ladders broke under the weight of men, and a bugle sounded on our right also for the Europeans to retire. A brief pause, and again the stormers rushed to the ladders, led on by the engineer officers," and carried the position.
As soon as they were in, they heard the shouts of the left column, who had broken in at the breach and came rushing along the ramparts. The two columns joined and dashed into the town. No quarter was given. The city and its people were held to be accursed. There were fights in every street, almost in every house; and in the palace and stables, battle and slaughter and conflagration. The Ranee, who had fled into the fort, kept up a fire on the palace. The Sepoys and rebels were surrounded in the town and out of it and very few escaped who stayed to bear the shock of fight. This went on all the 3rd and 4th, and on the 5th Lieutenant Baigrie, of the 3rd Europeans, found the fort had been abandoned. Our loss in this storm of Jhansi was 300 killed and wounded.
The weather was now so hot, and the force so exhausted, that Sir Hugh found himself obliged to give the troops some rest, and also to replenish his stores. He halted three weeks, and then, after leaving a garrison in the place, resumed active operations. The 1st Brigade marched for Calpee on the 25th; the 2nd a few days afterwards. The sufferings of the troops on the march were dreadful, chiefly from want of water—a want that the transport animals, even the camels, felt keenly. On the 5th of May the two brigades, reinforced by the 71st Highlanders, united. The enemy made a stand at Koonch and was routed, with the loss of eight guns. The battle of Koonch would have been more disastrous for the enemy had not Brigadier Stuart held back his brigade. The sun killed more on our side than the enemy and Sir Hugh Rose himself was prostrated three times with the heat.
The enemy, weakened and disheartened, drew up at Calpee. Here were the Ranee of Jhansi, the Nawab of Banda—driven off by Whitlock's column, which had slowly and without adventure worked its way as far as Banda—and Tantia Topee. Here they drew up among the tombs and ravines on the south side of Calpee. But Sir Hugh Rose swept round to the east, and encamping on the Jumna, entered into communication with Colonel Maxwell, who held his brigade on the opposite bank of the river. It was now the 15th of May. The strong front of the enemy's position had been turned, but he found in the ravines that ran between Sir Hugh's camp and Calpee endless facilities for attack; and every day until the 22nd the enemy made repeated attacks. On the 20th Maxwell sent over a few troops, and on the 21st his artillery shelled the town. On the 22nd the enemy came out in great force, and attacked Sir Hugh in position at Gowlowlee. This combat was, perhaps, the sharpest in which Sir Hugh had been engaged. The enemy, in thousands, not only attacked the front with great resolution, but repeatedly tried to turn the left flank. Several times his infantry charged up to the guns. For some time, so numerous were the assailants, it was with the greatest difficulty that our soldiers held their ground; and had not the right been promptly reinforced it must have been overpowered. But Sir Hugh Rose, at the right moment, assaulted the enemy's right with a vigour that was irresistible; and then, advancing the whole line, drove the enemy in disorder from the field. He retired to Calpee; but on the 23rd of May he was driven out without much trouble, pursued by the cavalry, and relieved of all his guns.
Such seemed to be the natural termination of this astonishing campaign in the hot season. The troops had traversed Central India from Indore to Calpee, had been four months in the sun, and were literally exhausted. But now came startling news. Gwalior was in the hands of the rebels, and the Maharajah Scindia a fugitive at Agra. Defeated at Gowlowlee, driven out of Calpee, Tantia Topee and his shattered troops hurried off towards Gwalior. It was a bold stroke, worthy of the subtle brain of the ablest leader of the Hindoos. Scindia had not befriended the rebel cause: nay, he and his sagacious Minister, Dinkur Rao, had helped the Europeans in every way; yet the Gwalior people were hostile to the British. Why not, then, dethrone Scindia and, seizing Gwalior, hoist the Mahratta flag in the capital of that great Mahratta State? Tantia Topee was equal to the emergency. Preceding the army by forced marches, he secretly entered Gwalior and began to intrigue with the leaders of the disaffected. The fruits were soon seen. Hearing of the approach of the rebel force, Scindia marched out to attack them on the 30th of May. But when the combat began, half his army threw down their arms and fled. The Maharajah's body-guard of horse alone fought, charging the enemy repeatedly, and only retiring when two-thirds were slain. Then the faithful remnant hurried their chief out of the field. They took the direction of Agra, and falling in with a troop of British horse, Scindia entered Agra a fugitive on the 3rd of June. Tantia Topee entered Gwalior in triumph and proclaimed Nana Sahib Peishwa of the Mahrattas. It was the news of this that brought Sir Hugh Rose from his sick bed and set his weary brigades in motion once more. They marched at once, one from Calpee, the other from Jaloun, to unite at Indoorkee.
A great movement of concentration on Gwalior was in progress. A body of Europeans marched out of Agra. Orders were sent to Brigadier Smith operating in the heart of Scindia's country, to hasten on to Gwalior from Goona. It was needful that a severe blow should be struck, and struck at once, lest Tantia Topee should succeed in raising the whole country south of the Jumna, and in spreading the contagion to the Deccan, where the Nizam's Minister, Salar Jung, another able Hindoo, held down the disaffected with difficulty; therefore the troops marched with rapidity under the scorching sun. Sir Hugh pushed up close to Gwalior, and then waited for Scindia, whose presence with the army gave it a moral weight and, it was hoped, would save the city from plunder. On the 17th Brigadier Smith, issuing from the Pass of Antree, south of the town, found himself in front of the rebel army. It was led by the Ranee of Jhansi, who, it is said, was dressed like a man and who fought like one. Brigadier Smith, after surveying the enemy's position, drove off their cavalry by a charge of the 8th Hussars, who had to ford a ravine full of water before they could get at the enemy. Then the infantry went in and, fighting and marching all day, expelled the enemy from his position and drove him back upon Gwalior. Smith encamped within range of the enemy's guns, and they pounded him at intervals, although the troops were not allowed to light fires. The next day Sir Hugh Rose arrived and the two columns, united, assailed the enemy with such fury, on the 19th, that, after a sharp combat of five hours, they drove him away. Tantia Topee fled to the west pursued by the British cavalry. The Ranee of Jhansi, mortally wounded on the 17th, was carried from the field, and Rose wrote, "the best man upon the side of the enemy was the woman found dead." All night the fort fired guns at intervals; but in the morning, when the troops entered, it was found that this was the work of eleven fanatics, only two of whom knew how to load and fire a gun.
As soon as Gwalior fell, the Agra brigade came up, and Scindia was ceremoniously restored to his throne by Sir Hugh Rose. Thus, within the space of three weeks, the Mahratta prince had been worsted in battle and driven from his capital by men of his own race and religion; and they in turn had been routed from the field and he had been restored by the white men from the Western world. A great danger had been met with energy and overcome. The lesson was not lost on the native princes far and near. It made our hold on the neighbouring Doab more secure, and it relieved the mind of Sir Colin Campbell of any apprehension he might have felt touching an irruption on his flank and rear from the south of the Jumna. On the 28th of June Sir Hugh Rose, having done his work and being really ill, resigned his command and started for Bombay.
The reader will be naturally solicitous to know how Brigadier Smith came to be at Goona and thus in a position to aid Rose in the vital operation of recovering Gwalior. The brigadier's column had come from the west. Lord Elphinstone's first care had been to recover Indore and reassure Holkar. This was effected by the troops Rose had collected at Mhow and Indore and by Stuart's campaign at Malwa. Lord Elphinstone's next care was to assemble troops in Western Rajpootana, in order to recover that country, keep the enemy out of Gujerat and, by a forward movement to the east, defeat the mutineers and rebellious chieftains between the Sinde river and the Chumbul. As reinforcements arrived from England, they were sent into Rajpootana. Camps were formed in the winter of 1857-8, and when Rose moved from Saugor, General Roberts, who commanded in Rajpootana, marched upon Kotah. On the 30th of March, the day he attacked the place, he was joined by 1,500 horsemen, who had marched from Cutch. Having dispersed these rebels, the division under Roberts broke up and engaged in diverse harassing expeditions during the whole of the year. Part of the force (Smith's brigade) marched over the Chumbul into the Gwalior country. When Sir Hugh Rose had captured Jhansi, the rebels, pressed from the west by Roberts, assembled in detached bodies in Rose's rear, and Smith's brigade was occupied in marching and fighting and dispersing the enemy. It was thus that, in June, he was at Goona and was called up to drive Tantia Topee out of Gwalior city.
After that defeat the rebel chief hurried westward, was defeated again, with the loss of his remaining guns, and pursued by Sir Robert Napier, who succeeded Rose in command of the Central India Field Force. But although the weaver-artilleryman attracted towards himself a host of enemies—Napier from Gwalior, Showers from Agra, Roberts from Nusseerabad—he managed to slip through their hands; to raise fresh armies as often as his soldiery were surprised and broken; to steal artillery from native rajahs; to fight and fly, and fly and fight, and to keep all the troops between the Jumna and Nerbudda constantly employed for six months. His great object was to reach the Deccan or Candeish; and to accomplish this he made incredible efforts. But the story of his wanderings and adventures belongs to a later stage in the revolt.
While Campbell had been capturing Lucknow and Bareilly, and Rose had marched and fought from Indore to Gwalior, by way of Calpee, the great force that held down the North-West and made the Punjab a tower of strength had not ceased to exert itself for the weal of the empire. Mr. Montgomery had issued an order in the very midst of our troubles, declaring that the system of caste could no longer be permitted to rule in our service; that soldiers and Government servants should be entertained irrespective of class, caste, or creed, and inviting native Christians to seek our service, promising to appoint those who were properly qualified. This was a great step; not taken before it was needed. Moreover, the Punjab Government determined that all loyal natives who had suffered in consequence of the acts of mutineers should be compensated by contributions levied in the offending districts—thus rewarding the faithful at the expense of the malcontents. Sir John Lawrence in the summer of 1858 was able to organise a plan for relieving himself of the huge army of disarmed Sepoys. He separated the faithful from the faithless. He sent off all the latter to their homes, passing them on in small batches of twenty a day, under escort, until they reached their native States, and then turned them adrift. Only two regiments, those at Mooltan, resisted and they met with terrible punishment. Three regiments and one wing of a fourth were re-armed. Another body, faithful men from several regiments, was formed into a new regiment, to be known in future as the Wuffadar Pultun, or faithful regiment; while the 21st, which had been armed all along, which had resisted every appeal from its fellows, and the Khelat-i-Ghilzies, were all that remained untouched in any way of the 41,000 Bengal Sepoys who in May, 1857, were in the Punjab and the Upper Doab.