[CHAPTER V]
THE INDIAN MUTINY—ORGANISATION—RELIEF OF LUCKNOW—DEFEAT OF GWALIOR CONTINGENT
In the beginning of 1857 the clouds that presaged the awful storm of mutiny which Sir Charles Napier had foretold and temporarily averted seven years earlier, were ominously gathering over the Bengal Presidency. On the 19th of February the first flash of actual outbreak burst forth at Berhampore. The revolt spread to Barrackpore, and in the course of a few weeks it became apparent that the spirit of insubordination was gradually but surely ripening throughout the Bengal army. In the middle of May the crisis which had been threatening for three months came to a head at Meerut. The revolt of the native troops at that great station was consummated in rapine and slaughter. Delhi, with its vast munitions of war unprotected save by a handful of devoted European soldiers, fell into the hands of the insurgents. The pensioned King of Delhi was drawn from his senile obscurity and proclaimed Emperor of India, and the great city became the capital of a rival power and the centre of attraction to the revolted army. The native regiments in the stations of the North-West Provinces broke out successively into revolt and hastened tumultuously to Delhi, which soon contained within its walls a turbulent mass of many thousand mutinous soldiers. Within a month after the outbreak at Meerut British authority had become almost extinct throughout the North-West Provinces. From Meerut to Allahabad, among a population of some thirty millions and throughout an area of many hundred miles, there remained no vestige of British occupation, save where at Agra the British residents were waiting anxiously for the signal to withdraw from their bungalows into the shelter of Akbar's fort, and the hapless people closely beleaguered in Wheeler's miserable entrenchment at Cawnpore. Across the Ganges throughout Oude, British men, women, and children were being mercilessly slaughtered by revolted sepoys; and Henry Lawrence, himself in the midst of troops scarcely caring to cloak their mutinous intentions, had soon sadly to realise that all Oude was gone except the Lucknow Residency, where he was to die after having exhausted himself in successful exertions to make that position defensible by the brave and steadfast men who survived him.
While on the march from Umballa towards Delhi the Commander-in-Chief in India, General the Hon. George Anson, died of cholera at Kurnal on May 27th. Tidings of this misfortune did not reach the War Office until July 11th. On that same afternoon Sir Colin Campbell was sent for by Lord Panmure, who made him the offer of the high command rendered vacant by Anson's decease. Campbell promptly accepted the offer and expressed his readiness to start that same evening if necessary. He stipulated successfully that his friend Colonel Mansfield, then Consul-General at Warsaw (afterwards Lord Sandhurst), should be offered the appointment of chief of staff with the rank of major-general. This settled, Campbell had an interview with the Duke of Cambridge, then as now Commander-in-Chief, who approved of the selection of Major Alison[3] as military secretary, and of Sir David Baird and Lieutenant Alison as aides-de-camp.
It had been arranged at Sir Colin's interview with Lord Panmure that he should start next morning. He was ready and his modest kit complete; but sundry matters intervened delaying his departure for a few hours. The Queen, for one thing, had desired that he should wait on her. The Duke of Cambridge brought him to Buckingham Palace; and, so Sir Colin wrote in his journal, "Her Majesty's expressions of approval of my readiness to proceed at once were pleasant to receive from a Sovereign so good and so justly loved." He left London by the continental night train, full of a justifiable elation. "Never," he wrote, "did a man proceed on a mission of duty with a lighter heart and a feeling of greater humility, yet with a juster sense of the compliment that had been paid to a mere soldier of fortune like myself in being named to the highest command in the gift of the Crown." Hurrying through Paris he found time to breakfast with General Vinoy his old Crimean friend, and reaching Marseilles on the morning of the 14th he immediately embarked for India on a vessel which was in readiness with its steam up. During the voyage he prepared a strategic scheme, the essence of which was a great concentric advance upon the Central Indian States, to be undertaken by the whole disposable military forces of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, that would effectually engage the whole rebel strength of those turbulent territories, and so in some degree divert the severe pressure of the Gwalior Contingent on the left flank of the long and precarious main line of communication. This object obtained, Bengal and the Punjaub once more united by the reconquest of the intervening territory, and the left flank and rear of the reconquered base secured by the reduction of Central India, the most arduous work of the war could be safely undertaken; the vast, populous, and bitterly hostile province of Oude might then be subdued, with the result of securing non-molestation on the right flank of the region through which the principal line of communication must pass. The operation of this grand strategic scheme was weakened and retarded by various causes; but the sound wisdom of Campbell's prescient conception was ultimately in great measure vindicated.
The new Commander-in-Chief landed at Calcutta on the 13th of August and became Lord Canning's guest at Government House. The situation which confronted him was gloomy almost to utter hopelessness. It was true, indeed, that John Lawrence was holding the Punjaub in his strong hand, and was pressing forward all his available reinforcements to strengthen the British force contending against overwhelming odds before the walls of Delhi. But meanwhile that force was little over four thousand strong, and it seemed more than doubtful whether it could hold its ground until reinforcements should reach it. The garrison at Agra was isolated and cut off from all communication. That of Lucknow, hemmed within the feebly-defensive position of the Residency and its environs by many thousands of fierce and relentless enemies, encumbered also with a great company of helpless women and children, had numbers wholly inadequate to man the defences and was maintaining an almost hopeless resistance against overwhelming odds. Havelock, at the head of less than two thousand brave men, had fought his way from Allahabad to Cawnpore, too late to save the lives of the hapless women and children who had been reserved from the massacre of the men of Wheeler's command only to endure a crueller fate. His gallant and persistent efforts to relieve Lucknow had failed and he had been obliged to fall back to Cawnpore, where with an attenuated force he was maintaining himself precariously in the face of the threatening attitude of the revolted Gwalior Contingent on the further bank of the Jumna.
Through the gloom there was one gleam of sunshine. The fortress of Allahabad, with its magazines of military stores, remained in British possession. At the point where the Ganges and the Jumna blend their waters, distant by land five hundred miles from Calcutta, it was a position of the highest strategical importance, forming as it did an advanced base for operations in the regions beyond having for their object the relief of beleaguered places and the restoration of communications with Delhi and the Punjaub. From Calcutta to Allahabad there were two available routes; by the Ganges a distance of eight hundred miles, to accomplish which by steamer required from twenty to thirty days; by the land route of five hundred miles, one hundred and twenty of which was by railway and three hundred and eighty by the Grand Trunk Road. The troops as they landed were despatched up country in detachments by one or other of those routes. The common objective for the time was Allahabad, where Sir James Outram, who had returned from the command of the Persian expedition and had left Calcutta on the 6th of August to assume the command of the combined Cawnpore and Dinapore divisions along with the civil appointment of Chief Commissioner in Oude, was to collect the detachments of reinforcements as they arrived, preparatory to moving upward to Cawnpore there to join Havelock and advance with him to attempt the relief of the beleaguered garrison in the Residency of Lucknow.
But the troops, which as soon as possible after landing at Calcutta should have been pushing straight up country to Allahabad either by land or by water, suffered unavoidable detentions by the way. So disturbed was the country that posts had to be maintained to keep the routes open, and their occupation absorbed a certain proportion of the scanty European force. The mutinies of native troops at Dinapore and Bhagulpore caused the temporary detention by the local authorities of important reinforcements; and it was not until the first week of September that Outram was able to collect his scattered detachments at Allahabad. After a sharp and successful fight on the way he reached Cawnpore on September 15th; bringing reinforcements which raised to a strength of about three thousand men the force of which he chivalrously waived the command in favour of Havelock. Ten days later was accomplished what is commonly though erroneously styled the First Relief of Lucknow,—not a "relief" in any sense of the term, but simply a great augmentation to the defensive strength of the garrison which had been holding the weak position of the Residency with a heroism so staunch.
Sir Colin found Calcutta all but entirely bare of material for a campaign; nothing was in readiness for the equipment of the troops fast converging on his base on the Hooghly. Means of transport there were scarcely any; horses for cavalry or artillery there were none; ammunition for the Enfield rifles was deficient; flour even was running out; guns, gun-carriages, and harness for the field-batteries were either unfit for active service or did not exist. Prompt and active were the exertions made by the energetic Chief and his subordinates to cope with needs so pressing. Horses were purchased no matter at what cost; ammunition was gathered in far and wide; flour was commissioned from the Cape; field-guns were cast at the Cossipore foundry; gun-carriages and harness were made up with all possible haste. The Commissariat and Ordnance departments were stirred from their lethargy and stimulated to an activity previously undreamed of; and the whole military machine was set throbbing at high pressure. As the falling of the Ganges gradually made the river route precarious, great exertions were made to quicken and extend the means of transport by the Grand Trunk Road, for which purpose the Bullock Train, as it was called, was established. Relays of soldiers travelled up night after night in bullock-waggons, halting during the heat of the day at prepared resting-places. Ultimately this system was so perfected that two hundred men were daily forwarded from the end of the railway at Raneegunge; and they reached Allahabad after about a fortnight's travel, perfectly fresh and fit for immediate service.
In the midst of the pressure of his preparations Sir Colin found time to write with soldierly appreciation and cordiality to the principal officers now under his command. His first message to Outram concluded with the words, "It is an exceeding satisfaction to me to have your assistance, and to find you in your present position." To Havelock he wrote: "The sustained energy, promptitude, and vigorous action by which your whole proceedings have been marked during the late difficult operations deserve the highest praise. I beg you to express to the officers and men under your command the pride and satisfaction I have experienced in reading your reports of the intrepid valour they have displayed upon every occasion they have encountered the vastly superior numbers of the enemy, and how nobly they have maintained the qualities for which British soldiers have ever been distinguished—high courage and endurance." To Archdale Wilson, commanding the force before Delhi, he sent on August 23rd some words of generous encouragement, the first communication which had reached that officer from any military authority for many weeks: "I must delay no longer to congratulate you on the manner in which the force under your command has conducted itself and upheld the honour of our arms. You may count on my support and help in every mode in which it may be possible for me to afford them." And when on September 26th the happy news reached him that Delhi, the head and heart of the rebellion as it was then considered to have been, was once more in the occupation of a British garrison, the Chief promptly telegraphed to Wilson, "Accept my hearty congratulations on your brilliant success."