Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde

by Archibald Forbes

[CHAPTER VI]
THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW

Sir Colin Campbell had effected the relief of the Residency of Lucknow and the withdrawal of its garrison, and he was now free to devote himself to the strategic prosecution of the main campaign. Some delay had to be endured pending the return of the carriage which had conveyed the great convoy from Lucknow to the advanced base at Allahabad; but the interval enabled him to concert the measures necessary for the restoration of British authority in the Gangetic Doab and the opening of communications with Agra and Delhi. Greathed's column on its descent from Delhi had already traversed this region through fire and blood; but the wave of rebellion had closed in upon its rear and obliterated every trace of its hurried progress. Campbell had now not merely to traverse but to subdue and occupy; and this was to be accomplished only by the methodised sweep through the length and breadth of the Doab of columns restoring, as they moved, the British authority, and expelling the numerous bands of mutineers. Sir Colin with a wise perception decided on the fort of Futtehghur as the objective point on which the columns to be employed should converge. For various reasons the possession of this strong place, situated as it was on the Ganges about midway between Allahabad and Delhi, was of great strategical importance. It was close to the town of Furrukhabad, the Nawaub of which was a bitter rebel; and it covered the floating bridge on the Ganges at a point where the states of Oude and Rohilcund met, from which hostile territories the enemy were as yet free to enter the Doab and intercept the communication by the Grand Trunk Road with Agra, Delhi, and the Punjaub. His occupation of Futtehghur, on the other hand, would carry with it the command of the fourth side of the Doab; while Agra, Allahabad, and Delhi, whose respective positions dominated the other three, were already in British possession.

Sir Colin fully recognised the strong strategic temptation, before advancing up the Doab, to root out from Calpee the Gwalior Contingent which he had just defeated before Lucknow, and so secure his flank and communications. But he also realised that the Contingent had been so cowed and weakened by its recent overthrow that many weeks must elapse before it could rally sufficiently to venture on any serious offensive operation. The brigade left at Lucknow under the command of Inglis, Sir Colin judged amply sufficient to prevent the interruption of his rearward communications; and it was with no apprehensions on that score that he proceeded to carry out the details of his project for the subjugation of the Doab by a concentric movement on Futtehghur. Before the close of November Colonel Seaton had already left Delhi in command of a column of all arms about nineteen hundred strong, in charge of a vast convoy covering some seventeen miles of road, and comprising carts, camels and elephants laden with tents, stores and ammunition for the headquarter column. Marching down the Trunk Road and sweeping the upper Doab, Seaton was the victor in two successive sharp combats with insurgent bodies, and having reached Bewar on December 31st he remained there until January 3rd, when he was joined by Brigadier Walpole. From that point the united force under Walpole was to move straight on Futtehghur, driving before it the rebel bands from the Delhi, Agra, and Etawah sections of the Doab.

Of the two columns marching up country, one commanded by Walpole the other by Sir Colin himself, the former had the greater distance to travel and was therefore the earlier to move out. On December 16th Walpole quitted Cawnpore with two thousand men consisting of two battalions of Rifles and a strong force of cavalry and artillery. Making a semicircular sweep to the left through the lower Doab in the direction of Calpee, a movement in the nature of a threatening demonstration against the Gwalior Contingent, he swung round to his right by Akbarpore and marched up the left bank of the Jumna to Etawah, whence he struck across to Mynpooree and, as has been said, joined Seaton at Bewar. On December 24th Sir Colin at the head of the main army some five thousand strong set out from Cawnpore, moving by easy marches up the Grand Trunk Road and clearing the right bank of the Ganges as he advanced. Thus three columns, from the north-west, from the south, and from the south-east, were simultaneously moving to converge on Futtehghur, driving before them the malcontents of the Doab with intent to push them across the Ganges into Oude and Rohilcund.

No matter how careful may be the pre-arrangements for precision in the execution of a combined operation when the distances are wide, as often as not there interposes some complication which detracts from the fulfilment of the combination. Sir Colin had anticipated a simultaneous concentric advance on Futtehghur, but events forestalled this operation. On the 1st of January 1858 Brigadier Hope with two infantry regiments and some cavalry and artillery reached the point, about fifteen miles from Futtehghur, where the road crossed the Kala Nuddee stream by a fine suspension bridge, just in time to prevent its total destruction by the enemy who had torn up a great part of the planking. The engineers and sailors had already repaired the structure when in the early morning of the 2nd several rebel battalions of the Nawaub's force under cover of a thick fog came down to dispute the passage of the river. When the fog lifted the enemy were seen to have occupied in great force the village of Khoodagunj, whence they opened a vigorous musketry-fire covered by several heavy guns, one of which, a 24-pounder, had been placed in the toll-house commanding the bridge. Sir Colin had come up and promptly made his dispositions to meet the enemy's rapidly developing attack. He sent back the order for the main body to hurry up; and meanwhile he pushed the Fifty-Third across the bridge to reinforce the pickets, with strict orders not to advance but to remain on the defensive so as to allow time for the cavalry, which had been sent across five miles up stream, to get behind the enemy and cut off his retreat to Futtehghur. One wing of the Ninety-Third was in reserve behind the bridge; the other with some horse-artillery guns was detached to hold a ford three miles down stream for the purpose of securing the right flank.

Peel sent an eight-inch shell through the window of the toll-house which burst under the enemy's big gun in that building, upsetting it and killing or disabling most of the rebel gunners. Campbell's main body came up, and under cover of a heavy artillery fire which soon silenced the hostile guns, the passage of the river was accomplished. The Fifty-Third regiment had been lying for hours under the bank of a road which afforded inadequate cover, and had lost a good many men. It was comprised chiefly of Irishmen,—fine stalwart fellows and ever keen for fighting, but somewhat difficult to keep in hand when their blood was up. When the main body began to cross, the Fifty-Third conceived the idea that they were to be relieved; and this suspicion, coupled with glimpses of the enemy attempting to withdraw some of their guns, overmastered their sense of discipline. All of a sudden, and in spite of the attempts to restrain them, they made a dash with loud cheers and charged and captured several of the rebel guns. Sir Colin had intended to make a waiting fight of it, to give plenty of time for the cavalry turning movement; when the hot-headed Irishmen interfered with this project he galloped up to the regiment in high wrath and objurgated it in terms of extreme potency. But each volley of his invective was drowned by repeated shouts of "Three cheers for the Commander-in-Chief, boys!" until, finding that the men were determined not to give him a hearing, the sternness of the commander gradually relaxed and the veteran turned away with a laugh. He might have made his voice heard over the cheery clamour of the Irishmen, but that a few minutes before he had been hit in the stomach by a spent bullet, happily with merely the momentary inconvenience of loss of breath.

The village of Khoodagunj when attacked by the Ninety-Third and Fifty-Third was carried with little opposition, the enemy abandoning their guns which had been posted in and about the place and retiring with the remainder of their artillery in good order along the road to Futtehghur. But they had yet to experience the fierce mercies of Hope Grant and his horsemen. Making a detour to the left, that fine cavalry leader rode parallel with the rebels' line of retreat, screened from their sight by groves and tall crops. Then, wheeling suddenly to his right, he crashed in on the flank of the insurgent force moving on a narrow front along the high road. Taken utterly by surprise, the mutineers fled panic-stricken before this terrible onslaught. Hope Grant's cavalry, committing ruthless havoc with lance and sabre, maintained the pursuit for miles, capturing guns, ammunition waggons and material of all descriptions; and so demoralised was the foe that he never halted in his camp at Futtehghur, but rushed across the floating bridge into Rohilcund. The return of Grant's troopers to camp in the evening was described by Alison's vivid pen as "a stirring scene of war." "The Ninth Lancers came first, with three standards they had taken waving at their head; the wild-looking Sikh cavalry rode in their rear. As they passed Sir Colin, he took off his hat to them and said some words of soldierly praise. The Lancers waved their lances in the air and cheered; the Sikhs took up the cry, shaking their sabres over their heads; the men carrying the standards spread them to the wind. The Highland Brigade encamped close by, ran down and cheered the victorious cavalry, waving their bonnets in the air. It was a beautiful sight, and recalled the old days of chivalry. When Sir Colin rode back to camp through the tents of the Highland Brigade, the cheering and enthusiasm of the men exceeded anything I had ever seen."

Hitherto Sir Colin Campbell had been carrying on the plan of campaign which he had formulated without interference on the part of the Governor-General. If he had continued to have a free hand, no doubt he would have followed up the clearance of the Doab by the immediate invasion of Rohilcund and the destruction of the rebel power at the important centre of Bareilly. Those objects he would have had ample time to accomplish before the setting in of the hot season. At its approach he would have distributed his force in quarters throughout the recovered provinces, and while restraining the Oude insurgents within the borders of their own territory, he would have employed the summer in the restoration of our authority in our old provinces. With the advent of the autumn cool weather he would have concerted a great concentric movement on Lucknow, driving the Oude rebels from the circumference of that territory into the heart of it, there to be hemmed in and finally crushed. His scheme was based alike on strict military and hygienic principles, avoiding at once a harassing guerilla warfare and the depletion of his invaluable European army in a hot weather campaign. The project thus outlined furnishes in itself the fullest testimony to the scope and accuracy of Sir Colin Campbell's strategic coup d'œil.

But he was now no longer free to conduct military operations in accordance with his soldierly sense of the fitness of things. Political considerations intervened, and Lord Canning was strongly in favour of proceeding to the reduction of Lucknow and the subjugation of Oude in advance of any other enterprise. Sir Colin's views, on the other hand, were in favour of the course briefly summarised in the preceding paragraph; but he fully realised that the decision of the Government was paramount as regarded the future course of the campaign. A long correspondence ensued on the subject between Lord Canning and Sir Colin, the terms of which illustrate the cordial relations existing between the head of the Government and his military subordinate. Some short extracts from this correspondence will serve to indicate its character. Lord Canning took the initiative. In his letter of December 20th, 1857, he writes: "So long as Oude is not dealt with, there will be no real quiet on this side of India. Every sepoy who has not already mutinied will have a standing temptation to do so, and every native chief will grow to think less and less of our power.... I am therefore strongly in favour of taking Oude in hand after Futtehghur, Mynpooree, etc., and when the Great Trunk Road communication shall have been made safe." Sir Colin forwarded to his lordship a memorandum in which it was pointed out that twenty thousand men were necessary for the reduction of Lucknow, and thirty thousand for the complete subjugation of the Oude province. "It is," in the words of the memorandum, "for the Government to decide whether it be possible, with regard to the circumstances of the Presidency, to effect the necessary concentration of troops for this purpose." It was further pointed out that, "If through exposure during the hot weather of 1858, the strength of the British forces in India be seriously reduced—viz. by one-third, and less than that number could not be reckoned on were the campaign to be prolonged throughout the year—it will not be in the power of the Government at home to replace them." In his reply to Sir Colin's memorandum Lord Canning was willing to limit his demand to the capture and holding of Lucknow, without attempting more for the present. "Paradoxical as it may appear," wrote his lordship, "I think it of more importance to establish our power in the centre and capital of Oude, which has scarcely been two years in our hands, than to recover our older possessions. Every eye is now upon Lucknow, as it lately was upon Delhi. I grant that, as with Delhi so with Lucknow, we may find ourselves disappointed of a very wide-spread and immediate effect from its capture. Still I hold that the active mischief which will result from leaving it untaken will be incalculable and most dangerous—just as a retirement from Delhi would have been, and scarcely less in degree." Sir Colin replied temperately but firmly, maintaining his standpoint so far as true military principles were concerned. "After much thought," he wrote, "it appears to me advisable to follow up the movement now made by this force by an advance into and occupation of Rohilcund, to root out the leaders of the large gatherings of insurgents which we know to exist there, and to establish authority as is now being effectually done in the Doab. It seems to me that if we halt in this course to divert the only force at our command to another object, we run no slight risk of seeing the results of our late labours wasted, and of an autumn, perhaps a summer, campaign on the present ground to rescue the garrisons left in Futtehghur and Mynpooree. I come therefore to the conclusion that Oude and Lucknow ought to wait till the autumn of 1858." The Governor-General naturally had the last word, and his decision was for the earlier operations against Lucknow. "I am obliged," he wrote, "to say that I hold those operations should be directed against Lucknow at no long interval. I believe it to be impossible to foresee the consequences of leaving that city unsubdued." The tone of the correspondence, though expressing divergent convictions, may be held up as a pattern of the temper in which the interchange of opinions between the civil and military chiefs of a great Government should be carried on.