Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde

by Archibald Forbes

Sir Colin lost no time in giving loyal effect to the views of the Governor-General by pressing on the preparations for the reduction of Lucknow. An inevitable pause in the active operations now occurred while the siege-train at Agra was being equipped, while reinforcements and Peel's 68-pounders were being brought up from Allahabad to Cawnpore, and while the needful amount of ammunition, provisions, and carriage, and the numerous requirements of the artillery and engineer parks were being concentrated in the same depôt. The soldiers meanwhile were in expectation of an immediate forward movement, and they wondered exceedingly at the incomprehensible delay which their Chief seemed to be maintaining. Keeping his own counsel, the Commander-in-Chief awaited the development of his plans, wholly indifferent to the abuse of the Indian press. Pending the moment for renewed action he took post at Futtehghur, where he could cover from above the concentration of his resources at Cawnpore, and at once dominate the reconquered territory and keep in check the enemy in the regions still unsubdued. Futtehghur was an excellent strategic centre whence troops could promptly be pushed out to points threatened by insurgents from Oude, Rohilcund, or the trans-Jumna territory, while it covered the long-distance transport of the siege-train from Agra to Cawnpore. From Futtehghur movable columns were from time to time sent out to scour the surrounding country and reduce the still insurgent villages. Sir Colin for weeks deceived the Rohilcund mutineers as to his intentions, and for some ten or twelve days they were kept in position on the Ramgunga watching Walpole, whose force they supposed to be the advanced guard of Campbell's army of invasion. When at length, losing patience, some five thousand of them crossed into the Doab some miles above Futtehghur, Hope made matters extremely unpleasant for them. He overwhelmed them with gun-fire, crashed in upon them with cavalry; and although they fought desperately, four of their guns were taken, their camp was captured, and they were pursued hot-foot for several miles.

Before quitting the Doab Sir Colin assigned a brigade under Colonel Seaton to the task of holding several main positions in that territory, to be relieved presently in some degree by a force from the Punjaub which was being organised at Roorkee for the purpose of invading Rohilcund from the north-west. The siege-train was now well forward on its way to Cawnpore; the secret which Sir Colin had rigidly kept for three weeks, was a secret no longer; and on February 1st he left Futtehghur with his cavalry and horse-artillery, and making forced marches reached Cawnpore on the 4th. A few days later he made a short visit to Allahabad for an interview with Lord Canning, who had arrived there. By the middle of February the greater part of the army destined for the operation against Lucknow was in échelon along the road from the Ganges to the Alumbagh, covering the advance of the vast military stores and supplies which were constantly being brought up. Sir Colin anticipated that he should be ready to begin operations about the 18th of February with his own army of ten thousand men. But the Nepaulese force of some nine thousand men with twenty-four guns under Jung Bahadoor, which had been on the frontier of Oude since the beginning of January and had subsequently done a good deal of sharp fighting in the eastern part of that province, was expected to prove an important reinforcement to Sir Colin's army. The gallant Franks was fighting his way from south-eastern Oude with some three thousand men. The twelve thousand additional troops which Sir Colin might look forward to obtain from those sources would be extremely valuable, bringing up his total strength to twenty-two thousand men. But neither body could reach Lucknow at the earliest before the 27th. Sir Colin left the decision to the Governor-General, whether he should proceed at once, which he was quite ready to do holding himself perfectly able to reduce Lucknow with the force now at his hand; or whether he should delay operations until Franks and the Nepaulese should arrive. Lord Canning promptly replied, "I wish," he wrote, "that the delay could have been avoided; but I am sure that we ought to wait for Jung Bahadoor, who would be driven wild to find himself deprived of a share in the work."

After some tentative efforts the Lucknow mutineers on the 21st made a serious attempt on both flanks of Outram's position behind the Alumbagh. Assailed by artillery and cavalry they accepted a defeat after sustaining heavy loss. They came at him again on the 25th, when they fought under the eyes of the Begum and her minister. Between twenty and thirty thousand came into the field. But Outram handled these masses so roughly that they gave way, and their retreat became a headlong rout when British cavalry attacked them on both flanks. Outram's loss was trivial; the enemy suffered heavily.

Towards the end of January the convoy of ladies from Agra had passed safely through Cawnpore on their way down country, and a month later Walpole rejoined the army after having given the Agra convoy escort to Allahabad. The whole siege-train by this time had come up; the engineer park, the commissariat supplies, the countless legions of camp-followers. The dense battalions, the glittering squadrons, the well-horsed batteries had traversed the bridges across the Ganges, and were faring over the sandy plains of Oude, every man's face set towards Lucknow. It was a great convergence. Such a force India had never before seen. Under the Commander-in-Chief were arrayed seventeen battalions of infantry, fifteen of which were British, twenty-eight squadrons of cavalry, including four English regiments, fifty-four light and eighty heavy guns and mortars; while from the south, right across Oude, Franks with three British and six Ghoorka battalions with twenty guns was pressing on strenuously, and from the south-east Jung Bahadoor with nine thousand men and twenty-four guns was marching on the common goal, to join the strange miscellaneous force whose rendezvous was before the rebel defences of the capital of Oude.

On February 27th Sir Colin Campbell established his temporary headquarters at Buntera, where the Second Division had already arrived. His force had now increased to eighteen thousand seven hundred men with eighty heavy guns and mortars and fifty-four field-guns; and in addition he could reckon on Franks' column and eventually on the Nepaulese contingent under Jung Bahadoor, when his total effective would amount to about thirty-one thousand men and one hundred and sixty-four guns. To the command of the artillery was assigned Sir Archdale Wilson of Delhi fame: the brigade of engineers was confided to the able charge of Brigadier Robert Napier; and the cavalry division was placed under Brigadier-General Hope Grant. Of the three infantry divisions, the first was under Major-General Sir James Outram, the second under Brigadier-General Sir E. Lugard, the third under Brigadier-General Walpole. Sir Colin had come to the conclusion that it would be impossible to invest the city, the circumference of which was quite twenty miles, and he determined, therefore, to operate simultaneously upon both sides of the Goomtee. By so doing he would be able to enfilade with his artillery fire the enemy's triple line of works, and thus weaken the resistance to his advance on the line of the canal and the approaches to the Kaiserbagh, which the rebels regarded as their citadel. It was covered by three successive lines of defence, of which the outer conformed to the line of the canal, the second circled round the Mess House and the Motee Mahal, and the inner one was the principal rampart of the Kaiserbagh itself. Those lines were flanked by numerous bastions, and rested at one end on the Goomtee, at the other on the massive buildings of the Huzrut Gunj, all of which were strongly fortified and flanked the street in every direction. The artillery of the defence was believed to consist of about one hundred and thirty guns. Apart from the normal population of Lucknow, which was reckoned about two hundred and eighty thousand, a turbulent and bitterly hostile community, the rebel garrison was estimated to amount to one hundred thousand fighting men, consisting of mutineers of the sepoy army, the Oude force, irregular regiments, and the levies of disaffected chiefs.

On March 2nd the Commander-in-Chief, with Lugard's division, a cavalry division, four heavy guns and three troops of horse-artillery, moved forward to the Dilkoosha by way of the Alumbagh and the fort of Jellalabad, sweeping aside as he marched some trivial opposition. When all the forces had come up, his camp in rear of the Dilkoosha extended to Bibiapore and the Goomtee on the right, to the left as far as the Alumbagh. Franks arrived on the 5th and his column became the Fourth Infantry Division. The position was strongly garnished with heavy guns on the edge of the Dilkoosha plateau to keep down the fire from the canal front and the Martinière, and with others down on the river side on the outer flank of the Dilkoosha park to enfilade the Martinière and command the left bank of the Goomtee.

For the important duty of operating on the left bank the Chief had selected Sir James Outram, who for the last three months had been gallantly holding the Alumbagh against overwhelming odds. While he was receiving his instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, two cask-bridges were being thrown across the Goomtee near Bibiapore. As by a mistake they were constructed within range of the fire from the Martinière, Outram was ordered to cross with his division before dawn of the 6th. Hope Grant, who was Outram's second in command and had charge of the passage of the river, records that, "Sir Colin, being anxious to get the division across before the enemy could discover our position and open upon us, rode down to the river side, and pitched into everybody most handsomely, I catching the principal share. But this," he frankly says, "had a good effect and hastened the passage materially—everything was got over in safety just as daylight appeared." Sir Colin understood the art of "pitching in" better than most people; he did not frequently resort to it, but the impression it created was immediate and stirring.

Outram took out a very fine force consisting of the Third Infantry Division, the Bays, and the Ninth Lancers with a body of Punjaub horse, five field-batteries, and an engineer detachment. When about to camp across the Fyzabad road he was threatened by a body of rebels, who were speedily driven back into Lucknow by the field-guns and artillery. In this skirmish fell a gallant officer, Major Percy Smith of the Bays. During the night of the 8th, under instructions from headquarters, Outram's people were engaged in preparing batteries for twenty-two heavy guns which Sir Colin had sent across for the purpose of bombarding the Chukur Kotee, the key of the enemy's position on the left bank. The batteries opened at daybreak of the 9th and in a few hours Outram's ardent infantry had carried the Chukur Kotee, whereby the enemy's outer line of entrenchments on the right bank was turned and taken in reverse, and had reached and occupied the enclosed position of the Badshahbagh. Outram promptly moved to the village of Jugrowlee on his extreme left a heavy battery whose fire enfiladed the enemy's outer line on the canal.

Meanwhile the Commander-in-Chief was perfecting his dispositions. From noon until 2 P.M. of the same day Peel's bluejackets were pouring shot, shell, and shrapnel into the Martinière, whose fire was replied to occasionally by a battery at the corner of that building, and by a heavy but wild musketry-fire a bullet from which wounded in the thigh the gallant Peel, who later, to the grief of the whole army, died of smallpox when being carried down to Calcutta on his way home. At two o'clock the order came for Lugard's division to advance, and the Forty-Second and Ninety-Third swept down the slope abreast, clearing off the enemy from the earthworks, trenches and rifle-pits in front of the Martinière. The rebels abandoned the place in panic and fell back hurriedly upon their first line of works whence they opened a sharp fire. Outram's artillery at Jugrowlee had cleared the rebels from their position at the junction of the canal with the Goomtee, but this circumstance had not been noticed by Lugard's people. Thereupon Lieutenant Butler of the First Bengal Fusiliers swam the Goomtee from the left bank, mounted the parapet of the abandoned work, and under a heavy fire signalled to the Highlanders, who along with Wilde's Sikhs speedily relieved the daring Fusilier, occupied the position, and swept along the line of rebel defences till they reached the vicinity of Banks' house where they remained for the night. Butler, having done his gallant part, swam back to his own side, and in course of time worthily received the Victoria Cross. The outer line of the rebel defences having been occupied in force by his troops, the first instalment of Sir Colin's plan had been successfully accomplished; and this, too, with little loss, owing to the effect of Outram's enfilading fire from the left bank.