Lord Clyde marched due north on Baraitch, where he arrived on the 17th. As he approached, the Nana Sahib and the Begum of Oude, who had been holding Baraitch, fell back in the direction of the Nepaul frontier. The end was now near at hand, and symptoms of disruption among the insurgents were manifesting themselves, the vakeels of the Rajahs and Talukdars who were still "out" coming in to ask for terms. The Begum herself sent a representative to inquire what she might expect. An advance was made on the 23rd towards Nanparah, and on the 26th, hearing that the rebels were in force at Burgidiah, a march beyond Nanparah, the Commander-in-Chief moved on that place. Late in the afternoon the rebel pickets fell back, disclosing the main body drawn up in advance of a village opposite the left front of the British force. After a brief reconnaissance Lord Clyde disposed his troops for action, and himself galloped to the front with the guns and cavalry of the advance guard. Coming under the enemy's fire he rapidly took ground to his right, and when he had gained their extreme left he again advanced and brought his guns into action. The effect of the evolution was instantaneous; the enemy's flank was turned and they hurried in disorder towards Burgidiah and Churdah, losing all their guns in the flight. Here Lord Clyde, while guiding the pursuit, met with a serious accident. His horse fell and he was thrown violently to the ground. Mackinnon, his surgeon, found him in great pain with blood flowing down his cheek. One of his shoulders was put out and a rib broken. Much shaken though he was, the gallant old Chief, as soon as the dislocation was reduced, promptly rose and walked towards the front as if he had been unhurt.
An incident, characteristic of Lord Clyde, occurred this evening. Mr. Russell, himself an eye-witness of it, has thus vividly portrayed the scene:—[10] "On returning to camp it was quite dark; not a tent was pitched; the baggage was coming up in darkness and in storms of angry voices. As the night was cold, the men made blazing fires of the straw and grass of the houses of the neighbouring hamlet in which Nana Sahib's followers had so long been quartered. At one of those fires, surrounded by Beloochees, Lord Clyde sat with his arm in a sling on a charpoy which had been brought out to feed the flames. Once, as he rose to give some order for the disposition of the troops, a tired Beloochee flung himself full length on the crazy bedstead, and was jerked off in a moment by one of his comrades with the exclamation—'Don't you see, you fool, that you are on the Lord Sahib's charpoy?' Lord Clyde interposed—'Let him lie there; don't interfere with his rest,' and himself took his seat on a billet of wood."
Next day the force marched onward to the fort of Mejiddiah, the Commander-in-Chief carried on an elephant at the head of the column. The place was found to be very strong, full of guns and crowded with men. Some casualties occurred from the enemy's fire, which was obstinate; but shell after shell burst inside the fort and the round-shot tore great masses of earth off the parapets. Detachments of infantry closed in upon it and poured through the embrasures a constant rain of bullets, which, with the fire from the big guns, ultimately crushed down an exceptionally stubborn resistance. The 28th was spent in the demolition of the fort, and next day Lord Clyde marched back to Nanparah, in the belief that there he would be in a more central and advantageous position from which to watch the enemy's movements. On the afternoon of the 30th intelligence came in that Nana Sahib, Beni Mahdo, and other outlaw leaders had gathered in force near Bankee, about twenty miles north of Nanparah. The camp was left standing and orders issued for the troops to parade without bugle sound at 8 P.M. The infantry were carried on the elephants of the force, on one of which Lord Clyde accompanied the column. The expedition consisted of the Seventh Hussars, part of the Carabineers, First Punjaub Cavalry, a troop of Horse Artillery, a battalion of the Rifle Brigade, a detachment of the Twentieth and a wing of the Belooch battalion. After a march of fifteen miles in pitch darkness a halt was made until dawn of the 31st, when the column continued its advance and presently the enemy's outposts became visible with the main body in rear. The hostile line was in position on the edge of the forest between two roads, one leading toward the Raptee, the other to the pass entering the Soonar valley in Nepaul. At the first onslaught the rebels turned and fled. Part of them hurried towards a ford on the Raptee. A squadron of the Seventh Hussars followed hard upon the flying troopers; the other three squadrons, ordered to support it, swept along the bank under the gauntlet of the artillery fire from the other side of the river. The panic-stricken rebel horsemen precipitated themselves into the waters of the Raptee. At the sight the pursuing hussars dashed after them, and cut them down as they struggled in the whirling stream. Major Horne and two hussars were drowned. Captain Stisted, who commanded the leading squadron, was carried away by the current, but was saved by his comrade Major Fraser,[11] who received the Victoria Cross for his opportune gallantry. The rebels thus driven and dispersed, the camp was pitched at Bankee. On information that the fugitives were gathered again in the Soonar valley within Nepaulese territory, Lord Clyde on the 5th of January, 1859, marched up from Bankee to Sidinhia Ghat, the scene of the action of December 31st, where an encampment was taken up on a site favourable for watching the pass leading into Nepaul, and there a column was left on duty under the command of Brigadier Horsford. Hope Grant, while at Bulrampore, had heard that the Nana's brother Bala Rao had taken possession of the fort of Toolseepore with a considerable body of followers, and was aiming at entering the Goruckpore district. Grant interfered materially with that project by hitting on Bala Rao's force at Kumdahkote about thirteen miles north-east of Toolseepore. He attacked them on January 4th, drove them into the neighbouring hills, and captured fifteen guns. Like his brother the Nana, Bala Rao sought refuge in Nepaul.
Lord Clyde had now fairly accomplished the task which he had undertaken. By means of the wide-sweeping movement begun in October, the three great provinces of Oude, Behar, and Goruckpore, which "till that time had been in a state of insurrection, were now absolutely cleared of even the semblance of rebellion." Although from the nature of the work there had been no great battles, the number of small affairs had been very considerable. In Oude alone one hundred and eighty thousand armed men, of whom at least thirty-five thousand were sepoys of the old native army, had succumbed to the British power. About one hundred and fifty guns had been captured in fight; many more guns and three hundred and fifty thousand arms of various descriptions had been collected; and more than three hundred forts had been destroyed. The disarmament of the country could at length be taken systematically in hand, and on its completion by the civil authorities some months later, Lord Clyde was able to report that "seven hundred additional guns had been recovered from the various forts, more than eleven hundred of which had been razed to the ground." Owing to the free employment of heavy ordnance and vertical fire, the casualties which had occurred during the campaign since Lord Clyde took the field in the beginning of November, 1858, did not exceed eighteen killed and eighty-four wounded,—a loss infinitesimal in proportion to the importance of the results.
On January 8th Lord Clyde began his return march to Lucknow. At Baraitch on the way down he met by appointment his trusted lieutenant Sir Hope Grant, whom he placed in command of all the forces in Oude and who for the present remained to watch matters on the frontier. Since his accident, until he left the front, the hardy old soldier had directed the military operations from the back of an elephant; but he now exchanged into a dooly in which more easy conveyance he was carried to Lucknow, where he arrived on January 17th.
[CHAPTER X]
FROM SIMLA TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY
The Mutiny had come to an end, although there was still a ground-swell of disturbance on the Oude frontier opposite Nepaul, in Bundelcund, and in some other districts of Central India. It was not until the end of May, 1859, that Lord Clyde could confidently state that the last embers of rebellion had been extinguished, and that the provinces of India which during the preceding two years had been the scene of so much lawlessness, bloodshed, and disorder, were now subsiding into a state of profound tranquillity.
The oldest soldier on active service of all the army in India, so strong was Lord Clyde's constitution that from the day he first took the field until the accident which befell him on the Nepaul frontier a few days before the termination of the final campaign, he had never suffered a day's illness. His vigour and energy had been extraordinary; the heat which prostrated so many of his followers was borne lightly by the tough and seasoned veteran, who despised all luxury, lived in a small tent, was content with the rations of the soldiers, and cheerfully bivouacked with them under the stars. But now that the stress of campaigning was over, and when he had reached Lucknow from the Nepaul frontier, the irritation of the broken rib, which was among the injuries he received in the accident that befell him before Burgidiah, resulted in a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs. For some days he was very ill, and his surgeon Mackinnon found him the reverse of a docile patient, for he hated medicine and could scarce be induced to remain quietly in bed. He gradually, however, recovered; and then, urged by Lord Canning to betake himself for rest to the hills, he left Lucknow with the headquarters on March 1st and proceeded by way of Agra and Delhi to Simla. At Delhi he spent several days investigating with the keenest interest the scenes of the memorable struggle there, and everything connected with the operations before that fortress. At Umbala he reviewed the troops quartered in that station, and reached Simla in the last week of April. His great work accomplished, he had a right to believe that there had now come an end to the cares which the rebellion entailed on him. In the bracing atmosphere of the hills he looked forward to a perfect restoration to health, and to the early realisation of his cherished hope of spending his last years with friends at home. But scarcely had he settled himself at Simla when tidings reached him of a grave danger confronting the Government of India. When in November, 1858, the assumption of the Government of India by the Crown was announced, some of the soldiers of the Company's European troops had set up an alternative claim for a free discharge or a bounty on re-enlistment into the service of the Crown. The law-officers of the Crown decided that the claim was inadmissible; and therefore a not unnatural discontent was engendered which finally culminated in the regrettable disturbance familiarly known as the "White Mutiny." It was well for the Government that in Lord Clyde there was available to meet the crisis a man who understood and sympathised with the nature and prejudices of the soldier. An actual collision was imminent, and as Lord Clyde informed the Viceroy, "no one could tell what would be the effect of a collision on the remainder of the local army, and on the native mind throughout India." A proclamation of a temporising character issued to the local European troops at Meerut produced a good effect, as establishing what the Commander-in-Chief termed the "tranquillity of expectation" in place of open discontent. But it was manifest, from the reports received from the stations where troops of the late Company's European force were serving, that the feeling of dissatisfaction was general; and the Government, recognising how wide was the agitation, became convinced of the necessity of granting a discharge to every man who desired it. With a strange inconsistency the Indian Government, notwithstanding that the law-officers of the Crown had decided that the alternative claims of the soldiers were alike inadmissible, granted them their discharges, but obstinately refused to give a bounty on re-enlistment, a concession which nine out of ten men would have accepted contentedly. The outcome was a study in the art of "how not to do it." The Company's European troops took their discharges and came home almost in a body,—from the Bengal Presidency alone came seven thousand men—most of whom had been fairly acclimatised to the Indian climate. The recruiting sergeants in Charles Street re-enlisted them for the Queen's service as they landed or even when the transports were coming up the Thames; and the great majority of the men who had been John Company's soldiers were back in India as soldiers of the Queen among the first reliefs. The operation, involving as it did the cost of the double voyage and the enlistment money at home, was not a brilliant sample of economy. The simpler method would have been to give the men the two guineas per head bounty, which was all they asked to transform them from Company's into Queen's soldiers. The disaffection of the local European troops made a great impression on Lord Clyde, and he expressed himself to the Viceroy on the subject in the following terms: "I am irresistibly led to the conclusion that henceforth it will be dangerous to the State to maintain in India a local European army. I believe, as a consequence of this recent experience, that it will be unsafe to have any European forces which do not undergo the regular process of relief, and that this consideration must be held paramount to all others. We cannot afford to attend to any other considerations than those of discipline and loyalty, which may be constantly renovated by the periodical return to England of all the regiments in every branch of the service."