CHAPTER XXVIII.
MILITARY OPERATIONS IN APRIL.
The British officers and soldiers in India looked forward, not without anxiety, to a hot-weather campaign in the summer of 1858. Much disappointment was felt, too, in England, when necessity for such a campaign became manifest. Persons in all ranks had fondly hoped that, when Sir Colin Campbell had spent two or three months in preparing for the siege of Lucknow, he would be enabled so to invest that city as to render the escape of the mutineers impossible; and that in conquering it, the heart of the rebellion would be crushed out. The result did not answer to this expectation. Lucknow was conquered; but the prisoners taken could be reckoned simply by dozens; nearly all the rebels who were not killed escaped into the provinces. It is true that they were now a dispersed body instead of a concentrated army; but it is also true that, in abandoning Lucknow, they would retire to many towns and forts where guns could be found, and where a formidable stand might be made against British troops. Let the summer approach, and the ratio of advantages on the two sides would be changed in character. Hot weather may affect the sepoy, but it affects him relatively less than the Englishman. It is heart-breaking work to a gallant soldier to feel his bodily strength failing through heat, at a time when his spirit is as heroic as ever. The rebels were astute enough to know this. The lithe Hindoo, with supple limbs and no superfluous flesh, can make great marches—especially when he retreats. His goods and chattels are few in number; his household arrangements simple; and it costs him little time or thought to shift his quarters at a short notice, in a period of peace. During war or rebellion, when he becomes a soldier, his worldly position is even more simple than before. A man who can live upon rice, parched corn, and water, and to whom it is a matter of much indifference whether he is clothed or not, has a remarkable freedom of movement, requiring little intricacy of commissariat arrangements. The English, during the war of the mutiny, had ample means of observing this mobility of the native rebel troops, and ample reasons for lamenting its consequences. If this were so during the winter, it would be still more decidedly the case during a hot-weather campaign, when exhaustion and coups de soleil work so terribly on the European constitution. It was this consideration, as we have said, that gave rise to much disappointment, both in India and in England, when the real sequel of the siege of Lucknow became apparent. The disappointment resolved itself in some quarters into adverse criticism on Sir Colin Campbell’s tactics; but even those who deemed it wise and just to postpone such criticism, could not postpone their anxiety when they found that the rebels, fleeing from Lucknow, assumed such an attitude elsewhere as would render a summer campaign necessary.
The long sojourn of the commander-in-chief in and near the Oudian capital, and the frequent communications between him and the governor-general, told of serious and weighty discussions concerning the policy to be pursued. Rumours circulated of an antagonism of plans; of one project for leaving the rebels unmolested until after the hot season should have passed, and of another for crushing them in detail before they could succeed in recombining. But whatever might have been the rumours, the policy adopted followed the latter of these two courses. The army of Lucknow, broken up into divisions or columns, was set again to work, to pursue and defeat those insurgents who kept the field with a pertinacity little expected when the mutiny began. So much of those operations as took place during the month of April, it is the purpose of this chapter to narrate; but a few words may previously be said concerning the state of affairs in Bengal, more dependent on Calcutta than on the army of Oude or the commander-in-chief.
The fact has already been adverted to that the supreme government, amid all the anxiety of the rebellion in the northwest, began in the spring of the year to take measures for the better protection of Lower Bengal. That province, the most important in the whole of India, had been very little affected by the mutiny, chiefly because there were few Mohammedan leaders inclined to become rebels; but the authorities could not close their eyes to the facts that the province was very insufficiently defended, and that any successful revolt there would be more disastrous than in other regions. So long as the delta of the Ganges remained in British hands, there would always be a base of operations for reconquering Upper India, if necessary; but that delta once lost, the services of a Clive, backed by a large army from England, would be again needed to recover it. A plan was therefore formed for locating five or six thousand European troops in Bengal, quartered at Calcutta, Dumdum, Chinsura, Barrackpore, Dinapoor, Benares, and one or two other places. It became very seriously contested whether any native army whatever would be needed in the province. The Bengalees are peaceful, and have few ambitious chieftains among them; hence, it was argued, a few thousand British troops, and a few hundred seamen of the Naval Brigade, would suffice to protect the province. There were ‘divisional battalions’ of native troops still at certain stations, as a sort of military police; but the regular Bengal native army had been extinguished, or had extinguished itself. So useful had a few hundred seamen become, that their employment led to many such suggestions as the following—‘Wherever these seamen are, there is a feeling of absolute security at once from external attack and internal treachery. Bengal has now been nearly twelve months without a native army, and within that twelve months they have never once been missed. Why not retain this security? Why not strike off Bengal from the provinces to be occupied by a native force, and render our improvised force a permanent institution? A company of European sailors would be a nucleus for the armed police in each division. Why not keep them up as such, give them permanent allowances, recruit them primarily from the same useful class? There can be no want of men when once such a permanent opening is known. They would not only protect the great cities, and double the physical force on which all authority must ultimately rest, but act as a permanent check on the divisional battalions. We want such a check. These men may be as faithful as the sepoys have been false, as attached to Europeans as the sepoys have proved themselves hostile; but there can never be any proof of the fact. Let us not again trust armed natives without the precautions we take in our ships against our own sailors—a check by a different body.’ All such considerations necessarily resolved themselves into a much larger inquiry, to be conducted deliberately and cautiously—how ought the army of India to be re-constituted?
Semi-barbarous tribes in many instances took advantage of the disturbed state of British influence in India, to make inroads into districts not properly belonging to them; and it sometimes happened that the correction of these evildoers was a very difficult matter. Such an instance occurred in the month now under notice. On the borders of Assam, at the extreme northeast corner of India, were a wild mountain tribe called Abors, who had for some time been engaged in a system of marauding on the Assam side of the frontier. Captain Bivar, at Debrooghur, set forth to punish them, taking with him a mixed force of sailors and Goorkhas. The Abors retreated to their fastnesses, and Bivar attempted to follow them; but this was an unsuccessful manœuvre. The Abors brought down many of his men by poisoned arrows, and maimed others by rolling down stones upon them from the rocks; a portion of their numbers, meanwhile, making a circuit, fell upon the baggage-boats, and captured the whole of the baggage. Captain Bivar and his companions suffered many privations before they safely got back to Debrooghur. These, however, were minor difficulties, involving no very serious consequences. Throughout the northeast region of India there were few ‘Pandies,’ few sepoys of Hindustani race; and thus the materials for rebellion were deprived of one very mischievous ingredient.
The Calcutta authorities found it necessary to make stringent rules concerning ladies and children; and hence some of the magistrates and collectors, the representatives of the Company in a civil capacity in the country districts, were occasionally placed in troublesome circumstances by family considerations during times of tumult. From the first, the Calcutta government had endeavoured, by every available means, to prevent women and children from going to the scenes of danger: knowing how seriously the movements of the officers, military and civil, would be interfered with by the presence of helpless relatives during scenes of fighting and tumult. One of the magistrates, in Western Bengal, was brought into difficulty by disobedience to this order. His wife entreated that she might come to him at his station. She did so. Shortly afterwards a rumour spread that a large force of the enemy was approaching. The lady grew frightened, and the husband anxious. He took her to another place, and was thereby absent from his post at a critical time. The government suspended him from office for disobeying orders in having his wife at the station, and for quitting his district without leave at a time when his presence was imperatively needed.
One other matter may be mentioned here, in connection with the local government, before proceeding to the affairs of Oude and the northwest. The Calcutta authorities shared with the Court of Directors, the English government, and the House of Commons, the power of rewarding or honouring their troops for good services; the modes adopted were many; but amid the controversies which occasionally arose concerning military honours, medals, promotions, and encomiums, it was made very manifest during the wars of the mutiny that the Victoria Cross, the recognition of individual valour, was one of the most highly valued by the soldiery, both officers and privates. The paltriness of the bits of metal and ribbon, or the tastelessness of the design, might be abundantly criticised; but when it became publicly known that the Cross would be given only to those who had shewn themselves to be brave among the brave, the value of the symbol was great, such as a soldier or sailor could alone appreciate. From time to time notices appeared in the London Gazette, emanating from the War-office, giving the utmost publicity to the instances in which the Victoria Cross was bestowed. The name of the officer or soldier, the regiment or corps to which he belonged, the commanding officer who had made the recommendation, the dispatch in which the deed of bravery was recorded, the date and place of that deed, the nature of the deed itself—all were briefly set forth; and there can be little doubt that the recipients of the Cross would cherish that memorial, and the Gazette notice, to the end of their lives. Incidental notices of this honorary testimonial have been frequently made in former chapters; and it is mentioned again here because of its importance in including officers and privates in the same category. Thus, on the 27th of April, to give one instance, the London Gazette announced the bestowal of the Victoria Cross on Lieutenant-colonel Henry Tombs, of the Bengal artillery; Lieutenant James Hills, of the same corps; Lieutenant William Alexander Kerr, of the 24th Bombay native infantry; Sergeant John Smith, of the Bengal Sappers and Miners; Bugler Robert Hawthorne, of the 52d foot; Lance-corporal Henry Smith, of the same regiment; Sergeant Bernard Diamond, of the Bengal horse-artillery; and Gunner Richard Fitzgerald, of the same corps. Sergeant Smith and Bugler Hawthorne, it will be remembered, assisted poor Home, Salkeld, and Burgess in blowing up the Cashmere Gate at Delhi; unlike their heroic but less fortunate companions, they lived to receive the Victoria Cross.[[165]]
Let us now pass to the stormy northwest regions. Beginning with Lucknow as a centre, it will be convenient to treat of Sir Colin’s arrangements at that place, and then to notice in succession the operations of his brigadiers in their movements radially from that centre, so far as they were connected with the month of April.
That portion of the army which remained in Lucknow found the month of April to open with a degree of heat very distressing to bear. A temperature of 100° F., under the shade of a tent, was not at all unusual. When the wind was calm, the pressure of temperature was not much felt; but the blowing of a hot wind was truly terrible—not only from the heat itself, but from the clouds of dust laden with particles of matter of the most offensive kind. Every organ of sense, every nerve, every pore, was distressed. And it was at such a time that a commander was called upon to plan, and officers and soldiers to execute, military operations with as much care and exactitude as if under a cool and temperate sky. There were putrefying bodies yet unburied in the vicinity, pools of recently dried blood in the streets and gardens, and abominations of every kind in this city of palaces: how these affected the air, in a temperature higher than is ever known in England, may be imperfectly, and only imperfectly, conceived.[[166]]