Before the first week in April had terminated, this distinguished general had gained very considerable advantages over the enemy. At daybreak on the first of the month, his force encountered an army of the enemy outside the walls of Jhansi, and completely defeated them. The rebels were commanded by a Mahratta chieftain, Tanteea Topee, a relative of Nena Sahib, who had marched thither in the hope of being able to relieve his brother rebels shut up within the beleaguered city. Sir Hugh divided his force into two parts—one to continue the siege, and the other to meet Tanteea Topee in the field. The rebels, including among their number two regiments of the traitorous Gwalior Contingent, fought desperately; but Rose succeeded in turning their left flank with artillery and cavalry, breaking up their array, and putting them to flight. It was a severe contest, for the rebels defended themselves individually to the last, even when their order of battle was broken. Rose pursued them to the river Betwah, and captured all their guns and ammunition. During the pursuit, they endeavoured to check him by setting the jungle on fire; but his cavalry and horse-artillery, nothing daunted, galloped through the flames, and kept close at the heels of the fugitives. The whole line of retreat became strewed with dead bodies; and it was estimated that the day’s sanguinary work had cost the enemy not less than fifteen hundred men.
This battle was followed by a result more favourable than Sir Hugh had ventured to hope. The ranee, shut up within Jhansi, well knew that Tanteea Topee was hastening to her assistance; for there was everywhere an intercommunication between the insurgents too close for the British to baffle. She knew of his approach, and hoped that he would be able to defeat and drive away the besiegers; but the battle of the Betwah dismayed her, and the result was very favourable to the British. In arranging for the siege, Sir Hugh divided his infantry into four detachments, two on the right and two on the left. H.M. 86th, and the 25th Bombay infantry, soon gained the walls, some by breach and others by escalade. Lieutenant Dartnell of the 86th, who was foremost in the assault, narrowly escaped being cut to pieces directly he entered the place. These two regiments were on the left attack. The attack on the right was less successful, owing to the use of defective ladders; the troops were for some time exposed to a murderous fire; but at length they entered the place, and joined their companions near the ranee’s palace. A discovery was now made. The ranee had evacuated the place during the night, with such of her troops as could break through the cordon which Rose endeavoured to draw round Jhansi. In the endeavour of the garrison to escape, the slaughter was terrible; insomuch that, during the storming of the fort and the pursuit of the garrison, more than three thousand of the rebels were laid low, besides the fifteen hundred during the battle. Much of this slaughter was within the city itself; for the towns-people were believed to have favoured the rebels, and the soldiers took severe vengeance before their officers could check the bloodshed. All this stern fighting could not be carried on without loss on the part of the British. Sir Hugh had to lament the fall of Lieutenant-colonel Turnbull, Captain Sinclair, Lieutenants Meicklejohn and Park, and Dr Stack, besides a number of non-commissioned officers and privates. The evacuation of the place in so sudden a way greatly lessened his chance of loss, for its defence might have been long continued. ‘Jhansi,’ he said in his telegraphic dispatch, ‘is not a fort, but its strength makes it a fortress; it could not have been breached; it could only have been taken by mining and blowing up one bastion after another.’
After this signal defeat of the rebels at Jhansi, the victorious army of Sir Hugh gradually prepared to move towards Calpee, a town on the Jumna, on the line of road from Jhansi to Cawnpore. Symptoms appeared to shew that a struggle would take place at this spot. Two rebel leaders made renewed exertions to regain lost ground in that region. The chief of these was Tanteea Topee, lately defeated at Jhansi; he had with him two mutinied infantry regiments, seven hundred cavalry, a large following of Ghazees or fanatics, and twelve guns. The other was Ram Rao Gobind, who had the command of three thousand rabble and four guns. These two leaders resolved to act on some common plan; and Sir Hugh Rose equally resolved to defeat them. Nevertheless this gallant officer had much need for careful planning long after he was master of Jhansi. He had a large number of sick and wounded, whose safety it would be necessary to provide for; and the roads around that city were still infested with remnants of the Kotah rebels and the Chanderee garrison. He himself remained at Jhansi until such time as he could resume his march without danger to those left behind; but he gave active employment to portions of his force. About the middle of the month he sent Major Orr with a column from Jhansi across the Betwah to Mhow, to clear that part of the country of rebels, and afterwards to join Rose and the main body of the force on the road to Calpee; the major had many small encounters with the rajahs of Bampore and Shagurh, and with detached parties of rebels. Some days afterwards, on the 21st, Sir Hugh despatched Major Gall, with detachments of cavalry and artillery, to a point on the Calpee road, to watch the enemy and aid Major Orr if necessary. Gall, besides other minor engagements, captured a fort belonging to the Rajah of Sumpter; the rebels in it proved to be disguised mutineers of the 12th Bengal native infantry, who fought desperately until all were killed. Sir Hugh, with his first brigade and head-quarters, did not take his departure from Jhansi until the 25th. He marched ten miles that day to Boregaum, on the Calpee road, and resumed his progress on subsequent days. His second brigade was soon to follow him—with the exception of detachments of the 3d Bombay Europeans, the 24th Bombay native infantry, and artillery, left under the charge of Colonel Liddell to protect Jhansi and the sick and wounded. Rumours reached Sir Hugh that four of the rebel leaders—the Ranee of Jhansi, Tanteea Topee, the Rajah of Shagurh, and the Rajah of Bampore—with seven thousand men and four guns, intended if possible to intercept him, and prevent his march to Calpee. To what result all these manœuvres on both sides led, was left to the month of May to determine.
While these operations were going on in and near the Jhansi district, General Whitlock, with a column of Madras troops, was engaged a little further eastward, in a district of Bundelcund having Banda for its chief town. He was frequently in contact with large or small bodies of rebels. One of these struggles took place on the 19th of April, when he encountered a force of seven thousand insurgents headed by the Nawab of Banda. Whitlock defeated the Nawab, captured Banda, killed five hundred of the enemy, and took several guns. After this victory, he gradually worked his way towards Calpee, to aid in Rose’s operations.
The city of Saugor remained in a somewhat peculiar condition during the spring months—secure itself, but surrounded by a disturbed district. The European residents were living in cantonments, sufficiently protected by troops left there by General Whitlock after he relieved the place early in February. These troops were neither stationary nor idle; the vicinity was swarming with rebels and malcontents, whom it was necessary to check by frequent pursuit and defeat. Those two exceptions to the generally mutinous condition of the Bengal native army, the 31st and 42d regiments, still remained in and near Saugor—or such portions of them as had not become tainted by insubordination. Divided into small detachments, they assisted the European and Madras troops in keeping open the line of communication between Saugor and the district marked by the victorious operations of Sir Hugh Rose.
Turning to the Mahratta and Rajpootana states, we find that, on the 2d of April, a large body of rebels, many thousands in number, with ten guns, crossed the Parbuttee river at Copoind into Scindia’s Gwalior territory. They were fleeing from Kotah, where a British force had severely handled them. Scindia still remained true to his alliance. Many of his officers, each with a small force, opposed the rebels at different points, drove them back across the river, and overturned many of their guns and wagons in the stream. The rebels, accompanied by large numbers of women and children, made their way by other routes towards Bundelcund.
Kotah, just mentioned, was closely connected with the insurgent and military operations in Rajpootana. It will be remembered[[170]] that in the month of March General Roberts, commanding the Rajpootana field-force, marched from Nuseerabad towards Kotah, accompanied by Richard Lawrence as political representative; that many difficulties had to be surmounted on the march; that Kotah was reached on the 22d; and that Roberts captured that place just before the end of the month, defeating a large body of rebels, and obtaining possession of an extensive store of ordnance and ammunition. After this victory, Roberts remained a long time at Kotah. Many other places would have welcomed his appearance; but there were doubts how far Kotah could safely be left, seeing that the neighbourhood was in a very disaffected state. The Kotah rebels, on the other hand, were greatly disconcerted at the news of the fall of Jhansi, which interfered with their plans and hopes. They had been camping for a while at Kularus, on the road from Gwalior to Bombay, but began now to move off towards the south. Captain Mayne, with some of Scindia’s troops, was at that place on the 11th of April, and found that the Kotah rebels, about four thousand strong, with six guns, had joined the rebel Rajah of Nirwur, six miles distant. Captain Mayne was preparing to watch and follow them, but the troops at his command consisted of only a few hundred men, and he could do little more than reconnoitre. Later in the month, General Roberts organised a column to look after the rebels at Goonah, Chupra, and other places. The column consisted of H.M. 95th foot, the 10th Bombay native infantry, a wing of the 8th hussars, a wing of the 1st lancers, and a troop of horse-artillery; and it started from Kotah for active service on the 24th. Thus the month of April passed away; Roberts himself remaining at Kotah; while some of his officers, each with a detachment of the Rajpootana field-force, were engaged in chastising bodies of rebels in the turbulent region on the border of the Rajpoot and Mahratta territories. Like Sir Hugh Rose at Jhansi, he had to consider how his conquered city would fare if he quitted it.
The province of Gujerat, lying as it does between Rajpootana and Bombay, was narrowly watched by the government of that presidency; and as one precaution, all the inhabitants were disarmed. On the 8th of April, a field-force, comprising about a thousand men of all arms, left Ahmedabad to conduct the disarming. Another column of about the same strength was preparing to march from the same station about a week later. It was expected that the difficulties of the troops would arise, not so much from the opposition of the natives, as from the gradually increasing heat of the weather.
Southward of Bombay there was still, as in the earlier months of the year, just so much of insubordination as to need careful watching on the part of the government, but without presenting any very alarming symptoms. The small Mahratta state of Satara was a little troubled. Two officers of the recently deposed rajah, his commander-in-chief and his commandant of artillery, were detected in treasonable correspondence with Nena Sahib. One of them, having been found guilty, was sentenced to be hanged; the indignity struck with horror one imbued with high-caste notions, and he asked to be blown away from a gun as a more noble death; this was refused; and under the influence of dismay and grief, he made a confession which afforded a clue to a further conspiracy. There was much in these southern Mahrattas which puzzled the authorities. To what extent the natives were bound into a brotherhood by secret compact, the English never could and never did know. Much comment was excited by an occurrence at Kolapore, where two native officers were blown away from guns, on conviction of being concerned in the mutiny and rebellion. It was remembered that those very men had sat on courts-martial which condemned numbers of their fellow-mutineers to the same punishment which was their own ultimate doom. One of the principal witnesses against them was a colleague whom they had sentenced to death, but who escaped by making a confession which implicated them. Many others, however, condemned by the court of which these two men were members, died without making a similar confession, although it was believed that they also might have implicated their judges.