Maude commanded its tiny battery; Hamilton led the Highlanders; Stirling the 64th; the gallant, ill-fated Renaud, the Fusileers. Stuart Beatson was Havelock’s assistant adjutant-general; Fraser Tytler was his assistant quartermaster—general. Of the Highlanders—the Ross-shire Buff’s—Forbes says, “It was a remarkable regiment; Scottish to the backbone; Highland to the core of its heart. Its ranks were filled with Mackenzies, Macdonalds, Tullochs, Macnabs, Rosses, Gunns, and Mackays. The Christian name of half the Grenadier company was Donald. It could glow with the Highland fervour; it could be sullen with the Highland dourness; and it may be added, it could charge with the stern and irresistible valour of the North.”
When the little force began its march for Cawnpore, the soil was swampy with the first furious showers of the rainy season, and in the intervals of the rain, the skies were white with the glare of an Indian sun in July. “For the first three days,” says Maude, “they waded in a sea of slush, knee-deep now, and now breast-high, while the flood of tropical rain beat down from overhead. As far to right and left as eye could pierce extended one vast morass.” After these three days’ toil through rain and mud, the rains vanished; the sky above them became like white flame, and, till they reached Cawnpore, Havelock’s troops had to march and fight under a sun that was well-nigh as deadly as the enemy’s bullets.
On July 11 Havelock marched fifteen miles under the intolerable heat to Arrapore. Camping for a few hours, he started again at midnight, picked up Renaud’s men while the stars were yet glittering in the heaven, pushed steadily on, and at seven o’clock, after a march of sixteen miles, camped at Belinda, four miles out of Futtehpore. The men had outmarched the tents and baggage, and were almost exhausted. They had fallen out, and were scattered under the trees, “some rubbing melted fat on their blistered feet, others cooling their chafes in the pools; many more too dead-beaten to do anything but lie still.” It was Sunday morning.
Suddenly there broke above the groups of tired soldiery the roar of cannon. Grape-shot swept over the camp. Over the crest and down the opposite slopes rode, with shouts and brandished tulwars, a huge mass of rebel cavalry. It was a genuine surprise! But the bugles rang out shrilly over the scattered clusters of Havelock’s men. They fell instantly into formation; skirmishers ran to the front, and the enemy’s cavalry came to an abrupt halt. It was a surprise for them, too. They had expected to see only Renaud’s composite force—a mere handful; what they beheld instead, was Havelock’s steady and workmanlike front.
Havelock did not attack immediately. His cool judgment warned him that his over-wearied soldiers needed rest before being flung into the fight, and orders were given for the men to lie down in rank. Presently the rebel cavalry wheeled aside, and revealed a long front of infantry, with batteries of artillery, and the rebel general, finding the British motionless, actually began a movement to turn their flank.
Then Havelock struck, and struck swiftly and hard. Maude’s battery was sent forward. He took his pieces at a run to within 200 yards of the enemy’s front, wheeled round, and opened fire. The British infantry, covered by a spray of skirmishers armed with Enfield rifles, swept steadily forward. The rebel general, conspicuous on a gorgeously adorned elephant, was busy directing the movements of his force; and Maude tells the story of how Stuart Beatson, who stood near his guns, asked him to “knock over that chap on the elephant.” “I dismounted,” says Maude, “and laid the gun myself, a 9-pounder, at ‘line of metal’ (700 yards) range, and my first shot went in under the beast’s tail, and came out at his chest, rolling it over and giving its rider a bad fall.”
Its rider, as it happened, was Tantia Topee, the Nana’s general; and had that 9-pound ball struck him, instead of his elephant, it might have saved the lives of the women and children in Cawnpore.
Meanwhile, the 64th and the Highlanders in one resolute charge had swept over the rebel guns. Renaud, with his Fusileers, had crumpled up their flank, and the Nana’s troops, a torrent of fugitives, were in full flight to Futtehpore. The battle was practically won in ten minutes, all the rebel guns being captured—so fierce and swift was the British advance.
The rebel Sepoys knew the fighting quality of the sahibs; but now they found a quite new fierceness in it. Havelock’s soldiers were on fire to avenge a thousand murders. And, flying fast, as Trevelyan puts it, the Nana’s troops “told everywhere that the sahibs had come back in strange guise; some draped like women to remind them what manner of wrong they were sworn to requite; others, conspicuous by tall blue caps, who hit their mark without being seen to fire—the native description of the Enfield rifle with which the Madras Fusileers were armed.”
The fight at Futtehpore is memorable as being the first occasion on which British troops and the rebel Sepoys met in open battle. The Nana had shortly before issued a proclamation announcing that the British had “all been destroyed and sent to hell by the pious and sagacious troops who were firm to their religion”; and, as “no trace of them was left, it became the duty of all the subjects of the Government to rejoice at the delightful intelligence.” But Futtehpore showed that “all the yellow-faced and narrow-minded people” had not been “sent to hell.” They had reappeared, indeed, with uncomfortable energy, and a disagreeable determination to despatch every Sepoy they could capture somewhere in that direction!