The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

A rush was, indeed, made by the Sepoys, and a native officer of the Irregular Cavalry, who headed the rush gallantly enough, actually crossed the line of the entrenchments—the only mutineer who, during the long siege, succeeded in putting his foot on the soil held by the British. He was instantly shot, and so cruel and swift was the fire poured in upon the Sepoys that they fell back in confusion, and under Inglis’s orders planks and doors were brought quickly up, and arranged, one overlapping the other, till the whole gap was covered, and a pile of sand-bags built behind it.

Gubbins describes one critical moment in the siege. On July 21st it was discovered the Sepoys had dug through an adjoining wall and found their way into a narrow lane which skirted the compound; and, literally, only a canvas screen parted them from the British position! Gubbins ran to the single loophole which commanded the lane, and, with his rifle, shot down every Sepoy who attempted to cross it while the gap in the British defences was being hurriedly built up. “At this moment,” he says, “I heard the voice of a European behind me, and, without turning my head, begged that the wall in the rear of the mutineers might be loopholed and musketry opened upon them. The person behind me, it seems, was Major Banks. He approached my post to get a sight of the enemy, and while looking out incautiously received a bullet through the temples. I heard the heavy fall, and turned for a second. He was dead. He never moved, and I resumed my guard over the enemy.” For two stern hours Gubbins guarded the gap. Then assistance came, the Sepoys were driven from their point of vantage, and the gap in the defences built up.

Later on in the siege the fighting was carried on beneath the surface of the earth. The Sepoys had amongst them many men belonging to a caste famous for skill with the spade, and from more than a score of separate points they drove mines towards the entrenchments. Spade had to fight spade; and, as in the 32nd were many Cornishmen familiar with mining work, these were employed to countermine the enemy. The Sepoys undertook 37 separate mines, and of these 36 were failures, only one—that directed against the Sikh square—proving successful.

One of the most heroic figures in the immortal garrison was Captain Fulton, the garrison engineer, who, on the death of Major Anderson, took charge of all engineering operations. Fulton was a superb engineer, and all the stories of the siege do justice to the part he played in the defence. Gubbins says he was “the life and soul of everything that was persevering, chivalrous, and daring,” and declares that he deserved to be called “the Defender of Lucknow.” Mr. Fulton, of Melbourne, a relation of this brave man, still preserves the journal of the siege kept by his kinsman. It is a document of real historical value, and gives a graphic picture of the great struggle from day to day. He tells again and again how he met the enemy’s mines by countermines, how he broke in upon them, swept them from their drive like flying rabbits, and blew the whole affair up, as he puts it, “with great enjoyment of the fun and excitement!”

Fulton once found that they had driven a mine close up to the wall of a house that formed part of the British defence, and he could hear the sound of pick and shovel distinctly. “I thought this very impudent,” he writes; “they could be so easily met; but it seemed a bore to begin to counter. So I just put my head over the wall and called out in Hindustanee a trifle of abuse and ‘Bagho! bagho!’—‘Fly! fly!’—when such a scuffle and bolt took place I could not leave for half-an-hour for laughing. They dropped it for good—that was the best of the joke.”

Fulton took his full part in the general fighting. Thus, in the assault on the Cawnpore battery, he relates that he “found the enemy led by a man in pink, whom I had noticed several times directing them as they came up. I put a rifle-ball through him, and then sent Tulloch to order hand-grenades, the second of which, well thrown, cleared the ditch.” Here is a picture, again, of one of Fulton’s many sorties to destroy houses by which the British were annoyed:

We sneaked out of our lines into a house. I had only a penknife, slow match, and port-fire in my hand, and was followed close by two Europeans, and supported by a dozen more. We expected to find the house empty, but George Hutchinson, who was first, suddenly startled us by firing his revolver and calling out “Here are twenty of them!” The two Europeans—indeed, all of them—fell back a pace or two; but I seized a musket from one, and ran forward. They followed, and I put them in position to guard doors, while I twitted the enemy with not showing their faces, as I did, in front of the door, but standing with only their firelocks showing. The chaff had the effect, for one dashed out and fired at me, but I shot him instanter. They then bolted as I gave the word “Charge!” and we blew up the house. Great fun and excitement in a small way!

Fulton detected a mine the enemy had driven a certain distance; he ran a short countermine to meet it, and then sat patiently, revolver in hand, waiting for the unconscious enemy to break through. “Some one,” he relates, “looking for me, asked one of the Europeans if I was in the mine. ‘Yes, sir!’ said the sergeant, ‘there he has been for the last two hours, like a terrier at a rat-hole, and not likely to leave it either all day!’” It was to the energy, skill, and daring of this gallant officer that the complete defeat of the enemy’s mines was due.

The last entry in his journal is dated September 11; on September 13 he was killed. Says Captain Birch, “The death of this brilliant officer was occasioned by one of the most curious of wounds. He had been inspecting a new battery in an earthwork opposite Mr. Gubbins’s house. He was lying at full length in one of the embrasures, with a telescope in his hand. He turned his face, with a smile on it, and said: ‘They are just going to fire,’ and sure enough they did! The shot took away the whole of the back of Captain Fulton’s head, leaving his face like a mask still on his neck. When he was laid out on his back on a bed, we could not see how he had been killed. His was the most important loss we had sustained after that of Sir Henry Lawrence.”