The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

Neill stood in a bay of a garden wall close by, with his “blue-caps” lying down under cover, waiting till Outram’s flanking movement should tell on the enemy’s battery; and Maude, with his artillerymen almost all shot down, said to young Havelock, “Do something, in the name of Heaven!” Havelock rode through the tempest of shot to Neill, and urged an immediate rush on the bridge; but Neill, with soldierly coolness, declared he would not move without orders. Then young Havelock played a boyish and gallant trick. He rode quietly off, turned round a bend in the road, and a moment after came back at a gallop, gave a smart salute to Neill as he pulled up his horse on its haunches, and said, as though bringing an order from his father, “You are to carry the bridge at once, sir!”

At the word, Arnold, who commanded the “blue-caps,” leaped to his feet and raced on to the bridge, his men rising with a shout and following him. Havelock and Tytler overtook him at a gallop, and the bridge in a moment was covered with a mass of charging soldiers.

But a blast of shots from the guns at its head—the deep bellow of the 24-pounders sounding high above the tumult—swept the bridge for a moment clear. Arnold had fallen with both legs smashed, Tytler’s horse had gone down with its brave rider; only young Havelock and a corporal of the Fusileers, named Jakes, stood unhurt. Havelock rode coolly up to the rampart of earth, and, waving his sword, called to the Fusileers to “come on”; and Corporal Jakes, as he busily plied his musket, shouted to Havelock, soothingly, “Never fear, sir! We’ll soon have the beggars out of that!” All this took but a few seconds of time; the Sepoys were toiling with frantic energy to reload their guns. Then through the white smoke came the rush of the Madras Fusileers—an officer leading. Over the bridge, up the seven-foot rampart, through the intervals betwixt the guns as with a single impulse, came the levelled bayonets and fierce faces of the charging British, and the bridge was won!

The entire British force came swiftly over, the 78th was left to hold the bridge and form the rearguard, while the British column swung round to the right and pushed on through the narrow lane that bordered the canal.

The 78th, while guarding the bridge, had a very trying experience. A great force of the enemy came down the Cawnpore road with banners flying and loud beating of drums, and flung itself with wild courage on the Highlanders. A little stone temple stood a hundred yards up the road, commanding the bridge; the Sepoys took possession of this, and from it galled the Highlanders cruelly with their fire. Hastings, of the 78th, stepped out to the front, and called for volunteers to storm the temple. There was an angry rush of Highlanders up the road; the temple was carried at the point of the bayonet, and then held as a sort of outwork to the bridge.

The Sepoys next brought up three brass guns, and lashed temple and road alike with their fire. Webster, an officer of the 78th, famous for his swordsmanship and strength, called out, “Who’s for these infernal guns?” and ran out, sword in hand. His Highlanders followed him, but could not overtake Webster, who sprang upon the guns, and slew a gunner, just in the act of putting his linstock to the touch-hole, with a stroke so mighty that it clove the Sepoy through skull and jaws almost to the collar-bone! The guns were captured, dragged with a triumphant skirl of the pipes to the canal, and flung in, and the Highlanders set off to follow the column.

They did not follow in its immediate track, but made a wide sweep to the right, and both sections of the column, with much stern fighting, reached what was called the Chutter Munzil Palace. “Here,” says Forbes, “were the chiefs of the little army. On his big ‘waler’ sat Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and one arm in a sling, the Malacca cane, which formed his sole weapon in battle, still grasped in the hand of the sound limb. Havelock, on foot, was walking up and down on Outram’s near side, with short steps. All around them, at a little distance, were officers, and outside of the circle so formed were soldiers, guns, wounded men, bullocks, camels”—all the tumult, in a word, of the battle.

Outram and Havelock disagreed as to the next step to be taken. Outram—the cooler brain of the two—wished to halt for the night, and then to push their way in the morning through the successive courts of the palaces right up to the Residency. Havelock was eager to complete the day’s work, and reach the Residency with a final and desperate rush.

A long, winding, and narrow street stretched before them up to the Bailey Guard Gate, the entrance to the Residency. It was true that every cross street that broke its length was swept by the fire of the enemy’s guns, that the houses were loopholed and crowded with Sepoys, and from the flat roofs of the houses above a tempest of fire would be poured upon the British. But Havelock was full of warlike impatience. “There is the street,” said he; “we see the worst. We shall be slated, but we can push through, and get it over.” Outram acknowledged afterwards that he ought to have said, “Havelock, we have virtually reached the Residency. I now take the command;” but he added to the confession, “My temper got a little the better of me, and I said, ‘In God’s name, then, let us go on.’”