The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

The Highlanders led, Havelock and Outram riding with their leading files. Brasyer’s Sikhs followed. It was, as Forbes says, “a true via dolorosa.” From house-roof, from door, from window, from every cross lane poured a tempest of shot, and through it the British could only push with dogged, all-enduring courage, seldom halting to fire back. And this experience stretched over more than three-quarters of a mile! Here is a little battle vignette taken from Forbes:—

In the foremost company of the Highland regiment were two staunch comrades, named Glandell and M’Donough, Irishmen and Catholics among the Scots and Presbyterians. In this street of death M’Donough’s leg was shattered by a bullet. He fell, but was not left to die. His stalwart chum raised the wounded man, took him on his back, and trudged on with his heavy burden. Nor did the hale man, thus encumbered, permit himself to be a non-combatant. When a chance offered him to fire a shot, Glandell propped his wounded comrade up against some wall, and would betake himself to his rifle, while it could be of service. Then he would pick M’Donough up again, and stagger cheerily onward, till the well-deserved goal of safety was reached.

The road at one point ran under an archway, and here Neill met with his death-shot. He drew up his horse by the arch quite coolly, and was steadying the soldiers as they swept through it. A Sepoy leaned forward from a window above the arch, with his musket almost touching Neill’s head. Neill sat with his face turned to his shoulder, watching a gun going through the archway, when the Sepoy fired. His bullet struck the side of Neill’s head above the ear, and killed him instantly. Out of the tumult and passion of the fight thus dropped, in a moment, this most gallant of soldiers.

Still the fierce fight raged. Still, beaten with a tempest of shot, the tormented column pushed on its dogged way. Suddenly from the head of the column rose a mighty shout. It was not the cry of soldiers at the charge, full of the wrath of battle. It was a great cry of exultation and triumph. Through the grey twilight, dark with eddying smoke, the leading files of the British had seen the battered archway of the Bailey Guard. The goal was reached.

The beleaguered garrison had listened, with what eagerness may be imagined, to the tumult of the fight as it crept nearer them. Its smoke was blowing over their defences. Those who watched the advance from the Residency could measure the approach of the relieving force by the attitudes and gestures of the Sepoys on the house-tops, as they fired furiously down on the gallant column forcing its way along the streets beneath them. The storm of sound grew louder, clearer, deeper. Suddenly, through the smoke and twilight, they caught a glimpse of figures on horseback, the gleam of bayonets, the white faces and red uniforms of British soldiers. An earthwork blocked the Bailey Gate itself, but the handful of men acting as the garrison of the gate, pulled hurriedly back from its ragged embrasure in the wall, to the left of the entrance, one of the guns, and through that embrasure—Outram, on his big Australian horse, leading—came the Highlanders, with Havelock and his staff; then the Sikhs; then the Fusileers. The Residency was reached!

How the shout of exultation ran round the seventeen shot-battered posts of the long-besieged entrenchments can be imagined. The women, the children, the very sick in the hospital, lent their voices to that shout. The Highlanders, who came first, poured their Celtic exclamations and blessings on the men and women they had rescued. “We expected to have found only your bones,” said one. That the children were still alive filled the gallant but soft-hearted Highlanders with amazed joy. “The big, rough-bearded soldiers,” wrote one of the rescued ladies, “were seizing the little children out of our arms, kissing them with tears running down their cheeks, and thanking God that they had come in time to save them from the fate of those at Cawnpore.”

Let it be remembered that for more than eighty days the garrison had lived under the shadow of death. No message, no whisper of news, from the outside world had reached them. Their rescuers were men of the same name and blood, who had fought their way as if through the flames of the Pit to reach and save them! And into what a mood of passionate joy amongst the delivered, and of passionate exultation and triumph amongst the deliverers, the crowd which thronged the Residency that night was lifted may be more easily imagined than described. It was a night worth living for; almost worth dying for.

Lady Inglis has told how she listened to the tremendous cheering that welcomed the British across the Residency lines, and how her husband brought up “a short, quiet-looking, grey-haired man,” who she guessed at once was Havelock. It was a great triumph, but a great price was paid for it. The relieving column, out of its 3000 men, lost in killed or wounded more than 700, nearly one in every four of its whole number!

One unfortunate incident marked the relief. As the Highlanders approached the Bailey Guard Gate they took Aitken’s men of the 13th for the enemy, and leaped upon them with gleaming and angry bayonets, and slew some before their blunder was discovered. It was never imagined that the very outpost of the heroic garrison would be found to consist of Sepoys, fighting with such long-enduring loyalty against their own countrymen. It was a very cruel fate for these faithful Sepoys to perish under the bayonets of the relieving force.