The crouching infantry meanwhile could hardly be restrained. A sergeant of the 53rd, a Welshman named Dobbin, called out, “Let the infantry storm, Sir Colin! Let the two Thirds at them”—meaning the 53rd and 93rd—“and we’ll soon make short work of the murdering villains.” Campbell, always good-tempered when the bullets were flying, recognised the man, and asked, “Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?”
The three regiments waiting for the rush were the 53rd, the 93rd, and a Sikh regiment—the 4th Rifles; and suddenly they leaped up and joined in one eager dash at the slowly widening breach. Whether the signal to advance was given at all is doubtful, and which regiment led, and which brave soldier was first through the breach, are all equally doubtful points.
Malleson says the rush on the Secundrabagh was “the most wonderful scene witnessed in the war.” No order was given; but suddenly the Sikhs and the Highlanders were seen racing for the breach at full speed, bonneted Highlander and brown-faced Sikh straining every nerve to reach it first. A Sikh of the 4th Rifles, he adds, outran the leading Highlander, leaped through the breach, and was shot dead as he sprang. An ensign of the 93rd, named Cooper, was a good second, and, leaping feet first through the hole like a gymnast, got safely through.
Hope Grant says that “before the order was given a native Sikh officer started forward, sword in hand, followed by his men.” The 93rd determined not to let the Sikhs outcharge them, and instantly ran forward. The Sikhs had a few yards’ start, but “a sergeant of the 93rd, Sergeant-Major Murray, a fine active fellow, outstripped them, jumped through the opening like a harlequin, and, as he landed on the other side, was shot through the breast and fell dead.” Archibald Forbes says the first man through the breach was an Irishman, Lance-Corporal Donnelly, of the 93rd, killed as he jumped through the breach; the second was a Sikh, the third a Scotchman, Sergeant-Major Murray, also killed. Who shall decide when there is such a conflict of testimony betwixt the very actors in the great scene!
Roberts confirms Hope Grant in the statement that a Highlander was the first to reach the goal, and was shot dead as he reached the enclosure; and he adds one curiously pathetic detail. A drummer-boy of the 93rd, he says, “must have been one of the first to pass that grim boundary between life and death; for when I got in I found him just inside the breach, lying on his back, quite dead, a pretty, innocent-looking, fair-haired lad, not more than fourteen years old.” What daring must have burned in that lad’s Scottish blood when he thus took his place in the very van of the wild rush of veterans into the Secundrabagh!
Forbes-Mitchell, who actually took part in the charge, gives yet another account. The order to charge, he says, was given, and the Sikhs, who caught it first, leaped over the mud-wall, behind which they were lying, shouting their war-cry, and, led by their two British officers, ran eagerly towards the breach. Both their officers were shot before they had run many yards, and at that the Sikhs halted. “As soon as Sir Colin saw them waver, he turned to the 93rd, and said, ‘Colonel Ewart, bring on the tartan! Let my own lads at them.’” Before the command could be repeated, or the buglers had time to sound the advance, “the whole seven companies like one man leaped over the wall with such a yell of pent-up rage as I never heard before nor since. It was not a cheer, but a concentrated yell of rage and ferocity, that made the echoes ring again; and it must have struck terror into the defenders, for they actually ceased firing, and we could see them through the breach rushing from the outside wall to take shelter in the two-storeyed building in the centre of the garden, the gate and doors of which they firmly barred.”
The Secundrabagh, it must be remembered, was held by four strong Sepoy regiments, numbering in all from 2000 to 3000 men, many of them veteran soldiers, wearing the medals they had won in British service, and they fought with desperate courage. The human jet of stormers through the gap in the wall was a mere tiny squirt, but the main body of the 93rd blew in the lock of the great gate with their bullets, and came sweeping in.
Lord Roberts gives another version of this incident. The Sepoys, he says, were driven out of the earthwork which covered the gateway, and were swept back into the Secundrabagh, and the heavy doors of the great gateway were being hurriedly shut in the face of the stormers. A subahdar of the 4th Punjab Infantry reached the gate in time enough to thrust his left arm, on which was carried a shield, between the closing doors. His hand was slashed across by a tulwar from within, whereupon he drew it out, instantly thrusting in the other arm, when his right hand, in turn, was all but severed from the wrist! But he kept the gates from being shut, and in another minute the men of the 93rd, of the 53rd, and of the gallant Punjabee’s own regiment went storming in.
The men of the 53rd again tried, with success, another device. They lifted their caps on the tips of their bayonets to a line of iron-barred windows above their heads, and thus drew the fire of their defenders. Then they leaped up, tore away the bars, and, clambering on each other’s shoulders, broke through. Forbes-Mitchell was the fifth or sixth man through the breach, and was immediately fired upon point-blank by a Sepoy lying in the grass half-a-dozen yards distant. The bullet struck the thick brass buckle on his belt, and such was the force of the blow that it tumbled him head over heels. Colonel Ewart came next to Forbes-Mitchell, who heard his colonel say, as he rushed past him, “Poor fellow! he is done for.” Ewart, a gallant Highlander, of commanding stature, played a great part in the struggle within the Secundrabagh. His bonnet was shot or struck off his head, and, bareheaded, amidst the push and sway and madness of the fight, he bore himself like a knight of old.
The fight within the walls of the Secundrabagh raged for nearly two hours, and the sounds that floated up from it as the Sepoys, “fighting like devils”—to quote an actor in the scene,—were driven from floor to floor of the building, or across the green turf of the garden, were appalling. The fighting passion amongst the combatants often took queer shapes. Thus one man, known amongst the 93rd as “the Quaker,” from his great quietness, charged into the Secundrabagh like a kilted and male Fury, and, according to Forbes-Mitchell, quoting a verse of the Scottish psalm with every thrust of his bayonet or shot from his rifle:—