The drifting clouds of battle-smoke helped him to concentrate, unobserved, on his left, a strong force consisting of Hope, with the Sikhs, the 53rd, the 42nd, the 93rd, and Inglis with the 23rd, the 32nd, and 82nd.
The iron hail of Campbell’s guns smote the town cruelly, while the rattle of Greathed’s musketry formed a sort of sharp treble to the hoarse diapason of the artillery. Presently, through the white drifting smoke of the guns, came the Rifles, under Walpole, firing on the edge of the town, to Greathed’s left. Campbell was still keeping back his real stroke, and this clatter of artillery and musketry, and the clouds of drifting battle-smoke, held the senses of the enemy. Suddenly, from behind a cluster of buildings on the British left, line after line of infantry moved quickly out. It was Hope’s and Inglis’s brigades, which, in parallel columns of companies, left in front, now—to quote the language of an eye-witness—“shot out and streamed on, wave after wave of glittering bayonets, till they stretched far across into the plain, while the cavalry and horse artillery, trotting rapidly out, pushed on beyond them, raising clouds of dust, and covering their advance.”
Campbell’s plan was now developed, and the enemy opened all their guns with the utmost fury on the steady lines of the two brigades. At a given signal, the British columns swung round, formed front to the enemy’s position, and, in perfect order, as Alison puts it, “swept on with a proud, majestic movement” against a cluster of high brick mounds which covered the bridge across the canal—both bridge and mounds being held in great force by the enemy. “Grouped in masses behind the mounds, the rebels fired sharply, while their guns, worked with great precision and energy, sent a storm of shot and shell upon the plain, over which, like a drifting storm, came the stout skirmishers of the Sikhs and the 53rd, covering their front with the flashes of a bickering musketry, behind whom rolled in a long and serried line the 93rd and 42nd, sombre with their gloomy plumes and dark tartans, followed, some hundred yards in rear, by the thin ranks of Inglis’s brigade.”
The skirmishers quickly cleared the mounds, and the Sikhs and the Highlanders went forward at a run to the bridge. It was held with fierce courage by the enemy. A sleet of shot swept along its entire length. It seemed to be barred as by a thousand dancing points of flame—the flash of musketry and the red flames of the great guns.
As Sikhs and Highlanders, however, pressed sternly forward, they heard behind them the tramp of many feet and the clatter of wheels. It was Peel with his sailors bringing up a 24-pounder. They came up at a run, the blue-jackets “tailing on” to the ropes, and clutching with eager hands the spokes of the wheels. The gun was swung round on the very bridge itself, and sent its grape hurtling into the ranks of the Sepoys on the further side. Sikhs and Highlanders kindled to flame at the sight of that daring act. With a shout they ran past the gun, and across the bridge; some leaped into the canal, splashed through its waters and clambered up the further bank. The bridge was carried! A battery of field artillery came up at the gallop, thundered across its shaking planks, and, swinging round, opened fire on the tents of the Gwalior contingent, while the two brigades pressed eagerly forward on the broken enemy.
Forbes-Mitchell, who fought that day in the ranks of the 93rd, gives a very picturesque description of the combat. Campbell, who was almost as fond of making speeches as Havelock, and understood perfectly how to stir the blood of his men, gave a brief address to the 93rd before launching the turning movement. He gave the Highlanders one somewhat quaint warning. There was a huge accumulation of rum, Campbell said, in the enemy’s camp; it had been drugged, he added, by the enemy, and no man must touch it. “But, 93rd!” he said, “I trust you! Leave that rum alone!”
As a matter of fact, when the men swept with a rush across the canal, they found the rum against which Sir Colin had warned them standing—great casks with their heads knocked out for the convenience of intending drunkards—in front of the enemy’s camp, with their infantry drawn up in columns behind them. “There is no doubt,” says Forbes-Mitchell, “that the enemy expected the British would break their ranks when they saw the rum, and make a rush for it, and they made careful and tempting provision for that contingency.” That expectation forms a somewhat severe commentary on the thirsty character the British private had won for himself in India!
The 93rd, however, virtuously marched past the rum barrels, while the supernumerary rank, as Campbell had ordered, upset the barrels and poured their contents out. It was, fortunately, not whisky! Forbes-Mitchell, again, describes how, covered by the heavy fire of Peel’s guns, their line advanced, with the pipers playing and the colours in front of the centre company. “By the time,” he says, “we reached the canal, Peel’s blue-jackets were calling out, ‘⸺ these cow-horses’—meaning the gun bullocks. ‘Come, you 93rd! Give us a hand with the drag-ropes as you did at Lucknow;’” and a company of the 93rd slung their rifles and dashed to the help of the blue-jackets! The sailors gave a vehement cheer for “the red and blue,” and some well-known vocalist in the ranks of the 93rd struck up a familiar camp-song with that title, and, says Forbes-Mitchell, “the whole line, including the skirmishers of the 53rd and the sailors,” joined with stentorian voices in singing—
“Come, all you gallant British hearts,
Who love the red and blue!”