From a lithograph
Once, it is true, even John Lawrence’s iron courage seemed to give way, or, rather, the strain of the peril threw his cool judgment off its balance. The fate of India visibly hung on Delhi. The force on the Ridge was absurdly inadequate for its task, and Lawrence conceived the idea that, to succeed at Delhi, it would be necessary to abandon Peshawur, give up the Punjaub to Dost Mohammed, and retire across the Indus. There were three European regiments, with powerful artillery, and the best native troops locked up beyond the Indus. On the Ridge at Delhi they would decide the issue of the siege. “If Delhi does not fall,” Lawrence argued, “Peshawur must go. Let us abandon the Punjaub for the sake of Delhi.”
It is still thrilling to read the sentences in which Herbert Edwardes protested against this evil policy. To abandon Peshawur, he urged, would be to fail not only at Delhi, but all over India. “Cabul would come again!” Lawrence quoted Napoleon against Edwardes. Did not Napoleon ruin himself in 1814 by holding fast to the line of the Elbe instead of falling back to the Rhine? But Edwardes knew the Eastern mind. India is not Europe. To waver, to seem to withdraw, to consent to disaster, was to be ruined. To abandon the Punjaub, Edwardes warned Lawrence, was to abandon the cause of England in the East. “Every hand in India would be against us. Don’t yield an inch of frontier!... If General Reed, with all the men you have sent him, cannot get into Delhi, let Delhi go. The Empire’s reconquest hangs on the Punjaub.” Then he quotes Nelson against Lawrence. “Make a stand! ‘Anchor, Hardy, anchor!’” The quotation was, perhaps, not very relevant; but it is curious to note how one brave spirit seems to speak to another across half a century, and give a new edge to its courage.
There can be no doubt that Edwardes showed, at this moment, not only the more heroic temper, but the sounder judgment of the two. Canning settled the dispute. “Hold on to Peshawur to the last,” he wrote; and the question was decided. But Lawrence’s momentary lapse into indecision only sets in more dazzling light his courage afterwards. It was after he had seriously meditated abandoning the Punjaub that he despatched the immortal movable column, under Nicholson, 4200 strong, with a powerful battering-train, to Delhi, thus feeding the gallant force on the Ridge with his own best troops, and yet not giving up “an inch of the frontier,” or abating one whit of his own haughty rule in the Punjaub!
General Anson, as we have seen, was commander-in-chief in India when the Mutiny broke out. He was a brave man, had fought as an ensign at Waterloo, and had seen forty-three years’ bloodless service after that great battle. But his gifts were rather social than soldierly. He was a better authority on whist and horses than on questions of tactics and strategy, and he was scarcely the man to face an army in revolt. Lawrence acted as a military brain and conscience for Anson, and determined that Delhi must be attacked; though, as a matter of fact, Anson had only three regiments of British troops, almost no artillery, and absolutely no transport at his command.
On May 16 Anson held a council of war with his five senior officers at Umballa, and the council agreed unanimously that, with the means at Anson’s command, nothing could be done. It is a curious fact, showing the speed with which, from this point, events moved, that, within less than two months from the date of that council, all its members were dead—either killed in battle, or killed by mere exposure and strain! But Lawrence’s views prevailed. “Pray, only reflect on the whole history of India,” he wrote to Anson. “Where have we failed when we have acted vigorously? Where have we succeeded when guided by timid counsels?”
Anson and his advisers gave that highest proof of courage which brave men can offer: they moved forward without a murmur on an adventure which they believed to be hopeless. From an orthodox military point of view it was hopeless. Only, the British empire in India has been built up by the doing of “hopeless” things.
On May 24 Anson reached Kurnal, where his troops were to arrive four days afterwards. On the 26th Anson himself was dead, killed by cholera after only four hours’ illness!
Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded him, had been Chief of the Staff in the Crimea. He was an utter stranger to India, having landed in it only a few weeks before. He was a brave soldier, and a high-minded English gentleman; but he was, perhaps, even less of a general than Anson. His force consisted of 2400 infantry, 600 cavalry, and 22 field-guns. Barnard had to fight one fierce and bloody combat before he reached the Delhi Ridge. This took place on June 7. It was the first time the British and the mutineers had met in the shock of battle; and the Sepoys who had revolted at Meerut, and the British troops who had been so strangely held back from crushing the revolt at the moment of its outbreak, now looked grimly at each other across a narrow interval of sun-baked turf. Lord Roberts says that when, as night fell on June 6, it was known that the troops were to move forward and attack the rebel force which stood in their path to Delhi, the sick in hospital declared they would remain there no longer, and “many quite unfit to walk insisted upon accompanying the attacking column, imploring their comrades not to mention they were ill, for fear they should not be allowed to take part in the fight!”
The rebels fought with an obstinacy unsurpassed in the whole record of the Mutiny; but British troops in such a mood as we have described, were not to be stayed. The 75th carried the rebel guns at the point of the bayonet; Hope Grant with his scanty squadrons of horse swept round their left flank. The British lost less than 200 killed and wounded, the rebels lost over 1000 men and 13 guns; and, as night fell, Barnard took possession of the famous Ridge. Then from the streets of the revolted city, the crowds looked up and saw the British flag, a gleaming and fluttering menace, a stern prophecy of defeat and retribution, flying from the Flagstaff Tower.