The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

The dash on the city was to have taken place at three o’clock in the morning, but it was difficult to collect all the men from the picquets who were to take part in the assault, and day was breaking before the columns were complete. The engineers, closely examining the breaches, found that during the night the Sepoys had blocked up the gaps with sand-bags and had improvised chevaux de frise. The attack was accordingly held back for a few minutes while the British batteries re-opened for the purpose of smashing the new defences.

The sun was clear of the horizon when, at a signal, the batteries ceased. A sudden silence fell on the slope of the Ridge and on the enemy’s wall. A thrill ran through the waiting columns, as each man, like a hound on the leash, braced himself up for the desperate rush. Nicholson had been standing, silent and alone, in front of his column; and now with a gesture of his hand he gave the signal. A shout, sudden, and stern, and fierce, broke through the air. It came from the 60th Rifles, who with a vehement cheer ran out to the front in skirmishing order, and in a moment the four columns were in swift and orderly movement. Then the enemy’s guns from every point broke into flame!

It is impossible to compress into a few paragraphs of cold type the story of that great assault; the fire and passion of the charge, the stubborn fury of the defence, the long, mad struggle through the streets. And the fact that four desperate combats at as many separate points broke out at once makes it still more difficult to give any single connected picture of the scene.

Nicholson led column No. 1 steadily forward till it reached the edge of the jungle. Then the engineers and storming party went forward at a run. They reached the crest of the glacis, and stood there under a perfect blaze of musketry. The stormers had outrun the ladder parties! The ditch gaped sixteen feet wide below them. The breach in front was crowded with dark figures, shouting, firing, hurling stones, all in a tempest of Eastern fury. The ladders were quickly up, and were dropped into the ditch. The men leaped down, and almost with the same impulse swept up the further side—Nicholson’s tall figure leading—and men and officers, contending madly with each other who should be first, raced up the broken slope of the breach, dashed the Sepoys back in confused flight, and gained the city!

The second column was as gallantly led as the first, and met with an almost fiercer resistance. At the signal its storming party ran out from the shelter of the Customs house. The two engineer officers, Greathed and Ovenden, and twenty-nine men out of the thirty-nine who formed the ladder parties were instantly shot down; but the attack never paused for an instant. The men of the 8th, the Sikhs, and the Fusileers came on with a silent speed and fury that nothing could stop. The ditch was crossed, as with a single effort. One officer—little more than a lad—Ensign Phillips, with soldierly quickness, and with the help of a few riflemen, swung round the guns on the Water Bastion, and opened fire with them on the Sepoys themselves.

The assault of the third column, directed at the Cashmere Gate, is, perhaps, the most picturesque and well-known incident in the wild story of that morning. This column did not find a breach; one had to be made! Campbell brought up his column within sight of the Cashmere Gate, but under cover; then, at the signal, a little cluster of soldiers ran out towards the gate. Its first section consisted of Home, of the Engineers, with two sergeants and ten sappers, each man carrying a bag containing twenty-five pounds of gunpowder. Behind them ran a firing party of the 52nd, under Salkeld. The sight of that little, daring handful of men, charging straight for the gate, so amazed the Sepoys that for a few moments they stared at them without firing. Then, from the wall on either side of the gate, from above the gate itself, and from an open wicket in its broad expanse, broke a sustained and angry blaze of musketry!

To run steadily on in the teeth of such a fire was a feat of amazing courage. But, Home leading, the little cluster of heroes never faltered. The bridge in front of the gate had been almost completely destroyed, a single beam being stretched across the ditch; and, in single file, each man carrying his bag of powder, Home’s party—by this time reduced to nearly one-half of its number—crossed, flung down the bags of powder at the foot of the gate, and then leaped into the ditch for cover, leaving the firing party behind to make the explosion.

Salkeld came up at a run, carrying the port-fire in his hand, his men, with bent heads, racing beside him. Salkeld fell, shot through the leg and arm; but, like the runner in Greek games, he handed the port-fire as he fell to Corporal Burgess, who in turn, as he bent over the powder, was shot dead. Lord Roberts says that in falling he yet ignited the powder. Malleson, on the other hand, says that Sergeant Carmichael snatched the port-fire from the dying hand of Burgess, lit the fuse, and then, in his turn, fell mortally wounded. On this another brave fellow named Smith, thinking Carmichael had failed, ran forward to seize the port-fire, but saw the fuse burning, and leaped into the ditch, just in time to escape the explosion.

In a moment there was a blast as of thunder, and—not the gate unfortunately, but merely the little wicket in it, had vanished! The bugler from the ditch sounded the advance; but such was the tumult of battle now raging that the storming parties of the 52nd, waiting eagerly to make their rush, heard neither the explosion nor the bugle-call. Campbell, their colonel, however, had seen the flame of the explosion, and gave the word. The storming party and the supports, all intermixed, ran forward at the double, they crossed, man after man, the single beam remaining of the bridge, and crept through the wicket. They found within the gate an overturned cannon, and some blackened Sepoy corpses. The main body followed, and from the two breaches and the Cashmere Gate the three columns met, breathless, confused, but triumphant, in the open space between the Cashmere Gate and the church.

The fourth column alone of the assaulting parties practically failed. A battle is always rich in blunders; and the guns, which were to have accompanied the column, somehow failed to arrive, and Reid, its commander, pushed on without them. He had to face an unbroken wall 18 feet high, lined with guns and marksmen. Reid himself fell, wounded and insensible, and there was some confusion as to who should take his place as leader. It was expected that the Lahore Gate would have been opened from within by the advance of the first column, but, before the Lahore Gate was reached from within the city by the British, the fourth column found itself unable to sustain the murderous fire from the walls, and fell back into cover.