The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

The Sepoys, in their exultation, actually ventured upon a sally, and Hope Grant had to bring up the scanty cavalry of the camp to check the advance of the enemy.

The cavalry could not charge, for this would bring them under the fire of the walls; they would not withdraw, for this would uncover the camp. They could only sit grimly in their saddles, and hold back the enemy by the menace of their presence, while men and horses went down unceasingly under the sleet of fire which broke over them. “For more than two hours,” says Hodson, “we had to sit on our horses, under the heaviest fire, without the chance of doing anything. My young regiment behaved admirably, as did all hands. The slaughter was great. Lamb’s troop lost twenty-seven men out of forty-eight, and nineteen horses, and the whole cavalry suffered in the same proportion.”

Hope Grant tells how he praised the 9th Lancers for their cool steadiness, and the men answered from the ranks that they were ready to stand as long as he chose. “Hodson,” says one officer who was present, “sat like a man carved in stone, apparently as unconcerned as the sentries at the Horse Guards, and only by his eyes and his ready hand, whenever occasion offered, could you have told that he was in deadly peril, and the balls flying among us as thick as hail!”

Delhi in shape roughly resembles an egg, and, in the assault we have described, the British had cracked, so to speak, the small end. Inside the Cashmere Gate was a comparatively clear space, a church, a Hindoo temple, and a mosque being scattered along its southern boundary. These owed their existence to the somewhat mixed piety of James Skinner, a gallant soldier, who played a brilliant part in Clive’s wars. His mother was a Hindoo lady, his wife was a Mohammedan; and, being severely wounded in some engagement, Skinner vowed, if he recovered, he would build three places of worship—a church, a temple, and a mosque! And the three buildings which stand opposite the Cashmere Gate are the fruits of that very composite act of piety. The three assaulting columns, in broken order and sadly reduced in numbers, but in resolute fighting mood, were re-formed in the open space in front of these buildings.

The third column, under Colonel Campbell, cleared the buildings on its left front, and then pushed forward on its perilous way straight through the centre of the city towards the Jumma Musjid, a huge mosque that lifted its great roof high above the streets and gardens of the city more than two miles distant. The first and second columns, now practically forming one, swung to the right, and, following the curve of the “egg” to which we compared Delhi, proceeded to clear what was called the Rampart Road, a narrow lane running immediately within the wall round the whole city. It was intended to push along this lane till the Lahore Gate was reached and seized. The Lahore Gate is the principal entrance into the city, the main street—the Chandin Chouk, the Silver Bazaar—runs from it to the King’s Palace, bisecting the “egg” which forms the city. If this gate were carried, Delhi was practically in the British possession.

The column, led by Jones, pushed eagerly on. The Moree Gate and the Cabul Gate were seized, the guns on the ramparts were captured, and the leading files of the advance came in sight of the Lahore Gate. A lane, a little more than two hundred and fifty yards long, led to it; but that narrow, crooked path was “a valley of death” more cruel and bloody than that down which Cardigan’s Light Cavalry rode in the famous charge at Balaclava. The city wall itself formed the boundary of the lane on the right; the left was formed by a mass of houses, with flat roofs and parapets, crowded with riflemen. The lane was scarcely ten yards wide at its broadest part; in places it was narrowed to three feet by the projecting buttresses of the wall.

About a hundred and fifty yards up the lane was planted a brass gun, sheltered by a bullet-proof screen. At the further extremity of the lane, where the ground rose, was a second gun, placed so as to cover the first, and itself covered by a bullet-proof screen. Then, like a massive wall, crossing the head of the lane, rose the great Burn Bastion, heavily armed, and capable of holding a thousand men. A force of some 8000 men, too, had just poured into the city through the Lahore and Ajmeer Gates, returning from the sally they had made on Reid’s column; and these swarmed round the side and head of the lane to hold it against the British.

Never, perhaps, did soldiers undertake a more desperate feat than that of fighting a way through this “gate of hell,” held by Sepoys, it will be noted, full of triumph, owing to their repulse of the attack of the fourth column under Reid already described. But never was a desperate deed more gallantly attempted.

The attacking party was formed of the 1st Bengal Fusileers; and, their officers leading, the men ran with a dash at the lane. They were scourged with fire from the roofs to the left; the guns in their front swept the lane with grape. But the men never faltered. They took the first gun with a rush, and raced on for the second. But the lane narrowed, and the “jam” checked the speed of the men. The fire of the enemy, concentrated on a front so narrow, was murderous. Stones and round shot thrown by hand from the roofs and parapets of the houses were added to musketry bullets and grape, and the stormers fell back, panting and bleeding, but still full of the wrath of battle, and leaving the body of many a slain comrade scattered along the lane.