The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JAMES OUTRAM, Bart., G.C.B.

From a painting by Thomas Brigstocke

Hope Grant, with the present Lord Roberts as his A.A.G., commanded the cavalry; Archdale Wilson the guns; Napier—afterwards of Magdala fame—the engineers. Outram, Lugard, and Walpole commanded the three infantry divisions. It was a fine army, admirably officered and led, and made a perfect fighting machine. And of all Campbell’s generals, no one, perhaps, served him better than did Robert Napier. He supplied the plan of attack, which made the Sepoy defences worthless, and enabled Lucknow to be carried, practically, in fourteen days, and at a loss of only 125 officers and men killed, and less than 600 wounded.

The east front, which was to be attacked, resembled, roughly, a boot laid on its side. A great canal, running north and south, is the sole of the “boot”; the river Goomtee curves round the toe, and, running back sharply to the south, defines the top of the foot, and stretches up to what may be described as the ankle. The road across the Dilkusha bridge pierces the centre of what we have called the “sole,” and the triple line of Sepoy defences barred this line of approach. Napier’s plan was to bridge the Goomtee, pass a strong force, with heavy guns, in a wide sweep round the “toe” of the boot, on the northern bank of the river. The heavy guns, when placed in position on the north bank, would take in reverse all the Sepoy defences, and smite with a direct and overwhelming fire the chief positions—the Mess-house, the Secundrabagh, and the Residency, &c., which the Sepoys held. The Sepoy generals had constructed no defences on the north bank of the river, though it was strongly held by the rebel cavalry. Outram was to command the force operating from the north bank of the river. When his guns had swept the Sepoy defences from flank to flank, then the British left would advance, cross the Dilkusha bridge, and fight its way up to the Kaisarbagh and the Residency, Outram, with his flanking gun-fire, always pushing ahead.

The British right and left were thus like the two blades of a pair of scissors, thrust through the web of the Sepoy defences; and when the “scissors” closed, those defences would be cut clean through from east to west.

Campbell began his operations on the morning of March 3. Forbes-Mitchell, who stood in the ranks of the 93rd, looked out with a soldier’s eye over the domed mosques and sky-piercing minarets of the doomed city, sharp-cut against the morning sky. “I don’t think,” he writes, “I ever saw a prettier scene.” Forbes-Mitchell was not an artist, only a hard-fighting private in the 93rd; but Russell of the Times, who was familiar with all the great cities of the world, was just as deeply impressed as Forbes-Mitchell with the aspect that Lucknow wore that fateful morning, when the red tide of war was about to fill and flood its streets. This is how Russell describes the scene: “A vision of palaces, minarets, domes, azure and golden, cupolas, colonnades, long façades of fair perspective, in pillar and column, terraced roofs—all rising up amid a calm, still ocean of the brightest verdure. Look for miles and miles away, and still the ocean spreads, and the towers of the fairy city gleam in its midst. Spires of gold glitter in the sun. Turrets and gilded spheres shine like constellations. There is nothing mean or squalid to be seen. Here is a city more vast than Paris, as it seems, and more brilliant, lying before us.”

But there was the grim face of war hidden beneath the mask of smiling beauty which Lucknow presented that March morning. The soldiers, as they stood in their ranks, could see, line beyond line, the frowning Sepoy defences; while, in the foreground, Peel, with his blue-jackets, was getting his heavy 16-pounders into position for the fierce duel about to begin. Colin Campbell’s movement on his left, however, was but a feint, designed to mislead the enemy’s generals. On the night of the 4th the construction of two bridges across the Goomtee was begun. On the morning of the 5th one of them was completed, and the British infantry crossed, and threw up earthworks to defend the bridge-head. By midnight on the 5th both bridges were complete, with their approaches, and by four o’clock the troops were crossing. Hope Grant, in command of the cavalry, covered their front, and drove back the enemy’s horse.

The Queen’s Bays, a young regiment that had never yet been engaged, were in the advance. They got out of hand in their ardour, and rode recklessly on a body of Sepoy horse, smashed them with their charge, followed them over-eagerly into broken ground, and under heavy gun-fire. They came back broken from that wild charge, their major, Percy Smith, was killed, and the Bays themselves suffered badly.

Outram, meanwhile, had got round what we have called the “toe” of the boot, and, swinging to the left, followed the curve of the river bank till a point was reached which took the first line of the Sepoy defences beyond the river in reverse. Twenty-two heavy guns had been brought, by this time, across the river, and sites were chosen for two powerful batteries. Nicholson, of the Engineers, tells how he rode with Outram to the river bank, to choose the position of the first battery. “Got close,” he writes, “to the end of the enemy’s lines, and found we could see into the rear of these works. Poor creatures! They have not a grain of sense. They have thrown up the most tremendous works, and they are absolutely useless.” A stroke of clever generalship, in a word, had turned the Sepoy lines into mere paper screens.

A building, called the Chaker Kothi, or Yellow House, had to be carried, as it commanded the site of one of the batteries. Most of the Sepoys holding the building fled when the British attacking party came on, but nine of them stubbornly clung to their post, and they fired so fast, and with so deadly an aim, that they shot down more than their own number before the position was carried. It was only, indeed, by firing salvos from a troop of horse artillery that this stubborn little garrison was driven out of the building at last. Then, from the summit of the Yellow House, a three-storey building, a flag—one of the colours of the Bengal Fusileers—was set up, a signal to the British left wing that Outram’s batteries were in position.