The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

On the morning of the 9th, Outram’s guns opened on the first line of the Sepoy defences, that to which the canal served as a wet ditch, with a fire that swept it from flank to flank. Campbell was pouring the fire of Peel’s guns upon the Martinere, which served as a sort of outwork to the long canal-rampart, and at two o’clock the Highland regiments—the 42nd leading, the 93rd in support—were launched on the enemy’s position. The men of the 93rd were too impatient to be content with “supporting” the 42nd, and the two regiments raced down the slope side by side. Earthworks, trenches, rifle-pits were leaped or clambered over, and almost in a moment the Sepoys were in wild flight across the canal. The Highlanders, with the 4th Punjaub Rifles, followed them eagerly, and broke through the enemy’s first line.

Outram’s first battery, as we have said, was sweeping this line with a cruel flank fire. The Sepoys had been driven from their guns in the batteries that abutted on the river, and they seemed to be deserted. Adrian Hope’s men were attacking, at that moment, the farther, or southern, end of the line; and Butler, of the 1st Bengal Fusileers, with four privates, ran down to the bank of the river and tried to attract the attention of the British left, some third of a mile distant; but in vain. The river was sixty yards wide, the current ran swiftly, the farther bank was held by Sepoy batteries; and though no Sepoys could be seen, yet it might well be that scores were crouching under its shelter. Butler, however, with the ready daring of youth, threw off his coat and boots, scrambled down the river bank, plunged into the stream and swam across it. He climbed up the farther bank, mounted the parapet of the abandoned work, and, standing there, waved his arms to the distant Highlanders. It was not a very heroic figure! His wet uniform clung to his limbs, the water was running down hair and face. The Sepoys nigh at hand, opened a sharp fire upon him. But still that damp figure stood erect and cool, showing, clear against the sky-line.

Butler was seen from the British left, and the meaning of his gestures understood; but a staff officer, with more punctiliousness than common sense, objected to the troops moving along the line till orders had been received to that effect. So a brief delay occurred. Still that damp figure stood aloft, shot at from many points, but vehemently signalling. Now the Highlanders and Sikhs came eagerly on, and Butler, having handed over to them the battery which, wet and unarmed, he had captured, scrambled down into the river, and swam back to rejoin his regiment. It was a gallant feat, and the Victoria Cross, which rewarded it, was well earned.

That night the British were content with holding the enemy’s first line. On the 10th Campbell, who, for all his hot Scottish temper, was the wariest and most deliberate of generals, was content with pushing Outram’s batteries still farther up the north bank, so as to command the Mess-house and the Begum’s Palace. On the left, the building known as Banks’ House was battered with artillery, and carried. The two blades of the scissors, in a word, had been thrust far up into the city, and now they were to be closed! Betwixt the positions held to the right and to the left, stood the great mass of buildings known as the Begum Kothi, the Begum’s Palace. This was strongly held, and the fight which carried it was the most stubborn and bloody of the whole operations of the siege.

The guns played fiercely upon it for hours; by the middle of the afternoon a slight breach had been effected, and it was resolved to assault. Forbes-Mitchell says that the men of the 93rd were finishing their dinner when they noticed a stir amongst the staff officers. The brigadiers were putting their heads together. Suddenly the order was given for the 93rd to “fall in.” “This was quietly done, the officers taking their places, the men tightening their belts, and pressing their bonnets firmly on their heads, loosening the ammunition in their pouches, and seeing that the springs of their bayonets held tight.” A few seconds were spent in these grim preparations, then came the sharp word of command that stiffened the whole regiment into an attitude of silent eagerness. The Begum’s Palace was to be rushed.

It was a block of buildings of vast size and strength. The breach was little more than a scratch in the wall of the gateway, which it needed the activity of a goat to climb, and which only British soldiers, daringly led, would have undertaken to assault in the teeth of a numerous enemy. And there were nearly 5000 Sepoys within that tangle of courts! The storming party consisted of the 93rd and the 4th Punjaub Rifles, led by Adrian Hope. The 93rd led, the Punjaubees were in support, and the rush was fierce and daring. It is said that the adjutant of the 93rd, McBean, cut down with his own sword no less than eleven of the enemy, in forcing his way through the breach; and he won the Victoria Cross by his performance. He was an Inverness ploughman when he enlisted in the 93rd, and he rose through all its ranks until he commanded the regiment.

Captain M’Donald was shot dead while leading his men. His senior lieutenant took the company on, until the charging crowd was stopped by a ditch eighteen feet wide, and from twelve to fourteen feet deep. The stormers leaped, with hardly a pause, into the ditch, but it seemed impossible to climb up the farther bank. Wood, of the Grenadier company, however, clambered on the shoulders of a tall private, and, claymore in hand, mounted the farther side. The spectacle of a Highland bonnet and menacing claymore, making its appearance above the ditch, proved too much for the Sepoys. They fled, and Wood pulled up man after man by the muzzle of his rifle—the rifles, it may be mentioned as an interesting detail, were all loaded, and on full cock! Highlanders and Punjaubees, racing side by side, had now broken into the great palace. Every doorway was barred and loopholed, and the Sepoys fought desperately; but the Highlanders, with the Punjaubees in generous rivalry, broke through barrier after barrier, till they reached the inner square, filled with a mass of Sepoys. “The word,” Forbes-Mitchell says, was “keep well together, men, and use the bayonet,” and that order was diligently obeyed. The combat raged for over two hours, the pipe-major of the 93rd blowing his pipes shrilly during the whole time. “I knew,” he said afterwards, “our boys would fight all the better while they heard the bagpipes.” When the main fight was over, in the inner court of the Begum’s Palace, alone, over 860 of the enemy lay dead. Colin Campbell himself described it as “the sternest struggle which occurred during the siege.”

That most gallant, but ill-fated soldier, Adrian Hope, personally led one of the storming parties. It is said that he got in through a window, up to which he was lifted, and through which he was pushed by his men. He was sent headlong and sprawling upon a group of Sepoys in the dark room inside. That apparition of the huge, red-headed Celt tumbling upon them, sword and pistol in hand, was too much for the Sepoys, and they fled without striking a blow!

Perhaps the most gallant soldier that perished within the blood-splashed courts of Begum Kothi was Hodson, of “Hodson’s Horse.” Robert Napier tells the story of how, when he was in the act of reconnoitring the breach, he found Hodson suddenly standing beside him, and saying, laughingly, “I am come to take care of you.” The two watched the rush of the stormers up the breach, and listened to the sound of the fierce tumult within the walls. Presently, arm-in-arm, they quietly climbed the breach, and found the last embers of the conflict still spluttering within. Napier was called away by some duty and Hodson went forward alone.