The Tale of the Great Mutiny

by W. H. Fitchett

At the back of the mosque ran a narrow lane, bordered by rooms in which many of the flying Sepoys had found shelter. Forbes-Mitchell says they had broken open the door of one of these rooms, and saw it was crowded with Sepoys. He placed some of his party on each side of the door, and sent back two men to the breach to get a few bags of gunpowder, with slow matches fixed, intending to light one of these and fling it into the room, by way of summarily clearing out the Sepoys. At that moment Hodson came quickly up, sword in hand. “Where are the rebels?” he demanded grimly. Forbes-Mitchell’s narrative runs: “I pointed to the door of the room, and Hodson, shouting, ‘Come on,’ was about to rush in. I implored him not to do so, saying ‘It’s certain death; wait for the powder; I’ve sent men for powder-bags.’ Hodson made a step forward, and I put out my hand to seize him by the shoulder to pull him out of the line of the doorway, when he fell back, shot through the chest. He gasped out a few words, either, ‘Oh, my wife,’ or ‘Oh, my mother’—I cannot now rightly remember—but was immediately choked by blood.”

Colonel Gordon-Alexander, who took part in the assault, and saw Hodson come on the scene, gives a similar account of the manner in which Hodson received his wound; but it illustrates the unreliability of human testimony to notice how he and Forbes-Mitchell, who were both actors in the tragedy, flatly contradict each other from this point. Gordon-Alexander says that a man of his company, whom he had sent over to warn Hodson, “never stopped, but ran in at the door and pinned the man who had shot Hodson, with his bayonet, before he had time to reload. There was only one other Sepoy in the doorway, and he was bayoneted, too.” Forbes-Mitchell says that after Hodson had been carried off, the bags of powder, with slow matches in them, were brought up. “These we lit, and then pitched the bags in through the door. Two or three bags very soon brought the enemy out, and they were bayoneted. One of the 93rd, a man named Rule, rushed in among the rebels, using both bayonet and butt of his rifle, shouting, ‘Revenge for Hodson!’ and he killed more than half the men single-handed.” But, according to Gordon-Alexander, there were only two Sepoys in the room, and no powder-bags were necessary to drive them out!

Hodson was a soldier of real genius, but was pursued through life, and to his very grave, by a swarm of baseless calumnies. When he was buried, Colin Campbell himself stood by the grave, and, as the coffin of the dead soldier sank from sight, the British commander-in-chief burst into tears. Those tears, rolling down the cheeks of so great and fine a soldier, are Hodson’s best vindication and memorial.

Meanwhile, some other formidable buildings—the Secundrabagh, the Shah Nujeef, &c.—had fallen, almost without resistance, into the hands of the British. Outram was steadily pushing on along the northern bank, and scourging with his flank fire each position the Sepoys held. The 12th and the 13th were employed by the engineers in pushing on a line of advance through the houses, to the left of the main road, thus avoiding the fire of the Sepoys. On the morning of the 14th the Imambarah, a mass of minarets, flat roofs, and long, ornamental frontage, was stormed by Brasyer’s Sikhs. Outram, by this time, had seized the iron bridge to the west of the Residency. He was in a position to cork the neck of the bottle, that is, and to make flight impossible for the great mass of the Sepoys. But this splendid position was thrown away by the first of the two great blunders which mar Colin Campbell’s conduct of the siege.

Outram asked permission to force the bridge, and take the Sepoys, still holding the Kaisarbagh and the Residency, in the rear. Campbell consented, but forbade him crossing, if, in the process, he would lose a single man. Now, the bridge was held in force by the Sepoys, and guarded by a battery, and to force it would necessarily risk many lives. But war is a business of risks, and the gain beyond was enormous. A soldier like Nicholson, or Neill, or Hodson, would have interpreted Campbell’s order generously; or they would have stormed the bridge without orders, and would have trusted to the justification which success always gives. But Outram was of a less audacious type. An order, to him, was sacro-sanct. He made no attempt to cross the bridge, but looked on, while the defeated Sepoys streamed past in thousands, escaping to the open country, there to kindle the fires of a costly guerilla warfare.

The preparations to pass the bridge, it may be added, were marked by fine valour on the part of one of Outram’s engineers. Outram himself had, at the beginning of the operations, thrown a barricade across the bridge, to prevent the Sepoys crossing. When, in turn, he himself had to force his way across, it was necessary to remove this barricade, and to do it in broad daylight, and under a fierce and sustained fire from the Sepoys. Wynne, of the Engineers, and a sergeant named Paul, undertook the perilous task. They crept forward, crouching under the parapet of the bridge; then, kneeling down, they removed one sand-bag after another from the barricade, passing each bag back along the line of men, from hand to hand. But, as the level of the barricade sank, the two gallant engineers were exposed more fully to the Sepoy muskets. The fire was furious. Yet Wynne and his companion coolly pulled down the barricade, bag by bag, till the lowest tier was reached, and then ran back unharmed.

Meanwhile, events elsewhere had moved too fast for the British commander-in-chief. Brasyer’s Sikhs, with some companies of the 10th Foot, had stormed the Imambarah. The flying Sepoys took refuge in the next and strongest of all the Sepoy works, the citadel of the whole defence, the Kaisarbagh, a blaze of gilded spires, cupolas and domes, all turned into a vast fortification. The Sikhs and the 10th followed vehemently and closely, while some of the men of the 90th, led by young Havelock, carried a palace close to the Kaisarbagh, from which they commanded three of its bastions. They opened on them a fire so deadly that the Sepoys fled from their guns. The engineers wished to stay any further attack; the programme for the day was exhausted, and, in Colin Campbell’s leisurely tactics, nothing further was meant to be done that day.

But the stormers were eager; Sikhs and Highlanders alike had the fire of victory in their blood. They clambered through an embrasure, and forced their way into the Kaisarbagh, Havelock running back and bringing up some companies of the 10th Foot. Brasyer pushed out beyond the Kaisarbagh, indeed, to the Mess-house. Franks and Napier brought up new troops, and the Kaisarbagh itself was swept from end to end.

All the wealth of India seemed to have been gathered within that great mass of gilded walls, and all this was now given up to mad and wasteful plunder. The men, to use Russell’s phrase, were “drunk with plunder.” They literally waded through court after court, piled high with embroidered cloths, gold and silver brocade, arms rough with jewels, shawls heavy with gold, banners, cloaks, pictures, vases. The men had the wealth of kings under their feet!

It was a day of great deeds. Two successive lines of defensive works, vast as railway embankments, garrisoned by an army, and backed by a great citadel, had been carried in succession. And yet the chief military gain of this great feat was lost, owing to Colin Campbell’s absurd order, which held Outram back from carrying the iron bridge, and enabled the flying Sepoys to escape in thousands, to relight the flame of war throughout the whole of Oude.