The reminiscence of Secundrabâgh which is here reproduced was called forth, I should state, by a paragraph which appeared at the time in the columns of The Calcutta Statesman regarding General Ewart. The paragraph was as follows:
General Ewart, not having been employed since he gave over the command of the Allahabad division on the 30th of November, 1879, was placed on the retired list on the 30th ultimo [Nov. 1884]. General Ewart is one of the few, if not the only general, who refused a transfer from the Allahabad Command to a more favourite division. He has served for over forty-six years, but has only been employed once since giving over the command of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders in 1864, and that was for two and a half years in this country. He commanded the Ninety-Third for about eighteen months before joining the Seventy-Eighth. He is in possession of the Crimean medal with four clasps, a novelty rather nowadays. He lost his left arm at the battle of Cawnpore.
I accordingly wrote to The Statesman desiring to correct a slight inaccuracy in the statement that "General Ewart commanded the Ninety-Third for about eighteen months before joining the Seventy-Eighth." This is not, I remarked, strictly correct; General Ewart never commanded the Ninety-Third in the sense implied. He joined the regiment as captain in 1848, exchanging from the old Thirty-Fifth Royal Sussex with Captain Buchanan of the Ninety-Third, and served in the regiment till he received the regimental rank of lieutenant-colonel on the death, at Fort Rooyah in April, 1858, of the Hon. Adrian Hope. Colonel Ewart was then in England on sick-leave, suffering from the loss of his arm and other wounds and exchanged into the Seventy-Eighth with Colonel Stisted about the end of 1859, so that he never actually commanded the Ninety-Third for more than a few days at most. I will now give a few facts about him which may interest old soldiers at least.
During the whole of his service in the Ninety-Third, both as captain and field-officer, Colonel Ewart was singularly devoted to duty, while careful, considerate, and attentive to the wants of his men in a way that made him more beloved by those under his command than any officer I ever met during my service in the army. To the best of my recollection, he was the only officer of the Ninety-Third who received the clasp for Inkerman. At that battle he was serving on the staff of Lord Raglan as Deputy-Assistant-Quartermaster-General, and as such was on duty on the morning of the battle, and I believe he was the first officer of the British army who perceived the Russian advance. He was visiting the outposts, as was his custom when on duty, in the early morning, and gave the alarm to Sir George Brown's division, and then carried the news of the attack to Lord Raglan. For his services at Inkerman he was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel, and on the termination of the war, besides the Crimean medal with four clasps (Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, and Sebastopol), he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Sardinian Medal, with the motto Al valore Militare, and also the Turkish Order of the Medjidie.
Early in the attack on the Secundrabâgh three companies of the Ninety-Third were detached under Colonel Leith-Hay to clear the ground to the left and carry the barracks, and Colonel Ewart was left in command of the other seven companies. For some time we lay down sheltered by a low mud wall not more than one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards from the walls of the Secundrabâgh, to allow time for the heavy guns to breach the garden wall. During this time Colonel Ewart had dismounted and stood exposed on the bank, picking off the enemy on the top of the building with one of the men's rifles which he took, making the owner of the rifle lie down.
It was an anxious moment. The artillerymen were falling fast, but, after a few discharges, a hole,—it could not be called a breach—was made, and the order was given to the Fourth Punjâb Rifles to storm. They sprang out of cover, as I have already described, but before they were half-way across the intervening distance, their commanding officer fell mortally wounded, and I think two others of their European officers were severely wounded. This caused a slight halt of the Punjâbis. Sir Colin called to Colonel Ewart, "Ewart, bring on the tartan;" one of our buglers who was in attendance on Sir Colin, sounded the advance, and the whole of the Ninety-Third dashed from behind the bank. It has always been a disputed point who got through the hole first. I believe the first man in was Lance-Corporal Donnelly of the Ninety-Third, who was killed inside; then Subadar Gokul Sing, followed by Sergeant-Major Murray, of the Ninety-Third, also killed, and fourth, Captain Burroughs, severely wounded.
It was about this time I got through myself, pushed up by Colonel Ewart who immediately followed. My feet had scarcely touched the ground inside, when a sepoy fired point-blank at me from among the long grass a few yards distant. The bullet struck the thick brass clasp of my waist-belt, but with such force that it sent me spinning heels over head. The man who fired was cut down by Captain Cooper, of the Ninety-Third, who got through the hole abreast with myself. When struck I felt just as one feels when tripped up at a football match. Before I regained my feet, I heard Ewart say as he rushed past me, "Poor fellow, he is done for." I was but stunned, and regaining my feet and my breath too, which was completely knocked out of me, I rushed on to the inner court of the building, where I saw Ewart bareheaded, his feather bonnet having been shot off his head, engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fight with several of the enemy. I believe he shot down five or six of them with his revolver. By that time the whole of the Ninety-Third and the Sikhs had got in either through the wall or by the principal gate which had now been forced open; the Fifty-Third, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon of the Ninety-Third, and Captain B. Walton (who was severely wounded), had got in by a window in the right angle of the garden wall which they forced open. The inner court was rapidly filled with dead, but two officers of the mutineers were fiercely defending a regimental colour inside a dark room. Ewart rushed on them to seize it, and although severely wounded in his sword-arm, he not only captured the colour, but killed both the officers who were defending it.
By this time opposition had almost ceased. A few only of the defenders of the Secundrabâgh were left alive, and those few were being hunted out of dark corners, some of them from below heaps of slain. Colonel Ewart, seeing that the fighting was over, started with his colour to present it to Sir Colin Campbell; but whether it was that the old Chief considered that it was infra dig. for a field-officer to expose himself to needless danger, or whether it was that he was angry at some other thing, I know not, but this much I remember: Colonel Ewart ran up to him where he sat on his gray charger outside the gate of the Secundrabâgh, and called out: "We are in possession of the bungalows, sir. I have killed the last two of the enemy with my own hand, and here is one of their colours," "D—n your colours, sir!" said Sir Colin. "It's not your place to be taking colours; go back to your regiment this instant, sir!" However, the officers of the staff who were with Sir Colin gave a cheer for Colonel Ewart, and one of them presented him with a cap to cover his head, which was still bare. He turned back, apparently very much upset at the reception given to him by the old Chief; but I afterwards heard that Sir Colin sent for him in the afternoon, apologised for his rudeness, and thanked him for his services. Before I conclude, I may remark that I have often thought over this incident, and the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that, from the wild and excited appearance of Colonel Ewart, who had been by that time more than an hour without his hat in the fierce rays of the sun, covered with blood and powder smoke, and his eyes still flashing with the excitement of the fight, giving him the appearance of a man under the influence of something more potent than "blue ribbon" tipple—I feel pretty sure, I say, that, when Sir Colin first saw him, he thought he was drunk. When he found out his mistake he was of course sorry for his rudeness.
After the capture of the Shâh Nujeef, a field officer was required to hold the barracks, which was one of the most important posts on our left advance, and although severely wounded, having several sabre-cuts and many bruises on his body, Colonel Ewart volunteered for the post of commandant of the force. This post he held until the night of the evacuation of the Residency and the retreat from Lucknow, for the purpose of relieving Cawnpore for the second time from the grasp of the Nânâ Sâhib and the Gwalior Contingent. It was at the retaking of Cawnpore that Colonel Ewart eventually had his arm carried off by a cannon-shot; and the last time I saw him was when I assisted to lift him into a dooly on the plain of Cawnpore on the 1st of December, 1857. But I must leave the retaking of Cawnpore to its proper place in these reminiscences, and resume my narrative of the capture of the Secundrabâgh.
I mentioned previously that the muster-rolls had scarcely been called outside the gateway, when the enemy evidently became aware that the place was no longer held for them by living men, and a terrible fire was opened on us from both our right and left, as well as from the Shâh Nujeef in our direct front.