The retiring force was overwhelmed by a murderous cannonade, and, being largely composed of young soldiers, a panic ensued. The men got out of hand, and fled for the fort with a loss of over three hundred,—mostly killed, because the wounded who fell into the hands of the enemy were cut to pieces,—and several guns. The Rev. Mr. Moore, Church of England Chaplain with General Wyndham's force, gave a very sad picture of the panic in which the men fled for the fort, and his description was borne out by what I saw myself when we passed through the fort on the morning of the 29th. Mr. Moore said: "The men got quite out of hand and fled pell-mell for the fort. An old Sikh sirdâr at the gate tried to stop them, and to form them up in some order, and when they pushed him aside and rushed past him, he lifted up his hands and said, 'You are not the brothers of the men who beat the Khâlsa army and conquered the Punjâb!'" Mr. Moore went on to say that, "The old Sikh followed the flying men through the Fort Gate, and patting some of them on the back said, 'Don't run, don't be afraid, there is nothing to hurt you!'" The fact is the men were mostly young soldiers, belonging to many different regiments, simply battalions of detachments. They were crushed by the heavy and well-served artillery of the enemy, and if the truth must be told, they had no confidence in their commander, who was a brave soldier, but no general; so when the men were once seized with panic, there was no stopping them. The only regiment, or rather part of a regiment, for they only numbered fourteen officers of all ranks and a hundred and sixty men, which behaved well, was the old Sixty-Fourth, and two companies of the Thirty-Fourth and Eighty-Second, making up a weak battalion of barely three hundred. This was led by brave old Brigadier Wilson, who held them in hand until he brought them forward to cover the retreat, which he did with a loss of seven officers killed and two wounded, eighteen men of the Sixty-Fourth killed and twenty-five wounded, with equally heavy proportions killed and wounded from the companies of the Thirty-Fourth and Eighty-Second. Brigadier Wilson first had his horse shot, and was then himself killed, while urging the men to maintain the honour of the regiment. The command then devolved on Major Stirling, one of the Sixty-Fourth, who was cut down in the act of spiking one of the enemy's guns, and Captain M'Crea of the same regiment was also cut down just as he had spiked his fourth gun. This charge, and these individual acts of bravery, retarded the advance of the enemy till some sort of order had been re-established inside the fort. The Sixty-Fourth were then driven back, and obliged to leave their dead.
This then was the state of matters when we reached Cawnpore from Lucknow. The whole of our spare baggage was captured: the city of Cawnpore and the whole of the river-side up to the house where the Nânâ had slaughtered the women and children were in the hands of the enemy; but they had not yet injured the bridge of boats, nor crossed the canal, and the road to Allahabad still remained open.
We marched through the fort, and took up ground near where the jute mill of Messrs. Beer Brothers and Co. and Joe Lee's hotel now stand. We crossed the bridge without any loss except one officer, who was slightly wounded by being struck on the shin by a spent bullet from a charge of grape. He was a long slender youth of about sixteen or seventeen years of age, whom the men had named "Jack Straw." He was knocked down just as we cleared the bridge of boats, among the blood of some camp-followers who had been killed by the bursting of a shell just in front of us. Sergeant Paton, of my company, picked him up, and put him into an empty dooly which was passing.
During the day a piquet of one sergeant, one corporal, and about twenty men, under command of Lieutenant Stirling, who was afterwards killed on the 5th of December, was sent out to bring in the body of Brigadier Wilson, and a man named Doran, of the Sixty-Fourth, who had gone up to Lucknow in the Volunteer Cavalry, and had there done good service and returned with our force, volunteered to go out with them to identify the brigadier's body, because there were many more killed near the same place, and their corpses having been stripped, they could not be identified by their uniform, and it would have been impossible to have brought in all without serious loss. The party reached the brigadier's body without apparently attracting the attention of the enemy; but just as two men, Rule of my regiment and Patrick Doran, were lifting it into the dooly they were seen, and the enemy opened fire on them. A bullet struck Doran and went right through his body from side to side, without touching any of the vital organs, just as he was bending down to lift the brigadier—a most extraordinary wound! If the bullet had deviated a hair's-breadth to either side, the wound must have been mortal, but Doran was able to walk back to the fort, and lived for many years after taking his discharge from the regiment.
During the time that this piquet was engaged the Blue-jackets of Peel's Brigade and our heavy artillery had taken up positions in front of the fort, and showed the gunners of the Gwalior Contingent that they were no longer confronted by raw inexperienced troops. By the afternoon of the 29th of November, the whole of the women and children and sick and wounded from Lucknow had crossed the Ganges, and encamped behind the Ninety-Third on the Allahabad road, and here I will leave them and close this chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Native cavalry troopers.
[28] See Appendix D.