‘The suppression of mutiny … is the most arduous and delicate duty upon which an officer can be employed, and which requires, in the person who undertakes it, all the highest qualifications of an officer, and moral qualities’
The Duke of Wellington
While the Gurkhas made their way south, Campbell mustered all he could at Cawnpore for the grand assault on Lucknow, requesting the (12-mile long) siege train from Agra and the Shannon’s 8in guns from Allahabad (see Plate 25).* ‘Every loop-holed house or garden wall will swarm with hidden foes’, warned the correspondent for the Bengal Hurkaru. ‘There is sound policy in Sir Colin’s waiting until he shall have got such an artillery force together as will, from its very weight of fire, drive them from their rat holes.’1 Most papers were not so forgiving. ‘The Indian press, with the self-confidence of pressmen all over the world, daily abused the C-in-C,’ recalled Gordon-Alexander, ‘but it must have been a matter of intense gratification to him that their perfectly sincere abuse assisted in misleading the enemy as to his immediate intentions and future plans.’2 As Roberts observed, ‘those who accused him of “indecision, dilatoriness, and wasting the best of the cold weather” could not have known how little he deserved their censure’.3 As Campbell explained:
I have been detained here, by desire of the governor-general, very much longer than was convenient to enable Jung Bahadoor to join and take part in the siege of Lucknow … I hope to reduce it speedily, for the weather is getting hot, and the heat will destroy and render ineffective more men than even the fire of the enemy.4
‘If Sir Colin gets up here soon, and we are favoured with a fortnight’s moderate weather, I believe Lucknow will be ours,’ wrote one civilian from the Alumbagh, ‘but if not, I think we must sit here through the hot weather and rains as in Delhi and lose at least half our men, and possibly have to begin again to reconquer India.’5
The governor-general had moved up to Allahabad* to be closer to the front, so on 7 February Campbell made a flying visit to discuss strategy, and the question of a pardon for the rebels. Both Outram and John Lawrence had been recommending an amnesty. ‘Why not then, when beating down all opposition with one hand, hold out the olive branch with the other?’ argued Lawrence.6 Campbell was sympathetic. Initially Canning agreed that, aside from ‘nine or ten’ regiments which would receive ‘no offer of pardon’, the rest were to be ‘allowed to retire to their homes with full pardon on laying down their arms’. However, on reflection, the governor-general decided this would only encourage the proscribed regiments to flee, and let the rest of the Lucknow rebels go unpunished. ‘We shall come to shame and contempt if we offer a compromise to Traitors who are still unbeaten and insolent before us’, he declared. ‘No power on earth will induce me to speak of terms until they have been driven from the city, or crushed within it.’7
A disappointed Campbell returned to Cawnpore to finalise his army’s structure. Grant, now promoted major-general, would be second-in-command and lead the cavalry. Archdale Wilson would have the artillery, Robert Napier the engineers, while the three divisions of infantry were split between Outram, Walpole and Sir Edward Lugard, who had seen action in Afghanistan, both Sikh wars and in Persia as Outram’s chief of staff.8 Everyone was ready, except for Jung’s Gurkhas, who had yet to appear. Tired of waiting, Campbell assured the governor-general ‘we are able to take the strongest positions of the city without him’. ‘I am sure that, as matters stand, we do better to accept the necessity and wait for Jung Bahadoor. It would drive him wild to find himself jockeyed out of all share in the great campaign’, insisted Canning:
I am convinced that he would break with us and go back to his hills within a week. The loss of this help would be very inconvenient, but to find ourselves on bad terms with him would be much more so. I am therefore quite reconciled to a little delay.9
The hiatus at least allowed William Russell to catch up with Campbell. He had been rather slower off the mark than in the Crimea, this time arriving ten months after unrest broke out, but as one officer wrote, ‘Mr. Russell being with the army is a great boon to the good people at home. Many stirring incidents are recorded which but for his graphic pen, would never have been known beyond where they took place.’10
Russell found Campbell ‘better, stronger and more vigorous than the last time I saw him’:
His figure shows little trace of fifty years of the hardest and most varied service, beyond that which a vigorous age must carry with it; the face is marked, indeed, with many a seam across the brow, but the mouth, surmounted by a trimmed, short moustache, is clean-cut and firm, showing a perfect set of teeth as he speaks.
‘Now, Mr Russell, I’ll be candid with you’, said Campbell. ‘We shall make a compact. You shall know everything that is going on. You shall see all my reports, and get every information that I have myself, on the condition that you do not mention it in camp, or let it be known in any way, except in your letters to England.’
‘I accept the condition, sir; and I promise you it will be faithfully observed’, was Russell’s response.11
In the field of communications, Campbell had already shown himself ahead of his time in his emphasis on telegraphy, and now he became the first British general to take an ‘embedded’ journalist. Given the time needed for Russell’s reports to reach London, to be printed, and then to filter back to India, they would be out of date by the time the rebels read them, so there was no risk from a tactical standpoint, while Campbell stood to gain from soft-soaping the most famous journalist on Britain’s biggest-selling daily newspaper.12 ‘Sir Colin will always be reckoned a great general,’ reported The Standard, ‘but he never made a finer show of generalship than when he welcomed the correspondent of The Times into his tent, his table and his council board.’13 Nevertheless, it was still a gamble. Russell was not there to give the Company or the military an easy time; he railed against the segregation of colonised and the colonisers, and the casual racism he encountered everywhere. His intention was to debunk the stories of native atrocities, not to act as Campbell’s PR agent.**
After nearly three weeks’ postponement, and still no sign of the Nepalis, Campbell’s army set out from Cawnpore in the early hours of 28 February. As before, they marched for Bunthera. ‘Here such a force was collected as must have paled the cheek of Pandy’s spies when they caught sight of it’, crowed Lieutenant Majendie.14 There were close on 16,000 soldiers and Russell estimated that for every fighting man there were six or seven camp followers.15 ‘I could not but think how different campaigning is in India from what it was in the Crimea’, he reported:
here we have barons of beef, great turkeys, which in the Irish phrase are ‘big enough to draw a gig’, mutton of grass-fed sheep, game, fish without the flavour of tin and rosin, truffled fowl, rissoles, and all the various triumphs of French cuisine, spread on snowy-white tablecloths in well-lighted tents, served by numerous hands. Here too, were beakers of pale ale from distant Trent or Glasgow, Dublin or London porter, champagne, Moselle, sherry, curious old port (rather bothered by travelling twenty miles a day on the backs of camels), plum puddings, mince-pies and other luxuries not often found in camps.16
Campbell had triple the men he had fielded in November, but Lucknow was triply reinforced. The Begum had spent five lakhs of rupees entrenching and now three massive earth ramparts protected the central rebel citadel, the Kaiserbagh. ‘The enemy, profiting by experience, had strengthened their defences by works exhibiting prodigious labour’, wrote Napier. ‘Sir Colin Campbell’s former route across the canal, where its banks shelved, was intercepted by a new line of very formidable section, flanked by strong bastions.’17 In addition, every street had been barricaded and most houses of substance loop-holed. The mutineers’ arsenal numbered more than 100 guns, commanding the key thoroughfares. Within Lucknow lay the greatest concentration of rebels yet gathered, approximately 30,000 sepoys plus 50,000 volunteers.* The latter, often dismissed as undisciplined bandits, were rated highly by Russell. ‘The great bulk of the sepoy army is supposed to be inside Lucknow,’ he wrote:
but they will not fight as well as the matchlockmen of Oudh, who have followed the chiefs to maintain the cause of their young king … and who may fairly be regarded as engaged in a patriot war for their country and their sovereign. The sepoys during the siege of the Residency never came on as boldly as the zemindary levies and nujeebs.**18
‘I could not hope to invest a city having a circumference of twenty miles’.19 Campbell informed the governor-general, so instead he decided to punch through the earthworks and storm the Kaiserbagh, that ‘range of massive palaces and walled courts of vast extent, equalled perhaps, but certainly not surpassed, in any capital in Europe’.20 The question was from which direction to attack. Expecting a repeat of Campbell’s November assault, the rebels had concentrated their fortifications to the east. Outram wanted to wrong-foot them with an offensive from the north-west,21 but, as Napier warned, the ‘west side presents a great breadth of dense and almost impenetrable city’. He favoured an eastern strike, which offered ‘first, the smallest front and was therefore more easily enveloped by our attack; secondly, ground for planting our artillery, which was wanting on the west side; and thirdly, it gave also the shortest approach to the Kaiserbagh, a place to which the rebels attached the greatest importance’.22 Napier recommended Campbell occupy the Dil Khooshah, and then:
cross the canal in the first instance at Banks’s house under cover of our artillery – and to place guns in position to bear on the mass of buildings which flank the European Infantry barracks – the Hospital – the Begum’s House and the Hurzat Gunge … and to take that mass of buildings.
This ‘line of strong buildings, which extend to the walls of the Kaiserbagh’, would ‘secure us a covered way for our safe but irresistible progress into the heart of the enemy’s position’. At the same time, advised Napier, cavalry and artillery should skirt round, north of the Goomtee, and deploy opposite the Residency to ‘cut off the enemy’s supplies, and to deter them from bringing guns on the North side of the river to annoy us’.23
Campbell expanded Napier’s basic plan into a two-pronged assault. Outram would take a whole infantry division and storm Lucknow from the north. ‘Mind that this is kept quiet’, Campbell instructed Russell. ‘Outram will be placed so as to command the rear of the enemy’s line, and to take their works in flank and reverse, whilst our attack is pressed with vigour from this side … as soon as the Martinière is taken.’24 Tactically it was hazardous. ‘I think of what the world would say if Outram there fell into an ambuscade, or got terribly mauled by an overwhelming body of the enemy’, wrote Russell:
How Sir Colin would have been decried for ‘acting in opposition to the principles of war’. How the club strategists would point out ‘the absurdity, by Jove, sir! Of any man dividing his army – small enough in itself – in the face of a powerful enemy, and putting one part of it out of reach beyond an unfordable river, by gad, sir, as if he wanted it cut to pieces’.
The vanguard left Bunthera on 2 March, followed by the rest of the army the next day. The Dil Khooshah presented no difficulties and the rebels there rapidly withdrew. The British found its once opulent grounds dilapidated and forlorn. After nine months of fighting, ‘everything was fast going to decay; the irrigation canals were choked up, the fountains were dry, the statues falling to pieces, the lattices in the kiosks broken’. Inside the main building were ‘heaps of ruin, broken mirror frames, crystals of chandeliers,* tapestries, pictures, beds of furniture’.25 Campbell’s intention was to halt there, but he found himself within range of enemy artillery along the line of the canal. ‘These guns commanded the plateau, and compelled me to retire the camp as far back as it was possible’, he explained. Without the pressing urgency of a garrison to rescue, or a Gwalior Contingent prowling the countryside, Campbell could take his time, so here he stayed, waiting for Brigadier Franks’s 4th Division and the remainder of the siege train to close up. Franks arrived on 5 March with 5,893 men, 3,019 of them Gurkhas kitted out in loose blue trousers, red jackets and green turbans.26 ‘They are a rum-looking little lot, few of them over 5ft 2,’ wrote one engineer, ‘but are said to fight well, although their officers are very bad. They will be of much use in preventing the escape of mutineers, but I fear not much else.’27
Campbell was not prepared to wait any longer for the rest of Jung’s Nepalis. Two bridges of casks, each 135ft long, were thrown over the Goomtee and on the morning of the 6th, Outram’s force, including Walpole’s 3rd Division and Grant’s cavalry, marched across.28 ‘What a mighty impedimentum of baggage, deserts of camels, wildernesses of elephants, all pouring towards the river’, wrote Russell. ‘The column and its dependencies were four hours crossing over; as to the baggage, it was not clear of the bridge even at night.’29 Next the force took a long circuit towards the village of Ismailganj, ‘partly to be out of the reach of the guns of the Martinière and partly to escape the observation of the enemy’, as Colonel Jones explained.30 They had not gone far before they discovered a 400-strong detachment of enemy cavalry. The Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards) having landed only four months before and being ‘anxious to signalise themselves in their first action’,31 charged down the road towards the rebels. They ended up badly mauled. ‘The Chief was very angry at the loss of horses and saddles,’ wrote Gordon-Alexander, ‘most of the animals, when they had thrown their riders, galloping after the flying rebels.’32 Good horses were even more difficult to find than good troopers.
Outram camped near the Fyzabad Road, about a mile west of Chinhut, and waited for the siege guns under Lieutenant-Colonel Riddell.33 For those who had watched Nicholson fall upon Delhi pell-mell, the leaden pace was infuriating. ‘I for one cannot see what Sir Colin is up to, but I suppose he has some plan or other of his own. All I can say is that he seems to be wasting valuable time’, complained one civilian engineer:
We have now something like 30,000 men of sorts here and hereabouts, and I feel sure that if Sir Colin would make up his mind, as they did in Delhi at last, and as they should have done months before – to lose a good lot – he will go in and take the place, but every day he sits quietly here the enemy will increase in numbers.
There was a reason for Campbell’s sluggishness. He wanted his artillery to remove the need for street fighting. Once the big guns had reached Outram on 8 March, all was ready: ‘I directed Sir James Outram to arrange his batteries during the succeeding night, and to attack the enemy’s position – the key of which was the Chukkur Walla Kotee [The Yellow House, grandstand of the royal racecourse].’34 By the early afternoon, the Yellow House was Outram’s, and he was able ‘to bring his right shoulders [sic] forward, occupying the Fyzabad Road, and to plant his batteries for the purpose of enfilading the works on the canal’.35 Next came the Badshahbagh, ‘an extensive enclosure surrounded with massive walls, the interior of which contained a number of small summer palaces with prettily laid out walks radiating in every direction, shaded by splendid orange trees and decorated with fountains and beds of flowers’.36 ‘It is, I believe, mentioned in the Arabian Nights as one of the wonders of India,’ observed one engineer, ‘and although I visited it under rather disadvantageous circumstances, viz. a pretty steady shower of every sort of missile, from musket bullets to 24lb shot, I had time to admire it very much.’37 ‘The fortified gates of the strong-walled enclosure were blown open, and the garden occupied’, Outram reported.38 He soon commanded the ground all the way down to the riverbank, and from here his guns could begin firing on the heart of Lucknow.
Upon seeing Outram’s flag over the Yellow House at 2 p.m., Campbell had ordered forward Lugard’s 2nd division. Instead of Napier’s plan to assault the rebel lines north-west of the Dil Khooshah, near Banks’s House, Campbell followed his old route and send Lugard to take La Martinière. ‘The 42nd were first let loose and rushed at the huts about the Martinière Alms House’, recalled Lang:
I was with the 93rd, who were very indignant, jealous and impatient, and when the right was let loose, away we went at the double across the open in front of the building. Stumbling among the maze of trenches which Pandy had thrown up, we occupied the house and garden.*39
The men now made for the north end of the first rebel line of earthworks, where the canal met the Goomtee. One of Outram’s strongest batteries (ten guns) had been positioned opposite, on the north bank, near the hamlet of Jagauli, to enfilade these defences.** They had pounded these entrenchments so comprehensively that by the time Campbell’s troops reached them they appeared abandoned. Lieutenant Butler of the 1st Bengal Fusiliers volunteered to swim the Goomtee to make sure. A short while later Butler could be seen on the enemy parapet, signalling that the earthworks were empty. ‘The 4th Punjab Infantry, supported by the 42nd Highlanders, climbed up the entrenchment abutting on the Goomtee, and proceeded to sweep down the whole line of works till they got to the neighbourhood of Banks’s house,’ Campbell reported, ‘when it became necessary to close operations for the night.’40
The next day, 10 March, Lugard stormed Banks’s House, and from here Peel’s guns began firing on the Begum’s Palace. That night Outram established new batteries targeting the Mess House and the Kaiserbagh, and the following morning occupied the mosque on the old cantonment road, commanding the approach to the iron bridge near the Residency. Outram continued westwards, taking the stone bridge upstream, ‘the enemy however, were able to command it with guns, as well as with musketry from the tops of several high and strong stone houses, from the opposite side of the river’, he explained, ‘and the position was moreover, too distant, and the approaches too intricate, to warrant my holding it permanently with the force at my disposal’. He pulled back his men to the Badshahbagh, leaving a detachment guarding the north end of the iron bridge and the mosque.41
The same day, 11 March, the Sekundrabagh fell with minimal British casualties. According to Lieutenant Lang:
Medley, Carnegie and I, being with 100 sappers at the Sekundrabagh, and having a strong objection to the dreadful odour of the 1840 Pandies half-buried there, and being pretty sure that the Kuddum Russool was deserted, took three sappers and stole into it and found it empty. From the top of it we saw the Shah Nujif seemingly also deserted. So we moved into the Shah Nujif and fortified it.42
As these troops advanced along Campbell’s old route and occupied the palaces next to the Goomtee, so the other British pincer drove in westwards towards the Begum’s Palace, while Outram continued shelling the rebels from the rear.
On every front, the gunners and sappers led the assault. ‘The operation had now become one of engineering character,’ explained Campbell, ‘and the most earnest endeavours were made to save the infantry from being hazarded before due preparation had been made.’ ‘The chief engineer [Napier] pushed his approach with the greatest judgment … the troops immediately occupying the ground as he advanced, and the mortars being moved from one place to another, as the ground was won.’43 Steadily and with minimal losses, Campbell’s army was advancing, pressing on into the middle of Lucknow ready to take the Kaiserbagh.
It was at this critical moment that Jung and his Gurkhas arrived. Oblivious to the battle, Jung requested a royal salute for himself and one for each of his brothers. ‘Salutes are never fired at sieges’, fumed Campbell, before diplomatically consenting.44 Through gritted teeth, he scheduled a grand durbar in his state tent for 4 p.m. ‘Carpets were laid down and the Union Jack displayed and, terrible to be said, the bagpipers of the 93rd, fully provided with bags and pipes, were in attendance’,* recalled Russell. ‘Our old Chief, in honour of the occasion, had doffed his usual workman-like costume, and wore General’s full dress uniform’, wrote Roberts.45 ‘Four o’clock came, no signs of Jung Bahadoor’, reported Russell. ‘A quarter of an hour passed by; the Chief walked up and down with one hand behind his back, and the other working nervously.’46 The artillery had smashed two breaches in the Begum’s Palace and Campbell had scheduled an assault for 4.30 p.m.
Then, at the entrance to the tent, appeared ‘a spare active figure, unwearied as yet by his years’, ‘magnificently dressed, his turban ornamented with a splendid tiara of diamonds and emeralds’. Jung’s ‘countenance was remarkably intelligent, and though he had the flat Nepalese features, he was dignified in his bearing and manner’, wrote Grant. ‘There was however, a suspicious glance in his eye, so characteristic of the Eastern disposition.’47 There followed ‘a good deal of bowing and salaaming’, according to Russell, ‘as the Maharajah introduced his brothers and great officers to the Chief’, before ‘in the midst of the durbar an officer of Mansfield’s staff comes in to announce to Sir Colin that “the Begum Kothie is taken. Very little loss on our side. About five hundred of the enemy killed!” As we could not cheer aloud, every man did so mentally.’48 ‘The effect was magical’, wrote another correspondent. ‘The unfinished programme of solemn nonsense was cast to the winds.’49
First in had been the 93rd and the 4th Punjab Infantry, with Franks’ Gurkhas in support. The 5,000 mutineers inside defended every yard. ‘It raged for two hours from court to court, and from room to room,’ recalled Forbes-Mitchell, ‘the pipe-major, John McLeod, playing the pipes inside as calmly as if he had been walking round the officers’ mess tent at a regimental festival.’ ‘The 93rd lost two officers killed, and were very savage,’ wrote Lieutenant Lang, ‘dragging out bodies, heaping them up and making assurance doubly sure with the bayonet.’50 The Highlanders used bags of gunpowder to clear each room of rebels. ‘This set fire to their clothing and to whatever furniture there was … and when day broke on the 12th there were hundreds of bodies all round, some still burning and others half-burnt’, reported Forbes-Mitchell. ‘The stench was sickening.’51 Just one prisoner was taken.52 ‘Altogether 600 corpses were counted and buried’, wrote Captain Maude. ‘On the second night the effluvium from the festering heap of bodies, though they were covered in earth, was so overpowering that I was totally unable to sleep.’53 ‘This was the sternest struggle which occurred during the siege’, reported Campbell.54 British casualties were thirty-one killed and eighty-six wounded.55 For some this was not nearly enough. ‘The 93rd went into action eight hundred strong, and their casualties little exceeded sixty,’ complained Fortescue, ‘from which the inevitable inference is that the mutinied sepoy, if boldly attacked, was not a very formidable foe.’56 The same foe had decimated Havelock’s column, obliterated Wheeler at Cawnpore and surrounded the British in Delhi, but because Campbell defeated them economically, they had to be second-rate.
Campbell now sat tight for two days while Napier constructed new batteries. The troops were fretful, but the commander-in-chief wanted to give his gunners more time, especially since the quality of the shells was proving unreliable. To make matters worse, Peel’s rockets were also behaving unpredictably. ‘The sticks had got too dry, and caught fire, and away went the rocket anywhere but where it was wanted,’ explained Colonel Jones, ‘and the composition had also got too dry, and burnt so quickly, as, in many cases, to fall or explode far short of their proper range.’57
Having given his artillery every chance to pulverise the enemy, on 14 March Campbell launched another push. Jung’s Gurkhas moved in from the south, while British artillery drew a bead on the next palatial obstacle, the Little Imambarra, lying between the Begum’s Palace and the Kaiserbagh. This time the breach was taken by a combination of Sikhs and the 10th Foot. ‘The men were excited and eager to go on’, wrote one officer. ‘Without orders the Sikhs, like monkeys, climbed a wall and opened a large gate … We rushed onwards, cleared 40 guns in battery en route, driving all before us.’ Finding themselves in a building overlooking the Kaiserbagh, the Punjabis began firing on the enemy gunners below, while the 10th Foot penetrated the enemy’s second line, and encircled the Taree Khotee and the Mess House. The 300 mutineers inside were put to the sword. One of Campbell’s staff officers rode back to report the news. ‘I saw Norman, at his usual canter, hurrying across the street’, Russell recalled. ‘“What is it, Norman? Have we got the Imambarra?” “The Imambarra! Why man, we’re in the Kaiserbagh!” Here indeed was news. The camp was in commotion. Syces [Indian grooms] running to and fro, the Chief and all his staff calling for their horses.’58
Campbell ordered the men forward from the Sekundrabagh and Shah Nujif, and called for reinforcements to press home the advantage. The Kaiserbagh’s mutineers were not prepared to mount a death-or-glory last stand, and fled. Its satellite strongholds, including the Motee Mahul and the Chuttur Manzil, put up very little resistance. The great citadel, expected to be the siege’s costliest prize, had fallen at a discount. ‘Everyone felt that, although much remained to be done before the final expulsion of the rebels, the most difficult part of the undertaking had been overcome’, reported Campbell.59 It all sounded ridiculously easy: the troops would descend on a rebel position, meet token resistance and so occupy another palace. But that ease was only ensured by withering barrages enfilading the rebel lines, a tactic in turn facilitated by Outram’s flanking manoeuvre. As Lady Canning observed of Campbell, ‘When he has done things so easily it has been because he laid his plans so well that he made it easy.’60
With the Kaiserbagh overpowered, the time had come for Outram to launch his men across the iron bridge and stop the rebels escaping westwards. His horse artillery limbered up and the breastwork across the bridge was removed. ‘All was ready for the advance, when General Outram and staff arrived’, reported Lieutenant Majendie. Outram explained to his astonished troops, ‘that Sir Colin Campbell had ordered him not to cross, if he saw the chance of losing a single man [my italics]’.61 Instead of landing the killer blow, the commander-in-chief was going to let his enemy escape into Oudh, leaving ‘the province swarming with armed rebels still capable of resistance’, complained Burne. ‘Another year of desultory fighting was quite needlessly imposed upon the British Army,’ claimed Jocelyn,62 resulting in ‘the needless loss of thousands of British soldiers’,* as Roberts put it.63 ‘That order derogates from his claim to be placed in the rank of the greatest commanders’, wrote Malleson. In consequence, ‘he must be classed as a great general of the second rank.’64
What was Campbell thinking? Most historians have interpreted this order literally, that Campbell meant it was fine to cross the bridge, so long as no one got killed; in other words, the only issue he had with an advance was casualties. ‘The order was consistent with Campbell’s character and his perception of future needs’, argued the only modern historian to examine the campaign in detail. He was ‘determined to husband his precious army’,65 but ‘by giving way to his desire to save the lives of his men’, as Evelyn Wood put it, ‘he expended many more lives and much more money than he would have done had he accorded General Outram a free hand.’66 Yet, in the light of the losses Campbell had incurred at Lucknow in November, and at the Begum’s Palace three days before, this does not make sense. Yes, Campbell was keen to ‘husband his precious army’, but he accepted casualties where necessary. He understood that one cannot fight a war without them. If he really wanted the bridge, he would have risked it. Rather, the order seems figurative: a prohibition, simply an inverted way of saying, ‘Don’t take the bridge.’ So the question is not, why was Campbell unwilling to suffer any casualties to take the bridge, but rather, why did he want Outram to stay on the north bank and let the rebels flee?
Practical considerations might explain it. Was it even feasible for Outram to corner the rebels if he crossed the bridge? The sepoys were not a single army like the French at Vitoria, who, fleeing with their materiel, had kept to one road. Lucknow housed a conglomeration of soldiers, retainers and badmashes fighting under one banner, but with very different ideas of where to run if push came to shove. Because Lucknow lacked a city wall restricting the rebels to a few guardable exits, they could escape from a thousand different points. ‘The city, for all practical purposes, was twenty miles in circumference; and he could not have guarded all the outlets without a very much larger army than that which was at his disposal,’ argued historian George Dodd.67 As one cavalry officer wrote:
It needs no great effort of imagination to conceive how difficult was the task of preventing, with a small brigade of Cavalry and Horse Artillery, so long a line from being penetrated by bands of fugitives at one point or another, even by day, still more under cover of night.68
That the British were not stopping Lucknow’s native civilians from leaving made that task a great deal harder. On 8 March, Captain Oliver Jones was riding from the Dil Khooshah towards the Goomtee. Any refugee deserting Lucknow westwards past the Dil Khooshah had to pass through heavily fortified rebel entrenchments before braving countryside beyond patrolled by Hodson’s Horse. Nevertheless, Jones stumbled across ‘a long string of people with their bullock carts and so forth … I suppose they were people escaping from Lucknow, and their object was to do so as quickly and quietly as possible.’69 Jones let them go. If a caravan of refugees could get out through the most militarised part of Lucknow, the notion of corralling every rebel in town was absurd. After the Battle of Cawnpore, Roberts had seen routed sepoys ‘throwing away their arms and divesting themselves of their uniform, that they might pass for harmless peasants’.70 In Lucknow they could just as easily drop their muskets and claim to be innocent townsfolk. The volunteers among them were not in uniform anyway, allowing them to blend seamlessly with a population twice that of Delhi, inhabiting ‘a wilderness of lanes and narrow tortuous streets, nearly as large as Paris’.
In fact, the rebels had been showing their heels for days. On the night of 13 March, the day before Outram asked to cross the bridge, Campbell told Russell that his spies reported sepoys ‘leaving the city in great numbers’.71 The commander-in-chief was unconcerned. For him, it was enough that the rebels’ will was broken. All the fight seemed to have gone from them. ‘We are so destitute that it is difficult to describe’, complained one mutineer. ‘God knows there is no ammunition left.’72 ‘Individuals can escape but supplies are completely cut off’, Roberts told his father on 12 March. ‘This disheartens them more than anything. Many run away every night, some make for Bareilly, but the chief part go to their homes,** hoping their lives will be spared.’73
There is another, more radical explanation of the order not to cross the bridge. What has never been considered is whether Campbell’s anxiety was as much to save the lives of the rebels as his own troops. Penning in the enemy meant a bloodbath. Lucknow was already a scene ‘of indiscriminate massacre’, according to Lieutenant Majendie. ‘Sepoy or Oudh villager, it mattered not – no questions were asked; his skin was black, and did not that suffice?’74 The lust for vengeance came from all corps. Sikh troops, finding a lone surviving sepoy at the Yellow House, pulled him ‘by the legs to a convenient place, where he was held down, pricked in the face and body by the bayonets of some of the soldiery, whilst others collected fuel for a small pyre’, reported Russell. ‘When all was ready – the man was roasted alive! There were Englishmen looking on, more than one officer saw it. No one offered to interfere!’75 As one naval chaplain put it, ‘Few ever went through the empty formality of making prisoners.’76 ‘I never let my men take prisoners, but shoot them at once’, explained William Hodson.77 To many British officers, this seemed perfectly reasonable. For one thing, the punishment for mutiny was death, so why take mutineers alive? For another, it is a difficult thing to take a man prisoner who expects no mercy. As Forbes-Mitchell reported when the Highlanders found a Ghazi, ‘Some of the light company tried to take the youngster prisoner, but it was no use; he cut at every one so madly that they had to bayonet him.’78
The inhumanity was mutual. ‘Wherever the rebels meet a Christian, or a white man, they at once slay him pitilessly’, Russell explained. ‘Wherever we meet a rebel in arms, or any man on whom suspicion rests, we kill him with equal celerity.’79 Even the wounded were fair game. Lieutenant Majendie watched British soldiers drag ‘out a decrepit old man, severely wounded in the thigh’. ‘“Ave his nut off” cried one; “Hang the brute” cried another; “Put him out of mess” said a third; “Give him a Cawnpore dinner” shouted a fourth. (The soldiers call six inches of steel a Cawnpore dinner).’ Two of the men led him away.
The soldiers returned to their games of cards and their pipes, and seemed to feel no further interest in the matter, except when the two executioners returned, and one of their comrades carelessly asked, ‘Well, Bill, what did yer do to him?’ ‘Oh’, said the man, as he wiped the blood off an old tulwar, with an air of cool and horrible indifference which no words can convey, ‘Oh! Sliced his ‘ed off!’ resuming his rubber and dropping the subject much as a man might who had drowned a litter of puppies.80
No other British general in the nineteenth century was faced with the choice confronting Campbell that day. ‘The case of the men now holding Lucknow is so desperate that it will be a second Sekundrabagh on a greater scale,’ one correspondent predicted, ‘and guerra a la morte [sic] will be the motto of the belligerents.’81 ‘Had Sir Colin Campbell not bound Outram’s hands so tightly the advance would have taken place,’ wrote Russell, ‘and a tremendous slaughter of the enemy must have followed.’ ‘Their slain would have been counted by thousands’, argued Malleson.82 Many welcomed it. ‘It was Campbell’s imperative duty to inflict the greatest possible punishment upon them’, insisted Fortescue.83 He would have been the toast of Calcutta, but when the fury subsided he would have been labelled the most murderous general in British history.
A massacre would have extended to civilians as well. In Delhi, ‘all the city people found within the walls, when our troops entered, were bayoneted on the spot’, reported the Bombay Telegraph. ‘These were not mutineers, but residents of the city, who trusted to our well-known mild rule for pardon.’84 ‘No one’s life was safe’, confirmed one mutineer. ‘All able-bodied men who were seen were taken for rebels and shot.’85 Where Lucknow residents got caught up in the fighting, they received no pity. Russell saw a native boy leading an aged, blind man throw himself at the feet of an officer and beg for protection. The officer shot him.86 According to Norman, this indiscriminate slaughter was especially common among troops from Britain, ‘unused to India and apt to make no difference between loyal and disloyal natives’.87
Since becoming commander-in-chief, Campbell had been forced to navigate a difficult cataract. He had hoped to enter Oudh with a proclamation promising ‘not to carry war to the homes of the people’, but Canning had refused.88 Campbell’s natural inclination was towards leniency: on discovering that a mutineer, promised his life if he surrendered, had given himself up only to be hanged anyway, ‘Sir Colin was extremely indignant at the transaction, which he characterised in the severest way’, recalled Russell. ‘As Sir Colin says, such conduct will leave rebels no alternative but to hold out to the last.’89 Yet he knew that if he made his sympathies too public, he risked the loyalty of his troops. The lesson from Corunna was that however well-loved a general might be, if he lost the confidence of his men, order went by the board. Restraining the troops was already proving hard. ‘Where blood-shedding and slaughter have once become universal, it is no light task to check it,’ explained Majendie, ‘and an impossible one to stop it entirely.’90 Grant had seen this first-hand when presiding at a trial of mutineers just a few days before. ‘No important evidence was forthcoming, and being principally townspeople and zemindaree men, they could not be called rebels in the strict sense of the word’, he wrote. ‘I therefore directed that they should be set at liberty.’ Minutes later a sergeant reported that the acquitted were being lynched. ‘I started off as fast as possible, and saw three poor wretches strung up to trees, quite dead, and several scoundrels belonging to my force making off’, reported Grant. ‘I tried to ascertain their names, but failed, as they soon mixed with other men in the tents.’ ‘It really sickens one to think of slaughtering any more of the poor wretched creatures’, he continued:
If we were to put to death 10,000 more, we should not nearly have come to the end of them; and should we once come to guerrilla warfare, farewell to peace and comfort in the country for years. The Governor-General, if he has strength of mind to set aside the press, ought to issue a proclamation granting an amnesty to these wretched creatures, of whom three-fourths were forced into the Mutiny.91
As it happened, the governor-general was edging towards leniency, or at least, away from executions and towards imprisonment. ‘I do not want more of general hanging and shooting,’ he told Lord Granville on 16 March, ‘but I do intend that large numbers of those men shall be transported.’ A new penal colony on the Andaman Islands to house them was already in the planning stage. To this end, Canning had approved a special commission for the apprehension of mutineers under the relatively liberal John Wilson of the Bengal Civil Service, who made his sympathies clear by appointing a native (the son of the former Chief Minister of Oudh) as one of his deputies. This commission would begin work in less than a fortnight, a fact Campbell must have known as he considered whether to unleash Outram or let the rebels escape.
Canning was only reflecting the change in public mood. In the summer of 1857 press and politicians risked ostracism if they recommended mercy,* but by March 1858 sentiment had changed. ‘It seems to be very generally recognised at last, in spite of the violent councils which ruled a little while since, that it is desirable that a door of hope should be thrown upon to the mere rebels’, reported the Leicester Chronicle.92 ‘With no little astonishment, as we read speeches and leading articles, did we behold the respective positions of Sepoy and Englishman reversed,’ complained Lieutenant Majendie, ‘the former being the martyrs now, the latter the persecutors’.93 ‘At first it had been unavoidable giving no quarter, & hanging the miscreants, but now, Conciliation must be tried’, advised the queen.94 Following Palmerston’s fall from power that February, the liberally minded Lord Ellenborough had been appointed as President of the Board of Control for India. ‘It is quite impossible ever to hope to re-establish civil government in that country if the ordinary proceeding of law is to be the infliction of death’, he declared. ‘It will produce a blood feud between the natives and ourselves.’95
How could Campbell square this new spirit of forgiveness with his troops’ bloodlust? By giving the impression that he was all for a pogrom, and that it was only his reluctance to incur British casualties which prevented him from allowing one. The order stopping Outram from taking the bridge did just that. Of course, one can overdo the guilt-wracked commander-in-chief, unfortunate victim of circumstance. Campbell was at heart an imperialist, just a rather more old-fashioned, laissez-faire one than the new generation. So, on his arrival in Cawnpore on 3 November 1857, we find him promptly rescinding Neill’s notorious punishment order ‘as unworthy of the English name and a Christian Government’.96 Yet at the same time he felt no hesitation in using the Bibigarh to fire up the men. He let battalions pass through its doors. ‘The sight of it to the troops and sailors was worth 10,000 men,’ Gordon-Alexander assured Campbell.97 ‘I felt that I had become a changed man’, admitted Major Ewart after his visit:
All feeling of mercy or consideration for the mutineers had left me; I was no longer a Christian, and all I wanted was revenge. In the Crimea I had never wished to kill a Russian, or ever tried to, but now my one idea was to kill every rebel I could come across.98
‘At dinner this evening Sir Colin was rather silent’, wrote Russell. ‘Perhaps he was thinking that people at home would not be satisfied that more of the rebels had not fallen, for he knew that it was now impossible to prevent the greater number of them escaping.’99 So on 15 March 1858 Campbell sent Grant out with 1,100 cavalry and twelve horse guns towards Sitapore to hunt them down, while a second detachment headed down the Sandila Road. Whether, in the absence of Grant’s squadrons, more rebels escaped from Lucknow than were run to earth in the countryside is a moot point.
The centre of town was still defiant. ‘A running fight was going on in the streets all this time,’ explained Majendie, ‘little knots of desperate rebels, here and there, shut themselves up in houses where they fought fiercely, necessitating an infinity of small sieges on our part to drive them out.’100 Campbell’s principal concern was the rebel gunpowder stockpiles. ‘We must be very cautious in that city for a long time to come; it’s full of powder and our men won’t take precautions’, he warned.101 ‘In the houses all over the town, but more especially in the Kaiserbagh, were several hundred tons of gunpowder, not in magazines, but lying loose all about’, recalled one officer. ‘This caused more damage to our men than any of their firing, for half the men were smoking, and of course great explosions resulted.’102 The Dil Khooshah was soon ‘crowded with sick soldiers, most of whom were burnt all over from head to foot by the dreadful explosions that have taken place in the city’, wrote one officer:
They were covered with cotton wadding, and by the side of each sat a native with a paper fan to keep off the flies: the sighs and moans of these poor fellows, reduced to mere pieces of burnt flesh, were those of men who literally felt life to be a burden, men without hope of recovery to whom death could be but a relief.103
The next day Outram crossed the Goomtee, not over the iron or stone bridges in the rear of the Kaiserbagh, but via the bridges of casks near the Sekundrabagh. From here he fought his way along the south bank of the river towards the Residency. With ‘the 23rd Fusiliers charging through the gateway … driving the enemy before them at the point of the bayonet’, the place fell in half an hour. The Mutchi Bhowan* and the Great Imambarra yielded soon after (see Plate 30). ‘In short,’ reported Campbell, ‘the city was ours.’104
If the intention was to hem in the mutineers, it was an odd route to take. Outram effectively herded them north-west, into the quarter of Lucknow outside British control. ‘Vast numbers, both of armed and unarmed men, are evacuating the city by the outlet they possess to the northward’, Campbell informed Canning the next day,105 with no noticeable disquiet. ‘Today’s work has not been very successful in causing loss to the enemy’, reported Russell. ‘It is evident most of them have escaped. The philanthropists who were cheering each other with the thought that there was sure “to be a good bag at Lucknow” will be disappointed.’ ‘Days ago we had the palaces and all the entrenchments,’ wrote one engineer, ‘but the Commander-in-Chief is rather a slow old gentleman, and objects to take any place until it is taken for him by some straggling party walking into it by mistake or something of that sort’.106 ‘Everybody wonders how the rebels have been allowed to escape’, complained one military chaplain. ‘Another hot weather campaign is inevitable.’107 But, once again, at the eye of the storm, Campbell remained phlegmatic. When Russell saw him that evening ‘he seemed satisfied’. ‘The runaways will go to their homes’, the commander-in-chief said.108
Having used Outram to drive the enemy north and westwards from town, Campbell continued the tactic with the Gurkhas. Jung’s troops had pushed along Havelock’s old route into town via the Charbagh Bridge and, despite a sepoy counter-attack, captured ten guns on the 17th. The next day they overran the rebel batteries that had pummelled Outram’s garrison in the Alumbagh for so long, securing the southern perimeter of Lucknow. But that still left the route north-west out of town wide open. That this was a deliberate effort on Campbell’s part was lost on Victorian historians, although it was evident to the press at the time. ‘It is an obvious source of satisfaction that the rush of the fugitive rebels should have been towards the West rather than the East’, reported The Times, which assumed Campbell’s intention was to chase them into Rohilcund: ‘Indeed the measures of the Commander-in-Chief seem to have been expressly taken with the view of placing at least this result beyond doubt.’109 If that was the plan, then stopping Outram from crossing the bridge back on the 14th made perfect sense.
Unfortunately, despite Campbell’s best efforts to let them abscond, between 8,000 and 9,000 sepoys stood their ground at the Moosabagh, a palace a few miles to the north-west of Lucknow. On the 19th, Campbell sent Outram to take it. The rebels put on a bold front, emerging to engage the British, but Outram’s skirmishers and artillery deterred them, and after a flank attack by the 9th Lancers the mutineers fled. ‘I did all I possibly could do to prevent them,’ Campbell explained to Ellenborough:
for I sent a very large force of cavalry and horse-artillery, with three good battalions of infantry the night before, with orders to go to the Moosabagh, for the very purpose of cutting off the fugitives, but unluckily from difficulties of ground, and perhaps from some misconception on the part of the commanding officer, these troops never appeared and were quite useless.110
The fault lay with Brigadier William Campbell, the man charged with capturing the mutineers. ‘Where is Campbell with his cloud of cavalry, who was to have been ready on our left to follow up the pursuit?’ asked one ensign. ‘No one can tell, and no one has yet been able to tell, except that the plan of combination was spoilt.’111 ‘Brigadier Campbell was undoubtedly caught napping’, wrote another officer. ‘It was not until many thousands of the enemy had streamed out and had already crossed miles of country that the Brigade was slipped in pursuit.’112 This was the third time the rebels had been left to escape, and for a third time, there seemed to be more than mere incompetence at work. Brigadier Campbell’s ‘errors appear to have partaken of wilfulness’,113 as one contributor to the Calcutta Review wrote.
Initially, at least, the failure was overwhelmed by the news of Lucknow’s fall.** ‘The highly important and gratifying news so long wished for has come at last’, announced the Glasgow Herald.114 Again the media declared the mutiny quashed. ‘With this success ends probably our last great definite operations against the mutineers of 1857’, announced the Caledonian Mercury.115 ‘Sweeping up the embers of revolt … is, at the worst, but a question of time’, reported the Huddersfield Chronicle. ‘The great devastating conflagration has been subdued.’116 ‘I see the wise people at home have determined the war is over, and that India is at peace’, Russell observed. ‘But many an Englishman must shed his blood, and many a pound must be spent, ere peace comes back again.’117 ‘When Lucknow is wrenched from the grasp of the rebels, and the eddying eye of the whirlpool thus fairly closed, you may see the broken waves recoil and dash off, though with greatly diminished power of mischief, in all directions over a revolted and rebellious territory’, the Rev. Alexander Duff had predicted in January 1858. ‘Then there may follow a critical period of twelve months or more for Northern and Central India. The enemy may … disperse in small bodies over the land, carrying rapine, massacre and conflagration in their train.’118 It was a remarkably accurate prophecy.
For the moment, at least, Campbell could take pride in a triumph cheaply won: 127 officers and men had been killed, 595 wounded and thirteen missing, plus a further fifty-one Gurkhas killed and 287 wounded – inconsequential losses for the taking of an entire city, especially considering that many of those casualties were from gunpowder explosions. In addition, his army had taken 127 rebel guns, ranging from 32 to ½ pounders.119 ‘The whole affair seems to have been well-managed and was eminently successful,’ wrote Cambridge, ‘the loss on our side being very small.’120 ‘Our success at Lucknow is the crowning blow of the war,’ declared the Cheshire Observer.121 Once again, Campbell’s victory was celebrated by William McGonagall:
‘Twas near the Begum Kothie the battle began,
Where innocent blood as plentiful as water ran;
The Begum Kothie was a place of honour given to the 93rd,
Which heroically to a man they soon did begird.
And the 4th Punjaub Rifles were their companions in glory,
And are worthy of their names enrolled in story,
Because they performed prodigious wonders in the fight,
By killing and scattering the Sepoys left and right.
The 93rd Highlanders bivouacked in a garden surrounded by mud walls,
Determined to capture the Begum Kothie no matter what befalls –,
A place strongly fortified and of enormous strength,
And protected by strong earthworks of very great length.
…
But barrier after barrier soon was passed;
And the brave men no doubt felt a little harassed,
But they fought desperately and overturned their foes at every point,
And put the rebels to flight by shot and bayonet conjoint.*
The East India Company voted Campbell an annuity of £2,000, Horse Guards promoted him to full general (substantive and not just local rank) and the queen insisted he receive a peerage immediately: ‘If necessary, a further step could be given him later.’122 The problem was that there was already a Baron Campbell. ‘If I were you’, advised the Duke of Cambridge, ‘I should wish to be called up by the title Lord Clyde of Lucknow. I think it would be a charming title, associated with the part of Scotland from whence you sprung, and with the great operation in the East in which you have been engaged.’123 Annoyingly, Lucknow had already been tagged to Havelock’s baronetcy, so Campbell chose Clydesdale instead,** though he made a point of continuing to sign himself plain ‘C. Campbell’. ‘I have neither wife nor child; my means had made me independent of the income of my profession; beside which I deem myself rich because I have no wants’, he stated, ‘I should therefore have been very grateful to have been left without other rank than my professional one.’124
This personal aversion to honours was all very well, but the rest of the army would rather it was not extended to them too. Honours were a powerful motivation for the soldier. Indeed, one honour in particular – the Victoria Cross – had become an obsession. Its effect on a man’s standing had only become clear after the first awards ceremony in June 1857. Since then, competition for the medal had become intense. ‘They seem more anxious to obtain this distinction than any mark of honour which has yet been given to them’, wrote Grant.125 Those who got it, flaunted it. Captain Maude, finding his plain metal cross too understated, commissioned Spinks to make a version studded with diamonds.126 The Rev. J.R. Baldwin, after meeting Thomas Kavanagh (‘one of the most conceited persons I ever knew’), remembered ‘seeing V.C. on his slippers, as well as on all other articles in ordinary use’.127 This exhibitionism confirmed Campbell’s fears. ‘It is probable that the spirit of the order seemed to him injudicious,’ wrote one civil servant, ‘as tempting men to seek for distinction by a single daring act, rather than by steady perseverance in ordinary duty.’128 He ‘thinks this race after the Victoria Cross is destructive to discipline and is determined to discountenance it’, confirmed Russell.129 Campbell ‘looked upon it as quite unnecessary in the British Army’, explained another general, ‘the soldiers of which he thought, rather required restraining than egging on to do gallant deeds’.
Campbell was especially loath to award it to senior officers and, off his own bat, decided that generals were ineligible. He rejected Outram’s candidature on these grounds, even after Horse Guards confirmed it was admissible.130 Staff officers, in his opinion, had the least excuse to be distracted by deeds of derring-do.131 ‘Since the institution of the Victoria Cross, advantage has been taken by young aides-de-camp and other staff officers to place themselves in prominent situations, for the purpose of attracting attention’, he wrote. ‘To them life is of little value as compared with the gain of public honour.’ He particularly objected to the VC recommendation from Henry Havelock for his own son and ADC. Havelock Junior, finding the 64th Foot lying down to avoid a nearby enemy 24-pounder, had supposedly ridden in front of them and led them towards the gun ‘until it was mastered by a rush’. By singling out Havelock, ‘it is made to appear to the world that a regiment should have proved wanting in courage except for an accidental circumstance’, complained Campbell. ‘Such a reflection is most galling to a regiment of British soldiers, indeed almost intolerable.’132 But by 1858 the Havelock name was beyond criticism and Sir Henry Havelock, Jnr got his cross.
Beset by officers demanding the medal, Campbell invoked Clause 13 of the Victoria Cross Warrant, which allowed a commander to direct each regiment to elect four recipients: one officer, one NCO and two private soldiers. This clause was supposed to be applied when an entire corps had behaved with equal bravery, and where ‘no special selection can be made’. Campbell applied it to the whole army at Lucknow. Every regiment had to vote for four recipients, regardless. When the 9th Lancers pointed out that they had hardly engaged the enemy, Campbell nonetheless insisted, so they put forward the name of a native bheesti (water carrier). After Lieutenant-Colonel Leith Hay of the 93rd recommended four hard-fighting officers of his regiment, Campbell reiterated that he could only nominate one.133 It turned the award into a popularity contest. One officer complained that a quartermaster-sergeant got the medal because he doled out the grog.134 Another accused Campbell of trying ‘to lower and degrade the order’.135 He certainly seemed to try his best to make it unremarkable, by handing it out more lavishly than any other commander: there were 182 recipients of the award during the Indian Mutiny, one more than in the whole of the Second World War.*
Aside from honours, Campbell’s troops were banking on Lucknow providing a healthy profit. When Outram’s men dashed through town in September they had little time to stop and plunder.136 In November, the spoils had been better, but still disappointing. Now, with every palace in their grip, Lucknow promised the British untold wealth, if only it could be pillaged methodically. But as with every other town Campbell had seen taken by storm, the rank and file were not about to leave looting to the authorities. What could not be pocketed was smashed. ‘For years past a painful conviction had pervaded the army that the Government had not behaved fairly to it in the matter of Prize,’ explained Outram, ‘a conviction which led to … the destruction, indeed, of all tangible property which could not be appropriated by the captors, who declared that “Government should make nothing by it”.’137 ‘Most righteous was it that war’s stern ploughshare should pass over the accursed city’, declared one military chaplain,138 and the destruction was indeed biblical. ‘No words can describe the scenes of havoc and desolation which successively startled one’s sight; never was a place more thoroughly “turned out o’ windows” than this one’, wrote Lieutenant Majendie:
Smashed chandeliers; huge gilded picture-frames, with the pictures they contained hanging in tatters from them; magnificent mirrors against which our men had been having rifle practice; silk hangings torn to rags; rich sofas stripped of their coverings, and their very bowels ransacked in search of loot; the gilded legs of chairs wandering about quite separate from and independent of their seats; statues minus their heads; heads minus their noses; marble tables dashed to pieces; beds in the last stage of dismemberment; carriages without wheels; buggies with their panels smashed in … doors which had been broken through, or torn from their hinges; with here and there, to make the scene complete, a half-putrid corpse.139
The Kaiserbagh became one ‘marvellous scene of blood and luxury’.140 ‘The rooms were so full that you could not take a step without smashing something underfoot, and before the prize agents came down you never saw such a wreck of vases, soup tureens, dishes, plates, cups and saucers, as was presented there’, recalled one officer. ‘You had to dive deep into the ruined heap to get at anything whole. We were washing out of fine china vases, and soldiers eating their dinners off kings’ plates.’141 Another soldier found a carriage:
covered with thick plates of solid silver … the inside and cushions were covered with the richest white silk … About an hour afterwards I again passed this coach-house; the white silk had all been cut or torn off and carried away, nearly all the silver had disappeared, with the exception of one or two places where men were busily engaged hammering it off.
‘I entered a detached building in flames, which had been used as an armoury, and in spite of the great heat succeeded in bringing out a helmet of Damascus steel inlaid with gold’, wrote one sailor:
I saw a room full of little cabinets, every cabinet was full of little drawers, and every drawer was full of little bottles containing scents and spices, some were liquid and some solid; some agreeable and some very nasty, some like pills and others like their concomitants, but as there were none that I liked, I left them for the next comer.
He was more taken with a crown of ‘cardboard and red satin, stiffened with rusty wire and sewn all over with dull white beads’. Assuming it was either ‘for private theatricals or for a child’s toy, I tore off half a dozen of the beads which I put into my pocket as mementos of the day’. Back at camp he gave them away. ‘Imagine my astonishment when I was told that they were the most beautiful pearls. I afterwards received one of them back, and estimated, at a rough guess, that the whole crown must have been worth two thousand pounds.’142
‘It is by no means safe work, this looting’, wrote Majendie. ‘The soldier who strolls so unsuspiciously into these little cottages, or tempting shops, runs a very good chance of never strolling out again.’143 Lucknow was still crawling with rebels. ‘Volumes might be written regarding loot in India, and how it was gotten,’ observed Maude. ‘De mortuis, etc, so we will not name them, but several of the foremost “loot wallahs” paid for it with their lives.’144 The prudent officer concentrated on the secondary market. Campbell’s cousin Sterling was ‘very fond of picking up “bargains” in the way of loot privately acquired’,145 and even at official sales it was a buyers’ market. Loot amassed by the prize agents was sold off at improvised auctions throughout the mutiny. In Delhi the auctioneer simply deposited a handful of valuables on a soup plate, passed it round for potential buyers to inspect, and then knocked it down to the highest bidder.146 It had been the same in Cawnpore that January: ‘We have auctions here every day of the property of rich rebels already suspended’, wrote one soldier. ‘Silver things go for a mere song, far under their weight in rupees, and I wish to goodness I had the money to invest.’147 Lucknow followed the same pattern, with ‘the sale by auction every morning … to an assembly of all sorts of native camp-followers only, with a sprinkling of non-combatant British officers, whose presence was not required at parade’, recalled Gordon-Alexander. ‘Not one of the assemblage to whom they were offered could afford to give a fiftieth part of their value … the valuable should have been sent to Calcutta, or, better still, to London, or wherever the best prices could have been realised.’148 Conscious of the lack of discerning buyers, Canning ensured that many of Delhi’s rare books and documents were bought by the Company, but most mutiny plunder went for a pittance.
For Campbell, after fifty years of slim pickings, the mother lode beckoned. He was entitled to 2.5 per cent of everything,* if he could just stop his soldiers filching and wrecking it all. That was a tall order in such a large city. ‘When looting is once commenced by an army it is no easy matter to stop it’, wrote Wolseley. ‘Soldiers are nothing more than grown-up schoolboys.’149 Joining them were 100,000 camp followers under the most meagre control,** greedy for spoils. The prize agents Campbell appointed were ineffective. One man boasted that he was able to bring ‘away, among other things, a carriage, for the prize agents were not very active in their performance and everyone was allowed to bring away what he chose’.***150 ‘Although nothing appears in official records,’ suggested one historian, ‘it is almost certain that there was a gentleman’s agreement that Jung Bahadoor’s Gurkha troops would get their chance of plunder before the Prize Agents took over.’ If that was true, then the Punjabis failed to get the memo. ‘The Sikhs and Gurkhas were by far the most proficient plunderers’, explained Forbes-Mitchell. ‘They instinctively knew where to look for the most valuable loot. The European soldiers did not understand the business, and articles which might have proved a fortune to many were readily parted with for a few rupees in cash and a bottle of grog.’151 Another officer revealed:
A Sikh sergeant will watch a party of Europeans enter a house for the purpose of plundering, and immediately plant sentries all round, and as each man comes out, he is told that there are strict orders against looting, and that he must disgorge his plunder; this of course he does with a very bad grace, and walks away looking sadly crestfallen. As soon as the whole party have thus gone off, the sergeant calls in his sentries, divides the loot, keeping the lion’s share for himself, and they all go on their way rejoicing.’152
Spurred into action, Campbell decreed, ‘The suppression of plunder and outrage’ was to be ‘enforced by the introduction of an hourly roll-call, by the prohibition, to even British soldiers, of wearing side arms, except on guard or duty, and the erection of triangles for the summary punishment of obstinate offenders’.153 Checkpoints were established and guards stationed around the principal treasures. Discipline was harsh. ‘I myself was on a court-martial which sentenced two men to be flogged for secreting one or two valuable Cashmere shawls, instead of handing them over’, wrote Gordon-Alexander.154 The prize agents became so zealous that they started confiscating goods from refugees returning home, resulting in an official complaint from Outram, requesting that they restrict themselves to just the palaces. Not that the common soldier benefited much from their diligence. ‘Before we left Lucknow the plunder accumulated by the prize agents was estimated at over £600,000, and within a week it had reached a million and a quarter sterling’, wrote Forbes-Mitchell. ‘What became of it all?’155 The Indian government maintained, since this was an insurrection rather than a war, that only ‘property neither claimed on behalf of the State, nor claimed and identified by individuals who may establish their loyalty’ could be considered prize;156 in other words, only as much loot as the Company was prepared to hand over. The result was predictable. ‘The official returns gave a little more than fourteen lakhs of rupees [£140,000],’**** explained Maude, ‘the share of each private soldier amounting to £3 15s.’157
The British public in India was more concerned with the disappointing tally of dead natives. ‘All the civilians are open-mouthed against the Lucknow management and declare that Sir Colin has “botched” the whole affair’, reported Russell. ‘They say that … if matters had been well-managed we ought to have killed twenty thousand of them!’158 Campbell was being ‘taxed for not cutting the whole quarter of a million to pieces’, complained the Glasgow Herald. ‘It appears to us that it would be about as reasonable to reproach him for not having eaten them.’159 Nevertheless, reproach him they did, from the highest to the lowest. Government House had expected a substantial death toll so as to frighten the rebels into flight. ‘The chastisement thereby inflicted upon the loose bands of mutineers, rebels and plunderers, who were collected in and about the city, was not such as to expel them from the limits of the province’,160 Canning complained. The governor-general decided a hard heart was required. ‘The City lies at the mercy of the British Government’, he declared in a new proclamation:
This resistance, begun by a mutinous soldiery, has found support from the inhabitants of the city … Many who owed their prosperity to the British Government … have ranged themselves with the enemies of the state. They have been guilty of a great crime, and have subjected themselves to a just retribution.
As punishment, the whole of Oudh was to be confiscated, bar the estates of six minor landowners. Canning did not intend to keep these forfeit lands, but he wanted to play the magnanimous overlord. ‘Because the Natives of India, whilst they attach much weight to a distinct and actual order of the Government, attach very little to a vague threat’,161 the governor-general preferred to declare sequestration rather than merely threaten it. That Canning planned to hand back these appropriated estates was lost in the stentorian rhetoric. Even the most vengeful, bloodthirsty, hang-’em-first-and-ask-questions-later officers thought it ill advised. Canning’s ‘general policy, as regards Oudh’, reported Russell, ‘is looked upon by all men here, political and military, as too harsh and despotic’.162 It seemed destined to foster a guerrilla war. Outram cautioned that ‘as soon as the Chiefs and Talookdars become acquainted with the determination of the Govt. to confiscate their rights, they will betake themselves at once to their domains, and prepare for a desperate and prolonged resistance’.163
When news of the proclamation reached London on 12 April, Ellenborough condemned it. ‘This decree, pronouncing the disinherison of a people, will throw difficulties, almost insurmountable, in the way of the re-establishment of peace’, he told Canning in a secret despatch. ‘We desire to see British authority in India rest upon the willing obedience of a contented people. There cannot be contentment where there is general confiscation.’ Regrettably, Ellenborough’s difference of opinion with Canning soon leaked. The British press felt the noble lord was being too forgiving, and despite a rigorous public defence of his actions, on 12 May Ellenborough was forced to resign. Fortunately, the prime minister, Lord Derby, reiterated his government’s disapproval of Canning’s decree, while the new Commissioner of Oudh convinced the landowners that it was all bluster and that their lands were safe. So, by 22 May, ‘with few exceptions, the larger Talookdars of Oudh have … by letter or vakeel [agent] or in person, tendered their allegiance’,164 making Campbell’s task a great deal easier. That said, the natives seemed beaten but not broken. ‘I was struck by the scowling, hostile look of the people’, remarked Russell. ‘The bunniahs [merchants] bow with their necks, and salaam with their hands, but not with their eyes.’165
Canning now requested Campbell switch to subduing Rohilcund. Lucknow was a totem. With the city in British hands, honour was restored. Campbell, however, was hesitant. He preferred to ‘settle one province before we commit ourselves to a Campaign in another. At this moment we have War all round us, in this Province of Oudh, and the country is not ours ten miles from the City.’166 There was also the problem of the increasing heat. ‘It is difficult for anyone who has not experienced it, to conceive the ennui and irksomeness that takes possession of men who pass the hot season in tents in India’, wrote one naval chaplain:
the excessive heat, the close confinement, the difficulty of getting books in camp … the hot winds, which carried clouds of broiling dust, the swarms of flies which crawl about, being too lazy to use their wings except when forcibly compelled, add to the inconvenience and monotony of a tent life.167
It was worse for the wounded. ‘The heat aggravates every symptom and hurries off the victim’, observed another padre.168 ‘From the beginning of April to the middle of August is the period of the year when it is desirable that no one should be exposed except in the case of vital necessity’, Campbell told the governor-general. ‘We cannot expect more regiments from England and there will be, I am afraid, the greatest difficulty in completing those we now have to their proper establishment. If we are obliged to march our troops about during the hot winds we shall lose a great many.’169 All his generals ‘were exclaiming on account of the exhaustion of their troops and of the great difficulty of making further demands on them in consequence of the mentality caused by the hot season, in the midst of which the enemy was now operating at all points’, warned Campbell.170 ‘We lose more men by sunstroke, in carrying on operations at this season, than by fire of the enemy’, he explained. ‘Can you wonder that many just now long to find themselves again in the more moderate climate of their own country, and in the opportunity of being near to those they hold in affection?’171
‘If the Commander-in-Chief had had his own way he would then have gone into summer quarters and reserved the recovery of India for a great campaign in the next cold season’, wrote one civil servant.172 Campbell recommended the governor-general at least pause to issue ‘some notice to the Sepoys which may have the effect of dissolving the confederacy between the mutinous regiments … The punishment of the native insurgent army has already been very severe.’173 Canning refused. He insisted Rohilcund must be brought to heel, whatever the weather, so Campbell detailed three columns for the task. Walpole would advance from Lucknow, Penny* from Meerut and Jones from Rurkhi, herding the rebels into Bareilly, the stronghold of rebel rajah Khan Bahadoor Khan.** Meanwhile, Napier would stay in Lucknow refining its defences while Grant organised an Oudh Field Force to ferret out the last mutineers there. As Campbell explained:
If the enormous distances be taken into account, the great number of Columns prosecuting separate Campaigns … it is easy to Conceive the care, attention, and strictness required to produce concert amongst the columns and their leaders, and to induce the whole to work with harmony towards the general result.174
Walpole was the first to run into trouble. At Ruiya on 15 April, eight days after leaving Lucknow, he reached the fort of Nirput Singh, son of a supporter of the Nana Sahib. Walpole ‘sent forward some infantry in extended order to enable the place to be reconnoitred, when a heavy fire of musketry was opened upon them, and an occasional gun’.175 In response, he brought up two 18-pounders and a couple of mortars, and ordered an advance. It cost him around 100 men and officers killed, including Brigadier Adrian Hope of the 93rd, before they withdrew. Because, argued Walpole, ‘these men had gone much nearer to the fort than I wished’, he had been forced to sound the retreat. ‘The Highland Brigade ordered to retire!’ fumed Gordon-Alexander. ‘The Highland Brigade, composed of the same regiments that had climbed the heights of Alma together; one of them my own regiment, the “thin red line” of Balaklava fame!’176 ‘After we retired from the fort the excitement was so great that if the officers had given the men the least encouragement, I am convinced they would have turned out in a body and hanged General Walpole’, reported Forbes-Mitchell. Their commander had ‘acted in such a pig-headed manner that the officers considered him insane’.177 ‘I felt beside myself with rage, mortification, and contempt for our leader,’ confessed Gordon-Alexander, ‘and gave audible vent to these feelings, which were entirely shared by the men.’178
‘The Chief is greatly grieved’, reported Russell. ‘But who is not? Walpole seems to have made the attack in a very careless, unsoldierly way.’179 ‘A check is always serious, but at this particular juncture … the consequence may be very serious,’ Campbell told Canning, ‘not as regards the column, but the general feelings in Oudh, and the increased boldness of the insurgent chiefs.’ It certainly destroyed the troops’ faith in Walpole, as Campbell saw for himself, when he caught up with them at Thigree, twelve days later. As the newly appointed Colonel of the 93rd, Campbell expected a warm welcome from the Highlanders, ‘but he received short and rather surly answers’, recalled Gordon-Alexander:
such as ‘Nane the better for being awa frae you, Sir Colin’ or ‘As weel as maun be wi’ a chief like Walpole’, till, the news spreading that Sir Colin was among the tents, all the men turned out and fairly shouted at him ‘Hoo about Walpole?’ … Sir Colin was evidently much disconcerted and, instead of going on to the mess tent, went straight back to his own camp.180
Notwithstanding Walpole’s fiasco, by 3 May Campbell was nearing Bareilly, as planned. Khan’s garrison there was estimated to exceed 35,000. On this occasion Campbell adopted the Gough tactic of smashing straight into the enemy, and at 7 a.m. on 5 May marched his men towards the rebels in two lines: the 4th Punjab Infantry, the Highlanders and a Baluch battalion up front, with a heavy field battery in the centre, the flanks covered by horse artillery and cavalry. As they approached the Nukutte Bridge the enemy opened fire. ‘Our guns advanced to the front at a rapid pace,’ wrote Captain Allgood, ‘and replied to the enemy’s guns with such precision that they fled across the nullah, abandoning their guns which were on this side.’181 Unfortunately, ‘A large force of the rebel cavalry … swept round the flank and among the baggage, cutting down camels, camel drivers, and camp followers in all directions’, recalled Forbes-Mitchell.182 ‘It was a veritable stampedo of men and animals’, Russell reported:
Elephants were trumpeting shrilly as they thundered over the fields, camels slung along at their utmost joggling stride, horses and tats [ponies], women and children were all pouring in a stream which converged and tossed in heaps of white and black as it neared the road – an awful panic!183
‘I remember the Rev. Mr Ross, chaplain of the 42nd, running for his life, dodging round camels and bullocks with a rebel sowar after him,’ wrote Forbes-Mitchell, ‘till, seeing our detachment, he rushed to us for protection, calling out “Ninety-third, shoot that impertinent fellow!” Moral – when in the field, padres, carry a good revolver.’184
‘A most furious charge was made by a body of about three hundred and sixty Rohilla Ghazis, who rushed out shouting “Bismillah! Allah! Allah! Deen! Deen!”’ continued Forbes-Mitchell:
Sir Colin was close by, and called out ‘Ghazis! Ghazis! Close up the ranks! Bayonet them as they come on’ … The Ghazis charged in blind fury, with their round shields on their left arms, their bodies bent low, waving their tulwars over their heads, throwing themselves under the bayonets and cutting at the men’s legs.185
Colonel Cameron was dragged from his horse, and ‘only saved from being cut to pieces by the plucky behaviour of two of his own men’.186 ‘Sir Colin had a narrow escape. As he was riding from one company to another his eye caught that of a quasi-dead Ghazi, who was lying, tulwar in hand, just before him’, reported Russell:
The Chief guessed the ruse in a moment. ‘Bayonet that man!’ he called to a soldier. The Highlander made a thrust at him, but the point would not enter the thick cotton quilting of the Ghazi’s tunic; and the dead man was rising to his legs, when a Sikh who happened to be near, with a whistling stroke of his sabre, cut off the Ghazi’s head with one blow, as if it had been the bulb of a poppy!187
All this was performed on ‘the hottest day on which British European soldiers were ever called upon to fight a general action’.188 ‘The heat was intense,’ complained Forbes-Mitchell. ‘It attained such a pitch that the barrels of our rifles could not be touched by our bare hands!’189 ‘The trees were scanty by the roadside. There was no friendly shade to afford the smallest shelter from the blazing sun,’ Russell recalled. ‘I had all the sensations of a man who is smothering in a mud-bath.’190 Wolseley at least had:
a good helmet with an unusually long turban wound round it, yet the sun seemed to gimlet a hole through it into my brain. My very hair seemed to crackle from the burning heat, and the nails of one’s fingers became as if made of some brittle material that must soon break.191
Once the rebels had been beaten back to the cantonments, Campbell let the men rest. Consequently only eight men died of sunstroke, from just eighteen deaths that day.192 ‘More was exacted from them, I do believe, than British troops ever were exposed to, except in the Crimea – certainly more than Europeans were ever heretofore exposed to in India’, Outram told Campbell. ‘And I attribute the comparatively little loss our army has suffered, under such exposure, to your lordship’s most judicious arrangements.’193
The next morning, Campbell’s artillery started a fresh barrage while Colonel Jones’s column approached from the far side of town. Within twenty-four hours the rebels had abandoned Bareilly. Another rebel stronghold was back under British control, but Campbell’s troops were reaching the limits of their endurance. ‘The news is bad,’ reported Cambridge:
for the Army was becoming fearfully sick from the hard work that it had undergone, and the fearful heat of the sun killing numbers by sunstroke. Mutinous feelings are also showing themselves in various parts of the country, and there had been a rising in several districts of the Bombay Presidency, especially in the Southern Mahratta country, which is most serious.194
In addition, the Maulvi of Faizabad, the last rebel leader to leave Lucknow, had taken Shajahanpore with 8,000 men and twelve guns, and on 2 May had begun shelling the gaol held by the small British garrison. Having subdued Bareilly, Campbell despatched Jones with a column to deal with this new threat. Four days later, Jones reached Shajahanpore and beat the enemy back, but the Maulvi soon returned with reinforcements and pinned the British down. On the 18th Campbell arrived with five squadrons of cavalry, seven companies of the 64th Foot, one troop of Bengal Horse Artillery and sundry guns.195 ‘As our men advanced the enemy fell back on a fort, which we could see crowded with men,’ reported Russell, ‘but it was too late to press them; the soldiers were much fatigued.’196 Campbell decided to wait for extra troops, giving the Maulvi time to remove most of his men to Mohumdee. Concerned that ‘the various columns which are in movement in other parts, stand in need of constant direction by telegraph’,197 on the 23rd Campbell left Jones to finish the job, and rode for Futtehghur from where he could direct the campaign by cable.
The heat was getting to him. By the time he had reached Futtehghur ‘he seemed very much knocked up’, reported one officer, ‘but his spirits were cheery and a few days’ rest in a cool house quite restored him’.198 Campbell having done as Canning asked, and taken the fight to Rohilcund, the rebels in Oudh had, in his absence, turned to guerrilla tactics. They had started to ‘harass and drive in all our thannahs and outposts, avoiding as much as possible close contact with any disciplined troops’, explained the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Oudh. The region was ungovernable. ‘We hold the Lucknow District and the line of road to Cawnpore, most of our other posts have been abandoned’, the secretary reported. ‘Throughout the country of Oudh the rebels are complete masters and harass all the followers of the British.’199
‘In the provinces of Oudh and Bundelcund, the mere march of troops is unattended by any real and substantial results’, Campbell explained to Cambridge:
We beat the enemy in the open field with the utmost ease – we take his guns; he appears utterly routed. A fortnight afterwards we again hear of the reassemblage of rebels at another point – perhaps at three or four points – while our movable columns have marched away to meet danger in another quarter.
For Campbell, the problem was that ‘the people who show their duty to us are treated with the utmost barbarity and cruelty’, and so revolt was perpetuated. ‘We must cling together. When we go to our homes, we are hunted down and hanged. We have no choice’, he heard one rebel say. ‘The unhappy man only spoke the truth. A very grave question is contained in the moral of this anecdote’, wrote Campbell. ‘We cannot look for the extermination of the entire remnant of the sepoy army. According to the terms on which we are now with that remnant, they look for nothing else than extermination, and we propose nothing else. What, then, can be the sequel, but a most protracted contest?’200 ‘There are many sepoys driven solely by desperation to fight against us, who would gladly desert the mutinous ranks,’ explained the Chief Commissioner for Oudh, ‘if they could find a door of repentance open to them.’201 None was offered.
The ability to defeat and chase mutineers, but not pacify rebel territory, had characterised the first year of the mutiny. Until such time as a pardon was offered, there was no end in sight to the fighting. This was true not simply of Oudh and the north-west provinces, but of Central India as well. This territory had been in revolt since the earliest days of the mutiny, spurred on by local potentate the Ranee of Jhansi.* The deaths of sixty Europeans who surrendered to the ranee in June 1857 had, in the public imagination, lumped her with the Nana Sahib in the first rank of villains, but among her own people she was an Indian Joan of Arc.
Sir Hugh Rose, from Owen Tudor Burne’s Clyde and Strathnairn.
In December 1857 Campbell had ordered in Major-General Sir Hugh Rose with a detachment of Bombay troops (dubbed the Central India Field Force) to defeat her. Rose’s column was one of three sent, but during that winter he blasted along at such a pace that he ended up doing most of the fighting and garnering most of the laurels.
It was a campaign of which Brigadier Neill would have been proud. After 149 rebels surrendered at Sehore in January 1858, Rose had them all shot.** On another occasion, one native made the mistake of recounting the massacre of Europeans at Jhansi the previous summer:
Sir Hugh Rose is said to have listened patiently till the man had finished, when he inquired ‘And you witnessed all this?’ The man replied that he had. Sir Hugh at once called for the provost-marshal, exclaiming ‘Take him away and hang him like a dog! No Indian shall live to say he saw an Englishwoman dishonoured and murdered.’202
Rose brazenly reported to Campbell, ‘Your Excellency will be glad to learn that my men conduct themselves very well, and treat the inhabitants in a way which inspires confidence and forms a striking contrast with the rebels.’203
Whether by inspiring confidence or just plain terror, Rose’s victories mounted and, having relieved the garrison at Saugor and forced the Mudenpore Pass, by 22 March he had besieged Jhansi, 200 miles south-west of Lucknow. Tantia Topee had retired to Calpee but, hearing of the ranee’s plight, he now led his remaining troops to relieve her. Outside Jhansi on 1 April, Rose defeated Tantia and two days later took the town. The ranee escaped dressed as a man. Rose then chased her to Calpee, which he stormed on 23 May.
Rose had only been able to secure these victories by marching his troops to prostration. In the unbearably hot weather, ‘officers and men dropped down as though struck by lightning’, but Rose seemed to regard them as disposable. He was unable to keep up the pursuit. ‘The Rebel force under Tantia Topee had not been much pressed after the fall of Calpee’, Campbell complained. ‘Sir Hugh Rose’s troops being represented to be in a state of great exhaustion, the General himself being in bad health and conceiving the campaign of his column to be at an end.’204
Tantia and the ranee seized their chance to mount a counter-attack and descended on Gwalior. There were no other British troops nearby, so, despite the condition of Rose’s men, ‘As soon as the news reached me, I anticipated the orders of the Government, and sent instant orders for the whole force which had been engaged at Calpee to march on Gwalior’, Campbell told the Duke of Cambridge:
What I am afraid of is that the rebel leaders will have been so much enriched by the plunder of Gwalior, that they will be supplied with the means of carrying on the war for an almost indefinite period in a manner most annoying to us, by which they will wear down our troops, while they constantly elude our grasp.205
‘It is all the more awkward because Sir Colin has sent down a general order to Allahabad, somewhat in the form of a proclamation, announcing the close of the summer campaign, and thanking the troops for their services’, explained Russell.206
On grounds of ill health, Rose had handed command over to Robert Napier following the fall of Calpee. Now, upon hearing that the rebels had taken Gwalior, Rose made an overnight recovery. ‘As soon as it became apparent that an important Campaign, likely to be attended by much éclat, would ensue … Sir Hugh Rose forgot his ailments and positively reassumed his Command without in the first place asking my permission’, complained Campbell.207 Rose had already persuaded the governor-general to confirm him in his post, so Campbell accepted this fait accompli and ‘assisted him with a Brigade from the far South, drawn from the Rajpootana force and with a strong detachment from Agra’.208
The Ranee of Jhansi. (Arthur Milner, lot 168, sale 6 November 2014, © 25 Blythe Road Ltd)
Drawing up on 16 June, Rose prepared to storm Gwalior. The next day, the Ranee of Jhansi was killed in a cavalry skirmish. By the 20th, the town had fallen. His enemy defeated for a second time, Rose again absented himself on sick leave. ‘The difficulties of re-establishing our Government and authority are enormously increased by this tendency on the part of the General Officers to fly off as soon as the brilliant part of the Campaign is at an end’, wrote Campbell to the Duke of Cambridge. ‘I was in the field months before Sir Hugh Rose … and am so still.’209
For India’s Young Turks, Rose had shown what was possible when Campbell was too far away to intervene, how fast India could be subdued if only the commander-in-chief was faster and more daring; a surmise lent weight by Burne’s biographical comparison of the two generals, and one which persists today. But the suggestion that their Indian campaigns represent two distinct, contrasting methods of war, each the product of one commander alone, is nonsense. In fact, the Central India strategy was not Rose’s work. It had been formulated months in advance, at the commander-in-chief’s request. The previous August, Campbell had asked Sir Robert Hamilton, the governor-general’s agent for Central India, for a memorandum on taking back the region. Campbell approved the resulting plan and, along with Hamilton, appointed Rose to implement it.210 Far from being the hare to the commander-in-chief’s tortoise, Rose was actually three weeks behind Campbell’s original schedule* when he reached Calpee on 23 May 1858.211 The strategy was Campbell and Hamilton’s, but Rose got the credit. Campbell himself ascribed much of the success to Hamilton’s presence in the column. ‘The successful marches of Sir Hugh Rose and General Whitlock would not have been made if it had not been in the power of Sir Robert Hamilton, the governor-general’s agent, to play off certain Rajahs and Chiefs against others’, Campbell told the Duke of Cambridge. ‘By such means their communications and supplies were secured.’212 Of course, dull essentials like logistics held little appeal for Victorians who believed all a British officer needed was a swagger stick and God’s own confidence. Unpreparedness had become a virtue to the extent that, as Russell reported, ‘great censure was bestowed on the Commander-in-Chief because Sir E. Lugard’s column was despatched to Azimghur with ample provisions and heavy guns … Most fortunate it was that they were so well provided.’213
Rose looked so dashing compared to ‘Sir Crawling Camel’ that it was impossible for the public to share the glory between them. The success of the one had to be at the expense of the other. ‘Sir Hugh Rose has done very well indeed, and had such great opportunities that it is no wonder he is such a hero in public estimation,’ observed Lady Canning, ‘but it is most unjust to cry down Sir Colin in consequence!’214 Nevertheless, posterity kept Rose on the pedestal, to Campbell’s detriment. ‘Sir Hugh Rose’s march from Mhow to Gwalior has been projected out of proportion as an outstanding feat of arms’, explained one recent historian, who argues that this tendency emerged after Rose became commander-in-chief, as officer-authors sought to curry favour with their new commander.215 Tactical errors, held against Campbell, were mysteriously forgotten in Rose’s case. For letting mutineers escape at Cawnpore and Lucknow, Campbell was lambasted, yet, as William Russell pointed out, ‘at Jhansi and at Calpee and at Gwalior thousands of the enemy got away from Sir Hugh Rose’216 and no one seemed to mind.
Rose was a much more attractive general for a public that shared his delusion that once the sepoys were chased away, the Indian people would simply breathe a collective sigh of relief and welcome back their colonisers. ‘Wherever the British force appears, matters at once and of themselves resume their old footing, the country people being profoundly indifferent, according to all appearance, who are their masters so long as they are allowed to remain unmolested in their fields and villages,’ declared the Bombay Times217 from its ivory tower. To them Campbell’s measures to pacify and police each province in turn seemed bewilderingly unnecessary. He had frittered away the cool winter months. His victories could have been achieved by any second-rate brigadier with half the men. Indeed, so bad was his performance, one contributor to The Times wondered whether ‘Sir Colin has been bribed by the mutineers, or promised a decoration by Russia, since he is working our ruin in this way’.218 ‘Much of the erroneousness of the estimate formed at home, relative to the facility of crushing the rebellion, has arisen from persisting in the first-formed conception of it as a purely military revolt’, the Rev. Alexander Duff explained.219 ‘They will insist on it that the people are not against us’, complained Campbell.220 The truth, as he saw it, was that Rose’s column ‘had been entirely successful as marched, but nothing more … The whole population was armed and hostile and closed round the rear of each column like the sea in a ship’s wake.’221 The result, wrote Russell, was that ‘we only hold the ground we cover with our bayonets’.
Campbell’s principle was ‘never to give up an inch of ground once acquired’, as one officer put it, ‘which, by the bye, would have solved many a riddle the Indian public could not read, and stopped many a clamour in respect to his apparent slowness, had it been known at the time’.222 While Rose merely fought, Campbell fought, conquered and pacified. And while Rose waged war at all costs, ‘actuated by the dictates of humanity towards the foe, Sir Colin on principle refrained from risking his troops in an unequal encounter of arms’, explained Shadwell, ‘or from exposing them unduly to the climate for an object which he regarded as alone attainable by the occupation and gradual settlement of the revolted districts’.223 ‘All rational men, instead of blaming, will applaud the Commander who abandoned a mode of carrying on war that was accompanied by a useless sacrifice of human life’, contended the Glasgow Herald.224
Unfortunately for Campbell, it was far more appealing to British officers to think of the task as a simple question of ridding India of rebellious sepoys, rather than as a gradual matter of restoring order and building trust. Not only did it sound quicker, it veiled the uncomfortable truth that the wider population was in revolt as well.
Sir Henry Havelock Jnr promoted the reductio ad absurdum of this strain (see Plate 31). For him, Campbell’s slow-coach methods were hopelessly outdated. Mounted riflemen were the solution.* ‘There is practically no limit to what they could do for us in India against our contemptible, half-disciplined, ill-armed, disunited Asiatic enemies’, he asserted. ‘Five thousand picked British “Mounted Riflemen” might literally ride from one end of India to the other at twenty-five miles a day, carrying all before them.’225 Action, action, promptitude! That would conquer India before the natives knew what hit them. ‘One steady man with an Enfield rifle could have done more execution in the same time, with much less exertion and risk,’ argued Fortescue in support, ‘if only he could have been carried to the spot more swiftly than upon his own legs’.226 It remains a remarkably popular solution. Mounted infantry ‘would have enabled British troops more easily to hunt down, as well as dislodge, their evasive target’, wrote one recent historian.227 True, but the problem was not the dislodging, it was the hunting down, in an all too literal sense. Those squadrons Havelock managed to organise were little more than execution squads. Neither did they pacify. They quelled one patch only for it to reignite as they moved on.
Needless to say, Havelock Jnr mourned the loss of more robust commanders. ‘Nicholson, Neill, Havelock – who had each shown by correct appreciation of their peculiar enemy, alike by rapid dash on fitting occasion, as by the most wary caution on others, each quality in its appropriate time and place – had passed away.’ He despised the Scotsman left in their place. Campbell ‘had come to look upon a battalion of British infantry as a sacred entity, whose preservation complete without detachments, intact, and, above all, unhurried in movement, was a consideration of far higher importance in his mind than the attaining of any results, however brilliant, by means of rapid, undignified, and irregular action’.228 Campbell foolishly ‘approached positions held by 20,000 or 30,000 Sepoys and rabble with the same ceremony as if they were about to be sternly defended by serried columns of French or Russians’, sneered Havelock. Would he have preferred them to have approached in a disorderly mob?
Havelock might represent the extreme, but his belief that sepoys were too lamentable to require the basics of military discipline to beat them grew and prospered. Fortescue argued that during the mutiny ‘every strategical and tactical principle was disregarded and rightly disregarded, by the British commanders with practically perfect impunity’.229 If true, this surely renders any military analysis pointless. If the British could blunder in any old how and still secure victory, their tactics were irrelevant. It was precisely this attitude that had left Outram and Havelock penned in Lucknow, waiting for Campbell to rescue them.
There was a racial basis to this thesis. It was the old story, that campaigning in India could not be compared to a ‘proper war’ against Europeans.** ‘A generation which has fresh in its memory a far more desperate contest against a European foe may feel disposed to smile at the fervour of enthusiasm displayed by their ancestors over the suppression of the Indian Mutiny’, wrote Fortescue in 1930, conveniently forgetting that 1 million Indians had fought in Flanders for the British against a European foe. As an enemy, the sepoy was dismissed as beneath contempt, yet when fighting for the British he was a fearless paragon. This was how the Victorians could explain the rebels’ defeat as a function of racial inferiority and at the same time produce books like Elliott and Knollys’ Gallant Sepoys and Sowars (1882). This idea, that Campbell’s enemy was hardly worthy of the name, was vital to the critique levelled at him by Burne, Fortescue and Havelock. What is extraordinary is that it has been so seldom challenged.
It soon cracks under the weight of its own contradictions. Innes’s analysis of the storming of Lucknow is typical. ‘Lucknow had been taken, but the foe had not been crushed nor even punished, and they were free to re-assemble elsewhere in their thousands and tens of thousands’, he complains. Hence, Campbell’s failure to round them up needlessly prolonged the campaign. QED. But at this point Innes realises that he is suggesting the sepoy was a fearsome enemy, in turn validating Campbell’s preparedness and, God forbid, pointing to some military talent on the part of the mutineers, so on the very next page he writes, ‘After so signal a proof of the power and prowess of the British, and with no marked rallying point left to the enemy, it was reasonable to expect that they would offer but little further resistance, and gradually disperse to their homes.’230 So which was it? Was the rebel single-minded and dangerous, backed by sympathetic, stout-hearted countrymen posing a formidable guerrilla threat, or was he a coward who would bolt at the first sign of a bayonet, whose grievances did not stretch beyond the barrack room? Too many historians still cast the rebels in whichever guise best suits them at the time, moving from one to the other, as the mood takes them. So when Campbell was carefully amassing resources to storm Lucknow, the rebels were trivial and easily bested, and the commander-in-chief ridiculously timorous. Yet, when they escaped Lucknow in March, these same rebels were furious, organised and able to pose a threat for months, possibly years. Unless, that is, one had MOUNTED INFANTRY, presumably.
Unlike his biographers, Campbell had no illusions about the long, tough business of pacification before him. ‘Still the most harassing part of the campaign was in store for us,’ he predicted, ‘although owing to the aspect now assumed by the Contest there was no longer the possibility of achieving those exploits by which great credit is won by individual commanders in the public eye.’231 It was unglamorous, and promised none of the glory of the set-piece battles of the previous year, yet it was vital. Campbell believed the work of pacification would require more men than the re-invasions of 1857, and so, although by 12 April 1858 he had been sent 46,528 soldiers,232 still he demanded more. In June 1858, an extra 7,000 British troops left for India, and another 2,000 the month after.233
Given the hot weather, Campbell preferred to postpone the campaign until autumn and get his men under cover in the meantime.* ‘For the next few months they must remain quiet, if the rebels will but permit them. Rest is what they all want’, he told the Duke of Cambridge.234 The duke agreed that Campbell should resist ‘any further attempt to oblige you to keep the troops longer in the field, and that you will insist on housing the men as far as possible’.235 With royal approval, Campbell moved all he could from tents to huts. ‘This was a great change for the better. The quarters were lofty and airy, the roof was made of straw, and sufficiently thick to repel the sun’s rays, as well as to keep out the rain’, wrote one naval chaplain. ‘The sick list then began to fluctuate and at last showed a diminution.’236
Having conserved his troops over the summer, and with reinforcements in place, by late October Campbell was ready. His plan was to sweep north from the Ganges to the Gogra, and from there advance to the Nepalese border. ‘Considering that we now had arrived at what might be held to be the crowning Mercy of the Mutiny,’ explained Campbell, ‘I proposed … to break on the rebels simultaneously in each Province, to leave them no loopholes for escape, and to prevent them travelling from one District to another and so prolong a miserable Guerrilla War without end.’237
Campbell had for months pressed for an amnesty as the only realistic way to subdue India, and now, as the war drew to a close, he got what he wanted. The mutiny had sealed the fate of the East India Company and, at Allahabad on 1 November, the Queen’s Proclamation transferring India to the Crown was read out. India was, as Hutchins put it, ‘psychologically annexed’. Canning was to be viceroy. The Raj had begun. But the proclamation went much further. It rejected attempts to impose Christianity on India, insisting that ‘none be molested or disquieted by reason of their religious faith or observances’. To mollify the rajahs, there was to be ‘no extension of our present territorial possessions’. Their right to pass lands to an adopted heir would be respected. Critically, Her Majesty’s ‘clemency will be extended to all offenders, save and except those who had been or shall be convicted of having directly taken part in the murder of British subjects’. ‘To all others in arms against the government, we hereby promise unconditional pardon, amnesty and oblivion of all offences against ourselves, our crown and dignity, on their return to their homes and peaceful pursuits’,238 as long as they did so by 1 January 1859.
The proviso that murderous rebels were still fair game was suspect. ‘Everything is written, and yet nothing is written’, fumed the fugitive Begum of Oudh. ‘Let no subject be deceived by this proclamation’,239 she warned, but in the event the British proved very forgiving. ‘In all thirty-seven persons were so punished in the year 1859, and a few more in the following year’, reported one Oudh civil servant:
A certain number of large estates were also confiscated for misconduct. But on the Sepoys the retribution was almost nil. They were either pardoned under the amnesty or allowed to come in at a later period, or never came in at all, and were lost sight of till the matter was forgotten … The men most deeply implicated in the massacres naturally kept out of the way till some months later, when our ardour for prosecuting them was somewhat cooled down.240
With the new proclamation came a new strategy. For the past month Campbell had been systematically besieging Oudh’s fortresses. As the commander-in-chief explained to Cambridge:
The most difficult part of the job of reduction is the fact that the large forts are in the midst of very dense bamboo jungle, which must be regularly cut down in many places before a sight even can be obtained of the stronghold it conceals. These powerful jungles have been always grown and preserved with much care by the powerful talookdars, or great feudal landholders, as a special means of defence.241
Now he instructed that no fort was to be attacked before its owner had been presented with the queen’s edict. So when he came to the stronghold of Rajah Lall Madho at Amethee, Campbell sent over the paperwork and waited. The Rajah rode out and surrendered, but without his men. Lall then sent a vakeel back inside to ask the rest to lay down their arms, but they had already bolted, taking their artillery with them. ‘Scarcely a gun was in the place … here and there were some old brass howitzers, popguns and little mortars, and one nine pounder in position’, explained Russell:
The Commander-in-Chief rode in with a few of his Staff, and the Rajah in attendance. The latter was pale with affright, for his Excellency, more irritated than I have ever seen him, and conscious of the trick which had been played on him, was denouncing the rajah’s conduct in terms which perhaps the latter would not have minded much had they not been accompanied by threats of unmistakeable vigour.242
Despite this double-cross, Campbell stuck to his principles, and when he reached Shankerpoor, headquarters of Beni Madho Singh, he sent Major Barrow to assure his enemy ‘that under the terms of that Proclamation his life is secured on due submission being made’, and that ‘He must therefore make the fullest submissive surrender of his forts and cannon, and come out at the head of his sepoys and armed followers, and with them lay down his arms in presence of Her Majesty’s troops.’ But during the night, ‘Beni Madho, with all his badmashes, treasure, guns, women, and baggage, steadily in the dark … moved round between Sir Hope Grant’s right flank pickets, towards the west’, as Russell reported, and slipped through unnoticed. ‘The moment the retreat was discovered this morning, we rushed into the fort and entrenched camp and found it empty. Not a soul was left, except a few feeble old men, priests, dirty fakirs, and a mad elephant with some gun-bullocks.’243
After several days’ marching, Campbell ran Beni to ground near Doundea Khera. As before, he gave his guns the chance to do the hard work first. When he did allow the infantry forward, ‘the advance became a run’, wrote Russell:
The men cheering broke out into a double, and at last into a regular race, Lord Clyde leading them on. But just as we got to the slope of the ridge, an immense cloud of dust, arising far away upon our left, told us that the enemy were in full flight along the banks of the Ganges.
Campbell was unperturbed, sure that ‘most of the sepoys would go to their own homes now that Beni Madho had been compelled to abandon his sanctuary’.244 And with that he returned to Lucknow.
The rebels were escaping rather than surrendering, but at least they were being forced northwards out of India, while behind them civil administration was being restored by means of thousands of native police recruits. By the end of November, Campbell had the south-east portion of Oudh up to the Gogra under control, while Brigadiers Hall, Barker and Troup had pacified the south-west, receiving ‘the surrender of large quantities of arms as well as the personal submission, under the terms of the Queen’s Proclamation, of numbers of rebel chiefs and their immediate followers’.245 Campbell could now turn to the area around Jhansi, as he put it, ‘to subjugate the country thoroughly, which had been brilliantly traversed, but not reduced by Sir Hugh Rose’.246
Columns marched hither and yon, depositing small garrisons in their wake, but for the press it was all far too leisurely: ‘Lord Clyde seems determined to pursue a line of conduct which is likely to make us the laughing stock,’ declared the Bombay Times.247 Without comprehensible pitched battles, it seemed rather muddled and inept, but it got the job done. ‘The effects of our successes, such as they are, unattended by much “glory”, and a good deal of evasion on the part of our enemy, and unilluminated by bloodshed, is, however, considerable already,’ argued Russell, ‘as the talookdars and ranas [rajahs] are coming in numerously and making earnest professions of good will’.248
By late November, the task of reconquest was nearly complete, and Campbell’s taste for the hunt waning, but a report that Beni Madho was camped next to the Gogra, at Byramghat, was too good to pass up, and so on 4 December he set out with a column from Lucknow, ‘in great delight at the prospect of getting hold of the rebels’.249 But by the time he got there, his quarry had fled. Then, a few days later, the Nana Sahib and Begum of Oudh were reported at Baraitch near the Nepalese border and so, on 15 December, Campbell set out again, but once again as he closed in, the rebels retreated ahead of him. The chase continued through December. British India insisted these ringleaders be brought to justice, especially the Nana Sahib, and Campbell was determined to pursue them through the festive season, if necessary. On Christmas Day, Russell:
was horribly alarmed after breakfast by seeing Lord Clyde walking up and down, and looking at the skies inquiringly, in a manner which indicated to those who knew him well that he was preparing to march. Then it was represented to him that the men’s puddings would be spoiled, and so at last his lordship gave way.
Early on Boxing Day they set forth and before long cornered the mutineers near Nanparah. ‘We could not make out their guns, but we could determine that the enemy were not more than 3,000 strong, of which some 800 or 900 were cavalry,’ Russell reported. ‘Elephants could be seen on the flanks, and camels and cart behind the tope.’ The rebels were easily outflanked and, as usual, fled, but while galloping over to a horse artillery officer, Campbell’s ‘charger, a perfectly sure-footed animal, put its foot in a hole, fell and threw him with great force’, recalled Russell. ‘He sat up for a moment, his face was bleeding; he tried to move his right arm, it was powerless. His shoulder was dislocated.’ He had also cracked a rib. He carried on as if nothing had happened.250
On 30 December news arrived that Beni Madho and the Nana Sahib had been sighted near Bankee. At six o’clock that evening Campbell ordered the troops to prepare for a night march to catch them. The attempt was ‘esteemed hopeless by those most conversant with Indian warfare’, wrote Russell. ‘The enemy were twenty three miles away, the nights were pitch dark, there were no roads whatever, the guides were not to be depended upon, the rebels would be informed the moment we stirred’,251 but Campbell was not discouraged. He gathered 150 elephants to carry the men in rotation, so they would not arrive exhausted.
‘We had a miserable cold, damp march through perfect darkness until 4 am,’ wrote Norman, ‘and consequently pulled up till daylight.’ They were in time. Enemy pickets were visible. Campbell ordered horse artillery to the front, and cavalry on each flank, while the infantry followed in support. The rebels decided on a tactical retreat. ‘The enemy succeeded in discharging a gun and wounding some of the troopers,’ wrote Norman, ‘but the appearance of two companies of the Rifle Brigade was enough to make them continue their flight.’252 The hussars chased them into the Raptee River. Soon the water was full of ‘men and horses swimming for their lives’ and ‘fierce hand-to-hand conflicts between sowars and hussars in the foaming water’, reported Russell, ‘but the river was our most formidable foe’.253 Worn out, the cavalry pulled back, leaving the rebels to flee into the Himalayan foothills.
Bankee was the last battle. ‘The Campaign is at an end’, Campbell declared. ‘There is no longer even the vestige of rebellion in the Province of Oudh, and the last remnant of the mutineers and insurgents has been hopelessly driven across the mountains.’
These results have been attained … by not committing the troops to a forward movement until I should be ready to support it on every side, and so to convert a march into a thorough process of occupation, as was done in the Doab last year, after the battle of Cawnpore.254
For the queen the news was ‘Most important and useful, and a great blessing at this moment … Albert is quite delighted with it.’ ‘It is with no small pride and satisfaction I can say to you that the last day of 1858 crowned Lord Canning’s policy with the most complete success’, Campbell told Lady Canning. ‘The rebels have all either surrendered or are fled hopeless exiles to the mountains of Nepaul. Hundreds of forts are destroyed, hundreds of thousands of arms are given up, and the civil officers have now free scope for the performance of their duties.’255 And this had all been achieved with a paltry eighteen killed and eighty-four wounded since 2 November.
Naturally, Campbell had his detractors. ‘No one will be inclined to dispute the thoroughness of Lord Clyde’s work in this final winter campaign, and his subjugation of Oudh’, wrote General Innes:
But the strength of the forces now at his disposal was enormous, and the consequent facilities for carrying his work into effect made the task easy. There was no such skill or hardihood, no such generalship involved, no such dread inspired in the enemy as had enabled Havelock to confront the armies of Oudh.256
But what Campbell had achieved was far harder than inspiring dread or confronting an army.
* Some have criticised Campbell for not requesting the siege train from Agra sooner, but in Agra it was well placed for the pacification of Rohilcund, so of course he did not move it until Lucknow was confirmed as the primary target. As for the Shannon’s big guns, only now had suitable carriage been procured, following the capture of the gun carriage factory at Futtehghur (Rowbotham, 10–13).
* While he praised Campbell’s restrictions on baggage, it took five days’ worth of bullock wagons to transport Canning, his entourage, and luggage to Allahabad (Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 17, 23–4). He was used to 300–400 servants at Government House in Calcutta (Hurd, 108).
** A second Crimean colleague, Colonel Sterling, arrived to act as Campbell’s military secretary after Alison was invalided home. Having adopted an eccentric pair of huge ‘coloured spectacles’, he was nicknamed ‘Old Gig-lamps’. Campbell’s staff had suffered considerable losses and, unusually for the time, he took on Colonel Metcalfe, the Anglo-Indian son of Lord Metcalfe and a Rajpoot princess (Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 255).
* Estimates varied widely. Captain Orr of the Intelligence Department put the figure at 120,000, of which around 55,000 were nujeebs and 20,000 bondsmen of talookdars.
** Indian soldiers loyal to a native rajah or landowner.
* The Nawab of Oudh had an obsession with chandeliers. Upon entering the Imambarra, one English traveller mistook it for ‘a manufactory of chandeliers’ (Taylor, 111).
* Confusingly, the 42nd was commanded by a Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron, but a different Cameron from the one in charge in the Crimea.
** See the excellent map at the back of Forrest, Selections, II, sadly too large and detailed to reproduce here.
* The Highlanders claimed that Jung Bahadoor was so impressed he tried to buy the regiment (Forbes-Mitchell, 220).
* For a statistical refutation of this claim see Appendix A.
** Yet, writing forty years later, Roberts changed his mind and claimed that these rebels regrouped to harry the British well into 1859.
* John Delane, editor of The Times, attributed this to Russell’s letters condemning British atrocities, though, as in the Crimea, that may be overstating the power of the press.
* The fort near the Residency Lawrence had originally occupied in June, and then abandoned to the rebels.
** Campbell’s ADC, Major James Dormer, suggested telegraphing Nunc fortunatus sum or ‘I am in luck, now’ (Wolseley, Story of a Soldier’s Life, I, 341).
* Merely a taste of this nineteen-verse epic.
** Upon realising that this was a title of the Duke of Hamilton, he swung back in favour of Lucknow, but Lord Derby had by then announced his elevation as Lord Clyde of Clydesdale.
* It was awarded 182 times in the Second World War, but Charles Upham got it twice.
* Loot was distributed on the basis of the Queen’s Proclamation of 11 August 1854 (PP.H/C.East India (Prize Property), 1860, Vol.L, 439). As mementos Campbell took a stuffed bird, which he later gave to Lady Canning’s aunt, two oil paintings from the throne room of the Kaiserbagh, and four black swans, which he presented to Lady Canning (Hare, III, 137; Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 202; Llewellyn-Jones, 137). They weren’t the only live plunder. A tame rhinoceros ‘reputed to be a hundred years old’ was taken prize by the 53rd.
** For example, Acting Commissary-General James Graham alone had 15,000 natives under his charge and approximately as many animals (Harrison, 90).
*** Prize agents were appointed by ballot from among the officers. Lieutenant McBean of the 93rd was offered the role of overseeing them, but refused, and a Mr Chalmers of the Indian Commissariat Department took over instead (Gordon-Alexander, 284).
**** This compares to nearly thirty-four lakhs of rupees from Delhi (PP.H/C.East India (Prize Property), 1860, Vol.L, 421). After cash, the largest portion of the Lucknow prize came from the sale of ‘shawls, dresses, etc’. Despite the haphazard nature of the collection of the spoils, the return reads rather like a solicitor’s bill, including five rupees logged for postage.
* The same Penny who had commanded Campbell’s reserve brigade at Chillianwala.
** Khan was already bent on a guerrilla war, exhorting his men to confound British ‘communications, stop their supplies, cut up their daks and post, and keep constantly hanging about their camps: give them no rest’ (Martin, R.M., The Indian Empire, VIII, 492).
* Although Canning described her as ‘Not pretty, and marked with smallpox, but [with] beautiful eyes and figure’ (Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 220), most British sources described her as gorgeously exotic. However, most nineteenth-century British officers would have you believe all ranees were pouting nymphomaniacs. Most British memsahibs described them in similar terms, for rather different reasons. The ranee’s guilt in the massacre is a matter of doubt.
** So vigorous was he, Canning seriously considered his supersession.
* The one deviation from the master plan was when Hamilton overruled orders from Canning and Campbell to head for Chirkaree before investing Jhansi.
* When the publisher received Havelock’s manuscript promoting his panacea, he must have had to wipe the spittle off every page. At least a quarter of this tirade is in italics or CAPITALS, and when the author gets really upset, ITALICISED CAPITALS.
** The same criticism levelled at ‘sepoy general’ Sir Arthur Wellesley before he landed in Portugal.
* Campbell had made sure his troops’ hospital facilities were so good that when Florence Nightingale offered to ‘start at 24 hours’ notice’ for India, Lady Canning told her not to bother (RA/VIC/MAIN/Z/502/34 and 24).
1 Bengal Hurkaru, 20 February 1858.
2 Gordon-Alexander, 221.
3 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 387.
4 Burne, 79.
5 Chalmers, 136.
6 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 187; BL/Mss.Eur.Photo.Eur.474 (20 Feb 1858).
7 BL.Mss.Eur.Photo.Eur.474 (20 Feb 1858); Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 180.
8 Lugard, 6.
9 Sen, 238; Forrest, A History of the Indian Mutiny, II, 303.
10 Jones, O., 120.
11 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 30, 64.
12 Russell, My Diary in India, I, 170.
13 The Times, 15 August 1863.
14 Majendie, 140.
15 Birmingham Daily Post, 6 September 1858.
16 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 259.
17 Forrest, Selections, III, App. F, ii.
18 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 71.
19 Forrest, Selections, III, 465.
20 Forrest, Selections, III, 471.
21 Goldsmid, II, 320.
22 Forrest, Selections, III, App. F, ii.
23 Napier, H.D., 100, 326.
24 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 74.
25 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 57, 62.
26 Brooks, J., 161.
27 Chalmers, 150.
28 Forrest, Selections, III, App. F. v; Chalmers, 140.
29 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 75–6.
30 Jones, O., 163.
31 Jones, O., 163.
32 Gordon-Alexander, 233.
33 Jocelyn, Mutiny, 281.
34 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 315.
35 Forrest, Selections, III, 468.
36 Vibart, E., 185.
37 Chalmers, 152.
38 Forrest, Selections, III, 479.
39 Lang, 162.
40 Forrest, Selections, III, 468.
41 Forrest, Selections, III, 480; Jocelyn, Mutiny, 288.
42 Lang, 162–3.
43 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 316–17.
44 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 89.
45 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 402.
46 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 91.
47 Maude and Sherer, II, 421; Knollys, I, 344.
48 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 92.
49 Bombay Times 24 March 1858.
50 Lang, 163.
51 Forbes-Mitchell, 210.
52 NLS/MS.2234.
53 Maude and Sherer, II, 467.
54 Forrest, Selections, III, 470.
55 Jocelyn, Mutiny, 286.
56 Fortescue, XIII, 341.
57 Jones, O., 171, 169.
58 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 96.
59 Forrest, Selections, III, 471.
60 Hare, II, 469.
61 Majendie, 212.
62 Jocelyn, Mutiny, 292.
63 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 406.
64 Malleson, II, 414.
65 Watson, 90.
66 Wood, Revolt in Hindustan, 276.
67 Dodd, Indian Revolt, 422.
68 Mackenzie, A.R.D., 193.
69 Jones, O., 167.
70 Roberts, F., Forty-One Years in India, I, 372.
71 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 77, 39, 95.
72 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 368.
73 Roberts, F., Letters, 146.
74 Majendie, 195.
75 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 87.
76 Williams, E.A., Cruise, 252.
77 Allen, 335.
78 Forbes-Mitchell, 256.
79 Russell, My Diary in India, I, 221.
80 Majendie, 222.
81 Bombay Times, 20 February 1858.
82 Malleson, II, 397.
83 Fortescue, XIII, 346.
84 Llewellyn-Jones, 160.
85 Metcalfe, C.T., 71.
86 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 110.
87 Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 193.
88 Raikes, 121.
89 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 133.
90 Majendie, 196.
91 Knollys, I, 329, 346.
92 Leicester Chronicle, 7 April 1858.
93 Majendie, 292.
94 RA/VIC/MAIN/QVJ(W).5/5/58.
95 Hansard/HL/Deb. 15/2/1858. Vol. 148 cc. 1360-4.
96 Forbes-Mitchell, 20.
97 Gordon-Alexander, 37–9.
98 Ewart, II, 53.
99 Russell, My Diary in India, I, 335.
100 Majendie, 230.
101 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 111.
102 Pearson, 98.
103 Verney, E., 117.
104 Forrest, Selections, III, 482, 471.
105 Forrest, Selections, III, 463.
106 Chalmers, 154.
107 Mackay, II, 456.
108 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 110.
109 The Times, 9 April 1858.
110 Shadwell, II, 267.
111 Barker, 116.
112 Mackenzie, A.R.D., 195.
113 Gordon-Alexander, 277.
114 Glasgow Herald, 9 April 1858.
115 Caledonian Mercury, 10 April 1858.
116 Huddersfield Chronicle, 10 April 1858.
117 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 154.
118 Duff, 254.
119 Forrest, Selections, III, 549–51.
120 Verner, I, 186.
121 Cheshire Observer, 10 April 1858.
122 RA/VIC/MAIN/QVJ(W).25/4/58.
123 Verner, I, 217.
124 Shadwell, II, 322.
125 Knollys, I, 331.
126 Maude and Sherer, II, 461.
127 Baldwin, 59.
128 Martin, R.M., The Indian Empire, VIII, 495.
129 Russell, My Diary in India, I, 218.
130 Goldsmid, II, 301.
131 Knollys, I, 349; Wood, Revolt in Hindustan, 280.
132 PP.H/C.East India, 1857-58, Vol.XLII.653.
133 NLS/MS.2234, 1 March 1858.
134 Stannus, 12.
135 Maude and Sherer, II, 333.
136 Danvers, 135.
137 Outram, Our Indian Army, 5.
138 Baldwin, 50.
139 Majendie, 244.
140 Brasyer, 58.
141 Danvers, 136.
142 Verney, E., 110.
143 Majendie, 202.
144 Maude and Sherer, II, 460.
145 Gordon-Alexander, 285.
146 Harris, James 63.
147 Bombay Times, 27 January 1858.
148 Gordon-Alexander, 285.
149 Wolseley, Narrative, 224.
150 Harrison, 101.
151 Forbes-Mitchell, 221.
152 Verney, E., 120.
153 Martin, R.M., The Indian Empire, VIII, 482.
154 Gordon-Alexander, 286.
155 Forbes-Mitchell, 228.
156 PP.H/C.East India (Prize Property), 1860, Vol.L.407.
157 Maude and Sherer, II, 457.
158 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 123.
159 Glasgow Herald, 18 August 1858.
160 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 208.
161 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 328, 356.
162 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 113–16.
163 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 333.
164 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 339, 422.
165 Russell, My Diary in India, I, 179.
166 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/993.
167 Williams, E.A. Cruise, 187.
168 Mackay, II, 446.
169 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 212.
170 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
171 Shadwell, II, 219.
172 Campbell, G., Memoirs, I, 301.
173 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 212.
174 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
175 London Gazette, 17 July 1858.
176 Gordon-Alexander, 299.
177 Forbes-Mitchell, 246.
178 Gordon-Alexander, 297.
179 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 124.
180 Gordon-Alexander, 304, 307.
181 Allgood, ‘Journal’, xxviii.
182 Forbes-Mitchell, 256.
183 Russell, My Diary in India, II, 8.
184 Forbes-Mitchell, 257.
185 Forbes-Mitchell, 254–5.
186 Vibart, E., 194.
187 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 146.
188 Munro, 189; Gordon-Alexander, 312–15.
189 Forbes-Mitchell, 254.
190 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 139.
191 Wolseley, Story of a Soldier’s Life, I, 364.
192 London Gazette, 28 July 1858.
193 Shadwell, II, 305.
194 Verner, I, 191.
195 Allgood, ‘Journal’, xxx.
196 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 153.
197 Shadwell, II, 234.
198 Seaton, T., II, 288.
199 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 430.
200 Shadwell, II, 274.
201 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 454.
202 Stent, 205.
203 Robson, 93.
204 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
205 Shadwell, II, 249.
206 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 162.
207 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1056.
208 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
209 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
210 Robson, 288.
211 Stokes, The Peasant Armed, 45–6.
212 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
213 Birmingham Daily Post, 6 September 1858.
214 Hare, II, 467.
215 Amin - www.defencejournal.com 2/2000.
216 Birmingham Daily Post, 6 September 1858.
217 Bombay Times, 10 February 1858.
218 The Times, 5–6 August 1858.
219 Duff, 258.
220 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 135.
221 NAM 1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
222 Seaton, T., II, 296.
223 Shadwell, II, 481.
224 Glasgow Herald, 18 August 1858.
225 Havelock, 112.
226 Fortescue, XIII, 398.
227 Maclagan, Clemency Canning, 230.
228 Havelock, 166, 161.
229 Fortescue, XIII, 388.
230 Innes, 289.
231 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
232 PP.H/C.East India, 1857-58, Vol.XLII.653.
233 Shadwell, II, 298.
234 RA/VIC/ADDE/1/1038.
235 Shadwell, II, 273.
236 Williams, E.A., Cruise, 217.
237 NAM/1995-11-296(VPP-Part).
238 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 525.
239 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 528.
240 Campbell, G., Memoirs, II, 27.
241 Shadwell, II, 318.
242 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 218–20.
243 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 266.
244 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 237–8.
245 Gordon-Alexander, 345.
246 NAM/1995-11-296 (VPP-Part).
247 Bombay Times, 4 December 1858.
248 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 227.
249 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 242.
250 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 261–2.
251 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 271.
252 Lee-Warner, Memoirs, 217.
253 Russell, My Indian Mutiny Diary, 276.
254 Rizvi and Bhargava, II, 570.
255 Hare, II, 481.
256 Innes, 307.